SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #661 (28), Friday, April 13, 2001
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TITLE: Unity, OVR Prepare Merger
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The pro-Kremlin Unity party and Fatherland-All Russia movement, or OVR, announced Thursday they will merge into what would become a new parliamentary powerhouse and the largest faction in the State Duma.
 The merger would give the as-yet unnamed party 131 votes in the 450-seat Duma, topping the 129 votes controlled by the 85-member Communist Party and their close allies, the Agrarians.
 The agreement also spells the demise of the once-powerful Fatherland that was launched with the backing of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov shortly before Duma elections in 1999.
 Unity and Fatherland were each created as reform-minded parties of power, with the only key difference being who should sit in the Kremlin. Fatherland stood behind Primakov, while Unity was formed for the sole purpose of getting Putin elected.
 "Our basic principles and political goals are very similar," Luzhkov, flanked by Unity leader and Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoi gu, said at a news conference. "This provided an opportunity for us to talk about deeper consolidation."
 Luzhkov said a group has been set up to hammer out the merger by November. A joint congress will be held that month to elect a leader for the new bloc.
 Putin has given his blessing to the coalition, Luzhkov and Shoigu said. 
 Presidential spokesman Alexei Gromov said the merger was "a constructive step toward forming a political system of Russia," Interfax reported. 
 Leaders of the People's Deputy faction, with 60 members, and the 45-strong Russia's Regions pledged that the new bloc will get their support in mustering up votes.
 Political observers said Putin was continuing to firm up his control of the government, a process that saw him appoint envoys to oversee regional governors last year and replace the defense, interior and nuclear power ministers last month.
 "Putin is now forming his own political elite. It falls very well in line with the previous step he took by [recently] reshuffling the ministers, said Andrei Ryabov of the Moscow Carnegie Center.
 "The process is simple: blend his own Unity team with the old - but proven loyal and non-antagonistic - elite from Fatherland-All Russia," he said.
 The merger would shift the balance of power from the Communists' hands for the first time since 1995, when the Communists won the largest number of seats in the Duma on a flood of discontentment over market reforms. Liberals had dominated parliament for the two years after its organization in 1993.
 Thursday's decision put an end to a spat between Unity and Fatherland that began on the eve of parliamentary elections in 1999. With what observers called carefully timed Kremlin attacks, Fatherland suffered a bitter defeat in its bid to snap up a huge number of seat in the Duma and then sweep into the Kremlin in the 2000 presidential elections.
 Many one-time Luzhkov allies joined Unity immediately after the Duma elections were over, including Fatherland co-founder and St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and Sergei Yastrzhembsky, who now heads the Kremlin's information office.
 Another vigorous supporter of Fatherland was Media-MOST founder Vladimir Gusinsky, whose now embattled NTV television provided extended airtime to the faction ahead of the Duma vote. Unlike many Fatherland supporters, Gusinsky and NTV continued to be critical of Putin even after the presidential elections in March 2000.
 However, a number of well-known politicians have quietly stood by Fatherland, and the merger with Unity could raise their fallen stars, analysts said. Devout members include former State Tax Service chief Georgy Boos and former deputy prime minister Gennady Kulik.
 Primakov, however, said Fatherland intends to retain a certain amount of independence within the new bloc.
 "For now, the faction will continue to work independently. After the merging congress is held, we will have to see how the merger will affect the balance of forces in the State Duma," Primakov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 "If this merger happens naturally and all the rights of the merging parties are protected, then we will all win," he said.
 Communist leader Gennady Zyu ga nov said he was surprised that Luzhkov and Primakov could consider a merger after suffering at the hands of the Kremlin in the parliamentary elections, adding that the union looked like a Kremlin move "to neutralize the Communists in the Duma."
 Communists, who could lose a number of key Duma committee post if the merger goes through, said they didn't expect to be sidelined.
 "I do not rule out that a rightist-centrist bloc could be created, but nobody is snoozing on the leftist flank either," said Duma Speaker and Communist member Gennady Seleznyov. 
 The merger sparked talk of other coalitions in parliament. Even liberals and democrats, who for a decade have rarely been able to reach any coalition agreements between themselves, said that Unity and Fatherland's decision may be a sign that it is time for the rightist parties to join forces.

TITLE: Foreigners Tune In to Russian TV
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: At a glance, this week's acquisition of the small Darial TV channel by Sweden's Modern Times Group looks like no big deal: MTG paid up to $10 million for a 75 percent stake in a channel whose only assets are licenses to broadcast in 25 cities.
 But the purchase is nothing short of a breakthrough in the Russian media market. For the first time, a prominent Western investor has obtained a significant share in an existing Russian television company. Moreover, the sale comes as stakes in better-known channels NTV and TV6 look set to be sold to major foreign investors.
 A new trend is emerging in the television industry in which foreign media heavyweights are finally knocking on Russia's door. Russian multimillionaires who kept a tight grip on their television channels during the 1990s are finally seriously looking abroad for investment.
 "This is exactly the moment when the media market is economically attractive for investment and the desire of Russian owners to sell media properties has increased," said Roman Petrenko, general director of STS television. "For the next eight years nothing dramatic is expected on the political scene, and media as a leverage of influence have become either less important or too expensive."
 The State Duma and the Kremlin are scrambling to protect television. This week, several bills were proposed in parliament to set a ceiling on foreign ownership. Alexander Chuyev, a member of the pro-Kremlin Unity faction and a co-author of one of the bills, acknowledged that he wanted to prevent U.S. media magnate Ted Turner from gaining control of NTV. Chuyev's bill would cap foreign ownership at 50 percent on both electronic and print media and apply retroactively. Other bills have lower limits.
 If passed in its present form, Chuyev's bill would not only invalidate MTG's purchase of Darial TV, but would also force publishers such as Independent Media, the parent company of The Moscow Times, to sell part of its assets to Russians.
 The Press Ministry has expressed opposition to the bill.
 Foreign ownership in the national media is indeed a novelty for Russia.
 Unlike the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, where the post-communist media market has been dominated by Western companies like MTG, the Russian media market until now has been controlled by the government and tycoons like NTV founder Vladimir Gusinsky and TV6 owner Boris Berezovsky, who had close ties to the Kremlin in the 1990s.
 The sole exception has been CTC - a dynamic, second-tier network built from scratch by U.S. media investor StoryFirst Communications in 1996 and 1997. StoryFirst's shareholders currently include Morgan Stanley, Universal Pictures, The Capital Group, Delta Capital and LGNC, a joint venture between Berezovsky and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. StoryFirst later sold a 25 percent to Russia's Alfa Group.
 But now the oligarchs are looking to sell their media properties, wholesale or in pieces.
 Turner is in advanced talks with Gusinsky and NTV's largest shareholder Gazprom-Media about the purchase of at least 30 percent of NTV, as well as shares in its sister television companies TNT, a second-tier channel, and NTV Plus satellite television. If the deal is finalized, control of NTV would be shared by members of a Turner-led consortium that reportedly includes financier George Soros, MTG, Capital Group and Russian businessman Grigory Beryozkin.
 TV6 board chair Igor Shabdurasulov said last week that the channel expects to strike a deal within weeks with German media company Kirsch Media Group, which has bid for blocking stakes in TV6 and the Kommersant publishing house.
 Kirsch and MTG are also expected to bid independently from the Turner consortium for a 19 percent stake in NTV if it is put up for a tender in London, as Gazprom-Media has promised, according to a high-level government source who asked not to be identified.
 Why is there such an interest from the West now?
 "We have great faith in Russia. Its potential is massive, and we believe that Russia will become a major advertising market," said MTG president Hans Holger Albrecht in a statement announcing the Darial TV deal.
 MTG estimates that Russia's advertising market in 2000 rang in at $385 million, with television accounting for 74 percent of that sum. The figure is much higher than estimates by Russia's advertising industry leader Video International. Company president Yury Za pol said in a recent interview that the television advertising market in 2000 reached $230 million and was expected to grow to $320 million this year.
 Advertising prices and per capita advertising spendings in Russia are among the lowest in the world. Petrenko at CTC said even Hungary's television ad sales topped $230 million last year, while Hungary's population is less than that of the Moscow area.
 That said, the underdeveloped Russian market could provide great rewards for investors with deep pockets who are willing to take the risk, Petrenko said.
 Kim Iskyan, media investment analyst with Renaissance Capital, said the powerful oligarchs kept would-be foreign investors at bay in the 1990s, even when the advertising market shot up in 1996 and 1997.
 "Oligarchs are looking for ways to get out of the media business rather than getting in [as they did in the mid-1990s]," Iskyan said. "This creates natural sellers."

TITLE: Lisitsky Paintings Labeled Fakes
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Art experts at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg are ruing the day they hung three paintings by Russian avant-garde painter El Lisitsky, two of which many expert claim are fakes. 
 The paintings were part of an exhibit entitled "The Malevich Circle" that ran in February and March at the museum. At issue is the authenticity of two of three paintings, which are part of a series entitled PROUNS, which stands for the Novelty Establishment Project. 
 The three Lisitsky paintings were chosen for their close stylistic adherence to the work of Kazimir Malevich, a Polish-born Russian painter who is known for founding and developing the so-called school of suprematism from the 1920s through the 1950s . 
 The movement's focus was on harsh geometry and flat bodies of color and it attracted many followers, among them Lisitsky - whose work, as fate would have it, was never widely displayed in Russia and ended up in the hands of mostly European and U.S. collectors. 
 Curators of the "The Malevich Circle" at the State Russian Museum therefore welcomed the inclusion of the two paintings from the PROUNS series that were loaned to the exhibit by a German and a Swiss collector. 
 No question as to the two paintings' authenticity were raised during the exhibit. The third painting in the PROUNS series was loaned by a Russia collector who was able to establish its authenticity with a list of former owners and the opinion of art experts. 
 But the authenticity of the other two were called into question by Alexandra Shatskikh during a conference in late March, causing a minor furor in the local art world and a source of embarrassment for the Russian Museum. 
 "I can't keep silent on this because the things exhibited here discredit the museum," said Shatskikh, according to Kommersant. 
 Another specialist in avant-garde painting, Tatyana Goryacheva, who works at the renowned Tretyakov Gal lery in Moscow, said she, too, doubted the authenticity of the two paintings displayed at the Russian Museum. 
 "As far as I know Lisitsky's work, he used different colors, used space differently, and had a different style of geometric figure arrangement," Goryacheva said in a telephone interview Thursday. 
 Specialists from the Russian Museum, however, say that it's still early to call the paintings fakes and they plan to subject them to a number of tests that will prove - or disprove - their authenticity. 
 Among these tests are x-ray verifications regarding the age of the paint and the canvas. Such equipment, however, is hard to come by and the Russian Museum will be sending the paintings to Harvard University's Busch-Reisinger Museum, which has access to such facilities. Results are expected in May. 
 But the Tretyakov's Goryacheva said that x-ray tests are not enough to establish authenticity. According to her, the best way to prove that a painting is genuinely the work of a certain artist is by comparing the painting in question with the artist's masterwork - a term used in the art world to denote a painting that is verifiably that of the artist in question. 
 Nevertheless, with all the checks, x-rays and standard paintings, accidents are bound to happen. 
 "In the Russian Museum there were about 700 paintings in [The Malevich Circle] exhibition alone," Goryacheva said. 
 "It's almost impossible to check them all."

TITLE: Media-MOST Turns to Court for NTV Answers
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - NTV television announced Tuesday that its parent company Media-MOST has filed two lawsuits over Gazprom's takeover of the channel.
 The suits, filed last Friday, ask the court to declare illegal a controversial shareholders meeting last week that picked a new board and to annul the board's decision to appoint new management to the channel, said NTV spokeswoman Tatyana Blinova.
 NTV has been fiercely protesting the takeover last week of the channel by shareholder Gazprom-Media, a subsidiary of gas giant Gazprom. NTV says it is under a crackdown by a Kremlin displeased with its sometimes critical coverage. State-controlled Gaz prom replies that it is trying to collect on millions of dollars in debt owed by NTV.
 A Moscow court said it will hear the lawsuit over the shareholders meeting on May 10 and the suit over the appointment of Gazprom-Media head Alfred Kokh as NTV chairman and U.S. banker Boris Jordan as general director on May 17.
 While Media-MOST prepares its cases for court, 129 NTV journalists signed an appeal to Putin for the nation's highest courts to study the validity of lower court decisions that paved the way for the April 3 shareholders meeting. 
 Of particular issue, Blinova said, is a Saratov court ruling on April 3 that overturned a decision banning the shareholders meeting that was made by the same court the day before. The April 3 ruling also only permitted the meeting to be held in 10 days.
 Meanwhile, Ted Turner spokesman Brian Faw said the media magnate remains keen on clinching a deal to acquire a stake in NTV.
 The Washington Post quoted Faw on Tuesday as saying Turner may be forced to reconsider the deal if too many NTV journalists walk off the job.
 "The Turner team is interested in finalizing the deal," Faw said by telephone from New York. "We are working with Gazprom to reach a mutually acceptable agreement. ... [We] hope to be sitting down with them over the next day or two." 
 Turner is negotiating to buy a disputed 19 percent stake claimed by Gazprom as collateral for an NTV loan. According to a source close to the negotiations, Turner plans to put $61 million toward that purchase. In addition, Turner hopes to buy an 11 percent stake from NTV founder Vla di mir Gusinsky.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Nuclear Vote Delayed
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Lawmakers on Tuesday delayed for a week a second hearing on a package of controversial bills to import spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing and storage. 
 State Duma deputies, who were supposed to vote on the legislation Thursday, said they wanted to review the bills until Tuesday. The bills were passed during their first reading in December. A public uproar about the plan to bring 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel into Russia led the lawmakers to ask for more time to study the bills. They put off a second hearing scheduled for March until this month. 
 Deputies said Tuesday that they wanted to sort out confusion over the feasibility of the project. The Duma's environmental committee says it has received a draft study calling the government bills "generally possible." Government experts say they have not issued such a study. 
 The bills were published Monday in the Green World environmental newspaper, and said that the bills did not comply with law. 
 
 
Media 'Under Threat'
 

PARIS (Reuters) - Press freedom in Russia is under threat following a number of serious setbacks last year, the media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontiers, or RSF, said in a report published on Wednesday.
 At least six journalists were killed in Russia in 2000 and many more were threatened, the Paris-based group said.
 The recent move by the state-dominated gas giant Gazprom to take over Russia's only independent television network, NTV, had added to the worries.
 "The Russian state's seizure of control of NTV comes after months of continuous degradation of freedom of the press across the territory of the Russian Federation," the report said.
 "Foreign press organizations have experienced growing difficulties carrying out their business, and accreditations for Chechnya are effectively impossible to obtain."
 Without directly implicating Russian President Vladimir Putin, RSF quoted him verbally attacking one reporter and said he had benefited from clear support from state-controlled television in last year's presidential election. 
 
 
Russian Soldier Shot
 

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - The Norwegian commander of NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo said on Thursday a Russian soldier shot dead the day before was the first in KFOR to die by hostile gunfire and he vowed a "robust response."
 The Russian serviceman was killed when his unit came under fire while marking the administrative boundary between Kosovo and Serbia proper, Lieutenant General Thorstein Skiaker said. It was not known who the attackers were.
 "This is the first KFOR soldier to be deliberately targeted and killed as a direct result of hostile action," Skiaker, commander of 38,000 peacekeepers in the mainly ethnic Albanian province of Yugoslavia, said in the statement.
 
