SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #663 (30), Friday, April 20, 2001
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Gusinsky To Sell Last NTV Shares
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky said on Thursday he planned to sell his remaining stake in the independent NTV television channel after the company fell under control of state- dominated gas monopoly Gazprom.
 The announcement - made on Ekho-Mosvky radio, a part of Gusinsky's crumbling empire - came Thursday, a day following a Spanish court's ruling not to extradite him to Russia where he is wanted on fraud charges. 
 Gusinsky founded NTV television and the Media-MOST company, of which the station along with Sem Dnei Publishing (See story, Page 4) were a part, and some considered NTV the most independent source of information outside Kremlin control.
 During the radio interview, Gusinsky did not say to whom he would sell his shares in the station, which total 49.5 percent, of which 19 percent are pledged as collateral for a multi-million-dollar loan from Gazprom maturing in June.
 U.S. media baron Ted Turner had held talks with Gusinsky on acquiring his stake to preserve NTV's independence but the businessman was seen likely to drop out of the deal after the natural gas monopoly Gazprom seized control in a boardroom coup, "The company in its present form and with its new management is of no interest to me as a shareholder," Gusinsky told Ekho Moskvy.
 "For me it is obvious that, after the departure of a majority of journalists who formed the face of the channel, NTV no longer has any attraction for me," he said.
 Many key reporters and anchormen left NTV in the wake of last Saturday's takeover, fearing a clampdown on free speech.
 They have migrated to the TV-6 channel owned by self-exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky, a one-time Krem lin insider who has fallen out with President Vladimir Putin and who, like Gusinsky, has seen his influence diminish under the new regime. TV-6 lacks the nationwide reach and stature of NTV.
 Gusinsky, meanwhile, is a free man as far as Spain is concerned. 
 By a vote of 2-1, a three-judge panel at the National Court in Madrid on Wednesday rejected the extradition request of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, news agencies reported. The court said the offenses allegedly committed by Gusinsky would not qualify as a crime in Spain - the key criterion for deciding extradition cases there. 
 "The court agrees to reject and declare inadmissible the extradition of Vladimir Alexandrovich Gusinsky as requested by the authorities of the Russian Federation," the majority judges said in their 16-page ruling, according to The Associated Press.
 Technically, the ruling could have been appealed in three days time but Prosecutor Eduardo Fungairino said Thursday that he would not, Reuters reported. 
 Officials at the Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow said the possibility of extraditing to Russia still exists.
 "We do not think this decision is a disaster. Not all legal possibilities have been exhausted," said Natalya Vishnyakova, the spokesperson for the Prosecutor General's Office, told Interfax.
 Gusinsky, 48, is wanted in Russia on charges of large-scale fraud involving his Media-MOST empire. The media baron and his supporters have repeatedly described the criminal cases against him as a politically motivated attack in retaliation for critical coverage of the Kremlin by Gusinsky's media outlets.
 Gusinsky was arrested in Spain in December and has been under police guard at his villa for most of the time since then. Last month, shortly before the extradition hearings began, he was briefly jailed before being released on $5.5 million bail.
 Back in Moscow, the Spanish court decision was regarded by Gusinsky's allies as a bittersweet victory. Media-MOST spokesperson Dmitry Ostalsky praised the ruling as one made by "a truly independent court."
 "At least we have received moral satisfaction," Ostalsky said.
 Media-MOST is involved in a multi-billion-dollar debt dispute with its main creditor and shareholder, Gazprom, which installed its management team at Media-MOST's flagship NTV television earlier this month. The management reshuffle culminated in an early-morning takeover last Saturday.
 Gusinsky's media empire took another hit this week as his former ally Dmitry Biryukov, the co-owner of Media-MOST's print-media arm, sided with Gazprom and closed Gusinsky's oldest media venture, the Segodnya daily newspaper, and a day later fired the editorial staff of the weekly Itogi magazine.
 According to AP, the Spanish court cited a November 2000 agreement in which Media-MOST turned over shares in NTV to cover part of its outstanding debt with Gazprom and said the arrangement was "indicative of the existence of an economic conflict between the parties" and that such a dispute should be dealt with in civil proceedings, not criminal charges. 
 The judges also rejected Gusinsky's claims of political persecution in Russia but agreed there had been "questionable circumstances and peculiarities" in the way Russia had attempted to prosecute him, AP reported.
 Ostalsky said the court ruling in Gusinsky's favor is unlikely to affect the situation surrounding NTV, since the media mogul will not be able to return to Russia and fight to "retrieve his property."
 "Things have gone too far with NTV and the court ruling in his favor cannot directly affect the situation," Ostalsky said. 
 In an interview published Tuesday in the Swiss newspaper Le Temps, Gusinsky said he is determined to keep on fighting in court to get his property back, but will lead the charge from abroad.
 "Whatever happens, I will never come back to Putin's Russia," he said.
 
 <i>- AP, Reuters, SPT </i>

TITLE: Zoo's Newest Additions Get Public Viewing
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: At the St. Petersburg Zoo in Tuesday's April warmth, two newborn polar bears took their first awkward steps in front of the public after their birth on Dec. 10. 
 The two yellow and grubby little cubs have been holed up for the past four months in their den, and will remain close to their den for the next two years. Zoo workers, in fact, will not even know the genders of the newborns for a long period of time, because they will not be able to approach the cubs for fear that a human scent on them will lead to their rejection by their mother. 
 For now, however, they are allowed to leave their den for walks and eventually to swim in the pool - which has been drained a level to accommodate their diminutive, fuzzy bodies - and romps in the sun, and their appearance on Tuesday was a definite crowd pleaser. 
 The St. Petersburg Zoo leads the world in polar bear births, owing to its high latitude, said the zoo's scientific director Yelena Denisenko.
 &quot;St. Petersburg being a northern city has the most appropriate climatic conditions for them,&quot; said Denisenko. &quot;And we do everything possible to make their births natural.&quot; 
 Since 1933 - including the years of the German blockade - the zoo has seen the birth of 100 polar bear cubs. Other zoos have not even come close to such numbers, and the 14-year-old Uslada, who usually gives birth every two years, keeps the population growing. And with a life expectancy of 35, she is in her prime. 
 Nonetheless, captive births, even here, are a delicate process, says De ni sen ko. The gestation period for polar bears is only three months, meaning they are born in a delicate, almost embryonic state, which accounts for the long period of care they need after birth. The cubs are born weighing 300 grams - just the weight of three shots of celebratory vodka - compared to their 300-kilogram mother. 
 For that reason, when a pregnant polar bear disappears into her den, it is virtually sealed off from all sound and disturbances, said Denisenko. 
 &quot;Any welding noise, the jingling of a pan or the appearance of a human can cause the mother to eat her babies,&quot; she said. 
 The father too, is to have no contact with the babies at all - immediately or long after birth. In the case of Uslada and her young, father Menshikov is sealed off in his own compound as he may present a danger to the cubs, said Denisenko. 
 Feeding the cubs and the mother is therefore a precarious process. Their food is slid into the den through a special hatch by the same person on a twice-weekly basis, as the bears only eat two times a week. 
 Meager though that may sound, the diet for Uslada is 14 kilograms of meat, 12 kilograms of hunchback salmon and a half a kilogram of liver per feeding. 
 The only daily supplement they receive is two liters of cod-liver oil. They also eat grass in the summer. In total, a diet for two bears and veterinary care comes to about $5,000 a year and Denisenko said the zoo is on the lookout for sponsors. 
 Meanwhile, zoo keepers keep their distance and watch the polar bear family's progress through special observation windows in the den. 
 &quot;The peeps we got of the cubs were the only sign for us that they had been born - and that there were two of them,&quot; Denisenko said.
 Eventually, after they have spent the obligatory two years with their mother, the two newborns will be sent to different zoos, a process Denisenko said is heart-rending. 
 &quot;Polar bear mothers cry like a human women when we take [the cubs] from her,&quot; she said.

TITLE: Ukrainian PM Faces Vote of No Confidence
AUTHOR: By Tony Roddam
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: KIEV - Ukrainian Prime Minister Vik tor Yushchenko on Thursday predicted he would be toppled in a looming no-confidence vote, after parliament condemned his policies and economic reforms in a stormy debate.
 Passions were running high in parliament, with one deputy poised to set herself alight in protest at the vote against the premier. Colleagues swiftly intervened to avert tragedy.
 Yushchenko, the country's main champion of liberal economic reform, said he was under no illusions about his government's chances of survival.
 &quot;This government should be retained because of its value and effectiveness. But I am convinced that it will not be retained,&quot; Yushchenko told reporters in parliament.
 The move to ditch Yushchenko is the latest twist in an intense political crisis gripping Ukraine, as parliamentary factions and big business interests jockey for power.
 President Leonid Kuchma is also under pressure from the scandal of a murdered journalist, which has brought protesters onto the streets of Kiev.
 Yushchenko, speaking immediately after the 450-seat parliament approved a resolution critical of his government by 283 votes to 65, said he feared for democracy in Ukraine.
 The European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana, on a two-day visit to Kiev, warned the country of 49 million people that it must stick to economic and political reform if it wanted to maintain close ties with the West.
 Thursday's parliamentary session ended without fixing a date for a full no-confidence vote. Deputies are expected on Friday to decide when to schedule the ballot, to be held by April 26.
 Some deputies began gathering signatures to try to oust Ivan Plyusch, the parliamentary speaker who supported delaying the vote until next week. Some parties had wanted the no-confidence vote to take place on Thursday.
 The no-cofidence vote is likely to have wider implications for Ukraine. The reforms pursued by Yushchenko, a former central banker, are regarded as crucial to keeping Western investors and the International Monetary Fund active in Ukraine.
 Yushchenko was appointed in 1999 by Kuchma to spearhead economic change. But his belt-tightening reforms angered leftists and centrists, and moves to improve transparency and accountability in Ukraine's notoriously opaque economy rattled many vested business interests.
 His position appears increasingly perilous. It is unclear whether he has the support of the president, who has so far failed to back his prime minister publicly.
 Kuchma himself is treading a fine line, needing allies to survive his own political crisis surrounding the case of murdered reporter Georgiy Gongadze. Kuch ma's opponents accuse him of involvement in the death. He denies the allegations.
 But the Gongadze case and Yu shchen ko's fight for survival have unnerved foreign investors. The IMF and World Bank have frozen lending programs, unnerved by the political turmoil.
 Western investors warn of a foreign capital exodus if Yuschenko is toppled. That would be potentially disastrous for an economy that analysts say is on the verge of a sustained, if fragile, recovery.

