SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #658 (25), Tuesday, April 3, 2001
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TITLE: Local Pensioner Suing Cigarette Company
AUTHOR: By Molly Graves and Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A St. Petersburg pensioner is claiming damages of $71,500 from local cigarette producer Petro, in the first law suit against a tobacco company to be heard in a Russian court.
Ivan Prokopenko, represented by the city-based law firm OSV, is demanding compensation for the cancer which resulted in the removal of one of his lungs. Prokopenko says that the cancer, diagnosed two years ago, was the result of smoking Belomorkanal, a non-filtered papirosa cigarette, made by Petro.
Petro is owned by multinational tobacco corporation Japan Tobacco International (JTI). It also produces the Winston, Camel, Russky Stil and Peter I brands. Petro produced around 50 billion cigarettes last year, according to the Vedomosti business daily.
"Doctors from the St. Petersburg City Oncology Center who treated and operated on Prokopenko have concluded that his illness was the result of smoking," said Sergei Osutin, director of OSV, in an interview on Monday. He said that the doctors would appear as witnesses in the case.
While the 2 million ruble sum involved is small compared to the multi-billion-dollar judgements handed out by cigarette companies in the United States, the suit, heard in the Nevsky District Court, is being seen as a test case by both smokers and local tobacco firms.
Unlike more recent additions to the local cigarette market, the Belomor brand has been around for decades - with Prokopenko himself a Belomor smoker for some 40 years.
Prokopenko was unavailable for comment on Monday. However, he said to Vedomosti daily that he had smoked brands other than Belomorkanal in the past, including some Bulgarian makes. He added: "I haven't smoked at all for the last eight years."
Andrei Rogov, JTI spokesperson for Russia, told The St. Petersburg Times on Monday that the company would "vigorously defend [its] position during the court proceedings."
"We consider Mr. Prokopenko's statement of claim against Petro in connection with the injury to his health allegedly caused by smoking Belomorkanal papirosy to be unfounded," he said.
JTI is following the lead of past suits in the United States and elsewhere, which argue for the "personal responsibility" of the smoker - claiming smokers know exactly what they are risking when they voluntarily choose to light up.
Besides collecting medical documentation, JTI's lawyers went one step further by raising the claimant's personal history - saying at the hearing last Wednesday that Prokopenko had been exposed to carcinogenic materials at his workplace. It was unclear exactly which materials were being referred to. Carcinogenic substances include asbestos, uranium, petroleum products, and industrial dust and fumes.
In addition to monetary damages, Prokopenko's lawyers are battling for amendments to the labeling on Belomor's cigarette packs.
"The label should say not only that smoking is harmful to people's health, but that it leads to cancer," Osutin said.
"Cigarette smoke is a carcinogen, and those who smoke should be reminded of this fact every time they buy tobacco."
In Russia, lung cancer is the leading killer among cancer-related deaths, with about 85 percent of all lung-cancer cases resulting from smoking.
But it is the United States that has become the focus of tobacco lawsuits, with numerous claims for compensation in U.S. courts from American citizens and from abroad. For example, in January the governments of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan filed separate suits in a Florida court, saying U.S. tobacco companies are responsible for smoking-related illnesses, which pose a heavy burden on the countries' health authorities.
In addition to numerous personal claims, the 1998 "National Tobacco Settlement" in the United States awarded around $200 billion to 46 states over a 25-year period, to be paid by the largest tobacco companies such as Philip Morris and JTI (then RJ Reynolds). The award was meant to help cover treatment costs for smoking-related ailments such as heart disease and cancer, as well as to supplement the falling income of tobacco farmers.
The central argument in such cases has been that consumers have been misled - and that tobacco companies are using addiction to sell their product at the expense of human health and should therefore be held accountable for the resulting damage.
Unidentified representatives of British American Tobacco were quoted by Kommersant last week as saying that a flood of multi-million tobacco cases was unlikely to happen in Russia. The paper also quoted a source in Philip Morris as saying that the company had not been on the Russian market long enough to have damaged anyone's health.
However, Osutin said that if Pro ko pen ko's case is settled out of court or the judge rules in his favor, hundreds of others will follow. In this case, companies such as JTI could be parting with substantially larger sums, he said.
Osutin added that whatever the verdict of the court, the case would not stop there. "Both sides take this matter very seriously, and neither side will stop trying to prove themselves right," he said.
The next hearing of Prokopenko's case is scheduled for Thursday, to allow time for both sides to complete additional medical evaluations.
TITLE: Primorye Region's Gubernatorial Elections Attract Bizarre Range of Hopefuls
AUTHOR: By Nonna Chernyakova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: VLADIVOSTOK, Far East - What do the following people have in common: a cleaning lady worried that her son might be drafted, a former gynecologist who sells newspapers and plays an accordion on commuter trains, a retired admiral and several unemployed people?
All are running for governor in the embattled Primorye region.
The catalog of candidates for the May 27 election swelled to 30 Monday as acting Governor Valentin Dubinin added his name to the list - one of the few politicians among many amateur gubernatorial hopefuls scurrying to fill the void left by Yevgeny Nazdratenko, the strongman who resigned in February during the region's worst energy crisis since World War II. And the list is likely to grow before registration closes April 21, electoral officials say.
One of the top planks in campaign platforms - as has often been the case in regional elections over the past year - seems to be claims of Kremlin support.
Konstantin Pulikovsky, who represents the president in the Far East, has nudged his deputy, Gennady Apa na sen ko, into the fray. Yet Admiral Igor Ka satonov, another contender, claims he is the one with President Vla di mir Putin's backing. Apanasenko and Ka satonov have quarreled openly about which of them is "the candidate of the Kremlin" - with Kasatonov complaining to the regional electoral commission that Pulikovsky has used his post to publicly promote his deputy, despite legislation prohibiting officials from doing so.
The list of candidates includes some bitter enemies. Former Deputy Governor Konstantin Tolstoshein, who resigned in disgrace along with Nazdratenko, threw his hat in the ring last month. Among others, he faces Tatyana Loktionova, former chair of the Primorye Arbitration Court who was stripped of her job and judge's title last year after a blistering media attack orchestrated by Nazdratenko and Tolstoshein himself. Loktionova had ruled against Nazdratenko's allies in several business disputes.
State Duma Deputy Viktor Cherepkov, the former mayor of Vladivostok, is a proven vote-getter who has maintained a loyal following among various groups - including Vladivostok drivers, who appreciated his road- and bridge-building projects, and the thousands of investors bilked in a failed pyramid scheme backed by Nazdratenko.
But Cherepkov was also notorious for cutting funding to orphanages and hospitals and has often been called eccentric.
Another well-known figure in the region is Alexander Kirilichev, director of the Primorsk Shipping Company and a regional Duma deputy who fought a tough race against Nazdratenko in 1999. Ki rilichev and his backers say he actually won the election, but the ex-governor used his control over electoral officials throughout the region to steal the vote. Kirilichev has stressed his experience as the head of a successful company and accused Nazdratenko of ruining the economy.
Other candidates have stated diverse motives. Vera Dovgopolova, a 44-year-old cleaning woman at the Vladivostok seaport, decided to run for governor despite her lack of experience and higher education because of her desire to "change something" - especially in the army, since her son is eligible to be drafted this year.
"Nothing is changing," she said in a phone interview. "The situation is very harsh and is getting worse and worse."
Dovgopolova seemed unaware that the governor has little control over conditions in the army.
Loktionova's reasons for running - in light of her war with Nazdratenko over court decisions he disliked - concerned the poor state of the region's judicial system.
Besides, after a governor who boasted of his "macho" moves such as sending police to seize companies, she feels the region could use a lighter touch.
"I think a woman should put things in order," Loktionova said. "Primorye is our home, so a woman should take care of it."
TITLE: Court Throws Lifeline to NTV
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Moscow court on Monday threw embattled media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky a lifeline in his fight to keep his NTV television channel free of Kremlin control.
A district court barred an NTV shareholders meeting called by state-dominated gas monopoly Gazprom, which has 46 percent of the station's shares.
The news came two days after thousands of protesters poured into a Mos cow square to defend NTV from what they saw as a government attack.
Organizers and police said at least 20,000 people turned out for the demonstration on Pushkin Square on Saturday, at which prominent liberals said NTV was in danger of being closed.
The rally, interspersed with rock music, was one of the largest in years.
Children waved green balloons with the NTV logo, young people wore cloth caps that said "I love NTV," and many people wore stickers on their lapels that said, "For NTV."
Gusinsky, currently in Spain fighting extradition on fraud charges, is trying to fend off a takeover bid by state-dominated gas giant Gazprom. Gusinsky claims the charges are an attempt to silence NTV's criticisms of President Vla di mir Putin's policies.
The shareholders' meeting was seen as a chance for Gazprom to oust Gusinsky. Gazprom said it had called the meeting - at which it wants to dump its Gusinsky-appointed managers - because it had gained a de facto majority of NTV's shares.
Dmitry Ostalsky, a spokesman for NTV, said that the company had received the court's banning order less than 24 hours before the shareholders' meeting was due to take place.
"'Guided by article 133, 134 and 136 of the civil procedural code the court has decided: to ban ... the holding of an extraordinary shareholders' meeting of NTV on April 3,'" Ostalsky said reading the district court order.
But Aelita Yefimova, spokesperson for Gazprom's media wing, Gazprom-Media, said the company was unaware of the ruling and planned, for now, to go ahead with the shareholders' meeting.
"We did not ask the court for news on this appeal because we had no reason to do so. We have received absolutely no official document" banning the shareholders' meeting, she said.
Gazprom denies it is acting as a Kremlin stooge and says it is merely seeking to ensure Gusinsky repays millions of dollars in loans.
The gas behemoth said 19 percent out of the 49 percent stake held by Gu sin sky had been pledged as collateral to Gaz prom for $262 million in loans maturing this summer.
Another Russian court has frozen that 19 percent share in a separate but related legal dispute. The power to exercise the voting rights of the "frozen" share holding remains a moot point which is due to be aired in court next month.
Liberals see the dispute, and legal action against NTV, as a test of Putin's commitment to press freedom and fair reporting of issues like the war against separatist Chechnya.
"We know why they want to destroy NTV. So that we will never know about millions of dollars taken out of the country ... about how a war is being conducted with slogans of fighting terrorism and corruption," Grigory Yav lin sky, leader of the Yabloko party, told the gathering on Saturday. "We know that this is not about fighting terrorists and corruption but about the fight for press freedom."
NTV has earned a reputation as a critic of Kremlin policies, particularly Russia's two military campaigns against Chechnya. It has accused Putin of chipping away at individual freedoms in a little more than a year in office.
Irina Khakamada, a leader of the Union of Right Forces faction in parliament, told the crowd that they had to fight for freedom of the press.
"We have no license or right to permit this or that channel to work, but we have our voice and that's why we are out on the streets again to speak our freedom," she said.
Yevgeny Kiselyov, NTV's general director and anchor of its flagship news program, said the station could be closed soon.
"It is very simple - a new management could do anything," he told reporters.
Musicians and athletes also spoke in defense of NTV during the two-hour gathering in bright spring sunshine.
Demonstrators at one point watched figures from NTV's weekly satirical "Puppets" show on a big screen. Putin's puppet likeness, dressed in skiing gear in an allusion to frequent outings on the slopes, welcomed people to the square.
The rally had been given wide publicity all week on NTV and on radio stations and newspapers in Gusinsky's Media-MOST group.
But the other two national television networks, state-owned RTR television and ORT television, ignored the gathering in their Saturday afternoon news bulletins.
Many rally participants were pleased at the large turnout.
"I just wanted to do my bit for NTV," said Maya, a museum worker in her sixties. "It was so good to look around at all the faces of people who had clearly thought about all these issues."
- Reuters, AP
TITLE: Borodin Drops Opposition To Swiss Extradition Claim
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - A former Kremlin aide who has been held in a New York jail for more than two months on Swiss money-laundering charges told a U.S. judge on Monday he was willing to be extradited to Switzerland.
Pavel Borodin, a Russian government official who headed the Kremlin's vast property empire under former president Boris Yeltsin and is close to President Vladimir Putin, has repeatedly been refused bail by U.S. judges.
"I declare I voluntarily waive my right to continue the struggle against the extradition to Switzerland," Bo ro din, 54, told U.S. Magistrate Viktor Pohorelsky in Brooklyn federal court.
"My decision is based solely on my desire to be set free as soon as possible and to have my reputation remain unstained," added Borodin, whose January 17 arrest by the FBI on a Swiss warrant has been hotly protested by Russia.
He has denied the Swiss charges of money laundering while in his Kremlin job and said in previous court hearings that he was ready to face Swiss prosecutors if freed.
Borodin's U.S. attorney said he expected his client to be extradited to Switzerland from the United States in about a week.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Mobile-Phone Ban
MOSCOW (SPT) - Anyone using a mobile phone while driving must be sure it is equipped with a hands-free device as of Sunday, Interfax reported. Violators can be stopped by traffic police and charged a fine of 20 rubles (about 70 cents).
The government resolution ordering the ban on handling mobile phones while driving - a standard measure in many countries - was signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov last month.
Cutting Nuclear Aid
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia on Friday expressed support for further cooperation with the United States in reducing nuclear proliferation, but said it was up to Washington to decide whether to cut aid programs helping Russia secure its nuclear arsenal.
U.S. President George W. Bush announced Thursday that his administration is reviewing the programs, prompting fears among U.S. lawmakers of cuts.
The Russian Foreign Ministry's chief spokesman, Alexander Yakovenko, said Friday that the U.S. reassessment was prompted by concern over the effectiveness of the programs, which he said was up to Washington to evaluate.
"The Russian side is ready for such cooperation, which should form the basis for all further deep cuts in strategic offensive weapons," he said.
Bush said it is in U.S. interests to work with Russia to dismantle its nuclear arsenal but that Washington must ensure that the money is being spent properly. The United States spends more than $1 billion a year on the programs.
2nd Suspect Sought
MOSCOW (AP) - Investigators in a drug case against a U.S. exchange student are looking for another American suspect who also visited the central Russian city of Voronezh, security officials said late last week.
John Tobin, a Fulbright scholar, was allegedly caught using and selling marijuana. His case attracted attention last month because the FSB claimed he had U.S. intelligence training. No espionage charges have been filed, but authorities are threatening Tobin, 24, with up to 15 years in prison on the marijuana charge.
Tobin and his defense team finished reviewing the case against him Friday, and told a judge they were ready for the trial to open, said a spokesman for the Voronezh branch of the FSB, Pavel Bolshunov. The trial date is to be set by the judge. Meanwhile, the FSB is planning to ask Interpol for help in finding and arresting another American suspect in the case, said investigator Andrei Makarov. He declined to elaborate, saying only that the man also visited Voronezh, and is believed to be in the United States or some other country outside Russia.
Flesh for Sale
CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) - Two women have been arrested in impoverished Moldova for selling meat, which tests revealed to be human remains, police and Interior Ministry officials reported Saturday.
A customer reported the women to police Friday after buying the meat, which they were selling in plastic bags outside a downtown butcher's shop, said the officials, who refused to be identified.
The women told police they got the meat from a state cancer clinic in Chisinau. An investigation is underway.
Police said they did not want to make an official statement because they did not want to create public revulsion and panic.
TITLE: Love for President Is Mixed With Doubt
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Opinion polls show that President Vladimir Putin enjoys the support of about 75 percent of Russians. But the love is not blind: A year after his election, people have greater doubts about Chechnya, the lack of a clear economic policy and the president's ability to raise their standard of living.
According to a poll conducted early last month by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion, or VTsIOM, respondents' biggest disappointment was Chech nya, with support for Putin's policy in the war-torn region dropping more than threefold - from 24 percent in October 1999, when Putin was prime minister, to a mere 7 percent as of February.
The number of people who said they were "very worried" by the president's inability to end the fighting in Chechnya more than doubled since last March - rising from 22 to 48 percent. The survey also showed a marked decline in respondents' belief that Putin would be able to end the war at all, down from 30 percent last June to 20 percent in February.
All of the cited polls were conducted using a standard sample of 1,600 respondents throughout the country, VTsIOM said on the Polit.ru Web site, where it posted the results.
Less dramatic, but still noteworthy, was the disappointment in Putin's economic policies: In comparison to last June, the number of people who believed Putin could raise their standard of living dropped in February from 26 to 17 percent, while the number of those who "have no hope" of seeing the standard rise grew from 10 to 15 percent.
Over the same period, the number of those who feel Putin can "lead the country out of crisis" dropped from 27 percent to 20 percent, while those who are unhappy with "the lack of a clear political line" grew from 5 percent in October 1999 to 12 percent in February.
Although the number of respondents who believe Putin is closely linked to the entourage of ex-President Boris Yeltsin rose since October 1999 from 16 to 26 percent, so has the number of people who attach no significance to this affiliation - from 17 percent a year ago to 27 percent now.
Despite the disappointments, Russians generally still like their president. About 61 percent believe Putin is "doing everything possible to fulfill his electoral promises." And the ranks of those who consider him the guarantor of stability in Russia grew from 10 percent in October 1999 to 15 percent. So did the number of those who find Putin "outwardly pleasant" - from 10 percent in October 1999 to 16 percent.
TITLE: Putin To Set Up Investigative Powerhouse
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Having reshuffled the top brass at the defense and interior ministries, President Vladimir Putin is moving to set up an investigative powerhouse with broad powers that will answer directly to the Kremlin and a military police force, ministry sources familiar with the plans said Monday.
Putin intends to create a State Investigative Committee by branching the investigative committee out of the Interior Ministry and giving it the investigative powers currently enjoyed by the Tax Police, Federal Security Service and Prosecutor General 's Office, the sources said.
Officers would be pulled from the Interior Troops to fill the ranks of the military police, a force that would provide muscle to the Federal Border Service and other Defense Ministry agencies.
Newly appointed Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov have already held talks with Putin about these changes, the Segodnya newspaper reported Monday.
In February, Putin's adviser Dmitry Kozak floated the idea of stripping the Tax Police, FSB and Prosecutor's Office of their investigative powers and setting up a single investigative body.
Those agencies have balked at the proposal, saying the loss of their investigative powers would undermine their bureaucratic weight.
Reached by telephone Monday, an Interior Ministry official said the formation of an investigative powerhouse from the ministry's own investigative committee was logical because the committee already handles 90 percent of all crimes committed in the country. The main exceptions are cases involving murder and terrorism.
In addition to losing the investigative committee, the Interior Ministry may also soon see some of its Interior Troops go in a move to the military police, said an official at the central command of the Interior Troops.
In addition to enforcing law and order at the Defense Ministry and the Federal Border Service, the military police would do the same at other federal bodies that have their own troops.
The Interior Troops official, who asked not to be named, could not explain why the Kremlin was interested in a military police force when it could just as easily, for example, expand the powers of the Interior Troops. The Interior Troops are used to police zones of civil unrest as well as areas close to frontlines.
Vladimir Volkov, deputy chairman of the State Duma's defense committee, has tried twice since 1997 to pass a law that would set up an independent military police force that would report directly to the president. The Defense Ministry has lobbied hard against the measure, offering instead to set up a force in its own ranks.
It remained unclear Monday whether the planned force would answer directly to the defense minister or the Kremlin.
Currently, the Military Prosecutor's Office enforces law and order among Russian soldiers and officers. However, the Military Prosecutor's Office, which reports to the Prosecutor General's Office, lacks personnel and is often forced to rely on regular police detectives and even military commanders for support.
TITLE: New Minister Calls for 'Balanced' Forces
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - New Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Saturday that he backed a "balanced" army, where the country's nuclear shield was maintained but conventional forces were reformed and improved.
Ivanov, appointed last week by President Vladimir Putin and expected to oversee any shakeup, said in a television interview he wanted to end conscription, but said it would take time.
"I consider that everything should be balanced," Ivanov said on ORT television. "For example, the strategic rocket forces: This is the nuclear shield of the country, it is a reliable barrier against aggression toward Russia using nuclear weapons."
"At the same time, the world is changing, the world is constantly changing. We see new threats that were not apparent 10 years ago. We have ignored a little the general armed forces, the infantry," he added.
He cited Chechnya, where the army is trying to stamp out separatist rebels, as an example of the decline of the conventional forces.
"For this we need a mobile force, militarily capable, armed well and in a modern way, including space capabilities which also need a boost," he said.
A new branch of the army called the Space Forces is to be broken out by June from a merger with the Strategic Rocket Forces and will launch spy satellites.
Ivanov, a lieutenant general in the SVR foreign intelligence service until Putin made him a civilian last year, oversaw the drafting of the military reform proposals in his previous job as secretary of the advisory Security Council.
He said in the interview it was logical he should become minister so the reforms could be made. He dismissed the idea of clashes between his predecessor Igor Sergeyev and General Staff chief Anatoly Kvashnin over military reforms.
TITLE: Army's Spring Draft Underway
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - The army, which says it backs plans to abolish the dreaded draft, kicked off on Sunday the spring draft to conscript nearly 200,000 young men.
The hard part will be persuading them to show up.
Vladislav Putilin, a deputy chief of staff, said Friday that a manpower crisis means Russia must still draft conscripts despite planned military reforms to slash the armed forces by one fifth, or 470,000.
