SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #632 (0), Tuesday, December 26, 2000
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TITLE: Wallenburg Victim of Purges, Russia Admits
AUTHOR: By Jon Boyle
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia officially acknowledged for the first time on Friday that Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps, was a victim of Stalin's purges and died in a Soviet prison.


The Prosecutor General's Office said Wallenberg and his driver Vilmos Langfelder were "unjustifiably arrested by non-judicial bodies and deprived of their freedom for political reasons ... and without being charged with specific offenses." It did not say whether they died of natural causes or were shot, or in what year it happened.

Alexander Yakovlev, the head of a Russian-Swedish committee set up to investigate Wallenberg's fate after his arrest, said last November he was sure the diplomat had been executed in the notorious Lubyanka prison.

Friday's statement said Wallenberg and his driver qualified "under Russian law on rehabilitating the victims of political repression." This is largely symbolic as neither man's relatives will be entitled to the modest compensation available to Russian citizens.

Jan Lundvik, a senior Swedish diplomat who sits on the joint Swedish-Russian commission, welcomed the announcement but said Stockholm would not rest until Wallenberg's exact fate had been determined.

However, Lundvik doubted his committee's report, due on Jan. 12, would end the mystery surrounding Wallenberg, who was arrested by Soviet troops as a spy in Budapest in 1945.

A member of Sweden's most powerful industrial family, Wallenberg used his diplomatic status to issue passports to Hungarian Jews, allowing them to escape the Holocaust.

The 34-year-old diplomat was last seen on Jan. 17, 1945 as he went to meet Soviet commanders in Budapest. Officially, the Soviet Union said he had died of a heart attack in 1957 in the Lubyanka, home to the NKVD secret police.

TITLE: Greens To Fight CEC in Courts
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russian environmentalists are crying foul at the rejection of a petition on the issue of spent nuclear fuel, saying that the Central Electoral Committee threw out signatures on the document for trivial technicalities.


The petition was raised in more than 60 regions across the country to try to force a referendum on the import of spent nuclear fuel into Russia. Hopes of a nationwide vote were dashed, however, when the CEC declared over 600,000 of the 2.5 million signatures environmentalists had gathered to be invalid.

Two million valid signatures - as well as favorable decisions from the Constitutional Court and the president - are required to hold a referendum.

The environmentalists now plan to challenge the decision in court, in an effort to have at least 126,000 signatures reinstated.

Signatories who gave their addresses with the wrong abbreviation - for example, Leninsky Pr. - had their entries declared invalid because the correct abbreviation should have been Leninsky Prosp., not Pr., according to CEC rules.

And the petition's organizers say the CEC also rejected signatories from villages on the grounds that the street wasn't even mentioned - for the simple reason that some small villages only have one street that doesn't have a name.

Last Thursday, the State Duma voted in favor of amending environmental law to allow Russia to import spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing - which yields plutonium, uranium, and huge quantities of waste water - and long-term storage. Previously, the waste had to be sent back to its country of origin.

The referendum would have asked the population if it agreed with the project, which the Nuclear Power Ministry claims would bring in $20 billion over the next decade.

Polina Malysheva, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace Russia in Moscow, said on Friday that environmentalists were hoping for a series of challenges to the CEC and to local electoral committees in various regions.

Alexander Karpov of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, which participated in the petition, said that 126,000 signatures would be enough to set the referendum's wheels in motion again.

He added that only a few challenges may be necessary. "There are common cases, and one victory in the courts could mean [that we get back] tens of thousands of signatures," he said by telephone on Friday.

A CEC spokeswoman contacted for comment last week confirmed that signatures had been rejected "owing to multiple inaccuracies."

"Those who signed and those who collected signatures ... failed to meet the requirements of the existing law," said the spokeswoman, who would not identify herself. "We don't make the laws, but we have to operate with the law that already exists."

However, Dmitry Krasnyansky, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Electoral Commission, said that CEC rules were highly subjective.

"In many cases, the decision [on whether to accept or reject] depends primarily on the interpretation of the people validating signatures ... [and is] based on opinions rather than on precise legal instructions." 

"There are no criteria for distinguishing occasional misspellings or mistakes from deliberate falsification."

"I'm surprised there haven't been any legal appeals yet," he added.

Karpov said that CEC rules denied people the right to express their views. He mentioned two other examples: the homeless, who often have no passport, and young people from outside St. Petersburg and Moscow who came to the cities looking for work, but who are not registered to live there and thus ineligible to sign a petition.

"These people are mentally healthy adults, and they should have the right to participate in a popular vote," Karpov said. "This is more than just bureaucracy - this is a violation of human rights."

The petition's organisers also faced problems convincing some people to give out their passport details and addresses, because they feared falling victim to some sort of scam.

Karpov said legal challenges would most likely come in the Chelyabinsk, Voronezh, Vologda, Far East and Primorye regions, where a high number of signatures was rejected.

TITLE: Border Splits Homes Down Middle
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: USPENSKAYA, On the Russian-Ukrainian Border - For eight years, Leonid Dobronogov has crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border a dozen times a day without even leaving his home.


Dobronogov has the bad luck to be the owner of a house that has the border running through it. When he lived in the Soviet Union, it didn't make much difference, but now one half of his house is in one country and the other is in another. There was even a time when a visit to his outhouse required a passport to keep the local customs officers at bay.

Dobronogov may be the unluckiest resident of Uspenskaya, but he's just one of a number whose lives, and deaths, have been complicated by the border.

On the edge of the village is a large border crossing, where guards check every car and all passengers on the trains that pass through daily. A few hundred meters away, the invisible border runs into the main road in the village, slicing it in half.

While most of the street and the village of 1,200 people remains in Russia, 13 houses fall on Ukrainian territory and Dobronogov's house is split down the middle.

The road is called Zheleznodorozhnaya Ulitsa, which translates as Railway Road, but it's more of a muddy track that dips so treacherously that it's easier to walk along the railroad that runs parallel. Nothing marks the actual border - unless you count Dobronogov's outhouse - and crossing the international border is a matter of stepping over a muddy puddle.

"That's the border," sneers Olga My zichkova, who lives on the Ukraine side a few doors down from Dobronogov, as she beckons toward a hole in the ground. 

"Day and night we have to carry our passports," says Myzichkova, complaining that the border guards watch with binoculars for victims to extort money from. Fines are common, and for villagers it's unquestioned that the money goes straight into the guards' pockets.

With the nearest shop, the nearest cemetery, railway station and school in another country - never mind that if they trip they'll fall into Russia - the villagers are easy targets.

Children going to school are regularly stopped and searched, villagers say.

Even the cow that Myzichkova's family owns causes problems. Their one cow lives in Ukraine but grazes in Russia, and accompanying her along international mud tracks isn't easy.

"They don't demand passports of the cows but they demand them of us," says Myzichkova's father, pensioner Alexei Kucherenko.

Even without the border hassles, life wouldn't be easy in Uspenskaya, which lies between Russia's Rostov-on-Don and Ukraine's Donetsk. There is little work for the few under pension age, pensions are minute, and families eke out a bleak living, but the border has made things even worse. 

"They're the smugglers," says My zich kova, pointing out a couple of her neighbors carrying huge bags of flour on bicycles. She says the smugglers, who bring goods from Russia into Ukraine provide a service because the nearest shop in Ukraine is more than four kilometers away. "Three villages and no shops," says Ku cherenko, "and all around pensioners."

Many of those pensioners, his daughter says, have been doing their own smuggling and setting up shops. She remembers with nostalgia a pensioner who sold bread, pasta and "sweet things" until the border guards clamped down.

The border, and the poverty, have brought a steep rise in crime, says Ku che ren ko. Many houses have guard dogs, and one, a couple of doors into Ukraine, has a simple sign scrawled in chalk on the gate: zlaya sobaka or mean dog. 

Despite their physical presence a few meters into Ukraine, the Ku che ren kos live in a mixed-up zone. They live by Russian time - one hour ahead of Uk rainian - because the shops they go to are in Russia. While Alexei Ku che ren ko receives his meager pension of 650 rubles (about $23) from Russia, where he was born and worked all his life, his wife receives her even more meager pension of 55 hryvna (about $11) from Ukraine. Their address still refers to the Rostov region in Russia, but their old Soviet passports are now stamped with the word Ukraine.

Even within the family they speak in a mix of the two languages. "We speak in Ukrainian and Russian," Ku che ren ko says. "We mix it up."

Citizens of Ukraine and Russia can travel freely between the two countries. The passport controls are ostensibly because of the proximity of the border, but villagers say they make no sense.

"They all know us," Myzichkova says of the border guards, and the family talks knowingly of the four shifts the guards work and whether one is an "easy" or "difficult" shift.

As the owner of a house in two countries, Dobronogov rightly has passports from both Russia and Ukraine. "I pull them from different pockets - depending on where I'm stopped," Dobronogov is quoted as saying by the Kom somolskaya Pravda newspaper.

Dobronogov, whose wife was ill, didn't want to talk to reporters last week.

Of all the hardships the border has brought, the worst, the Kucherenkos say, is in death.

With the nearest cemetery in Russia, the deceased has to be brought over the border. As well as demanding customs payments for the coffin, customs officials insist on looking in the coffin and lifting up the body to see that nothing is being smuggled in, the villagers say.

"It'd be good if there was a cemetery on our side," Dobronogov is quoted as saying. "Then we can die and customs won't ask anything."

TITLE: Frozen Lake May Contain Life's Key
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A group of St. Petersburg mining technicians have developed a method they say will help Antarctic researchers overcome international controversy and reach a lake - buried under almost four kilometers and 400,000 years worth of ice -that scientists say is teeming with life. 


The lake itself is estimated to be a million years old, as large as North America's Lake Ontario, and potentially the holder of the key to understanding the development of life on Warth - as well as the possible existence of life on other planets, scientists say. 

A team of Russian Antarctic explorers began drilling toward what they call Lake Vostok in 1995. Part of the lake, in fact, lies below Russia's Vostok Ice Station encampment. 

But they were stopped in 1998 just 127 meters short of reaching the lake by the Scientific Committee of Antarctic Research in Cambridge, England, who said appropriate boring tools had not been developed that would make entering the sterile waters of the lake possible. 

One argument that figured into that decision was a report submitted last year by Dr. Ricardo Roura of the Antarctic and South Coalition, invoking the Environmental Protection of the Antarctic Treaty - or Madrid Protocol - which is legally binding for all countries conducting research in Antarctica. Russia signed the document in 1991. 

Roura's report urged waiting before actually drilling into Lake Vostok. 

"At present," he wrote, "Lake Vostok can be fully studied only by intrusive methods, whereas future technological developments, [developed] in for instance 20 to 50 years, could significantly reduce or perhaps fully avoid the risk of harmful impact."

The drilling was repeatedly halted, but while the scientists were arguing it out, the Russians - and the French and American teams drilling with them - managed to make some exciting discoveries.

Among these was the revelation that many of the biological samples they were pulling from their core samples - such as bacteria, molds and yeasts - were still alive. 

The material had survived in a state of suspended animation, or anabiosis, for millions of years, said Narsiss Barkov, a glaciologist from the St. Petersburg Arctic and Antarctic Institute, in a recent interview.

According to Barkov, the samples displayed signs of life - such as nerve activity and movement - when dropped in a special nutrient medium.

To Barkov and many other scientists, this was proof positive that once drillers reach the fresh water of Lake Vos tok - which has remained unfrozen in its rock insulation - there is most likely more life to be discovered. 

"That was really a discovery," said Sabit Abyzov of Moscow's Microbiology Institute, and one of the world's key researchers on anabiosis. 

"It proved that [these organisms] can still survive in anabiosis." 

But maintaining the sterility of the water holding such exciting life forms is paramount to the scientific community. As such, the St. Petersburg Mining Institute has stepped in with an invention it hopes will receive international approval and allow drilling to continue. The invention is currently under review at the Natural Resources Ministry.

According to institute scientist Nikolai Vasiliev, the new drilling technology involved sinking silicon - which traps and kills any bacteria that could contaminate the lake - into almost the last 100 meters of the bore-hole prior to reaching Lake Vostok.

The final 30 centimeters will be drilled with a hot lance. Once the drill hits the lake, Vasiliev said, the pressure in the bore-hole will be reduced from twice its initial pressure, causing some 20 to 30 centimeters of lake water to rise and freeze, creating a core sample.

Although most scientists in Russia concede it may be a long time before the Natural Resources Ministry approves the new technology, they are in agreement that its applications could have uses far beyond the reaches of planet Earth. 

Dr. Kenneth Nealson, a senior research scientist in astrobiology at NASA, is one of them.

"Lake Vostok is a great and unique analog for future Europa exploration," he said, referring to intended exploration of one of Jupiter's icy moons. 

"It means that if the life survived for millions of years in Lake Vostok, then Europa, which has been frozen for only about a million, could hold life, too." 

The last remaining question for scientists to consider, then, is the possibility of waking some sleeping beast in the primordial ooze.

But Nealson was unconcerned. Referring to nearly two centuries' worth of dinosaur excavation, he said calmly, "Nothing bad has ever happened."

TITLE: Putin Uses Hanukkah Visit To Quell Jewish Concerns
AUTHOR: By Jon Boyle
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin sought on Thursday to scotch fears that a wave of anti-Semitism could sweep Russia under his rule, making a high-profile visit to a Jewish center celebrating Judaism's Hanuk kah holiday.


Prominent Jewish groups earlier this month accused the Kremlin of doing nothing to end attacks on Jewish targets in a country they said had a history of anti-Semitism.

And the prosecution of media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky, a sharp Putin critic and a leading figure in the Russian Jewish community, heightened concerns in some quarters.

Gusinsky is currently in Spain fighting his extradition to Russia on fraud charges.

But during a stay of more than two hours at a Jewish center, Putin sought to boost his ties with the community, accepting a menorah, the traditional eight-branch candlestick used during the eight days of Hanukkah.

"And I want to promise you that the light and the kindness that this [menorah] will radiate will always illuminate the Kremlin," Putin told the audience of hundreds.

Putin won backing from local Jewish leaders and an influential guest - the former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was on a private visit to Russia.

"If you want powerful evidence of the change that has happened in Russia, then come here tonight, see what is happening here tonight," said Netanyahu, who was recently ruled out of the upcoming Israeli elections.

Hanukkah, or the feast of lights, commemorates the rededication of the second temple of Jerusalem in 164 BC after its desecration on the orders of the king of Syria, Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

Netanyahu used his brief address at the Moscow Jewish Center to hail what he called warming Russian and Israeli relations.

TITLE: Harry Potter Tries His Magic in Russia
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Santa Claus and Ded Moroz may have a helping hand in working miracles for Russian children this Christmas: Harry Potter has arrived.


Be it the magic of advertising or Harry's own charisma, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," the first official translation of the first book in J.K. Rowling's widely popular series, disappeared from the counters of St. Petersburg's bookstores as soon as it appeared three weeks ago.

"Yes, we have Harry Potter on sale," said an employee at the Snark bookstore on Zagorodny Prospect - a shop with some 50,000 titles on offer. But when a St. Petersburg Times reporter stopped by half an hour later, there was nothing left but a colorful advertising poster.

It was a similar story at the Dom Knigi central bookstore on Nevsky, where all three boxes of copies had already sold out.

"Customers are constantly asking for it," said Anna Gordiyenko, a sales assistant at Snark, saying that she herself liked it very much and would buy it for her child if she had one. 

The Russian edition of Potter's adventures - translated by Igor Oransky and released by the Moscow-based Rosmen publishing house - has in the capital almost caught up with this month's bestseller, Boris Yeltsin's Presidential Marathon, according to The Associated Press. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" costs around 60 rubles ($2), a price considered moderate for modern releases for kids.

"It's hard to say how many copies we had initially - we have deliveries every day from our warehouses, and we're one of a whole network of bookstores," said Zhorzh Dmitriyev, Snark's manager.

"But today, for instance, one woman even bought three for her grandchildren. That's some sign."

Indeed, Potter, a 11-year-old boy who "found out he was a wizard and was sent off to wizard school" to learn to fight evil with spells and flying brooms, may soon enjoy as much popularity in Russia as everywhere else.

Published in Britain in 1997 and in the United States the following year, by summer 2000 the first Potter story and two sequels had sold over 35 million copies in 35 languages and earned around $480 million, making the top three on the New York Times' bestseller list.

But while it has been quite a success for a new release in Russia, it is early to tell if Potter will soon become a Russian kids' hero on the scale of Winnie the Pooh or Mary Poppins, the best-known Western imports and still going strong. Gor diyenko attributed much of Potter's initial sales to a strong advertizing campaign.

Meanwhile, critics have branded the Russian translation a failure. "The problem is the terrifying poverty of Oransky's language," Lev Danilkin wrote in the Vedomosti newspaper last Tuesday. "Instead of a very good fairy tale, it ended up an amusing, implausible story from the life of British teenagers."

Rowling's books have come in for criticism in the West, too: Christian fundamentalists have expressed concern that the books promote and encourage Satanic practices.

On the other hand, moderate Christians applaud the books for the themes of courage, loyalty, justice, honesty and fairness that they portray. 

That may work well in Russia, whose classical and Soviet literature always praised the strong and courageous, the honest and dedicated, with Russian folk tales replete with magic, artfulness and as many evil spirits as they could pack in.

According to Alexandra Benkovich, deputy manager for fiction at Dom Knigi, children's literature is in especially high demand at this time of year.

"We didn't have people asking specifically for the book. We just bought 30 copies to see if it would sell. Since it did, we'll order more," she said.

TITLE: Deputies Deal With Chechen Parliament
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, Southern Russia - Liberal legislators said on Sunday that they had signed a protocol with members of rebel Chechnya's parliament that eventually could lead to a negotiated solution to the 15-month war over the republic.


There was no response to the initiative from the Russian government, which has insisted that the only settlement it will accept is the surrender of rebel commanders. President Vladimir Putin has rejected calls from Western governments to pursue peace talks, saying there is no central authority to negotiate with.

