SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #652 (19), Tuesday, March 13, 2001
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TITLE: Russia To Educate More Patriots
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Forget promoting an investor-friendly climate and a stable currency. The cheapest way to improve society and the economy just could be by making Russians more patriotic citizens.
 This is what a new five-year government program - which seeks to arouse feelings of pride in Russians for their country by increasing pro-Russia programming on television and selling patriotic souvenirs - states as its means of improving the general well-being of society at large.
 "Implementation of this program will help preserve public stability, restore the national economy and strengthen the defense capability of the country," states the text of the program, which was published in the official government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Monday. 
 Steps are to be taken this month to draw up a framework for implementing the 177.95 million ruble ($6.25 million) program, which was drafted by the defense and education ministries. The blueprint should be ready by the end of the year and the actual implementation should commence in 2002.
 The federal government gave its stamp of approval to the program in mid-February.
 "The growing poverty gap and the loss of spiritual values" have led "to a gradual loss of traditional Russian patriotism," the preface of the program laments. 
 Meanwhile, "indifference, individualism, cynicism and unmotivated aggression and ... disrespect for the state" have become widespread.
 Deputy Education Minister Yury Kovrizhnykh said on Monday that the demise of the Soviet Union's propaganda machine left the country's youth in a vacuum. 
 Calling for state-owned media to play a key role in promoting new patriotic values, he said programming should be drawn from the glorious pages of the Soviet era - such as victory in World War II - and Slavic folklore. 
 The program has a separate section on mass media that provides funding for patriotic films and other programming and support to media outlets that promote patriotism.
 The program also envisions the establishing of a patriotic newspaper or magazine of some kind.
 The program states that a battle should be waged against those people who "distort the history of the Fatherland" by providing a publically available data base of historical facts and "patriotically inclined calendars and souvenirs."
 Kovrizhnykh, who supervises paramilitary youth clubs among other organizations at the Education Ministry, said that the newly adopted program should also be complemented by a nationwide revival of military training in high schools.
 In December 1999, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin issued an edict to require the military training of 11th-graders, a practice that was compulsory in Soviet days.
 The decree stated that schools had to provide at least two to three hours of military training every week. Such training would include marching, as well as loading rifles and shooting for the boys and medical training for the girls.
 However, many regions have resisted bringing back the training, arguing that the existing curriculum adequately covers the subject with a class called Basics of Life Safety.
 The course, which was introduced nationwide in the early 1990s, teaches children how to behave in emergency situations such as household or outdoor accidents. 
 Clearly worried about the public's growing indifference, the government is hoping that the patriotic education will help turn things around, said a Defense Ministry official close to the program.
 The official, who asked not to be named, said both his ministry and other "concerned" government agencies consider this program "to be very important." 
 He would not elaborate, however, on how a program with a budget of just over $6 million would possibly manage to achieve its goal of turning tens of millions of Russians into more patriotic citizens.
 An official with the Russian Defense Technical Sports Organization, which is working with the government on the patriotic program, said a low-cost method could be the censorship of Western television programming in a bid to protect youth from the unpatriotic "filth" that has entered the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 "Back in those days the youth dreamed of becoming pilots whereas now they have [drug] dealers as role models," said Leonid Burlaka, a retired officer who is now working for the Russian Defense Technical Sports Organization.
 In the days of the Soviet Union, his organization was called the Voluntary Organization of Support for the Army and Navy, and offered teenagers weekly, if not daily, drills on how to be "the right role models," remembered Burlaka.
 The organization maintains a nationwide network of military-style sports clubs and is ready to expand Soviet-era practices to build up patriotism, he said.

TITLE: Yeltsin Leaves Hospital
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Boris Yeltsin received a visit from his successor on Monday, and Russian television showed the first pictures of the former Russian president since a six-week hospital stay that sparked rumors that he was near death.
 Yeltsin left a Moscow hospital on Sunday, after being confined with an acute viral infection and pneumonia since the end of January.
 His prolonged hospital stay had sparked speculation that his health had seriously declined, and last week aides even took the step of denying he had died.
 Monday's pictures, aired without sound, showed Yeltsin seated in a sweater, speaking while his wife Naina laughed. Yeltsin's protocol chief and top aide Vladimir Shevchenko was also present.
 A Kremlin spokesman said President Vladimir Putin had visited Yelt sin's house on Monday morning, but did not say what the two men had discussed. Putin was not shown in the television pictures.
 Shevchenko later told Interfax news agency that Yeltsin had taken a stroll outdoors near the house after a half-hour conversation with Putin.
 Yeltsin, who steered Russia's transition to capitalism during nine years as Kremlin leader, has a record of health problems that often sidelined him during the later years of his presidency.
 His latest illness produced none of the political tremors that similar incidents did while he was president, but the silver-haired patriarch remains an important, controversial symbolic figure in the Russian political realm.
 The former president was seeking "to throw off the burden of the hospital and reacclimatise himself," Interfax quoted Shevchenko as saying.
 He added that Yeltsin was no longer undergoing special medical procedures, but was taking "medicine and vitamins."

TITLE: City of Amber Key To Restoration of Lost Room
AUTHOR: By Daniel Mclaughlin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: YANTARNY, Kaliningrad Region - On a remote spit of Russian land battered by Baltic wind and waves, dredgers trawl through a vast pit of ancient earth in search of enough amber to recreate one of Europe's most spectacular lost treasures.
 Yantarny is home to about 6,000 Russians whose lives revolve around an open-cast mine holding some 90 percent of the world's amber, the fossilized resin of prehistoric trees which has drawn people to this northeastern corner of Europe for thousands of years.
 When the king of Prussia commissioned a copy of his own amber room in 1716 to give to Russia's Peter the Great as a symbol of friendship between their lands, workers at Palmnicken, as Yantarny was called when part of Prussia, plowed through this earth for the amber to line its walls.
 Catherine the Great later ordered her craftsmen to stud the room's walls with semi-precious stones, and moved it from St. Petersburg's Winter Palace to her opulent summer retreat at Tsarskoye Selo.
 Now almost three centuries after Prussian workers unearthed the amber for the original room, their Russian successors at Yantarny - whose name means "Amber" in Russian - are supplying St. Petersburg with amber to recreate the lost chamber for the city's 300-year celebrations in 2003.
 As the Nazis swept through the Soviet Union in 1941, they dismantled the Amber Room at Tsarskoye Selo and took it to their Baltic port of Koenigsberg.
 The Soviet Union later seized the city and after the war renamed it Kaliningrad, the regional capital about 50 kilometers from Yantarny.
 The room's jewel-encrusted amber panels have not been seen since Allied bombs ripped through the city, and though Nazi records say they were shipped to Saxony intact, their fate has remained a mystery for more than half a century.
 One theory places the room at the bottom of the Baltic, where a ship allegedly carrying it to mainland Germany sank. Others insist it still lies where it was buried for wartime safety, in Czech or German mineshafts which lay competing claims to be its resting place.
 Hopes that the Amber Room had survived the war were boosted in the 1990s by the appearance in the German city of Bremen of a bureau and a Florentine mosaic from the Tsarskoye Selo palace.
 But even if Catherine's room did survive, its ordeal would probably have ruined the delicate amber forever, said Vera Yunina, head of Yantarny's commercial department.
 "Just as the sun shines differently on different days so each piece of amber is different. It's like a little sun, living gold that you must really look after," said Yunina, holding pieces of amber ranging from black through red and gold to green and from near translucence to milky opacity.
 Yunina said Germans occasionally return to Yantarny, to see what remains of the village their ancestors built.
 "Germans come back to try to find the places where their relatives lived and worked. They just walk up to the old German buildings and lay their hands on them."
 She said the mine and the village did not deserve their bad reputation, as a polluter of the Baltic and source of a dismally low wage paid to people forced to work in grim conditions.
 "Things aren't bad here, we've got what we need, it's peaceful and everyone knows each other," Yunina said. "Life is centred on the mine but people aren't dying every day like the papers say."
 She said sons followed fathers and daughters their mothers into jobs at the mine, where about 1,600 workers receive an average wage of 1,500 rubles ($50) a month.
 Many of the staff are descendants of Soviet prisoners of war, who survived a German concentration camp and women's prison on the site and stayed on after liberation.
 A memorial to 7000 people executed here by a Nazi firing squad stands between the leaden Baltic and the huge smear of grey earth, through which towering dredgers drag rusty claws.
 They spew tons of mud into trucks and pipes for transfer to a factory, where workers blast the earth with water to sift out the buoyant amber. A conveyor carries the amber to a line of waiting workers who sort it by hand according to size and quality.
 Nikolai Pitukhov, Yantarny's deputy general director, said that the vast majority of amber unearthed was not of jewelry quality, and was turned instead into amber acid or oil for use in lacquers, paints and a few more novel projects.
 Yantarny amber was used in an amber therapy room in Kaliningrad region's resort town Svetlogorsk, where, Pitukhov said, patients enjoy sessions absorbing the room's positive energy. Reaching into a cupboard above his desk, he pulled out a bottle of amber tablets and talked of their rejuvenative powers.
 Pitukhov also rejected allegations that the open-cast mine sullied the already overworked and heavily polluted Baltic Sea.
 "We only take in sea water and that is what we discharge, without adding anything except some salt," Pitukhov said. "Our whole coastline is cleaner than our neighbors, and you should see how the fish feed close to our outlet pipe."
 The ancient Egyptians, Romans and Vikings all treasured Baltic amber, but Pitukhov said a lucrative black market was now exploiting the old trade routes into central Europe.
 "It is a state problem and we have to employ lots of well-paid security," he said. "But what can we do when the border is so porous and some of the people who should stop smuggling are interested in the opposite result."
 In Yantarny's brightly lit amber gallery, Yunina said they used to display an amber mosaic of Lenin, but had been told to take it down and had forgotten where they put it.
 Looking out of the museum's windows, the legacy of communism is less easy to forget in the potholed streets of the village.
 Leaking heating pipes weave through town, past the crumbling shells of buildings which local officials cannot afford to repair or finish constructing.
 There is no real work outside the mine and, according to Vladimir, who arrived here as a child two years after the end of World War II, life should be easier for people living on top of amber reserves which should last another 300 years.
 "The wages are miserly when we could live so well," he said. "But it doesn't depend on us, it's up to the administration.
 "We are not suffering badly, but we could be flourishing on all the riches buried here."

TITLE: Gusinsky Back Behind Bars in Spain
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MADRID, Spain - Russian media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky was behind bars again on Monday after a Spanish judge ordered him back to prison ahead of the start of extradition proceedings, a lawyer for Gusinsky said.
 A judge at Spain's High Court brought forward the start date for the extradition hearing to March 15 and ordered Gusinsky sent back to jail to ensure his attendance in court, defence lawyer Domingo Plazas told Reuters.
 "He is in prison in Algeciras [in southern Spain] and he will be sent to Madrid either today or tomorrow," Plazas said.
 Gusinsky was arrested by Spanish police acting on an international warrant in December after Russian prosecutors charged him with large-scale fraud.
 He spent a few days in jail before paying bail of more than $5 million and has spent most of the time since then under a form of house arrest in the south of Spain.
 Gusinsky says the charges against him are politically motivated and represent an attempt by the Kremlin to silence his independent Media-MOST group, which has been critical of President Vladimir Putin.

TITLE: Moscow Scoffs at 'Rogue' Idea
AUTHOR: By Martin Nesirky
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - A senior Russian arms control diplomat said on Monday that the West was deluding itself if it thought Moscow's European anti-missile defense proposal meant that Russia now envisaged a post-Cold War threat from so-called rogue rockets.
 Last month, Russia handed NATO a broadbrush anti-missile proposal on assessing potential threats, working out how to deal with them and only then deploying defence systems if necessary.
 U.S. President George W. Bush subsequently said he was encouraged because Russia had indicated there were new threats in the post-Cold War era. A NATO official made similar remarks.
 "We are now hearing reactions, even comments from officials, that the Russian proposal on European anti-missile defence is interesting and allegedly proves two things - a recognition of threats and a recognition these threats should be tackled by military-technical means," Yury Kapralov told Reuters.
 "I tell you, this absolutely does not correspond to our view," he said in an interview in his 18th-floor office in the Foreign Ministry.
 "It's wishful thinking."
 Kapralov, director of the Foreign Ministry's Security Affairs and Disarmament Department, said Russia's proposal - unlike the U.S. national missile defence (NMD) plan - did not envisage building an umbrella to shield Europe.
 "It is aimed at cooperation, if such cooperation is deemed necessary, to confront non-strategic missiles," he said.
 Moscow remains opposed to U.S. plans for a Star Wars-style defense against strategic missiles and says that such a scheme would undermine the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which Russia views as the cornerstone of all disarmament agreements.
 Kapralov said ditching ABM could mean a game without rules.
 "What that game without rules would look like in the nuclear sphere - it is better not to think about, even in one's worst nightmares," he said.
 On nuclear disarmament, Kapralov said Moscow was ready to begin talks at a day's notice on cutting strategic arsenals.
 "A lot of preparation has been done and if talks on START III began now they would proceed rather quickly," he said.
 "That doesn't mean we would agree and that there wouldn't be differences."
 START III - outlined by then-presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in 1997, but still to be negotiated - envisages cuts in the arsenals to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads each.
 But he said that Russia was patient as it understood the new Bush administration needed time to work out its position. He said Russia needed U.S. and European help to carry out reforms. That meant ensuring the United States and Europe felt secure.
 Speaking about Russia's own anti-missile proposal, Kapralov said it had been handed to NATO Secretary General George Robertson, but that it was not intended solely for the alliance.
 "It's a proposal for all European countries," he said.
 Kapralov said Russia was mystified about why Washington had given South Korea approval in January to extend the range of its missiles while at the same time worrying about North Korean missile plans - one of the main arguments for NMD.
 "Doesn't that strike you as rather contradictory?" he said. "It seems very strange to us."

TITLE: Funding Problems To Delay Raising of Kursk Until Fall
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - A lack of cash has forced Russia to delay an operation to raise the sunken nuclear-powered submarine Kursk from the Arctic seabed, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov was quoted as saying on Sunday.
 Interfax quoted Klebanov as saying that the Kursk, which sank in the Barents Sea last August killing all 118 men on board, would probably be raised in early autumn, rather than in July-August as was initially planned.
 "The decision to postpone the operation has been prompted by a delay in signing a contract between the Rubin company, which is in charge of it, and the international consortium, which includes Belgian and Norwegian companies," he said.
 "There are difficulties with raising cash for the operation," Klebanov added.
 The cause of the accident on board the Kursk, which now rests 100 metres under the surface, remains unclear.
 Klebanov said that neither of two main possibilities - an explosion of torpedoes on board or a collision with another vessel - could be excluded.
 But Interfax said he shrugged off media reports that the Kursk could have been hit by a stray missile launched during the navy exercise in which it was taking part.
 Norwegian divers, hired by the Russian government, made an attempt in November to retrieve bodies of dead sailors from the submarine. But they gave up their attempts after pulling out a dozen bodies because of dangerous conditions inside the wreck.
 Experts believe that raising the Kursk will be an expensive and technically complicated task.
 The Brussels-based international consortium unveiled earlier this year a $70 million plan to raise the submarine. Kle banov was speaking about $80 million on Sunday.
 The Kursk Fund's experts have said some 20 holes would be cut into the submarine's outer hull and cables attached to a huge crane would be clamped onto it.
 The Kursk, minus its damaged bow, would then be winched up to just below a barge and transported under escort, with the help of tugs, to the northern port of Murmansk.

TITLE: Report: Suspected Kidnappers Arrested
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Two suspected Chechen militants accused of mass kidnappings and killings in the rebel Russian region have been captured in Azerbaijan and turned over to Russian authorities, Russian television reported on Sunday.
 Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Russia's main Chechnya spokesman, told RTR state television that one of the suspects, Ruslan Akhmadov, was a member of a gang that kidnapped three Britons and a New Zealander whose severed heads were found by a highway in 1998.
 RTR also aired excerpts of footage it said showed the other suspect, Badrudi Murtazayev, holding down the legs of a captured Russian soldier while another rebel slit his throat in 1996.
 Television pictures showed Russian servicemen escorting the two men into detention, after a joint operation with Azerbaijani security forces.
 Azerbaijani President Haydar Aliyev, speaking to reporters in the national capital Baku, confirmed the two had been handed over under a treaty on joint assistance in law enforcement.
 RTR showed Murtazayev in custody, acknowledging that he had held a Russian prisoner while his throat was slit.
 Yastrzhembsky said Akhmadov was part of a gang led by his brothers that kidnapped foreigners. These included the Britons and the New Zealander, who were in Chechnya installing a cellular phone system, and two female Polish scientists, released last year unharmed.
 Russian news agencies said he described the capture of the two Chechen militants as a "major coup for the Russian law enforcement agencies - to be specific, for the Interior Ministry.
 "If other neighbors of Russia followed Baku's example, the tension in Chechnya could be relieved faster," he told Interfax, in remarks apparently aimed at Georgia, which Moscow accuses of harboring Che chen rebels.
 No details of the capture of the two men were disclosed.
 Itar-Tass news agency quoted Russian Interior Ministry sources as saying Akhmadov faced charges of murder, kidnapping and illegal arms trafficking. The sources said he and his nine brothers had carried out 34 kidnappings since 1996 and that he himself was suspected of having killed three of the hostages.
 Russia withdrew from Chechnya after a humiliating defeat in a 1994-96 war against separatists. Its troops now maintain a tenuous hold on the region 18 months into a second offensive but are subject to constant ambushes, particularly in the mountainous areas south of the devastated regional capital Grozny.
 The Kremlin has repeatedly said the intervention was necessary to halt lawlessness in Chechnya, particularly kidnappings and violence, often committed against foreigners.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Moscow Official Killed
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The head of Moscow's regional justice department and his chauffeur were found murdered in the official's apartment in northern Moscow on Sunday, a police spokesperson said.
 The bodies of Yury Vlasov, 43, and his driver had numerous knife wounds and the assailants had tried to strangle them with kitchen towels, the spokesperson said. 
 The apartment had been ransacked, with all books taken off the shelves, pictures pulled from the walls, mattresses and chairs cut open and even stuffed animals slashed apart at the seams, she said.
 There were no signs of a break-in and the attackers didn't take any of Vla sov's electronic equipment, the spokesperson said, adding that they may have taken jewelry and money. Police regard robbery as the motive for the attack.
 Regional justice departments are branches of the Justice Ministry that monitor, among others, the implementation of federal laws and the work of regional legal and notary offices.
 Vlasov is the second high-ranking official to be killed in Moscow in recent weeks. The head of the federal public notary chamber, Anatoly Tikhenko, was shot dead Feb. 28 in an apparent contract killing.
 