 
Joint Peace Appeal
 

PARIS (Reuters) - The United States and Russia on Thursday urged Israelis and Palestinians to end violence and take reciprocal steps to restore calm.
 "The U.S. and Russia are deeply concerned by the continued violence in the Middle East and the growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians," they said in a joint statement. It was issued after talks in Paris between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.
 At least 375 Palestinians, 13 Israeli Arabs and 71 other Israelis have been killed in seven months of violence that erupted after peace talks hit a deadlock. 



TITLE: Memories, Protests Mark Cosmonauts' Day
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia marked the 40th anniversary of the first manned space flight on Thursday with wreath-layings and protests of the nation's diminishing resources for space exploration. 
 Cosmonauts Day is celebrated every year to mark Yury Gagarin's 108-minute orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961. Gagarin is one of the few heroes of the Cold-War era to retain a bright image after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 
 "We have the right to take pride in the fact that this huge, scientific and technical breakthrough was achieved in our country," President Vladimir Putin said in a holiday statement, according to the Itar-Tass news agency. 
 Later he visited Star City, the cosmonaut training center north of Mos cow, and laid flowers at a monument to Gagarin, who died in a jet fighter test flight in 1968. He also met with space veterans and presented the complex with a painting of Gagarin, one of five done by military artists shortly after the pioneering flight. 
 Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov also recalled Gagarin's flight as he opened the cabinet meeting on Thursday. 
 "We will always remember the courageous feat of the Russian and the achievements of Russian science and space technologies," Kasyanov said according to Itar-Tass.
 Space engineers called a rally outside the government headquarters, where the cabinet meeting was taking place, to protest cuts in funding for space research. 
 Putin promised officials at Star City that the government would resolve funding problems in the space sector, whose morale suffered a blow last month when the deteriorating Mir space station was taken out of orbit. The space program is integral to Russia's development, he said. 
 At Star City, Putin also met Dennis Tito, the U.S. businessman who is to ride a Russian rocket to the International Space Station this month. Tito reportedly will pay $20 million to be a space tourist under a deal begun when Russia was seeking funds to keep Mir aloft. 
 Meanwhile, top space officials laid a wreath and red carnations at Gagarin's grave in the wall of the Kremlin. Similar ceremonies were scheduled to take place across Russia, where many towns have their own Gagarin monuments. 
 
 q
 Interfax quoted a Russian space researcher as saying on Thursday that three Soviet pilots died in secret test launches before Yury Gagarin made his maiden space flight in 1961.
 But a senior Russian space official denounced the remarks as nonsense.
 Interfax quoted Mikhail Rudenko, who worked as an engineer in one the main Soviet space centers, as saying three sub-orbital flights had been carried out from Kapustin Yar cosmodrome in southern Russia in 1957, 1958 and 1959. He said all three flights - in which rockets followed a parabolic trajectory that briefly entered outer space at the highest point - ended in failure. Rudenko gave the surnames of the pilots who died in the test flights as Ledovskikh, Shaborin and Mitkov.
 Space officials have denied media reports before about deaths of cosmonauts in pre-Gagarin space flights.
 
 <i>- AP, Reuters </i>

TITLE: First Witness Speaks at Budanov Trial
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: ROSTOV-ON-DON, Southern Russia - The first witness, Vissa Kungayev, took the stand Thursday at the trial of Colonel Yury Budanov and testified that the Russian commander raped his 18-year-old daughter Elza before killing her.
 Budanov is being tried for abducting and murdering Elza in March last year. While admitting to the charges, he says the killing was not premeditated and that he never raped the girl. Kungayev's lawyer Stanislav Dmitriyevsky said rape charges could be brought against Budanov after the father presented to the court a report showing Elza was raped and sodomized an hour before her death.
 Rapes charges had been dropped before the trial began after an expert from the military forensic laboratory in Rostov-on-Don gave investigators an autopsy report March 28, 2000, that stated he could not determine whether Elza had been vaginally and anally penetrated before or after her death. 
 Dmitriyevsky, said Kungayev had received a different report that was also dated March 28 from the same expert, who he identified only as Lyanenko.
 Budanov, 33, has admitted he took Elza Kungayeva from her house in the village of Tangi-Chu on March 26 and strangled her a few hours later, but he says he acted in a fit of rage. 
 He first told investigators he was tipped off that Elza was a sniper who may have killed soldiers in his regiment near the town of Duba-Yurt. Later he said he had been told Elza's mother was the sniper and the girl infuriated him by refusing to say where the woman was.
 Budanov faces up to three years in prison if he is convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
 Budanov has also claimed he was shown a photograph of Elza with a sniper rifle taken in Duna-Yurt. He says a villager whom he arrested a day before the killing in Duna-Yurt had shown him Elza's house and said a female sniper lived there.
 Investigators say they have been unable to track down the villager described by Budanov.
 Elza's father testified on Thursday that no family members including Elza had every set foot in Duba-Yurt.
 The hearings, which began Tuesday, were scheduled to continue Friday with testimony from other members of the Kungayev family.

TITLE: Grozny Mayor Recants Over Mass-Grave Remarks
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Grozny Mayor Bislan Gan tamirov backtracked Wednesday on remarks he made a day earlier about a mass grave found by his staff on the grounds of a police station in the Che chen capital.
 After saying Tuesday that 17 bodies with gunshot wounds had been found in the basement of a bombed-out dormitory next to the Oktyabrskoye police station, Gantamirov did an about-face and joined the chorus of federal officials denying the findings.
 &quot;If [presidential envoy to the North Cau casus District General Viktor] Ka zant sev thinks there is no one there, it means there is no one there,&quot; Ganta mi rov said by telephone on Wednesday. 
 Kommersant reported Tuesday that Gan tamirov had announced the discovery and accused Interior Ministry troops stationed at the police station of killing Chechen detainees. In a telephone interview Tuesday, Gantamirov confirmed the report.
 The story of the burial site has been rife with contradictions.
 Federal officials, including Chechnya's prosecutor Viktor Dakhnov, announced Tuesday that the site had been searched and no bodies found.
 However, on Wednesday acting Grozny prosecutor Yury Ponomaryov said the investigation was continuing.
 &quot;It is impossible to say for certain whether there are bodies there or not,&quot; Ponomaryov told NTV television.
 Explaining his change of heart Wednesday, Gantamirov said he'd learned of the discovery from the same source as Kazantsev, who first confirmed the find but then said an investigation had come up empty.
 &quot;I was relying on the same source of information as Kazantsev,&quot; Gantamirov told Interfax. &quot;If he then maintained there is no grave, I have to believe him.&quot;
 Gantamirov did not specify his source of information. 
 But Chechnya's prosecutor Dak h nov told Interfax on Wednesday that the reports were based on claims by local residents. 
 &quot;They are looking for relatives missing since January and for some reason are convinced their bodies can be found near the Oktyabrskoye police station,&quot; Dakh nov told Interfax.
 Russian television Wednesday showed investigators inspecting the ruins of the shell-shattered dormitory as Chechen women roamed around nearby. Gantamirov said his men were at the site as well, but declined to elaborate.
 Gantamirov, whose current stint as Grozny's mayor began in October, has a bumpy relationship with the Kremlin. He was first appointed mayor after federal troops seized Grozny in 1994 and held the post until May 1996, when he was jailed after a conviction for embezzling millions of dollars allocated for restoring the devastated city. In October 1999, shortly after the second campaign began, Gantamirov was pardoned and appointed to head the pro-Kremlin Che chen police. Since then, he has often been at odds with his boss, Che chen administration head Akhmad Kadyrov.
 Human rights groups have registered complaints about disappearances of people detained by troops from the Oktyabrskoye police station. 
 But Vladimir Salnikov, an officer from the elite OMON unit in charge of the station until early this month, told Kommersant his comrades had nothing to do with the disappearance of local residents, adding that mass graves in Chechnya are commonplace.
 &quot;Half the buildings in [Grozny's] Oktyabrsky district are destroyed. Most ruins haven't been cleared since the previous war, so God knows how many more bodies - both Chechen and ours - are underneath,&quot; Salnikov was quoted as saying.

TITLE: Iranian Leader Calls for Cooperation
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's supreme leader called for more cooperation between Iran, India, Russia and China on Thursday during a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the official IRNA news agency said.
 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said &quot;colonialist countries&quot; were opposed to such cooperation, making it imperative for Eastern countries to strengthen their ties.
 Iran's President Mohammad Khatami went to Russia last month in a visit which angered Tehran's arch enemy, the United States. Iran sees such ties as undermining the grip of unilateral U.S. sanctions which have badly hurt Iranian industry.
 Iran and India have signed six agreements to boost cooperation in the energy sector and other fields including trade and technology during Vajpayee's visit.
 India is considering obtaining natural gas from Iran through a deep-sea pipeline or through a 2,500-kilometer land-based pipeline which would run to northwest India via Pakistan.
 Iran's exports to India, mainly shipments of crude oil, were worth about $1 billion last year. Iran imported about $165 million worth of goods including tea, iron-ore, chemicals and textiles from India during the same period.

TITLE: City To Get Diplomatic Oasis
AUTHOR: By Charles Digges
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: He may run the country from the Kremlin - but there's something about St. Petersburg that keeps President Vla di mir Pu tin coming back to this, his home town.
 Quick on the heels of a visit by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Kremlin and city officials have confirmed the renovation of a diplomatic residence for visiting dignitaries in one of St. Petersburg's most prestigious regions.
 And almost exactly a year ago, just before he won the presidential election, Putin entertained British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Russia's imperial capital, taking him to the tsarist splendor of Petergof and to the Mariinsky Theater to see &quot;War and Peace.&quot;
 Now, such high-profile visitors will have a place of their own in this city.
 The residence, to be called K-4, is on Kamenny Ostrov - next to the nearby K-1 presidential residence - according to both city and presidential administration officials. K-4 is meant to accommodate the number of high-profile guests Putin, will be having in the city in the future. 
 The project, however, has stuck a wrench in private investment on the island by putting it under the purview of the presidential property office, halting a number of projects that were already underway. 
 &quot;St. Petersburg is the calling card of Russia,&quot; said Afanasyev in a telephone interview Wednesday, and confirmed that the presidential administration had asked the city to set aside Kamenny Ostrov as a diplomatic enclave.
 &quot;It is our function, in the words of Alexander Pushkin, to be a 'window onto Europe,' and many of the [foreign] leaders who come simply feel more comfortable here.&quot;
 The prospect of major diplomatic meetings taking place in St. Petersburg has inspired the local cultural elite. 
 &quot;We will be showing our face as a capital,&quot; said Larisa Apova, spokesperson for Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky, in a telephone interview Wednesday. 
 &quot;We are no longer sitting on the sidelines, but are in the middle of events in Russia. And it also inspires hope in restoration projects.&quot;
 Alexander Chizhonok, spokesperson for Governor General Viktor Cher ke sov - Putin's emissary in the Northwest region - confirmed that the diplomatic residences were under renovation for the purposes of conducting more presidential meetings in St. Petersburg. 
 Kamenny Ostrov has long been eyed by real-estate barons as hot property. Last year, developers finally won the right to build on the island from City Hall. But the the city hung a number of conditions the condition that buildings were to be restored to their original condition using &quot;original&quot; methods. 
 The diplomatic residence project, said Afanasyev and Chizhonok, meant shutting out some of the hard-won privileges of local businesses to build on Kamenny Ostrov. Among those developers was the Grand Hotel Europe, which had a project in progress.
 Despite several calls, Alexei Krauzer, director of projects and development for the hotel, could not be reached for comment. 
 According to Chizhonok, the Grand Hotel Europe had assembled a group of private investors under the name of CATEK, which had worked for nearly a year to secure permission to build a hotel called the Evropa on the K-4 site.
 An abrupt halt was put to this last week by Cherkesov's property manager Ivan Malyushin, who requested that the city administration deny any further construction right on the island. The request, according to Afanasyev, was granted. Malyushin was unavailable for comment. 
 According to an article in Kommersant, the Grand Hotel Europe can only complete its project on the island if it convinces the Tax Police to sell the land plot it owns on Kamenny Ostrov. Tax Police would not discuss the deal when contacted. 
 Commenting on this investment dilemma, City Hall was less than sympathetic. Construction Committee head and Vice Governor Alexander Vakh mist rov told Kommersant that it was &quot;necessary for the city to have a showplace&quot; for diplomats.
 It would seem, therefore, that the only way to overcome the moratorium on securing and renting historical monuments in St. Petersburg is to get friendly with the presidential property administration, said Leonid Kesselman, a sociologist with the Russian Academy of Sciences. Other analysts, like Timofei Bordachev, expressed a more psychological view of Putin's motives for the move away from Moscow, saying it was an issue of the president's personal nostalgia. 
 &quot;We are dealing with an extremely nostalgic personality in Putin,&quot; said Bordachev, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow. &quot;But he also understands that St. Petersburg is a more appealing venue, especially for European visitors,&quot; he said, adding wryly, &quot;though it could just be that Putin is homesick.&quot;
 
 <i>Staff writer Simon Ostrovsky contributed to this report. </i>

TITLE: Borodin Free To Travel After Court Grants Bail
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia's government is pleased that a Swiss court has granted bail to Russian ex-presidential aide Pavel Borodin, indicted on money-laundering charges, a Russian government official was quoted as saying on Thursday.
 &quot;We take the position that a Russian citizen whose guilt has not been proven should not be sitting in prison,&quot; Interfax quoted Alexei Volin, a key aide to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, as saying.
 The Russian Federation paid the full five million Swiss francs ($2.92 million) bail ordered by a Geneva court for the release of ex-Kremlin aide Pavel Borodin, his lawyer said on Thursday.
 The Geneva tribunal hearing the case against Borodin, accused of receiving $25 million in kickbacks from Kremlin renovation contracts, provisionally released him on condition that he post bail of five million Swiss francs, which carries a maximum three-year sentence. The court imposed no travel restrictions, but said Borodin, 54, would have to be available for any further proceedings in the two-year Swiss inquiry.
 Vincent Solari, one of Borodin's lawyers in Geneva, said his client, who remains indicted on Swiss charges of money-laundering, would probably return to Russia on Friday.
 &quot;We are arranging things right now,&quot; Solari said.
 &quot;He will most likely leave tomorrow for Russia.&quot;