TITLE: Nuclear Waste Bill Passes Its 2nd Reading
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Ignoring environmentalists' warnings, the State Duma on Wednesday passed in the second reading a set of highly controversial bills allowing the import and storage of spent nuclear fuel rods in Russia.
 If passed, the Kremlin-backed legislation would open the doors for the import of around 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel over the next decade, which its supporters claim could bring $20 billion in revenues to prop up the country's cash-starved nuclear sector. 
 The bills' proponents say part of the funds would go toward cleaning up contaminated areas and also hope to use the processed fuel as an alternative energy source - in both existing nuclear reactors and as yet undeveloped reactors that would rely on plutonium.
 But opponents in the Duma argued Wednesday that, in their current form, the bills, which feature amendments to existing legislation, would turn the country into a nuclear waste dump, where any state-run or private organization would have the right to sign import contracts.
 For this to happen, the bills will have to pass an as-yet unscheduled third reading, but they are predicted to receive approval in their newly amended form, which cannot be changed prior to the third reading. The legislation would then be passed to the Federation Council, where it is also expected to pass. 
 After repeated rounds of voting, the three-bill package was pushed through with counts of 230-116, 244-114 and 267-67. While clearing the 226-vote minimum required for passage, the counts reflected a significant drop from the 319 votes the package garnered in the first reading earlier this year.
 Several deputies complained that government environmental experts had not submitted their assessment of the bills between the two readings - a procedure required by law for environmentally risky projects.
 &quot;We were shown no new documents whatsoever in between the two readings,&quot; Sergei Mitrokhin, a Yabloko deputy, said Wednesday. &quot;There were parliamentary hearings, but no documents were produced. The only papers we got were Nuclear Power Ministry propaganda leaflets and a stand with a model of a spent nuclear fuel rod set up in the corridor.&quot;
 One of the most hotly disputed amendments introduced between the two readings was penned by President Vla dimir Putin. The president proposed that the contracts for importing spent nuclear fuel be drawn up as &quot;civil&quot; contracts - a definition, in theory, allowing government and commercial trading companies to sign their own import deals.
 Robert Nigmatulin, a member of the Duma's ecology committee, argued that provisions in the two other bills - stipulating that contracts must be signed within the framework of international agreements - were enough to ensure against loose cannons seeking profits.
 Nigmatulin, the legislation's most outspoken lobbyist, is the brother of Deputy Nuclear Power Minister Bulat Nigmatulin.
 The Nuclear Power Ministry has lobbied for the amendments, saying they were a money spinner needed for the modernization and maintenance of nuclear power plants and radioactive cleanup. Both the former minister, Yevgeny Adamov, sacked last month under a flurry of corruption allegations, and his successor Alexander Rumyantsev are fervent supporters of the bills.
 Their opponents from the Yabloko and Russia's Regions factions fought in vain to install control mechanisms regulating the import contracts, insisting without success on mandatory Duma ratification of every contract.
 Even some of the pro-Kremlin deputies opposed the presidential amendment, warning that it removes the import deals from public scrutiny. 
 The bills' opponents failed to push through amendments guaranteeing that both the reprocessed fuel and any waste by-products would be returned to the countries of origin.
 But the ecology committee's Nigmatulin insisted that repatriating some by-products, such as radioactive plutonium, would contradict Russia's international obligations on non-proliferation of nuclear technologies.
 Furthermore, Nuclear Power Ministry officials have argued that plutonium could be used as fuel in a new generation of nuclear reactors, called breeders, which, they acknowledged, have yet to be fully developed. 
 Deputy Minister Valentin Ivanov said it would take Russia &quot;some time&quot; to build reliable breeders, which, because of the way they process plutonium fuel, actually creates more - sometimes purer - fuel in the process. 
 The money for research and construction, he said, would come from importing the spent fuel. That is why the fuel should be kept in Russia for at least 30 to 35 years, he added.
 The bills' supporters said imports are the only way the government can raise cash for cleaning up areas contaminated during Soviet times, and maintaining safety in the nuclear industry.

TITLE: Chechen Cabinet Meets in Grozny
AUTHOR: By Yuri Bagrov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAZRAN, Southern Russia - The Cabinet of Chechnya's pro-Russian administration met in the shattered capital Grozny on Wednesday for the first time since it moved to the region's second-largest city more than a year ago. 
 The federal government in Moscow has said for months that it plans to move Chechnya's administration from Gudermes to Grozny, which was practically razed by relentless Russian bombardment last winter and where rebels still attack Russian troops. 
 The administration has been operating out of Gudermes, 30 kilometers east of Grozny, since late 1999, when Russian forces overran the city. 
 The government has missed several deadlines it set to move back to Grozny, and Wednesdays' meeting - held as workers lugged carpeting into the barely completed government building - was just a test. Cabinet members traveled back to Gudermes after the session. 
 Large-scale fighting in Russia's latest war against Chechen separatists ended last year, but Russian troops are killed almost daily in rebel attacks and land-mine explosions, many of them in Grozny. 
 Seven Russian servicemen were killed and at least 12 were wounded over the past 24 hours, a Chechen government official said on condition of anonymity. 
 Still, the government has stepped up efforts to renovate Grozny's government buildings in recent months, and construction managers blame delays on financial problems, not security. 
 Some Grozny residents accused the administration of foot-dragging. 
 &quot;If the government moved to Grozny, life would gradually return to normal, and refugees would return, too,&quot; said Lilik han Yunu sova, a 53-year-old schoolteacher. 
 &quot;I understand that Grozny isn't a safe town to live in, because every day people are killed, robbed and detained here. Yet we live here, and the government could work here,&quot; she said. 
 The regional ministries of health and education are already working in Grozny. Stanislav Ilyasov, the Chechen prime minister who presided over the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, said top government officials would start working there permanently in a week. 
 In another sign the Kremlin wants to return a semblance of normality, a Railway Ministry spokesperson said Wed nes day that passenger service between Moscow and the Chechen capital will resume Saturday. He could not say how often trains would make the 1,600 kilometer trip. 
 Railway service between Russia and Chechnya has been disrupted repeatedly since war first broke out in the region in 1994, and military trains traveling in the war zone are often derailed by powerful land mines planted by rebels.

TITLE: TV-6 Staff Decries 'Freedom Fighters'
AUTHOR: By Karl Emerick Hanuska
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - The ousted director of Russia's NTV station and his rebel colleagues came under fresh fire on Thursday, this time from journalists they are replacing at another Moscow-based television network.
 Financier Boris Berezovsky, once NTV's arch rival, gave a new home at his TV-6 station to Yevgeny Kiselyov and journalists who had quit NTV rather than work with managers installed after a boardroom coup by state-dominated Gazprom, the natural gas monopoly.
 Their arrival is forcing out some of the station's journalists and sparking complaints that Kiselyov, who was made head of TV-6, was behaving no better than Gazprom had with NTV.
 TV-6 is a second-tier station featuring entertainment shows and lacks the reach and stature of NTV, the battle for which renewed concerns about press freedom in Russia. NTV's former managers said Gazprom had acted on the Kremlin's orders.
 Kiselyov met TV-6 staff late on Wed nesday to say that, from next week, former NTV journalists would handle news broadcasts and fill key editorial roles.
 TV-6 staff decried the &quot;takeover&quot; of their channel, but star journalists went quietly from the air, saying they had no wish to repeat the &quot;hysterics&quot; that had marked the climax of the NTV battle.
 &quot;Today I am not going to say 'until tomorrow' to you,&quot; presenter Anna Pavlova told viewers at the end of her final news cast on Wednesday.
 &quot;I thank you all for your attention. I hope that we will all meet again somewhere.&quot;
 The station's outgoing news editor, Mikhail Ponomaryov, appeared on ORT public television to ask other networks to give work to his former co-workers.
 &quot;Please find jobs for all who come to you with credentials from TV-6,&quot; Ponomarov said. He added: &quot;All these freedom fighters ... they set up shop and [dismissed us] with a pat on the shoulder.&quot;
 Ponomarov's criticism echoed that of NTV commentator Leonid Parfyonov, who defected from the Kiselyov camp, and accused him of using journalists as &quot;cannon fodder&quot;. But Ponomarov rejected calls that he and his journalists stage an NTV-style protest, &quot;so that no one will be able to say later that [I] used journalists to protect my own rear end like Yevgeny Kiselyov did.&quot;
 The Web site Lenta.ru quoted Berezovsky - TV-6's majority shareholder who is in self-imposed exile - as saying that &quot;no one will be fired and no one will lose their salaries.&quot;
 He was also quoted as saying that the decision to invite Kiselyov and his associates had been &quot;political.&quot;
 TV-6 journalists were not the only ones displeased with the changes at the channel. LUKoil-Garant, the pension fund of Russia's largest oil producer LUKoil, which holds a 15 percent stake in the station, said it has not been happy with the way TV-6 was run. 
 &quot;There are grounds to believe that steps taken by TV-6 behind the backs of minority investors will significantly change the channel's image ... [and] affect its ability to attract investment,&quot; the company said in a statement earlier this week.

TITLE: OVR-Unity Swelled by 2 More Parties, Full Coalition Planned
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Four parties that usually back President Vladimir Putin in the State Duma pledged on Tuesday to work together, formalizing their cooperation and giving another boost to the Kremlin leader.
 The parties said that they would form a &quot;coordinating council&quot; to cement their cooperation in the lower house and said they planned to move later toward a coalition.
 Russia's Regions and People's Deputy - two small centrist factions - joined with Fatherland-All Russia and the main pro-Kremlin party. The decision was announced days after Unity and Fatherland, two former adversaries, said they were to merge by November.
 The head of the Fatherland faction in the Duma, former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, said the new council would coordinate the position of the four groups on economic and political issues.
 &quot;Priority will be given to documents proposed by the president and the government,&quot; he told reporters.
 One of the council's main goals is to &quot;counteract attempts to use the Duma in the interests of individual political or financial-industrial groups,&quot; according to a statement signed by the leaders of the four factions.
 The statement, reported by Interfax, said another of the council's priorities is to &quot;form a coalition of factions that would create a stable majority in parliament.&quot;
 Putin already enjoys wide support in the Duma. The council would formalize the cooperation the parties have in backing Putin's legislation and helping him reach a majority in the house.
 The Unity-Fatherland merger was already set to make the largest single force in parliament with 131 seats. The main opposition group, the Communists and their allies, would be the second-largest force with 129 seats.
 Together, the four pro-Kremlin factions have more than the 226 needed for a majority in the 450-member Duma. 
 The council will include three members of each faction and be chaired by faction leaders in rotation, beginning with Oleg Morozov of the Russia's Regions faction. 
 Meanwhile, other parties said the council may become a valuable political tool for Putin. Alexei Mitrofanov of the Liberal Democratic Party said the strategy may backfire if the Kremlin cannot retain control over its leaders, NTV television reported. 
 Unity and Fatherland were each created as reform-minded parties of power in the run-up to the 1999 parliamentary and 2000 presidential elections. The key difference between them was who each would support as the next president.
 Fatherland stood behind Primakov, while Unity was formed for the sole purpose of getting Putin elected president.
 