Russian parliament deputy Boris Nemtsov said Sunday that he and other legislators held talks with seven members of Chechnya's parliament, elected in 1997 after independence fighters drove Russian troops from the province.

At talks Saturday night in the neighboring region of Ingushetia, both sides signed a five-point protocol that "could become the beginning of a political solution," Nemtsov said on state-run RTR television. He did not outline what the statement said.

"We understand how difficult the problem is, but we believe a guerrilla war is impossible to win," he said.

There was no word from the Chechens, nor any indication about what connection they might have with the rebel commanders conducting hit-and-run warfare against Russian troops.

The rebel delegation was led by Khozhakhmed Yelikhanov and included "fairly influential people from around the republic," Pavel Krasheninnikov, a former Russian justice minister who took part in the talks, said on private NTV television.

Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, who worked with Russia to reach a deal ending the 1994-96 Chechnya War, has invited the Russians to negotiate. Moscow says his authority is too fractured and weak.

Putin was informed of the talks, and neither approved nor objected, Nemt sov said. He called the discussions "very preliminary," and said he was not in disagreement with Putin, who has stressed the need to destroy rebel forces.

The Russian lawmakers also met with soldiers and officers guarding the border between Ingushetia and Chechnya who Nemtsov claimed were eager for negotiations.

Russian forces in Chechnya said on Sunday that 30 rebels had been killed in separate operations, news agencies reported.

Itar-Tass quoted Vladimir Orlov, deputy commander of Interior Ministry forces in Chechnya, as saying 21 rebels were killed on Saturday in a clash with a guerrilla group near the southwestern village of Roshny-Chu.

Orlov said the troops were pursuing rebels who had attacked a bus with Russian policemen in a nearby town of Urus-Martan earlier on Saturday.

He said one policeman was killed and nine wounded in the Urus-Martan shoot out. Russian news agencies said on Saturday that 19 policemen were wounded. Tass said three rebels were killed and another five were wounded in Urus-Martan.

The Russian military says that Chechen rebels have stepped up hit-and-run attacks against troops in the past few months. RTR television on Saturday showed a Russian paratroop officer saying that rebel attacks on soldiers shopping at the makeshift market in Chechnya's devastated capital Groz ny had become routine.

Rebels attacked Russian positions 32 times in the preceding 24 hours, killing seven servicemen, an official in the pro-Russian civilian administration said Sunday on condition of anonymity.

Russia has lost more than 2,500 troops in the military campaign against Chechen separatists launched in September 1999.

Chechnya won de facto independence after guerrillas defeated Russian forces in 1996. Maskhadov was unable to establish order, and Chechnya descended into lawlessness.

There is no reliable figure of civilian casualties, in a conflict marked by extensive use of artillery and aircraft against Chechen towns and villages.


- AP, Reuters

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Nobel Donation

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Zhores Alfyorov, the St. Petersburg scientist who won this year's Nobel Prize for Physics, announced on Thursday that he would created a Foundation for the Support of Science and Education with his Nobel Prize winnings, according to local press reports. 

The foundation will bear his name and support St. Petersburg's educational institutions, helping them seek and sponsor young talents. 

"Young people are now leaving natural sciences for unnatural ones. So I've decided to try and interest young Russians in science," Alfyorov was quoted by local press as saying at the opening of the foundation. Alfyorov, who had been awarded about $250,000 by the Swedish Academy - which gives the prize - said he had already allocated $75,000 in his own to the foundation.



Chernobyl Bill Passes

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The State Duma overwhelmingly backed a bill Thursday to adjust payouts to cleanup victims of the 1986 disaster at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 

Thousands of people from across the Soviet Union were called up to fight the fire and clear up radioactive debris after the accident. Most of them suffered severe health problems afterward. 

The new compensation allocations allow for payments from 1,000 rubles ($36) to 5,000 rubles per month depending on the severity of injuries sustained. Previous compensation had been paid on the basis of people's salaries at the time.

The bill on compensation was passed on its final reading with 387 deputies in the State Duma in favor, five against and three abstentions. It is also supported by the Kremlin. 



Pushkin's Lucky Hare

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Another monument dedicated to Russian poet Alexander Pushkin was unveiled in the village of Mikhailovskoye in Pskov region west off St. Petersburg, Interfax reported on Sunday.

Based on an idea by Andrei Bitov, a St. Petersburg writer and Pushkin scholar, the monument depicts a hare on a milestone and bears the inscription saying "416 versts" (about 440 kilometers) left to reach Senatskaya Square." According to legend, the hare saved Pushkin's life in December 1825 when the poet - in internal exile in his estate of Mikhailovskoye - learned the Decembrist coup was soon to start in St. Petersburg and left to participate. 

According to the poet's memoirs, the hare crossed his way on the road - the worst omen according to local folklore - causing the superstitious Pushkin to return home. When the rebellion was quashed, five rebel leaders were hanged and thousands more sent to Siberia. 



400 Foreign Spies


MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian counterintelligence identified at least 400 foreign spies to keep tabs on during 2000, the FSB domestic security police said on Monday.

The spokesman did not specify the total number of presumed foreign spies in Russia, or explain how the security services kept them under surveillance.

This month, a Moscow court found a former U.S. naval intelligence officer, Edmond Pope, guilty of collecting information on a secret Russian high-speed torpedo.

Pope was sentenced to 20 years' hard labour before being pardoned by President Vladimir Putin under pressure from Washington. He has now returned to the United States. The spokesman said the FSB had curtailed the "spying and other sabotage activities" of 11 agents recruited by foreign security services and of more than 30 foreign spies.

TITLE: Chuvashiya Governor Tears Into President's Record
AUTHOR: By Andrei Shukshin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - A dissident Russian governor launched a blistering attack on President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, saying he was taking Russia back to the darkest days of Soviet rule.


Nikolai Fyodorov assaulted Putin on all fronts for his first year in office in a rare public attack by a serving governor.

"We are now on a receding wave taking us back in time," Fyodorov, governor of the central Chuvashiya region, told NTV's analytical Itogi programme.

"Some people might not realise it but we are returning to the 1950s or 30s," he said, referring to the time of mass communist repression under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

Putin has unnerved local leaders by embarking on a crusade to boost the Kremlin's dominant role in relations with Russia's 89 regions and republics.

Fyodorov showed his colours earlier this month as the only one in the 178-strong upper chamber of parliament not to stand to the music of Stalin's Soviet-era anthem which Putin had pushed through parliament to become Russia's national tune.

Despite his apparent loneliness, Fyodorov told NTV that he hoped it would not be long before others rally to his cause and said that members of both houses of parliament "not only support me but say thank you to me for voicing ideas that they share."

Fyodorov said he was often asked why unlike most of his humbled colleagues he was not holding his fire now that the Kremlin had so much leverage against the regional leaders and Putin enjoyed wide public backing.

"I am not personally intimidated by the numerical prevalence of the majority because their large numbers do not mean that historically they will prevail," he said.

TITLE: Kuchma Talks Energy Debts on Tour
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Ukraine's embattled President Leonid Kuchma left behind a bitter political crisis at home for a two-day working visit to Moscow and St. Petersburg, in order to tackle the thorny issue of his country's energy debts to Russia.


While in town on Friday, Kuchma and his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, also participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremonies for a mismatched new pair of St. Petersburg constructions - a monument to Uk rai nian 19th-century writer Taras Shev chenko, and the 21st-century Northwest power station, which Russia is touting as capable of running 25 percent cleaner than standard gas turbine-type facilities. 

But Kuchma's respite from his home will be short-lived, where thousands of demonstrators last week called for his ouster over the disappearance of journalist Georgy Gon gad ze, who as editor of the Internet newsletter Ukrainska Pravda, has been a highly outspoken critic of the government. 

He disappeared Sept. 16, and the newsletter's staff believes that a decapitated corpse found in the countryside weeks later is his. Kuchma has vigorously denied involvement with Gongadze's disappearance. 

The 5,000-strong demonstration - which is the largest the country has seen since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991- in Ukraine's capital, Kiev, was also stoked by low wages and pensions. 

With that maelstrom put briefly on hold, Kuchma and Putin participated in the opening of the Northwest power facility, on which construction began in 1993 - while Putin was a vice mayor to the late Anatoly Sobchak.

Building the station was bumpy until Unified Energy Systems, or UES, director Anatoly Chubais pledged to fund the last leg of construction on Dec. 9, saying: "We are facing a shortage of energy production facilities, and this will be the first energy station built in Russia in the last 15 years." 

But just where the power will go when the switch turns on is still - at least as illustrated by Putin's visit Friday - unclear.

Lenenergo director Andrei Likhacyov said in an interview Friday that the station's main purpose was the export of energy to Finland, where energy prices are higher. 

Putin, on the other hand, discussed possibilities of exporting energy to Ukraine, given it's recent shutdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which, in 1986, was the site of the world's worst nuclear-power plant disaster. 

Indeed, the plans for the station remain as unclear as Putin's own plans for power monopoly UES, whose proposed breakup has become a feud pitting top Kremlin advisers against the government of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, which last week approved guidelines for breaking up UES and privatizing its power plants, Reuters reported on Friday.

The company, which heats and powers most of Russia and is by far the country's most widely traded stock, has seen its share price plummet as investors worry that the sell-off could serve as a cover for asset-stripping.

"Putin is being his usual sphinx-like self," Eric Kraus, chief strategist at Nikoil brokerage, wrote in a letter to clients. "He has overseen UES restructuring, but has sought to avoid being seen to be responsible for it," Reuters reported. 

On a less political note, Putin and Kuchma cut the ribbon on a monument on Slavyanskaya Ploshchad on the city's Petrograd Side to the Ukrainian writer Shevchenko, who studied in St. Petersburg. and was first published here.

The sculpture was designed by Ukrainian emigre artist Leo Mol.

TITLE: Abramovich One of a Mixed Crowd of Elected Governors
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian gubernatorial elections that were held at the weekend resulted in victories for one of the country's most influential businessmen, a hardline army general and a former secret police colleague of President Vladimir Putin.


The Central Election Commission said on Monday that Roman Ab ra mo vich, a 34-year-old member of parliament with links to the oil and metals industry, won over 90 percent of votes in the Arctic far eastern Chukotka region, a distance of 10 time zones from the capital Moscow.

A spokesman for the CEC said that the results of Sunday's polls were preliminary but that significant changes were unlikely.

Governorships have lost some of their gloss since Putin overhauled Russia's state structures to strengthen Kremlin authority, but they remain a coveted prize because governors wield great influence in their regions and have control of local finances.

Abramovich, virtually unknown to the general public until last year, is usually referred to in the Russian media as one of a group of so-called "oligarchs" who built their empires on good political connections under former president Boris Yeltsin.

Last December, Abramovich was elected to the State Duma as Chu kot ka's representative.

His victory was virtually guaranteed last week when incumbent governor Alexander Na za rov decided not to run for a new term.

In the Ulyanovsk region on the Vol ga, a former Russian commander in Chech nya and newcomer to politics, Vla dimir Shamanov, dealt a crushing blow to the province's long-serving communist governor, netting more than 56 percent of the votes.

Shamanov, an ardent supporter of Putin's military drive in Chechnya, earlier this year received a Hero of Russia award from Putin for his role in the campaign.

A general in the FSB domestic security service, Vladimir Kulakov - a one-time subordinate of President Putin - won three times as many votes as incumbent Ivan Shabanov in the central Russian Vo ro nezh region.

But in the Kostroma region near Moscow and in Chelyabinsk in the Urals, voters opted for continuity, electing incumbents Viktor Shershunov and Pyotr Sumin.

Nikolai Maksyuta, head of the central Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, region, also won re-election.

Alexei Lebed, the brother of Alexander Lebed who helped Yeltsin win re-election in 1996, secured a second term as governor of the Siberian region of Khakassiya with more than 72 percent of the votes.

Under new legislation, governors are no longer entitled to sit in the Federation Council upper house of parliament. Furthermore, they are now subject to dismissal if deemed to have violated federal law.

And much of their authority has been overshadowed by the governors general Putin appointed earlier this year to oversee seven so-called super regions.

TITLE: Local Court Delays Revision Of Charter
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Lawmakers who had hoped to make a Jan. 1 federal deadline stipulating that all regional legislation be aligned with federal laws ostensibly hit a snag this week when a city court found some of their City Charter amendments to be at variance with Moscow. 


In addition, the City Prosecutor's Office flagged 17 tax and election laws and gubernatorial decrees - which are under the same federal deadline but separate from the Charter - saying they are out of sync with state law, too.

At issue is a decree, handed down by President Vladimir Putin last summer ordering all regional authorities to scour their law books and amend laws that contradict federal law. 

The deadline Putin gave - to be enforced by his newly installed governors general - was Jan. 1. After that, governors not in accord with the decree could be fired and legislative assemblies disbanded. 

St. Petersburg's amended Charter sailed through the assembly on Dec. 13. Lawmakers also say that most of the 17 bits of legislation that hit snags with the City Prosecutor are entirely in accord with federal legislation. 

But rather than the churning of legislative wheels from the Mariinsky Palace, or fear of a stand-off between lawmakers and the courts, legislators are remarkably at ease, because they know a thing or two about the legal system. 

"The latest decision of the City Court has, in effect, held up the deadline for [the city] to amend the Charter," said Anatoly Kalinin, a Yabloko faction lawmaker who heads the Legislative Assembly's legislation committee, by telephone on Friday.

"Everyone started panicking after [Governor General Viktor] Cherkesov said we should be forced to do the works" in revamping our legislation, he said. "That's why the prosecutor and the court started making thoughtless decisions." 

He said legislators planned to appeal the Charter and the amendments all the way to the Supreme Court. In any case, he added that "most of the protests sent by the prosecutors will be turned down [and refused to be addressed] by next Wednesday.

"When the courts start playing by principles, we'll start playing by principles," said Union of Right Forces lawmaker Leonid Romankov on Monday. By his calculations, throwing the courts at St. Petersburg's legislation has extended the city's deadline for amendments until October 2001. 

Alexander Chizhonok, spokesman for Cherkesov, said that nowhere does amending legislation go slower than it does in St. Petersburg. He had no further comment. 

As for the St. Petersburg Prosecutor's Office, it just says the courts are doing their job. Among the laws that were stopped were several pieces of legislation allowing for local collection of taxes from organizations that have only representative offices in St. Petersburg. 

According to City Prosecutor spokes man Gennady Ryabov, this "double-collection" is federally unacceptable. 

He also said a number of election statutes that place vague restrictions on who can actually vote in municipal elections need to be hammered out.

TITLE: Gusinsky, On Bail, Awaits Legal Fight
AUTHOR: By Elisabeth O'Leary
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MADRID - Media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky was resting at his home on the southern coast of Spain on Saturday, awaiting extradition proceedings after being released on bail from a prison in Madrid, his lawyer said.


Gusinsky, wanted in Russia on fraud charges, is obliged by judicial authorities to stay inside his house in the luxury resort of Sotogrande after his lawyers posted bail of $5.55 million late on Friday night.

"He arrived home early this morning ... after we'd posted the bail. For the moment he's catching up on his sleep," said Domingo Plazas, one of Gusinsky's team of lawyers.

Judge Baltasar Garzon, famed for his failed attempt to try former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, has been overseeing the case and allowed Gusinsky to post bail.

But he is being kept under the strict eye of the police in case he should attempt to flee. His passport has been confiscated and he can only leave his house with specific permission from the court, conditions similar to house arrest.

Garzon noted in the bail order that Gusinsky had dual Russian and Israeli nationality and could "easily" evade justice, although those involved in the case say that is unlikely.

The businessman, also head of Russia's Jewish Congress, won his release on the first day of the Hanukkah holiday.

"[Gusinsky] told me he was looking forward to spending a few days quietly with his family," Plazas said.

His case is being closely watched by the U.S. State Department and international Jewish groups as a test of whether independent media will be tolerated by the Russian government headed by President Vladimir Putin.

The founder of Media-MOST, Russia's only nationwide independent media group, was arrested at his Spanish home 11 days ago by police acting on an international warrant requested by Russia.

Judicial experts estimate the extradition battle could take a year or more.

The next step is a decision by the Spanish government to allow or stop the extradition proceedings in principle.

Russian prosecutors have accused Gusinsky of concealing assets to avoid paying debts.

His lawyers have denied the charges lodged against him, calling them a crude bid by the Kremlin to silence its critics since Putin was elected in March.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Taking Soccer to Heart

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new study has found that deaths from heart attacks jumped a whopping 50 percent during a Dutch soccer match in 1996 when the Netherlands lost to France. The researchers attribute the deaths to the increase in stress the men may have experienced.

Scientists at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands evaluated the number of deaths that occurred on the day of the match and compared it with the figures recorded five days before and after the match and in the same period in 1995 and 1997.

Their findings are published in the December 23/30 issue of the British Medical Journal.



Stolen-Drug Danger

WASHINGTON (AP) - A batch of an experimental drug produced in goats and intended as a treatment for HIV/AIDS has been stolen, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Friday in a warning to doctors and patients.

The sponsor of the product, Dr. Gary R. Davis, said in a letter to the government that the batch had been stolen from a storage facility in Raleigh, North Carolina, the FDA said in a statement.

Davis said the batch has "the potential to be extremely dangerous" and "it is also possible that someone may try to sell this contaminated medication."



Study Cites Coffee Risk


NEW YORK (AP) - Five cups of coffee per day more than doubles a pregnant woman's risk of a miscarriage, according to a study of possible links between caffeine and miscarriages.

The research team in Sweden and the United States, which was to publish its findings in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the equivalent of one-to-three cups of American coffee increases the risk of miscarriage by 30 percent. Three-to-five cups raises the risk by 40 percent.

TITLE: Sunspot Activity Threats Receive Close Attention
AUTHOR: By Maggie Fox
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The sun is hot right now - spewing electromagnetic radiation in the midst of its most interesting storm season ever, scientists say.


But although the plasma and high-energy particles are making the Earth's ionosphere light up, orbiting detectors and other equipment have helped scientists set up an early-warning system that seems to have helped, so far, to keep satellites and power grids safe, the scientists at NASA and other agencies said.

