SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #636 (3), Tuesday, January 16, 2001
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TITLE: Nothing To Fear for Free Press, Says Putin
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin, accused by critics of trying to stifle the media, insisted that reports of the death of free speech in Russia were exaggerated. 


Putin, marking Press Day, said the state welcomed criticism. But at the same time, he sternly reminded journalists of their duties and responsibilities. 

"Paraphrasing Mark Twain, I can say that information about the death of free speech in our country is greatly exaggerated," he said in televised remarks at a Kremlin meeting with editors on Saturday. 

Liberal critics have said that Putin and his Kremlin aides are intent on tightly controlling the media, to prevent objective criticism and reporting of the authorities. 

Foremost among the critics has been Media-MOST, which owns NTV, the only independent national television station. It cites official pressure on its boss, Vladimir Gusinsky, as evidence the Kremlin wants control of non-state media. 

"Many of you in different ways interpret what is happening in the country, and our foreign policy initiatives and steps. You do this sometimes, even quite often, in a very sharp and critical way," Putin said at the Kremlin gathering. 

"The state swallows this, and, even more, I must tell you that this is useful for government at any level, as it makes us react to the mistakes the state sometimes makes," he said. 

Vladislav Starkov, editor of the popular weekly Argumenty i Fakty, said that during the 4 1/2 hour meeting Putin had condemned law-and-order officials for using masked gunmen to stage raids on the offices of some leading media companies. 

"It's complete nonsense when people with masks come into an editorial office," Interfax quoted Putin as saying. "What for? They don't know themselves why they're doing it."

Alexei Venediktov, editor of Media-MOST's Ekho Moskvy radio, said Putin had also promised not to push for swift changes to the liberal post-Soviet law on the press, which guarantees wide media freedoms. 

In his address to journalists, Putin said the freedom of speech that followed the collapse of Soviet communism in 1991 "was one of the main gains of the last decade."

But, he added: "Its unshakeability depends not only on correct laws but on the demands the journalist places on himself, on his responsibility to his country and to society." 

Following the Kremlin meeting, Starkov and some other editors expressed satisfaction.

"The president is not placing the freedom of the press in doubt," Starkov said, according to Interfax.

A report released Saturday by the Glasnost Defense Fund, which supports freedom of expression, said 16 journalists died last year, the same number as the year before.

In a statement released by the Kremlin press office, Putin said being a reporter was one of the most dangerous professions. 

"You sometimes have to give your lives for the ability to write truthfully and objectively," Putin said. "A reporter's job continues to be one of the most dangerous, and journalists are often the first to withstand arbitrary rule and lawlessness." 

Boris Timoshenko, chief of the Glasnost Defense Fund's monitoring service, told Itar-Tass that on the eve of Press Day, the apartment of an editor of the Volzhskoye Vremya newspaper in the Tver region northwest of Moscow was fired on by unidentified gunmen. 

The editor, Fyodor Penkin, was unharmed in the attack, which Timoshenko said was an attempt at intimidation following publication of articles on drug trafficking and shady deals at a local distillery.

The most prominent of the journalists to die in the last year was Igor Domnikov, who worked for the muckraking Novaya Gazeta and was fatally beaten with a hammer by an unknown attacker. 

The report also includes Artyom Borovik, the head of the media holding company Sovershenno Sekretno, or Top Secret, who died in a plane crash. 

According to the report, journalists were attacked on 73 separate occasions last year. 

Timoshenko told Itar-Tass that the statistics were not complete, and the number of violations of the rights of media workers was much higher, especially in regions where many journalists were reluctant to report them for fear of retaliation. 

Putin has many times said he backs a free press, but liberals have accused him of trying to tighten the reins on the media. 

Gusinsky is currently fighting extradition to Russia from Spain on fraud charges he says are trumped up and part of efforts to force him to cede control of his media group. 

Gusinsky has already had to transfer a large stake in NTV to the media arm of state-controlled gas company Gazprom because of debts. He says the Kremlin is manipulating the debt problem to get NTV and other Media-MOST outlets into its own hands. 

Rival businessman Boris Berezovsky, once a leading Kremlin courtier but now in self-imposed exile, has also accused Putin of trying to stifle free speech. Berezovsky said last week he was to sell his 49 percent stake in the ORT television station, Russia's most watched. 

He said he believed ORT would come under full state control.


- Reuters, AP

TITLE: Doctor Charged in Draft-Dodge Case
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg City Court heard opening statements Friday by psychiatrist and medical doctor Dmitry Isayev, who is charged with taking bribes to issue phony bills of questionable psychiatric health to draftees wanting to escape Russia's compulsory military service.


According to prosecutors, he charged between $1,500 and $2,000 per fake diagnosis between the years 1995 to 1998, roughly coinciding with the Russian military's first war in the breakaway southern republic of Chechnya.

But Isayev - a former naval doctor in the Northern Fleet who now works at the St. Petersburg Bekhterev Scientific Institute - is only one of 19 defendants in the case. 

Other defendants include Mikhail Rumyantsev, a local businessman, and Yury Robakidze, a lawyer from the AIDS Center, who are both charged with allegedly referring clients to Isayev and sharing in the profits. 

If convicted of bribery and abuse of power, the three could face up to 12 years in prison. Parents, meanwhile, testified that they never considered Isayev's high rates to be a bribe, but a fee for services. 

Also on trial are a mixture of 15 conscripts and parents who allegedly paid Isayev's fee to obtain false health records and escape service. Another two women are on trial for being accessories to harboring a run-away conscript. 

Since the beginning of the case - which was opened by the City Prosecutor's Office in May 1998 but only reached the trial stage in late December - Isayev has maintained his innocence on the official charges of "abusing an official position to receive money in an illegal manner."

But he has not contested the charges that he was selling phony bills of health to scared conscripts. In fact, during Monday's session, Isayev freely admitted to forging a diagnosis of homosexuality in one case because he did not have the medical certification to diagnose the young man's true problems - problems that were ignored by the Military Commission. 

Judge Sergei Golets, who is hearing the cases, said in an interview that Isayev admitted to doing this for seven other conscripts who he deemed to have legitimate psychiatric reasons for not serving.

While not considered to be a psychiatric illness, homosexuality is nonetheless frowned upon as a psychiatric malady by many draft boards and often conscripts are exempted from service as a result. 

At issue in the determination of Isayev's guilt or innocence is the technical status of Isayev's employment at the Bekhterev Scientific Institute. He is also a graduate of the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy and did graduate work in male sexuality. 

In Isayev's account, he is but an adjunct affiliate of the institution, meaning that he has no administrative function. If he is found guilty of faking medical documents as a mere associate of the hospital, his crime is mere forgery - not bribery - which carries a lighter maximum sentence of six years. 

What the prosecution will try to prove is that Isayev did, in fact, have a fully professional role at the institute' and thus an official position to abuse, which carries with it a sentence of up to 12 years. 

The court will hear witnesses from the Bekhterev Institute on Wednesday. 

During Monday's hearings, Isayev - who, like the other defendants, is free on his own recognizance - said that a diagnosis of homosexuality was not even enough to keep someone from serving.

"It's up to the draft board in the end who is fit to serve," he said. 

"I can only make recommendations." 

Golets - who acquitted former naval officer and environmentalist Alexander Nikitin of espionage charges in December 1999 - expects the case to continue until February.

According to Golets, Isayev caught the prosecutors' attention when so many potential conscripts arrived at the Military Commission with more or less identical medical exemptions from the same doctor.

Police taps of Isayev's phone in 1998 gave city prosecutors the supposed evidence they needed to arrest the doctor. Rumyantsev and Robakidze were also subsequently arrested on the alleged strength of the taped conversations. 

At present, Russian men aged from 18 to 27 who are not enrolled in an institute of higher education are all but obligated to serve two years in the Russian Army, or three in the Russian Navy. 

But conscripts face such appalling conditions that many will do whatever possible to avoid service - from buying bad bills of health to going on the lam to seriously injuring themselves. 

Military salaries are low, if paid at all; violent hazing rituals called dedovshina are visited on young recruits, and press accounts abound with stories of military bases that are so poor that soldiers are forced to pick berries and eat stray dogs and cats to survive.

Men of draft age can be exempted if they are studying full time or meet specific family circumstances, said Yevgeny Oborin, a deputy at the City Military Commission. 

In all, 46 percent of draft age men in St. Petersburg are in such poor health they cannot serve.

Apart from that, the number of men unfit to serve because they have serious drug problems has increased by 12 percent in just two years, said Oborin. Because of this wide range of possible deferrals, said Oborin, only 2.5 percent of those men who were eligible for the winter call-up - which ended Dec. 31 - will serve. 

President Vladimir Putin's renewal of the 1994-96 Chechen War has made military service even less popular - though it is not expected to have any effect on conscription. 

Because of this, according to one woman involved in the case who wished to remain anonymous, parents will do anything to keep a sons out of the military. 

And even though the Russian Constitution guarantees alternative, non-military service for conscientious objectors, the federal provision is rarely honored by the courts. 

Meanwhile, two of 15 conscripts examined by Isayev had their criminal cases thrown out because the statue of limitations on their cases - two years for the army, three for the navy - had run out. 

Many, however, having been found fit to serve, will be off to boot camp this spring.

TITLE: Horticulture of Personality Pursues President
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Just a month after President Vladimir Putin pleaded with fans to stop watering the deepening grass roots of presidential worship, a local businessman has installed a shiny brass plaque on a tree planted by Putin in 1995. 


The still diminutive maple tree was planted on Malodetskosyelsky Pros pect, opposite the Canadian Consulate, while Putin was still a member of late Mayor Anatoly Sobchak's government in an act of goodwill toward the Canadian government. But at the time, no special notation about who planted the tree was made. 

Then, last month, local businessman Marlen Nakhapetov, who owns the Eastern Entrepreneurial Express construction company, installed the plaque a few days before the president came to town with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma to inaugurate the new Northwest Power Station. 

"This maple was planted by V. Putin Oct. 7, 1995," reads the plaque, which adorns a small wrought-iron fence around the tree. 

Next to Putin's tree is a slightly less illustrious horticultural contribution by Gov. Vladimir Yakovlev - who also worked for Sobchak at the time, and planted his tree on the same day. 

When questioned about the sign in front of Putin's tree, Nakhapetov asked in a Monday telephone interview, "What's bad in this? Presidents don't plant trees every day." 

"It was a big day five years ago when Malodetskosyelsky Prospect was finally put in order," Nakhapetov added. "

"It was a mess here before, and then the maples were planted here [by the city administration] in honor of the Canadian Consulate."

Though appreciative of the trees donated in 1995, officials at the consulate denied any involvement with last month's installation of the commemorative Putin plaque. 

According to guards standing in front of the Canadian Consulate, Nakhapetov - who lives across the street - wished to show Putin the plaque. They said that Nakhapetov hired an orchestra and invited officials, but that Putin's motorcade sped by without a second glance. 

Nakhapetov's plaque is just the latest in a series of local - and seemingly unilateral - initiatives that can be described as nothing less than effort to create a cult of personality around the young president, 48 , who was born and later cut his political teeth in St. Petersburg. 

In early December, the local branch of Putin's party of power, Unity, decided to produce Putin busts - an eerie reflection if the Lenin busts that adorned nearly every office, classroom and apartment in the Soviet Union. Putin was outraged by the idea and put a stop to it. 

But the avalanche had already begun. 

In October, Unity also issued a series of children's books on human rights that featured the young Putin - or Vova Boy - as the plot's Dudley-Do-Right. The book featured a youthful picture of the president that were not dissimilar to the cherubic portraits of Lenin in his youth. 

And earlier this autumn, the director of a historical museum in the Pskov Oblast town of Izborsk arranged a walking tour of places Putin had been when his motorcade made an unexpected stop in the town. 

In late December, Putin pleaded for restraint among his admirers in television and newspaper interviews.

"I would like to thank [the authors and artists], but would ask them not to do this, Putin said in Russian and international media reports. 

"I would ask them neither to write books about nor to cast busts of me," he said, though added that he "could not, in fact, do much to stop them." 

Meanwhile, people milling around the sign on Putin's tree said they thought it was a joke. Dogs walking by sniffed at the tree as potentially unclaimed territory. 

"I hadn't noticed the sign until recently," said Dmitry, 19, as he walked his dog. "I think it's just funny," he said.

Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst with the Moscow-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the hero worship is not really Putin's problem. Rather it's the Russian people, who "act in a typical way for them in a post-revolution situation."

"Russian society is like a horse which was allowed to go free ten years ago, but didn't find anything interesting at large and now wants to go back to be in the same condition it was before," Ryabov said in a telephone interview on Monday.

TITLE: Pope, Ivanov Find Much To Agree On
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VATICAN CITY - The Vatican on Monday said that it holds similar views with Russia on the Middle East and other international issues after a meeting between Pope John Paul II and Russia's foreign minister. 


The Vatican statement, issued after the talks with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, made no mention, however, of a possible papal trip to Moscow, one of the unfulfilled goals of John Paul's 22-year papacy. 

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II has been the chief stumbling block to a Vatican visit. Long-standing theological divisions between Roman Catholics and the Russian Orthodox Church have worsened because of Catholic missionary activity since the fall of communism in traditionally Orthodox Russia. 

In an interview with an Italian newspaper over the weekend, Ivanov said that improved relations between the Vatican and the Orthodox church would clearly improve the chances of a papal trip, although he did not want to interfere. 

The statement said the talks between the pope and Ivanov showed a "convergence" of views on many international issues, particularly the Middle East. 

The Vatican's long-standing view that the sites holy to Muslims, Christians and Jews in Jerusalem must be protected by an international statute was one of the topics discussed.

TITLE: Delegation Asks for Action Over Kidnap
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: YESSENTUKI, Southern Russia - European parliamentarians arrived in the Caucasus on Sunday, voicing concern at the pace of Russian investigations into atrocities in Chechnya and at the kidnapping of a U.S. aid worker.


Britain's Lord Judd, head of a delegation from the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, traveled to Yessentuki to meet military prosecutors charged with acting on allegations of human rights abuses by Russian soldiers.

The previous day, in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin had discussed the fate of 38-year-old Kenny Gluck - head of the Northern Caucasus branch of Doctors Without Borders - with Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlin-appointed Chechnya administrator. 

Kadyrov said after the meeting he hoped Gluck would be released. Unknown gunmen seized Gluck in Chechnya on Tuesday. "I think he will be freed. Maybe they will ask for a ransom or a swap," Itar-Tass quoted him as saying. 

Kadyrov, who met with Putin to discuss the region's future government, gave no further details, but said everything was being done to secure Gluck's release.

"The concerned services are working on it, I have engaged my information channels," he said. 

Judd told reporters after the meeting in Yessentuki, which is just over the border from Chechnya, that he was worried by the slow pace at which such cases were being brought to court.

"There is still a very disturbing gap between the number of cases registered by the office of [Russian rights official] Vladimir Kalamanov and cases brought to court," he said. Some 500 complaints were made and only 10 sent to court, he added.

Judd is to report to the parliamentary assembly, which last year embarrassed Russia by withdrawing its delegation's voting rights because of allegations of rights abuses in Chechnya. The assembly is to review the decision later this month.

Russia denied allegations of massacres, indiscriminate bombing and ill-treatment of detainees which followed the start of its 1999 campaign in Chechnya against separatist rebels.

The assembly is a consultative body of parliamentarians from the 41 members of the Council of Europe, which monitors democracy and rights. It has no formal clout but the council is viewed with importance by newly democratic east European states.

Chechnya remains restless despite the fact Russia's troops control most of its territory. Clashes with separatist rebels take place almost daily, resulting in deaths on both sides.

The danger for aid workers was highlighted last week when masked gunmen abducted Gluck - an American from New York who heads the North Caucasus mission of Doctors Without Borders.

The seizure of Gluck prompted the United Nations and nongovernmental groups working with the UN and the European Community to suspend operations in Chechnya, said UN spokes man Fred Eckhard on Friday. 

Gluck was taken near the village of Stariye Atagi in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains south of Grozny, Doctors Without Borders said. Russia accused the separatist rebels it has been fighting of responsibility, although a guerrilla spokesman denied this.