 <i> - Reuters, AP, SPT </i>

TITLE: Cossacks Battle With Villages' Chechens
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: BOGORODITSKOYE, Southern Russia - It all started at the village disco. Or maybe a bit earlier, when the first goose vanished. Some even say the seeds of discord in Bogoroditskoye were sown 20 years ago, when Sultan, a shepherd, came to work on the collective farm. The trouble, as village people see it, is that Sultan was a Chechen.
 &quot;The Chechens have these enormous families - hundreds of cousins and relatives,&quot; says the director of the village school, Galina Bondareva. &quot;So they started coming here, first slowly, but when the war broke out in 1994 they flooded the village. When it started again [in 1999] even more people came. And they never left.&quot;
 Now, several hundred Chechen villagers and refugees living in Bogoroditskoye and the neighboring hamlet of Mukhino are being forced out. They are under pressure both from the local administration and a Cossack militia that raided the village this spring.
 First there were small thefts - the geese started disappearing. The chickens followed. Sunflower seeds were stolen from fields belonging to the collective farm, or <i>kolkhoz</i>. A woman's cow vanished. 
 &quot;Naturally, we suspected Che chens,&quot; Bondareva says, sitting calmly on the edge of her couch, her hands crossed in her lap. &quot;They have such large families, and there's no work here. It's logical that they steal.&quot;
 There were small quarrels at the disco, too - over the girls. Chechen boys would come in their cars and make lots of noise, provoking the local boys. They kept together. They never shunned a fist fight. So life in Bogoroditskoye - a dusty village of about 3,000 people in the south of the Rostov region - became increasingly tense.
 Outside Bondareva's window one of four village streets lined with small family houses stretches for kilometers. It's strangely quiet for a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon. She says it's been this quiet ever since the Cossacks came last month.
 The Cossacks came March 10. There were about 80 of them, according to the local administration and the Cossacks themselves. The Chechens say more. 
 Later the villagers discovered the Cossacks had been invited by the kolkhoz director, who is a Cossack himself, but was conveniently absent on that day. 
 First they had a <i>krug </i>- a meeting, where they discussed the village's problems. Then they had a <i>charka </i>- literally the bowls Cossacks use for drinking vodka - to warm themselves up. Quite a few rounds later, they set out to solve the &quot;Chechen question&quot; in Bogoroditskoye.
 &quot;I was at the park chatting with some girls when they approached me,&quot; recalls Adlan Zagayev, a Chechen in his late 20s who has lived in the village since 1986. &quot;They were wearing camouflage uniforms, like OMON; some had batons in their hands, others had whips. They asked who I was. I answered it was none of their business. So they charged.&quot;
 Zagayev was lucky - he plays soccer regularly and is a fast runner. &quot;They hit me several times with batons, but I managed to escape. There were 30, maybe 40 people running after me, but they got tired quickly.&quot;
 But not all Chechens chose to run away, and the village exploded quickly. 
 No one can say precisely what happened. Bondareva says she only heard the noise coming from the square, where a monument to heroes of World War II still stands proudly. The local police officer says he was there, but his superiors have forbidden him from giving interviews. The Chechens who fought have since left the village and returned to Chechnya.
 It took two hours before the district police arrived and separated the sides. They took the Cossacks away and opened an investigation.
 Six Cossacks ended up in the hospital with cracked skulls and knife wounds. Nineteen Chechens fought and all were wounded, says Chechen elder Ramzan Guseyev. They refused to go to the hospital.
 The next day, Russian villagers gathered in the local <i>dom kultury </i>and decided the Chechens were to blame. And they should all leave. Immediately. And that the head of the village administration, Sergei Greko, who let them come and kept registering them all these years, should resign.
 More than a month later, the villagers of Bogoroditskoye still think the same. &quot;They should all be forced to leave,&quot; says Zhora, a 46-year-old tractor driver, who is sitting on a bench in front of his house, surrounded by several neighbors.
 They should leave not because they're Chechens but because they're thieves and troublemakers, he says. And even those who are not thieves and troublemakers should leave, he says, because they are Chechens, which means that they must have cousins who are thieves and troublemakers and who sooner or later will come to live here, in Bogoroditskoye.
 &quot;If there's one Chechen left in the village, tomorrow there will be hundreds again,&quot; Zhora says to the accompaniment of his neighbors' synchronized nodding. 
 &quot;Let them go to Chechnya and rebuild their country,&quot; adds his neighbor, 57-year-old Olya. &quot;They have no business being here.&quot;
 Guseyev sees it differently. &quot;We were not the ones who destroyed our republic and I don't see why we should be the ones who have to rebuild it,&quot; he says. 
 Guseyev, a large, quiet man in his 40s, left Chechnya in 1995 and has made Bogoroditskoye his home. There is a two-week-old calf in his backyard and a potato field that stretches behind it. His two cows and a herd of 30-odd goats graze outside the village. His children have just started school and he has no intention of moving.
 &quot;We live off our animals and the vegetables that grow in our gardens,&quot; he explains. &quot;When we need money, we sell them. We're poor, but we're not thieves.
 &quot;Or at least not all of us,&quot; he adds, resignedly. &quot;The thieves are everywhere, among Chechens as well as among Russians and Ukrainians. But when a Russian steals something then it's Petrov or Sidorov who stole it, not 'the Russians.' And when a Chechen steals something, it's 'the Chechens' who have done it.&quot;
 The school director agrees. &quot;Everybody steals the sunflower seeds,&quot; she admits. The neighbors at Zhora's house agree as well. &quot;But when there were no Chechens, there was less stealing,&quot; Zhora says. The heads nod in agreement.
 The problem that the village now faces is that moving people out of Bogoroditskoye is not really legal. But the district administration has found the answer in the <i>propiska, </i>the old system of registration that is a holdover from Soviet times. 
 In those days people could live in cities only if they could get permission from the local administration and a stamp in their passports. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, though, the stamp should be given to anyone who comes to register. 
 Greko, the ousted village administrator, says because the law is the law, he would give Chechens the document they needed to register. That's now changed.
 &quot;We have decided to heed the wishes of the villagers and stop registering people of Chechen nationality in Bogoroditskoye,&quot; the deputy head of the Peschanokopsk district administration, Alexander Korovin, said in a telephone interview. &quot;It's a temporary measure, until ... well, until things sort themselves out there.&quot;
 The process of &quot;sorting out&quot; has already started. According to Guseyev, about 60 Chechens have already left the village, most of them young men of military age. Those who stay and try to register, as they are supposed to do every six months, are flatly refused. 
 &quot;Now when we come to ask to prolong our registration, they tell us: forget it. We won't register any of you anymore,&quot; Guseyev says.
 And those who are not registered, Korovin says, are being advised to consider leaving for Chechnya. &quot;Unfortunately, that's all we can do,&quot; he sighs. &quot;Russian law does not foresee measures to relocate them forcefully.&quot;
 But the neighbors at Zhora's fence believe that where the administration fails them, the Cossacks will again step in. &quot;It's their job,&quot; Zhora says. &quot;Maintaining order.&quot;

TITLE: U.S. Adds Voice to German Concerns Over Fate of NTV
AUTHOR: By Elaine Monaghan
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The United States said on Wednesday that it was very worried about the takeover of Russia's sole national independent television station NTV and that &quot;reasonable observers&quot; saw it as politically motivated.
 Earlier this month Gazprom-Media, a branch of Russia's state-dominated gas giant Gazprom, seized the flagship station of Vladimir Gusinsky's Media-MOST empire in a boardroom coup, saying he owed it up to $300 million.
 State Department spokesman Ri chard Boucher said that Segodnya daily newspaper and the weekly Itogi magazine - two other Media-MOST outlets - had also lost their independent voices since then, and noted that the government had filed tax evasion charges against the chief accountant of another Media-MOST channel, TNT.
 He echoed comments by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer who earlier said that observation of press freedom in Russia was a &quot;decisive yardstick for democracy in Russia.&quot;
 In a statement, Boucher said the events were the latest in a series over the past year showing that Media-MOST outlets were &quot;clear targets of a series of extraordinary pressures fromlaw enforcement and other elements of the Russian government.&quot;
 He said, &quot;These actions lead reasonable observers in Russia and elsewhere to the conclusion that the campaign against Media-MOST is politically motivated, given the media company's often outspoken criticism of Russian government policies.&quot;
 Boucher said the United States was &quot;extremely troubled&quot; by the management takeover at NTV which is regarded by its journalists as a state-orchestrated move to bring the most powerful independent voice in Russian media to heel.
 The United States has never accused Russian President Vladimir Putin personally of trying to muzzle NTV but sees the case as a test of his commitment to media freedom.
 Boucher said gains in freedom of speech and pluralism were among the most important in post-Soviet Russia. &quot;These gains are put in jeopardy so long as the Russian government continues to use political pressures and intimidation tactics to limit the people's access to unfiltered sources of information.&quot;
 But U.S. banker Boris Jordan who has been chosen to run NTV said in a commentary in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday (and reprinted on page 18 of The St. Petersburg Times) that his critics were not fighting on the side of media freedom.
 He was appointed by Gazprom, which sent in new managers who locked out dissenting journalists after a dawn raid last Saturday.
 On Tuesday, the co-owners of Gu sin sky's political weekly magazine Itogi sacked all the editorial, just hours after closing Segodnya, its liberal sister daily.
 Jordan said NTV was on &quot;a fast and sure road to bankruptcy&quot; and that those most vocally opposing its takeover were the same people whose &quot;mismanagement&quot; had dragged it into a crisis.
 &quot;The irony of the controversy surrounding the newly appointed management team I run is that NTV stands no chance of surviving as an independent editorial voice unless a viable business model is put in place,&quot; he wrote.
 Jordan said he had never spoken to Putin or anyone in his administration about his appointment. He said that after an audit, he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding employee salaries and debts to program producers.
 He also said he had told all shareholders including Gazprom that he would accept no attempt to influence NTV's editorial independence or journalistic freedom. 
 &quot;If there is any such attempt I shall immediately step down,&quot; he added. U.S. media magnate Ted Turner announced this month that he had reached a deal to buy into NTV to maintain its independence. But that deal was believed unlikely to go ahead after Gazprom's takeover