TITLE: Screening of 'Thirteen Days' Impetus for Talks on Weapons Reductions
AUTHOR: By Ron Popeski
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian and U.S. participants in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis relived the nuclear brink drama at a screening of the U.S. film &quot;Thirteen Days,&quot; and joined in urging their countries' leaders to cut post-Cold War arsenals.
 Robert McNamara, U.S. defense secretary at the time, and Theodore Sorensen, an adviser to President John F. Kennedy, flew in for Wednesday evening's Russian premiere of the film starring Kevin Costner.
 Seated alongside Soviet-era officials involved in deploying missiles in Cuba or advising Communist Party chief Nikita Khrushchev, both said the world could afford no more standoffs using weapons of mass destruction as a bargaining chip.
 McNamara said the crisis was based on misconceptions - a Soviet belief that Cuba was about to be invaded and that the deployment would go unnoticed, and a conviction within the U.S. military that Moscow would not respond to any strike on Cuba.
 &quot;Disaster was avoided solely because we were lucky. Both sides made mistakes and misjudgments,&quot; he told a discussion organized by the U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment.
 &quot;The lesson to be learned is that given human fallibility, nuclear weapons can result in the destruction of nations. There is no learning curve with the use of nuclear weapons.&quot;
 He said both Russia and the United States should move quickly to reduce strategic arsenals, perhaps 1,500 warheads each, as proposed by Moscow. Risks could be reduced by taking warheads off high alert or removing them altogether.
 Sorensen said President George W. Bush should draw lessons 40 years on and abandon plans for a national anti-missile scheme, denounced by Russia and viewed with suspicion in western Europe.
 &quot;This would be a provocative, reckless act and generate new tensions and fears,&quot; he said. &quot;Perhaps people looking at movie stars here think we lived in heroic days. I can tell you, I would not want to relive them.&quot;
 The crisis, prompted by the discovery by U.S. spy planes of Soviet missile deployments on Cuba, was defused after a two-week standoff when Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the weapons.
 Under President Mikhail Gorbachev's &quot;perestroika&quot; reforms, Soviet academics revealed that Cuban President Fidel Castro had urged Moscow to make a pre-emptive strike on the United States.
 Castro viewed &quot;Thirteen Days&quot; in Costner's company in Havana on Tuesday. The Cuban state news agency Prensa Latina dismissed the film as superficial, with &quot;the North Americans ... presented yet again as the saviors of the world.&quot;
 Russian experts regretted that the film gave no Soviet perspective.
 Anatoly Gribkov, a top staff officer involved in the missile deployment, said U.S. figures had understated the 40,000-strong Soviet troop contingent in Cuba. But he said no missile had been deployed vertically, loaded with fuel or had warheads fitted.
 &quot;Why did Khrushchev make such a move? Because it was clear to everyone that the balance of nuclear forces was heavily in the Americans' favor,&quot; he said.
 &quot;What made the United States uneasy was the secrecy and deception, and those mainly responsible were Khrushchev and [Foreign Minister] Andrei Gromyko. The diplomats knew nothing.&quot;
 Georgy Kornienko, then-counselor at the Soviet embassy in Washington, said the standoff was a model in crisis management.
 &quot;But we should not allow ourselves to believe that crises can be resolved simply,&quot; he said. &quot;Would the outcome have been the same if the president had been Ronald Reagan and his defense secretary Caspar Weinberger? I don't really think so.&quot;
 The U.S. administration, he said, should &quot;put itself in our shoes&quot; before proceeding with the national anti-missile shield.
 McNamara took a swipe at NATO's post-Cold War eastward enlargement to include ex-Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic and discussion about further expansion.
 &quot;I said before enlargement, it was wrong and I said after, it was wrong,&quot; he said. &quot;The only thing that could be worse would be to do it a second time and enlarge it to the Baltics.&quot;

TITLE: Schroeder Offers Help on Foreign Debt
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said this week that Germany, Russia's biggest foreign creditor, would help Russia restructure its huge foreign debt if it faced a repayment crunch in the next few years.
 Schroder and Putin ended a two-day summit Tuesday in St. Petersburg by extolling their good relations, but with no solution on Russia's huge debt to Germany or the dispute over artworks seized by the Soviets at the end of World War II. 
 Schroder also encouraged Russia to move faster toward integration into Europe. Putin has recently said closer ties with European countries are his top priority, in an apparent bid to compensate for a deep chill in U.S.-Russian relations. 
 The only concrete result of the gathering was an agreement on cooperation in space research and a German-sponsored training program for Russian economic managers. 
 Russia's foreign debt payments, about $14 billion this year, will rise to $18 billion in 2003. Many Russian officials and analysts see this as an unbearable burden for stretched state coffers.
 &quot;If there are problems with [debt] repayments in 2003-04, we are ready to help in considering debt restructuring,&quot; Schroeder told Ekho Moskvy radio through an interpreter.
 At a later news conference in St. Petersburg, President Vladimir Putin welcomed Schroeder's offer after what he called &quot;open, substantive and productive&quot; talks.
 &quot;We can thank our German partners for their readiness to discuss this matter with us and support Russia if the need arises in connection with a worsening economic situation.&quot;
 Schroeder said Russia was currently repaying its debts, a move that would help it maintain creditworthiness.
 &quot;This is an indicator of the political and economic strength of Russia,&quot; he said, adding that the two sides may soon clinch a deal on the repayment of money Moscow borrowed from old communist ally East Germany.
 Russia wants to restructure its $40 billion or so Soviet-era debt to the Paris Club of creditor nations.
 Some 40 percent of that total is owed to Germany, Moscow's main trade partner.
 Russia wants to swap some debt for investment opportunities in the country's economy, but one of Putin's foreign policy advisers said no one was ready to decide anything just yet.
 &quot;There are some difficulties on the German side and they are involved in corporate consultations,&quot; Sergei Prikhodko said.
 Schroeder said on Ekho Moskvy radio that German business was interested in investment projects in Russia, especially in the energy and consumer-goods sectors.
 But Russian authorities must improve the investment climate, he added, removing bureaucratic barriers and providing guarantees for investors.
 Russian officials have said eight joint projects aiming to convert Russia's debt into new German investments are in the pipeline, with four of them ready to go.
 
 q
 BERLIN - President Vladimir Putin may visit Germany this fall for a fifth summit meeting with Gerhard Schroder, a German government spokesman said Wednesday, a day after the end of the leaders' latest talks. 
 Officials are discussing a trip by Putin to Germany, possibly in September, spokesman Uwe Karsten-Heye said. 
 Heye said that Germany plans to host the next round of the forum next spring in the eastern city of Weimar.
 
 <i>- Reuters, AP </i>

TITLE: Conference Ponders Meltdown in 2003
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Here's the paradox: The more the economy grows, the more energy is consumed and the more strain is put on the fragile and dilapidated national infrastructure.
 The good news is that the Economic Development and Trade Ministry has come up with a formula that targets the moment when industrial growth, infrastructural wear-and-tear, demographics and sovereign debt repayments all collide to bring the whole system down.
 The bad news? That moment begins in 2003 and no one is exactly sure how to deal with it.
 This is &quot;Crisis 2003 - Myths and Reality,&quot; a full-day conference attended by a slew of officials, analysts and prognosticators armed with ideas, warnings and solutions for the impending crisis.
 The first industries to be hit will be the most archaic - the power grid, the chemical, petrochemical and metal sectors and the transportation network, said Vladimir Kozlov, an expert of the Center for Strategic Research.
 Indeed, maintaining the power grid, in the corporate form of Unified Energy Systems, is a national priority.
 The reasons to fret are real, said UES' top economist Vasily Zubatkin. In some regions of the country, some 80 percent of the company's fixed assets are already obsolete. 
 &quot;Some of our equipment in the Mos cow region was brought to the country in 1945 from Nazi Germany - and it still works!&quot; Zubatkin said. &quot;This may be good, but it is not effective,&quot; he said.
 This year's electricity and heat shutoffs in the Far East is just the beginning,&quot; warned the Emergency Situation Ministry's Yury Lalazarov.
 Andrei Sharonov, deputy economic development and trade minister, said his ministry would present its UES reform plan to President Vladimir Putin on Sunday.
 Sharonov said that handling the power grid problem alone would take $25 billion to $35 billion over 10 years. This figure is a compromise between UES's $60 billion estimate and the $7 billion put forth by Arthur Andersen.
 &quot;Arthur Andersen's plan was nothing more than patching up the holes, which would only delay the crisis by three or four years,&quot; said Sharonov.
 Viktor Chekhunov, the chairman of the board and deputy director of Energomashkorporatsiya, which makes electrical generators, slammed the Energy Ministry for not helping his company get the financing it needs to modernize and grow. &quot;Governments all over the world help their energy companies,&quot; Chek hu nov said. &quot;But the Energy Ministry is like the Titanic with no sign of life.&quot; 
 Sergei Kurtsov, the deputy director of Leningrad Metal Plant, or LMZ, one of the largest producers of energy turbines in the world, said his company plans to invest $400 million through 2005 to modernize. But LMZ, too, needs the government's help with financing, he said.

TITLE: Government Names State Targets for Privatization
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has signed off on a list of state companies the Cabinet wants privatized in the first half of this year, the Property Ministry said on Monday.
 Among the chosen are four oil and gas enterprises, including Orenburggeologiya, Nizhnevartovsk nef te gaz and Slavneft-Megionneftegazgeologiya, of which the state hopes to sell, respectively, 15.5 percent, 4.73 percent and 3.28 percent. 
 Also listed are coal producers Kuz bassugol, Kuznetskugol and Kha kas sugol, where 79.73 percent, 80.67 percent and 43 percent of shares are planned to be sold.
 Moscow River Shipping Co.'s 21.3 percent, Kovdorsky alumina plant's 24.8 percent, Yuzhuralnikel's 23.35 percent and Novokuznetsky aluminum plant's 14 percent will also be put on the block. 
 A stake of 50 percent minus one share of Rosgosstrakh - the former Soviet Union insurance monopoly now fully owned by the state - is also for sale.
 It is not clear, however, whether the list is going to be approved by the State Duma, as required by the law &quot;On Privatization.&quot; 
 A spokesperson for Kasyanov told Reuters on Monday that the government didn't need the Duma's approval. For years, the Property Ministry has effectively been selling state stakes without the Duma's official consent.
 But Yevgeny Ishchenko, deputy head of the Duma's Property Committee, told Interfax late last year that the government was violating the law by doing so.
 &quot;For the last three years the government has promised to provide the Duma with a draft privatization plan along with a list of stakes it intends to sell, but it has never given it,&quot; Ishchenko said.
 In March, the Duma revolted: It approved a special article in the 2001 budget that forbids the sale of any stake in a state enterprise - including subsidiaries and affiliated companies - with assets more than 50 million minimal salaries, or $350 million.
 Property Ministry spokesperson Natalya Skorodumova could not say Monday how much money the sales are expected to raise or how many of the 19 enterprises will be affected by the article.
 The stake in Rossgosstrakh might fall under restrictions: Its managers said at the end of 1999 that if privatized, it could bring $1 billion to $1.5 billion.
 But Viktor Mayevsky from the Renaissance-Insurance Group said those figures are unlikely.
 &quot;We don't even have a market capacity of $1 billion,&quot; he said.
 According to the 2001 budget, the state expects to raise 18 billion rubles, or $600 million, from privatization for the whole year. Last year's budget forecasted 15 billion rubles, but raised twice as much.
 &quot;We hope that the Duma will abolish that article soon, while we are still preparing the stakes for sale,&quot; Skorodumova said.
 The article is already losing its force with each rise in the official minimal salary. 
 In December, when the minimum salary was set at 84.5 rubles, enterprises with assets of about $150 million were restricted. 
 That level rose to $350 million in January, when the minimal salary level was boosted to 200 rubles. 
 The numbers are set to change again this summer, when the government plans to boost the minimum salary to 300 rubles, which would raise the restriction level to $500 million. 
 This level would automatically allow the government to sell stakes in nearly all its companies except major ones such as Gazprom and LUKoil.

TITLE: Customs Revamp in the Works
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The World Customs Organization said Wednesday that it would help Russia clear a major hurdle blocking its accession into the WTO by giving it a hand overhauling its notarious customs regime. 
 The WCO is setting up a hi-tech monitoring center in Moscow that will integrate the country into a global anti-smuggling system, WCO secretary general Michel Danet told reporters.
 The center - just the third in Europe and 12th in the world - will be the communication hub for the law-enforcement activities of customs agencies of every member nation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. 
 Bringing the new bureau online is part of the &quot;gearing up&quot; process for accession to the World Trade Organization and its mission is &quot;to collect, analyze and process information about external trade activity that may pose a threat to the country or its people,&quot; Danet said. 
 The idea is to &quot;get and spread information about smuggling activities in any spot of the globe&quot; instantly, said WCO deputy head Leonid Losbenko.
 The WCO is an intergovernmental body, made up of 153 countries, which works with the WTO to reduce trade barriers by harmonizing and improving customs regimes around the world. 
 Both Danet and Losbenko said Russia's accession to the WTO, which it has been negotiating since 1995, is inevitable. But one of the main stumbling blocks has been corruption.
 &quot;The biggest problem with Russia's customs is corruption,&quot; said Losbenko, a native Russian.
 Indeed, Danet's high-level visit - he met privately Tuesday with President Vladimir Putin's chief of staff Alexander Voloshin - comes at a time when the State Customs Committee is under fire from the Audit Chamber, which just two weeks ago released a report slamming the agency for its handling of confiscated contraband, which is supposed to be sold off and the proceeds contributed to the federal budget.
 By taking a close look at the modus operandi of just five Moscow customs points, the chamber discovered that &quot;loss&quot; of inventory, below-market selloffs and bureaucratic snafus cost the federal budget $380 million between 1998 and September 2000. 
 Included in this figure is 2.4 billion rubles ($83 million) that the government didn't receive from sales of confiscated goods. According to the chamber's report, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times, the federal budget only received 48.2 percent of the value of these goods, which included cigarettes, equipment and alcohol. 
 The chamber also found that the five customs administrations committed a total of 32,000 violations during the first nine months of 2000. 
 Customs officials found many ways to enrich their own branches. For example, the chamber report uncovered a widespread practice in which customs gave itself a 10-percent commission instead of 5-percent as set by law. Another popular method consists of forming an &quot;assessment&quot; committee that subsequently discounts the value of imported goods from their initial arrival into Russia - sometimes by as much as 27 times.
 The federal budget alone lost $26.2 million when customs sold construction equipment originally valued at $27.2 million to a company called LK Likostroi. Not only did customs lower the original value of the equipment by $7 million, they sold it to LK Likostroi at an auction where the other two bidders offered more money. After the contract was signed, LK Likostroi repeatedly failed to pay customs officials, who just as often revised the contract instead of enforcing payment. This was fatal mistake on the part of the customs officials, who saw Likostroi's debt to them shrink in the wake of the August 1998 ruble devaluation.
 Lastly, because LK Likostroi wasn't prompt in picking up its prize, customs lost 30 million rubles in storage costs.
 If Russia is going to join the WTO, these are exactly the kind of problems it must eradicate.
 &quot;Joining the WTO will be a serious culture shock for Russian customs, as it is for all new entrants,&quot; Danet said. 
 &quot;Any weak, underdeveloped customs system that cannot deal with a huge volume of foreign trade could face an economic threat to the state,&quot; he said. &quot;It will have to control the flow of goods so that the increase in foreign trade does not lead to an increase in contraband and illegality.&quot; 
 Danet said that the draft of Russia's new customs code met international norms and that some 60,000 customs officials were being trained up to international standards. 
 &quot;Accession to the WTO presents Russia and her customs service with a new, serious task ... to protect simultaneously both Russia's economy and her citizens,&quot; he said. &quot;To find a balance between protective measures and a simplified system.&quot;
 Russian customs collects more than 30 percent of the federal budget, but the average salary of customs officer is just $100.