"No matter who did this, it is clear such acts undermine the efforts of non-governmental organizations to bring humanitarian aid to Chechnya," Judd said before leaving Moscow.

- AP, Reuters

TITLE: Ex-KGB Head Semichastny Dies at 77
AUTHOR: By Ron Popeski
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Vladimir Semichastny, former head of the Soviet KGB security service and a key figure in the 1964 plot to oust Soviet leader Nikita Khru shchev, died Friday at age 77, the radio station Ekho Moskvy reported. 


Ekho Moskvy quoted Semichastny's wife as saying he had died of a stroke. 

Semichastny moved into the upper echelons of the Soviet hierarchy by taking on the job of first secretary of the Kom somol, the communist youth movement, in 1958. 

He became head of the KGB under Khru shchev in 1961 and served for six years during the Cuban missile crisis and construction of the Berlin wall. He welcomed British spy George Blake after his 1966 escape from jail in his homeland. 

Semichastny outstayed Khrushchev only to be removed in 1967 by his successor, Leonid Brezhnev, who appointed him deputy prime minister of his native Ukraine. 

He had no regrets for his role in toppling Khrushchev, who denounced Josef Stalin in a landmark 1956 speech and led efforts to liberalize the Soviet Union. 

"I have no regrets and nothing to reproach myself. I believe everything was done correctly," he said in a recent interview broadcast on NTV television. 

Semichastny was charged with the task of meeting Khrushchev at the airport on Oct. 13, 1964, on his return from a Black Sea resort to tell him of his removal as party first secretary. 

He said Khrushchev's call for rapid reform had made his departure inevitable. But he persuaded Brezhnev against killing him, advocating instead "more democratic" means of ousting him through the Communist Party apparatus. 

"In the end, he went too far. Khrushchev wanted everything at once and he had to go," he told Britain's weekly Observer newspaper in a 1998 interview. 

"We discussed it among ourselves and then Brezhnev asked me a straight question: 'If it comes to the crunch which position would you take?' There were no troops involved, no tanks on the streets. I just sent Khrushchev's chief of security on holiday and got on with it." 

He described Brezhnev as "not a particularly brave man" - eager to secure power but having others sort out the problems. 

Semichastny expressed doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald, a resident of the Soviet Union for three years, was behind U.S. President John Kennedy's assassination. Oswald was arrested for the November 1963 killing but shot dead himself two days later. 

"The second I heard the name Oswald, my suspicions that something fishy was going on were strengthened," he wrote in his memoirs. 

Semichastny told reporters he was removed by Brezhnev - and replaced by future Communist Party chief Yury Andropov - after a failed attempt to smuggle Josef Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Aliluyeva, out of the United States. 

In recent interviews, he made plain his distaste with the politics and morals of post-Soviet society. 

"Do you call it freedom when a group of wealthy oligarchs owns our press, when sexual freedom has brought moral collapse and anyone who likes can come and live in Moscow?" he told the Observer. "Russia will always reject democracy because it descends into anarchy."

TITLE: Ustinov Berates Prosecutors in Fierce Attack on Corruption
AUTHOR: By Daniel Mclaughlin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prosecutor General Vla di mir Ustinov tore into his colleagues and the country's businessmen and politicians Friday, saying the legal system was riddled with corruption and government officials took more bribes than ever. 


Ustinov launched his tirade a day after President Vladimir Putin praised prosecutors for their political independence and democratic outlook as he tries to fulfill an election vow to submit Russia to a "dictatorship of the law."

"The bureaucratic system is riddled with bribe-taking as never before," Ustinov said in comments quoted at length by news agencies and shown on television.

"Almost everywhere, federal and regional elites have become closely associated with financial-industrial and criminal groups." 

He challenged a national conference of prosecutors over kickbacks secured through the murky and quick-fire privatization of state enterprises. 

"Will many of you be able to boast that after their intervention they earned state packets of shares in enterprises?" Ustinov said, before calling for more powers for prosecutors to fight corruption. 

"Lots of questions have arisen over the official figures in regional power - why did they not run tenders when privatizing enterprises, why did auctions break laws?" he said. "Because sometimes they involved only one person taking part." 

He said prosecutors' independence could only be assured by introducing a system of appointing regional prosecutors and giving the Prosecutor General the right to bring his own legislative initiatives before the Constitutional Court. 

The Prosecutor's Office has been accused in recent months of being used by the Kremlin to pressure Media-MOST founder Vladimir Gusinsky. He has been jailed briefly once and is now in Spain fighting a Russian extradition order on fraud charges. 

"We will do everything so that the legislator stops the prosecutor from becoming a victim of political ambitions," Ustinov said. He said prosecutors should stop resorting to heavy-handed tactics, including the armed raids by masked officers that secure prominent television coverage. 

"No masks. Who are we intimidating ... if nobody intends to offer resistance, if they are ready to produce the documents which interest us?" he asked. 

Putin has said his dictatorship of the law is not aimed at an increasingly authoritarian state, but making sure people and businesses know what to expect from the judicial system and creating a level playing field. Ustinov followed Putin's line. 

"It is impossible to safeguard the economy's development without creating a unified economic area," he said. "The duty of prosecutors is to get involved every time the state suffers damage." 

He said reforms had to help underpin "unified and strong state power, to defend the interests of Russia, her integrity against money grabbing."

TITLE: TV Tower Deaths Remembered
AUTHOR: By Liudas Dapkus
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VILNIUS, Lithuania - Lithuanians gathered outside their parliament and the landmark television tower in Vilnius on Saturday to remember the 14 people who were shot to death or crushed under Soviet tanks while demonstrating for independence 10 years ago. 


Vytautas Landsbergis, who as Lithuanian president stayed barricaded in the parliament building as he pleaded with Moscow to stop the massacre, thanked his countrymen who resisted Soviet aggression in the unrest - a major milestone in the road to the Soviet collapse. 

"Lithuania was facing the greatest challenge, but did not bend," said Landsbergis, who is now a member of parliament.

"If we could withstand Soviet troops, we will withstand anything else." 

His Saturday speech in the parliament building was broadcast on speakers to the hundreds of people gathered outside and on nationwide television in the Baltic nation of 3.7 million. 

In the early morning hours of Jan. 13, 1991, Soviet troops moved into a crowd of independence-minded Lithuanians demonstrating beneath the 316-foot needle-shaped TV tower on the outskirts of the capital. 

Soviet troops - who had been sent by 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev - took over the tower and the broadcasting center but did not attack the parliament building, where thousands of people stood in a makeshift line of defense. 

Moscow had hoped to halt the disintegration of the Soviet Union by snuffing out the independence drive in Lithuania - the most rebellious of its 15 republics. 

But the attack on the TV tower, which also injured nearly 1,000 people, only emboldened Lithuanians and ended up hastening the Soviet collapse. 

After a failed Kremlin coup later in 1991, Lithuania regained the independence it had lost when Soviet forces annexed it in 1940. 

"It was the last desperate act of an empire," said Algimantas Cekuolis, a leading commentator at Lithuanian state television. "It illustrated starkly to everyone, including the Kremlin, that this creature was in its death throes." 

Hundreds also visited the TV tower, where crosses and flowers marked the area where the 14 died, the first victims in a year of upheaval that ended with the Soviet Union disbanded. 

The mood at the protest that January night a decade ago was festive at first, with people singing and dancing around bonfires. But after midnight, tanks rumbled up belching smoke. Behind them were scores of soldiers, some shooting live rounds and others swinging iron rods, recalled Sakalauskas. 

Aiming at the crowds, the tanks fired blanks. The reverberations shattered windows on the tower, raining glass on the protesters. 

As the tanks moved toward them, protesters pounded on the armored plating, hoping the drivers might hear their pleas to stop. Sakalauskas and three others were caught in a tank's clawed treads and dragged under. 

Loreta Asanaviciene, a 23-year-old who died of her injuries hours after being crushed by the same tank, was the youngest fatality and the only woman. 

"It's men who should die in war, not pretty young girls like my daughter," Stase Asanaviciene, Loreta's mother said, crying into a handkerchief. "But she was brave. She stood her ground, while some others ran." 

The massacre is marked every year, with national flags lowered to half-staff and a nearly nine-mile run from the TV tower to the cemetery where the victims are buried.

TITLE: Romanov Princess, 94, Dies
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VALLEY COTTAGE, New York - Princess Vera Constantinovna of Russia, the great-granddaughter of Emperor Nicholas I and the last member of the Romanov family to be born in Russia, has died at 94. 


She died of natural causes Thursday in her private apartment at the Tolstoy Foundation in Valley Cottage, New York, said Catherine Larin, a foundation administrator. She had lived in New York since 1951 and worked for charitable organizations, such as the Tolstoy Foundation, Larin said. She was also a devoted member of the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile. 

According to the Romanov Family Laws of Succession, the princess inherited the legitimate claim to the Russian throne after 1989 but never took advantage of it and viewed others' attempts to do so with skepticism.

The youngest of nine children by Grand Duke Constantine, known in Russian literature as the poet "K.R.," and Princess Elizabeth of Saxen-Altenburg, Vera Constantinovna escaped with her mother and one brother from the Bolshevik Revolution to Sweden in 1918, said Xenia Cheremeteff of the Tolstoy Foundation. 

Five brothers were killed in World War I, while her three other brothers died in the so-called Alapayevsk Mine Shaft Massacre, Cheremeteff said. The Bolsheviks threw the men, together with Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, into a mine shaft and bombarded them with hand grenades. According to legend, they did not immediately die, and local peasants heard them singing hymns. 

From 1918, Vera was a stateless refugee. She never took foreign citizenship and never married, Cheremeteff said. Vera Constantinovna will be buried Monday in the Russian Orthodox Cemetery of Novo-Diveyevo in Spring Valley, New York.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: U.S. Asks About Arms 

PARIS (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has raised with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov the reported movement of nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad, a senior State Department official said Friday. He told reporters Albright had discussed the matter with Ivanov on Thursday.

"He took on board what we had to say," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. But he added: "She didn't get a detailed response."

The United States said earlier this month there had been "some movement of tactical nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad." Russia's Defense Ministry has said reports of such a build-up were "absolutely untrue."



Mir Descent Clarified

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian Aviation and Space Agency chief Yury Koptev said a supply ship will be sent this week to Mir in the first step of an operation to end the veteran space station's days with a fiery plunge to Earth. 

The supply ship that is to be launched Thursday will carry fuel to power the Mir's planned, controlled descent into the Pacific Ocean. 

Officials decided to bring the Mir down last year after Russia launched the first crew to the international space station project. Koptev said Friday that the descent will take place March 6.

Ships and aircraft will be warned away from the area where Mir is expected to come down. The Foreign Ministry will be in charge of answering concerns from countries that lie underneath the 140-ton station's path, Koptev said.



Protesters Harassed? 

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - The organizers of anti-presidential protests in Ukraine complained Friday that the authorities have started to harass them, breaking up their tent camps and shadowing activists.

In Kharkiv, armed people dressed in the uniforms of an elite police unit tore down the protesters' tents at the main Freedom Square before dawn. Two protesters were injured and three others were taken away, who were later found in a police office, according to lawmaker Volo dy myr Mykhin of the opposition Socialist Party. 

Demonstrations and other protests against President Leonid Kuchma began in December and were sparked by allegations that Kuchma was involved in the disappearance of opposition-minded journalist Georgy Gongadze.



Markovic to Moscow 

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - The wife of Yugoslavia's ousted strongman Slobodan Milosevic departed for Russia on Friday, a Belgrade airport official said.

Mirjana Markovic, regarded as the most influential ally and in most cases the sole adviser of her husband, was apparently going to visit her son Marko, who departed for Moscow with his family after Milosevic left office in October.



Sheremetyevo Arrest 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The daughter of Deputy Prosecutor General Vasily Kolmogorov has been arrested at Sheremetyevo Airport for allegedly trying to take more than $5,000 in foreign bank notes out of Russia without declaring them, Segodnya newspaper reported on Saturday. 

The daily said the woman, identified as Ye. Kolmogorova, was planning to take a flight to Geneva last Tuesday when customs officials found she was carrying the hard-currency equivalent of 147,952 rubles. 

The sum, about $5,210, was confiscated despite Kolmogorova's explanation that she needed the money to pay her tuition fee for study abroad.

TITLE: U.S. Ambassador Snubbed by Lukashenko
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK, Belarus - President Alexander Lukashenko said Saturday at a diplomatic reception that he hoped for better relations with the United States, but didn't invite the U.S. ambassador to the function. 


Most other ambassadors attended the reception, in honor of the "Old New Year's" holiday observed Jan. 13 in some former Soviet republics, including Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. 

"I hope that the pragmatic realism of the new U.S. administration will help to bring our positions closer on a whole array of political and economic questions." Lukashenko said. 

The authoritarian Lukashenko, an open admirer of the Soviet Union, has been widely criticized in the West for cracking down on independent media, disbanding a popularly elected parliament and for routine police beatings and arrests of participants in peaceful opposition rallies. 

Lukashenko in turn has accused the West of funding opposition attempts to form a coup. His relations with the West further soured when he evicted foreign diplomats from their homes in the capital Minsk in 1998, claiming the buildings were on property belonging to his official residence. The diplomats later returned to Belarus. 

U.S. Ambassador Michael Kozak arrived in the capital Minsk in October and has been waiting ever since to present his diplomatic credentials. 

So far, Kozak has not obtained a meeting with Lukashenko, and it is unclear when he officially will be able to assume his duties.

TITLE: $70M Plan To Raise Kursk Unveiled
AUTHOR: By Constant Brand
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium - Efforts to lift the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk are to begin in April and will cost around $70 million, the Kursk Foundation, which is leading the organization and funding of the operation, said Friday. 


The foundation was set up last September to coordinate the recovery of the submarine. It laid out its plans to raise the vessel, which sank Aug. 12. Divers have recovered 12 of the 118 crew members who were on board when the submarine sank.

There are also two nuclear reactors and some 22 armed missiles still on the vessel, lying 108 meters below the surface of the Barents Sea. 

"There is no question the boat should not be left alone on the bottom of the sea, it should be lifted," said former Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh, who co-chairs the international foundation with former Dutch Defense Minister Willem van Eekelen. 

Many have concerns that if left too long, the hull of the submarine may start seeping radioactive material.

"Over time it is the spread of minute particles of radioactive material which could be inside fish, and then, well, you can imagine what could happen to the fishing industry," said van Eekelen. 

Russia has reassured the international community that the reactors on board were automatically shut down when the vessel exploded and sank. 

Van Eekelen, who said the foundation presented plans to salvage the submarine to the European Union on Thursday, said the group was seeking financial support from the EU and the United States, Japan and Canada to help fund the operation. 

"We are preparing for an operation to commence in April with the final recovery of the Kursk in August this year," said Colin Schofield, production manager of the consortium of Dutch, American and Russian companies that will try to bring up the Kursk. 

Schofield said the salvage operation had to take place this summer to take advantage of the weather, which is normally calmer at that time. 

"All necessary barges and cranes will be available this summer," said Schofield, whose Dutch company, Heerema Marine Contractors, will provide the submersible double crane to lift the Kursk. 

U.S. company Halliburton and Russian submarine builder CDB Rubin are also involved in the project.

TITLE: Study Presents New Theory On Descent of Modern Man
AUTHOR: By Paul Recer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Modern humans likely arose from small groups that journeyed from continent to continent, not in a single migration from Africa, anthropologists say.


These individual groups probably intermingled with archaic humans such as the Neanderthal, said the researchers, who analyzed ancient skulls from around the world.

They said that distinctive features in ancient skulls, some dating to more than 200,000 years, suggest modern humans descended independently from common ancestors that lived on nearly every continent and mingled with earlier human types.

"There was no single wave of modern humans out of Africa," said Milford H. Wolpoff, a University of Michigan anthropologist and co-author of the study, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Modern humans did originate in Africa, Wolpoff said, but they migrated in small groups over thousands of years and journeyed to Asia, Europe and even as far as Australia.

This is contrary to the Eve theory, which holds that modern humans evolved in Africa and moved into the rest of the world in a singular movement of perhaps 10,000 people. Once on the other continents, the theory holds, the moderns supplanted the existing more ancient humans.