TITLE: Itogi, Segodnya Determined To Carry On
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Three days after Gazprom-Media took over Vladimir Gusinsky's NTV, it came for his print media too. The Segodnya newspaper was suddenly closed and the entire team of the Itogi news magazine was ousted when they showed up for work on Tuesday.
 Both publications were part of the Sem Dnei publishing house, which is now controlled by Gazprom-Media and Sem Dnei's president Dmitry Biryukov. Gusinsky has the remaining stake.
 When Itogi journalists came to work on Tuesday, they were not allowed through the doors to the editorial office on Leningradskoye Shosse and instead told to go through the next door to the publisher's offices, where they were presented with papers stating their resignation.
 &quot;It was clear something like this would happen any day,&quot; said military commentator Alexander Golts while journalists were waiting for editor Sergei Parkhomenko and Gusinsky's lawyer Alexander Berezin to negotiate the terms of their leaving with Sem Dnei officials. 
 On Monday, just an hour and a half before the press time, Segodnya journalists were notified that the issue would not be printed, said editor Mikhail Berger. He was fired Tuesday.
 On Wednesday, Newsweek magazine, which has a licencing agreement with Itogi, said was terminating its relationship with Itogi because of the changes in Moscow.
 &quot;Newsweek will no longer send editorial material to Itogi or sell advertising for the magazine,&quot; said the statement issued in New York.
 After about an hour of negotiations Tuesday, Parkhomenko and Berezin came out to announce that the entire Itogi staff - more than 70 people - was laid off because of &quot;staff cuts.&quot; They said the publishers denied that a parallel team was working on the next issue of the magazine, a scenario Parkhomenko has been warning of for weeks.
 &quot;What is happening today can no longer be considered a threat to press freedom,&quot; Parkhomenko said during an impromptu press conference outside the publishers' doors. &quot;What is happening today is establishment of a new system of the relationship between the authorities and the press, between politicians and journalists. It is no longer a threat, it is already a process.&quot;
 Just hours later, Sem Dnei announced that part of the Segodnya team led by former deputy editor Kirill Dybsky - a team that Park ho menko and his colleagues have referred to as strike breakers - will produce next Tuesday's issue of the Itogi magazine. 
 &quot;There was no such team yesterday,&quot; Biryukov said in a telephone interview in the afternoon. &quot;It appeared today at about 1 p.m.&quot;
 Parkhomenko and Berger said that within weeks, they will resume their publications under a different publisher. Last month, Media-MOST said it will continue to fund Segodnya. Parkhomenko refused to specify on Tuesday whether it will be Gusinsky who will be funding a new version of Itogi. In the meantime, journalists promised to publish Internet versions of their publications.
 Media-MOST issued a statement describing Tuesday's events as a &quot;natural development&quot; of the authorities' course to destroy Gusinsky's media companies.
 &quot;We will find ways to continue the work at least until, and if, a strict dictatorship is established in Russia,&quot; the statement said.
 Biryukov, who controls 25 percent of the publishing house, sided last month with Gazprom-Media, which owns 25 percent plus one share. He said on Tuesday that he attempted to meet the Itogi team on Monday, but journalists refused to talk to him. The layoffs under the pretext of staff cuts was just a way of allowing for a two-month pause, during which journalists may decide whether they want to leave with Parkhomenko and Berger or return to Sem Dnei, Biryukov said. 
 As far as Segodnya publication is concerned, Biryukov said that his pledge to publish the newspaper until May 1 was conditional on Berger's promise to buy out the title. When Berger failed to come up with the money, Biryukov said, he promised to give away the shares in the newspaper and its logo to the journalists. After Gazprom-Media &quot;gave full backing&quot; to this proposal, he decided to &quot;expedite the process&quot; and cease the publication on Monday. 
 Segodnya loses about $3 million annually, he said. Itogi was profitable until Parkhomenko's statements about the dispute started to cause alarm among advertisers, which Biryukov said was the reason for the editor's sacking.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Spy-Plane Treaty
 

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's lower house of Parliament on Wednesday ratified a treaty allowing other countries to fly surveillance flights over its territory - a pact that aimed at preventing confrontations like the recent U.S.-Chinese standoff over a spy plane. 
 The treaty was approved in the 450-member State Duma lower house, said Sergei Butin, a spokesperson for the international relations committee. It now goes to the Federation Council, the upper house of Parliament. 
 Under the pact, each country is allotted a quota of flights it can make over other countries' territories using specified aircraft with sensors determined by the treaty. 
 
 
Star Wars Ban Urged
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia, eager to thwart U.S. plans for a Star Wars-style anti-missile shield, urged other countries on Thursday to help tighten rules banning the military use of space. 
 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said to delegates at a space conference last week that Moscow had devoted particular attention to the problem of perfecting international law in this area.
 "We are ready from today to start working on practical steps in this direction and call on other space powers to join this initiative," Ivanov said, noting President Vladimir Putin had made such a suggestion in his message to delegates. Ivanov said Russia hoped ideas from the conference would be taken up at the United Nations and other international organizations. 
 
 
Budanov Trial on Hold
 

ROSTOV-NA-DONU (AP) - The trial of Colonel Yury Budanov, accused of murdering an 18-year-old Chechen woman, was adjourned early Tuesday because the victim's mother suffered a seizure of nervous distress. 
 Budanov is charged with abducting Elza Kungayeva from her home near the Chechen village of Tangi-Chu and strangling her. He has admitted to the killing, but denies it was premeditated. 
 Adlan Kungayev, the victim's uncle, who testified earlier in the day, said he saw soldiers enter the family home and leave with a bundle, but could not say if they took Kungayeva with them. Other neighbors have given similar testimony. 
 
 
Tsar Photos in D.C. 
 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Color photos of Russia under the last tsar went on display Tuesday at the U.S. Library of Congress in prints made vivid by a new digital process. 
 In the early 20th century, Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii impressed Tsar Nicholas II with a portrait of novelist Leo Tolstoy in his last years. The tsar, himself an amateur photographer, gave Prokudin-Gorskii a private railroad car as a laboratory and instructions to go out and portray his empire. 
 With permits to visit restricted locations, Prokudin-Gorskii set off on tours from the Arctic to the Chinese border. 
 He devised his own camera, which snapped the same scene in quick succession through red, green and blue filters onto three-by-nine inch glass plates. 
 The library has produced 58 prints and almost as many video images for "The Empire That Was Russia," through a process called digichromatography.
 
 
Borodin in Hospital
 

MOSCOW (AP) - Pavel Borodin, the former Kremlin property manager facing Swiss corruption charges, was admitted to hospital Tuesday for a checkup, his aide Yevgeny Krovopuskov said. 
 Borodin returned from Geneva last Friday after being freed on $3 million bail. Krovopuskov said Borodin was in fine condition and that the checkup was routine. 



TITLE: 'Caviar Mafia' Invades Caspian Coast-Guard Station
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A crowd of at least 100 poachers and their relatives have stormed a coast-guard station in Dagestan and forcibly retrieved their confiscated boats and fishing nets in a well-organized attack that local officials described as part of the ongoing war with the local &quot;caviar mafia.&quot;
 Scores of irate poachers broke down a fence at a coast-guard unit in the Caspian Sea town of Izberbash on Sunday and seized at least 18 motor boats confiscated earlier that day, an official at the unit said Tuesday in a telephone interview from the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala.
 The official, who asked not to be named, said the poachers used their wives and children as a human shield to prevent guards from shooting. He said the 100-strong crowd didn't only seize the boats, but also beat up several servicemen, as well as some policemen summoned as backup by the unit's command.
 He said the nets had been confiscated by the unit's Derbent patrol vessel in the waters off Izberbash earlier Sunday. A group of poachers on several motor boats had tried to prevent the confiscations, the official said, but retreated when two more patrol boats rushed to the Derbent's rescue. 
 Dagestani police spokesperson Abdul Musayev confirmed that the poachers tried to storm the guard post Sunday, but denied that they'd been successful. 
 In a telephone interview from Makhachkala on Tuesday, Musayev said police estimated that the crowd gathered outside the unit included up to 300 men, women and children. But he said they retreated when police commandos arrived at the scene.
 He said the crowd went on to block a road from Makhachkala to Izberbash for about 10 minutes, but dispersed after Dagestan's Deputy Interior Minister Ismail Ismailov negotiated with the group's leaders.
 Both Musayev and Dagestan's presidential spokesperson Eduard Urazayev said the attack came as a result of federal restrictions on sturgeon fishing and the caviar trade. According to Urazayev, thousands of people engage in poaching in Dagestan, where the unemployment rate hovers around 20 percent - one of the highest in Russia.
 Investigations conducted in 1999 by the Prosecutor General's Office and the Audit Chamber revealed that illegal fishing in Russia turns over from $2 billion to $4 billion a year.
 Dagestani coast guards confiscated 64 tons of fish and 184 kilograms of caviar from poachers last year and 10 tons of fish this year, the official said.
 &quot;There is a so-called caviar mafia here and we have to fight all the time,&quot; he said.

TITLE: FSB Arrests Scientist On Treason Charges
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Federal Security Service said Wednesday that it has charged a Krasnoyarsk scientist with treason for passing secret technology to China that could help it develop spacecraft. 
 His colleagues, however, said the technology has long been declassified and no secrets were given to the Chinese. The only threat to Russia's national interest, they said, has been caused by the FSB's arrest of the scientist and the disruption of a beneficial contract.
 Valentin Danilov, head of the Thermal Physics Center of Krasnoyarsk Technical University, was arrested and jailed Feb. 16, according to his colleagues, who published an open letter to the Krasnoyarsk prosecutor in the local press Wednesday.
 A number of scientists have been arrested or come under pressure from the FSB in recent years after cooperating with foreign firms or organizations. Researchers involved in military-related issues say one problem is that the guidelines regulating their work are vague.
 Interfax, citing FSB sources, said Danilov agreed to sell the China Precision Machine-Building Export and Import Company a scientific method used to forecast the electromagnetic environment around satellites.
 Stella Alexeyeva, spokesperson for the Krasnoyarsk branch of the FSB, said authorities opened an investigation into the alleged leak of classified data on satellite technology last May. Until early this year, the suspect remained accused of disclosing a state secret. FSB investigators decided to charge him with state treason in February. 
 Under the Criminal Code, state treason is considered a grave crime and suspects may be held until the case is heard in court. If convicted, Danilov could spend from 12 years to 20 years in prison.
 News of Danilov's arrest spread beyond Krasnoyarsk on Wednesday when 20 of his colleagues published an open letter to Krasnoyarsk regional prosecutor Ivan Borisenko asking for his release.
 They said all the information Danilov passed to the Chinese company was declassified in 1992. Moreover, some of the data was described in open publications even back in Soviet days when used by the Krasnoyarsk Scientific Production Association of Applied Mechanics.
 The contract with the Chinese company was signed two years ago and is worth $366,000, RTR television reported. Under the contract, Danilov and his colleagues are to create a model for testing the influence of electromagnetic waves on satellites, the report said.
 His lawyer Yelena Yevmenova said in televised remarks that Danilov revealed no state secrets and the contract involved only previously published information. 
 Danilov's colleagues at Krasnoyarsk Technical University could not be reached by phone this week. Calls to the press service of the Chinese Embassy in Moscow went unanswered.

