SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #659 (26), Friday, April 6, 2001
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TITLE: TIMELINE
TEXT: NTV'S WEEK
A brief look at the tumultuous week for NTV television, leading to Thursday's announcement of a conciliatory committee to try and find a compromise.
. Monday: A Saratov court bans an NTV shareholders meeting for Tuesday, called by state-dominated gas monopoly Gazprom. Gazprom holds 46 percent of the company's shares, and planned the meeting to dump Media-MOST head Vladimir Gu sin sky and managers appointed by him.
. Tuesday: Yevgeny Kiselyov, general director of NTV, arrives at Gazprom's offices to present the ruling by the court, only to see a paper signed by the same judge reversing his decision.
The meeting goes ahead, and NTV shareholder and creditor Gazprom-Media wins backing to oust Gusinsky and his associates from the board of directors and appoint new management.
U.S. investment banker Boris Jordan is appointed general director Vladimir Kulistikov, a former NTV journalist who went over to state-run media last fall, is brought back as chief editor.
NTV journalists call the decision illegal, and say they will stick by Kiselyov as general director.
Jordan says he will ask Gazprom to restructure NTV's debts and speed up negotiations with a Ted Turner-led consortium of investors. He pledges to defend NTV journalists from pressure coming either from the government or from shareholders.
. Wednesday: NTV replaces most of its regular programs with round-the-clock broadcasts from its offices, which are manned throughout the night by supporters and staff after rumors spread that the new management might show up with their own security guards.
Kiselyov says he and his colleagues will not negotiate with the management forced on them by Gaz prom. "Making a deal with racketeers is just as unacceptable as making a deal with terrorists," Kiselyov says.
NTV airs hourly news programs, but drops its usual array of serials, films and entertainment programs.
Meanwhile, CNN founder Ted Turner announces that he has struck a deal with Vladimir Gusinsky to buy stakes in several of his Media-MOST companies. Gusinsky describes the sale as economically disadvantageous, but politically necessary.
. Thursday: NTV management agrees to sit down with Gazprom-Media representatives and hammer out a compromise deal, but say they still refuse to accept the takeover.
TITLE: NTV, Gazprom Agree To Meeting
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Embattled NTV management agreed Thursday to sit down with Gazprom-Media representatives and hammer out a compromise to their protest of the takeover of the channel by the subsidiary of state-controlled gas giant Gazprom.
Gazprom-Media head Alfred Kokh said after a two-hour meeting with NTV general director Yevgeny Kiselyov that they had decided to form a negotiating team with up to 10 people from each camp. A first meeting was scheduled for Friday at Media-MOST headquarters.
"I am quite pleased that a dialogue has begun," said Kokh, who was named NTV chairman at a controversial shareholders meeting earlier this week.
Asked what issues would first be approached, Kokh said, "First and foremost personnel decisions, of course."
The agreement to form a conciliatory commission was the first break in a standoff that began Tuesday when Gazprom-Media voted to oust the present management at the shareholders meeting. Since then, NTV employees have worked in protest mode, canceling regular programming to report just news (see Timeline, page 2).
The events of this week encapsulate a year-long conflict between Gazprom and Media-MOST. Gazprom says it has the right to take over NTV because of the millions of dollars in debts it had to cover for Media-MOST. In turn, Media-MOST says it is being targeted for its news coverage that has been critical of the Kremlin.
NTV resumed its usual broadcasting Thursday at about 3 p.m. Thursday on the orders of Media-MOST.
Kiselyov said the programming resumed "in the interests of our viewers."
"But we will not stop protesting," he added. "It [the protest] will take different forms. We stand by our previous position. We do not recognize the decision that is being imposed upon us and will continue to work as we did before."
Meanwhile, CNN founder Ted Turner remained silent about the status of his negotiations with Gazprom. Turner on Wednesday confirmed that he had agreed to buy a majority of NTV founder Vladimir Gusinsky's shares in Media-MOST through his Turner International Ventures. The investment vehicle has no links to Turner's position as vice chairman of AOL Time Warner.
U.S. investment banker Boris Jordan, who was appointed NTV general director this week, said that he intended to meet with Turner's representatives on Friday.
Jordan and Kokh will be part of the commission meeting with NTV staff Friday, Kokh said. The members from NTV's side were not announced.
All decisions made by the group would have to be agreed upon unanimously, Gazprom-Media and NTV officials said. Implementation of the decision would be mandatory.
Privately, NTV journalists said they doubted that the negotiators would be able to reach any compromise.
Kokh said he was against keeping Kiselyov as general director. "This is the prerogative of a shareholder," he said. "He's a good journalist but a bad manager."
However, Kokh said he would not mind placing Kiselyov in the role of general editor with a limited say over financial matters.
While Kokh spent the afternoon at NTV, Jordan said he wouldn't step foot inside the offices while the employees were protesting.
Kiselyov said he had received a letter from Jordan asking him to hand over documentation of the channel's doings and the official NTV stamp.
Kiselyov said that he was addressed as chief accountant instead of chief editor in the letter.
"I am not going to hand over the affairs to Jordan," he said.
Jordan expressed confusion about the news of Turner's deal to purchase Gusinsky's shares.
"I would be surprised to find out that Turner actually bought these shares without first consulting Gaz prom-Media and Capital Group," Jordan told the newspaper Izvestia.
Capital Group is the parent company of Capital Management Research, a U.S. investment fund that holds a 4.5 percent stake in NTV. It played a pivotal role in Tuesday's shareholders meeting by giving Gazprom-Media enough shares to muster voting power for a quorum.
It was unclear what Capital Management Research's relationship would be with Gazprom-Media in the future and how their ties would affect Turner's deal to buy into NTV.
TITLE: City Radio Station Threatened by Button Shift
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While protests have been taking place all over the country against the management takeover of NTV television, another change in the media landscape - this time in St. Petersburg - has been attracting its fair share of controversy amid mutterings of an information war.
On April 1, Petersburg Radio was shifted from the "first button" to the "third button" of the wired receiver sets in Soviet-era apartments that only broadcast fixed channels. Now broadcasting on the first channel is the state-run station Radio Rossiya.
The move from first to third channel is significant because the third signal is much weaker. In apartments where the built-in receiver has only one channel rather than three, the station has disappeared entirely, and can now only be heard on a standard radio.
"Petersburg Radio - which has existed for 76 years - will die. It's dead already," said Lev Markhasyov, the station's deputy general director.
Several thousand city residents, mostly elderly people - the station's most faithful listeners - staged a demonstration outside the studios of Petersburg Radio on Italianskaya Ulitsa on Monday and Tuesday, collecting signatures in defense of the station.
The change of channel came after the Press Ministry ordered that the first button be handed over to Radio Rossiya on March 28, enforcing a 1997 decree by former president Boris Yeltsin.
The decree gave the first button to Radio Rossiya and the second to state-run Radio Mayak in all regions of the country, but made an exception for Petersburg Radio, which was at the time owned by the government along with its local television counterpart, known then as Channel 5.
In 1997, the entire company was controversially liquidated by Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and privatized, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs.
The new company obtained a license in 1998 to continue broadcasting on the first channel. According to Boris Grumbkov, a lawyer for Petersburg Radio, that license is valid until 2003. The Press Ministry's order overturns it, however.
Apart from losing most of its approximately 2 1/2 million listeners to Radio Rossiya, said Markhasyov, Petersburg Radio will lose much of its advertising revenue, since the quality of the frequency is poor and reaches a fraction of its original audience.
"We live by selling advertizing, which also pays our salaries," Mark hasyov said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "In the three days since our channel was moved, we haven't had a single call from advertisers. Furthermore, those who signed deals with us for April are calling and demanding their money back."
Markhasyov said that by moving Radio Petersburg - which he admitted was a pro-Yakovlev outlet - to the third button, the government was trying to monopolize information space and use the media to increase its influence. Around 90 percent of the company is now owned by the St. Petersburg and Lenoblast administrations, according to Grumbkov.
Markhasyov based his argument on the appointment of Marina Fokina as head of the St. Petersburg department of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Company (VGTRK), which owns Radio Rossiya and Radio Mayak, as well as RTR television. Fokina moved to the job in July 2000. Mark hasyov said that Petersburg Radio has since lost many of its employees to Radio Rossiya.
"Fokina arrived soon after the appointment of Governor General Viktor Cherkesov," said Markhasyov, referring to the presidential representative for the Northwest region.
"With his support, she started working on moving Radio Rossiya to the first button."
Fokina could not be reached on Thursday despite repeated attempts.
Earlier this week, however, she was quoted by Interfax as saying, "St. Petersburg need not worry - there are good technical opportunities for [Petersburg Radio] to survive and keep its audience."
Alexander Afanasyev, spokesperson for Gov. Yakovlev, downplayed the control angle of the channel move.
"Yakovlev doesn't need a lever of influence such as [Petersburg] radio," Afanasyev said on Thursday. "His influence [on the city] is there in his work, and people see it.
He also said Alexander Po tek hin, head of the City Media Committee and a member of the board of directors of Petersburg Radio and Television Company, was still in talks with the Press Ministry regarding the issue. He added that Yakovlev would take up the matter with President Putin, but he did not say when.
Leonid Dubshan, a journalist with Radio Liberty who has experience working for both Petersburg Radio and Radio Rossiya, said that while he regretted the channel move, he was not entirely sympathetic.
"Back in 1996, my colleagues and I had a lot of pressure [from Petersburg Radio's editors] who tried to make us say what they wanted us to. Many of us left for Radio Rossiya, while many others lost jobs after Petersburg Radio was privatized," said Dubshan.
"Radio Rossiya is still more professional, more liberal. In Yeltsin's time, it was one of the best. But one can still see the government behind this move."
Yury Vdovin of the human rights group Citizen's Watch drew parallels with with move by Gazprom to take control of NTV television.
"The president's policy is to attain a 100 percent monopoly on information - this is what Radio Rossiya is trying to do, and the same is happening with NTV," said Vdovin on Thursday. "In St. Petersburg [we are seeing] a battle between Yakovlev and Cherkesov. The latter is more capable of winning." Cherkesov could not be reached for comment.
Grumbkov said he was preparing to appeal the Press Ministry's decision over what he called "this collision of decrees." He said that Petersburg Radio's license and its popularity gave it a stronger claim to the first channel than Radio Rossiya.
Lev Tsaryov, the head of the regional department of the Press Ministry, declined to comment on Thursday. "I don't have anything to say - I learned about the [channel switch] on the Internet," he said. "But I would think there is no way back now that the ministry has made its decision."
Meanwhile, more protests are planned for next week.
"Most of us are used to a particular way of life," said pensioner Irina Do rov skaya. "They listen to their favourite radio programs on the only radio channel they have. My favorite always ran at 9:30 a.m., but Radio Rossiya just got rid of it."
TITLE: Turner Deal's Goal To Take Heat Off NTV
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff and Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - CNN founder Ted Turner announced Wednesday that he has struck a deal with Vladimir Gusinsky to buy stakes in several of his Media-MOST companies.
"While we are disappointed with the recent disruptive developments regarding NTV, we look forward with enthusiasm to finalizing an agreement with Gazprom and Gazprom-Media that will ensure the ongoing independence of NTV," Turner said in a statement.
The deal was signed Tuesday, the same day Gusinsky and his associates were ousted from the board of directors at a shareholders meeting called by Gazprom-Media. The board appointed new management, including American investment banker Boris Jordan as general director to replace Yevgeny Kiselyov. The takeover outraged NTV journalists, who began their own on-air protest.
Although Gusinsky said Gazprom-Media rushed the shareholders meeting to prevent the Turner deal, it appeared that Turner could play a face-saving role and make compromise possible.
Turner has bought stakes in NTV, the second-tier network TNT and NTV Plus, the satellite television service, said Brian Faw, Turner's spokesperson, by telephone from New York. Faw declined to put a price on the deal or give the size of the stakes, other than to say that Turner will remain a minority shareholder.
CNN reported Turner bought out a portion of Gusinsky's stakes for $225 million, which was lower than the original figure of $300 million. A source close to the negotiations said Turner valued all of NTV at about $200 million. Another source said Turner hopes to have about 30 percent of NTV.
"In earlier negotiations with Gazprom, we both agreed that no one party should have control of NTV and we are pursuing that course," Turner said in his statement.
Gusinsky, who is in Spain fighting extradition to Russia, spoke via satellite with NTV staff late Monday. He told them of the pending deal and said he would transfer all of his voting rights to Turner. "The idea is the following: 49.5 percent will be owned by Turner and us. There will be a certain proportion," Gusinsky said, according to a transcript published Wednesday in Kommersant.
Gusinsky said he was prepared to accept a lower price for NTV to guarantee its freedom. "I will tell you directly that the conditions we are discussing with Turner are economically very disadvantageous. But we are accepting these conditions only to preserve the possibility of your independent work."
"Turner is de facto a political shareholder. His participation creates additional problems for the Russian authorities to exert pressure on you."
Jordan himself spoke out, reasserting his claim to the general director's chair after discussing NTV's situation with Press Minister Mikhail Lesin.
He reiterated the sorry state of NTV's accounts, stating that NTV was in a state of default and owed more than $80 million to creditors.
"Simply put, finances are the problem," Jordan said. He said he hopes to open up a constructive dialogue with employees and Kiselyov. "If NTV wants to be independent, it needs to be financially strong."
Earlier this year, Turner announced the existence of a consortium of foreign investors who were looking to buy a stake in Media-MOST, at the same time providing much-needed cash flow.
It remained unclear who remains in Turner's consortium, which he helped put together last year and included billionaire financier George Soros, the Swedish Modern Times Group, Capital Research Management and Russian business maverick Grigory Beryozkin. Soros declined to comment Wednesday.
The agreement between Turner and Gusinsky is expected to take two or three months to finalize.
Turner said his desire was to secure the future of NTV.
"I am committed to the promotion of free and open media around the world, and highly value the journalistic staff that drives NTV and consider them to be highly professional and dependable. Our goal is to secure the financial underpinnings of the company and establish a mechanism for growing the business in order to strengthen NTV's prominence and scope throughout Russia."
TITLE: President Receives City's Plea
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg journalists and politicians gathered Thursday to condemn Gazprom management's takeover of NTV, and have sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin protesting against what they called "the destruction of the best and most professional Russian television channel."
"The destruction of this channel will inevitably [herald] similar actions towards private media in many regions of Russia," said the letter, which was written by board members of the St. Petersburg Union of Journalists.
Around 60 journalists from several local newspapers, radio and television stations packed into the House of Journalists on Thursday morning to hear the letter read, and to vote on its contents with a show of hands.
Also present was Yury Zinchuk, the head of NTV's St. Petersburg bureau. Zinchuk said the station's local office was only working on its news programs presently. He added that the bureau still considered Yevgeny Kiselyov as its general director.
"If new managers take control [of NTV], I will quit my job here," Zinchuk told The St. Petersburg Times on Wedensday, adding that any change in leadership would inevitably bring a change in the station's "information policy."
Igor Sidorov, chairman of the St. Petersburg Union of Journalists, agreed. "As every journalist knows, a change in editor means a change in a media company's policy."
"If all these changes are only about financial questions, then why change the editor?"
The letter also called on Putin to support openly the cause of independent journalism, and to apply the same standards to state and non-state media. It further called on the president to reduce government interference in state-run media outlets.
Ruslan Linkov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Democratic Russia party, called Gazprom's actions "monstrous"
"If all journalists unite to support NTV, it will win. But I am afraid that NTV is only the start. Once regional leaders see that such methods work, they will understand that they can do the same to local independent media," he said.
State Duma Deputy Alexander Nevzorov, who before his election in 1999 was media advisor to Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and who earned a reputation as a muckracking journalist, attacked NTV and the "hysteria" surrounding the takeover.
"The most ridiculous aspect of the whole story is that NTV's [journalists] consider themselves as [the source of] the truth," Nevzorov said in remarks quoted by Interfax. "In fact, the fight for NTV ... is a fight for a multiplicity of lies."