 
Publisher Shot
 

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) - The publisher of a leading Russian-language daily newspaper was shot and killed Saturday in one of the highest-profile murders since this former Soviet republic regained independence 10 years ago. 
 Vitali Haitov, 57, was shot twice in the head just after 3:30 p.m. local time while sitting in his four-wheel-drive vehicle in a suburb of Tallinn, the capital, police spokesperson Indrek Raudjalg said. Police knew of no motive for the attack and have no immediate suspects, he said. 
 Haitov, a Russian citizen and retired Soviet naval officer, owned the "Estoniya" daily, read by the country's Russian-speaking minority, estimated at about 500,000. He also published a weekly called "Vesti Nedelya Plus," and had other business interests, including real estate. 
 Last year, his 32-year-old son, Marian, was fatally shot in the head while sitting in a Mercedes in Tallinn. No one has been charged in that killing. 
 
 
Tobin Facing Charges
 

MOSCOW (AP) - New charges may be brought against an American graduate student arrested in Voronezh last month on drug charges, a news report said Sunday. 
 Andrei Makarov, the senior investigator in the case, told Interfax that fresh charges may be lodged against John Tobin before the investigation is completed. He did not specify what the charges may be. 
 Makarov said he did not intend to release Tobin on bail or against a written pledge not to leave the city. 
 He said the investigation against Tobin, 24, would likely be completed by the end of March. 
 Tobin's case attracted attention because the FSB said he had ties to U.S. intelligence services. However, the agency stressed that he was not caught spying and no espionage charges would be filed. 
 Tobin was arrested Feb. 1 on suspicion of possessing marijuana. He is also to be charged with distribution. Tobin faces 10 years in prison if convicted. 



TITLE: Borodin Cites Ill Health in New York Prison
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Former Kremlin official Pavel Borodin, who is in jail in New York City and wanted by Swiss authorities in a corruption investigation, said on Sunday that he is having health problems, the news agency Interfax reported. 
 Pavel Borodin, speaking by telephone from jail, said he was experiencing heart and blood-pressure troubles and underwent oxygen treatment for more than two hours on Saturday, Interfax said. 
 Borodin was Kremlin property manager under former president Boris Yelt sin. He and other members of Yeltsin's inner circle have been accused of taking kickbacks from Swiss firms contracted to renovate Kremlin buildings. 
 Switzerland issued a warrant for his arrest, and he was seized Jan. 17 by the FBI as he arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on his way President Bush's inauguration. 
 A federal judge denied Borodin bail for the second time on Friday, saying he was a flight risk. A hearing on his extradition to Switzerland is set for April 2. 
 Borodin, 54, attributed his health problems to "nervous strain" and said he had no complaints about his treatment, Interfax said. 
 Russian prosecutors closed their investigation into the Kremlin case last year, saying Swiss authorities failed to provide evidence. 
 Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin, dismissed Borodin from his Kremlin post shortly after Yeltsin resigned on Dec. 31, 1999. Borodin later became state secretary of the Russia-Belarus Union, a largely ceremonial post. 
 The arrest has drawn protests from the Russian Foreign Ministry but silence from Putin, who has pledged to crack down on corruption.

TITLE: Protesters Clash With Police in Ukraine
AUTHOR: By Tony Roddam
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KIEV - Ukrainian riot police clashed with scores of protesters over the holiday weekend as thousands of people took to the streets in the biggest march yet to demand that President Leonid Kuchma step down.
 Police wielding heavy truncheons beat back around 200 people who tried to confront the president in a park where he laid a wreath at the statue of a national hero Friday.
 Thousands of people later swarmed down Kiev's main street to demand Kuchma quit over alleged links to the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze. Kuchma denies the allegations.
 As the march, the latest in two months of hitherto peaceful street protests, reached the presidential administration building in the early afternoon, some 100 demonstrators fought a pitched battle with riot police.
 Reuters correspondents witnessed police firing tear gas into the crowd, mainly young men who repeatedly charged the lines of riot officers using crowd control barriers as battering rams.
 Scores of demonstrators suffered head and back injuries as police lashed out with batons, defending themselves against attack from bottles, stones and heavy wooden sticks. The crowd cheered as a policeman's tear-gas gun exploded in his hands. One man stood still as the fight raged around him, urging police not to retaliate. He was clubbed to the ground.
 Police later arrested around 100 members of the radical right-wing UNA-UNSO party, a spokesperson for the party said.
 Ukraine's opposition parties denounced the arrests Saturday and vowed to stage new rallies to press their campaign to oust Kuchma.
 On Sunday, about 100 students demonstrated outside the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, demanding the release of protesters arrested Friday. 
 Friday's march was the largest yet. Reporters estimated 5,000 to 10,000 people were involved.
 The opposition campaign has been one of Kuchma's biggest challenges since he came to power in 1994.
 Despite the protests, political analysts doubt he will be toppled soon, citing his tough grip on the government and skill at exploiting and facing down a less-than-united opposition.

TITLE: Row Escalates Over Anna Pavlova's Ashes
AUTHOR: By Mike Collett-White
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Plans to return the ashes of famed ballerina Anna Pavlova to Russia have been postponed after Moscow told the London crematorium where her remains are on display that the deal should be put on hold.
 Moscow Deputy Mayor Viktor Shantsev said Saturday that the city government is ready to organize the reburial of Pavlova's remains only after obtaining all the necessary documents and consent from all concerned parties, Interfax reported.
 "All the city services are ready to perform the burial," Shantsev said.
 But Golders Green Crematorium in northern London said Thursday that Moscow authorities suddenly withdrew a request to have the remains of one of the world's greatest dancers sent home, less than a week before the planned transfer was to take place.
 Exactly who asked for the repatriation has been surrounded by confusion, after the Moscow government recently denied that it was behind the request. 
 The Interfax report said representatives of the Moscow city government met with members of the "initiating group" on Thursday and Friday and have already found two locations where Pavlova's remains might be buried. But it did not identify the group.
 "We are very surprised by this sudden phone call reversing the request of the government of Moscow, on which we have been working together in full public view for many months," said the London Cremation Co., owner of the Golders Green site.
 Director Harvey Thomas said both Moscow city authorities and the non-governmental Committee for Russian and Slavonic Art had been calling for years for the return of Pavlova's remains seven decades after her death.
 He had expected to take Pavlova's ashes and those of her husband, Victor Dandre, to Moscow next week with the full blessing of Russia's federal government and Moscow's City Hall and present them to Novodevichy Cemetery, where many cultural luminaries are buried.
 News of what he said was a U-turn in Moscow's position was relayed to Thomas by a late-night telephone call Wednesday from the Russian Embassy in London to his wife.
 In the last two weeks Moscow authorities, Pavlova's relatives and the Kremlin have all distanced themselves from the plan. Russia's ambassador in London, Grigory Karasin, called for the repatriation of Pavlova's ashes to be postponed.
 "Strong doubts remain in all strata of the Russian society about the legal and moral sides of this project," he said.
 "In these circumstances ... I feel compelled to appeal to the initiators of this plan to postpone its implementation until all delicate aspects are fully settled."
 His statement added that Russia's government "considers the transfer of the ashes as a project of highly dubious legality."
 Moscow's deputy mayor said the reburial could go ahead, but it is necessary first to obtain the consent of Pavlova's relatives, prepare all the necessary documents and decide where Pavlova's remains will be buried, in Moscow or in St. Petersburg, and also to organize the delivery of the remains.
 "It is not up to us to solve all these problems," Shantsev said.
 Andrei Dandre, whose grandfather was the cousin of Pavlova's husband, said if any Russian city was to be Pavlova's resting place it should be St. Petersburg, where she was born in 1881 and caused a sensation at the famed Mariinsky Theater.
 She made her debut in the theater's corps de ballet in 1899 and a decade later was dancing with the great Nijinsky in Paris and embarking on gruelling tours that swept her through three continents.
 She died in a hotel in The Hague in 1931, and her ashes were placed at the crematorium close to her London home.

TITLE: City Ill-Informed on Ecology, Poll Reveals
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A poll has revealed that St. Petersburg residents are largely unaware of local environmental questions, but most said that they would like to have a greater say in decisions that affect their surroundings.
 According to research carried out in January by TOY Opinion in the form of a telephone survey of 1,000 people, intended to gauge public knowledge of ecological issues, 80 percent said they had no idea that a new nuclear reactor is slated for construction at the Leningrad Atomic Power Station, or LAES, while only 7 percent said they were aware of the plan, and 13 percent said they were vaguely aware.
 Nearly 60 percent of respondents said they would like local and regional authorities to take public opinion into account should another reactor be built at LAES or anywhere else near the city. LAES is located at the town of Sosnovy Bor, 60 kilometers to the west of St. Petersburg. Another 17 percent replied "better yes than no" to the same question.
 As regards local media coverage of environmental issues - and of the new reactor in particular - almost half of those polled described reports as "incomplete and insufficient."
 Alexander Karpov of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, which commissioned the poll, drew comfort from the result. "What is particularly encouraging about the results of the [survey] is that the overwhelming majority of people would like to be involved in the decision-making process [on environmental issues]," Karpov said at a press conference at the Institute for Press Development on Monday.
 Karpov pointed to more figures from the survey saying that those unhappy with press coverage of the environment would like to participate in discussions of, and solutions to, ecological problems, either by referendum (33 percent) or opinion polls (53 percent). Four percent said they favored protest action, with only 2 percent saying they would go to court to fight decisions they opposed. 
 Overall, the poll found that younger people - defined in the poll as between 16 to 29 years old - were less informed on the development of the regional nuclear industry but, unexpectedly, those with secondary education generally knew more than those with higher education. There was also an income divide, the less well- off more aware than the richer respondents.
 Although LAES has suffered a number of minor accidents and leaks in the past, 45 percent of those polled said they did not know what to do to protect themselves from exposure to radiation, and a further 35 percent said that they had only a vague idea. In this case, however, younger and more educated people declared themselves more knowledgeable. Basic civil defense training, including first aid and how to respond in case of a nuclear accident or explosion, is still taught in most Russian schools and universities. 
 Dmitry Artamonov, head of Greenpeace St. Petersburg, said that while Russian law set out people's rights to voice their opinions, the authorities responsible for environmental and other questions were under no obligation to take their views into account.
 "Russians have the right to ask for information, but the law doesn't guarantee a satisfactory response," he said Monday.
 The TOY Opinion poll said a mere 3 percent of respondents thought that the government was interested in what the public thinks about the environment. The same percentage believed that the Nuclear Power Ministry took their views into account. Governor Vladimir Yakovlev fared slightly better, with 11 percent, while 28 percent said that only environmental groups cared what they thought. A further 28 percent thought that no one was interested in their opinion on the environment.
 Mikhail Brodsky, head of the Union of Right Forces faction at the Legislative Assembly, said neither his colleagues nor City Hall were truly concerned about environmental problems. adding that this attitude was bad for the business climate.
 "Environmental safety strengthens the safety of investment," he said. "A region where the authorities don't care about the environment cannot hope for a good influx of foreign investment."

TITLE: Reports: U.S. Has Evidence of Nuke Weapons in Kaliningrad
AUTHOR: By Doug Mellgren
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OSLO, Norway - U.S. intelligence has comprehensive evidence that Russia moved nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad, a leading Norwegian newspaper claimed. The news media in neighboring Sweden has made similar claims. 
 For months, Russia has denied reports that it secretly moved atomic weapons into Kaliningrad.
 U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity in January, said there were strong indications of such a deployment, but Washington has offered no public confirmation. 
 The respected Oslo newspaper Aftenposten said last week that top military officers in Norway - a NATO member - confirmed the existence of U.S. intelligence reports on the deployment and said the reports cover a Russian nuclear weapons buildup in the Baltic Sea area. 
 Aftenposten said the weapons were transported to St. Petersburg by train, then shipped to Kaliningrad. The paper said all top Norwegian officers it talked to confirmed the report, but they refused to go on the record. 
 The Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet also said U.S. satellites tracked the weapons on that route to a Kaliningrad airfield. 
 "If Russia deployed tactical nuclear arms in Kaliningrad and denies this, it is very serious," said Stefan Noreen of Sweden's European Union unit. 
 The Norwegian Supreme Defense Command and the Defense Ministry declined comment.

TITLE: Business Called On To Fund Putin's Palace
AUTHOR: By Viktoria Uzdina and Aleksei Germanovich
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The head of the Presidential Administration, Vladimir Kozhin, announced Sunday that the cost of reconstructing the Konstantinov Palace in Strelnya, just outside the city, which has been chosen as the St. Petersburg residence for President Vladimir Putin at $150 million to 170 million. The funds are to coome from private donors, but no major business representatives have yet offered to step forward and help with the project.
 Vadim Znamyonov, director of the Petrodvorets museum, in an attempt to save the palace, proposed using the structure as the St. Petersburg presidential residence to Putin's personal administration last fall. The residence itself, looking on to the Gulf of Finland, has an area of 4,800 square meters and was built by the architect Bartholomew Rastrelli. The 240-hectare palace grounds also include a 500-square-meter stable and an array of other surrounding buildings. In 1990 UNESCO included the Konstantinov complex in its list of globally important architectural structures.
 "The Konstantinov Palace needs to be repaired now or never" said Kozhin on Sunday, "And besides, St. Petersburg is a socio-political center that lacks the kind of building needed to host events involving the countries top officials".
 The Presidential Administration plans to complete the palace by St. Petersburg's 300-year anniversary in May 2003, but the federal budget can only start financing the project in 2002. The palace will need $50 million in reconstruction work in 2001 alone. That's why Kozhin is heading the charitable foundation that is to collect the needed cash.
 Viktor Cherkesov, presidential representative in the Northwest region, St. Petersburg Gebernor Vladimir Yakovlev, the minister of culture, Mikhail Shvydkoy, actor Kirill Lavrov and Nobel Laureate physicist Zhores Alferov, among others are included as the chief money raisers.
 "Nobody will be asking for donations or demanding them" said Kozhin. And though he says no special benefits will be offered to presidential benefactors, Kozhin says there is a plethora of potential donors. The Kremlin administration, however, did not name any individuals or businesses who have agreed to take part.
 Recently Putin has proven himself an effective fund raiser by collecting $100 million for a foundation for the families of dead service men in a short period of time. All he had to do was throw two or three words in the direction of a couple of oligarchs in the administrative bureau of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, whom he called to meet at the Kremlin.
 But he won't be collecting money for his own residence. "This is Kozhin's own project" said one Kremlin source. "We haven't heard anything about him being involved, so there is no point in commenting at this time."
 But close advisers to members of the Union of Industrialists and Entre pre ne urs, speaking on condition of anonymity, were more willing to comment.
 "If the government really wants to interest businesses in the reconstruction of the palace then it has to show us some real pluses to come from participating in a project of this kind." one such adviser said. "To be frank, we need this about as much as a goat needs an accordion."
 "On the one hand, reconstructing cultural heritage is noble," said another. "But on the other hand, if this is anything like the [dead servicemen] fund, when money was almost demanded from all the big fish, well that's just a case of going after someone personally."
 But Kozhin is certain that the plan will work, saying that construction will begin "as soon as the snow melts."

TITLE: Battle Over Board Seats At UES Heating Up
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Head of national power grid Unified Energy Systems Anatoly Chubais is likely to have the upper hand at the next company shareholders meeting, slated for April 28.
 First, Chubais staved off the personal attacks of his foes, who decided at last week's board meeting not to put his position of chief executive officer up to a vote at the shareholders meeting.
 "Chubais always had the support of the government and he obtained it once again," first deputy board director Leonid Melamed said after Wednesday's meeting.
 Second, Chubais orchestrated a split among minority shareholders by introducing new candidates on behalf of companies deemed to be close to UES managers.
 "The fight is brewing for one place on the board of directors," says Kakha Kiknavelidze, analyst with Troika Dialog.
 The list of candidates to the 15-member board was shortened to 29 people from 35 after six people withdrew their names. Just days before the UES board was to approve the agenda for the shareholders meeting, a list of 13 candidates was submitted by Alexander Novikov, who said he was acting on behalf of outside shareholders, mostly banks. Market watchers, however, say that UES managers are connected to companies on whose behalf Novikov drafted the list.
 Since most of these 13 candidates had not been notified, six people, including managing director of Hermitage Capital Management Bill Browder, J.P. Morgan equity analyst John Paul Smith, former head of the Federal Securities Commission Dmitry Va si li ev and NAUFOR board member Oleg Fyodorov, asked to withdraw their names.
 "We think it is unethical to put people on the list without their approval," said Grigory Raksha, spokesman for State Duma member Viktor Ples ka chev sky from Unity, who also asked that his name be dropped.
 If indeed UES managers are behind the scheme, they have succeeded in splitting up minority shareholders, who even in the best-case scenario can get no more than three places in the new board. Ten of the seats are expected to go to the government.
 "Attempts to split minority shareholders cause serious concerns," says Alexander Ikonnikov, executive director of the Investor Protection Association.
 IPA considered putting four candidates on the voting list, but later decided to name just three people, including head of research with Hermitage Vadim Kleiner, chief investment officer with Brunswick Capital Management David Herne and director of Prosperity Capital Management Matthias Westman. "We wanted to lower risks," Ikonnikov said.
 "It is unlikely that IPA now will put more than two of their representatives on the board," said Natalya Baranova, head of research with CentreInvest Securities.

TITLE: Lenoblast Tax Law Goes Back to the Future
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Leningrad Oblast Legislative Assembly passed an investment law on Feb. 27 that, if signed by Leningrad Oblast Governor Valery Serdyakov, will make the region one of the country's most attractive for investors - again.
 The law grants exemptions to businesses locating in the area on the oblast's portion of profit, property and road-usage taxes. According to the law, these businesses will not have to pay the portion of the 35 percent profit tax earmarked for the oblast budget, nor any of the 2 percent property tax and 1 percent road-usage tax until 2 years after they have recouped their initial investment in the region.
 According to tax law, 19 percent of a firm's annual profits are to go to the regional government in tax, with another 16 percent of profits going to federal coffers, adding up to the 35 percent total.
 If this law sounds familiar, it's because this is the second time that the Leningrad Oblast has put such a program in place.
 In 1997 a virtually identical package of breaks was passed, but they became illegal as a result of the new federal Tax Code Part I, approved in January 1999, which did not explicitly give regional governments the right to exempt businesses from federally mandated taxes, even if the money was targeted at the regional budget.
 "It's difficult to say why these tax breaks weren't covered by the new tax code," Slava Vlasov, tax manager at the St. Petersburg office of PricewaterhouseCoopers, which participated in drafting the new law, said. "Unfortunately, the State Duma and especially the Federation Council do not have enough time to examine the laws thoroughly, and if the governors had known the entire contents of the law for which they were voting, they would have thought twice."
 In order to be able to follow through with already-promised tax breaks while still complying with the law, the Leningrad Oblast Legislative Assembly opted for a subvention system.
 Under the subvention system, the oblast would not exempt the firms from paying the tax, but would simply give them a sum equal to the region's portion of the tax collected. One problem with this system was that the refunds themselves would have counted as taxable income for the firms.
 But the subvention system never came into effect. Later the same month the federal government released the details of Tax Code Part II. The introduction to Part II reinstated the rights of regions to grant profit tax exemptions.
 As a result, the oblast had to pass a set of laws putting the exemptions in place again.
 "The aim of the new law was to secure profit tax incentives for all investors operating in the Leningrad Oblast," Vlasov said. "The law also provides a 'grandfather clause' for the road- usage tax incentive to those investors who started their investment projects in the region prior to January 1999, thus protecting them from potential challenges by the local tax authorities."
 The road-usage tax is not mentioned in Tax Code Part II, so a subvention system will be used for all firms who located to the oblast after 1999. The oblast will still grant exemptions from road-usage taxes to those who arrived before, on the understanding that the firms moved to the region based on an agreement stipulating that these would be in effect.
 According to Alexander Butenin, press officer at the Leningrad Oblast Finance and Economic Committee, the governor will definitely sign the bill.
 "Serdyakov himself initiated the drafting of the law," he said. "He asked the Investment Committee, which then passed it to the Legislative Assembly for approval."