But Wolpoff and his co-authors said that skulls dated 25,000 to 30,000 years from Europe and from Australia share strong characteristics of 40,000 to 200,000-year-old archaic human skulls found in Europe, Indonesia, and Africa.

The more recent skulls from Europe, for instance, showed clear evidence of a Neanderthal influence, along with features of the early modern humans that evolved in Africa.

Wolpoff said this suggests modern humans dribbled out of Africa in small numbers and migrated to lands where they mingled with a more ancient human type already living in those places.

Eventually, he said, the superior genes of modern humans dominated the species through natural selection. "The Neanderthal disappeared as a result of interbreeding," Wolpoff said.

The conclusion is controversial, and another University of Utah anthropologist, Henry Harpending, is unconvinced.

"The genetic evidence is unequivocal in support of the idea that we are all descended from a small group of Africans within the last 100,000 years," Harpending said in a statement. "There is no Neanderthal in us."

TITLE: Ancient Ice Yields Clue to Today's Global Warming
AUTHOR: By Michael Byrnes
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY, Australia - The discovery in a core of ancient polar ice of evidence of a sudden Antarctic temperature rise thousands of years ago has added fuel to the debate on global warming.


The find, by scientists working on an ice core taken several kilometers beneath the surface, is the first evidence of rapid warming in the Antarctic and matches existing evidence of warmer bouts in past eons in the North-Pole region.

It suggests a temperature spike of around four degrees Celsius took place in the south pole region over about a decade 19,000 years ago.

"That's a significant temperature change [over] about a decade... Pretty phenomenal," said Dr. David Etheridge, a scientist with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).

The discovery, by University of Colorado Associate Professor James White toward the end of last year, is sending Australian scientists back to examine their own drill cores of Antarctic ice, taken from Australia's East Antarctic Territory.

Scientific interest in White's discovery, from cores taken from coastal West Antarctica, has been heightened by a correlation between the time of the temperature spike and an abrupt rise in sea levels at about the same time, as documented by Australian National University research.

"It is fuel for the argument that climate change can be rapid and that the Antarctic ice sheet can melt," Etheridge said.

Not everyone agrees. White's discovery, which all scientists caution needs verification, is providing as much fuel for skeptics as for committed believers in greenhouse warming.

Professor Pat Quilty, former chief scientist with the Australian government-funded Australian Antarctic Division and now an academic with the University of Tasmania, says the Antarctic temperature spike counters doomsday theories of melting Antarctic ice sheets.

Belying the beliefs of those on the global climate change bandwagon, the new Antarctic readings showed natural change could be as dramatic as anything produced by man, he said.

In contrast, Etheridge says ancient Antarctic ice is proving that warming thousands of years ago took place after changing orbital tilts of the earth triggered a release of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, from the oceans.

Greenhouse gas was part of the cause of warming even then, long before industrialization increased the amount of gas clogging the atmosphere, he said.

Now ancient Antarctic ice could help predict modern climate change, he said.

Further evidence of White's warming could be hidden in a 10-centimeter section of a core sample of ice in Australia.

"It's worth looking," said Vin Morgan, principal research scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), the government-funded body responsible for logistics and research at Australia's Antarctic Territory.

AAD will re-examine a core covering an 80,000 years time span drilled around 10 years ago at Law Dome, inland from Casey Station.

The real question was what made rapid climate changes occur, Morgan said. Nobody knows, despite the unlocking of some of the secrets of Ant arctic ice.

Also, nobody definitely knows how Antarctic ice sheets are responding to global warming and changes in sea level, he said.

The Antarctic contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by five to six meters and has been melting since the end of the last ice age, sending giant icebergs crashing off the edges of Antarctic shelves.

But new snow was generally compensating for ice loss, leaving the Antarctic in approximate balance between accumulation and outflow of Antarctic ice, Morgan said.

TITLE: Diamond Giant Considering Partnership
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - A French newspaper said on Monday that luxury goods group LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA and South African diamond giant De Beers were close to announcing a joint venture to market branded diamond jewelry.


La Tribune financial daily, in which LVMH owns a stake, quoted sources close to the deal as saying the joint venture would be announced Tuesday in London. LVMH and De Beers declined to comment Monday on the report.

Market speculation about a possible tie-up between LVMH, owned by billionaire entrepreneur Bernard Arnault, and De Beers, the world's largest diamond company, has been growing in recent weeks with talk centering on a plan to sell De Beers brand jewelry through a network of shops run by LVMH.

Until now, De Beers has sold rough diamonds to jewelers to be cut and polished.

La Tribune said the proposed deal was part of De Beers efforts to adapt to changes in the gem market, where it controls 60 percent. For LVMH, best known for luxury handbags and champagne, the joint venture would offer it a chance to strengthen its position in the jewelry market.

Last year, De Beers' sales of rough gems reached a record high of $5.67 billion, an increase of 8 percent compared to the previous year.

TITLE: U.S. Lobbying Against Oil Cuts
AUTHOR: By Peg Mackey
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates - U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson urged OPEC on Sunday to agree to a modest, two-phased oil output cut at its January meeting in order to spare the world economy any harmful effects from higher oil prices.


"The United States feels there should be no production decrease," Richardson said in Abu Dhabi after talks with the UAE oil minister. "But we are realistic and it is important that any cut in January will not aggravate the market ... Our objective is as small a cut as possible."

Qatari oil minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said after talks with Richardson in Doha that Washington also preferred a two-phased oil output cut to balance the market and avoid a price collapse.

"[The Americans] believe that a reduction [in oil output] in two phases will lead to a balance in the oil market and will not result in a steep price crash," the official Qatari news agency quoted the minister, Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, as telling a news conference in Doha.

OPEC oil ministers have shown little inclination to adopt Washington's suggestion of a two-phased output cut.

Richardson had said in Abu Dhabi that Washington was concerned that a drastic oil output cut by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could send world oil prices rocketing and harm the world economy.

"Our strong message is that there should not be steep production cuts at the next OPEC meeting because that will spur a price hike that is unhealthy for the world economy," he said.

Richardson said Washington was "concerned with talk of output cuts of two to three million barrels per day (bpd), which will be very harmful to the world economy."

OPEC ministers will meet in Vienna on Jan. 17 to agree on production cuts. Leading producer Saudi Arabia prefers a reduction of 1.5 million barrels per day, while other OPEC members have talked of cuts of up to two million bpd.

Richardson refused to be drawn on whether a cut of less than two million bpd would be acceptable to Washington. He said he did not want to discuss specific numbers.

Richardson, who held talks in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, said his meetings in Abu Dhabi with UAE Oil Minister Obaid bin Saif al-Nasseri on Sunday was "very productive."

"The minister listened carefully and promised to take all views into account," Richardson said.

Nasseri told reporters after the meeting that OPEC had yet to decide on the precise level of production cuts.

"There has been no decision on a specific level for the cut which will be decided in Vienna," Nasseri said. "There are many views."

"We in OPEC will work toward restoring the supply, demand balance and will take a decision [at our meeting] that will influence price direction. Our objective is to avoid sharp price movements up or down," Nasseri said.

Richardson is rallying Washington's Gulf Arab allies who are key OPEC members to contain the size of the oil production cut. He is still due to hold talks in Kuwait in the last days of the administration of President Clinton.

Kuwait's Oil Minister Sheikh Saud Nasser al-Sabah told the al-Anba daily in remarks published on Sunday that OPEC was set to cut crude output by 1.5 million bpd despite the last minute tour by Richardson.

"We welcome the visit of the U.S. minister ... but [OPEC] are also agreed on a cut of 1.5 million barrels per day," Sheikh Saud said.

Richardson stressed that the United States would prefer to see the price of WTI at $25 a barrel. On Friday the price of WTI closed at more than $30 bpd.

"The $10 a barrel is too low, $30 a barrel is too high, $25 a barrel is a good range," he said, adding that Nasseri agreed with that view.

Richardson said "no commitments were made" at the meeting with Nasseri, but that the UAE minister "indicated he will consider our arguments and [OPEC will] make their decision."

Richardson said he was optimistic that his tour would bear fruit. "We think OPEC will consider our views."

Nasseri described a sharp drop in oil prices last month as "very worrying" and hoped that the price fall would not be repeated. "We are very keen to stabilize the market," he said.

Nasseri said OPEC was hoping that non-OPEC producers might also curb their output flows. "We are hoping for some cooperation from non-OPEC [producers] because they increased [their supplies] by 1.5 million bpd [last year]."

"They must share in any production cut," Nasseri added.

He said he and Richardson took each others' views into account. "There is always scope to agree a fair price for producers and consumers."

Nasseri added that there was solid evidence of oversupply in the market, saying that even when Iraq suspended its exports of more than two million bpd at the start of last month, prices declined despite the suspension.

TITLE: Ministers Meet To Talk Asian Currency Plans
AUTHOR: By Scott Stoddard
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KOBE, Japan - Asian and European finance ministers on Sunday agreed to renew one fund and create another to prevent the large currency swings that led to financial crisis in Asia two years ago.


On the final day of the two-day Asia-Europe Meeting, or ASEM, the 10 Asian and 15 European finance ministers voted to replenish a fund created to train officials charged with reforming Asia's corporate and financial sectors.

They also endorsed a Japanese-backed proposal for another fund that will be used to study regional monetary cooperation and methods for stabilizing currencies.

Japan and France are urging Asian nations to adopt currency systems less dominated by the U.S. dollar, saying the change could ward off financial crises like the 1997-98 Asian collapse.

"Regional economic and monetary cooperation is vital for promotion of international stability," Japanese Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said.

The France-Japan proposal underlines a disenchantment with the dollar in Asia as well as hopes in the region for its own single currency like the euro in Europe. The proposal suggests as one solution a "basket" of various currencies - including the euro and the Japanese yen as well as the dollar - to set a range of value for a nation's currency.

Worries about the recent U.S. economic slowdown and the exchange of views on currencies were the main topics at the meeting - the third of its kind aimed at strengthening financial ties between Europe and Asia.

"We agreed on the need to press ahead with necessary structural reforms," said Swedish Finance Minister Bosse Ringholm.

Still, it is unlikely the officials gathered in Kobe will agree on a single currency system anytime soon. Despite past economic troubles, the dollar remains a powerful currency in Asia.

When Thailand devalued its currency, the baht, on July 2, 1997, other countries in the region did the same. Banks were left with a mountain of dollar-based loans and were forced to cut lending to focus on debt repayment, pushing the region into a deep recession.

The three main victims - South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia - required big bailout loans overseen by the IMF. Their troubles rattled financial markets throughout the West and triggered fears of a global economic crisis.

But Miyazawa, the chairman of the meeting in this Japanese port city, said a second financial crisis was not likely.

"We're not in the same situation," he said, adding the 1997 crisis was exacerbated when foreign investors pulled their money out of the region.

The ASEM meeting comes as the U.S. dollar has risen more than 10 percent against the Japanese currency in the past two months, reaching an 18-month high of 118.16 yen on Friday.

TITLE: Earnings, Inflation Topping Wall-Street Agenda
AUTHOR: By Denise Duclaux
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - Wall Street's new-found confidence is seen passing its biggest hurdle this week, with investors expected to toss aside poor results as the earnings season gets underway, and hoist the stock market higher.


"The longer-term investors have changed their psychology and are now willing to put money to work in the market," said Paul Cherney, a market analyst at S&P Marketscope. "The market has clearly demonstrated its sentiment has shifted 180 degrees."

Indeed, the tech-packed NASDAQ composite index last week scored its first three-day rally since September in spite of dour news from such marquee names as Internet gear maker Cisco Systems Inc., mobile phone company Motorola Inc., popular media site Yahoo! Inc. and computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co.

This week, narrowed to four days of trading after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday, now marks the true test of the turnaround in sentiment.

A flood of results from high-profile companies is set to the hit the street and paint a gloomy picture of profit growth as the U.S. economy slows from its once torrid pace.

A key gauge of inflation on Wednesday could push the U.S. Federal Reserve closer to more interest rate cuts, signaling help is in store for struggling companies. But oil cartel OPEC is expected to cut production that same day and possibly spark a rise in energy costs for businesses.

Bad news or good, Wall Street is expected to creep higher as momentum buying rolls into this week.

A slew of corporate icons, including chip maker Intel Corp., car company General Motors Corp. and film giant Eastman Kodak Co., warned last year that quarterly results will land shy of estimates amid a slowing economy. The steady flow of ugly news has helped prepare investors for what will likely be a glum earnings season, experts say.

"I think we are pretty well beyond earnings, it's already been discounted to a degree," said Richard Cripps, chief market strategist at Legg Mason Wood Walker. "They are expecting whatever numbers are going to come will be at consensus and that guidance is going to reflect the general view that the economy is on a very slow path."

U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers who unexpectedly cut rates on Jan. 3 and sparked a record rally are expected to agree on another reduction at their next policy-meeting on Jan. 30-31. But just how much the nation's top inflation fighters cut rates and how eager they are to ratchet down rates for the rest of 2001 remains to be seen.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a key measure of inflation, is expected to be released on Wednesday. The widely watched gauge is forecast to stay fairly controlled in December. A rise in inflation can be a harbinger of higher interest rates, which in turn tend to spook the stock market.

Economists polled by Reuters forecast a 0.2 percent increase in the CPI in December after a 0.2 percent rise in November. Excluding volatile food and energy components, the core CPI is expected to increase 0.2 percent, following a 0.3 percent rise in November.

TITLE: DaimlerChrysler Dismisses Breakup Rumors
AUTHOR: By Hans Greimal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FRANKFURT, Germany - DaimlerChrysler's biggest shareholder came to the automaker's support Monday after a British newspaper reported that heavyweight investors were pressuring for a breakup of the automaker's troubled merger.


DaimlerChrysler dismissed the report, and Deutsche Bank, which has a 12-percent share in the automaker, said it would stand behind chief executive Juergen Schrempp's plan to boost the loss-making Chrysler.

"Breuer said in December that he thinks the strategy is correct and that the management is capable of running the company," said Deutsche Bank spokesman Ronald Weichert of bank chairman Rolf Breuer. "That stance hasn't changed."

Weichert would not comment on the report's claim that the automaker had six months to shape up, but he said that Deutsche Bank was still looking to thin out its stakes in various industrial companies, including DaimlerChrysler, over the next two years.

"We have said in the long run that we will part with this investment, but we will do it only at an active price for us and our shareholders," Weichert said, adding that Deutsche Bank would not sell DaimlerChrysler with prices at their current lows.

DaimlerChrysler shares were trading flat Monday around 44 euros ($41.80) in Frankfurt trading after The Sunday Times of Britain reported that some of the Stuttgart-based company's biggest shareholders were giving Schrempp six months to either turn around its loss making Chrysler unit or break the company up.

DaimlerChrysler spokesman Thomas Froehlich called the report pure speculation, adding that the company has no plans to drop its U.S.-based unit.

"Chrysler is an important part of our corporate strategy and that still stands," Froehlich said.

Auto analysts said it is unlikely DaimlerChrysler would break up anytime soon. With Chrysler mired in red ink, few buyers would be interested in the company right now, they said, and its financial troubles also make it an unattractive buy if it were launched on the stock market as a spin off.

One solution could be dividing the company in two, giving each current stockholder one share each in two new companies that would correspond roughly to former Daimler-Benz and Chrysler, speculated Juergen Pieper, an auto analyst with Metzler Bank in Frankfurt.

"A split would be seen positively by the market because people fear that the losses at Chrysler will reach enormous figures, possibly into the billions, in 2001," Pieper said. "But if this report is right, DaimlerChrysler has almost no chance to turn around Chrysler in just six months."

A string of production cuts at Chrysler will likely hurt revenue, and Chrysler's fourth-quarter loss likely will run more than double its third-quarter loss of $512 million.

Deutsche Bank is the company's largest shareholder, but The Sunday Times also cited the Kuwaiti government as a disgruntled investor. Kuwait is DaimlerChrysler's second-largest shareholder with a 7.4 percent holding.

Pieper described the Kuwaitis as patient investors who were unlikely to be pressuring for a shake up.

DaimlerChrysler shares have lost nearly half their value since hitting a post merger high in early 1999.

