SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #631 (0), Friday, December 22, 2000
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TITLE: Duma Votes for Nuclear Imports
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The State Duma voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to support amendments to environmental law that would allow for the import of irradiated nuclear fuel for reprocessing and long-term storage, despite concerns of environmentalists who say this will turn Russia into the world's dump for nuclear waste.


With 318 deputies for and only 32 against, the first reading had a satisfactory conclusion for Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov, who has lobbied long and hard for the legislative change.

And Vladimir Klimov, deputy head of the Duma's power, transport and communications committee, was also happy with the result. "The 1992 environmental law was a victory of the emotions over common sense. It has to be changed," he said in an telephone interview.

Support for the amendment came mostly from the Communist and Unity factions. Over 90 percent of Unity deputies supported the change, as did over three-quarters of the Communist Party's lawmakers.

If the amendment passes all readings in the Duma, it will mean that Russia can import up to 20,000 tons of irradiated fuel from other countries over the next decade. Adamov has repeatedly claimed that this could earn the country as much as $20 billion.

Supporters of the project say that this money would be used to develop Russia's nuclear industry, as well as improve its safety record and help clean up contaminated areas.

The amendment says that up to 35 percent of revenues will go to ecological projects.

At the moment, the world has around 200,000 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel awaiting reprocessing, with 14,000 tons produced by Russia.

One dissenting Communist voice came from Alexander Shvetsov, who announced his intention to vote against the motion before the vote. 

"The ecological danger is obvious," Shvetsov said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But even in terms of the economics, the plan won't work."

Yelena Drapeko, a member of the Agro-Industrial faction, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that she, too, would vote against the plan. "Our storage facilities aren't safe, and the money we would earn won't suffice to solve our environmental problems," she said.

The only faction to vote against the amendment en masse was Yabloko. "The amendment ... only proves that the Nuclear Power Ministry is blatantly lobbying its interests," said Yabloko Deputy Sergei Mitrokhin during the debate.

Thomas Nilsen of the environmental group Bellona agreed. "The [Nuclear Power Ministry] will keep as much of the money [it earns] as possible for itself," Nilsen said by telephone on Thursday evening. "I doubt that money will be used to improve nuclear safety, and in any case, $20 billion is not enough."

And Alexander Nikitin, who co-wrote a report on the Northern Fleet's mishandling of its nuclear waste with Bellona, said that the real motive for the amendment was for the Nuclear Ministry to make money. "The ministry has degraded from being a scientific and technological center to a commercial enterprise," Nikitin said.

In June 1999, the Nuclear Power Ministry and a U.S.-based company, the Non-Proliferation Trust (NPT), signed a letter of intent, according to which Russia would accept at least 10,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from Switzerland, South Korea, and Taiwan for reprocessing and storage for at least 40 years. For its services, Russia would charge between $1,000 and $2,000 per kilogram of spent fuel - much cheaper than other countries which store and reprocess foreign fuel.

Earlier this year, First Deputy Nuclear Minister Valentin Ivanov also revealed that Russia plans to convince Eastern European countries to rely on Russian storage facilities, rather than build their own. "It would be safer than having countries that do not possess the advanced technology in this field constructing their own storage sites," he told deputies.

In late October, a Bulgarian power plant announced a deal to store nuclear waste in Russia, and said that the waste would remain in this country.

Environmentalists have often pointed to Russia's record on storing nuclear waste, highlighting a number of radiation leaks at existing facilities, and maintain that the country's reactors are dangerous and out-of-date.

Greenpeace-Russia distributed letters to deputies written by those who say they have suffered from radiation poisoning.

Nilsen, who said that Russia was more likely to use existing storage sites in the Chelyabinsk and Krasnoyarsk regions, added that the Nuclear Power Ministry had mislead deputies.

"It diverted attention away from the nuclear waste issue by using the phrase 'energy resources,'" he said. "It focused on how [the plan] would be economically profitable, and ignored the fact that this is pretty dangerous material."

One way in which Russian environmentalists tried to fight the amendment was by forcing a referendum on the subject. The initiative, begun this autumn, failed when the Central Electoral Commission rejected over 600,000 of the nearly 2 1/2 million signatures gathered, thus invalidating the petition.

Greenpeace spokeswoman Polina Malysheva said that the petition's organizers intended to challenge the CEC's decision in court.

TITLE: Unity Busted Over Putin Sculpture
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Busts of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin used to be as common as paperweights in the former Soviet Union. In fact, they often were paperweights.


But an effort by a St. Petersburg Unity faction member to churn out a series of busts of President Vladimir Putin has not only been nipped in the bud: It has apparently left him isolated by his own party, and earned him widespread scorn.

With the bust still only in plaster form, Viktor Cherkesov, the governor general of the Northwest region, has put a stop to the plan, and Putin himself has intervened to halt any further reproduction of the presidential head. 

The plan began as the idea of Viktor Yurakov, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Unity faction, who wished to make dozens of the busts which would then be given to regional leaders to display in their offices. 

But Putin's press service asked Cherkesov to put a to stop the plan.

"In a private conversations [with Cherkesov] ,representatives from the presidential press service asked him, 'What is that rubbish Unity is perpetrating up there?'" said Cherkesov's spokesman Alexander Chizhonok in a telephone interview on Thursday.

"And they asked Cherkesov to tell them to stop this nonsense."

Whether the Putin administration is being careful to avoid accusations of fostering a cult of personality, or whether it is genuinely repelled by the idea of the bust, remains to be seen. Either way, however, this is not the first time St. Petersburg Unity politicians have shown their admiration for the president.

In October, 10,000 local school children were handed a glossy pamphlet on children's rights as set out by a United Nations convention, complete with a short but glowing autobiography of the president, praising his brave deeds as a child and including photographs of him as a boy.

The pamphlet, financed by Unity and various local businesses, drew instant comparisons to the old Soviet children's books about Lenin as a boy, and a stony silence from the Kremlin.

But as far as the bust goes, local Unity politicians distanced themselves from Yurakov's project this week.

"I think we should be very careful about this," said Unity spokesman Vadim Sergienko in a telephone interview on Tuesday. 

"We should ask the president first if he agrees. [Otherwise], we should only do these things for our [own consumption]."

The sculptor himself, local artist Alexander Palmin, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Most other interviewees, however, were not impressed.

"This is just ridiculous," said Moscow-based political analyst Alexei Pankin. "This is the kind of thing that happens in America, where every politician silly enough to do so hangs a portrait of the president on the wall."

And members of the public were also unsympathetic to the idea.

"I am strictly against having sculptures on desks, and it doesn't matter whose sculpture it is - Yeltsin's, Putin's or anyone else's," said Marina, 42. "I protest any sign of a cult of personality."

"This is complete rubbish," said Alexander, 64. "Idolatry is the sign of a weak brain. They'd better do something useful instead."

TITLE: Chekists Urged To Aid Democracy's Defense
AUTHOR: By Anna Dolgov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia's most visible KGB veteran, President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday urged former colleagues to learn from the repressive past of Soviet-era secret services and to apply their skills toward defending democracy. 


Putin's speech in the Kremlin - followed by a concert and dinner - was timed to mark Chekist's Day, a Soviet-era holiday commemorating the Dec. 20, 1917, establishment of the secret police, the Cheka. The Cheka later developed into the Soviet-era KGB, the dreaded repression machine that executed or imprisoned millions.

Putin served for 16 years in the KGB's foreign intelligence department before the agency broke up into successor services after the Soviet collapse. 

"Fundamental changes in the country have given a new meaning to your work," he told agents. "The state significance of your work is in the defense of the constitutional rights of Russia's citizens."

In an interview published to mark the secret agents' professional holiday, the head of the KGB's main successor agency said that Western spy services have turned former Soviet allies in Eastern Europe into a platform for operations against Russia. 

Nikolai Patrushev, head of Russia's Federal Security Service, also promised to continue efforts to block foreign espionage activities, according to the interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda. 

Putin has put many of his former colleagues into senior government positions, a trend started by his predecessor Boris Yeltsin. Critics have voiced fears that the former KGB officials might try to re-establish elements of the repressive Soviet system and crack down on democratic freedoms. 

Patrushev denied the allegations, and Putin said Wednesday that the security service would be used to reinforce the democratic government. 

"We remember the history of the security agencies. It is ambiguous, we know that," Putin said. 

"The easiest thing would be to reject our past," he said. "It is more important, in my view, to learn its lessons, regardless how bitter they are, and along with the harshest criticism, to preserve the valuable aspects."

TITLE: Stalin Not Forgotten in Home Town
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GORI, Georgia - Hundreds of Georgians celebrated the 121st anniversary of the birth of Josef Stalin on Thursday in one of the few places where the late Soviet dictator is still openly revered - his home town.


About 500 people gathered outside the colonnaded museum erected in his honor in Gori, a small town some 65 kilometers west of the capital Tbilisi where the future revolutionary was born on Dec. 21, 1879.

In the rest of Georgia and other former Soviet republics, the personality cult evaporated with Stalin's death in March 1953.

But in Gori, the first toast at celebrations is traditionally raised in honour of Stalin.

Elderly supporters carried portraits of Stalin down Stalin Avenue to Gori's huge bronze statue of Stalin, one of the few still standing in a public place anywhere.

Bemedalled war veterans sang songs and recited poems in honor of the Communist dictator, who sent millions to their deaths in labor camps during waves of political purges.

Despite the scale of Stalin's purges, some die-hard communists remain nostalgic for his uncompromising rule, and credit him with defeating Nazi Germany in World War II.

Stalin's humble home, a two-roomed wooden affair, has been preserved for enthusiasts and the merely curious inside a museum compound in the town.

Panteleimon Giorgadze, leader of the country's small Communist Party, used the anniversary to accuse President Eduard Shevardnadze's government of turning Georgia into a beggar.

Vakhtang Goguadze, leader of the left-wing Patriotic Union, delivered a fiery anti-American speech and said Georgia should follow Russia's example and restore the Soviet-era national anthem personally selected by Stalin.

TITLE: SVR Releases 'Greatest Hits'
AUTHOR: By Anna Badkhen
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Perhaps anticipating that gifts and well-wishes might be in short supply as Russia's secret police celebrated their 80th anniversary, the Foreign Intelligence Service has come up with a very special present to itself. 


"Their Uneasy Job Is Called Spying," a 22-track compilation of songs near and dear to the hearts of Russia's spies, has a little bit of everything: nostalgia, patriotism and love. 

The songs, with titles like "Hope," "Completing a Task" and "Here Goes Your Friend Off on a Mission," were chosen - and occasionally written and performed - by intelligence service officials, and will be distributed on CD and audiocassette to the country's intelligence veterans in honor of the 80-year jubilee. 

But civilian music lovers hoping to hear what professional spies are listening to these days will find themselves left out in the cold. The collection, which boasts professional recording standards and the occasional musical luminary, is for intelligence ears only. 

"It's a purely private thing that is not subject for mass distribution," said Boris Labusov, chief of the SVR's press bureau. 

Maybe "Spy's Motto," the first song on the compilation - whose cover photograph features a man from the neck down, dressed in a discreet dark suit and sporting the sword-and-shield emblem first made famous by the KGB - puts it better: "It's that kind of job ... or, to put it more correctly, it's that kind of fate." 

Despite the profession's secretive nature, Labusov said he was surprised how many Russian songs about spies there were to choose from - so many, in fact, that the CD couldn't hold them all. 

"It's that kind of job, you know," he echoed, smiling slyly. 

Not surprisingly, all of the tunes - from "A Replacement" to "Intelligence, Motherland and Honor" - are written with love for Russia. 

"I have seen plenty of countries, as I walked on with a rifle in hand, but there wasn't a greater sadness than to live apart from you," goes "Birds of Passage Fly," performed by singer and State Duma Deputy Iosif Kobzon. 

"Naturally, spies can't always announce that they are foreign intelligence service officers," Labusov said. "But when the time comes for them to sing a little, they choose the songs that have to do with their life's work."

TITLE: Gazprom's Cable Cut by Polish Farmers
AUTHOR: By Monika Scislowska
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TLUCHOWO, Poland - The black cable snaking out of freshly turned Polish soil hardly looks like the missing link in one of central Europe's biggest high-tech schemes. But the best-laid plans of Russian gas giant Gazprom have come to an embarrassing halt in Andrzej Skowronski's muddy strawberry field in rural Poland. 


"We have capitalism now," said Skowronski, 28, who has skirmished with courts and riot police to keep the cable off his family's farm. "If someone wants to make a profit using my private property, I must make money on it, too. That's what capitalism says."

The Polish government is deeply embarrassed. It issued permits for the cable believing it was meant only to monitor the Yamal pipeline carrying gas from Siberia to Germany. Now it discovers it could have held out for a bigger share of the profits, had it only known that the cable is also carrying enough fiber optics to handle most of Russia's telephone traffic with Western Europe.

The scandal has also revived nasty memories of times when Poland was a Soviet satellite. Some Polish media say the affair shows that the Kremlin is as arrogant as ever toward Poles. 

Meanwhile, the Skowronskis and their neighbors in the farming town of Tluchowo, central Poland, have held up the project for 18 months while demanding their due. 

That leaves a 10-kilometer gap in the transmission line's 675-kilometer Polish segment, and EuRoPol Gaz, the Russian-Polish joint venture that built and operates the pipeline, is furious. 

Gazprom, the Russian natural-gas monopoly that owns 48 percent of EuRoPol, already has signed telecommunications accords with operators in Western Europe, assuming the line would be laid by year's end. 

It is unclear what the Polish state gas company, which also owns 48 percent of the pipeline venture, knew about Gazprom's intentions. A EuRoPol Gaz spokeswoman in Warsaw, Danuta Tarkowska, acknowledged that EuRoPol was "thinking about putting the cable to commercial use," but said there were no binding contracts. 

As for the Tluchowo farmers, she said EuRoPol Gaz intends to enforce court orders giving it right-of-way. 

That may be difficult. Police escorting workers to the cable route in March 1999 found it blocked by farm machinery and scythe-wielding farmers, including two generations of Skowronskis. 

The authorities won round 1: Skowronski says one of his four brothers was kicked in the spine and hospitalized, and another was detained for 48 hours. The cable crews went to work, but the brothers were back within days. 

The workers, apparently lacking the appetite for round two, coiled up the cable and left. 

Skowronski says EuRoPol Gaz initially offered $480 for use of a 180-meter strip of land, pledging an unspecified sum later. He demanded more, and after the 1999 standoff was offered $17,000. Skowronski wants double. 

EuRoPol Gaz says that's exorbitant. Polish authorities are bound, eventually, to uphold the court orders, but they may be in no rush. 

Stung by a newspaper expose last month about cable's fiber-optics capability, Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek pledged to investigate and make sure Polish interests are protected. Moreover, no one wants to look soft on the Russians. 

The telecommunications ministry has warned that the cable will pose "a serious threat to the state's security" if it is linked to Poland's telephone network. 

Skowronski, a graduate of the Warsaw Agriculture Academy whose smooth-spoken demeanor belies his stubborn peasant roots, isn't concerned about international diplomacy. 

"I don't care about the country's sovereignty," he said. "I want to do business over this cable. Sooner or later, we will win."



q

The Yamal pipeline - which runs from Germany through Poland, Belarus and European Russia to the Yamal Peninsula in the north - came into operation in September. 


All such pipelines include some sort of accompanying fiber-optic cable so pipeline operators can transmit computer information to regulate the flow of gas.