TITLE: Microsoft Gets Nod In Landmark Ruling
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Intellectual property rights advocates got a major boost Tuesday when a Moscow court found a leading local computer retailer guilty of profiting from pirated copies of Microsoft's Windows 98 operating system.
 The Moscow arbitration court ordered the Formoza Center chain to pay Microsoft 584,200 rubles ($20,000) in damages - one of the largest awards of its kind in Russia.
 The suit was brought by the Prosecutor General's Office, which wrote in a statement to the court that it was acting &quot;to safeguard the interests of the state and the public,&quot; rather than on behalf of Microsoft itself, said Lev Simkin of Latham&Watkins, Microsoft's lawyer in Moscow.
 Simkin said Microsoft did not request that the prosecutor's office do so, but was pleased with the outcome.
 In March 2000, law enforcement agencies, acting on a tip from the local Microsoft office, bought five computers using unlicensed copies of Windows from a Formoza store.
 A spokesperson for Formoza Center, an affiliate of Formoza Altair, Russia's leading personal computer maker, said the company would probably appeal.
 Formoza Center director Vladimir Sharov said that although he was disappointed that a suit had been brought, his company's business relationship with Microsoft remains solid.
 The case comes at a time when strengthening and enforcing intellectual property laws is of particular importance for Russia.
 The government considers accession to the World Trade Organization a national priority, and the WTO has singled out intellectual property protection as a main sticking point to Russia's membership.
 Intellectual property violations in Russia result in losses of some $1 billion a year to industry and the government in the form of taxes, according to the Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights.
 In addition to damaging its WTO hopes, Simkin said, the government can ill afford the resulting lost tax revenues, adding that the general population also suffers from intellectual property violations in the form of purchasing goods of inferior quality.
 IP crusaders reached Wednesday applauded the ruling.
 &quot;I welcome this decision,&quot; said Yev ge ny Arievich of Baker & McKenzie law firm. &quot;It's high time the prosecutor's office interferes in the issue of IP violation in Russia.&quot;
 &quot;The law enforcement authorities - the courts in making their decision and the prosecutors in taking the case - have taken a very significant stance,&quot; said Tom Thomson, vice president of the Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights in Moscow.
 Simkin said Microsoft has won between 10 and 15 such cases in Russia, with awards of up to about $5,000, not including Tuesday's decision.

TITLE: Deutsche Bank Pursuing ADR Market
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Deutsche Bank is cherishing plans to crack the Bank of New York's monopoly on American Depositary Receipts esstablished by Russian companies.
 &quot;We started marketing 10 months ago to sign up new issuers, looking to do ADR placements,&quot; said Michael Hughes, global depositary receipts product manager with Deutsche Bank in London. &quot;We are being welcomed in this market with open arms.&quot;
 Deutsche Bank officials Wednesday unveiled their depositary receipts package in Moscow.
 So far, about 60 local companies have established depositary receipt programs, but most of the business is in the hands of the Bank of New York.
 But Deutsche Bank seeks to enroll at least 10 customers in its depositary receipt programs by offering services to new issuers and winning over customers from its competitor.
 So far, Deutsche Bank has won mandates from Russia's No. 2 oil major Yukos for level 1 ADRs and national air carrier Aeroflot for Global Depositary Receipts. One potential client is power monopoly Unified Energy Systems.
 &quot;UES is reviewing its program and the decision on it will be made in the next couple of months,&quot; Hughes said.
 BoNY officials contacted both in New York and London refused to comment on their competitor's plans.
 On a global scale, depositary business is the hunting ground of four major players - BoNY, JP Morgan, Citibank and Deutsche Bank, the largest being BoNY and the smallest being Deutsche Bank.
 Statistics revealed by a number of different parties do not match. BoNY data, which include all ADR programs, show it had a 64 percent share in programs established around the world last year.
 According to data provided by Deutsche Bank on capital-raising programs, level 3 ADRs and private placements, it had a 14 percent share of the market last year, While BoNY had 53 percent, and Citibank and JP Morgan had 18 percent and 15 percent, respectively.
 In total, there are about 1,534 depositary receipt programs, out of which 65 percent are managed by BoNY and only 3 percent are in the hands of &quot;other&quot; banks, or Deutsche Bank, according to BoNY's Web site (www.adrbny.com).
 But while just four banks compete globally on the depositary receipts market, in Russia BoNY has enjoyed privileged status ever since local corporations set their eyes on international markets.
 &quot;[BoNY] had a first mover advantage,&quot; said James Fenkner, equity strategist with Troika Dialog. &quot;It's a very clever move on the part of Deut sche Bank [to roll in].&quot;
 &quot;We did not specifically target Russia in the past,&quot; said Christopher Strakosch, director with Deutsche Bank AG London. &quot;We lacked sales coverage and had too many programs coming from other markets.&quot;
 Hughes said that most of Russian companies ADRs were level 1 and that it was &quot;not Deutsche Bank's strategy to target level 1 issues.&quot;
 For the local market, expansion of Deutsche's presence is good news.
 &quot;It is always good news when an institution of such a size shows interest in the Russian market,&quot; said Dominic Gualtieri, head of equities at Alfa Bank. &quot;I hope there will be more companies with ADR programs.&quot;
 One of the reasons why UES might be considering a switch betweeen depositary banks shortly after its annual shareholder meeting, due at the end of the month, is President Vladimir Putin's apparent drift from cooperation with the United States to strengthening ties with Germany and the European Union.
 &quot;It is a political decision for [UES chief Anatoly] Chubais,&quot; said one banker who asked not to be named.
 The first ADRs appeared in 1927 to facilitate U.S. investors' access to the British market. ADR programs have three levels.
 Level 1 ADRs allow a company's shares to be traded over the counter without raising new capital, while level 2 gives access to exchange trading and level 3 is used to raise new capital through the placement of new shares on an exchange.

TITLE: New Agreement Could Pump $2.3 Bln Into Aerospace Sector
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Europe is betting billions that a new cooperation agreement with Russia can help it bridge its defense technology gap with the United States.
 The agreement signed April 4 between the giant European consortium European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., or EADS, and its Russian counterpart the Russian Aviation and Space Agency - the largest ever between the two - is a lifeline for Russia's struggling defense industry and a boost to Europe's efforts to gain ground on the United States in aerospace technology.
 A source close to EADS's negotiating team said in a telephone interview last week that the deal could generate $2.3 billion worth of orders for Russia's aerospace industry over the next decade.
 Russian Aviation and Space Agency general director Yury Koptev confirmed that figure Friday, with the caveat that &quot;only if all of the projects planned with EADS get implemented.&quot;
 The deal calls for Russian aerospace firms, under the supervision of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, to help the Europeans in the development and production of satellite navigation systems, military transport aircraft, jumbo civil airlines, helicopters and upgrades of Soviet-made combat aircraft, EADS spokesperson Gregor Kursell said.
 Koptev added to that list the launching of European satellites by Russian-made Soyuz rockets from the equator.
 Actual contracts between EADS and Russian enterprises could be signed as early as May, Kursell said.
 &quot;[The deal] is mutually beneficial,&quot; said Alexander Pikayev, defense analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center.
 Pikayev said the deal could help EADS catch up with America in &quot;those spheres of aerospace technology where Europe has been lagging behind.&quot;
 Pikayev singled out Russia's satellite navigation know-how as one of the main areas of interest for Europe.
 The agreement calls for Russian participation in EADS's A-400M military transport aircraft program. Pikayev said Russia's contribution to the program may go beyond limited production and Russia's leading aviation design bureaus may end up on the project as well.
 EADS and the MiG Russian Aircraft Co. have also agreed to continue a joint program to upgrade MiG-29 fighters in Eastern and Central Europe.
 The accord encourages Russian participation in the European Union's Galileo satellite navigation systems, Kursell said, adding that while the EU has decided not to use Russia's own Glonass system, EADS plans to procure some Glonass subsystems for Galileo.
 To launch the fleet of satellites, EADS is looking at Russian rockets.
 As for civil aviation, the accord provides for the Russian aerospace industry to produce subsystems and possibly contribute technology for EADS's A-380 jumbo airliner, Kursell said.
 Since 1997 a group of Russian companies, including Moscow's Tupolev and Ulyanovsk's Aviastar, have been cooperating on the project with Airbus Industrie, in which EADS has an 80 percent stake. Russian firms already supply titanium and design subsystems for Airbus.
 Independent defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said that Russian aerospace firms could generate more than $2 billion over the next 10 years from contracts for the A-400M military transport plane and A-380 superjumbo alone.

TITLE: Abramovich Road Show in U.S.
AUTHOR: By Mona Eltahawy
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SEATTLE, Washington - One of Russia's youngest and richest industrialists wants to lure U.S. investors to Russia's far eastern region, pledging to rid the frigid area of the political risk and red tape that has ruined other foreign investors.
 Oil and aluminum magnate Roman Abramovich, 34, a confidant of President Vladimir Putin, told reporters in Seattle on Wednesday that investors who bring cash to the impoverished region of Chukotka, which elected him governor last December, would face &quot;zero&quot; political risk.
 Abramovich, with a personal fortune estimated at $2 billion, was in Washington state drumming up support for Chukotka - the Russian region closest to the United States, just across the Bering Strait from Alaska.
 &quot;Every investor must decide whether it is worthwhile investing or not,&quot; Abramovich told a news conference through a translator.
 &quot;Political risk in Chukotka will be zero. We're going to take action and do everything we can. If companies are willing to invest in mineral resources for example, we will publish any data that exists. For tourism, we will simplify the manner of entering the country,&quot; Abramovich said.
 A handful of Russians, including Abramovich, made billions as the state sold off a wide range of businesses after the fall of communism.
 But many foreign investors lost their shirts and some U.S. lawmakers have likened aid to their former Cold-War foe to &quot;throwing money down a rat hole.&quot;
 Some companies, notably Seattle-based aerospace giant Boeing Co., have expanded their ties to Russia, and Ab ra mo vich visited company officials earlier this week.
 The young governor said transparency was the key element in his administration.
 &quot;All budget organizations have received their salaries. This hasn't happened in Chukotka in many years,&quot; he said. &quot;We have made the budget transparent so that anyone interested can see where money is going. That was my principle when working in business and now it is my principle also in government.&quot;
 Fishing, construction and mining are among the main potential areas for foreign investment in Chukotka.
 Before becoming governor, Ab ra mo vich was a deputy in the State Du ma, the lower house of parliament, for Chu kotka. One of Russia's most enigmatic &quot;oligarchs,&quot; he is a major shareholder in oil giant Sibneft, and co-founder of Russian Aluminum, the world's No. 2 aluminum producer.
 Sibneft, which now produces around 370,000 barrels of oil per day, reportedly plans to drill exploratory wells in Chukotka later this spring.