TITLE: Feds, States Countering Microsoft Appeals
AUTHOR: By Tim Dobbyn
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The Justice Department and states that brought the Microsoft Corp. antitrust case urged an appeals court on Friday to uphold findings that the software powerhouse broke the law and should be split in two to prevent future violations.


In the U.S. Court of Appeals filing, the government said the Microsoft matter was "a classic case of monopolization" in which market dominance was used to sustain or extend that power.

"The district court acted properly in imposing the structural and conduct remedy for Microsoft's wide-ranging course of illegal actions," said part of the 150-page brief.

District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson found that Microsoft holds monopoly power in the market for personal computer operating systems with its Windows product and illegally used that power, including integrating its Web-browser into Windows to combat Netscape.

On June 7, Jackson ordered that the company be broken up to prevent future antitrust violations and set other remedies, all of which he suspended pending appeal.

Microsoft told the appeals court in November that the trial court proceeding was "infected with error" and described the breakup order as radical relief.

But the government said the breakup and various conduct remedies were designed to end unlawful conduct and prevent its recurrence.

"The structural relief wisely relies on ordinary market incentives, rather than long-term judicial oversight," the filing said.

"We continue to believe our decision to integrate browsing technology into the operating system is pro-competitive and good for consumers," said Microsoft spokesman Vivek Varma.

The company had a partial victory over a collection of private suits arising from the main case when a federal judge in Baltimore late on Friday dismissed 38 claims for monetary damages.

The government had wanted the Supreme Court to directly hear the company's appeal, but the high court sided with Microsoft and sent the case to the lower appellate court, which ruled for the company in a related case in 1998.

Microsoft has drawn the appeals court's attention to Judge Jackson's many comments on the case both during and after the trial as sufficient grounds to vacate the judgement.

But the Department of Justice, 19 states and the District of Columbia that brought the case said Microsoft could not establish any prejudice from the out-of-court statements.

"Those statement provide no grounds for inferring bias or partiality, nor establish a basis for setting aside the judgement or removing him from subsequent proceedings," they said.

Friday's filing could be the final word for senior Justice Department antitrust officials, who will likely be replaced by the incoming Republican administration of President-elect George W. Bush before oral arguments scheduled to take place Feb. 26-27.

The states have said they are prepared to carry the case forward on their own should the Bush administration try to back away.

TITLE: California: An Example to UES
AUTHOR: By Robert Orttung
TEXT: RUSSIA is currently considering a major reorganization of its electricity monopoly, Unified Energy Systems. Before moving ahead, however, the country should carefully consider California's experience in reforming its own energy system. This year, shortly after implementing a deregulation plan, Californians face rolling blackouts and the future of Silicon Valley, the driving force behind the state's recent economic boom, is imperiled.


In 1996 the state legislature adopted a major reform of the way Californians get their electricity. The old system had been regulated by the state. State agencies set prices for the utilities that generated and distributed electricity. The system was very stable and seemed to have plenty of excess capacity to meet the state's needs. However, prices were much higher than the average in the United States, creating grounds for criticism.

So a coalition of utilities and large manufacturers convinced the legislature to push ahead with a policy of deregulation. The idea was to create separate generators which would distribute electricity through a state-controlled grid, a plan similar to the one Russia is now considering. According to the theory, prices for industrial and residential consumers would fall as more generators jumped into the market to produce more electricity. Market forces, rather than staid government bureaucrats, would be able to provide energy more cheaply and efficiently.

In reality the results of deregulation turned out to be quite different. Shortly after the reform, consumers in San Diego saw their energy bills double. In the summer of 2000 and then again in the late fall, the state came dangerously close to running out of electricity. Major industrial plants had to shut down their production lines "voluntarily" to reduce the load on the strained utilities. 

One key problem is that there is not enough generating capacity in the state and neighboring states do not have the extra capacity to sell California the electricity it needs. Contrary to the reformers' expectations, new generators have not entered the market. The problem is that market barriers are too high. 

Building generating capacity requires billions of dollars in investment, but no one will invest such large sums in a market that is so unstable. While prices for electricity are high now, no one knows what the market will look like in a few years, especially if the government decides to impose new regulations. 

Another problem is that the current generators do not really have the incentive to build more plants. Since they are now able to sell their electricity during peak hours at eight to nine times what it costs them to manufacture it, they are making enormous profits without further outlays.

In this situation, the major utilities, such as Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison, seem to be the main losers. They have to buy electricity at a high price from the generators and then sell it to their customers at relatively low prices required by the state. As part of the initial deal, the utilities agreed to low prices for the next few years. Accordingly, they are absorbing enormous losses. 

Or so it seems. The utilities probably did not shed their generating capacity completely. Instead, they likely set up shell companies to control some of the generators. Thus, they are still making money from the generators even though they are losing money when they sell it to their customers. Texas-based energy companies also seem to be making a killing, which, of course, is upsetting some Californians. The situation is very murky and the public does not really know what is going on, generating widespread suspicions. 

The utilities want to increase the price they are allowed to charge customers, but state regulators face a number of questions in raising rates. Why should consumers bear the costs of a failed reform? Should industry pay more than residential users? Should efficient homeowners pay less per kilowatt-hour than their wasteful neighbors? What about pensioners on fixed incomes who cannot afford a major price hike?

So far, the governor has not presented a road map for the state to address its energy problems, and it looks like California will be dealing with this issue for many years to come. Observers do not know if deregulation destroyed a system that was working fine or simply exacerbated problems that would have appeared anyway. For example, it is not clear why a lack of generating capacity caught the state by surprise. Even though the economy has been expanding rapidly, planners should have foreseen that supply would not meet demand a few years down the road. There are no simple answers. The governor claims that California will have to build more generating capacity and implement a program of stringent conservation. Such calls represent only a minimum of what needs to be done. 

Given California's experience, Russia should not rush into a simplistic reorganization of its electricity monopoly. Russia's reformers are promising enormous benefits from a plan that looks very similar to the one that California has adopted. While conditions in Russia are very different from those in California, in this case the similarities could prove to be more important.



Robert Orttung is the editor of the East-West Institute's Russian Regional Report. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.

TITLE: THE TAX ADVISER
AUTHOR: Tom Stansmore
TEXT: Tax Withholding Rules Unclear in New System 


NOW that Russia's 13 percent income-tax rate has gone into effect as of Jan. 1 of this year, I thought it might be a good opportunity to address some of the issues that go along with this reduced rate.


Most significantly, the 13 percent rate applies only to Russian "Tax Residents." Those who are not tax resident, but are subject to Russian taxation for other reasons, such as salary paid directly by a Russian company, are subject to taxation at the rate of 30 percent. As the definition of tax resident means those who have been in Russia for 183 days or more in a calendar year (Russian citizens and foreigners alike), an immediate problem arises in that no one, not even Russian citizens, can technically be considered a tax resident until at least half way through the year.

This problem leads into another issue: the employer's obligation to withhold. In the case of income paid on shore by a Russian legal entity, although it's not clear at what rate the employer is required to withhold (at least during the first half of the year), it is clear that withholding should occur.

In the case of individuals employed by a foreign company and working in their representative office (as is often the case with expatriates), the wording of the instruction makes the withholding obligations of the foreign employer confusing.

If the foreign employer does not withhold on behalf of their employee, the employee is theoretically obliged to file a preliminary tax declaration and make advance tax payments. A recent order from the Ministry of Taxes and Duties seemingly attempted to clarify these issues. Unfortunately, the instruction to which it referred does little more that duplicate the wording of the new Tax Code (which already makes one feel like a Floridian voter).

After a recent telephone conversation with the local tax authorities, it became clear that they themselves were concerned about the issue and were anxious to receive a response to their own inquires from the Central Tax Office. It seems that work has piled up for everyone over the holidays.



Tom Stansmore is head of the St. Petersburg branch of Deloitte and Touche CIS. For more information or advice, call Deloitte and Touche at 326-93-10

TITLE: New Book Casts Some Light On Local 'Shadow Economy'
AUTHOR: By Natasha Shanetskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Ever given cash to a plumber who fixed your toilet or offered 50 rubles for a car ride from a restaurant? 


You, along with more than 90 percent of Russia's population, are participating in the country's shadow economy, according to Igor Klyamkin and Lev Timofeyev, authors of a new book "Shadowy Russia."

"Cash is a way of life here, so nearly every member of the country's population is a player in the black market arena," said Timofeyev at a recent news conference where he introduced the book.

While the shadow economy has received plenty of coverage over the past several years, Klyamkin and Timofeyev, a sociologist and an economist respectively, claim their book is the first of its kind because it examines average citizens' attitudes toward the issue.

"Shadowy Russia," which details a sociological study the authors conducted in 83 of Russia's 89 regions, finds that a small but growing number of people no longer want to accept under-the-table economic relations as a way of life.

Most of these opponents are small business owners who are "ripe for change since they are sick of paying dues to the corrupt system," Klyamkin said, adding that the study found that this segment makes up only about 4 percent of population.

The shadow economy finds the bulk of its supporters among potential entrepreneurs, who make up 21 percent of those questioned. They admit they see shady transactions as an opportunity to build initial capital.

"We were really surprised at the degree to which shady economic relations have enveloped Russia's countryside," said Timofeyev in a telephone interview. 

Most city residents mistakenly perceive country folk as rule abiding and traditional, he added.

The fact that Russia has one of the world's largest shadow economies is nothing new. In December, Alexander Movsesyan of Moscow's Financial Academy told the Nezavisimaya daily that the shadow economy envelops roughly 40 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.

This figure is echoed in other reports, suggesting that the picture has not changed for years. In 1998, a study by the Russian Marketing Research Co. estimated that the shadow economy makes up 40 percent to 50 percent of the country's GDP. 

A study six years ago by Daniel Kaufmann and Alexander Kaliberda of the Harvard Institute for International Development assessed the country's unreported economy at about 40 percent of GDP.

Timofeyev called these estimates too low, saying they do not take into account everyday underground economic activities that have become standard practice.

However, Timofeyev said, one thing is certain even though the size of the shadow economy remains unclear: People's attitudes are beginning to shift, which is most evident in their reaction to the survey itself.

"The big shock was how candid the answers were," he said. "That means they are getting tired of corruption."

TITLE: Russia Hikes Oil Export Duties
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - New customs duties for the export of oil and oil products went into effect on Monday, with the higher price echelons seeing an increase in the tariff level.


These price-linked tariffs were set last month by administration decree as a result of increased prices on the international market, said Alexei Savenko, spokesperson with the State Customs Committee.

However, the market price of oil is now lower than when the decree was signed one month ago. For example, the benchmark crude Russia Urals currently hovers at a little more than $24.50 a barrel; at the end of November, it traded at around $30 a barrel. This means that it slipped down a tax bracket to the 20-euro tariff levied when oil sells between $22.50 and $25.00 a barrel.

The increases only come into play when oil sells for more than $25 a barrel. Below this price, nothing changes. At the highest extreme, when the price of oil is more than $32.50, an export tariff of 48 euros ($45.35) per ton, or 6.67 euros per barrel, will be levied. This is up from 34 euros per ton.

"The tariff always depended on the overall prices," said Dmitry Avdeev, an oil analyst at United Financial Group, a brokerage. "This time, though, there is a kind of lag between the new oil price and the tariff rate."

The progressive tariff scale on exported oil products was introduced at the beginning of 2000. Every month, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and his administration examine the scale. Sometimes tariffs are even lowered, but since oil prices started their rise in 1999, the trend has generally been upward, Avdeev said.

The price of oil has always been a volatile indicator and has become even more so as a crucial Wednesday meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries approaches. On OPEC's agenda is a proposal to cut production quotas. Reports and rumors about the extent of the cut abound and have already driven prices up, as buyers anticipate a decrease in supply.

Russia, which does not belong to the OPEC cartel, may reap the benefits of high oil prices without the restrictions on pumping. But Russia is incapable of sharply increasing its production in response to OPEC's anticipated cuts, said Mikhail Delyagin, director of the Institute of Problems of Globalization.

"Despite the fact that investment in the industry doubled, the volume of last year's extraction was limited by capacity, including the usual wear and tear of equipment," Delyagin said. "Another problem is plainly technical. We can't transport more oil than the pipelines can bear."

TITLE: EBRD, Japan Considering New Sakhalin Investment
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The EBRD and Tokyo are in preliminary talks about investing into a $10 billion project to further develop the oil and gas fields under the waters off Sakhalin Island.


"We don't have many projects in the Russian Far East and so we are interested," Jean Lemierre, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, told the Financial Times during a visit to Tokyo last week. "Japan would like us to be involved."

Lemierre cautioned that talks are in their early stages and that he wouldn't count on progress unless both Japan and Russia took the initiative. For now, an EBRD official said, even the amount that the bank might consider lending remains unclear.

There has been little comment as yet from the Russian government, but Japanese officials and Russia's Sakhalin-2 managers are enthusiastic.

"This is at an early stage, but it is really an important project for us," said Kaname Nakano, a spokesman for the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation - another likely participant should the EBRD put together a Sakhalin-2 investment package.

Nakano commented in the Financial Times that "the EBRD has played an important role in dealing with the Russians before."

But the investments the bank are pondering in the project would almost certainly be the bank's biggest ever.

They would not mark the EBRD's first foray into Sakhalin-2. In 1997, the bank lent $116 million to the project.

The idea of that loan was to provide a "demonstration effect," and also "to facilitate the implementation of an effective production-sharing framework in Russia," according to the project summary documentation.

In other words, the EBRD hoped that its example would impress others into pitching in as well. Isabel Murray, an analyst with the International Energy Agency, said that investments by any of the international financial organizations, like the EBRD or the World Bank, are often seen by private-sector investors as a green light.

"It shows some level of assurance," Murray said.

If that was the plan, however, it has met with only limited success, and the Sakhalin Energy Investment Co. - a consortium of oil majors that operates Sakhalin-2 - is again looking to the EBRD for further credits.

"The reason for taking the loan is simple," said Ivan Chernakhovsky, a spokesperson for the Sakhalin Energy Investment Co. "This way of finding money is standard in building projects. There's even a phrase for it: project financing."

Oil fields were discovered off Sakhalin between 1977 and 1979.

In June 1994, the Sakhalin-2 production-sharing agreement - Russia's first - was signed. The consortium members were Marathon Oil Co., McDermott International Inc., Mitsui & Co., Mitsubishi Corp. and Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and they originally signed on to develop the Lunskoye and Piltun-Astokhskoye fields.

After some asset swaps, buying and selling, the current composition of the consortium breaks down into Royal Dutch/Shell with 55 percent, Mitsui & Co. with 25 percent and Mitsubishi Corp. with 20 percent.

TITLE: Private Land Ownership Continues Slide
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - While the nine-year wait continues for the government to set the rules for the conversion of large tracts of the country from public to private hands, the number of hectares owned by the state is actually growing.


According to a new report by the Federal Land Service - the body charged with monitoring land ownership in Russia - the amount of private property in the nation shrank by 400,000 hectares from 1998 to 1999.

In 1998, the first year it issued a comprehensive study of nationwide land ownership, the service calculated that 130 million hectares of land - most of it in the rich farming areas of the south and southwest - was owned privately by individuals and non-governmental entities.

By Jan. 1, 2000, only 129.6 million hectares, or 7.6 percent of the country, was owned privately.

The new report attributes the decline to the liquidation of bankrupt farms and enterprises and the voluntary return of property to the state.

Gerald Gaige, chief real estate consultant for Arthur Andersen, said Russia's 1998 financial meltdown was probably the main reason for the number of bankruptcies and subsequent liquidations that resulted in the state regaining ownership of the land.

In the mid-'90s the agricultural industry received millions of dollars in aid from the West and was the testing lab for numerous projects that resulted in the transmutation of many Soviet-style kolkhoz and sovkhoz collective farms into "corporations" with allocated land as their major asset.

"After conversion to the private sector, many of the agricultural enterprises suffered from a lack of business incentives - like the lack of financing and unorganized markets - that resulted in their failure," said Gaige.

To add to the problem, the government has for years failed to enact a Land Code, which has prevented the development of a legitimate land market.