What is unusual about the fiber-optic cable on the Yamal-Europe pipeline, however, is that it can carry such an extraordinary amount of telecommunications traffic.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Stalin-Era Spy Charged

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) - An elderly ex-secret police agent has begun serving a prison term for crimes against humanity, one of the few men in a former Soviet republic jailed for Stalinist repressions. 

Karl-Leonhard Paulov, 76, was convicted earlier this year of crimes against humanity and sentenced to eight years in prison. Estonia's highest court has refused to hear an appeal. Paulov was taken into custody Tuesday in the capital, Tallinn, without incident, police said. 

Prosecutors said Paulov, then a young Soviet agent, followed orders to kill three members of the Estonian resistance movement after the Red Army invaded Estonia in 1940. Paulov had pleaded innocent, claimed he acted in self-defense, even though two of the victims were shot in the back. 



Labor Debate Goes On

MOSCOW (SPT ) - State Duma leaders agreed Tuesday to cancel Thursday's scheduled vote on the new Labor Code and instead work on a compromise bill.

The debate over the Labor Code has pitted the Cabinet against unions, who say the government's proposed code would strip workers of all protections and security. State officials say the alternative version drawn up by pro-labor Duma deputies contains old-fashioned ideas unsuitable for a market economy.



Grozny Grenade Kills 6

NAZRAN, Ingushetia (AP) - Five students and an instructor from Chechnya's university in Grozny were killed Wednesday in a battle that started when rebels opened fire with grenade launchers on a Russian de-mining team in the Chechen capital, officials said. 

One Russian serviceman also was killed and four were injured in the gun battle, according to Konstantin Makeyev, a government spokesman on Chechnya.

Federal troops were sweeping buildings and roads near the university for mines and booby traps Wednesday morning when rebels opened fire from several directions, Makeyev said. Russian servicemen returned fire, he said. 



Swiss Want Files 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Swiss prosecutors have urged their Russian counterparts to return documents related to the Swiss-based Mabetex construction company that has until recently been suspected of having paid kick-backs in exchange for lucrative renovation contracts in Moscow, Interfax news agency reported.

The Prosecutor General's Office has received piles of documents to be used in the probe that focused on alleged corruption among top Kremlin officials, but decided to close the case earlier this month, arguing that no evidence had ever shown a crime being committed. 



Gorbachev on Bush

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said on Wednesday Russians should ignore commentators' predictions of chillier Moscow-Washington relations under George W. Bush. 

Gorbachev told reporters that Russia should not fear the cool pragmatism of new U.S. foreign policy chiefs Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. 

"People are scared that it will be tough for Russia with the new administration, a lot has been said about this. But I think the United States will conduct responsible politics in relation to Russia," Gorbachev said.

TITLE: Federation Council Approves National Anthem
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Federation Council voted Wednesday to restore music personally chosen by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin as the country's post-communist national anthem.


The body also approved a twin-headed eagle and tricolor white, blue and red flag, which date from tsarist times, as official state symbols. The measures, contained in three separate bills, all cleared the 134-vote hurdle they needed to be forwarded to President Vladimir Putin for signature into law.

The laws are constitutional measures and thus needed a three-quarters majority. The anthem won 144 votes and the eagle and flag 139 in the 178-member upper chamber.

The State Duma had rushed the bills through in a single day on Dec. 8 after Putin threw his weight behind a return to the anthem composed by Alexander Alexandrov during World War II.

With new words to the anthem yet to be approved, left-wing lawmakers hailed the return to the stirring "Unbreakable Union" melody and the army's retention of the Soviet-style red flag as its official banner. 

But dismayed liberals sounded a warning against adopting symbols tainted by Stalin's bloody repression. 

Federation Council member Alexander Dzasokhov, governor of the North Ossetia region, said it was right for the governors to give support to the anthem, "because a secret referendum was held and the majority of the population came out in favor of the music of Alexandrov." 

But Nikolai Fyodorov, governor of the Chuvashia region in central Russia, said adopting the music without words was "a mockery of the Constitution."

TITLE: Berezovsky Creates Civil Society Fund
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Tycoon Boris Berezovsky has announced the creation of a foundation to develop civil society in Russia, his latest gambit to regain the influence he has lost under President Vla dimir Putin. 


Berezovsky, a one-time political insider now under investigation for alleged financial misconduct, said the fund was necessary to defend society against the growth of alleged authoritarian tendencies in Russia. 

He will donate $25 million over five years to the fund, called the International Foundation for Civil Liberties, according to a statement faxed to The Associated Press late Monday. 

The money will support some human rights groups and sponsor an electronic archive on political repression under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, the statement said. It will also be used to defend "vulnerable groups" in the provinces, including prisoners, conscripts and national minorities, the statement said. Berezovsky said he had hired two former Russian employees of U.S. financier George Soros' philanthropic organizations, Alex Goldfarb and Pavel Arsenyev, to manage the fund.

TITLE: Russia Affirms Tax Break for Aid Workers
AUTHOR: By Anna Badkhen
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Hundreds of American employees in government-funded aid programs across Russia have one less problem to worry about after the Russian government on Wednesday pledged to uphold a bilateral treaty exempting them from taxes.


The agreement, which was signed by the United States and Russia in 1992, was never formally ratified by the State Duma and is therefore not officially valid.

But American aid workers have considered the agreement active and never paid Russian taxes. 

Doubt was cast on the practice last summer when an American working for a U.S.-funded nonprofit group in Siberia lost his visa amid a dispute over his taxes.

Al Decie's visa was seized by the Krasnoyarsk visa and registration department, which said that he would only get the visa back after he paid Russian taxes. 

The visa was eventually returned to him and he left Russia this month.

But the dispute may have played a role in the Russian authorities' decision Wednesday to send an official document to the U.S. government under which it agreed to give a tax-exempt status to Americans working for state-backed nonprofit groups.

The U.S. State Department gave the Kremlin an ultimatum earlier this month, saying it would recommend the recall of all its aid workers by Jan. 1 if the Russians did not deliver a document promising to uphold the 1992 agreement.

Such an action could have resulted in the cancellation of all American aid projects across Russia. 

The U.S. government has given more than $60 billion in assistance to Russia over the past 10 years.

"We want the document to say that [these] U.S. citizens would not be subject to taxation as we have agreed in the past," an official at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said Thursday afternoon.

Late Thursday evening a diplomatic source told The St. Petersburg Times that the document has been signed.

Russian government officials could not be reached for comment on Thursday evening.

TITLE: PM Downplays Effects of Moscow Murder
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - An attack on a top Moscow city official responsible for dealing with lucrative business sectors should not frighten away investors, but will add to public tension, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said Wednesday.


Two masked gunmen fired on Moscow's Deputy Prime Minister Iosif Ordzhonikidze as he neared City Hall during morning rush hour Tuesday, gravely wounding him and killing his driver.

The attack had all the features of a contract hit and was described as most likely the work of organized crime groups that were unhappy over one of his decisions.

Ordzhonikidze is responsible for the government's dealings with some of the city's most profitable business sectors, including casinos, hotels and foreign organizations. He oversees construction of the unfinished, multibillion-dollar City business district on the Moscow River and a proposal to build a Formula-1 racetrack.

Kasyanov said the attack was unlikely to damage the investment climate in Moscow significantly, but it will undoubtedly influence the general state of society, Itar-Tass reported.

Officials who control cash flows or business regulation can become assassination targets if they cross one of the criminal organizations that infest much of the economy.

Ordzhonikidze gained consciousness Wednesday, but remained in serious condition, Itar-Tass reported, citing unidentified doctors at the Sklifosovsky Institute trauma center, where the deputy mayor was hospitalized.

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov was allowed to visit Ordzhonikidze on Wednesday morning and he said that doctors "will have to struggle to save Ordzhonikidze's life for another 10 days," Interfax reported.

The mayor said Ordzhonikidze, who has lost 3 liters of blood, still cannot speak.

Ordzhonikidze was shot in the abdomen and leg, police said, and he underwent several hours of surgery.

Russian media speculated that the gunmen were most likely killed after the attack, to punish them for failing to kill Ordzhonikidze and to prevent them from leading investigators to those who commissioned the crime.

But an investigator who was working at the scene of the crime Tuesday suggested the gunmen were not planning to kill Ordzhonikidze, but to persuade him to comply with demands of an organized crime group, the daily Kom somolskaya Pravda reported on Wednesday.

The attack took place in the very center of the city, on a narrow side street just off Tverskaya Ulitsa.

It was the highest-profile attack on a Moscow city official since a 1996 bombing that severely wounded Mayor Luzhkov's running-mate, Va le ry Shantsev, on the eve of city elections.


- AP, SPT

TITLE: Canada Visit Leaves Putin Unsatisfied
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: OTTAWA - President Vladimir Putin got most of what he wanted in Canada - agreements on closer cooperation, support for joining the World Trade Organization - but was unable to persuade Prime Minister Jean Chretien to reject a proposed U.S. missile defense plan. 


The two leaders met for 90 minutes Monday followed by a news conference, then lunch and a state dinner. 

Putin's trip completed his agenda of meeting one-on-one with all the other Group of Seven leaders in his first year in office as he tries to invigorate a struggling economy and recapture some of Russia's Soviet-era status as a world power. 

On a windy day that caused Russian and Canadian flags lining the streets to snap and flutter, Putin mixed the protocol of a state visit with his own diplomatic posturing on major issues confronting his country, Canada, and the United States. 

He made clear that Russia considered the U.S. plan for land-based missiles to intercept incoming missiles a threat to world security because it would alter the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 

"We believe deployment would no doubt damage significantly the established system of international security," Putin said. "This would - absolutely change the balance of power in the international arena, and this itself is a threat," he added later 

Putin and Cretien agreed in a joint statement that the ABM treaty would be a "cornerstone" of global stability and nuclear non-proliferation that should be preserved and strengthened. The statement however stopped short of matching Putin's opposition to the U.S. missile defense plan, saying it was too soon to tell. 

Canada fears that the U.S. plan would spark a new round of weapons proliferation. The issue is politically sensitive, due to Canada's status as a NATO ally, northern neighbor and key trading partner with the United States. 

Chretien noted Canada was in a "geographic bind" because of its location between the United States to the south and Russia across the North Pole. Questions about whether the system can work and how the incoming U.S. administration of George W. Bush would proceed on the matter must be answered before final decisions can be made, he said. 

"Our preoccupation and the preoccupation of everybody is to make sure that the stability that exists at this moment is not undermined by the [U.S.] plan," he said. 

The issue dominated a 20-minute news conference that followed the signing of agreements on expanded air services between the countries and increased cooperation between Russian and Canadian provinces and territories. Canada and Russia also issued joint statements on strategic stability, cooperation in the Arctic and northern regions, and Russia's efforts to join the World Trade Organization. 

"A key element in our relations is creating a solid base for trade," Putin told a state dinner Monday, noting that Canada accounted for only 1.5 percent of all foreign investment, mostly in oil and gas. 

Since the economic crisis of 1998, Canadian exports to Russia fell to $116 million last year from $255 million in 1997. "This most certainly does not correspondent to our countries' interests or capabilities," Putin said. 


- AP, Reuters

TITLE: Duma Deputy Says Staff Levels Bloated
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The number of staff working at the offices of the State Duma has grown so large that three different departments are now being used just to collect and distribute daily reviews produced of stories published in the Russian press, according to a new report that has been compiled by a Duma deputy.


Vadim Bondar, a deputy who is from the Union of Right Forces faction, said on Wednesday that he discovered that there are as many as 1,885 people working in the parliament as consultants and specialists, a number which he insists should be drastically reduced.

Of the 1,885 people on staff, only 509 work in the Du ma's 28 committees and six commissions, while the remaining more than a thousand workers are employed by the parliament's 11 directorates and service divisions, Bondar said.

"It just doesn't make sense - that two-thirds of them are not directly involved in assisting us in our legislative activities," he mentioned in a telephone interview.

Some of the directorates and services he cited overlap to such an extent that there exist at least three different teams involved in publishing and distributing press reviews, which Bondar says are so "weak" that he is forced to turn to the Internet for media digests. 

As another example of the labor profligacy, there are almost 70 people taking minutes at Duma sessions, Bondar said. 

And while the ranks are swelled by the amount of unnecessary duplication of services, Bondar says that there are some areas where staffing levels are clearly inadequate. For example, the parliament doesn't have enough computer specialists, leading to significant delays when deputies need to gain quick access to information sources, he said.

The figure of 1,885 staff still understates the number of people working in some capacity in the Duma, as it does not include custodians, maintenance workers or lawmakers' aides. Each Duma deputy is allowed to hire up to five aides.

Each staff member is paid an average of 15,000 rubles ($536) a month from the Duma's payroll. The federal budget for 2001 has earmarked 1.025 billion rubles to cover the running of the parliament.

Duma spokesperson Alexei Nikolayev defended the present number of employees working at the Duma, however, saying that the size, when compared with the parliaments in other countries, was "not exactly ahead of the entire planet." 

Estimating the number of staff at the Duma was a task in itself. Bondar said it took four months to convince the committee on the organization and regulation of State Duma activities to reply to his inquiries about how many people are employed full-time in the 450-seat parliament.

The committee initially refused to provide the numbers, and when the information was finally handed over last week it demanded that no copies bemade, Bon dar said.

The committee's chairman, Ni kolai Loktionov, was out of his office Wednesday and could not be reached for comment.

Bondar, who is serving his first term in parliament, said he first came to suspect there might be many redundant employees during his daily walks along the Duma's corridors.

"I would go to one floor and see people out smoking in the staircase - and the same people would still be there smoking when I came back," Bondar said.

Bondar initiated a motion to ban smoking on Duma premises after one such walk. That bill has been passed. 

The deputy said he is now trying to figure out how to slash staff and optimize the activities of the remaining workers. 

He said he would try to convince the committee to approve trims, and if that did not work he would turn to lawmakers for a vote.

TITLE: Moscow Cops Bust Internet Child-Porn Ring
AUTHOR: By Peter Graff
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian police, working with British and U.S. colleagues, arrested two suspects accused of selling child pornography over the Internet in Europe and the United States, a police spokeswoman said Thursday in Moscow.


The spokeswoman said one of the suspects was arrested on Wednesday evening in a Moscow apartment, while the other was nabbed simultaneously in a military hospital in St. Petersburg. Both were unemployed men, aged 30 and 28.

She said police from the United States and Britain had played a role in the arrests, but did not elaborate.

Police seized 588 video cassettes, 112 video discs and more than 1,000 photographs of pornography, some of it involving children. The suspects were accused of selling the material over the Internet and through the mail.

The arrests show an apparent trend of Russian pornographers using the Internet to feed an appetite for child pornography abroad, and police worldwide teaming up to fight them.

In October, a prosecutor in Italy charged 1,491 people with sending or receiving child pornography on a Web site.

A month earlier, Italian police swoop ed on 600 homes, arresting eight people on charges of possessing or trading in child pornography, all of it from Russia.

Italian police said the Russian ring had kidnapped children from orphanages and filmed them being forced to have sex, sometimes raping and torturing them to death on camera.

Russian police later said they had captured three members of that ring in February this year and retrieved lists of their clients in the United States, Britain, Germany and Italy, which they passed on through Interpol.

One of the men caught in February had participated in sex acts on film himself and was sentenced to 11 years in prison, but the other two were charged only with selling pornography and released under a general amnesty for minor crimes.

Russian law does not provide stiffer penalties for selling pornography that involves children, a police official said.

TITLE: Rozhdestvensky Not Going Back to Prison
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg City Court declined to fulfill the City Prosecutor's Office's request to re-imprison local media mogul Dmitry Rozhdestvensky - freed last August on grounds of ill-health - on tax evasion charges. 