TITLE: Itera Ownership Listing Leaves Waters Muddied
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - It waited nine years before it let outsiders get a peek at its books.
 Itera, the second largest gas company in the nation and seventh in the world, decided this week to make public its list of shareholders.
 The decision was made to &quot;to ensure maximum transparency&quot; of Itera's business, the text of a press release circulated Thursday said.
 The move was intended to dispel reports that Itera - which said it had gross revenues in excess of $3 billion last year - benefits from close links to Gazprom, a company accused of shifting its prize assets over to a company closely held by Gazprom executives or their relatives.
 &quot;Neither Gazprom nor its top managers are beneficiary shareholders of Itera,&quot; the release said.
 &quot;We are fed up with all this talk,&quot; Itera president Igor Makarov was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal Europe. &quot;We are fed up that people make all these conjectures. This disturbs our work, our normal, objective work,&quot; he said.
 Despite spending nearly a decade getting ready to come out from the shadows, however, the information disclosed by Itera produced more questions than answers.
 According to the release, the main company is Itera Group NV, which is registered in the Dutch Antilles, an offshore center in the Caribbean. Itera Group NV is a holding company for three major subsidiaries that act as umbrellas for some 130 Iteras operating in 24 countries around the globe.
 These three major subsidiaries are Itera International Energy LLC of Jacksonville, Florida; Kayton Corp NV, which is also incorporated in the Dutch Antilles and Amsterdam-based Itera Holding BV, an Itera spokesperson said Thursday.
 Itera only disclosed some ownership details for the holding company Itera Group NV, but not for any of the other Iteras.
 Earlier this year, company officials told the business daily Vedomosti that disclosing the ownership structure of every single company in the Itera group would be a &quot;very labor-intensive&quot; job.
 On the surface, it looks like Itera Group NV is owned by its managers and employees.
 A 13 percent stake in the company is in the hands of six individuals, five Americans and one Swiss, who helped build it from scratch.
 Raissa Frenkel owns 4 percent, Lazar Finker owns 1 percent, while the other four people - Galina Weber, Ted Kavalieros, Steven Sisselman and Ste ven Koegler - hold 2 percent each. Itera provided the spellings of the names.
 Exactly who owns the remaining 87 percent of Itera's shares is not known because these shares are held in trust on behalf of managers and employees.
 &quot;In a legal sense, if you are a trust beneficiary, you do not own the shares,&quot; said James Henderson, head of research with Renaissance Capital. 
 The remaining 87 percent are held in trust by Van Doorn FSI Ltd.
 Van Doorn FSI holds 26.01 percent of the shares in trust on behalf of Itera head Makarov, and a 24 percent stake on behalf of other top managers.
 A 37 percent stake is held in trust on behalf of Itera's 8,000 employees.
 Few details were disclosed about Van Doorn FSI Ltd. But the Jersey Financial Services Commission has a company of the same name listed on its Web site as being licensed to conduct trust company business in the offshore haven.
 The partial disclosure is clearly fueled by Itera's plans to tap international capital markets with a public offering within three years.
 The fact that it disclosed so little, however, may prove even more damaging for its reputation, some market watchers noted Thursday. So even though Itera went out of its way to become more appealing to investors, its effort went askew, they said.
 &quot;They are fighting a losing battle,&quot; said Stephen O'Sullivan, head of research with United Financial Group. 
 &quot;Whenever Itera begins to talk to the public, it is as if they are shooting themselves in the foot,&quot; said a former Itera official who spoke on condition of anonymity. &quot;There are so many loose ends in the company that it is in a losing position the moment it opens its mouth.&quot;

TITLE: License Ruling Throws Open Telecoms Sector
AUTHOR: By Yelena Seregina
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - The telecommunications industry is facing chaos after last week's Supreme Court decision to cancel a regulation limiting the geographical area in which operators can work.
 If the Communications Ministry fails to get the ruling overturned, all 7,800 license holders in Russia could become nationwide operators overnight.
 The ability to decide whether or not to issue licenses to operators for providing their services in a particular region has always been the Communications Ministry's main tool for exerting pressure on communications operators.
 If this instrument is taken away, disobedience is expected to be rampant.
 For example, mobile operators will be able to establish networks on other territories and compete with those companies that have made considerable efforts in acquiring their licenses. The regional regulator would in this case lose its position on the market overnight.
 The Supreme Court issued the ruling in connection with a claim by the Kostroma city telephone network. The appeal stated that it was unlawful for the Communications Ministry to apply territorial limitations on the operators' activities. According to the deputy general director of the Kostroma city telephone network, Viktor Vakulenko, the Supreme Court canceled one of the articles in the regulations &quot;on licensing activities in the communications sector,&quot; which limits the territorial effect of an operator's license. This article was the formal reason why the Communications Ministry refused to issue a license to the Kostroma city telephone network.
 Each license issued by the Communications Ministry indicates the territory where it is in effect. The ministry has never issued a license covering the entire territory of the country.
 In the laws &quot;On Communications&quot; and &quot;On Licensing&quot; there are no limitations in the area of operators' activities. The government's resolution that was changed by order of the court contradicts these laws.
 This is the first case where a traditional communications operator has abruptly and effectively objected to the policy of the branch regulator.
 Dmitry Ryabikov, a lawyer for the Kostroma city telephone network, said now any operator - including mobile operators - has the right to provide services anywhere in the country.
 A Communications Ministry representative said it plans to argue the decision soon. Furthermore, the ministry, together with State Duma deputies, is rushing to prepare amendments to the laws.
 &quot;Changing the territorial limitations for licenses is ridiculous,&quot; said Andrei Braginsky, an analyst with Renaissance Capital. &quot;No one wants a situation whereby an operator from Chuvashia could theoretically offer its services on the Moscow or St. Petersburg market.&quot;
 &quot;Any rules of the game are better than chaos and anarchy on the market,&quot; said a representative with another major Moscow communications company.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: City in Line for $150M
 

St. PETERSBURG (Reuters) - The World Bank said Thursday that it was considering a $150 million loan to St. Petersburg to make the city more attractive for investors and tourists.
 The bank's lending strategy for Russia envisages the $150 million loan to St. Petersburg in the 2003 financial year, but the bank may approve the loan earlier, said Julian Schweitzer, the bank's country director for Russia.
 "We are satisfied with the first loan. That's why we decided to go ahead with the new loan," Schweitzer said by telephone from St. Petersburg after meeting the city's governor, Vladimir Yakovlev.
 
 
Gref: Growth To Slow
 

MOSCOW (AP) - Economic growth could slow to between 3.5 percent and 4 percent a year between 2002 and 2004, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said Thursday. 
 The figure represents only about half of last year's 7.7 percent increase in gross domestic product. 
 The figure was based on a pessimistic forecast for the price of oil, a major Russian export. Russia is also expecting to carry a heavy debt burden, with payments reaching about $19 billion in 2003. 
 
 
Ministry Gives Kudos
 

MOSCOW (AP) - The Foreign Ministry on Thursday applauded two U.S. business organizations' recommendations to the U.S. administration aimed at intensifying bilateral commercial ties. 
 Representatives of the Washington-based U.S.-Russian Business Council and the Moscow-based American Chamber of Commerce presented their policy recommendations to President George W. Bush's administration last month. 
 "We accept the initiative of American business circles, which clearly expressed their interest in developing constructive and mutually beneficial cooperation between Russia and the United States, with satisfaction," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued Thursday. 
 The two proposed that Washington focus on commercial issues rather than making security issues the core of U.S.-Russian relations, support Russia's market reforms and assist in Mos cow's bid to join the World Trade Organization. 
 Other recommendations included expanding U.S. government trade and finance programs to promote American companies in the Russian market, and creating a new U.S.-Russian public-private mechanism that would assist Russian structural reforms. 
 
 
Svyazinvest Talks Profit
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Telecoms holding Svyazinvest said Thursday it expected 2001 profit from sales to rise to 24 billion rubles ($831.31 million) from 20.4 billion rubles ($706.62 million) in 2000.
 Svyazinvest, which unites Russia's 79 regional telecoms, said in a statement it expected 2001 pretax profit to be more than 17 billion rubles ($588.85 million), but gave no comparative figures. It expects 2001 sales revenue to rise to 87 billion rubles ($3 billion) from 72.4 billion rubles ($2.51 billion) this year.
 Svyazinvest expects 2000 net profit to be 9.3 billion rubles ($322 million). 
 "The company has managed to keep tariffs ahead of spending despite inflation," the statement quoted general director Valery Yashin as saying. "According to preliminary estimates, 2000 spending growth was 27.5 percent, while revenues from tariff increases rose 31.5 percent," he said. 



TITLE: Global eye
TEXT: Continuing what appears to be a worldwide trend of socio-political nostalgia, Italy's Northern League - like Israel's Sharon, America's Bush and, of course, those fun-loving iconoclasts Afghanistan's Taleban - is taking a bold leap backwards these days.
 The combative faction, founded by Umberto Bossi to promote autonomy for Italy's northern provinces, long grieved by Rome's neglect, is apparently bent on reviving the political <i>panache </i>of Italy's inglorious fascist past, Italy Daily reports. With elections nearing, Bossi and his boys have largely dropped the regionalist rabble-rousing in favor of that proven vote-spinner: racist nationalism.
 The League has been holding regular torchlight rallies against immigrants, protests &quot;escorted&quot; by Bossi's new &quot;uniformed peacekeepers&quot; - who don't actually wear black shirts yet, but you get the idea - and punctuated with shouts of &quot;Neither blacks nor reds, only Umberto Bossi!&quot;
 Bossi backer Giancarlo Gentilini, mayor of Treviso, is definitely with the program. He recently called for the &quot;return of the use of cattle cars&quot; to get rid of unwanted ethnics - a practice last seen in Italy during that genocidal unpleasantness back in 1939-45. Gentilini added that immigrants should be &quot;branded&quot; for health purposes: &quot;After all, they carry every form of sickness: tuberculosis, scabies, hepatitis and so on.&quot;
 Bossi gave a hearty chuckle when asked about the remarks. &quot;If Gentilini says something serious, I would do something,&quot; he told the paper. Anyway, he chortled, people shouldn't worry too much about plans to use cattle cars to cleanse the land of diseased non-Italian types: &quot;Italian trains always run three hours late.&quot;
 Yes, but as that other cattle car maven, Mussolini, used to say, when he was shipping Jews and Gypsies to his buddies in Auschwitz: better late than never. Right, Umberto?
 