Putilin said just 12 percent of young men of conscript age would likely serve their two years in uniform. On Friday, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree calling up 189,995 men.
Ill-health and exemptions made the draft ever smaller, the three-star general told a news conference.
The move toward an all-professional army, a prospect held out by Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on his first day in office on Thursday, would not ease the situation in the short-term.
"Of all those who should be called up, only 12 percent are actually conscripted. And that percentage is falling at a catastrophic rate," Putilin said.
"Today we cannot call up as many people as the armed forces need. ... Soon there will be no one we can call up," he added.
Eight years ago, 24 percent of those called up actually served in the army or navy. In the autumn of 1999, the figure was 13 percent, he said.
Ill-health meant more than 50 percent of draftees were immediately ruled out, while military doctors ruled unfit to serve a further 30 percent.
Of the remainder, 60 to 70 percent had left school early or had received no education whatsoever, Pu ti lin said.
"Yes, the armed forces are getting smaller. But that will not influence the number of conscripts who are summoned to serve."
Seventy percent of officers and noncommissioned officers in the armed forces are professionals, but only 30 percent of ordinary troops, according to Defense Ministry figures.
A bill to introduce a system of "alternative service," currently before parliament, could further reduce the pool of recruits open to the military.
The measure would allow men of conscription age to avoid the military but force them to work in the civilian sector - for up to twice as long. The exact period has yet to be finalized.
Putilin said less than 2,000 conscripts had expressed an interest in civilian service at the time of their draft, ridiculing figures from supporters of the bill that suggested up to 15,000 preferred civilian to military service.
Former president Boris Yeltsin, promised to end conscription but never made good the pledge.
Proposed military cuts announced in November would involve 470,000 military staff and 130,000 civilians over five years.
Officially, there are now 2,136,000 uniformed personnel and 966,000 civilians in the armed forces.
TITLE: Rival Fans Riot at Moscow Soccer Match
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Police arrested 669 people after riots broke out before and during Saturday's derby between fierce city rivals Spartak and CSKA.
A police statement on Monday said 63 fans and three police were hurt, both in clashes before the match and during the riot that broke out when Spartak scored the only goal of the match at Moscow's Luzhniki stadium.
Twenty-seven people were taken to the hospital with injuries while 42 fans were locked up for being drunk, the statement added.
Rioters also tore up 1,436 orange plastic seats to use as missiles.
The fans fought in the center of Moscow before the match, resulting in nine arrests and 11 injuries. The main incidents occurred at the stadium, however, where another 660 were arrested.
Russian television showed hundreds of rival fans charging at each other, throwing punches and wielding the seats they had ripped up. The fans then separated into two groups and hurled the seats at each other.
Fans claimed that the police later beat individual fans as they left the stadium, allegedly lashing out indiscriminately at fans regardless of whether or not they were involved in the trouble.
Spartak fans possess the reputation of being the most volatile of all in the Russian premier league. Spartak, champions for the last five years in a row, were the most heavily fined club in the league last year due to their fans' misbehavior.
TITLE: Join EU but Not NATO, Adamkus Is Told
AUTHOR: By Patrick Lannin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin told Lithuanian leader Valdas Adamkus that he backed European Union expansion, but reiterated opposition to the extension of NATO, which the Baltic state also wants to join.
Putin, who welcomed Adamkus on Friday, also proposed that Lithuania, Russia and the EU hold talks together on Kaliningrad, the enclave on the Baltic Sea that will be surrounded by EU states once Lithuania and Poland join the bloc.
Lithuanian leaders have been the only Baltic presidents invited to Mos cow in recent years as Russia has shunned Estonia and Latvia over what it calls discrimination against their large Russian-speaking communities.
"Russia welcomes the expansion of Europe but considers that at the same time its economic interests and those of its new potential members should be taken into account," Putin said in televised remarks after meeting Adamkus.
"We consider, and recent events in the Balkans confirm this, that NATO expansion does not lead to enhanced security in the region. But we believe each country has the right to independently decide its security priorities," he said.
Lithuania wants to get into both the EU and NATO, but is heading for EU membership before joining the alliance due to Russia's strong objections.
Putin said three-way talks on Kaliningrad would be better than bilateral discussions on the region, called Ko nigs berg before the Red Army seized it from Germany at the end of World War II.
Russia is worried about the continuation of visa-free travel from Kaliningrad to Lithuania and the transit of Russian military convoys.
The EU is worried about Kaliningrad's high crime, pollution and economic woes.
TITLE: President Preparing To Address Country
AUTHOR: By Ron Popeski
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - On Monday, President Vla dimir Putin put the finishing touches on an annual speech to parliament in which he is expected to outline his ideas for reforming Russia's economy and overhauling key institutions.
The annual state of the nation address which Putin will deliver on Tuesday, a week after he oversaw sweeping changes in his cabinet, is generally used by Russian presidents to discuss abstract notions rather than promote specific policy programs.
But commentators said Putin could break with tradition and produce detailed proposals both on the economy and on a new look for institutions like Russia's legal system.
"This year, the speech will be more comprehensive," the daily Vedomosti quoted a government source as saying. "Putin will talk about doing away with problems set down last year and say where the country is going."
Putin came to power on New Year's Eve 1999 with the resignation of Boris Yelt sin, but was elected a year ago last week on pledges to restore some of Russia's lost greatness.
The president put liberals in charge of the economy and set a series of goals - trimming social and military spending and creating a favorable investment climate. He has made symbolic moves including laws allowing the sale of non-farm land, and changed the tax code to encourage payments to state coffers.
Politicians of both left and right said they hoped the address would make Putin's plans clear.
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, whose no-confidence motion in the government failed last month, said Putin faced the choice of liberal reforms championed by Economic Trade and Development Minister German Gref or boosting state intervention.
"If he chooses Gref's program, Russia will cease to exist in its current geographical and financial framework," he said.
Boris Nemtsov of the liberal Union of Right-Wing Forces, said he expected "a clear, defined strategy" covering tax reform, the pension system, Russia's legal frame work and moves to create a professional army without conscription.
Regional leaders said that they hoped Putin would address the turmoil in Chechnya, where Russian soldiers remain subject to constant ambushes 18 months into a military drive.
Vedomosti's source said Putin's speech would discuss new tax reforms, simplified customs rules and Russia's protracted bid to join the World Trade Organization. The daily Sevodnya suggested Putin would soon tackle reform of the prosecutor's office.
Putin last week appointed allies Sergei Ivanov and Boris Gryzlov to run the defense and interior ministries. He has pledged to streamline and restructure the government.
Putin told both men at a meeting of senior cabinet ministers on Monday that he wanted them to proceed with changes to their ministries "in keeping with the country's economic capabilities over the next 10 years."
Analysts suggest Putin may use his efficiency drive to replace Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. But they also predict liberals will keep their positions.
Opponents say Putin concentrated too much on centralizing authority and failed to launch structural reforms in a year in office when Russia benefited from high oil prices for exports.
Russia reached an unprecedented post-Soviet GDP growth rate of 7.7 percent last year. But growth has now slowed, making pessimists doubt the 4 percent target for 2001.
Putin, riding high in opinion polls, has curbed the powers of regional leaders and won the cooperation of parliament.
But the West is wary of commitments to liberal freedoms, citing the war in Chechnya and attempts by state-dominated gas giant Gazprom to take over independent NTV television.
TITLE: Air Companies Battle Safety Deadline
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova and Barnaby Thompson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russian aviation companies are facing the loss of access to European airspace and their most lucrative market unless they install new safety and noise-reduction equipment in their aircraft.
But the cost of installing the equipment, as required by Eurocontrol and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), means companies will have to pay millions of dollars to update their fleets.
The safety equipment comprises navigation systems that are required as a result of increased air traffic in European airspace, according to Sergei Belov, deputy head of the St. Petersburg-based Pulkovo Airlines.
The original deadline for installation of the equipment was March 31, but some aviation companies are requesting extensions that would keep aircraft in European airspace without the systems.
"Some airline operators [including Russian companies] have had problems installing the equipment," said John Law, a spokesperson for Eurocontrol, which oversees European air-traffic safety and collects fees from companies using European airspace. Law said that such operators could apply for a maximum six-month extension to the deadline.
"This is not a last-minute request," said Chris Mason, press spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Authority in Britain. "Airlines have known for a number of years that this equipment has to be installed."
Among the Russian-made passenger aircraft affected are the Tupolev 134 and 154, and the Ilyushin 62. Cargo planes affected include the Ilyushin 76.
According to Paul Duffy, an independent aviation analyst based in Moscow, European aviation authorities have over the past few years introduced a series of rules that require planes to be fitted with a Traffic Collision Avoidance System, or TCAS.
Belov said in an interview Monday that the cost of the TCAS would come to $250,000 per plane, although Eurocontrol's Law gave a lower figure of $150,000, "or [up to] $200,000 if the plane is older."
In addition, planes in European airspace now require a system known as an RVSM, which allows aircraft to fly at a lower vertical separation than before, plus a more accurate navigation system.
"To fit a single airplane with these three pieces of equipment, Russian aviation companies will need around $1 million per aircraft, plus extra for the noise reduction kits," Duffy said by telephone on Monday. "Most of them don't have that money."
Travellers from Russia to Europe may therefore be faced with the possibility that domestic air companies will be permitted to operate fewer aircraft in Europe's crowded skies. Pulkovo, the nation's second-largest carrier, is already talking of increased costs for passenger and cargo operations.
Belov said that Pulkovo had applied for an extension to the deadline. He added that the company already had 15 of its aircraft fitted with the new equipment.
"We're planning to install it in more [of the fleet] by Oct. 1, and the rest during the winter season next year when we have fewer flights to Europe," he said.
However, Duffy said that Eurocontrol and the ICAO may not grant the full six months to Russian air companies. "There needs to be a lot of goodwill on the European side," he said, "and an active view that [Russian air companies] are doing something to install the systems for extensions to be granted."
More expensive is the installation of noise-reduction equipment, which in the case of some aircraft would require a completely new engine. The Tu-134, for example, qualifies as a "noisy" plane, said Belov, and will need rehauling. Pulkovo owns 11 Tu-134s, as well as 21 Tu-154s amd nine Il-86s.
Belov said, however, that the international noise-reduction requirements came into effect only in April 2002.
"A Tu-134 costs around $500,000 to $600,000," said Duffy, "while each new engine would cost from $2 million to $3 million - much higher than the commercial value of the aircraft."
TITLE: U.S., Chinese Planes Collide
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - A top Russian military official said on Monday that a mid-air collision between a U.S. reconnaissance plane and a Chinese jet was no surprise to Moscow, which detects hundreds of NATO spy flights along its borders.
The U.S. aircraft, which was damaged during a game of cat-and-mouse with the fighter, made an emergency landing on the tropical Chinese island of Hainan on Sunday. The Chinese plane crashed.
Interfax quoted the unnamed defense ministry official as saying that last year Russia had logged some 1,000 spying flights by the United States and other NATO countries.
The official said radar weekly tracked up to 60 reconnaissance planes closing in on Russia's Far Eastern shores, where Moscow maintains some of its biggest military bases.
In Soviet days, fighter jets would routinely scramble to chase off foreign aircraft but such missions have been rare since the military fell on hard times with the collapse of communism. These days air defense forces are chronically short of aviation fuel.
In 1983, a Soviet interceptor shot down a South Korean airline jumbo jet with 269 passengers on board after the plane strayed into Soviet airspace. Moscow said the plane was on a spying mission or testing its vigilance.
Beijing says the U.S. EP-3 Marine surveillance plane had veered into its airspace, which Washington denies.
TITLE: Ethnic Russians Run Grozny Gauntlet
AUTHOR: By Yuri Bagrov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAZRAN, Ingushetia - Unidentified gunmen killed a 96-year-old woman and her son and burned their house in Grozny on Monday, in the latest in a spate of killings of ethnic Russian civilians in Chechnya.
Antonina Stupak and her son Vla dimir, 74, were shot in their small house in the Kalinin district on the eastern edge of Grozny overnight, witnesses said. The assailants set the house on fire and fled.
Federal troops moved into Groz ny a year ago and civilians have been gradually returning to their shell-shattered homes, but the rebel presence remains high throughout the city, despite ubiquitous checkpoints and servicemen. In addition to rebels, roaming bands of outlaws suspected of robbing and killing civilians have heightened the terror in the city. It is unclear who controls the gangs.
During the last month, 15 Russian civilians have been killed in Grozny's Kalinin district alone. In one such attack, gunmen killed a 14-year-old girl who was mute and badly wounded her 16-year-old sister, Chechen prosecutors said. Their mother hid under a bed and thus survived.
Most Russians in the neighborhood, assuming the attackers are ethnic Chechens, have been spending the night with Chechen neighbors in recent weeks.
Residents of the district organized overnight vigils to prevent repeat attacks, but federal authorities last week banned such patrols, calling them a violation of the curfew imposed throughout Grozny.
In the same neighborhood, rebels early Monday raided a building being renovated to house the pro-Moscow Chechen police headquarters, wounding five servicemen.
Officials have promised to transfer the pro-Moscow government from Gudermes to Grozny, but have postponed the move repeatedly.
Since large-scale fighting in Chechnya ended a year ago, Russian officials have contended that the rebels are on the verge of defeat. But they continue to inflict almost daily casualties.
Four servicemen were killed and four wounded in 22 rebel attacks on federal outposts over the past 24 hours, an official with the pro-Moscow Chechen administration said on Monday on condition of anonymity.
Two more federal servicemen were killed and several others wounded when their truck blew up on a radio-controlled land mine in Grozny on Sunday.
TITLE: GM-AvtoVAZ Deal Secured by Bitter Pill
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - General Motors apparently inserted a clause in its new $340 million joint-venture contract with AvtoVAZ that gives the giant U.S. automaker the right to take complete control of the deal if there are any changes in AvtoVAZ's ownership structure.
The "poison pill" clause, so-called because it serves to deter any prospective takeover of the Tolyatti-based automaker and also prevents any new owner from using the GM or Chevrolet trademark in Russia, was first reported by the Financial Times on Thursday.
"The buy-out clause will enable the world's largest car maker to take control of the Russian joint venture with payment of $100 million - the equivalent of AvtoVAZ's investment in the project," the FT reported.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which has a $40 million stake in the venture and is providing an additional $100 million in loans, appeared to confirm the report Friday when its spokesperson for Russia, Richard Wallis, said that General Motors was responsible for leaking the details of the contract.
"Such a big company like GM has every right to have a parachute in this [deal]," Wallis said, adding that "AvtoVAZ has become a very attractive company" as a result of its GM partnership, which is the largest foreign direct investment in the Russian automobile industry.
"Someone has a very good appetite," said Wallis, referring to the 165 percent rise in AvtoVAZ's share price since the beginning of the year, which has led to takeover speculation.
Like the EBRD, GM did not deny the existence of the clause.
"It is very hard to give any comments about this situation," said Alexander Moinov, GM's spokesperson in Moscow.
"I have no right to comment on things that are a commercial secret," he said.
AvtoVAZ officials could not be reached for comment.
Under the terms of the joint venture agreement, GM and AvtoVAZ, which makes the popular Lada cars and Niva jeeps, will invest $100 million each to assemble 75,000 sport utility vehicles at a new plant in Tolyatti that will be sold under the Chevrolet brand. Each automaker will receive a 41.5 percent stake under the arrangement. The remaining 17 percent of the shares will go to the EBRD for its $40 million investment.
If true, the poison pill clause represents one of the most protective measures used by a foreign investor in a Russian manufacturing project and is likely inspired by tactics recently used by tycoon Oleg Deripaska's Siberian Aluminum to gain control of GAZ, a carmaker with over $1 billion in sales last year.
Deripaska's takeover of GAZ comes on the heels of his acquiring top bus maker PAZ and reports that he is interested in acquiring top truck maker LiAZ - all of which have contributed to speculation that AvtoVAZ may be his next target.
Unlike GAZ and PAZ, however, it would be impossible to acquire AvtoVAZ by accumulating its free float because the controlling stake is in the hands of AvtoVAZ management.
"GM's move is an insurance policy from a hostile takeover and specific risks - it is normal and logical," said Yulia Zhdanova, an analyst from United Financial Group.
One analyst, who asked not to be named, said that it is very likely that GM leaked the details of the contract to the FT to calm down its shareholders over Deripaska's moves and the cooling relationship between Russia and the United States.
TITLE: Change to VAT Rules Could Help Builders
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Russian government has moved toward closing a legal hole that arguably could have allowed input value-added tax on construction costs to be recovered for work carried out before Jan. 1, 2001.
However, even though a new amendment to the Introductory Law on Part 2 of the Tax Code sets tougher conditions for input VAT recovery, it also creates an opportunity for arguing that some of the expenses incurred before Jan. 1 should be eligible for a tax return.
According to the amendment, which was published last month, all VAT expenditures made before Jan. 1 must be included in the book value of the building, thus becoming irrecoverable.
However, according to Yevgeny Astakhov, tax partner with Baker & McKenzie law firm's Moscow office, the amendment still leaves some gray area for determining when work is performed and how payments are made. According to the new amendment, only those expenses from work performed after Jan. 1 are subject to input VAT recovery. But the amendment to the law does not provide a clear description of how a completed project should be defined or what should happen if the work was paid for before Jan. 1.
The new amendment takes effect May 1, and with as much as 20 percent at stake for construction firms, Astakhov said legal debates are expected. But he added that any such cases would have to be brought before the Constitutional Court.
"I guess the amendment was passed in order to protect the 2001 budget from loosing any funds at the expense of the revenues from 2000," Astakhov said. "But I can reasonably assume that there will be companies that would want to fight this."
One point that supports the companies' potential claims, Astakhov said, is the point of law that states that no change in the law that worsens a taxpayer's position can be retroactive. Considering the time gap between Jan. 1 and May 1, this clause may well apply in this case.
Before 2001, VAT on construction was not subject to recovery - a legal obstacle that many considered to be a barrier for real estate investment. Developers and construction companies were forced to include VAT expenses in the total cost of the project, which in simple terms, resulted in some 20 percent added to the final costs and prices.
The notion that these sums could be saved triggered a positive reaction on the real estate market last year, when the second part of the Tax Code was still under discussion. Reclaiming input VAT would effectively liven up the market by leading to lower rents and to higher rates of returns for the investors.
TITLE: Shareholders Turn to Courts To Fight Sberbank Stock Sale
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - A group of minority shareholders in state-owned savings bank Sberbank, protesting plans for a new share issue, said that they had filed a lawsuit Monday in a Moscow court challenging the bank's refusal to hold an EGM.
"After reviewing the decision of the supervisory board and determining that grounds for the rejection of the EGM request were groundless ... minority shareholders decided to sue Sberbank to enforce the EGM," the group said in a statement.
Bill Browder, managing director of Hermitage Capital Management, the fund that is leading the EGM demand, said no hearing date had been set.
The shareholders, fighting a share issue that they fear would be sold far below book value, want an extraordinary meeting to oust Sberbank President Andrei Kazmin, re-elect the supervisory board and change the bank's charter.
The bank's supervisory board on March 23 rejected the request, saying that the shareholders had filed it incorrectly and had failed to prove they held the 10 percent necessary to call an EGM.
The statement said the group members held more than 10 percent and followed the law when they filed their request.
"It's a shame that the largest bank in Russia has to push around its minority shareholders, who are the common people of Russia, and to take away what rights they may have just in order to show its power," said Leo nard Nebons, managing director of the brokerage CenterInvest Securities.
"[Sberbank] ends up hurting themselves in the long run, as no international institution will consider them a reliable, professional business partner. This is supposed to be, after all, the savings bank of the people."
- SPT, Reuters
TITLE: Report: State Plans Aviation Holding
AUTHOR: By Mikhail Kozyrev
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - While the government has yet to announce its plan to consolidate the aviation industry, a copy of the Science and Technology Ministry plan under consideration, obtained by Vedomosti, calls for the establishment of a holding company for state enterprises that will enjoy the full backing of the state.
The plan shows that the Science and Technology Ministry is highly skeptical of the prospects for civilian aircraft manufacturers. The internal demand for such production over the next 10 years will remain low, the document says.
But the situation for aircraft makers in the military-industrial complex is better. It has a high export potential. The Science and Technology Ministry estimates potential exports at $2 billion to $2.5 billion a year over the next decade. Five enterprises producing military aircraft can produce 50 to 60 airplanes a year for export and another 10 to 20 for the Defense Ministry. But it will be impossible to entirely realize the production capacity of the factories, some of which can make 80 airplanes a year.
The ministry has concluded that there are too many enterprises in the industry. In order to reduce their number, a plan was proposed. The first stage, to be implemented from 2001 to 2002, proposes finishing the formation of already existing associations and holdings. In the second stage, beginning in 2002, the first steps will be taken to unify the most promising aircraft manufacturers into a holding to be called Aist.
The plan proposes to build the new mega-holding on the base of Tupolev, which comprises the Tupolev construction bureau ANTK and the Avistar factory in Ulyanovsk, the intergovernmental aviation corporation Ilyushin, the construction complexes Mig and Sukhoi, and the Komsomolsk-Amur aviation production association, which makes the Su-27 and is now part of the Sukhoi complex. All of these enterprises are controlled by the state.