TITLE: IMF, Kremlin Reach a Deal
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Russian government and a mission of the International Monetary Fund have reached outline agreement on a one-year cooperation program, a government official said Monday.
 "Yesterday talks with the IMF's Moscow representative office ended after two at night, but we have managed to reach agreement on the program at this level," Gennady Yezhov, spokes person for Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin, told Reuters.
 "Now the program will go to Washington."
 He said the one-year deal was part of a three-year economic plan, currently in the works.
 Russia's relations with the IMF chilled after the 1998 economic crisis which undermined the country's IMF-agreed program.
 The government needs the deal with the Fund urgently to start talks on restructuring a $40 billion Soviet-era debt to the Paris Club of creditor nations.

TITLE: LUKoil Greasing Its Wheels With Foodstuffs
AUTHOR: By Anna Andreyeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - "Downstream" in the oil industry can imply gasoline, engine oils or even asphalt - but hardly the fruit jams, pickles and mineral water that Russia's No. 1 oil company has added recently to its array of products.
 Over the past four years, oil major LUKoil has built a canning factory and a bottling plant intended to serve the multiple purposes of feeding its workers in the northern hinterlands, promoting the company name and - if possible - bringing in some extra revenue.
 "Originally, we were to manufacture for LUKoil employees," said Azmet Dlekhuch, director of the LUKoil-Adygeya canning factory. "But, at the same time, we didn't want to forget about the market. As long as there was interest in our products, we aimed to capture a broader consumer base."
 While 40 percent of the factory's goods go to wholesale distributors in remote regions where LUKoil employees are based, the bulk can be found on supermarket shelves in Russia's major cities. According to Dlekhuch, the factory, opened in 1999 in the southern republic of Adygeya, produces canned goods and preserves made of 37 types of locally grown fruits and vegetables.
 So far, the Adygeya project is just breaking even. Last year the factory produced 1 million cans worth about 14 million rubles ($500,000) - less than half its capacity of 2.5 million cans, Dlekhuch said.
 "We've invested in the factory every year," he said. "So we expect a profit in 2 1/2 to five years."
 LUKoil's other food-industry project, the KMP-Plastik mineral water bottler, was built in 1997 in the Caucasus city of Pyatigorsk, the site of numerous mineral springs. Last year the plant produced only a fifth of its 1.5 million-bottle capacity. So far, all of the water has gone to retailers rather than to LUKoil work sites, according to the plant's director, Artur Biragov.
 While profits seem to be a long-term goal for the two companies, both hope to reap more immediate rewards from sales: a positive image for LUKoil.
 "When people see our cans, they'll know that LUKoil isn't just about depleting resources," said Dlekhuch, "but that it also helps agriculture and works with wild plants."
 The red and white LUKoil logo features prominently both on LUKoil-Adygeya's exotic fruit preserves and on KMP's Pyatigorskaya mineral water -which is also adorned by a portrait of renowned 19th-century poet Mikhail Lermontov, who was killed in a duel not far from the location of the KMP plant.
 Both lines of products are also marked as part of LUKoil's "ecological program" - billed on the company's Web site as an effort "to increase the industrial and environmental safety of the company's enterprises and reduce their negative impact on the environment." However, Anatoly Alexandrov, the head of LUKoil's ecological department, which oversees the program, said by phone last week that he was not familiar with the factories' work, although he assumed the logo must indicate that their products are "ecologically safe."
 Producing goods completely unrelated to a company's main line of production was standard practice among Soviet industrial giants forced to make up for the chronic deficit of groceries and other consumer goods in state-run stores. Enterprises such as gas monopoly Gazprom or metal producer Norilsk Nickel had so-called special departments of workers' provisions to coordinate such supplies.
 Representatives of the LUKoil-Adygeya canning factory seemed upbeat that their somewhat anachronistic project would be a success.
 In the two years since it opened, the factory has won several medals - including three golds - at the Moscow-based Products of Russia fair, director Dlekhuch said. This has helped attract domestic dealers and even led to some international contracts, with trial shipments going to Israel and Finland.
 Dlekhuch said it was not just the positive feedback but also the "attractive packaging" that gave rise to the idea of promoting LUKoil through its affiliate's food products. Hence, the factory's goods are marketed in places where LUKoil has a strong presence - St. Petersburg, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, Kirov, Vologda, Syktyvkar, Chelyabinsk and even at LUKoil gas stations.
 "People buy them, so we order them," a manager at the Magistral supermarket in northern Moscow said of the products. "But I don't think anyone notices the LUKoil name on the jars."

TITLE: Moscow To Deal Arms to Iran
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - After years of complying with a self-imposed ban on arms sales to Tehran, Moscow hopes to secure a number of lucrative new deals as a result of a four-day official visit by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami which began Monday.
 Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow would proceed with its controversial arms sales to Iran, but supplies would be solely to ensure Tehran's defense needs.
 "For economic reasons, Russia is interested in [military] cooperation," Putin told reporters after talks in the Kremlin with Khatami.
 "And the political reasons are that we believe that Iran must be an independent state capable of defending its national interests."
 Russia is under strong pressure from the United States to sell no arms to Iran, which Washington lists among "rogue states." Moscow had refrained from such sales under a secret deal with the United States struck in 1995.
 Russia last year said it would no longer abide by that deal, prompting strong criticism from Washington.
 Putin said Russia would not trade weapons banned under international law.
 He did not say which arms were being sought by Iran.
 The daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta quoted officials from Russia's arms export agency as saying shipments could include spare parts for BMP-1 and BTW-80 armored vehicles and T-62 and T-72 tanks. It said parts could also be supplied for Su-24, Su-25 and MiG-29 aircraft and three types of helicopters.
 The daily said in the future, Russia could sell Iran unspecified armor, tactical missiles and diesel-powered submarines.
 Iran's ambassador to Moscow, Mehdi Safari, was quoted by Interfax last month as saying Russia could earn up to $7 billion in the next few years by resuming military cooperation with Iran.
 That figure is unrealistic, according to Ruslan Pukhov, head of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, who said Russian sales to Iran could be expected to total $400 million annually. Even this, he said, would allow the Russian defense industry to "leave the Chinese-Indian ghetto" - at the moment these two countries account for more than 60 percent of Russia's arms exports.
 During his Moscow visit, Khatami also is expected to negotiate with Putin on how the oil and gas riches of the Caspian Sea should be shared.
 One Russian official familiar with Khatami's agenda said that Iranian generals are interested first of all in negotiating procurement of spare parts for their Russian-made arms and systems, such as MiG-29 fighters and Su-24 bombers.
 Iran is also interested in procuring anti-ship missiles and air-defense systems from Russia, Pukhov of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies said in a telephone interview.
 But out of consideration of U.S. concerns, he said, Russia is unlikely to agree to sell the S-300PMU-2 air-defense system, which has a range of 200 kilometers, or the Yakhont or Moskit missiles, which have a range of 300 kilometers and 150 kilometers, respectively.
 Pukhov said sales of these missiles, which could be used to block oil shipments across the Persian Gulf, would "infuriate" the U.S. administration and its Persian Gulf allies, and could prompt the U.S. to impose sanctions on Moscow.
 Moscow will most definitely agree, however, to sell air defense systems of a shorter range, such as Tor-M1 and Buk, which would be met with less concern in Washington, Pukhov said.
 A secret memorandum signed in 1995 by then-U.S. Vice President Al Gore and then-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin obliged Russia to stop deliveries of weaponry systems under existing agreements by Dec. 31, 2001, and to refrain from signing new arms deals.
 But Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov told reporters Nov. 24 that Moscow will not honor the deal.
 Prior to the signing of this memorandum, Russia had delivered three Project 877EKM diesel submarines and eight MiG-29 fighters to Iran and sold a T-72 tank production license as part of a series of deals dating back to 1989-91.
 These deals also provided for delivery of Su-24MK aircraft and S-200VE air-defense systems and the sale of a BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle production license, according to Pukhov.
 Moscow's military cooperation with Tehran and its assistance in building a nuclear power plant in Iran have been a major point of contention between the United States and Russia for years.
 Putin said Russia would proceed with work to complete construction of a nuclear power station in the Iranian Gulf port of Bushehr.
 Khatami is scheduled to meet Monday with President Vladimir Putin and sign a cooperation treaty, the first major accord to be clinched by the two countries since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.
 <i>- AP, SPT </i>

TITLE: Relocation Project To Be Funded by World Bank
AUTHOR: James Schofield
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The World Bank is in final negotiations with the government to fund the &quot;liquidation&quot; of northern industrial settlements whose economies are considered unsalvageable.
 By the end of the year, the relocation of some 20,000 people from 8,000 households is scheduled to begin under the $80 million pilot program, which the Economic Development and Trade Ministry is expected to give final approval to this summer.
 Three Soviet-era settlements have been chosen for the initial phase of the project: Vorkuta in the Komi Republic, the Susuman District in the Magadan Oblast, and the city of Norilsk.
 Once residents have left, the plan is to raze their former homes because local budgets aren't big enough to subsidize heating, water and electricity for them. 
 Officials involved in the project said that by encouraging nonproductive people to move to nearby cities or out of the region entirely, local municipalities should save millions of rubles a year.
 Under the terms of the project, eligible families will be given housing vouchers to move away. Once they sign a contract to purchase an apartment or home elsewhere, they are to present the voucher to a local branch of state savings bank Sberbank, which will then pay the owner of the property directly. 
 Families will be &quot;free to go where they want,&quot; said Irina Starodub rov skaya, deputy director of the World Bank program in Moscow.
 &quot;There is absolutely no question of anyone being forced to leave if they don't want to,&quot; said Alexander Gagelov, another deputy director of the program.
 Those who refuse to leave, however, would be &quot;moved to one building, while [the rest] are completely shut down and liquidated,&quot; Gagelov said.
 Starodubrovskaya said that the &quot;ideology&quot; of the program was not to cover the full costs of relocating everyone.
 Indeed, with an average grant of $2,400 per family member, few of the families will be looking for holiday homes on the Black Sea. 
 The three regions selected are among dozens of remote northern areas that only became populated as a result of the Soviet-era gulag system and industrial programs.
 Hundreds of thousands of workers were sent to desolate locations before and after World War II to work in factories that were dismantled wholesale and rebuilt in Siberia and the Far North.
 Scores of mines were developed to satisfy enormous Gosplan quotas, regardless of their efficiency or practicality. The recent decline of state support for key industries has destroyed the economic base of the towns that grew around such mines. As jobs disappeared, social problems, alcoholism and crime have risen as populations have shrunk. 
 Vorkuta, for example, is in the heart of a coal-mining region with some 170,000 inhabitants, 24,000 of whom are disabled. 
 The Pechorsky complex totaled 13 mines. A different World Bank program recently modernized those it believed had the best productive potential. The remaining seven mines, however, were closed, leaving hundreds of workers unemployed. Some workers left the area, though many remain: A constant and costly drain on scarce resources. 
 Alexander Silyankin, first deputy mayor of Vorkuta, which is slated to receive $15 million under the project, said he was optimistic about the relocations. His optimism is well founded: The city forged ahead with its own pilot scheme last year following delays in the World Bank's project after the financial crisis of 1998. Today the settlement of Zapadny, once home to 68 families in 15 blocks, has been leveled and returned to tundra. 
 &quot;The project was a good one,&quot; said Silyankin in a telephone interview from Vor kuta. &quot;We saved money and the budget burden was eased.&quot;
 The success of Vorkuta's example helped convince the World Bank to revive its own program. But, reflecting the frustration of delays, Silyankin said he wouldn't believe the World Bank program is actually underway &quot;until I see the first voucher handed out, not before.&quot;
 In total, the project envisages $16 million in co-financing from federal and regional authorities. To date, Vorkuta and Susuman have approved budgets of just 6 million rubles ($210,000) each for the first year, when costs will be limited primarily to informational campaigns.

TITLE: Upward Blip No Help for Tokyo
AUTHOR: By Yri Kageyama
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOKYO - Japan's economy managed to grow by 0.8 percent for the quarter ending in December, but the news Monday did little to relieve fears that deflation and a global downturn could drag down the economy.
 The data released by the government Monday for the gross domestic product were slightly better than expected because of a 6.8 percent rise in business investment from the previous quarter.
 Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had predicted GDP growth at 0.6 percent for the quarter.
 &quot;Overall the data were okay,&quot; Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa told reporters. But lagging consumption continued to be a major problem, he said. Consumer spending slumped 0.6 percent for the quarter after being flat the previous quarter.
 Widespread uncertainties about the future have prompted Japanese to rein in purchases, and the situation was unlikely to improve soon, analysts said.
 &quot;The problem is the next fiscal year. The Japanese economy is now headed toward zero growth,&quot; said Susumu Kato, strategist at Lehman Brothers in Tokyo.
 Kato said it would be &quot;almost impossible&quot; for the Japanese government to achieve its target 1.7 percent growth for the next fiscal year starting in April, as demand for Japanese exports continues to decline in the United States and the rest of Asia.
 Economy Minister Taro Aso said Monday the government was sticking by the 1.7 percent target. He acknowledged, however, that it was &quot;hard to feel at ease&quot; about the future of the Japanese economy.
 The government has set a target of 1.2 percent growth for this fiscal year ending in March. The figure released Monday shows an annual pace of expansion of 3.2 percent.
 For the July-September quarter, the Japanese economy shrank 0.6 percent, the first quarter of contraction since October-December 1999.
 Japan has been battling economic woes for a decade. Now the recent U.S. economic slowdown has crimped the earnings of Japanese exporters as demand for their products diminishes across the Pacific.
 Political confusion has aggravated the problem.
 Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who has done little to carry out the reforms promised by the government to bring about recovery, indicated over the weekend that he would step down next month. Calls for his resignation both from his party and the public have been growing for months.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Severnaya Wins Tender
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Severnaya Neft, a Komi-based oil company, won the right to develop fields along the Timan-Pechora region's Gamburtseva Val, which holds an estimated 475 million barrels of recoverable reserves.
 The company beat out LUKoil, Yukos, Surgutneftegaz, Rosneft, Sibneft and Bashneft with its winning bid. The government set the minimum bid at $5 million.
 After Sunday's announcement by the Nenetsk Autonomous Districts' committee on natural resources, the other participants in the tender came forward with accusations of a rigged auction and threats of court suits.
 "It's unclear what criteria was used to assess the offers," LUKoil spokesman Dmitry Dolgov said in remarks reported by Vedomosti. "Preference was handed over to Severnaya Neft, even though the other participants have incommensurable investment and technological experience."
 
 
CB: Keep Forex Rules
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Central Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko said in an interview last week that it was too early to reduce the percentage of foreign currency receipts that Russian exporters are required to sell in exchange for rubles.
 Russian exporters currently have to sell up to 75 percent of their foreign exchange revenues for rubles at a special daily session on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange. The Central Bank is the major buyer.
 This rule was introduced to support the ruble after the 1998 financial crisis. 
 
 
Baku-Ceyhan Loan
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - A member organization of the World Bank Group last week gave signs it would be willing to participate in financing of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline if funding by the U.S. and Azerbaijani governments falls through.
 International Finance Corp. representatives said a decision will be made after oil companies promise to dedicate a certain amount of their oil production to the pipeline, Azeri news service Azer-Press reported.
 The 1,730 kilometer pipeline will start at Baku, Azerbaijan, cross through Tbilisi, Georgia, and then terminate at the Turkish port of Ceyhan. It is estimated to cost $2.4 billion.
 The United States has thrown its support behind the Baku-Ceyhan route, calling it more stable because it bypasses Russia. Preliminary studies have shown that at least 6 billion barrels of reserves would be needed for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline to operate at full capacity. Currently, Azerbaijan can only offer 4 billion barrels, making the project unfeasible, according to several estimates.
 
 
$700M Budget Deficit
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia ran a budget deficit in February of 20.1 billion rubles ($702.3 million), or 3.4 percent of gross domestic product, compared with a surplus of 1.3 percent of GDP in January, the Finance Ministry said Sunday.
 In a statement on its Web site (www. minfin.ru), the ministry said it estimated Russia posted a federal budget deficit of 14.5 billion rubles, or 1.2 percent of GDP, in the first two months of 2001.
 February budget revenues amounted to 105.9 billion rubles, 6 percent above target for the month, while spending amounted to 126 billion rubles, or 87.4 percent of planned spending.
 Revenues were 73.4 billion rubles in February 2000. 



TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: OPEC Studies Cuts
 

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil, who holds the presidency of OPEC, said this weekend that the organization was still studying production cuts ahead of an upcoming meeting.
 Speaking Saturday on the sidelines of a conference in Algiers, Khelil said two OPEC committees were evaluating whether to cut production for a second time this year when the group meets Friday in Vienna. New cuts have been widely expected.
 "We cannot rule out that OPEC could decide to reduce production based on the conclusions of the surveillance committee and the organization's economic commission," Khelil said Saturday at the Algiers conference.
 
 
Ankara Confident
 

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey's new economy minister said Sunday he was confident that international lenders would support a new program that Turkish officials are formulating to bolster the country's ailing economy.
 Kemal Dervis spoke after returning from Washington, where he met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Horst Koehler and World Bank President James Wolfensohn.
 Dervis gave no figures as to how much support Turkey would need and said that the country would seek international funding once it releases its new program, which could come as early as Monday. Turkey is expected to ask for billions in international aid.
 
 
Shell's Takeover Bid
 

HOUSTON, Texas (Reuters) - Oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell on Monday said it had begun a $55 per-share cash tender offer for Barrett Resources Corp. shares, taking its hostile takeover bid directly to shareholders after Barrett's board rejected Shell's $1.8 billion proposal.
 Shell said it believes its bid for Barrett represents "full and fair value," saying the offer price was a 24 percent premium over Barrett's $44.25 stock price on Feb. 28, the day before Shell proposed its takeover.
 Shell made its offer public last Wednesday, and Barrett's board rejected it the next day, saying it would invite other oil companies to make competing bids. 