"By calling itself the only independent TV channel, NTV insinuates that all the others ... are liars and in someone's pocket."
The journalists' meeting came a day after thousands of city residents signed a petition, entitled "The Defense of Free Speech and NTV," outside Gor kov skaya metro station on the Petrograd Side.
NTV journalist Andrei Radin said that the local bureau had been swamped with calls, and broadcast an appeal for supporters to gather outside the metro station. It was not clear who organized the signature gathering, however. Radin said that NTV was not responsible for the petition. The signatures were later taken to the offices of the local Yabloko party.
"NTV talks to us in a language we can understand," said pensioner Anna Bogina, 68, who came to sign the petition. "I want NTV to fight on ... because they fight for us."
"I came here because I don't like when my vote is only used in elections," said tour guide Marina Ma de yeva, 39. "People should have the right to participate in decisions like the future of NTV."
"If the [shareholders] consider that it's worth changing the company's leaders, let them do it, as long as NTV keeps saying what it thinks," said student Dmitry Kukharev, 18.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Ivanov, Powell To Meet
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov is to meet U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in Paris next week on the sidelines of an international meeting on Yugoslavia, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
A ministry statement said the two men would "continue discussion of key issues on the Russian-American political agenda."
Relations between Moscow and Washington have been strained by an espionage scandal. Moscow has also been upset by U.S. statements suggesting that Russia has encouraged nuclear proliferation and constitutes a threat to security.
Assault Arrests Made
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Police detained three suspects in connection with the recent assault on a senior investigator at the City Prosecutor's Office, Interfax reported on Tuesday.
Nina Tkachenko, 52, the chief investigator into the murder of lawmaker Viktor Novosyolov, was attacked and beaten March 20. According to Alexander Smir nov, head of the local criminal investigations department, 28-year-old Andrei So lo mennikov, 27-year-old Ser gei Berezhnoi and 20-year-old Tatyana Shevchenko - all of whom have previous convictions - are suspected of eight robberies and beatings, including the assault of Tkachenko.
Businessman Shot
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Va le ry Mikhailov, a 42-year-old St. Petersburg businessman, was found shot dead in the elevator near his apartment in the city's northern Vyborgsky district, Interfax reported on Wednesday.
Police found a gun with a silencer and ammunition on the crime scene, according to Interfax.
According to Gennady Ryabov, spokesman for the City Prosecutor's Office, Mikhailov - who was a co-founder of several firms and the owner of a number of shops in the city - the murder may have been owing to a dispute between rival criminal organizations.
Bootleg Vodka Seized
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - City police have uncovered an underground vodka distillery and seized more than 10,000 bottles of bootleg liquor, Interfax reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, which cited sources in the city's Anti-Organized Crime Squad and Economic Crimes Department, police detained five people, all local residents, as they were trying to sell 8,000 bottles of vodka with counterfeit excise stamps to an undercover officer. The liquor was worth around 180,000 rubles ($6,360), said the report.
Police later discovered the distillery and seized another 1,200 bottles of alcohol, 1,200 liters of spirit, 4,000 counterfeit excise stamps and 26,000 vodka labels, Interfax said.
Tax Officer Busted
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Eduard Simonenko, a 30-year-old former captain in the St. Petersburg Tax Police, was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for extortion and bribe-taking, local press reported Wednesday.
According to a report in Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosti, Simonenko as a tax officer extorted 100,000 rubles ($3,530) from an unidentified local businessman after he uncovered several technical violations in the activity of the businessman's firm. Simonenko later settled for half that amount.
According to the report, the businessman informed the police, who arrested Simonenko as the money was being handed over. Simonenko's lawyer intends to appeal, said the paper.
Diplomats Leave
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Four U.S. diplomats expelled from Moscow in a spy spat have returned to the United States, news agencies reported on Thursday.
They quoted diplomatic sources saying the four had flown home on Wednesday, within the 10-day grace period they were given after Russian authorities retaliated for Washington's expulsion of four of its own diplomats.
Both Russia and the United States demanded a further 46 of the other's officials leave their posts and go home by July, in the worst spy row to hit Moscow-Washington relations since the end of the Cold War.
Mori To Look at Islands
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Saturday will inspect by air four Russian-held islands, a dispute over which is the main obstacle to a post-war peace treaty between the two nations.
Top government spokesman Yasuo Fukuda said Thursday that Mori, set to be replaced as premier later this month, would be the first Japanese prime minister to make such a trip in two decades.
Mori and President Vladimir Putin agreed late last month to redouble their efforts to end a row over the islands, seized by Soviet troops in the final days of World War II.
TITLE: Putin: Nation Is Not Out of the Woods Yet
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Pu tin on Tuesday applauded the relative political and economic stability achieved over the past year, but warned that it was too early for the government to rest on its laurels, and that much work was still needed to transform stability into growth and improved living conditions.
"The disintegration of the country has been stopped," Putin said in his second state-of-the-nation address since being elected a year ago.
"Our current economic stability is relative. It's solely up to us either to secure the favorable conditions for our development and the greater well-being of the [Russian] people or to let this unique chance slip away."
The hour-long speech was largely perceived as a victory for liberal forces within the government, especially in its references to the economy and judicial reform. However, Putin stuck to the Kremlin's generally hawkish line on the war in Chech nya, without addressing international concern about human rights violations in the breakaway republic.
Putin attributed the stability to his efforts to strengthen the so-called vertical line of executive power, and praised his seven envoys in the federal administrative districts for "carrying the bulk of the work on their shoulders." One of the achievements he singled out was the near completion of bringing regional legislation in line with federal laws.
Putin spoke extensively on judicial reform, calling for many of the changes foreseen by the liberal program developed by his old-time ally in the presidential administration, Dmitry Kozak.
He criticized what he called an "outdated" legal system full of unclear and often contradictory legislation, which allowed for arbitrariness and led to the creation of a "gray justice system."
"Citizens who have lost hope of finding justice in the courtroom are looking for other, less legal ways out. Sometimes they realize that illegal means often give them a better chance of getting a fair decision. And that undermines their trust in the state."
Putin lashed out at the country's bloated, corruption-riddled bureaucratic apparatus, which he also accused of undercutting public trust in the government, as well as "suppressing business initiative and activity."
The huge administrative machine, now numbering over a million people, should be slashed, Putin said, without elaborating on figures for downsizing.
On several occasions, the president expressed displeasure with the persistently low standard of living. Other social issues mentioned were the outdated labor code, which Putin criticized as not "answering to the needs of a market economy," and often getting ignored altogether. He also called for the coexistence of paid and free services in both education and health care.
Putin made no mention of relations with the U.S., which have been growing more and more tense since November's election of George W. Bush. The few comments that were devoted to foreign policy focused on relations with Europe and former Soviet states, and reiterated Russia's customary criticism of NATO's attempts to dictate its terms on the international scene and to usurp the authority of the UN Security Council.
Putin likewise failed to comment on allegations that the Kremlin is curtailing press freedom, on the upcoming military reform, and on rampant crime.
Several observers commented on the differences between this speech and the one Putin made last year, four months after being elected.
"While his address last year might be viewed as a declaration, this time it could be described as a business plan," Igor Bunin, director of the Center for Political Technologies, told Reuters.
The Duma's deputy speaker, Irina Kha kamada, of the liberal Union of Right Forces (SPS) party agreed. She compared Putin's speech to "a crisis manager's instruction to the board of directors of a corporation called Russia."
Khakamada's fellow liberals denounced the address as being too short on detail.
Additional reporting by Andrei Zolotov Jr.
TITLE: Moscow, EU To Put Security, Defense at Heart of Summit
AUTHOR: By Jon Boyle
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia and the European Union, gearing up for a summit in Mos cow next month, said on Thursday that they were expanding their ever deepening contacts to embrace security issues.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he had brought fresh proposals to Moscow on joint cooperation with Russia on defense and security.
The former Spanish foreign minister and NATO secretary general met Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, new Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and the incoming head of the influential Presidential Security Council during his stay.
"We have some concrete proposals of how to continue working together on the field of crisis management," Solana told reporters after meeting Ivanov, a reference to the greater role in solving regional conflicts sought by the EU.
The Union wants to set up a 60,000-strong rapid reaction force by 2003 which will be able to act without the full involvement of NATO. Russia has expressed an interest and could participate in operations with the new force.
"As you know, the European Union is assuming new responsibilities in the field of crisis management, including military responsibilities," said Solana, who ran NATO during its 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia.
"It would like to have transparent cooperation with the Russian Federation," he said. "We would like also to have some debate at the level of the summit on questions pertaining to crisis management," he added.
Solana's discussions helped prepare the summit, set for May 17, between EU leaders and President Vladimir Putin, at which economic, energy and security issues will be discussed.
Spurned by the United States as a "strategic partner," Russia has moved to intensify links with the European Union, its major trading partner.
In his state-of-the-nation address to parliament on Tuesday, Putin made no mention of the United States, but pointedly emphasized moves towards partnership with the European Union.
"Relations with the European Union are of a strategic nature for Russia," Ivanov said. "And today, with Mr. Solana's visit, we are opening up a new page in our interaction, I mean on security and defense issues."
EU policy in this field was in its formative stage, he said, but Moscow was interested in cooperation because it believed collective efforts were needed to solve problems confronting the international community.
Russian peace keepers work alongside European soldiers in Bosnia and Kosovo, but Moscow's role in any future operation with the European rapid reaction force remains undefined.
Solana said there was rarely a day when EU leaders or officials did not contact their counterparts in Russia, adding that the deepening level of contacts underscored the "strategic partnership" between the two sides.
TITLE: Jordan in the Headlines Again
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Who is Boris Jordan?
A shady character with a spotty reputation? A wealthy businessman who enjoys being in the limelight? Or perhaps a Zionist or an American spy?
These were some of the ways prominent politicians and business leaders on Wednesday characterized Jordan, the 34-year-old son of Russian émigrés who just a day earlier was appointed general director of NTV television.
State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov suggested that the ouster of NTV's management at a controversial board meeting Tuesday was a mistake, partially because new managers like Jordan and Gazprom-Media head Alfred Kokh, NTV's new board chairman, have "spotty reputations" and are "shady characters."
"I cannot even imagine a more inept decision ... than the appointment of shady characters like Kokh and Jordan," Seleznyov was quoted by Interfax as saying. "They are not capable of resolving the conflict or thoroughly sorting out [NTV's] financial problems."
NTV general director Yevgeny Kiselyov, who is refusing to hand over his post to Jordan, provided a similar characterization.
He was "picked by the government for the job of breaking into the company, raping it and introducing total censorship," Kiselyov said.
"Jordan certainly has a bad reputation in this country," he said in televised remarks.
Jordan, a New York native who speaks fluent Russian with a noticeable accent, has been thrust in and out of the public eye for many of the nine years that he has lived in Russia. And many times, he has grabbed the headlines for political and financial activities that raised eyebrows.
Jordan returned to his family's homeland in 1992 to work for the Credit Swiss First Boston investment bank. It didn't take him long to find a golden business opportunity: privatization.
A group of young reformers led by Anatoly Chubais kicked off a program in 1992 under which every Russian man, woman and child was offered vouchers that could be swapped for shares in newly privatized state enterprises. The vouchers could also be traded on the open market.
While the government intended to share the nation's wealth with the program, it also effectively opened up a huge number of grossly undervalued assets for the taking.
And Jordan took.
Teaming up with then-CSFB associate Stephen Jennings, he managed to snap up 17 million vouchers for Western investors, according to various reports in Russia and the West. By acquiring the vouchers, the two men changed the very process of privatization by setting up a depository system that later grew into Russia's leading share depository.
"We said, 'Jesus Christ, there's an incredible opportunity here,'" Jordan later recalled in an interview with Rose Brady, the author of the book "Kapitalizm." Jordan said he remembered seeing young women arrive at the depository with vouchers held together with cut-up condoms due to a shortage of rubber bands.
Over the next few years, Jordan and partners like Interros tycoon Vladimir Potanin opened a number of companies, including the Renaissance Capital investment bank. Voucher partner Jennings now heads Renaissance Capital.
He also helped found Renaissance's Sputnik Fund, an investment vehicle still closely associated with Jordan that in its early stages managed to attract investors like financier George Soros and the Harvard Management Co., the endowment fund for Harvard University, Janine Wedel writes in her new book "Collision and Collusion."
Such close business ties no doubt enabled Soros and Harvard Management to become the only foreign investors permitted to participate in the notoriously famous loans-for-shares auctions of the mid-1990s, according to "Collision and Collusion."
In 1997, Jordan-affiliated companies participated in the formation of Mustcom - the Soros-backed consortium that ended up buying 25 percent in telecommunications giant Svyazinvest for almost $2 billion.
Jordan dropped out of public view after the 1998 financial crisis when he left Renaissance Capital and turned his attention to the Sputnik Fund, which was promptly renamed Sputnik Group.
Jordan still has a stake of about 10 percent in Renaissance Capital, according to various media reports. Vedomosti reported Wednesday that Jordan was in negotiations to sell the stake.
Renaissance Capital officials declined Wednesday to comment on the brokerage's ties with Jordan. A Renaissance representative later called and said the brokerage did not want to be associated with Jordan.
The Sputnik Group owns stakes in a dozen or more companies including technology firms Sputnik Technology Ventures and inVentures, telecommunication companies Svyazinvest and Kievstar and the National Timber Co. It also has its thumb in Renaissance Insurance, the Sidanko oil company and media outlets such as the Evropa Plus radio station.
It was unclear Wednesday why Jordan had agreed to accept the post of general director at NTV.
However, Jordan said Tuesday that he was an intermediary in talks between U.S.-based Capital Research Management and Gazprom, the two NTV shareholders whose decision to pool their shares gave them the more than 50 percent stake need to appoint a new board at the channel.
"I helped establish a dialogue between representatives of Capital and Gazprom-Media. From this dialogue the idea was born to appoint me as general director, as a kind of compromise figure between the shareholders who would move the company forward," Jordan was quoted in Kommersant as saying.
Jordan also said that he plans to solve NTV's financial problems - he said it is $80 million in debt - and ensure the company's healthy economic future.
"For me it is a strictly business issue. I have no intention to get into politics. I am an American, what is there for me in Russian politics?" Jordan told Vedomosti.
Jordan, however, did not elaborate on the business reasons behind his interest in the post.
Whatever the reason, the appointment did not sit well with a number of lawmakers and other observers.
"In which other European country would it be possible for a foreigner to lead a nationwide television channel?" said Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, Interfax reported.
"Today, the Russian Kiselyov was replaced by the Zionist Jordan," said another Communist lawmaker, Vasily Shandybin.
"As we all know Jordan is a protégé of American intelligence," Shandybin told reporters. "His father teaches in an intelligence school in the U.S.A. Today, Jordans and Kokhs are running anti-Russian policies aimed at the destruction of our people."
Others were less passionate.
"Jordan likes to be in the spotlight," said Bernard Sucher, the managing director of Troika Dialog brokerage. "This is a fellow who has been happy to be used as an instrument by people who are more powerful than he is."
TITLE: Tobacco Suit Testing Limits of the Law
AUTHOR: By Molly Graves and Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A lawsuit brought by a pensioner against the Petro tobacco firm moved into its second hearing on Thursday, with proceedings concentrating on evidence from medical specialists.
The suit is the first of its kind to be heard in a Russian court. Ivan Prokopenko is demanding health and moral damages of $71,500 from Petro, owned by multinational Japan Tobacco International (JTI), for lung cancer which he says was the result of smoking Belomorkanal papirosy - a type of non-filtered cigarette - for 40 years.
Prokopenko's lawyer, Sergei Osutin, invited three witnesses to speak at the court on Thursday, including Alexander Yatsuba, Prokopenko's neighbor for over eight years and co-worker for three years, and two physicians specializing in cancer-related disorders. One of the doctors is familiar with Prokopenko's case history.