"It is proposed to concentrate the economic and political resources of the government on a limited number of priority system-forming projects for the purpose of creating the final project," the plan says. "The state will not undermine the private initiative of the creation of new aviation technology in other areas but will not offer the use of its services for its support."
Certain private enterprises are performing well, such as the Irkutsk aviation production association, in which the state holds a 14 percent stake. The association is part of the Sukhoi aviation military-industrial complex. A contract signed at the end of last year for the licensed production of 140 Su-30MKIs in India gave the Irkutsk factory an order for 15 years and guaranteed financing of more than $3 billion.
But when the contract expires, it could become evident that private enterprises will find the foreign market already closed. A high-ranking representative of the Irkutsk factory criticized the plans. "The tendency of the concentration of aviation production and the dominant role of the government is understandable," he said. The government today simply does not have enough money or opportunities to finance large-scale programs, for the sake of which such an association would be created, said the representative of the Irkutsk factory.
A representative of another large Russian military-industrial company said he is simply afraid to look at the plan. He is waiting to see what President Vladimir Putin says when the program is presented before the Duma. "The president has still not expressed his point of view on whether it is necessary to nationalize defense [enterprises]," said the source.
TITLE: Gazprom Documents Throw Cloud Over Itera
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Gazprom sold to Itera for $300 its controlling stake in a private Siberian gas company with reserves worth $9 billion after allowing that company to go bankrupt, according to a series of internal documents obtained by The St. Petersburg Times.
The documents refute Itera's assertion that it rose from obscurity to become the world's No. 7 gas company in less than a decade without receiving preferential treatment from Gazprom.
As part of an aggressive PR campaign to improve its murky image and tap capital markets, the president of the Florida-registered Itera gave a rare interview last week in which he told Reuters that his company had "never participated in any asset transfer schemes [with Gazprom]."
But the documents detailing the gas monopoly's 1999 sale of its 51 percent stake in Rospan International - after it had invested $135 million in the company - prove otherwise.
The fact that the deal occurred is not striking: It is well-known in business circles that Gazprom's former assets now belong to Itera, a Jacksonville, Florida-registered company started in 1992 by a former Soviet Olympic bicyclist.
What is striking is how it happened. By failing to invest the amount of money it promised when it originally bought the stake in Rospan, Gazprom bankrupted the company. As other creditors scrambled to seize assets, the gas monopoly sold its stake to Itera for its nominal value - 4,258 rubles and 50 kopecks, or $300 at the exchange rate at that time.
"This transaction was dear to Itera," said Vladimir Martynenko, vice president of Itera-Holding. "And it's not easy for us, either. We are optimistic that we can turn the company around."
After a scandal-ridden bankruptcy, Rospan is losing money, but Itera takes pride in succeeding in markets and fields where others fail, Martynenko said.
In this case, Gazprom is the rival that failed.
"We have never received a cent either from the government or from Gaz prom all these years," said Itera president Valery Otchertsov, in the Reuters interview. "Gazprom has never given us any gasfields or free licenses to develop its fields."
In 1995, Gazprom bought a 51 percent stake in Rospan for $50 million and agreed to invest another $400 million in the company.
Gazprom declined to comment for this article.
Rospan was founded in 1992 by Farman Salmanov (see related story, page 8), a former geology minister in the Russian government. Salmanov, now 69, is a world-renown and celebrated geologist and was the first to discover oil in Western Siberia in the early 1960s.
The company received 25-year licenses for the New Urengoi and the East Urengoi fields from the Tyumen regional administration when it promised to invest money in development.
However, the original founders didn't have enough money themselves, so Salmanov approached Gazprom CEO Rem Vyakhirev, with whom he worked for two years in Tyumen.
Salmanov says he now regrets that decision.
In August 1995, the two struck a deal, where Gazprom agreed to "organize the financing for the first-stage development of the New Urengoi and East Urengoi fields for up to $400 million over three years, including $52 million to be paid in 1995," according to the notes of a meeting that took place on January 6, 1999. Salmanov, Vyak hi rev and Itera president Igor Makarov all attended the meeting.
Between 1995 and 1999 Gazprom invested 281 million rubles in Rospan, but then stopped because of its "well-known financial problems," according to the document. With natural gas selling within Russia for about $15 per 1,000 cubic meters, Gazprom was and still continues to lose money on its internal sales.
To partially compensate for pulling the plug on its investment, Gazprom gave Rospan 2 billion cubic meters of gas using Itera as the sales agent. In turn, Rospan sold it back to Itera for $31.4 million. This comes to about $15 per 1,000 cubic meters, the wholesale price on Russian markets. It is unclear for how much money Itera sold the gas. But Itera sells most of its gas outside of Russia where prices are substantially higher.
Gazprom then admits that its actions forced Rospan into bankruptcy.
"Because of the delays in attracting investment necessary for financing the field development, much of the work was accomplished by taking out debt. This led to Rospan's indebtedness of 2 billion rubles. This, in turn, led to the bankruptcy procedures, which began in the first half of 1998," the document says.
Gazprom was having its own financial problems and needed to find someone who would take on the company as well as the 2 billion rubles of debt that included workers' wages and equipment costs.
On an internal memo dated July 6, 1998, outlining Rospan's debts and Gazprom's past investments, Vyakhirev scribbled a little note on the upper-left-hand side of the paper three days later.
"Request that this be decided by the nominal, and that debts be transferred to the company," the note said, meaning that the company be sold at the nominal price shown on its stock.
Itera's Martynenko said this wasn't cheap, considering the debt and $500 million investment Itera decided to take on.
However, Martynenko himself admits that Itera doesn't know if or when Rospan will turn a profit.
According to various estimates, Rospan's Urengoi reserves come to 95 billion cubic meters of gas and 28 million tons of gas condensate. There is already a Gazprom-owned gas pipeline that links the Urengoi region with Europe. At European gas prices, this means $300-500 million in profit from $9 billion in sales over the life of the gas fields.
It is exactly this pipeline that is at the root of Rospan's problems.
"When everything was privatized, or stolen, however you want to put it, Gazprom took control of the pipeline," Salmanov said. "This blocked access to anyone else who wanted to develop their own gas-extraction business."
Salmanov explained that he didn't take Gazprom to court for fulfilling its investment contract for fear that the gas monopoly would completely cut off pipeline access.
Analysts said that the actual value of Rospan was difficult to estimate, given its dependence on Gazprom for transport and the artificially low prices on the domestic market.
"If Rospan was forced to sell within Russia, then it would be worthless," said one gas analyst. "But if it were allowed to export - a big 'if' - then it would actually be worth something. Because of the internal price, investors are not flocking to Russian companies that have gas in the ground."
However, the deal between Gazprom and Itera begs the question: "What does Itera see in Rospan that Gazprom didn't?" the analyst added. "It doesn't make much sense for Gazprom to invest so much money in a company and then throw it away."
TITLE: A Geologist Who Fed a Nation
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The year was 1961, and the city was Surgut. Of course, with only a few thousand residents at the time, Surgut - in the heart of the Tyumen region in western Siberia - couldn't really be called a "city."
This was before it became known as "oil country." This was before the efforts of an Azeri geologist gave birth to an oil rush rivaling that of Baku's in the late 1800s.
On March 21, 1961, Farman Salmanov hurried back to his base from the oilfields and fired off the following telegram: "A fountain of oil is gushing. Do you get it?"
Even though the telegram was addressed to Geology Ministry officials in Moscow and Tyumen, the wry tone was meant for those who didn't believe in Salmanov, who laughed at him and thought he was insane for oil prospecting in the middle of nowhere.
History has proved Salmanov, 69, correct - more correct than he himself had ever dreamed. In fact, western Siberian oil is what drove the Soviet economy, provided hard-currency earnings and fed the nation.
"He is one of the greats," said Rady Razyanpov, chief geologist with Yukos operator Yuganskneftegaz. "And as far as western Siberia is concerned, he is considered to be a god."
However, a new generation of exploration has come about, and Russia's hydrocarbon centers have moved to Timan-Pechora in the northwest, the Sakhalin peninsula in the Far East and the Caspian Sea basin. Except for a few fields, western Siberia's oil reserves will be exhausted in the next decade.
That doesn't mean Salmanov's work there is done. As founder and head of Rospan International - a natural-gas exploration and extraction company - he oversees the fields that he calls his "favorites": New Urengoi and Eastern Urengoi in the Tyumen region.
The two plots are outlined in red on a map hidden behind Venetian blinds.
"These are our licenses," he says, drawing the blinds. Then he points to a large area east of the fields, "This is what [Boris] Berezovsky bought. He even called me one time wanting to buy my license out. I hung up on him. I don't like dealing with people like that."
Born in Morul, a village near Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, Salmanov came from a family of farmers. After graduating from school with honors, he entered the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute and was immediately drawn to geology and the business of oil.
"When I was 15 or 16, an oilman - Nikolai Baibakov - went into government and starting fixing up everything around my town," Salmanov said. "He built roads, put up infrastructure and repaired buildings. Because of that, I decided that I wanted to be a geologist, too."
After graduation, Salmanov asked to be sent to Siberia, a place he knew of only through the wondrous stories of his grandfather, who spent many years there in exile under the tsarist regime. Salmanov's professors also considered it a probable gold mine of oil and gas.
He says he was always sure, even when his team kept hitting water instead of oil.
The Urals are to the west, he says, gesturing to the multicolored map. To the east are the high plains. In the middle, you end up with a low valley that was once covered completely by the sea.
"By the geology, it was obvious that it was rich in minerals," he said.
Salmanov spent 33 years in Siberia, where he met his wife and where all his children were born. In 1985, then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited the geologist in Tyumen, from where all exploratory operations were run, and was so impressed he decided that Salmanov should be working in Moscow.
The next year, the Geology Ministry requested he come on board. Salmanov refused. Later that year, the Politburo took it into their own hands. Salmanov figured he had no choice.
He was deputy geology minister and later minister until May 1992, when it was merged with what is now called the Natural Resources Ministry.
TITLE: Putin Tells WTO Russian Economy Is Still Unstable
AUTHOR: By Natasha Shanetskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin told visiting World Trade Organization director general Michael Moore on Friday that Russia was committed to joining the WTO, but not at any price.
"We are not asking for, nor are we counting on any privileges. We ask for a standard approach while acceding to the WTO," Putin told Moore in remarks broadcast on ORT television.
"We hope the WTO understands that Russia has not yet ended a period of structural reforms and has not yet reached a state of [economic] upturn and stable development," Putin said.
At a round table earlier in the day attended by Moore and top EU and Russian officials, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov reiterated Russia's position that WTO entry is a priority only if its economic interests could be protected.
"We are aiming to become a full-fledged partner," he said. He said Russia had already made several concessions to the global trade body, but "we need between five and seven years to restructure some of the main sectors of our economy."
Moore and the EU also expressed support for Russia's entry.
"The WTO will not be a full global organization without Russia as a full-fledged member," Moore said.
"Russia's accession to the WTO [is] a gradual process that cannot be completed overnight. Russia can count on us to accompany it along this road," said EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy.
Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref refused to give a timetable for entry, but said that the bulk of remaining issues should be resolved by the end of the year.
Russia's talks with the WTO have dragged on since 1995, but have accelerated lately. At issue are bringing Russian legislation - most prominently intellectual property rights, customs and tax regulations - in line with international standards and agreeing to terms that will open Russian markets.
Gref said becoming a member of the global trade club has specific economic benefits: "Expert estimates show that several years after accession to the WTO, positive cash flows [into the economy] could increase as much as $18 billion a year, specifically from lowering protectionist trade barriers," he said.
Presently, WTO lists a dozen categories of Russian export products that currently face trade barriers - including steel, agricultural pesticides and paper products - which complicate international trade for Russian businesses.
But gaining access to WTO member markets would also mean that Russia has to lower its own protective trade barriers as well.
As a result, many of the country's enterprises "still question the advantages and opportunities" of WTO membership, Kasyanov said.
One of the goals for entering WTO is to protect Russian importers that have encountered negative attitudes from its foreign trade partners, including European countries, Kasyanov said.
Overall, anti-dumping measures cost Russian importers more than $2.5 billion in recent years, he said.
Gref said the country has already resolved the bulk of issues necessary for accession, especially when it comes to import tariffs.
In a bid to align its regulations with WTO norms, the government recently slashed import duties on more than 3,000 items, effective January 2001.
Currently, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry is bargaining with 50 WTO members over obtaining mutually satisfactory tariffs on a wide range of products.
While market reforms remain the government's priority, a number of economic sectors, including agriculture, remain extremely inefficient, Gref said.
According to Gref, the government will aim to push 10 draft laws concerning customs tariffs and intellectual property rights through the legislature by the end of August.
These conditions are necessary if Russia is to receive approval from the 40 WTO member countries it is currently negotiating with.
Agriculture remains one of the main problem areas.
WTO currently has 135 member countries responsible for 90 percent of the world trade, while another 30 countries are currently considering entry.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Rostelecom Bond
MOSCOW (SPT) - Rostelecom's leasing arm, RTC-Leasing, intends to raise 500 million rubles ($17.4 million) through a bond placement, company representatives said Friday, Prime-Tass reported.
The placement, set for Wednesday and arranged by Trust and Investment Bank, marks the first loan RTC-Leasing has raised without guarantees from national long-distance monopoly Rostelecom, which has a 27.3 percent stake. The conversion period for the bonds will be 180 days.
The company plans next year to address itself to foreign capital markets and is looking into the placement of Eurobonds, which could provide relatively cheap financing, said RTC-Leasing director Mikhail Margolin, Prime-Tass reported.
RTC-Leasing - which over the past five years has leased out around $400 million through some 200 projects that involve mostly telecoms and hi-tech equipment to Rostelecom subsidiaries - expects to attract no less than $50 million on foreign markets, Margolin said, Prime-Tass reported.
No. 8 in CIS Growth
(SPT) - Russia finished eighth in industrial growth among the CIS countries January on January, Prime-Tass reported Friday.
According to the State Statistics Committee, Kyrgyzstan came on top with 45.1 percent growth, followed by Ukraine (19.5 percent), Moldova (18.7 percent), Armenia (16.5), Tajikistan (14.4 percent), Kazakhstan (11.6 percent) and Azerbaijan (5.4 percent).
Russia recorded 5.3 percent industrial growth.
Below Russia were Belarus with 3.7 percent and Georgia with a 10.6 percent decline. No data were available on Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan.
Energy Needs $120Bln
MOSCOW (SPT) - Russia's power industry will need some $120 billion between 2001 and 2015 to increase capacity, experts from the Russian Academy of Sciences said at a conference on the energy sector Thursday, Interfax reported.
The experts said the modernization of old facilities will require some $15 billion from 2001 to 2005, $40 billion from 2006 to 2010 and $64 billion from 2011 to 2015.
According to the scientists, electricity consumption is increasing by 4 percent each year, which could result in a capacity shortfall as early as 2003.
The scientists said the energy sector needs support from the government, in particular on technical modernization.
Merger Nearing Nod
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Anti-Monopoly Ministry could approve the merger of Russian Aluminum assets in the first half of April, Antimonopoly Minister Ilya Yuzhanov said Friday.
Russian Aluminum, Russia's largest aluminum group, was formed about a year ago by Siberian Aluminum and shareholders in oil major Sibneft, but it still needs ministry approval before all of its assets can be fully incorporated.
"I think we'll approve it in March, but as the month's nearly over it's more likely to take effect in the first 10 days of April - the documents are already going through," Yuzhanov said.
The new company unites Russia's biggest aluminum plants - Bratsk, Krasnoyarsk and Sayansk - as well as Achinsk and the Nikolayev Alumina Plant in Ukraine. It controls over 70 percent of Russia's primary aluminum output, which amounted to 2,135,445 tons last year.
Stock Options Law
MOSCOW (Vedomosti) - Under a new draft law soon to hit the State Duma, company managers could be entitled to options for up to 5 percent of their company's shares.
The law aims to get managers to take an interest in increasing the value of their company's stock once they have the option of buying these shares at a lower price, as established by law.
The options will be placed in the same way as for securities which are convertible into shares. The company's charter must provide for shares that have not yet been placed and that will be used for the performance of option obligations.
The volume of options issued must not exceed 5 percent of the charter capital, and the decision to sell managers options may require approval at a general shareholders meeting.
TITLE: Caspian Oil Project Promises To Make History
TEXT: If an oil field can grow into a legend, like Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, then Kashagan, located in the remote shallows of the Caspian Sea, will surely become one. Christopher Pala reports.
ATYRAU, Kazakhstan - Kashagan could variously go down in history as the field that freed Kazakhstan from Moscow's orbit, that delivered the fatal blow to an ecologically ailing Caspian or showcased Western know-how in the face of a challenging environment. Or it could become one of the most over-hyped fizzles in the history of an industry not known for its restraint.
Though remarkably little is known about the field, oilmen involved in probing it insist there is a high probability that, together with other smaller offshore fields nearby, it will produce 2 million barrels a day within 15 years. By these estimates, Kashagan would generate nearly as much as some members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Added to a string of onshore fields, Kashagan would be enough to turn Kazakhstan, a sparsely populated Central Asian country of steppes and mountains, into one of the world's major oil exporters. It would rescue 15 million Kazakhs from the post-industrial misery bequeathed by a failed Soviet economy.
But the Caspian Sea (see map), the world's largest closed body of water, is just as environmentally sensitive as Alaska's North Slope - more so, in fact, since it has already suffered considerable pollution. And, unlike Alaska's large ly deserted Arc tic Ocean coastline, Ka zakhstan's Cas pian shore is home to a population that is deeply worried that the race for riches will first yield considerable environmental damage.
For Kashagan, named after a turn-of-the-last-century Kazakh poet, is entirely located inside a nature preserve. A local scientist called it a "kindergarten of the sea," where 130 species of fish spawn and where young sturgeon, hatched in the nearby Volga and Ural rivers, spend their adolescence.
In snow-covered Atyrau, just north of the Caspian Sea, residents' hopes and fears swirled through the hall of a public hearing conducted by a consortium of oil companies to explain drilling plans for the next two years.
The Netherlands-based consortium, Offshore Kazakhstan International Operating Co., or OKIOC, was established two years ago to explore and exploit the field. So far, it has spent close to $1 billion doing a seismic survey of the entire Kazakh sector of the Caspian and drilling two exploratory wells at opposite ends of Kashagan's oil-soaked limestone structure.
The consortium's members are Agip of Italy, the project's newly elected operator; ExxonMobil; TotalFinaElf of France; Royal Dutch/Shell and BG International, all with 14.29 percent each, as well as Phillips Petroleum and Inpex of Japan, each with 7.14 percent. Statoil of Norway, with a 4.76 percent holding, and BP Amoco, with 9.52 percent, have agreed to sell their stakes to TotalFinaElf. The French company hopes to eventually wrest the highly prestigious but financially unrewarding operatorship from Agip.
Last July, Kashagan's first oil well yielded high-quality light crude and another half-dozen wells will be drilled near it in the next two years. On March 15, Agip announced it had struck oil at 4,982 meters, just 200 meters higher than the first well located 40 kilometers away. This confirmed initial beliefs that Kashagan is similar in structure, and presumably in yield, to the richly endowed Tengiz field, one of the world's top 10, located onshore about 130 kilometers southeast of Kashagan.
It is that similarity that has fueled the optimism that Kashagan will change, if not the world, at least this part of it.
"But there is still a 1 percent chance that the whole thing could flop and there is no recoverable oil at all," said a senior executive with one of the oil companies involved.
NOT AN EASY SITE
The Soviet government knew about Kashagan, a 350 million-year-old coral atoll 80 kilometers long and up to 25 kilometers wide, since the 1970s. But because it was difficult to exploit, Moscow planners bypassed it in favor of easier fields in Azerbaijan and Western Siberia. In addition, Soviet authorities said the field would be impossible to exploit without causing so much pollution as to seriously damage the production of caviar, that other form of black gold.
Analysts estimate today that Kashagan could hold anywhere from 10 billion to 30 billion barrels of crude. At 20 billion barrels, it would be the world's fifth-largest field and the only one among the top five to lie outside the Middle East region, which begins 1,600 kilometers to the south.
At the public hearing, a novelty in the former Soviet Union, local residents - many of them retired oil workers with quavering voices, deeply lined faces and long memories of careless Soviet methods - challenged the consortium's ability to live up to its zero-discharge policy.
"You foreigners are not concerned about our tragedies," Iosif Aikulov, 72, told the British operations manager sitting on the stage. "The sea is our life. It fed us when we had a famine in the 1920s. You will leave in a few years, but our children will remain."
"We haven't even lifted a liter of oil and already our seals are dying and our sturgeon are disappearing," lamented retired ichthyologist Abish Bekeshev.
Several thousand dead Caspian seals washed ashore last year, prompting the consortium to hire seal specialist Callan Duck, from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. His study, part of an international examination of the health of the sea's 400,000 or so seals, found that their deaths were unrelated to oil and were caused by an epidemic of the canine distemper virus. Duck told the audience that the epidemic was probably facilitated by the presence of high levels of DDT in the seals' fat and of mercury in their livers - pollutants from Russia's heartland that have been flowing down the Volga River into the north Cas pian for decades.