Vladimir Romanov, a top adviser to the service, said Tuesday that enacting a Land Code is one of the most important tasks facing the government.

The Russian Constitution provides for private ownership of land, but the legislative framework - the package of legislation collectively referred to as the Land Code - has yet to be considered by the State Duma.

The current Land Code was passed in 1991 and does not allow for private land ownership, thus contradicting the Constitution.

TITLE: Imports Rebounding From Post-Devaluation Plummet
AUTHOR: By Roman Kutuzov and Yulia Polyakova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - The good news for domestic producers?


Spending in nearly every category of consumer goods is growing and sales in many retail sectors have reached or surpassed pre-crisis levels.

The bad news?

The drop in demand for imports that resulted from the 1998 financial meltdown is over, a yearlong nationwide survey of consumer demand has concluded.

The survey was conducted by the research agency GfK using a method called "consumer scan," which selected 2,005 households in the country's 14 largest cities and asked them to record in a ledger every day the name of each product they bought, the store where they bought it and the price.

In order to ascertain the demand for consumer goods before and after the crisis, GfK compared sales volumes of different product categories for the first nine months of 1998, 1999 and 2000. The same picture emerged in nearly every sector - a sharp fall in the volume of sales in 1999 in comparison with 1998 and a steady increase in 2000. This growth took place in varying degrees, although sales volumes in many sectors of the market already exceeded pre-crisis levels. These include, but are not limited to, baked goods, vegetable oil, mineral water, tea, instant coffee, shampoo, soap, detergent and dishwashing liquid.

Sales of potato chips, cheese, yogurt, butter, ground coffee, deodorant and toothpaste all grew in 2000, but did not exceed pre-crisis levels. The survey also found a very small category of goods with "atypical" demand. For example, sales of pasta and beer actually increased after the crisis and continued to rise through September 2000, the last month surveyed. The soft drinks market, in contrast, shrunk in 2000.

The fall in demand for imports was yet another consequence of the crisis, resulting in a boom for relatively inexpensive Russian goods. In 2000 that tendency decreased considerably and, in certain sectors, went in the opposite direction as international corporations resumed actively defending their market positions. For example, the consumption of imported tea last year noticeably increased.

"The dollar again became cheaper," said Sergei Yashko, director of the survey for GfK.

Yashko said Russian producers are not as competitive as a year ago. Moreover, he said, many international companies have begun producing here, putting an even tighter squeeze on domestic competition. Together, domestic and foreign producers have established an alliance against "unbranded" or generic products. The market share of these products steadily shrunk in 1999 and 2000 in all categories. In some areas, large producers achieved a total victory - practically no one buys mayonnaise or detergent manufactured by lesser known brand names, the survey found.

Another discovery concerns so-called uncivilized retail, particularly the open, small-scale wholesale market. The percentage of household consumer goods purchased at small-scale wholesale markets rose steadily after the crisis and at the end of 2000 totaled 27 percent, Yashko said. If kiosk sales were included, he said, the figure could be as high as 70 percent.

Vladislav Metnev, a consumer market analyst for the Aton brokerage, said much of the growth in the "uncivilized" market could be attributed to consumers with less than average incomes who lost all their money after the crisis.

TITLE: Domestic Tobacco Producers Facing Glut
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - More than 50 billion cigarettes - equal to nearly every fifth cigarette produced in Russia last year - are in storage in the warehouses of the nation's tobacco factories, a glut that industry-watchers say is likely to lead to a consumer-friendly price war.


The stored cigarettes translate to about $1 billion worth of potential sales, said Viktor Stefashin, director of the analytical service of Grand-Tabak, an association of tobacco distributors. 

For comparison, the Russian retail market last year has been estimated at about $3.5 billion, said Mark Duerst, the head of Philip Morris in Russia - down from about $5.5 billion before the 1998 ruble devaluation steeply cut prices per pack.

Nor is the glut likely to ease soon. Domestic production will continue to rise, even while the national smoking appetite is holding more or less steady.

Stefashin, among others, says the likely outcome will be a price war on cigarettes in 2001, with big multinationals perhaps even dumping cigarettes on the Russian market at below cost so as to keep or gain market share.

"The competition on the market is very tough," said Duerst, discussing Philip Morris' decision to confront the glut not by decreasing but by increasing local production. Duerst said he suspected small factories producing non-filtered cigarettes would close in 2001, with their market taken over by majors like his company.

Already even big players are being squeezed. 

One of the largest homegrown cigarette makers, Donskoi Tabak in Rostov, produced a record 37 billion cigarettes last year. But on New Year's Eve, Donskoi closed the factory and sent its workers on vacation, citing overproduction and packed warehouses. "Production will resume again on or around Jan. 15," said Vika Andriyenko, a Donskoi Tabak spokes person.

Another major local player, Balkanskaya Zvezda in Yaroslavl, has also shut down production, citing repairs.

In 1999, for the first time Russian factories produced as many cigarettes as the nation smokes - about 260 billion, according to Tabakprom, an association of tobacco producers. That's about 16.5 cigarettes per person in Russia, according to Andrei Bakhvalov of the Biznes-Analitika market researchers.

In 2000, production surged even higher - for the first time Russia's cigarette plants were churning out more than people smoked. Production passed 300 billion cigarettes, according to Yury Avrushkin, a Tabakprom spokesperson. 

Imports of cigarettes, though they have been falling steadily over the years, still accounted for another 10 billion cigarettes, Stefashin said. 

This year, the big multinationals plan to expand further. Philip Morris produced 40 billion cigarettes in 2000, but this year it plans to produce 50 billion. Ligget-Dukkat produced 45 billion cigarettes last year, but this year it plans to invest another $60 million into its local factories, to increase production capacity to 65 billion cigarettes.

At the same time, Biznes-Analitika has been tracking little rise in per capita smoking. It is more or less flat compared to 1999, at 16.7 cigarettes per person. 

So where are all these extra cigarettes going? In theory they are piling up in warehouses.

In practice, however, some of this excess capacity has been exported. 

Legally shipping cigarettes out of Russia is hindered by double-taxation rules - which are in place until July 1, when the newly adopted Tax Code rescinds the Russian side of those taxes.

Until then, small shuttle traders will do a brisk business evading customs duties by shipping cigarettes to Ukraine, Ka zakstan and the countries of the Caucasus, said Biznes-Analitika's Bakhvalov.

Customs offices report a sharp rise last year in cigarette smuggling. For example, if in 1999, the Ukrainian East Regional Customs reported 5.4 percent of all seized contraband to be tobacco, last year tobacco had soared to 30 percent of all such contraband.

But exports are only slightly easing the pressure, and a cigarette price war seems inevitable. It will mean cutting prices that are already startlingly low.

In 2000, the average retail price for a pack of cigarettes was 9.8 rubles ($0.35) - the average is driven low because almost a third of all cigarettes sold are unfiltered papirosy, the poor man's smoke.

By comparison, according to a 2000 report by the Canadian Department of Finance a pack of cigarettes in the United Kingdom averages $5.32, in Ireland $4.54, in the United States $4,17, in Germany $2.61 and in Spain $1.63.

Taxes on cigarettes are also modest by world standards. About 12 percent of the price of a pack of cigarettes goes to the Russian budget, said Stefashin.

By comparison, the Canadian Finance Department's report says United Kingdom cigarette taxes average 86 percent, in France the taxes are 76 percent, in Germany and Spain they are 71 percent and in the United States taxes (at least in New York) are 40 percent.

Those low taxes make bootleg production - a major issue in the West - less attractive a business in Russia, said Duerst. Tabakprom agreed, reporting that illegally produced cigarettes make up less than 4 percent of the Russian market - while in some Western countries every fourth cigarette is illegally produced.

The Russian cigarette market is dominated by six big players: Philip Morris, British-American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco International, Ligget-Dugget, Donskoi Tabak and Balkanskaya Zvezda. According to Biznes-Analitika, those six hold 76 percent of the market: Philip Morris has 17 percent, BAT and JTI each have 15 percent, British Gallaher's Ligget-Dukat has 12 percent, Donskoi Tabak 10 percent and Balkanskaya Zvezda 7 percent.

The remaining 24 percent of the market is divided up among some 60 smaller factories, and industry watchers said many of them will go under in the coming months and years.

TITLE: Building Bridges to Billion-Dollar Dreams
AUTHOR: By Natasha Shanetskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Viktor Razbegin has a $50 billion building project that makes the Chunnel between England and France look like a high school science project.


He wants to build a tunnel under the Bering Strait, connecting Chukotka to Alaska, and says it is not only technically possible, but promises to be economically rewarding.

"Russia is a bridge between Asia and America," says Razbegin, director of the government Center for Regional Transport Projects, as he leans back in a stylish leather armchair in his Moscow office.

"But, frankly, we have not been doing a good job," he adds. "We need to use this chance to unite civilization."

A loud train toot interrupts his thought. He turns to a toy train on his desk and picks up its upper half - the train turns into a phone. As he calmly talks into the hybrid handset, an enormous map of Russia's railway system stares at him from the wall.

Trains and maps have been the main ingredients of Razbegin's life for the past 25 years. As a permafrost specialist, he studied the tundra and headed various transportation projects in the far northern regions during the Soviet era.

He also is behind a $20 billion scheme to build a 40-kilometer bridge between Japan and the Russian mainland via Sakhalin Island. The Railways Ministry appears to back the project.

The ministry is less committal on the tunnel to Alaska, if only because the U.S. and Russian governments have not shaken hands on the project. But ministry spokesperson Yelena Kulakova says it would be "very profitable for the Russian railway industry because it would allow us to compete with a sea-based transportation system."

Razbegin got involved with reviving the idea of building a link to Alaska in 1992 as a spirit of entrepreneurship was sweeping the country. The idea was originally contrived by Russian merchants at the end of the 19th century, shortly after Russia sold the territory to the United States. The venture in its modern form includes building a 6,000-kilometer railway system to connect the Russian and U.S. rail systems.

The project's critics argue that even if this utopian idea were to be executed, the tunnel would link two of the world's most remote, desolate and economically undeveloped areas, where the most common modes of transportation are snowmobiles and dogsleds.

A spokesman for Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles said the main problem with digging the tunnel is that "there is nothing on either end," The Wall Street Journal reported.

Razbegin's bearded face melts in a smile as he hears the argument - it is the one he has to rebut most often.

"The crucial thing everyone misses is that this venture is not about a tunnel. It is about developing adjacent territories and creating new jobs," he says. "It can be done through building infrastructure to connect Asia with North America via Russia."

That infrastructure would include a railroad, a joint electricity system and a set of telecommunication lines, including fiber-optic cables.

The first step would be to lay 3,200 kilometers of railroad to connect Chukotka with BAM, the Baikal-Amur Railroad. More than 2,000 kilometers of track would also have to be laid on the North American side to line the tunnel to the main U.S. railway system.

The tunnel itself would run much longer than the 37-kilometer Bering Strait. Razbegin's research team proposes a tunnel as long as 103 kilometers to bypass the rough terrain along the coasts.

According to Razbegin, the project has received the go-ahead from the Economic Development and Trade and Railways ministries and the Academy of Science. His interdepartmental center is affiliated with all three.

Opponents of the Chukotka-Alaska link argue it would be a financial fiasco.

"I cannot imagine, given the extreme expenses, even with China and the rest of Asia connected, that a railroad linking Siberia and North America could be economically viable for a long time to come," says Ilya Vinkovetsky, who is doing doctoral research at the University of California on Russian migration and the history of Alaska and Chukotka.

He says the history of failed expectations for the Trans-Siberian Railroad and BAM suggest that skepticism is justified. "It is difficult to imagine a proposed railway across the Bering Strait being competitive with shipping across the Pacific," Vinkovetsky says in an e-mail interview.

Razbegin objects, insisting the project has numerous potential revenue streams and a high likelihood of profitability.

For instance, he says, the railroad would shorten the shipping route across the Pacific by 10 to 14 days and could quickly become the preferred way of shipping goods between Asia and North America.

Razbegin estimates the Chukotka-Alaska railroad could carry 30 to 40 billion tons of cargo annually.

In addition, he says, building a joint Asia-Russia-North America electricity line could ring in savings of about $15 billion a year. 

Once the U.S.-Russia railroad was complete, export transit would bring Russia about $20 billion annually, Deputy Railways Minister Sergei Grishin said in September at the Baikal Economic Forum held in Irkutsk, according to the Web site of a transportation sector newspaper called Gudok.

But even if Razbegin succeeds in shattering his skeptics' fears about the economic unfeasibility of the project, he still has to find $50 billion to $60 billion in financing.

"This is not a lot of money," he says. "For example, it would be possible in a framework of a joint government project between Russia, the United States, Canada, and possibly Japan and China."

According to Razbegin, many potential investors have already expressed an interest in the project, which he boasts will turn a profit for first-tier investors within the first five to seven years of operation.

He admits this is not the easiest undertaking. Ten-month-long winters feature temperatures below minus 50 degrees Celsius, while short summers bestow overflowing rivers and unrelenting insects. Yet Razbegin is confident the project is technically viable.

"First of all, [thousands of years ago] Alaska and Chukotka were connected, so there are actually some technical advantages," he says, "Secondly, mankind by now has a lot of experience in building large, complex projects."

Razbegin himself is experienced in such projects, or at least in launching them. His second much-criticized brainchild is the scheme to build a 40-kilometer bridge between the Japanese island of Hokkaido and the Russian mainland via Sakhalin.

Both projects, he says, are part of the same goal - creating an enormous intercontinental railway system.

Despite the criticism, Razbegin and his team were able to secure the government's permission to start work on the Sakhalin bridge, which he says will cost roughly $20 billion and take about 15 years to complete.

The Railways Ministry spokes woman confirmed that the project is going ahead. Railways Minister Nikolai Aksyoneko was quoted by Interfax last week as saying that by the end of next year, his ministry "really will start construction of the tunnel under the Tatarsky Strait, which will connect the mainland with Sakhalin."

Razbegin is sure the same fateawaits the Bering Strait scheme. Now that he has sent the results of a "successful" feasibility study to the U.S. and Russian governments and developed a draft of investor proposal, all Razbegin says he needs is "a decision on the highest level."

"I know this project will be realized," Razbegin says. "If tomorrow the two presidents signed the deal, you could start buying tickets for the train that will be ready to depart in 20 years."

TITLE: Global eye
TEXT: Shooting Star


With a red-blooded bang-banger about to set up shop in the White House (reports that the new administration plans to change the name of the country from "U.S.A." to "NRA" have not yet been confirmed), looks like it's open season for the ammo-avid over in that barrel-hugging, bullet-loving land of America. Take Carey McWilliams, for example. The Associated Press reports that the North Dakota graduate student has been issued a permit to carry concealed weapons - even though he happens to be, er, blind.


But officials in the conservative state were not about to let a little thing like blindness deprive McWilliams of his God-given right to secrete deadly weapons on his person. He met all the necessary requirements for slipping a roscoe into his britches, state officials said, including the most important test: pumping 10 shots into a black silhouette target from 7 meters away, AP reports. Officials did admit that McWilliams was allowed to "get his bearings" before filling the black figure with hot lead.

McWilliams says he is packing the hidden heat for protection. "If you choose this blind victim, you might end up dead," he says. "An assailant's life is not an issue with me." (Just pray you don't accidentally bump into him at the bus stop.) Upon graduation, McWilliams plans to work in public relations for - surprise! - the National Rifle Association.



Word Play


Sleazy birds of a feather stuck together this week when The Times of London fired a just-hired editorial writer for writing a coded "up yours" to his former publisher.


Stephen Pollard was lately toiling for the Daily Express. But then that paper was bought out by porn merchant Richard Desmond, publisher of such weighty periodicals such as Nude Wives, Big Ones and Asian Babes, which complemented his sideline in running sex chatlines. Pollard was one of many Express staffers who declined to join this worthy journalistic empire. He gave his notice, worked out his time and signed a hefty contract with the venerable Times.

He wrote one last editorial for the Express: a rather dreary piece extolling the glories of organic farming. However, astute readers noticed that the first letter of each sentence spelled out a message for Desmond, upon whom Pollard wished an unpleasant sexual experience. At first, Pollard shrugged off what he winkingly called "an amazing coincidence," and the clubby London media world had a good old larf.