Yatsuba said Prokopenko was a heavy smoker of Belomorkanal cigarettes, although he was unable to say how many Prokopenko smoked daily. He was also unsure if Prokopenko only smoked Petro's cigarettes.
Both doctors invited by the plaintiff - Ernest Druskin of the St. Petersburg Oncological Center and Mark Zabezhinsky of the St. Petersburg Institute of Oncology - said that it is impossible to determine the exact cause of any cancer, Prokopenko's included, as the disease may have several causes. However, both also said that in Prokopenko's case, smoking appeared to be the predominant factor.
Lawyers for Petro have pointed to Prokopenko's 10 years of employment manning furnaces in the smelting department of Kirovsky Zavod, a machinery and metal factory, which they say exposed him to carcinogenic substances.
Lawyer Dmitry Surikov, acting for Petro, asked if Prokopenko's job alone could have brought on his illness.
"In theory, it could," replied Druskin, "though non-smokers not working [in such conditions] can develop lung cancer, too. Lung cancer is definitely not a professional disease for smelters. Smokers face a 13-times greater risk of developing lung cancer than non-smokers, while those working at steel mills are twice at risk, at most. The difference is drastic."
Although the damages requested by Prokopenko amount to small change for JTI, the suit is being seen as a test case, particularly in light of the recent spate of similar actions in the United States.
Multibillion-dollar settlements in the U.S. and elsewhere abroad have struck fear in the heart of tobacco companies worldwide - with consumers arguing that tobacco companies unfairly use addiction to sell their products. The industry underlines the personal responsibility of the smoker and the fact that smoking itself remains a voluntary act.
The next hearing is scheduled for April 13.
TITLE: Russia Denies Kursk Had Nukes on Board
AUTHOR: By Daniel Mclaughlin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Norway challenged Moscow on Thursday over a report that the Kursk submarine was carrying nuclear weapons when it plunged to the sea bed last year, and received assurances from the Russian Navy that the story was nonsense.
Igor Dygalo, an aide to the commander of the navy, dismissed comments by Russian politician Grigory Tomchin on Norwegian television this week in which he said the Kursk was carrying nuclear arms when disaster struck, killing all 118 on board.
"I categorically deny this information. From the first day of the catastrophe we said there were no nuclear weapons on board the nuclear submarine Kursk," Dygalo said.
Dygalo said that Tomchin - who claimed on Thursday his comments had been misinterpreted by the TV-2 television channel - had no official role regarding the Kursk and that his claims were "linked to his personal analysis and personal fantasy ... and do nothing but cause tension in society."
Norway despatched a diplomat to the Russian Foreign Ministry - and heard a similar dismissal of Tomchin's assertions.
"They categorically denied it," Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokes person Karsten Klepsvik said in Oslo.
"We have no basis to take this any further."
The Kursk, one of Russia's most advanced submarines, sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea in August after two unexplained explosions ripped through it during a training exercise.
Twelve of the victims of Russia's worst submarine accident were recovered last year and Moscow is trying to secure a deal with Western partners to raise the wreck in August or September.
Tests around the wreck site have shown no sign of radioactivity from the vessel's two nuclear reactors. Russia says salvaging it will avert any possible environmental damage.
Dygalo said the navy was ready for the $70-million job.
"The navy could fulfill the task as laid out in a government order," he said. "But it is too early to comment on the project itself, with negotiations still going on."
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said this week Russia would underwrite the salvage plan and that a deal was imminent between the government and a consortium of Western contractors.
Rio Praaning, secretary general of the Brussels-based Kursk Foundation which is trying to gather half the funding from Western donors, said long delays in finalizing a deal had pushed back essential work on a special barge, underneath which the main part of the Kursk will be hauled back to port.
The forward torpedo bay would first be cut off along with the stern and these would be retrieved later, Praaning said.
He gave no credence to the nuclear weapons story.
"From our close Russian contacts we have had no indication at all that there were nuclear weapons on board the Kursk."
TITLE: UN Holds Hearing on Abuses in Chechnya
AUTHOR: By Stephanie Nebehay
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GENEVA - Russia said on Thursday it was investigating more than 60 cases of alleged crimes by Russian soldiers against Chechen civilians, including 22 who are charged with murder.
But Vladimir Kalamanov, special representative of President Vladimir Putin for the Protection of Human and Civil Rights in the Chechen Republic, blamed "terrorist" activities for the "serious problems" which still plague the separatist republic.
In a speech to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, he confirmed that Chechnya's prosecutor was investigating a mass grave in the Zdo ro vye suburb of Grozny, which officials said last month contained 48 bodies.
But Kalamanov urged the forum's 53 member states, who are holding their annual six-week session in Geneva to scrutinize abuses worldwide, to adopt a "balanced decision" on Chechnya. Last year, the UN rights forum rebuked Russia for abuses in Chechnya, believed to be the first time in its history it had criticized a permanent Security Council member.
On Tuesday, groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called for an international probe to investigate a mass grave and "more than a dozen dumping grounds" for corpses allegedly executed by Russian forces in the separatist region.
Kalamanov said the government was strengthening human rights protection and recreating a democratic society in Chechnya.
"Serious problems still remain. The activities of terrorists at present are not only directed against the federal forces and representatives of the Administration of the Chechen Republic, but also against the civilian population," he said.
He said the Office of the Military Prosecutor had stepped up work and was conducting "objective, thorough and reliable investigations regarding federal servicemen who have committed crimes or other violations against the local population."
At present, 64 such criminal cases are under investigation, including 21 on murder charges and one on charges of murder exceeding the limits of self-defense, according to Kalamanov.
Last month the first trial of a senior officer accused of serious crimes in Chechnya was postponed after Russian colonel Yury Budanov, charged with killing a Chechen woman, fell ill.
Probes into 17 criminal cases, including Budanov's, were complete, and the cases had been submitted to courts, Kalamanov said. "Up to now the courts have sentenced seven servicemen for various crimes against the local population."
The Office of the Military Prosecutor is also looking into reports of criminal acts against local people, including "the alleged placing of persons in so-called pits," he added.
Diplomats say the European Union is negotiating with Russia on a draft resolution on Chechnya, amid dismay that Moscow has not investigated mass killings in the past year. But Russia has resisted the creation of an international probe, they said.
TITLE: Report: Drugs Not Mafia Problem
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Russia is facing an explosive growth in drug consumption and trade, but its major organized crime rings haven't yet plunged into the narcotics market, said a United Nations-sponsored report released on Thursday.
Large criminal groups accumulated so much wealth during the country's turbulent transfer to a free market during the 1990s that they "have no interest to 'dirty their hands' with drugs," Dr. Letizia Paoli said in the report, commissioned by the UN office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention.
The "illegal drug trade still represents a relatively small part of the booming Russian illegal and semi-legal economy and is far from being a primary source of revenue for the galaxy of Russian organized crime," Paoli said at a news conference.
The report - based on an extensive survey of police, doctors, journalists and drug addicts in several regions - concluded that there was scarcely any evidence to support the official view that the drug trade was increasingly monopolized by the powerful "Russian mafia."
"The phenomenal growth of drug use can rather be attributed to the 'invisible hand' of the market," said Paoli, who works with the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg, Germany. "The local drug markets ... are today largely supplied by a myriad of dealers who tend to operate alone or in small groups and often consume illegal drugs themselves."
Vladimir Yegorov, the Health Ministry's chief narcotics expert, disagreed, saying his data show the drug trade "is a controlled process."
According to Interior Ministry statistics, the number of drug seizures has grown 3.5 times between 1990 and 1999, reaching almost 60 metric tons in 1999. The number of registered drug users has increased almost 400 percent since 1990 to reach 450,000 in 2000.
Even the Interior Ministry acknowledges these figures were just the tip of the iceberg, estimating that between 2.5 million and 3 million people - or about 2 percent of the population - regularly or occasionally take drugs.
Although high, these figures aren't staggering compared to other countries, Paoli noted. "What is really staggering ... is the explosion of injecting drug use - specifically, heroin consumption."
Since appearing in the mid-90s, heroin has rapidly spread among teenagers. Paoli's survey showed that 6 percent of 15- to 16-year-olds interviewed in Moscow in 1999 admitted to having used heroin at least once. The rate didn't exceed two percent in any of the other 21 countries in the survey.
The quick spread of heroin and other intravenous drugs has contributed to a dramatic rise in HIV and AIDS cases. The number of registered HIV cases almost quadrupled last year from 29,000 cases registered between 1987 and 1999 to 105,000 now, said Yegorov.
Sergei Kharitonov, of the Interior Ministry's anti-drug department, attributed the quick spread of drugs to low living standards and hard economic conditions, admitting that cash-strapped law-enforcement agencies have found it difficult to stem the rising tide of drugs.
TITLE: Fire Razes Chemical Warehouse
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Firefighters backed by two helicopters battled a blaze Wednesday that roared through a warehouse on 4th Ulitsa Marina Roshcha in northern Moscow and sent aerosol cans stored there soaring into the air and exploding.
No injuries were reported in the fire, which released a thick column of gray smoke billowing into the skies above the Marina Roshcha district, a neighborhood where industrial plants are interspersed among residential blocks.
Firefighters blamed the blaze on a short circuit.
The fire broke out Tuesday night in the warehouse, which is owned by the Moscow Transportation Agency and located near a household-chemical storehouse.
Firefighters thought the blaze was extinguished by early Wednesday morning, but it flared up again after dawn and engulfed the entire 3,500-square-meter building, according to media reports. The fire was finally contained at 12:30 p.m.
Firefighters told Interfax that their efforts to put the blaze out were hindered by the fact that the warehouse was located in a concrete-walled basement that contained the fire's heat, causing aerosol cans to explode and release poisons.
The Moscow branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry took dirt and air samples to check whether the concentration of poisons had made the area uninhabitable for area residents.
Meanwhile, another fire broke out near the Paveletsky station and razed a 500-square-meter warehouse at about 11:30 a.m. That blaze was put out with no injuries reported.
- AP, SPT
TITLE: Gref Looking to U.S. for Clear Policy Stance
AUTHOR: By Anna Willard
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref on Tuesday called on the Bush administration to clarify its policies toward Russia.
Gref said in an interview that in discussions with U.S. officials earlier Tuesday, there was a "long list of questions about policy toward Russia but very few answers."
"It's easier to talk about policies they are clear on than the ones that they aren't," Gref said. He said U.S. officials had unequivocally backed Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization and also expressed understanding of its decision to pull out of signing a one-year standby agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
"They understand that there is no sense in this kind of agreement when we don't need the funds," Gref said.
On Tuesday, Gref met with John Taylor, the nominee for the U.S. Treasury's top international post, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Commerce Secretary Don Evans among others. On Wednesday, he met with World Bank President James Wolfensohn.
Asked when Russia was likely to discuss further with the IMF the possibility of a three-year program, Gref said, "It depends on when we might need additional resources and restructuring with the Paris Club [of creditor nations]."
"If we follow the program that has been stipulated by the [Russian] government and the Central Bank, then the U.S. will have a favorable response to it," Gref said.
"We don't need financial assistance from the U.S., but we should be able to coordinate our policies," he added.
Last month, the Russian government approved in principle a long-term economic strategy aimed at ensuring stable growth and creating an attractive investment climate.
Gref said the restructuring of Russia's debt to the Paris Club has only been discussed "in passing" with U.S. officials. Earlier this year, Russia was hoping to restructure further billions of dollars of outstanding debt to the Paris Club, but several creditors, including Germany, felt that Russia had enough money to continue making its debt payments for the next few years. These creditors cited as evidence the high price of oil, which has swelled Russia's foreign exchange reserves.
"I confirmed our determination to fully pay back our debts; but in 2003 we will have difficulties with regard to the peak of the debt payments, and it is highly possible that we will need restructuring at this point," Gref said.
He said that U.S. officials had reacted with "understanding" to the possible need for restructuring in 2003, but Gref said it is too early to say what the actual U.S. response to this would be.
Asked about his recent announcement to liberalize foreign exchange controls, Gref said: "Right now, we are drafting a package of measures that would lead to liberalization of currency regulations. This would lead to a reduction of obligatory currency sales, but this is all currently being debated between the government and the Central Bank."
Gref said he hoped that a proposed package of changes to the banking sector would be presented to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, this year, but not before the spring session. He said this package would also include proposals for changes to the state-run Sberbank.
"We are discussing the guarantees that Sberbank enjoys today. We are talking about the possibility of lifting the guarantees and spreading them out between all the banks for a limited amount of money so that all banks will be equal."
Gref was speaking on the sidelines of a dinner hosted by the U.S.-Russia Business Council. He told the audience that the slight slowdown in economic growth that Russia is currently experiencing had been anticipated by the government and was accounted for in this year's budget.
In his annual state-of-the-nation address, President Vladimir Putin said he was worried by signs of a slowdown after the highest growth levels in almost 30 years. Gross domestic product grew 7.7 percent in 2000, but is expected to slow to 4 percent this year.
Russia's industrial output has slowed and its inflation has remained high, eroding the competitiveness of Russian producers by leading to a real appreciation of the ruble.
Gref said that the slowing was likely to persist for several more years until investment picks up. But he added that he was confident that all the economic forecasts which were laid out in the budget for this year would be met. However, "[inflation] might exceed the targets by a couple of percentage points."
TITLE: World Bank Pledges Aid To Reform Coal Sector
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia does not need World Bank money to support structural economic reforms, but will get $150 million from the bank to help a restructuring of the coal sector, a senior World Bank official said Wednesday.
Russia and the bank agreed last year to cancel a previous structural-adjustment loan program as the government failed to meet loan terms. Only $400 million of the $1.5 billion loan, agreed in 1998, was disbursed.
"We agreed with the government at this point because of the favorable balance of payments and budget situation that Russia does not need to borrow from the World Bank in ... the form of structural-adjustment loans," World Bank Vice President Johannes Linn told a news conference.
The bank said previously it could lend Russia up to $1 billion to support structural reforms, but the future of a possible new SAL would largely depend on Russia's need to borrow and on the government's ability to carry out ambitious reforms.
Linn said the bank planned to release by this summer the remaining two tranches, worth a total of $150 million, of a suspended coal-sector loan. "We believe the government is committed to completing the actions that were agreed under the second coal loan," he said.
The bank had suspended release of the remaining tranches on the $800 million coal loan - agreed upon in 1997 to smooth industry reforms - citing slow progress in privatization of the sector and in closing down loss-making mines.
The bank expects the government to reduce further subsidies to the sector, improve efficiency and transparency of the sector management and to bring coal production at privatized mines to 49 percent of the overall coal output in 1996 figures, on which the agreement was based.
The coal-sector lending program, originally due to close by March, was extended until the end of this year.
The bank is also planning three new lending programs totaling $280 million targeting some of the country's chronic problems.
The largest loan, worth $150 million, is earmarked to slow the spread of tuberculosis and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, Linn said.
An $80 million loan would finance the relocation of Russians from impoverished cities in the Arctic to more southerly parts of Russia, he said.
The program is designed to cut down on costly and inefficient government subsidies for Arctic communities.
A $50 million loan would finance education reform in three Russian regions.
The three projects must be approved by the bank's board of directors at a meeting in Washington in June, Linn said.
More than 60 smaller projects may also be ready then for the board's approval, he said.
Russia is one of the World Bank's biggest borrowers, with $10 billion in loan commitments and $7 billion disbursed so far.
Over the past decade, Russia has borrowed about $22 billion from the International Monetary Fund and still owes about $12 billion, IMF director Michel Camdessus said Wednesday.
- AP, Reuters
TITLE: DeltaCredit, U.S. Bank To Team Up
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - U.S. government-funded mortgage program DeltaCredit has made its first partnership with a Western bank operating in Russia by teaming up with Dutch-based ABN AMRO.