The case of Rozhdestvensky , who is the former head of Russkoye Video, a holding of Vladimir Gusinsky's Media-MOST, is due to be heard again before the City Court on Feb. 22. 

Supports of Rozhdestvensky - whose Russkoye Video holdings figure in the current case against Media-MOST owner Vladimir Gusinksy, who has since fled the country and been detained by Spanish authorities - had feared the worst. 

Rozhdestvensky was freed from pretrial detention on Aug. 3, after two years in a remand prison awaiting trail, when the court changed its position and freed him on health grounds pending trial. 

"The decision of the city court restores my and my family's constitutional rights," Rozhdestvensky said in an interview on Tuesday. "I spent two years behind bars for things I did not do because prosecutors wanted to use my name to prosecute other people. 

But the new flurry of activity surrounding the Gusinsky case had given Rozhdestvensky's lawyers reason to worry he might be detained again. 

At issue is an alleged 75 percent share sold by Rozhdestvensky to Gu sinsky in 1997 - 25 percent of which was owned by Rozhdestvensky himself. The sale left Russkoye Video with a mere 17 percent in holdings. 

Additionally, prosecutors charge that Rozhdestvensky engaged in routine tax evasion beginning in 1998 - as well as funneling money into the failed re-election campaign of Anatoly Sob chak in 1996. 

It was a 1998 Federal Audit Chamber investigation into these alleged tax misdealing - which investigators charged were making him 10.5 billion rubles ($175 million) during heavy ruble upheaval - that led to Rozhdestvensky's arrest. 

He was jailed in August 1998 and his release on bail in August of this year came as a surprise even to his lawyer, Sergei Afanasiyev, who had appealed the bail verdict five times. 

"The [August] court decision was completely unexpected for us, to be honest," Afanasiyev said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

"As for the current Prosecutor's Office's request [to send him back to jail], it looks silly, as there is no explanation as to why they want Rozhdestvensky to be in prison," Afanasiyev continued.

Indeed, all of the embezzlement and financial machination charges against Rozhdestvensky were dropped. But the Prosecutor General's Office is continuing to press charges against Rozh dest ven sky concerning 142,500 Finnish marks (about $28,000), which it says was funneled to him through the accounts of a Lappeenranta advertising business.

TITLE: NTV Director Warns of Kremlin Plot
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MADRID, Spain - NTV television director Yevgeny Kiselyov said Wednesday that the government plans to shut down the channel on New Year's Eve. 


"This plan exists," Kiselyov said, quoting what he called a "highly reliable source." "The only thing I don't know is whether this plan comes directly from President Vladimir Putin or from somebody close to him," he said.

Kiselyov appeared at a news conference and urged Spanish authorities to grant Media-MOST founder Vla di mir Gusinsky bail. 

Gusinsky, wanted in Russia on charges of fraud, was arrested in southern Spain last week on a warrant issued by Moscow. He is being held in a jail outside Madrid while a judge considers a bail request from Gusinsky's lawyers. 

The Media-MOST representatives said they have also sent a letter to the Spanish government and Baltazar Garzon insisting that Gusinsky is a victim of political persecution because of his criticism of the Kremlin.

The journalists also charged that, contrary to claims by Spanish authorities, an arrest warrant from Russia for Gusinsky was not processed by the Lyon, France, headquarters of Interpol. 

Rather, it was simply sent by the Russian office of Interpol, which falls under the Interior Ministry, said the director of Ekho Moskvy radio, Alexei Benediktov.

TITLE: Russian Aluminium Hit With $2.7Bln Suit in U.S. Court
AUTHOR: By Natasha Shanetskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Three offshore metal trading companies filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against metals giant Russian Aluminum in New York on Wednesday, accusing it of fraud, money laundering and attempted murder.


The lawsuit, filed by Base Metal Trading SA, Base Metals Trading Ltd. and Alucoal Ltd. in the U.S. District Court of New York, accuses Russian Aluminum, its chief executive Oleg Deripaska and his business partner, Mikhail Chyorny, of taking over and monopolizing the Russian aluminum industry.

National power grid Unified Energy Systems and its chief Anatoly Chubais are also named in the filing, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times.

"Criminal elements have besieged Russian industry with illegal payoffs, threats and acts of violence," the plaintiffs' attorney Robert Abrams said in a statement.

Abrams added in a telephone interview that the United States must not allow Russian organized crime to spill into the U.S. banking and commercial systems, and that the courts have the power to prevent this from taking place.

Russian Aluminum, which controls about 75 percent of the Russian aluminum market, said that the legal action was a smear attempt by opponents disgruntled over its founding and rapid expansion this year.

"This lawsuit is absurd," said Vla di mir Alexandrov, Russian Aluminum's spokesperson in a telephone interview. "We suspect this is an attempt to provoke and discredit Russian Aluminum."

The plaintiffs are protesting Russian Aluminum's takeover of the Kemerovo region-based Novokuznetsk Aluminum Plant, Russia's fifth-largest producer of aluminum. The three companies had served as middlemen, buying Novokuznetsk's aluminum and reselling it abroad, until Siberian Aluminum stepped into the picture earlier this year, according to court papers.

Novokuznetsk was bankrupt at the time, thanks to a lawsuit initiated by UES over 2 billion rubles in unpaid electricity bills.

Siberian Aluminum later merged Novokuznetsk and its other assets with those held by Sibneft shareholders to form Russian Aluminum.

Court papers filed Wednesday claim that Deripaska, the former chief of Siberian Aluminum, conspired with Chorny to oust then-Novokuznetsk head Mikhail Zhivilo, threatening him with violence and death if he refused to cooperate. Zhivilo was also a major shareholder in the aluminum plant.

The lawsuit says Deripaska and Chyorny finally ousted Zhivilo with the help of Kemerovo region Governor Aman Tuleyev, who accused Zhivilo of attempted murder and forced him to flee the country.

Russia has since issued an international warrant for Zhivilo's arrest.

"Among the most odious tactics used by the defendants were enlisting the assistance of government and judicial officials in pursuing and winning falsified bankruptcy proceedings against the plant," the companies said in a statement.

Abrams said the case is based on the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which lets accusers file a lawsuit in the U.S. courts even if the majority of the alleged violations took place outside the United States, the Financial Times reported.

The act also provides an opportunity to seek punitive compensation. As a result, Abrams is asking the courts for $900 million to cover the plaintiffs' losses since ownership changed at Novokuznetsk and $1.7 million in damages.

It was unclear Wednesday who controls the companies that filed suit. Base Metal Trading SA is based in Switzerland, Base Metals Trading Ltd. on the Channel Islands and Alucoal in Cyprus.

Svetlana Smirnova, a metals analyst at Renaissance Capital, said Wednesday's lawsuit signals that Siberian Aluminum has made enemies in its bid to dominate the local aluminum market.

"Some major players are unhappy about the formation of Russian Aluminum because its strategy is to sell directly, eliminating all middlemen," Smirnova said.

Other industry analysts expressed doubts that the plaintiffs would succeed in winning the court's sympathies.

"This is not the first time they've done this," said Alexander Agibalov, a metals analyst at the Aton brokerage. "The likelihood of their victory is very low."

Base Metals and its partners had launched several lawsuits related to their contracts with Novokuznetsk in Russia, Estonia, Netherlands and the United States. They have had no success so far.

TITLE: Chubais Panned by Russia's Top Investors
AUTHOR: Natasha Shanetskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - He may have been treated like a son by former President Boris Yeltsin and an economic savior by Western governments, but for 23 leading investors in the Russian economy, national power grid boss Anatoly Chubais is the worst manager in the country.


Chubais was given the booby prize this week in a survey of the country's top investors, both foreign and domestic, conducted by the Association for the Protection of Investors' Rights. 

The survey focused on the managers of Russia's publicly-traded companies. It rated their performance in eight categories, including overall strategies, corporate earnings, financial transparency and approaches to protecting minority shareholders.

Russia's best managers, according to the survey, are top oil producer LUKoil's Vagit Alekperov and steel giant Severstal's Alexei Mordashov.

The survey participants blasted Chubais for his attempts to restructure the debt-plagued UES, one of the country's largest companies and its most traded stock.

"The market has expressed its opinion in a number of ways," said Bill Browder, managing director of the Heritage Fund, one of the companies that participated in the survey and a minority shareholder in UES.

According to Browder, UES' share price has dropped more than 66 percent since Chubais revealed his restructuring plan at the end of March. That compares to a 45-percent decline in the RTS Index.

"The results of this survey are a vote of no confidence [in Chubais]" Browder added in a telephone interview.

UES, through its 84 regional utility subsidiaries known as energos, has a monopoly on local power distribution. It also runs 34 power plants of its own and controls the electricity grid that funnels electricity throughout the country.

As a power monopoly, UES plays a substantial role in the economy, and many market analysts agree Chubais' actions have the power to effect Russia's economic growth. The long-awaited restructuring of UES is badly needed if it is to receive the massive foreign investment necessary to upgrade its crumbling infrastructure. It will also pave the way for competition in the industry.

Supporter's of Chubais' plan argue it is too early to judge the results of his reforms.

"[UES] does have problems with reorganizing their business, but many foreign companies take from five to 15 years to restructure," said Marina Ionova, political and economic analyst at Aton Capital Group, which also took part in the survey.

Ionova added that the survey is an instrument Chubais' opponents could be using for political gain. 

"We have no idea how the results are counted and how the rating is created," she said. "We do know the results can be manipulated."

"UES shareholders were very excited when Chubais took the hot seat in 1998," she added, "therefore, his political opponents realize the best way to discredit him is by highlighting shareholders' dissatisfaction.

But APIR claims it was under no political pressure when it launched its survey, according to the Vremya daily. It surveyed about 60 percent of its members, which include Deutsche Bank, Flemings, Kenneth Dart, Tempelton Fund, Brunswick, and the Russian insurance giant Ingosstrakh, and found that most were simply unhappy with Chubais' approach.

"Restructuring is one thing, but selling assets at the most undervalued level is quite another," said the Heritage Fund's Browder, "He is just using the word 'restructuring' to justify the sale of assets."

However, Browder conceded some minority shareholders want to see Chubais ousted.

"The is a good chance we can convince the government to fire him as it becomes more clear that this is just another a loan-for-share scandal in the making," he said, referring to Chubais-led privatizations in the mid-'90s that were widely recognized to have given control of some of Russia's most valuable enterprises to powerful banks at bargain-basement prices. Those same banks returned the favor during the 1996 presidential campaign, when Chubais needed big money for a superhuman, and ultimately successful, effort to get Yeltsin re-elected.

Chubais told reporters Thursday that he agrees that his re-organization plan could use some fine-tuning, and he is interested in constructive criticism, but considers accusations like Browder's unfounded, Interfax reported. 

He also said that he expects the plan to attract up to $50 billion in foreign investment in the next 10 years.

TITLE: Federation Council Gives Nod To Budget
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The upper house of the parliament Wednesday approved the government's budget for 2001 - the first zero-deficit financial plan since Russia emerged as an independent country from the 1991 Soviet collapse.


Some members of the Federation Council, which is made up of local governors and heads of regional legislatures, have complained that the budget leaves too little for local government. But it passed, 122-12. It envisions 1.2 trillion rubles ($40 billion) in revenues and spending.

The budget now goes to President Vladimir Putin for his signature.

It sailed through the State Du ma, the lower house, which approved it last Thursday. Under former President Boris Yeltsin, the budget was often held up by bitter political wrangling between the Kremlin and its Communist opponents in the Duma.

The government has not made budget provisions for $3 billion worth of payments due in 2001.

It is seeking to restructure about $48 billion in Soviet-era debts to the Paris Club of creditor nations and wants the creditors at least to reschedule forthcoming payments. The first small payment falls due as early as next month, while the first significant payment is scheduled for February. Russia has been in technical default on the Paris Club debt and the debt to private London Club lenders since the 1998 economic crisis.

The budget, which its critics say relies too heavily on the assumption that oil prices will stay high, includes 18 billion rubles of expected privatization revenues for 2001 and is counting on proceeds from state property sales for possible funds to pay foreign debt.

The government said earlier this month that the sale of 6 percent of No. 1 oil producer LUKoil through American Depositary Receipts is a budget priority for 2001. The government also plans to sell about 2.5 percent of Gazprom and a blocking stake of 25 percent plus one share in Rosneft next year.

Also on Wednesday, the Duma approved a hike in 2000 budget revenues, which turned an expected budget deficit into a surplus this year.

The chamber, which passed the amendments 299-13 with no abstentions, approved a budget revenue hike to 1.103 trillion rubles ($39.4 billion) from a previously budgeted 797.2 billion rubles.

The Duma also approved an increase in spending to 1.014 trillion rubles from 855.1 billion rubles.

The resulting surplus of 89 billion rubles, instead of a budgeted deficit of 57.8 billion rubles will compensate for the lack of foreign lending and help foreign debt servicing.


(Reuters, AP, SPT)

TITLE: Ministry Head Defends Svyazinvest Plan
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government approved a controversial $33-billion plan Thursday to expand the telecoms industry, aiming to attract investment but proposing limiting foreign stakes in local firms. 


The 10-year blueprint outlines the ministry's plans to reduce loss-making services, win investment and connect more Russians - six million of whom are waiting to have phones installed - to the network. 

Communications Minister Leonid Reiman said that half or more of the funds attracted would come from reinvestment by more profitable, streamlined state operators themselves. 

"In regard to foreign investors, we are planning several measures: effective tariff policy, and transparency to allow investors to see what is happening in the companies, and transparent government regulation," Reiman said at a press conference. 

Among investor-friendly measures, Reiman said the ministry would start conducting tenders for licenses, including next generation UMTS licenses. 

The government would forgo cash auctions for the licenses, instead holding "beauty contests" for the broad band wireless system, which will allow users faster Internet access. 

Reiman said state tariff regulation had left Svyazinvest, the state telecoms holding that owns 78 regional telecoms and the national long-distance carrier, with a lower market capitalization than Russia's three U.S.-listed private operators. 

The ministry said that under its restructuring of the state telecoms sector, which dominates the market outside Moscow, Svyazinvest's regional operators will be consolidated into seven firms and tariffs brought in line with cost and investment needs. 

The ministry expects the restructure to at least quadruple Svyazinvest's market capitalization. 

Reiman said Svyazinvest would aim to list the companies on a Western exchange if their value could be raised. 

But analysts said some of the ministry's proposed measures - namely a possible cap on foreign stakes - were not what investors were looking for. 

Despite being asked by reporters three times, Reiman was unable to detail exactly how the plan will limit foreign investors' stakes and to what percent.

"The government should talk about how to attract strategic foreign investors and not how to limit their presence," Aton brokerage analyst Andrei Braginski said.

Analysts also criticized the idea of creating a universal service fund to help struggling and ineffective companies by mandatory contributions from all operators. "As independent management of the fund is unlikely, a major threat is that the fund may become an instrument of the state to transfer funds form alternative operators to the benefit of local telephone operators and Rostelecom.," Braginski said in a research note.

"The [Communications] Ministry has reaffirmed its reputation as 'investor unfriendly' by producing another controversial document," Yevgeny Golosnoi of Troika Dialog brokerage wrote in a research note. 


- Reuters, SPT

TITLE: U.S. Economy Continues Stall
AUTHOR: By Glenn Somerville
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - New government figures on Thursday showed U.S. economic growth slowed sharply in the summer to its weakest pace in four years as a political debate about the risks of recession heated up.