But his new masters at Rupert Murdoch's Times weren't larfing. They gave Pollard the ax before he'd even stuck his head in the door. His prankish pricking of Desmond was "inappropriate for a leader writer on a serious newspaper," it was said. Behind the scenes, one Times exec told The Guardian that Mr. Murdoch - a most respectable gentleman indeed - felt keenly the offense done to Mr. Desmond and refused to have further truck with any underling who would so abuse a brother publisher.

And they say there is no honor among thieves.



Labor Pains


"Never believe any categorical denial of wrongdoing on first utterance, since it's likely to be revised with clarifications, qualifications, or obfuscations within days if not hours."


- Linda Chavez, March 4, 1998.



Ain't that the truth!


And truth - or rather, the lack of same - was at the heart of President-to-Be George W. Bush's very first scandal (besides the scandal of his unconstitutional appointment to office in the first place, of course). This week, the Texas Topwater gave the heave-ho to his nominee for Labor Secretary, Linda "English Only" Chavez, after the FBI began probing Chavez's attempts to cover up her tax-free employment of an illegal alien.

The week began with a flurry of - what's the word? "Qualifications"? "Obfuscations"? "Canards"? How about "lies"? - from Chavez and various spokesmen for the Bush regime. Chavez had not employed a Guatemalan woman, Marta Mercado, as a live-in housekeeper, they said; the woman was only living with her and doing chores around the house for money. (A subtle difference to be sure, especially for someone charged with overseeing employment practices in the whole country.) If Chavez had actually "paid" the woman a "wage," the would-be cabinet secretary would have been required to provide employee benefits and pay Social Security taxes. But although Chavez - head of a right-wing fund-raising instrument dedicated to abolishing Spanish-language education programs for Hispanic children - was indeed compassionate toward her servant, she was far too conservative to pony up that kind of dough.

Chavez and the Bushfolk also swore, at first, that she never knew Mercado was an illegal alien. They quickly backtracked from this when Mercado, who is now a legal U.S. resident, said that Chavez had known of her status: Indeed, Chavez had promised to sponsor her for citizenship. (She never did, by the way.) Then the feds began probing reports that Chavez had asked her friends to deep-six the Mercado connection when the FBI came calling for background checks. Finally, as Chavez fell on her sword at a Tuesday news conference, she coughed up the prevaricating bone and admitted that she had known of Mercado's status from the very beginning.



Big Muddy


Finally, this just in from our new "Fox in Charge of Henhouse" bureau in Washington:


"We might even go so far as to recognize a right to pollute." said Gail Norton, Bush nominee to head the Interior Department, which oversees the environmental stewardship of federal parks, woodlands and wilderness areas.

TITLE: COMMENT
AUTHOR: By James Klurfeld
TEXT: Bush Too Fast In Deploying NMD System 

One of the most ideological positions Bush is taking with him to the White House has to do with an issue that should be purely a practical question: Will the nation's security be enhanced if it builds a missile defense system? 


On this issue Bush gives every impression of already having made up his mind. He does not seem to be considering the most practical questions: Can such a system mechanically work? How will it affect relations with our closest allies, almost all of whom oppose such a system? What effect will it have on potential adversaries such as Russia and China whose response to a system might be to simply build many more missiles and start an entirely new arms race? 

In this sense, Bush ought to learn from President Kennedy's experience. Kennedy campaigned on a promise to close the missile gap with the Soviet Union. Once he was president, he found out there was not only no missile gap, but the United States was well ahead of the Soviet Union. But he went ahead with a missile-modernization plan anyway, not wanting to back out of his campaign promise. His actions were so threatening to Moscow that there is evidence they were a significant factor in the Soviet decision to place missiles in Cuba in 1962. 

The Republican right has always been against the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which would have to be abrogated to deploy a defense system. It's a position based on an inherent right-wing distrust of treaties and the belief that the United States ought to be able to act unilaterally. Unfortunately, in the age of weapons of mass destruction, that has not been possible. We have relied on mutual assured destruction, not because it is our first choice for defense but because it has been the only choice. 

The problem now is that nations such as North Korea or Iran are developing the ability to launch missiles with weapons of mass destruction on U.S. territory. (Such weapons could also be delivered in a suitcase smuggled into the country - a problem that cannot be solved by a missile defense system.) 

In 1998, Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense who Bush has nominated to be his secretary, headed a panel that concluded the missile threat from those nations could emerge within five years. Bush is basing his plan to deploy an anti-missile system on the Rumsfeld commission report. 

But it's important to understand what the Rumsfeld commission did and did not do. As Richard Garwin, a member of the commission and one of the most respected defense scientists in the world, pointed out recently, the report said the threat could emerge, not that it would. And the commission made no recommendation on countering the threat. 

In addition, the system has failed in test after test, and scientists say that there might be a much more effective anti-ballistic system available in the future.

There is also the danger that if the United States withdraws from the ABM Treaty it will cause China and then Russia to build hundreds more intercontinental missiles to maintain deterrence. China now has only roughly 20 missiles deployed and Russia has been reducing its much larger inventory. But building offensive weapons has always been much less expensive than building defensive systems. 

Bush ought not rush into building and deploying a system, as the Republican right wing wants him to do. First, there should be a post-election evaluation of the threat, the technology and the consequences of building a missile defense system. As Kennedy learned, what you say in a campaign doesn't always make sense.


James Klurfeld edits the editorial pages for Newsday, where this comment originally appeared.

TITLE: EDITORIAL
TEXT: Some Points Putin Might Have Made 


SATURDAY was Press Day and, in keeping with custom, President Vla dimir Putin took advantage of the holiday to congratulate Russian journalists and mouth a few platitudes about his commitment to press freedom in Russia. "Our country has always had a particular relationship to the press," he said, with hardly a hint of irony. 


We might have thought that Putin would use the opportunity to speak about what the state has done and can do further to ensure that press freedom becomes firmly established and institutionalized here. 

He might have explained what the Press Ministry, which was created in July 1999, has done to develop the media sector and to represent its interests in government. Russian journalists, who have named Press Minister Mikhail Lesin the "number one" enemy of the press and who have called for a criminal investigation to be opened against him, seem to be confused about this matter.

Putin might also have commented on the work of his Central Electoral Commission. He could have illuminated us on what the CEC has done to help the press inform the public about the issues and candidates in local elections. After the way state-owned ORT "covered" Putin's own presidential campaign in March, there seems to be some confusion about this too.

He might also have shed light for us on the "information security doctrine" that he signed in September. He could have told the nation what this will do to make state-controlled information more widely accessible to the media and to make the government accountable to the public. Some observers seem somewhat confused about exactly why freedom of the press is a national security issue at all.

Instead of looking forward, though, Putin strangely emphasized the past. "The present generation of Russian journalists has many remarkable predecessors and teachers. I believe that you will be worthy of the best traditions of Russian journalism."

Putin did not, however, elaborate on which of predecessors he had in mind. Was it Alexander Hertzen, who ran his newspaper from London after the government chased him abroad in 1847? Or did he mean countless Soviet journalists who, at home, wrote whatever the Party told them to and, abroad, as often as not worked for the KGB?

Or maybe Putin was harking back to the beginning. Press Day is celebrated on Jan. 13 because, on that day in 1703, the first Russian newspaper was published. By Peter the Great. Who was its editor. And who wrote the lead the story. And who owned the press on which it was printed. ...

TITLE: Africa Is Losing Out
AUTHOR: By Donald G. McNeil Jr.
TEXT: IT was just as the car crested the hill above Kosovo's capital that I realized that the president of Zambia was right.


Down below was Pristina, another banged-up eastern European city full of Soviet-style apartment blocks. The only visual relief among them was that they appeared sprinkled with confetti - white satellite dishes shimmered from thousands of tiny Stalinist balconies.

But what really jumped out of the landscape was something else - vast fields of snow white Toyota 4-by-4s. In cynical New York, the symbol of the United Nations may be the double-parked limo, just as much as the Secretariat Building. But in the third world, the United Nations icon is the white Toyota Land Cruiser with the spring-mounted radio mast. It may contain blue-helmeted soldiers or a bureaucrat overseeing food sacks, but there it always is, a pristine white ocean liner nosing through the crowds of bush taxis, rickshaws or starving refugees. 

In Rwanda a year after the 1994 genocide, one could spot dozens of these white vehicles on the roads around the capital, Kigali. They are to be found in Angola, Somalia, virtually anywhere else where the United Nations and the civic organizations it works with save lives.

But Kosovo - which I saw within months of having spent four years in Africa - was clearly a higher order of aid recipient. In a province the size of Connecticut, there were literally thousands of white 4-by-4s with the logos of the United Nations, the Red Cross, Oxfam, Goal, Catholic Relief Services and so on.

What President Frederick Chiluba of Zambia charges is that the world - despite having an African as secretary general of the United Nations and despite poverty being concentrated on dark-skinned continents - runs its aid programs to soothe the white, Eurocentric nerves of the rich countries that pay for them.

His chief evidence is that the United Nations was spending $1.50 per refugee in the former Yugoslavia and 11 cents per refugee from the war in Congo, many of whom are inside his borders.

Critics of such cost comparisons say they may be out of place, considering the relative prices of labor and materials in Europe and Africa, but in my own experience they are not without a point. And here below me was the proof. In fact, since President Chiluba left out military budgets, it seemed possible that he was vastly underestimating the relative attention being paid. In Angola, scared United Nations peacekeepeers huddle in their tents counting passing trucks and trying not to get shot, while in Kosovo, battle-ready NATO troops with armor and air support (for which the United Nations doesn't pay) dominate the province - having bombed the Serbs out of it. Meanwhile, United Nations administrators run Kosovo as a virtual colony, paying for everything from police to telephones to water and garbage collection.

Switching from Africa to Eastern Europe was a shock for me. For one thing, I quickly learned that impoverished, tribal Europeans hate being compared to Africans, whom they think of as impoverished and tribal.

My Kosovo Albanian translator bridled at my saying that I didn't hear a dime's worth of difference between her cracks about the loose morals of Serb girls and what some Hutus say about Tutsi girls.

And Romanians get quite snide when I compare their problems with Zimbabwe's, even though the parallels go deeper than the friendship that existed between Zimbabwe's President, Robert Mugabe, and the late Romanian Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

The truly frustrating thing is how much of the world - of all colors - seems to think the same way. Worse than that, when it comes to attracting attention, white-skinned suffering just seems to have more bite than brown-skinned suffering.

I am convinced that one of the chief reasons NATO's members mustered the political will to bomb Serbia is that the refugees streaming over the borders into Albania and Macedonia, with their head scarves and mule-drawn wagons, looked so much like the old World War II newsreels. It was easy to believe that a new Holocaust was on.

By contrast, one stream of Africans with head bundles looks much like another. One seldom hears the individual stories that humanize them.

For example: in a camp deep in the Congo, a friend of mine met a refugee who had carried his most precious possession through the jungle for four months - a box containing his accordion. The cycles of genocide there seem unstoppable, so no one tries to stop them.

Even the stump-children of Sierra Leone, who briefly caught the eye of their former colonial masters in Britain, can't generate an outcry that rouses NATO.

A few weeks ago I was researching an article about Romanian orphanages and blundered into a better story: Many of the thousands of children who were infected with the virus that causes AIDS during the Ceausescu regime are now dying because they cannot get anti-retroviral cocktails. After two years of paying astronomical drug prices, Romania had bungled its budget and run out of money.

And I immediately had an unworthy thought: Oh boy. After years of covering AIDS in Africa, where millions of children haven't a prayer of getting the same drugs - not to mention the children dying of curable things like sleeping sickness or malaria - I finally get to write about white kids who have contracted AIDS. Now we'll see what happens.

And it did. Offers to help buy drugs for those poor white children have poured in.

One even came from a woman who grew up in Calcutta. These children are different, she said, because poverty and sickness are a way of life in India, her homeland, and children are not shielded from it - but these Romanian children are having their innocence destroyed.

I don't find anything to criticize in the kind hearts of such people who want to help the Europeans. Still, it leaves me sad.



Donald G. McNeil Jr. is a correspondent for The New York Times, where this comment originally appeared.

TITLE: Quake Claims Over 400 Victims
AUTHOR: By Marcos Aleman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - Strong aftershocks Sunday sent rescuers fleeing from the search for survivors of an earthquake that killed more than 400 people. But they quickly resumed the desperate hunt for hundreds of missing, using sniffer dogs, shovels and their bare hands. 


Workers rescued a 22-year-old man trapped for 30 hours under slabs of concrete, reviving dwindling hopes that more survivors might be found in a quake-triggered landslide in Las Colinas, a neighborhood near the capital, San Salvador. 

Drawn by the sound of tapping, workers dug for hours until they reached Sergio Moreno late Sunday. 

As the death toll rose from Saturday's magnitude 7.6 quake, President Francisco Flores said he had asked Colombia for 3,000 coffins, and overwhelmed officials began to bury some victims in common graves. 

The strongest of more than 660 aftershocks led rescuers to scale back digging in Las Colinas, which was buried by dirt that came crashing down from a mountainside Saturday morning. 

"We still don't know anything," said Gladis de Carman, searching for her missing daughter and crying as she spoke on a cell phone to her mother. "And now the ground is shaking again under us." 

The largest aftershock, measured at magnitude 5.4, caused more of the hillside to collapse late Sunday afternoon, sending rescuers fleeing in panic. No one was injured, and they soon returned to the gruesome work. 

Body-hunting dogs, sent in from the United States and Mexico, sniffed for the living and the dead under the blinding sun at Las Colinas. 

"We're looking for our friends here. This can't wait," said Juan Jose Lopez, who had come with six friends to try to dig out an elderly couple and was frustrated by the delays. 

Saturday's quake off of El Salvador's coast was felt from northern Panama to central Mexico - a distance of more than 1,770 kilometers. Sunday's aftershocks were centered within a few kilometers of the capital, according to local seismologists. 

Workers at a temporary morgue near the disaster scene said 182 bodies had been pulled from Las Colinas on Sunday. 

Dr. Mario Afredo Hernandez of the Institute of Legal Medicine said about half had not yet been identified, and those were being buried in common graves because there was no place to keep them. 

Flores told a news conference that despite his request for thousands of coffins, it was "premature" to evaluate the damage. In the post-quake chaos, rescuing took precedence over accurate counting. 

Red Cross official Mildred Sandoval reported that by late Sunday, the confirmed death toll in the quake nationwide had risen to 403. 

National Police counted 2,000 injured, 4,692 houses destroyed and 16,148 damaged. Eighty-seven churches were damaged as well - including the ruined Our Lady of Guadalupe Church overlooking Las Colinas. 

Only three survivors had been recovered from Las Colinas, but hundreds of people worked without sleep to hunt for more, many using only shovels, even their bare hands.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Sampaio Re-Elected

LISBON, Portugal (Reuters) - Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio strolled to re-election for a second five-year term, maintaining the Socialist Party's firm grip on power. 

The final count late Sunday gave the 61-year-old lawyer 55.8 percent of the vote, well ahead of the 34.5 percent won by conservative rival, Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral. "The people have re-elected me. I am proud to receive their confidence," he told cheering supporters. 

However, his triumph was marred by a low voter turnout, with nearly half of the electorate not bothering to cast a ballot Sunday, the highest-ever abstention rate in a presidential vote.



Vote in Kashmir

TANGHDAR, India (AP) - Within sight of Pakistani soldiers perched on a Himalayan mountaintop across an uneasy frontier, villagers voted Monday in Indian-controlled Kashmir in the first local polls held in 23 years. 

Islamic guerrilla groups fighting to wrest Kashmir from India have asked villagers to boycott the elections, saying they are meant to legitimize Indian authority and could hamper peace initiatives. But elections officials said voter turnout was good Monday - 65 percent in the Poonch sector and at least 84 percent in Rajouri. Figures for the Kupwara region were still coming in a few hours after polls closed. 



Khmer Rouge Law

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Reuters) - Cambodia's upper house of parliament passed a bill Monday to set up a tribunal to prosecute former members of the communist Khmer Rouge government accused of genocide. 