TITLE: Forex Reform Idea Leaves Central Bank Head Cool
AUTHOR: By Vlasta Demyanenko
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: Central Bank head Viktor Gera shchen ko said Wednesday he opposed hasty steps to liberalize the foreign exchange market and favored keeping obligatory sales of hard currency. 
 President Vladimir Putin said in his state-of-the-nation address last week that Russia should review foreign currency controls to bring them closer to world standards. 
 But Gerashchenko was cautious in a speech to the Association of Russian Banks. &quot;The ruble exchange rate trend would not stay predictable if quick liberalization of foreign exchange legislation is allowed,&quot; he said. 
 &quot;The requirement on obligatory sales of hard currency receipts corresponds to the targets for development of the financial market.&quot; 
 Russia ordered exporters to sell up to 75 percent of their hard-currency revenues for rubles after the 1998 economic crisis to prop up the ruble and allow the Central Bank to build up its reserves. 
 Some economists, including presidential aide Andrei Illarionov, say the measure is outdated, ineffective and should be scrapped. They point out that the ruble has been stable for the past two years. 
 &quot;Lowering the level of the requirement, or even better, its cancellation, would be a sensible decision,&quot; Illarionov told reporters after Putin's address. 
 But Gerashchenko said foreign exchange legislation should be liberalized gradually, as scrapping the obligatory sales rule would sharply increase the risk of exchange rate instability. 
 &quot;If there was quick liberalization, we would not be sure that gold and foreign exchange reserves were at a level sufficient to provide for stability of the [exchange] rate and timely payment of debt obligations,&quot; he said. 
 Gerashchenko said the optimal level for reserves would be $45 billion, which compares with $29.7 billion as of March 30. 
 &quot;The current level of foreign exchange and gold reserves is insufficient to ensure stability of the national currency at a time when foreign debt is being serviced,&quot; he said. 
 He ruled out a devaluation of the ruble, saying export revenues were strong enough to keep the currency stable. 
 Many economists, including International Monetary Fund and World Bank representatives, have voiced concern that the real appreciation of the ruble and rising inflation could slow down Russia's recent strong economic growth. 
 Gerashchenko also touched on the problem of capital flight, which Putin estimated at $20 billion a year, saying that the share of total export earnings that were not repatriated in 1999-2000 had dropped to 3 percent. 
 By comparison, the veteran Central Banker said almost half of Russia's export earnings in 1992-93 never returned to the country. 
 Some analysts say capital flight could increase if foreign exchange controls were liberalized, but others disagree. 
 Lev Ratnovksy of the Institute of Financial Research wrote in the Vedomosti newspaper Wednesday that payments for shadowy import deals accounted for at least $15 billion of flight capital per year. 
 He said customs controls, not foreign exchange policy, should be improved to legalize imports, while other capital flight could be explained by Russia's poor investment climate. 
 &quot;Therefore administrative action against capital flight is a hopeless struggle with the consequences and not with the reasons,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Minister Paints Grim Picture of Film Industry
AUTHOR: By Anna Dolgov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - While Hollywood productions premier in a few upscale Moscow movie theaters, Russia's own film industry, crippled by disorganization and money shortages, has been relegated to decrepit movie houses, unattended and unprofitable, the country's culture minister said Wednesday. 
 Making films in Russia is, by and large, a way to lose money, said Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi. 
 &quot;This is proclaimed not as an axiom, but as an issue of faith,&quot; he said at a press conference. 
 A post-Soviet lack of cash, compounded by a lack of organization in the industry, means production delays at even the best Russian studios. Meanwhile, movie theaters refuse to deal with unreliable Russian film makers, instead opting for Western productions, he said. 
 &quot;If they promise a film by May 1, they deliver the film by May 1,&quot; Shvydkoi said. &quot;But if we promise a film by May 1, we don't specify the year.&quot; 
 The decline in filmmaking comes amid a decline of movie theaters, many of which have been shut down or turned into furniture showrooms. 
 Of the 1,560 movie theaters remaining in Russia, only 80 have been outfitted with modern sound systems or chairs that do not give movie-goers a vicious backache 15 minutes into the show. 
 The 80 modern ones rake in $50 million in profits every year - while the remaining 1,480 earn a paltry $6 million between them, Shvydkoi said.
 But if a Russian studio wants to get its film shown at an upscale theater, it often has to pay for the privilege, instead of taking in its share of profits, Shvydkoi said.
 &quot;When a picture finally happens, the producer says we must urgently play it,&quot; Shvydkoi said. &quot;So we need to break into an existing schedule for playing foreign films, and pay money to have a Russian film played.&quot;
 The Culture Ministry wants to reshape the industry, issuing shares for state-owned studios and streamlining the distribution system, but the plan has many opponents.
 One of Russia's best-known studios, Mosfilm, resisted proposals to privatize it, saying that would ruin the artistic standards. Mosfilm leadership has agreed to issuing stock, but it would still be held by the government, Shvydkoi said.
 He also urged filmmakers to abandon their internal squabbles, saying the industry would bring on its own ruin by the relentless self-deprecation.
 &quot;Nobody will go to see films or plays, when the [art] community itself says we are making bad movies, bad theater,&quot; he said. &quot;It's the same as if Coca-Cola advertised itself as the worst, the most disgusting soft drink in the world.&quot;

TITLE: Losses Leave Yahoo Feeling Blue
AUTHOR: By Saul Hansell
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: NEW YORK - Yahoo, the big but beleaguered Internet service, reported its first quarterly loss in nearly two years yesterday and said it would lay off 12 percent of its work force of 3,510.
 It also announced a variety of other cost-cutting moves, including paring marketing expenses and eliminating some parts of its sprawling service. 
 Over the last two months, Yahoo twice sharply reduced its projections for sales and profits for the first quarter and the year. And last month, it said it would look for a replacement for Tim Koogle, its chief executive.
 Yahoo, based in Santa Clara, California, essentially met its lower targets for the quarter. It lost $11.5 million, or 2 cents a share, in contrast to a profit of $67.6 million, or 11 cents a share, in the first quarter a year ago. Its sales fell 21 percent, to $180.2 million from $228.4 million in the similar period of 2000. At the beginning of the year, analysts had expected that Yahoo would earn $80 million on sales of $320 million in the quarter.
 Using Yahoo's preferred measure of operating earnings, excluding charges the company wants investors to ignore, it earned 1 cent a share, matching analysts' expectations.
 Yahoo said that its prospects were not likely to turn around soon. It predicted it would not do any better than break even in the second quarter. It expects its revenue to be $165 million to $185 million, down from $270 million a year earlier. 
 As a result of its cost-cutting, the company says it can break even or make a pretax profit of as much as $50 million for the full year, assuming its revenue is $700 million to $775 million. Last year, Yahoo's revenue was $1.1 billion.
 &quot;With their lack of diversification and moves to add new revenue streams at an early stage, we were not surprised that their guidance for the second quarter was where it was,&quot; said Anthony Noto, an analyst with Goldman Sachs. 
 Yahoo has high hopes for expanding beyond advertising. It has created a corporate Yahoo service that lets companies offer employees a Web site that combines corporate information with news, stock quotes and other features from Yahoo.
 And it is introducing a range of premium offerings, like a $10-a-month real-time stock quote service. Yahoo said that it expected that these nonadvertising services would make up 20 percent of its revenue this year.
 The company has continued to have a substantial turnover in its management ranks, once the most stable and well-respected on the Internet. It said yesterday that Heather Killen, who has run its operations in 24 countries outside of the United States, would step down from day-to- day operations.
 This year a number of the executives in her area left Yahoo, including the heads of its European, Asian and Canadian divisions. Last month, Anil Singh, the top sales executive, also left.
 &quot;International revenue seems to be holding up well, but these resignations are very troubling,&quot; said Jamie Kiggen, an analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston.
 The company said that its cost- cutting would save it $20 million a quarter, but it has additional expenses including paying for a new headquarters and giving employees cash raises to compensate for their worthless stock options. As a result the net savings will be $10 million a quarter. 
 Yahoo executives declined to specify which areas of its service will be affected by the cutbacks. In general, however, the company said the only areas spared would be those that directly produced revenue - advertising, services to businesses and its new fee-based services for consumers.
 Big areas of its site - like the Geocities service, which lets users build personal home pages - are not part of this new, narrower focus, even though they contain some advertising.
 The company's advertising business continued to contract sharply. It had 3,145 clients in the first quarter, down from 3,700 in the last quarter of 2000.

TITLE: Turkey Hatches Plan To Bail Out Economy
AUTHOR: By Hatice Aydogdu
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ANKARA, Turkey - On Saturday Turkey will outline a financial plan it hopes will attract the foreign aid it needs to recover from a devastating crisis, Economics Minister Kemal Dervis said on Thursday.
 Dervis, a former World Bank official drafted in to pull Turkey's economy out of a nose dive, had previously said the long-awaited program was likely to be announced on Friday. He gave no reason for the postponement. &quot;The program is going well. It will be announced on Saturday morning,&quot; he told reporters after meetings with Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and other senior officials.
 EU membership candidate Turkey is attempting to rehabilitate a creaking banking sector and return to growth from an expected heavy contraction caused by six weeks of economic turmoil.
 It hopes the program will convince foreign lenders that its efforts are worth supporting.
 The lira has lost nearly half of its value against the dollar since February 22 when it was freely floated in a bid to cap market upheaval sparked by fears of political instability.
 Turkish markets expect the International Monetary Fund to figure prominently in a rescue package of around $10 billion to $12 billion thought to include contributions from some Western countries.
 &quot;[Dervis] has given the impression he can raise $10-12 billion ... It seems like a lot of people are expecting him to be able to announce that he's secured that. To me that would be a favorable surprise,&quot; said Kasper Bartholdy, senior emerging markets economist at CSFB London. 
 Turkey's position as a NATO member on the fringes of Europe makes shoring up its economy against upheaval of strategic interest to a number of Western allies.
 The crisis has already sparked violent demonstrations against the government and its acceptance of tight IMF-backed spending cuts.
 But the Fund and other lenders may feel they have already given Turkey sufficient assistance over the last stormy year. The World Bank has already said it is unlikely to provide more than the $5 billion agreed with Turkey over the past year.
 Dervis last month announced &quot;priority steps&quot; Turkey must take to extricate itself from crisis. They are likely to form the basis of the full program and dealt mainly with placing three huge state-owned banks back on a solid financial footing.
 The banks have been debilitated by years of issuing subsidized loans on behalf of the state, running up &quot;duty losses&quot; that total some $20 billion, according to official estimates at the end of 2000.
 A legal amendment passed on Wednesday as part of the priority package allows Turkey to make special debt issues in order to help deal with the banks' liquidity needs.
 Analysts are also expecting the program to outline the country's domestic and foreign borrowing schedule and provide a convincing plan to lower domestic interest rates from stratospheric levels they reached during the February crisis.
 Turkey's treasury has been rolling over domestic debt on a short-term basis at compound interest rates of around 150 percent annually, levels most believe are unsustainable.
 Foreign cash and credibility would be essential to easing those rates.
 On the positive side, most expect the falling Turkish lira to help Turkey's exporters and thereby improve the country's external balance.
 Comments from Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and Dervis suggest that a healthier balance of trade will form a major plank of the program they are trying to build.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Oil Demand Weaker
 

LONDON (Reuters) - The prospects for growth in the demand for world oil appear to be getting weaker again because of the impact of the economic slowdown in the United States on emerging nations, the International Energy Agency announced on Thursday.
 In its monthly oil market report the intergovernmental agency made revisions to its forecast for this year's growth in world demand, saying that it would decrease by 85,000 barrels per day down to 1.325 million.
 It was the IEA's fifth successive downward revision and reduces the Paris-based agency's original growth estimate for 2001 by 540,000 bpd to 76.7 million.
 "Oil demand growth in the non-OECD economies appears to be most at threat from the spill-over effect of the slowdown in the U.S. economy, and of recession concerns in Japan," said the IEA.
 
 
Actors' Walkout Looms
 

LOS ANGELES (AP) - With a potential strike by Hollywood writers looming, two actors' unions have agreed to start negotiating in May for a new contract in hopes of averting back-to-back walkouts.
 The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists plan to meet with producers and studio heads on May 10, Variety reported Wednesday.
 Contracts for both unions, which represent 135,000 performers, expire on June 30.
 Back-to-back strikes would likely delay the fall TV season and curtail new movie releases.
 The WGA is asking for more money for writers when programs are rebroadcast domestically and in foreign markets, and when shows are distributed on video, DVD and the Internet.
 
 
U.S. Confidence Falls
 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One of the key barometers of U.S. consumer sentiment tumbled in April, resuming a slide after a slight pause in March as uncertainty gripped equity markets and job layoffs made many Americans much less comfortable about their future finances.
 In a development that could stir up expectations for swift interest-rate cuts from the Federal Reserve, the University of Michigan's preliminary consumer sentiment index, which measures consumers' attitudes about the economy and their current financial picture, fell to 87.8 in April from 91.5 in March. Analysts had been expecting that the index would fall to 90.4.
 The report followed earlier news that retail sales across the United States had fallen by 0.2 percent in March after zero growth in the previous month, which sparked some concerns that consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of all economic activity, could slow even more sharply in the months to come.
 
 
Caspian Disagreement
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Failure to reach an agreement on dividing up the energy-rich Caspian Sea is creating tension between the five countries surrounding it and is delaying crucial investments, Viktor Kalyuzhny, Russia's envoy to the region, warned on Thursday.
 The five littoral states - Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan - have delayed until autumn a March summit to agree on who owns what in the sea, an issue seen as key before multi-billion dollar investments can flow. The failure to resolve the division of the Caspian's water, seabed and water surface have hindered development of the region, which could contain the world's largest untapped supply of hyrdrocarbons. 
 But analysts have said that a lack of a concrete agreement on the Caspian's status is in Russia's interests at present, as this will prevent Western oil majors from investing in a U.S.-backed oil pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan in Turkey, opening the way for Iranian or Russian transport routes.
 A pipeline to ship Kazakh oil from the giant Tengiz field to Russia's southern No vo rossiisk port came on line last month.

TITLE: Pilot Project Will Permit Banks To Borrow From Pension Fund
AUTHOR: Natasha Shanetskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government wants to turn a profit on the State Pension Fund's money by allowing private and state banks to borrow billions of rubles from the fund at a competitive interest rate.
 A brainchild of the Labor Ministry, the pilot project will start with an initial tranche of 4 billion rubles ($145 million) that will have a six-month repayment date. The project is expected to begin June 1.
 Vyacheslav Batayev, an adviser to Labor Minister Alexander Pochinok, said the project, which will eventually include a savings component, has several objectives.
 &quot;It will test the various mechanisms of investing [money from the State Pension Fund]. At the same time, it will help the government overcome its fear of investing in the financial markets and reduce pensioners' fear of pension reform,&quot; said Batayev.
 Batayev, however, said the project would only be a success if participating banks can guarantee a 12.5 percent to 15 percent annual return - roughly 300 million rubles ($10.5) after six-months.
 The plan is a result of Labor Ministry-led working group that included the Central Bank, MDM-Bank, state-controlled Vneshtorgbank, RESO-Garantia insurance agency, and representatives of Independent Pension Fund.
 At the end of last month, the government responded with a letter asking the Central Bank, together with the Finance, Justice and Economic Development and Trade Justice Ministries, to iron out the final version of the proposal.
 Bank executives polled Wednesday gave an enthusiastic thumbs up to the idea of receiving money from the Pension Fund, one of the largest financial institutions in the country.
 &quot;There is not a single bank that can honestly say it is not interested in this opportunity,&quot; said MDM-Bank's representative Anatoly Meszheryakov.
 Alexei Kabanov, a deputy treasurer at Vneshtorgbank, said banks always welcome additional means of financing.
 &quot;All commercial banks are interested in attracting long-term funds,&quot; said Kabanov, who was a member of the project's working group.
 Pension Fund officials, however, are not thrilled about the idea.
 &quot;We have serious doubts about this [experiment] because the bulk of the fund's money goes toward present payments,&quot; said Vladimir Vyunitsky, adviser to State Pension Fund head Mik hail Zurabov.
 The fund's hand-to-mouth approach means that as employers dish out 28 percent of their employees' salaries to the fund, the money immediately flows into the pockets of retired people. 
 Last year, the Pension Fund collected 341 billion rubles ($11.8 billion) while it paid out a total of 331 billion rubles. 
 The 10 billion-ruble surplus is not earning interest.
 This year, the fund expects expenditures of roughly 490 billion rubles on revenues of about 500 billion rubles. 
 The difference - roughly 10 billion rubles - is what commercial banks are eyeing as the initial investment into the program, which will be put to tender some time after June 1.
 The rules of the tender approved by the government require participating banks to be five years or older, have at least 3 billion rubles of working capital, and have no outstanding debt to the federal budget, among other conditions.