The U.S. Commerce Department said gross domestic product or GDP, the broadest measure of economic activity within U.S. borders, grew at a revised 2.2 percent rate in the July-September third quarter.

That was marked down from 2.4 percent that the government estimated a month ago because overseas sales were weaker than it thought then. It was the most lackluster quarterly growth since 2 percent in the third quarter of 1996 and followed a sparkling 5.6 percent rate of second-quarter expansion.

Other reports showing rising claims for jobless pay and slumping manufacturing activity along the East Coast added to signs that economic boom times were over and fanned a war of words about how serious the slowdown may become.

Senior Clinton administration officials angrily charged that top members of President-elect George W. Bush's team were "talking down" the economy in a campaign for tax cuts that could backfire by spreading self-fulfilling fears of a sharp slump.

"What you're seeing is President-elect Bush and his team actually talking down our economy, actually probably injecting more fear and anxiety into the economy than is justified," said Gene Sperling, a White House economic adviser.

But Vice President-elect Dick Cheney said later that the incoming Bush administration, which will be sworn into office in January, had to be realistic. Bush campaigned on a program of offering a $1.3-trillion tax cut to fuel U.S. prosperity.

"There does seem to be a lot of evidence out there that in fact the economy has slowed down some," Cheney said in a meeting with reporters. "Whether or not this ultimately results in a recession, that is negative real growth, nobody knows at this time."

The economy has grown steadily since the last brief recession, which came in 1990-91, creating tens of millions of jobs that the Clinton administration wants full credit for while ensuring that any future weakening is laid on the doorstep of the incoming Bush administration.

The rapidity of the slowdown in national output is raising concern among the highest councils of economic policy makers. The Federal Reserve - the U.S. central bank - this week said it was more concerned now about an excessive downturn than about inflation as it signaled it was preparing to cut interest rates in the new year.

The Labor Department said on Thursday that new claims for unemployment pay jumped by 34,000 last week to 354,000. In some states, layoffs were beginning to show up in the automotive industry, a reflection of slumping sales as carmakers shutter plants temporarily.

The slowing appears to be continuing.

The regional Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said manufacturing activity in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region contracted in December - a third bleak month after sluggish growth in November and another contraction in October.

Its index of business conditions, calculated by subtracting companies that report decreases in particular measures like prices and orders from those that have increases and making seasonal adjustments, fell 6.1 after rising 5.2 in November.

Economist Paul Kasriel of Northern Trust Co. in Chicago said rising jobless claims and the continuing weakening in manufacturing clearly reflect an economy under stress after years of breakneck borrowing and spending.

"It's almost like we're on a knife-edge," Kasriel said, made especially so because of high levels of consumer debt and corporate borrowing for expansion and for share buybacks.

"Right now, there is no sign of recession, but conditions could deteriorate very quickly, he said, adding that he still expected about 3 percent GDP growth in the current quarter, slowing to 2.5 percent in the first half of 2001.

Financial markets, while still jittery about the economy's direction, regained some equilibrium on Thursday. Both the Dow Jones industrial average and the high tech-laden NASDAQ composite index held strong gains at noon.

Bond prices were off as money shifted to equities but yields remained low by historical standards after recent big inflows of money from wary stock-market investors.

The rate of price rises slowed during the third quarter, as the personal consumption expenditure gauge favored by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Green span advanced at a revised annual rate of 1.8 percent. A month ago, Commerce had estimated prices went up at a 2.1 percent rate, the same as in the second quarter.

TITLE: Unpaid Wages Spark Off Vnukovo Workers Strike
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Some 300 engineers and ground technicians for national No. 2 carrier Vnukovo Airlines walked off the job Wednesday over unpaid wages and continued their strike Thursday, vowing to "fight to the end."


It is the second time in as many months that the disgruntled employees have taken action to demand their salaries, which haven't been paid since August. Last month's strike included 1,000 workers and ended after just one day when Vnukovo's interim general director scrambled to pay most of the workers.

For the 300 that are still waiting, however, there is no relief in sight. 

Alexei Sapin, a spokesman for the airline, said in a telephone interview Thursday that his company's directors "recognize the wage arrears" and that the striking employees have not been paid since August. "They will be paid sooner or later, but I cannot give concrete dates," he said, adding that the average wage at the company is between 5,000 and 6,000 rubles a month ($178 and $214), and workers are owed a total of 3 million rubles ($107,000).

Sapin was quick to assert that the company was operating on schedule and that no delays had been reported at Vnukovo Airport, where it is based.

Sapin also said that Vnukovo was already negotiating with the workers, but the head of the union representing them, Yury Novikov, said that "no one from the company's administration has approached us with an offer to start negotiations."

Novikov also said that wage arrears were "much higher than the 3-million-ruble figure put forward by Sapin. Novikov said the strike would continue Friday if their demands were not fulfilled.

In addition to the wage arrears, engineers are also lamenting over the state of the airlines itself. "Vnukovo Airlines, one of the biggest carriers in Russia, is at the stage of ultimate collapse," the union wrote in its official statement.

The strikers said that only five of the company's roughly 50 planes are being used, and that as a result of its 1995 privatization the airlines is 43-percent owned by a financial-industrial group, Russian Aviation Consortium, that failed to attract much-needed investment and drove Vnukovo to the point of ruin. 

"In the past one and a half years we have seen four general directors come and go and the position is vacant at the moment," the union's statement said.

The last general director to go was former Aeroflot executive Alexander Krasnenker who was credited with bringing at least some relief to the company. His first deputy, Alexander Klimov, took up the interim position in October.

"Payments became regular with Krasnenker and we thought the prospects of the company were looking good," said union official Alexander Tveritinov.

Sapkin said that Vnukovo itself is owed money by several organizations, with the Defense Ministry leading the way with debts of 160 million rubles ($5.7 million). 

"[Vnukovo] used to be an excellent airline. I had hoped that Krasnenker would solve its problems, but when he left it looked almost like the end of the road for the airline," said Moscow-based independent aviation analyst Paul Duffy.

TITLE: MARKET MATTERS
TEXT: A Renovation Project Gone Down the Pan 


THERE is an old joke that explains how plumbers, of all people, were the principal opponents of the old Soviet regime: They were always saying that the entire system needed changing.

I was reminded of this last week when in search of a new unitaz, or lavatory, to put in my bathroom at home, and it struck me that, after a decade of political and economical reform, the nation's plumbing is badly in need of an overhaul.


Russia and the West have their differences in many fields, but home renovation is one where the differences can be seen with great clarity. Pipes and other appliances that don't match are only the start; the culture clash is also visible in the way we Russians tend to stuff tiny apartments full of furniture, use fotooboi, (photo-wallpaper) or cover everything with rugs.

Approximately five years ago, however, we discovered the white walls, sophisticated lighting systems and other such characteristics of Yevrostandart, or Euro-standard, that changed so many lifestyles.

Anyway, it was time to update our bathroom equipment and so, in search of a lavatory, I found myself exploring plumbing merchants around town. To my delight, there were dozens of shiny lavatories available, mostly imported from Western Europe, ready to adorn our cramped bathroom.

But the expected pleasure of choosing one and buying it was spoiled when a plumber revealed the bitter truth: the pipes in my aging building were only designed for what is apparently called a uniflow lavatory - a rare find among local plumbing equipment retailers.

This, somehow combined with certain peculiarities of my sink, conspired to ruin my hopes. The only possibility of their fulfillment, I was told in one shop in the city center, was ordering the requisite item from Italy - at a cost of between $200 to $300 and a wait of at least two months.

Wondering just how much of an exception my building is, I went to a factory that makes all things porcelain, including lavatories. In the factory's modest shop - none of the mirrors and other shiny things adorning so many stores in the city center - I found an awful lot of items in pink, blue, black, gold and granite tones, and took heart. 

But again, fate was against me: I discovered that, even here, the uniflow lavatory is a near-obsolete model that is produced in very small quantities. I did find one, but I left the shop resigned to the fact that my very Russian apartment will never be fully Euro-standard. 

Even the factory produced Euro-style lavatories, and it must be said that the home-renovation business is booming, with huge superstores springing up like mushrooms after rain. But the sad fact is that many Russian homes are just not able to embrace the shiny new technology, and I can only wonder what other uniflow owners do when they buy new lavatories.

So maybe the Soviet plumber was right: We need to change the entire system.


Anna Shcherbakova is chief of the St. Petersburg bureau of Vedomosti.

TITLE: COMMENT
AUTHOR: By Jacques Chirac
TEXT: Europe's Welcome to President-Elect Bush 

THE Euro-American summit in Washington this week comes at a defining moment for relations between the European Union (EU) and the United States - just days after the European Council in Nice and a month before the start of a new U.S. administration.


As head of the EU, I bring a simple, friendly message: The time has come to build a new partnership between the United States and the EU.

To begin, while the EU, in cooperation with the United States, already is sharing the major part of the burden in the Balkans, the European Council in Nice made major decisions so it could better assume its defense and security responsibilities. In particular, the EU plans a rapid-reaction capability that will enable it to field a force of as many as 60,000, together with air and naval support, by 2003. This force will be a major contribution to the burden-sharing long sought by the United States. 

The goal of having a new transatlantic partnership implies that the United States will continue to be involved in world affairs. Today as in the aftermath of World War II, the world needs an America that is not tempted to turn its back on the world. In addition to crisis management, I'm thinking of efforts to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, threats to our environment, drug trafficking, money laundering, organized crime cartels and terrorism. 

Europeans and Americans further have a special responsibility to promote a more humane side to globalization. This implies greater effort for the poorest countries, especially those in Africa. France and its European partners are spearheading these efforts by reducing the debt burden of the poor countries and providing them with aid. Development assistance is more necessary than ever to enable these countries access to international trade circuits under the "aid for trade" motto. 

Similarly, we must tackle together the AIDS pandemic and the critical problem of access to care in poor countries. I'd like to renew my call for an international conference with representatives of pharmaceutical companies to convene as soon as possible, with a view toward making significant reductions in the cost of medications and increasing access to treatment. 

The EU and the United States already are principal partners in trade and investment. Trade disputes, which account for only about 1 percent of the trade volume between the EU and the United States, must not cloud their fast-growing economic relations.

Everything favors a renewed transatlantic partnership anchored in shared values and destiny as one of the cornerstones of world stability. The United States and the European Union, I'm sure, can rely on each other in taking this demanding path. 



Jacques Chirac is president of France. He contributed this comment to The Washington Post.

TITLE: Mailbox
TEXT: Dear Editor,

Re your editorial ["Green Putin? Why Not Start Now?" Dec. 19]. President Putin could very well live his environmentalist dream from where he sits rather than in your suggested little rubber boat. These days, being an environmentalist includes being a fire fighter. Biomass burning (forest fires) contributes up to 40 percent of carbon dioxide and 38 percent of tropospheric ozone to the atmosphere in a bad burning year. Humans cause up to 90 percent of such fires.

People are wrong to think that most of this destruction is natural because it isn't. Five percent of fires - the very large ones - consume 95 percent of the biomass. In a recent study in Austria, Switzerland, and France, it was determined that along with coal and diesel burning, biomass burning contributed unacceptable volumes of black carbon aerosols (or soot) into the environment. A direct connection was drawn from this soot to 40,000 deaths and 500,000 asthma attacks costing these economies 1.7 percent of gross national product in health-care costs per annum. 

In these days of global environmental consciousness, when the future of the internal combustion engine is very much in question, and when the word "sinks" takes on whole new meaning (and, in due course, value), President Putin, uniquely among world leaders, can bring considerable force to bear on the global fire problem if relatively crudely equipped fire-fighting jurisdictions like the United States would let him.

In the summer of 2000, the U.S. spent $1 billion in fire suppression costs, burnt 7.2 million acres, and deployed 25,000 fire fighters including New Zealanders, Australians, Mexicans, prisoners, students, forest service retirees, and soldiers.

Russia just happens to produce by far the largest, fastest, longest-range fire-fighting aircraft in the world. This aircraft, the IL-76TD, equipped with a special tanking system designed by the Ilyushin Design Bureau and deployed by Sergei Shoigu's Emergency Situations Ministry, will in due course put President Putin at the forefront of environmental leaders if global warming remains a priority and trade barriers drop to allow entry whenever and wherever environmental disaster mitigation is needed most. This plane also does oil-spill dispersion by dropping chemical solutions.

And Putin will be sitting in a cockpit, not a little rubber boat.


John Anderson

Calgary, Alberta, Canada 


Dear Editor,

I appreciate your editorial support of the Salvation Army in regard to our Moscow registration difficulties ["Don't Let Calvanism Kill Charity," Dec. 12]. You and many others in the media have encouraged us greatly.

Two clarifications are in order. For one, in the minds of some readers your wording might have linked the Salvation Army to "dangerous cults and sects." They are the focus of some Russians' fears, to be sure, but neither word describes us. We are a respected and responsible evangelical denomination, with a strong focus on the social dimension of the Gospel and with historical roots in Methodism.

Second, your editorial seemed to pit us not only against the city Ministry of Justice but also the Orthodox Church. It may be that the Orthodox Church lobbied for the 1997 law. But in our specific case we have no knowledge that any Orthodox officials have been involved. I make this point because we desire fraternal ecumenical relations with our Orthodox brothers. Such is typical elsewhere around the world where we dialogue together at numerous national and international church councils. We long for the same fraternal relationships here in Russia; your editorial may have suggested otherwise.


Ken Baille

Officer Commanding

Salvation Army Russia/CIS


Dear Editor,

While I think it is highly commendable that the Russian government is willing to act so expeditiously in releasing Edmond Pope, but I think that President Vladimir Putin should consider coupling a pardon of Pope with a request to U.S. President Bill Clinton to release the last remaining Soviet-bloc prisoner of the Cold War, Huseyin Yildirim. It only seems fair that my government should show the same kind of mercy and forgiveness that the Russian government is reportedly about to show toward Pope. [Pope was pardoned on Thursday, Dec. 14.]

While I realize that Yildirim did not work directly for the Soviet foreign intelligence service when he carried out his intelligence activities on behalf of East Germany's Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung, or HVA, between 1980 and 1986, the risks that he took and punishment he has suffered these last 12 years of incarceration in U.S. prisons indirectly benefited Russia. 

There are serious questions about the fairness of Yildirim's three-day jury trial in 1989 and the disproportionately harsh sentence he received: Yildirim was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole even though the American military personnel who betrayed their flag and uniforms by stealing classified documents and selling them to the East Germans and the Soviet Union received a more lenient sentence or were not prosecuted at all. Yildirim, who is now 73 years old and very small in size and therefore physically vulnerable, was nearly killed five years ago when a deranged cellmate stabbed him for no apparent reason.

Stated differently, Yildirim is nothing more than a low-level former agent of the HVA whose continued imprisonment no longer makes any sense, except perhaps to diehard Cold Warriors. Even if his sentence is somehow still considered just, he should be released on humanitarian grounds alone, since this harmless relic of the Cold War simply wants nothing more than to return home to spend his remaining days with his family. He has been punished adequately for his crimes.

It is simply hypocritical and inhumane to keep such a low-level foreign intelligence agent locked up forever merely because he happened to work for the "losing" side.

I can understand why the Russians did not attempt to negotiate a trade of Pope for Yildirim, since there are significant differences between the two cases, the most important of which is that Pope still maintains he is innocent of the espionage charges against him, while Huseyin cannot make the same claim. But unless the charges against Pope were completely fabricated in the first place and he is entirely innocent of spying against the Russians, I find it hard to understand why the Russians would not even make a request to the Americans that Yildirim be released on humanitarian grounds.