ABN AMRO becomes the 15th partner bank for DeltaCredit, the financial arm of The U.S. Russia Investment Fund, which was set up in 1994 with $440 million of capital. DeltaCredit's seed capital was $20 million of this total.
James Cook, president of DeltaCredit, said the program's mortgages would now be available to employees of ABN AMRO's roughly 6,000 corporate client companies and more than 4,000 individual credit card holders. The terms of the mortgages for ABN AMRO clients will include a 20 percent down payment, a 10-year term, 15 percent interest rates and amounts of up to $150,000.
The partnership was approved in mid-March, but despite little publicity, "we have already had a big surge in applications because of the relationship with ABN AMRO, and a lot of Western clients are interested," Cook said.
Michael Schwartz, country manager for ABN AMRO, said his bank was considering all kinds of ways to service its corporate clients.
"Our objective is to provide them as close as we can get to Western consumer bank facilities; that's not entirely possible in Russia yet," Schwartz said.
ABN AMRO's clients range from large Western multinationals to a number of larger Russian corporations and financial institutions, Schwartz said, but he declined to name the bank's clients.
TITLE: RTS Ranks 3rd in 1st-Quarter Performance
AUTHOR: By Natasha Shanetskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - While its volume may be minuscule by international standards, the Russian Trading System outperformed all but two of the world's 38 major stock exchanges over the first three months of the year.
According to a quarterly rating issued Tuesday by U.S.-based financial heavyweight Merrill Lynch, only the China and Taiwan exchanges did better than the RTS in the first quarter of 2001.
The RTS advanced 18.3 percent in the first quarter, compared with a drop of nearly 6 percent for all of 2000.
The good news, however, may not last.
"In three to four months, Russia's market may start having some difficulties," said Walter Murphy, senior international market analyst at Merrill Lynch, in a telephone interview from New York. "Strong markets for one period tend to correct themselves during the next."
Alexei Zabotkin, chief economist at United Financial Group, said Merrill Lynch's rating is deceiving since it looks at Russia's index performance for just the first quarter.
"The gains represent a recovery from last year, when the market closed much lower than it should have," he said. "Going forward, we should not expect Russia to outperform other markets because the fundamentals do not support that."
According to Zabotkin, fundamentals in Russia - including macroeconomic factors, structural market reforms and corporate governance issues - don't show any significant improvements that could counteract a world downturn.
While the rating represents an improvement for Russia, which occupied 12th place in 2000, the RTS is still far behind China's Shanghai index, which Merrill Lynch rated the No. 1 performer.
China's index posted a first quarter rise of 75 percent, retaining the No. 1 position that it has held since last year, and was the only market that remained among the top 10 for 2000 and the first quarter of 2001.
Taiwan's index, which received the second place in Merrill Lynch's rating, posted gains of 22 percent compared with a loss of roughly 44 percent last year.
Finland disappointed its investors with the greatest drop among all major markets. During the first quarter, Hex General index declined 36 percent, pushing Finland down to 38th place from the 21st spot it occupied last year.
The United States, which is in the middle of a bear market, slid from 18th place to 28th.
According to Reuters, a total of 694 U.S.-based companies have issued first-quarter warnings. As a result, the Nasdaq Composite index has shed a quarter of its value while the Dow Jones has dropped 8 percent since Jan. 1. Over the same period, the benchmark Morgan Stanley Composite World Index fell 13.1 percent, which was its fourth weakest quarter in the past 22 years.
Most market indices are close to a bottom in their declines and investors can expect a reversal of the current trend, Merrill Lynch said in a release Tuesday.
Daniel Thorniley, a senior vice president of the influential Economist Intelligence Unit, said last week he was bullish on Russia, a country under appreciated by foreign investors.
China's market may have offered the greatest returns of any market, but it can hardly compare with Russia when it comes to corporate profits, Thorniley told a group of Western executives at a seminar in Moscow.
Western companies operating in China have an average annual return of 3 percent, while their average return in Russia before the crisis was 5 percent to 45 percent, and most Western companies have returned to the pre-crisis levels, he said.
TITLE: IMF, World Bank Issue Warning Against Stronger Ruble
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Kovalyova
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - The International Monetary Fund and World Bank said Tuesday that Russia, in order to keep its economy healthy, should prevent the ruble from strengthening too much.
"The government should prevent excessive real appreciation of the ruble, which would jeopardize the economic recovery," Gerard Belanger, deputy director of the IMF's second European Department, told an economic conference in Moscow.
"The potential for real appreciation to slow down the economy is already evident," he said. Russian gross domestic product is expected to slow this year to 4 percent from a post-Soviet record of 7.7 percent last year.
"The strong budget surplus of the year 2000 [due to high oil prices] is unlikely to be repeated this year, which will increase greatly the burden on monetary policy," Belanger said, adding that inflation had to be kept under control.
Central Bank chief Viktor Ge ra shchenko said earlier this year the ruble would remain steady in 2001 if world energy prices remained stable for at least the first half of the year. Inflation is expected to be more than 14 percent.
He has forecast that the ruble will not slip below 30 per dollar this year, compared with the latest official rate of 28.86 per dollar.
World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia Johannes Linn told the conference that the only safeguard against continued real appreciation was an increase in productivity helped by investment.
"An increase in efficient investment would increase the competitiveness of Russian goods in international markets," Linn said. "Efficient investment is the key to long-term sustainable economic development."
"Strong appreciation of the ruble by approximately 12 percent last year makes the Russian economy a victim of its own success because it makes exports more expensive and reduces the competitiveness of Russian goods abroad," he added.
Belanger said maintaining prudent monetary and fiscal policies and reforming the banking system would be key elements in supporting macroeconomic stability in Russia, along with resolution of non-payment and barter problems.
"It is in those areas that the discussions between the Fund and the Russian authorities have concentrated in the last several months," Belanger said, adding that a trustworthy banking system was an essential component of any market economy.
Belanger said Russian economic reforms should be sequenced to maintain a strong balance of payments and to find a balance between revenues, which are highly dependent on volatile world oil prices and expected increases in budget spending.
He also said tax reforms should be accelerated as much as possible to take advantage of the current high oil prices.
Belanger suggested that the government should consider creating a special stabilization fund based on extra revenues to help sterilize excessive liquidity and smooth possible budget problems when the external situation was not so favorable.
Linn emphasized the need for diversifying investment into the economy, saying it was currently focused in only a few sectors such as energy, fuel and transport.
He said the World Bank was ready to support structural reforms and was monitoring their progress.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Electrolux in Town
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Swedish Appliance manufacturer Electrolux announced Thursday that it plans to build a $60 million plant to build washing machines in St. Petersburg, Interfax reports.
According to Interfax, the plant will have a capacity of 300,000 machines per year, which will both be sold domestically and imported.
Electrolux plans initially to import components, but ultimately to switch to using companies from St. Petersburg and other areas within the Northwest region.
According to industry analysts, the plant would employ at least 1,000 workers and require inputs from 100 to 200 Russian subcontractors.
Vimpelcom Still Talking
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Cellular firm Vimpelcom and potential local strategic investor Alfa Eco said Thursday they were still in talks on a potential deal to facilitate regional expansion.
Vimpelcom's head of investor relations, Valery Goldin, and the head of Alfa Eco's telecoms arm, Stanislav Shekshnya, confirmed the negotiations were continuing.
Andrei Kosogov, first deputy chairman of Alfa-Bank's board, told a news conference earlier this week that the bank had been in negotiations with Vimpelcom but had backed out, limiting their Russian telecoms investments to a financial stake in Golden Telecom.
Vimpelcom is seeking a strategic investor for its regional expansion arm and says it needs about $300 million.
Mi-35 Catches Fire
LAGOS, Nigeria (Reuters) - One of Nigeria's new Russian-made helicopter gunships caught fire within hours of being delivered to the Nigerian Air Force, a military spokesperson said Thursday.
A Nigerian Air Force spokesperson said that the Mi-35, which went into service on Tuesday, caught fire shortly after refueling at Osubi Airstrip in the Niger Delta oil town of Warri. No one was hurt.
Squadron leader Hassan Zoaka said the incident could not be blamed on poor training.
The terms of the helicopter deal were classified, but newspapers said the Ministry of Defense paid a total of $100 million during military rule, which ended in May 1999.
TNK Ultimatum
Moscow (Vedomosti) - Tyumen Oil Co., or TNK, plans to wind up negotiations with the Sidanko oil company over the return to the latter of assets in prized oil producer Chernogorneft, TNK executive director German Khan said in an interview published Thursday.
"We have presented the following conditions to our counterparts, the Sidanko shareholders: The Cherno gor neft question must be resolved before the end of April," Khan said.
"If a consensus is not reached by this time, then negotiations on the basic conditions that are currently clear to all parties will be terminated.
"This is not to say that the issue will not be discussed, but it will move to a different level and therefore different constructions will be employed," he said.
Chernogorneft, the star jewel in Sidanko's crown, was bankrupted in court and auctioned off to TNK. Sidanko shareholders objected, and TNK later pledged to return the unit in exchange for a 25 percent stake in Sidanko.
TITLE: Lomo Plans Preferred Dividends
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: LOMO will pay full dividends to its preferred shareholders for the first time in four years, the company announced Tuesday.
According to a press release from the firm, the board of directors at the Leningrad Optical-Mechanical Association, Russia's largest producer of military and civilian optics, will submit the payment plan at an annual shareholder meeting scheduled for June 9.
"Last year we paid dividends to our preferred shareholders, but not in full," said Lazar Zalmanov, spokesman for LOMO General Director Arkady Kobitsky, "Because we have not paid our common or preferred shareholders in full for four years, they have gained the right to vote at the shareholders meeting."
According to Russia's securities law, preferred shares - on which dividends are paid before they are paid to holders of common shares - revert to common shares when no dividends are paid. Unlike owners of common shares, those holding preferred are not entitled to vote at shareholders meetings. The last time dividends were paid by LOMO on both common and preferred shares was in 1995.
The press release said that 10 percent of LOMO's 2000 profits will be paid out in dividends, with the rest being reinvested in the company.
"We had predicted greater profits for 2000 but, because a deal with a foreign government [for weapons technology] fell through, we made less than expected," Zalmanov said. " But we are seeing development in our domestic branch, with progress in medical optics and photography equipment."
One of the products contributing to this stability is the LOMO Kompakt, a 35 millimeter camera which, due to its unpredictable color exposures, was popularized by Austrian "Lomographers" in the 1990s.
With 6.2 million shares, and a value of five rubles a share, LOMO is worth 31 million rubles (about $1,100,000). Major share holders are Finansovy Broker Bosi (32.5%), KM Technologies Ltd. (19.35%), ACFI Ltd. (10.1%), AO IK Russ-Invest (5.77%) and Rosbank (1.91%), according to Interfax.
TITLE: Global eye
TEXT: As the world knows, Texas is one of most polluted places on the face of the earth. There, countless poisons boil and bubble beneath the harsh sun, belching out of vast industrial citadels excused from environmental regulation by the grace of the former governor, now translated to glory. There the children play on stubbly grass scorched by tons of pesticides, which ooze foul toxins into the pores of tiny bare knees, into the curious fingers and mouths, into the nicks and scratches of innocent play.
And which Texas town is the most polluted, where the city parks - common pleasures for the free citizenry to walk abroad and recreate themselves - are seeping the greatest amount of toxic pesticides? Why, that would be Midland, of course - the putative hometown of George W. Bush, the place that "shaped his heartland values," according to his campaign literature.
A new study by the Texas Pesticide Information Network reveals that Midland leads the state in the amount of pesticide per hectare, and the percentage of toxic pesticide, TomPaine.com reports. Almost 75 percent of the bug-killer and weed-choker used in Midland parks carry a "Danger" warning from the Environmental Protection Agency.
But Big Poison is Big Business in Bush Country. While towns in other states across the country have started restricting or banning the use of toxic pesticides, Texas law specifically prohibits cities from regulating pesticide sales and usage, even in children's playgrounds.
One of the most popular Texas toxins is the insecticide Dursban, based on the chemical chlorpyrifos. This little ring-tailed scientific wonder was banned by the EPA last year for its adverse effects on brain development and nervous systems in children.
It's unlikely that little Georgie - who actually passed most of his childhood and youth in exclusive New England private schools, and at the family's mansion in Kennebunkport, Maine - was ever exposed to the playground poisons that infected grubby little proles. However, there was one aspect of the report that might give him pause:
Golf courses used four times more pesticides per hectare than parks, the study said - including even more of the most toxic poisons.
What was that bit about "adverse effects on brain development" again?
Word Perfect
When it comes to bad writing, the Global Eye takes a back seat to no one, but even we must doff our cap in respect when those connoisseurs of atrocious prose - the Bulwer-Lytton gang - roll out their literary gems. (Or is that germs?)
The group is best known for its annual contest soliciting original compositions of unspeakable awfulness. However, their Web site also features choice pluckings from the real world, by people who actually got paid for their (and our) pains.
Mystery writer Gillian White, for example, whose novel The Plague Stone takes the genre's penchant for strained simile and whomps it on the ground like a burly drill sergeant bashing a mouse to death with a 20-kilogram bag of mule feed. But let's let her tell it, as she captures her heroine's reaction to an emotional moment: "She wanted to pick her heart up like a naughty toddler and take it outside and smack it until it stopped leaping about like this."
But White is hardly restricted to Joycean epiphanies of the inner life; witness this telling bit of architectural description: "The town hall today was in its starkest state: naked and waiting like a woman with wet hair sitting dull and expectant before the stylist." (Actually, that could be a deadly accurate rendering of Christ the Savior Cathedral.)
Then there's Larissa MacFarquhar, coming down with an attack of the verbal vapors during a one-on-one with a heartthrob in Premiere Magazine: "Three little wrinkles like a stack of tiny pancakes sit just at the top of Nicolas Cage's nose, held in place by his bushy, Italian-guy eyebrows, which extend out and down like two hairy arms around his for-the-moment strangely vacant blue eyes." Hope she brought the syrup.
Then again, you just can't beat those Bulwer-Lytton originals. So here, just for the heck of it, we present Sheila Richter's classic 1987 contest winner:
"The notes blatted skyward as the sun rose over the Canada geese, feathered rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically peddling unseen bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by Nature's maxim, 'Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I knew Pittsburgh."
Even John Grisham couldn't do it any better.
Dishonest Abe
There's an energy crisis in America. Surely you've heard about it; the regime in Washington talks about little else these days. It's their excuse for everything: cutting taxes, strip-mining national parks, abandoning the Kyoto treaty, putting up new drapes in the White House, you name it.
But anyway, there's this crisis, and it's gonna get worser and worser, says the Bush crew, unless the nation is paved over with nuke plants and oil rigs, and people stop using that damned Internet Al Gore invented. So we have Energy Secretary Spencer "Chicken Little" Abraham speechifying recently that Internet usage now accounts for up to 13 percent of all energy consumption, and at this rate will soon gobble up 50 percent. "We'll need nearly 1,900 new plants - or more than 90 every year - just to keep pace," cried Spence.
Pretty dire stuff. It would be more scary if it were actually true. When pressed for the source of Abraham's prophecy, aides said he took it from a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Slate.com reports. Regime faces went a bit red, however, when the Berkeley scientists refuted that claim: Their report found that Internet usage - all of it, networks, machinery, homes, offices - accounts for no more than 3 percent of electricity consumption.
Finally, a spokesman admitted that Abe got his "data" from - where else? - a Web site, which had posted a "study" on the subject by the Greening Earth Society, one of the innumerable innocuous-sounding front groups funded by - who else? - the fossil-fuel industry.
Well, at least there's still a lot of natural gas around.
TITLE: Are Things So Different After All?
AUTHOR: By Russell Working
TEXT: VLADIVOSTOK, Far East - A few weeks before I first moved here four years ago, I ran into an American woman (let's call her Sissy) who was enduring a traumatized life in this Far Eastern city and wanted to suggest some things that I should take with me to help me overcome the isolation.