An additional factor, he said, was that last winter - and unfortunately this winter too - was exceptionally warm. The ice melted away before the seals were able to molt and finish feeding their young. That, he said, contributed additional stress that would have made the seals more vulnerable to the virus, which affects dogs and seals alike.
Duck took pains to explain that he wasn't paid by the consortium, but received a university researcher's salary. However, Bekeshev, the ichthyologist, got officials to admit the consortium was paying St. Andrews for the study.
"He who pays the musician calls the tune," he said triumphantly, suggesting that Duck's explanation was simply propaganda for the oil companies.
Bekeshev was not alone in his cynicism; the expression was uttered several times that day. Nor was it entirely unjustified: The oilmen brushed away questions about their long-term plans, saying that in the next two years, only five more wells will be drilled, all for the purpose of appraising the deposit's potential. Only after that would the program begin to develop the field - a process that will require the investment of tens of billions of dollars.
As for the sturgeon, Kazakh ichthyologists took the stage to blame the catastrophic reduction in their population on a steep rise in poaching during the past decade and on the closing of most of the hatcheries that helped replenish stocks.
THE ONLY HOPE
But the concerns expressed at the public hearings - another was held in Aktau, on the Caspian's northeastern shore - were tempered by the understanding that Caspian oil represented the region's sole hope of reversing its decline.
"I'm not against this project, I just hope they will be careful," said Anar Sadikhov, 20, who is studying oil engineering in the hope of being part of the coming oil boom. Many others said they were worried but wished the foreign oilmen success.
Kashagan and its neighboring fields present technical difficulties that are not unique, but that have never been found concentrated in one deposit.
"We know we are dealing with a large volume of oil," said Keith Dallard, the outgoing general manager of the consortium working on Kashagan. "To translate this into a commercial way forward will require a great deal of creativity."
The sea bottom throughout the field is between 4 meters and 10 meters deep and will require that artificial islands be built out of rocks brought from shore at each drilling site. About 30 to 50 such islands will probably be required over the life of the field, oilmen say.
Then the oil deposit is particularly deep - about five kilometers - and the oil contains high amounts of gas and sulfur. The sulfur will have to be processed and stored ashore, and the gas will have to be either refined and sold to Russia, whose pipelines pass nearby, or reinjected into the ground. Reinjection makes it possible to lift a greater proportion of the oil deposit, about 30 to 40 percent instead of 15 to 20 percent.
The winter ice cover restricts the time available for building new drilling stations and moving barges. It also requires the building of a pipeline network to bring the oil to Aktau, Kazakhstan's northernmost ice-free port.
Finally, the environmental restraints will be heightened because the sea is landlocked and because much of the southern Caspian has already been polluted by the slovenly drilling methods that prevailed off the Azeri coast - the cradle of the Russian oil industry - for over a century.
"All of our drilling waste is barged ashore and processed," said Graham Johnson, the consortium's head of safety, environment and security. "Only the liquid waste from our accommodation is released, and this is treated to probably the highest standard of any rig in the world."
REGIONAL PLAYERS
Environmentalists are not the only ones scrutinizing the consortium's plans. Politicians are, too.
The president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, an amiable autocrat who manages to have excellent relations with both Moscow and Washington, has been among the most vocal and optimistic proponents of exploiting the Caspian's huge potential. He once predicted that within 15 years, when Kashagan, Tengiz and a number of lesser fields all reach maturity, Kazakhstan would be producing 8 million barrels a day, up from 615,000 barrels today and on the level of the world's leading producer, Saudi Arabia.
Nazarbayev is "too optimistic by half," said Robert Ebel, director of energy and national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Ebel, along with other analysts and oil industry executives, predicts Kazakhstan's overall production in 15 years will be 4 million barrels a day.
"I understand he [Nazarbayev] wants the income," Ebel said in a telephone interview from Washington. "But I wouldn't anticipate any significant production before 2008. And I know the companies are in no great hurry."
TITLE: U.S. Firms Not AmCham Chief's Sole Focus
TEXT: When Andrew Somers took over as president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia (AmCham) last year, he brought with him extensive experience in dealing with business issues in Russia. Having already worked as chief international lawyer and special advisor on Russia for American Express and then as a consultant to Russian firms looking to attract foreign investment, he was already well acquainted with Russia's business environment. Staff writer Thomas Rymer spoke with Somers about the difficulties faced by foreign and Russian companies doing business here.
Q: Prior to accepting your present position with AmCham in Russia, you ran a consulting firm in Moscow that worked with Russian firms looking to attract foreign investment. How has that experience affected your approach to your work now?
A: It taught me that issues of transparency and the conversion to international accounting standards are major obstacles to funding for small- and medium-sized businesses.
That's for two reasons. First of all, they don't have the resources in personnel or money to transform their accounting systems in a manner consistent with the timing of their financing needs. This is also an issue with major companies, but at least they have the resources - if they have the will - to do it.
Secondly, I think there's a lack of understanding by these companies as to exactly why they should become more transparent in their financial accounting and why they should transform their books, or at least create a second set of books to comply with international accounting standards.
I think part of that has to do with Russian tradition, concern about the tax authorities and various methods that companies use to reduce their exposure to Russian tax authorities.
Q: Speaking of Russian authorities, President Vladimir Putin just celebrated his first year in office. How would you evaluate the performance of his administration so far?
A: Given the enormous obstacles that the Russian government has to overcome in terms of attracting investment and regularizing the business climate as well as the political challenges any new president faces, I would give him an A.
Q: Why?
A: First, he's brought back political stability, which is a key to attracting potential investment as well as to normalizing business conditions.
Second, he has shown a very strong commitment to economic restructuring, ranging from the implementation of Tax Code Part II to a number of efforts in the legislature, in the Duma, to amend key laws that are inhibiting development.
And I would add his very firm commitment to having Russia accede to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as soon as practically possible.
Q: Looking forward there are a couple of initiatives afoot dealing with corporate governance issues in Russia. What do we know of their content?
A: Russia's Federal Securities Commission intends to release the first draft of a multiple-chapter code in the next couple of months, so we don't actually have the substance of the code yet, but I do agree with the tactics.
The draft will be subject to comments, which will have a two-fold purpose. It will gain further insights, but it will also begin familiarizing Russian companies that will be subject to this code with its content before it becomes effective.
The Duma is discussing the issue of corporate governance and the appropriate legislation that is required. I haven't seen a draft document yet - I don't know if one is available - but there is vigorous debate in the Duma over issues that affect corporate governance, such as minority shareholder rights, independent directors, the transparency of accounting records, the right of shareholders to have access to material information and the right of shareholders to vote on issues of major importance to the company - these are all issues being discussed in the Duma by the Federal Securities Commission. I think they're covering the issues pretty well.
One of the special issues for Russia in this area arises from the fact that the government has significant ownership in a number of large enterprises and that the government, regardless of whatever financial interests it has, also often has certain social responsibilities tied to enterprises where it has significant ownership. So, the question of determining the right approach to corporate governance may be somewhat difficult in those companies where the government is a significant shareholder, as it perhaps has different interests than solely financial investors
Q: To change the focus to local issues, you've been here in St. Petersburg a couple of times in the last few months for different events. What are your impressions of the investment climate in the region?
A: The Leningrad Oblast is very impressive in terms of its ability to attract foreign investment - particularly American investment. In addition to the investment legal regime and the tax benefits that the oblast has provided, I've been very impressed with the quality of the oblast administration in terms of their understanding of the business and investment issues affecting foreign companies and their effectiveness and willingness in dealing with different problems as they arise. This is a big selling point for them.
My impression is that the St. Petersburg city administration is somewhat less aware of issues that affect investment and somewhat less active in responding to problems. I attribute that, in part, to St. Petersburg's cultural heritage - the psychology that, given its rich heritage and geographical position, people should be happy to come to St. Petersburg and, because of this, there's less need to develop an intense effort to attract investment. This is opposed to the situation in the Leningrad Oblast, which is outside the reach of the cultural heritage in that sense. This makes them much more aggressive and practical in terms of attracting investment.
Q: The companies we generally talk about with regard to investment in the oblast are major firms - such as Ford, Caterpillar and Philip Morris. It's accepted economic wisdom that the engine of a strong economy is usually found in the area of small- and medium-sized business. What do the oblast and the city have to do to try to foster growth in these areas?
A: This is a big problem and I don't know that it's really endemic to St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. It's a national issue, and that is the ability of these companies to get appropriate funding - whether from the banking system or from multilateral agencies - to either start a business, expand a business, or to build on early success.
And in cases where the money would be available, these small- and medium-sized companies don't know about it.
There are programs, for example, in the United States that offer support. There are a number of programs that the U.S. Department of State and Department of Commerce sponsor, which are focusing on these businesses.
Q: How sensitive are these programs to the climate of U.S.-Russian relations, especially given the new presidential administration in the United States and incidents such as recent charges of spying and expulsion of diplomats?
A: First, to the extent that funding is cut for the agencies that sponsor these programs, that will have a negative effect. I know there have been proposals to cut funding in some of these areas that aren't directed directly at Russia, but are part of an overall budgetary analysis.
In terms of the political situation, I believe the U.S. government is still formulating its Russia policy. I don't think they have one yet. They certainly have not articulated one. I would hope that the final articulation of the policy would recognize that Russia has a market, that American companies here are doing well, for the most part, and that they are working not only to make money, but also to help develop the Russian business environment in a way that's consistent with attracting further investment. Given the business background of many of the high-level cabinet appointments made by President Bush and their pragmatic approach to problems, I would say that once a period of adjustment passes relations between the two countries would normalize and that business will not be significantly affected.
I also think that, notwithstanding political disputes and differences, business will continue to function and that the programs I spoke of before will continue to receive support from the U.S. government. I think that the government recognizes that these small- and medium-sized businesses are vital to economic growth and that from a political- or defense-oriented perspective, these companies are probably the least likely to engender a negative attitude from the U.S. government. I think you might even find more emphasis on these support programs.
TITLE: Overeager Security Can Be Bad For Business
TEXT: "Please show me the contents of your bag."
Not, as you might think, a question from an airport customs official, but a request I recently received from the sumptuously decorated entrance hall of a large local bank. The security guards before me were intelligent enough: Rather than searching my bag themselves, they asked me to pull out what was inside - which, as it happens, comprised a mobile phone, lipstick, notepad and pen, and a set of keys.
Nonetheless, I decided not to bring these modest belongings into the light, preferring to meet my interviewee outside the bank. "That is up to you," the guards said to me in a friendly manner.
Like most journalists, I can recall dozens of occasions when my bag has been searched - by U.S. marines when high-ranking American officials have come to town, by the security apparatus of the governor's office, by guards at a military plant and once at the entrance to one of St. Petersburg's oldest five-star hotels. And guards at the Tavrichesky Palace once wanted to know why I was in possession of a screwdriver, presumably afraid that it could be used in an attempt on the life of the governor general of the Northwest region.
Security guards who watch over the buildings of the powers-that-be are generally more rigorous than their counterparts at the doors of hotels, restaurants, banks and shops, since the livelihood of such places depends to a greater or lesser extent on how many clients visit, and how they are treated when they're there. A posse of armed gorillas is, after all, a good way of putting people off and earning an establishment a bad reputation.
One night club that was well known for its security's lack of ceremony when dealing with customers was recently the subject of a police investigation, after a group (which turned out to consist of the employees of a big foreign company) was searched, led to the back door, and beaten up. The guards gave the standard excuse - the guests were drunk - but the victims were able to prove that this was not the case. It transpired that these particular guards had links to an organized crime group and were later arrested. The venue in question has not, however, closed its doors in shame.
The days when every business needed a krysha, or protection from gangsters, are long gone. But the brutal attitude of some security staff lives on. You might think that I am writing out of personal grievance, but how many people have undergone offensive treatment at the hands of security guards?
In any case, many of the most visible safety measures are pointless. Anyone who might be the target of an assassination attempt is never in danger at the office. And the second time I went back to that bank, I took advantage of the massive pockets provided by contemporary fashion and stuffed all my belongings in those. No one said a word.
Anna Shcherbakova is the St. Petersburg bureau chief of Vedomosti newspaper.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: U.S. Indicator Positive
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. manufacturing sector, mired in a steep eight-month downturn, showed some tentative signs of recovery on Monday as a closely watched index of industrial activity rose for a second straight month in March.
The National Association of Purchasing Management reported its manufacturing index unexpectedly rose to 43.1 last month from 41.9 in February, as new export orders grew for the first time in six months and firms made progress in unloading a glut of inventories.
A reading under 50 indicates the sector, which makes up one-fifth of the economy, is shrinking.
Amex Warning
NEW YORK (AP) - American Express, the New York-based financial and travel giant, said Monday that its earnings for the first quarter and the year would be significantly lower than expected.
It said first-quarter figures could be about 39 cents a share, 18 percent below the 48 cents a share it earned a year earlier. The company in a statement blamed losses of about $185 million "on the write-down and sale of certain high-yield securities held in the investment portfolio of its subsidiary, American Express Financial Advisors."
Analysts surveyed by First Call/Thomson Financial had expected the company to report earnings of 51 cents a share for the first quarter.
Polaroid Gets Reprieve
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Ailing instant camera and film maker Polaroid Corp. said on Monday it had received waivers on loan covenants through May 15, which would allow the firm time to restructure its debt.
The company said it continues to implement plans to cut costs and reduce debt. In February, Polaroid said it was suspending its dividend and setting a restructuring, which included cutting 950 jobs.
The company reiterated it expects to report a net loss for the first quarter, hurt by inventory reductions, the soft economy and net interest expense of about $25 million.
Hyundai Execs Go
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Hyundai Securities Co. on Monday dismissed 13 executives as part of efforts to turn itself around, a company spokesperson said.
"It's part of our restructuring efforts. But it is also aimed at holding the management responsible for its performance," said spokesperson Kim Shin-hwan.
The 13 executives are among 42 who offered to resign last month to take responsibility for the company's poor performance last year, Kim said. He didn't give further details.
M&S Under Fire
PARIS (Reuters) - Two trade unions took Marks & Spencer to court on Monday to try to force the British retailer to reverse last week's surprise decision to shut down its network of French stores.
Marks & Spencer announced last Thursday it was closing all its loss-making businesses and pulling out of continental Europe. The move affects 18 stores in France and just over 1,800 French employees.
The Communist-led CGT union and Force Ouvrière union filed their suit in a civil court, accusing company management of acting illegally by failing to consult the workforce before announcing the cuts.
TITLE: Dresdner, Allianz Defend Deal
AUTHOR: By Mark Thompson and Thomas Atkins
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: FRANKFURT, Germany - Allianz AG sought but failed on Monday to calm concerns that it may have overpaid in a 23.4 billion euro ($20.6 billion) takeover for Dresdner Bank AG, which it said would unlock the burgeoning market for retirement savings.
Shares in both Allianz and Dresdner fell as analysts voiced doubts about the merits of the deal, hailed by the companies' chairmen as the key to further consolidation of Germany's overcrowded financial sector.
Executives said the link was aimed at achieving growth rather than cost savings. But they left key questions unanswered on the outlook for revenue and profit growth.
"There is a risk that we won't find enough acceptance among our shareholders for what we are presenting today," Allianz chief executive Henning Schulte-Noelle told reporters at a news conference in Frankfurt.
"I don't think you could describe the price we are offering to Dresdner shareholders as particularly cheap."
The takeover will create the world's fourth-largest financial group from the merger of Europe's biggest insurer and Germany's third-biggest bank.
WestLB analyst Carsten Zielke said on Monday he was maintaining his "buy" rating on Allianz but lowered his price target, saying there was some doubt about how it would increase earnings and how the two would cooperate beyond existing ties.
"Did they have to buy the whole bank to get this?" Zielke asked. "This is not the optimal solution because the results volatility will increase."
Dresdner said the 53.13 euro ($46.82) per share price Allianz was paying amounted to a premium of more than 40 percent, if Dresdner's huge portfolio of German stocks was removed and the value was applied only to its core banking business.
Allianz said it would need to raise 8 billion euros ($7 billion) in a non-cash capital hike to fund the purchase but added that the measure would not force its shareholders to provide any new cash.
Allianz shares were down 2.85 percent or 9.31 euros ($8.20) at 317.69 at on Monday morning.
Dresdner stock, now linked to Allianz through the cash and stock bid, which values Dresdner at 53.13 euros per share, also came under pressure and was down 1.63 percent at 50.54 euros ($44.58).
Trudbert Merkel, fund manager at Deka Kapital in Frankfurt, said: "Investors are not convinced about the integration of such a big bank into an insurance company and the ability of an insurance company to run a big bank."
Schulte-Noelle said the group was willing and able to make further acquisitions even after it had swallowed Dresdner in the complex cash-and-stock deal.
"I know that you're eager to know what sort of deals we have in the pipeline and what we plan next. One thing is certain: With all the challenges and efforts that the merger of such two big firms requires, we will remain capable and eager to act in the market," he told the news conference.
TITLE: IMF Chief Backs Cut in European Interest Rates
AUTHOR: By Stephen Graham
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BERLIN - The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday added his voice to growing appeals for the European Central Bank (ECB) to ease interest rates in order to shore up the continent's cooling economy and the beleaguered euro.
Even as Horst Koehler predicted that Europe's common currency will remain weak, the German government was launching a new drive to win over its skeptical citizens to the new money.
"An interest rate cut by the ECB would be definitely helpful for the European economy," Koehler told a German parliamentary panel's session on the global economy.
Koehler's call followed a similar appeal from World Bank President James Wolfensohn in a weekend interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
The ECB last week kept its main interest rate unchanged at 4.75 percent, triggering a new decline in the single currency's value against the dollar. It has been the only major central bank to resist cutting rates this year.
Three rate-cuts since January by the ECB's U.S. counterpart - by a total of 1.5 percentage points - "demonstrated decisiveness, and the Federal Reserve has further room for maneuver, if necessary," Koehler said.
The IMF is likely to cut its forecast for euro-zone economic growth this year to 2.5 percent, Koehler indicated. In October, it had projected 2001 growth of 3.4 percent. World growth is likely to be a "good 3 percent" this year, he said.
The ECB's governing council next meets April 11, when many economists expect it will follow the Fed's example - particularly if reports this week on European consumer and business confidence indicate a slowdown.
"They don't want to be a slave to the markets," said Michael Schubert, an economist at Commerzbank in Frankfurt. "They need the data to make a plausible change of direction."
Still, with investors increasingly betting on a quick U.S. recovery, even a rate cut in the 12 countries using the euro may fail to spark a renewed rise in the currency. Koehler forecast the euro will "remain weak" in the short term.
The euro edged below 87.50 cents early Monday, extending a three-month slide that has prompted economists to drop their forecasts of a lasting rebound against the dollar, and damped ordinary Europeans' enthusiasm for the currency.
The currency is well above its all-time low of little more than 82 cents last October, but has shed a quarter of its value since its launch in January 1999.
Alarmed at that slide, and the skepticism of citizens in Europe's most powerful economy over giving up their trusted marks, German government and central-bank officials on Monday launched an information campaign they hope will build trust in the euro.
TITLE: Putin Speech Should Focus On Public
TEXT: WHEN President Vladimir Putin delivered his first state-of-the-nation address last July, he emphasized the need to strengthen the federal government. "Power should rely on the law and on a single vertical line of executive power," he said.
On Tuesday Putin will come before the nation once again. No doubt he will use the opportunity to pat himself on the back for his achievements in strengthening the state - including reforming the Federation Council, bolstering the institution of the seven presidential envoys, acquiring the power to dismiss regional governors and making progress toward reconciling local and federal laws.
However, we hope that he will also address the question of why he is strengthening the state and that he will be more convincing this year than last in persuading us that it is, after all, a genuine participatory democracy that we are building. Whereas last year he stressed control, power and an "effective" state, this year Putin's by-words should be transparency, government accountability and broad participation.
It would be impressive, for instance, if the president took a moment to applaud the efforts of citizens who collected more than 2.5 million signatures in an effort to force a referendum on the Nuclear Power Ministry's initiative to import spent nuclear fuel.
Imagine the symbolic effect of Putin's urging the activists not to be disheartened because the Central Election Commission squelched their effort by disqualifying about 600,000 signatures. Imagine Putin not only declaring that the people mustn't let their right to speak out on such issues be restricted, but also affirming his willingness to be the first signatory on a new referendum petition.
We would also be impressed if the president discussed the CEC's effort to regulate political parties. Putin should publicly instruct the CEC to be guided in this effort by a desire to maximize active grassroots participation and declare his intention to veto any plan designed to just mechanically reduce the number of parties.
We would also like to see the president offer concrete proposals to ensure the accountability of his strong "single vertical line of executive power." He should admit that it must be balanced by a strong Audit Chamber with the authority to access information and compel investigation of its charges. Unfortunately, it is probably too much to hope that Putin will move beyond platitudes in affirming the role of independent media in protecting citizens from the state.
We don't need just a strong state, but one that is also open, accountable and responsive. On Tuesday, Putin should unveil his plan for getting us there.