The tribunal will involve Cambodian and foreign prosecutors and judges jointly indicting defendants and reaching verdicts together. 

The bill was passed two weeks ago by the lower house of parliament and must now be ratified by the Constitutional Council and signed by King Norodom Sihanouk.



Wahid Under Fire

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid came under renewed pressure Monday as lawmakers reopened a probe into two financial scandals allegedly involving the head of state and a Muslim coalition withdrew its support for him. 

After an end-of-year recess, a parliamentary commission reconvened Monday to resume its investigation into a corruption scam allegedly involving Wahid. 

On Sunday, an alliance of small Muslim parties known as the Central Axis withdrew its support for him. Amien Rais, who heads the group, described Wahid's management as "dangerous."



Disputed Thai Vote

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Thailand's Electoral Commission said Monday it will question dozens of victorious candidates suspected of fraud in last week's election, raising the prospect of a rash of revotes and recounts. 

The questioning of the candidates was to begin Tuesday and end Saturday, said Gothom Arya, one of five election commissioners. Candidates who are not be able to clear themselves will either be disqualified or asked to run in revotes on Jan. 27, he said. 

Gothom refused to say how many candidates will be questioned. 



Chinese Persecution 

BEIJING (AP) - In a rare disclosure, China said Monday it has punished 242 organizers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement and sent an undisclosed number of followers to labor camps during an 18-month-old crackdown.

The government information appeared aimed at countering claims that thousands of sect followers are in jails or labor camps and came in the wake of a major weekend gathering of Falun Gong members in Hong Kong.

Since outlawing Falun Gong in July 1999, Beijing has infrequently provided figures on those punished by courts and never given an accurate tally of the numbers detained outside of the court system.

A Hong Kong-based rights group says at least 10,000 Falun Gong members are being held in more than 300 labor camps, with one camp for women in northeastern Changchun city holding 560. But a government spokesman said that none are in camps "purely because they practiced Falun Gong."



Flogging Delayed

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) - Under mounting international pressure, an Islamic court has reduced and indefinitely postponed the flogging of a 17-year-old Muslim girl who says she was pressured by her father to have sex with three men, officials said Monday. 

The girl, Bariya Ibrahim Magazu, was sentenced to 180 lashes with a cane in September by an Islamic court in the northern Nigerian state of Zamfara. 

Last week, the court reduced the penalty to 100 lashes for breaking a law against premarital sex, dropping the 80 lashes that were imposed for making unsubstantiated allegations against the men, who denied having sex with her, court officials said. The court also indefinitely postponed the sentence - which had been scheduled for Jan. 27, the first anniversary of the imposition of Islamic law, or sharia, in the region.



Congo Train Crash

BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) - The death toll from a train collision in this central African nation rose to 45 as rescuers pulled more bodies from the wreckage Friday. 

State television reported that 38 bodies had been recovered Friday afternoon, and rescuers were struggling to dislodge seven more from train cars that tumbled into a ravine in Wednesday's accident along the railroad line linking the capital, Brazzaville, to the port city of Pointe-Noire. 

Transportation officials have said the brakes of one of the trains failed as they approached the same station from different directions at Nvoungouti. 



Kissing Protest

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) - About 100 protesters puckered up in public Sunday to protest restrictions on kissing at a Brisbane park. 

The mass smooch, at which 50 couples kissed, was a show of solidarity with two gay men who were ejected from the city-run South Bank Parklands last weekend for kissing in public. 

Mark Pendleton, a protester with the National Union of Students, accused the park of discriminating against homosexuals. 

A spokeswoman for the park said couples of both sexual persuasions had been asked to "tone it down" in the park, which is popular with families.

TITLE: Israel Calls Off Talks After Settler Is Killed
AUTHOR: By Mark Lavie
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - Israel on Monday canceled a negotiating session with the Palestinians and reimposed a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip after the body of a Jewish settler slain by Palestinians was found near his greenhouse. 


Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said the killing was despicable and dealt a tough blow to the peace process. 

In response, a meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qureia was called off, officials from both sides said. 

Israel and the Palestinians are trying to draft a document that would sum up agreements and differences, with U.S. President Bill Clinton's proposals as a guide. 

The Palestinians are waiting for maps showing Israel's interpretation of the Clinton plan, under which the Palestinians would establish a state in all of Gaza, 95 percent of the West Bank and Arab neighborhoods of contested Jerusalem. 

The body of Roni Tsalah, a Jewish settler, was found Monday in an onion field of his Kfar Yam settlement in Gaza. His car, carrying a locating transmitter, was tracked to the Palestinian city of Khan Yunis, where it was set on fire. 

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killing. Ben-Ami said the assailants apparently were members of the Islamic militant group Hamas. 

After Tsalah first went missing late Sunday, Israel rolled tanks toward Palestinian-controlled areas and cut the Gaza Strip into three isolated sections. 

On Monday morning, Israel also closed the Palestinian airport in Gaza, the border crossing into Egypt and the cargo crossing into Israel. All Palestinian workers were banned from entering Israel, the army said. 

The tight closure came only a week after Israel had eased the restrictions as part of an attempt to calm the situation and renew peace talks. 

Senior Israeli and Palestinian officials have held several sessions, described by both sides as productive, though no real progress was reported. 

On Monday, Qureia was to meet with Ben-Ami. However, Palestinian officials said Israel notified them Monday morning that the session would not take place, and that no new meeting had been scheduled. Israeli officials confirmed the cancelation. 

The two sides are working against twin political deadlines. Clinton's term ends Saturday, and Barak faces re-election Feb. 6. 



******

JERUSALEM - After putting two men before firing squads and condemning two more, Palestinian authorities said Sunday that more trials - and harsher punishment - are ahead for Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel. 


Israeli TV on Sunday showed one of the executions: the body of a bound, blindfolded collaborator twisting under a seconds-long fusillade from a police squad opening fire with Kalashnikov automatic rifles - the waiting crowd outside the execution site roaring in approval at the sound of the barrage. 

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak joined the criticism of Saturday's executions and trials, which Israeli newspapers featured Sunday in full-page color spreads complete with photos of the downcast condemned. 

Barak, in a statement, called the trials "field court-martials." 

"It is regrettable that the Palestinian Authority, which aspires to be a recognized entity, has recourse to show trials which recall dark periods of history," the Israeli leader added.

TITLE: Czech Broadcasters Continue Protests
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PRAGUE, Czech Republic - Dismissing concessions made by parliament, striking journalists at Czech Television said on Sunday they would continue their protest over what they charge is political interference in their broadcasts. 


"There are still people here who have brought terror and chaos to the Czech Television," Adam Komers, a striking staffer told reporters, alluding to members of the station's management team. 

The public broadcasting service has been in disarray since Dec. 20, when the network's employees holed up in the newsroom to protest the appointment of Jiri Hodac as director. The journalists said he was politically biased. Tens of thousands of citizens staged rallies in support of the journalists. 

Hodac resigned last Thursday, citing health reasons, but his management team remains in place, rejecting the protesting journalists' demands that they leave. 

The journalists also demand that former managers, fired by Hodac, return to their posts. 

To resolve the impasse, however, the lower house of Parliament dissolved the network supervisory body that appointed Hodac and amended laws to roll back politicians' control over the station. 

Under the amendment, non-governmental organizations like labor unions, scientific groups and religious bodies would nominate members of the television council. Currently, political parties nominate council members.

TITLE: Stackhouse Scores 41, Pistons Fall to Blazers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AUBURN HILLS, Michigan - Bonzi Wells had a season-high 28 points and a career-high 14 rebounds as the Portland Trail Blazers beat Detroit 103-96, the Pistons' fifth straight loss.


Detroit's Jerry Stackhouse scored 41 points Sunday night on 13-of-18 shooting and moved past the Lakers' Kobe Bryant for the league scoring lead.

The Trail Blazers won a day after their 10-game winning streak ended in a 91-78 defeat at New York.

Portland scored a season-high 37 points in the first quarter to move out to an 11-point lead that they easily maintained against the Pistons. The Blazers scored just 12 points in the first quarter against the Knicks en route to 37 for the entire first half of that game.

Joe Smith scored 18 for the Pistons, who have lost eight of their last nine games. Steve Smith had 21 for Portland.



Toronto 107, Charlotte 99. In Toronto, Vince Carter scored 40 points, 18 off 3-pointers, as Toronto won its third straight game, beating the Hornets 107-99.


Tracy Murray, acquired from Denver on Friday, added three of Toronto's season-high 14 3-pointers on 21 attempts. He finished with 13 points, eight in the fourth quarter.

Jamal Mashburn, who had missed Charlotte's five previous games with a bruised left knee, had 21 points, 12 rebounds and five assists.

Carter went 16-for-23 from the field, including a spectacular reverse, alley-oop dunk that gave Toronto a 10-point lead with 2:15 left to play. 



Miami 90, Chicago 81. In Miami, Eddie Jones scored 12 of his 20 points in the fourth quarter as Miami handed Chicago its fourth straight loss.


Trailing by seven points early in the fourth quarter, the Heat went on a 20-4 run. Miami outscored Chicago 27-13 in the final quarter en route to its seventh consecutive victory at home.

Tim Hardaway hit two key 3-pointers in the fourth quarter for the Heat - his only baskets of the game. The first gave Miami the lead for good, at 76-74 with 7:28 left.

Anthony Mason and Brian Grant each had 19 points for the Heat.



Seattle 106, Phoenix 87. In Phoenix, Gary Payton outscored Jason Kidd 22-3, and Seattle scored the first 14 points of the game en route to its fourth straight victory.


Seattle's Ruben Patterson added 25 points and 10 rebounds, while Rashard Lewis had 20 points and nine rebounds.

It was supposed to be a battle of perhaps the two best point guards in the NBA, but the matchup was as one-sided as the game itself.

Payton, 9-for-22 from the field, also had nine rebounds and six assists. Kidd, whose only points came on a 3-pointer with 10:33 left, went 1-for-7 on field goals, adding nine assists and five rebounds.

Cliff Robinson scored 33 points for the Suns.

TITLE: European Leaders Stretching Away
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Real Madrid turned on the style to go three points clear in the Spanish first division while Nantes also stretched its French league lead despite being held to a draw. Manchester United is now 1-66 to win the English premier league after another easy win, but Serie A leaders AS Roma had a rare slip and drew at home with bottom club Bari. 

England. An awful mistake by Bradford City goalkeeper Gary Walsh helped Manchester United to a 3-0 away win. The former United player miskicked a clearance to allow Teddy Sheringham a tap-in 72nd-minute opener and Ryan Giggs and Luke completed the win. United remains 11 points clear with 53, with Sunderland second with 42 after a 2-0 win at West Ham United. Arsenal, which was held to a 1-1 home draw by Chelsea, drops to third with 40, ahead on goal difference of Ipswich Town, which beat Leicester City 2-0. Liverpool is fifth with 39 after a 3-0 win at Aston Villa. 




France. Nantes was held to a 1-1 draw at home to AJ Auxerre, but still increased its lead to three points as its rivals faltered. Nantes' Romanian international striker Viorel Moldovan equalized with seven minutes left after Djibril Cisse had given Auxerre the lead. Nantes has 40 points, three clear of Lille, which lost 2-1 at Troyes after taking the lead. Sedan also lost - 1-0 to Monaco - to drop from third to fourth with 36 points. They trail Girondins Bordeaux on goal difference as the latter drew 1-1 at En Avant Guingamp. 




Italy. AS Roma needed a late penalty from captain Francesco Totti to salvage a 1-1 home draw against bottom club Bari and the chasing pack took full advantage. Giuseppe Mazzarelli gave Bari the lead in the 69th minute, but six minutes later Totti was tripped by Diego Markic and scored the resulting penalty. Roma's lead is now down to eight points over Juventus, which edged Bologna 1-0 in Turin with an 11th-minute David Trezeguet goal. Argentine striker Julio Cruz later missed a penalty for Bologna. Fiorentina is third with 24 points after thumping AC Milan 4-0. Lazio, back under Dino Zoff after the departure of Sven Goran Eriksson, also has 24 after winning 4-3 at Udinese. 




Spain. Luis Figo was presented with his European Player of the Year award before the home game against Real Oviedo and celebrated by scoring the opener in Real Madrid's 4-0 victory. Further goals from Fernando Morientes and Pedro Munitis and a spectacular volley from Steve McManaman sealed Real's eighth successive win. Real, with a game in hand, has 38 points to Valencia's 35 after it lost 2-0 to late goals from Deportivo Coruna, which is third with 34. Barcelona is a point further back following its 3-1 win over Valladolid.

TITLE: 7 Olympic Gold Medals Earns Water Sports Award for Spitz
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Mark Spitz, who won seven swimming gold medals at the 1972 Munich Games, has tipped Dutch Olympic champion Pieter van den Hoogenband for the World Sports Award for Men's Water Sports.


Spitz, who arrived in London on Sunday, will be presented with the water sports award at the Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday.

Van den Hoogenband took gold in the 100- and 200-meter freestyle, along with bronze in the 50-meter freestyle and 4x200 freestyle relay at last year's Sydney Olympics.

Australian favorite Thorpe won three golds and two silver with two of the golds coming in relays.

"He had the best performance in the Olympic Games," Spitz told Reuters. "The fact was that he dethroned Ian Thorpe's effort and became that much more important.

"I would take gold medals for relays and put them in a different category. When I look at my Munich performance I won seven gold medals but I really won four individual medals," Spitz said.

But he resisted a comparison between his seven golds and the achievements of Sydney's Olympians.

"I am glad that I am Mark Spitz, I am glad that I am not competing and constantly compared to Mark Spitz," he said.

Spitz also emphasized the pressure that Australian Thorpe suffered at the Sydney Games.

"He had all this build-up of pressure from the year before. When you start believing your own press clippings and then you start believing that you have the potential to do what is expected of you, that's additional pressure that I didn't have."

But Spitz's attention was not just focused on the winning side as he had some kind words for Sydney's most famous loser, Equatorial Guinea's Eric Moussambani - "Eric the Eel."

"I don't think it is a disgrace to lose in swimming," he said.

"I think that it really lives up to the Olympic ideal, that it does not matter whether you win or lose, but the idea that you compete."

TITLE: Daze Buries Late Goal To Give Hawks 2-2 Tie With Avalanche
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: CHICAGO - Eric Daze scored with 79 seconds left in regulation as the resurgent Chicago Blackhawks rallied from a two-goal deficit for a 2-2 tie with the high-flying Colorado Avalanche Sunday.


Stephane Quintal kept in Eric Messier's clearing attempt at the right point, but his shot was blocked by Messier. The puck came to Daze at the top of the right face-off circle and he put a shot through traffic that beat rookie goaltender David Aebischer to the stick side.

It was the 13th goal of the season for Daze, who has three goals and six assists in his last six games.

Chicago had a couple of chances to win in the extra period, but Tony Amonte whiffed on a point-blank shot and Daze missed the net on a lunging one-timer off a two-on-one with Steve Sullivan.

The Blackhawks are unbeaten in four games (3-0-1-0) and have gone 8-2-2-0 in the last 12 to tie Nashville for third place in the Central Division.

"It seems like the last two weeks, if we don't get the lead we're still coming back strong,'' Daze said.

Milan Hejduk and Chris Drury scored in the first period for the Avalanche, who concluded a 2-0-2-1 road trip and lead the NHL with 65 points.

"The big picture of our road trip is that we picked up seven out of 10 points and that is very satisfying. And we got points in all the games,'' said Colorado coach Bob Hartley.



Vancouver 5, Calgary 1. In Vancouver, fans at GM Place got what they wanted as Bob Essensa returned to the nets and Markus Naslund made sure his goaltender had a happy birthday.


Naslund scored three times to take the NHL lead in goals and Essensa celebrated his 36th birthday with 23 saves as the Canucks won for the sixth time in eight games, 5-1 over the Calgary Flames.

Naslund's fourth hat trick of his career gave him 27 goals, nine away from his career high and two more than three others for the NHL lead.

Valeri Bure spoiled Essensa's chance for his 18th career shutout with a power-play goal at 7:35 of the third. Essensa improved to 12-3-1, matching the win total of top goalie Felix Potvin, who has 30 decisions. Potvin was booed in Wednesday's 5-1 loss against Ottawa as fans chanted, "We want Bob.''