Why is it that only the Russians, and never the Americans, are expected to be merciful and capable of humanitarianism and clemency when dealing with convicted foreign spies? Why don't the Russians show a similar concern for an imprisoned former foreign intelligence agent whose services benefited them, at least indirectly, in the past? 

I realize that Yildirim is a Turk who worked for the East Germans, and therefore is not likely to garner much sympathy in the United States or, apparently, Russia either. But surely it is morally indefensible for the Russians to ignore the plight of this pathetic old former intelligence agent.


James R. Nichols Jr.

Santa Barbara, California

TITLE: EDITORIAL
TEXT: Spain Musn't Pander to Rough Justice 


MEDIA-MOST owner Vladimir Gusinsky sits in a Madrid jail, waiting for a Spanish court to rule on his possible extradition to Russia on embezzlement charges. The chief prosecutor said last week that he saw nothing to prevent Gusinsky's extradition. 


It is not for the Spanish court to determine Gusinsky's guilt or innocence of the charges he faces. However, the court is obligated to consider whether Russia's legal system can ensure Gusinsky a fair trial and protect his basic civil rights. The extradition decision should really be a verdict on Russia's courts.

The Spanish court should ask, for instance, about Russia's lamentable record on politically motivated prosecutions. It should consider recent reports that one-third of all the investigators working on high-profile cases for the Prosecutor General's Office have resigned this year. Duma deputies Viktor Pokhmelkin,Yury Shchekochikhin and others have expressed grave concerns about politically motivated prosecutions, as has former prosecutor general Yury Skuratov. 

In seeking to determine the extent to which the Russian prosecutor's office is politicized, the Spanish court should look at the corruption case of Kremlin insider Pavel Borodin, which was inexplicably closed on Dec. 13. Bernard Bertossa, the chief prosecutor in Geneva who investigated this case, is certain that the case was closed for political reasons. "In my view," Bertossa told the newspaper Segodnya, "a double standard of jurisprudence has been established: one for friends, one for opponents."

The Spanish court should consider whether Russia's judges are sufficiently insulated and independent to withstand pressure to return the verdict the prosecutor seeks. The court should weigh the opinion of former Moscow City Court Judge Sergei Pashin, who once headed President Boris Yeltsin's ill-fated judicial reform project. Pashin told The St. Petersburg Times in October that he frequently received phone calls from prosecutors and the Federal Security Service seeking to influence his opinion of on-going cases.

The court should also examine the Russian practice of trying people on the basis of secret decrees that even defense attornies are not allowed to see. It should consider the recent conviction of American Edmond Pope despite the prosecution's failure to produce any evidence of wrongdoing.

In short, there is plenty of reason to doubt that justice can be done here in the Gusinsky case. The Russian judicial system is simply incapable of extending to him the basic legal protections that any decent standard demands.

Justice in Russia is a cruel game. But the West should not just play along.

TITLE: The Afghanistan Trap
AUTHOR: By S. Frederick Starr
TEXT: THREE little-noted recent measures on Afghanistan mark a fundamental shift in U.S. policy not only toward that impoverished land but toward all Central Asia and even the Middle East. Whether it succeeds or fails, the outgoing administration's latest gambit will damage basic U.S. interests. 


First, the United States has quietly begun to align itself with those in the Russian government calling for military action against Afghanistan and has toyed with the idea of a new raid to wipe out Osama bin Laden. Until it backed off under local pressure, it went so far as to explore whether a Central Asian country would permit the use of its territory for such a purpose.

This comes at a time when Central Asians are as concerned over recent Russian activities as they are over the Taleban - specifically over Russian efforts to use the specter of terrorism and Islamic radicalism to regain control of their region. In fact, the United States' new militancy arises just as Afghanistan's immediate neighbors are preparing to accept the Taleban regime so long as it puts a stop to cross-border actions and otherwise respects their sovereignty. 

Second, Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth met recently with Russia's friends in the government of India to discuss what kind of government should replace the Taleban. Thus, while claiming to oppose a military solution to the Afghan problem, the United States is now talking about the overthrow of a regime that controls nearly the entire country, in the hope it can be replaced with a hypothetical government that does not exist even on paper.

Third, the United States is supporting a one-sided resolution in the United Nations that would strengthen sanctions against foreign military aid for the Taleban but take no action against its warlord opponents, who control a mere 3 to 5 percent of the country's territory. These warlords, when they ruled in key areas, showed a brutal disregard for human rights and for other minorities that was comparable to the Taleban at its worst. Yet the fragment of a government they support limps on and, with U.S. backing, occupies Afghanistan's seat in the United Nations. 

How did the United States become the junior partner to a misguided Russian policy arising from that country's desire for revenge against humiliations suffered in Afghanistan and Chechnya and from a kind of post-imperial hangover?

The trail goes back to the Clinton administration's desire to throw Moscow a bone after brushing the Russians aside during the Kosovo crisis. That bone was support for Russia's crusade against "Muslim fundamentalism" and "terrorism." We bought the Russians' line that these forces - rather than seven generations of savage Russian and Soviet misrule - fueled the revolt in Chechnya.

It appears likely that the Clinton administration also supplied the Russians with special equipment used against the Chechens. Confronted on this point in a Senate hearing, a State department spokesman took two weeks to produce a letter claiming disingenuously that the State Department itself provided no arms - as if Secretary Albright, rather than the Pentagon, controlled America's arsenal.

By making itself the junior partner in a Russian-Indian crusade against Muslim Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States will eliminate itself as a future mediator in one of the world's major trouble spots. This is all the more unfortunate because even today the United States is better positioned than any other country to resolve the Afghan tragedy and associated pathologies infecting the entire region.

The United States supported opposition to the Russian invasion of 1979 and welcomed the Taleban to the extent it reduced killing within the country. Even today, $9 of every $10 of food aid distributed there by the United Nations comes from the United States, and the Afghans know this.

But few in the Islamic world will doubt that the object of Russia's and India's efforts is not just Osama bin Laden or specific policies of the Taleban regime but Islam as such. This in turn will further damage America's position as a broker in the Middle East. It will weaken Israeli moderates who have reached out to Muslim states such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. 

Equally serious, the new states of Central Asia already sense that the United States is subordinating its policy toward them to Russia's aspirations in the region. The considerable credibility America gained from a decade of support for independence and development in their region will evaporate.

These shifts add up to a fundamental redirection of American policy toward the world's largest and most vexed zone of conflict. All this is occurring without public discussion, without consultation with Congress and without even informing those who are likely to make foreign policy in the next administration.

Because of this, the Clinton State Department is preparing a kind of land mine that will explode in the face of the incoming Bush administration.


S. Frederick Starr is chairman of the Central Asia-Caucuses Institute at Johns Hopkins's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He contributed this comment to The Washington Post.

TITLE: What Other Papers Are Saying
AUTHOR: by Ali Nassor
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin wound up his visit to Cuba and Canada this week with more efforts to recapture lost Soviet-era glory. Nevertheless, it was a tour that found the Canadians still committed to NATO despite Putin's objections. But to his surprise, he saw Cuba's communist grandfather being swept up by the winds of change, denouncing the faith for which he was once prepared to give his life.



Missiles Everywhere


Putin's visit to the former Soviet satellite state of Cuba was almost a 100 percent success, says Smena, but his visit to Canada left a lot to be desired. If the trip to Cuba was timely and much needed by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, he found himself unceremoniously shrugged off by the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien when he proposed that Canada attempt to dissuade the United States from carrying out its missile defense plan.


Chretien said that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty should serve as a cornerstone in maintaining global security, and should not be undermined by disagreements over the U.S. plan to create a nuclear shield, says the paper.

But Putin had to adopt a better-late-than-never tactic, immediately lobbying for economic gains from Canada rather than focus on military issues.

At least, the paper says, Putin managed to convince Chretien that his people needed to invest in Russia, and that the 1998 crisis was all in the past.

Putin then found out that Chretien was the right man from whom to garner support for Russia to join the World Trade Organization; and he was right, the paper says, adding that it was a sign that bilateral relations that soured over the Chechen War have been mended.



Friends In Need 


If Putin's Canadian visit was more of geopolitical significance in the Western world, his Cuban visit went beyond usual diplomacy, says Argumenty i Fakty.


The paper asks its readers to recall the nature of Putin's international tours during his first year as president. It's no coincidence that he was the first Russian leader in more than a decade to visit Cuba, not to mention the communist states of North Korea and China.

Peterburgsky Chas Pik suggests that, with U.S. sanctions still in force and Cuba's economy in turmoil, Castro is yearning for an economic boost from Russia in exchange for military technology and a joint effort to fight American imperialism - all old Cold War rhetoric, the paper says.

And if Putin is courting payment of multi-billion-dollar Soviet-era debt, Cuba has something to offer instead - tobacco, sugar, nickel, and jobs for Russian specialists in factories abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union.

If Russia needs a site to monitor U.S. military activities, then Cuba is there for the taking, the paper says.



V.I. Lennon?


Moreover, according to Smena, Castro is no more the committed communist he was. If possession of a dollar could once put a Cuban in jail, Castro is now relaxed about the currency's circulation and allows small businesses to operate. It is also interesting that the anti-private-ownership Castro has become one of the world's richest men, says the paper.


Backing Smena, Izvestia says Putin's visit in Cuba was a timely one, as Castro had been ready to come to terms with Russia, a country he had just been slinging mud at for denouncing communism. He went public shortly before Putin's visit, saying he was both a "Lennonist and a Leninist," in reference to John Lennon of the Beatles, whose music was until recently banned in Cuba.

Castro even ordered a statue of Lennon to be built prior to Putin's visit, the paper says. The only sign that some elements of communism still exist in Castro's regime was a large statue of Lenin that Putin saw on his arrival. But that could be just because it was too big to take down, the paper suggests.

TITLE: sixth sense follow-up is unbreakable hit
AUTHOR: by Kirill Galetski
TEXT: M. Night Shyamalan, the talented Philadelphia-based Indian-born film maker who helmed the much talked-about 1999 sleeper hit "The Sixth Sense," returns a year later with a film that is just as good, if not better.


His new film "Unbreakable," which opened Thursday in St. Petersburg, is an effective psychological drama and not a thriller in the traditional sense. As with "The Sixth Sense," it is bound to elicit disputes due to its highly unconventional approach, which will put off people expecting a thrilling ride. It works in slow and often mystifying ways.

Bruce Willis plays John Dunne, a troubled, depressed stadium security guard. He is a paragon of dysfunction within normalcy until he starts to unravel some extraordinary truths about himself after he is the sole survivor of a train collision. Surviving a deadly train wreck completely unharmed is, of course an anomaly, but the characters in the film are hard pressed to find any meaning in it - except for one. Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson,) a comic book art gallery owner with a rare disease which makes his bones extremely fragile, is convinced he knows exactly why Dunne survived. He tracks Dunne down and leaves him a cryptic question written on his gallery's card, "How many times have you been sick?" Dunne, who is in a troubled marriage and has been walking around in a deadened daze begins to show signs of life after receiving this note. His relationship with his alienated wife (Robin Wright Penn) noticeably improves. He visits Elijah with his son in tow and learns that the man considers him to be "unbreakable," i.e. someone completely opposite to him, someone with the ability to be a superhero.

Dunne thinks Elijah is nuts, of course, and tries to distance himself from him, but signs, premonitions, his son's belief in his superhero powers and a pervasive sadness in his life lead him to think that perhaps in some way Elijah is right. Dunne's discoveries about himself lead him into a journey through Philadelphia's dark side, and the film carries through to a denouement which proves one does not need explosions and mayhem to generate an electrifying conclusion.

"Dunne was such a great character," commented Willis in an interview with Australian Website Urban Cinephile, "So challenging to play, and with messages that for whatever reason, I think resonate in my own life. It's not difficult for me to understand a character that is searching for a reason as to why something phenomenal has happened to him."

Often, truly good scripts such as "Unbreakable" come about when a film's concerns are highly personal to the film maker. "When I wasn't making films, I used to wake up in the morning with a little bit of sadness and I didn't want to feel that my whole life," said Shyamalan on Movieweb, "So there was a point where I just listened carefully and figured out what I wanted to do. And now, even though that feeling of sadness still comes and goes every once in a while, I feel an incredible sense of peace because I feel like I am doing what I am supposed to do. What this movie is really about is discovering your destiny and asking yourself questions like 'what am I supposed to be doing with my life?' and how the pieces of your life somehow seem to fall into place and make sense when you find the answer."

"Unbreakable" is a near perfect convergence of two intriguing characters. It wins its kudos entirely through atmosphere and intense characterization rather than plot. Its comic book premise is given an effective spin, which is even expressed literally in a biographical sequence on the Elijah character.

In its detailing of the awkward formation of a hero, the entire film is more like a highly literate, profound prologue to a comic book, rather than a comic book itself. The film's immensely absorbing grip on the viewer is accomplished through carefully constructed, effective cinematography, great dramaturgy with wonderfully extreme characters and situations, and great acting. Its only fault is an abrupt, tacked-on epilogue over a still frame. The film could have gone on longer, and the film makers could have shown what they describe in the epilogue. Yes, there's a surprise ending, but it's not as much of a jolt as the finale in "The Sixth Sense" was. As with Terry Gilliam's film "Twelve Monkeys," and "The Sixth Sense" Bruce Willis once again had a chance to give a more meaningful, multi-layered performance.

"I really haven't figured out this whole acting thing yet," admits Willis. "Every film I do, I learn a little bit more and I try different things and working with Night, especially the second time, I was afforded the opportunity to really go for a more subtle performance because the part was written that way. It's far more interesting to me than running down the street with a gun in my hand screaming."



"Unbreakable" is now playing at the Barrikada and Crystal Palace cinemas.

TITLE: dancer takes the do-it-yourself approach
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
TEXT: When she realized that nobody would create what she wanted to do on stage, dancer Nancy Zendora began to choreograph performances herself.


Zendora was 33 when she evolved from a performer into a choreographer, and her first show "The Voice Of Things" saw the stage. The debut work was inspired by traditions of the Japanese no theater and was based on French poetry exploring the heathen world view when objects were believed to have souls.

"I got to the point in my life when I thought that either I have to create something myself or I wouldn't stay in the field," she said.

For Zendora, who runs a contemporary dance company bearing her name in New York, her art is a way of thinking, of seeing reality and expressing it - a method she is now unveiling to Russian dancers. 

She was very pleased to see the auditorium of the St. Petersburg Conservatory packed with students of the ballet masters' department during the two master classes she gave this December as part of an international festival of contemporary dance. "There was no publicity about my lessons, but I saw so much interest," Zendora smiled.

"[Contemporary dance] gives you many more possibilities of how to be on stage, how to enter and exit, than classical ballet with its narcissistic attitude," the choreographer said.

But as Zendora points out, the dancers may be willing to learn the technique and absorb the philosophy - and she could see they were - but a developed infrastructure needs to exist for audiences to accept the philosophy of contemporary dance and explore this world, still alien to the vast majority of Russians.

The world of contemporary dance is yet to take shape in Russia, and even now there are only fragments emerging.

In the United States, however, the problem is different, Zendora stresses. There are so many companies it is difficult for them to develop and raise money. And in these troupes, she says, they do everything themselves, relying entirely on their own resources and potential. "You have to produce, to direct, to choreograph, to dance and to organize. And people don't think that anybody will give them anything, this is the American style," Zendora said.