TITLE: Ericsson Profit Warning Touches Off Tech-Stock Sell-Off
AUTHOR: By Jan Strupczewski
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: STOCKHOLM - Shares in Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson plunged 21 percent on Monday after the company issued a profit warning, sparking another round of sell-offs in technology stocks in Europe.
 The profit warning, coming in the wake of similar announcements from U.S. technology groups Cisco, Intel and Motorola, was further evidence of weakness in the battered sector and of a global economic slowdown.
 Ericsson, the world's third biggest mobile phone maker and the leading network infrastructure supplier, said it expected a pre-tax loss of $400 million to $500 million in the first quarter instead of a result close to break even.
 It said in a statement that year-on-year sales in the quarter would be flat or slightly lower instead of rising 15 percent as previously expected, and that sales of mobile phones would be &quot;considerably lower than in the first quarter of last year.&quot;
 Ericsson said seasonally low first-quarter sales were accentuated by low replacement demand, reduced operator subsidies, high inventory levels in the distribution chain and continued price pressure due to excess vendor capacity.
 &quot;As now announced by a number of important industry players, this uncertainty has had a great impact on current investment levels in the whole industry, also in some markets outside the United States,&quot; Ericsson said.
 Chief Financial Officer Sten Fornell told analysts in a conference call after the profit warning that mobile phone inventories in the industry were at about 20 million units with Ericsson's share proportionate to its slice of the market of about 10 percent.
 &quot;There will be gradual improvement in inventories over the quarter,&quot; he said. Asked if Ericsson would change its forecast for sales this year from 500 milion to 540 million units predicted in January, Chief Executive Kurt Hellstrom said: &quot;We have not revisited the question now, normally we give a new forecast in April, we will come back to that then.&quot;
 He said the lower demand for handsets could be seen all over the world and in all price brackets.
 Ericsson's statement, the latest in a string of profit warnings, showed that despite a series of restructurings it was still unable to cope with rapid change in the wireless industry.
 &quot;The slower growth is affecting all of our operations. Customers in the United States in particular are postponing capital expenditures. Also in Western Europe in markets with already high penetration, operators are delaying investment,&quot; the company said.
 In late January Ericsson said it was outsourcing its production of mobile phones after a huge 2000 loss in handsets, a sector where its models have failed to attract consumers in the way more nimble rivals such as Nokia have done.
 In its annual report released in January Ericsson said it expected an operating margin of 6 to 8 percent this year.
 Ericsson's share has fallen 32.5 percent so far this year, under performing the sector index by nine percent. Nokia has shed 44 percent, lagging the same index by 24 percent.

TITLE: Wall Street Seeks Cure For Falling Stock Prices
AUTHOR: By Haitham Haddadin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - America gears up for a &quot;Wee Bit o' Fun&quot; on St. Patrick's Day Saturday, but Wall Street is in no mood to party and the stock market is likely to drop further this week.
 It's hard to find much cheer, analysts say, amid Corporate America's almost daily confessions of downbeat earnings, in particular in the technology arena where even such marquee names as Intel Corp. have become serial warners.
 The best scenario is sideways action in the broad market, but some experts expect the technology-laden NASDAQ peaked at over 5,000 points a year ago amid dizzying equity valuations, but now teeters above 2,000 - down 59.3 percent from its all-time high.
 &quot;Unfortunately, the momentum is clearly in that direction ... We are running out of blood in the blood bank to revive this market,&quot; said Ned Riley, chief market strategist at State Street Global Advisors in Boston, which manages $740 billion.
 &quot;If one is looking for corporate news to bolster confidence or for the fundamental picture to improve in the next three to four weeks, they will be sorely dismayed,&quot; he said, &quot;simply because this is the start of the trial period for technology stock prices versus the disclosure of company fundamentals.&quot;
 Among top-tier companies reporting results this week is Oracle Corp., on Thursday. The company, the world's No. 2 software provider, early this month warned investors the slowing economy will cause its fiscal third-quarter profits to miss previous estimates, and it was joined by Intel, the No. 1 computer chip maker, which late last week issued its second warning in six weeks.
 Others are likely to follow with downbeat forecasts, or worse yet, complain that &quot;low visibility&quot; is fogging up the earnings runway for future quarters.
 This means that Wall Street's estimates for corporate earnings, which are still too high despite the damage in tech prices, need to be lowered, said Howard Kornblue, money manager with ING Pilgrim Inc., which manages $12 billion.
 &quot;As those numbers come down, stock prices will be coming down to reflect that,&quot; Kornblue said.
 The catalyst for a rally would be for a marquee tech company to &quot;say things have stabilized and demand is improving,&quot; said Tony Dwyer, chief market strategist at Kirlin Securities, something that has not happened yet.
 &quot;It is very difficult to argue for a big move in either direction because there is no positive catalyst other than the oversold condition,&quot; Dwyer said. &quot;So it will drift in its current direction, which means NASDAQ with a weakish tone and the broad market with a more positive tone.&quot;
 The Street will be looking for the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut interest rates again at its next scheduled meeting March 20-21. But while a rate cut may help stop the market's erosion, it won't be the instant cure for its malaise.
 Lower borrowing costs stimulate the economy and help the corporate bottom-line, but the full impact is not felt for at least six months, &quot;which means you're going to have uncertainty about corporate profits at least until July,&quot; Dwyer said.

TITLE: Euro Zone Ministers Put on Brave Faces
AUTHOR: By Nick Antonovics
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium - European finance ministers said on Monday they remained confident that euro zone growth prospects remain good despite signs of economic weakness in Germany and the euro zone's main trading partners.
 Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said that while some ministers were concerned about developments in the United States and Japan, they remained confident the euro zone economy could grow by close to 3 percent in 2001 and 2002.
 &quot;We are concerned about the evolution in the U.S. economy and perhaps more with the evolution in the financial sector in Japan. But there is a difference between being concerned and to see an evolution in our capacity of growth in the euro area,&quot; Reynders told a news conference on the results of a meeting of euro zone finance ministers held on Sunday.
 &quot;So we remain around 3 percent, as announced, with a capacity to resist trends on other international markets,&quot; Reynders, the current chairman of the Eurogroup, said.
 Other ministers joined in the upbeat chorus as they arrived for the regular monthly meeting of all 15 European Union finance ministers in Brussels.
 But their message jarred with increasing pessimism among private sector analysts about Germany's economy, the euro zone's biggest, in the face of the shock wave coming from export markets.
 An economic adviser to the German government was quoted on Monday as saying growth could slow to 2.4 percent in 2001 from 3.0 percent in 2000. Separately, Germany's DIW economic research institute cut its growth forecast for 2001 to about 2.1 percent from an earlier forecast of 2.5 percent.
 But ministers sought to play down the potential consequences of a German slowdown.
 &quot;We think that a growth estimate of 3 percent for the euro zone is realistic,&quot; Luxembourg Finance Minister Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters.
 European statistics office Eurostat said last week euro zone gross domestic product in 2000 expanded at 3.4 percent, up from 2.5 percent in 1999. But forecasts are being cut in response to the economic slowdown in the United States.
 The European Commission said last November growth should be 3.2 percent this year, but Economic Affairs Commissioner Pedro Solbes said on Monday that a figure nearer 3 percent was likely when its official forecast is published in April.
 Monday's meeting was expected to be dominated by a struggle between EU institutions over an arcane proposal to speed up financial services lawmaking.
 A report last month recommended the EU legislate via framework laws, leaving details to be filled in later by a new European Securities Committee, if the bloc wanted to meet a self-set 2005 deadline for completing an integrated capital market in the bloc.
 But the proposals have angered the European Parliament, which is worried about losing power to EU ministers, and also divided governments, who dispute the role foreseen for a separate advisory committee of financial market regulators.
 The European Parliament said last week it would broadly back the proposals in a vote next Thursday if governments and the European Commission agreed to give it a right of veto over any technical proposal it did not like, something ministers are expected to reject.
 Finance ministers will also conclude their annual review of EU governments' budgets with a review of the policies of Portugal, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg, and begin setting budgetary priorities for 2002.
 Diplomats said only Portugal would be singled out for strong criticism, with a budget deficit that has fallen thanks to one-off phone-license revenues and a soaring current-account deficit.

TITLE: History Gives Insight Into Bush Program's Poor Prospects
AUTHOR: By John Kenneth Galbraith
TEXT: CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - I am not, in my own view or that of others, a plausible candidate as a political adviser to the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, but I would like to make the suggestion that it could be on course for a powerful political disaster. Following a long period of insane speculation, the United States is thought now to be facing a recession, possibly even, so far as there can be a difference, a depression.
 On this the new presidential administration agrees; so it has given its support for two measures designed to strengthen the U.S. economy. Both have proved useless in the past and owe their present acceptance to a combination of personal attractiveness and political convenience. They are reliance on the Federal Reserve and reliance on tax reduction for providing support for the economy.
 The reliance on the Federal Reserve and its cuts in the discount rate proceeds from the wonderful convenience of having an action available that is above politics and much more mentally agreeable than anything of substantive value. Ever since 1913, the founding year of the Federal Reserve, there have been great hopes for the stabilizing effect of its actions.
 The succession of boom and bust, or inflation and recession, has continued ever since. During the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve was completely ineffective; during World War II, when inflation was a serious menace and the United States took life seriously, Federal Reserve action was simply set aside. The Reserve owes its continuing standing to the thought that bankers have some peculiar effect on the economy and, especially, to the exceptional convenience of having a remedy that can be simply announced, without legislators and without regard for the great complexities that govern economic behavior. Also, needless to say, it now owes much to the extraordinary theatrical talent of Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman. To rely on the Reserve as a remedy for an emerging recession is optimism carried to the point of foolishness.
 The other political threat faced by the administration comes in the form of tax reduction. This, as support to the economy, was announced immediately by President Bush on taking office. Most of the benefit, as now more than amply agreed, goes to the very affluent. In an economic downturn, those so favored do not spend more, because they have no particular need to do so. That is an aspect of wealth. And given the uncertainties of the current economic situation, they do not readily initiate or invest.
 It is true that middle-and lower-income folk do spend, but they do not get a significant share of the tax-cut benefit, and the very poor get none of it at all. And such expenditure as there is here goes for the daily necessities of life, not for the things on which recovery depends. To repeat, those of middle and lower income won't be the beneficiaries in any case. The effect of tax reduction is not on the economy but on the pleasure and political gratitude of those who receive it.
 Since the days of Herbert Hoover, who tried similar tax reduction policies with no result, depression or recession has been the political misfortune of government with the strongest political effect. After the Great Depression, the Republicans were out of office for 20 years. This sort of rejection is what the Bush administration, substituting the preference and enjoyment of the affluent for reality, is risking. If there is a recession and no remedial action beyond that of Alan Greenspan and the lowered expectations of the Internal Revenue Service, the administration faces political difficulty, even disaster.
 I repeat, it is not my tendency to render advice to a Republican president, but this prospect is sufficiently grim for so many that one should break even the best established rules.
 
 <i>John Kenneth Galbraith, a professor emeritus at Harvard University, submitted this comment to the New York Times. </i>

TITLE: Private Cash On the Spot To Pay Off Public Bills
TEXT: INSTEAD of orphanages, hospitals, theaters or orchestras, businesses have now been presented with a new opportunity to step up and display their benevolence - the opportunity to take part in the renovation of the half-ruined Konstantinov Palace out at Strelna, a southern suburb of St. Petersburg.
 According to the head of the Presidential Administration, Vladimir Ko zhin, who was in town to talk about the project on Saturday, donations to the order of $50 million are expected this year, while the total required investment in the palace is expected to reach $170 million. Most of this money is expected to come in the form of private donations collected through a newly established charity fund, and the palace should be ready as a state residence by 2003 with restoration work to begin as soon as spring has sprung.
 According to Kozhi, who, before moving into his present Moscow appointment, served as head of the local currency-control service and is well known in the St. Petersburg business community, numerous offers of money have been made - even though there are no tax exemptions being offered for donations by participants in the financing project.
 Kozhin seems to be in no doubt that the plan will succeed, and in fact Russia's charitable traditions go a long way back, particularly when it comes to the Orthodox Church. These days, certain low-profile entrepreneurs prefer to finance orphanages or churches rather than paying taxes, but the Kremlin is counting on donations from big, prominent businesses which, in turn, will expect favors from the government.
 So it appears that this is a straightforward money-for-power deal, and presumably there will be a number of Moscow-based high rollers who will respond with alacrity to this unusual initiative.
 Stating with such confidence that you are expecting that the donations will come rushing in strikes me as a little bit presumptuous, consideriing the fact that no honest business enjoys parting with its money when it has no hope of getting it back. However, it seems the authorities have already made businesses' minds up for them.
 And here we have another long-standing tradition - dispensing other people's cash freely - in a country where private property did not exist for decades.
 As a result, nobody should be looking for respect for other people's property - whether looking for it from the state or from private organizations - at present (and probably not for some time to come yet).
 It's no surprise that masked Tax Police officers find it acceptable to raid someone's office and treat the place as if <i>they </i>owned it - it's their job to be suspicious of business, not to support it.

TITLE: CB Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place
AUTHOR: By Edwin Dolan
TEXT: OF all the transition economies, Russia has been among the last in the world to begin a recovery. Russia's late start made the good news about the 2000 economy all the more welcome: Real gross domestic product grew by more than 7 percent, inflation fell to about 20 percent, the ruble was stable throughout the year and the government's budget moved from running a deficit to a surplus. The question of the day is, do these figures mark a sustainable, long-term expansion, or were they simply the result of a lucky combination of fleeting circumstances?
 In 2000, thanks to strong world oil prices, Russia enjoyed a surplus of exports over imports of about $45 billion. Of that amount, the Central Bank added about $20 billion to its hard-currency reserves. The remaining $25 billion or so was spent by Russian firms and individuals to buy foreign assets or on other forms of what is popularly called &quot;capital flight.&quot; Unfortunately, continued growth of hard-currency reserves in combination with large-scale capital flight is not consistent with long-term real output growth, low inflation and a budget surplus. Something will have to change - but what?
 Suppose that energy prices stay high and the ruble is held near its current level of about 28 to the dollar. To keep the ruble from strengthening, the Central Bank must continue, like last year, to buy up all the surplus dollars that come on the market, adding further to its hard-currency reserves. But adding to reserves in this way has an unwanted side effect, in that the rubles used to buy the dollars increase Russia's domestic money supply. From January 2000 to January 2001, the money supply increased by some 62 percent.
 It is a well-established principle that in the long run, an increase in the money supply will lead to a proportional increase in price levels, except to the extent that the money is absorbed by real output growth. So why was inflation in 2000 just 20 percent, rather than the 55 percent that we would expect from a 62 percent jump in the money stock?
 The answer is that the rate at which money circulated through the economy - what economists call &quot;velocity&quot; - slowed at the same time the quantity of money increased, thereby easing inflationary pressure. The slower velocity, in part, reflected greater public confidence in the ruble. Because inflation was moderate and the exchange rate was stable, people did not rush as quickly to convert every ruble they earned into dollars or to spend it on goods. The slowing of velocity also reflected a greater demand for money in the business sector as the share of trade conducted by barter fell and the use of cash increased.
 Preliminary data suggest that velocity has already reached a value below seven in the first quarter, almost down to the record low of 6.5 in early 1998. But at that time, the annual rate of inflation was less than 10 percent. If we go back to the last previous year of 20 percent inflation, velocity was about seven. On the whole, then, it seems unrealistic to expect velocity to fall much more this year.
 Without the help of falling velocity, the Central Bank can't afford to let the money stock grow by another 60 percent in 2001. Inflation would soar. But there are few other options available to effectively absorb the avalanche of extra dollars entering the economy as a result of the huge current account surplus. Diverting a certain amount of that money from the budget to pay off Paris Club debts will help a little, but not enough. If oil prices remain high, the only real way to avoid increased inflation is to let the ruble appreciate, perhaps to 25 per dollar, perhaps even stronger.
 Unfortunately, having to choose between inflation or a strengthening of the ruble puts the Central Bank between a rock and a hard place when it comes to developing the real economy. Over the past two years, one of the main engines of recovery has been import substitution fueled by the big devaluation of 1998. But import substitution will stop if inflation pushes up Russian wages and production costs while the exchange rate remains unchanged, or equally, if inflation remains moderate but a strengthening exchange rate makes imports cheaper in ruble terms.
 One or the other of those alternatives seems bound to happen in 2001. Economists use a concept called the trade-weighted real exchange rate to measure the competitive position of domestic goods relative to imports. The real exchange rate depreciated by about a third after the 1998 crisis, working the magic of import substitution. However, inflation has since eroded about half of that gain.
 Assuming that oil prices stay high, either a strengthening of the ruble or an acceleration of inflation will probably wipe out the last of the advantage by the end of 2001.
 Of course, oil prices might very well fall. But a drop in oil prices would have its downside, too. The government's budget would swing back into deficit. Servicing Russia's foreign debt would become far more difficult. And it would become harder to find the funds needed to renew the country's crumbling infrastructure or combat its looming demographic problems.
 We began by asking whether the economic gains of 2000 are sustainable. It looks very doubtful that they are. In 2001, either inflation will accelerate, or growth will slow, or oil prices will crash, or maybe even all three. The numbers just don't add up any other way.
 
