SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #639 (6), Friday, January 26, 2001
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TITLE: Mirilashvili Arrest Given Political Overtones
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Since St. Petersburg prosecutors arrested prominent Russian-Israeli businessman Mikhail Mirilashvili on Tuesday, speculation has raged over the possible political and business motives for the arrest.


And while the prosecutors are sticking to their story - that Mirilashvili was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping as the result of a criminal investigation begun last September - Russian media and sources close to Mirilashvili are focusing on his connection to two other men who have fallen foul of prosecutors: Media-MOST's Vla dimir Gusinsky, and businessman Dmitry Rozhdestvensky.

Gusinsky, the president of the Russian Jewish Congress, is under house arrest in Spain awaiting a Madrid court decision on a Russian extradition request. Mirilashvili is vice president of the Jewish Congress, one of the two main national Jewish organizations in the country.

Rozhdestvensky, who has been charged with fraud and embezzlement, is head of the board of directors of the advertising and film production company Russkoye Video. Media-MOST's acquisition of a stake in Russkoye Video is at the heart of the case against Gusinsky.

In an interview with The St. Petersburg Times, Rozhdestvensky, whose trial is due to open Feb. 22, described Mirilashvili as "an old friend." The two men have a long-standing business association, including partnership in the history of Russkoye Video.



KIDNAPPING CHARGES

At a press conference on Wednesday, however, City Prosecutor Ivan Sydoruk denied that Mirilashvili's arrest had "anything to do with either Media-MOST or [Mirilashvili's] membership of the Jewish Congress."


"We have enough proof to suspect [Mirilashvili] of organizing the kidnapping of two St. Petersburg businessmen last year," said Sydoruk. "He will be officially charged within the week."

Sydoruk refused to give any details on the names or age of the kidnapped. 

Immediately after news of the arrest broke, Yury Novolodsky, Mirilashvili's lawyer, called a press conference and declared his client innocent, demanding his release on bail or on a guarantee that he would not leave St. Petersburg.

Novolodsky said that Mirilashvili was calm, if confused by the charges, which the lawyer described as extremely vague. He also said that prosecutors were trying to frame Mirilashvili, who, he said, did not know anything about the investigation or what it might be linked to.

"[Mirilashvili] came to see me in my office [Tuesday] evening and said he was afraid that there was a smear campaign being organized against him," said Novolodsky on Wednesday. "Half an hour later, the police came and took him to the Prosecutor's Office to be interrogated."



A RANGE OF THEORIES

Despite the prosecutor's statements to the contrary, the Gusinsky connection was still highly favored by commentators. Media-MOST's offices in Moscow were also searched by police on Wednesday.


And although Rozhdestvensky said to Interfax Wednesday that "there is no connection between the Russkoye Video case and Mirilashvili's arrest," he said in an interview that when he himself was arrested in 1998, "Investigators asked me to give evidence against Gusinsky and Mirilashvili, and made anti-Semitic remarks."

"They couldn't [successfully prosecute] me, so they've gone after Gusinsky and Mirilashvili." 

NTV television, part of Gusinsky's Media-MOST, has been highly critical of President Vladimir Putin's government, and many commentators have said that his case and other attacks on Media-MOST are politically motivated.

"Law-enforcement agencies are being used more and more for political and economic goals," said Novolodsky.

Tankred Golenpolsky, a leading member of the Russian Jewish Congress, said to Agence France Presse that he did not believe the charges against Mirilashvili, whom he described as "a pleasant, cultured young man." 

"We'll have to wait and see what the courts say before drawing conclusions," Golenpolsky was quoted as saying.



BUSINESS INTERESTS

Mirilashvili, 40, is a native of Georgia who now holds dual Russian-Israeli citizenship. Together with his father, Mikhail, and brother, Gabriel, who now reportedly live in Israel, Mirilashvili is said to control a wide range of St. Petersburg businesses, including real-estate, pharmeceutical, trading, entertainment and construction companies.


Mirilashvili himself is said to control the Conti Group, which runs a number of casinos in the city, as well as having connections to the local branch of LUKoil, and being a major shareholder in the Gostiny Dvor department store.

Police on Tuesday and Wednesday searched Mirilashvili's apartment on Kamennoostrovsky Prospect, and LUKoil's offices on Moscow's Tverskaya Ulitsa. 

According to both Dmitry Dolgov, spokesman for LUKoil, and Mikhail Varganov, director of the company's St. Petersburg branch, police took away audio and video tapes from the office but did not remove any documentation. 

Interfax quoted the two LUKoil representatives as saying that the search was "only vaguely connected" to LUKoil. Mirilashvili has an office in the same building, although it was not clear if that had been searched as well.

"Mirilashvili has never been an official LUKoil representive in the Northwest, but we've heard that he has introduced himself as such," the two said according to Interfax. 



CRIME CONNECTION

However, Prosecutor Sydoruk also said on Wednesday that Mirilashvili could have been involved in a triple murder that took place in the center of St. Petersburg last September, perhaps in response to the kidnapping of Mirilashvili's father a few weeks before that.


In the first incident, two men and a woman described by prosecutors as well-known St. Petersburg mobsters of Georgian nationality were shot dead in broad daylight in front of the Astoria hotel, where a conference on investment and business security was taking place, which Mirilashvili was chairing.

At the time, some local reports hinted that Mirilashvili - who is said to have an underworld-style nickname, Misha Kutaissky - was behind the shootings, in revenge for his father's abduction.

Novolodsky called rumors of Mirilashvili's criminal ties absurd. "The [shootings] may or may not be connected with the arrest. I have no comment," he added.

Rozhdestvensky also rubbished the kidnapping and murder allegations. "I have never heard of a more absurd case," he said. "Mirilashvili is a peaceful man, incapable of committing any crime."

"It makes no sense for him to murder three people outside a business-security conference he himself was holding."

Ruslan Linkov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Democratic Russia party, called the charges "absolute nonsense," according to an Interfax report.

"This is yet another demonstration of anti-semitic tendencies [...] on the part of [the police and prosecutors]," Linkov, who has close ties to Rozhdestvensky, was quoted as saying.



Staff writer Vladimir Kovalyev also contributed to this report.

TITLE: Kokh To Take Charge Of NTV
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Gazprom-Media head Alfred Kokh announced Thursday that he is taking over control of NTV television and planning to install a new board that will not include NTV founder Vla dimir Gusinsky.


The announcement was a stunning turn in the months-long battle for the only national television station still independent of the Kremlin. 

The stage was set earlier Thursday when court marshals seized the disputed 19 percent of NTV shares and forbade Media-MOST from voting with them.

"This means that the number of voting shares is 81 percent, and consequently Gazprom with 46 percent is the controlling shareholder," Kokh said at a news conference.

Gusinsky's Media-MOST holding company said the court marshals had violated the court decision and predicted the battle was not yet over.

Kokh said he plans to call an emergency shareholders meeting within days and bring in new Gazprom representatives, including himself. Gusinsky and his closest associates, Igor Malashenko and Andrei Tsimailo, will be ousted.

Management changes at NTV are also likely, Kokh said, but he promised to do his best to keep the existing team. Appearing later in the day in a dramatic duel with an NTV correspondent on the channel's program "Geroi Dnya," or Hero of the Day, Kokh said he is "satisfied" with Yevgeny Kiselyov as NTV's general director.

After insistent questions about the Kremlin's role in his takeover of NTV, Kokh said in both public appearances that on Jan. 14, President Vladimir Putin had summoned him to his country residence to discuss the future of NTV. According to Kokh, Putin demanded that Gazprom-Media should not influence the channel's coverage. 

"Shares, debts, finance is your prerogrative," Kokh quoted Putin as saying. "But don't touch journalists and management, that is my prerogative. I am the guarantor of press freedom. Our task is to preserve the management and editorial team as much as possible."

Media-MOST said Thursday that Kokh had jumped the gun. Both in comments from the press service, and on NTV's news program, the company focused on the difference between the document it had received from the Moscow Arbitration Court earlier this week and the one it got from the court marshals Thursday. 

According to Media-MOST, the court froze the 19 percent stake but refused Gazprom-Media's demand that Media-MOST be barred from voting with these shares. The court marshals, however, ordered the shares be excluded from voting.

"Obviously, under pressure, the court marshals have violated the court's decision and carried out a crime," Media-MOST spokesman Dmitry Ostalsky said. He said Media-MOST will dispute the court marshals' decision in court. "Nobody other than the court can deprive shareholders of their right to manage their property," Ostalsky said.

"The procedure will take longer than Kokh would like," he said. "Mr. Kokh is rushing."

Kokh said there is no contradiction between the two documents. "The form of arrest is determined by the court marshals, not by the court," he said.

The dispute over the 19 percent portfolio derives from an agreement Media-MOST and Gazprom-Media signed on Nov. 17. Both sides accuse the other of violating the agreement and suits have been filed in London, Gibraltar and Moscow. The shares were frozen Thursday pending a decision by the Moscow Arbitration Court, which is scheduled to hear the case on Feb. 14.

"This is a blatant, rude attempt to disregard the court and simply take our television company away from us," Kiselyov said in dramatic comments aired by NTV. "And the ruler will be not the Prosecutor General's Office, not Kokh, but President Putin. The law is on our side, I am convinced. We will defend our legal rights, and we will win."

In an attempt to prevent the takeover of NTV, Media-MOST announced late last week that they were ready to sell Gusinsky's shares in NTV and three other media companies to a consortium of investors led by CNN founder Ted Turner. The company challenged President Putin to back the purchase and guarantee that the state would not interfere in editorial matters. The $300 million raised from the sale would go to repay loans to Gazprom.

Christopher Renaud, Media-MOST's head of finance and strategic development, described the situation as a race between Media-MOST trying to repay the loans first and Gazprom-Media trying to take over the company before the loans had been paid.

Among the nine board members Kokh plans to nominate, there are five Gazprom representatives. Media-MOST is to be represented by NTV's Kiselyov, TNT head Sergei Skvortsov and another NTV official, Mikhail Shmushkovich.

There is a ninth board member on Kokh's list: chairman of the state-owned RIA news agency, Vladimir Kulistikov. Last October, Kulistikov left his post as NTV's deputy director and joined RIA, which is part of the government-owned television and radio conglomerate, VGTRK. The conglomerate is headed by another Media-MOST defector, former NTV president Oleg Dobrodeyev.

Last week, the government-owned newspaper Parlamentskaya Gazeta reported that Media-MOST planned to replace Kiselyov with Kulistikov in an attempt to smooth its relations with the government. Media-MOST officials vehemently denied the reports.

Kokh blurred the answer to the question of whom Kulistikov will represent, but pointed to his expertise in managing NTV.

The prosecutor's office on Thursday called Malashenko, Gusinsky's first deputy, and NTV anchor Tatyana Mitkova in for questioning on Friday morning. Ostalsky said Malashenko was abroad and could not appear.

TITLE: Blockade Survivors Who Lived by Bread Alone
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Lidiya Lifanova, a 77-year-old pensioner, has not thrown away a piece of bread for 60 years.


"For me bread is priceless," Lifanova said. "All these left-over odds and ends that we have in our family we give to stray cats and dogs," she said.

Nadezhda Samsonenko, another 77-year-old woman, puts seemingly useless scrapings from plates in the fridge with which she magically prepares delicious meals. 

Unappealing frozen fish, three-day-old boiled potatoes left by her young relatives, a desiccated carrot, left-over broth, and spices all combine in her pot to create a delicious soup that wastes nothing. She could even make glue and bean skins an appealing dish. 

Far from being some modern super-recycling effort, however, these are habits the women developed during the 900-day blockade of Leningrad during which the city was surrounded by Nazi troops. While the siege ended 57 years ago this Saturday, more sombre ceremonies will mark the 60th anniversary of its beginning later this year.

At the beginning of the siege on Sept. 8, 1941, the German army destroyed all railways into the city, blew up Badayevsky, the city center's main food storage facility, shut off electricity, water and all possible routes of nourishment and vowed to starve Leningrad to death until it gave in.

But the city never surrendered. When the blockade ended, only 560,000 people remained in the city, which in 1941 had a population of 3.2 million. Of those, 1.7 million were evacuated during the war while 600,000 joined the army. Starvation, sickness and bombing raids took the rest - more than 500,000. 

At that time, small rations of bread - which was often more saw-dust than flour - were available on a daily basis and distributed according to the following scheme: laborers - 250 grams; office workers - 200 and an additional 125 grams for each of these peoples' dependents. 

Given the spartan fare, people had to use their imaginations to come up with more palatable cuisine - which today would look more at home on a carpenter's bench: soup made from joiner's glue; leather belts; potato peels and tea from pine twigs for vitamins. Others dug the sweet soil near the bombed-out Badayevsky facility following the German bombing, where fire had melted sugar into the earth. 

In more morbid circles, some people actually sold meat from corpses and tried to pass it off as pork. According to Nina Volodina, who was 10 years old in 1941, city radio broadcast almost constant warnings about cannibalistic practices. Once when Antonina Mirinova, now 75, went to take water from the Neva river ice-hole she came across the severed head of a woman who had obviously been eaten. 

"What was striking is that we were not shocked by the sight or the existence of cannibalism," said Mironova. "We just tried to fill our buckets, a difficult task with the head constantly popping up." 

So pervasive were the ugly signs of hunger that one became inured to them in time. Samsonenko recalls walking down Ulitsa Nekrasova in December, 1941 when a man in front her, struggling to catch his balance, plopped down on a box at the side of the side walk. When Samsonenko reached him, she found he was dead of exhaustion and starvation. 

"Wherever we walked somewhere we simply stepped over the corpses on in our path," said Volodina. "We no longer reacted to such sights." 

Despite the thick skin one had to develop during the blockade years to survive, no one had any illusions that they could survive without help. In turn, many thousands of the city residents were ready to give it. 

Volodina recalled that one mother of two in her communal apartment took on the responsibility of two more young children after their mother died of starvation while their father was at the front. He too was killed, and from the blockade on, the neighbor treated the children as her own. 

Indeed, except for the very young or old, women dominated the city during the blockade. When bombing set whole city blocks ablaze, it was women who extinguished them in the fire brigades. Women also dug trenches for shelter and stood in the watch towers, watching for enemy planes on the horizon. It was they, too, who pulled survivors from under smoking rubble, or looked after the children of the dead, whom they would find trying to wake their dead mothers. 

In a way, it was not the Red Army that saved Leningrad from the ruin of the war, but the city's own tradition of humanism and culture. 

Samsonenko, who worked in a school during the blockade, would read the poems of Alexander Pushkin to the children to distract them from their painful hunger. Later, in the evenings, radio announcers would read those same verses to distract adults from their hunger as well. 

Indeed, the city refused to give its culture up. People went to the symphony, saw plays, visited museums, wrote and read. They visited the zoo as well, a storehouse of possible food that no one ever dared to eat. 

Some people - including Alexandra Pukhova, who smiles gently at the recollection - even managed to fall in love. The young sailor she met, she added, would always leave her extra rations of bread in her apartment 

"It moved me so much that he didn't just give it to me outright, so as not to embarrass me," Pukhova said.

They married on January 30, 1944, three days after the blockade was over. On September 28, 1944, she gave birth to a son.

After the harsh winter of 1942, spring brought some relief and people were able to cultivate modest gardens in local parks.