Zendora finds rivalry and competition stimulating for dancers trying to perfect their skills, but looking into the future she anticipates the commercialization of her art as numerous companies compete for limited financial support. "There will be more dance, but less art, sadly," she said.

"It is very important for Russian dance companies to find arts administrators who can help with such things as organizing their press material, reaching out to the audiences and critics, and promoting productions," Zendora said. 

Contemporary dance is something that Western people know about, having gained much knowledge through television as well as through multiple dance departments in colleges and universities which have been popping up around Europe and the United States in recent decades - a path Russia is yet to follow.

It is interesting, while recommending Western experience in arts management and fundraising for Russian contemporary dance companies to develop, artistically Zendora's advice sends them inward rather than outward.

"Let your country's culture, history, music and literature inspire you, look into the philosophy and world around you, then think of a possible language you would want to use to talk about it," she said.

Zendora herself is very much of an introverted nature, deeply into introspection and spiritual life. Her choreography, bearing a touch of ancient mystical rituals, has been inspired by Oriental mythology and aesthetics.

"Yes, I am an introvert, but I need to move," she said. "I am attracted by the poetic, the mystical, the mysterious."

In over two decades of dancing she has made numerous trips to Japan as well as Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Israel, absorbing cultures, movements and philosophy and developing her own unique vision.

"Some Japanese choreographers spent some time in the West, and then used their experience and impressions to experiment with the Japanese folk theater tradition, with the results being thrilling and extraordinary," Zendora said. "I think that Russia in a strange way is in a unique position in its isolation. Look into your own tradition and start from there. Yes, learn the techniques [from the West] but never lose yourself into the world's great masters."

Zendora welcomes contemporary interpretations of once inviolable classical ballets. "It is a fascinating way to re-think classical pieces in a modern way, it keeps the classical art in a fresh way. And by the way it is the very thing that Russians could do beautifully, given the rich traditions you have."

TITLE: doubting thomas untypical as usual
AUTHOR: by Simon Patterson
TEXT: When David Thomas founded the avant-garde rock group Pere Ubu some 25 years ago, he can hardly have been expecting mass public attention and adoration. And indeed, the St. Petersburg Estrada Theater (which seats 400) was barely half-full for his Thursday concert as David Thomas and two pale boys.


The size of the audience is probably typical for his concerts wherever he plays, however, as he admits: "I am not talented enough to attract many people," and says the reason for giving a concert in St. Petersburg is "life and life only."

Certainly, Thomas is hardly your typical rock musician. A very large man, he plays a tiny accordion and wears a red apron, which he explains is "to protect it from the passion that emanates from me during the concert - it's a kind of accordion condom." 

Backed by a sequenced trumpet and guitar, the trio can in fact deliver songs with surprising attack.

Thomas likes to stress that what he plays is rock music, and he certainly has a point - for all the group's strange appearance and unusual instrumentation, the songs they play seem to carry a lot of the spirit and conviction that can be found in a genuine raw rock performance.

Much of the performance is a kind of improvisation, as Thomas sings his verse to impromptu pieces that the guitarist or trumpeter come up with. He sets the mood with a few phrases, such as "fog rising off the Neva river," or "a whole line of ghost towns." Surprisingly, the resulting songs sound just as rehearsed as the numbers from the band's repertoire which make up the rest of the concert.

The performance ended with a song dedicated to Brian Wilson, whom Thomas evidently reveres. As he told this newspaper last week, and repeated at the concert: "The Beatles will be forgotten in 100 years... Brian Wilson, Sky Saxon and Don Van Vliet will be revered forever." 

Much of the banter must have been lost on the audience, some of whom saw fit to shout at the singer in Russian. He managed to quiet them down with the words, "We don't like it when people shout at us in foreign languages." His frequent supping from a hip-flask went down a bit better, however.

Whatever the audience thought of the concert, one can only congratulate the Estrada Theater for becoming the main venue for hosting acts like these, which make a welcome change from the usual diet of foreign acts, with this year's selection consisting mainly of old has-beens playing at the Ice Palace (Bryan Adams, Motorhead etc.) While no one seems to be making a profit from any of this, it seems fair to say that a good time was had by all.

TITLE: rilling wraps up city's bach memorial celebrations in style
AUTHOR: by Giulara Sadykh-zade
TEXT: To mark the closing of the Bach memorial year in St. Petersburg, the Goethe Institute and the German Embassy in Moscow cooperated to bring conductor Helmut Rilling, his "Moscow Virtuosos" chamber orchestra, the choir of the Moscow Academy of Choral Art and soloists from all over the world to perform in St. Petersburg.


Anna Korondi, a lyric soprano, was born in Budapest; Susan Platts, mezzo-soprano, is from Canada; the superlative lyric tenor James Taylor - a Texan in origin who is more of a German in spirit and musical training - also attended, along with Finnish bass Petri Lindroos.

The international nature of the performers did in no way prevent Rilling from conducting with his characteristic feeling and enthusiasm, however, which both seem unharmed by the years as he laid yet another musical wreath at the foot of the great composer's monument. This time the "wreath" was very festive: The Christmas Oratorio, made up of six independent cantatas which are all performed, according to tradition, as one cycle. In St. Petersburg, though, they were not performed in their entirety; of the six parts, parts four and five were omitted. Yet those they did perform conveyed the festive spirit quite effectively.

Helmut Rilling, one of the most famous names from the German musical world, is the founder of the Stuttgart Bach Academy and is already known to Petersburgers for his previous touring here. Each one of his visits to St. Petersburg tends to be marked by an extraordinary musical event: for example, Krisztof Penderecki's Credo or the reconstruction of a concert by Mendelssohn at the Leipzig Gewandhaus that took place 150 years ago.

Rilling is also an important initiator and organizer of large-scale, ambitious cultural projects in Bach's honor, something which not so long ago came to St. Petersburg in the guise of Gubaidulina's Mariinsky premier of the Passions. It was Rilling's own idea to get four composers from different countries to write a passion each for one of the evangelists and in so doing, continue the Bach (and in a wider context, the Protestant) tradition from baroque to the present day. The united spirit of this musical undertaking, first performed in Germany and subsequently in countries from the new and old worlds - the United States, Spain and Russia - is hard to overestimate.

Thus it is also hard to evaluate the fact that Rilling compiled, with the cooperation of fellow musicians at the Bach Academy, a recording of all of Bach's compositions, taking up no less than 140 CDs - a titanic task which was only completed this year.

Rilling's many differing activities reflect the fact that the conductor consistently comes up with highly original and unexpected ideas, and even more importantly, knows how to bring them to life. In this sense his recent visit can be seen only as a standard Russian tour for an internationally-renowned conductor (before St. Petersburg, Rilling performed at Moscow's Tchaikovsky Hall).

On the occasion of the final St. Petersburg concert of the jubilee year, the Moscow choir conducted by Rilling sounded unusually stylish. The part of the evangelist was almost ideally realized by James Taylor's tenor, and the orchestra was outstanding, Andrei Ikov on trumpet especially standing out. On the whole, the Christmas Oratorio was interpreted subtly and accurately by Rilling, who clearly understands the enigma of Bach's voice leading, the ruches of Bach's baroque articulation, and the polyphonic choral fugue.

The final concert, itself cheerful and festive, was more of an exclamation mark than a full stop at the end of Bach's memorial year, and deservedly so.

TITLE: a window on paris at garcon
AUTHOR: by Tom Masters
TEXT: Fresh lilies, low lighting and comfortable, candle-lit booths greeted us at Bistro Garcon, a French restaurant that opened earlier this year just off Ploshchad Vosstania. Not so much a theme restaurant as the real McCoy, much of Bistrot Garcon - including its head chef, Patrick Grandgien - comes direct from France, particularly the interior, which is made up of retro-chic advertising boards plundered from 1950s Paris.


The staff are painfully polite (something I just can't get used to in Russia) and the pozhaluista count was already off the scale by the time we had ordered. We sat drinking beers ($1.80 each) and devouring baskets of freshly baked baguette while watching our food being prepared through an open hatch - an experience that can be quite off-putting in a stolovaya, but one that is both reassuring and enjoyable in such an obviously professional establishment.

Indeed, anyone bored of dubious misnomers on Russian menus such as govyadina po-frantsuzsky will be glad to see a truly authentic range of French dishes, including steak tartar, fresh oysters, escargots, foie gras, a range of French cheese and a large wine list.

As a starter, my companion opted for the soupe au pistou ($4), while I found my curiosity insisted on salade canaille ($6) which was described on the menu as a "provocative combination" of sliced tomatoes, asparagus, onions, banana slices, rice, celery sticks and lettuce covered in fresh cream and lemon juice.

The soupe au pistou - country vegetable soup served with spaghetti, basil leaves and olive oil paste - was brimming with flavor and went down extremely well with the French bread. I am not sure how provocative I found the salade canaille, but it was a strangely pleasant blend of sweet and savory and I chided myself for never having combined asparagus and banana before in my unadventurous life.

However, the focus of the meal was on the main courses, which were brought to us on large porcelain trays and which both seemed to combine at least two dishes. My "Pork Andalusian Style" ($12) was sumptuous, filet mignon sauteed and served with eggplants, cubes of tomato and ham, chipolatas and green peppers stuffed with rice - an overwhelming array of diverse tastes, both strong and subtle.

My companion ordered Chicken Supreme with "Musketeer Sauce" ($8) - sauteed chicken cooked in white wine with cayenne pepper and served with tagliatelli. The musketeer sauce turned out to be thick provencale mayonnaise, but there were no complaints; in fact my co-diner was moved to pronounce that it was the best meal she had eaten in her six months in Russia.

We rounded off the meal with espressos ($2 each), which were of equally high standard. 

Paying the bill by Master Card, however, we were reminded that we were indeed still in Russia, as attempt after attempt to process the debit failed. Our unbelievably apologetic waiter encouraged us to read one of many back issues of Paris-Match, and we whiled away a good 20 minutes with Jonny Halliday's love affairs, Grimaldi weddings and the Blair's latest child before the staff finally gave up and asked me to visit an ATM.

A brief excursion to the Mos kov sky Vokzal later, and we left Bistrot Garcon's quiet warmth and friendly staff, and both agreed to come back (with cash) next year.



Bistrot Garson, 95 Nevsky Prospect. Open daily. Dinner for two with a modicum of alcohol, 1,100 rubles ($40). All major credit cards accepted (theoretically). Tel. 277-24-67.

TITLE: chapek play gets timely production at priyut
AUTHOR: by Natasha Shirokova
TEXT: The Christmas Parade winter theater festival opened on Dec. 14 with a new production by Veniamin Filshtinsky at the Priyut Komedianta Theater, the last play of Czech playwright Karel Chapek "Mother, or Unrest of the Dead." Chapek wrote the play in 1938, and it deals with the idea of every person's moral responsibility for the situation in their native country at a time when fascism was spreading over Europe. Filshtinsky, who has always claimed to have an acute feeling of time, thinks it's the right moment to stage the play and deal with civic problems.


Filshtinsky began his career with Lev Dodin at the TYuZ theater, and the two have collaborated for many years. His stage version of Turgenev's short story "Mumu" at the Maly Drama Theater has been running for 16 years and was considered for some time one of the best productions in St. Petersburg. Filshtinsky has gained a reputation for being a "serious" director, whose main priority is moral and social matters.

In "Mother, or Unrest of the Dead" the core of the performance is the story of the sufferings and the losses of an elderly woman, whose husband and five sons have been killed in various wars. The director stresses human values and underlines the worthlessness of any kind of victim. Through the sufferings of a single woman we are confronted with the violence and unjustness of the world.

The mother is portrayed by Bolshoi Drama Theater actress Larisa Malevannaya, who has played over 20 roles in the cinema and over 30 in the theaters of Moscow and St. Petersburg. She still plays the main part in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" at the Bolshoi Drama Theater. The last few years have not brought the actress any new interesting roles, so her participation in Filshtinsky's project is significant.

The portrayal of the mother by Malevannaya is highly psychological, which makes her troubles more immediate to the audience. In some episodes there is an intimate dialogue between her and the relatives, sometimes angry accusations at the world which ruined her family.

The action takes plays on two planes, the real, inhabited by living people, and the unreal, belonging to the dead. By the end of the performance the mother is the only character alive. From the very beginning she comes to the study of her late husband, where she sees him appearing in the dim light, and talks to him about their children and their past. But gradually all the men come to the plane of the unreal and the woman continues to meet them in the same study. When the apparitions disappear she is left by herself and has to face all the troubles again.

Filshtinsky is considered one of the city's best theatrical instructors, and many actors can boast of being Filshtinsky's apprentices. Two of Filshtinsky's pupils make impressive stage debuts in this production, with Taras Bibich and Alexei Morozov playing the constantly arguing brothers Kornel and Peter.

Filshtinsky's performances are always noticeable for their stylistic unity. The sets, created by Alexander Orlov, whom the director often calls his main assistant, have an ascetic look in keeping with the spirit of the production. The last scene represents what is left of the home, with the mother standing amist burnt furniture and charred family portraits.

TITLE: Chilling Links to Civil War Atrocities Found in Guatemala
AUTHOR: By Ricardo Miranda
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHOATALUN, Guatemala - For the villagers who survived those days of terror, the mass of skulls, bones, rotted clothing, rope and blindfolds unearthed here this week brought back memories of unspeakable savagery. 


It also may have led them closer to family members missing now for 18 years - since the day in 1982 when the army rounded up some 5,000 Mayan Indians and raped, tortured and killed many of them in a bid to do away with suspected rebel supporters. 

For Andres Suchite, the atrocity committed here at the peak of Guatemala's 36-year civil war is not yet a part of the past. 

The 52-year-old coffee picker survived it, and the civil war that framed it has been over for four years now. But he's still looking for his family: His mother, mother-in-law and two brothers were among those herded together by the army, and he hasn't seen them since. 

On Wednesday, though, researchers announced that they had found 20 bodies in a mass grave at this former army base. 

Afterward, Suchite pointed at partly excavated pieces of ground and the faint traces of building foundations. He plotted out the path the butchery took in the hope the pits will yield his long-missing family members. 

As he looked at the earth from which the bones were pulled, he spoke of what happened to him and his family that winter day. 

"[The soldiers] rounded us up at the village church in December 1982. They read a list, and those whose names were called, had to go to the base," Suchite said. "That's when my family went." 

Suchite was held for 15 days at the Choatalun base before a family friend with government connections convinced an army commander to release him. During that time, he said he saw atrocities committed here. 

"Here was where they held the women," Suchite said, pointing to traces of what were once the foundations of two adobe rooms. "And over here was where they raped them." 

"The men's bodies were buried all over here," he said, broadening his gesture to include the entire 2,000-square-meter base. 

As an eyewitness to some killings, Suchite offers an explanation for one of the more macabre details about the grave. 

No ballistics evidence has been found so far of bullet impacts against the bones found Wednesday. That, Suchite says, is because many victims were tied to a waist-high log, then bent backward by soldiers until their spines broke. They later were tossed into graves. 

The massacre was among the most brutal incidents in a vicious civil war that tore this tiny nation for decades. 

Leftist guerrillas and the government signed peace accords ending the conflict in 1996, but by then more than 200,000 people had died. Reports by human rights groups indicate the army committed the vast majority of the human rights abuses reported during the war. 

At or near Choatalun, about 5,000 Mayan Indians were rounded up by the army in December 1982, according to a UN report. It said 3,000 were reportedly killed and their bodies buried at several locations. 

So far, researchers from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation have found 20 sets of skeletal remains - some still bearing traces of blindfolds or ropes around their wrists or necks - at this base in Chimaltenango province, about 60 kilometers west of Guatemala City.