TITLE: The Correct Lessons Must Be Learned From Disasters Under the Water
AUTHOR: By Christopher Lehman
TEXT: AS soon as I read about the USS Greeneville sinking the Japa ne se fishing boat Ehime Maru, killing nine people, I knew what was in store for the sub's crew. I don't mean just the Navy inquiry into the accident, the possible courts-martial of the top officers, or even the hours of retraining and recertification everyone will have to undergo.
I'm talking about the months of low morale, personal disarray and intra-squadron scapegoating that likely will dog the crew. I'm talking about the sense of failure and responsibility - and fear that you might never do anything right again - that could follow some of those men for a lifetime.
Submarine life, under any circumstances, means high pressure and constant stress. It demands excellence; mistakes are not tolerated, because mistakes can be fatal. And the Greeneville made a huge mistake. So every last man aboard will take a beating from here on out, mentally and emotionally, from himself and from his comrades at sea. He'll have the feeling of being associated with a marked ship, which can lead to further error and the potential for more catastrophe.
I know because I've seen it happen firsthand.
On July 1, 1989, I reported for duty aboard the USS Houston, a Los Angeles-class attack submarine like the Greeneville. This was my third sub tour, but the truth was, I didn't much like submarines - I'd never gotten used to the close quarters, the feeling of blindness, the undeniable fear. I'd just been made chief of the auxiliary division, responsible for about 70 percent of the ship's mechanical workings. And I'd heard the talk about the Houston around the piers.
The word was it was a bad-luck boat. Its number was SSN-713, and guys referred to it as the Lucky 7 with an unlucky 13 on its back. My first day, I met with the chief of the boat. He had his head in his hands as if he were deep in thought, or pain. He told me my whole division was in disarray. Then I met the commanding officer. I'll never forget the first words out of his mouth: "Chief," he said, "your division is crippling my ship." All I could say was, "Yes, sir, that's why I'm here - to fix all of that."
As we headed out to sea for a training run, I had a bad feeling. Soon after we submerged, I met the chief engineer in the torpedo room. As we talked, I glanced behind his shoulder. I couldn't believe my eyes. Across the room, in a scene that looked like something out of an animated cartoon, seawater was gushing through a main air vent.
"Is this some weird joke to test my reactions?" I thought. I turned to the chief engineer, who stood frozen, staring at the water with a look that said it all: This was not a drill.
The flooding alarm sounded, signaling one of a submariner's worst fears: uncontrolled water rushing in. This was what all the training had been about. If the men in control of the ship failed now in any way, we were all simply doomed.
The chief engineer and I ran toward the air vent to investigate but were nearly thrown off our feet as the sub's nose turned upward and it drove hard toward the surface. But the weight of the water we were taking on abruptly halted our forward motion. We began an eerie slide backward for what seemed like an eternity. All about the sub, silence set in; the only sound seemed to be that of our main engines, fighting to overcome the massive water drag.
Then, slowly, we started moving upward again, at an angle so steep we were forced nearly parallel to the deck. The six or seven of us in the torpedo room clung to the torpedo stowage racks for our lives. Letting go meant a possible 13-meter free-fall, straight back and down, or sliding down the length of the deck like a cue ball heading for a pocket.
A second alarm sounded. The word was passed: "Toxic gas!" Seawater had apparently entered the battery area. It was time to don an oxygen mask but I couldn't let go to get to one.
Suddenly, the sub pierced the ocean surface and leveled off. I let go, grabbed a mask and headed for the emergency damage control gear. "The worst is over," I thought.
Then the sub pitched sharply forward. It was obvious that the thousands of gallons of seawater we'd taken on, equaling tons of negative weight, had shifted toward the front of the sub, forcing us back into the ocean depths.
The reactive speed of our ascent took us down at a critical rate. The sub was being simultaneously pushed by the turbine and pulled by the water. I could hear the outer hull sing as the metal shrank and buckled under the tremendous ocean pressure. It felt like an endless, rapid elevator ride from which there would be no return.
I don't know what was going on in the control room that day, nor did I really know the men on duty. But I do know their courage saved us. Their hours of critical training and their steadfastness of heart came together, and somehow the descent slowed, stopped, and we began to rise. This time, the crew managed an emergency blow - the same maneuver the Greeneville was performing on its fateful day. It forces a massive amount of air into the main ballast tanks, rapidly expelling the ballast water in them, so the ship quickly achieves positive buoyancy and rises like a cork. Our speed overcame the weight of the seawater, and we shot out of the ocean like a breaching whale.
As we stabilized, I began to check for damage. I moved about the ship, coming upon grown men crying in corners, others curled up in shock. Later, we learned the ventilation system's main snorkel valve had malfunctioned, failing to close properly and allowing seawater to rush in. We'd been unaware of this because someone had turned off the audible signal of the valve's rhythmic opening and closing.
Back in port, the crew was assembled on the pier, where we were told we would be evaluated to determine our further suitability for submarine duty. Those who exhibited signs of real mental trauma were either individually escorted to family services or more forcefully encouraged to go. But I felt the higher-ups actually hoped most of us would just shake it off and go on as though nothing much had happened.
I wasn't sorry to leave the pressures of submarine life: the isolation, the separation from family and loved ones for up to 90 days in a constantly hostile environment; the grueling training; the necessity of 150 minds pulling together in perfect sync; the need not to think about the living ocean that waits mere inches from your head.
But when I read about a submarine disaster - like last summer's sinking of the Russian sub Kursk, or the Green eville's collision - they all come back.
I hope the navy is thinking about the Greeneville crew's reaction and feelings. I hope it will do more than send in inspectors and certifiers, and change the rules about civilian guests aboard submarines. I hope it will understand the crew needs more than a token offer of evaluation and counseling.
Most of all, I hope the navy will realize it's not enough to make the top officers pay for the Greeneville's mistake, then let the ship slide back into the water and continue on its silent rounds, with a crew carrying on as though nothing had ever happened. I hope it will give the Greeneville's men the help they really need - and the attention they deserve.
Christopher Lehman served in the Navy for 21 years and works for a Department of Defense contractor. He contributed this comment to The Washington Post.
TITLE: Threat-Reduction Aid Needs To Be Increased
TEXT: AMONG the most cost-effective defense dollars that America spends are those that pay for reducing Russia's arsenal of leftover Cold-War weapons. The Bush administration began a review of these "threat-reduction" programs last week, saying that it had the intention of making them more efficient.
But there are troubling signs that Bush is planning to reconsider his campaign promise to increase overall funding for these valuable programs and cut them instead. That would be a very serious mistake indeed.
Throughout the Cold War, Washington spent trillions of dollars defending against Russian nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Over the past decade, for a little less than $6 billion, America has financed - among other things - the deactivation of more than 5,000 Soviet-era nuclear warheads, the conversion of more than 110 metric tons of bomb-grade uranium into commercial reactor fuel, and the safe storage of plutonium that had been removed from Russian weapons.
It has also helped underwrite new jobs for Russian nuclear scientists who might otherwise sell their talents to such countries as Iraq, Iran or Libya.
Last year Congress appropriated nearly $900 million for threat-reduction programs in Russia and other former Soviet republics. In the presidential campaign, Bush expressed strong support for these efforts and promised a substantial increase in their funding.
Earlier this year, a bipartisan task force headed by the former Republican senator Howard Baker called for spending up to $30 billion on them over the next decade.
But just last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Bush administration's budget makers were instead preparing to impose substantial cuts.
It is indeed true that not all the programs in Russia have been equally effective. Finding commercial projects to keep nuclear scientists employed has been very difficult, and efforts to dispose of Russian and American weapons-grade plutonium have been slow in getting started.
But one of the programs now in line for big reductions is the highly successful effort to keep track of - and secure - nuclear material at Russian bomb sites before it is removed and rendered harmless.
The administration should conduct a careful review, identifying those programs that need to be strengthened or that should have their funding shifted to more effective efforts.
But overall spending in this area should be increased, and not decreased. It would be a dangerously false economy either to slow down or to halt the dismantling of Russian weapons.
This comment piece originally appeared as an editorial in The New York Times.
TITLE: Ted Turner: Savior of NTV Or Kremlin?
AUTHOR: By Aleksei Pankin
TEXT: "IF you're free, come and support us!" was the slogan for Saturday's public rally in defense of NTV. I wasn't free, so I didn't go. However, I hope it's not too late to show some support.
On March 29, Novaya Gazeta published an article by The Independent's Moscow correspondent and Sreda columnist Patrick Cockburn. "Some journalists in Moscow liked the idea of Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, taking a shareholding in NTV. They might have been less enthusiastic if they had examined the history of CNN over the last 10 years or talked to victims of the vicious purge last year when CNN fired 400 of its employees."
I would have tried to draw protesters' attention to facts and opinions such as these, if I had been free on Saturday.
Cockburn also wrote: "In fact, CNN's success has partly been the result of its willingness to spend money to get close to governments. This was blatant during the first months of the present war in Chechnya when CNN took up permanent residence in [Russian] military headquarters in Mozdok."
A little research turned up other goodies. The liberal media-monitoring organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) wrote last April: "Indeed, the presence of psychological-operations personnel at CNN was first revealed at a psy-ops conference in Arlington, Virginia, by Colonel Christopher St. John, commander of the [U.S.] Army's 4th PSYOPS Group [the unit to which the CNN interns belonged], who offered the internship program as an example of the type of 'greater cooperation between the armed forces and media giants,' which he hoped to see more of." When this "cooperation" became public, a scandal erupted, and CNN's management issued numerous statements that their editorial content had not been influenced by army psy-ops personnel and the internships were canceled.
From the other end of the spectrum, Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid wrote in 1998 for the conservative media-monitoring organization Accuracy in Media (AIM): "Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council and America's Renewal has expressed shock that CNN decided not to run his ad criticizing President Clinton's forthcoming visit to communist China. Other networks, including MSNBC, Fox and CNBC, ran the ad. Bauer has suggested that business dealings between China and Time Warner, CNN's parent company, explain the decision."
In February, John Helmer wrote in The Russia Journal: "So how can a $300 million investment in Media-MOST make a creditable rate of return? Only by the same method [Media-MOST owner Vla dimir] Gusinsky used - underwriting from the Kremlin."
And, once again, here's Cockburn: "'The management [of CNN] didn't even have the courage to sack people themselves,' one former member of the staff told me. 'They hired consultants to do it for them.'"
I imagine that familiarity with such facts would simply spur the Kremlin on. The Putin administration would bend over backwards to offer Ted Turner whatever incentives or guarantees of editorial independence he wants if only he would buy NTV as soon as possible.
For my part, I'd advise the Union of Journalists, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces to call the people into the streets for another demonstration, this time under the slogan: "Turner! Keep your hands off NTV!"
Aleksei Pankin is editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals (www.internews.ru/sreda). He contributed this column to Vedomosti.
TITLE: Undoing Adamov
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Orlov
TEXT: PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin's decision to fire Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov is a significant event and an encouraging sign for those who are concerned about fostering an appropriate international climate to ensure the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and dual-use technologies.
Russia has always observed its obligations as an officially recognized nuclear-weapons state and as the successor of the Soviet Union. Moreover, a nonproliferation policy clearly corresponds with Russia's national interests. It avoids the problems that would be caused by unpredictable neighbors armed with weapons of mass destruction and facilitates Russia's efforts to preserve its elite status on the world stage.
Adamov, however, ignored these obvious truths. Although he mouthed platitudes about the "importance" of nonproliferation, in practice he expedited a number of nuclear deals that ran counter to Russia's national interests and its international commitments.
For instance, during Putin's visit to India last October, Adamov lobbied a proposal to supply New Delhi with 58 tons of uranium dioxide for a nuclear-power plant in Tarapur. This deal had only limited commercial appeal, but it undermined Russia's political positions and was a transparent violation of Moscow's obligations as a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. All NSG member states except Belarus denounced the plan at the NSG meeting last December, and the Clinton administration declared the Tarapur deal "a serious threat" to the nonproliferation regime. In short, Adamov dealt a serious blow to Moscow's international prestige.
Adamov, however, went further and last December he publicly declared that Moscow might withdraw from the NSG and other international export-control regimes "if current restrictions concerning cooperation in peaceful nuclear energy uses are not modified." Such ultimatums run counter to Russia's official policy with respect to the NSG.
Adamov's proximity to Putin and to certain influential business communities helped him convince the president to include the so-called "initiative on nonproliferation" in his Millennium Summit speech at the United Nations in New York last September. This initiative stated some noble political goals, but in practice it called for a number of dubious measures. According to Nikolai Ponomaryov-Stepnoi, a leading expert of the Kurchatov Institute, the ideas contained in the technical part of Putin's statement were "unclear to the public, have caused equivocal interpretations and have not been accepted by many experts." He argued that "such innovations have not yet been proved with scientific and technological work and are not indisputable as far as major principles are concerned."
Adamov also launched a large-scale campaign in favor of amendments to existing legislation governing the import of spent nuclear fuel. In principle, such imports do not threaten the nonproliferation regime and could even result in some commercial benefits for Russia. However, it is certain that the $20 billion figure constantly cited by Adamov was a conscious deception of the public and the country's leadership. Although a number of skeptical officials argued that the proposal requires thorough scrutiny in order to avoid undermining Russia's national security, Adamov preferred to ram his initiative through the State Duma regardless of any obstacles. Fortunately, though the Duma passed the bill in its first reading, it wisely postponed voting on the second reading.
Adamov's replacement as nuclear power minister, Alexander Rumyantsev comes from the Kurchatov Institute and immediately faces a number of difficult tasks. Experts highly esteem Rumyantsev's professional skills and the promise he seems to bring to his new post. In order to build on this esteem, Rumyantsev should state unequivocally and immediately that the Nuclear Power Ministry will abandon any attempts to substitute its corporate policy for state policy in the area of nuclear nonproliferation. He must pledge that the ministry's leadership will remain committed to Russia's international nonproliferation obligations, its national legislation and the provisions of the 2000 National Security Concept.
Strict compliance with the nonproliferation regime, however, does not preclude the ministry's commercial activities in the area of nuclear export. On the contrary, it has vast opportunities in this sphere. There is no reason why Russia should not proceed with the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran. However, Moscow will have to rethink the fate of some other deals.
We can only hope that the changes within the Nuclear Power Ministry will enable the Foreign Ministry to speak about Russia's commitment to nonproliferation without any reservations or hesitations. In the field of nonproliferation, transparency is of the utmost importance. The logical next step at this point would be to form an arms control and nonproliferation agency directly subordinate to the president that would develop and monitor a coherent, coordinated policy in these areas. Such an agency could also monitor international threat-reduction assistance to Russia and should be headed by a diplomat with an impeccable international reputation.
Such an agency would defend Russia's national interests - not least from those within the Nuclear Power Ministry who, like Adamov, confuse their corporate interest with national policy and thereby undermine the president on the international stage.
Vladimir Orlov is director of PIR-Center for Policy Studies, a nonprofit nongovernmental organization that studies arms control and nuclear nonproliferation issues. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: The Reasons for the Reshuffle
TEXT: DESPITE the secrecy surrounding the current decision-making processes in the Kremlin, last week's cabinet reshuffling sheds some light on what the policy of President Vla dimir Putin will be over the next few years.
There is a definite logic to the new appointments. Three of the four new appointees (Sergei Ivanov as defense minister, Boris Gryzlov as interior minister and Mikhail Fradkov as head of the Tax Police) are political appointments. In other words, none of these three represent any interest groups, but are loyal tools of the president.
Further, Ivanov and Gryzlov have no association with Boris Yeltsin's regime. Fradkov, a career bureaucrat since Leonid Brezhnev's time, had the unfortunate distinction of being sacked four times under Yeltsin. Alexander Rumyantsev, who replaced Yevgeny Adamov as the new nuclear power minister, is the only stranger.
Except for Rumyantsev, all are outsiders to the organizations they are to run. This means they are not constrained by corporate rules and alliances and may be capable of bringing change to these notoriously corrupted institutions. However, they do not come alone, but are accompanied by professionals with inside information.
For instance, Sergei Ivanov's new deputy in charge of finance, Larissa Kudelina, certainly learned all the tricks of the opaque defense budget while working at the Finance Ministry. No doubt, Kudelina understands what her colleagues in epaulets have in mind when they estimate that the strips of cloth that soldiers wear under their boots cost $20 per pair in their budget projections. Likewise, Gryzlov's first deputy, Vladimir Vasiliev, a career policeman whom Gryzlov's predecessors had previously kicked out of the ministry, and Fradkov's new deputy, General Sergei Ve rev kin-Rochalsky, a career KGB officer, are consummate insiders.
What all four new appointees have in common is that, in different ways, they have all been closely connected with the former KGB and thus will enjoy the backing of what was once the Soviet Union's most powerful corporation which now has its representatives in a wide variety of banks and private companies as well as inside Kremlin.
The fact that former Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo and the dismissed head of the Tax Police, Vyacheslav Saltaganov, were appointed to the Security Council suggests that that body's status will be reduced. It will most likely return to its Yeltsin-era status as an honorary body for distinguished retirees.
But this move may also signify that Putin is dissatisfied with the existence of competing bodies within the executive branch. Over the last year, for instance, the Security Council and the Foreign Ministry both fulfilled more or less identical functions in many areas, with the overlapping jurisdictions causing considerable inefficiency and discord. Putin apparently wants his key agencies to have more sharply delineated functions and to be accountable directly to the president. Very likely, this approach will entail a heightened role for the agencies of the former KGB, which will now - as in Soviet times - function as watchdogs over powerful ministers.
So, what do these deeds (as opposed to the meaningless words that Kremlin officials speak in interviews and speeches) tell us about Putin's plans? First, the military is now clearly a top priority. However, whether he intends to reform the military-industrial complex to make it less of a burden on the economy or whether he intends to reinstate its power at the expense of the rest of society will only become clear over the next couple of years.
Second, it appears that Putin sees the bureaucracy - and especially the bureaucracy in epaulets - as his most reliable source of political support. As long as individuals remain loyal to the president, they will never be sent off into oblivion - as often happened under Yeltsin.
Third, drawing conclusions from the two points above, Putin has no plans for liberalization. Any military reorganization will be expensive and will require still stronger state domination of the economy. A reliance on the bureaucracy, as opposed to an open society, will increase secrecy and opacity, further marginalizing the media, private interest groups and civil society as a whole.
Yes, we now have stability and this is a positive feature of Putin's rule. But stability and reform do not go together well. Nothing new came to the Soviet Union in the 36 years after the bureaucracy replaced the reformer Nikita Khrushchev with the inert Brezhnev. The country stagnated - until world oil prices collapsed.
Yevgenia Albats is an independent, Moscow-based journalist.
TITLE: Legal Wranglings: Dealing With the Police
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Editor's note: This is the second in a three-part series on how to deal with various legal institutions in Russia. Next week, the procedure once placed under arrest is investigated.
We all live according to some set of laws, and try to observe them even more carefully while in an unfamiliar country. However, in Russia - where since time immemorial people have lived under the day-to-day tyranny of random decisions and where the ability to circumvent the law has always been a virtue - law and its workings are often a puzzle to Russian citizens as well as foreigners.
The police - or militsia in Russian - are reluctant to admit that some of their colleagues violate the law more than they enforce it, but cases are not infrequent when people on the street fall victim to just such violations. Furthermore, while violating your rights, police will often refer to the law, making any arguments you could come up with appear ridiculous, if not risky. Both foreigners and Russian nationals are equal under Russian law, so if the cover of your passport is not a diplomatic blue, the risk you stand of clashing with the police should be big enough to make you cautious.
But while no universal remedy can be offered against unpleasant incidents involving the police, some useful tips can still be found to make these incidents as painless as possible. The most helpful one is to not mix theory - that is, law - with practice.
DOCUMENTS PLEASE ...
Most of what we know about Russian police routines comes from TV shows like "Menty" ("Cops") or "Road Patrol" crime reports - stories that make Western detective movies and thrillers, where human rights unfailingly win, look like fairy tales. Still, there always comes a time for each of us to get acquainted with this simple phrase: predyavite dokumenty, or present your documents.
Here is where the first confusion shows. In theory, no Russian law demands that a citizen carry his or her papers at any time. But in practice, common sense does. Usually it happens on the street, when a patrulny, or a patrol officer, stops you to check your papers - often with no explanation offered whatsoever. But you should know better than to ask him for one, if only because the officer can himself have a very vague idea of why it is you, of all passers-by, that he has chosen to check.
According to an officer from Police Precinct No. 28 in St. Petersburg's Central district, who wished to remain anonymous, the reasons for a document check range from the person in question looking like somebody on a recent police sketch, to a complaint from another passer-by, to simply looking suspicious. Although police usually deny it, the latter could well be caused by a darker color of the skin or an untidy haircut.
"It makes no difference for us what color the person is, or his hair. We're used to different people here and do not discriminate," said the officer. "But with the latest rise in crime, we have to have tighter control over illegal aliens, who could be drug-dealers or terrorists. Of course, if it's a native of the Caucasus or Central Asia, you can easily spot him by his dark skin."