 <i>Edwin Dolan teaches economics in the MBA program of the American Institute of Business and Economics in Moscow. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times . </i>

TITLE: Kosovo's Reality Defeats U.S. Campaign Promise
TEXT: IT has taken only seven weeks for the Bush administration's campaign rhetoric about American military involvement in the Balkans to be swayed by the realities of Kosovo. Last fall George W. Bush suggested that he would want to withdraw most or all of the 11,000 American troops serving in Bosnia and Kosovo, leaving such peacekeeping operations to the Europeans. By this week, far from withdrawing, American soldiers in Kosovo were engaged in a firefight with Albanian rebels - and NATO's secretary general was extracting what he said was a commitment from Bush that the United States would leave the Balkans only when its allies did. 
 The two developments each reflected an inescapable fact the administration has had to face. Though the Balkan peacekeeping operations have gone relatively well, the situation remains volatile. Guerrilla operations by Albanian militants have spread from a buffer zone in Serbia along the border with Kosovo to nearby Macedonia, threatening to trigger an explosive conflict pitting Yugoslav, Macedonian and NATO forces against the Albanians and maybe even each other. 
 In an effort to limit U.S. exposure, the administration rejected a British proposal that NATO forces be deployed in the Serbian buffer zone, thus expanding the military commitment beyond Kosovo. Instead, Yugoslav forces will gradually be allowed to move into the area accompanied by European Union observers. But American troops stationed adjacent to the trouble zones in Serbia and Macedonia will be needed to block Albanian rebels from moving across the border or using bases in Kosovo.
 Even without the problems on the ground, European governments have made clear to the administration in recent weeks that they are not prepared to let U.S. forces escape from Bosnia and Kosovo on their own. There are some strange contradictions between policy and practice in this: The European Union is trying to launch a new military force that, in theory, would be able to act without the United States and NATO, but apparently it doesn't want Kosovo to serve as an example; the Bush administration, which is worried the European force may operate too independently from the United States, nevertheless would be happy to leave Kosovo to the Europeans. 
 But the bottom line is that the Bush administration has now made the same open-ended military commitment to the Balkans as the Clinton administration - a change that reflects not so much a compromise of principle as an inevitable yielding to the importance of European stability and NATO alliances. In the words of Secretary of State Colin Powell &quot;We went in together, and we will come out together.&quot;
 
 <i>This comment originally appeared as an editorial in The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: A Fishy Story Of Jobs, Bribes And Quotas
TEXT: FOR the last 10 days our liberal press has been railing at the appointment of former Primorye region governor Yevgeny Nazdratenko to head the State Fisheries Committee. It even generated a revolt within the government, as Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov almost openly expressed his opposition and didn't hide the fact he would have preferred to see his assistant Alexander Moiseyev get the post.
 We can imagine why Kasyanov, who even back when he worked in the Finance Ministry managed to earn himself the nickname &quot;Misha 2 Percent,&quot; was worried about this appointment. But it is less clear why the press, on the basis of his opposition, suddenly started including the prime minister among our &quot;anti-corruption fighters.&quot;
 It seems pretty clear to me that Kasyanov wanted his friend to divvy up Russia's fish and now it turns out that Nazdratenko will do the honors. And, it must be admitted, it is one lucrative fish.
 It is estimated that every dollar invested in fishing brings $12 in profit. Russia's far-eastern catch alone (including poaching) is worth about $4 billion annually. The bribe for acquiring a fish quota can, it is said, be more than the price of the quota itself. This is because a quota is considerably more than just a certain quantity of fish. It is really a piece of paper that entitles one to catch as much fish, crab or scallops as one can. That is why they are sold in extremely small lots, as little as 50 tons of crab.
 &quot;You can catch about four tons of crab in a day,&quot; said one self-confessed poacher, who is also the manager of a registered fishing company. &quot;Fifty tons takes about 12 days. No one is going to bother setting sail for just 12 days. You just catch your 50 tons, offload it to a foreign ship and go on. For each load, you pay the inspector about $3,000. They just load the crab into boxes labeled 'Product of Japan.'&quot;
 You can get a sense of the scale of the poaching problem just by considering how many structures have been created to combat it. Initially, poaching was handled by the federal inspectors of Glavrybvod. And handle it they did: Whenever an inspector was arrested, he rarely had less than $50,000 on him. That is why the Federal Border Service and then later the FSB took up the mission.
 The days when black Land Cruisers would pull up next to every ship about to embark and tell the captain when and where to meet the Japanese factory ship are long past. Nowadays such deals are not settled by punks with machine guns but by the cutters of the coast guard. And here's a word of warning to journalists out there: Be careful about writing about how the coast guard sunk another poaching vessel as if it were an example of how they are diligently protecting our natural resources.
 Poaching is the essence of Russian fishing. On Kamchatka alone, slightly fewer than 600 companies officially receive quotas. Even the official quotas are so high that prices are driven down. Russian companies sold fish last year abroad for an average price of just 96 cents a kilogram, while global averages run about $7. 
 Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref's effort to regulate this by auctioning quotas is like trying to stop a waterfall with a cork. Not only is it impossible, but it also isn't even desirable. Without poaching and bribes, the entire economy of these regions would collapse. Obviously, it doesn't matter a bit for the economy whether Nazdratenko or Kasyanov has his fingers in this pie. 
 
 <i>Yulia Latynina is a journalist for ORT. </i>

TITLE: The Mud Age Cometh
AUTHOR: By Stephen Shenfield
TEXT: AROUND the North Pole there is now a stretch of open sea where the ice cap has melted. Global warming is already making itself felt and is proceeding even more rapidly than previously expected. That is the gist of the latest research on the subject, summarized for us in the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released earlier this year. 
 Russia, too, is a bit warmer than it used to be. Or let us say - in deference to the Siberians freezing in unheated apartments - that Russia is a bit less cold. The year-round average temperature of the country has risen by over 1 degree Celsius since the mid-1960s and now stands at -5 degrees Celsius. Russian winters especially have been less cold in recent years - up to 2.5 degrees Celsius less cold than in the late 1960s. In places the permafrost has begun to thaw.
 According to projections made by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, Russia's year-round average temperature may rise by as much as another 5 degrees Celsius by 2060, bringing it all the way up to the freezing point. Winter temperatures on the Arctic coast, now typically between -40 degrees Celsius and -10 degrees Celsius, may be 10 degrees Celsius higher in the 2050s. A substantial proportion of Russia's permafrost will thaw.
 Perhaps Russia could do with some warming. True, it isn't exactly what is needed in the south Russian steppe, where temperatures topped 35 degrees Celsius during the 1999 drought and which in some places (notably Kalmykia) is rapidly turning into desert. But surely the inhabitants of central, and especially of northern, Russia would appreciate the prospect of shorter and less harsh winters, together with longer and warmer summers?
 Yes, conditions will become easier - but not in all ways and not everywhere. As always, there are snags.
 For example, warmer summers are not so good for the trees in Russia's forests. Warm weather brings out pests like the destructive spruce bark beetle, which emerges when the temperature reaches 10 degrees Celsius and multiplies faster and faster as it gets warmer. 
 But the biggest snag has to do with the thawing of the permafrost. Far from making life in the Far North more comfortable, this will turn the areas affected into an uninhabitable bog. The trouble is that when the ice in permafrost melts it produces up to twice as much water as the thawed soil is able to absorb. The result is the thick mixture of soil and water known to laymen as <i>mud. </i>
 Those who live in the Far North know that their brief summer, which only just starts to thaw the permafrost, brings not only some welcome warmth, but also mud. The mud oozes everywhere. People try to keep it out of their houses, but they can't. 
 The deep and prolonged thaw that global warming holds in store will generate oceans of mud, which will flow in broad streams down slopes and accumulate in low-lying areas. Erosion and subsidence will lead to the formation of numerous new ponds and lakes. 
 The subsidence of coastal land, taken together with the rise in the global sea level brought about by the melting of the polar ice, means that much of Russia's northern seacoast will recede far inland. Many coastal, island and riverside settlements will be inundated. A prime candidate for submersion will be the geologically unstable Yamal Peninsula with its vast gas deposits.
 All the residential, economic, and transport structures people have built in the tundra - buildings, mining installations, oil and gas pipelines, the roads and airstrips - are laid straight on top of the permafrost. They have no deeper foundations or support. As the permafrost thaws, these structures will slide, buckle, topple over, collapse, and finally sink forever into the mud. That will be the end of a permanent human presence in the Far North. 
 The indigenous people of the North will not be able to cope either. They, too - and the reindeer on which they depend - need the permafrost.
 Some analysts argue technological solutions to these problems will be found. Pipelines can - at great expense - be reconstructed to make them less prone to break or sink. New technologies may be developed in Canada and the United States, which face the same problem in their far northern territories. But I think that technological fixes will be effective only during the early phases of the process. Eventually the mud will win out. Homo sapiens is not a species that thrives in mud. 
 Some advantageous aspects of global warming appear less impressive when the problem of thawing permafrost is factored in. It is expected, for instance, that the northern sea route along Russia's north coast and through the Bering Strait, currently navigable only with costly icebreaker assistance, will be ice-free for up to 100 days a year by 2050. It may become a major international trade route, enabling ships to sail from European ports to the Far East in three weeks' less time than via the Suez Canal. But what good will this do Russia if its Arctic ports have been washed away and onshore industry and transport have collapsed? The route will be used mainly by other countries for their transit traffic.
 Global warming is a reality. Even were the world community to agree on resolute counteraction, it would take several decades to bring the process to a halt. We will be living - or dying - with the consequences for centuries. 
 What then is to be done? 
 In my opinion, the most sensible thing - for Canada and Alaska as well as for Russia - would be to accept the inevitable, to cut our losses, and to complete the evacuation of the far north in good time and at the minimum possible human and economic cost. Russia is a big country. There will continue to be large expanses where global warming will prove more of a blessing than a curse. That is where the limited resources available for Russia's development should be concentrated. And if Russia is forced to become less dependent on the export of its oil, gas, and mineral resources, that may also turn out to be, in a long-term perspective, a blessing in disguise. 
 
 <i>Stephen D. Shenfield is an independent researcher based in Providence, RI. His latest book is Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, and Movements. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Statues Aren't Afghanistan's Real Tragedy
TEXT: &quot;THE destruction work is not as easy as people would think,&quot; Taleban Information Minister Qudratullah Jamal told CNN in regard to his government's demolition of the unique ancient giant Buddhas of Bamiyan. 
 The statues, built in the fourth or fifth century and having withstood the invading armies of Alexander the Great and the Huns, were the most visible and symbolic victims of the Taleban's recent edict ordering the destruction of all statues on the grounds that representations of people and animals are offensive to Islam. &quot;We are not going to back away from the edict and no statutes in Afghanistan will be spared,&quot; the minister said.
 As horrifying as this edict and the loss of the Bamiyan Buddhas are and as easy as it is to simply blame the intolerant and narrow-minded Taleban for all Afghanistan's woes, the incident should give the world pause to think about what it has wrought upon this impoverished, long-suffering nation.
 Decades of civil war - the flames of which were eagerly and selfishly fanned by both the Soviet Union and the United States in their pitiless Cold War rivalry - have already long ago obliterated Afghani stan's cultural heritage. The Kabul Museum has been thoroughly looted, which may have actually saved many of its treasures from a rocket attack in 1993 that destroyed much of what had been left behind. 
 And what about the unspeakable human costs of this tragic conflict and the isolation inflicted on the country by misguided international sanctions? The Taleban may well have taken more moderate stands on issues such as harboring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden or destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas if they had had international business or tourism ties to protect. 
 In 1998, when a Taleban commander ordered the destruction of one of the Bamiyan statues, Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar ordered him to stop, evidently hoping for a revival of tourism. Apparently, the latest wave of UN sanctions - advocated jointly by the United States and Russia - was enough to kill off that slim hope.
 The international community's outrage over the desecration of cultural monuments might have been more effective had it not come against the background of decades of indifference to - and even complicity in - Afghanistan's plight.
 Now Russia and the West will use Bamiyan to further stigmatize the Taleban and to justify additional torments for Afghanistan. The real lessons of the Bamiyan Buddhas will go unheeded and further cultural and humanitarian catastrophes - Chechnya, Iraq - are inevitable unless we all stop now to ask who is really to blame.

TITLE: A Crisis That's Fit for a President
TEXT: WHEN I joined my first newspaper about 20 years ago, an old reporter taught me the principles of Soviet journalism. The most important was to learn how to read and write between the lines.
 I had thought that this system had become pretty irrelevant since the dawn of Gorbachev's glasnost, but I now have learned that one should never say &quot;never.&quot; The technique of writing and reading between the lines is becoming extremely valuable once again these days.
 Let's say, for instance, that you are wondering about the current crisis in the State Duma. First the Communists have threatened to vote no-confidence in the government. Then the pro-Kremlin Unity faction expressed its support, only to retract it later and announce that it would only make up its collective mind later this week. The Communists claim that they want to throw Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov's government out, while Unity said that they support the government and want to see the Duma dissolved. Meanwhile, the Kremlin maintains silence, pretending that it has nothing to do with the situation.
 Inexperienced political consumers get the message that President Putin is trying hard to put the country on the right track but those elected representatives are putting brakes on the wheels of progress. The obvious lesson is that democracy - with its culture of elected representatives - is not for Russia and brings nothing but disorder and discontent.
 However, experienced media junkies have long expected this &quot;no-confidence&quot; performance to happen. All they had to do was to read carefully Gleb Pavlovsky's interviews and articles, particularly those on the Web site Strana.ru. Pavlovsky is a master of the self-promotion technique perfected by Boris Berezovsky: pretending in a very public way that you have access to top officials and a say in high-level decisions regardless of whether you actually have access or not.
 In recent months, Pavlovsky has devoted considerable web and print space to the problem of the need to change the Duma. Why? Our &quot;pink&quot; Duma opposes the president and does not allow his reforms to move forward.
 When you first read this stuff, you feel as if you might be going a bit mad. Wait a second, you tell yourself, the Duma has passed practically everything the Kremlin asked it to pass: the laws on the so-called &quot;super governors,&quot; a balanced budget and then later a not-balanced budget, the Soviet national anthem and so on.
 Was it the Duma that refused to pass crucial amendments to the Criminal Code, the basis for Russian legal reform? No, the Kremlin withdrew the draft law. Was it the Duma that did not allow Economic Development Minister German Gref's program to go forward? No, the Kremlin asked some Soviet-style economists to write a new one. Is the Duma blocking military and administrative reforms? No, it is the Kremlin's Security Council that kept the military budget nontransparent, and it was the Kremlin that cut the reform of the state apparatus from the final draft of Gref's program.
 Obviously, this is a situation that calls for reading between the lines. And using this technique reveals the following. The current political crisis - which, by the way, undermines the only real achievement of Putin's reign, stability - is aimed to ensure Putin's re-election in 2004.
 Now, the next parliamentary election is set for 2003. Clearly, all parties except Unity will run on some sort of anti-regime platform. The left will claim that Putin has continued the mistakes of the Yeltsin era, and the right will highlight the opportunities that Putin missed and the reforms that never happened. 
 Should world energy prices fall - as has been predicted - it will be pretty hard for the Kremlin to control the damage that such an election could cause.
 Therefore, it would be best if the Duma elections took place well before the presidential vote, ideally some time this year. All the other claims and arguments being put forth by Kremlin spinmasters - such as that the Communists would get fewer votes if the elections were moved up and that, consequently, Unity would get more votes or that Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov's Fatherland movement would be the big loser - really amount to nothing. The purpose of this discussion is merely to mask the Kremlin's real agenda.
 Clever readers, though, have already received the message.
 
 <i>Yevgenia Albats is an independent, Moscow-based journalist. </i>

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Clashes on West Bank
 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian and used tear gas against stone-throwing protesters on Monday during clashes at trenches built by the army to blockade the West Bank city of Ramallah, witnesses said.
 Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer later announced Israel would lift closures on four other West Bank cities, imposed at the start of a five-month-old Palestinian uprising that erupted after peace talks deadlocked.
 The blockade on Ramallah, which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said was tightened after Israel learned a group of Palestinians were planning a bombing attack on Israel, would remain.
 The army used tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets after tensions flared during the protest by about 1,500 Palestinians against the blockade on Ramallah, a major West Bank city about 13 kilometers from Jerusalem.
 
 
Cease-Fire in Kosovo
 

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Ethnic Albanian guerrillas fighting Serb security forces in a buffer zone just outside Kosovo said Monday they had agreed to cease fire for a week.
 Sejdullah Kadriu, political representative of the group, which emerged about a year ago saying it was defending local Albanians against repression by the security forces of then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, said it was temporary.
 "An agreement was signed for a cease-fire until March 19. During this week preparations for negotiations have to go on," he said.
 There was no immediate word on any signing by representatives of the Serbian government, which says the guerrillas are "terrorists" trying to grab territory. 
 
 
Ugandan Elections
 

KAMPALA, Uganda (Reuters) - Vote counting began in Uganda's presidential election on Monday after polls closed in one of the hardest fought elections in the country's history.
 Voters turned out in large numbers. Most of the polling was calm despite reports of intimidation and attempted vote-rigging.
 President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled the central African country, was the strong favorite to win a final five-year term against his main challenger Kizza Besigye.
 At the Mango Tree polling station in Kampala, about 50 people watched the counting as the presiding officer held up the ballot papers and called out the names of Museveni or Besigye.
 The Electoral Commission said it expected to announce the final results within 48 hours of the polls closing, although unofficial results are expected much sooner.
 
 
Mori 'Won't Quit'
 

TOKYO (AP) - Just two days after he reportedly signaled his intention to resign to ruling party leaders, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori told parliament on Monday that he never said he would quit. 
 Then he refused to talk about it anymore. 
 While Mori's protestations were not seen as a flat denial that he would step down within a month, his comments were a measure of the confusion and secrecy of Japan's political leadership. 
 "The nation simply can't understand why this is happening behind closed doors," Yasuko Takemura of the Democratic Party, the largest opposition group, told Mori. "Are you concerned about the people at all?" 
 Mori would seem to have little choice but to step down. His support ratings are below 10 percent and his one-year term has been marked by a constant stream of scandals and verbal and political missteps. 
 
 
Britain Defends Ban
 

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain defended its efforts to contain a three-week-old outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease on Monday against furious criticism from Ireland, but said it faced a "long haul" battling the highly contagious livestock disease.
 Agriculture Minister Nick Brown insisted a nationwide ban on livestock movements had kept the outbreak under control, despite a sharp rise in cases over the weekend which pushed the number of affected farms and abattoirs relentlessly higher.
 Ireland's junior Natural Resources Minister Hugh Byrne attacked Brown's handling of the outbreak, labeling Britain the "leper of Europe" and accusing ministers of complacency and mishandling the crisis.
 Wide swathes of rural Britain are off-limits and opposition Conservatives have warned of a "national emergency" as Prime Minister Tony Blair gears up for elections expected on May 3.
 
 
War Criminal Gives In
 

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - A Bosnian Serb wanted for crimes against humanity surrendered to the UN war crimes court on Monday in a move likely to ease international pressure on Yugoslavia to cooperate with the tribunal.
 Blagoje Simic, accused of orchestrating a 1992 campaign of ethnic cleansing while he was the top civilian official in the Bosnian town of Samac, avowed his innocence and said that he was giving himself up voluntarily.
 His lawyer, speaking just before the war crimes suspect flew from Belgrade to the Netherlands, said Simic had a Yugoslav passport and was the first Yugoslav citizen to turn himself in to the tribunal.
 The new reformist leadership in Yugoslavia, a federal state now made up of only Serbia and Montenegro, is under heavy international pressure to begin cooperating with the tribunal.
 It faces U.S. economic sanctions if it is not deemed to have begun cooperating by the end of March.
 
 
Air Race Begins 
 

LONDON (AP) - Pilots from around the world set off on Sunday in small aircraft, bound for Australia in the London to Sydney Air Race. 
 Thirty-eight pilots from 10 countries took off from an airfield in south London on the first leg of a 22,000-kilometer journey that follows the same 28-day schedule and route as a 1919 challenge race.
 The voyage will take them over the Persian Gulf, India and Singapore and on to Australia. 
 Arriving in Australia first does not necessarily guarantee victory. Pilots are ranked along the way according to a complex formula which takes account of the highest speed their planes can reach. 
 The slowest and oldest plane entered in the race is a Piper Cub plane built in the 1940s. 
 A special trophy will be awarded in memory of two American women, who died en route to the race last week when their twin-engine plane crashed into the sea off the coast of Iceland. 