TITLE: NTV Case Is a Test for The Courts
TEXT: FINALLY breaking his puzzling silence regarding the NTV controversy, President Vladimir Putin said Monday that the ultimate resolution to the crisis must come from the courts. Now NTV seems willing to play by these rules, announcing two new lawsuits on Tuesday challenging the April 3 shareholders meeting and its decision to appoint new management at the station. 
 The judicial system is the natural place to resolve disputes of this nature in any modern society. However, Putin's call to place the burden of decision on the courts merely makes it all the more regrettable that he has done so little over the last year to advance legal reform and strengthen the courts. If his administration had worked harder in this crucial area, perhaps the system would now be better able to rise to this challenge.
 In his state-of-the-nation address - delivered almost at the very moment that the disputed shareholders meeting was taking place - Putin had some harsh but perfectly accurate words for the courts. &quot;We badly need a judicial reform today,&quot; the president said. &quot;The country's judicial system is lagging behind real life and is not very helpful in carrying out economic transformations. Not only for entrepreneurs, but also for many people who are seeking to restore their rights in law, the courts have not been quick, fair and impartial.&quot;
 The NTV crisis provides a textbook example of what the president had in mind. Saratov Judge Vitaly Nikolayev first banned the April 3 shareholders meeting and then suddenly reversed himself and permitted it. Gazprom board member and legal counsel Anatoly Blinov resigned in protest saying that Gazprom &quot;can't be allowed to use any methods necessary to achieve their ends.&quot; Blinov said that Gaz prom was pursuing its ends in such a way that &quot;the profession of a lawyer may soon become unnecessary.&quot;
 Now, however, with Putin's blessing, the case heads back to the courts. And we will see to what extent the matter is &quot;just a business dispute.&quot; Potential investors will no doubt be watching with keen interest. 
 The Spanish court that is now weighing the possible extradition of Media-MOST founder Vladimir Gusinsky should also be watching with considerable interest. The Gazprom/NTV cases have already provided much for that court to consider before ruling whether Gusinsky can get a fair trail here. Putin, in his address to the nation, has already as much as admitted that he cannot. Blinov seems to think not as well. What does Saratov's Nikolayev think? That depends on when you ask him.

TITLE: St. Petersburg: Capital of Form, Not Substance
TEXT: WHAT'S going on with St. Petersburg's unofficial titles?
 For years and years, this city has been known as the Northern Capital of Russia. But St. Petersburg has had several other names as well, particularly in the post-Soviet era.
 Northern Capital as a sobriquet has stuck. Likewise, another favorite that is still used - although mostly in the summer months, when arts festivals get underway - is Cultural Capital. One thinks of the Hermitage and Russian Museum, the Mariinsky Theater, the 220-plus museums and the hundreds of art galleries, theaters, orchestras and other institutions, some of which are internationally famous. Not to mention the many great poets, composers and artists who lived and worked here.
 But from the assassination of Vice Governor Manevich in the summer of 1997, and continuing with the series of high-profile assassinations in 1998, the media - repeating a phrase first used by Boris Nemtsov - started calling the city Russia's Criminal Capital, even comparing it to the Chicago of the 1930s.
 Today, after a run of elections - for the State Duma, president and city governor in that order - the latter title seems to have been dropped, although assassinations take place on a weekly basis and the number of criminal groups operating here is no less than it was three years ago.
 In its place - and there's probably a moral here, if only one could find it - has come the title of Diplomatic Capital, particularly following this week's visit of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. The new name has again been conferred by the media, and was referred to several times by national television stations and newspapers.
 The name sounds good, but what about the substance? Few people are saying, for instance, that a collection of palaces and plush residencies is not enough to confer any serious status on the city.
 And while there has been talk of moving the Duma to St. Petersburg, or making the city the site of the Russia-Belarus parliament, it has stopped with just that - talk.
 In fact, quite a lot of the local population had strong opinions about the most tangible aspect of being in the Diplomatic Capital for one day this week: the traffic. Traffic in the city center was paralyzed, and it was a good day to wander among the cars collecting entries for a dictionary of rude words. Nevsky Prospect alone was closed for half an hour before Putin's car roared past, creating havoc in a hundred other places. Half an hour to wait for a bunch of black limousines to take less than two minutes to pass by. Imagine this on a regular basis. As one Legislative Assembly deputy said, this is taking the concept of &quot;playing it safe&quot; to extremes.
 On the other hand, said another local lawmaker, bad traffic can be an illustrious thing. &quot;This way, we would be included in the ranks of world cities with traffic jams such as Paris and New York,&quot; he said to me this week. &quot;This is not bad company.&quot;
 This deputy went on to list other reasons why being the Diplomatic Capital would be good for St. Petersburg: new jobs, more attention, more business.
 Northern Capital - deserved. We're a long way north. Cultural Capital - disputed, but we have a strong case. Criminal Capital - highly disputed, since there are a lot of contenders for that one. Diplomatic Capital? Dubious at best, until the authorities, including the presidential security service, start thinking not only about Vladimir Putin's safety, but about the rest of us as well.

TITLE: Surviving a Long, Hard Winter
AUTHOR: By Russell Working
TEXT: VLADIVOSTOK, Far East - Early last week, The Japan Times ran a photo on its Web site of a flowering cherry tree on the grounds of the imperial palace in Tokyo. A caption noted that the blossom season so beloved by the Japanese was ending.
 As I watch Vladivostok's spring creep in - the forests of twiggy poplars that won't bud until May, the sea ice that only a week ago began breaking up into flotillas that melt in ice-creamy smears on the bay - I recall a warning that a fellow Pacific Northwesterner offered me in 1997 during my first January in this harsher climate: In Vladivostok you get a Russian winter, which is then followed by a Seattle winter.
 But the image of double winters only partly captures the haggard optimism of early April, especially this April, in the Far East. 
 We are like children emerging from a grave illness. 
 We head outside wearing far too many clothes. It is still too early for us to play. We sit on a bench beside a babushka who is resting as she struggles to carry a bag of groceries home, and together, wise in our mutual solitude and exhaustion, we watch the other children. Soon we will forget that we ever felt like this, but for now it is enough to venture outdoors on a chilly winter afternoon and squint under an unfamiliar overcast. We were able to survive.
 This winter was a hard one, the coldest since 1949. Our apartments were barely heated, and our lights were out for 15 or 18 or 24 hours at a time, day after day. 
 Federal auditors say the regional administration stole the money for our heat and power (the suspects deny this, and will go unpunished anyway). The mayor's office spread ash on the streets rather than plowing them. 
 All this I have recounted here, and it cannot be of interest anymore for readers far away. Yet it shapes our spring.
 A lucky elite escaped Vladivostok for part of the winter: New Russians flew to Thailand, foreigners went home for Christmas, and I headed to the Philippines to cover the presidential impeachment. Manila was bombed while Nonna, her son, Seryoga, and I were in the islands. I spent my time exploring slums for stories, seeking out Moslem rebels, or shivering uncontrollably in the heat due to a tropical fever I contracted. 
 Yet we recall it as a golden time. We swam in the Camotes Sea at the stroke of the New Year while revelers fired guns and bottle rockets in the air. For three weeks we were never cold, except for the time we paddled on a raft under a waterfall. 
 We returned just in time for the worst of the cold and the blackouts, but the break sustained us. The less fortunate braved the whole winter here. Even now, stories trickle in about how hard things were. 
 I recently heard about a professor who lost eight toes to frostbite. Elderly widows spent nights wondering whether their last moment of consciousness would come while sitting alone in a black apartment wearing too many sweaters and an overcoat, waiting for their children to show up with some sauerkraut and smoked fish. On the radio, the governor assured us there was no energy crisis.
 Now he is gone, and we have become spoiled, taking electricity for granted. The last time I felt that claustrophobic sense that blackouts bring in winter was one afternoon more than a week ago. Seryoga rushed in as I was writing on my laptop and said, &quot;Russik, the lights are out.&quot;
 &quot;What! No, it can't be; my computer says it's getting electricity.&quot;
 He flashed a wicked grin. &quot;First of April,&quot; he said.
 Spring arrives despite the best efforts of a northerly climate, of venal officials, of our own sense of helplessness. Snow may fall again this month, but potted cactuses are blooming in the kitchen. The rose bushes around the apartment, which the neighbors bend to the ground and bury every October, have been exhumed. Young boys with rings of dirt around their mouths sell bunches of pussy willow branches in the local markets. There is still light in the evening sky after 8 o'clock.
 Russia has a way of crushing hope in its people and making its friends feel like fools for promising that things will change. Yet you can't help but hope at springtime. The children are playing, and for now we are content to sit with the babushkas and watch.
 
 <i>Russell Working is a freelance journalist based in Vladivostok. </i>

TITLE: NTV vs. the Kremlin: U.S. Has To Speak Up
AUTHOR: By Michael McFaul
TEXT: THE Russian government's assault against NTV represents the greatest threat to Russian democracy since the coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev. Just like the coup plotters in August 1991, President Vladimir Putin - through his proxy, state-run Gazprom - has used extraordinary means to seize control of the last important bastion of the independent national media.
 Gazprom officials describe the takeover as a financial issue, but everyone involved in the conflict knows that the move is political. Putin does not like criticism, and he is wielding the enormous power of the Russian state to muzzle it. 
 As in the last coup attempt, the people are resisting. A public demonstration in Moscow last week attracted 20,000 people, the largest showing of public activism since the one in 1991. Even more boldly, the journalists at NTV have defied the takeover, and their defense of media independence has attracted supporters from every major political party, from the Communists to the liberals.
 As one journalist who worked for Media-MOST told me, &quot;It feels exactly like August 1991, only this time one of the coup leaders has an American accent.&quot; Boris Jordan, an American investment banker hired to run NTV, has cleverly spun the crisis as a typical U.S.-style merger and acquisition with nothing to do with politics.
 The Bush administration cannot interfere in the ownership of a Russian company. Nor can it save independent media in Russia or democracy more generally. Ultimately, only the Russian people can prevent dictatorship from re-emerging.
 The Bush administration can, however, signal clearly and loudly that it sides with the majority of Russians and the brave NTV journalists. 
 Bush should signal his support for Russia's democrats in three simple ways. First, he should issue a statement about American support for freedom of the press in Russia. The president should make clear the U.S. government does not believe that this is just a financial matter. 
 Second, behind the scenes, the U.S. should be assisting Ted Turner, a potential new minority shareholder in NTV, to secure a guarantee from the Putin government that there will be no censorship. To be credible, however, Putin himself must make this commitment public.
 Third, the Bush administration should increase financial assistance to American nongovernmental organizations that currently subsidize and support other sources of independent media in Russia.
 Support for freedom of the press is a no-brainer. In this important turning point in Russian democracy, the U.S. can no longer remain silent.
 
 <i>Michael McFaul, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, teaches politics at Stanford University. He contributed this comment to the Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: Fueling a Revival
AUTHOR: By Robert McFarlane
TEXT: IN terms of natural resources, Russia is the wealthiest country in the world. It has always been clear that if ever Russia were able to develop and exploit its oil, gas and precious metals in a sensible fashion it could become an economic superpower of virtually unlimited potential. Today it is impressive to see how quickly following its ideological collapse in the Cold War and the more recent economic implosion of the summer of 1998, Russia has begun once more to exercise the power inherent in its natural wealth.
 Two examples underscore the point. Beginning last fall during visits to Brussels and other European capitals, President Vladimir Putin focused on Russia's readiness to ensure a continued supply of natural gas to Western Europe as North Sea reserves decline - a dependency that could place significant political leverage in Russia's hands.
 In the same vein, Russia has concluded an agreement with Turkey to lay a pipeline under the Black Sea to deliver 19 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually - more than half Turkey's requirements. Here again, Russia's role as leading supplier of primary energy to Turkey will substantially enhance its influence in Ankara.
 Closer to home, Russia has demonstrated a more &quot;market-oriented' management of its resources. For example in Georgia and Ukraine, it has orchestrated the cutoff of gas in the dead of winter, ostensibly over nonpayment of bills - a problem that hadn't seemed to bother Russia for the previous 70 years. In Central Asia, Russia has offered assistance to five states to help them withstand the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, which is just a step away in Afghanistan. It ought not go unnoticed that were these states to rejoin a new Soviet Union, they would bring with them the oil and gas resources of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, now estimated as nearly equivalent to those of Saudi Arabia.
 Next door in Iran, Russia has reneged on its commitment to the Clinton administration to cease military sales to the government and has continued its nuclear assistance program to Iran. In short, Russia under Vladimir Putin is on the move to use the demand for its natural resources to advance its political interests.
 I sketch these scenarios involving European and Turkish vulnerability, and the potential for Russia to recapture control over the huge Central Asian oil and gas reserves, not so much because I believe they are inevitable - they are not - but rather to underscore the importance of the Bush administration moving to deal with these matters. For example, the administration could encourage the participation of U.S. oil and gas developers in the exploration and production of Russian oil and gas - a win-win proposition as Russia benefits from U.S. investment and state-of-the-art technology to accelerate the development of its fields, and we gain a measure of control over the pace and terms of developing Russia's resources.
 In parallel, the administration could focus intensively on developing our relations with the Central Asian states, to include a substantial business presence and - by planting the American flag - to nurture the independence of these states and their ability to resist being absorbed into a revived Soviet orbit. In the process we could lay a foundation for offering Western Europe and Turkey a second source of oil and gas - from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan across the Caspian Sea to Baku and thence westward to Turkey and Europe, and southward through Iran - yes, Iran - to the Persian Gulf and the Asian market.
 As for our relations with Iran, clearly our policy of seeking to isolate that country through economic sanctions hasn't worked to achieve any of the goals for which the sanctions were put in place. It hasn't inhibited support by Iran's radical clerics for terrorist groups, and it hasn't inhibited Iran's nuclear program or engendered Iranian support for the Middle East peace process.
 In fact, one could argue that sanctions have contributed in different ways to prolonging these adversarial positions more than to impeding them. Sanctions have achieved some things, but they are all contrary to American security interests. First, they have drawn Russia and Iran together into a quasi-economic alliance. Second, they have foreclosed U.S. access to Iran's substantial energy resources while forfeiting that access to European and Japanese companies. Third, they have made it more difficult for the relatively pragmatic government of President Mohammad Khatami to engage with us. Clearly a review of our policies toward Iran is long overdue.
 Russia is making clear its intention once more to become a superpower - this time relying heavily on the power inherent in controlling vast energy resources, offering them to potential clients in Western Europe and in Turkey and gaining political leverage in doing so.
 All of these matters are currently under review by the new administration. The resultant global energy policy cannot come a moment too soon.
 