As for "obvious" ethnic traits, police say they are able to tell a "Western foreigner" from their own compatriots simply by the style of his or her clothes or subtle differences in behavior. The police are less likely to bother the latter at all: "An ordinary foreigner doesn't usually have problems."
"If we have any suspicions, a simple document check [on the street] is the quickest way you can prove that you are [a law-abiding citizen]," said the officer.
If you have left your documents at home or in your hotel room, your day may well end up in the police station's akvarium, or glass box. There, in the company of local prostitutes and underage offenders, you will have to wait until your identity is verified by registration officials or the hotel you're staying at, or until somebody is able to confirm your legal status. In any case, you have a right to a phone call. Spetsialnaya Sluzhba Militsii, or the Special Police Squad, who deal with foreign citizens' arrest, will be informed by the police, as well as your consulate.
OPTIONS FOR INDIVIDUALS
In theory, the officer who requests to see your documents must be wearing a police uniform, allow you to examine his police identification (udostovereniye) and introduce himself including his name, rank, position, the kind of force and police precinct he serves in and for what specified territory or district. If he is an officer from any other district of the city (unless he is an investigator on a specific task), he has no right to ask for your documents. He must also provide you with any information you ask for to prove that he is indeed a police officer and not a robber, including making a call to his police station. But in practice, who would bother wasting time on such details? At best, you will be given a curt "Major Ivanov" as an answer, anyway.
At worst, a refusal to show one's documents - or for that matter, to do whatever you are requested - may be considered by the police as zlostnoye nepovinoveniye militsii, or "aggressive resistance," which, according to the law, may lead to a fine - 10 to 15 minimum wages ($70-$105) - or 15 days' detention, or even one to two months of corrective labor. This said, cases of the latter two options are relatively rare.
A foreigner, however, should be aware that apart from document checks, both policemen and criminals disguised as policemen, earn money by "fining" people for whatever they choose, including netrezvoye povedeniye, or intoxication, for which no fine is stipulated by law.
According to Vadim Buyevich, a lawyer from St. Petersburg's International Collegium of Lawyers and someone very much used to dealing with foreigners in such sitations, even the simplest human rights are violated constantly, not to mention common police beatings. His own practice included cases when he defended citizens who resisted unlawful police actions. For instance, an officer could be making some money on the side by demanding "a fine for a dropped cigarette butt," while not actually being on duty, or on a beat other than his own. In such situations, when Buyevich's clients asked for police identification or a receipt for the fine, a fight almost always ensued.
Violations like these are almost impossible to prove, and the chances of getting a criminal investigation underway are near to zero. However, when a wrong has been committed, an individual can complain to any prosecutor's office, or to the Department for Internal Investigations, or directly to the chief of the St. Petersburg police. Both the police and Buyevich advise that you have the name and other data of the officers you are dealing with before going about this. According to Buyevich, the only way to deal with such cases is to enlist the assistance of a lawyer for the duration of the investigation.
Indeed, even the officer from Police Precinct No. 28 did concede that "cases of severe violations are frequent among police, especially new recruits."
But - and this comes as a certain consolation - the outcome of a simple document check is not always that horrible. According to Buyevich, foreigners usually get better treatment by police than Russian citizens, and police say that foreigners - especially those who have long experience living in Russia - know better than to misbehave.
So the best advice here is: Have your documents on you at all times and make sure that they include all the necessary papers - your passport, visa and St. Petersburg registration stamp. Also be sure to have the contact numbers of your hotel, company office, friends or relatives with you. An Armani suit probably wouldn't hurt, either.
The Department for Internal Investigations (Upravlenie Sobstvennoi Bezo pas nosti ), 1 Konyushennaya Ploshchad, Tel. 314-19-19.
Vadim Buyevich, International Collegium of Lawyers, 35 Ulitsa Vosstaniya, Tel. 275-08-10 or 275-77-84.
Special Police Squad, 19 Zakhari yev skaya Ulitsa, Tel. 278-30-14.
TITLE: PRICE WATCH
TEXT: St. Petersburg is still without a Starbucks, although it probably won't be long. Meanwhile the local equivalent seems to be Idealnaya Chashka, which has outlets throughout the center. The following are a selction of prices throughout town.
Ontourmé, 34 Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa
Coffee with whipped cream 40 rub.
Variety of cakes 25-40 rub.
Idealnaya Chashka, 15, 112 and 130 Nevsky Prospect, 19 Kirochnaya Ulitsa
Solo Mocha 27 rub.
Regular Coffee 21 rub.
Solo Espresso 19 rub.
Variety of cakes 30 rub.
Bogart's, 14 Malaya Konnyushennaya Ulitsa
Americano 25 rub.
Caffe Latte 42 rub.
Irish Coffee 131 rub.
Café Rico, 1 Ulitsa Pushkina
Mocha 54 rub.
Cappuccino 42 rub.
Espresso Rico 35 rub.
Mexican Coffee 99 rub.
Variety of cakes 25-50 rub.
TITLE: RUBLE AROUND TOWN
TEXT: Monday's ruble/dollar rates in St. Petersburg:
Address Buy Sell
Alfa Bank 6 Kanal Griboyedova 28.00 28.80
Avto Bank 119 Moskovsky Prospect 28.20 28.80
Baltiisky Bank 34 Sadovaya Ul. 28.50 29.24
Bank Sankt Peterburg 10 Mokhovaya Ul. 28.30 28.90
Impexbank 58 Nevsky Prospect 28.20 28.95
Inkas Bank 44 Nevsky Prospect 27.70 28.80
Petrovsky Narodny Bank 7 Moika Naberezhnaya 28.30 28.90
Promstroi Bank 4 Mikhailovskaya Ul. 28.25 28.85
RusRegion Bank 54 Nevsky Prospect 28.70 28.85
Sberbank 4 Dumskaya Ul. 28.00 28.90
Average 28.21 28.89
Change from last week -0.11 -0.02
TITLE: Lenin and Methodius Both Seek To Convert
AUTHOR: By Tom Masters
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Finland Station got PR to die for when it became immortalized in Soviet lore as the place of Lenin's arrival back from self-imposed exile on April 3, 1917. To this day the locomotive that brought Vladimir Ilich from Helsinki is preserved as historical curio (and largely employed as a meeting place) on the station concourse. Lenin - who always traveled first class - was greeted by thousands singing the Marseillaise and holding Bolshevik banners. The following day, at the Tavrichesky Palace, Lenin dropped his bombshell "April Theses" in which he denied any further role for the provisional government in the revolution, demanded the overthrow of capitalism and coined the phrase "all power to the Soviets."
April 4, 1765 saw the death of Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov, while on the same day film director Andrei Tarkovsky came into the world in 1932. Constantly having problems with the Soviet authorities who could not accommodate his demands for artistic integrity and were suspicious of his motives, Tarkovsky completed just six films during a thirty year career, only four of which were made in the Soviet Union, provoking his lament at the end of his life: "I could have made a film every two years, if it weren't for those idiots." However, such films as "The Mirror" and "Andrei Rublyov" made him the most acclaimed Russian director since Eisenstein. He died of cancer in Paris on Dec. 29, 1986, never living to be acclaimed in his home country.
The NATO military alliance was formed on April 4, 1949. The allaince currently includes 19 member countries, and has some 9 applicant members, all of which were once part of the Soviet "sphere of influence," - an increasing strain on East-West relations, as many among Russia's military elite fear that Russia is being forced into a defensive position against an enormous military block.
April 6 marks the death of St. Methodius in 885. The brother of St. Cyril, with whom he developed the Cyrillic alphabet, Methodius is credited with the conversion of the Slavs, after converting the Jewish Khazars in Russia. He was deposed as archbishop of Velehred by German clergy who considered his use of Slavonic in liturgy heretical, but was consistently cleared of all charges and translated the Bible into several Slavonic languages.
The Kishinyov Pogrom took place during Easter of 1903 between April 6 and 7, in what is now the Moldovan capital of Chisnau. The pogrom, the bloodiest of the many which took place in tsarist Russia, was instigated in the hope of "drowning the revolution in Jewish blood." Prominent minister Count Sergei Witte denounced the violence as "horrific and idiotic politics," given that the pogrom did not in anyway stem the tide of revolution that was to culminate in the 1905 revolution.
On April 8, 1872 the first ever edition of Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" went on sale in its Russian translation at Cherkesov's on Nevsky Prospect.
Also on April 8, 1783, the Crimea became a part of Russia. The controversial peninsula now belongs to Ukraine.
TITLE: AIDS: Old Scapegoats Do Not Solve New Problems
AUTHOR: By Ali Nassor
TEXT: For some, a time machine is a fantasy, but for me it is a reality - as history seems to be repeating itself alarmingly. On my first visit to provincial Russia, a young boy of about 12 followed me for half a kilometer because, like most provincial Russian children in the 1980s, he did not believe that black men really existed on Earth. In the same town, an elderly woman pawed my face to see whether her fingers would be stained black when touching me. She was also shocked not to find me in tribal attire - sporting reeds around my waist - and asked me where the hell I got my clothes. I smiled and gave her the answer she evidently expected: "I was offered them at the airport upon my arrival."
I was consoled to find out that such things did not often happen in the cosmopolitan centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, although that is not to say that prejudice and ignorance were non-existent. In St. Petersburg at that time, for example, I was asked if cows in Africa produced white milk, and whether there are any houses at all on the entire continent (that some people inexplicably prefer to refer to as a country). But when I gave in-depth accounts of African housing affairs, I immediately made enemies. Though it seemed to be received wisdom in 1980s Russia that there were only trees and caves in my unfortunate land, my interlocutors often got annoyed when I told them that the tallest trees and largest caves were usually reserved for foreign diplomats.
In the early days of perestroika, I even heard a seemingly iron-curtained Russian woman claim on TV, with horror at the suggestion, that sex had simply not existed in the Soviet Union.
Ignorance was everywhere, perhaps understandably given 70 years of isolation and information filters. I also found myself arguing with my university lecturer who taught us that the Papuans are an African race. He himself had incidentally just accused me of ignorance for not knowing the difference between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
Moreover, I had a tough time convincing two of my course mates at the journalism faculty, who insisted on dividing the African continent into two parts - the "Arab North" and the "African South" - that Egypt and Algeria indeed belonged to Africa. This situation might well have improved with the opening up of the former Soviet Union to the outside world, were it not for AIDS.
Children on the street when they see me often sing the childhood song: "Children! Don't go to Africa. There are sharks in Africa, there are gorillas in Africa. In Africa there are huge and ugly crocodiles ..." I ignore them and console myself, saying that they are children whose prejudices about diseased monkeys in Africa (which are possibly embedded by the Russian fairy tale Dr. Aibolit) have found surprising resonance in the AIDS crisis, supposedly brought to the rest of the world by a man who ate the meat of an infected monkey in the African jungle.
This is where I find justifications when I'm called "obyezyana" (monkey) when I walk out on the streets. Old prejudices about black people in Russia have simply been replaced by new ones, thus people will often shout out "SPID!" (AIDS) or "obyezyana!" after me on the street. (By the way, I'm not offended by the latter as I am aware that monkeys can make very good circus performers.) Unfortunately, alongside sex, illicit substances have ultimately appeared in Russia and are a major source of the spread of AIDS. A scapegoat is again needed and once again it's me, busy feeding the local population with illegal drugs. On the threshold of a new millennium, I still have to shoulder the burden of prejudice and vilification in St. Petersburg, albeit for different reasons. It is of course clear that finding a cure and preventing AIDS are far more critical issues than the syndrome's origin. But why worry? As one local Russian newspaper assured me recently, almost all the people in Africa are AIDS patients - I will soon be no more.
Ali Nassor is a press analyst for The St. Petersburg Times. If you would like to write this column, please contact masters@sptimes.ru
TITLE: VOX POPULI
TEXT: With diplomatic expulsions on both sides of the Atlantic and talk of a new Cold War between Russia and the United States, what do local residents think of the action taken and the future for U.S.-Russian relations? Irina Ti to va found out.
Liliya Pleshkova, 60, pensioner:
I think the spy scandal means that the relations between our countries are getting worse. It scares me because I'm afraid of war - I was born just before World War II and I saw the war in my childhood. Then I witnessed how much energy it took to restore our ruined country and St. Petersburg especially.
However, I think we were right when we decided to expel American diplomats in response to the American expulsions of Russian diplomats for spying. I trust President Putin - whom I voted for - and think if he made the decision, then it was definitely the right thing to do.
Viktor Murzin, 64, pensioner:
It just means that both sides are doing their normal work. It doesn't scare me. Besides, I think that the Americans just want to be a bit superior to us, and of course we don't want to yield either. I think the situation is not indicative of anything crucial in Russian-U.S. relations, after all, there can be no way back to the strained relations that we had before.
Russia is in a bad economic position now, and it wants to go back to better times. You know, when someone wants to move up in the world, there's always someone out to stop them. On the one hand the U.S. helps us financially and sends humanitarian aid, on the other hand it wants to interfere in our lives. I think we should try not to forget about the good things the American side is doing for us.
Roman Klyushnikov, 31, railway worker:
I don't like Americans and I think we should be tougher with them. That is, if they expel our diplomats, then we should do exactly the same.
I'm not afraid of worsening relations between the two countries, I would have worsened them a long time ago. I think we need to defend our interests - such as developing our relations with Iraq, Iran and India despite all the dissatisfaction about it from the American side. For example, they don't want us to help Iran in building a nuclear power station. However, we should do it regardless because it's economically profitable for us.
Natalya Barlinskaya, 48, doctor:
I imagine there are no solid reasons for either country to expel each other's diplomats. At the same time, I fear that that U.S.-Russian relations are getting worse, and it makes me feel uneasy, though I can't really explain why.
Yury Glazunov, 66, former colonel:
It's just another working day for both the Russian and American special services. The Americans felt humiliated that their citizen Robert Hanssen had been working for Russia, and wanted to respond to that. But I don't think that this situation denotes a serious change in the relationship between the two countries because it wouldn't make sense for either of them.
Mikhail Melnikov, 23, former officer:
I think the spy scandal means that relations between the two countries really are getting worse. However, it doesn't scare me. On the contrary, I'm glad that this has happened as it has because it's just the time to show the Americans their place. Until now, it seems to have been exclusively their prerogative to show us ours.
Yelena Androkhina, 46, real estate agent:
All this scandal must be evidence of some bigger shift in relations, although I have no idea exactly what. As for our response with expelling American diplomats, it's only worth doing if those people deserve it, if they don't - then it's pointless.
Alexei Shavrin, 39, audit specialist:
Nobody doubts that diplomats of both sides are involved in other activities in certain spheres. It's been a problem for long time, and it came out now just because the U.S. has a different administration which finally decided to make a move. As for our move towards the American diplomats, it was the correct thing to do, because it's usual practice in such situations. However, it doesn't necessarily mean that U.S.-Russian relations will worsen from now on.
TITLE: Strawberry Disappears From Rehab
AUTHOR: By Vickie Chachere
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TAMPA, Florida - Police are still looking for Darryl Strawberry, who late last week failed to report to a residential drug treatment center where he was serving two years of house arrest.
Prosecutors will push to have the former New York Yankees slugger sent to prison, saying the multiple chances he's had for freedom on the outside have not worked.
"We were seeking prison time on his last violation," said Pam Bondi, a spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County State Attorney's Office. "We certainly haven't changed our opinion. He was given every opportunity and he has all the resources."
Strawberry, 39, never returned to his apartment at the center Thursday night after a drug counseling session. He shares the apartment with a roommate.
It was the second time he's left the facility and the third time he's violated the terms of his 1999 sentence on drug possession and solicitation of prostitution.
He last left the center in October for a drug binge with a friend. That time, Strawberry turned himself in the next morning. The fact that he has been gone for days now worries those close to him.
After Strawberry's October arrest, prosecutors sought to send him to prison, telling Circuit Court Judge Florence Foster that he was repeatedly violating the breaks that had been given him and had faced no punishment for his actions.
Prosecutors recommended sending Strawberry to the North Florida Reception Center, which has a hospital where Strawberry could get cancer treatments.
Instead, Strawberry was kept in jail for less than a month and fitted with an electronic monitor. He said he felt the monitor would keep him from straying.
TITLE: Reminders of Russian Legacy Linger in Harbin
TEXT: Founded by Russians building a railroad across the northern tip of China, Harbin once boasted the largest population of Russians living abroad. But after suffering the ravages of war, occupation, and the Cultural Revolution, only a handful of Russians now remain. On a recent trip to Harbin, Russell Working searched for traces of Russian life.
In his youth, the old man recalled, when he hauled pails of milk to this northern Chinese city, nearly everyone he met along the boulevards and streets would be speaking Russian.
Central Street resembled Moscow's Arbat, and there were Russian banks, shops, restaurants and hotels, said Vladimir Zinchenko, now a 66-year-old farmer. Twenty-two churches graced the skyline - including the onion-domed St. Nikolai Cathedral, an architectural gem built of wood without nails in the old Russian style.
"It was like a little Moscow or Paris here," he said in his native Russian. "We had an opera here. There were so many magazines and newspapers here, and the cultural life was on a very high level. Unfortunately, all that was destroyed."
Zinchenko is one of a handful of surviving Russians in a city that once had the largest population of immigrants outside the Soviet Union. Built in 1898 by Russians who were extending the railroad across northeastern China to Vla divostok on the Sea of Japan, Har bin was home to perhaps 100,000 Russian citizens in the 1920s, their ranks swollen by refugees first from tsarist oppression and later from the meltdown of their homeland under Bolshevism.
They were a microcosm of the Russian empire. Ukrainian Catholics worshiped at their own church, Jews built two synagogues and a rabbinical school and Tatars established a mosque topped by domes and crescents. Old Believers, a splinter Orthodox sect, chanted their ancient liturgies, and German-speaking Mennonites from Russia's Volga River area, relocated to the Siberian city of Blagoveshchensk, fled across the frozen Amur River in 1928-29 and settled in Harbin.
"It was a free zone," said Svetlana Rusnak, senior researcher at Vladivostok's V.K. Arseniev Primorye Local Studies Museum. "What was impossible in the Russian empire was implemented in Harbin. For instance, in Russia, Jews didn't have the right to own land and had limitations on entering universities and couldn't freely do business in the capital. But in Harbin, there was nothing like that. ... It was a mosaic, a multiethnic society, united by Russian culture."
But all this would vanish under three successive regimes hostile to the Russians of Harbin: Japanese occupiers, the postwar Soviet army and China's communist government.
Harbin today is an industrial city of 2.5 million in Heilongjiang province on the banks of the Sungari River. Its skyline is a jumble of aging smokestacks and high-rises constructed over the last decade. Some of its neighborhoods could be anywhere in China: single-story brick houses with crooked chimneys, alleyways where street vendors produce bags of puffed rice, stores overflowing with sweaters and back-scratchers. Yet throughout the city center, graceful Russian buildings remain, some intact, others remodeled and covered in that favorite Chinese surfacing, shower tiles, or sprouting a glass tower out of what was once a two-story art deco building.
While historic architecture such as the Modern Hotel still lines Central Street, the most obvious signs of Russian Harbin are in its 18 remaining churches. One of them is said to be the only operating Orthodox church in China, but on a recent weekday it was closed, its courtyard heaped with coal mixed with snow. The graceful St. Sophia has been converted to an architectural museum, but it takes its educational mission lightly. The English language signs inside provide an essay on the need for remembering the past but make no mention of the building's history as a church. The walls are decorated with gaudy oil paintings of saints (real icons were painted on wood, not canvas), and over the chancel hangs a copy of Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper."
The first wave of Russian emigration away from Harbin began with the Japanese occupation in 1932-45. Zin chen ko was born in Harbin during this period. Now hospitalized with a heart condition and infections in his feet, he recalled the time in a recent interview with foreign journalists. In the presence of a minder from the Harbin city administration, Zinchenko spoke carefully, making sure to praise the achievements of modern China and the generosity of Chinese who had donated money to pay for his hospital bills.
During wartime, he said, it was illegal for Russians and Chinese to buy rice - that was reserved for the Japanese occupiers - and they were forbidden from listening to foreign radio. Japanese openly called both Chinese and Russians "bastards," and Zinchenko's step-grandfather was jailed and never heard from again. After the war it turned out that the Japanese were using Chinese and Russians as guinea pigs in germ warfare experiments.
Despite all this, Harbin remained essentially a Russian city through the end of the war, said Rusnak, the Vladivostok historian. But the position of Russians began to deteriorate, ironically, with the postwar arrival of Soviet troops who occupied Manchuria under the Yalta agreement.
When the Red Army rolled into Harbin in 1945, expatriates turned out to cheer them and offer bouquets. They soon discovered, however, that these were not disciplined combat troops, but units of former criminals who had been drafted to create an occupation army in Asia. Anarchy broke out in Heilongjiang. Calling themselves liberators, the soldiers sneered at Harbin's migrs as "the White gang" and encouraged the Chinese to loot warehouses of food and show disrespect for Harbin's Russians.
"They basically had no moral restraint," Zinchenko said. "My neighbor had Chinese workers repairing the railroad, and the soldiers killed them all. They even killed each other when they got drunk. They raped women and children. My mother had to dress as an old babushka when she went out. They also killed all our cows and left us with nothing to live on."