"This is the most exciting solar cycle that we have had," Ernest Hildner of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, told a news conference Thursday.

The sun goes through 11-year cycles of sunspot activity. These sunspots have been watched for centuries but only recently did scientists learn they are accompanied by ejections of hot electromagnetic plasma from the sun.

The sunspots are invisible to the naked eye - except when they make the Aurora Borealis light up in northern skies. And in the 20th century they have knocked satellites off-line and shut down power grids.

The last big event, in 1989, shut down Quebec's power grid, plunging 6 million customers into darkness for a day.

NASA, NOAA and other agencies rushed to set up an early-warning system, which is working to some degree and providing very pretty pictures, said George Withbroe, science director of NASA's Sun-Earth connection program.

"Our predictions are getting better but they are not perfect," he said.

Withbroe and Hildner said power operators up and down North America's east coast responded promptly to the latest solar burp this past July, cutting output to avoid overloads, but still breakers tripped and transformers overheated.

Global Positioning Systems (GPS), which use satellites to tell a user where he or she is within a few meters, became much less accurate for several hours - which could spell disaster if one was ever used, for instance, to land a plane.

"These are dramatic events. They are not subtle at all and they are affecting us in many different ways," solar physicist Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, told the news conference.

"They literally are masses of coronal material that are thrown off the sun," added Nicola Fox of the International Solar Terrestrial Physics Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "They take typically three days to reach us."

The Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft detects shock waves, the leading edges of the ejections resembling those running in front of a boat, giving about one hour's notice.

These slap up against the magnetosphere, the magnetic barrier that surrounds the Earth. "It is like striking a bell. You get vibrations that move up and down the whole magnetosphere," Fox said.

Then the Imager for Magnetosphere to Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite catches pictures of the effect on the Earth's aurora, which literally lights up. "It is a very spectacular effect," Fox said.

TITLE: WHO Calls Meeting Over BSE
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GENEVA - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday expressed concern about what it called "exposure worldwide" to mad cow disease and its fatal human form, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD).


The United Nations health agency announced it was convening an international meeting of experts and officials from all regions, to be held in Geneva in late spring, on the neurodegenerative diseases affecting cattle and humans.

WHO officials were speaking at a news briefing after an informal meeting of experts reviewed scientific evidence on a variety of health issues amid growing consumer concerns in countries including Germany and Canada.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) came to attention in 1986 in Britain. Since then, 180,000 cases have been confirmed there among cattle, while 87 cases of vCJD have been reported in Britain, three in France and a single case in Ireland, WHO said.

"Our concern is that there was sufficient international trade in meat and bone meal and live cattle that there actually has been exposure worldwide already," said Dr. Maura Ricketts, of WHO's animal and food-related public-health-risks division.

"We are concerned some countries which received materials do not have surveillance systems to detect the disease in animals or the human population," she added. "Countries of the world need to be developing surveillance systems for these diseases."

But Ricketts, a Canadian, conceded it would be difficult to trace exported meat products, often repackaged before being re-exported with new labeling.

"We know potentially contaminated materials were exported outside of the European Community. We are trying to identify the countries that we should put our largest effort into," Ricketts said. "The only way to know whether or not different countries are at risk is to ask them. These countries themselves have the information that is required to determine if they are at risk."

TITLE: Study Suggests Health Value of a Pint a Day
AUTHOR: By Anne Harding
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - Beer may not be considered a health food, but it is rich in the nutrients that help make fruit and vegetables good for you. Three new lab and animal studies presented this month at the International Chemical Congress of Pacific Basin Societies in Honolulu confirm that beer - especially darker brew - contains plenty of antioxidants.


These chemicals shield cells from the effects of free radicals, which are corrosive molecules produced during normal metabolic processes that have been implicated in the development of many aging-related diseases.

"We think that beer is good for you, at least in an antioxidant way," Dr. Joe Vinson, from the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania, told Reuters.

In laboratory studies, Vinson found, beer prevented the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein and very low-density lipoprotein - two types of bad cholesterol. This oxidation is believed to be an initiating step in the development of heart and blood-vessel disease.

When Vinson and his colleagues gave hamsters the equivalent of two beers a day, their rate of atherosclerosis was halved. The hamsters, who consumed the diluted beer in their drinking water, had been fed cholesterol and saturated fat for 10 weeks to increase their blood-cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

Another group of hamsters was given the equivalent amount of plain ethanol alcohol to determine whether beer's health effects are separate from its alcohol content. Alcohol alone did not have any effect on the amount of disease in the hamster aorta (the major blood vessel supplying the body).

A second study looked at how alcohol consumption impacts on cataracts - another aging-associated disease thought to be related to oxidation.

People who consume one alcoholic beverage daily reduce their risk of developing cataracts by half, according to Dr. John Trevithick and colleagues of the University of Western Ontario in Canada. The researchers have found evidence that the antioxidants in beer and wine, along with its alcohol content, could be responsible for this effect.

TITLE: Cell Phone Producers Pushing For Tighter Import Regulation
AUTHOR: Elena Seregina
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - With an estimated half of all mobile phones sold in Russia thought to be imported illegally, some of the world's largest cellular phone makers have agreed to fight the problem together.


At a meeting last week, Motorola, Ericsson, Siemens, Samsung and Philips called with a single voice upon the Communications Ministry, the Customs Committee and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry to tighten import regulations for their products. Contraband telephones, the companies said, are costing the federal budget more than $20 million a year in customs revenue. 

Up to 50 percent of the Ericsson models sold in Russia are illegally imported, said Oleg Logunov, sales manager for the company's Moscow operation. And Samsung manager Rubena Razilova estimated that 30 percent to 40 percent of sales of her company's phone are also contraband.

In a few regions, such as Ryazan, authorities are taking active measures to combat unofficial imports. The Ryazan department of Glavsvyaznadzor, the main state agency for the monitoring of telecommunications, has cut unofficial imports to just 5 percent of that region's market, the representative of a Moscow distributor of mobile equipment said. 

However, according to several estimates, unofficial imports exceed 80 percent of the market of certain telephone models in Moscow.

Unofficial telephones are usually supplied to the local market after they are purchased abroad in clearance sales. For example, that is how telephones of the D-AMPS standard were first brought into the country.

As a preventative measure, companies often install a protection device in their phones to prevent them from operating on other networks. But that device is easy to remove, which is what happens before these telephones are delivered to Russian stores and operators and sold for half of what legally imported phones sell for. Not only do the producers lose out on sales this way, but they also lose consumer confidence because half of all such modified phones stop working after six months, said Logunov. 

Suppliers of unofficial phones earn profits of about 30 percent of the asking price, Samsung's Razilova said. 

Ivan Mukhin, an executive at cellular network provider Vimpelcom, said that operators of mobile connections themselves cannot determine if the telephone came from an unofficial supplier. The operator often merely sells a SIM card. "Motorola intends to advise official agencies on how they can identify mobile telephones shipped by official suppliers," said Andrei Bichenko, the manager for production support at Motorola.

Samsung has a different plan: Next month it will offer warranties for its telephone service in Russia but only if the purchaser has a special coupon that comes with the legally imported phone. 

Ericsson, however, has cancelled the international warranty on its most recent models. This means that guaranteed repair services will only be offered in the country where the telephone was bought. 

"When someone buys a telephone from an unofficial supplier, he loses the right to support and a warranty from the producer. In the future, the buyer of an unofficial telephone will pay all the costs for repair and adaptation out of his own pocket," said the head of the Russian office of Benefon, Pia Lekhtinen.

TITLE: TV Transmission System Due for Overhaul
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Talk about an untapped market: Of the approximately 140 million people living in Russia today, nearly 1.75 million do not receive broadcast signals for a single television channel in their homes. Only 60 percent to 65 percent of the population gets more than two channels, and only a quarter of Russians receive more than four.


These figures, published in a Press Ministry report, are fuel for Russian broadcasters' long-standing lament: The country's signal-distribution system, built during the 1960s to 1980s, is old, expensive and sometimes literally falling apart.

Earlier this month, the ministry announced a potential solution, saying that President Vladimir Putin had given the green light to a major restructuring of the country's broadcasting networks - a restructuring that may eventually include the industries' partial privatization.

Among the fixer-uppers is RTR-Signal, a daughter company of the state-owned All-Russian State Television and Radio Co., or VGTRK. Founded four years ago to digitize state-owned TV signal distribution, RTR-Signal has in fact borne little fruit beyond piling up an impressive resume of embezzlement allegations and visits from the Audit Chamber and Prosecutor General's Office.

This time, however, its lobbyists say the company is ready to stay the straight and narrow. Despite fierce opposition, the State Duma this month approved government guarantees of $28.6 million in foreign loans for RTR-Signal. The rocky decision, however, points to a future full of battles for property and capital in the TV communications industry.

At stake is Russia's distribution network, a system of about 100 regional transmission centers and some 15,000 transmitters around the country with an annual turnover in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Also at stake are additional hundreds of millions of dollars of potential investment in the industry - either directly from government coffers or in the form of state guarantees of foreign credit.

"There's a lot of money involved, and it's attractive for many," admitted Valentin Khlebnikov, the official in charge of VGTRK's distribution network and the state body's representative on the RTR-Signal board of directors.

RTR-Signal's main opponent is Leonid Mayevsky, a Communist Duma deputy who chairs the Duma's subcommittee on communications and is a reputed enemy of Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, who applied to the Cabinet for the $28.6 million in loan guarantees to RTR-Signal. During the parliament debate, Mayevsky accused RTR-Signal and the Press Ministry of "cheating" the Cabinet.

"I have nothing against [RTR-Signal general director Sergei] Kalugin personally," Mayevsky said. "But I am against people who are trying to obtain state funds illegally. I mean Mr. Lesin ... How can a company that has only seven people on staff, that hasn't accomplished anything over a number of years, get $28.6 million?"



A SLOW START-UP

Formed in December 1996, RTR-Signal - which now says it has more than 120 people on staff, contrary to Mayevsky's claim - was registered the following year as a joint-stock company in which VGTRK had 25.5 percent. The remaining 74.5 percent was, formally, won in a tender by Unikominvestcenter, a subsidiary of Unikombank led by Ashot Yegia zaryan, a controversial businessman.


VGTRK contributed two facilities it had been given by the military complex: a huge, unfinished building in Moscow, which was to be turned into a new television center, and an air defense facility near Klin, 100 kilometers northwest of Moscow, designated to become an uplink station. According to First Deputy Press Minister Mikhail Seslavinsky, $100 million had to be invested in the Shabolovka building, and an additional $15 million was to go the Klin facility.

Kalugin said that Unikominvestcenter had invested some 360 million rubles (about $60 million at the pre-1998 rate) in the project. Some of the money was spent on conservation of the unfinished buildings. The remainder was invested in securities, which devalued in the wake of the 1998 financial meltdown. In 1997, the government guaranteed an additional 260 million Deutsche marks (about $130 million) in German loans, but the credit line was frozen in 1998.

VGTRK leases 11 transponders - radio or radar transmitter-receivers activated for transmission by reception of a predetermined signal - on nine satellites to distribute television signals around Russia. Most of these satellites, such as the Gorizont and Ekran, have already served more than two terms, with only one replacement model in stock.

According to RTR-Signal's business plan, the new digital distribution system will use only four transponders on three Express satellites and - owing to the possibility of compressing signals digitally - each will contain six programs, and not one as they do today.



POISED FOR PROGRESS?

From its inception, RTR-Signal has been mired in controversy. In 1998, the Audit Chamber decried the formation of the company as illegal and said that major state property facilities had been funneled into private hands as a result.


This year, however, has marked the company's revival. After Unikominvestcenter gave up 24.5 percent of its shares to VGTRK in December last year, the breakdown between government and private shareholders became an even 50-50 split, the Press Ministry said. RTR-Signal also signed a special agreement with VGTRK granting it board chairmanship. In so doing, the ministry said, the company gained the ground to ask for and obtain credit.

In the fall of this year, both the Cabinet and the Duma - despite angry opposition from Mayevsky - agreed to open the credit line. According to Seslavinsky, the first deputy press minister, negotiations are currently under way to buy out the remaining 50 percent stake from Unikominvestcenter, a move that would make RTR-Signal a 100 percent VGTRK-owned company.

Mayevsky has argued that such an allocation is against the law, and that VGTRK's legal status as a "federal unitary enterprise" does not allow it to form daughter companies incorporated as joint-stock companies. He has also said that handing the digital communications control system to private hands is nothing short of a national security threat.

According to VGTRK and Press Ministry officials, Mayevsky has a personal interest in preventing RTR-Signal from getting government money. Khlebnikov said that Mayevsky is involved with a company called 21st Century - New Technologies, which also bids on developing digital television broadcasting projects. In the early 1990s, Mayevsky was also involved in several television projects and held licenses and funding, but failed to produce any publicly recognized programs. He eventually lost his licenses and was elected to the Duma on the Communist Party list.

"[Mayevsky's] metamorphosis from unsuccessful television businessman to Communist deputy and his blatant desire to lobby for the interests of the Communications Ministry raise skepticism about his drive for the purity of the television business," said Anna Kachkayeva, a television analyst with Radio Liberty and Moscow State University.

The outcome of the battle for RTR-Signal remains unclear. Mayevsky has vowed to prevent the company from getting state money by unleashing one investigation after another. The Audit Chamber is due to report on its findings at the end of December, and Mayevsky has said that the Prosecutor General's Office will go after the company as soon as it receives the first tranche of its loan.

TITLE: Kasyanov Sees Rosy Economy In 2001
AUTHOR: By Julie Tolkacheva
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mik hail Kasyanov says this year will show record post-Soviet economic growth levels, a huge trade surplus and surging domestic and foreign investment levels. Nevertheless, Kasyanov says, the country still won't be able to pay its debts next year without a restructuring deal.


He said the government hoped the IMF, which is due to send a mission to Moscow in January, would decide whether or not Russia needed a reduction in its $48 billion debt to the Paris Club of creditor nations.

"I think that in January our positions will become closer and the mission will confirm Russia needs debt relief," he said.

The previous mission left Moscow in November without issuing any recommendations. The main stumbling block was different estimates of 2000 prices for oil, Russia's main export.

Russia cannot start negotiations with the Paris Club, to which it is due to pay $3 billion next year, without an agreement with the IMF.

"The problem must be solved in the nearest future, because Russia will not be able to find $3 billion," Kasyanov said.

The economy, largely dependent on exports of oil and gas, has been boosted by high international energy prices and the positive effects of a ruble devaluation after the 1998 financial crisis.

"The year 2000 was a special year. Political stability has created conditions for the economy to move forward. My evaluation of the economic development is positive," Kasyanov said recently.

Gross domestic product, which rose 3.2 percent in 1999, is expected to rise 7 percent this year, while industrial output would increase by 9.5 percent compared with an 8.1 percent rise last year.

"The main factor behind industrial growth is widening domestic demand, demand for investment," Kasyanov said, adding domestic investment had risen from 17 to 19 percent compared to 1999.

Foreign investment had risen from 20 to 22 percent to $8 billion, with about half of it going to industry. Household real incomes had grown 9.5 percent, he said.

Kasyanov said the trade surplus would hit a 10-year high of $60 billion, with exports $102 billion and imports $42 billion.

In 1999 Russia's trade surplus was $36.2 billion, with exports $75.8 billion and imports $39.6 billion.

TITLE: State Targets NYSE With LUKoil Stake
AUTHOR: By Natasha Shanetskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In a race to beat the State Duma's restrictions on the sale of state-owned enterprises, the government presented its plan Friday to float indirectly a stake in No. 1 oil major LUKoil on the New York Stock Exchange.


The float, which is expected to raise about $800 million, is the government's largest privatization project of 2001.

"The number of potential investors is much higher on the NYSE than on the local market," Dmitry Mazepin, deputy chairman of the Federal Property Fund, told reporters. "And higher demand leads to higher prices - that's simple economics."

Since Russian security regulations prohibit the state from selling its shares on foreign exchanges, the government will create a holding company, which it plans to register before the end of the year. The state will then transfer about 50 million shares, or roughly 6 percent of LUKoil, to the newly created entity and list its shares on the NYSE in the second half of 2001.

"The State Duma bars us from listing directly, so we must use the last week of the year to get around its regulations," Mazepin said.

The Duma has expressed concerns about the sale of key state-owned companies to foreign investors, hesitating to pass the privatization program allowing the offer of companies such as LUKoil on foreign bourses. But the government, which holds about 16 percent of the company, desperately needs the extra cash.

Among other expenses, it needs the money to make payments on its $48 billion debt to the Paris Club of creditor nations. While Russia is lobbying to restructure its payments of the loan, Paris Club creditors resist, saying Russia is banking on dilating oil prices.

Indeed, the government counted on oil prices of $21 a barrel when it molded its budget for next year. If oil prices drop, Russia may not have the cash to pay its debtors.

"It is hard to predict exactly what will happen to [oil] prices," said Dmitry Andreyev, an oil analyst at United Financial Group. "But our estimates are in line with the government's."

Not everyone shares Andreyev's optimism. Ivan Mazalov, oil analyst at Troika Dialog, said he does not see an oil barrel selling higher than $17 in 2001. He said that lower-than-expected oil prices may create a deficit that will force the government to raise oil taxes.

Oil prices are not the only factor in ensuring LUKoil's share offering will receive a warm welcome on the NYSE, however. The market conditions play a big role: "Today, LUKoil is at about $8 a share," he added, " but it makes no sense to offer the shares at less than $16."

Mazalov said that, according to his estimates, the sale would not make sense unless the government can get "closer to $20 a share."

Analysts polled agree that waiting for a favorable market climate may mean LUKoil will postpone its debut on NYSE till the second half of 2001.

This time frame seems to suit the government: "We are not in a hurry, and we have no time restrictions," said Vladimir Malin, chairman of the Property Fund, although he declined to specify when the sale would take place.

The Project Privatization Co., the Property Fund's newly created entity, will deposit its LUKoil shares through the Bank of New York, while Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter will act as the lead underwriters for the deal.

On Friday, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that allows the government to create the holding company, Interfax reported.