Make sure you bring antibiotics, Sissy said. They don't have them in Russia. Also a good frying pan: Russian ones have this crosshatch pattern that breaks up eggs when you flip them. And pack some brown sugar, because you'll want to bake cookies. (I hate cookies, I said. Sissy insisted: In Russia, you will want cookies on those nights you spend crying from homesickness.) Also, find room for a jar of peanut butter. Some salsa. A bag of coffee beans.
Shocked at the depravation I would be facing, I raced around stocking up from her list. I bought a two-year supply of a medication I take for seizure control. Antibiotics. A down coat. I hadn't eaten peanut butter in years, but suddenly it seemed impossible to get by without Skippy's. I refused to take a frying pan on an intercontinental flight, but I loaded up on four kilos of coffee. The only other thing I didn't buy was brown sugar.
Four years later, I have learned a great deal. For example, you can buy antibiotics at any pharmacy. Coffee beans, though expensive, can be found here. Even one of America's favorite snack foods, peanut butter, comes and goes on store shelves. Serviceable frying pans sizzle on every stove. The sheepskin coats that men wear are warmer than down. Even my medication turns out to be available - a generic Russian variety - and the hallucinations it induces are small potatoes compared to the convenience and cut-rate price.
The notion that the foreign state in which one is sojourning is a wasteland that must be stocked with caravans from home is not limited to visitors to Russia. My sister-in-law is Swiss, and she used to stuff her suitcase with goods from home whenever she returned to Seattle, where she and my brother live. Eventually she decided it wasn't worth the hassle.
Yet the Far East seems to inspire a particular dread. When a church group visited from Sacramento last year, members believed that Russia's benighted orphanage employees would hold the babies more often if they were sitting comfortably. Convinced that rocking chairs do not exist here, they brought their own. Customs agents detected an opportunity: They demanded $350 to send the chair through, and the poor churchmen forked over the loot. Too bad: I would have sold them the rocker in my apartment for $340. Or they could buy a cheap one in a store for $50.
Some foreign products suddenly show up in the strangest places. In the remote Kuril Islands, I found spinach pasta for lasagna in 1998. I bought several boxes. Within six months, it appeared in stores all over Vladivostok.
When I used to visit the United States, Japan or Korea, I would bring back powdered Parmesan cheese - real stuff wouldn't last. I did find locally made Parmesan in a store here. The clerk said it was dehydrated cheese: Mix it with water and spread it on your sandwich. Its bitter taste gagged me, and I threw away packages that I had bought. But not long ago, I found a store that sells wedges of fresh Parmesan at its cheese counter.
I have been known to tuck bottles of red wines into my carry-on bag when leaving my parents' place in California for Vladivostok, but that seems extravagant now that the return trips require an overnight stop in Seoul. By the time I lug my bags to an airport bus, head into the city, and take the metro to a fleabag hotel that always puts me up in the room with no windows, I think: So what exactly was it about a robust Moldavian Kagor that I can't stand? I open a bottle of Ravenswood cabernet under the flickering phosphorescent lights and sip from a hotel water glass while watching the U.S. Army channel's rebroadcasts of NFL games.
In the end, it pays to remember the ancient words about the lilies of the field. They toil not and neither do they spin; yet they find cheap cigars in the kiosks and if there are no coffee beans this week, they get by on instant Nescafe. Sometimes they even find salsa.
Russell Working is a freelance journalist based in Vladivostok.
TITLE: Independent Television in Russia Can Be Saved
TEXT: "A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with power which knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both."
- James Madison
"Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinion calculated to embarrass the government?"
- Vladimir Lenin
RUSSIA again stands at a crossroads, forced to choose between the values of Madison and those of Lenin. On one side stands the right of the people to monitor and judge their government. On the other, the self-interested and cynical desire of governments to hide their crimes and incompetence and, by doing so, to perpetuate them.
Either the media are a tool of public control over their representatives or they are a weapon wielded against the people in order to oppress and dispossess them. It is a daunting struggle, one to which it is immoral to be indifferent.
The present crisis over NTV must be viewed in these terms. In recent months, we have seen ORT pummeled into submission and its board packed with Kremlin press spokespersons and minions of the Press Ministry. Now the nation's last private national television channel is in grave peril. We face the real possibility that, any moment now, we will get the news "of the Kremlin" on channel one, "by the Kremlin" on channel two and "for the Kremlin" on Gazprom's NTV. If the "coverage" of the NTV battle over the last couple of days by state-controlled ORT and RTR is any indication of things to come, all any responsible person can say is "no."
Furthermore, the state's assault has been extended to the rest of Media-MOST's respected media holdings - the radio station Ekho Moskvy, the newsweekly Itogi and the daily newspaper Segodnya. Although these outlets are less influential than NTV, losing any of them would be regrettable and losing them all would be tragic.
We will not be reconciled to a state monopoly of national television.
We will not accept the lie that this is a business dispute. We will not listen as the government - with its restrictive media policies, its subsidized state-controlled television channels and grotesque ties between the Press Ministry and the country's leading television-advertising company - tells us that poor management has killed NTV and necessitated a state takeover.
We will not accept that the nation's elected president can and will do nothing to defend the rights and interests of his constituents. We will not accept that he can ignore his oath of office so outrageously and with impunity. This may indeed be the case, but it is wrong and we reject it.
We will not accept President Putin's silence. Neither will we be deluded by empty platitudes that are struck down by authoritarian actions. If he believes in the government's right to control the minds of its citizens, then we must force him to say so out loud and accept the consequences.
Nor can we accept the decision of the State Duma and the Federation Council to remain silent. Although some factions and some deputies have spoken out individually, parliament's shameful refusal to debate the issue officially and contribute to solving it is unconscionable. We reject it.
NTV is not a symbol of all that is proper and virtuous. It is a typical company, working in the trying circumstances of contemporary Russia. We make no apologies for the network's many gross violations of journalistic ethics - especially its conduct of the 1996 presidential campaign and the 1999 Duma elections. We do not turn a blind eye to the numerous occasions when the channel has placed its own interests above those of its audience. If public support now is too little and too weak to save a private NTV, then Yevgeny Kiselyov and his colleagues will have much time to rue the mistakes that contributed to that failure.
However, we respect NTV's many outstanding contributions to the growth of an open society here and are ashamed to watch Russia's elected officials and their surrogates destroy NTV's potential to mature and live up to the tremendous promise it has shown to date.
We stand without hesitation and without reservation for the principle that Russia needs private media. American journalist Walter Lippmann wrote: "The theory of a free press is that the truth will emerge from free reporting and free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." We endorse this view.
Just last month the world - and the Russian government - looked on with justified horror as the Taleban government in Afghani stan destroyed the priceless ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan. "How can these philistines so wantonly blow away millennia of their land's heritage?" we asked, unable to get our minds around the senselessness.
Now the Kremlin and its lackies at Gaz prom are committing a crime against Russia's future every bit as reprehensible and politically primitive as the Taleban desecration of Af gha ni stan's past. Destroying NTV as an independent journalistic voice is an unforgivable crime against Russia's children and their hopes for a better life in a democratic country.
Moreover, it is a crime behind which will stand years and years of other crimes in the form of unexposed corruption, unbridled state avarice and unexamined incompetence. And it is as hard to sit by silently while it happens as it would have been to watch unmoved as the silent Buddhas crumbled.
We do not pretend to know what the answer to the NTV crisis is. But we are certain that indifference is not a solution. Silence is not a solution. Pretending that what is happening is not vitally important to the future of every citizen of Russia is no solution. Acceptance of the unacceptable is no solution.
The journalists of NTV and Media-MOST have taken a brave stand. By not resigning to the fate that looms more ominously with each passing day, they have challenged us all to think about Russia's future and to take a stand today in order to have the right to take further stands tomorrow.
Russia is at a crossroads. Although a tragic fate for NTV may seem inevitable, it is not. Only indifference and acceptance will make it so. Speaking out now, proving that Russia has reached the point where citizens can grab the government and compel it to defend them, arguing that what is right is also possible - these things can still make the difference.
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech."
- Benjamin Franklin
TITLE: World Should Pressure Russia on Mass Graves
AUTHOR: By Human Rights Watch
TEXT: AS the international community gathers this week in Geneva for the UN Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch urges the adoption of a resolution to establish an international commission of inquiry to investigate the recent discovery of more than 50 bodies in a village close to the main Russian military base in Chechnya, as well as other human rights crimes committed by Russian troops and Chechen rebel forces.
On Feb. 21, relatives of three Che chen men who had "disappeared" in the custody of Russian soldiers in December 2000 discovered a large number of bodies in a cottage village in the vicinity of the main Russian base at Khankala.
Government investigators closed off the area, and in subsequent weeks, law enforcement officials said they found another 48 bodies. By March 13, 14 of the 48 bodies had been identified and were taken away by relatives for burial.
After news of the grave was first reported, Russian officials denied responsibility for the bodies. They claimed the bodies were either those of Chechen rebel fighters who had been killed in battle or belonged to civilians who had been killed by Chechen rebel fighters and dumped in the village. The government failed to mention that that area had been under Russian control since December 1999, long before the majority of the bodies were deposited there.
The government has not conducted a credible investigation. No comprehensive forensic examinations were conducted before the bodies were reburied. HRW has obtained evidence that in many cases even a description of the condition of the bodies was not made. HRW reviewed photographs of bodies taken from the grave site that reveal that, at the time of their burial, the corpses had not been undressed nor had their arms been untied from behind their backs.
Meanwhile, human rights organizations have been able to establish that almost all of the bodies identified were of people who had previously "disappeared" in the custody of Russian troops. As of this writing, HRW has confirmed that 12 of the 17 identified victims had previously "disappeared" in the custody of Russian troops. All of the victims apparently had execution-style bullet wounds.
European governments and the United States, failed even to respond publicly to the news of the grave, thus signaling to Russian officials that there would be no consequences for failing to conduct a proper investigation. The Council of Europe human rights commissioner did raise the need for an investigation with the Russian authorities during a February trip to Russia and Chechnya, but failed to visit the site.
Human Rights Watch is a private, New York-based organization that conducts systematic investigations of human-rights abuses in some 70 countries.
TITLE: Mailbox
TEXT: Dear Editor,
May I remind you that what you call "the world" has already helped Russia in Chechnya once in the mid-1990s ["World Can Help Russia in Chechnya," March 20]. Then OSCE mediators playted the role of the Chechen rebels' intelligence branch so effectively that in August 1996, the rebels managed to take Grozny in next to no time. The result is well-known: For the next four years, Europe has within its geographical borders a territory on which slavery was actually legitimized.
And now you are again extending your helping hand to Russian just as the world is seeing the disastrous results of another instance of your help imposed two years ago with the bombing of Yugoslav cities. The Albanian terrorists that were saved by the international community from Serbian genocide are now invading Macedonia and the KFOR troops are quietly pulling out in order to save thier precious skins.
I think that offering anyone your help after two such grandiose washouts without correcting your previous mistakes or even recognizing that you made mistakes is presumptuousness bordering on arrogance. The most civilzied answer I can think of for such offers is: "Mind your own business, guys."
Eugene Tsypin
St. Petersburg
Dear Editor,
St. Petersburg is suffering the same problems of transition that many large cities around the world suffered in the '60s, '70s and '80s. Unfortunately, it is trying to replicate the same strategies of "urban renewal" that had a very mixed track record elsewhere.
At the heart of any housing renewal lies the willingness and ability of local residents to bear the costs of construction, reconstruction and maintenance. No matter how projects are initially financed - by banks, large or small investors or the state - residents over time must pay back the loans or cover the rents. Or, alternatively, residents must use their own capital to make improvements themselves.
Therefore, to regenerate housing in a deteriorating area, three complementary reforms are necessary. First, infrastructural investments that will support investments in individual buildings and housing units must be undertaken. St. Petersburg is doing this through its World Bank projects.
Second, legal and regulatory systems must be created that do not obstruct productive investment. If residents or new investors cannot gain secure rights (ownership or solid long-term leases) to land and buildings, they will not sink capital into improvements or new construction, and no one will lend them money to do so. Further, if it takes many years, considerable bribes and complicated reviews to secure building permits, then only the largest developers will initiate new projects.
This is a key unresolved problem in St. Petersburg. Despite lengthy and much-debated regulatory "reforms," urban-development procedures there have not been changed. There are still no standard procedures for permit application and review. In every case - even the smallest jobs - city agencies expect to negotiate a "deal" and to build in many layers of review so that fees can be spread as widely as possible.
Third, since the success of housing investment ultimately rests on the future flow of income, creating well-paid jobs will improve the residents' ability to carry housing costs. Thus a clear vision of the direction of the entire urban economy is needed. What will the economy of St. Petersburg look like in 20 years? Will it follow the pattern of many large cities that made the transition from obsolete industry to new forms of high-technology production and sophisticated services? Or will it lose the competition with other urban regions and remain stuck with a low-wage, low-productivity industrial base?
St. Petersburg has attempted in a limited way to give some answers through its strategic-planning effort. Unfortunately, that process also fell short. It was concerned almost completely with the regeneration of the city's traditional bases and with transport and heavy infrastructure support. It almost completely ignored the potential of the service sectors and the opportunities and problems posed by telecommunications, air transport and information flow. Moreover, it was silent on the key question of the relation of St. Petersburg to Moscow - how policies of centralization or regionalization will block or create opportunities for St. Petersburg.
As in all Russian cities, the most striking visual evidence of the housing dilemma can be seen by taking a ride outside the city. Over the last 10 years, Russians have invested billions of rubles in their dachas. This represents real capital that was not borrowed from foreigners and that Russians chose not to send to Cyprus. Why were they willing to invest in this type of housing, but not in their urban apartments? The answer lies in the structure of the city administrative and legal system. The rights to the dacha plot are secure in ownership or inheritable possession. Suburban authorities set fewer restrictions on improvements and let families with modest incomes construct houses incrementally.
In the center, city officials are not interested in this kind of accumulation of small, citizen-generated investment. They hope that big investors will come along. So far, however, the big guys are not convinced that St. Petersburg has a clear future. Thus it is clear that the city's urban-renewal woes will continue.
Bill Valletta
attorney/urban planner
Fond Gradostroitelnii Reformi
Moscow
Dear Editor,
As a student of history and culture I have long admired and enjoyed Russia's often ambivalent struggle to identify itself within the context of a larger world.
When communism imploded, Russia's people where left ill-prepared to deal with the highly competitive, very aggressive nature of "free enterprise." High-placed apparatchiks - long cynical about the achievability of true communism - exploited their positions and developed amoral even diabolical schemes to defraud the people of control of basic industries. These amoral, self-serving "tycoons" - the equivalent of despicable, treacherous, cowardly types like Marc Rich and Pinkus Green in the United States - are indifferent to the sufferings of their people.
While they control billions, pensioners live on scraps in apartments that are often unheated, Russian soldiers hustle dubious after-hours employment and sometimes even beg in Moscow's subways, and young Russian and Ukrainian women end up as sex slaves in the cities of Western Europe and Israel. Russian mafiosi operate with impunity in eastern Europe, western Europe and North America.
All of these things reflect a nation that has lost its confidence and its self respect. There is a desperate resignation in the face of the nation's massive problems. This aching despair is reflected in the Russia's declining birthrate and population, its shrinking productivity, its declining life expectancies.
What can be done? The most important step that Russia must take is a relentless and continuous campaign to be fully included in the evolving of Europe. This means, ultimately, membership in the European Union, membership in NATO and eventually full partnership in all councils and forums that bear on Europe's future.