TITLE: EU Applicants Closer to Membership
AUTHOR: By Sean Maguire
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: A hard-fought deal changing the way the European Union works, struck in Nice in December, has brought long-sought membership of the EU tantalisingly close for some of the 13 ex-communist and Mediterranean applicants.
 Now the question the candidates are asking is if the current members are really ready for the tough last-stage talks that the deal in the French Riviera city has allowed to start.
 Politicians across eastern and central Europe cheered that the EU cleared a major institutional hurdle to enlargement at Nice and that something like a clear target date for entry, 2004, was given unexpectedly to the Union hopefuls.
 They began to believe the EU may finally be ready to bring both sides of the old communist-era Iron Curtain together in one economic bloc, for their mutual benefit.
 Nobody is forgetting that enormous efforts must still be made by the former Soviet allies to repair decrepit infrastructure, update laws to EU standards, tighten borders to the East and make economies efficient and transparent.
 The European Commission, the EU's executive, says it could conclude negotiations by mid-2002 according to a road map laid out for enlargement talks.
 For the first time there is more emphasis on the EU's current 15 members knuckling down to negotiate common positions on the divisive issues than on the stance of the candidates.
 Sweden, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, has set ambitious negotiating targets to try to prevent domestic political issues in current member states becoming a delaying factor in the enlargement process.
 By June it hopes to seal deals with leading candidates on the environment and the four basic freedoms - to work abroad, invest abroad, and to travel and trade - that lie at the heart of the Union.
 German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has already tried to quiet right-wing pressure and union fears over jobs by requesting a seven year transition period in which eastern workers will be banned from seeking employment in the West.
 Other EU members seek softer restrictions. The candidates reject any ban as discriminatory, saying few Poles, Czechs or Hungarians are likely to flee their homes for work elsewhere.
 Vast subsidies to depressed farmers in the front-running six, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus, have not been discussed yet, nor have aid programmes for their more impoverished regions.
 The first to join will be the poorest EU members, with average gross domestic product per capita ranging from 40 percent of the Union average in Poland to 80 percent in Slovenia. They will be requesting substantial financial help.
 Second-rung candidates, Malta, Latvia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania, who started talks only last year, are desperate to catch up with the early starters for fear EU funds will be spread even thinner by the time they get to enter.
 &quot;The road map is there and the political declarations of member states on forming common positions are there,&quot; says Jan Truszczynski, Poland's Ambassador to the EU.
 &quot;Will they deliver? If the 15 can agree substantive enough positions then we are in a position to end talks next year,&quot; he added &quot;But it is too early to tell if it can actually be done.&quot;
 At least for the moment some perceive progress.
 &quot;It seems real negotiations have begun. Compromises have started to appear. We used to get standard responses and now we're hearing 'we can accept this' or 'we can discuss this,'&quot; says Peter Gottfried, a top Hungarian enlargement official.
 For now the enlargement juggernaut is moving. But as the costlier issues loom closer the timetable of the EU members and the commission's road map for talks will likely diverge.
 Senior EU diplomats say privately that Sweden's hopes for a deal on the free movement of labour are unrealistic, with Germany determined to keep the subject vague until after its elections in 2002 to prevent it becoming a domestic political issue.
 Similarly France is set to delay fundamental discussion on farm aid since that may involve changes to the costly Common Agriculture Policy that will be unacceptable in the run-up to crucial elections in the first half of 2002.
 Meanwhile, to encourage the member states to take advantage of what EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenther Verheugen calls the &quot;window of opportunity&quot; created by Nice, applicants are setting bold targets for closing negotiating chapters, or subjects.

TITLE: Paper Report: Gore Won Florida
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PALM BEACH, Florida - A ballot design that confused voters into chosing two candidates cost Democrat Al Gore 6,607 votes in Palm Beach County, The Palm Beach Post reported in its Sunday editions.
 The newspaper counted more than 19,000 overvotes, or ballots on which more than one vote was recorded for a presidential candidate. It concluded the net gain of votes for Gore would have been 10 times more than he needed to erase Republican George W. Bush's slim margin of 537 votes in the state.
 Many voters had complained that the butterfly ballot was confusing because candidates' names appeared on both sides of the punchcard with holes in the middle. They expected the holes to select Bush and Gore to be the first two choices as required by Florida statutes, but instead found Buchanan, on a facing page, located between them.
 According to the newspaper's review, 5,330 ballots were thrown out because voters punched chads for Gore and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, whose name appeared just above Gore's.
 Another 2,908 voters punched Gore's name and Socialist David McReynolds, the candidate whose name appeared just below Gore's.
 Bush lost 1,631 votes because people selected both Bush and Buchanan. Buchanan's name appeared just below Bush on the ballot. The two Gore combinations, minus the Bush-Buchanan votes, add up to 6,607 lost votes for Gore.
 &quot;What it shows is what we've been saying all along: There is no question that the majority of people on election day believed they left the booth voting for Al Gore,&quot; said Ron Klain, Gore's former chief of staff and his lead legal strategist in Florida.
 Former Montana Governor Marc Racicot, a vocal Bush supporter, dismissed the findings.
 &quot;You're trying too hard to find a correlation here,&quot; Racicot said. &quot;You don't know these people, you don't know what they intended.&quot;
 The Post reported that even if 1 percent of the 6,607 votes were intended for Buchanan or McReynolds - more than their combined percent of Palm Beach County's total vote - Gore would still have received 6,541 votes.
 Three-fourths of the overvotes had punches for two candidates, most of which experts said can be attributed to the ballot design. The rest were for three or more candidates, which experts called voter error, not a design problem.
 There were 5,062 voters who punched three or more choices for president. Twenty-eight voters selected all 10 presidential candidates.
 In a story published Saturday, The Post reported that Gore would have gained 784 votes in Palm Beach County if every ballot that had a hanging chad, pinhole or dimple was counted.
 Had The Post's standard been used and its tally applied without any changes in counting procedures in Florida's 66 other counties, the tally also would have erased Bush's victory margin in the state.
 In Palm Beach County's official 10-day manual recount, Gore gained 174 votes. Those were not counted in the statewide tally because the county canvassing board missed the deadline by two hours.
 The newspaper looked at the 9,150 ballots that county officials said had no vote for president - commonly called &quot;undervotes&quot; - and found that 5,736 had a mark for either Bush or Gore. There were 462,350 ballots cast in the county, which Gore carried by an almost two-to-one margin.
 During its manual recount, the Palm Beach canvassing board members - who were all Democrats - struggled over which ballots should be counted, so board Chairman Charles Burton went to court in hopes of having a firm standard set.
 But Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga ruled that the board should judge every ballot on its own merit and count those where the voter's intent could be determined. The board counted very few dimpled ballots.
 The newspaper's examination of ballots the board rejected broke them into three categories.
 The paper found that Bush would have had a net gain of 14 votes if the canvassing board had counted the 62 undervotes that had a hanging chad. That is where a candidate's square is partially detached or is hanging from the ballot.
 But, the newspaper found, Gore would have had a net gain of 25 votes if the canvassing board had also counted the 313 ballots where light could be seen through the perforations or through a pinhole in the square. None of the corners of these chads were detached.
 Finally, the paper found that Gore would have had a net gain of 784 votes if the board had also counted the 5,361 ballots that had a dimpled chad, which means the chad had an indentation but no light could be seen through a pinhole or its edges.

TITLE: Wahid Refuses To Resign Amid Protests
AUTHOR: By Achmad Sukarsono
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: JAKARTA - President Abdurrahman Wahid refused Monday to budge from office saying if he did the world's fourth-most-populous country would fall apart.
 But clearly frightened by mounting political and social unrest, his government dropped plans to raise prices next month on fuel that would have hit the country's impoverished masses.
 &quot;I don't want to resign. I want to maintain this country's integrity,&quot; he said.
 Wahid had to make his comments to reporters at the back of the presidential palace compound instead of the usual front where thousands of protesters had rallied to demand an end to his shambling 16-month rule.
 He also ordered his enigmatic but hugely popular Vice President Mega wati Sukarnoputri to take a more active role in government.
 The daughter of Indonesia's founding president and widely seen as itching to replace Wahid, Megawati has long been criticized for taking almost no role in running the country despite heading its largest political party.
 And in recent weeks, her supporters and erstwhile political enemies have been rallying to her side to push her to replace the frail Wahid.
 Outside the compound, pro and anti-Wahid protesters hurled rocks at each other and traded punches, causing minor injuries, but there were no reports of all-out clashes amid tight security.
 Earlier, local media reports quoted chief security minister and retired general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as warning of the country descending into chaos.
 &quot;Without ... stability, law and security, our country will become a sea of mayhem, violence and worry,&quot; he said.
 Yudhoyono said last month's parliamentary censure of Wahid over his role in two graft scandals - which could trigger his impeachment - was not only a blow to the Muslim cleric but the entire government.
 The political instability and relentless communal violence have rocked financial markets, driving the rupiah through 11,000 against the dollar on Monday, its weakest in more than two years. It later recovered slightly.
 The stock market has also hit a two-year low, falling below the psychologically important 400 point mark. By the close, the main index had fallen 4.22 percent to 396.611 points.
 Monday's protests are the latest in a series attacking Wahid's failure to drag the country out of economic despair and quell communal bloodshed that has killed thousands.
 Witnesses said about 5,000 students rallied to demand Wahid resigns. Most protesters gathered near the presidential palace.
 Nearby, more than 500 Wahid supporters burned effigies of the president's main political enemies, including parliamentary speaker Akbar Tandjung and the head of the top legislature Amien Rais. Both men are former Wahid allies.
 In the mid-afternoon, Rais drove with a busload of supporters to join the anti-Wahid protesters.
 The ambitious Rais, who now heads the president-electing People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), was also a key figure in the protests that helped oust former autocrat Suharto in 1998.
 Parliament censured Wahid in February over his role in two graft scandals, a rebuke that could lead to impeachment.
 He must reply to the censure by May. If parliament is unhappy with the reply, it can censure him again and set in motion the procedure to impeach him by the MPR.
 Former Wahid allies, including Muslim parties, have turned into his most lethal foes and few expect him to serve out his term to 2004.
 The anti-Wahid protesters, who said that they were planning to occupy the presidential palace for a day, also demanded that the government drop a 20 percent fuel price hike it was planning for April.
 On that score they were successful, and the government said they would only boost prices for shipping and industry.
 Violence in the rebellious far-western province of Aceh is also adding to the problems racking Indonesia - forcing the closure of key gas and oil operations at the weekend.

TITLE: March, the Month of Unrest and Revolutions
TEXT: March 12, 1918 </strong>was a fateful day for Petrograd. For tactical reasons, the seat of Soviet power was &quot;temporarily&quot; moved to Moscow to avoid the possibility of losing power, were the then-capital to succumb to White forces in the Russian civil war. St. Petersburg has ever since been relegated to the position of Russia's second city, with Moscow being the capital for over 80 years now and no indication that this will change.
 March is steeped in revolutionary history. The February revolution began on <strong>March 12, 1917 </strong>(Feb. 27 under the old calendar), when strikes at the Putilovsky (now Kirovsky) Zavod became a model followed across the hungry city, leading to the formation of a provisional government and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.
 It was not until <strong>March 15, 1917 </strong>that Nicholas signed a document in Pskov, announcing both his abdication and renouncing his son Alexei's claim to the throne, in favor of Grand Duke Mikhail. The same day saw the formation of the provisional government, headed temporarily by Prince Georgy Lvov, later to be taken over by liberal politician Alexander Karensky. Kerensky was soon to be driven from the country by Lenin himself, who came to power in the October revolution later the same year.
 However, things looked increasingly poor for the future of the Romanovs when Grand Duke Mikhail refused the throne on <strong>March 16, 1917, </strong>worrying for his personal safety. Mikhail's trepidation proved to be well founded, as the imperial family was arrested a week later and spent a year and a half in captivity in Yekaterinburg before their gruesome murders were carried out by the Bolsheviks under the command of Yakov Sverdlov.
 Sverdlov, who himself died <strong>March 16, 1919, </strong>was given the posthumous honor of having the city named after him, and Yekaterinburg became Sverd lovsk until the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991.
 <strong>March 13, 1917 </strong>saw the first ever edition of communist newspaper Izvestia, which labored under the slightly less catchy title of &quot;Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.&quot; Izvestia (&quot;The News&quot;) later became the major Soviet daily, alongside Pravda (&quot;The Truth&quot;), giving rise to the joke that there was &quot;never any truth in 'The News' nor any news in 'The Truth'.&quot;
 <strong>March 19, 1917 </strong>saw the declaration by the provisional government of prison amnesties, the formation of a constituent assembly, full suffrage, guaranteed freedom of speech and the equality of all citizens, as well as renewing Russia's commitment to see World War I through to victory.
 The Paris Commune - the ultimately unsuccessful uprising of workers in the French capital that served as a great inspiration to revolutionaries worldwide - began on <strong>March 18, 1871, </strong>130 years ago.
 More recent revolutionary events occurred exactly a decade ago, as on <strong>March 17, 1991 </strong>70 percent of Russian voters gave their support to the creation of a directly elected Russian President. The same referendum, however, showed that 76 percent of participants wanted to see the preservation of the Soviet Union, although the Baltic States, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova did not take part.

TITLE: Davenport, Williams Sisters Advance at Tennis Masters Series
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: INDIAN WELLS, California - Second-seeded Lindsay Davenport beat Anne-Gaelle Sidot of France 6-4, 6-4 Sunday in the third round of the Tennis Masters Series.
 Third-seeded Venus Williams and seventh-seeded Serena Williams also advanced to the round of 16.
 Davenport had trouble closing out the match and lost her serve at 5-3 in the second set. She put it all together in her next service game and sealed the win.
 &quot;She's a difficult player to play against. Anytime you play a lefty, that's always a little bit awkward to return,&quot; Davenport said. &quot;She hits the ball very hard and very low with no spin. Sometimes that's hard to control.&quot;
 Venus Williams struggled in her match against Cara Black of Zimbabwe before prevailing 6-4, 3-6, 6-0.
 &quot;I just really got away from my game plan, basically,&quot; Venus Williams said. &quot;I wasn't playing by best before that time. I guess all that matters is I was able to recover.&quot;
 Serena Williams breezed to a straight set victory over Gala Leon Garcia of Spain 6-3, 6-1.
 According to the draw, the Williams sisters could face each other in the semifinals. The sisters have squared off five times with Venus leading the series 4-1. Davenport is also in the same half of the draw and could meet Serena in the quarterfinals and Venus in the semis.
 The $2.05 million women's tournament will continue for another week, while the men's $2.45 million competition starts Monday at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden.
 
 q
 LONDON - Brazil's Gustavo Kuerten has been named the Association of Tennis Professionals' Player of the Year for 2000 after becoming the first South American to finish the year ranked No. 1.
 Kuerten headed the winners list at the ATP's annual awards, announced Saturday night ahead of next week's Indian Wells Masters tournament in California.
 Kuerten, who takes over from Andre Agassi as Player of the Year, won five titles in 2000 - including the French Open, the Hamburg Masters and the season-ending Masters Cup in Lisbon.
 Heading into Lisbon, Kuerten needed back-to-back victories over Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi to overtake Marat Safin for the year-end world No. 1 ranking.
 Safin, the Russian U.S. Open champion who won an ATP-best seven titles during the year, picked up three awards.
 The 21-year-old was voted Most Improved Player by his fellow professionals, New Balls Please player of the year and ASAP Sports Most Quotable Player of the Year by the International Tennis Writers' Association.
 <i>- Reuters </i>

TITLE: RUBLE AROUND TOWN
TEXT: Monday's ruble/dollar rates in St. Petersburg:
 
 Buy Sell
 </strong>Alfa Bank 6 Kanal Griboyedova 28.20 28.80
 Baltiisky Bank 34 Sadovaya Ul. 28.30 29.29
 Impexbank 58 Nevsky Prospect 28.00 28.80
 Inkas Bank 44 Nevsky Prospect 27.90 29.00
 MOST Bank 27 Nevsky Prospect 28.00 29.00
 PetroAeroBank 54 Nevsky Prospect 28.62 28.80
 Promstroi Bank 4 Mikhailovskaya Ul. 28.20 28.85
 RusRegion Bank 54 Nevsky Prospect 28.62 28.80
 Sberbank 4 Dumskaya Ul. 27.80 29.00
 <strong>Average 28.18 28.93
 </strong><i>Change from last week -0.02 -0.05

TITLE: PRICE WATCH
TEXT: The cost of vodka around St. Petersburg; Prices are for half-liter bottles, in rubles.
 </i><strong>
 Vodka: Diplomat Flagmann Mendeleyev Nasha Russky Pyotr
 Vodka Standart Veliky</strong>
 Kontinent 90.6 84.5 - 67.3 200 82.4
 Napitki 83.9 80 56.7 - - 76.3
 Orfyei - 86 - 66 190 -
 Passazh 92 95 - 70 201 84
 Polar - - 55.5 - - 76.5
 Prima 93 - 62 70 - 85
 Ryba 85 - 55 - - 76
 Tabak - 87.5 57.5 65 201 -
 <strong>
 Kontinent </strong>- 21 Ul. Korablestroiteley; M. Primorskaya
 <strong>Napitki </strong>- 23 Ul. Bolshaya Morskaya; M. Gostiny Dvor
 <strong>Orfyei </strong>- 2A Nab. Novosmolenskaya; M. Primorskaya
 <strong>Passazh </strong>- 48 Nevsky Pr.; M. Gostiny Dvor
 <strong>Polar </strong>- 19 Ul. Vosstaniya; M. Ploshchad Vosstaniya
 <strong>Prima </strong>- 26 Ul. Bolshaya Morskaya; M. Gostiny Dvor
 <strong>Ryba </strong>- 21 Nevsky Pr.; M. Gostiny Dvor
 <strong>Tabak </strong>- 9 Ul. Vosstaniya; M. Ploshchad Vosstaniya