 <b>No Right Turn</b>
 And speaking of the one-time fellow fascists north of the Northern League, Germany has been rocked in recent days by two developments showing that those old-time <i>Deutsche </i>values which brought so much joy to the 20th century are withering on the 21st-century vine.
 A survey by the BAT Institute last week revealed the shocking truth that the majority of young Germans (age 29 and below) now put <i>Spass </i>- &quot;Fun&quot; - at the top of their list of life priorities, instead of that long-held Teutonic virtue, <i>Pflicht </i>- &quot;Duty.&quot;
 The survey has shattered the nation's chattering classes, The Independent reports. The new emphasis on <i>Spasskultur </i>is &quot;irrefutable evidence of moral decline among the nation's youth,&quot; cried one thought-<i>fuhrer. </i>&quot;The sense of duty and traditional values are being eroded.&quot;
 What's more, this news came on the heels of a government report showing a precipitous decline in military enlistment. The once-vaunted Wermacht now has 1,412 vacancies for officers, 4,138 for NCOs and a whopping 17,000 empty spaces for the lower ranks. What's more, 25,000 professional soldiers quit the field last year alone. All this in a country where in some regions - particularly the economically ravaged east - youth unemployment is as high as 25 percent, and the military's free room and board, vocational training and steady pay might be thought somewhat attractive.
 Once again there was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, much of it from American quarters. Alexander Vershbow, U.S. ambassador to NATO, led the doom-laden chorus of &quot;disappointment&quot; over Germany's lack of martial fiber and its cuts in military spending. &quot;Even Luxembourg is pulling ahead of Germany,&quot; lamented another U.S. diplomat.
 So let's get this straight: young Germans are now more concerned about enjoying life than goosestepping after some syphilitic marauder. <i>Germans </i>want to have fun and <i>not </i>kill people.
 This is supposed to be a <i>bad </i>thing?
 
 <b>Big Muddy</b>
 Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the regime of George W. &quot;I'm Very Sorry&quot; Bush is the astonishing fecundity of its political bowels, so to speak. The steaming piles of mendacity and greed pour out so fast, on so many fronts, in so many ways, that no one can possibly keep track of it all. And so your poor chroniclers are forced to grab only the tiniest chunks of rancidity as they roar past, knowing that vast seas of sludge will slip away and sink into the groundwater, poisoning the earth for future generations.
 And so to this week's chunks, briefly noted. First up, another campaign oath broken. Here's old Very Sorry in Miami, August 2000: &quot;I will ask Congress to provide $100 million to support the exchange of debt relief for the protection of tropical forests.&quot; Now here is Sorry's budget outlay for that program, April 2001: $13 million - or $87 million worth of lies.
 Next: Education. Here's Sorry, standing before Congress and a national TV audience in February: &quot;The highest percentage increase in our budget will go to children's education.&quot; Er, no. The actual budget shows that saber-rattling got the biggest dollar increase, while the State Department got the &quot;highest percentage increase.&quot; Sorry also claimed that education would get a $4.6 billion boost. But the budget registers only $2.5 billion - or a whopping $2.1 billion worth of lies.
 And then: Sorry is famously eager for photo-ops with dusky youth. Last week found him posing at a Delaware Boys and Girls Club, where he pledged his firm support of the group's work with disadvantaged children. But that was then; this is now: Bush's new budget eliminates <i>all </i>federal funding for Boys and Girls Club of America. The evil Clinton gave them $170 million in the last 3 years; with the compassionate conservative, they get zilch. But Sorry did get another &quot;Yes, I like these little darkies&quot; photo for the next election, so it's OK.
 One last chunk as the tidal wave of sewage rolls on: Sorry is stiffing the lawyers who fought his post-election dirty war in Florida and gave him the presidency, Newsweek reports. Some firms are still owed up to $800,000, but Sorry seems disinclined to come through. In fact, his staffers say the lawyers should quit &quot;bellyaching&quot; and be glad for the &quot;huge in-kind contributions to their reputations&quot; gained from working for the Glorious Leader.
 So who's &quot;very sorry&quot; now, fellas?

TITLE: Prosecutor's Presence Has Assembly Feeling Uneasy
AUTHOR: By Barnaby Thompson
TEXT: I DON'T know how many times this newspaper has included the words, &quot;Ever since the arrival of Viktor Cherkesov, governor general of the Northwest region ...&quot; somewhere in its stories over the past 12 months, but since the president's man has loomed large in the collective political and economic consciousness of the city, I suppose I might be forgiven for doing it again.
 Ever since the arrival of Viktor Cherkesov, governor general of the Northwest region, the City Prosecutor has been busy. This, in turn, has kept the Legislative Assembly on its toes, as one of the main functions of the governor general/prosecutor axis has been to bring local laws in line with federal legislation.
 These legal discrepancies have been varied - from establishing rights to picking berries on state territory in the Leningrad Oblast, to correcting local documents such as St. Petersburg's City Charter - but while the assembly has found dealing with them to be a major nuisance, it has generally been good-humored about it. Most deputies had probably forgotten about the existence of the City Prosecutor, and some are mildly amused to find him still alive and kicking.
 Not so on Wednesday, when the prosecutor's deputy, Alexander Konovalov, came to call with a list of corrections to city laws. Perhaps the mood in the assembly was affected by the hoo-hah earlier this week when the prosecutor called into question the lawmakers' right to their own discretionary funds. Perhaps the deputies are just getting fed up. In any case, I have rarely seen a more serious chamber, and I have <i>never </i>heard the kind of silence that descended as we awaited the results of one of the votes.
 Konovalov looks much younger than most of the deputies - I didn't have the courage to ask him how old he was, in case he inquired about my tax forms - and you could sense this was counting against him. &quot;Not only are you from the Prosecutor's Office, you're barely out of short trousers and we'd tie you to the radiators if we could,&quot; was the unspoken message. 
 Vitaly Kalinin was doing most of the responding, since he is head of the assembly's legal affairs committee. Like most of his colleagues, Kalinin doesn't seem to be too worked up by the prosecutor's attention - <i>normalno, </i>as he put it.
 But one could sense the unease in the chamber, and the urgent desire for the spotty youth to go away. The silence, the formality, the way the voting screen unexpectedly went blank, the way Igor Mikhailov, who is smoother than a Pina Coloda in a heat wave, swanked noiselessly across the room and back to no apparent purpose about 60 times. ... They say it's all <i>normalno, </i>but they don't like it one little bit. You can sense it, and so can the prosecutor.

TITLE: Memories of the Last Emperor
AUTHOR: By Russell Working
TEXT: KHABAROVSK, Far East - Georgy Permyakov is 83 years old and so fit that he will spring to his feet and pound on his stomach to prove he still retains some of the strength of a former amateur boxer.
 He never drinks or smokes, speaks six languages and sleeps on the balcony year-round. He chatters away in Japanese and Mandarin and is gleeful when visitors stare blankly in reply. 
 But just when you think he is through pulling tricks from his hat, he shuffles about in his study and finds a tattered schoolboy's notebook. There are essays written in Chinese, interspersed with pages of drawings made out of characters, such as a dancing man, a teapot and an umbrella. 
 &quot;You know who draw these?&quot; said Permyakov, persisting on speaking in a rough but fearless English. &quot;Henry P'u-yi. Poo-yi, you Americans called him, but that is wrong. You know Henry P'u-yi? Last emperor of China. I was his interpreter and his teacher of Russian history and history of Communist Party.&quot;
 P'u-yi was the last of the Ch'ing Dynasty Manchus who conquered China in 1644 and ruled until 1912. P'u-yi ascended the throne in 1909 when he was 3 and later ruled as a puppet under the Japanese in the vassal state of Man chu kuo (it included the occupied Chinese territories of Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia). And Permyakov was the emperor's translator during the five years that he lived in the Soviet Union - a prisoner, but that could hardly have been new for P'u-yi. He had been a prisoner every day of his life.
 P'u-yi spent a cloistered childhood in Beijing's Forbidden City. Removed from his mother when he became emperor, he didn't see another child until he was seven, when he first met his brother and sister. But he wasn't allowed to leave the Forbidden City, even after he was deposed. When a warlord finally expelled P'u-yi from the palace in 1924, he sought help from the Japanese. They crowned him emperor in 1934 in Changchun, where he lived until Soviet troops captured him in 1945.
 Permyakov, too, grew up in China after his father, a wealthy soap manufacturer, fled the Bolshevik advance in the Far East. He is so comfortable in Chinese that he calls it his native tongue, and so upon his return to the Soviet Union after the war, he was chosen to work with this strange prisoner. 
 P'u-yi spent his life shaping himself to his captors' demands - he married at 16 when advisers told him to, publicly followed Shintoism and chose a new wife when the Japanese insisted on it, and eventually killed mice when ordered to do so by red Chinese brainwashers (he was a closet Buddhist and considered killing a sin). So perhaps it is no surprise that he sought to please his Soviet captors. Or perhaps he was afraid of being returned to China.
 &quot;He twice sent to Stalin, requesting: 'Let me become Soviet citizen, work for socialism, work for communism,'&quot; Permyakov said. &quot;But MVD [the Ministry of Interior Affairs] said, 'You cannot be member of Communist Party because we fight against monarchy.' So P'u-yi said, 'I will be first communist emperor in the Russia.'&quot;
 There was another reason for his desire to stay in the Soviet Union, and her name was Maria Tishchenko. A big but beautiful woman, she was a graduate of a post office college and a war widow with two children, Permyakov said. She worked as a cook at Special Object No. 45, the facility where P'u-yi was detained.
 P'u-yi's record for bringing personal wealth into the Far East surely has yet to be beaten by money-laundering governors or the missionary who in 1992 arrived with millions of dollars worth of church-planting funds in a suitcase. He brought a valise full of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and platinum state emblem including a bird design. P'u-yi tried to give his translator a diamond then worth $60,000. Per mya kov declined.
 Until 1949, Chiang Kai-shek demanded P'u-yi's return, but the Soviets refused to hand him over. But after Mao Zedong's victory, the picture changed, and Stalin surrendered P'u-yi in 1950.
 Before he left, P'u-yi gave his translator his wristwatch, a Japanese fan on which he had painted characters, and the notebook, which describes life, love, upbringing and husband-wife relations in China. He spent nine years in prison, and upon his release he was assigned to work as a gardener in the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Botany. Mao eventually ordered him to marry a party member. P'u-yi complied. 
 