Vinton Heuck
Lancaster, California
TITLE: The World Watches the Fate of NTV and Press Freedom
TEXT: THE WASHINGTON POST
More than anything in [President Vladimir Putin's address to the Federation Council], the Gazprom coup made clear what Putin means by stability: a country where there are no independent media to document, as NTV has, the government's brutal war against Chechnya, the revival of a secret police apparatus and the slow suffocation of Russia's fragile democracy. Indeed, Putin made no mention of press freedom in the agenda he laid out for his government. That left former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the originator of the glasnost policy of free expression 15 years ago, to spell out the stakes of the NTV takeover: "It is," he said, "a challenge to our entire society."
Gorbachev's statement and the courageous continuing protest broadcasts by [NTV's Yevgeny] Kiselyov's journalists should discredit the attempts of Putin's apparatchiks to portray the takeover as a simple business dispute. Still, the slim hopes that NTV's independent journalism will survive now rest mainly with U.S. media magnate Ted Turner, who yesterday confirmed that he had agreed to buy a substantial part of [Vladimir] Gusinsky's interest in the network. (The deal would not affect Gusinsky's stake in a magazine co-produced with Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co.) If the sale goes through, Turner, Gusinsky and a small New York-based investment group together might be able to take back control of the NTV board and reverse the Gazprom coup.
Turner's bid to rescue NTV will depend on Kremlin acquiescence. Private talks between representatives of the CNN founder and Putin have been underway for some time. That raises a couple of crucial questions: Can pressure from the West and a handful of domestic critics such as Gorbachev induce the former KGB colonel to let go of NTV? And if he does, will Turner avoid promising him editorial docility in return? The Bush administration and other Western governments have a chance in the coming days to sway the answers to "yes." They have often promised to support Russian democracy; here is a critical and perhaps irreplaceable chance to do it.
DIE PRESSE, VIENNA
Vladimir Putin has a problem with journalists who do not see it as their job to offer never-ending praise for the great deeds of the Russian President. For this reason Putin has a problem with the Media-MOST holding of the formerly very powerful oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky.
The different media companies belonging to the holding never understood themselves as mouthpieces for the Kremlin, but analyzed and, when necessary, criticized the political decisions of the Russian leadership.
This makes it even more incredible when a Putin spokesperson announces that the Kremlin has nothing to do with the current events at Media-MOST, in particular with the open seizure of the television station NTV by the state-controlled natural gas giant Gazprom. It was also more than remarkable that Putin in his annual state of the nation address didn't say one word about the freedom of the press and speech, subjects which last year he found it worthwhile to devote long passages to.
Russian society has had a bad experience of 70 years with one national-opinion monopoly that did not inform, but only propagandized, and that did not want eloquent citizens, but only cringing recipients for its orders. Does Putin want Russia to return to these times? If he does then it is high time for Russian society to defend itself or the Kremlin will again make it into a gray, malleable mass; it is the time to show Putin that there is no going back.
THE WALL ST. JOURNAL EUROPE
It's not every day that the static image of an empty newsroom chair could constitute compelling television. But when outraged journalists aired this desolate tableau at Russia's NTV - until this week, the country's one and only national station independent of the state - it made for a strangely moving drama about free speech denied.
Though Gazprom claims that it only wishes to turn around NTV's economic fortunes, by sheer coincidence the station's news coverage of deteriorating social services, graft, and disappearing Chechen journalists may mysteriously evaporate too.
Putin might reflect, however, on the fact that when everything starts looking rose-colored on the Russian networks, all three of which will now be subject to state control, the audience won't be fooled. No apparatchik will come along to rose-tint their dirty windows. Indeed, Russians routinely discounted most of what they saw on central television in the Soviet days as self-serving pap. And in an Internet era, it's harder to control information than during the Cold War. But it's as easy as it's ever been to come across as authoritarian and insecure.
Let's leave aside the usual Western preaching about human rights. Relaxation about a free press from any government reads as a gesture of confidence, repression as a sign of fear. When Putin silences his critics, even under the unlikely aegis of a state gas company, he doesn't look powerful and resolute - not to the West, not to his own people. He looks scared.
TITLE: jazz spring kicks off with jfc celebrations
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: JFC Jazz Club is celebrating its seventh anniversary with a jazz festival opening at the club Thursday. Called "Jazz Spring in St. Petersburg," it is organized for the sixth time and takes place at five venues - culminating in "Jazz Stars on the Classical Stage" gala at the Shostakovich Philharmonic on April 17.
When JFC opened in April 1994 as the New Jazz Club, there was only one jazz venue around - the city-sponsored Jazz Philharmonic Hall, operated by mainstream jazz guru David Goloshchokin and based around traditional jazz styles.
Now there are over a dozen jazz venues of all sorts, the latest addition being the (812) Club, which opened last month - but JFC's director Felix Naroditsky, who has been instrumental in the jazz scene's development, said that for a city of 5 million there should be even more jazz clubs.
"It's a big city and if life gets better and people start to think what to do at night, the situation with music clubs will be entirely different," said Naroditsky, who is also coordinator of Art Sessions, the educational program which gathers about 100 local promoters once a month and which was established in November 2000.
"The thing with the other clubs is that they have to survive financially - while we can afford to do more creative things," said Naroditsky. JFC features projects such as Volkovtrio or Vyacheslav Guyvoronsky, which demand a high degree of musical concentration.
Although some 10 years ago local jazz musicians performed mostly mainstream and jazz standards, now more contemporary styles, such as fusion, funk and acid jazz, dominate in the local jazz scene, including the JFC Jazz Club.
"It's positive that many musicians start to compose their own music now, these days 80 or 85 percent [of music performed in local clubs] is original music," said Naroditsky.
Local jazz clubs' repertoires feature largely the same dozen names with a few exceptions, but Naroditsky said that much depends on a particular venue and its specialty.
"Frequently the same band performs different repertoires at different clubs," he said. "If you want to listen to jazz music and then watch a film, there's Jam Hall, or if you want to dance there's Jazz'n'Phrenia."
"I'd say jazz musicians survive, they are not rich, but that's their choice," said Naroditsky. "They could have become successful pop musicians, as some did, but they chose to keep playing jazz instead and have to pay for it."
Naroditsky disagreed with musicologist and jazz promoter Vladimir Feyertag's opinion that Latin nights at local jazz clubs are "pure commerce."
"For instance, Salsamania with Yana Radion, who sings both jazz standards and Brazilian music with similar brilliance, is in the same category as the Andrei Kondakov Band from the point of view of creativity," he said.
Many jazz musicians also play at restaurants, but Naroditsky, who combines managing at the JFC with art direction at the expensive restaurant Sadko's, sees nothing at all wrong with this.
"To play background music well is high art," he said. "Things like lobby lounge playing require great skill - one moment you have to draw attention to your playing, but the next you have to remain in the background."
TITLE: chernov's choice
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Zdob Si Zdub has dropped out of the Fuzz Awards ceremony and
concert, which will take place at the Yubileiny Sports Palace
on Saturday. According to Fuzz magazine, which established the
awards in 1995, Moldova's best-known rock band chose to play
in Moscow instead.
Fuzz Awards' headliners Akvarium is busy recording new material,
as usual. Quite when their new album will be coming out is still
in question, but Boris Grebenshchikov, an ardent user and defender
of Napster, has already made some recordings available to fans
on the Internet. The MP3 of Akvarium's new song "500" can be
downloaded from the band's official Web site at www.aquarium.ru.
For some reason though, Aquarium has never won a Fuzz award.
In concert Akvarium will perform more brand new songs, Grebenshchikov
said when I bumped into him in the street on Thursday.
The price has changed, though. Instead of the 80 rubles the tickets
cost last year, this year they are going for 150, 200 and 250
rubles.
Colombia's folk diva Totó la Momposina will demonstrate her county's
music at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall Friday. "I do in music what
[Gabriel Garcia] Marquez does in literature," Totó told The St.
Petersburg Times last week. Tickets cost 50-150 rubles.
By pure coincidence, a renowned world music performer from a
different part of the globe - Russia - will play the same day.
Moscow-based but a frequent guest at international world music
festivals, Inna Zhelannaya and the Farlanders, will play at the
Concert Hall (near the Finland Station) on Friday.
There's a confusion about the band she will appear with as the
posters and tickets say "Alliance," not the Farlanders. Alliance
was the electropop band Zhelannaya played with in the 1980s before
she took her current direction.
The local promoters, Best Presents, explained Thursday that this
was because they got the wrong poster layout from Zhelannaya's
Mos cow management. Tickets 80-150 rubles.
We all know that Eric Clapton is coming to town, but it turns
out there will also be a "special guest," Doyle Bramhall, who
will appear at the guitar God's show at the Ice Palace on Sunday.
Before the 1994 release of his acclaimed debut album, "Bird Nest
on the Ground," Texas-born Bramhall had long been recognized
as a songwriter, having composed some of the best known songs
performed by the late Stevie Ray Vaughan. Check out information
and sound clips at www.doylebramhall.com.
Finally, the city's best rock club Moloko will take a break after
the Sunday gig to return (they say) on April 28 - with a renovated
bar.
TITLE: all eyes on dodin at golden mask
AUTHOR: by John Freedman
TEXT: The Golden Mask Festival is still three days from completion, but one thing can already be said for certain: Interest this year has been nothing short of phenomenal. I have yet to attend a show where there has been anything less than a standing-room-only crowd. With several intriguing shows still scheduled to play, there is no reason to think that will change now.
Among the various offerings of ballet, opera, operetta and drama remaining, the focal point of the final days will undoubtedly be Lev Dodin's production of Brian Friel's "Molly Sweeney" for St. Petersburg's Maly Drama Theater. It plays Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Taganka Theater in Moscow.
Dodin, one of Russian theater's best-known names throughout the world, is sure to bring excitement and discussion with him. Not only is the show nominated for best production, but director Dodin, designer David Borovsky and two actors - Tatyana Shestakova and Sergei Kuryshev - are up for awards in their respective categories.
"Molly Sweeney" opened in Italy in spring 2000. Like many of Dodin's works of late, it is a joint production with a foreign production company - in this case, the Theater of Europe. However, according to reports of those who have seen the show in Europe or St. Petersburg, "Sweeney" marks quite a departure for Dodin, who established his reputation as a master of grand, sweeping productions with strong social messages.
Friel's play essentially consists of the interweaving monologues of two men and a woman. The action is held to a minimum as the actors remain seated in stylish, high-back wicker chairs designed by Borovsky. In a statement made for the Golden Mask Festival booklet, Dodin describes Friel's play as being so "saturated with life" that it "drips life as ancient tragedies drip blood."
In addition to the final performances of two Moscow shows nominated in the field of drama - the Fomenko Studio's "One Absolutely Happy Village" and the Tabakov Theater's "The Lower Depths," both playing Thursday and Friday - there is yet another show ahead from St. Petersburg, Grigory Dityatkovsky's production of Hanoch Levin's "Lost in the Stars" for the Theater on Liteiny. This show, boasting four award nominations, including best large-stage show, best director and two best actors (Sergei Dreiden and Vyacheslav Zakharov), plays Saturday.
Both nominees in the field of operetta and musical play this weekend - Moscow's hit musical "Metro" plays twice each on Saturday and Sunday, while the Krasnodar Musical Theater offers Boris Tseitlin's production of Isaak Dunayevsky's "The Acacia Blooms Again" on Friday.
Tseitlin is the only director who has shows nominated for awards in different categories - his dramatic production of "An Angel Comes to Babylon" for the Tomsk Drama Theater played Monday.
A key element in "Angel" is Yelena Stepanova's set, a long canvas tube that turns the stage and the auditorium into a single space. At the farthest point in back is a starry orifice through which the Angel and her gift to mankind, a newly created being, enter the world of the stage. At the other end of the tube sits the audience. For this set, Ste pa no va was nominated for a best designer Golden Mask.
Following performances of "Hamlet" by Moscow's Shadow Theater on Sunday and Wednesday, the puppet theater segment of the festival has now concluded. This whimsical piece created by Maya Krasnopolskaya and Ilya Epelbaum was routine fare from this talented husband-and-wife team in the sense that, like all of their shows in the past, it was unexpected in every way.
Take the show's title, for instance, which seemed to indicate we were in for a performance of William Shakespeare's tragedy. Instead, we witnessed a comical, theatricalized lesson in how to behave at the theater while a trio of actors - Krasnopolskaya, Epelbaum and the mad pianist Andrei Semyonov - marched us triumphantly through crazy, mock renditions of "Don Juan," "Eugene Onegin" and "Silva." Even when it came time for them to play "Hamlet" we didn't see "Hamlet," for it was "canceled" and replaced by a thumbnail sketch of "The Seagull."
Off-the-wall humor was also the rule in Mikhail Bychkov's production of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Uncle's Dream" for the Chamber Theater of Voronezh. Nominated in five categories - dramatic production, director, designer (Yury Galperin), actor (Anatoly Abdulayev) and actress (Tatyana Kutikhina) - this was a curious mix of the grotesque and the surreal with a bit of commedia dell'arte thrown in for fun.
Bychkov presented Dostoevsky's satirical tale of a senile old man throwing the lives of some bored and cynical provincials into chaos as if its components were pieces of a single, riotous dream. The actors' puppet-like movements, their skewed makeup and their eccentric costumes matched well the compartmental set allowing actors to appear and disappear as if by magic.
The Golden Mask concludes Monday at the Mossoviet Theater with a ceremony where the year's top directors, designers and performers will be named. If the past is any indication, these awards will not only honor Russia's top theater artists, but will foster great controversies. After all, how would we know theater is great if we didn't argue about it after the curtain falls? The festival is coming to a close; let the debates begin!
The Golden Mask Festival continues until Sunday. Tel. (095) 755-83-35.
TITLE: city gets first-ever colombian film festival
AUTHOR: by Kirill Galetski
TEXT: The Colombian Cinema Retrospective, which runs from April 7 to April 12 at Dom Kino, adds a new dimension to the St. Petersburg film exhibition scene. The festival is an engaging, varied mix of some of the most internationally successful films to come from a South American country more known for its violent civil wars and drug cartels than for its cinematic wonders. Through five feature films and four shorts, the retrospective follows Colombian cinema's progress from the mid-1980s.
The last 30 years saw favorable developments as a whole generation of Colombian filmmakers attended film schools in Colombia, the United States, and Europe. A distinct national cinema has emerged, and the Colombian film industry is alive and well, thanks to added government support.
The feature film in the retrospective that most directly addresses volatile history is "A Man of Principle." In the late 1940s, Colombia was plagued by assassinations and political violence, during which 200,000 people died. This film tells about the changing fortunes of one of the executioners on the side of the Conservatives, who came to be known as "El Condor." The brutal massacre of an entire family opens the film, and a sense of doom pervades.
The story links the various townspeople together as they wonder which of their neighbors will be killed next. Those brave enough to speak out are quickly silenced, but the situation changes. Political upheavals and a change of government in the rest of the country suddenly appear without warning. One moment El Condor is killing at will, apparently in full control of the situation. Next, he finds out that the Conservatives have been overthrown and that he has to flee. The film is not your standard historical epic, however, and is limited somewhat by its low budget.
The influence of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel prize winning Colom bian author, on Colombian cinema is notable. Marquez wrote the screenplay to Jorge Ali Triana's "A Time to Die." The film has decent production values, credible acting and resembles an American western, but is infused with local Colombian color and mores with their own take on usual notions of machismo, honor and vengeance.
St. Petersburg audiences will also get to see Victor Gaviria's most recent work "The Rose Seller" at the local retrospective. The film is about a 13-year-old flower girl and her friends who work the mean streets of Medellin at night and whose only joy in life is glue-sniffing.
Somewhat more lightweight is Felipe Aljure's film "People of the Universal," which follows the adventures of a private eye named Diogenes, his wife and his nephew. The three of them comprise the staff of the Universal investigation agency and they are hired to follow a young porno actress by the actress's married Spanish lover.
Sergei Solovyov's 1984 Russian-Colombian co-production "The Chosen Ones" is an obvious yet fascinating choice for the retrospective. Solovyov is one of the more interesting Moscow-based directors. He directed the 1987 cult film "Assa," which starred Sergei "Afrika" Bugayev and Tatyana Drubich, and became synonymous with the Glasnost era.