Those who remained alive set about cleaning up the city after the long winter. 

Pukhova said that there were many places where the corpses of the deceased were piled, and in spring all of them were buried at what is now Piskaryovskoye memorial cemetery, in the North East of the city. Despite the devastation of hunger and war, Leningrad miraculously never suffered any outbreaks of disease during the siege. 

Those blockade survivors who are still among the living are now, of course, pensioners. In addition to the standard 800-ruble state pension they receive an additional 800 rubles. Sometimes, the government also gives them discounts on bread and sugar.

It can hardly be called luxury, but after surviving the blockade, Lifanova - who still hasn't thrown a piece of bread away in 58 years - is hardly inclined to wastefulness.

TITLE: Communists Walk Out Over Land Bill
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: With left-wing deputies staging a walkout in protest, the State Duma on Thursday gave a narrow tentative approval to a bill enabling the private buying and selling of non-agricultural land. 


The Duma voted 229 to 168 on first reading to add a chapter to the Civil Code regulating business deals involving land.

The proposal had been blocked by Communists who strongly opposed trading in land, most of which remains in the hands of the government and collective farms left over from the Soviet era. 

The bill must go through two more readings, pass the Federation Council and receive President Vladimir Putin's signature to become law. Second readings are usually held within a month.

Communists and their allies argued unsuccessfully Thursday that the rich or politically connected would gobble up the best land, pushing most of the population deeper into poverty. 

"Those who work and live on land don't have money and won't have any tomorrow," said Nikolai Kharitonov, the leader of the Communist-allied Agrarian faction. "If we pass this bill, we will become slaves tomorrow." 

He said it was "premature" to allow sales even of urban land. 

"Those who vote for this bill hate farmers," echoed Communist Yury Nikiforov. 

After the vote, Kharitonov led left-wing deputies out of the Duma hall in protest. 

Liberal and centrist supporters of the bill dismissed such protests as pointless since the bill only refers to non-agricultural land. The ban on deals in farmland will remain in place until a special Land Code is approved. 

Pavel Krasheninnikov, the head of Duma's legal affairs committee and member of the liberal Union of Right Forces faction, said the new bill would provide long-needed legal guidelines. 

The State Land Committee estimates the value of the nation's land at $5 trillion. Supporters of the Land Code point out that if the government were to levy a tax on privately owned land - as is done in the West - the state coffers would bulge. 

Land deals are currently regulated by myriad laws approved by local legislatures, and the legal confusion has created a rich ground for corruption and fraud. The absence of coherent legislation has spooked foreign investors and helped stall economic development. 

The approval on first reading Thursday will no doubt cheer those foreign investors who have for years been urging the government to cobble together a law that would clearly guarantee ownership rights to land. They say the lack of legislation has drastically slowed down their investments into the country.

But Vladimir Plotnikov, head of the Duma's agriculture committee, said Thursday night that the bill would probably face a drawn-out fight to get through a second reading because among the agricultural lands banned from private ownership are dachas and gardens. 

"What we are doing by passing this article now is actually forbidding people who have dachas and gardens from doing anything with them," Plotnikov, who is also a member of the Agrarian faction, said in a telephone interview. "They can't sell them, give them away or mortgage them."

The Land Code bans the sale of seven different kinds of agricultural land, and liberal deputies failed to read the fine print in their rush to get the code passed in first reading, he said.

President Vladimir Putin's representative to the Duma, Alexander Kotenkov, strongly backed the bill. 

"If we don't enact the Civil Code chapter, we will preserve the black market in land," he told lawmakers before the vote. 

The 1993 Constitution guarantees the right of citizens to own private land. But legislation setting up procedures for buying and selling land has been stalled for years in parliament. 


- AP, SPT

TITLE: Vandals Targeting Latvian Consulate
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In what has become a cycle of hostility, the Latvian Consulate in St. Petersburg was vandalized early Tuesday morning by a group that smashed windows on the building's first floor, thus touching off a minor diplomatic furor. 


Glass on the front door and two windows on the first floor of the building - which is located on the 10th Line of St. Petersburg's Vasilievsky Island - were shattered with a metal rod and stones, consulate officials said. Latvian Embassy officials accused the Russian authorities of being lax for not posting 24-hour guards in front of the diplomatic mission. 

"The Russians are not providing safety for the consulate, which they should be doing according to the Vienna Convention [signed in 1963]," said Latvian Consul General Yuris Audarins in an interview on Thursday.

The police and consulate officials say they think members of the nationalist Russian National Unity Party, or RNE, group - which has no connection to the Yedinstvo, or Unity, political faction - were involved in the violence. In fact, a police source who requested anonymity said that they had a suspect for the most recent attack under surveillance but had not arrested him yet. The source declined to say why, but he did say that the suspect had been kicked out of RNE.

Throughout the year, said Audarins, the consulate has suffered at least six hostile acts, including angry pickets, telephone threats, and even a Molotov cocktail attack last July.

And last January, the consulate was vandalized with black paint and eggs. During the same month, the RNE claimed responsibility for the action. The police arrested a young activist, Andrei Dmitriyev, who was charged with deliberate damage of property. He confessed, spent three days in jail, but then he was amnestied and released.

Also last May, police said, RNE members paid a beggar 250 rubles and two bottles of highly alcoholic cleaning fluid for the beggar to drink in exchange for his breaking the consulate's windows. He too was arrested and let go shortly thereafter. 

After Tuesday's attack, the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a letter of protest to the Russian Embassy in Riga, demanding Russia organize 24-hour security for the St. Petersburg consulate as well as apprehending the vandals, Audarins said. The note added that Russia's Embassy in Riga has round-the-clock protection from Latvian police. 

Police at Vasilieostrovsky Police station No. 16, however, say that they don't have the staff to provide that kind of service. Generally, police can cover the consulate only on the days when its visa section is working, the source said.

He said the Lithuanian, Czech and Estonian consulates are in the same situation.

Unconsoled, Audarins said there appears to be a method behind the violence, which appears to be driven by the tensions that have existed between Russia and the newly independent Baltic state. 

Dmitriyev, who was arrested last year, said he was protesting the imprisonment in Latvia of Vasily Kononov, 77, a former Soviet officer accused of war crimes and sentenced to six years last January.

RNE members were not available for comment on the incident, but members of the Russian Party, another local nationalist group in St. Petersburg with anti-Baltic leanings, said it supported the alleged actions of the RNE.

"The Baltic states made the policy of apartheid legal," said Russian Party leader Nikolai Bondarik, in reference to the citizenship difficulties that Russians have had in the Baltic states since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. 

Latvia fell under Soviet rule as a result of the Molotov-Ribentropp pact signed in 1939. Approximately 35 percent of Latvia's native population was killed during World War II, deported to Siberia, or fled. 

Since Latvia regained independence in 1991, Russia has been concerned about the Baltic nation's ethnic Russian population and the Kremlin has protested the republic's policy of prosecuting suspected former Soviet officers.

TITLE: Yeltsin Threatened With Immunity Limitation
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian lawmakers on Thursday gave final approval to a bill that limits former presidents' immunity from prosecution and may spell problems for Boris Yeltsin, whose administration has been accused of corruption. 


The bill, which the lower house of parliament approved by a 280-130 vote, substantially weakened the original Kremlin-proposed version that would have offered former presidents unlimited immunity. The new version says that a former president can be stripped of immunity by a simple majority in both houses of parliament if prosecutors charge him with a serious crime. 

Lawmakers in the State Duma passed amendments to the bill Wednesday, and today's vote on the third and final reading came virtually without debate. To become law, the bill must be approved by the upper house and signed by President Vladimir Putin. 

The vote revived discussions about allegations of Kremlin corruption while Yeltsin was president, which have languished since his abrupt resignation Dec. 31, 1999. 

Putin signed a decree immediately after Yeltsin's departure guaranteeing total criminal immunity for former presidents, fueling speculation that Yeltsin stepped down before the end of his term out of fear of investigations into his corruption-tinged administration. The Kremlin then submitted a bill to parliament in an effort to enshrine the decree in law. 

The bill's approval follows last week's arrest in New York of Yeltsin's property chief and ally Pavel Borodin on a Swiss money-laundering warrant. Borodin is in a New York jail pending a bail hearing scheduled for Thursday. 

Swiss prosecutors say there is evidence Borodin received tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks from the Swiss construction company Mabetex for a contract to renovate the Kremlin. 

Russia's former prosecutor general, Yuri Skuratov, has said that documents provided by Swiss prosecutors allege that Yeltsin and his daughters, Tatyana Dyachenko and Yelena Okulova, used credit cards provided by Mabetex, with the company paying the bills. The Kremlin has denied the allegations, and no charges have been filed.

TITLE: Russia Regains Europe Council Vote
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STRASBOURG, France - The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly restored Russia's vote Thursday despite persistent concerns about the human-rights situation in Chechnya.


The European human-rights body's 600-member chamber said it decided to reinstate the voting rights of the 36-member Russian delegation because of the Russian parliament's increasing cooperation with the group.

The assembly had revoked the Russian delegation's voting rights last April, saying they would not be restored without "substantial progress" toward improving human rights in Chechnya.

While it noted "some encouraging, if limited, developments" since then, the assembly said that Russia had a long way to go in adhering to human-rights standards in war-torn republic.

"Russia did not act in line with the Council of Europe's principles and values in the conduct of its military campaign and many of the assembly's requirements in this regard are yet to be implemented," it said in a statement.

A progress report on Chechnya said alleged human-rights violations by Russian troops were not investigated and cited a "disturbing" humanitarian situation highlighted by the scarcity of food, medicine, and hospital treatment.

Chechen rebels drove Russian troops out of Chechnya in a 1994-96 war, but Moscow's forces went back last year and now occupy most of the territory.

Fighting continues, and human-rights organizations have frequently accused both sides of human-rights violations.

Russia has repeatedly rejected criticism of its war in Chechnya, denying widespread abuses and insisting that the conflict is an internal affair.

The Parliamentary Assembly is a largely advisory body of lawmakers from the 43 nations that belong to the Council of Europe, which binds members to the 1952 European Convention on Human Rights.

TITLE: Bush: It's Time To Talk to Rebels
AUTHOR: By Barry Schweid
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - In a clear message sent to Moscow in one of its first foreign-policy pronouncements, the presidential administration of George W. Bush is pushing negotiations with rebels in Chechnya as the only way to end the 16-month conflict. 


The message was coupled Wednesday with open skepticism that President Vladimir Putin's announcement earlier this week of a reduction of Russian troops in Chechnya had any real meaning. 

"We've seen announcements of troop withdrawals from Chechnya before, but frankly, Russia's presence in Chechnya remains massive," State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said. "The fighting has continued, and there are continuing credible reports of humanitarian abuses against the civilian population by Russian troops." 

Russia maintains that the conflict in rebellious Chechnya is a domestic matter. The Kremlin also is likely to be irritated by the Bush administration's plan to go ahead with a national missile defense system despite a ban contained in a 1972 treaty the two nations signed. 

Talks on a political settlement in Chechnya are the only way to bring peace and stability to the troubled region, Boucher said. He also urged Russia to take steps to deal with widespread social and economic problems in Chechnya. 

Russian troops moved into Chechnya in September 1999 following rebel attacks on Dagestan and apartment bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities that were blamed on the insurgents. 

This week, Putin signed a troop reduction plan and turned over command of the war to Russia's chief security agency, the FSB, saying a new strategy was needed to secure control of Chechnya. 

Boucher said: "it remains to be seen whether this announcement represents a change in Russian strategy that could resolve the stalemate in Chechnya." 

In any event, he said, "it doesn't preclude the need for a political settlement." 

Asked if the Bush administration agreed with the Clinton administration that Chechnya should remain part of Russia, Boucher said: "We have not changed our view of the status of Chechnya in any way." 

In the meantime, a panel advising the Energy Department issued a report that urged Bush to appoint a high-level official at the White House to oversee U.S. efforts to help safeguard existing nuclear stockpiles in Russia and to stem the spread of nuclear technology. 

"It is going to take someone who is at a high level to make sure this issue is not lost among other national security issues," Lloyd Cutler, a former White House counsel who served on the panel, said at a news conference. 

"The most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen or sold to terrorists or hostile nation states and used against American troops abroad or citizens at home," the report found.

TITLE: Seismic Data Supports Theory of Kursk Blast
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico - Analysis of seismic waves supports conclusions that two onboard explosions, not a collision, destroyed a Russian submarine in August, killing all 118 crew members. 


The first explosion was relatively small, consistent with a misfiring torpedo aboard the Kursk, according to a report by Arizona and New Mexico researchers published Tuesday in the geophysical journal Eos. That blast was followed about two minutes later by an explosion 250 times larger than the first, the researchers said. 

Most investigators have said they believed an explosion sank the sub in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12, but Russian researchers have left open the possibility of a collision - possibly with a ship shadowing the sub. 

The Eos authors, led by Keith Koper and Terry Wallace of the University of Arizona, say their data were collected by a network of seismic stations used in part to monitor a Russian nuclear test site 805 kilometers from the location of the Kursk sinking. Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists Steve Taylor and Hans Hartse participated in the study. 

"The main shock is consistent with the explosion of approximately five tons equivalent TNT detonated near, or on, the sea floor," they wrote. That second blast was likely caused by fire from the first blast setting off other torpedo warheads or propellant fuel, Wallace said Tuesday by e-mail from Chile, where he and Koper are doing other research. 

Divers who entered the sub found two notes written by sailors trapped in a rear compartment after the explosions. One note described 23 crew members as suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning from a fire and the other described how its author was writing by feel in the dark. 

Taylor said the research team is not suggesting either blast was a nuclear explosion. The report refers only to conventional explosives. 

In December, an American diver who worked on the Kursk recovery team said damage he saw convinced him the sub blew up.

TITLE: Guerrilla Strikes Kill 14 Soldiers in Chechnya
AUTHOR: By Yuri Bagrov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAZRAN, Russia - A day of rebel ambushes and mine blasts killed 14 Russian troops in breakaway Chechnya, officials said Wednesday as Russian artillery and paratrooper units reportedly prepared to pull out of the republic. 


Chechen rebels trapped a Russian convoy leaving the eastern town of Vedeno, in the process killing one soldier, an official with the Russian-backed Chechen administration said Wednesday. Five Russian servicemen were killed in a gunfight in the village of Novogroznensky on Tuesday, five died in other rebel attacks and three more were killed when their vehicles ran over mines in the capital, Grozny, the official said on condition of anonymity. 

In Russia this week, President Vla dimir Putin signed a troop reduction plan and turned over command of the 16-month-old Chechnya war to Russia's chief security agency, saying a new strategy was needed to secure control of the republic. The federal forces, who suffer daily casualties from hit-and-run rebel raids, say they will focus on small special operations instead of large-scale attacks. 

Putin did not say how many of Russia's 80,000 troops presently serving in Chechnya would ultimately be withdrawn or provide a timetable for the plan. But on Wednesday, the ITAR-Tass and Interfax news agencies quoted the Defense Ministry as saying that paratroop units and some artillery equipment were preparing for a pullout next month. 

Elsewhere on Wednesday, about 2,000 civilians rallied to demand an end to the Russian military offensive and the full withdrawal of Russian troops. The protesters gathered in the city of Gudermes, headquarters of the Kremlin-backed Chechen administration, and in Shali, a town in southern Chechnya. 