TITLE: Jesus' Birthplace Prepares for Christmas
AUTHOR: By Dina Kraft
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BETHLEHEM, West Bank - Pilgrims who want to brave an outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence to visit Bethlehem at Christmas will be allowed to enter the town of Jesus' birth - but they'll have to take an indirect route. 


Bethlehem, five kilometers south of Jerusalem, lies in Palestinian territory, but access is controlled from an Israeli military checkpoint at the edge of town. 

Israeli officials said Wednesday that holders of foreign passports are allowed to pass through the checkpoint - but not in vehicles with Israeli plates, in which most of them will be traveling. 

Tourists and pilgrims, then, will have to switch to Palestinian tour buses at the checkpoint, or else walk or take a Palestinian taxi to muted festivities in Manger Square, three kilometers away.

Most tourists are staying away from Bethlehem, which has been the scene of gun battles during the three-month-old outbreak of violence that has claimed nearly 340 lives, almost all Palestinians. 

Despite the drop-off in visitors, the Israeli and Palestinian tourism ministries are working together to ensure access for those who do want to come. 

"We are encouraging the pilgrims to come," said Oren Drori, who heads the marketing department of Israel's tourism ministry. "We have a joint interest, and here we can see how tourism can act as a bridge." 

"I hope there will be coordination," said Shlomo Dror, spokesman for the Israeli liaison office with the Palestinians. "But every time there is shooting it is hard to bring in people." 

Most pilgrims visiting Bethlehem travel on Israeli-plated tour buses with Israeli tour guides. Israeli citizens, and vehicles with yellow Israeli license plates, have been largely prohibited from entering Palestinian areas since the violence began. 

Israeli security officials said they hoped that by Christmas Eve, arrangements will have been made to ease restrictions on Israelis who want to celebrate in Bethlehem. Thousands of Arab citizens of Israel are Christians. 

Drori said that arrangements have been made with the Palestinians for pilgrims traveling to Bethlehem from Israel to disembark from Israeli tour buses and walk about 100 meters across an Israeli military checkpoint to the Palestinian side. There they can travel on Palestinian tour buses with Palestinian tour guides to the center of town. 

The route to Manger Square - a plaza fronting the Church of the Nativity, built at the traditional site of Jesus' birth - skirts the major site of recent clashes in Bethlehem, a road next to the Jewish shrine of Rachel's Tomb. 

Palestinians have fired on Israeli troops from a hotel in the area, according to the Israelis, who have responded by firing tank shells into the hotel. 

Israeli forces in Gilo have also repeatedly exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen on rooftops in Beit Jalla, a mainly Christian village on the outskirts of Bethlehem.

TITLE: U.S. in Push for Mideast Peace
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was on Thursday trying to prod Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to make progress in talks aiming to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East.


U.S. President Bill Clinton stepped into the Middle East peacemaking effort Wednesday, meeting with the two sides at the White House.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami called the talks "very fruitful," but Saeb Erekat, the head of the Palestinian delegation, said serious differences remained.

Albright took part in the White House meetings and on Thursday went to the site of the talks, Bolling Air Force Base in southeast Washington, to try to facilitate progress.

Albright, speaking at the State Department on Wednesday, said the United States saw an opportunity in a change of approach by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, reflected in his decision to resign and run for re-election as prime minister.

"There is a sense that there are opportunities, clearly, some of the changed calculations by Prime Minister Barak ... and a sense that we have gotten - that basically Chairman [Yasser] Arafat may see this also as an opportune time," she told reporters.

But P.J. Crowley, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, sought to play down expectations.

"We feel very realistic. This is still a difficult process. We've gone through 11 weeks of violence in the region that has clearly left scars on both sides," Crowley said.

Erekat, speaking after 45 minutes of talks at the White House, said a summit meeting between Clinton, Barak and Palestinian President Arafat would not be advisable unless success was certain.

"I don't want to raise anybody's expectations. We're having very serious discussions. But at the same time, we're facing major difficulties and serious differences," Erekat said.

"Nobody wants to convene a trilateral summit and to have a failure. ... Unless we can ensure the success of a trilateral summit, I don't think it's advisable to convene," he added.

"The president is willing to have a summit, that is, a conclusive summit. ... We need the summit to crown an effort rather than to be a substitute for negotiations," Ben-Ami said.

Clinton invited Arafat and Barak to the U.S. presidential retreat at Camp David in July, but the meeting broke up after 15 days because of differences over Jerusalem.

Erekat and Ben-Ami came to Washington Tuesday amid signs the two sides want to break a cycle of violence in which more than 330 people have been killed in the last three months.

Ben-Ami described the first meetings in Washington as productive and said the negotiations could lead to an agreement if they continued in the same positive spirit.

For President Clinton, the Middle East stands out as an area in which he might be able to make a dramatic difference before the administration of President-elect George W. Bush begins on Jan. 20.

The conventional wisdom is that a deal with the Palestinians would help Barak win a surprise election in February. Arafat, despite Palestinian skepticism about Barak's goodwill, knows that if Barak loses the election, it might be hard to reach an agreement under a right-wing Israeli leader.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Pinochet Interrogation

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - Chile's top court dropped homicide and kidnapping charges against Gen. Augusto Pinochet on Wednesday, but left open the possibility of trying the former dictator in the "Caravan of Death" killings of political prisoners. 

Although the court tossed out the indictment, saying Judge Juan Guzman should have questioned Pinochet before his Dec. 1 arrest, it also ordered Guzman to interrogate Pinochet within 20 days - giving the judge a chance to issue a new indictment. 

Lawyers opposed to Pinochet said they expect the judge to question the retired general as soon as possible and indict him again in the 1973 "Caravan of Death" operation that executed 73 political prisoners shortly after Pinochet came to power in a coup. 



Jiang Warns Macao

HONG KONG (LAT) - Chinese President Jiang Zemin on Wednesday warned the people of Macao and Hong Kong against using their freedom to oppose the state. 

Speaking in Macao on the first anniversary of the former Portuguese colony's return to Chinese sovereignty, Jiang said the citizens of China's two special administrative regions should pay attention to their social responsibilities rather than involve themselves in protests. 

The Chinese leader urged the Macao government to "take concrete measures to defend the national interest and the authority of the central government." 

While his remarks were directed at the people of Macao, he made clear they're also relevant to Hong Kong. Citizens of the two regions, both former European colonial possessions, enjoy far greater personal freedoms and civil rights under the negotiated terms of their return to Chinese sovereignty. 



'Popo' Flood Threat

MEXICO CITY (LAT) - The Mexican government swiftly evacuated thousands more people Tuesday from homes near the Popocatepetl volcano as the behemoth erupted for a second day, hurling molten rocks the size of beach balls into the air. 

Authorities said they were on "maximum alert" Tuesday afternoon because a series of tremors in the volcano indicated that a vigorous new eruption was likely. But officials said their greatest concern was that the red-hot rocks spewing from the volcano would melt a glacier on its flanks, sending torrents of mud and water toward nearby towns. 

Since Monday night, the volcano known locally as "Popo" has erupted three times in its biggest activity in more than 400 years.



Taleban Embargo

UNITED NATIONS (WP) - The UN Security Council on Tuesday slapped an arms embargo on Afghani stan's ruling Taleban and tightened financial, diplomatic and travel sanctions on the militia's leaders for harboring alleged terrorists, particularly the exiled Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden. 

The resolution, co-sponsored by the United States and Russia, was approved by a vote of 13-0, with China and Malaysia abstaining. 

Humanitarian agencies warned that the sanctions would worsen conditions for the country's poor and could provoke reprisals against UN staffers and international relief workers. But the United States and Russia, in a rare act of cooperation at the UN, pushed for the tough measures to squeeze the Taleban to surrender bin Laden, expel other alleged terrorists and shut down training camps for Islamic extremists. 



German BSE Warning

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's health minister has issued an urgent warning to the public to stop eating some sausages made of meat from the backbones of cattle and called on producers to take the products off the market.

Minister Andrea Fischer said in a Wednesday television interview that the warning was a precaution based on the recommendation of scientists. It marked a dramatic change of direction for the minister who earlier on Wednesday ruled out any danger from the sausage products.



Peru Spy Links

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - The government has amassed enough evidence to ask courts to probe hundreds of politicians, military officials and businessmen linked to Peru's fugitive ex-spy chief, wanted on corruption charges, a top lawyer said.

"There are hundreds of people from military officials to businessmen and politicians. The only ones missing are priests," Jose Ugaz, the government's top lawyer investigating Montesinos, said on Wednesday.

Vladimiro Montesinos, ex-President Alberto Fujimori's right-hand man for 10 years, spun a web of power over Peru, extorting courts, media and military while skimming profits off illegal drug and arms deals, the government said.

Montesinos, 56, had a taste for gold watches and fitted escape tunnels under his bathtub at home. He has not been seen since October, when witnesses say he fled by yacht across the Pacific ocean to Costa Rica or Venezuela.



Taylor Challenges UN

MONROVIA, Liberia (Reuters) - Liberian President Charles Taylor, accused of trading blood diamonds from Sierra Leonean rebels, challenged the United Nations Wednesday to seize his foreign bank accounts - if they could find any.

"I own nothing outside this country. This revolution is my life," the former civil war rebel leader told supporters at his executive mansion against a damning UN report published Tuesday.

A report by a five-member expert panel circulated at the United Nations Tuesday accuses Taylor and his country of involvement in gems-for-arms trafficking with Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front rebels.



Bombers Bail Bid

VANCOUVER, Canada (Reuters) - The two men charged with the 1985 bombing of an Air India jet that killed 329 people over the Atlantic Ocean were scheduled to appear in a Canadian judge Thursday in a bid to be released on bail.

The hearing at British Columbia's Supreme Court could provide the first glimpse of the case against Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, although Canadian judges often bar the media from reporting on evidence and arguments presented in bail hearings.

Malik, 53, and Bagri, 51, have been held in custody since their arrest in October for the Air India bombing - history's deadliest act of aviation sabotage - and a related explosion that killed two airport workers at Tokyo's Narita airport.

TITLE: Turkey Takes Steps To End Prison Protests
AUTHOR: By Suzan Fraser
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey's parliament approved a prison amnesty Thursday that will nearly halve the country's prison population and help the government transfer inmates from large wards to small cells. Meanwhile, Turkish soldiers battled radical leftist inmates for a third day in their push to regain control of two prisons. 


The battle for control of Turkey's unruly prisons began Tuesday, when troops stormed 20 penitentiaries. On Thursday, they used bulldozers to break holes in the thick walls of Istanbul's Umraniye prison and Canakkale prison in western Turkey - the two facilities where inmates were still holding out - to reach the inmates, who are reportedly armed with guns and makeshift flame-throwers. 

Shots were heard throughout the night at Umraniye prison, the Anatolia news agency reported. Private news channel NTV said security forces were throwing tear gas to force the prisoners out of their wards. 

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said the security forces were being "slow and sensitive" to avoid more casualties. 

At least 19 people - 17 prisoners and two soldiers - have died since Tuesday, when soldiers stormed the penitentiaries to end a two-month hunger strike by prisoners protesting moves from Turkey's packed prison wards to small cells. Human rights activists fear the toll could be higher. 

On the political front, meanwhile, lawmakers approved the contentious amnesty bill, which is strongly opposed by families of crime victims and has already been vetoed once by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. 

The president cannot legally veto the bill again. As soon as he signs it, nearly half the nation's 72,000 inmates could go free. 

The amnesty applies to crimes committed before April 23, 1999 and reduces sentences by 10 years. Convicted murderers and thieves will benefit, but rapists, corrupt state officials, drug traffickers and those accused of crimes against the state, such as Kurdish guerrillas and leftist and Islamic militants, will not. 

The government hopes the amnesty will help it regain control of the wards, where up to 100 prisoners live together with little or no oversight. Prisoners from political groups often run the wards like indoctrination centers and decorate them with rebel flags. Authorities reportedly entered one ward in Istanbul's Bayrampasa prison this week for the first time in almost 10 years. 

The inmates launched the hunger strike to protest government plans to move them into prisons with one- or three-person cells, where they say they would be more vulnerable to abuse by authorities. Many of the inmates have continued their hunger strikes despite having been pulled from their wards by troops and taken to hospitals. 

The government has already started to break up the wards by moving prisoners to individual cells. But at Canakkale and Umraniye, the inmates have been defiant. 

At Canakkale, inmates linked to the Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front, or DHKP-C, eluded the soldiers by constantly moving around within the prison, NTV television reported. Some prisoners barricaded themselves into a gymnasium. At least five surrendered to soldiers, NTV said. 

The prisoners in both penitentiaries are said to be armed with guns, gas bombs and flame-throwers made of pipes attached to gas canisters. They have vowed to burn themselves alive if attacked, and several of the at least 17 inmates who died Tuesday had set themselves on fire. 

The DHKP-C, the main faction battling soldiers in the prisons, is a splinter group from Dev-Sol, or Revolutionary Left, which battled right-wing activists in violent street fights in the 1970s. The DHKP-C, which aims to topple the government and replace it with a Marxist one, has claimed responsibility for the assassinations of generals, policemen and government officials and has targeted U.S. military and diplomatic missions.

TITLE: Protests Hit London as Kurds Take Over Famous Landmark
AUTHOR: By Mike Peacock
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Fifty Kurdish protesters hijacked the world's tallest ferris wheel and then threatened to set themselves on fire, but surrendered to British police about five hours later.


Riot police on Wednesday persuaded the protesters, who wanted to draw attention to the plight of Kurdish prisoners in Turkey, to leave the London Eye ferris wheel, from which hundreds of tourists had been evacuated earlier.

Police said on Thursday all 50 were arrested and may face charges. "There were suggestions that the protesters had inflammable materials but this has not been confirmed," a police spokesman told Reuters.

Police earlier said the protesters had threatened in mobile phone calls to set themselves on fire.

A spokeswoman for the protesters said, "This is a demonstration to show political prisoners in Turkey that we are with them and we will be with them to the end.

"The Turkish authorities have been murdering them."

London's giant wheel is one of the British capital's most popular tourist attractions, offering bird's eye views of parliament and other landmarks. Police said the protesters had paid for their tickets to go onto the wheel.

The takeover of the wheel was part of a series of Kurdish protests in London that began in the debating chamber of the British parliament on Wednesday afternoon.

A man and a woman chanting "Stop the massacres in Turkish prisons!" were dragged by attendants from the public gallery in the House of Commons while Prime Minister Tony Blair was answering questions from members of parliament.

Another group of Kurds occupied the London offices of the European Commission, but surrendered after less than three hours. Twelve people were arrested but no charges had been made yet, police said.

British Airways, which runs the London Eye, said protesters had occupied two of the wheel's gondolas - one on the ground and the other directly overhead.

The 140-meter wheel has 32 glassed-in gondola pods. Each can carry 25 passengers on a round trip that takes 30 minutes.

TITLE: Man Utd Hopes To Avoid Christmas Jinx
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Manchester United is five points clear at the top but history suggests the busy holiday program - when clubs can face four games in nine days - could prove a major stumbling block on its march towards a 14th title.


Only twice since the premier league was formed eight years ago has the team leading the table on Christmas Day gone on to win the championship - Blackburn in 1995 and United in 1994.

But despite United's home defeat to Liverpool last week, its first league loss at home for nearly two years, it remains odds-on to make it seven championships in nine years.

They will expect normal service to resume at Old Trafford on Saturday when they face Ipswich Town, although the promoted club is flying high in third place.