This film stars Leonid Filatov as a German Jewish immigrant seeking refuge in Bogota just after World War II. The film explores the tragic irony of his fate as he is unjustly accused of collaboration with the fascist Conservative party. The film shows the damaging effects on peoples' lives by adverse politics, a notion that both Colombian and Russian audiences can relate to.
z "A Man of Principle" (Condores no entierran todos los dias) (1984). Sat., April 7, 7 p.m.
z "Time to Die" (Tiempo de Morir) (1985). Sun., April 8, 7 p.m.
z "The Rose Seller" (La Vendedora de rosas) (1998). Mon., April 9, 7 p.m.
z "People of the Universal" (La Gente de la Universal) (1993). Tues., April 10, 7 p.m.
z "The Chosen Ones" (Los Elegidos - Izbranniye) (1984, Colombia-Russia) . Wed., April 11, 7 p.m.
z Short Film Program - (1977-1997) 4 Colombian short films. Thurs., April 12, 7 p.m.
z Reprise of the Audience's Favorite - the film in the retrospective voted most popular is repeated. Thurs., April 12, 8 p.m.
TITLE: verdi's 'scottish opera' comes to the mariinsky
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
TEXT: Looking at 11th-century Scotland through the dual prisms of Shakespeare and Verdi - such is the task facing British director David McVicar and his compatriot set designer Tanya McCallin as they prepare to unveil their rendition of Verdi's "Macbeth," based on Shakespeare's play, which premieres on April 18 at the Mariinsky Theater.
"It is indeed a complex task, but I look at my work in terms of the periods in which things are set," said McCallin who has worked for the English National Opera, the Liceu Barcelona and Scottish Opera, but is making her debut in Russia. "We can't experience Shakespeare's idea of the 11th century any more than we can experience Shakespeare's time or Verdi's time - we can only experience our own."
Viewers wishing to trace the layers of history will get various hints throughout the performance. For example, none of the male characters will have wigs, and no one will be wearing any makeup because the production's authors don't consider this theatrical gesture to be necessary. The performers will be wearing early 17th-century costumes from the time of Shakespeare's play, but McCallin says that they will be worn as modern clothes. "There won't be any theatrical attitude; singers will move very freely and naturally," she said.
Verdi's first opera to be based on a Shakespearean work, Macbeth was premiered in Florence on March 14, 1847, but almost two decades later was revised by the composer.
"We are hoping that the audiences will sense the layering of the work as Medieval Scotland seen through Shakespeare's eyes, Verdi's eyes, and then our eyes, the eyes of the performers and the viewers," said McCallin.
Having designed a number of Chekhov dramas and other Russian plays, McCallin is excited about being in Russia for the first time. "Getting to know people and visiting countries feeds into the way you work. It is a great asset for a designer," she said. "It is fantastic to be here and see things for real, rather than just imagining them."
As McCallin stresses, Macbeth is not just a story about a man obsessed with ambition. What is important, she believes, is why he is obsessed, and the answer is that he has no future. Lady Macbeth can have no children, which means the pair cannot be followed by further generations.
Exploring the differences between Shakespeare's Macbeth and Verdi's Macbeth, the designer points out that the play develops at a much slower pace. "The opera take huge time leaps, things happen much more quickly," she said.
"Verdi was passionate about Shakespeare and this play in particular, and he has gone to the deepest level of the play, the greatest aspect of the tragedy," McCallin said. "At the same time, he made very selective choices as to how to go about it."
McCallin's preference is for simple staging so that the singer is given the greatest emphasis. "I try to take a very calm, clear approach to the way I design, so that the performance becomes the issue and not the visual effect." she said.
"On the other hand, both the director and I have a very good knowledge of Scotland in its physical sense, so we hope we have managed to bring across the atmosphere of the times when the play is set."
The sets will be steely, stony gray, with a touch of red signifying blood and murder, and a note of green, reflecting the theme of youth, children and new life.
McCallin doesn't consider herself minimalist, though she admits that her staging is "architecturally minimal and spare." The whole of the Mariinsky stage will be opened out from wing to wing. "We will be using the back wall and even beyond the back wall," designer said. "I am very concerned with space, the architecture of space and the performer in that space."
Rehearsing for the roles are Sergei Murzayev, Edem Umerov (Macbeth), Irina Gordei, Olga Sergeyeva (Lady Macbeth), Yury Alexeyev, Leonid Zakhozhayev, Yevgeny Strashko (Macduff), Gennady Bezzubenkov, Yevgeny Nikitin, and Mikhail Petrenko (Banquo).
For details, call the Mariinsky Theater box office at: 114-43-44, or visit www.mariinsky.ru
TITLE: the perils of pregnant spying
AUTHOR: by Tom Masters
TEXT: In one particularly funny episode of The Simpsons, down-at-heel barman Moe decides to turn his flagging bar into a "family restaurant," replete with wacky wall features and a "crazy" menu, calculating that people whose lives lack excitement will then start coming in hoards. "A crocodile wearing sunglasses," says Marge Simpson as she enters, "I thought I'd seen it all." You get the idea.
Such is the logic behind the Pregnant Spy, which could probably put even Moe's efforts at wacky hilarity to shame. Bearing the full name "Sac de Voyage for a Pregnant Spy," stepping inside is indeed like entering a suitcase, as there is no natural light inside at all, and even the electric light is rather scarcely supplied.
As your eyes become accustomed to spending the next hour or so in semi-darkness, you will make out an array of "crazy" tables, none of which are comfortable or ergonomic. We finally vouched for what turned out to be the least comfortable of all - a strange wooden construction which featured a real log (wild!) and was at a very obvious slant, along with wooden chairs that were unadjustable.
Our waiter was rather unhelpful when it came to explaining what individual dishes on the menu were, and the menu itself gave no explanation other than a title either. We avoided the rather standard business lunch (120 rub.) and ordered à la carte.
My companion took solyanka (80 rub.) and a steak (180 rub.), while I opted for solyenya (75 rub.) and chicken stuffed with avocado and cheese (160 rub.). We accompanied the dishes with two Stary Melnik beers (40 rub. each).
While the solyanka was said to be far too salty, my solyenya - an array of pickled vegetables, olives, garlic and cranberries - was perfectly acceptable, but only confirmed my suspicions that however long I spend in Russia, I will never go fully local and enjoy anything simply because it has been pickled.
The generous break the kitchen staff gave us between our starters and main courses gave us a chance to explore, and in turn we ventured upstairs to have a look round. The cavernous upper floor is far better appointed, with four different rooms, each with its own inevitable theme. One of them takes its inspiration from the karma sutra, and diners are surrounded by painted and sculptural representations of ambitious sexual positions, while another is a grotto with stalactites everywhere. All include features that, again, smack more of novelty than comfort.
Finally, our main dishes arrived, large portions both served on very small plates. While my colleague's steak was pronounced to be fine, I was disappointed with the rather bland chicken fillet, which, like most things at the Pregnant Spy, had been generously salted for taste. The cheese and avocado were barely in evidence, in fact I found three pieces of avocado in two fillets, and they were hard. At least the beer was cold.
If, like me, the idea of wacky theme restaurants leaves you corpse-cold, you might do better to watch The Simpsons, where Moe decides he'd rather be poor and run a last drop saloon for alcoholics than endure fun-through-decor and a highly annoying clientele. The Pregnant Spy obviously has a winning formula for many - it is, after all, very large and has survived for some time - but while restaurants continue to be judged by their food above all else, the Pregnant Spy is one to avoid.
The Pregnant Spy, 13 Bolshaya Konyu shen naya Ulitsa, 311-78-17. Open daily from noon until last client. Lunch for two, 675 rub. ($24). Visa and Mastercard accepted.
TITLE: Balkan Talks Only Highlight Divisions
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Verbin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SKOPJE, Macedonia - The world pressed hard on Thursday for a serious political dialogue between Macedonia's Slav majority and ethnic Albanian minority, but fresh differences showed the latest Balkan crisis was far from over.
Mircea Geoana, the chairman-in-office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Macedonian parties should seize the chance of peace offered by the talks.
"All legitimate interests should be presented there and we also feel the need of having some quick success, some quick wins, which will give confidence," he told reporters.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook warned that the time left for meeting "legitimate aspirations" of the ethnic Albanian minority, one-third of the population, might not be long.
"We need to work while there is an interval, when Macedonia is clear of violence," he told reporters in Tetovo, Macedonia's unofficial ethnic Albanian capital near which ethnic Albanian rebels fought government troops last month.
"We must create the political conditions in Macedonia where all citizens know they have equal rights and feel they have equal opportunities."
Cook was speaking after talks with Arben Xhaferi, leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians (DPA), part of a fragile government coalition.
Xhaferi responded by saying the Slav majority was not serious about the dialogue that opened earlier this week after Skopje said its troops had dispersed the rebels in the northern mountains along the border with Kosovo.
"They want to have some kind of a coffee-table discussion without any obligations," Xhaferi said.
"If we do not open dialogue, the violence will return very easily. The people did not disappear, they are around us," he said in a reference to the rebels who, he said, should not be called terrorists.
For the rebels, who call themselves the National Liberation Army (NLA), a key demand is a change to the constitution, which names Macedonian Slavs as the primary nation in Macedonia.
The emergence of the NLA has radicalized mainstream Albanian parties, which have also called for greater language and cultural rights and better representation at all administrative levels.
The West says only quick agreement to accommodate Albanians' grievances could avoid a new Bal kan war.
Talks to address the issue got off to a poor start this week, with Slav protests against concessions and a boycott by the main Albanian opposition Party for Democratic Prosperity, which said rebels should be represented in the talks.
Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski ruled out any talks with the rebels or changes in the basic law that would turn the tiny state into a federation.
"We have intensified political dialogue but we will not respond to those who suggest a federal state," he told a meeting of regional defense ministers.
Trajkovski's speech reflected Slav leaders' fears of a backlash from their constituency if they concede too much. He repeated Skopje's view that the crisis had been imported from Ko so vo, whose ethnic Albanians want independence.
"The agenda of the terrorists is not the internal situation in Macedonia. Their agenda is the situation in Kosovo. Our efforts will be fruitless if the international community does not take care of the roots of the crisis in Kosovo," he said.
TITLE: Italian Police Trap Terror Group
AUTHOR: By Emilio Parodi
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MILAN - Italy said on Thursday police had smashed the "nerve center'' of an Islamic group bent on carrying out attacks across Europe. Police swooped in on five suspected members of the guerrilla group, believed linked to Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, who is wanted in the United States in connection with bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998.
Italian Interior Minister Enzo Bianco said the arrests were part of a dawn raid operation carried out in coordination with police forces in Europe and the United States.
In Berlin, federal prosecutors said a suspected Islamic guerrilla of Algerian origin had been detained after raids across southern and western Germany that uncovered arms stores and bomb materials.
"The nerve center of an organization which could carry out attacks in Europe has been exposed,'' Bianco told reporters in Rome. "[Police have] uncovered a very dangerous unit ready [to carry out] terrorist acts.''
Police in Milan said the five suspects, all north Africans, were seized as part of a probe by magistrates in northern Italy and police were searching for five others in Italy.
The men were being held in the San Vittore prison in Milan.
Sources close to the investigation said that the northern Italian cell was more than just a unit of a European network for guerrilla activities.
One source said the suspects were part of a hub used to recruit guerrillas who were then sent to training camps financed by Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Officials said the suspects, who operated out of Busto Arsizio, a town about 35 kilometers northwest of Milan, also provided logistical support including identity papers to guerrillas.
Stefano Dambruoso, one of two investigating magistrates on the case, said the men were also believed to be connected to a group which had planned an attack in France last December.
Dambruoso said the group had planned to launch an attack in the central square in Strasbourg during Christmas holidays last year.
German police arrested four men - two Iraqis, one Algerian and one French national - on Dec. 26 in Frankfurt, and a subsequent search of two homes uncovered a hoard of weapons and explosives. The German operation stymied the planned attack in Strasbourg, Italian officials said.
In Paris, French judicial sources said the latest arrests followed the operation carried out in Frankfurt in which the suspected guerrillas were found in possession of arms and an amateur video film made in Strasbourg of the route leading to and from the city's Gothic cathedral.
Italian media earlier reported that the suspects detained in northern Italy had been planning an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Rome. But the Milan magistrate said they were not believed to be directly involved in any plot against the embassy.
The U.S. Embassy was closed for several days in January.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Bomb Kills Militant
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Islamic Jihad militant died instantly on Thursday when a booby-trapped public telephone blew up while he was using it, and Palestinians accused Israel of assassinating him.
In another action likely to anger Palestinians and hamper peace moves, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's month-old government announced it would auction off West Bank land for the building of 700 more Jewish settler houses. The move drew quick condemnation from the United States, which used much stronger language than in previous statements on Jewish settlements.
Iyad al-Hardan, 30, died in the phone-booth explosion. He had left his Palestinian Authority prison cell in the northern West Bank city of Jenin briefly to make a call from a phone he often used. He inserted a phone card and the phone blew up, a Palestinian security source said.
Bush Demands Action
WASHINGTON (AP) - The standoff with China over a downed reconnaissance plane show ed signs of easing Thursday. "We are working all diplomatic channels," Pre sident Bush declared.
Bush said he regrets "that a Chinese pilot is missing" and that his plane was lost. At the same time, the president told a convention of newspaper editors, China must allow the 24 U.S. crew members to come home.
"The Chinese have got to act, and I hope they do so quickly," Bush said.
Bush spoke amid a flurry of diplomatic activity over the crippled Navy spy plane, stranded on China's Hainan Island since it made an emergency landing Sunday after a collision with a Chinese fighter over the South China Sea.
The United States has declined to apologize for the mishap, despite Chinese demands.
Truck Driver Jailed
MAIDSTONE, England (Reuters) - Dutch driver Perry Wacker was jailed for 14 years Thursday for the manslaughter of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants who suffocated in a sweltering airtight container on the back of his truck.
Wacker, from Rotterdam in the Netherlands, was caught in one of Britain's worst human smuggling cases by customs officials at the port of Dover who discovered a "sea of bodies" in his truck when it arrived on June 19 last year.
Handing down the sentence, judge Alan Moses said Wacker had engaged in "cynical exploitation" of young Chinese who were only striving to get to a better life.
India Calls Peace Talks
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Indian government invited Kashmiri militants and separatists for talks on Thursday, taking its biggest step toward peace in the Himalayan region since embarking on a cease-fire four months ago.
But there was no sign that New Delhi was any closer to agreeing on a resumption of dialogue with Pakistan even as a key militant group swiftly rejected the invitation branding it as yet another attempt to split the separatists.
Frontline Kashmiri militant group Hizbul Mujahideen said that it saw no point in negotiations that did not include Pakistan, which India accuses of sponsoring the insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir.
More than a dozen guerrilla groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir have repeatedly rejected the cease-fires announced by India and demanded that Pakistan should be involved in talks.
Kabila Fires Cabinet
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) - Congo President Joseph Kabila abruptly dismissed his cabinet and suspended top financial managers, asserting control of the corrupt and inefficient government he inherited from his assassinated father.
Then Kabila embarked for Germany on a two-day "explaining campaign," aimed at "remedying the country's troubles." He met for nearly an hour Thursday with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who offered support to the new leader for his efforts to end Congo's war.
Four months after his father's assassination, Kabila, 29, has courted aid from officials in Washington and in European capitals.
His decree late Wednesday restricted government services to a basic day-to-day minimum, presidential spokesman Ngwej Katot said. Heads of public treasuries and public companies were suspended and auditors were dispatched to all provinces and public companies.
25 Killed in Guinea
CONAKRY (Reuters) - Twenty-five people died and 50 others were injured in two separate accidents on a busy highway in Guinea, state radio said on Thursday.