TITLE: Demystifying Organized Crime
TEXT: Nocturnal discussions around the kitchen table in Russia are often likely to focus on high level conspiracies infiltrating the whole state apparatus. One favorite field for nocturnal conspiracy theorists is, of course, Russia's notorious criminal community and its &quot;cooperation&quot; with the state authorities. Portrayed as black figures without face and exalted by television, the bad guys of Russia's organized crime have become an impenetrable myth without beginning or end. Vadim Volkov, a Russian sociologist and an associate professor at the European University at St. Petersburg, has tried to uncover some of the mysteries by shifting the perspective to the very inside logic of these criminal groups. 
 Since 1995, he has investigated the history, everyday practices and behavioral codes of the St. Petersburg mafia and their role in the process of market building and state formation in Russia. He found the time to speak about his work and his forthcoming book with </i><strong>Lena Ruthner.</strong>
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>What do you think stimulated the evolution of criminal networks in Russia?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Many criminal groups initially thrived on the illegal alcohol trade during the &quot;Gorbachev prohibition,&quot; then on outright extortion from commerce. Afterwards, in the later years of perestroika, the liberalization of the economy and the private market on the one hand and the evolution of high business risks, the shortage of protection, and the non-existence of a functioning system of law on the other created an institutional demand for &quot;enforcement partners&quot; - business mediators who would ensure the smooth functioning of private business.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>So how was the evolving vacuum filled after the breakdown of the Soviet state? What backgrounds did the various bandit groups engaged in the protection business come from?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>In St. Petersburg, the protection rackets which came quickly to fill the niche that had been created by the breakdown of the Soviet state were mostly recruited from former sports clubs and non-resident student communes. The notorious Tambovskaya group, for example, was formed in the late 1980s by a group of students who grew up in the town of Tambov and came to Leningrad for their higher education. Many other cities such as Murmansk, Vorkuta, Perm and Kazan became centers of gravity for other athletic and violent young people willing to earn a living by the use of force. Groups formed by Leningrad residents recruited local athletes whose primary cohesion and trust had been formed throughout their joint sports careers.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>How did you contact the criminal groups or their representatives? Weren't you afraid about aggressive reactions or revenge for intervening in their business?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Most of my interview partners I met through friends who were engaged in business and had to pay revenue to a certain criminal group. I asked them to organize a meeting for me with a representative of their <i>krysha </i>[protection agency]. Actually, most of the criminals I talked to were very cooperative. I think my status as a scientist helped me to gain their trust. I told them that I was not interested in any secret information, but only in general patterns of their everyday business. We agreed that if they didn't want to answer some of my questions, they would just ignore them. Some of them even enjoyed reflecting with me on their everyday practices and the very logic of their business. Some showed me with pride the tattoos and scars that marked their existence as bandits. 
 Still, for many of my interview partners the interview appeared to remind them of some investigation with the FSB and I could feel certain barriers in their openness while talking to me. What surprised me was that in general, bandits were more talkative than most of the businessmen I talked to when I was investigating their connections to criminal groups.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>What were the main fields of activity for these gangster groups? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>In the early days of Russia's new market economy, the racketeer groups were mainly engaged in physical protection from other such groups and debt recovery. As private business developed, the functions of the &quot;violent entrepreneurs&quot; diversified. Apart from security, risk control, debt recovery, and dispute settlement, enforcement partners also came to mediate relations between private business and the state bureaucracy, helping to obtain licenses, registration and tax exemptions, as well as using the state organs to impose damage on the companies of their competitors. The institution of enforcement partnership rested on the power of deterrence - the capacity to use force and cause physical damage to those who cause financial or other losses to a business the criminal group claims to protect. A large number of small- and medium-scale business firms ended up under the control of criminal groups, either because of the shadowy nature of their own business or because they resigned themselves to the intimidating practices of the criminal groups. In most cases, however, criminal groups were simply more efficient than the state organs in solving the day-to-day problems of the new Russian entrepreneurs.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>So what role do private protection companies perform in Russia today?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Being a type of violent entrepreneurial agency, the private protection company provides the standard set of <i>krysha </i>services to other business agents and resolves their problems - these are protection, contract enforcement, dispute settlement, debt recovery and information gathering. 
 Since criminal groups were the first to discover this entrepreneurial niche, they also laid down the basic rules and terms of the game, which every newcomer in the field had to take into account. So the setting up of a private protection company implies competition as well as cooperation with illegal enforcement partners, i.e. criminal structures. But since both criminal structures and legal protection agencies are not only force-managing entities but also in the long run are subject to the logic of economic action, both undergo a transformation into more civilized business enterprises with complex structures.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>In your forthcoming book, &quot;The Monopoly of Force: Violent Entrepreneurship and State Formation in Russia, 1987-2000,&quot; you argue that private protection is becoming more &quot;civilized&quot; as bandits turn more and more to legal business. Can you explain this idea in more detail?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Yes. My argument is that in 1997, the &quot;wild years&quot; of organized violence and extortion ended. As the competition between the different agencies - legal and illegal - became harsher, the bandits became more attentive to the economic interests of their clients. Their actions become less violent and more predictable. A good group reputation enabled entrepreneurialism based on virtual rather than actual violence and thus a more efficient and stable conversion of force into money. 
 This in turn freed cash for investment and enabled the transition of the violent agency to a legal business enterprise with stakes and stock holdings in the enterprises' capital. 
 Once they become investors, the former groups are faced with new challenges, and running the risk of being arrested becomes more damaging to them. In turn, the pure business of protection becomes less interesting and profitable to them. Some of them are still involved in contract killings, but the tendency is that those groups who succeeded in the competitive market turn away from &quot;dirty business&quot; and engage in more profitable trade or even politics. The notorious Tambov group displays just such a pattern of transition into a business enterprise: It now owns the majority share of the Petersburg Fuel Company, for example.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>What role would you ascribe to the state and the government in fighting or coming to terms with the violent entrepreneurs?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>In 1997 conditions for a reassertion of the state began to emerge. At this point in time, various developments and policies of state formation that had only a loose sense of common direction were articulated and transformed into a conscious state-building project by politicians. That's essentially what happened as Vladimir Putin ascended to power in 1999-2000. Putin's presidential address to the legislature on July 8, 2000, demonstrated that his understanding of state weakness is structural rather than purely substantive, and so are his proposals on strengthening the state. Putin stresses the need to ensure the protection of ownership rights and of fair competition, to liberate business from bureaucratic dictatorship and to ease the tax burden. The Putin politics of state formation are in fact very close to the mainstream liberal thinking on the role of the state. 
 But the enforcement of the &quot;dictatorship of law&quot; raises important questions. The first is: What is to be done with those who acquired their stakes in the economy by illegal means, but who are now engaged in more or less legal private enterprises and often through their holdings and investments to a great degree support the Russian economy? For the sake of economic expediency, the Putin government would probably do well to grant them amnesty concerning their roots in the underworld. But, of course, starting from zero or even buying off those former criminals and integrating them in the economy would conflict with the very idea of the rule of law and the democratic credibility of the present government. That's only one of the big dilemmas in which the Putin government has to choose the lesser of two evils.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>What are you planning to do after your book's publication? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Honestly, I don't know yet. But by the time my book is published, the violent entrepreneurs will have probably disappeared from the market of private protection. Either they will have been integrated into legal social structures or they will have returned to the traditional underworld businesses of prostitution and drug dealing.

TITLE: Physicist-Turned-Assessor Finds Satisfaction at Last
AUTHOR: By Lyudmila Spichkina
TEXT: It has been seven years now since I became a criminal court assessor in St. Petersburg. What this means is that I am one of two jurors - paid by the state - who hears the case alongside the judge and participates in rendering the verdict.
 If someone had told me fifty years ago that this is what I would be doing now, I would have been very surprised and wouldn't have believed it. Indeed, after leaving school in 1956, I decided to break with family tradition by entering a very tough technical institute. Those years were marked by a lot of discussion about &quot;the physical and the lyrical,&quot; and I thought that everything involving physics was awfully romantic. I was so mistaken!
 Growing up in exclusively bohemian circles of actors, musicians and artists, I felt I was out of place among scientists. But what was done was done, my technical diploma was in my hands, and thus I became an engineer.
 Work at the designers' bureau brought me no satisfaction, so I set out to find something that would. Finally, I found something that I really liked - I became a guide on tours of the city's rivers and canals. I still recall this as the most wonderful time of my life.
 Of course, the work was exhausting, as I was busy leading tours on weekends and evenings. St. Petersburg's changeable weather is notorious: I had to get soaked by rain, I had to suffer the heat, I lost my voice at times, and yet it was nothing compared to the joy that I felt engaging with people. I could see that the stories I told about our remarkable city would live on in their memories. 
 One day, when I was already thinking of retirement, I was offered temporary work as an assessor in court. I tried it, and found that I settled naturally into the work. Assessors are usually very elderly people, which is how it should be. Only when one has lived one's life and acquired the life experience and wisdom that comes with it, can one be qualified to make decisions concerning the lives of other people.
 I've had to hear many cases over the years, but several of them have become engraved upon my memory - some for being grotesque, others for their tragedy.
 I recall one homeless defendant, who may already now be long dead. He suffered from tuberculosis and decided once to steal a chunk of butter and a jug of honey at a supermarket. The police arrested him and took him into custody. As homeless people - lacking a permanent place of residence - are not given pretrial release, by the time of the trial his tuberculosis had reached its final stage. It grieved us to look at him: a sallow face with a detached gaze. Of course, we gave him a suspended sentence and released him at once. But he was not happy with this: In prison at least, he would have had a place to sleep and something to eat. He had nowhere to go, there was no one waiting for him. I remember that we gave him a packet of food and some money. When he finally left we sat for a long time in silence.
 Almost all such cases tug at the strings of your heart. It is terrible to look at drug addicts who are so young and have no idea what they're doing. Some of them don't even survive to see their court date, dying of overdoses beforehand.
 But it's not all sadness in our work. We are especially happy when we believe that a defendant has definitely turned over a new leaf, that he has given up on crime and that we can safely release him. When the judge reads his verdict and pronounces the phrase: &quot;Free the defendant immediately from this courtroom,&quot; we see his relatives light up and we understand that we are doing very important and necessary work. Some defendants even bring us flowers after their trials - proof that we were not mistaken in believing them, that they were indeed penitent.
 Verdicts for big cases are indeed consuming and strenuous work. Often we have to work as secretaries as well as assessors, because our poor girls can't cope with all the cases at once. There are not enough judges, so we sometimes have to hear up to six cases a day. Sometimes the litigants don't show up - some of them just don't want to, others are afraid of revenge on the part of the defendants' families - and thus trials are postponed, and they build up horrendously.
 Sometimes I even have to work at home: calling people and reminding them that they have to show up at court.
 When I come home in the evening, exhausted, I hear a voice stirring at the back of my mind: &quot;What the hell are you doing? You're retired - enough already! It's time to rest.&quot; &quot;Do be quiet,&quot; I say. &quot;I have finally found something interesting to do.&quot; And with that, I turn to my housework - but that's a completely different story.
 
 <i>Lyudmila Spichkina is a court assessor in St. Petersburg. She submitted this column to The St. Petersburg Times. If you would like to do so, then please contact masters@sptimes.ru </i>

TITLE: WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
TEXT: Get your green clothing out, Saturday is St. Patrick's Day. While St. Petersburg's pub scene features just two &quot;real&quot; Irish pubs, both are planning special events to mark the death of St. Patrick, the second Bishop of Ireland and the man credited with the emerald isle's conversion to Christianity. St. Patrick's Day has long been the most alcoholic of Christian holidays, and <strong>Molly's Irish Bar </strong>has no plans to break with that aspect of tradition. On Saturday Molly's promises all sorts of competitions and prizes, &quot;most of which will be alcoholic,&quot; promises its manager. <i>(Free entry, 36 Ul. Rubenshteina, Tel: 272-49-94). 
 </i>
The coming week sees the opening of two long-awaited films at the <strong>Avrora </strong>cinema. The Oscar-nominated &quot;Chocolat,&quot; starring Juliette Binoche and Jonny Depp, is the latest triumph for &quot;My Life as a Dog&quot; director Lasse Hallstrom. Set in provincial France in 1959, Chocolat is the story of temptation sparring with conservatism in the guise of Juliette Binoche's newly-opened chocolate shop. It opens at the Avrora on March 15<i>. </i>More homegrown viewing is provided in the form of &quot;Moskva,&quot; a fresh look at contemporary Russia from Alexander Zeldovich which - despite its length - has proved to be both scandalous and a critical hit, avoiding the now hackneyed images of New Russians and gang violence. The film opens at the Avrora next Monday. <i>(60 Nevsky Prospect, Tel: 315-52-54.)</i>
 The Avant-garde Music Festival continues this week at the <strong>Philharmonic, </strong>featuring concerts by avant-gardist ensemble OPUS POSTH in the Small Hall of the Philharmonic on March 14 and 15. The March 15 concert will also feature Dmitry Prokovsky's folk ensemble performing Vladimir Martinov's &quot;Night in Galicia.&quot; Also at the Philharmonic on March 13 is the Admiralty Music Festival, featuring the Admiralty Leningrad Naval Base Orchestra performing music by Vivaldi, Panchenko, Reed, Lansen and Roost, celebrating 290 years of the orchestra's existence <i>(30 Nevsky Prospect, Tel: 311-80-33.)

TITLE: Maier Takes 3rd Overall Title
AUTHOR: By Alan Crosby
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ARE, Sweden - Austria's Hermann Maier came into the final weekend of the Alpine ski World Cup season needing to overpower his competitors. Croat Janica Kostelic came in hoping only to hold on.
 Both achieved their objectives and both walked away on Sunday with the overall titles.
 In the season-ending men's slalom, Austria's Benjamin Raich emerged from the shadow of teammate Maier for a few fleeting but very rewarding moments.
 Raich shrugged off the disappointment of an indifferent first run to win the final men's World Cup slalom of the season and clinch the discipline title.
 But the burly Maier remained in the spotlight to claim the overall title - his third - that he had unofficially clinched some time ago.
 &quot;Hermann is Hermann and what he has accomplished this year is unbelievable. But right now I can only think about how proud I am of myself and coaches to be where I am. I will remember this feeling forever,&quot; Raich said.
 Maier opened the racing with a win in the final downhill race to leapfrog compatriot Stephan Eberharter and clinch that title, having already sewn up the super-G and overall titles.
 He then dominated the season's final giant slalom to pass Swiss Michael von Gruenigen in the standings for his second crown of the week and fourth in total.
 &quot;Really, coming into the week just after capturing the overall title, I wasn't thinking that much about the downhill. If there was a race I thought I wouldn't win, since the course was not to my liking,'' he said.
 &quot;The giant slalom title is really what I came here to fight for after the disappointment at Val d'Isere,&quot; Maier added in a reference to officials disqualifying him for taking too long during an inspection run.
 His final tally of 13 victories tied the single-season record of Swedish legend Ingmar Stenmark, who watched at the finish line.
 On Sunday, Maier watched Raich place fifth after the first run to trail teammate Mario Matt by more than a half second. But Raich stormed back to post a combined time of one minute 47.99 seconds.
 Matt, looking for his second win this year, settled for second in 1:48.18 followed by France's Sebastien Amiez in 1:48.31.
 Raich went into the final race leading fellow Austrian Heinz Schilchegger by 60 points. But Schilchegger failed to rise to the challenge, placing ninth after the first run where he remained after the second leg in a time of 1:49.18.
 Raich finished the season with 545 points to Schilchegger's 414. Maier, much to Raich's chagrin, does not compete in the slalom.
 On the women's side, Swiss ski racer Sonja Nef won the final two battles of the season taking the slalom and giant slalom races, but Kostelic won the war, sealing the overall title when Renate Goetschl fell.
 Fighting a stomach virus and a knee injury that will require surgery next week, the 19-year-old from Zagreb battled it out and was rewarded with the overall title to go with the slalom crown she claimed long ago by winning the first eight races.
 Despite being the title holder it was veteran Austrian skier Goetschl who looked nervous, crashing out in three of four races to see her chances of overtaking Kostelic fall by the wayside.
 &quot;It was so hard to see Renate fall like that. I wouldn't wish something like that on anyone,&quot; the Croat said.
 &quot;I'm happy to be finished this season, it's been hard on my body and mind. But I think I showed by skiing this weekend that this is what a champion has to go through. I proved I am a champion, I think,&quot; she added.
 Isolde Kostner of Italy took the downhill title while Regine Cavagnoud won the super-G. Both had been decided before the weekend.

TITLE: Gustafson Holds off Webb To Claim Australian Open
AUTHOR: By Dennis Passa
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MELBOURNE, Australia - Sophie Gustafson birdied the first three holes and then squandered a seven-shot lead Sunday before outlasting Karrie Webb and winning the Australian Open by a stroke.
 Gustafson started the day with a four-shot lead over Webb after shooting eagle-birdie-eagle on the last three holes in Saturday's third round.
 Gustafson closed with a 1-under-par 71 for a total of 12-under 276 at Yarra Yarra. Webb, the defending champion, shot a 68 for a 277.
 &quot;I'm happy that I was able to hold Karrie off,&quot; said Gustafson, the player of the year last season in Europe. &quot;I had played well enough earlier to leave some room for a few problems. Having a seven-stroke lead allows for that.&quot;
 Webb reduced the lead to three shots after nine holes and to two shots after 10.
 &quot;With a seven-stroke lead, I could have pretty much said it was Sophie's tournament,&quot; she said. &quot;But I kept plugging away.&quot;
 Australia's Jane Crafter shot a 74 and was third at 283. Countrywoman Corinne Dibnah was another stroke back after a 70.
 In last year's British Open, Gustafson eagled the first hole of the final round to go up by nine shots. But the lead evaporated and she needed a birdie on the 18th for a two-shot victory.
 Gustafson made an 8-foot putt to save par on No. 13 to keep her two-stroke margin, then missed a birdie putt on No. 14. She birdied 15, but bogeyed No. 16 to leave the margin at two with two holes left. She birdied No. 17 from 40 feet after Webb had put herself in position for an easy birdie.
 &quot;That one ripped my heart out,&quot; Webb said. &quot;But she played great all week and deserves the win.&quot;
 On No. 18, Gustafson played it safe, hitting a chip-and-run shot to the green and allowing herself two putts for par. Webb missed an eagle putt that could have forced a playoff.
 It's been a golden 12 months for Gustafson, a 27-year-old Swede who turned pro in 1992 and joined the European tour two years later.
 She won three tournaments in Europe and partnered Carin Koch to victory in the Ladies World Cup. She finished atop the European tour's order of merit with prize money of $640,000. She also played a key role in Europe's Solheim Cup win over the United States.
 On the other side of the Atlantic, she played 21 events on the LPGA tour and won the Chick-fil-A Charity championship in Georgia for her first LPGA win in America. She finished 13th on the LPGA money-winning list with $544,390. In January, she won the Naples LPGA event by three strokes over Webb.
 
 q
 CORAL SPRINGS, Florida - Mark Calcavecchia and Geoff Ogilvy were frustrated after the final round of the Honda Classic. Jesper Parnevik was relieved.
 Parnevik shot an even-par 72 Sunday, closing at 18 under and beating Calcavecchia, Ogilvy and Craig Perks by a stroke for his first victory of the season on the PGA Tour.
 &quot;I'm obviously pretty disappointed right now,&quot; said Calcavecchia, who missed a putt on No. 18 that would have forced a playoff with Parnevik. &quot;I goofed. I had my chances. I'm not going to say Jesper didn't deserve to win, but I blew it.&quot;
 &quot;I have nothing to say. I just finished very badly,&quot; Ogilvy said.
 Ty Tryon, a high school sophomore and the second-youngest player to make the cut in a PGA Tour event, shot a 68 and wound up 10 under in his debut. He finished tied for 39th.
 &quot;I can't believe it's over, but at least I had a great round today,&quot; said Tryon, who would have made $12,480 for his showing but collected nothing because of his amateur status.
 Parnevik took a three-stroke lead into the final round at the TPC at Heron Bay, but it was gone at the turn. The 36-year-old Swede, who stands out with his plaid pants, colorful shirts and flipped-up hat bills, trailed Ogilvy by a shot as he approached the par-3 No. 11.
 After Parnevik bogeyed the par-5 No. 9, Ogilvy took the outright lead on the 11th by making a 40-foot putt from the front of the green. It was the first time this weekend that Parnevik was not atop the leaderboard.
 But Parnevik answered with a birdie on the 11th. He held on from there -with some assistance.
 Ogilvy gave strokes back on Nos. 15 and 18. He was equally as frustrated as Calcavecchia, kicking his bag over after he signed his scorecard.
 Calcavecchia double-bogeyed No. 6, then missed the putt on the 18th.
 &quot;I'll take it any way I can get it,&quot; Parnevik said. &quot;It's more a relief than happiness. You never want to win that way.&quot;

TITLE: SKA Skates Out of Relegation
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: SKA, St. Petersburg's entry in Russia's Professional Hockey League, the PHL, recently managed to avoid being relegated to the second division with a couple of late-season victories. In doing so, however, they also managed to attract a fair bit of controversy.
 SKA clinched a spot in next year's superliga when it defeated last-placed Dinamo-Engeria last Wednesday 2-0 at home. Yury Trubachev scored at 12:29 in the third and the Petersburgers held on for a 2-0 win.
 The most interesting part of SKA's season, however, involves the rumors of match fixing that were circulating among journalists and hockey scouts during SKA's big game against Molot-Prikamye from Perm on March 3.
 &quot;What a circus&quot; journalists complained after SKA pulled off an overtime victory. Many had already &quot;predicted&quot; such a victory, having shown that such a result would help both teams avoid relegation.
 When overtime started, visiting goalie Konstantin Chashchukhin fell down as soon as SKA moved in with the puck. Expecting SKA to find the open net for the win, he was slow getting up, but the home team managed to miss the net anyway. Chashchukhin fell twice more before SKA finally scored. The home team surprisingly managed to take 4 shots in 49 seconds, while taking only 21 in regulation.
 People close to the team either refused to comment on the allegations of match fixing or seemed surprised to hear about it. &quot;This is the first I have heard about [match fixing],&quot; said SKA defenseman Bob Halkaidis.