Ipswich followed up its recent win at Anfield by beating Southampton last week and Manchester City away in midweek in the League Cup quarterfinals.

George Burley has got his team playing a controlled passing style that has brought comparisons with the side fashioned by Bobby Robson 20 years ago which won the FA Cup, twice finished runners-up in the league and then lifted the UEFA Cup.

"We're all looking forward to it but know it will be a very, very tough match," said Burley.

United is without suspended striker Dwight Yorke while long-term injury victims Andy Cole and Jaap Stam are likely to get a return to action early in the New Year.



Coventry City (18) vs. Southampton (15). A traditional relegation clash at any time of the year. Coventry's 1-0 defeat at Derby County last week was its eighth in 10 games and yet another fight against the drop looms.


Southampton can turn on the style but inconsistency has let them down - and an away record of just one win from nine attempts hasn't helped.



Charlton Athletic (13) vs. Everton (14). Charlton's home form has been impressive this season and Alan Curbishley has developed a side with a terrific spirit.


It's unlikely to be a fixture full of flowing football. Everton has been devoid of ideas in the absence of the injured Paul Gascoigne and is earning its points through hard work rather than smart soccer.



Chelsea (12) vs. Bradford City (20). Last week was a disaster for both clubs. Chelsea's appalling away form continued with a 1-0 defeat at Middlesbrough while Bradford slipped to last place after losing 2-1 at Newcastle.


Chelsea is without suspended top scorer Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink but should have more than enough alternative firepower for a Bradford side also missing its main striker, suspended Stan Collymore.



Derby County (17) vs. Newcastle United (7). Derby is starting to show a little form at last with three wins in its last five games and is solid, if unspectacular, at home. Newcastle continues to struggle for goals despite its lofty league position.




Leeds United (10) vs. Aston Villa (9). The best news for David O'Leary last week was not the 2-0 home win over Sunderland but the return to action of injured key midfield duo Harry Kewell and David Batty. Both should feature on Saturday though Batty may again start on the bench.


Villa is the premier league's draw specialist with eight so far and manager John Gregory would probably settle for a point again against the resurgent hosts.



Leicester City (4) vs. West Ham United (8). West Ham is in great form, home and away, and is playing entertaining football. It could risk Titi Camara, signed on Thursday from Liverpool, although he has not played this season. But with Manchester United the only visiting team to win at Filbert Street this season Leicester, which is also full of confidence at the moment, will prove to be a very tough nut to crack.


Liverpool (5) vs. Arsenal (2). Liverpool's first win over Manchester United for 10 years has lifted the club. However, despite Emile Heskey's good form, Michael Owen and Robbie Fowler are still worryingly below par. 


Arsenal missed the opportunity to close the gap at the top to three points last Monday when it could only draw 1-1 at Tottenham. However, it can take inspiration from the class of '98, who trailed United by 13 points at Christmas but came through to finish on top.

TITLE: Moscow: City Is Safe for IOC Members
AUTHOR: By Gennady Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Russian Olympic chief Vitaly Smirnov sought to reassure the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Thursday that Moscow was a safe city despite the latest gun attack on a senior city official. 


"The federal government will be responsible for all security matters concerning the IOC session and I don't think there should be any doubt in its ability to provide the necessary protection," the president of the Russian Olympic Committee told Reuters. 

Next year the Russian capital will host a high-profile IOC session, which will elect a new IOC president as well as the host city for the 2008 Summer Games. 

On Tuesday, gunmen opened fire in broad daylight on the car of Moscow's deputy mayor Josif Ordzhonikidze, seriously wounding him and killing his driver. 

Last month Ordzhonikidze signed an agreement to build Russia's first top-class international motorsport circuit at a cost of around $100 million. 

He also deals with the organization and use of hard currency in Moscow, measures for regulating currency expenditure in the city and attracting foreign investment. 

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov said that Ordzhonikidze was "a victim of a decision that did not please criminal organizations." 

A few months earlier, one of Ordzhonikidze's aides also came under fire while on his way to work by car, but was not hurt. 

Smirnov insisted, however, that the international Olympic Committee had nothing to worry about. 

"I don't think that the IOC members will be of any interest to our domestic killers," he said. "Here we're talking about strictly internal quarrels." 

The sports infrastructure, which used to enjoy strong tax and import benefits, has attracted the attention of Russia's criminal underworld. Several major sports figures have become targets of criminal attacks in the past. 

Last year, six men were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for the contract killing of Valentin Sych, the powerful president of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation, who died in a hail of bullets in April 1997 when gunmen opened fire on his car. They also seriously wounded his wife. 

"We had problems in the past prior to elections in certain sports federations, where we had officials being blackmailed, threatened and even attacked, while Valentin Sych simply lost his life," Smirnov said. 

In six months, Moscow will be the home for hundreds of IOC and international sports federations' members as well as several thousand foreign media and guests, attending the 112th annual session of the IOC. 

The city is banking on the success of this historic event to give itself a good platform to bid for the next Summer Olympics. 

Luzhkov has said on several occasions that Moscow, which hosted the boycott-plagued 1980 Summer Games, will bid again in 2012.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Kemp on a Diet

DALLAS (AP) - Shawn Kemp, after being fined by the Portland Trail Blazers for missing a practice, blamed his absence on weariness triggered by his new diet.

Kemp slept through the workout Tuesday morning, then joined his teammates in Dallas after catching an afternoon flight. He suited up for the game Wednesday night, but did not play in a 106-101 loss to the Mavericks.

Kemp said his bosses and his teammates accepted his explanation and were understanding. He added that he didn't argue with the fine, which Dunleavy called "fairly large."

"I've lost so much weight the last few weeks, the energy level drops down a little bit," he said. "I can be sitting there and all of a sudden just kind of phase out if you're not careful."



Record Deal for Venus

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sports apparel company Reebok International Ltd., on Thursday said it signed tennis champion Ve nus Williams to an endorsement deal that makes her the most lucratively paid female athlete.

The Stoughton, Massachussetts-based company best known for its athletic shoes declined to name the terms of the multi-year contract extension. Williams, 20, has endorsed Reebok products on the court and in television and print ads since 1995.

Williams, the reigning U.S. Open and Wimbledon women's champion, also will co-design the collections scheduled to debut in the 2002 tennis season.

"Venus' agreement with Reebok breaks new ground for women athletes all over the world," said Billie Jean King, former tennis champion.

Last week Williams and her younger sister Serena, doubles gold medalists at the Sydney Olympics, signed a three-year advertising and promotional agreement with Avon Products Inc. 



U.S. Surpasses England

ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) - The United States has moved ahead of England in the latest FIFA world rankings.

The Americans moved up two spots to 16th in end-of-year rankings released Wednesday. England, the motherland of soccer, dropped one spot to 17th.

The United States has climbed six spots since December 1999, while England has fallen five.

The top three spots remained unchanged from November, with Brazil followed by France and Argentina. Italy moved into fourth and the Czech Republic dropped to fifth.



Eligibility Restored

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) - Louisville basketball recruit Muham med Lasege won a court ruling Wednesday ordering the NCAA to restore his eligibility.

Jefferson Circuit Judge Geoffrey Morris ruled the NCAA was wrong to ban the Nigerian from playing college basketball because he signed a professional contract in Russia.

"While this contract may have been legal in Russia, it is clearly illegal in this country and Commonwealth," Morris said.

Lasege's attorney, Jim Milliman, said the player was thrilled by the ruling. Milliman said he reached Lasege in Canada while he was headed to London to visit his sister. Lasege then returned Louisville.

TITLE: Mailman Delivers Jazz Victory
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PHILADELPHIA - Karl Malone and the Utah Jazz responded to their coach's departure a bit better than Allen Iverson and the Philadelphia 76ers responded to their coach's return.


Malone scored a season-high 41 points and led a fourth-quarter rally that gave the Jazz a 91-89 National Basketball Association victory over the 76ers, who wasted a season-high 45 points from Allen Iverson.

The Jazz were coming off a lackluster loss in Toronto in which Jerry Sloan sat perennial All-Stars Malone and John Stockton for huge chunks of the second half.



Boston 99, New Jersey 86. Paul Pierce scored 13 of his 25 points in the opening quarter as the host Boston Celtics raced to a 17-point lead and cruised past the New Jersey Nets, 99-86, to snap a four-game losing streak.


Stephon Marbury led New Jersey with 24 points while Aaron Williams added 14 and 10 rebounds.



San Antonio 94, Cleveland 77. In San Antonio, Danny Ferry scored 16 points against his former team and Derek Anderson keyed a decisive second-half run as the Spurs snapped the Cleveland Cavaliers' six-game winning streak, 94-77.


Tim Duncan added 14 points and 12 rebounds while David Robinson chipped in with 13 boards.



Dallas 106, Portland 101. In Dallas, Dirk Nowitzki answered Bonzi Wells' poor sportsmanship in the fourth quarter by scoring 12 of his 29 points in the final period, leading the Mavericks to an impressive 106-101 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers in a volatile game.


Damon Stoudamire scored 22 points and Rasheed Wallace added 20 for Portland.



Charlotte 65, Miami 56. In Charlotte, North Carolina, the Miami Heat had their worst first half of the season and followed it up by managing just 11 points in the third quarter en route to the worst offensive performance in team history and an embarrassing 65-56 loss to the Charlotte Hornets.


Former Miami forward Jamal Mashburn had 19 points, 14 rebounds and four assists for the Hornets, who established a franchise record for fewest points allowed. Charlotte had yielded 59 to Sacramento on Jan. 10, 1991.


Toronto 99, Indiana 98. At Indianapolis, Vince Carter scored 45 points to offset a career-high 42 by Jalen Rose and Antonio Davis made the winning free throw with 1.8 seconds left in overtime to give the Toronto Raptors a 99-98 victory over the Indiana Pacers.


Carter made 17 of 30 shots as he eclipsed 40 points for the second time this season.

TITLE: Devils Give Stars Hell of a Time in Rematch of Finals
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey - The New Jersey Devils erupted for a four-goal first period Wednesday to thwart any Dallas thoughts of revenge with a 4-1 victory over the Stars in their first meeting since last season's Stanley Cup finals.


Jason Arnott, who scored the Cup-winning goal in double overtime to end the six-game finals, picked up where he left off, opening the scoring just 89 seconds into the contest.

The line of Patrik Elias, Petr Sykora and Arnott ran roughshod over the Dallas defense, doing all the damage in the first 10 1/2 minutes to chase Stars goalie Ed Belfour.

Elias assisted on the first three New Jersey goals and completed the scoring with his 14th goal of the season, tying a team record for points in a period. Sykora, who was knocked senseless in the first period of the championship game and watched his team win the Stanley Cup from a hospital bed, contributed a power-play goal and two assists.



St. Louis 6, New York Rangers 3. In New York, Pavol Demitra recorded his second career hat trick and added two assists for a five-point night as the St. Louis Blues took their unbeaten streak to 10 games - 9 of them wins - with a 6-3 victory over the Rangers.


The Slovakian All-Star scored twice in the first period to stake the Blues to a 2-0 lead and completed the hat trick with an empty-net goal with 57 seconds left in regulation.

In between, Petr Nedved, Michal Grosek and Mark Messier scored in a 5:40 span of the third period for New York to cut the deficit to 4-3. But the Blues sealed their fifth straight road win just 11 seconds later when Michal Handzus put the puck in off defenseman Sylvain Lefebvre's skate.



San Jose 2, Detroit 0. In Detroit, rookie Evgeni Nabokov recorded his third shutout of the season and Stephane Matteau and Mike Ricci scored 90 seconds apart in the first period as the streaking San Jose Sharks blanked the Red Wings 2-0 for their fifth straight win.


Nabokov made 31 saves and helped San Jose kill seven Red Wings power plays as the Sharks won in Detroit for only the second time in 19 regular-season visits to the Motor City.



Phoenix 4, Calgary 2. In Phoenix, Keith Tkachuk ended a 12-game scoring drought with his ninth career hat trick to lead the Coyotes to a 4-2 victory over the Calgary Flames.


Tkachuk scored twice in the first period and beat Mike Vernon for the third time 22 seconds into the third.

Jeremy Roenick added a goal and an assist and Sean Burke made 25 saves for Phoenix. 



Edmonton 3, Vancouver 2. In Edmonton, Alberta, Anson Carter scored a power-play goal at 2:41 of overtime as the Edmonton Oilers rallied from two goals down for a 3-2 victory over the Vancouver Canucks. Doug Weight tied the game for Edmonton with a power-play goal midway through the third period. Canucks defenseman Mattias Ohlund was in the penalty box for both goals.


Janne Niinimaa assisted on all three Edmonton goals.



Buffalo 2, Washington 2. In Washington, Miroslav Satan scored the tying goal five minutes into the third period and Martin Biron made 30 saves, including five in overtime, as the Buffalo Sabres skated to a 2-2 tie with the Capitals.


Erik Rasmussen also scored for Buffalo. Adam Oates assisted on goals by Sergei Gonchar and Chris Simon for Washington.



Florida 2, Pittsburgh 2. At Sunrise, Florida, rookie Milan Kraft's short-handed goal 9:23 into the third period lifted the Pittsburgh Penguins into a 2-2 tie with the Panthers.


Pittsburgh's Alexei Kovalev appeared to score in overtime, but the goal was disallowed when officials ruled the net was knocked off its moorings before the puck crossed the line.

TITLE: Salaries Reach Record Level
AUTHOR: By Ronald Blum
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Y2K just missed being baseball's Y2MIL.


The sport's average salary soared 17.5 percent to $1,895,630 in 2000, according to the annual survey released Wednesday by the Major League Baseball Players Association.

The New York Yankees had the highest average salary for the second straight year and the sixth time in seven seasons. A year after becoming the first team to break the $3 million barrier, the Yankees averaged $3,656,542 as they won their third straight World Series, up from $3,215,660 in 1999.

Three other teams topped $3 million: Los Angeles ($3,141,883), Atlanta ($3,127,992) and the NL champion New York Mets ($3,115,549).

Minnesota had the lowest average at $601,680, with Montreal 29th at $767,420 and Kansas City 28th at $798,242. The Royals had the lowest average in 1999, $534,460.

Texas, which last week agreed to a record $252 million, 10-year contract with Alex Rodriguez, had the biggest payroll drop this year, falling from second at $2,825,735 to 15th at $1,870,723.

St. Louis, which won the NL Central, rose from 17th at $1,515,094 to seventh at $2,390,042.

The average salary increased 17.7 percent from 1999's revised average of $1,611,166, the second-biggest rise since 1992, trailing only a 19.3 percent hike in 1997.

This offseason's signings, led by Rodriguez's deal, Manny Ramirez's $160 million, eight-year contract with Boston and Mike Hampton's $121 million, eight-year agreement with Colorado, should push the average over $2 million next season, just nine years after it topped $1 million for the first time.

First basemen were the highest-paid players, averaging $4,996,933. They were followed by outfielders ($3,480,792), designated hitters ($3,366,872), second basemen ($3,158,209), starting pitchers ($3,064,021), catchers ($2,767,726), shortstops ($2,504,993), third basemen ($2,484,428) and relief pitchers ($1,220,412).

Just four teams among the top 15 payrolls had losing records - Detroit (79-83), Baltimore (74-88), Tampa Bay (69-92) and the Chicago Cubs (65-97) - and the teams with the eight highest payrolls all had winning records.

Only five clubs among the bottom 15 payrolls had winning records: the Chicago White Sox (95-67), Oakland (91-70), Cincinnati (85-77), Anaheim (82-80) and Colorado (82-80).