 <i>Robert McFarlane was national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan from October 1983 to December 1985. He is currently president of Energy & Communications Solutions LLC, a partnership with business interests in Central Asia, Turkey and the Balkans. He contributed this comment to The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: Mailbox
TEXT: Dear Editor,
 I found the interview with Sebastian FitzLyon in the April 10 issue rather interesting, though a bit puzzling. The segmentation of present-day Russian business seems to be taken from real life. But FitzLyon's enthusiasm about the effectiveness of the Communist Party's elite and their &quot;old boy's network&quot; may leave some wondering if it is a serious statement or a joke in disguise. It is actually this elite who drag their feet in the process of reforms, who stifle any initiative unless it is related to misappropriation of public money, and who are often plain stupid. They may look effective, but only compared with the most incompetent new-wave businessmen.
 On a different note, it was great to see our president receiving important German guests. Both sides evidently enjoyed each other's company. That feeling was NOT shared by tens of thousands of drivers as well as pedestrians, who had to wait from 15 to 30 minutes in lines because the police thought these were the right security measures. Many onlookers blasted both guests unceremoniously. The mildest of the complaints I heard was a wish for all important guests in the future to limit themselves to Moscow. Did Mr. FitzLyon happen to drive on Monday or Tuesday? If the answer is yes, I wonder if he found all this effective too.
 <i>Nikolai Kupriyanovsky
 St. Petersburg
 </i>
 Dear Editor,
 Out here in Vladivostok we particularly enjoyed the parts of President Vladimir Putin's state-of-the-nation speech about encouraging foreign investment.
 The next day we attended a shareholders meeting of the local brewery, Pivoindustriya Primoriye, where once again the 30 percent shareholder associated with the SUN Group was not allowed to participate for contrived technical reasons, which applied to all of their various powers of attorney that should have allowed them to take part.
 This game has been going on since the Lianozovsky Dairy subsidiary of Wimm-Bill-Dann bought a controlling share of the company and took the opportunity to exclude SUN from a shareholders meeting last November at which they presented their new board (comprised entirely of their own people) with expanded powers, including the unilateral power to issue new shares at their discretion. SUN's candidates for the 2001 board were similarly rejected from the voting.
 A new first for me personally was when two large anonymous bodyguards physically blocked me for 40 minutes from covering the final ten yards to register as the representative of a small shareholder, Tiger Securities. I was then told regretfully that I had arrived too late to register! Try arguing that to a deaf court if you still have the energy.
 Philosophical Russians say that this is what foreign investors should expect in Russia - even such obviously beneficial and constructive investors as SUN, who with their partners have worked here for 40 years and over the last decade have invested over $500 million in what Russians like to call &quot;the real economy.&quot; On a local level, SUN has been a major shareholder in this brewery for seven years and represents a desperately needed investment program of $15 to 20 million, as well as new life and hope for the community.
 Putin rightly noted that when there is practically no legal recourse investors will seek other avenues, if only to retrieve some of their capital and escape to friendlier climes. 
 But then who would make a new investment in such a place? Probably only those who are willing and able to support and maintain - through greed and fear supposedly - their obligatory powerful protectors long enough to get a return on their money. So we can look forward to a subtle change in the kind of money truly welcome and active in Russia. And why would honestly earned Russian money act any differently?
 <i>Andrew Fox
 Chairman, Tiger Securities Ltd.
 Vladivostok
 </i>
 The NTV Business
 Dear Editor,
 What is this deal with NTV? It gives me headaches. All of the NTV reporting about NTV is beginning to remind me of some good old propaganda by Kiselyov and company. 
 I am for a free press. But NTV's appeal to President Vladimir Putin to solve their problems looks grotesque. I think the Russian media is going through a learning process of understanding what it means to be truly free. The team of Russian intellectuals discussing these issues on television with NTV employees looked sorry. They have no personal stake in the company. They have no voting right. They risked nothing personal for that company. 
 <i>Vadim Raff Matthews
 North Carolina
 </i>
 Dear Editor, Who is Boris Jordan? Perhaps journalists are too cowardly to ask such questions directly of powerful people. But if you ask people in the streets of Moscow, you'll hear: &quot;This is the man who tried to take over NTV.&quot;
 I wish this were just a fools-rush-in-where-angels-fear-to-tread kind of situation. But men like Jordan are not fools. And the standoff is not going to end peacefully tomorrow. But it surely is a litmus test for our whole society. If you want to know your friends better, ask them what they think of NTV's possible destruction. I did, and I was deeply hurt by some remarks.
 Yes, such events - no matter how they turn out - clearly show who is who. The Kremlin is keeping its silence. Isn't that already enough to draw a conclusion? It would be more than interesting to have a look at the list of those deputies in the State Duma who voted against considering the matter during their sessions last week. I was terribly sorry to see my favorite NTV journalist, Leonid Parfyonov, leave. 
 If NTV is really gone, perhaps a line from a Metallica song could serve as an appropriate motto for those who stay: &quot;Free speech for the dumb.&quot; But I believe we will not let this happen.
 <i>Olga Karmatskikh
 Moscow
 </i>
 Dear Editor,</strong></i>
 Since I have been living in Russia, I tune in only to NTV for information that I value and trust. Of course, the state channels do provide information, but it is worthless. 
 In a nutshell, it will be sad to see NTV go under because many ex-pats depend on it. Let me take this opportunity to say &quot;three cheers to Kukli!&quot; It is the best political satire, interpreting political events in a funny but serious way. Then there is Itogo and Itogi. All these programs deserve applause. No wonder they irritate the Kremlin.
 I don't know how the situation will end and I understand that the station is heavily in debt. However, it would be sad to see the end of quality independent reporting that can bring the Kremlin to account.
 So, I'd like to say to the staff of NTV: There are many foreigners here and abroad that wish you well and are praying for freedom of the press in Russia.
 <i>Susan Weber
 Moscow
 </i>
 In response to &quot;CNN's Turner: NTV's Savior or Putin's?&quot; a comment by Alexei Pankin, April 3.
 Dear Editor,
 I have been reading with interest about the NTV situation. To start with, I think that it is correct to try to keep NTV as an independent media given the recent events and history of Russia.
 Pankin raises the issue that the possible acquisition of some NTV stock by Ted Turner would be a minus for maintaining NTV's independence, an objective that Pankin seems to support.
 I am uncomfortable about Pankin's equating Turner with CNN. It is my interpretation that after the merger of CNN and Time-Warner, more than a year ago, Turner has not been engaged in the active management of CNN. Furthermore, those CNN management policies that the columnist discusses, we believe, were post-merger, when management was handled by the parent company. On the other hand, Turner has shown, from his beginnings, a talent for innovation and reasonable risk-taking that might serve NTV well.
 It is interesting that Turner himself said that he plans to attract other investors to join him in purchasing NTV stock. It is also my understanding that Capital Research Management, the mutual fund that is also participating, was brought by Merrill Lynch, Turner's representatives.
 We hope that all financial outcomes are analyzed and the best option for NTV and the Russian people do emerge. Turner's option is one to be considered seriously.
 <i>Rodolfo Santiago
 Isla Verde, Puerto Rico
 </i>
 Dear Editor,
 The fight over NTV has very little to do with a business dispute; it has everything to do with how business is conducted in Russia. All over the country, employees have become hostages to warring &quot;groups of owners&quot; intent on taking control at any cost. Workers at the Kachkanar Ore-Enrichment Plant, the Novokuznetsk Metallurgical Plant and the Bryansk Poultry Factory - to name only a few - know all too well what it feels like to have one's job and one's profession threatened by corporate outlaws motivated by greed and political ambition. If not for the press, few but the effected workers would know about the battles being waged. Even with the press, coverage is far too limited.
 The NTV protest has brought the horror of Russia's &quot;business as usual&quot; into homes throughout this vast country. A symbol of independent media, which few doubt is essential to addressing corruption and instituting the rule of law, NTV is a victim of the very evils that it is charged to expose. The government's silence on this issue provides little hope to citizens that there is any political will to address the myriad problems that Russian citizens face everyday.
 The protest broadcast on April 4 occurred on the first anniversary of the State Duma's special hearing on violence against workers during conflicts arising from changes in enterprise administration. That hearing was attended by Duma deputies, trade union leaders and representatives of workers' collectives. Significantly, representatives of the executive branch and the prosecutor's office did not attend. To date, none of the recommendations made during the hearing have been implemented - some of which might have defused the current NTV conflict. While one year ago deputies called a special hearing, today they are unwilling even to debate the NTV conflict.
 Russian procedural law specifies that a court decision cannot be overturned without a hearing. One would assume that events surrounding the Saratov decisions should have sparked interest within the justice and prosecutors' systems. We've heard only silence.
 Silence seems to be the desired outcome. Silence of independent reporting, silence of criticism, silence about illegal actions by those in power. Let's move beyond &quot;bad debts,&quot; a charge that can be leveled against all of the national television channels and the Russian government itself. Let's look at other, concrete violations of Russian and international law that continue to be condoned by the Russian government. 
 The trade union at the state-controlled broadcasting company RTR has been fighting for recognition and the right to conclude a collective agreement for years. The Russian court system has ruled in the union's favor. Almost two years ago, the International Labor Organization reprimanded the Russian government for RTR's violations of obligatory ILO conventions on freedom of association and the right to conclude collective negotiations. These rights were deemed basic human rights by the tri-partite ILO and are obligatory for all member nations. However, despite international censure, the company continues to violate these rights. 
 Obviously, the Russian government puts far more significance on Gazprom's &quot;strictly commercial interests&quot; than on basic human rights recognized by the international community.
 The NTV journalists and other employees have shown both dignity and passion in their fight - a fight that will protect our right to hear more than silence.
 <i>Irene Stevenson
 AFL-CIO Representative <br> in Russia, Moscow
 </i>
 Dear Editor,
 I had never heard of NTV until recently. However, I have heard of Ted Turner. I now am a supporter of NTV.
 Of course, I did not hear about the 20,000 people protesting in the streets in support of NTV from U.S. media. We Americans live in a world like that depicted in the film The Matrix. Most Americans go to work, go home, pet their dog, play with their kids, drink a beer, eat a cheeseburger, watch Ted Turner's version of world events on the news and then go to bed. Day in day out, day after day after day. They are not bad people.
 Most Russians are probably the same, except when the likes of Ted Turner or his Russian counterparts tell us we need to kill each other, then we will gladly do so. It is absolutely insane. I am glad to see there are 20,000 people who want more than that. 
 If 20,000 people protested here, the rest of the country would not hear about it. We have freedom of the press, except we are bombarded with useless information. Ted Turner married Jane Fonda, who was a traitor in Vietnam. True, we should have never been in Vietnam, but while ordinary Americans were in the jungle, Fonda was dancing with the Viet Cong. What is the character of a man who chooses a woman like this? If he does not care about America, why would he care about Russia? He now has the potential to affect the outcome of so much in Russia.
 If I were in Russia, there would have been 20,001 demonstrators. What you all are doing has an effect on the future of freedom in Russia as well as here in the United States. Take nothing for granted - the fight for freedom is never-ending. Thank you.
 <i>James Marshall
 Rogers, Texas
 </i>
 Putin's Turn
 Dear Editor,
 If there could be a more negative message to send to the rest of Europe from Russia at the present moment, I cannot think of it. All the bridges that were built between Russia and the rest of Europe are now in danger of collapsing. 
 Who can trust the Russian government to assure democracy in Russia when the independence of NTV's reporting is being castrated by the government organization Gazprom? This act, which attacks the fundamental right of the free media to criticize their government and their leaders, smacks of the power wielded by the Soviet and Imperial regimes at their worst. 
 Vladimir Kulistikov's statements quoted in your newspaper echo a past best forgotten. Their resurrection only brings mistrust from those who live outside of Russia. I pray that President Vladimir Putin understands this and makes a move to bring his power into play, as endorsement of this act only reflects an action of a weak government.
 <i>Leonard Newman
 London, United Kingdom
 Dear Editor,
 I would like to congratulate the Russian people and especially the heroes of the Russian Space Agency on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the flight of Yury Gagarin. This is truly one of the greatest achievements in the history of man and has led to many other great achievements in space exploration.
 I still remember the day that the flight was announced here in the United States and how I admired the Soviet space program, even though it made me a bit jealous. Being the leader in space exploration, Russia has shown the world the way to the future of mankind.
 Once again, congratulations to Russia on this historic event. I hope the entire country will celebrate with pride this great day in history.
 <i>Terry Smith
 Victoria, Texas
 </i>
 Dear Editor,
 I was also sad to see the Mir go. It will never leave our memory like many other things do. To preserve its memory for all, I think that the ground-based, full-sized mockup of Mir located at the Khrunichev Rocket Plant should be made available for all the world to see. 
 A museum could be created around this wonderful centerpiece. I was fortunate enough to visit it and would be very happy to be a paying guest to visit it again in the future.
 <i>Lloyd Lounsbury
 Seattle, Washington </i>

TITLE: leningrad loses out to zemfira for fuzz prize
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: &quot;As the worst of all we perform the first. Because all the rest are cool bands, while we are crap,&quot; said Sergei Shnurov, distinctly pronouncing his trademark four-letter words, before his band Leningrad threw itself into its loud and hilarious routine, opening the fifth Fuzz Awards ceremony and concert last Saturday.
 The boorish bunch - complete with four-piece horn section - played six of Leningrad's best-known songs, including their takes on Akvarium's Boris Grebenshchikov (&quot;I'm Acting B.G.&quot;) and the music industry (&quot;Show Business&quot;). The latter was duly dedicated to Coca-Coca, the show's general sponsors.
 But despite expectations, Leningrad didn't get a trophy. &quot;Fuzz told me it was 99 percent certain that Leningrad would get 'Best Band,' 'Best Album' and so on,&quot; said Ilya Bortnyuk of Gala Records, the company which releases Leningrad's recordings. &quot;Now they lump the blame on the experts.&quot;
 Both the &quot;Best Band&quot; and &quot;Best Album&quot; went to Zemfira instead - just like last year. Despite rumors, the Moscow-based singer who rocketed to fame in 1999 did not appear.
 &quot;It's clear that Leningrad is the band which made the biggest progress of all during the past 12 months,&quot; said music writer Andrei Burlaka, who was on the Fuzz Awards' board of experts. &quot;From a club act they grew into a nationally popular band.&quot;
 &quot;Best Song&quot; award went to Vyacheslav Butusov for the nonsensical &quot;Gibraltar Labrador,&quot; &quot;Best Video&quot; to Chicherina for &quot;Tula-Lula,&quot; the &quot;Best New Band&quot; to BI-2 and the &quot;Best Live Act&quot; to Zdob Si Zdub.
 Though tickets went for 150-250 rubles - unlike last year's 80 rubles - the Yubileiny Sports Palace was packed, though not so tight as last year's festival, which was headlined by Zemfira.
 But the drama of the event was ruined when Akvarium, which it was thought would headline the event, appeared in the middle. Receiving an award for &quot;Lifetime Achievement&quot; Grebenshchikov said that his achievement was left in the past century, and performed a brief but high-energy 30-minute set of mostly new material, culminating in a loud punk number.
 Though the concert was to continue for almost two more hours, little of interest happened - with the refreshing exception of the Britpop-style MultFilmy, who were awarded &quot;Best New Band&quot; last year but this time appeared as surprise guests. Appearing in ski masks, the band played an unlikely cover of the Eurythmics' &quot;Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)&quot; with some of their own favorites to follow.
 &quot;I found it boring - I liked last year's Fuzz Awards much more. Rock and roll is dead,&quot; said Shnurov. &quot;It seems that nothing significant happened last year, that's why the festival was like it was. It was a non-event.&quot;
 A professional PR manager until last year, Shnurov said Fuzz Awards was a promotional event for Fuzz magazine. &quot;Without it, nobody would probably know that such a magazine exists,&quot; he said.
 MultFilmy's Yegor Timofeyev disagreed. &quot;There is meaning in it; it is stimulating,&quot; he said. &quot;When we got the award last year, it meant a lot to us. Generally, any awards add confidence.&quot;
 Unlike many, Timofeyev agreed with the choice of Zemfira for the second year in a row. &quot;Who's the best artist if not Zemfira? She has the best ticket sales, she gathers the biggest venues among rock bands. It's all objective. Zemfira is O.K. At least she's not DDT.&quot;