"A global company like LUKoil must have global investors," said the Federal Property Fund's Mazepin.

TITLE: Debt Market Gaining Strength
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia's equity market may be plunging, but its debt market is outpacing the world.


Russia's portion of J.P. Morgan's Emerging Markets Bond Index, or EMBI+, was up a hefty 55 percent from January to December, followed by unpredictable Ecuador and Mexico, which are up 50.5 percent and 18 percent, respectively.

"What we see is global reappraisal of the debt markets," said Alexander Ovchinnikov, fixed-income analyst with Troika Dialog. "It's going to be a bond play next year."

The biggest problems bothering emerging debt players in recent weeks were quickly addressed by the International Monetary Fund, which rushed to rescue Argentina and Turkey.

"A lot of tension has been reduced in the past weeks [by the IMF]," said a fixed-income analyst in a London-based investment bank, who asked that his name be withheld.

EMBI+ for Russia closed at 130.05 on Dec. 21, still below its all-time high in the spring of 1998, when the sub-index hit a notch of 193.13 on March 23.

Six months later, it dropped to an all-time low of 24.4, inflicting a loss of 87 percent on those who bought the debts - mostly in the form of eurobonds - at their peak.

But this year, it was a completely different story.

"What we've seen is people plowing money into funds that manage emerging market debts," said Ovchinnikov. "This trend was further reinforced by the Fed's statement on interest rates and NASDAQ's fall."

"Debts could get an inflow of fresh funds next year," said a fixed-income analyst in London. "What we are going to see is clients calling fund managers and asking them why they are underweight in debts and, particularly, in Russia."

The bad news for local debt traders came from Europe, where Brent crude oil futures dropped below $22 per barrel.

Analysts expect investors to do their homework carefully before lending to Russia.

"People will look closer at the balance of payments and other macro figures when oil hovers at such levels," said Ovchinnikov.

Even so, the debts are much more stable than in the past, when they moved in wild swings.

"In the past, Russian debts were traded with a leverage and the market was very volatile," said Eric Kraus, chief strategist with NIKoil.

Having burned their fingers in the 1998 crisis, a lot of traders have begun to shun margin trading, in which borrowed funds are used to bloat the exposure.

If the market goes up, the effort pays off, but if you fail to predict its next twist, the leverage will drain your account at an accelerating pace.

TITLE: THE ANALYST
AUTHOR: By Christopher Weafer
TEXT: Budget Hopes Resting on A Strong World Oil Price 

WITH world oil prices appearing to have passed their peak - although it is too early to discount another price spike - and most observers expecting a sharp fall in the spring, there are valid reasons for concern over the effect such a decline may have on the pace of economic growth in Russia. Though it is fair to say oil sales now represent a lower percentage of gross domestic product than in the past, it is important to remember at the same time that the value of oil and gas export revenues to the overall economy is what created - and continues to sustain - most of the favorable economic conditions that enable other sectors to grow.


In 1998, the total export value of oil and gas was just under $20 billion. This year, that figure will reach almost $40 billion. Of this approximately $12.5 billion will go to the federal budget. This boon has allowed the government to pay wage and pension arrears and increase contributions toward industrial restructuring in state-owned enterprises. For the country as a whole, wage arrears have fallen 22 percent this year and now stand at around $1.4 billion. Growth in retail trade is expected to be 9 percent in 2000 and overall "household consumption" of goods and services was up 11.2 percent year-on-year at the end of September. This activity helps broaden the non-oil-based economy, but growth continues to depend on the liquidity generated by oil and gas exports.

The oil-tax windfall is one of the main reasons the government was able to make its bold move on tax restructuring earlier this year. The 2000 budget was drawn up based on an average oil price forecast of $18 a barrel. The actual average price for the year has been almost $27 a barrel. This difference is worth around $9 billion in export revenues, of which almost $2.5 billion has been received as unanticipated tax revenues. 

Russia's top eight publicly listed oil companies, along with Gazprom, are expected to generate total sales revenues of around $54 billion this year, compared with less than $30 billion in 1998. In addition to increasing tax revenues, these funds have allowed for increased capital investment and a decrease in the use of "barter" in Russia's economy. The most recent figures from the State Statistics Committee show that the share of cash transactions in the economy is now over 60 percent, up from 50 percent at end of 1999. Unified Energy Systems has confirmed that its rate of cash collection is now running at an annualized 85 percent, up from just 19 percent in 1997. This huge cash injection into the economy is a major reason that restructuring in many enterprises has become possible. 

While Russia's economy is clearly benefiting from the effects of 1998's currency devaluation (which has also substantially added to oil and gas export revenues) and industrial restructuring, oil and gas tax revenues and the liquidity they afford remain crucial to continuing and expanding restructuring and growth. If, as we expect, the average price of Urals oil falls to around $20 a barrel in 2001 as is envisaged in the budget, then Russia's economy will continue to grow.

But there will be practically no margin left over for error or disappointment and no significant ability to contribute to an accelerated industrial restructuring program. 

The draft budget for 2001 does not anticipate the payment of the $3.5 billion that will, assuming that no restructuring deal is agreed upon, be due to the Paris Club. With oil at $20 a barrel, the state will be unable to pay this from its budget revenues. However, because of the substantial liquidity inflows generated by the higher oil and gas revenues in 1999/2000, Central Bank reserves are expected to stand at around $28.5 billion at this year-end (from $7.8 billion at the end of 1998). Russia could, therefore, pay its debt from reserves.

Since the Russian economy is poorly developed, it will require considerable investment over the life of Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref's proposed 10-year economic plan. The government hopes this investment will be funded by Russian capital returning home (estimated at $100 billion), by increased foreign investment and by moving all that cash from underneath mattresses into the economy. The U.S. Treasury last estimated this sum at close to $40 billion. For this to occur, the government must create a more favorable investment environment and advance reforms in such critical areas as banking and the judicial system. 

This is unlikely to happen within the next year or two. Meanwhile, the liquidity and tax revenues provided by the sale of oil and gas will remain crucial. With future oil prices uncertain, Russia can only protect revenues by increasing the volume of oil and gas exports. The government knows this, which explains why President Vladimir Putin has given responsibility for profit-sharing agreements directly to Gref. Russia is continuing to add production and export capacity in the oil sector, but any significant change will require Western technology and capital. 

To suggest Russia's economy in 2001 could walk unaided by oil and gas tax revenues and liquidity is highly optimistic. At $20 a barrel, there is little margin for error in next year's budget. At a lower price, economists will have to cut overall growth expectations. Reducing expectations of growth in major world economies, energy substitution, increasing non-OPEC-controlled supply and the fact that OPEC has historically been unable to control the pace of ascent or descent of oil prices (their target price after the March 1999 agreement was $18 per barrel) strongly suggests that a return to the long-term average of $17 per barrel will occur sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, it is simply too early in the economic reform program to think this will not have a negative impact on the pace of growth. 



Christopher Weafer is head of research for Troika Dialog. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: Genome Map Tops Stories in 2000
AUTHOR: By Maggie Fox
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The faster-than-expected sequencing of the human genome - the first step toward unraveling the genetic "book of life" - tops this year's list of biggest scientific achievements, Science magazine says.


Genome mappers also pushed out sequences for two favorites of laboratory scientists - the fruit fly and the weed Aradopsis. Both are interesting on their own but also offer valuable insights into human genetics.

The genomes of several microbes have been sequenced as well, including those that cause cholera and meningitis - achievements that should lead to new treatments for these and other diseases.

Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), named as runner-up the discovery that RNA runs the part of the cell known as the ribosome, where proteins are made.

While the discovery did not make the front pages of most newspapers, it was a hugely important step that may show that life started with RNA, rather than DNA, the magazine said Thursday.

Genetic information is stored in DNA, but for the body to do anything with it, it has to be translated into RNA. Then the ribosome can use this "recipe" to make a protein - which is the basic function of a cell.



Other discoveries praised by Science:

. The unearthing of fossil skulls 1.7 million years old in Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia. Researchers said they may have come from the first human ancestors to journey out of Africa.

. Advances in developing "plastic electronics" - which won three scientists the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Examples include an array of hundreds of organic computer chip components on flexible plastic and an organic laser.

. Cloning and stem-cell research. Work in getting adult stem cells - the master cells of the body - to change their identity and function offered new potential for organ and tissue transplants. Scientists also cloned pigs, one of the most difficult animals to clone, and a guar, an endangered cow-like animal native to Indian and southeast Asian forests.

. Evidence that water may have recently flowed on or at least to the surface of Mars, and photographs that suggest the planet was once covered with lakes.

. Microwave maps of the early universe, which use leftover radiation from the Big Bang to confirm the view that the universe is flat.

. New insights into the roles of hormone receptors that advance understanding of cholesterol metabolism and fatty-acid production, as well as the processes underlying diabetes and cancer.

. Discoveries in quantum physics including one finding that an electric current can flow around a superconducting loop of wire in both directions at the same time and a report that quantum computers might be able to work without using a strange property called "entanglement."




For big discoveries next year, Science advises watching the fields of infectious diseases, ocean studies with satellites, RNA synthesis, science funding around the world and asymmetry in cell development.

TITLE: Summers: Some Lapse In Economy Is Inevitable
AUTHOR: By Glenn Somerville
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - A slowdown in the pace of U.S. expansion was unavoidable but there are sound reasons to expect steady economic growth next year, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said on Sunday.


"Some deceleration in the economy from where it had been was an inevitable thing," Summers said on ABC Television's "This Week" program, pointing out that private-sector forecasters still predict "moderate growth" over the four quarters of 2001.

Summers lauded the outgoing Clinton administration's record on the economy in the face of recent warnings from President-elect George W. Bush's team that it had to prepare for a sharp downturn, possibly even recession.

"I think the question that we are going to face as a country is whether we are able to maintain a broad strategy that has worked and that has propelled us to the lowest unemployment, inflation, highest productivity growth in a generation," Summers said.

The Federal Reserve cited waning optimism last Tuesday as one reason that it was now more worried about economic weakness than about inflation, signaling it was preparing to cut interest rates early next year.

Vice President-elect Dick Cheney angered Democrats by raising the specter of a potential recession, in which national output would shrink, for the first time since the last one ended in March 1991, as he cautioned about the economy's slowing.

"Whether or not this ultimately results in a recession, that is negative real growth, nobody knows at this time," Cheney said last week. His comments drew criticism from democratic circles that Cheney was effectively "talking down" the economy.

Summers turned aside a question about whether Republicans might be pursuing a strategy of warning about a serious economic slowdown in order to enhance chances for winning a big tax cut that was a centerpiece of Bush's campaign.

But he said it was important not to dampen confidence, and contrasted the Clinton administration's program of using budget surpluses for paying down the government's debt with Bush's call for returning the surpluses to taxpayers in the form of broad-based tax reduction.

"What's important now, if we want to maintain confidence and keep the economy going, is that we not do anything that diminishes the confidence that people have, that we're going to keep running budget surpluses and pay down debt," Summers said, adding that keeping confidence up was a "crucial priority." 

In a separate television appearance on "Fox News Sunday," White House economic adviser Gene Sperling said the best bet was that the economy was heading into a so-called "soft landing" in which growth slows enough to keep inflation in check without causing a big rise in unemployment.

"We're seeing the economy go into a more moderate but solid path," Sperling said, suggesting that the rate of growth of goods and services output measured by gross domestic product will ease to about 3 percent in 2001 from 5.1 percent this year.

TITLE: New Alzheimer's Vaccine Effective in Tests on Mice
AUTHOR: By Malcolm Ritter
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Taking what could be an important step toward preventing Alzheimer's, scientists found that an experimental vaccine can largely ward off memory loss in mice stricken with a similar disease.


The vaccine is already being tested in people.

"This potentially could be a major breakthrough for us,'' said Zaven Khachaturian, senior science adviser to the Alzheimer's Association.

But he stressed that treatments that work in mice do not necessarily help people and that the mouse research did not deal with some key mental abilities lost in Alzheimer's, such as language and judgment.

The vaccine made headlines last year when scientists reported that it largely blocks the formation of protein deposits called amyloid plaques in the brains of mice. Such plaques are a hallmark of Alzheimer's.

But the next step was to find whether the vaccine makes any difference in the animals' mental functioning.

Two studies published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature found that the vaccine does indeed make a difference.

The research was conducted by two independent research teams, centered at the University of South Florida in Tampa and the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada.

The studies used strains of mice that develop lots of amyloid plaques in their brains, along with measurable memory deficits, because of the genes they carry.

The researchers used different versions of a procedure in which mice swam until they learned the location of an underwater platform. The animals were then tested to see how well they remembered where the platform was. Alzheimer's patients frequently have trouble remembering locations and how to get to destinations.

Both studies found that mice that had been repeatedly vaccinated performed markedly better than the untreated plaque-forming mice in the memory tests. On some occasions they did as well or nearly as well as ordinary mice.

University of South Florida researcher Dave Morgan said his vaccinated mice were slower to learn the platform location but eventually remembered it as well as ordinary mice did.

This past July, drug-company scientists announced that preliminary results in human patients indicated the vaccine was safe. Those tests were not designed to assess any effect on symptoms.

Human tests are continuing under the sponsorship of Elan Corp. of Dublin, Ireland, and American Home Products Corp. of Madison, New Jersey. Neither company paid for the new mouse studies.

The researchers who carried out the mouse studies said it is not clear why the vaccine protects memory. For one thing, the research does not settle the question of whether the plaques actually cause the symptoms of Alzheimer's.

The vaccine was designed to make the mouse immune system attack amyloid-beta peptide, also called beta amyloid, a key component of the brain plaques in Alzheimer's. And both studies found that vaccinated mice had fewer and smaller amyloid plaques in their brains.

But Morgan noted that his treated mice still had a lot of plaques.

He and Dr. Peter St George-Hyslop, one of the University of Toronto researchers, suggested the vaccine might act on a harmful form of amyloid-beta peptide outside of the plaques.

TITLE: NASA Seeking Input for Mission to Pluto
AUTHOR: By Paul Recer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - NASA wants to tap the brains of America's space thinkers to develop a mission to faraway Pluto that is cheap enough to be feasible and won't significantly delay a planned exploration of one of Jupiter's moons.


Ed Weiler, the agency's chief of space science, announced last Wednesday that the agency was seeking proposals that would make it possible to send a robot craft to Pluto before the most distant of the solar system planets sweeps out of reach.

A launch planned in 2004 to Pluto, the only planet not yet visited by robot probes, was canceled in June because of spiraling costs.

The costs of the Europa and Pluto missions had risen from $650 million to $1.5 billion and Weiler said he acted to stay within budget and preserve the Europa mission.

Reaching Pluto with current technology requires a spacecraft first to pass by Jupiter and pick up speed with a gravitational boost from that huge planet. After 2006, Pluto will move out of alignment for such a boost from Jupiter, and the opportunity for a Pluto mission could be lost for about 20 years.

TITLE: N. America Sees Holiday Eclipse
AUTHOR: By Paul Recer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The moon's shadow appeared to take a Christmas Day bite out of the sun on Monday, giving North Americans a rare look at a partial solar eclipse.


The partial eclipse was visible over most of the continental U.S., with the best view in the northeast, where about half of the solar disk was obscured by the moon.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon is positioned between the sun and the Earth. This casts a lunar shadow on the Earth's surface and obscures the solar disk.

Only part of the sun's sphere was covered on Christmas and no place on Earth saw a total eclipse. The sun was most obscured when viewed from Baffin Island, Canada, where 72 percent of the solar disk was covered.

During a total eclipse, the moon's dark inner shadow, called the umbra, strikes the Earth. During a partial eclipse, only the fainter outer shadow, called the penumbra, strikes the Earth. Monday's partial eclipse resulted when only the penumbra swept across North America.

A full solar eclipse can cause brief, localized darkness, but there was only a slight dimming of sunlight at maximum eclipse points in the northeast on Monday. Daylight was not significantly affected in the rest of the country.

At the eclipse maximum in the northeast, the solar disk resembled a cookie with a hearty bite removed.

The partial eclipse occured after midday in the east and shortly after dawn in the far west.

In New York City, the eclipse began at 11:09 a.m., reached its maximum at 12:47 p.m., and ended at 2:21 p.m. About 44 percent of the sun was obscured and daylight intensity dipped slightly.

In Los Angeles, the partial eclipse began at 7:37 a.m., reached its maximum of 7 percent at 8:23 a.m. and was over 50 minutes later. Farther north, more of the sun was covered. In Seattle, 25 percent of the solar sphere was obscured at 8:29 a.m.

TITLE: Arms Industry Weighs Sales Against Sanctions
AUTHOR: Simon Saradzhyan
TEXT: The United States threatens to retaliate against Russia for arms sales to what it perceives to be hostile nuclear-threshold states. But it could still pay off to ignore looming U.S. sanctions and engage in a brisk trade in conventional weapons. Simon Saradzhyan reports. 


THE recent decision to resume weapons sales to Tehran will inevitably prompt the United States to slap sanctions on domestic defense companies, but trading arms with Iran and other so-called "states of concern" will eventually compensate for any losses from such sanctions, experts here say.


Washington has repeatedly threatened to impose sanctions on Moscow if the latter sells arms to Iran. At the same time, if the weapons trade resumes, Washington may push the International Monetary Fund to delay issues of new credits to the country and block Russia's admission to the World Trade Organization, experts say.

But the most concrete, probable and immediate blow that Washington could deal Moscow over Iran would be for U.S. legislators to limit the launches of U.S.-made satellites by Russian rockets, experts said. The U.S. administration has already indicated that it will not seek an extention to the launch quota agreement, which permits limited launches of U.S. satellites by Russian rockets and is to expire Dec. 31. However, the U.S. Congress is likely to demand that the next presidential administration continue to make launches conditional upon Russia showing some restraint in its arms deals.