Eventually they were replaced by regular army units, and the chaos subsided. The newer soldiers grew fond of Harbin's Russians, and when they returned to Russia in 1946, some of them hung banners out their windows of their departing trains that doubtless could have earned them a prison term in Stalin's Soviet Union. The banners read, "Long live emigrant life!"
With the arrival of Chinese communist forces, many Chinese celebrated the liberation of their country from foreigners. Russians began flooding from Harbin to Australia, Canada, the United States and other countries. Many of them had already fled the ravages of the Russian Revolution, and they were unwilling to live under a communist government.
After the death of Stalin, the Soviet Union itself recruited thousands of Harbiners. Soviet leader Nikita Khru shchev began a policy of cultivating the "virgin lands" of Kazakhstan in 1953, and he sent trains to Harbin to transport settlers to the grasslands of Central Asia, Rusnak said.
"They would load up in train cars voluntarily, because they were patriots," she said. "They were mainly city people, and would be taken to the open steppes. They would come with high heel shoes and nylons and boxes full of books and records. All of that would be left out in the pouring rain."
With the backing of the Chinese government, the Soviet Union pressured Harbin's Russians in an attempt to force them out of China, Zinchenko said. The Soviet embassy would call Chinese employers and urge them to fire Russian technicians, and many Russians lost their jobs and headed back to Russia.
The Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 was the nadir of the Russian experience in Harbin. During the period, Mao Zedong shut down schools and encouraged mobs of students - known as Red Guards - to travel the country, attacking anything seen as bourgeois. Students tortured respected teachers, abused elderly citizens, humiliated old revolutionaries, and battled former friends in bloody confrontations. Mobs destroyed thousands of temples and works of art. Even today, the topic remains sensitive. China's leadership essentially repudiated the Cultural Revolution after Mao's death by trying the "Gang of Four" - including Mao's wife - who supported it. But to open the subject to even a limited, Khrushchev-like re-examination would be to undermine the party itself.
Thus, as Zinchenko tried to discuss the period, a Chinese minder cut off the interview. "It's not convenient to discuss the Cultural Revolution," he said. The conversation moved on to the achievements of modern China.
But the reporters later returned alone under the pretext of giving Russian books to Zinchenko. "Now we can talk freely," he said, and he continued his narrative.
Red Guards hopped trains throughout China, and they swarmed to Harbin, chanting slogans, beating up émigrés, throwing bricks and rocks through the windows of Russian houses, Vladimir recalled. Russians kept their shutters closed all the time. Mobs threw so many rocks onto the roof of Vladimir's home, it buckled on two occasions, and he had to have it replaced. Often, when he was out making his rounds selling milk, a stone hurled by an unseen assailant would clobber Vladimir on the head.
The Russians were not alone in their persecution as China descended into mob rule. Many Maoist restrictions bordered on ludicrous. Such bourgeois decorations as statues, flowers, and even goldfish in aquariums were banned, Zinchenko recalled. Once a barber denied him a haircut until he recited Maoist slogans and bowed to a poster of the party chairman. But the most fateful moment - the spiritual death knell for the remaining Russians of Harbin - came when the Red Guards tore down St. Nikolai Cathedral.
"All the Russians gathered to watch," Zinchenko said. "Everyone was crying. Grandmothers and grandfathers were weeping in the streets, but what could you do? And when the Russians were standing there, the Chinese mocked us, saying, 'Is it a good thing or a bad thing that they are destroying it?'"
In March 1969, Chinese troops invaded Russia, swarming across the frozen Ussuri River to seize Damansky Island. Highways through Harbin were filled with military trucks heading east, and Chinese officials rounded up the remaining Russians and forced them to watch propaganda films about China's victorious army, Zinchenko said. But when Russian border guards repulsed the attack, the officials stopped trumpeting the matter and left Harbin's Russians alone.
Nowadays Zinchenko knows of only seven other full-blooded Russians in Harbin, all of them elderly women in their 80s or 90s. He refused to introduce them to reporters visiting from Russia. They would be too afraid to talk, he said.
Despite a hard life, Zinchenko expresses little bitterness. Indeed, when he became ill recently, many Chinese sent money to pay for his hospitalization after a television station did a spot on him. The Russian consulate in Shenyang made a donation, and it provided him with his first Russian passport. He has never seen his parents' homeland, but now that he can legally visit, he is too ill to travel.
But while Zinchenko receives kinder treatment these days, officials remain uneasy with Harbin's Russian roots. During a recent ceremony to celebrate the city's centennial, bureaucrats invited Zinchenko to attend. Then they gave him a warning.
"They told me, 'You can go to the restaurants and you can sit in on the events, but you should not give any political statements. And you should not tell people about the Russian history that was going on here.'"
TITLE: Milosevic Arrested, Faces Charges
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - Police charged Slobodan Milosevic with inciting his bodyguards to shoot at officers trying to arrest him, a senior law enforcement official said Monday, a day after authorities seized a vast cache of weapons from the former president's mansion.
Milosevic was arrested early Sunday on suspicion of abuse of power and corruption, which carries a maximum five years in prison on conviction. If charged and convicted for inciting his body guards, he could be jailed for an additional 15 years.
More serious charges could be raised in the months ahead, including involvement in political assassinations during his 13-year rule. Police Lieutenant General Sreten Lukic said authorities were trying to determine whether Milosevic loyalists were planning "armed rebellion."
Lukic, who heads Serbia's Public Security, said that Milosevic's bodyguards wounded four policemen early Saturday, one seriously, when they charged his residence.
Three of the bodyguards are in custody, including Sinisa Vucinic, Lukic told reporters. Vucinic, a Milosevic loyalist, was in charge of the armed squad protecting the former president at his upscale villa.
Milosevic, in jail after surrendering before dawn Sunday to end a 26-hour standoff, maintained his innocence. He told an investigative judge that he was guilty of "not a single count from the charge sheet."
The judge ordered him held for at least 30 days while police continue investigations into allegations of criminal conspiracy and diverting millions of dollars of state funds.
After Milosevic was whisked away to Belgrade's Central Prison, police entered his compound in the tree-lined Dedinje district and said they found a major arsenal, including two armored personnel carriers ,30 automatic weapons, three heavy machine guns, an anti-tank grenade launcher, 23 pistols of varying calibers, 30 rifle grenades, two cases of hand grenades and other ammunition.
Milosevic had vowed not to be taken alive, and brandished a pistol during negotiations that led to his surrender. His daughter Marija fired pistol shots after her father agreed to give up, officials said.
On Monday, police said they asked a prosecutor to file charges against Marija.
It was a bizarre end to the political history of a leader who presided over the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, triggering and losing four Balkan wars that left his country in political, economic and spiritual ruin.
Milosevic surrendered only after government negotiators assured him that he would not be handed over immediately to the UN war crimes tribunal that indicted him in 1999 for atrocities his forces allegedly committed against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Milosevic's crackdown in Kosovo triggered a 78-day NATO bombing campaign and the province's takeover by the United Nations and NATO.
Yugoslav authorities face intense international pressure to extradite Milosevic to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. The Bush administration is expected to declare Monday whether steps taken to cooperate with the court so far are enough to avoid a cut off of $50 million in aid to Yugoslavia.
In Washington, President Bush said Milosevic's arrest was an important step toward ending "the tragic era of his brutal dictatorship." He said the United States considers the arrest an initial move toward a trial at the war crimes tribunal.
"We cannot and must not forget the chilling images of terrified women and children herded onto trains, emaciated prisoners interned behind barbed wire and mass graves unearthed by UN investigators," Bush said in a statement.
France, Germany, Italy and NATO also praised Milosevic's arrest and said it should lead to a trial at the war crimes court. Tribunal spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said the court expects Milosevic in The Hague by the end of the year.
TITLE: Sicilian Mafia Finding New Ways of Doing Business
AUTHOR: By Philip Pullella
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: PALERMO, Sicily - In the past, the Mafia tried to influence elections with unequivocal messages, such as a calf's head left on a doorstep in the night.
But times have changed and so has the mob. The Mafia has cleaned up its political act enormously in the past decade. It no longer kills politicians or judges. It even no longer kills its own kin.
It has a new "chief executive officer" - Bernardo Provenzano - a calm, calculating man who favors a truce with the state instead of all-out war, which was the self-destructive strategy relished by his mercurial predecessor, Toto Riina.
What hasn't changed is the Mafia's aim: to make money, to do business. And like any corporation that wants to thrive in tough times, the Mafia knows it has to influence politicians.
As Italy's May 13 general election approaches, officials say the Mafia has no real preferences between the two main blocs, center left or center right. Anyone willing to do business is fine, thank you.
One of the Mafia's most traditional ways of making money is by trying to influence the awarding of public contracts and steering them to companies it controls directly or indirectly.
This is the golden-egg-laying goose the Mafia does not want to kill.
"The Mafia has always been interested in public-works contracts but now we are in a phase in which [trying to steer such contracts toward companies linked to the Mafia] is what interests the Mafia most," said Antonio Ingroia, a leading anti-Mafia magistrate in Palermo.
Italy's fight against the Mafia has made great strides since the twin killings in 1992 of magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino galvanized officials.
Riina was arrested in 1993 after nearly a quarter of a century on the run.
A raft of top bosses and small-fry lieutenants have been nabbed since then and several times police have come close to arresting Provenzano, who has been on the run for 37 years.
A truce - Ingroia does not like the word peace when referring to the Mafia - may give the crime organization more opportunities to reforge political links.
"It is very complicated and difficult for a politician to forge links with a Mafia that is planting bombs and to offer the organization political protection but it is a lot easier to do it with a Mafia that is more silent, with a Mafia that is interested above all in business," Ingroia said.
There were three general elections in Italy in the 1990s -1992, 1994 and 1996 - and the Mafia fine-tuned its political strategy each time.
"Under Riina's leadership, the Mafia tried to get men it controlled elected," Ingroia said.
"Today, the Mafia can reorganize its relations with the political world in a more traditional way, a relationship of an exchange of favors where the politician and the Mafioso each do their own thing but collaborate to help each other when needed."
The current period of calm, Ingroia said, has greatly widened what he called "the political horizon" of the Mafia.
"Today, all the conditions exist to crank up this relationship of an exchange of favors between the Mafia and politics," he said.
Before the 1994 general election, a study by the Eurispes research institute said the Mafia could directly or indirectly control up to 400,000 votes in Sicily, or some 10 percent of island's electorate.
Officials say the Mafia's ability to influence the vote directly has diminished.
Before the recent crackdown, the Mafia was able to control votes through neighborhood lieutenants who, in return, promised jobs or favors.
Sometimes signals were sent to make sure people did not vote a certain way.
During the 1994 electoral campaign, the fiancée of Giuseppe Cipriani, mayor of the hill town of Corleone that is synonymous with the Mafia, found a calf's head on her doorstep.
It was seen as a clear message that the big boys did not want the people to vote for the center left in the national polls, which the center right went on to win.
Things have changed in Corleone and throughout Sicily. The island, once a stronghold of the Christian Democrats, is traditionally conservative and the center right is expected to do well.
Both Giuffrida and Ingroia said teachers had made great strides in the past seven years in breaking the stranglehold of what the Sicilian anti-Mafia movement calls the crime organization's "cultural hegemony" over Sicilians.
"With the work that has been done in schools, at least among new generations, this has changed. The school factor has been key," he said.
"Above all, the Mafia is no longer able to greatly influence the overall political situation [in Sicily]," he added.
Both Giuffrida and Ingroia agreed that the Mafia has no preferred political bedfellows and will try to influence whoever is elected. "The Mafia has never had problems about who is in power, it has always tried to cuddle up to those in charge because they are the ones who control the purse strings of public financing," Giuffrida said.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Bus Crash Kills 14
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Two buses collided on a bridge along Kenya's Indian Ocean coast and plunged into a rain-swollen river, killing at least 14 people and injuring 28, police and hospital officials said Monday. Dozens of people remained missing.
The buses were traveling on a bridge north of the tourist town of Malindi at sunset Sunday when one of them slowed down to overtake a tourist van parked on the bridge, police spokesman Dola Indidis said.
It was struck in the rear by the second bus and both broke through the guardrail, plunging into the crocodile-infested Sabaki River, he said.
Dalai Lama Speaks Out
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, accused by China of making a politically motivated trip to Taiwan, said the plight of his homeland was getting worse as Beijing's rule becomes more harsh.
"The central government of the People's Republic of China, their thinking [is] becoming more hardline," the bespectacled, saffron-robed monk told Taiwan's parliament on the third day of his 10-day visit.
"There is sometimes a little change, but basically thinking very hardline," he said, speaking under a giant portrait of the late founder of the Chinese republic Sun Yat-sen. "So for the moment, things are getting worse and worse."
Woman Hanged
GABORONE, Botswana (Reuters) - A South African woman was hanged for a love-triangle murder in Botswana on Saturday, the first white person and the fourth woman to be executed since independence in 1966, officials said on Monday.
Mariette Bosch, 50, was sentenced in February 2000 to hang for the June 1996 murder of her friend Maria Wolmarans, whose husband she later married.
Bosch was hanged at Gaborone's Central Maximum Prison on Saturday. No other details were given.
Bosch's shattered husband Tienie Wolmarans told Reuters that he, South African consular officials and the hanged woman's lawyers were not told she was going to be executed.
Rebels Kill 35 in Nepal
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) - Maoist rebels attacked police stations in two remote mountain villages in midwest and central Nepal on Monday, killing at least 35 policemen, police said. Three rebels died in the attacks.
The rebels surrounded the police station at Rukumkot, a village in Rukum district about 400 kilometers west of the capital, Katmandu, shortly after midnight, hurling crude bombs and firing shots at officers as they ran for cover.
The five-hour attack left at least 35 policemen dead, and an undetermined number of injured were flown by helicopter to hospitals in nearby towns.
The station held 78 policemen at the time of the attack. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that at least two dozen other officers were missing.
Unsolved Mystery
PARIS (AP) - France's justice minister has asked the courts to reopen a 1924 murder case because of persistent doubts over the verdict, though the man convicted of the slaying died nearly five decades ago.
Justice Minister Marylise Lebranchu requested a judicial commission re-examine the case, judicial sources, speaking on customary condition they not be named, said Monday.
Guillaume Seznec was convicted in the murder of Pierre Quemeneur, a woodcutter and local official of Brittany's Finistere region, 76 years ago.
Quemeneur was last seen the night of May 25, 1923, when he left on a trip with Seznec. Quemeneur's body was never found. Seznec was convicted a year later and sentenced to a life of hard labor in Cayenne, French Guiana. He was pardoned in 1946 and returned to mainland France, where he died at the age of 75.
TITLE: All Eyes Are on the Defending Champions
AUTHOR: By Ben Walker
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Joe Torre hears all the doubters, the ones who keep insisting the New York Yankees' run is coming to an end.
"Eventually, they'll be right," the manager said.
Torre does not plan for them to be correct this October, though. But David Wells believes it's time his old team took a fall.
"Everyone's picking the Yankees, but I don't think they're going to do it this year," he said. "If they win their division, someone is going to bump them off.''
Wells, now pitching for the AL Central-champion Chicago White Sox, might get his chance later this year. In the meantime, there's a lot of baseball to be played.
A day after Toronto started the major league season by beating Texas 8-1 in Puerto Rico, most everyone else on the mainland was set for opening day Monday.
Well, most everyone. Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra, Kevin Brown and John Smoltz were some of the stars already on the disabled list, with Ken Griffey Jr. and Greg Maddux among those ailing.
"Everybody wants to play opening day. You don't want to miss games," said Jeter, sidelined by a strained right quadriceps.
In other places, enthusiasm was building as 10 games were scheduled.
At Coors Field, the Colorado Rockies were eager for a close-up look at newcomer Mike Hampton when he pitched against Mark McGwire and St. Louis. At Camden Yards, Pedro Martinez and the Boston Red Sox were excited to welcome Manny Ramirez to their lineup.
At Jacobs Field, Wells got ready to pitch - and perhaps take advantage of those high strikes that umpires plan to call - against Cleveland's recent arrivals, Juan Gonzalez and Ellis Burks.
And at Yankee Stadium, New York took aim at its fourth straight World Series championship. Yet even after adding Mike Mussina, the Yankees were not about to celebrate too early, even as they prepared to raise another flag.
"When it comes down to it, there's only one day a year when we allow ourselves to get giddy - the parade," Yankees center fielder Bernie Willi ams said.
Roger Clemens was supposed to start for the Yankees against Kansas City, though rain and sleet were in the forecast.
In Cincinnati, the traditional opening-day parade will lead to Cinergy Field, where a 13-meter wall in center field is part of the reconfigured ballpark.
The Reds and new manager Bob Boone face Atlanta, which will start John Burkett because Maddux has a bad toe. Burkett will pitch an opener for his fourth team, having done it for San Francisco, Texas and Florida.
"Not too many guys have done that with an 85-mile-per-hour [136-kilometer-per-hour] fastball,'' Burkett said.
Because of schedule logistics, the Braves and Reds will play only one game. On Tuesday, Pittsburgh will visit Cincinnati, while the Braves will be home against the Mets.
At Florida, new Philadelphia manager Larry Bowa sent Omar Daal, who led the majors with 19 losses last season, against the Marlins.
"I just can't wait for Monday," Daal said. "There's a lot of responsibility with being an ace, but I think I'm smart enough to handle the part."
At Dodger Stadium, new Los Angeles manager Jim Tracy took on Milwaukee. Most likely, Dodgers slugger Gary Sheffield would hear the same boos he got in exhibition play, prompted by his contract demand and trade request.
Baseball's two new stadiums, PNC Park in Pittsburgh and Miller Park in Milwaukee, will hold their first regular-season games within a week.
Elsewhere on Monday:
The San Diego Padres visited San Francisco, where the biggest question mark might be the condition of a field used as late as last week by the XFL's San Francisco Demons.
Tim Raines, 41 and back in baseball after a year off, and the Montreal Expos played the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field.
Oakland played at Seattle, where seven-time Japanese batting champion Ichiro Suzuki was part of the Mariners' lineup.
TITLE: Liverpool Does the Double Over United
AUTHOR: By Stephen Wade
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Man United was soundly beaten on Saturday 2-0 by Liverpool at Anfield, the first time in 22 years that Liverpool has defeated United twice in one season. Liverpool won earlier at Old Trafford 1-0.
With Manchester United all but having clinched its seventh title in the last nine seasons, Charlton moved into eighth place and joined a handful of clubs bidding for places in Europe next season.
Manchester United leads with 70 points in 31 games followed by: Arsenal (57), Leeds (50), Liverpool (49), Ipswich (49), Sunderland (48), Chelsea (45), Charlton (45), Leicester (45).
Andrew Todd scored in the 33rd minute and Shaun Bartlett scored on a 15-meter volley in the final five minutes as Charlton defeated Leicester 2-0 Sunday to move one place ahead of the losers.
Arsenal got a 2-0 home victory over North London rival Tottenham with goals from Frenchmen Robert Pires and Thierry Henry.
New Tottenham manager Glenn Hoddle watched from the stands. Hoddle will take over the club Monday and will coach Spurs in their next match - an FA Cup semifinal, again against Arsenal.
Italy. AS Roma came back from a 1-0 deficit with three goals in 16 minutes on Sunday afternoon for a 3-1 win over Verona, extending its Serie A lead to nine points on goals from Francesco Totti, Gabriel Batistuta and Brazilian Cafu.
No. 2 Juventus slipped with a 1-1 draw against Brescia as Roberto Baggio got the tying goal for Brescia with four minutes left.
Third-place Lazio stayed there despite a 1-0 loss to AC Milan, leaving Lazio 12 points behind the leaders. Parma held onto fourth place with a scoreless draw against regional rival Bologna.
Spain. Barcelona used goals from Gabri Garcia, Marc Overmars, Rivaldo and Dani Garcia to secure a 4-1 victory over Las Palmas Sunday to stay in fourth place, trailing leader and archrival Real Madrid by 10 points.
Moving into fourth place put Barca in the final qualifying spot for next year's Champion League.
Real Madrid defeated Numancia 1-0 Saturday on a Luis Figo free kick. Real will need a sizable improvement when it travels to Istanbul for Tuesday's Champions League quarterfinal with Galatasaray.
Deportivo de la Coruna remained five points behind after a comfortable 4-2 win over Villarreal on Saturday with two goals from Diego Tristan and others from Djalminha and Roy Makaay.
Germany. Ghana midfielder Otto Addo scored a goal and set up two others Sunday as Borussia Dortmund routed FC Kaiserlautern 4-1 in a battle of two Bundesliga title hopefuls.
Dortmund's victory moved it to within one point of leading Bayern Munich and spoiled Kaiserslautern's chance of pulling even with the Bavarians. Bayern leads with 49 points followed by Borussia (48), Schalke (46), Leverkusen (46), Hertha (46) and Kaiserslautern (46).
TITLE: Hingis' Stalking Trial Focusing Attention on Safety Issues
AUTHOR: By Steve Keating
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MIAMI - Memories of the most chilling moment in the history of tennis will be reawakened next week when world No. 1 Martina Hingis takes the stand in the trial of a man accused of stalking her.