TITLE: chernov's choice
AUTHOR: - by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Mikhail &quot;Mike&quot; Naumenko, one of the leading forces in the 1980s' Russian rock breakthrough, will be remembered with a concert at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture next week - on the day the late rock musician and songwriter would have turned 46.
 Called &quot;Segodnya Seishen v Lensovete&quot; (&quot;There's a gig at Lensoviet tonight&quot;), the concert takes its name from Naumenko's song &quot;Leto&quot; (&quot;Summer&quot;), which in its turn refers to the legendary &quot;semi-official&quot; concert of Akvarium and Stranniye Igry which took place at the venue in 1981.
 Unlike previous memorials, this year's concert will feature mostly currently popular acts such as Akvarium, <strong>Kir pichi</strong>, Markshcheider Kunst, Dva Sa maliota and Le nin grad's Sergei Shnu rov. Pop singer Maxim Leo ni dov will participate as he was in the &quot;beat group&quot; Secret in the 1980s, which covered a few rock and roll songs composed by Naumenko.
 The acts taking part will perform both Naumenko's covers and their own original material. 
 While last year's event was presented by Dmitry Dibrov of now- struggling NTV Television, a presenter for the forthcoming concert has not yet been announced.
 Naumenko was born in 1955 and became involved with rock music as a student. Following a 1970s trend, he began calling himself &quot;Mike&quot; and initially wrote rock lyrics in English, while playing with various outfits at organized dance evenings.
 But it was only after he had penned some songs in Russian that he started to acquire some recognition from the sophisticated underground rock crowd.
 Written under the obvious influences of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Marc Bolan and the Rolling Stones - at times to the point of almost literal translation - his lyrics were strikingly unusual for the rock scene of that time which leaned toward naive declarations and primitive symbolism.
 Musically his work combined intense rhythm and blues with rock and roll. A one-time member of Akvarium, he then left to form his own band Zoopark.
 Naumenko's music was widely circulated throughout the whole Soviet Union on home-made cassettes, while many of his fans had no idea what their idol looked like.
 Although Zoopark never achieved the fame of its counterparts, its leader, who died in August 1991, is respected and popular among rock musicians and critics. Almost all the recorded material has been released on CDs, and there is also a tribute album.
 Mikhail &quot;Mike&quot; Naumenko's Birthday Concert at 7 p.m. Weds., April 18 at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture, 42 Kamennoostrovsky Prospect, 346-04-38. Tickets cost between 80 and 200 rub.</p>

TITLE: volkovtrio: a jazz group you can only hear in concert
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Vladimir Volkov - widely considered one of the leading double-bass players in Russia - is one of the driving forces behind St. Petersburg's &quot;new music&quot; scene.
 Volkov is also one of the country's busiest musicians, torn between a variety of diverse projects and outfits, some international and some domestic, which involve a great deal of traveling.
 Although since 1995 Volkov has been chiefly concerned with his contemporary jazz fusion band Volkovtrio (their brand of music is sometimes referred to as &quot;new folk&quot;), he has also been involved in several rather unlikely collaborations, the most recent of which was an album recorded (and not yet released) with folk musician Sergei Starostin. Other such collaborations include a single recorded with St. Petersburg female pop trio Kalibri and recordings with Auktsyon frontman Leonid Fyodorov, who is also a member of Volkovtrio.
 This winter, Volkov was also busy composing the soundtrack for the upcoming film &quot;4,&quot; the script for which was written by popular writer Vladimir Sorokin and which stars Sergei Shnurov of Leningrad.
 While the group that brought Vol kov fame in the early 1980s - a jazz duet with Slava Guyvoronsky - is no longer active, Volkov is currently involved in a number of similar partnerships with counterparts that include Sta rostin, French Horn player Arkady Shilkloper and pianist Andrei Kondakov, to name a few.
 &quot;The main thing is communication and finding a common language with the musicians you play with,&quot; said Volkov, who recently recorded music with Senegalese singer Mola Sylla. &quot;I don't play with just any musicians.&quot;
 Born in Leningrad in 1960, Volkov became involved in jazz in the mid-1970s while studying at the city's Rimsky-Korsakov Music Institute.
 &quot;I entered the classical department as an average person, a student, and suddenly I started seeing weird people who didn't look like everybody else,&quot; Volkov said. &quot;[They were] rock and jazz musicians and I started to look closely at them. I was struck by [saxophonist Igor] Butman's playing - he was getting started then.&quot;
 In 1978, Volkov played with a jazz quartet led by Butman, who is today easily Russia's best-known saxophonist - indeed, in 1995, he was chosen to entertain then U.S. president Bill Clinton at a Kremlin reception.
 &quot;We played standards then, but it wasn't really traditional jazz,&quot; said Volkov about his early days with Butman. &quot;There were attempts [to experiment] even then.&quot;
 In 1980, Volkov formed his duet with trumpet player and composer Guyvoronsky, whom he met while taking part in one of Vapirov's projects. The Volkov/Guyvoronsky Duo, also known as the Leningrad Duo or the St. Petersburg Duo, was to become one of the city's finest sobaka outfits. For over a decade, Volkov worked almost exclusively with Guyvoronsky, building a solid reputation with concerts and festival performances and recordings.
 Formed in 1995, Volkovtrio's foundation actually dates to 1992, when Volkov met current Volkovtrio members guitarist Slava Kurashov and drummer Denis &quot;Ringo&quot; Sladkeyevich at Lenfilm Studios while recording a soundtrack (composed by Kuryokhin) for the Dmitry Meskhiyev film, &quot;Nad Tyomnoi Vodoi,&quot; or &quot;Over Dark Waters&quot; (1993).
 Volkovtrio has not yet released its own album, but the band has performed on various collaboration CDs.
 &quot;For some reason, we haven't been able to [record our own album],&quot; Vol kov said. &quot;We record what comes - Starostin appeared, we caught him and we recorded [an album]. The same goes for Shilkloper. To me, concerts are always more interesting than our attempts at studio recording.&quot;
 Further, Volkov admitted that his music - often described as &quot;pessimistic&quot; or &quot;gloomy&quot; - isn't a &quot;very edible product,&quot; a fact confirmed by Peter Gabriel when the musician was given a chance to listen and comment on Volkov's recent foray into Russian folk music, a collaboration with Starostin called &quot;Bylo Solntse,&quot; or &quot;Once There Was Sun,&quot; as it is known in English. The album, Volkov said, was dismissed by Gabriel, who said it was &quot;too jazzy.&quot;
 &quot;Many people expect to be entertained or diverted,&quot; he said. &quot;But this is Russian culture: Most folk songs are pretty gloomy.&quot;
 &quot;I think that's an unwillingness to perceive the 'inedible' element of Russian culture,&quot; Volkov said. &quot;[Our music] isn't ... easy to listen to.&quot;
 Volkovtrio with Sergei Starostin in concert at 7 p.m. Fri., April 13 at JFC Jazz Club. </i>

TITLE: killing time at weeping willow
AUTHOR: by Simon Patterson
TEXT: For a real family restaurant experience, there can be few places more suitable than the &quot;Plakuchaya Iva,&quot; or Weeping Willow, situated across the road from the Vitebsk Station on Zagorodny Prospect. They even promise a play-room with a nanny and children's parties, along with the more usual weddings and banquets, and &quot;business lunches.&quot;
 Spread over two floors, the restaurant has a bar, a dimly lit hall with a stage, and a balcony area. A fairly tipsy banquet was taking place in the hall when we arrived, and a loud band had taken the stage. We were able to escape the music, however, fleeing to the safety of the balcony. It was loud enough for us to hear the Esperanto version of &quot;You Never Can Tell&quot; (the only recognizable words being the title of the song) and the crowd's boisterous reaction, but not so loud that we couldn't hear each other talk. Something for everyone, indeed.
 While the pastel walls, with various amorphous designs on them, seem to represent nothing in particular, the food was remarkably good. The menu, which promises <i>&quot;vkusnaya i zdorovaya pishcha,&quot; </i>a tongue-in-cheek reference to the all-time favorite Soviet cookbook, has a wide selection of fish, meat and game, featuring some fairly exotic choices along with the usual favorites.
 We began with <i>borshch</i> (50 rubles), served with a small cabbage pie, and quite a cut above the average. I went for the tuna salad (90 rubles), which was tasty enough, if not somewhat closer to the tinned version than one would like. The bread was a particular highlight, served with four different kinds of butter, including garlic, lemon and red pepper.
 My wife ordered a glass of white wine (70 rubles) while I had a Nevsky beer (30 rubles).
 For some reason, my order of <i>ukha </i>soup was forgotten, and our main courses were brought to us immediately. Perhaps our waitress was too busy attending to the riotous crowd downstairs, and she managed to cancel the order, without us being charged for it or having it taken out of her salary. My wife had the fried flounder (140 rubles) with bacon and potatoes, and I had the duck (280 rubles), which was certainly worth every kopek, served with a mushroom sauce, and with real sauerkraut.
 After the soup fiasco, I was still feeling peckish, so we decided to check out the desserts. I ordered the banana split (80 rubles) while my wife ordered the apple pie (80 rubles). While I'm not a huge dessert fan, the banana split was delicious, served with cognac, kiwi and cream, and the apple pie, served with miniature apples, was also given the thumbs up.
 As the band continued to churn out the hits, mostly Soviet 70's retro, we decided to make an exit. Generally speaking, the restaurant left a good impression, and while not exactly the spot for a romantic dinner, would make an ideal place for passengers waiting for the next train to Vitebsk, or to entertain one's offspring.
 
 <i>Plakuchaya Iva, 45 Zagorodny Pros pect, 325-09-77. Open daily from 12 p.m. to 12 a.m. Dinner for two with alcohol, 870 rubles ($30). Credit cards accepted. </i>

TITLE: underdogs triumph at golden mask awards
AUTHOR: by John Freedman
TEXT: If nothing else, the seventh annual awards ceremony of the Golden Mask theater festival in Moscow cleared up a few questions about outspoken lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
 Prior to helping announce the winners in the musical and operetta category, Zhirinovsky performed in a villain's cape and mask, singing: &quot;Yes, I am a jester. So what?&quot;
 The standing-room-only audience of popular actors, directors and other artists at the Mossoviet Theater on Monday night greeted the politician's confession enthusiastically.
 Aside from Zhirinovsky, however, who was meek as a mouse while presenting awards, there was plenty of controversy.
 For the first time in recent memory, a Mos cow opera theater broke the hegemony of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater and its artistic director Valery Ger giev - perennial winners in the field.
 This year's big winner was the Helikon Opera's production of &quot;Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,&quot; pulling down four of the category's five awards - best opera, best director (Dmitry Bertman), best conductor (Vladimir Ponkin) and best female singer (Anna Kazakova).
 The announcement of each of these awards was greeted with whoops and hollers from fans of the Helikon, which has gained the reputation as being Mos cow's most innovative musical theater.
 Meanwhile, many were shocked that the Mariinsky's acclaimed production of &quot;Das Rheingold&quot; was nearly snubbed. The sole winner from this show was Viktor Chernomortsev, named best male singer.
 The awards for dramatic theater provided surprises that left many at the after-ceremony banquet crying foul and shaking their heads at the decisions of the jury of actors, directors, critics and educators.
 Perhaps the biggest shock was the poor showing of Kama Ginkas' highly touted production of &quot;The Black Monk&quot; for Moscow's Theater Yunogo Zritelya. Said by some to be Ginkas' finest work ever, and nominated in four categories, it brought a winner's plaque only to Sergei Barkhin for his stunning set design of a gazebo in a field of peacock feathers hanging over a precipice.
 Another topic of hot discussion was the shutout of Lev Dodin's production of &quot;Molly Sweeney&quot; for St. Petersburg's Maly Drama Theater. None of its five nominations, including best show and best director, brought home an award.
 Arguably, the night's most popular decision was the awarding of best small-stage production to Pyotr Fomenko's staging of &quot;One Absolutely Happy Village&quot; for Moscow's Fomenko Studio. The audience went wild when this award was announced and the show's two stars, Sergei Taramayev and Polina Agu re ye va, took the stage to accept for Fomenko.
 A strong, though controversial, showing was made by &quot;Lost in the Stars,&quot; a production of Hanoch Levin's comedy by the Theater on Liteiny. This sensitive and exquisitely performed play about sex, love and loneliness among aging people grabbed two awards, including best large-stage production, despite irritating many with its frank and irreverent discussions of sex and condoms. The show's supporters pointed to its extraordinary trio of actors, superb lighting, quirky choreography and versatile set of a massive series of doors as ample proof that it deserved its awards.
 &quot;Lost in the Stars&quot; director Grigory Dityatkovsky, 42, beat out his more established opponents Ginkas and Fomenko and his former teacher Dodin for the coveted best director award.
 Among dramatic actors, the winners were Tatyana Kutikhina, named best actress for her reserved, though eccentric, performance in &quot;Uncle's Dream&quot; for the Chamber Theater of Voronezh, and Konstantin Raikin, tapped best actor for his one-man performance as an obscure musician in &quot;The Bass&quot; at Moscow's Satirikon Theater.
 Other drama honors included special jury awards made to Inna Chu ri ko va and Armen Dzhigarkhanyan for their marvelous acting duet in &quot;City of Millionaires&quot; at the Lenkom Theater, and to the renowned designer David Borovsky, who created the set for &quot;Molly Sweeney.&quot; Churikova, accepting for herself and the absent Dzhigarkhanyan, graciously called her opportunity to work with Dzhigarkhanyan a &quot;gift.&quot;
 Veteran actress Alisa Frendlikh received an award honoring her many years of work in theater.
 The Critic's Prize, one of the festival's most prestigious and one that tends to reflect younger, less traditional tastes, went to Andrei Moguchy's atmospheric staging of &quot;School for Fools,&quot; a joint production of the St. Petersburg's Baltiisky Dom and Formalny Theaters.
 The ballet awards were scattered among three different cities. Best ballet went to the Mariinsky Theater's &quot;Jewels,&quot; while Diana Vishneva was honored as best female dancer from that show. The Chelyabinsk Theater of Contemporary Dance won best contemporary dance production for &quot;Sketches From Nature&quot; and Tatyana Baganova was designated best choreographer for her work on &quot;Maple Orchard&quot; and &quot;Provincial Dances&quot; for the Kipling Dance Group of Yekaterinburg.
 Next year Zhirinovsky may be up for an award. He twice was offered work at the Moscow Operetta Theater by representatives accepting the best musical award for &quot;Metro&quot; as well as the award for the show's director, Janus Juzefovic.
 Other awards included: Best conductor, operetta: Georgy Ave rin, &quot;The Acacia Blooms Again,&quot; Kras nodar Operetta Theater; best designer, musical theater: Olga Pautova and Viktoria Mozgovaya, &quot;Maple Orchard&quot; and &quot;Provincial Dances;&quot; special jury awards, musical theater: Viola Kho dova, designer, Arvaiden Theater, Vla dikavkaz, and the entire orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater; innovation award: &quot;Women. 1945,&quot; Fat Ballet, Perm.