Russian troops moved into Chechnya in September 1999 following rebel attacks on Dagestan and apartment bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities which were blamed on the rebels. The offensive followed a botched attempt to regain control over Chech nya in a 1994-96 war. 

The military's massive air and artillery bombardments have led to casualties among civilians and drawn broad international criticism.

TITLE: Borodin Replacement Draws Belarus' Ire
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Russian government rejected accusations of high-handedness from Belarus on Thursday after replacing Pavel Borodin, who is under arrest in the United States, as head of the proposed union between the two states. 


The former Kremlin property manager was due to attend a bail hearing in New York later Thursday linked to Swiss attempts to extradite him. He is accused of taking multi-million dollar kickbacks from Swiss construction companies.

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov appointed Igor Selivanov, who is one of Borodin's deputies, as acting secretary of the Belarussian-Russian Union, a nebulous body preparing the planned economic merger of Belarus and Russia. 

The appointment brought an indignant reaction in Minsk. "Theoretically Kasyanov has the right to propose candidates for council secretary," an official in Minsk said on condition of anonymity. 

"But it should be confirmed by the Council of Ministers. Not just by the Russian prime minister but by the Belarussian too," he said. "Kasyanov cannot give directions and orders for both governments." 

Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khris tenko said the Belarussian-Russian Union needed an acting chief to prepare for a meeting scheduled for Monday.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky led a parade by supporters of his nationalist-oriented Liberal Democratic Party to the Swiss Embassy in Moscow on Thursday, waving banners and placards backing Borodin. "This is a form of war against Russia," Zhirinovsky said. "It is provocation." 

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has vehemently criticized Borodin's arrest and said he was "duty-bound" to support the head of the Belarussian-Russian union. 

Media say Lukashenko signaled his fury at Russia's inaction over Borodin this week by returning to Minsk from Moscow a day early, ostensibly to meet Kyrgyzstan President Askar Akayev. 

"Some insist that Lukashenko, having been offended by such treatment, decided on his own to cut short his Moscow trip. Others assert that the request came from the Kremlin," Belorusskaya Delovaya Ga ze ta newspaper said. 

Andrei Ryabov, political analyst with the Moscow-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Thursday that the decision to replace Bo rodin is a "pretext to show Lu ka shen ko that he is losing the Kremlin's favor."

Yevgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation's Moscow office also said that Borodin was too closely affiliated with Lukashenko. "In my view, Russian authorities have recently lost trust in Borodin because he has become an odious figure," Volk said.

Ryabov and Volk both agreed that the Kremlin has yet to use all of the resources it has at its disposal to try to contest Borodin's arrest. "It would be inaccurate to say that the Kremlin gave Borodin up, but, for a number of reasons, it chose not to fight [for his freedom] too vigorously," Rya bov said.


- Reuters, SPT

TITLE: Nuclear Waste Shipments May Test Northern Route
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Japanese power companies are considering shipping radioactive waste from Europe to Japan through Russia's northern seas, a Russian official said Wednesday.


The international environmental group Greenpeace says the project is a nightmare scenario: a Soviet-era nuclear icebreaker crashing through the ice, followed by a ship carrying radioactive materials through the fragile Arctic.

Alexander Ushakov of the Transport Ministry said plans for such shipments have been under discussion for a year. 

However, the Japanese consortium interested in the route denied it was involved in any negotiations but said it was working with a Russian concern on a feasibility study.

Shigeki Okada, spokesman for Japan's Federation of Electric Power Companies, refused to elaborate on the position.

In an interview broadcast by the Norwegian state radio network NRK, Vladimir Blinov of the Murmansk Shipping Co. also said that talks were under way. He said a test run, which would not involve any waste on board, was planned for this summer, with shipping to begin in 2002. 

NRK said he refused to discuss details of the talks. "There are such negotiations, such positions, but nothing more," Blinov said in English. "In principle, it is good business."

News of the negotiations, which was first reported by Japan's Kyodo news agency, comes as the government is seeking ways to increase exploitation of the northern sea route, which proponents say is the fastest and cheapest route between Europe and Asia. 

Russia has the largest fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers, which are operated by the Murmansk Shipping Co., but aside from shipments by Norilsk Nickel, the route is largely unused.

It also comes as the government is is in the process of pushing through legislation that would allow Russia to import spent nuclear fuel for storage. That plan has been met with outrage from environmentalists, who were no more pleased about the shipping plan.

Igor Forofontov, nuclear campaign coordinator for the Moscow office of Greenpeace, said that the northern sea route was a particularly dangerous way by which to ship nuclear waste.

"The northern sea route is a tough waterway, and sailors who navigated it were always called heroes," he said.

The Japanese companies and their European partners have been shipping the waste since 1995 as part of a deal set up to reprocess spent uranium and plutonium from Japan at La Hague in France and Sellafield in Britain. The resulting mixed-oxide nuclear fuel and the high-level waste that is a by-product of the process are then shipped back to Japan.

So far, two routes have been tried - through the Panama Canal and around the tip of South America. Both were met with protest by the countries along the routes.

Caribbean states, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Australia and other South Pacific countries have protested the shipments, forcing the Japanese to look for other routes. 

A shipment launched Jan. 19 and set to travel around South Africa is also expected to meet with strong opposition, said Tobias Muenchmeyer, a nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace International, speaking by telephone from Berlin. 


- AP, MT

TITLE: Putin-Backed Bill Buys Governors More Time
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma passed a bill Thursday that will allow 69 of the men who now govern Russia's 89 regions to seek a third or even a fourth term in office. 


The legislation had the support of the Kremlin and was seen as President Vladimir Putin's biggest concession yet to the regional elite.

Among the beneficiaries of the move is Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who will be able to run again in 2003 and try to stay in office until 2007. Another is Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev, who now has the potential to rule his region for a total of 20 years.

The move was hotly opposed by the liberal Yabloko and Union of Right Forces factions, which accused the president of backtracking on his earlier promises to fight corruption in the regions.

The bill was an amendment to the law on regional government, which took effect Oct. 16, 1999, and limited the governors to two consecutive terms. 

When passed in the first reading on Nov. 30, the bill defined a governor's first term as the one he was serving on Oct. 16, 1999. This would have limited those eligible to seek a third term to about 40 and would have excluded Luzhkov, who was re-elected to a second term in December 1999.

The version that passed Thursday in the third and final reading defined a governor's first term as the one started after Oct. 16, 1999. As a result, Luzhkov can run again, while a governor like Shaimiyev, who was re-elected to a second term before that date, can run for two more terms. Shaimiyev comes up for re-election in March.

The revised bill was put forward Wednesday by Georgy Boos of Fatherland, the party founded by the Moscow mayor. It passed Wednesday in second reading, but took the more liberal factions by complete surprise, said Vadim Bondar of the Union of Right Forces, or SPS.

"It was clear that the Kremlin would make concessions for a limited number of extra terms, but not for almost everybody," Bondar said Thursday by telephone.

The bill passed with the support of the pro-Kremlin Unity and People's Deputy factions, indicating that it had Putin's approval.

Kommersant newspaper reported that two members of the presidential administration - deputy head Vla di mir Surkov and the head of its political department Andrei Popov - were present at Wednesday's Duma session.

For the bill to become law, it still has to be passed by the Russian parliament's upper house, the Federation Council, and be signed by the president, but neither step appeared in doubt.

The bill means that all governors who have not come up for re-election since October 1999 are in effect not even serving their first term yet and will only be seeking it in the future.

There are 17 such regional leaders, including Ruslan Aushev of Ingushetia, Murtaza Rakhimov of Bash kor tostan and Kirsan Ilyumzhinov of Kalmykia. 

The 52 others, who like Luzhkov were re-elected after that date, can run for one more term. They include Alexander Lebed of Krasnoyarsk, Yevgeny Nazdratenko of Primorye and Konstantin Titov of Samara.

The rest, who were elected for the first time in their political careers after Oct. 16, 1999, fall in the same category and can seek one more term.

Sergei Markov, the director of the Center for Political Research and the head of the foreign desk of the Kremlin-connected Strana.ru Web site, said that the concessions to the governors were greater than expected but not a surprise.

"These concessions were a part of a deal that the Kremlin struck with the governors last spring, when it introduced the legislation that curbed their federal powers," he said in a telephone interview Thursday.

As soon as he was inaugurated in May, Putin began pushing for legislation to deprive the governors of their seats in the Federation Council, strip them of their immunity to criminal prosecution and give the president the right to get rid of those who disregard federal law. With remarkably little objection, the governors in the Federation Council gave in and passed the legislation.

"The deal was simple: You lose your federal influence in exchange for full control over your regions," Mar kov said.

He said Thursday's concessions show that the Kremlin now has a regional elite it thinks it can work together with and wants to keep it that way. The Kremlin was able to rid itself of some of the most objectionable governors in regional elections held last year.

"I think the president's revolutionary zeal for reforming relations between the federation and the regions has been overestimated," Markov said.

Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said the Kremlin is also counting on its representatives in the seven new federal districts to keep the regions in line. 

"The Kremlin is counting on that when the representatives get stronger, it will be completely irrelevant who is in power in the regions," he said. "So there's no need for hostilities."

But the bill has caused another rift between the Kremlin and SPS, its sometimes-loyal Duma partner.

The leader of the SPS Duma faction, Boris Nemtsov, said the bill was "undermining the foundations of Russian statehood."

"Whole regions are practically being given away to the old regional elite, which will result in a rise in the level of corruption and make local bureaucracies unchangeable and unpunishable," he said.

Yabloko went a step further, calling the bill "a constitutional coup" and warning that it might be just the first step toward allowing the president to extend his time in office as well.

Luzhkov has been mayor of Moscow since 1992, when he was appointed by then-President Boris Yeltsin. He was re-elected in June 1996 and December 1999.

Shaimiyev has ruled Tatarstan since 1989, when he became first secretary of the Communist Party's regional committee. Yeltsin appointed him the republic's president in 1991. He was elected for the first time in March 1996 and is still serving that five-year term.

Rakhimov is another long-serving leader. He became head of the Supreme Soviet in Bashkortostan in 1990, was elected president in 1993 and re-elected in 1998.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Shutov Case Finalized

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Yury Shutov, a local businessman and former aid to Gov. Vladimir Yakovlev, is soon to stand trial on charges of organizing a string of contract hits, prosecutors said at a press conference on Wednesday.

"We have finalized Shutov's case consisting of 25 counts. His case will be sent to court on January 26," said City Prosecutor Ivan Sydoruk. 

Shutov, a former Legislative Assembly member, is charged with organizing and committing several grave felonies - including murder, extortion, kidnapping and robbery, and arranging the contract hits of prominent St. Petersburg lawmakers and businessmen. He has been in pre-trial detention since Feb. 1999. If not for the finalization of the case, Shutov would have been released on Jan. 26. 

In late December, the assembly granted the City Prosecutor's request to withdraw Shutov's deputy's immunity from prosecution. If found guilty of all charges, Shutov could face life in prison. 



Train Kills 2

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A woman and her 5-year-old daughter died Wednesday night in a train accident, Interfax news agency reported.

According to the press service of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Emergency Situations Ministry, the mother and daughter were hit by a train when trying to cross the railway tracks at the crossing near the 21-kilometer mark of Pushkinskoye highway. Both mother and daughter were killed instantly.



Trans-Siberian Siege

VLADIVOSTOK, Far East (Reuters) - Police in the freezing Far East drove back hundreds of protesters Wednesday trying to block the Trans-Siberian Railway to complain at being left without power and heat. 

Desperate residents of Razdolnoye village, which has had its power and light cut off, attempted to surge onto the track of the Trans-Siberian Railway. 

But a police spokesman said security forces outnumbered the protesters at the village, some 50 kilometers from Vladivostok, and no demonstrator actually reached the track. 

"You should be ashamed of yourself, pushing old ladies into ditches," one elderly woman was shown shouting on television as she struggled up an embankment toward the tracks. 

The situation in Vladivostok has improved since last week, with some parts of the far eastern city now spared power cuts while others lose heat and light for up to four hours daily.



Convoy Embarks

LONDON (AP) -Three Russian trucks left London on the third and final leg of a round-the-world expedition Tuesday, their crew hoping to become the first people to circumnavigate the globe by truck.

If the team arrives in Moscow in February as planned, they will have driven 26,000 kilometers and crossed 11 national borders. Five out of the seven team members had never been outside of Russia before the expedition. 

Stefania Zini, the Italian-born captain of the trucking team and the only female crew member, said she "kept dreaming about driving around the world" three years ago while working at a Moscow-based company importing Italian furniture. Zini garnered dozens of sponsors and selected her crew of mechanics, truck drivers and engineers during the next few years. The team left Moscow last Feb. 16.



Tuleyev To Resign

MOSCOW (SPT) - Kemerovo regional Governor Aman Tuleyev announced Wednesday that he will resign in what RTR television said was a plan to hold early elections and win the post again.

Tuleyev said on RTR that he was resigning so that gubernatorial elections would be held at the same time as local elections April 22, a move that he said would save the region money.

Kemerovo's regional parliament will decide Thursday whether to accept Tuleyev's resignation, which would cause gubernatorial elections to be held three months early.

TITLE: Russian Jet Makes Emergency Landing
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NOVOSIBIRSK, Western Siberia - A Russian jet with 89 people on board made a safe emergency landing in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk after the landing gear on its right side failed to lock shut, an airport spokesman said Wednesday. 


Oleg Shulmin said a Sibir Tu-154 airliner left from Irkutsk for Moscow early on Wednesday with 80 passengers and nine crew. But the right side of its undercarriage failed to retract after takeoff. 

Shlumin said it is not clear why the undercarriage seized up.

The crew realized soon after takeoff that there was a problem with the plane's undercarriage, a second airport spokesman, Gleb Osokin said, but they decided to fly to Novosibirsk to use up fuel because the Tu-154 is equipped with a system for emptying its tanks in flight.

TITLE: Putin Visit to India Leads Way to Deals
AUTHOR: By Mikhail Yenukov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - An Indian oil company is to receive a stake in the Sakhalin-1 offshore oil and gas project in return for an order for Russian armaments in a deal that brings a windfall to state-owned oil major Rosneft, sources said Tuesday.


Under the deal, which arose after President Vladimir Putin visited the subcontinent in October, Rosneft has agreed to pass on half of its 40 percent stake in Sakhalin-1 to India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp.'s international arm, ONGC-Videsh Ltd., or OVL.

Under the deal, OVL will pay Rosneft $200 million and cover the company's previous expenses of about $100 million to $150 million, and also fund Rosneft's participation in Sakhalin-1 until the project starts to make a profit.

The initial, loss-making stage of the project is to be completed by 2005, before which the participants are due to invest $4 billion. Once Rosneft is left with a 20 percent share, it will be required to invest $800 million. Now OVL will be picking up the bill.

OVL's conditions will most likely force Rosneft's old partners in Sakhalin-1 - U.S. giant ExxonMobil and Japan's Sodeco - to waive their preferential option to purchase the 20 percent stake, said a source close to the Property Ministry.

"OVL is offering an unjustifiably high amount [for the 20 percent stake]," the source said. "Most likely this has all been resolved by political and international relations."