Launches of Western satellites, mostly U.S.-made, by Russian rockets have earned the country an annual average of more than $370 million in gross profits in the past few years, and if Washington bans such launches, it would be "quite a tangible blow," according to Vladimir Kirillov, of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

However, this blow could be offset by sales of Russian-made conventional arms to Iran and other countries that Washington has labeled as states of concern and consequently slapped sanctions on, such as Libya, Syria and North Korea, say both Ruslan Pukhov, head of CAST, and Ivan Safranchuk, of the Center for Policy Studies, or PIR.

They estimate arms exports to these four countries could gross an annual average of more than $450 million.

Also, a hike in arms sales to these countries would lessen the national defense industry's dependence on China and India, which accounts for 80 percent of the nation's total $3 billion in arms exports this year, Pukhov said.

There are no internationally recognized embargoes on arms exports to these four countries, which all need to overhaul their arsenals by procuring new weaponry, such as air-defense systems and warplanes, according to Konstantin Makienko, deputy head of CAST.

The armed forces of Libya, Syria and North Korea would also be willing to turn to Russia for repairs, if not for upgrades of their armaments, as more than half of their weaponry systems were made in the former Soviet Union, Makienko says.

These three countries relied heavily on imports of Soviet-made arms, which they often acquired at large discounts, if not for free, for projecting themselves as political allies of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Now that Russia has largely abandoned the practice of free military aid, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea would have to pay mostly in cash for Russian-made arms, Pukhov says.



Secret Memorandum


Iran alone would be willing to spend anywhere from $250 million to $500 million a year on Russian-made arms, according to both Makienko and Saf ran chuk of PIR.


Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has already officially notified U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that the Kremlin intends to back out of a self-imposed ban on sales of arms to the Tehran government.

U.S. Vice President Al Gore and then-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin inked a secret memorandum in 1995 that obliged Russia to complete by Dec. 31, 1999, deliveries of the weaponry systems that Russia and Iran had already agreed on and to refrain from signing new arms deals with the Muslim country after that.

In exchange, the U.S. authorities allowed launches of U.S.-made satellites by Russian rockets to continue. Russia has grossed some $1.7 billion from launches of Western-made satellites since 1993, according to CAST's estimates. But since 1995, Moscow has also lost several billion dollars in missed opportunities to sign new arms deals with Iran, according to Interfax.

If Russia resumes arms sales to Iran, that country could be willing to update its arsenals by acquiring Su-27 fighters, Su-25 attack planes, Mi-17 helicopters, as well as air-defense systems ranging from the shoulder-fired Igla to the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, among other hardware, Pukhov said.

The most advanced version of S-300, dubbed S-300 PMU-2, has a range of some 200 kilometers and can intercept ballistic missiles and aircraft making this system an effective tool for warding off Israeli or Iraqi warplanes, Pukhov said.

Russia delivered three Project 877EKM diesel submarines and eight MiG-29 fighters to Iran, and sold Tehran a T-72 tank-production license in a series of deals signed before the 1995 Gore-Chernomyrdin memorandum.

It was also to sell a production license for the BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle and deliver Su-24MK warplanes in accordance with these pre-memorandum deals, according to Pukhov. These deliveries could have been followed by the sale of warships armed with anti-ship supersonic Moskit missiles that even the U.S. military couldn't intercept, Pukhov added.

Having sold all these systems, the Kremlin would have then earned millions of dollars annually just from selling spare parts to Tehran, Pukhov said. But Iran has no great demand for Russian-made spare parts because the Soviet Union refrained from large-scale weapons sales to Tehran, choosing to arm its arch-foe, Iraq, instead.



Interest in Libya


Like Iran, Libya is also casting about for air-defense systems, now that the United Nations has decided to suspend sanctions against Tripoli after it finally agreed to hand over two suspects in the Dec. 21, 1988, explosion of a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.


Pukhov estimated Libya would be willing to spend some $90 million a year to repair and upgrade its Soviet-made arsenal and then to purchase new weaponry systems from Russia.

Tripoli would be particularly interested in purchasing Tor-M1 and S-300 air-defense systems to prevent the U.S. military from launching more air raids against it, Makienko said. U.S. jets bombed Tripoli in 1986 to punish the country's government for alleged involvement in an explosion in a German disco frequented by U.S. soldiers.

Back in the '80s, Libya reportedly acquired Soviet-made arms worth some $500 million each year. Tripoli owes $2.4 billion to Moscow for Soviet-era arms supplies. Until it is restructured, this debt could hinder sales of Russian-made arms to the oil-rich country, according to Safranchuk. Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov and Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu have visited Tripoli this year to discuss the debt issue and negotiate new deals with the country.



Syria's Wish List


As for Syria, Damascus would buy some $60 million worth of Russian-made arms if Moscow decided to ignore Washington's and Tel Aviv's opposition to such sales, says CAST's Pukhov.


Russia has already sold some arms, including 1,000 anti-tank Kornet missiles, to Syria, which Washington accuses of sponsoring international terrorism. In response, Washington imposed sanctions last year on several Russian defense companies involved in manufacturing hardware for the Syrian armed forces, which already owes 90 percent of its weaponry to the former Soviet Union.

Sanctions failed to impress the Russian leadership, however, which remains committed to honoring a 1998 agreement signed by Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and his Syrian counterpart that reportedly provides for up to $3 billion in arms to be delivered to Damascus.

In line with this agreement, a delegation of Syrian air force and air-defense specialists visited Moscow in February to negotiate the possible purchase of Russian-made arms, including S-300 air-defense systems, Su-27 fighters and T-80 tanks, according to officials at the Defense Ministry.

This hardware would better enable Syria to ward off Israel's much more advanced war machine if the already tense relations between the two Mideast neighbors devolved into war, Makienko says.

However, as in Libya's case, sales of Russian-made arms to Syria could be hindered by the fact that Damascus has yet to restructure its $12 billion Soviet-era debt to Moscow, Safranchuk says.



Setting Limits


Another state of concern that would be willing to procure Russian-made arms en masse is Iraq. But United Nations sanctions remain in place against Baghdad, which needs to procure new air-defense systems and warplanes as well as other hardware to overhaul arsenals crippled during the Gulf War.


While announcing the resumption of exports of conventional arms to Iran, the government continues to block sales of ballistic-missile components and technologies to that country and other countries, although some domestic defense companies may try to dodge this ban as they have in the past, Pukhov and Safranchuk said.

Both Iran and North Korea have been actively pursuing ballistic-missile programs and can proceed with or without Russian help, according to Makienko.

"With the development of information highways, any nation can acquire such [ballistic-missile] technologies if it really sets its sight on it and is willing to pay," Makienko said.

Iran has already test fired its indigenous Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missiles and has run ground tests of space rocket engines.

As for North Korea, it test launched what it said was a Taepo Dong-1 space rocket in August 1998 to demonstrate its capability in building three-stage rockets. North Korean missile designers are working on a Taepo-Dong-2, which it is believed would be able to reach Alaska, Safranchuk said.

While taking pains to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, North Korea has been and will be spending only $50 million a year on Russian-made military hardware, mostly spare parts for its Soviet-made weaponry systems, according to Pukhov.

And the Russian government also hasn't agreed to sell to either Iran or North Korea so-called sub-strategic systems, such as long-range Tu-22 bombers and atomic-powered vessels as well as high-precision missiles, such as the surface-to-surface Iskander missiles, Pukhov said.

Any attempt to sell these missiles, which have a range of 280 kilometers, to countries such as Syria or Iran would most definitely infuriate the United States and Israel, as these high-precision missiles could inflict serious damage in the event of a war with Israel, Pukhov said. Iskander designers maintain that two such missiles could cause as much destruction as one nuclear warhead.

And Russia isn't willing to sell Yakhont anti-ship missiles, which have a range that would allow countries like Iran to ward off U.S. aircraft in the Persian Gulf, Pukhov said. Yakhont has a range of 300 kilometers compared with Moskit's 120 kilometers.

The United States may refrain from wide-scale punitive actions over sales of defensive systems such as the S-300 and the Tor-M1, but sales of high-precision missiles would probably prompt Washington to slap an economically crippling trade embargo on Russia, Pukhov said.



Rapid Response


But while refraining from sales of sub-strategic systems, Pukhov said Russia should not delay offering to upgrade the weapon systems of Syria and Libya, as well as to deliver new arms to these two countries and Iran.


Otherwise, arms dealers from Ukraine and Belarus, as well as Western European countries such as France, could steal arms orders from under Russia's nose, as they have done in the past, Pukhov said.

Both Ukraine and Belarus have inherited sizable chunks of the Soviet defense industry and these two countries' arms exporters are generally quicker than their Russian counterparts in responding to weaponry inquiries from other countries.

As a result, Iran clinched a deal to procure 12 An-74 transport planes from Ukraine in 1997. Also, the Aircraft Manufacturing Co. of Isfahan, Iran, will begin assembling Ukrainian-designed An-140 transport planes next year.

"Generally speaking, we need to draw a line to define what exactly we want to export to these countries without a fear that this would provoke any large-scale actions on the part of the United States, and then pursue sales aggressively," Pukhov said.

TITLE: Wall Street May Still Be Good Bet in 2001
AUTHOR: By Pierre Belec
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - Want a gutsy forecast? Look for an after-Christmas shopping spree on Wall Street.


For now, many investors are in shock with the overall stock market, on track to post its first down year in a decade.

The technology-laced NASDAQ composite index is down more than 30 percent for the year. The Standard & Poor's 500 index hovers at the year's low with a loss of 11 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average, home of the 'Old Economy's' biggest names, is in better shape, off just 8 percent.

The script has changed and the United States is no longer the oasis of growth in a sluggish global economy. And the stock market will join the club of underperformers this year.

The economy is growing at less than half of the recent quarters' pace and corporate earnings are being revised downward, thanks largely to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's money policy, which drove interest rates to a 10-year high.

The Fed chief manipulated interest rates, impacting credit card holders, car buyers and corporate borrowers, by raising lending rates six times between June 1999 and May this year in a pre-emptive strike against the ghost of inflation.

Investors are now weighing the odds the economy will have a hard landing with growth shrinking to 2 percent or even a recession, which would bring no growth.

Nonetheless, as stock investors reel from a sub-par year, some experts are looking over the valley. They see good things for 2001.

The reasons: Greenspan is no longer as high on inflation, and the stock market's swoon has taken a lot of air out of overvalued stocks. Also, the hoard of cash, which usually moves into mutual funds early in the New Year, will kick-start the market.

"Wall Street is building a base for another bull market," says Peter Canelo, U.S. investment strategist for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. "Most of the action will come in the first half of 2001."

The catalysts for the market's rebound, he says, will be the Fed's readiness to cut interest rates because of concern over the domino effect from the weakening economy.

Greenspan may also have realized that while the economy may not be affected by temporary stock market panics, the same can't be said for a sustained bear market drop of 20 percent or more.

In the past, the Fed chief has come to Wall Street's rescue. Greenspan threw a lifeline to the market and cut interest rates repeatedly in 1998 when Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund, threatened to crash and burn as Russia defaulted on its debt and the economic crisis deepened in Asia. The easy money policy did the trick and prevented upheaval in U.S. financial markets.

Canelo thinks the first half could be the best of times for stocks.

Of course, there will be a lot of purveyors of gloom warning that the economy risks slamming into recession and corporate earnings will shrink further.

But in the end, the slowing economy will be a blessing. It will put the Fed chairman in a mood to begin lowering interest rates, perhaps as early as January.

The main story last week was the Fed's abrupt shift to an easing money bias from the current tightening.

That the Fed bypassed neutral and went straight into reverse, scared Wall Street. Traders ran for the exit, knocking the NASDAQ market down 7 percent the day after the Fed meeting as the policymakers acknowledged the risk that the economy tilted toward a slowdown.

The investors' bearish reaction begs the question of how much damage they would have done to the market if the Fed had actually cut interest rates. The Street would probably have smelled panic at the central bank and jackhammered stocks even more.

TITLE: Year of Promise Yielded Little in Way of Results
AUTHOR: By Mark Weinraub and Huw Jones
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - Stock exchanges promised investors the world as they sought to boost their competitive edge in 2000 but the bourses delivered mostly press releases, and market-watchers expect more of the same next year.


The promise of 24-hour global stock trading, courtesy of tie-ups between exchanges, remains unfulfilled despite furious efforts by markets to court international partners.

The reason: global alliances so far have failed to attract enough trading volumes and skepticism abounds on whether future link-ups can generate interest. In addition, myriad government regulations make meaningful alliances a tricky proposition.

Even the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the world's biggest stock exchange, which made its international play in June with nine other bourses, said it was difficult to follow through on the promises of global stock trading.

"There has been, in the business of market structure both here in the United States and around the world, an enormous amount of dialogue yet a rather skimpy amount of deliverable," NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso said recently.

Insiders are starting to wonder what the point is of all these discussions and would rather focus on results. In Europe, the failure to create a dominant, single trading platform prompted users to switch their gaze to less glamorous back-office functions like clearing.

But bourses will keep on trying in 2001, as the question of what exchanges will look like in the future is still very much up in the air and no one wants to be left out.

"There is a great deal of thrashing about that is going on within all of the market centers, trying to figure out which way they should head in order to survive, let alone flourish," said Robert Wood, a finance professor at the University of Memphis.

The alliances would spur an increase in communications between traders around the globe, said Robert Basel, head of listed equity trading at Salomon Smith Barney. Individual trading desks would not have to be staffed 24 hours a day, and traders would pass on information to other centers.

"I just do not see the customer demand that we service every day [being enough] for us to be hanging around until 7, 8 or 9 o'clock," Basel said. "It is going to flow through to a different marketplace."

The key to a successful alliance is generating enough volume - the rest, including fancy technology link-ups, is just details - Wood said. If an alliance fails to drum-up enough buyers and sellers, it can only offer investors secondary benefits such as easier cross-border trade settlement and standardized regulatory rules.

NASDAQ, the No. 2 U.S. stock exchange, did manage to get its Japan project with Osaka Securities Exchange off the ground this year, listing about 35 Asian companies, but dealings are lackluster. On a recent day, nearly three-quarters of the market's companies saw less than 100 of their shares change hands, according to NASDAQ Japan's Web site.

But about half of all Japanese new stock offerings, in terms of market value, listed on NASDAQ Japan since it began operating in June. NASDAQ has also said it expects volume to grow as it adds some U.S. companies from its high-tech stable to the Japan market in the future.

New alliances aiming to list stocks in foreign markets will face even bigger hurdles.

Most big traders prefer to wait until the market opens in a stock's home arena because ample supply and demand guarantees a better price. Also, traders can already buy overseas stocks by simply calling a foreign broker, a practice that short-circuits regulatory hurdles that would have to be cleared for true global trading, Wood said.

The European theater for alliance has been characterized by some spectacular failures but still holds a lot of promise.

"The big progress we have made this year in Europe is developing a consensus on the optimal way forward; that is, a single platform for blue chips and not a bunch of link-ups," said European stock market expert Benn Steil of the New York Council on Foreign Affairs.

The NASDAQ stock market put aside its initial plan to set up shop alone in Europe and opted for a deal with the London Stock Exchange and the Deutsche Boerse, which had planned to merge and create a European superbourse called iX.

But the Anglo-German deal fell apart, leaving NASDAQ without a European partner and gaping hole in its global strategy.

NASDAQ, without revealing any details, has said it wants another alliance with the LSE, which recently fought off a hostile bid from Swedish Stock Exchange operator OM Gruppen.

The good news is that stock exchanges, including the Deutsche Boerse, are looking to sell shares to investors and turn themselves into for-profit entities. That will raise cash for new technologies and make them quicker to respond to changes in the marketplace, experts have said.

"The emphasis needs to be on turning exchanges into proper, commercial enterprises before embarking on mergers," Steil said.

Electronic exchange Tradepoint has merged with the Swiss Exchange to form virt-x, which will trade pan-European blue chips next year. Bourses in Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam merged to create Euronext.

"There will be a few fireworks next year around the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, and maybe the Deutsche Boerse, but whether these will bang or sputter remains to be seen," said industry consultant Nic Stuchfield.

GEM, the global equity market project backed by 10 exchanges including the NYSE, aims to provide a platform for 24-hour trading in big-name stocks by linking exchanges around the world. The Big Board's partners are the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Australian Stock Exchange, and bourses in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Toronto, Hong Kong, Mexico and Sao Paulo.

GEM's plan has to answer questions of different exchange governance, listing rules and regulations, as well as conflicting tax and accounting laws. Even more important, few stocks have the investor demand to support 24-hour trading.

"A few of those stocks have huge liquidity, but not many, and even in those I just do not know that you are going to get that good a deal in Tokyo or London if New York is not open," Wood said.

TITLE: Japanese Markets Bounce Back
AUTHOR: By Risa Maeda
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TOKYO - Tokyo stocks ended sharply higher on Monday, on broad-based buying triggered by the U.S. NASDAQ market's gain on Friday.


The fact U.S. markets were closed on Monday for the Christmas holiday also prompted buying by investors, including investment trusts, brokers said.

The benchmark Nikkei ended the day at the day's high of 13,931.61, up 504.53 points or 3.76 percent. But its biggest rise in 21 months still left it 27 percent lower than at the beginning of this year.

The Nikkei had slipped for six straight sessions before Friday, when it ended modestly higher.

Analysts said Friday's 7.56 percent jump in the U.S. tech-laden NASDAQ market drove bears in Tokyo into a corner in early trade, with quick buybacks in the technology sector leading the broader market higher.

Several domestic investment trusts have been launched in the past weeks, aiming to lure individuals with winter bonuses to spend, and the funds found bargains among technology stocks that hit year-to-date lows last week.

The Nikkei enjoyed its largest one-day gain since March 19, when it soared 4.2 percent.

But there was caution over the direction of U.S. stocks, since the focus could return to the U.S. economic slowdown after the Christmas holidays, and many institutional investors were seen sticking to the sidelines.

"We can't be sanguine about the market's direction with only one bounce on the NASDAQ. Investors want to know how soon there will be U.S. rate cuts and how big the impact will be before chasing shares any higher," said Yoshihisa Okamoto, senior vice president at fund manager Fuji Investment Management.

The broader, capital-weighted TOPIX index was up 36.93 points or 2.93 percent at 1,297.81.