TITLE: Weekend of Surprises in France and Scotland
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - There were cup shocks in France and Scotland over the weekend, while in league action AS Roma, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid continued to set the pace.
 <strong>Spain. </strong>Real Madrid stayed five points clear with a 4-0 demolition of lowly Real Sociedad thanks to a first-half double from Fernando Morientes and goals by Raul and Steve McManaman.
 The victory took Real to 56 points, five ahead of second-placed Deportivo Coruna, which beat Numancia 4-1 with two goals each for Walter Pandiani and Diego Tristan.
 
 <strong>Italy. </strong>Vincenzo Montella scored twice for AS Roma as it maintained its six-point lead at the top with a 3-1 home win over Brescia.
 Second-placed Juventus kept in touch with a hard-earned 1-0 win over Reggina, but Lazio's eight-match unbeaten run came to an end with a 2-0 defeat at Bologna.
 Roma has 54 points, Juventus 48 and Lazio 43 after 22 games.
 Inter Milan moved up to sixth place with a 2-0 win over Verona, while Roberto Mancini, taking charge as Fiorentina coach for the first time, saw his side come back from two goals down to draw 2-2 at Perugia.
 
 <strong>Germany. </strong>Bayern Munich returned to the top of the Bundesliga after Mehmet Scholl and Stefan Effenberg put the club's losing streak behind them with a 2-0 win over struggling Energie Cottbus.
 Borussia Dortmund, which had taken advantage of Bayern's recent troubles to edge ahead last week, had to settle for a 2-2 draw at SC Freiburg after going two goals up.
 Munich has 46 points and Dortmund has 45. Three teams - Bayer Leverkusen, Hertha Berlin and Kaiserslautern - all have 43 with Schalke 04 a further point back.
 
 <strong>The Netherlands. </strong>PSV Eindhoven enjoyed a weekend off as it watched its title challengers falter.
 Feyenoord went down 3-1 at Willem II Tilburg while Ajax Amsterdam drew 3-3 at Groningen.
 PSV has 57 points while Feyenoord has 53 and Ajax 47 after 24 games.
 
 <strong>France. </strong>Stade Reims revived memories of its golden era by beating First Division Bastia 1-0 to reach the quarterfinals of the French Cup.
 Third Division Reims, which won the last of its two French Cups in 1958 but has been out of the top flight since 1979, won with a goal by David Ducourtioux seconds before the break.
 Its victory was the main surprise of a fourth round that saw holders Nantes easily dismiss Fifth Division Carcassonne 3-0 and Olympique Lyon struggle to beat amateurs Fontenay on penalties after a 2-2 draw.
 
 <strong>Scotland. </strong>Struggling Dundee United knocked holders Rangers out of the Scottish Cup with a well-deserved 1-0 home quarterfinal victory.
 David Hannah scored the only goal of the game after 62 minutes for the club second-last in the standings while Rangers failed to muster a single shot on target.
 In the semifinals United will play Celtic, which went through after Henrik Larsson headed his 43rd goal of the season to secure a 1-0 home victory over Hearts.

TITLE: Mad March to the Final 4 Gets Underway
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana - Duke and Michigan State are getting used to this No. 1 thing.
 The Blue Devils and Spartans, along with Stanford and Illinois, took the top spots Sunday for the NCAA tournament.
 Duke has been a No. 1 seed in each of the last four years, while defending national champion Michigan State earned its third straight.
 &quot;This is the time to do it. This is why I came back&quot; to school, Duke senior Shane Battier said.
 The first-ever 65-team field starts play Tuesday night in Dayton, Ohio, when Northwestern State faces Winthrop in the opening-round game. The winner between the two lowest-ranked teams plays Illinois (24-7) in the Midwest's first round in Dayton on Friday.
 Duke (29-4) will play in the East against No. 16 Monmouth on Thursday in Greensboro, North Carolina.
 Stanford (28-2), a unanimous choice last week as the nation's top team, earned its second straight top spot in the West and plays No. 16 North Carolina-Greensboro in San Diego on Thursday.
 Michigan State (24-4) begins defense of its title Friday in the South, playing No. 16 Alabama State in Memphis, Tennessee.
 &quot;We're excited to say the least,&quot; Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. &quot;I didn't know where we would end up. To have three straight NCAA seeds is something our program can be proud of. Going to the South is fine with me.&quot;
 Even that was not an easy decision for the selection committee.
 Illinois and Michigan State shared the regular-season Big Ten title, and the committee had trouble deciding where the teams should play. Both teams were knocked out in the conference tournament.
 &quot;Illinois played Michigan State only once, at Illinois,&quot; committee chairman Mike Tranghese said. &quot;But Illinois won and Illinois went farther in the Big Ten tournament.&quot;
 The No. 2 seeds also are no strangers to the tournament: Kentucky, North Carolina, Arizona and Iowa State.
 Kentucky, North Carolina and Arizona all won national championships in the 1990s and rank among the top teams with consecutive appearances. Iowa State reached the Elite Eight last year before falling to Michigan State.
 Some teams, such as North Carolina, were hurt by the way they finished.
 &quot;It got down to Michigan State and Carolina, and what that came down to was North Carolina went 4-4 over its last eight games,&quot; Tranghese said.
 Again, the top six conferences dominated the field, receiving 29 of the 34 at-large berths. The Big Ten's seven teams matched the record for the most in the tournament.
 Following the Big Ten were the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 and Southeastern Conference with six selections each. The Big East and Pacific-10 each had five teams chosen.
 Five schools - Alabama State, Cal State-Northridge, Hampton, Northwestern State and Southern Utah - are making their first NCAA tournament appearances. Holy Cross, which hasn't been in the field since 1983, ended the longest drought.
 Oklahoma State (20-9) will be a sentimental choice for many fans. The 11th-seeded Cowboys had to play the final month of the season after a plane crash that killed 10 people, including two players. They open Thursday against No. 6 Southern Cal in Uniondale, New York.
 &quot;We know they will be playing with a lot of emotion,&quot; Trojans center Sam Clancy said. &quot;We can't let ourselves get caught up in those emotions.&quot;

TITLE: Wycombe Earns Shot At the Reds
AUTHOR: By Stephen Wood
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - The princes of Manchester United have been usurped by the paupers of Wycombe Wanderers - but English football was still rejoicing in the newfound majesty of the FA Cup on Monday.
 When the Old Trafford club was given special dispensation by the Football Association to miss the famous competition last season to enter the World Club Championship instead, there were fears the image of the FA Cup had been irrevocably tarnished.
 The stories to emerge after this year's quarterfinals have changed that, however - and United is nowhere to be seen.
 While Alex Ferguson's side was knocked out in the fourth round, the imagination has been fired by Second Division Wycombe.
 The club from the outskirts of London turned professional only in 1993 after years of treading water in non-league football.
 Until its 2-1 victory at Premier League club Leicester City on Saturday, its previous best run in the Cup had ended in the third round.
 Fittingly, the reward for its giant-killing exploits was a semifinal date with Liverpool and a potential windfall of up to 1 million pounds ($1.46 million).
 The draw for the semifinals matched Arsenal - comfortable 3-0 winners over Blackburn Rovers on Saturday - with Tottenham Hotspur.
 The Spurs swept aside West Ham United 3-2, leaving manager George Graham to relish a reunion with the club he had managed between 1986 and 1995.
 Graham was even at the Highbury helm when Spurs triumphed 3-1 in the north London rivals' FA Cup semifinal encounter at Wembley in 1991.
 He gained revenge in 1993, as Arsenal beat the Spurs in the semifinal before clinching the Cup against Sheffield Wednesday at Wembley.
 Wycombe's win at Filbert Street came to a climax in unlikely fashion.
 With seconds remaining, Roy Essandoh rose to head home the winning goal, shortly before revealing he was on a week-to-week contract at the club.
 Essandoh, a 73rd-minute substitute, had joined Wycombe only after answering adverts for players on the Internet.
 &quot;I know I have scored a vital goal for Wycombe, but the one objective I have is to get a contract,&quot; he told the Daily Mail newspaper.
 The joy of the moment was brought further into perspective by Steve Brown, the Wycombe man of the match.
 Brown was sent off by referee Steve Bennett after earning his second yellow card as he celebrated Essandoh's strike by taking off his shirt.
 Brown explained on Monday his gesture was directed to his sick son, whose name Maxwell was scribbled on Brown's vest.
 The 15-month-old boy had been Wycombe's mascot for the day, after enduring more than 20 operations for tracheo-oesophageal fistula (TOF).
 It is a condition that leaves no link between stomach and throat, meaning the milk Brown's son receives from his mother was going straight into his lungs.
 &quot;It was a massive day for my little boy,&quot; said Brown.
 &quot;It should have been his greatest moment, but for him to see me sent off was awful. I left the pitch crying.&quot;
 Bennett insisted he was applying the letter of the law as handed down to referees, and he was supported on Monday by John Baker, the FA's head of refereeing.
 Nevertheless, with the romance of the Cup melting English football's heart once more, such cynical actions were never going to be warmly received.
 Sanchez, too, was sent from the touchline by Bennett, as he argued once too often with the official.
 The manager faces an anxious wait to discover what, if any, further punishment he might face.
 The FA could fine and ban Sanchez from the touchline, which might even take in the semifinal clash with Liverpool on April 8.

TITLE: Controversy Rules the Day in Test Match
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - England has won a controversy-ridden second test against Sri Lanka, scraping home by three wickets on a tense final day to level the three-match series.
 England, chasing 161 in its fourth innings, ended with 164 for seven, as all-rounder Craig White hit the winning runs with an off-side boundary.
 Nasser Hussain punched the air in delight before walking onto the pitch to shake hands with the Sri Lankan players, in a clear show of reconciliation after an acrimonious contest.
 The touring team, resuming on 91 for four, lost Alec Stewart with only six runs added, as left-arm pace bowler Cha min da Vaas claimed his fourth wicket.
 It was yet another borderline decision, one of several by home umpire B.C. Cooray during the match, as the ball appeared to pitch outside the leg stump.
 Graeme Hick, dropped behind on two off Sanath Jayasuriya's left-arm spin, added a couple of fine cover-driven boundaries, but then fell for 16 to a poor shot, bowled by Jayasuriya as he played across the line with England still 39 short.
 The tension mounted further as nightwatchman Robert Croft was dismissed leg before by Kumar Dharmasena's off spin after a stubborn 17 spanning almost two hours.
 White, however, teamed up with left-arm spinner Ashley Giles to knock off the 19 runs still needed.
 White made his lunch more palatable with a fine cover drive off Dharmasena to leave the touring side nine shy.
 The drama, however, was not over.
 White edged in the air for four between wicketkeeper and first slip after lunch, and with three still needed, the Sri Lankans blundered a clear run-out chance, wicketkeeper Kumar Sangakkara breaking the wicket with his leg, not the ball, with Giles meters short.
 Sri Lankan captain Jayasuriya, given a four-match ban for dissent following his second-innings dismissal, congratulated England before regretting the match controversies.
 White ended on 24 not out, while the man-of-the-match award went to England pace bowler Darren Gough, who took eight wickets in the test.
 The game, like the first test in Galle, has been riddled with questionable umpiring decisions, leading to dissent and several flash points between the sides.
 On Saturday, match referee Hanumant Singh, after handing out several fines and suspended bans, issued a &quot;final warning&quot; to both teams over their behavior.
 The third test in Colombo starts Thursday.
 Hussain began the process of reconciliation on Sunday, making a show of walking onto the Kandy pitch to shake the hands of his opponents after England's series-levelling victory.
 Jayasuriya and his team responded by clapping England during the victory ceremony - something they had signally failed to do during the match.
 Hussain did not rule out a clear-the-air meeting with Jayasuriya.
 &quot;I get on well with Sanath. If I thought a chat with him would help to sort it out, I would consider it,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Finding and Maintaining the Perfect Pet
AUTHOR: By Robin Swithinbank
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Owning and properly caring for a pet can be two very different things, especially if you are not familiar with a good local vet or pet shop. Pet care in Russia has undergone a facelift over the last decade, and while there are still many animals in the city used to a diet of leftovers and table scraps, more and more well-cared for animals are reaping the benefits of suitable food, regular health checks and immunization jabs.
 Veterinary clinics, pet shops and breeding clubs can be found all over the city, but unfortunately they do not offer universal quality. As with most subjects, the most reliable source of information on good vets and other animal facilities is through friends, particularly if they have animals themselves, otherwise the Yellow Pages or the Internet are the best sources of information. 
 Animal Web sites such as www.superpets.ru and www.zooclub.ru both include notice boards for people buying and selling animals, as well as comprehensive listings of associated services. Zooclub also has part of its site in English.
 One of the biggest issues involving pets is just where to find a healthy specimen. Metro station exits are often swamped with all manner of cute animals for sale, all of which often look far more attractive on the surface than they may actually turn out to be in reality. For some, this proves to be all too much, and the temptation to buy overcomes the fact that buying a pet out of a box on a street corner is unwise at best.
 Valeria Yachina, Senior Specialist at the St. Petersburg Administration of Veterinary Medicine, says that she would never advise anyone to buy a pet from a market or street salesman. She cites the obvious reasons that some salesmen are dishonest and simply trying to make a quick profit. Therefore, many of the pets available on the street are poorly nourished and sometimes at death's door.
 When St. Petersburg resident Greta Haustein bought a kitten from a salesman outside a metro station last August for example, she was forced to rush it to the nearest vet for emergency treatment within just a few days. She decided to take the ailing kitten to the state veterinary center for the region in which she lives. Luckily, the kitten survived and is now a healthy, content cat , saved by a 4-day period of treatment.
 It is therefore best to avoid all non-specialist outlets and head straight for one of St. Petersburg's established pet clubs, or <i>pitomniki.</i>
 For listings of some of these, consult www.doggy.lgg.ru or www.bestcat.spb.ru. Yachina explains that by going through such an organization, the club and the new owner enter into a two-way agreement, by which the club agrees to provide a healthy animal and the owner agrees to keep their new pet in good health.
 St. Petersburg has roughly 20 state pet stations and 40 private clinics. According to both Yachina and Alla Skuba, director of the private clinic Zooservice, there are almost no differences between the two halves of the city's veterinary system. While clinics may differ in size and the range of services offered, in terms of cost they rank evenly. Once again, seek advice from friends or colleagues if you can, in order to avoid less-reliable establishments.
 By Western standards veterinary treatment is staggeringly cheap. A 4-day period of treatment with 24 injections a day for the aforementioned kitten cost just 300 rubles ($10).
 Working hours differ from clinic to clinic, but in the event of a late-night emergency, the <i>Gorodskoi Vetirenarianskaya Stantsia</i> is open 24 hours a day. Prices, however, double after 9 p.m. for their services.
 Vets will be able to help any pet owner with the inevitable animal registration, and if you leave St. Petersburg and plan to take your pet out of the country with you, check the quarantine requirements of your country of destination. In addition, in order to leave Russian soil, dogs and cats require a pet passport listing vaccinations and filled out no more than 30 days before departure. Again, any good vet will be able to help you with information relevant to your home country.
 One of St. Petersburg's growing problems, according to Yachina, is the steady rise of homeless animals on the streets alongside the dearth of services and societies to deal with this problem. At present the city is home to but one animal shelter. City Hall, recently deluged by letters of complaint, has finally allotted a property on Ul. Bolshaya Smolenskaya - now undergoing redevelopment - to become a shelter for homeless animals. Despite the number of stray animals on the streets, it's not a good idea to adopt them yourself as they often carry disease, fleas and other ailments.
 Equally lacking are services on offer to those whose pets have died. Pet cemeteries have been very difficult to establish, although currently under development is a five hectare graveyard in the Krasnogvardeisky Region.
 Today, bereaved pet owners are still forced to abandon their deceased companions in dumpsters or to bury them illegally in parks.
 Private companies have taken little initiative in this area. However, <i>Dobraya Pamyat </i>(Fond Memory) is one of few privately owned companies that offers services for deceased pets. They are licensed to put animals down and offer cremation, with the additional option of an urn to take away the remains. The cost of such a service depends on the weight of an animal, therefore cremation of a smaller animal with all the extras will set you back $50, the price rising to as much as $80 for a larger animal.
 Other pet services are in short supply as well. Whether you are heading out of town and need a place for your pet to stay, or are busy and need someone to walk the dog, you will have difficulty finding a service to meet your needs. Most pet owners rely on friends and family to perform such tasks, as pet hotels and dog-walking services are still a novelty in Russia.
 Generally, the advice of the professionals is to steer clear of markets and hawkers on street corners - but for those who choose to ignore warnings, the St. Petersburg Pet Market is teaming with life. Whatever kind animal you want to buy, you are almost sure to be able to find it here if you do not want to go through the process of finding a pet club. 
 Pet shops or <i>zoomagaziny </i>are, however, increasing in number. Vets advise buying foodstuffs from shops, rather than at pet markets, in order to find the genuine article. Specialist pet shops <i>Zolotaya Ryba </i>and <i>Leon </i>are both to be found at the top of Moskovsky Prospect, for example. Zolotaya Ryba offers both a reasonable range of foodstuffs and accessories, as well as an array of smaller pets - from terrapins and tortoises to exotic fish and rabbits. Leon does not offer pets for sale, but has a considerable range of everything else that you will need to look after your animal.
 While there is no harm in feeding your dog table scraps in most cases, these can never really be a full substitute for the vitamins provided by properly-formulated pet food. Ultimately, however, vets agree that the most important thing for a pet is how well it is loved and cared for by its owners.
 
 <i>St. Petersburg Administration Department of Veterinary Medicine
 5 4-aya Sovietskaya Ul., M. Pl. Vossta niya, Tel: 277-52-37.
 Zooservis, 58 Novocherkassky Pros pect, M. Novocherkassya, Tel: 580-64-33.
 Gorodskoi Veterinarnaya Stantsia (24 hours), 46 2-ayay Zhernovskaya Ul., M. Ladozhskaya, Tel: 527-09-46
 Dobraya Pamyat, Tel: 272-49-94 
 Zolotaya Ryba (a chain with seven outlets across the city), main store at 4/6 Moskovsky Prospect, Tel: 008.
 Leon, 7 Moskovsky Prospect, Tel: 310-25-98.
 St. Petersburg Pet Market, 45 Polyustrovsky Prospect, M. Pl. Lenina. </i>