"Putin promised that he would sell a share in Sakhalin to India. This is definitely a condition for selling Russian aircraft to India," said a source close to the Energy Ministry.

Putin's visit to Delhi in October initially appeared not to have brought any significant results, and Russia reduced the value of military hardware it plans to sell to India.

Now it seems that the reduction may have been made for a reason - it is almost equal to OVL's costs in the deal with Rosneft. During the visit, it was anticipated that contracts licensing production of the new Su-30MKI fighter and T-90C tanks in India would be signed. India wasn't excited about the terms, however. According to unofficial sources, the tank contract fell in price from $880 million to $520 million, while the price of the Su-30MKI deal signed in December last year was slashed by $700 million. Initially it was proposed that India would pay $4 billion for the license.

This "political" deal between Russia and India could be extremely good news for Rosneft, which announced in 1998 that it planned to sell off half of its Sakhalin share but failed to find a suitable buyer.

Rosneft is happy that everything ended this way. "Sakhalin is a risky project - so far research has been carried out that has not given complete information as to how profitable it actually is," said Rosneft press secretary Alexander Stepanenko.

"Rosneft hopes that once we have sold our share we won't lose the money that we could have earned from implementing the project."

TITLE: Cell Cos. Jump to New System
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg Telephone Network (PTS), through its wholly owned Telecominvest subsidiary, has further strengthened its position in the local market in the last two weeks with the launch of St. Petersburg Transit Telecom (PTT).


PTT immediately attracted big-name clients to its $48.6 million ground-line capacity system with cellular providers North-West GSM, Delta-Telecom and Fora Communications switching to the carrier for their ground-line traffic.

The cellular providers had previously routed this traffic through the Peterstar system. The transfer deals a serious blow to Peterstar as cellular traffic generated about $19 million in revenues during 2000 - about a third of total revenues - United Financial Group (UFG) reports.

Telecominvest holds a 29 percent stake in Peterstar, while it owns 100 percent of the newly created company. The remaining 71 percent stake in Peterstar belongs to Metromedia Telecommunications, an international holding company.

According to a report authored by Ari Krel, a telecoms analyst with UFG, the PTT project was originally launched in January 2000 by PTS itself, but was later transferred to Telecominvest because the parent firm lacked the funds to complete it.

Telecominvest provided $21 million of the price tag for the new 320-kilometer fiber-optic network, with an additional $10 million credit provided by Mos kov sky International Bank and the remaining $17 million coming in the form of credits from equipment suppliers.

While Krel reported that other firms, such as payphone service provider Metrocom, and Sovintel, which provides long-distance and other services, are also negotiating a shift to the PTT network, he stressed that the cellular-related business was the most important factor for the new system.

"The most lucrative part of PTT's operation will be the provision of connecting and numbering capacity to cellular operators," Krel wrote. "PTT has taken this business away from Peterstar ... ."

According to Aleksei Ionov, a press officer at North-West GSM, the PTT plan was originally hatched with the goal of rationalizing the city's phone traffic and easing the load on the existing PTS network. But Ionov said that the system ultimately provided a number of advantages to cellular providers.

"While a more suitable infrastructure was one reason to switch," Ionov said in a telephone interview on Thursday, "a big reason is that the cost for our traffic on the system will be lower."

Ionov would not comment on the financial specifics of North-West GSM's agreement with PTT, citing one condition of the agreement, but did say that the negotiations with the new system took place over a long period.

"North-West GSM signed the agreement with PTT just a few days ago, but negotiations were initiated last fall," Ionov said.

Industry analysts said the reduction in costs for the cellular carriers would be significant, but they said it was unlikely that these savings would make much of a difference in the rates cellular users would be charged for their service.

"Although carrying costs are about half of what they were, this will hardly influence the prices of St. Petersburg cell-phone operators," Anton Pogrebinsky, a telecoms analyst at J'son & Partners, said in telephone interview Thursday. 

"North-West GSM, for instance, which is the only operator in the area working on the GSM standard, probably won't lower their rates in the absence of a competitor, such as Telecom XXI."

In late 1997 Russia's Communications Ministry divided the country into eight regions and then stipulated that two licenses to operate the GSM standard were to be granted in each. Along with North-West GSM, Telekom XXI was granted a GSM license for the Northwest region in spring 1998, but has yet to begin operating a system here.

Aside from the incentive provided by lower charges, Pogrebinsky said corporate structure concerns may have also played a role in the decision by North-West GSM and Delta to switch carriers.

"Telecominvest's direct stake in North-West GSM is 45 percent, but another 6 percent belongs to Kontakt-S and Vest-Link, which are also associated with Telecominvest," he said. "Delta Telecom is 25 percent owned by Telecominvest and 32 percent owned by PTS, a total of 57 percent, so the switch could just represent the integration of daughter companies within a sector."

TITLE: Baltic Pipeline Plan Clears Hurdle
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HELSINKI - A plan to build a northern-tier pipeline to carry Russian natural gas to Western Europe via Finland took a step forward on Wednesday when the Finnish and Russian governments signalled their support.


Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen told reporters in Moscow that Finland and Russia had agreed in principle to support the concept of a pipeline from Russia through Finnish territorial waters under the Baltic Sea to continental Europe.

But one of the likely builders, Finnish energy group Fortum, said it and Gazprom had not yet made any firm decision to invest in the estimated $3 billion pipeline, and would first seek European partners.

Gazprom board member Yury Komarov told reporters in Moscow that Gazprom, Fortum and Germany's Ruhrgas and Wintershall planned to create a consortium in the next two months to build the pipeline.

A northern line would rival Central European routes for Russian gas, including one through Ukraine and another, the Yamal line, through Belarus and Poland.

Fortum and Gazprom have made feasibility studies on the pipeline via their joint venture North Transgas, whose chief executive, Rainer Moberg, said that if the project goes ahead, it would aim to start pumping gas by the end of the decade.

Moberg said the partners would now proceed with further studies on a pipeline starting near the town of Vyborg in Russia, passing through Finnish waters in the eastern Baltic Sea and emerging in northern Germany.

TITLE: Central Bank Proposed as Paris Club Debt Solution
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Kovalyova
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - A loan from the Central Bank is the best way for the government to service its debt to the Paris Club of creditor nations, senior deputies in the State Duma said Tuesday.


Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said last week the government, facing tough talks with the club, would ask the lower house of parliament to revise the 2001 budget so that a greater share of any extra incoming budget revenues could be allocated for foreign debt servicing.

But Duma banking committee head Alexander Shokhin said the Duma would hardly support this proposal because deputies had agreed to pass a tight 2001 budget in exchange for a fixed distribution of additional revenues.

Shokhin advised the government to use the Central Bank's burgeoning reserves to pay debts to the Paris Club falling due in the first quarter. The Duma, which has to approve such borrowing, would support the government, he said.

"The easiest way is to borrow from the Central Bank. The Duma will support it. It always supports the government, even when it believes that the government is not quite right," Shokhin told a news conference.

He said the government was likely to present its proposals on Paris Club debt repayment to the Duma in mid-February.

The 2001 budget doesn't provide for $3.8 billion for payments to the Paris Club this year, nor does it allow the government to borrow from the Central Bank.

The budget states that if there are additional revenues up to 70 billion rubles ($2.47 billion), they are to be split in half between domestic needs and foreign debt. If extra revenues exceed 70 billion rubles, 70 percent will go to foreign debt.

The government, which hopes to restructure and partially write off the $38.7 billion of Soviet-era debt it owes to the Paris Club, angered creditors earlier this month by saying it would not pay in full $1.6 billion owed in the first quarter.

Kasyanov has said funds are tight and social spending would not be cut for the sake of paying foreign debt, but he has opposed borrowing from the Central Bank, saying this would undermine macroeconomic stability.

Central Bank gold and foreign exchange reserves are near post-Soviet highs at $27.8 billion. But the bank's first deputy head, Tatyana Paramonova, said the bank would lend money to the government only as a last resort.

"Only if there are no other sources, then, under the law, such an option could be used," Paramonova told reporters on the sidelines of a banking conference.

"If we have to pay in the first quarter, the cheapest way is to take a Central Bank credit."

TITLE: Yukos Plan Targets Chinese Energy Market
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The nation's No. 2 oil major is stepping up its efforts to breach China's energy market with plans to invest $1.5 billion into its West Siberian subsidiary over the next five years.


"We aim to extract 7.5 million tons of crude a year from its fields," Yury Beilin, Yukos' head of exploration and extraction, said Wednesday at a conference.

The West Siberia Oil Co. has the permit for geological exploration of the Yurubshensky plot in the Evenkiisky Autonomous District. The total concession, which also includes several surrounding plots, has lain fallow since its discovery in the 1980s. The concession is estimated to hold more than 500 million tons of oil.

The discovery was never exploited due to the economic slowdown during the twilight of the Soviet Union, and until now, no one has put forward the substantial funds necessary to extract oil from these fields.

China's growing energy needs, and an intergovernmental understanding that it would be an eager buyer of oil pumped from western Siberia, also acted as a catalyst for Yukos' decision, said Beilin, a dead ringer for former presidential candidate and current presidential envoy to the Volga region, Sergei Kiriyenko.

Profit figures for 2000 are not yet available, but recent record-breaking dividend handouts testify to the amount of last year's take, much of which will finance Yukos' investment, officials said.

Yukos spokesman Andrei Krasnov said that the $1.5 billion investment figure was reached using a pessimistic estimate of the price of oil traded on international markets. Last year, Yukos invested $700 million. "Our investment plans will radically change only in the event of a dramatic downturn in the price of oil this year," Krasnov said.

Yukos executives don't expect such an event to happen. In the past two years, Yukos focused on cost cutting, and this gives it a cushion in case the price of oil slips.

The $1.5 billion will go toward drilling, construction of 80 to 100 wells, a gas-compressing station and a pipeline from the West Siberian fields that would join them to Transneft's network.

Yukos wants to exploit the West Siberian fields as fast as possible because they are a relatively new playing card in Russia's oil game, said Ivan Mazalov, an oil analyst at Troika Dialog. "Overall, the quantity of their investment is in line with what other petroleum companies are doing this year," he said.

At the beginning of this year, Yukos raised its stake in West Siberia from 19.9 percent to 68 percent. The other 32 percent belong to Mettalinvest, which, in turn, belongs to Rossiisky Kredit bank.

For 2001, Yukos intends to extract 56.5 million to 57 million tons of oil, and Beilin noted that this will, in part, depend on the company's processing and retail capabilities. This is a 15 percent increase from last year. Also, the oil company has allocated $750 million in total this year for its upstream activities.

TITLE: Mailbox
TEXT: Dear Editor,

I read the study mentioned in your article ["New Book Casts Some Light on Local 'Shadow Economy,'" Jan. 16] and found it useful for better understanding this vital problem. Having worked with a variety of businesses here, I can confirm the trend noted by the authors. All businesses (especially small- and medium-size ones) feel uncomfortable and unsafe conducting even part of their operations in the "gray economy." (Many analysts divide the "shadow economy" into "black" and "gray," the former being criminal activities such as drugs and illegal weapon sales, prostitution, racketeering, money laundering, etc.) It goes without saying that the "black economy" is to be suppressed, but much effort and patience are needed to make "gray" economy "white."

First, taxation must be "business-friendly." It must be clear and applied uniformly to everyone. It must allow the deduction of all legitimate costs of doing business. Moreover, the business registration and accounting systems must be simplified as soon as possible.

Second, employees must be given incentives to receive all their wages "in white." The flat 13 percent personal income tax rate must be made stable for at least 10 years. 

Finally, I would mention that the large "gray" economy is one of the basic causes of the stagnation of Russia's banking system. It means that banks are not earning what they might in the form of commissions on transactions. 

Andrei Sedin,

Moscow

Dear Editor,

I would like to register my disagreement with the reader who criticized Chris Floyd's "Global Eye." It's true the column is strong meat, but I don't think it can be called unbalanced, unfair or irresponsible. The mainstream media has done a very poor job of reporting the facts of the Bush family empire and its political agenda. This one little column, crying in the wilderness, as it were, is a very small counterweight to the mass media's silence on these matters. Floyd's characterizations are indeed partisan, and often scathing, but his facts are correct.


Millions of Americans strenuously opposed Bush and the very narrow special-interest agenda he represents. Millions of Americans do believe that he was placed in office through an unjust process. Millions of Americans do believe that his election represents a very severe blow to the American ideal of a constitutional republic based on the electorally expressed will of the people.

I hope that you will continue to run this entertaining and necessary column in your newspaper. 

Arthur Kobel

Moscow

TITLE: EDITORIAL
TEXT: Putin Must Fight for His Reforms 


"THIS is a big step forward," said former Moscow City Court Judge Vladimir Mironov after President Vladimir Putin had introduced legislation that would finally bring the Criminal Procedural Code in line with the Constitution. Human Rights Commissioner Oleg Mironov said he "felt great satisfaction" with Putin's action.


The Duma legislation committee was set to begin immediate consideration of the proposal, which was widely expected to sail through with ease. The bill - which would have mandated court-ordered arrest and search warrants - was set to become the next major step in legal reform, following December's passage of a bill that reduced the maximum period of pretrial detention from 18 to 12 months.

Until, that is, Putin unceremoniously withdrew it on Monday, reportedly under pressure from police and prosecutors. Dmitry Kozak, the Kremlin's deputy chief of staff, told journalists that although Putin still supports the bill, a number of legal, technical and organizational issues need to be resolved. Supporters of the reform, though, fear that the proposal will be worked to death behind closed doors.

We can only hope that these fears prove unjustified and that the government quickly returns with a bill that is substantively the same. Legal reform must remain a priority of the highest order, especially as the government is moving very quickly to strengthen the police and security organs. Only a strong legal foundation based on constitutional guarantees can prevent Putin's much-ballyhooed "dictatorship of law" from devolving into mere dictatorship.

The president's primary obligation is to ensure that all the provisions of the Constitution are consistently and effectively enforced. By introducing this legislation, Putin has shown that he takes this obligation seriously. Now he must show that he has the determination to stay the course despite entrenched interests pursuing less noble ends.

Serious reform is rarely easy. The resistance that we are now seeing in regard to legal reform, we fear, is child's play compared to what is to come when Putin moves seriously with the military reform that the Security Council approved last November. 

However, Putin has no excuse for backing down. His popularity rating is astonishingly high, and there is significant public support for this particular reform. The president has committed allies in the Duma, and the necessary funds for implementing the reform can surely be found.

Yielding in this instance may undermine all of the much-needed reforms that Putin has pledged himself to. Now Putin must prove he is ready for the difficult fights to come.

TITLE: INSIDE RUSSIA
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: The Complex Battle Against Corruption 


PAVEL Borodin, secretary of the Russia-Belarus Union, is sitting in a New York jail, facing possible extradition to Switzerland. With the notable exception of President Vladimir Putin - who has the habit of maintaining silence about any arrests - the whole nation has reacted with outrage to this event. One businessman I know captured the mood perfectly when he told me, "Well, they've found a fine person to arrest! Others don't do anything but steal, while Borodin at least built something!"


It looks like they got Borodin just as he was hitting his stride. The former Kremlin property chief continued to show a healthy interest in architecture. His latest project was the proposed federal parliament complex in St. Petersburg, which carries a projected price tag of $2 billion. 

Not so much, but it's worth noting that this is about two-thirds of the amount that Russia presently is trying to avoid paying out to the Paris Club. 