The crashes took place on Wednesday within hours of each other on the 600-kilometer road linking the capital Conakry to the eastern city of Kankan.
In the first accident, a trailer loaded with goods and passengers rammed into an oncoming passenger van, killing 21 on the spot and injuring more than 30 others - some of them seriously.
Shortly afterwards, four people died when a four-wheel-drive vehicle collided with a passenger bus, leaving the car a mangled wreck.
Hostage Spared
MANILA, Philippines (AP) - In the face of a last-ditch military offensive, Muslim rebels backed off on their threat to kill an American hostage Thursday and send his head to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as a birthday present.
Just minutes before the threatened execution, Carol Schilling was hooked up on live radio with the Abu Sayyaf guerrilla group that has held her 25-year-old son, Jeffrey, since last August.
Mrs. Schilling had been told twice before that her son's execution was imminent.
But this threat had been the most specific - beheading at 5 p.m. Thursday, Arroyo's 54th birthday. Similarly, two Filipino school teachers held by the group were killed last April to mark then-President Joseph Estrada's birthday.
Both the Philippine and U.S. governments expressed thanks that Schilling had been spared, but reiterated their refusal to pay ransom for hostages. Abu Sayyaf, thought to number about 1,200, has sought $10 million for Schilling.
TITLE: Leeds, Arsenal Capture Openers
AUTHOR: By Jeremy Butler
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LEEDS, England - Leeds United manager David O'Leary said his side would not crumble in Spain after securing a decisive 3-0 first-leg lead in its Champions League quarterfinal against Deportivo Coruna.
Wednesday's win at Elland Road has left Leeds in a comfortable position, but the Spanish team has a useful psychological weapon at its disposal after its remarkable comeback against Paris St. Germain earlier in the competition.
The Spanish champions were 3-0 down at home before battling back to win the second-group stage match 4-3.
But O'Leary claims his side, which has won at Lazio and drawn with AC Milan on its travels this season, is mentally strong enough to withstand the Spanish in their own backyard.
O'Leary heaped praise on captain-for-the-night Rio Ferdinand, the world's most expensive defender following his 18-million-pound ($25.85 million) move from West Ham United last November.
"I think he's quality. I was a center half for 20 years and I might not know too much, but I know center halves and he's pure, pure quality."
The England defender was in commanding form at the heart of the Leeds defense, but he said keeping Deportivo's strikers quiet was not as easy as it looked.
"It was a hard a game, we had to make sure we won every tackle and kept on top of them all the way through," Ferdinand said.
"We would have settled for 0-0 at the start so we are delighted with the position we're in, but no way is it over."
Deportivo striker Roy Makaay admitted he was frustrated at the way his team lost the match.
"They scored their goals from free-kicks and corners and that has been our problem lately," the Dutch striker said.
"We've been conceding a lot of goals from those situations and at this level you can't afford to do that."
In Wednesday's other match, Arsenal defeated Valencia 2-1 in the first leg of its Champions League quarterfinal.
Second-half goals from Thierry Henry and Ray Parlour secured victory for the English team after the visitors had taken the lead against the run of play through Fabian Ayala.
Arsenal dominated possession in the early stages of the game, but failed to breach a Valencia back line that had the best defensive record in the first two phases of the competition.
Patrick Vieira headed Arsenal's best other chance against the crossbar and although the pace of Henry and Robert Pires worried Valencia's veteran right-back Jocelyn Angloma, the hosts were unable to score a third goal.
Despite the victory, Wenger knows it won't be easy to overcome Valencia, who reached last season's Champions League final and has not lost its last 16 European matches at its Mestalla stadium.
"The tie is finely poised," he said. "I felt we could have scored more goals in the second half."
TITLE: Tiger Looks To Continue Historic Run at Masters
AUTHOR: By Paul Newberry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AUGUSTA, Georgia - Maybe it will be Vijay Singh, the last golfer other than Tiger Woods to win a major championship.
Or perhaps this will be the year Phil Mickelson finally breaks through in the big four. After all, he's already snapped two of Woods' most treasured streaks.
Don't forget David Duval, the last player to hold the world's No. 1 ranking other than you know who. Keep an eye on Ernie Els, runner-up in three majors a year ago. Don't overlook Davis Love III, who has five top-10 finishes at Augusta.
If it's Woods against the rest of the world, these are the top contenders. All can make a case that they'll be trying on the green jacket Sunday, thereby halting his seemingly unstoppable march toward history.
"I have not felt as though everybody is trying to get together to beat one guy," Mickelson said. "That's certainly not the case."
Maybe it should be. Woods has won the last three majors - and four of the last five - a streak interrupted by Singh's victory at last year's Masters.
If Woods can win for the second time at Augusta National, he'll be the first player to hold all four major professional titles at one time.
"There's a lot of talk about him winning all four," Singh said. "But I'm not here to stop Tiger from winning a golf tournament. I'm am here to win myself. My whole focus is on me."
Mickelson, who has won 18 tournaments in his career but never a major, is clearly ticked by that glaring omission from his record.
"It's disappointing," he said. "My expectation was that by age 30 I would have not just one major, but more."
As with Mickelson, Duval lacks a major championship on his resume, though he has finished second, sixth and third at Augusta National in the last three years.
"Expectations are not high for me," Duval said. "At the same time, I think I'm striking the golf ball so much better than I was last year. Last year, I was playing off confidence and smart play."
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Hingis Stalker Guilty
MIAMI (AP) - A man who said he fell in love with tennis star Martina Hingis and followed her to tournaments around the world despite her pleas to stay away has been convicted of stalking.
Dubravko Rajcevic, a 46-year-old Croatian-born naval architect from Australia, was found guilty Tuesday of stalking and three counts of trespassing at the 2000 Ericsson Open near Miami. He faces up to four years in prison.
After the jury left the courtroom, Rajcevic blurted questions at Judge Kevin Emas.
"Why no black people on my jury? All the black people were eliminated from my jury," Rajcevic said. The judge told him to discuss that with his lawyer, Frank Abrams.
Emas granted Abrams' request for a psychologist to visit Rajcevic in jail before sentencing on April 12. But Rajcevic said he would not cooperate. "I need legal help, not psychological help," he said.
Agassi Wins Award
LONDON (Reuters) - Champions Race leader Andre Agassi has been named ATP Player of the Month for March following his back-to-back Tennis Masters Series victories in Indian Wells and the Ericsson Open in Miami.
Agassi, with a 249-point lead at the top of the Champions Race rankings, which count only points earned in 2001, won his fifth different Tennis Masters Series title with a straight-set demolition of Pete Sampras in Indian Wells.
He then won a record fourth Ericsson Open title last weekend - his third major title of the year - and a record 12th Masters Series event.
The 30-year-old has a 22-2 record for the year, his best start since 1995 (29-2), and is unbeaten in his last 11 matches.
Salaries Surpass $2M
NEW YORK (AP) - Baseball's average salary burst past $2 million for the first time, and nearly half the players in the major leagues - 425 of 854 - will make $1 million or more, according to a study by The Associated Press.
The average salary increased 13.9 percent to $2,264,403, according to the AP study, which reviewed the contracts of all major leaguers on opening-day rosters and disabled lists.
Since 1967, the average salary has increased 118-fold from $19,000 while the Consumer Price Index has merely quadrupled. Opening-day salaries totaled $1.934 billion.
Texas shortstop Alex Rodriguez led the way with a $22 million salary, including a prorated share of his $10 million signing bonus. Rodriguez, beginning a record $252 million, 10-year contract, alone is responsible for adding $25,761 to the average salary.
TITLE: Nomo Dispels Spring Doubts With No-Hitter
AUTHOR: By David Ginsburg
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BALTIMORE - First, Hideo Nomo conquered Coors Field. Then he gave a command performance at the bandbox called Camden Yards.
Nomo became the fourth player in major league history to throw a no-hitter in both leagues, using his trademark hesitation delivery and a crafty mix of pitches to lift the Boston Red Sox past the Baltimore Orioles 3-0 Wednesday night.
Nomo's first no-hitter, in September 1996 as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is the only one ever pitched at Colorado's high-altitude Coors Field. Now, he's the only pitcher to throw a no-hitter at 10-year-old Camden Yards.
"Tonight was better," he said, recalling that there was a two-hour rain delay in his initial no-hitter.
This game was delayed at the start for 43 minutes because of a power outage, but once the lights came on, it was lights out for the Orioles.
"He mixed his pitches well," said Baltimore's Jerry Hairston, who struck out three times. "I've been in the major leagues for parts of four seasons, and that's the best split-finger fastball I've ever seen. He was throwing 88-89 [142 kilometers per hour] but with the splitter it seemed like 95 with some movement."
Nomo walked three and struck out 11. Cal Ripken, who reached in the second inning on an error by third baseman Shea Hillenbrand and moved up on a wild pitch, was the only Orioles player to get to second base.
In his initial game with Boston, Nomo became the first Boston pitcher to throw a no-hitter since Dave Morehead beat Cleveland in 1965 - three years before Nomo was born in Osaka, Japan.
"I felt pretty good throughout the game," said Nomo, signed as a free agent in December. "As I was going into the ninth inning, I was not nervous."
That was apparent in the Boston dugout, where Red Sox pitching coach Joe Kerrigan marveled at just how calm the right-hander appeared as he toed the pitching rubber with three outs to go.
"You could see on his face that he was very focused. Nothing bothered him," Kerrigan said. "It was one of those situations where a bomb could go off on the side of the mound and he'd still be looking for a sign. He had great intensity."
There was no reason to be jittery. At that point, Nomo had already proved that his horrid spring (0-3, 11.37 ERA) was just an illusion.
Second baseman Mike Lansing saved the no-hitter with a backhanded, tumbling catch of Mike Bordick's soft looper to center field for the second out in the ninth.
Lansing, who entered the game as a pinch-runner in the eighth, knew exactly how important it was to catch up to the rapidly falling baseball.
"You know what's going on. As soon as I saw it, I put my head down," Lansing said. "I knew I had to go all out and get there. ... He had worked so hard to get that far. I didn't want him to lose it at that point."
Two pitches later, Delino DeShields lofted a routine fly to left field that Troy O'Leary caught for the final out. Nomo was lifted by catcher Jason Varitek and mobbed by his new teammates as O'Leary ran in to give the pitcher the ball.
Nomo, 32, needed 110 pitches to dispatch the Orioles, who last were no-hit in 1991 by Chicago's Wilson Alvarez in Baltimore's old Memorial Stadium.
It was the earliest no-hitter in baseball history, coming three days earlier than Houston's Ken Forsch in 1979 and Detroit's Jack Morris in 1984.
The Orioles didn't get anything close to a hit until Lansing's catch in the ninth. Before that, the hardest-hit ball was a drive to the warning track in center by Melvin Mora in the second inning, but Carl Everett had more than enough room to make the play.
As the game wore on, many in the crowd of 35,602 abandoned the home team and cheered each out.
"People in the U.S. like good baseball, whether you're on the home team or not," Nomo said through an interpreter.
Nomo joined Cy Young, Jim Bunning and Nolan Ryan as the only pitchers with no-hitters in both leagues.
Nomo won the 1995 NL Rookie of the Year for the Dodgers, exciting all of baseball with Nomo-mania. In 1997, Nomo became the fastest pitcher in major league history to reach 500 career strikeouts, doing it in 444 2-3 innings.
But he struggled the past three seasons, going 26-32 for the Dodgers, Mets, Milwaukee and Detroit. He entered the season 69-61 with a 3.97 ERA.
Brian Daubach took care of the offense for Nomo, hitting two home runs off loser Sidney Ponson. The first homer, in the third inning, followed an error by Ripken. He added a solo shot in the eighth.
Ponson pitched well enough to win - on most nights. He allowed three runs and four hits in 7 1-3 innings, walking one and striking out 10.
"I threw a good game, but the other guy throws a no-hitter," Ponson said. "What are you going to do?"
TITLE: Duke Downs Arizona To Win 3rd Title
AUTHOR: By Jim O'Connell
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINNEAPOLIS - Mike Krzyzewski didn't want to let go of Shane Battier after the top-ranked Duke Blue Devils won their third NCAA college basketball championship - and second in the Metrodome - with an 82-72 victory over Arizona on Monday night.
Coach K hugged Battier for what seemed to be an eternity, a farewell embrace for his national player of the year and team leader.
Battier's work is done.
"It's complete," said Duke's all-everything senior forward. "All that's left for me is to ride off into the sunset on a white horse."
With a national title in his hand.
With Battier and Duke's other All-American, Jason Williams, coming up big down the stretch, and sophomores Mike Dunleavy and Carlos Boozer playing key roles, Krzyzewski moved into impressive coaching company.
"Shane wasn't hitting his jump shot, but he comes up with two amazing offensive rebounds," Krzyzewski said. He was referring to two plays in the final 4 1/2 minutes when Battier, the national player of the year, scored after Arizona had closed within three points.
Battier played all 40 minutes, scoring 18 points, with 11 rebounds and six assists. He finished his career with 131 victories, tying Kentucky's Wayne Turner, who played from 1996-99, for the NCAA record.
"The thing with Duke, you pick your poison," said Arizona coach Lute Olson. "Sometimes it's going to be one guy, another time it's going to be someone else. The one consistent thing is that Shane Battier is going to have a great game because he just makes things happen. I don't think there's been any question in anyone's mind about him being player of the year."
Still trailing UCLA's John Wooden's 10 national championships, Krzyzewski moved one behind Kentucky's Adolph Rupp and tied his college coach, Bob Knight, who won three at Indiana.
The loss ended Arizona's bittersweet season and kept the Wildcats (28-8) from matching their own record of beating three No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament, which they did when they won it all in 1997.
Loren Woods had 22 points and 11 rebounds to lead Arizona, the team that rebounded from a poor start and overcame the death of Olson's wife, Bobbi, on Jan. 1 to reach the championship game.
"All the emotions they had to go through and they withstood them and did a great job to get to the final game," Olson said. "It's tough. Someone's got to lose it. Duke is deserving. We gave them a good run and couldn't get it done."
Duke's other titles came in consecutive years, and the second in 1992 was won in the same building after the same trip through the tournament - Greensboro, North Carolina, Philadelphia and Minneapolis for the Final Four.
Dunleavy, playing in front of his father, Portland Trail Blazers coach Mike Dunleavy, led Duke with 21 points, 18 in the second half.
Dunleavy hit a career-high five three-pointers, while Boozer, who just returned last weekend after missing six games with a broken foot, had 12 points and 12 rebounds.
Williams, saddled with foul trouble, had 16 points on five-for-15 shooting.
Duke is the first No. 1-ranked team to win the national championship since UCLA in 1995.
Dunleavy had three three-pointers in an 11-2 run that put the Blue Devils up 50-39 four minutes into the second half.
Arizona came right back with a 9-0 run that was capped by a hook shot by Woods with 14:11 left that made it 50-48.
It took Duke just four minutes to get the lead back to 10, 61-51, on Dunleavy's last three of the game with 10:08 to play.
Again, the Wildcats came back.
Four times Arizona got within three points. Three times it was Battier, the outstanding player of the Final Four, who responded for Duke.
His dunk on a pass from Williams made it 77-72 with 2:31 left, and Williams hit a three with 1:45 left that gave the Blue Devils an eight-point lead.
"Most games we're able to get that run," Woods said. "We just couldn't today. They just beat us at our own game."
Duke, which set NCAA records this season for three-pointers made and attempted, finished nine-for-27 from beyond the arc. Arizona struggled from long range, finishing four-for-22 with Jason Gardner missing all eight attempts.
Duke shot 47 percent from the field (30-for-64), well above the 38 percent Arizona's other opponents, including No. 1 seeds Illinois and Michigan State, shot during the tournament.
Arizona shot 39 percent (28-for-71), nowhere near the 50 percent mark the Wildcats were at for the first five games of the tournament.
"Somehow," Dunleavy said, "we were able to outlast them."