Among hi-tech issues hit hard in a NASDAQ-led sell-off last week, Kyocera Corp, the world's biggest maker of integrated circuit ceramic packages, soared 6.38 percent to 12,680 yen and having fallen 24 percent in the previous seven sessions.

TITLE: OPEC Head Will Fight Oil-Price Slide
AUTHOR: By Christopher Toothaker
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez urged the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to fight efforts to reduce the price of oil, his country's main export.


Chavez accused some oil-consuming countries Sunday of playing "a dirty game" by trying to push prices below $10 a barrel.

"I must warn that there are countries that want us to give oil away at $8 to $10 a barrel," Chavez said during his weekly radio program, "Hello President."

Oil prices have dropped in recent weeks due to increased OPEC production this year, more non-OPEC production, and a mild European winter that has lowered demand for heating oil.

In September, oil prices topped $30 a barrel, the highest price in a decade. On Thursday, OPEC oil had dropped to $21.64 a barrel.

Under OPEC's pricing system, production decreases by 500,000 barrels a day if oil prices are below $22 a barrel for 10 straight business days.

OPEC president Ali Rodriguez - who is also Venezuela's oil minister - said the world oil market has been flooded and said that he expected the 11-member cartel would boost production in January.

OPEC has raised production four times this year for a total increase of 3.7 million barrels a day.

Chavez said many OPEC members would like to push oil prices above $50 a barrel, and could do so if consumer nations do not "play a clean game."

"We call on those countries that are playing a secret and unfair game to play clean. If not, we have our resources and leadership within OPEC and some countries outside OPEC to push prices to much higher levels," Chavez said.

Last week, U.S. President-elect George W. Bush urged OPEC to increase production to bring prices down for consumers.

Chavez concluded saying that he would talk to Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Li bya's Moammar Gadhafi, and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika about a possibe cut in production.

Oil accounts for approximately 75 percent of Venezuela's exports, almost half its revenues and roughly 30 percent of its gross domestic product.

TITLE: Beijing Promises Cut in Long-Distance and Internet Fees
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BEIJING - China will slash Internet and long-distance telephone fees by over 50 percent from next month to lure more people onto the Web and help assuage popular outrage at exorbitant phone bills, state media said on Monday.


The step could complicate the planned overseas listing of state giant China Telecom, since it holds a franchise on fixed-line phone service in China and makes much of its money from long-distance calls.

"Charges for international phone calls, leased circuits and Internet surfing are cut by more than 50 percent," Xinhua news agency said.

The changes, which were announced on Monday by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), the State Development and Planning Commission and the Ministry of Finance, will be applied on Jan. 1, 2001, but phone companies will have until March 1 to complete implementation, Xinhua said.

Billing rates would remain unchanged for mobile phone service, but the country's two listed mobile carriers - China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd and China Unicom Ltd - stand to benefit from the new policy.

Both companies lease transmission lines from China Telecom to carry voice and Internet traffic and would end up paying less under the rate changes, according to an official at the Telecom Fees Office of the MII.

Asked whether leased-line fees would drop for China Mobile and China Unicom, he said: "Yes, lease fees will fall significantly for all customers."

Chinese telecoms operators China Netcom Corp and Jitong Network Communications, as well as myriad retail Internet service providers would also benefit from the fall in leased-line and Internet access rates.

TITLE: Cell Phone Cancer Link Questioned
AUTHOR: By Lindsey Tanner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHICAGO - A study of people who used cell phones for an average of less than three years found no evidence the devices cause brain cancer.


The research does not answer the question of whether longer-term use is dangerous.

The study, funded by the industry group Wireless Technology Research and the National Cancer Institute, appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study of 891 people did find a slightly increased risk for a rare type of brain cancer, but the researchers said it was not statistically significant.

While they acknowledge longer-term studies are needed, the researchers said the overall results should reassure the more than 86 million cell-phone users nationwide.

"We feel confident that the results reflect that cell phones don't seem to cause brain cancer," said epidemiologist Joshua Muscat, a scientist at the American Health Foundation who helped lead the study.

Publication of the research prompted the New England Journal of Medicine to release a study showing similar results. The study, led by National Cancer Institute researchers and set for publication on Jan. 11, looked at 782 brain-cancer patients and 799 people without cancer.

Maximum cell-phone use was at least an hour per day for five or more years, and no brain-cancer link was found even at that level. The authors of the second study said longer-term use needs more study.

Unlike regular telephones, handheld cell phones contain an antenna inside the receiver, which puts the user's brain close to the electromagnetic radio waves. Since cell phones were introduced in the United States, conflicting data have emerged from safety studies on animals and humans.

The Food and Drug Administration has said there is no evidence the phones are unsafe, but has joined with the industry in sponsoring research on the devices. Some cell-phone makers have also started disclosing their products' radiation levels.

The JAMA study, co-written by Dr. Mark Malkin of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, involved phone-use questionnaires given to 469 men and women ages 18 to 80 with brain cancer and a 422-member cancer-free control group.

Cell-phone use was more common among the cancer-free participants, though average cell-phone use for both groups was under three hours monthly for less than three years.

The amount and duration of cell-phone use were not related to an increased brain-cancer risk except for a type of neuron-cell tumors called neuroepitheliomatous cancer. Of the 35 patients with these rare tumors, 14 to 40 percent used cell phones.

"An isolated result like that can occur entirely due to chance," said Russell Owen, chief of the FDA's radiation biology branch.

TITLE: The False Dissident
AUTHOR: By Paul Klebnikov
TEXT: RUSSIA'S chief crony capitalist, Boris Berezovsky, has refashioned himself as a Soviet-style dissident. In September he addressed the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations in New York. President Vladimir Putin, the tycoon argued, was betraying the ideals of the Yeltsin era and returning Russia to its authoritarian past. Berezovsky declared himself to be Russia's primary defender of democracy, free speech and the free market. This month he even donated $3 million to the cash-strapped Andrei Sakharov Museum in Moscow in an effort to wrap himself in the mantle of the great human rights activist. This week, he pledged another $25 million to support the development of Russian civil society.


In recent months, the public argument between Putin and Berezovsky has grown increasingly menacing. Putin talks about using a "cudgel" against those who try to "blackmail" the state. Berezovsky declares that "if Putin continues his destructive policies, his regime will not last to the end of his first constitutional term."

This is a strange sort of feud. To a large extent Berezovsky made Putin, and several of his business partners and political allies still head up the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor's Office, the presidential administration and other key state institutions. With Putin in power, Berezovsky's future seemed assured. 

Yet, just two months after the election, the new president turned against his erstwhile patron. The first signs of this rift came from Berezovsky, who claimed in June that Putin was becoming too "authoritarian" and declared that he was forming a "constructive opposition" to the president.

The source of the conflict lies in Berezovsky's commercial interests. The tycoon argues that Putin should declare an amnesty on all crimes committed during the privatization of state-owned property during the Yeltsin era. But instead of reassuring Russia's crony capitalists, Putin signaled that the rules of the game had changed. 

In the summer, government officials talked of bringing charges against a number of big companies. Media-MOST, Norilsk Nickel, LUKoil, Sibneft, Gazprom - all have felt pressure to clean up their act. Berezovsky's turn came in August, when the government challenged his executive control of the 51-percent state-owned television network ORT. 

But the administration seemed reluctant to challenge Berezovsky directly or to prosecute him. At the same time that it was reining in ORT, for instance, the government took steps to bury the long-running investigation into alleged embezzlement at Aeroflot. The prosecutor who had led the Aeroflot investigation, Nikolai Volkov, was fired, and his immediate supervisor resigned. 

The administration seemed to be saying that Berezovsky could go free and could even keep a good part of his liquid wealth, but he had to stay low, avoid criticizing the government and not boast so much about his power.

Berezovsky refused. His reaction was to go to the West and declaim loudly about Putin's "authoritarianism." Within weeks, the Aeroflot case was revived. 

Still the prosecutors have been easy on Berezovsky. When media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky failed to appear at the Prosecutor's Office in Moscow to answer questions about alleged fraudulent dealings, the government promptly sent out an Interpol warrant. Gusinsky now sits in Madrid awaiting a decision on extradition. Berezovsky also refused a summons from the prosecutor - twice.

The government's reaction? The proposed conversation is being rescheduled for a future time. ORT? Berezovsky still retains his 49 percent share. If the government really wanted him out of ORT, it could simply cut off its lavish subsidies and allow the company to go bankrupt.

Putin's moves against Be re zovsky have been largely symbolic. Berezovsky's government dacha has been confiscated, his direct phone line to the Kremlin has been terminated and the government license plates on his automobiles revoked. Hiding in the West, Berezovsky declared: "Essentially I am being forced to choose between becoming a political prisoner or a political emigre."

Please! Berezovsky is regarded as the embodiment of the degeneration of post-communist Russia into a corrupt and gangster-infested wasteland. Until now, he has rarely, if ever, spoken of his support for democracy. On the other hand, he has often stated that the government should be at the service of big business. "It is my fundamental belief that, leaving aside the abstract conception of the interests of the people, government should represent the interests of business," he declared in one interview.

Another "abstract conception" Berezovsky has repeatedly ignored is freedom of the press. In the 1996 campaign Berezovsky stood behind the near total monopolization of state and private media in support of Yeltsin. As Berezovsky noted at the time to one American journalist, he "didn't believe in freedom of the press the way idealists would like to imagine this notion." 

If Russia is going to make a clean break with the corruption and criminality of the Yeltsin years, the government has to apply the "dictatorship of the law" to the most egregious offenders. Ironically, though, Berezovsky may be safe precisely because he is the most egregious offender. Putin may have concluded that a full-scale prosecution of Berezovsky may simply be too costly politically. Yes, the largely symbolic attacks on Berezovsky's empire have had an impact, but the actual application of the law to the tycoon is a "cudgel" that Putin seems to be keeping only as a last resort.

For his part, Berezovsky is planning a comeback. Several times over the past decade, Berezovsky has been on the verge of either assassination by business rivals or arrest by the authorities, but every time he has managed to outmaneuver his opponents. No one should be counting him out this time.


Paul Klebnikov is a senior editor at Forbes and the author of "Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia," published by Harcourt. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: EDITORIAL
TEXT: Bureaucracy Has Beaten Democracy 


"WE don't make the rules - we just follow them," was a Central Electoral Committee spokeswoman's response to why 600,000 signatures were rejected on a petition organized by environmentalists across the country.


That petition, submitted in parts to local electoral commissions in over 60 regions, was forwarded to the CEC last month with comments made by St. Petersburg officials that it was rare to see a document so carefully and thoroughly prepared. The CEC didn't see it that way. It appears that three letters - the difference between abbreviating the word Prospect as Pr. rather than Prosp. - caused some signatures to be rejected. Others were struck off for only marginally less ridiculous "errors."

(The vast majority of these apparently concerned details of address, but the CEC does not accept, for instance mistakes of date - 25.12.2000 is fine, but 25/12/2000, or 25 Dec., 2000 are not. A close examination of the CEC guidelines shows that passport details are another minefield.)

Now, the CEC will claim - and has claimed - that the rules are the same for everyone, and if you don't follow them then expect the inevitable consequences.

On the face of it, it has a point: It is the CEC's duty to ensure there has been no falsification of signatures or other sharp practice.

What the CEC does not accept, however, is that thousands and thousands of people with genuine concerns about their country importing spent nuclear fuel have been denied a say in that project.

By rejecting the petition, the CEC is effectively telling those people that the technicalities of form filling are more important than their opinions - that bureaucracy beats democracy. 

The CEC is not an organization ruled by common sense. Readers may recall its stricture before Duma elections a year ago that no media outlet was to publish or air information that would allow a candidate to be seen in either a positive or a negative light - an order that is obviously impossible to fulfill. (Is it positive or negative coverage to quote a politician's remarks, or choose not to quote them?)

And its response to revelations of vote-rigging in the presidential elections made by our sister paper, The Moscow Times, was to remove the relevant information from its Web site.

The Nuclear Power Ministry has lobbied so hard for the change to the law that environmentalists are protesting, it is difficult not to see a political motive behind the referendum's rejection. But then, the CEC has shown too many times that it is just another weapon in the government's armory.

TITLE: INSIDE RUSSIA
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: Nothing Will Be Left After The Battle 


THE tax inspectorate of the central district of Moscow has filed a suit calling for the liquidation of NTV in connection with its bankruptcy. Now, before I go further, I want to point out what it clearly says at the end of this column: My television program is broadcast on NTV.


There are an estimated 80,000 collective farms in Russia that have no money to purchase new equipment - even to pay wages. However, according to the tax authorities, the only bankrupt company in Russia is NTV.

This suit is not the final blow to NTV. Merely one more volley in a long war that has been waged against the private television channel. It is the traditional tactic of Russian invaders: attack from all sides at once and keep the enemy in a constant state of tension. "I don't want him to get any sleep," one of our oligarchs once told me about the owner of a factory that he was trying to take over. "Then he'll make a mistake."

Of course, it would be wrong to reduce the conflict between NTV and the authorities down to just a battle over freedom of speech. It is really an attempt by government bureaucrats to take over a rich and promising sector of the national television market. 

The apparatus of the state is merely being used as a cudgel in this effort. NTV's opposition stance is merely a pretext. To my mind, when the state settles scores with the opposition, it is pretty vile; but when the settling of scores is just a pretext for some bureaucrats to pocket the opposition's property, that is far more contemptible. 

It is unlikely that the court will settle this case in favor of the tax inspectorate. They are clearly counting on something else: The suit is designed to chase away any of the foreign investors to whom, according to the agreement reached with Gazprom, a blocking packet of NTV shares was to be sold. If the move succeeds, that packet will be left to whichever buyer can be found and, no doubt, the price will be better too. 

This is one more interesting peculiarity about a Russian-style hostile takeover. In a Western hostile takeover, the buyers have to pay a higher price than a buyer would pay in an amicable sale. In Russia, however, a hostile takeover is when the buyer pays literally kopeks for a company. And he pays this money not to the company's owner, but some thug who throws the former owner out a window. 

Unfortunately, hi-tech enterprises tend to disappear in the process of being divvied up. Therefore, I am sure that NTV will soon disappear.

After the company is swallowed up, all that will remain is the frequency that it broadcasts on, which can be sold off to another company, and a certain vacant spot in the country's advertising market, which can be filled by other companies.

What is going on now is like a gunfight in a burning airplane that is rapidly running out of fuel. And we shouldn't blame the oligarchs for this. They are good people who, when they have some time free from their infighting, are eager to speculate profoundly on the fate of this great country. 

But there is no denying that the laws of economics have doomed Russia to failure. Unless another, better paradigm can be proposed to enable the country to survive. So far, President Vladimir Putin has not come up with such a paradigm.


Yulia Latynina is creator and host of The Ruble Zone on NTV television.

TITLE: GLOBAL EYE
TEXT: Hog Heaven


Just when we thought we could finally move beyond the bitter partisan rancor that has divided the American body politic for so long, word came this week of yet another red-hot political scandal on the boil. It's all there, all the ugly elements that, sadly, have become so familiar to us over the past few years: sex, fund-raising - and ham.


Yes, an anguished nation bore witness as the red-faced fire department of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was forced to return $2,400 in donations obtained under unseemly circumstances, the city's Sun News reports.

It seems the boys are trying to raise $8,000 for a "computerized talking fire truck" to use in safety demonstrations. But city officials in the seaside resort are making them give back a good chunk of change because it was raised at a party where, as the SN demurely puts it, "women danced on stage while having their bare chests rubbed with a ham."

While this porcine pulsation went down a treat with the punters at the Revolutions Retro Dance Club, which was hosting the "Fourth Annual Ham Rubbing," city fathers took a dimmer view. "I can't believe this," said city manager Tom Leath, adding that the "bare chests" at the party violated local zoning ordinances against nudity. "I guarantee this will be the last ham rubbing they have for the fire department."

Club owner Craig Smith - who also doubles as a "corporate partner" with the department's public education program - was surprised that his heaving hocks rubbed the city the wrong way. "It's not like a strip club; if somebody goes up there and pulls their shirt up, it's all done in good taste," said Smith, no doubt reassuring the thousands of Myrtilians worried that the juddering breasts of exotic dancers were being smeared with pork in some kind of tasteless way.



Political Offensive


Pity poor little Billy Hague. The (skin)head of Britain's teeny tiny Tory party just can't get it right. He's spent many an hour at the knee of America's new blue-blooded master, George II, and has labored mightily, with all the strength in his little bitty body, to inject the Republicans' media-savvy "folksy conservatism" into his moribund band of toffs.


But all of Hague's attempts to ape the Texas Topwater have come to the proverbial cropper. For example, G.W. somehow made great political hay out of his long sordid history of serious boozing; but little Billy merely became a figure of fun when he claimed that he used to sock away 14 pints of lager every day. G.W. scored points with the great unwashed when he played the amiable doofus and decried "pointy-headed intellectuals"; but Hague's blasts at the "intellectual elite" sound tinny in the mouth of an Oxford debating champ.

This week, Billy tried to pull off G.W.'s neatest trick: race-baiting with a human face. But once again, he fell flatter than 14 pints of lager left out in the sun.

Hague blamed the Labor government for the murder of a 10-year-old Nigerian immigrant at the hands of yobs on a housing estate. This was already pretty rich from a politician who has recommended concentration camps for all the swarthy immigrants "flooding" the country, but Hague had more pretzel logic up his sleeve. Why was Labor responsible for the death of the black child? Why, because they've forced police to cut down on the number of "stop-and-search" arrests - also known as "racial profiling," since the overwhelming number of suspects arbitrarily given the frisk were of something less than Mr. Hague's pale and pasty hue.

By week's end, the Tory "leader" was tied up in his usual knots, with his own party faithful taking pot-shots at him in the press, and the usual panicky "corrections" and "amplifications" of his bonehead comments being issued by Conservative HQ.

Contrast that to the scene in Washington, where the amiable doofus was winning praise for appointing two African Americans to top foreign policy posts - a neat trick indeed, especially after his paid operatives (not to mention his kinfolk) in Florida had engineered the most blatant and widespread disenfranchisement of black voters since the 1960s.