Ironically, the parliament complex was to be built not by the Swiss company Mabetex, but by America's Cushman & Wakefield.

This connection encourages speculation that Borodin traveled to America not, as was reported, to attend the inauguration of President George W. Bush, but to tend to his own business. Otherwise, it seems likely that someone would have told him that Bush's inauguration would be held in Washington, not New York. 

Nonetheless, I find myself sharing my compatriots' outrage. As Pushkin put it, "Of course I despise my fatherland from head to toe, but it upsets me when foreigners share this sentiment." 

It isn't right when foreigners decide which Russians are corrupt and which aren't. It is still worse when the person deciding is someone like Swiss investigating judge Daniel Devaud, a man of known leftist leanings. As Russian television commentator Mikhail Leontiev wryly observer, Devaud is sparing no effort in the struggle against Russian capitalism. 

Devaud's battle has found support in the global financial community, which for some reason suspects there is some direct connection between the huge profits Mabetex received and Russia's refusal to pay its debts.

Of course, if foreigners think the arrest of two or three bribe-takers is going to put an end to corruption in Russia, they are sadly mistaken.

I imagine that if we took half of all our bureaucrats out tomorrow and shot them, the other half would just work twice as hard to take up the slack.

Incidentally, Devaud has no legal proof that Borodin is guilty of anything. Most likely this is indicative not of Borodin's clean hands, but of the ineffectiveness of any prosecutor - even Switzerland's. 

Even the arrest order says that Borodin is being detained not as a suspect, but as a witness. It notes that he has repeatedly refused to appear and testify.

If you look at the case that has been prepared so far, it is far from clear what crimes Devaud thinks Borodin may have committed. He needs Borodin to come and tell him what he should be arrested for. 

And judging from what I've heard, Russian prosecutors are using just the same approach in their questioning of employees and managers of Media-MOST.


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

TITLE: The Next Crisis
AUTHOR: By David Ignatius
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: PRESIDENT George W. Bush appears set to make a potentially costly mistake by politicizing his administration's approach to global financial crises. He announced plans last week to create a White House team to handle such economic problems - but it's one that could spend as much time in inter-agency bickering as in crisis management. 


This is one area where Bush would have been wise to learn from the Clinton administration, which developed real expertise in handling international financial crises, from the 1995 Mexican bailout to the '97 Asian crisis to the '98 Russian default. 

A president who loved to put his arms around other policy problems learned to back off and leave these delicate matters to experts at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. They were able to handle crises quietly and calmly - outside the political spotlight. 

The Bush administration's decision to dump this successful Clinton approach is perplexing and potentially dangerous. Instead of leaving it to the pros, Bush has chosen to politicize global finance, by vesting power in the White House and its policy-making National Security Council. 

Bush told The New York Times last week that he would shift control of global economics to his national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and his chief economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey. They would "share a desk," Bush said - an amicable formula that in real-world Washington often presages a power struggle. 

The desk-sharers will have to coordinate with each other, as well as with Treasury, State, Commerce, the special trade representative and the CIA - not to mention the television networks. 

"Globalization has altered the dynamics in the White House, as well as between the White House and the Treasury," Bush explained. He said he wanted to "make sure the economic people don't run off with foreign policy and vice versa." 

But why reinvent this particular wheel? Partly, the answer is bureaucratic politics. Global economics is a hot issue, so Rice and Lindsey understandably want to control it. Putting a White House stamp on the issue is a way of marking it "Important." 

The problems will come when a financial crisis strikes. That's when the White House, operating under the klieg lights, may be the wrong address for crisis management. The real tasks will involve negotiating with banks, imposing harsh conditions on foreign countries and avoiding public statements that could send financial markets into a death spiral. White House operatives don't fit this job description. 

During the Clinton years, Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers and Fed chairman Alan Greenspan were able to move quickly and quietly when disaster loomed. A Time magazine cover dubbed these three "The Committee to Save the World," because of their success in averting financial disasters. 

The danger in Mexico, Asia and Russia was spreading financial panic - a rush for the exits as investors tried to unload bad debts. The secret of success was to negotiate "workout" plans that kept these economies functioning and stemmed the panic. The model was Wall Street rather than Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Let's imagine that a major international bank or foreign debtor should default over the next several months, threatening a cascade of similar failures by other financial institutions. Sadly, this is not an entirely far-fetched scenario. How would the Bush administration react? 

First, it apparently hopes to have earlier warning of such crises, thanks to more-aggressive economic reporting by U.S. intelligence agencies. That's the initial fallacy. If the global bankers and financiers who have money at risk don't see the crises coming, how will a junior analyst at the CIA? 

The next thing Bush's crisis managers will do is to hold meetings. They'll have to coordinate all the Cabinet agencies that have their fingers in the pie. With so many parties involved, there's the added danger of leaks to the media - so maybe they'll have to hold some press conferences, too. 

Finally, the president himself may jump in. Bush signaled his eagerness to be cheerleader-in-chief in early January, when he said: "I am pleased that the Fed has cut the interest rates." Clinton made a rule of not commenting on Fed policy, and Bush later signaled his comment had been a mistake. 

Beyond the bureaucratic difficulties with the Bush approach is a personnel problem. So far, the new administration doesn't seem to have anyone with the expertise Rubin brought from his days as a trader at Goldman Sachs, or Summers brought from his years as chief economist at the World Bank. Rice's expertise is in foreign policy, not economics. 

And while Lindsey is a former member of the Fed board, critics say he has little feel for the nuances of international finance. 

The Bush Treasury is also weak on global finance. Secretary-designate Paul O'Neill may have been a fine CEO at Alcoa, but he lacks Rubin's knowledge of financial markets. That gap led many to expect that O'Neill would recruit a Wall Street financier as his deputy. But the leading candidate for the deputy's job is said to be Kenneth Dam, a law professor whose most important government service was at the Reagan State Department. 

The new president is right to highlight the global economy as a crucial area for his administration. But so far, his efforts to deal with it are taking him in the wrong direction. 


David Ignatius is a columnist for the Washington Post, for which he wrote this comment.

TITLE: What Other Papers Are Saying
AUTHOR: by Ali Nassor
TEXT: The big story this week was the fate of Pavel Borodin, who flew to the United States to attend George W. Bush's inauguration, only to be arrested on arrival in New York and faces the possibility of extradition to Switzerland. At home, a largely indifferent public has ignored a campaign launched by a handful of Borodin sympathizers calling for his immediate release from jail.




Change of Plan


Former Kremlin property supremo and current Russia-Belarus Union Secretary Pavel Borodin found himself behind bars last week instead of the more civilized White House - his intended destination, where he was to salute the new American president. 


As he set foot on U.S. soil, Borodin discovered how serious prosecutors in Switzerland really were when they had put out an international warrant on him, sticking tenaciously to their belief that he received huge kick-backs from Swiss contractors Mabetex and Mercata in return for lucrative Kremlin contracts, says Komsomolskaya Pravda.

While Russian and Belarussian authorities immediately protested, saying that Borodin enjoyed diplomatic immunity owing to his status as secretary of the Russia-Belarus Union, international lawyers rubbished the claim, saying the union itself was virtually non-existent and Borodin's post therefore bogus, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets v Pitere.


World in Union


Indeed, says the paper, Borodin's arrest is a reflection of how the international community regards the union, suggesting that giving it a parliament and common currency are considered as so much nonsense in the eyes of the world.


Even a document signed by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko approving Borodin's "official trip" to attend the inauguration reflected nothing more than their joint ignorance on the status of the union, says the paper.

However, says the paper, Borodin has few friends left in Russian politics. Some politicians have gone as far as calling him a mere businessman who is only interested in a deal if it involves more than $100 million. To prove it, one only has to look at his project to build a half-billion-dollar Russia-Belarus parliamentary complex in St. Petersburg, the paper says.

But Kommersant says Borodin still has some leading cultural activists on his side, all of whom are blaming the Russian press for not securing his release.



Kangeroo Court


But Leonid Yakubovich, host of ORT's "Polye Chudes" game-show program, was more forthright in pronouncing the state guilty over Borodin, saying it has always failed to protect its own citizens. 


He was quoted by Kommersant as warning other Russian nationals of the dangers ahead, saying: "It's possible that Zanzibar could tomorrow issue an arrest warrant [for a Russian] accused of stealing the tail of a kangaroo."

"You could end up in jail for 60 days awaiting extradition to Zanzibar," he reportedly added. 

For its part, Komsomolskaya Prav da defends Borodin, who in his own words is "a simple civil servant living solely on his wages," but now in a Brooklyn jail without even enough cash left for a phone call home. Both federal authorities and the public seem reluctant to chip in, however, says the paper.



Street Charity


The paper's reporters, who took to the streets for a "Free Borodin" fund-raising campaign, found little sympathy. One man suggested the campaigners "look for fools elsewhere."


They took their campaign to the State Duma, only to be told "Borodin has more money than Mabetex." 

But even if Borodin had enough money to call Moscow, Argumenty i Fakty suggests, there would be no one to call, as President Vladimir Putin has finally found an excuse to get rid of one of Boris Yeltsin's "family" members and leave his conscience untroubled.

He can't even rely on Lukashenko, says Izvestia, since a) Lukashenko has become an irritant to the Kremlin, interrupting Putin's work, and b) Borodin's replacement for the Russian-Belarus Union has already been found.

TITLE: electronic music takes on putin's government
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: A new CD compilation demonstrates some of St. Petersburg's most interesting electronic acts, while simultaneously taking a snipe at President Vladimir Putin and his politics.


Released in Austria on the Subetage label on Jan. 18, it is called "putINout. Finest Tunes From Saint Petersburg," while its cover shows a submarine sunk in a bottle of vodka, called - you guessed it - "Putin."

Robert Jelinek, the director of Subetage, a division of Sabotage Communications, explained that the title of the record - which is intended for distribution outside Russia - expresses the St. Petersburg music scene's feelings about the regime.

"To protest against the Putin regime's most recent abuses of power, and in the face of the music scene's political powerlessness, the title and CD cover is designed, at least ironically, to show up Russia's present collective discontent," said Jelinek in an e-mail interview with The St. Petersburg Times earlier this week.

"Every country has a different cliche about others countries," added Jelinek. "If a Russian label made an Austrian compilation including an illustration of the political climate, they would probably have Joerg Haider dressed as Mozart and eating Wiener schnitzel on the cover."

"For me it was important to release great Russian music along with a personal statement and to communicate the feelings and worries of the young Russian music scene about politics," he said.

"PutINout" contains 12 tracks by local acts such as PCP, EU, DJ Udjin and Igor Vdovin - the ex-Leningrad singer, who switched to electronic music after leaving the band - culled from around 50 tracks chosen and sent by local DJ and promoter Misha Chak to be mastered in Vienna. Styles range from hip-hop and electro to drum'n'bass and acid jazz.

The idea to release the record was cemented when Jelinek, who has been always interested in scenes around the globe, came to St. Petersburg last March to visit Chak, who fed Sabotage with local electronic music for years while distributing Sabotage's vinyls in the city.

"I met a lot of very good Russian musicians and had the chance to see their studio situations and to enjoy the club scene," he said.

Chak claims the novelty of the compilation is that local DJs such as Udjin, Demidov and 108 have presented their own music for the first time.

Also, they are the first St. Petersburg-based DJs whose tracks have been released on a foreign label - Chak says 90 percent of the represented acts haven't released anything in the West.

"But the main reason for releasing the CD was to push young and [in the West] unknown artists, and give them a chance for a global response," said Jelinek, as the album started getting positive reviews from European specialized media.

"Most Russian productions have never had the chance to be heard outside of Russia and our label has global distribution channels. The other reason was to show Western listeners the very high level of these Russian productions."

According to Jelinek, what is special about St. Petersburg's electronic music scene is "the specific sound. A lot of jazz influences and a playful cynical spectrum using sound collages and samples from old Soviet material."

Claiming that Russian electronic music can easily match what is produced in other countries, Jelinek outlined the scene's major problems.

"In Russia there's no vinyl production, which is very important for the DJs playing their own records in clubs," he said. "There are just a few underground distributors for imported Western records. But there is no distribution for Russian CDs or other material in the West."

"The next problem is the mail costs. Most of the Russian artists can't send their material by normal mail, because it gets lost. And sending stuff by courier is too expensive for them, which makes communication with the West very difficult. So Russian artists can only send downloaded material from their local Internet cafes."



For more information and free MP3s check out www.sabotage.at

TITLE: racine's masterpiece gets timeless production at bdt theater
AUTHOR: by Natasha Shirokova
TEXT: The premiere of Racine's Phaedra by Grigory Dityatkovsky at the Bolshoy Drama Theater, which was shown for the first time just before Christmas, was an important event despite having next to no publicity. Dityakovsky's professional motto is to work only with excellent drama, and here he has shown that even eloquent classical tragedy can be adopted for contemporary theater and take its place in the repertoire.


Dityatkovsky sweeps the dust away from the old story and displays this tragedy, when people resist the will of the gods, in its all grandeur.

Dityatkovsky, one of the most interesting directors in the city, easily recognizable by his intellectual, restrained, and analytical style, began his career as one of Maly Drama Theater director Lev Dodin's actors.

He still appears in a minor role in Dodin's production of The Devils based on Dostoevsky's novel. At the Maly Drama Theater he also staged the first production of his own, The Star Child, which is still in the repertoire. Though he works a lot abroad, his first production at home brought him the Golden Sophit award, an interpretation of Joseph Brodsky's Marble, shown in the unusual atmosphere of Borey Art Gallery. 

His next production, August Strindberg's The Father won him a Golden Mask award. Both productions showed his main focus is on archetypal situations, and his interest in philosophical generalizations.

There are several peculiarities about the new production of Phaedra, which struck the audience at once, but at the same time are a part of the whole concept of the production. For example, he uses the traditional 19th-century translation of the play which contains a great deal of obsolete vocabulary. This lends the text a musical quality, and is in line with the director's intention not to modernize the consciousness of his characters. He even underlines the difference and the distance between the present day mentality and that of the 17th century, when the tragedy was written. He uses a different rhythm of action, which is accentuated by the old translation, and different motivations. To watch this production you need to tune in to its elevated atmosphere.

There is no reference to any historical time in the production. Tragedy, in the opinion of the director, has no time. This idea is underlined by the sets of Marina Azizyan, who wraps the whole stage in black, which helps us to concentrate on the action. The luxurious costumes work also to accentuate the exclusiveness of the characters, as members of the royal Athenian family, but don't emphasize a particular period of time.

The most valuable thing about the production, however, is the acting. Marina Ignatova, who plays Phaedra, makes her character passionate, subtle and brave. She is burning with love, and this dominates all her words and deeds. Also worthy of mention is Yelena Popova in the role of Oenona. The way Popova depicts her, strong and devoted, ready to sacrifice herself, makes Oenone the second leading part in the production. These two women understand the situation and the inevitability of divine punishment from the very beginning.

Phaedra thus stands aloof from all current productions in St. Petersburg, and is one of the most interesting theater events of the current season.

TITLE: chernov's choice
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: As old rockers prepare to see what remains of a bunch of once big names from the 1970s such as Slade and T. Rex (i.e.: not much at all), there other bizarre and not so bizarre events happening in the city over the next two weeks.