TITLE: 40 Years After Bay of Pigs, U.S. and Cuba Fight On
AUTHOR: By Andrew Cawthorne
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BAY OF PIGS, Cuba - The battle is long over, and now the only &quot;invaders&quot; at Cuba's Bay of Pigs are tourists lolling in the sun, or the millions of crabs crawling daily in and out of the sea during spring mating season.
 Forty years after President Fidel Castro's troops crushed a U.S.-backed invasion by Cuban exiles, the beaches and swamps that formed the battleground of one of the Cold War's most emblematic conflicts are a leisure and wildlife paradise. Not that anyone forgets what happened here.
 Many foreign tourists say they are drawn to the Bay of Pigs' two main beaches - Playa Giron and Playa Larga - as much for its military history as its idyllic sands, shallow Caribbean waters and unspoiled marine life.
 Billboards on roads into the area remind visitors: &quot;Here is where the mercenaries reached&quot; or advertise: &quot;Playa Giron - the first imperialist defeat in Latin America.&quot;
 And several museums in the zone bear testimony to the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces' victory within 72 hours over the 1,500 members of the doomed, CIA-trained 2506 Brigade, who failed to form a proper beachhead, let alone topple Castro, after disembarking in the early hours of April 17, 1961.
 For Cuba's Communist leadership, the wider political war with the United States and the anti-Castro Cuban American community was only just beginning at the Bay of Pigs.
 Four decades later, that conflict is still going strong, albeit on different battlefields, and Cuba is promising its people another Bay of Pigs victory in the future.
 &quot;We may take years, perhaps quite some time, but they will continue suffering defeat after defeat and will not obtain any victories other than Pyrrhic ones,&quot; Castro told a recent rally.
 He was referring to the &quot;Battle of Ideas,&quot; a 16-month-old ideological counter-offensive of rallies and media campaigns on the island, led by Castro and intended to demonstrate the superiority of local-style socialism over Western capitalism.
 Cuba, and many others throughout Latin America, name the April 17 to 19, 1961, battle after Playa Giron, whereas the English-speaking world generally refers to the Bay of Pigs.
 Cuba hopes the anniversary of the conflict will remind its people and the world, not only of a glorious past victory, but also of ongoing U.S. &quot;aggression&quot; to Havana like long-standing commercial sanctions or support for internal dissidents.
 President George W. Bush, the 10th U.S. leader in the White House since Castro's 1959 revolution, has pledged to keep a tough line on Cuba with no letup to the embargo until &quot;freedom&quot; is gained for the islanders.
 While the Bay of Pigs battle is a source of sorrow to many Cuban Americans in Florida - where some still cannot forgive then President John F. Kennedy for not authorizing direct military support to Brigade 2506 - in Cuba it is generally a source of pride.
 Some, however, are rolling their eyes at the inevitable political tub-thumping accompanying the anniversary.
 &quot;It was a specific moment in Cuban history when everyone was prepared to fight for their country. It was a moment of great revolutionary effervescence,&quot; said Martha Beatriz Roque, a leading Cuban dissident.
 Beyond the politics, the Bay of Pigs anniversary is a time of sober reflection for the survivors. Nearly 300 soldiers, and more than 150 civilians, died during the invasion.
 Cuba took more than 1,000 prisoners.
 &quot;In war, if you're not afraid, you're abnormal,&quot; 73-year-old veteran Ve ne ran do Jesus Cabrera, who fought as a militiaman at the Bay of Pigs, said as he recounted what he called &quot;the phenomenal combat&quot; of the battle.
 &quot;At first you are afraid, then as you start advancing, the fear disappears, and when they kill a comrade beside you, you become a hero or a martyr, because you charge forward like a madman after that,&quot; he said in an interview at his modest apartment in Havana.

TITLE: Spy-Plane Crew Returns Home
AUTHOR: By Sondra White
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GUAM - The freed crew of a U.S. spy plane headed for home Thursday and Easter reunions with their families, after a flight to freedom that defused a Sino-American standoff over their detention in China.
 But the deal which brought the release left the spy plane itself in Chinese hands and a host of unresolved issues between the two sides, in particular the future of American surveillance flights off China's coast.
 &quot;All responsibilities for the incident lie with the U.S. side,&quot; Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, quoted by the official Xinhua news agency, told UN General Assembly President Harri Holkeri, who was visiting Beijing.
 The 24 Americans, who left China's southern island of Hainan on a chartered Boeing 737 earlier in the day, landed on the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam for a brief stopover - and a welcome-back feast of steak, apple pie and cookies.
 White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said President George Bush was &quot;very pleased for the families, he's very pleased for the crew. He's pleased that this accident did not turn into a crisis.&quot;
 The Continental Micronesia Airlines plane that flew them to freedom lifted off almost exactly 11 days to the hour since the collision between the EP-3 surveillance plane and the Chinese F-8 whose pilot bailed out into the South China Sea.
 But as the crew left Hainan, Washington vowed not to give up its surveillance flights. Even before the wheels of the Boeing 737 left Haikou, Beijing and Washington were disagreeing over the interpretation of an American letter that secured the release of the Americans.
 Secretary of State Colin Powell insisted the United States had not apologized for the incident, which it maintains was an accident.
 The Chinese media were triumphant. &quot;America Finally Apologizes,&quot; screamed a headline in the Beijing Morning Post, telling its readers that U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher had delivered a &quot;letter of apology.&quot;
 The language of the letter - in which Washington said it was &quot;very sorry&quot; for the loss of the pilot of the Chinese fighter and &quot;very sorry&quot; its plane landed on Hainan without permission - was hammered out over almost a week of intense negotiations.
 It appeared to be a clever diplomatic compromise that gave both sides a face-saving way out.
 But U.S. surveillance flights over the South China Sea that have irritated Beijing remained an unresolved issue.
 One senior U.S. official, speaking after the crew had left China, said that the United States would not give up surveillance flights near China in spite of Beijing's insistence that the matter be discussed.
 The eavesdropping flights, generally several times a month, collect radar, radio and other electronic transmissions.
 The United States and China agreed to meet on April 18 to discuss the collision. Also on the agenda will be the fate of the EP-3 spy plane, which is too badly damaged to fly with its nose cone ripped off and propeller destroyed.


TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: TV Millionaire
 

NEW YORK (AP) - A Michigan engineer won $2.18 million on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" Tuesday, which ABC claims is the biggest quiz show prize in network television history.
 Kevin Olmstead of Ann Arbor, Mi chi gan, won the jackpot for correctly identifying Igor Sikorsky as inventor of the first mass-produced helicopter.
 Olmstead said he feared being asked a question about recent pop culture. Instead, he was lucky enough to be asked about the helicopter inventor.
 "From being an engineer and being into engineering history, I immediately knew Sikorsky," he said.
 
 
Security Talks End
 

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - U.S.-hosted cease-fire talks between Israelis and Palestinians ended without result Thursday, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned he would send troops into Palestinian areas again if attacks on Israelis persist.
 The meeting between Israeli and Palestinian security officials came a day after Israeli tanks and bulldozers razed a neighborhood in the Palestinian refugee camp of Khan Yunis in a Palestinian-controlled area of the Gaza Strip.
 In an interview with the Maariv daily published Thursday, Sharon said there were no plans to reoccupy areas from which Israeli troops withdrew several years ago, as part of interim peace deals. However, he said would again order troops into Palestinian-controlled territory, also known as Area A, if attacks on Israelis persist.
 At the security talks, held at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, both sides made a series of demands without reaching agreement on any of them. Another round of talks was set for Monday.
 
 
Tornadoes Kill 3
 

AGENCY, Iowa (AP) - Tornadoes cut paths through parts of the Plains and Midwest, leaving at least three people dead and damaging buildings, uprooting trees and overturning cars.
 One of the handful of twisters that touched down Wednesday tore through a community food pantry in Agency, a town in southeastern Iowa. Two pantry volunteers - Mary Ellen Hewitt, 73, and Helen Bacon, 61 - were killed and three others were injured. A third person died in a tornado early Wednesday in Oklahoma.
 Three other twisters also hit southern Iowa on Wednesday.
 
 
U.S. Hostage Freed
 

ZAMBOANGA, Philippines (Reuters) - Philippine troops rescued U.S. hostage Jeffrey Schilling from more than seven months of captivity on Thursday after a 45-minute gun battle with his Muslim rebel captors, officials said.
 The 25-year-old from Oakland, California, was unhurt except for a few bruises, officials said.
 The U.S. Embassy in Manila confirmed the rescue.
 Armed forces chief General Diomedio Villanueva said that Schilling was rescued by marines around 2 p.m. after a gun battle with the fundamentalist Abu Sayyaf guerrillas who held him on the nearby island of Jolo, about 950 kilometers south of Manila, since August 28.
 
 
Milosevic Hospitalized
 

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was transferred to hospital from his jail cell late on Wednesday due to heart problems caused by high blood pressure, prison and hospital authorities said. 
 "Two medical teams examined Milosevic in jail and it was decided he should be transferred to a hospital," a source close to Belgrade prison authorities said. A source at Belgrade's military medical academy, located in a suburb of the city, later said Milosevic, 59, had been admitted there.
 After Milosevic, ousted in a popular uprising six months ago, was arrested on April 1, a doctor found him exhausted with slightly elevated blood pressure, but otherwise in good health.
 A source close to the Serbian government said police would guard Milosevic at the military hospital, adding that Yugoslav army chief of staff Nebojsa Pavkovic had authorized this.
 
 
Net Fraud Uncovered
 

LONDON (Reuters) - An Internet fraud scheme involving fake bank guarantees of $3.9 billion has been uncovered by the International Chamber of Commerce, the ICC announced on Thursday.
 Some 29 Web sites used in the scam were shut down but the mastermind was still at large, said Jon Merrett, assistant director of the ICC Commercial Crime Bureau and Cyber crime Units which polices all financial and intellectual property rights breaches on the Internet.
 The British-based Commercial Crime Bureau was alerted to the false bank guarantees six months ago but believes some victims were conned as early as 1999.
 The victims had paid tens of thousands of dollars for the issue of fraudulent bank guarantees, which were validated on the scam Web sites, Merrett said. 



TITLE: Stampede Claims 43 Lives in South Africa
AUTHOR: By Susanna Loof
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Sobbing women identified their relatives from among bodies lined up on a soccer field early Thursday after a stampede at a match between two of South Africa's most popular teams. Forty-three people were killed and more than 80 injured.
 In one of the country's worst sports tragedies, thousands of fans who couldn't fit into Johannesburg's Ellis Park stadium on Wednesday night shoved and broke through the fence around the facility or climbed over gates.
 Not initially realizing the seriousness of the situation, officials didn't call off the game until 10 minutes after the first body had been carried away, one fan said.
 Government and league officials met Thursday to look into what caused the stampede at a game between the Kaizer Chiefs and the Orlando Pirates.
 Gates leading to the stadium were closed Wednesday after it had filled to its capacity of 62,000, said Robin Petersen, chief of the Premier Soccer League, which organized the match. The thousands of fans still outside then began pushing the fence, breaking it in four places, he said.
 Guards were unable to stop the crowd from pouring into the already full stands, Petersen said, and officials didn't realize the magnitude of the problem.
 &quot;Maybe had we responded earlier, the situation would have been averted,&quot; the South African Press Association quoted him as saying.
 Officials from the league and the South African Football Association met with Sports Minister Nconde Balfour Thursday morning.
 &quot;If proper arrangements had put in place this never should have happened,&quot; Balfour told SAPA.
 The stampede killed 43 people, 29 inside the stadium and 14 outside, said Sergeant Amanda Roestoff, a police spokeswoman. 
 The number of injured was unclear. SAPA quoted emergency services spokes man Gerhard van Rooyen as saying 89 people were injured. But Kgotso Chikane, spokesman for Johannesburg Mayor Amos Masondo, said more than 100 people had been hospitalized.
 The mood at the stadium was spirited even before kickoff, spectators said, which is common for matches between the two teams. Things took a darker turn after the Pirates scored a goal.
 &quot;That's when everything happened,&quot; said security guard Louis Shipalana. &quot;The stadium was full. There was no place to stand.&quot; People pushed down the fence, he said, &quot;and the people in the back stepped on those in front.&quot;
 In a statement, former president Nelson Mandela said sport has been a uniting force in South Africans' lives and should continue to be so.
 &quot;We, the fans and supporters of sport, should ensure that this culture of uniting people is cherished. This incident should not divide us now but rather bring us even closer to ensure that this horror story does not repeat itself,&quot; it said.
 South Africa has made a bid to host the 2010 World Cup. But Keith Cooper, a spokesman for FIFA, the sport's worldwide governing body, said Thursday that it was far too early to say if the stampede would have any impact on that petition.

TITLE: Graf: I Don't Feel Like 'Steffi' Anymore
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BERLIN - Stefanie Graf is tired of being called &quot;Steffi.&quot;
 The German tennis great, who won 22 grand slam singles titles and spent a record 378 weeks ranked No. 1, does not feel like &quot;Steffi&quot; anymore and would prefer being called &quot;Stefanie.&quot;
 &quot;I like the name better,&quot; she said in an interview with a German newspaper, Handelsblatt.
 Graf, 31, said that she had relaunched and renamed her company &quot;Steffi Graf Sport GmbH&quot; as &quot;Stefanie Graf Marketing GmbH & Co KG.&quot; Her office based in Mannheim has a staff of four.
 &quot;My company will be involved more in marketing in general than in just sport,&quot; Graf said. &quot;Naturally we talked about the recognition value of the name during our discussions of building up a brand name because most people know me as Steffi. But we made a conscious decision for Stefanie.&quot;
 Graf's official Web site remains accessible through both names: www.steffi-graf.de and www.stefanie-graf.de. But once you get to the site, it is strictly Stefanie from there on.
 Graf, who won Wimbledon seven times, retired abruptly in 1999 just weeks after winning the French Open as she turned 30. Shortly afterward she split up with her longtime boyfriend and immediately began a relationship with American Andre Agassi.
 Graf, who has a strained relationship with German media in part because of her irritation at the coverage of her father's tax-evasion trial and subsequent conviction, has spent much of the last two years living in the United States.
 &quot;I like coming back to Germany [for visits],&quot; she said. &quot;My roots are here. And apparently people are still well informed about me, [but] I'm looking forward to moving into our new house in San Francisco.&quot;

TITLE: Wings Start Playoffs on Right Note With 5-3 Win Over L.A.
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DETROIT - The Detroit Red Wings kept their perfect 2001 home record intact, winning their 12th straight first-round Western Conference playoff game with a 5-3 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday. By contrast, the Kings have not been in the postseason since 1993.
 The Red Wings were without their captain and center Steve Yzerman for the final 40 minutes because of a leg injury, but still equaled Edmonton's record when they swept four straight opening series from 1983-86, when they were best-of-five.
 The Red Wings continued their winning way after ending the regular season with a franchise-record 19-game home unbeaten streak and virtually wrapped up the contest in the opening 13 minutes when Tomas Holmstrom, Sergei Fedorov and Brendan Shanahan scored.
 Shanahan scored two goals while Fedorov, who was held scoreless in the final 10 regular-season games, picked up a goal and two assists.
 Detroit coach Scotty Bowman said goalie Chris Osgood made the play of the game with his save on Ziggy Palffy's shorthanded breakaway, then followed up with a stop on the rebound by Brian Smolinski.
 
 <strong>Buffalo 2, Philadelphia 1. </strong>In Philadelphia, the Sabres took away the Flyers' home-ice advantage when Chris Gratton and Doug Gilmour scored in the first period and then goalie Dominik Hasek slammed the door shut stopping 31 shots.
 Buffalo had scored only two goals in losing all four regular-season meetings with the Flyers.
 Hasek stopped 13 of Philadelphia's 14 shots in the first period and made 18 over the final 40 minutes. He also stopped Mark Recchi's penalty shot with 8:19 left in the opening frame. Recchi faked a shot to try to get Hasek to go down, but the goalie threw his right pad and glove up to deflect the puck. 
 
 <strong>Dallas 2, Edmonton 1. </strong>In Dallas, Jamie Langenbrunner scored 2:08 into overtime for a Stars 2-1 win over the Oilers Shaun Van Allen took on two opponents in the left corner.
 He sent a pass into the slot, where Langenbrunner took a shot that was blocked by defenseman Janne Niinimaa.
 The puck bounced straight back and the alert Langenbrunner lifted a wrist shot into the top right corner as goaltender Tommy Salo was screened by three players.
 Dallas' Ed Belfour made 21 saves and went to 13-2 in postseason against Edmonton, which has been eliminated by the Stars in the past three seasons. Salo had 26 saves and dropped to 1-9 against Dallas in postseason play.