That's how the big dogs do it, Willy!


Canned Goods


"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws our country." - Thomas Jefferson.


Or not. That pinnacle of monied corporate aristocracy, Coca-Cola, was recently feted at the Great Hall of the U.S. Library of Congress, to celebrate the company's "historic contribution" to the nation's archive: 20 years of Coke commercials.

With corporate banners proudly festooning the public institution, Coke treated the assembled dignitaries to a replay of the advertisements that have helped pour rivers of dark sugar water down the gullets of the world, TomPaine.com reports.

When, however, two journalists, Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, made so bold during a lull in the activities as to ask Coke head Doug Daft, who had just agreed to pay $192.5 million to settle racial bias charges by the company's employees, "Why are you using a public library to promote a junk-food product?" they were wrestled from the building (the "Thomas Jefferson Building," by the way) by police.

For the heinous crime of getting up the corporate nose, the two hooligans have been banned for life from the hallowed premises. Which means they probably won't be applying for the Library's new Coke-fueled Fellowship in "Culture and Communications": the "scholarly study" of - what else? - TV commercials.



Freudian Slip


"If this was a dictatorship, this would be a heck of a lot easier. Just so long as I'm the dictator." - Mr. George W. Bush - the loser of the popular vote who was appointed president by the five-member right-wing faction of the U.S. Supreme Court, two of whose families were getting direct financial benefits from Mr. George W. Bush - making a "joke" during his first appearance in Washington since his installation as the nation's unelected leader.


Ha ha.

TITLE: Spartans Take Over Top Spot In AP Poll
AUTHOR: By Jim O'Connell
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Michigan State moved into the No. 1 spot in The Associated Press' college basketball poll Monday, the Spartans' first time at the top in almost 22 years.


The defending national champions became the third team to hold the top ranking this season, joining Duke, which was No. 1 the last four weeks until losing to Stanford last Thursday, and Arizona, which was the preseason No. 1 and stayed there for the first two weeks of the regular season.

The Spartans (9-0), who beat Seton Hall in their only game last week, became No. 1 for the first time in school history on Jan. 3, 1979, and stayed there for one more week.

That team was led by sophomore guard Magic Johnson and went on to win the only other national championship in school history.

Michigan State, which has won 20 straight games dating to last season, received 46 first-place votes and 1,605 points from the national media panel to move up one place. Stanford (9-0), which was No. 1 on the other 19 ballots and had 1,579 points, also moved up one spot after beating Duke 84-83 in the Pete Newell Classic.

The Blue Devils (10-1) dropped from first to third and were one of seven schools last week to lose for the first time this season.

Wake Forest and Florida each moved up two spots to fourth and fifth, while Tennessee dropped two spots to sixth after losing to Virginia before beating Syracuse.

Kansas moved from ninth to No. 7, while Virginia had the week's biggest jump from No. 14 to eight. The top-10 appearance is the first for the Cavaliers (8-0) since they were No. 7 on Jan. 18, 1993.

Illinois, which beat Missouri before losing at Texas, dropped from fifth to No. 9, while Connecticut moved up one place to round out the top 10.

Seton Hall dropped three places to 11 and was followed by Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Syracuse, Southern California, Oklahoma, Maryland, Cincinnati and Alabama.

The last five ranked teams were Georgetown, Notre Dame, Iowa, Mississippi and Iowa State.

Iowa State (10-1) moved into the rankings for the third time this season after winning the Yahoo! Sports Invitational, including a 73-68 victory over Mississippi in the finals. The Cyclones were 25th in the preseason poll, dropped out for three weeks, then returned at No. 25. A loss to Iowa knocked them out the next week and they returned this week after being out the last two.

Arkansas (7-3) dropped out from 25th after losing 88-79 in overtime to Oklahoma.

In addition to Duke, the other teams to lose for the first time last week were Tennessee, Syracuse, Southern California, Alabama, Iowa and Mississippi.

Illinois' fall from fifth to No. 9 and Iowa's drop from 19th to No. 23 tied for the week's biggest drop.

TITLE: Mood Dark at Bethlehem Mass
AUTHOR: By Mark Lavie
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BETHLEHEM, West Bank - With only a meager crowd of pilgrims visiting the town of Jesus' birth and Manger Square nearly bare of decorations, the Christmas midnight Mass here was overshadowed by Palestinians' mourning over months of violence. 


The highest Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, Patriarch Michel Sabbah, delivered his homily in the Mass early Monday to a congregation of several hundred people, including Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, wearing his traditional olive uniform and headdress. 

"Whether we live at war, or in the intefadeh, whether our houses are demolished, our brothers wounded or killed, it is here that God wants us to be Christians," Sabbah, a Palestinian, said. "This is our land, to claim our freedom among our demolished houses and in our besieged towns and villages." 

At the start of this year, Palestinians were looking to Christmas 2000 as the centerpiece of what they hoped would be a millennial boom. Instead, tourism has dried up almost completely, with only a few pilgrims braving the outbreak of unrest in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - called by Palestinians a second "intefadeh," after the 1987-1993 uprising. 

Bethlehem, in the hills of the West Bank south of Jerusalem, has been the scene of fierce fighting during 13 weeks of clashes. The fighting has taken at least 345 lives, nearly all Palestinian.

In keeping with the solemn mourning for the dead and wounded, there were almost no Christmas decorations in Bethlehem's Manger Square, the broad yellow-stoned plaza fronting the 6th-century Church of the Nativity, marking the traditional site of Jesus' birth. 

The thin crowds in Bethlehem were made up almost completely of Palestinians, with few foreign visitors. Many small Palestinian boys carried toy guns, and fought mock battles in the alleyways off of Manger Square. 

Only a handful of choirs from overseas performed Christmas carols in the hours before the midnight Mass - compared to a lively gathering last year of entertainers from all over the world. 

"We realize that the Palestinian people are ... going through a very hard time, and that somebody should be coming here to support them and show that the world is watching," said Nick Franshan of Norfolk, Connecticut, a member of one of the few choirs on hand. 

The traditional Christmas Eve procession of the patriarch, led by Sabbah from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, was low-key as well, with none of the festive marching bands that usually perform. 

Arafat used the holiday as an occasion to come to Bethlehem, making his first visit to the West Bank since the first days of the violence in late September. Before attending the Mass, as he does every year, Arafat spent the day in consultations with advisers about peace proposals put forth last week by Bill Clinton. 

Arafat and Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister, are to report back to Clinton by Wednesday on prospects for moving ahead with the peace process. 

Christmas visitors to Bethlehem had to pass through three military roadblocks - two Israeli and one Palestinian. The Israeli army gave Christian pilgrims permission to enter, but warned that the town could be sealed off in the event of clashes.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Child Soldiers Killed

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Sri Lankan forces raiding a Tamil rebel camp killed 18 fighters, all but four of them girls, in a gunbattle Sunday in the Jaffna Peninsula, an official spokes man said. 

Child soldiers were leading the fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam near the camp in Navatkuli, 19 kilometers north of Jaffna, a Defense Ministry spokesman said. Soldiers discovered after the gunbattle that most of the dead guerrillas were children. 

Children, especially girls, are among the most efficient fighters in Sri Lanka's 17-year-old war between government forces and the Tamil rebels. Child rights groups say both the government and the rebels use children as fighters. 



Foot Cult Fined


TOKYO (AP) - A court ruled Monday that a cult led by a guru who claimed to see people's future by examining their feet had swindled followers and ordered it to pay more than $1 million in damages. 

The Tokyo District Court ordered the Ho-no-Hana Sampogyo cult to pay $1.33 million to a group of 31 former members, said a court official who declined to be named. 

It was the fourth time a Japanese court has found the neo-Buddhist sect and its charismatic founder, 55-year-old Hogen Fukunaga, liable for defrauding followers. Ho-no-Hana allegedly told people they would get cancer and other fatal diseases unless they took part in high-priced "training sessions." 

The 31 plaintiffs said that they paid a total of $1.15 million to participate in various cult events between 1992 and 1996. 



Blast Hits Market

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) - A powerful bomb ripped through a crowded market in the eastern border city of Lahore on Monday, injuring at least 25 people, police said. 

The explosion caused a fire that destroyed several makeshift wooden stalls and shattered glass in nearby buildings in Lunda Bazaar, located near the congested Delhi Gate neighborhood of Lahore, the capital of eastern Punjab province, they said. 

The explosion triggered a stampede as fire and smoke billowed from the stores. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.



Japan Bans Beef

TOKYO (AP) - Japan announced Monday that it was banning the import of beef and related products from the European Union as a precaution against mad cow disease.

The ban will take effect on Jan. 1 and apply to beef, food made from processed beef and bull sperm - which is used for breeding, the Agriculture Ministry said, adding that it had notified its European trade partners.



UN Workers Return


KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Non-Afghan employees of the United Nations began returning to Afghanistan today after the Taleban militia, who rule most of the country, guaranteed that the workers would not face a violent backlash because of newly proposed sanctions against the government.

Three UN workers arrived in the capital, Kabul, early today, while seven others returned to the cities of Herat and Kandahar, said Erick de Mul, the UN co-ordinator for Afghanistan.

They are among about 50 workers the United Nations had pulled out of Afghanistan last week because there were fears that there would be a violent reaction to a sanctions resolution that the United Nations Security Council passed last week.



Pop Star Slashed

ALGIERS, Algeria (Reuters) - Muslim rebels burst into an Algerian discotheque, slashed the throat of a 23-year-old woman pop singer and dragged off two members of her band, security sources said on Sunday.

Another 11 people were killed in various other incidents, bringing to more than 240 the death toll during the fasting month of Ramadan, a period Muslim rebels see as auspicious for their holy war.

Security sources said about 25 rebels broke into the discotheque at Berrahal in the Annaba area, 400 kilometers east of Algiers on Friday night. They said 13 people were injured, some shot by the assailants and others cut by broken glass as they jumped through broken windows to escape.



Djindjic Victorious

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia's reformers knuckled down on Monday to the tough task of converting victory into lasting democracy and a better life after they dethroned nationalists to applause from a world wearied by Balkan turmoil.

Opposition leader Zoran Djindjic, who will now be prime minister, told Belgrade media one priority was to evict functionaries loyal to the toppled Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, from the offices they have sat in for years.

With 176 seats out of 250 in the parliament, Yugoslavia's most powerful institution, Djindjic need not worry about his mandate - unless the awkward alliance of 18 disparate parties with whom he won fails to stay together. 



Egyptian Soap Outrage

CAIRO (AP) - A soap opera featuring a Coptic Christian woman married to a Muslim man kept Egyptians riveted night after night, although its frank talk of sex and religious differences has outraged conservatives. 

The three-week-long "Awan al-Ward," or "Time of Roses," was one of the most-watched television shows this Ramadan season, when Egyptians tune in for special sunset-to-sunrise holiday programming. 

"It is the best serial this Ramadan. It is a new topic, something we face in our daily life," said Nadine el Hosseini, a 17-year-old Muslim. 

Egypt is predominantly Muslim, with Christians making up 10 percent of the population, but marriages like the one in "Awan al-Ward" are not uncommon. However, the Coptic Christian church does not condone interfaith marriages, and some groups accused the makers of the show of promoting the unions. 



Bombings in Indonesia

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's Chief Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned on Monday of the possibility of more bombings less than 24 hours after a series of blasts killed at least 12 people on Christmas Eve.

"Information from police intelligence indicates that there could be similar bombings at other places of worship and at other public facilities," Yudhoyono told reporters.

He said the blasts were an act of terrorism, designed to stir religious tensions.

TITLE: Minerals Fuelling War in Congo
AUTHOR: By Todd Pitman
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BUKAVU, Congo - Diamonds and gold have long fuelled African conflicts, but in the war-torn east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo another mineral is giving the rebels and their Rwandan allies an incentive to fight.


Residents and businessmen in the eastern city of Bukavu say "coltan" - the local name given to a steel-grey, glittering metallic ore that is a mixture of columbite and tantalite - is being mined intensely in remote mountains, rivers and forests across the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu.

"It's being extracted at levels you cannot imagine," said one Bukavu resident who works in the nearby Kahuzi-Biega National Park. "Coltan - as much as diamonds and gold - is fuelling the war, helping the fighting to continue."

President Laurent Kabila, who is backed by Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, has struggled for over two years against Rwanda and Uganda, who have together deployed tens of thousands of troops to Congo and control the country's three main rebel groups.

The rebels and their foreign backers occupy huge swathes in the north and east but are very unpopular with most civilians, who accuse them of plundering Congo's vast mineral wealth.

The accusations are nothing new. Foreign armies and prospectors have come to Congo to loot the country's vast cache of rubber, ivory, timber, copper, gold and diamonds since the era of Belgium's King Leopold a century ago.

Columbite and tantalite are used predominantly in electronic circuitry, as well in light-bulb filaments, nuclear-reactor parts, superconductivity research, and in corrosion-resistant metal alloys.

Apart from Congo, the ores are found in western Australia, Madagascar, and the U.S. state of South Dakota.


BUSINESS BOOMING

In Bukavu, a scenic town built on rolling hills on the western shores of Lake Kivu, hundreds of new coltan shops have sprung up over the last two years.


"The people that deal in coltan, they're buying cars, building houses. It can make you rich," said 28-year-old dealer Wilondja Museme. "It's abundant and easy to sell and in that way it is worth more here than gold."

Dealers say coltan has been mined in eastern Congo since the 1980s, but business has boomed in recent months, apparently because of shortages in other parts of the world.

The ore sells locally for between $30 to $100 a kilogram, with most medium-sized dealers averaging 500 kilos a day.

Exporters pay the rebel government around $15,000 a year for export licenses and around 11 percent in taxes.

But this month one company, SOMIGL, was given a monopoly on the trade by the rebels, apparently in an effort to control the trade and maximize profits. The move forced at least one foreign dealer based in Bukavu with buyers in Brussels to shut down.

Coltan is extracted manually in the Congo in the form of small pebbles and rocks by peasants who are paid little for their hard labor.



CRUISING THE SKIES

Aviation sources say rampant insecurity and poor roads dictate that the mineral is transported from remote areas by air.


They say Russian-built Antonovs cruise the skies every day, loading cargo aircraft with tons of the ore gathered at dozens of airstrips in eastern Congo.

Most of the coltan is brought to middlemen in Bukavu, where it is then taken by road to the capitals of Uganda and Rwanda, and flown on to primary buyers in Europe and America.

Aviation sources say Rwandan army helicopters are also flying the ore directly to the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

"Business in coltan is booming, but it's not the Congolese who are getting rich," one aviation source said.

"There are some areas where we Congolese don't even have the right to dig for it. It's being flown straight to Kigali."

Rwanda adamantly denies the charges.

"Rwanda is not benefiting materially from any Congolese resources whatsoever," Rwandan government spokesman Joseph Bideri said.

"Our budget this year was a shoestring budget, worse than last year's. If the government was getting money from Congo minerals, our budget wouldn't be as miserable as it is."



WILDLIFE THREATENED

Conservationists in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, home to an endangered population of eastern lowland gorillas and bush elephants, say the trade is taking a heavy toll on the area's flora and fauna.


Park officials say about 3,150 families have moved into the park illegally at the behest of dealers, despite that the area was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which is to be protected.

"People are going further and further into the park in search of coltan and more and more elephants and gorillas are being killed," a senior park official said.

TITLE: Kiwis Triumphant in Nailbiter
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LINCOLN, New Zealand - New Zealand wrested the Cricinfo Women's Cricket World Cup from Australia by four runs on Saturday in a thrilling final at Lincoln, near Christchurch.


Off-spinner Clare Nicholson had Australia's No. 10 Charmaine Mason caught behind by Rebecca Rolls with the first ball of the last over to win the game. Australia had needed just five runs off the remaining six balls to retain the cup they won in India in 1996.

Australia's captain Belinda Clark was the mainstay of the holder's quest for 185 to win, hitting 91 off just 102 deliveries. But when Clark fell, bowled by Nicholson in the 42nd over with the score at 150, it was the turning point in New Zealand's favor.

The game see-sawed throughout, with the New Zealanders disappointed to post only 184 runs in their innings, as Kathryn Ramel top scored on 41 and opener Rebecca Rolls hitting 34.

New Zealand's most experienced player, 38-year-old Debbie Hockley, bowed out of international cricket after five world cups, with 24 runs.

Australia's chase began disastrously with the holders at one stage two down for two wickets. But Clark, who looked at ease throughout, then combined in an 83-run partnership with Cherie Bambury which appeared to have won the game.

But New Zealand managed to take wickets regularly and when Clark finally went, it was a case of who held their nerve till the finish. 



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Brian Lara was taken to hospital after being hit in the eye by a delivery while batting in the nets in Melbourne on Saturday.


West Indies team manager Ricky Skerritt, though, said Lara was not in doubt for the fourth test against Australia which starts at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Dec. 26.

"Brian is fine ... It was more precautionary than anything else," Skerritt said.

"He was playing forward and trying to turn a spinner to the leg-side. The ball came off the top of his pad and bruised his eyebrow.

"There's a slight bruising of the cornea, which the doctor says will be fine in 48 hours. It hasn't affected his vision."

West Indies trail 3-0 in the five-match test series. Lara rediscovered his best form as he scored 182 in the first innings of the third test at Adelaide.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Brunell's House Burns

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida (AP) - The home of Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Mark Brunell was heavily damaged by a fire possibly sparked when a candle tipped over.

Nobody was injured in the blaze early Sunday. But most of the home's contents were damaged and it was considered uninhabitable, teammate Tony Boselli said.

A fire official set damages at about $250,000; the home was worth an estimated $400,000.

Brunell, who left early Sunday on a trip to Seattle, was not available for comment. He is building a house nearby that is expected to be completed this winter.



Ilgauskas Breaks Foot

CLEVELAND (Reuters) - The foot problems continue for Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

The forward the Cleveland Cavaliers Sunday was diagnosed with another broken foot, the fourth in his NBA career.