Local hippies have come up with an idea to - as a press release proudly states - "prove once again that the hippie movement is alive" with the Hippie Festival, which will take place at the Valencia Gallery this weekend.

The festival, which is co-promoted by the magazine Hippieland, will start with a show by hippie-minded local bands such as Zelyoniye Rukava and Laterna Magica as well as a photo exhibition called "From the life of St. Petersburg's Hippies." The second day will concentrate on something called "Musical Poetic Performance."

According to the press release, the organizers expect the crowd to be "long-time and newly-converted hippies from St. Petersburg, Russia and even from abroad."

In their favor is that both events start some time in the afternoon, leaving you free at night to look for something more exciting.

Valencia Gallery, 5 Pr. Bakunina, 274-40-45. 3 p.m. on Sat., 4 p.m. on Sun.


Local music critic and promoter Andrei Burlaka has conceived a new rock festival, which is called Proryv (Breakthrough) with two purposes - to celebrate the breakthrough of the Nazi blockade of Leningrad in 1943 and to draw attention to those less known local club bands, which he considers interesting. Thus, the name also hints at the "isolation of rock music by the media," Burlaka says.


Though the historical date came on Jan. 27, the festival will take place a couple of weeks later, as Burlaka says "the idea occurred to me too late to have time to organize everything."

The line-up as published by music press agencies is far from perfect, however, as it mentions the band Leningrad, which is not participating. Check next week's gigs for the full list.

Yubileiny Sports Palace (Small Arena), Feb. 8.


Fuzz Magazine, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary later this year, will stage its so far increasingly massive Fuzz Awards. Though the three last ceremonies were headlined by relatively new popular acts, this year's headliner is Akvarium, with Zemfira appearing as a "special guest."


Yubileiny Sports Palace, Apr. 8.


Returning to the present, a show by Pep-See, the local three girl-fronted group responsible for "Parni, Muzyka, Narkotiki" - Russia's answer to "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll" - is always good fun. Pep-See will play at Faculty on Friday. And if you don't feel like vomiting when you hear "Tula Lula," go to see Chicherina at the Len soviet Palace of Culture on Sunday.

TITLE: world cuisine at world's end
AUTHOR: by Kirill Galetski
TEXT: The intersection of Grazhdansky Prospect and Prospect Nauki is one of the most heavily traveled crossroads in the city. With a metro station (albeit on the part of the metro line that collapsed in 1995 and has yet to be repaired) and a market, it is an area of commercial possibilities that deserves a decent eatery.


The Liner Cafe, located nearby, barely fits the bill. While the decor is "ultra-modern," the theme at Liner is international, with a series of inexpensive combo dishes (59 rubles each) named after various cities of the world, allegedly offering foreign cuisine.

"My most recent trip abroad convinced me that I needed to introduce Russians to foreign cuisine at a price they can afford," declares the chef in his English-language press release about the establishment. 

Well, at least they got the prices right. My wife and I pored over the menu, which is currently available only in Russian. I opted for the Acapulco, which includes Salad with fresh vegetables, rice and feta cheese, a Burrito, boiled Rice, beet-marinated cabbage. My wife ordered the Shanghai, which comes with Korean carrot salad, noodles in bouillon with seaweed, breaded chicken fillet stuffed with pineapple, rice and carrots. These along with the Seafood Cocktail (45 rubles) served as appetizers, while the Texas Steak (112 rubles) and the Rose Dream Salmon (72 rubles) provided a filling representative sample of the Liner's fare, along with side dishes, which although not authentically ethnic were quite resourceful from the point of view of the Russian economy's food market.

Take for example the noodles with bouillon and seaweed served with the Shanghai - if taken on ethnic value, it is a rather poor attempt at making a Chinese-style soup. However, it is an intriguing and rather tasty mix of ingredients which are readily available - flat noodles, Far East salad (seaweed), and presumably bouillon cubes. 

The chef's press release also claims that the Acapulco's burrito went through a painstaking process. This claim does whet the appetite, but the actual result, while being quite edible, is also quite underwhelming. The tortilla bears no difference from the thin lavash you can get from every other bakery in town, and the burrito filling tastes akin to something I produced in my kitchen once when experimenting with Mexican food - in other words, nothing special - just kidney beans in tomato sauce with a hint of spicy red pepper powder. 

The vegetable sides that came with the Acapulco were perplexing - one was a cabbage, apple and feta cheese concoction which in my mind has no business being anywhere a Mexican combo plate, and the spiced, beet-marinated cabbage is a case of confusion as to which border to be south of - in this case it's the Russia-Georgia border! 

The steak was palatable and came with French fries. It was thankfully easy to cut with a knife, but had none of the grilled taste promised by the menu, looking and tasting like the kind of amorphous blob you get when you order steak and eggs at a really cheap diner in the U.S. 

The salmon, also garnished with fries, was the best - a light, flaky breaded filet with a pleasant enough taste and consistency, albeit with a slight smack of cafeteria food. At least the service was fast and the beer was low-priced, from 17 to 22 rubles for a half liter.



Dinner for two with alcohol, 583 rubles. ($21) No credit cards. 14A Prospect Nauki. M: Akademicheskaya. Tel.: 533-24-02.

TITLE: kitezh at mariinsky: farewell to cliches
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
TEXT: Russian opera has always been a priority for the Mariinsky Theater, and unveiling its hidden treasures to the world has been declared the company's prime goal.


Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and Maid Fevronia" may be considered the composer's best operatic creation, but the piece is far from being a favorite in the opera world, and stagings often fail to avoid stereotypes.

Rimsky-Korsakov, whose Snow Maiden, Kitezh, and The Maid Of Pskov, among others, had their world premieres at the Mariinsky, is one of the idols of Mariinsky artistic director Valery Gergiev.

Gergiev has admitted to having an obsession with the spiritual magnetism and power of Kitezh, but was dissatisfied with previous renditions of the opera. 

It is often hard for opera directors to offer an original approach to operas targeting historical subjects, such as Kitezh which juxtaposes historical events and 13th-century legend.

Gergiev's long-term goal is to eradicate the sugary feel, or susalnost, a common critcism levelled at a number of the theater's previous productions of Russian classics.

Trying to to get rid of traditional folk imagery, Gergiev invited young director Dmitry Chernyakov, a 1993 graduate of Russian Academy for Theater Art in Moscow, to offer a fresh look. The risky move paid off, and the new Kitezh, which premiered on Jan. 20, is a contrast to the versions you may have seen previously.

No onion church domes frame the stage in Chernyakov's production, and female characters' dresses are devoid of any kokoshniki.

The opera's four acts are designed as four stylistically different fragments, which are visually compelling, but give the piece as a whole a somewhat disjointed impression.

The eclectic mixture of styles makes for an interesting sight, though at times what you see has little to do with what you hear. However, the production definitely deserves attention, for the director has managed to get away from the stereotypes and cliches which have dogged the opera for decades.

Musically, the production has a certain folk element, with gusli and several domras joining the orchestra during the wedding scene in Act 2, much to the show's advantage.

Chernyakov takes an independent, creative and imaginative approach, but the spirituality with which the music is pierced is lacking throughout the entire first act. The stage is reminiscent of a contemporary design studio: oversized white jugs and handwashing fixture, tall grass, and a floor so clean it shines.

Act 2, when the Tartars ransack Kitezh the Less, is set in a typical St. Petersburg courtyard with beggars looking just like their counterparts from Nevsky Prospect, and leading characters dressed in long dark coats or sportswear and camouflage. The scene of the fight with the Tartars seems to have come straight out of Star Wars, with the Tartar commander arriving in Kitezh the Less on a peculiar hybrid of a horse and Barber of Siberia-type machine with blinding lights shining around the stage.

Chernyakov approaches death scenes with much attention to detail. Fevronia's passing has been turned into a ceremony: birds of paradise - dressed up like normal Soviet pensioners - wash her body, help her take off her dress, put her in a white shroud and take her away on a wooden toboggan. The scene takes you directly back to film chronicles of the Lenin grad blockade.

The production's strong point is that it bridges centuries and generations. Here the costume designer Olga Lukina is very much in line with the director, as the cast is dressed eclectically, in certain scenes juxtaposing the fashions of different ages. 

Before every act Chernyakov "quotes" Konstantin Korovin's and Apollinary Vasnetsov's sets for the 1907 premiere, which appear in the form of a curtain that rises before the singing starts.

The show mixes the real and ethereal, the historical and the fantastic, the divine and the damned. While Chernyakov seemed reluctant to experiment with colors in the sets, lighting designer Gleb Filshtinsky has done some virtuoso, finely nuanced work. Masterful lighting enables the sets to go through many transformations, with the earthly world turning into a celestial paradise in an instant.

The production is stylistically a departure from the Mariinsky's two most recent operatic shows - David Freeman's rendition of Strauss' Salome and Marta Domingo's take on Offenbach's Tales Of Hoffmann - which both had illustrative tendencies, while Salome was even naturalistic.

But just like in Salome and Tales Of Hoffmann, the orchestra under Valery Gergiev's baton was a head above the singing and direction.

Yury Marusin, as drunkard Grishka Kuterma, was lacking depth, power and spark on the opening night, and failed to make a duo for Olga Sergeyeva who was convincing as the maid Fevronia. Marusin's Kuterma didn't seem to suffer from the meanness of his nature as much as thrive in it.

Mockery rather than inner drama was the key to his peformance, which could well make the audience wish tenor Vladimir Galuzin was back in St. Petersburg - it was in the Mariinsky's 1994 production of Kitezh that Galuzin made a thrilling, mesmerizing duo with soprano Galina Gorchakova. 



The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and Maid Fevronia plays next on Feb. 2.

TITLE: Hip Monks Shaking Orthodox Traditions
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TRIKORFO, Greece - A group of Greek Orthodox monks, whose rock music has stormed the Greek charts, are ruffling the feathers of Greece's conservative Holy Synod.


The 15 monks of the Saints Augustine and Serafeim Sarof monastery high in the hills of central Greece say modern times call for modern methods.

Last year the monks, who call themselves the "Free People", released a CD called "I Learned to Live Free." In contrast to Byzantine chant it was rock and roll accompanied by revolutionary lyrics that struck out at big power, globalisation, drugs, conformity and the new world order.

The CD was a huge hit, going platinum after selling some 60,000 copies on the Greek market. And despite the Greek church's warnings about "scandalous" behaviour, the young monks are doing it again.

Their new CD is called "SOS-Save Our Souls" and is full of bold lyrics about issues such as money, power, drug abuse, and human exploitation by modern technology.

An accompanying video shows a man implanted with a microchip, his movements monitored by a "Big Brother." Throughout the video, one of the monks watches over the scene, an apparent symbol of the church observing how man is enslaved by technology and is coming to save him.

"I am a little chip so small, that will drive you to slavery, buy whatever you desire in this world, as long as you live without God," goes the song.

Father Pandeleimon, Free People's 28-year-old lead singer, says the intention is to bring youth closer to the church.

"Life goes forward, and according to the needs and demands of the times, we as clerics of the church have to do things to adjust to those demands of society, and to transform the language of God into the language of modern society." he said.

The monks say the idea came from an article they read in a computer magazine about chip implants. Despite their warnings against the evils of technology they are planning to design a Web site -www.freemonks.gr - where the lyrics of the songs will be written in English so they can be read in other countries.

They are even toying with the idea of opening their own Internet cafes.

Their ideas have angered members of the Holy Synod and some bishops have condemned the monks, calling their actions "unseemly." They plan a trip to the monastery to investigate.

"[The Holy Synod] feels the need to state its distress over this kind of action, which is not consistent with a long orthodox monastic tradition nor in line with the modesty and distinction that characterises the orthodox monastic ideal and causes in many instances problems and scandal to the God-loving congregation of the church," reads a statement issued by Synod members.

The head of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, whom the monks idolise, initially embraced their schemes but now appears to have distanced himself.

Reacting to the bishop's complaints, monastery abbot Father Nektarios, who has been behind the endeavor from the start, said there was no sin in the monk's actions. The church, he continued, had to realise that sooner or later it too will have to modernise.

"Whether the church wants to or not, it will be forced in the next decade to do the things we are doing," he said.

TITLE: Wrestling Camels Enliven Turkish Winter
AUTHOR: By Harmonie Toros
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SELCUK, Turkey - It was the battle of the giants: Cobra versus Thunder, furry neck to furry neck, using every trick in the book to wrestle the other to the ground. 


Cobra tried to lock Thunder in a scissor move, while Thunder countered by tying his neck around Cobra. It took 20 sturdy Turks to divide the two as a crowd of more than 10,000 cheered on a favorite winter pastime: camel wrestling. 

The judges ruled Sunday's competition a draw between the two nearly one-ton animals. 

For more than 100 years, camel wrestling has drawn crowds in western Turkey during the winter months - camel mating season and a time when farmers have little to do on their fields. 

"I learned to love this from my father, and now I bring my son," Ibrahim Soysal said at Sunday's match, oblivious to the large white stains of camel saliva on his jacket. 

Male camels naturally fight for their females during mating season - their readiness to do battle visible in the white froth coming from their mouths, the tension in their hind legs and their tails whipping at their backs. 

"Crazy Camel" from Umurlu won't fight without his scantily clad beloved, Emine, prodding him on. Emine wears just a carpet covering her hump - in sharp contrast to the male wresters, bedecked in huge bead-embroidered saddles, veil-draped headdresses and fluorescent pompoms swaying on the sides. 

But, for all the glory, wrestling camels never consummate their lust during their fighting careers; sexual activity would diminish their determination to fight. 

For a winner to be declared, one of the camels has to run out of the arena, cry out of frustration after being dominated by an opponent, or fall to the ground. 

Most matches end in ties because their owners fear their prized camels could be harmed. During matches, the camels' mouths are tied to keep them from biting each other. 

Sunday's gathering in Selcuk, the largest camel-wrestling festival in Turkey, gathered 96 fighting camels. Smaller festivals are organized across the Aegean from December to March. 

Winners at Sunday's competition received a machine-made carpet and all participants were given about $30 for transportation - nowhere near the minimum $1,500 per year it costs to maintain a camel. A good wrestling camel costs $20,000 on average, with camels from Iran especially valued. 

But owning a good fighter is a sign of power, and many village leaders buy them to emphasize their positions. 

"He won!" exclaimed Ahmet Uza, standing by his camel "Master of the Universe." 

"It's important for the family and the village to win," added Uza, wearing the eight-cornered flat cap, leather boots and jacket, and tweed trousers traditionally worn by camel owners. 

It's also sheer fun, say camel owners and spectators. The matches are accompanied by traditional music and entire families set up barbecues on the hills overlooking the arena, feasting on beef, chicken and camel sausage washed down by raki, Turkey's strong anisette alcohol. 

"This is the best kind of entertainment," said Selami Onder, who grows apples and peaches in the village of Yapildak. 

Residents hope that camel wrestling will increase winter tourism to the region and officials in Selcuk, a small Aegean town just a few miles from the ancient Greek city of Ephesus, hope to attract thousands of tourists in the coming years.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Iraq Draws UN Praise

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - UN nuclear experts praised Iraq for cooperating with an inspection completed Wednesday, but refused to say whether they had found any evidence Iraq was restarting banned weapons programs. 