Haunted for years by the unwanted presence and affections of Croatian-born Dubravko Rajcevic, the Swiss 20-year-old is scheduled to testify in a Miami-Dade County courtroom on Monday.
Still vivid are the memories of Monica Seles, then ranked No. 1 in the world, clutching her back after being stabbed in April 1993 by an obsessed fan of her greatest rival, Steffi Graf.
Many of the top names in women's tennis, including Lindsay Davenport and the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, have been subpoenaed to give evidence at Rajcevic's trial that begins on Friday and is expected to take a week to complete.
If found guilty, the 45-year-old faces a maximum six years in jail, one year for each of six counts of misdemeanor stalking he is charged with.
Rajcevic, now an Australian citizen, also faces six counts of the lesser charge of trespassing.
"I'm trying to prepare myself for it," said Hingis, who lost to Venus Williams in the semifinals of the Ericsson Open on Thursday." It's definitely on my mind.
"But I hope to get it done with and I won't have to think about it any more."
The trial is almost certain to dredge up what is generally regarded as tennis' darkest episode.
In April 1993, Guenther Parche sent shock waves through the sporting world when he climbed out of the stands during a changeover at a tournament in Hamburg, Germany, and plunged a 12-centimeter knife into Seles' back.
Parche was later found not guilty after a judge ruled he was emotionally retarded and might not have been completely responsible for his actions.
While Seles escaped with minor physical injuries, the attack cut much deeper - changing her and the sport forever.
A traumatized Seles withdrew into seclusion and did not return to competitive tennis for almost three years.
When she made her comeback in Toronto, burly bodyguards had become a permanent courtside fixture as players' safety became a paramount concern of the WTA and tournament organizers.
Hingis' trial is likely to refocus attention on those safety issues and the menacing threat posed by obsessed fans.
"We are just seeking to end the pattern of stalking that we have too often seen lead to tragedy," said Ed Griffith, spokesman for the Miami-Dade County State Attorney's Office. "It's something we take very seriously here."
All the elaborate precautions put in place by the WTA have done little to shield Hingis from the unwanted attentions of Rajcevic, who has tracked the Swiss around the world.
For several years Rajcevic has said he is romantically linked with Hingis, showering her with flowers, gifts, letters and faxes.
The unemployed engineer has been ejected from several tournaments, including last year's Australian Open and the 1999 European indoor event, following complaints from Hingis' family and entourage.
During last year's Ericsson Open, Rajcevic was arrested when he refused to leave the tournament and released on bail after being warned to stay away. Two days later he was spotted again at the tournament and taken into custody, his bail was set at $2 million.
After his arrest, Rajcevic declared, "Why would I ever want to harm her when one day she could be my wife?"
Since his arrest Rajcevic has remained in a Miami-Dade County jail, refusing bail that includes the condition he stay away from Hingis.
"He had the option to leave jail and he chose not to," explained Griffith. "He decided the conditions were too restrictive, the part that he should not contact Ms. Hingis.
"He found that unacceptable."
TITLE: Aging Agassi Hitting His Prime
AUTHOR: By Steven Wine
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KEY BISCAYNE, Florida - On the final point of the Ericsson Open, Andre Agassi appeared to be in trouble.
He scrambled into the corner, behind the baseline and under pressure from Jan-Michael Gambill, who was hovering at the net. But Agassi had one more marvelous shot in him: a crosscourt forehand that whizzed past Gambill for a winner.
Game, set, match, and another title for Agassi. He beat an impressed Gambill 7-6, 6-1, 6-0 Sunday.
Four weeks shy of his 31st birthday, Agassi is playing the best tennis of his life. He has won the three biggest tournaments so far this year - Key Biscayne, Indian Wells two weeks ago and the Australian Open in January. He's the first man to sweep all three since Pete Sampras in 1994, and he's a runaway leader in this year's ATP champions race.
"This is a great point to be at right now," said Agassi, who heads into the clay-court season hoping to make a run at his second French Open title.
Seeded third, Agassi became the first four-time men's champion at Key Biscayne. After surviving a close first set, he dominated every phase, serving well, keeping Gambill away from the net and controlling the baseline rallies to sweep the final nine games. A gracious Gambill raved about his opponent's ability to keep points going.
The No. 19-seeded Gambill recovered from a 2-0 deficit, serving well to reach 6-6 in the first set. But he committed two unforced errors in the tiebreaker and Agassi seized the opening. A drop volley put him up 4-3, and he smacked a forehand winner and service winner on the final two points to take the set.
From there the rout was on. The last two sets took only an hour.
Agassi improved to 22-2 this year, his best start since 1995, when he was 29-2. He said he's a better player than six years ago because he's a better athlete.
"I'm stronger and faster and move better," he said. "When I move better, I have more options. And I have a lot more experience to make good decisions with those options.
"A game like mine, I need to think out there. A lot of other players have been at the top with exceptional weapons. I have to do more thinking, probably, than most guys."
Agassi became the oldest Key Biscayne men's champion. He also won the title in 1990, 1995 and 1996.
"I believe I can do this for a few more years, but I don't know," he said. "I've never been 31 before."
TITLE: Schumacher's Winning Streak Ends at 6
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SAO PAULO, Brazil - McLaren's David Coulthard snapped world champion Michael Schumacher's run of six successive victories Sunday when he won a thrilling Brazilian Grand Prix.
The Briton's first win since the French Grand Prix in July, ahead of second-placed Schumacher and Nick Heidfeld in a Sauber, will be remembered most for the unveiling of a stunning Formula One talent - Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, who displayed daring driving in challenging the leaders throughout the race.
Coulthard and Schumacher were left to scrap for the lead, both changing to intermediate tires after heavy rain began to fall. The German champion spun twice as his famed skill in the rain deserted him.
Coulthard made the decisive move on the 50th lap when he attacked Schumacher as they both passed backmarker Tarso Marques's Minardi and the Scot came out ahead after taking the inside line.
It was Coulthard's 10th victory. Schumacher had won the first two races of the season.
TITLE: Preseason Favorites Meet for NCAA Title
AUTHOR: By Eddie Pells
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINNEAPOLIS - Somebody asked Lute Olson what Arizona's biggest challenge would be against a Duke team few opponents have stopped this season.
Five minutes later, Olson wrapped up his reply.
Duke's Mike Krzyzewski has a similar laundry list about Arizona's strong points.
Such is life when the two teams considered the best in the country in the preseason actually make it to the NCAA title game.
Sure, there have been good matchups in the past, but the Duke-Arizona final Monday night has been almost universally regarded as one of the most exquisitely balanced championship games anyone can remember.
Arizona was ranked first and Duke second in the preseason poll. The Wildcats had some well-documented problems along the way, while Duke made it through with only four defeats despite the temporary loss of starting center Carlos Boozer to a foot injury.
In the end, however, college basketball will get a true champion - not just a good team on a hot streak - a group good enough to cope with its opponents and great expectations.
"It's fitting that the two best teams are meeting to play for the national championship," Duke All-American Shane Battier said. "That's the way it should be. The true champions should have to beat the best teams."
Speaking of that, Arizona is trying to duplicate its 1997 achievement of beating three top-seeded teams on the way to its title. Those Wildcats are the only team to do that.
The differences between 1997 and this year's team are too numerous to list. Most notable among them are the difficulties this year's team has endured, especially the death of Olson's wife, Bobbi, like a mother to many of these players.
On the court, the 1997 team was a plucky underdog; this team has had visions of a title since the first practice.
Duke has taken the identical road to this point as it did in 1992 - Greensboro, North Carolina, Philadelphia, Minneapolis - when it won the second of its back-to-back titles.
Since the UCLA dynasty ended in the 1970s, Duke has established itself as one of the two or three most storied programs in the country. This is its ninth trip to the Final Four since 1986. Two years ago, the Blue Devils were 36-1 and heavy favorites to win the championship, but came up one win short.
They overcame a 22-point deficit in the semifinal against Maryland on Saturday night, and Battier felt it was more than just Xs and Os that got them through.
"It was just a matter of relaxing, looking each other in the eye and saying, 'Hey, let's do the things we've done all year long and do it because we're Duke,'" Battier said. "We expect to do it at a high level."
When it comes to stopping Duke, Olson's many concerns are justified.
The Blue Devils made the most three-pointers (398) in NCAA history and lead the nation by making 10.6 a game. They're more relentless rebounders than most teams give them credit for, and they might have the best point guard in the country in Jason Williams.
Arizona presents its own problems.
All five starters average double-digits in points, and the Wildcats are versatile, able to run with teams who play that style and pound with Big Ten teams like Illinois and Michigan State who try to outmuscle them.
Both teams agree that beating the best would be the most satisfying way to win a championship.
Arizona is a 3 1/2-point underdog in a game in which injuries from Saturday's semifinals could play a factor.
Arizona guard Gilbert Arenas, the Wildcats' leading scorer, was being treated Sunday morning after taking a shot to the chest against Michigan State.
Duke starting guard Chris Duhon collided with Maryland's Steve Blake late in the Blue Devils' 95-84 win, striking his head on the floor. He returned to play in the final minute.
"My head still hurts," he said Sunday. "I'm not feeling any signs of dizziness or anything like that."
q
ST. LOUIS - In the Notre Dame game plan, Ruth Riley is always the first, second and third option.
That never was more evident than in the all-Indiana NCAA final.
Notre Dame went to the women's player of the year all night, and the 1.92-meter center from tiny Macy, Indiana didn't disappoint. Riley had 28 points, 13 rebounds and seven blocked shots in the Irish's 68-66 victory over Purdue on Sunday night.
"I know my teammates are looking for me," Riley said. "I just wanted to finish my career with a win. I was in the zone a little bit there."
More than a little bit. For the capper, Riley hit the clinching free throws with 5.8 seconds to go that produced the Fighting Irish's first NCAA women's title.
Purdue ran post players at Riley in waves in an all-out effort at damage control. The Boilermakers collapsed on her whenever she got the ball and tried their best to get Riley into foul trouble by forcing the ball inside on the offensive end.
None of it affected the tournament's most outstanding player, a consistent scoring and rebounding machine for four seasons at Notre Dame. Riley finished with school career records for blocked shots (370) and rebounds (1,007), and she also holds the school record for field-goal percentage (63 percent).
Alicia Ratay, Notre Dame's second-leading scorer with a 13-point average, was off her game and in foul trouble all night. Ratay, who had 20 points on four-for-five three-point shooting in the semifinals, scored only three points, although her lone three-pointer tied it at 62.
First, she tied it at 66 with 1:01 to go. Then, with the score still tied, she was fouled with 5.8 seconds to go after catching a lob pass.
"I thought my teammates were going to be looking for me and coach always said 'Just throw it up,' and we practiced going after it," Riley said. "It was all heart at the end."
The first free throw bounced in as she contorted her body, and she also bounced in her second shot.
Riley had been in this spot before, in the final of the Big East tournament against Connecticut, and she made only one of two attempts with 5.1 seconds to go to tie it in a game Notre Dame lost on Sue Bird's buzzer-beating shot.
TITLE: Bad Weather Can't Keep McCarron Down
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DULUTH, Georgia - Marathon man Scott McCarron sliced open a finger before slicing up the field to win the $3.3 million BellSouth Classic by three strokes on Sunday.
Californian McCarron survived extremely strong winds to lead throughout the final round on his way to his third PGA Tour victory, his second at the Sugarloaf TPC.
On a day when the field had to complete 36 holes to make up for Thursday's washout, McCarron shot rounds of 72 and 73 to finish at 8-under 280.
Canadian Mike Weir (67), one of only five players to break par in the final round, birdied his final hole to break out of a logjam and claim outright second with a 283.
Phil Mickelson (75) couldn't defend his title successfully, tying for third with Chris Smith (69) and Dennis Paulson (75) with 284.
McCarron cut his left index finger while trying to lock the door in a locker-room toilet shortly before the third round. He applied several bandages and said the wound didn't hinder his grip.
"Always beware of the injured golfer," he continued. "It's been bleeding all day, all over my pants. It finally stopped bleeding an hour ago."
"Having to play 36 holes in very tough conditions, you had to stay really patient, and I felt I did a good job of that," McCarron said. "I knew that par was going to be a really good score.
"I tried to eat some energy bars, because 36 holes on a day like today, the wind takes even more energy out of you. My hands and forearms were starting to cramp a little bit.
"I was drinking so much water to stay hydrated that I was going to the bathroom every two holes."
McCarron, 35, who collected $594,000, thought that his victory was overdue.
"I've been playing some really good golf the last six months. I've had some chances this year and it's so nice to be in the winner's circle again after four years. You have no idea."
Despite this weekend's triumph, he is not in the field for this week's Masters, since tour winners no longer qualify automatically.
He started the final round with a one-shot lead, and extended it to six shots with eight holes left. From that point he needed only to avoid a disaster hole to win, but in these conditions that was easier said than done.
He bogeyed the 12th, 13th and 15th holes to offer his rivals at least a glimmer of hope, but a birdie on the 16th all but assured him of victory, and he safely parred the final two holes to make it a sure thing.
Runner-up Weir qualified for the final two rounds without a shot up his sleeve. Indeed, he began his final round at the 10th hole, and played his final nine in front of just a handful of spectators.
"It was a really good day," he said. "I left a couple out there but you can't ask for much more.
"It was a lot different being on the other side of the course [from the other leaders], not in the mix of everything. It was still exciting the last few holes, even though the other leaders were on the other side."
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Student Unrest
WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana (AP) - Students lighted fires around the Purdue campus Sunday night after the Boilermakers lost to Notre Dame in the NCAA women's basketball championship in St. Louis.
No injuries were reported, and Purdue spokeswoman Jeanne Norberg said five people had been arrested.
State police used tear gas to break up crowds of students who also threw rocks and launched bottle rockets at officers, a state police spokeswoman told WRTV in Indianapolis.
Nomar Faces Surgery
BOSTON (AP) - Boston Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra might spend opening day in an operating room.
Garciaparra, who has a split tendon in his wrist that sidelined him for much of spring training, was scheduled to undergo surgery Monday at the UMass Medical Center, the Boston Herald reported.
The Boston Globe said Garciaparra could have surgery as early as Monday and at least by Wednesday.
Garciaparra has been mulling his options for the past week, trying to decide if continued rest would allow the injury to heal - or if he should have the operation that would force him to miss up to 16 weeks.
The three-time All Star was placed on the 15-day disabled list Saturday, retroactive to March 22.
Safin Regains Top Spot
LONDON (Reuters) - Marat Safin regained the world No. 1 spot in the ATP's Entry System Monday despite a second-round defeat in last week's Ericsson Open.
The Russian leapfrogged Bra zil's Gustavo Kuer ten into top spot because he equaled his 2000 performance in Miami whereas Kuerten, runner-up last year, fell in the third round this time.
Safin has 4,270 points to Kuerten's 4,150. The Entry System rankings are based on results over a rolling 12-month period and are used to determine seedings for tournaments.
Ericsson champion Andre Agassi made up ground on the top two and consolidated his third-place ranking.
He now has 3,640 points - 800 more than Pete Sampras in fourth, but 510 behind Kuerten.
Tigers Ink Higginson
DETROIT (Reuters) - The long-rumored contract extension for Bobby Higginson became official on Sunday when the Detroit Tigers signed the left fielder to a four-year deal through the 2005 season.
Financial terms were not disclosed for Higginson, who said he wanted to finalize the deal by opening day. Previous reports indicated Higginson, who was eligible for free agency after the season, was seeking about $10 million per year while the team was offering about $8 million. He made $4.425 million last season.
He had the best season of his career in 2000, hitting .300 with 30 homers and 102 RBI.
Jarrett Secures Lead
FORT WORTH (Reuters) - Dale Jarrett's late charge on Sunday earned him a 26th trip to victory lane.
Jarrett captured the NASCAR Harrah's 500 at Texas Motor Speedway to become the first two-time winner on the Winston Cup circuit this season.
In a wide-open race that featured several lead changes, Jarrett emerged from a six-car logjam in the final 25 laps. Driving his No. 88 Ford Taurus, he took the lead on turn two on lap 328 of the 334-lap race and never relinquished it.
Seeking his second Winston Cup championship in three years, Jarrett extended his lead atop the standings to 75 points on Jeff Gordon.
Henderson Sent Down
SAN DIEGO (AP) - Rickey Henderson, who joined the San Diego Padres with just two weeks left in spring training, was reassigned to the minor league camp on Sunday as the team cut to its opening day roster of 25.
Padres general manager Kevin Towers said last week there was a 50-50 chance Henderson would start the season in the minors as he continued to get in playing shape.
Henderson, considered the greatest leadoff hitter in baseball history, needs three walks to break Babe Ruth's record of 2,062 and 68 runs to break Ty Cobb's record of 2,245. He also needs 86 hits to become the 25th player in baseball history to reach 3,000.
TITLE: Hermitage Welcomes Waterman
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: With the world becoming more and more cosmopolitan, and performing arts schools in classical music, opera and ballet becoming ever more competitive, it takes courage for a young performer to be original.
British violinist Ruth Waterman has always been a daring and imaginative performer - and these are the qualities she now encourages in her students during lectures and master classes at London's Royal Academy of Music, Oxford University and other internationally acclaimed institutions. This month, violin students from the St. Petersburg Conservatory were absorbing Waterman's skills and advice.
Waterman, whose revelatory virtuoso interpretations, most particularly of Johann Sebastian Bach, won her high international acclaim, made her first appearance on the international musical scene when Yehudi Menuhin invited the then 19-year-old violinist to replace Nathan Milstein at the Bath Festival. The performance was a highlight of the festival and launched a remarkable career for a musician who has since played with the London Symphony, the BBC Symphony, the English Chamber Orchestra and other great orchestra .
Waterman, who was invited to St. Petersburg by the Hermitage Musical Academy, has become the first British musician ever to perform at the museum. The experience left her thrilled and moved. "I like to perform at a venue with wonderful atmosphere and acoustics. The Hermitage proved a dream of a place to perform," she smiled. "Almost any music would be wonderful there."
She was brought up with a very classical repertoire, being taught Mozart, Beethoven and Bach from a very early age. "This is quite unusual these days - most violin teachers like to teach the romantic repertoire first," she points out. Waterman says quite openly that she never performs contemporary music. "I am not very familiar with that music and so I don't love it. In the meantime, I feel there is so much work to be done on the interpretation of the older composers, so I am happy just to stay in the past."
She likes to find rare and unusual pieces to interpret. During her brief stay in St. Petersburg, she discovered "Albumblatt," an obscure work by Alexander Glazunov, which many of her Russian colleagues had never even heard and which she looks set to introduce to England.
Every musician eventually develops his own method of plunging into the mind and soul of a composer whose works he rehearses and performs. Waterman finds that looking into composers' original manuscripts is very useful from an interpretive point of view. "But I am not really a historian and don't consider myself an academic," Waterman says. "I just feel it is a great responsibility to try and understand what the composer was meaning when he wrote his marks and notations on the paper. When Bach writes a quarter note, for example, it doesn't mean the same as Brahms' or Gershwin's quarter notes."
In cases when Waterman is unfamiliar with a certain composer, she listens to his or her entire repertoire. "But the main thing really is the dialogue between me and the score," she says. "I have to ask the score 'what are you saying?' It is not often just a melody but a pattern or a fantasy. So I am getting to know what the harmony is, the rhythm and the characters - and how I respond emotionally to that music." It needs to be as clear as possible to the performer what the music consists of, without any preconceived ideas.
Brought up in a family of musicians, Waterman has been listening to recordings of the greatest violinists from the moment she was born. Interestingly though, when thinking of a musician who helped her understand music better, she names pianists and singers.
American pianist and conductor Rosalyn Tureck has become a friend of the family and gave Waterman a few lessons. "She was showing me things which you can't do on a violin, and when I pointed this out to her she would just ignore me, saying 'just do it anyway,'" Waterman recalls. "This seemingly unreasonable attitude was wonderful because it really made me think of finding a way of doing all this on a violin. It forced me to think in a much more creative way than my violin teachers had suggested."
But during her lecture-recitals, Waterman - before actually giving a performance - welcomes her audiences listening to fragments of other musicians' interpretations so that they can compare and understand her approach.
The world has become smaller, and most very well-known performers travel all over the world, and their recordings are available in even most far-flung parts of the planet. "The students have the sound of the world's greatest masters in their ears, and when I try to get them to play from their own souls they are very much afraid to do that," Waterman says.
Admitting that enforcing creativity and individualism is difficult now, and subjective international competition encourages conformity rather than originality, the musician still believes bright talents will shine through.
"Though I don't know how this situation can be helped generally and globally, I do think teachers should inculcate a sense of the interpreter's responsibility to the composer in their students, and encourage them to be brave," she said." At least, this is what I am trying to do."
During the master classes at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Waterman was amazed by the technical level of the students who performed for her. "If anything, I would hope that the teachers devoted more and more time to every student, giving them classes in interpretation, in various different styles," Waterman said.
"Mine is a very slow teaching method," Waterman adds. "I teach by asking questions like, for instance: Which is the most intense harmony of this melody? I give no answers, but when they give an answer we discuss it and try to understand how they respond emotionally. I don't want any clones of myself or of any great violinists. There would be no point."