Ilgauskas took himself out of Friday's 103-95 loss to Miami after experiencing sudden pain in his left foot. He returned to Cleveland on Saturday for tests, which revealed a new fracture in the same foot he underwent season-ending surgery on last year.

The 25-year-old Lithuanian, who was averaging 11.7 points and 6.7 rebounds, will be sidelined indefinitely, pending further tests to determine the appropriate treatment.

Ilgauskas' history of foot problems began before even playing in the NBA. He missed what should have been his rookie season in 1996-97 due to a broken bone in his right foot.



Lewis To Retire

LONDON (Reuters) - World heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis is to consider retiring after one more fight - against Mike Tyson.

The Briton told BBC Radio 5: "I want one fight. Once I get Mike Tyson out of the way then I will probably think about retirement."

He thought it "very likely" he would fight Tyson in 2001. "The public demands it and it's just putting the two principals together."

He added: "For me there is only one result. Lennox Lewis will be victorious, no matter what."

Lewis, 35, was last in the ring on Nov. 11 in Las Vegas where he retained his WBC and IBF titles in an easy points victory over David Tua of New Zealand.

Lewis also said he wants to give something back to boxing and was willing to help Britain's Olympic super-heavyweight champion Audley Harrison, who is about to launch his professional career.



New TD Record

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Marshall Faulk capped the most prolific touchdown season in NFL history by scoring three times Sunday to break Emmitt Smith's record. 

The St. Louis Rams' star running back fueled a 26-21 victory over the New Orleans Saints and helped propel the Rams into the playoffs. 

Faulk scored on a 1-yard dive with 3:27 left to give the Rams a 26-14 lead and get the record. He then ran over to the stands and presented the ball to his mother. 

The record-reaking touchdown was set up by a 42-yard-pass to Torry Holt to the Saints 1. 

Faulk, who missed two games during the season with minor knee surgery, ran untouched for a 9-yard score with 2:45 left in the third quarter. He also scored on a 13-yard pass from Kurt Warner in the first period. 

Smith scored 25 times for Dallas in 1995. 

This year, Faulk became the first player in NFL history to score four touchdowns in a game three times in a season. He's also the first player in league history to score four touchdowns in back-to-back games. 



Shchyogolev Robbed

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Burglars have broken into the home of Spartak Moscow defender Alexander Shchyogolev and stolen thousands of dollars in cash and belongings. 

Russian media reported on Saturday that clothes, gold jewelry, a fur coat belonging to the player's wife and $28,000 in cash had gone missing while the couple were on vacation in Thailand.

Earlier this year former Spartak captain Andrei Tikhonov, who now plays for Israel's Maccabi Tel Aviv, had his jeep stolen from outside his house in suburban Moscow.

TITLE: Bears Kick Rams Into Playoffs
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Before they won, the Rams needed help from the Bears. They got it.


Before they won, the Colts needed help from the Ravens. They got it, too.

Before they officially won, the Dolphins had to come back out of their celebratory locker room to finish off the Patriots.

Just another wacky Sunday, this one the final one of the NFL season.

St. Louis, the defending NFL champion, with Marshall Faulk setting a record for touchdowns in a season with 26, won at New Orleans 26-21. When Chicago rookie Paul Edinger sent a 54-yard line drive through the uprights for a 23-20 decision against Detroit, the Rams (10-6) were headed back to New Orleans (10-6) for an NFC wild-card game Saturday with the Saints.

"The whole Chicago Bears organization can come to my house for dinner," Rams defensive tackle D'Marco Farr said. "I'll put Edinger, the kicker, at the head of the table."

The Colts must make room for Baltimore's record-setting defense, which forced six turnovers in beating the New York Jets 34-20. Then Indianapolis romped over Minnesota 31-10 to secure a spot at Miami in Saturday's AFC wild-card game.

"I had my pager and I was following those scores all afternoon," running back Edgerrin James said. "I knew before we started our game that the Jets were dead and we had life. I was determined to do whatever I could to keep that life."

Officials made the Dolphins return to the field for the final three seconds before finishing off their 27-24 win at New England.

"It put a little damper on our celebration," Dolphins lineman Kevin Donnalley said of the bizarre finish prompted by a replay review.

Next Sunday, it will be Tampa Bay at Philadelphia and Denver at either Baltimore or Tennessee.

In other season finales, Oakland romped over Carolina 52-9, securing the AFC West championship and a first-round bye. Green Bay beat Tampa Bay 17-14; Philadelphia took Cincinnati 16-7; Atlanta downed Kansas City 29-13; Pittsburgh took San Diego 34-21; and Washington beat Arizona 20-3.

On Saturday, the New York Giants (12-4) clinched the NFC East and home-field advantage for the conference playoffs by beating Jacksonville (7-9) 28-25. Denver (11-5) routed San Francisco (6-10) 38-9 in the final game at Mile High Stadium. Buffalo (8-8) was a 42-23 winner at Seattle (6-10).

The season concludes Monday night with Dallas at Tennessee. If the Titans win, they own the AFC Central crown and home-field advantage in the conference. A Tennessee loss gives the Ravens those honors.

Cleveland was off and finished 3-13.

Faulk rushed for a career-high 220 yards and scored from the 1 with 3:27 left to break Emmitt Smith's mark. Faulk, who missed two games during the season with minor knee surgery, ran untouched for a 9-yard score in the third quarter after he scored on a 13-yard pass from Kurt Warner in the first period.

Warner went out with a concussion - his status is unknown for next week - but the Rams continued to move behind Trent Green and Faulk.

Detroit (9-7) would have advanced simply by beating visiting Chicago (5-11).

"It doesn't make any sense," Detroit's Johnnie Morton said. "We were favored by 10 points over a team that already had their stuff packed because they had nothing to play for."

Chicago (5-11) won it when R.W. McQuarters hit backup quarterback Stoney Case, causing a fumble that was recovered by Rosevelt Colvin. Cade McNown, subbing for the injured Shane Matthews, moved 19 yards in five plays and 37 seconds. Edinger hit the winning kick with two seconds left.

After two straight losses when they could have secured the division, the Dolphins (11-5) finally clinched the crown a half-hour after they thought they'd done it.

The game appeared to end when Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe fumbled, then picked the ball up and threw an illegal forward pass as time ran out. Both teams went to their locker rooms, but referee Johnny Grier called them back after a replay showed Bledsoe had thrown an incompletion and three seconds remained.

Miami coach Dave Wannstedt had to take off the AFC East championship cap he wore at his news conference, which had begun. And players had to come out of the shower.

When play resumed with the ball at the New England 40, Michael Bishop replaced Bledsoe. But his desperation pass fell far short of the end zone and incomplete.

Olindo Mare, who missed two field goals earlier, kicked a 49-yarder into the wind with nine seconds left for the winning points. New England finished 5-11.

TITLE: Liverpool Gives Man Utd Helping Hand
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored two goals against Ipswich Town to allow Manchester United to stretch its English premiership lead to eight points on Saturday.


United was given a helping hand by Liverpool, who thrashed second-placed Arsenal 4-0 earlier on Saturday with goals by Steven Gerrard, Michael Owen, Nick Barmby and Robbie Fowler.

The defeat left Arsenal with 35 points, and they had to watch as United pulled ahead to 43. Leicester joined Arsenal with 35 after a 2-1 home win over West Ham.

Liverpool, who beat Manchester United last weekend, moved up one place to fourth though manager Gerard Houllier played down his team's chances of catching the reigning champions.

"Even though we won last week, I still say we are not as good as Manchester," said Houllier. "Let's not get carried away because even though this is a great win I still have regrets that we do not have another five points on the board."



Charlton 1, Everton 0. Matthias Svensson scored with a header from a corner kick in the ninth minute to halt Charlton's slide down the standings as the London side took its first win in five matches.


Idan Tal nearly equalized for Everton but his high kick rebounded off the post.



Chelsea 3, Bradford City 0. Chelsea extended its unbeaten home run to seven games with goals by Uruguay's Gustavo Poyet in the 22nd minute, Italian teenager Sam Dalla Bona in the 68th and Iceland's Eidur Gudjohnsen in the dying seconds.


Bradford, at the bottom of the premier league, has not won at Chelsea since 1912.



Derby County 2, Newcastle United 0. Argentine Horacio Carbonari scored his first goal of the season to put Derby ahead in the 33rd minute. The home side sealed its fourth win in six games when Jamaican Deon Burton picked up a free kick to score from close range in the 73rd.


Newcastle was short of first-string players including Nolberto Solano through injury and was still missing Frenchman Didier Domi, who has failed to report back after a trip home.



Leeds United 1, Aston Villa 2. Irishman Robbie Keane, on loan from Inter Milan, made his debut for Leeds as a substitute in the second half and came close to scoring in the 87th minute.


But Leeds, already 1-0 down after a Gareth Southgate header in the 43rd minute, saw George Boateng put the visitors 2-0 up in the 88th before Jonathan Woodgate got a consolation goal in the final minute.



Leicester 2, West Ham United 1. Leicester moved into third in the league with goals from Frenchman Frederic Kanoute in the seventh minute and Muzzy Izzet in the 26th, but the home side lost defender Matt Elliott to injury late in the first half.


Robbie Savage pulled back a goal for West Ham in the 63rd after picking up a long ball on the left and Trevor Sinclair missed a chance to equalize in injury time.



Liverpool 4, Arsenal 0. Liverpool followed up last weekend's defeat of leaders Manchester United with a thrashing of Arsenal, thanks to a first-half goal by Steven Gerrard and second-half strikes by Michael Owen, Nick Barmby and Robbie Fowler.


An early goal attempt by Thierry Henry for Arsenal was saved by Sander Westerveld, who also parried a shot from Dennis Bergkamp seconds after the interval.



Manchester United 2, Ipswich 0. Defending champions United extended its lead to eight points with a confident win over Ipswich. Norwegian Ole Gunnar Solskjaer got both goals, in the 20th and 31st minutes, in front of a premier-league record crowd of 67,597 at Old Trafford.


Goalkeeper Fabien Barthez easily saved a header from Jermaine Wright, which was Ipswich's only attempt on goal in the first half. Ipswich, beaten 9-0 by United in a premier-league record defeat five years ago, improved its marking in the second half but could not ruffle the home side.



Sunderland 1, Manchester 0. Sunderland earned its 50th league win at their Stadium of Light with a 19th-minute goal by Don Hutchison, who drove a free kick straight through the defensive wall. City goalkeeper Nicky Weaver got one hand on the ball but only helped it into the net.


Sunderland remains unbeaten at home since April while Manchester has not beaten them on their own ground since 1989.



Tottenham Hotspur 0, Middlesbrough 0. Terry Venables, temporary head coach at struggling Middlesbrough, returned to White Hart Lane for the first time since he was ousted in 1993 but the match was a low-key affair.


Tottenham had most of the play and its substitute striker Chris Armstrong had two second-half goals disallowed for offside.

TITLE: Will Toronto Be Stage For Lemieux's Return?
AUTHOR: By Alan Robinson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PITTSBURGH - Mario Lemieux might be the comeback player of the century. 


A player simply doesn't spend most of three months in bed following a back operation and a bone infection, practise for a week, then go out and lead his team to a Stanley Cup championship. 

Mario Lemieux did it in 1991. 

A player simply doesn't undergo radiation treatment for cancer, hop on a plane, then lead his team to an important victory that night after barely practising for a month. 

Mario Lemieux did it in 1993. 

A player simply doesn't take a full season off at the peak of his career, climb back into his skates as if he had merely taken a week off, go out and win two more scoring titles, then retire at age 31. 

Mario Lemieux did it. 

Now, Lemieux's Latest Comeback - one that he expects to begin Wednesday against Toronto - might be his greatest yet. Eighteen months after buying the team for which he starred, he will return from a 3 1/2-year retirement to become the Pittsburgh Penguins' owner-turned-player. 

The king of comebacks is, improbably, coming back again. It's almost as if the rules of the game are suspended for him, that he plays by a set created entirely for him. 

Tell him he can't, and he'll say he can. Tell him he won't, and he'll say he will. Tell him goodbye, and he keeps saying hello. 

"To me, this comeback will be the easiest,'' Lemieux said. "Because I'm healthy. Because I've rested for three years. Because I've got a fresh start, physically and mentally.'' 

And, although he didn't say it, because he is Mario Lemieux. 

Few athletes have retired at so young an age and at the top of their game as Lemieux did after winning his sixth NHL scoring title in 1997. The Dodgers' Sandy Koufax quit at the same age Lemieux did after winning 53 games in his final two seasons, but he no longer wanted to pitch with severe arthritis pain in his elbow. 

After Lemieux retired, golf became his passion, and he played well enough to win a celebrity pro tournament. Then, after his $26 million-plus in deferred salary was threatened by the Penguins' 1998 bankruptcy, Lemieux dedicated his time to buying the team. He spent long hours in planning sessions, investor meetings and court hearings until his group was awarded the team in federal bankruptcy court in September 1999. 

He wasn't an absentee owner. The Penguins' chief executive officer and board chairman kept regular business hours, ran meetings, closely followed the bottom line, attended games. The Penguins quickly made a financial turnaround, becoming fiscally sound after bleeding millions of dollars a year. 

"It's simple,'' said Tom Reich, one of Lemieux's agents. "Mario Lemieux saved hockey in Pittsburgh.'' 

Nobody thought Lemieux was thinking about relaunching his own career. 

Lemieux got the urge to play again early this season, when his talented but largely leaderless team began playing erratically. Jaromir Jagr, who has won every scoring championship since Lemi eux retired, had an extended slump that was clearly distracting him from his role as team captain. He even asked Lemi eux to trade him; Lemieux refused. 

As he watched from the owner's box, Lemieux became convinced the Penguins badly needed one player, one leader, one experienced hand to become the team he envisioned. 

They needed Mario Lemieux. 

So, on Nov. 1, without telling general manager Craig Patrick or even his own children, Lemieux began skating, trying to gauge whether a comeback was possible. Realizing he had the leg strength and stamina to come back, he called in former teammate Jay Caufield, now a conditioning expert, to help get him into shape. 

By the first week of December, the word was out: Mario was coming back. 

"As it filtered down from the commissioner's office, to the executive board, the general managers, the Players Association and the agents, everybody's reaction was the same,'' Penguins vice president Tom McMillan said. "Nobody believed it." 

Not even the Penguins. On Dec. 7, as the players sat in their locker room preparing for practice, they heard on the radio the news they thought they would never hear: 

Mario was coming back. 

"Our jaws just dropped in shock," defenseman Bob Boughner said. 

Lemieux continued working out on his own for another 10 days, then returned to practice Dec. 19 before a crowd of 500 and a live TV audience. Never a fitness zealot, he insists he is in the best shape of his career, and needs only to regain his ability to move in traffic and make quick decisions to be the player he was before.

"I feel I'm very close to it, that all the hard work I've put in is starting to pay off, and I'm very excited about the future," he said. 

Boughner said, "I wish I could skate like he does now, and he's been off for 3 1/2 years." 

Lemieux still doesn't know how his oft-troublesome back will respond to his return to competition; it was the back pain that was largely responsible for his retirement. But he isn't concerned he can't keep up in a league that has grown bigger and stronger since he last played. 

"I'm 238 pounds [108 kilograms] and I can take a hit, and I'm 6-4 [190 centimeters] and I'm bigger than most of the guys out there," he said. "My game over the years is to get away from checks and I don't think that's going to change." 

He also thinks his scoring touch - he is the only NHL player to average more than two points per game for a career - will come back. 

A man who is immensely proud and, when he has a goal in sight, immensely driven, Lemieux says with conviction that he did not come back to fail. 

"It doesn't take me long to adjust - a few times on the ice and I should be okay," he said. "I'm not coming back to embarrass myself. I feel that I can come back and play at very high level, the way I used to play. I have no doubt in my mind I can do that."

TITLE: Olympians Are Recognized as Year's Best Female Athletes
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - U.S. sprinter Marion Jones, who won three gold medals at the Sydney Olympics but failed in her quest to secure five, was voted sports woman of the year in a Reuters poll.


Gold medallists from the Olympic Games swept the top three places in the poll with Jones scoring 171 points out of a possible 250, ahead of Australian athlete Cathy Freeman with 120 and Dutch swimmer Inge de Bruijn who took third place with 103.

Wimbledon, U.S. Open and Olympic champion Venus Williams was fourth with 97 points and Australian golfer Karrie Webb took fifth place with 31.

"Jones was the dominant figure at the biggest sports event of the year," said Joseph Romanos at the New Zealand Listener magazine.

Jones made an ambitious bid for five golds in Sydney but finished with victories in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 4x400-meters relay.

"Marion Jones may have failed in her quest for five gold medals in Sydney but she is the supreme sprinter of the modern era," said Clive Ellis at the Daily Telegraph in London.

Fifty sports editors and journalists from 37 countries nominated up to five leading sportswomen. Each first-place choice was awarded five points, the second-placed took four points and so on.

Runner-up Cathy Freeman won the 400-meters gold medal after lighting the Olympic flame in what became one of the most enduring and symbolic moments of the Games.

"Cathy Freeman delivered all that was expected of her and more at Sydney,'' said Ori Lewis at Haaretz in Israel.

As Australia's most prominent Aboriginal sportsperson, Freeman was seen as a symbol of the country's 200-year struggle for reconciliation between blacks and whites. "Her victory came to symbolize so much more than an Olympic gold medal," said Brian Walsh at the Herald Sun in Melbourne.

"It was a victory for her race, for tolerance in this country and managed to unite 19 million Australians - if only for one memorable night."

Third-placed de Bruijn capped a great year by winning three individual golds in Sydney, all in world-record time.

Just points behind de Bruijn in the poll, Williams became the first black Wimbledon champion since the late Arthur Ashe in 1975.

Williams defeated younger sister Serena in the Wimbledon semifinal before beating defending champion Lindsay Davenport in the final. She went on to win the U.S. Open in New York and the singles title at the Sydney Olympics.

"She's the first female sportswoman to also become a superstar," said Federico Fregni, an Italian sports journalist.

Fifth place in the poll went to world number one women's golfer Webb, who won LPGA Player of the Year for the second season in a row.