The visit came as Iraq prepared to sit down with the United Nations to determine whether broader monitoring of its weapons programs could resume, and as the new U.S. administration made clear it will take a hard line on Iraq. 

Iraq is under sanctions that can only be lifted once UN inspectors confirm it has ended its programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. 



Manila Minister Quits

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippine defense minister abruptly resigned Thursday, delivering a jolt to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's five-day-old government which is already beset with economic woes and rumors of coup plots.

Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado said he did not agree with the appointment of a retired general as national security adviser, whom he had investigated in the past for discrepancies in pension funds.

The move appears to underscore divisions in the new government, which is already struggling with a depleted treasury, woefully slow economic growth and rumors that ousted President Joseph Estrada may be seeking a comeback.



Fashion Crime

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The Taleban religious police have jailed 22 hairdressers accused of propagating a Western-style haircut referred to among young men in Kabul as "the Titanic," residents said Thursday. The hairstyle mimics that of actor Leonardo DiCaprio and the cut is named for the movie in which he starred. 

Religious police deployed by the Ministry of Vice and Virtue say the hairstyle is offensive, according to Mohammed Arif, a barber in Kabul. The hairstyle allows hair on the forehead, which the Taleban say could interfere with a person's ability to say his prayers.



Leading by Example

NEW DELHI, India (AP) - All government ministers in a Western Indian state have agreed to rear a cow at home to emphasize the need to care for cattle during a widespread drought, a newspaper reported Thursday. 

Rains have been scarce in Gujarat, where a large majority of people are farmers. An estimated 12,000 villages are affected by the drought and about 10 million cows, buffaloes, goats and camels are suffering from the lack of water. 

Cows are considered sacred animals by Hindus, who are the religious majority in India. 



Falun Gong Thwarted

BEIJING (AP) - China scored a victory Wednesday in its 18-month-old standoff with the Falun Gong spiritual movement, thwarting protests by the banned sect at the cost of the heaviest security in central Beijing in years. 

Checkpoints ringed Tiananmen Square, marring the beginning of the lunar new year, the most auspicious date in the Chinese calendar. Police inspected identification papers, bags, pockets and coat sleeves to ferret out suspected Falun Gong followers. 

The intrusive security came after five people, doused in gasoline, set fire to themselves on Lunar New Year's Eve. The attempted group suicide killed one and marked an ominous shift in Falun Gong's sustained campaign of civil disobedience against the government's ban. 



Swiss Security Set

CHUR, Switzerland (Reuters) - Swiss police urged even peaceful protesters to stay away from the annual World Economic Forum summit in Davos this week for fear they could fuel violent anti-globalization clashes.

Hundreds of activists opposed to the increasing integration of global commerce have vowed to be on hand on Saturday to demonstrate against the WEF annual meeting, which brings together the world's business and political elite.

Swiss officials are mounting a massive security operation to protect heads of state and business executive among the 3,200 participants. 



NATO Downplays Risk

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A committee of 50 nations hastily set up by NATO two weeks ago has found no evidence so far to support claims that depleted uranium (DU) munitions can cause cancer, NATO says.

Soldiers serving as peacekeepers in the NATO-led missions in Bosnia and Ko so vo - where U.S. aircraft fired some 40,000 DU shells - were no sicker than those who had not, committee chairman Da niel Speckhard told a news conference.

NATO spokesperson Mark Laity said Wednesday that it was "quite possible" that tiny traces of highly radioactive plutonium and uranium 236 would turn up in Balkans soil samples now being taken or analyzed by international experts.



Serbs Decry Tribunal

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Yugoslavia told visiting UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte on Wednesday that any trial of former president Slobodan Milosevic should take place in his homeland and not at the international tribunal in The Hague.

A day after absorbing stinging criticism in a meeting with President Vojislav Kostunica, del Ponte also saw further evidence of local opposition to her tribunal as Serb protesters blocked a road outside the Foreign Ministry in Belgrade.

Demonstrators denounced the tribunal as anti-Serb and chanted their opposition to del Ponte's demand that Milosevic, the ousted Yugoslav president, be handed over to face charges that his forces committed atrocities in Kosovo.



Corpses Dumped

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (Reu ters) - San Salvador slum-dwellers complained this week that the government is dumping the decomposing human remains of earthquake victims from a middle-class suburb into their backyard.

More than 700 people died in an eart h quake on Jan. 13. About half the victims were buried when the quake triggered a landslide in the middle-class Las Colinas suburb outside the capital of San Salvador.

To stop the spread of disease, authorities began carting off the mixture of soil, debris and unidentified human remains that covered hundreds of houses. It was taken to government dump sites, but when those reached their limit, the government asked private landowners for permission to begin dumping on wasteland - some of it in slum areas like Montecristo.

TITLE: Sydney Harbor Teems With Fear of Return of the Sharks
AUTHOR: By Michael Christie
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY - Sharks, one of nature's most fearsome killers, are coming in increasing numbers to feed in Sydney Harbor, where every weekend hundreds of sailing boats dot the water and thousands of bathers frolic in the coves.


Or are they?

Battle lines have been drawn between newspapers and some scientists who claim the cleanest Sydney Harbor waters in many years have boosted fish populations and the predators that feed off them, and sceptics who deride it all as "shark-ploitation."

The catch in mid-January of a three-meter Bull shark way up the Parramatta River which snakes from the harbor through Sydney suburbia was seen by some experts as unusual.

The Parramatta catch, headlined "Monster in our Midst" by the tabloid Daily Telegraph, made many locals wonder if a decades-long truce was ending between Sydneysiders and sharks. The last fatal shark attack in the harbour was in 1963.

Some professional divers, who spend most of their days swimming in the supposedly shark-infested waters of Sydney harbor and the surrounding coastline, think the local media is getting caught up in a shark headline frenzy after a number of attacks and sightings around the country.

"They're not after humans anyway. For the most part, if they take a bite out of you they'll realise you're not a fish and spit it out," said a 76-year-old veteran in a Sydney dive shop.

The New South Wales Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said this week that the water off Sydney's ocean beaches was now cleaner than it had been in decades because of deep sea sewage outflows, stormwater drain improvements and public education.

It said that the same applied, to a slightly lesser extent, to the harbor itself and anecdotal evidence of an increase in fish and marine life was "incontrovertible."

"It's only anecdotal but it seems consistent. No one can doubt the harbor water is getting better and that's having a beneficial impact on wildlife, more fish, more sharks," said John Dengate of the EPA.

Australia has always had its sharks. Much maligned, they strike fear in most hearts but have actually killed far fewer people since European settlement than, for example, bee stings.

Nevertheless, the government is using their menacing presence off Australia's shores to try and deter illegal immigrants.

Frequent shark sightings that followed two fatal attacks last September by suspected Great Whites off South Australia, and two highly publicised attacks in Western Australia, have persuaded South Australia authorities to reinstitute aerial patrols.

Last Sunday, Mark Ellington of a cancer fundraising campaign called Kayaking for Kemo Kids said he was flung into the sea when what might have been a Mako shark rammed his kayak as he paddled down to Sydney from Queensland.

As for Sydney harbour, Dave Crass of Manly Oceanworld said on Wednesday that shark numbers were miniscule in comparison with 150 years ago, when hundreds would have been swimming in the water. But the sharks out there would certainly head for the food.

"If there are more food stocks in the water, then there will be more accommodation for large predators," Crass said.

The expert of Australian shark experts, John Stevens of the government-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's marine research division in Hobart, said the catch of the large Bull shark deep in the harbor was "fairly unusual."

But to say cleaner water meant more fish and therefore more sharks was a hypothesis that might not stand up to scrutiny.

"The thing is, sharks are always there. I'd think you'd be in for quite a surprise if they drained the harbour and you found out exactly how many are swimming about in there," he said.

Marine biologists question the thesis that clean water is simply good for ocean critters.

Strip out the "charismatic stuff" like seals, birds and big fish and you find that many lifeforms in the sea thrive in a crisis - such as contamination - as they madly reproduce to stabilise their numbers, said Tony Underwood, a professor and invertebrate biologist at Sydney University.

"Mostly, water quality has bugger all to do with anything," Underwood said. "With the sharks in Sydney you have to ask: Is it because now we can see them? They're no longer hidden by sewage?"

TITLE: Russian Duo Reclaims Figure-Skating Crown
AUTHOR: By Colleen Barry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRATISLAVA, Slovakia - Russians Yele na Berezhnaya and Anton Sikha ru lidze overcame an early mistake Wednesday to reclaim the European Figure-Skating title stripped from them last year.


The error - a missed combination - came during a charming long program drawing on Charlie Chaplin's goofy grace. The victory was redemption for last year, when they were disqualified after Berezhnaya tested positive for a banned substance.

Skating with equal musical acuity, the until-now-overlooked No. 3 Russian pair of Tatyana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin vaulted to second with a snappy, error-free program to West Side Story selections. Sarah Abitbol and Stephane Bernadis of France finished third.

Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze earned a perfect 6.0 for presentation - in a field where 5.9s were common - after a program that won over the audience with its comical poses. At one point, Sikharulidze stuck out his belly and scratched his behind, and there were pleasing pauses as they pretend to falter at a musical stop.

The Chaplinesque humor vanquished their one error: Berezhnaya touched down during the side-by-side double axel, forcing them to pass on a planned combination.

The performance held off an advance by Totmyanina and Marinin, who made no mistakes and were the only pair to complete two side-by-side triple jumps. 

Still, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze edged them technically, with marks ranging from 5.7 to 5.9s, to their compatriots' 5.6s to 5.8s.

Abitbol and Bernadis, third at least year's world's, defended their European bronze with a routine to an edgy, sometimes industrial version of Tristan and Isolde arranged specially for them. Abitbol touched down on a throw triple loop, but it was a small error.

Defending European champion Irina Slutskaya's pursuit of technical difficulty has raised the bar for American champ Michelle Kwan, who has been seeking consistency in her triple-triple combination. Yet that competitive drive was notably absent from Slutskaya's qualifying Wednesday, where she finished easily at the top of her group.

The round counts for 20 percent of the final score - but neither Slutskaya, seeking her fourth European title, nor teammate Maria Butyrskaya, looking for her third, displayed more than a glimmer of their true mastery.

Slutskaya even wore her reserve costume, saving the elegant black and Bordeaux red dress designed by Bolshoi ballet's own costume designer for the final free skate on Saturday.

Slutskaya is the only woman who has hit the difficult triple lutz-triple loop, and her long program can feature up to seven triple jumps. Yet in qualifying she hit just five triples. It was for lack of trying.

Both Butyrskaya, 28, and Slutskaya, 21, will be taking aim at Kwan at the worlds in Vancouver, British Columbia, in March. Both Russians have beaten her in the past, Slutskaya three times in 2000. Butyrskaya, European champion in 1998 and 1999, beat Kwan at the 1999 World Championship.

The Russians are on track to win both the women's and men's titles, with Yevgeny Plushchenko, Alexei Yagudin and Alexander Abt locked in the top three spots going into Thursday's final.

TITLE: Pens Win as Mario Continues To Amaze
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: VANCOUVER - Markus Naslund became the National Hockey League's first 30-goal scorer this season and the Vancouver Canucks used their special teams to cool off the Phoenix Coyotes, 6-2.


Vancouver scored three power-play goals and a short-handed tally to snap a four-game losing streak while preventing Phoenix from recording a season-high sixth straight win.

After Josh Holden scored his first goal of the season 5:52 into the game Wednesday night, Naslund doubled the Canucks' lead with a power-play goal just before the midway point.

Vancouver put away the game with three goals in the second period. Trent Klatt and Harold Druken scored 93 seconds apart early in the session before rookie Jarkko Ruutu got his first NHL goal while killing a penalty at 7:05.

Former Canuck Brad May and Tka chuk provided the offense for Phoenix.



Pittsburgh 3, Montreal 1. In Pittsburgh, Mario Lemieux's improbable comeback continued as the Hall of Famer recorded a hat trick to lift the Pittsburgh Penguins to a 3-1 victory over the injury-riddled Montreal Canadiens.


Lemieux's 40th career hat trick ranks second all-time behind Wayne Gretzky's 50.

Lemieux completed his hat trick 87 seconds into the third period. Lemieux has 14 goals and 12 assists in 13 games since moving from the owner's box to the ice. He has a point in every game except a win over Anaheim on Jan. 15.

Eric Chouinard scored his first NHL goal on the power play with 2:12 to go to break up Garth Snow's bid for a second straight shutout.



New Jersey 4, Dallas 1. In Dallas, the New Jersey Devils scored three goals on as many shots in a 71-second span of the first period and coasted to a 4-1 victory over the Dallas Stars.


Scott Niedermayer, Petr Sykora and Alexander Mogilny did the damage, chasing rookie goaltender Marty Turco.

Martin Brodeur made 32 saves for the Devils.



Detroit 4, Nashville 3. In Detroit, Martin Lapointe and Aaron Ward scored second-period goals on a historic night at Joe Louis Arena as the Detroit Red Wings held on for a 4-3 victory over the Nashville Predators.


Defenseman Larry Murphy helped set up Lapointe's tally as he became only the second player in NHL history to appear in 1,600 games. Long-time Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman had a pair of assists to tie Phil Esposito for sixth place on the league's all-time scoring list with 1,590 points.


Carolina 3, New York Rangers 2. In New York, defensemen Niclas Wallin and David Tanabe scored 29 seconds apart to spark a three-goal second period as the Carolina Hurricanes held on for a 3-2 victory over the New York Rangers.


Wallin forged a 1-1 tie 5:53 into the second with his second NHL goal.

Tanabe put Carolina ahead for good at 6:22 with his first goal since Nov. 12. Martin Gelinas stretched the lead to 3-1 with 5:47 left in the period.

TITLE: There's No Place Like The Road For Sixers
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: HOUSTON, Texas - Tyrone Hill rebounded Allen Iverson's second consecutive missed free throw and put in a lay-up in the final minute that lifted the Philadelphia 76ers to their franchise-record 12th straight road victory, an 85-84 overtime triumph over the Houston Rockets.


Hill pulled down a season-high 19 rebounds but none bigger than his grab with 56 seconds to go.

Iverson scored 32 points and won his duel with Steve Francis, who had 24.



Cleveland 94, Chicago 86. Elton Brand's short jumper gave the Chicago Bulls an 82-81 lead with 4:53 to play before the Cleveland Cavaliers awoke from their slumber to win 94-86.


Andre Miller hit two free throws, Lamond Murray followed a missed lay-up by Miller with a dunk and Jim Jackson drilled a three-pointer as Cleveland took an 88-84 lead with 3:46 remaining.

Murray hit two free throws Wednesday night, Gatling knocked down a mid-range jump shot and Murray fed Clarence Weatherspoon for a dunk that made it 94-86 with 54 seconds left, securing the Cavs' first consecutive victories since Dec. 15-16.

Miller had 13 points, nine assists and seven rebounds and Jackson and Weatherspoon added 12 points each for Cleveland.



Charlotte 81, New York 67. In Charlotte, North Carolina, Jamal Mashburn had 31 points, 13 rebounds and fueled a decisive run to close the first half as the Charlotte Hornets snapped a five-game losing streak with an 81-67 triumph over the slumping New York Knicks.


David Wesley - the only other Charlotte player to score in double figures - had 18 points as the Hornets won for the first time since an 86-85 triumph at NBA-worst Chicago on Jan. 12.