Edmonton 4, Ottawa 1 In Edmonton, Ryan Smyth got his second hat trick of the season as the Oilers cooled off the Ottawa Senators, 4-1.


Edmonton's leader with 20 goals, Smyth recorded his last hat trick on Nov. 14, when he become the first player in NHL history to score all the goals in a 3-0 win twice.

Doug Weight assisted on all three of Smyth's goals, helping the Oilers finish a 2-2-0-0 homestand.

Shawn McEachern scored for the Senators, who had won five straight games to take the lead in the Eastern Conference.



Carolina 4, Anaheim 0. At Carolina, the surging Hurricanes set a franchise record by extending their home unbeaten streak to eight games with a 4-0 blanking of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.


Ron Francis moved into sole possession of fifth place on the NHL's all-time scoring list and Arturs Irbe made 27 saves for his fourth shutout of the season, helping Carolina stretch its overall unbeaten streak to seven games (5-0-2).

Francis, who started the day tied with Phil Esposito, scored twice to raise his career total to 1,592 points. The Hurricanes improved to 7-0-1-0 in their last eight at home. The previous mark was a 5-0-2 run in 1986, when the team played at the Hartford Civic Center and was known as the Whalers.

TITLE: Fast Start for Russians at Australian Open
AUTHOR: By Paul Tait
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MELBOURNE, Australia - Marat Safin provided the power and purpose and Anna Kournikova the fizz and color as the two Russians grabbed center stage on the first day of the Australian Open on Monday.


Defending champion Andre Agassi, Australian crowd favorite Pat Rafter and Tim Henman, Britain's only real hope in the season-opening, grand-slam event, were all in good form as the trio eased past outclassed opponents into the second round.

The towering Safin at least temporarily allayed fears that the recurrence of an elbow injury might cut short his campaign in Melbourne, the second seed serving himself out of trouble to beat Spaniard Galo Blanco 6-4, 1-6, 6-4, 7-6.

Safin, the 2000 U.S. Open champion, has had little to celebrate in Melbourne lately. He was fined for not trying in a first-round loss at the Open last year and pulled out of a warm-up tournament last week with an elbow injury.

The 1.93-meter Muscovite said he was happy with his progress, and that he had been able to play well at important times against Blanco on center court at Melbourne Park.

"For the moment it's okay, and I can serve," Safin said.

"I hope I will serve like this for the next week - two weeks," he said.

Safin showed some flashes of his notorious temper during the match but said he was unable to moderate the passion that resulted in him smashing no fewer than 48 rackets during matches last year.

"It's my character. How can I change my character? It's impossible," said Safin, who came within a whisker of finishing 2000 as the No. 1 player in the world.

The stylish Kournikova broke new fashion ground when she paraded a distinctive black and yellow outfit against the unproven Daniela Hantuchova on court one.

Still without a professional singles title, eighth seed Kournikova was a cut above the 17-year-old Slovakian and won 6-2, 7-5 in 77 minutes.

She was down 0-3 in the second set but quickly regained control against Hantuchova, who was playing in her first grand-slam tournament.

"In the second set, I think that I relaxed a little bit and started to make mistakes. I was too defensive but then I found my rhythm again," Kournikova said afterward.

Former world No. 1 Seles had hardly broken sweat before her match against fellow American Rippner was over, Rippner retiring hurt at 1-0 in the first set after falling and twisting her ankle.

Eighth seed Henman beat Morocco's Hicham Arazi - a quarterfinalist in Melbourne last year - 7-6, 6-4, 6-4.

Agassi followed Henman onto court and was in a confident mood after his relatively uneventful 6-0, 7-5, 6-3 win over Jiri Vanek of the Czech Republic.

"For the first match, I couldn't have really done it better today," Agassi said. "If that continues, I have a good feeling for how quickly I'll get into my best form."

Rafter, who could be playing his last grand slam in front of his home crowd after hinting at retirement, beat his friend and compatriot Scott Draper 6-3, 6-2, 7-5.

Henman and Rafter find themselves in a talent-packed half of the draw that also includes Safin, as well as former champions Agassi and Pete Sampras.

Chanda Rubin of the United States won the dubious honor of becoming the first seeded casualty of the tournament, the 11th seed beaten 6-3, 6-0 by Slovakian qualifier Janette Husarova.

Defending champion Lindsay Davenport beat Jelena Dokic 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 after dropping the first set to advance to a second-round clash against German qualifier Greta Arn.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Igelstrom Sets Record

IMPERIA, Italy (Reuters) - Sweden's Emma Igelstrom set a European short-course record in the women's 50-meter breaststroke at a World Cup meeting on Sunday while compatriot Johanna Sjoberg completed a clean sweep of the butterfly and freestyle sprints. Igelstrom, who has been suffering from illness since the European short-course championship in Valencia in December, set a new mark of 31.17 seconds, bettering the record of 31.19 set by fellow Swede Louise Karlsson in Espoo, Finland, on Nov. 21, 1992.

Australia's Brooke Hanson finished a mere 0.01 seconds behind in 31.18, while American Megan Quann, the Olympic 100-meter-breaststroke champion, was third in 31.40.

Igelstrom's victory avenged a defeat by Hanson in the 100-meter breaststroke final on Saturday, the first of two days of races in this northern Italian city.



Nike Inks Hewitt

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australian teen star Lleyton Hewitt signed the richest sponsorship deal in men's tennis in 2000 to wear only Nike tennis gear for five years, The Age newspaper said on Monday.

The newspaper said industry sources estimated the deal to be worth as much as $15 million, but Hewitt's management firm, Octagon, declined to comment on the size of the package with the sportswear company.

Hewitt, seeded seventh at the Australian Open which started on Monday, is among the favorites to win the season's first Grand Slam event after taking the Sydney international title on Saturday.

Nike has sponsored Hewitt since he burst on the scene two years ago and considers him a potential world number one.

"If you combine his obvious tennis talent with his personality - he's got a personality which we think excites people - he's the complete package," The Age quoted Nike legal relations director, John Slusher, as saying.

Hewitt, who played a key role in Australia's 2000 Davis Cup victory, last year was the first teenager to win four titles in a season since Pete Sampras 10 years before.

TITLE: Furyk Triumphs Over Golf's Big Names
AUTHOR: By Doug Ferguson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KAPALUA, Hawaii - Tiger Woods expects to win every tournament he plays. Jim Furyk's expectations were substantially lower in the Mercedes Championship, which made his victory that much more surprising.


Furyk had not played in two months, sidelined by an injury to his right wrist when he fell awkwardly while trying to break up a pass as his buddies tossed around a football after a Baltimore Ravens game in October.

"Just to come here and complete the 72 holes, I would have been happy," Furyk said Sunday. "To play as well as I did ... I'm pretty amazed."

Even more shocking was the way he won.

Rory Sabbatini was a man of equally low expectations because it was his first time at Kapalua and his game is not particularly sharp in January. He played well enough to win, and needed only a 3-foot putt on the 72nd hole to play a little longer.

But those 3 feet included these variables - the slope of the green went to the right, while the grain of the grass and the wind went to the left.

The grain won.

With a driver in his hand to prepare for the sudden-death playoff, Furyk's face was a mixture of sadness and relief as Sabbatini's short birdie putt veered sharply to the left. Furyk had a similar line from about 10 feet moments earlier and made it.

"I guessed right," he said.

He closed with a 6-under 67, which gave him a 274, a one-stroke victory over Sabbatini and $630,000 for his sixth PGA Tour win.

"I've been in that situation. I've felt like I've given an event away, had a chance to win or get in a playoff and just missed," Furyk said. "It's a pretty sick feeling."

Also leaving the Plantation Course at Kapalua with a sick feeling was Ernie Els, who missed five birdie putts inside 15 feet on the back nine and finished two strokes behind.

Els tried to summon the magic from a year ago, when he matched eagles and birdies with Woods on the 18th hole - once in regulation, once in a playoff - before losing on the second extra hole.

Needing another eagle on the 18th, Els pulled his approach on the downhill, 633-yard hole into a hazard and watched another Mercedes Championship slip away. He finished two strokes back and wondered what could have been.

The Big Easy had a four-stroke lead going into the weekend and let it get away.

"I lost a bit of concentration," Els said. "If I don't get in my own way this week, I could have won."

Instead, he was a bit player in another thrilling finish at Kapalua. That's more than can be said for Woods, who wasn't around for any of the theatrics.

Playing for the first time in a month, Woods never got it going. He was eight strokes back going into the last round and managed only a bogey-free 69 that left him six behind, in a tie for eighth.

"I wanted to make sure I could finish the tournament," Furyk said.

He did, in style.

After getting into the mix with a long eagle putt on the fifth, Furyk thought he had thrown away his chances when he flew a fairway bunker shot over the green on No. 16. But he holed the 12-foot par putt and pumped his first, realizing he was still in the hunt.

Sabbatini gave back the lead when his approach on the 16th spun off the green, and after both nearly made birdies on the 17th, the tournament was settled on the closing hole.

"There's nothing in golf that's ever a gimme," Sabbatini said.

TITLE: Blue Jays Send Ace Starter to White Sox in 6-Player Trade
AUTHOR: By Rick Gano
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHICAGO, Illinois - David Wells could be just the pitcher the Chicago White Sox need. It's a safe bet he'll also be more than just the staff ace.


An opinionated man known for his girth and off-field mirth, Wells might also fill some seats at Comiskey Park, where the AL Central Division champs often played to small crowds a year ago.

Poor attendance is apparently not something Wells tolerates lightly. He was traded Sunday from Toronto to the White Sox, not long after he ripped the Blue Jays' front office and their fans.

How will Wells, who was honeymooning in Australia and New Zealand when the trade was announced, adjust to his sixth team?

"He should fit right in. Boomer is Okay," said White Sox general manager Kenny Williams, who was one of Wells' teammates during his first stint with the Blue Jays at the beginning of his career.

"I don't anticipate any problems. And if there are, we will deal with it. The man can pitch. ... He leads by example on the field. Off the field, he's his own man. He always has been."

The White Sox sent pitchers Mike Sirotka, Kevin Beirne and Mike Williams and outfielder Brian Simmons to Toronto for Wells, a 20-game winner last season, and pitcher Matt DeWitt.

"Certainly David Wells will be missed," Blue Jays general manager Gord Ash said. "He was an important guy for us, but it's time for him to move on."

Wells, 37, is 161-107 in his 14-year career, including 20-8 last season with a league-best nine complete games in 35 starts. He has averaged 16 victories the last six years and has been at his best in the postseason with an 8-1 record in 19 games.

"We needed an ace, and the price for an ace is high," Williams said. "We won 95 games and got to the playoffs and it wasn't enough."

TITLE: Road to Super Bowl XXXV Paved With Defense
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OAKLAND, California - Even Shannon Sharpe acknowledges that the Baltimore Ravens don't have the typical Super Bowl offense.


"We're not that good, but we're effective," the Ravens tight end said after Baltimore beat the Oakland Raiders 16-3 Sunday to reach the first Super Bowl in the history of the franchise that, until 1996, was the Cleveland Browns.

In truth, the offense needed to make just one play, a 96-yard pass to Sharpe from Trent Dilfer on a third-and-18 from their own 4-yard line in the second quarter. It was the longest pass play in NFL postseason history, gave the Ravens a 7-0 lead and Baltimore turned the rest of the work over to the defense.

They now face a similar team in the New York Giants, a team whose strength is its defense.

Nonetheless, the Ravens were installed as two- to 2 1/2-point favorites, primarily because the AFC is a bit stronger than the NFC and because Baltimore's offense might have scored 41 points against Minnesota the way the Vikings' defense played Sunday.

The Super Bowl will be a homecoming of sorts for Dilfer, who started for six years for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before being replaced late last season by Shaun King and let go in the offseason. He became Baltimore's starter at midseason during a stretch in which the Ravens went five games without a touchdown.

He is now 10-1 as a starter.

"Obviously I'm excited," said Dilfer, who finished nine-of-18 for 190 yards.

"The greatest lesson I've learned in life is that you have to appreciate the moments that are hard. You can't go running from adversity. I'm very thankful for my years in Tampa. That experience helped develop the man that sits here today."

Dilfer did what he had to do Sunday, notably the one big play and ball security. He was intercepted early in the third quarter with the Ravens leading 10-0. But the defense did its work afterward - with a first-and-goal at the Baltimore 2, the defense held Oakland to a field goal by Sebastian Janikowski.

Then, Dilfer took the offense down the field for 51 yards and Matt Stover's field goal boosted the lead back to 10. That was all the Ravens needed, although the defense played loosely in the fourth quarter and Oakland almost scored - a TD pass from Bobby Hoying to Andre Rison was nullified by pass interference on Rison.

Hoying was in because Rich Gannon was hit in the shoulder in the second quarter by Tony Siragusa. He went out of the game, returned in the third quarter, but then left again.

"I don't know if it would have made a difference if I had been 100 percent healthy in the second half," Gannon said. "They were the better team today."



New York Giants 41, Minnesota Vikings 0. Ho-hum. Another NFC championship game at the Meadowlands, another shutout for the New York Giants.


Yet it wasn't the defense, which held high-powered Minnesota to 114 yards and had five takeaways, that drew the loudest praise in Sunday's 41-0 rout. The Giants are heading for their third Super Bowl because their offense was unstoppable and quarterback Kerry Collins was a record-setter.

"It's reaffirming, when you get to this point, of the things that you're doing and the things that you're trying to do the right way," Collins said after he threw for five touchdowns and 381 yards in the Giants' most convincing win of a stunningly successful season. "I've had so much help since I've gotten here. No man does it alone."

No man since Sid Luckman of the Bears in 1943 had thrown for five TDs in an NFC playoff game. Few men have gone through the off-field problems Collins has endured - alcoholism, charges of making racist comments to teammates - and wound up guiding a team to a Super Bowl.

And few men have made guarantees the way coach Jim Fassel did, then seen that prediction blossom into something far more impressive. After the Giants, then 7-4, lost to Detroit, Fassel promised his team would make the playoffs. The Giants have won seven straight and are headed to Tampa, where 10 years ago they won their second Super Bowl crown.

"It was the match, and the fire has been burning since then," Fassel said. "I think we shocked a lot of people, but we didn't shock ourselves."

They definitely shocked the Vikings (12-6) by taking a 14-0 lead before Minnesota's vaunted offense got onto the field. Collins found Ike Hilliard sprinting behind the depleted secondary for a 46-yard touchdown with just 1:57 gone.

The Vikings mishandled the ensuing kickoff and Lyle West recovered at the Minnesota 18. On the next play, Collins hit Greg Comella for the fullback's first career touchdown.

The rout was on.

"We were going to throw it up and expose their defensive backs," said Amani Toomer, who had a 7-yard TD catch in the third quarter to end the scoring. "They can't play with us."

Particularly without regulars Orlando Thomas and Kenny Wright, which made New York's decision to throw - and throw often - an easy one.

"We felt it became contagious," offensive coordinator Sean Payton said. "We couldn't get the ball out there enough."

The defense was grateful, and showed it by completely befuddling quarterback Daunte Culpepper, the first-year starter who looked it. The Giants also made star receivers Randy Moss (two catches, 18 yards) and Cris Carter (three for 24) virtually invisible.

The touchdown receptions kept coming: Joe Jurevicius had an 8-yarder and Hilliard had a 7-yarder. Brad Daluiso added field goals of 21 and 22 yards.

Hilliard made 10 catches for 155 yards and Toomer six for 81. New York gained 380 yards in the air and 518 overall against the Vikings despite being underdogs. Minnesota, which rarely plays well outdoors, was a two-point favorite.

The Vikings became the first NFC championship shutout victim since the Giants beat Washington 17-0 en route to winning the Super Bowl following the 1986 season. It was their first shutout loss in 158 games since Dennis Green became coach in 1992.

"This team was referred to as the worst team ever to win the home-field advantage in the National Football League," Giants co-owner Wellington Mara said. "And today, on our field of painted mud, we proved we're the worst team ever to win the NFC championship. In two weeks, we're going to try to become the worst team ever to win the Super Bowl."