Latrell Sprewell scored 22 points for the Knicks.



Phoenix 106, Detroit 73. In Auburn Hills, Michigan, Cliff Robinson scored 12 of his 27 points in the first quarter and Shawn Marion added 18 and 16 rebounds as the Phoenix Suns snapped a three-game losing streak by pasting the Detroit Pistons, 106-73.


Robinson had the final four points in a game-opening 8-0 run and the Suns never looked back.

Jerry Stackhouse, the NBA's leading scorer who missed the last game with the flu, was held to 19 points.



Miami 103, Toronto 83. In Miami, Anthony Mason scored 21 points to lead a balanced attack as the Heat beat the Toronto Raptors 103-83.


Eddie Jones scored 18 points and Brian Grant added 17 for the Heat (26-18), who have won 12 of their last 16 games.

Vince Carter scored 21 points for the Raptors.



Golden State 109, New Jersey 87. In Oakland, Antawn Jamison scored 28 points and grabbed 12 rebounds as the Golden State Warriors used a big third quarter to defeat the New Jersey Nets, 109-87.


Former Net Mookie Blaylock scored 20 points and rookie Marc Jackson had 17 and 13 rebounds.

Stephon Marbury suffered through three-of-14 shooting and scored just 11 points for New Jersey.

TITLE: Giants, Ravens Claim Super Bowl Victory Lies in the Trenches
AUTHOR: By Barry Wilner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TAMPA, Florida - They don't mind getting down and dirty, so the New York Giants and Baltimore Ravens almost relish the idea of deciding the Super Bowl in the trenches.


And most of them insist that's exactly where the outcome of Sunday's NFL title game will be determined.

"We both have the same style of play, blue-collar and physically aggressive defenses," said Pro Bowl defensive tackle Sam Adams, a key contributor to Baltimore's record-setting defense. "That's how we both win and got here." 

Neither team is at a defensive disadvantage at the line of scrimmage. While the Ravens allowed the fewest points in a 16-game season - and still are six points below the old mark - the Giants have been nearly as staunch up front. 

Tackle Keith Hamilton might have been their best defensive player. Or perhaps it was end Michael Strahan.

Baltimore, of course, has Adams and Tony Siragusa inside, nearly 320 kilograms of practically immovable beef. On the outside, the Ravens have sackmasters Rob Burnett and Michael McCrary.

"Burnett and McCrary penetrate a lot, they are very quick," said Giants offensive line coach Jim McNally. "Then you have those two in the middle.

"A big part of the game is fought in the trenches, and their defense obviously has been a stone wall."

Which means New York's revamped offensive line, led by Pro Bowl guard Ron Stone, must act like a wrecking ball.

Stone believes the unit, bolstered by the offseason addition of veterans Lomas Brown at tackle, Glenn Parker at guard and Dusty Zeigler at center, can handle the destructive assignment - even if right tackle Luke Pettigout is hampered by a left ankle injury sustained in Wednesday's practice.

"You've got your stars at other positions, but the game is always won in the trenches," said Stone, who wore a T-shirt with "Overworked and Underappreciated" emblazoned on it.

"They've got two athletic guys who are very big and take up so much space and they get into the blocks and you can't get to Ray."

That would be Ray Lewis, the NFL defensive player of the year. The middle linebacker knows how to dig ditches as well as anyone, although the idea is for Adams and Siragusa - and, to a lesser extent, Burnett and McCrary - to keep the blockers away from Lewis.

Then Lewis is free to make tackles, something nobody does better. 

Unoffically, Lewis has led the league in tackles three of the last five years.

"The guy in that position has been the quarterback on defense," defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis said. "So everything starts with him and centers around him. He's the focal point of your defense, the leader and the guy you look to. He's got to take the coaches' personality out on the field and relay it to the guys in the huddle."

That rugged personality isn't confined to the Ravens in this game, of course. Nor is it limited to the defensive fronts.

Jon Ogden, Baltimore's All-Pro offensive tackle, is big enough, strong enough and mobile enough to dominate at the line. But so is Hamilton, who, despite being just an NFC alternate for the Pro Bowl, has been as good as any defensive tackle for the last two months. 

"We get too much exposure for things like holding, not enough for helping win games," Ogden said.

"What I like is I'm going to have my guy right here, in front of me, and I'm going to have to move him," he said. "And I plan to move him," Hamilton added.

Whichever team wins in the trenches will have a huge edge considering points may be at a premium.

TITLE: SKA Looks to Foreigners For Much-Needed Boost
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg hockey team SKA spelled out their recipe for survival Wednesday night enlisting foreign players as they opened the professional hockey Superliga's second stage with a 3-0 loss to Dinamo Moscow.


SKA changed their team formula from a young team by signing a number of experienced players including 34-year-old Canadian defenseman Bob Halkadis, who played 11 seasons in the NHL before being sent to the minors in 1997, and 32-year-old defenseman Vla di mir Tarasov.

Tarasov debuted on Petersburgs's top line paired with Alexei Danilov while Halkadis teamed up with Russian national junior team defenseman Fyodor Tyutin.

The army team's second offensive line was made up entirely from scratch with Ukranian winger Bogdan Saven ko, 34-year-old Vladimir Kochin, and 37-year-old Mikhail Kravets who played center despite playing most of his career at right wing.

"We are short of centers and I chose Kravets to fill the gap," said SKA head coach Rafail Ishmatov who added that he hoped to move him back to his regular position soon.

Likely to ease this problem is Swe dish center Peter Nylander who failed to debut because his luggage, including all his hockey equipment, hasn't arrived yet.

The fourth and final foreigner is Ukrainian forward Yevgeny Myn chen ko who didn't get much ice time in his opening match.

Russian hockey veterans Igor Belyaevsky and Konstantin Bytsenko were also listed on the SKA roster, but have yet to arrive in St. Petersburg.

Despite the sprinkling of seasoned veterans into SKA's lineup, the young offensive line of Alexander Shinkar, Alexei Tsvetkov, and Yury Trubochev was the most aggressive with chances to put the home team on the board early in the first. Visiting goalie Mikhail Shta len kov was invincible and held on for a shutout.

Muscovite Alexander Kuvalenko opened the scoring at 16:03 of the first.

Even though SKA showed rare spirit in the second Dinamo ran away with the game after scoring a power-play goal at 38:41 and went ahead 3-0 at 1:44 in the third. Dinamo stifled the Petersburgers with tight defense and excellent goaltending in the third.

SKA finished at the bottom of the league's first stage with a 2-0-0-2-30 (W-OTW-T-OTL-L) record.

For the second stage, which started Wednesday, the league has been divided into three separate groups of six teams each. The top six are guaranteed spots in the play-offs and will play to improve their standings. The middle six will compete for the last two play-off spots, while the bottom six fight to avoid relegation to the first division.

Joining SKA in the relegation group are capital teams Dinamo and CSKA, Moscow Region team Viyatz, Molot-Prikamye from Perm and Yekaterinburg's Dinamo-Energia.

TITLE: Capriati To Meet Hingis in Aussie Open Final
AUTHOR: By Phil Brown
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MELBOURNE, Australia - Martina Hingis finally beat both Williams sisters in the same tournament, and handed Venus her worst loss ever in the process.


Playing with a new "wave of confidence," former troubled teenager Jennifer Capriati reached her first Grand-Slam final.

The matchup for the Australian Open championship was set after Hingis beat Venus Williams 6-1, 6-1 Thursday, and Capriati knocked out defending champion Lindsay Davenport 6-3, 6-4.

Capriati, the No. 12 seed, reacted by putting her hand behind her head in a gesture of disbelief.

Both losers suffered from a rash of errors as Williams missed a chance to collect a fourth consecutive big title after the Wimbledon, U.S. Open and Olympic championships.

Capriati, who rates the 1992 Olympic gold medal as the greatest feat of her career, beat Steffi Graf in that final at age 16. That was before her mid-1990s hiatus from tennis with drug and personal problems.

Hingis is seeking her fourth title in the last five Australian Opens.

Williams, who beat Hingis on her way to the Wimbledon and U.S. Open titles, held service only once, committed 38 errors and yielded her second service break of the second set by serving three double faults.

She gave Hingis match point by slamming a volley far out, and then missed a backhand long.

"Things happen all the time for no apparent reason," Williams said.

She said Hingis played her normal consistent, counterpunching game.

"A lot of times I'd be in there and I'd just miss a shot, just giving it back to her," a subdued Williams said. "That's something you can't do, especially in a Grand-Slam semifinal."

Williams, however, had been struggling throughout the tournament, needing three sets in three of her first five matches. She had to rally from 3-5 in the final set to beat Amanda Coetzer in Wednesday's quarterfinals.

"It's a sad thing not to go home with the title," Williams said.

Hingis also was responsible for one of Williams' worst previous losses, 6-2, 6-1 in 1997 - "when I was like a baby," the 20-year-old Williams said.

Before rallying from 1-4 in the final set to beat Serena Williams on Wednesday, Hingis watched Venus' slow start against Coetzer.

"[It] was the same thing today," Hingis said.

"I am fitter now and taking the ball earlier, and I think that helps me when I play the power players like the Williamses," Hingis said.

In three previous events, Hingis had beaten one Williams sister and then lost to the other, including the 1999 U.S. Open, won by Serena.

She became the third player to beat both sisters in the same tournament. 

Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario did it in 1998 and Steffi Graf in '99.

Davenport hung her head or banged her racket on the court after some of the 43 errors that accounted for a majority of Capriati's 78 points.

Trying to stay in the match with Capriati serving at 5-4 in the second set, Davenport missed two serve returns, netted a backhand and finally dumped a forehand into the net while chasing a wide shot by Capriati.

"In all the semifinals I've ever played, this was probably the most disappointing in the way that I showed up to play," Davenport said.

Davenport said she was sending balls long because the 34-degree heat made the balls lighter and harder to control.

"Her balls were coming extremely hard, so then it's hard to do what you want with the ball," she added.

Capriati said she was stronger and more aggressive than when she lost to Davenport in last year's semifinals here.

"Maybe I was kind of intimidated by her and the whole moment," Capriati said.

Not this time.

"Just in this tournament, from the beginning, all of a sudden this confidence came over me, like this wave of confidence," said Capriati, who beat No. 4 Monica Seles in the quarterfinals.

"I had to really jump on top of her early, especially on her serve," Capriati said of Davenport. "Maybe I thought she was taking me a little bit lightly there. So I got the early break [in the second game]. I think that helped a lot."

In 1990-91, Capriati also reached three Grand Slam tournament semifinals, but lost each time.

"I was happy just playing and even having a good couple wins here and there, getting my ranking up," Capriati said, referring to her matches early in her comeback. "But now my expectations are going to be higher."



******

Defending champion Andre Agassi beat an injured Pat Rafter in five sets Thursday to reach the Australian Open final for the third time.


Agassi sealed a 7-5, 2-6, 6-7, 6-2, 6-3 victory in just over three hours after the Australian's legs cramped up so badly that he could hardly run.

Rafter had led by two sets to one even though his legs had started to seize up early in the third set, but won just four more games as his muscles tightened more in the last two.

Rafter, bidding to become the first local player since Pat Cash in 1998 to make the men's singles final, needed treatment after the fourth set but bravely played on even though he was in obvious discomfort.

The sixth-seeded Agassi will play the winner of Friday's second semifinal between Frenchmen Arnaud Clement and Sebastien Grosjean in Sunday's final.

Rafter had begun strongly, sending down four aces in his first service game, but the Agassi took the opening set when he claimed the first break of serve in the 11th game after Rafter pushed a backhand long.

Rafter, a dual U.S. Open champion, fought back to take the second set 6-2. He got the first break in the fourth game when Agassi double-faulted then again in the eighth game when he lunged to send a forehand winner cross court.

The Australian serve-and-volleyer blasted three aces past Agassi in the 11th game of the third set, taking his total for the match to 19, before taking the tiebreak.

Rafter beat Agassi in a thrilling five-setter in last year's Wimbledon semifinals but it quickly became clear that he was in trouble this time as he struggled to run.

With Rafter unable to move freely, Agassi had no problems holding serve and broke twice to win the fourth set and once more in the fifth to reach his 12th grand slam final.

Agassi won the Australian Open in 1995 and again last year. 


- Reuters

TITLE: Tanker-Spill Captain, Crew Detained
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PUERTO BAQUERIZO, Galapagos Islands - Authorities detained the captain of a crippled tanker who took the blame for the accident that spilled at least 185,000 gallons of fuel in the Galapagos Islands.


Capt. Tarquino Arevalo, who apparently mistook a signal buoy for a lighthouse, and 13 crewmen from the tanker Jessica were confined to a military base on San Cristobal island pending formal charges, Merchant Marines Vice Admiral Gonzalo Vega said Wednesday.

Arevalo and the tanker's owners could face two to four years in prison if convicted of negligence or crimes against the environment.

The Jessica ran aground nine days ago off San Cristobal Island, one of the Galapagos chain, spilling diesel fuel into an ecosystem populated by rare species that inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

But the spill appeared less serious than it could have been, although the long-term environmental damage to the islands 1,000 kilometers off the mainland remained unclear.

Only one pelican and two seagulls are known to have died. But dozens of other birds and marine animals - sea lions, seagulls, blue-footed boobies and albatrosses - have been affected, Galapagos park officials said.

One environmental worker said that the spill was under control.

"We were very worried at first, but what has happened is not so grave," said Carlos Valle, the Galapagos coordinator for the World Wildlife Fund.

Hundreds of volunteers, park rangers and environmentalists combed the shores of San Cristobal and Santa Fe Island for wildlife affected by the spill. Four sea lion cubs were cleaned and released Wednesday, said park director Eliecer Cruz.

Some conservationists fear the fuel will sink to the ocean floor, destroying algae vital to the food chain and threatening marine iguanas, sharks, birds that feed off fish and other species.

Officials blamed human error for the spill - an allegation Arevalo admitted to in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. He said he confused two landmarks, leading to the accident.

"I know what's happened but what can I do now?" he said in the interview aired Wednesday and posted on the BBC Web site.

Arevalo said he has not slept since the accident and knows the islanders blame him. "If they want to kill, kill me, but I need a little peace," he said.

Efforts to reach Arevalo for furthercomment were unsuccessful.

Conservationists worldwide demanded that Ecuador take greater steps to protect the Galapagos.

Ecuadorean Environment Minister Rodolfo Rendon said new legislation is being written to require special permission and insurance for all vessels entering the Galapagos with more than 38 liters of fuel aboard.

Shipping authorities have confirmed that the Jessica was not insured for environmental contamination, he said. International shipping rules require such insurance for vessels carrying 2,000 tons of fuel, while the Jessica had only 300 tons aboard, Galapagos park officials said.

"We are writing up the regulations to establish what fuels can enter the Galapagos, and moreover, that the minimum amount possible is used," Rendon said.

The 28-year-old tanker Jessica is owned by the Ecuadorean company Acotramar. It regularly transported diesel and bunker, a heavy fuel used by tour boats, from the mainland into the Galapagos, Ecuador's main tourist attraction.

It was carrying a cargo of some 234,000 gallons of fuel when it hit bottom 500 meters off San Cristobal, the easternmost island in the archipelago.

Tens of thousands of liters were safely removed from the tanker after it hit, but much more spilled into the water.