 <i>Russell Working is a freelance journalist based in Vladivostok. </i>

TITLE: The West Must Show Putin It Means Business
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: LAST Thursday U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov of the Bush administration's support for preserving the freedom of Russia's NTV television network, reiterating a concern that the administration had repeatedly voiced publicly. On Sunday, security forces evicted NTV's journalistic team from the network's studios, installing new management selected by the state-controlled gas company. On Monday, the same government toadies shut down the newspaper Segodnya, another beacon of the post-Soviet free press controlled by NTV's holding company, Media-MOST. Yesterday, the apparatchiks ousted the editorial team at Itogi, a Media-MOST news magazine published in cooperation with Newsweek (which is owned by The Washington Post Co.).
 The sum of these actions is clear: President Vladimir Putin has flouted the appeals of the United States and other Western governments that he preserve Russia's free media. Instead, piece by piece, his cronies have crushed the most prestigious television, newspaper and magazine organizations in the country. The claims of Putin's surrogates that they are motivated by business concerns, never very plausible, have been shredded in the last week: The first action of the new managers has been to dismiss the independent journalists who enraged Putin with critical reports on the war in Chechnya, on corruption and on reconstruction of the secret police apparatus. 
 The Bush administration and the governments of the European Union, Canada and Japan now face a challenge: to ensure that Mr. Putin suffers some consequence from his grossly anti-democratic behavior. To avoid action after the many warnings to Moscow would be a serious blow to Western credibility. 
 White House officials say they are seeking to coordinate a response to Putin with other governments, which is good. The most effective message to Putin can be delivered not by the Bush administration alone, but by the Western-led international organizations his government aspires to be part of. Even as he moves to centralize power and stifle opposition at home, Putin imagines leading Russia into a position of world influence, and revels in his membership in the G-7 and the Council of Europe. Russia's place in those prestigious but largely ceremonial organizations is ripe for reconsideration.
 The United States supported Russia's addition to the G-7 though it was neither rich nor fully democratic; the idea was that inclusion in annual summit meetings would encourage Moscow to cooperate and eventually integrate with the democratic West. But Russia has ruptured that premise; and there should be no place at a summit of Western democracies, or any European political council, for a government that has suppressed freedom of speech, built up a secret police apparatus and waged a brutal campaign of repression like that in Chechnya.
 Putin has been unwilling take the West seriously when it has raised these issues; if he is disinvited from the next G-7 summit meeting, he just might.
 
 <i>This editorial originally appeared in The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: The New NTV: Search for Justification
AUTHOR: By Boris Jordan
TEXT: OVER the last two weeks, much has been said and written about the future of the Russian media group, NTV, without any consideration of the critical issue. NTV is on a fast and sure road to bankruptcy. The irony of the controversy surrounding the newly appointed management team is that NTV stands no chance of surviving as an independent editorial voice unless a viable business model is put in place. In short, NTV's future depends on doing quickly exactly what NTV's shareholders have asked me to do as the media group's new chief executive. 
 But you can't tell that by listening to critics who oppose our new management team. They cast the situation as a struggle for free media and freedom of speech. Admittedly, this has proven a potent public relations gambit, not so much because it tarnishes our team, but mostly because it obscures some uncomfortable questions about the previous management. 
 Begin with their silence about NTV's financial crisis. Some of those most vocally opposing us are the very same people whose mismanagement dragged NTV into a financial crisis. Could their opposition be motivated by a desire to cover-up and perpetuate this waste of shareholder assets? Is the real issue not freedom of speech, but freedom from accountability? 
 Only a willful blindness to NTV's financial condition lets opponents question my appointment on the basis that I am not a journalist. A majority of NTV shareholders voted for me exactly because of my expertise in finance and business. And I accepted, as an independent businessman, because I believe that NTV can be one of Russia's leading media groups, providing world-class news and entertainment. But as a financial professional, I also understand this vision cannot become a reality unless NTV is run like a world-class media company. With a sound business plan. Financial planning and controls. Strong management. And there's the rub for our opponents. 
 We have begun the task of carrying out a proper audit of the company, the first in two years. We are creating a budget, streamlining operations and reducing out - of - control costs. But only in the last few days has it become clear just how badly NTV's finances were managed. My first task was to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in outstanding employee salaries and debts to program producers. My second is to raise more than $20 million to cover outstanding costs for our broadcasting signal, our office rent and the costs of our foreign bureaus. Clearly, the real threat to NTV was that the group was never run as a business.
 Listening to the critics, one would think that NTV's founder and his hand-picked senior executives are paragons of free media. But the opposite is true. The fact is that Vladimir Gusinsky dominated NTV's news content just as he did its operations. His chief editor has admitted to allowing NTV to serve Gusinsky's political agenda, campaigning for former President Boris Yeltsin's re - election. And the record is clear that the former chief editor, the leader of our opposition, also placed NTV in the service of the oligarch's commercial agenda. Now, by going to another television outlet, he has jumped into the embrace of the other oligarch most adept, by his own admission, at mixing business, politics and the media, Boris Berezovsky. Surely our critics' self-serving rhetoric about freedom of speech should be weighed against their past behavior, obvious self interest and their actions today. 
 For my part, let me be clear, as I have been from the start: my agenda is to fix NTV's business and build it into Russia's leading media group on behalf of all shareholders. I've been outspoken about editorial independence, both as a moral principle and as a media company's greatest asset. When I was offered my position, I told all shareholders, including Gazprom, that I would accept no attempt to influence NTV's editorial independence or journalistic freedom. If there is any such attempt I shall immediately step down. 
 I have never spoken to President Vladimir Putin or any member of his administration about my appointment at NTV. Moreover, I believe it is not in the interests of NTV to be dominated by any single group of shareholders, and favor both Gazprom and Gusinsky reducing their stakes to accommodate an independent international strategic investor who can step in to help build a strong national media network. 
 I respect the journalists, editors, producers and programmers who have made NTV a success among Russian consumers. And I will work with any of them who share my goal of making NTV Russia's leading media group. Among the many who chose to stay on under new management, I have witnessed the kind of hope and determination that I have rarely seen in the ten years that I have worked in Russia. They know they shall be judged by the quality of the news and entertainment they deliver to the Russian people. They have accepted the assurances I have given them about the editorial and professional standards of NTV moving forward. 
 That critics ignore what I have been saying strikes me as unfair, but I accept that as a cost of being in the business I am in. All I ask is that we be judged by our actions and not by what self-interested parties say we intend to do. Meanwhile, lets in all fairness apply to opponents of NTV's new management the same healthy skeptical analysis that they claim to treasure in Russia's media. 
 
 <i>Boris Jordan is the general director of NTV. He contributed this comment to the Wall Street Journal Europe. </i>

TITLE: With Tycoons Now Friends, Rozhdestvensky's Seen It All
TEXT: TIME not only heals, but makes friends of enemies, as Dmitry Rozhdestvensky will attest. It was just three years ago that Rozh dest vensky, the former head of Russkoye Video, was sent to jail, shortly after he refused to sell a controlling stake in the local television station Channel 11 to tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who in those days was in command of ORT. Instead, he sold his shares to Media-MOST's Vladimir Gusinsky.
 While he was behind bars - awaiting trial on charges, most of which fell apart last year - Rozh dest vensky often recalled something that Berezovsky had said to him in 1997: &quot;You'll be sorry.&quot;
 Rozhdestvensky was forced to watch the rise and fall of Berezovsky from behind bars, as his influence on the media grew and grew, along with his successful career in the Kremlin. And Rozhdestvensky was still in jail when then-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov moved against Berezovsky - by now a true enemy of Gusinsky, whose media position got stronger.
 Times, as we know, have changed. Rozhdestvensky is free, and it seems to be a case of no hard feelings - at least in public - between Gu sinsky and Berezovsky. Vla dimir Putin has become president, appears not to like criticism very much, and the two media moguls are ready to unite in common cause against a new enemy. As Rozhdestvensky told me, when two people fall from grace, they then fall in love.
 The affair between Berezovsky and Gusinsky is now a highly pragmatic relationship. NTV journalists in St. Petersburg and Moscow are doing everything they can to reach as wide an audience as possible; in Moscow there are plans for a new station on the back of Berezovsky's TV6, while up here they're going with Gusinsky's Channel 11, since the TV6 signal is weak in St. Petersburg.
 Andrei Radin, head of the news team at NTV-St. Petersburg, says that he and his colleagues have no plans to go over to TV6 should a new station emerge. Rather, he said, after a stint at Channel 11, they'll return to NTV because everything will go back to normal.
 He is deluding himself. When the state takes something over, it never returns it, and certainly never in its original form. That is as true now as it was in the Soviet Union.
 Vadim Nyesvizhsky, a reporter for the Segodnya newspaper - another of this week's Media-MOST casualties - said this week that a publisher had been found who was interested in getting the paper going again and was talking to Gusinsky.
 &quot;But I have no doubt that soon the authorities will 'discover' that he eats babies, doesn't pay his taxes and rapes old women on the streets,&quot; Nyesvizhsky said.

TITLE: Mailbox
TEXT: This week our readers write in about NTV and press freedom, issues that have been grabbing the headlines over the past several weeks. </i>
 <strong>
 No True Freedom</strong>
 <i><strong>Dear Editor,
 </strong></i>I would like to add some words about the free press.
 I'm 47 years old, which means that I belong to the generation that, in its attempts to understand what was taking place in the world, tried to listen to Radio Svoboda and Voice of America, as well as to learn to read Soviet newspapers between the lines. That means we learned to pay attention to the adjectives used, to who was doing the talking, what else was being said, and so on. Reading and listening to the media is a science, and it is almost impossible to teach to people who didn't live in the Soviet Union.
 Since then, I have had access to the foreign press, and reading it has led me to the conclusion that a free press doesn't exist in any country, regardless of its laws. Whether we like it or not, we are conditioned by our education, by the country which imbued in us its social priorities, values, ideology and so many other things. It is the same for any journalist. A journalist may be totally honest, ready to work for justice and truth, but he is limited by his own view of that justice and truth. Only a very few are able to be truly discerning and free of prejudice, and this is a talent, not something that can be taught or willed.
 With ordinary journalism, we won't find real freedom of speech, but rather conflicting opinions and arguments, blame or praise.
 Freedom of speech is the result of the freedom of thought: Nobody gives us that freedom, and nobody can take it away, <i>if </i>we have it. I find it funny, therefore, to hear the word &quot;independent&quot; in reference to journalists or TV networks. If they don't depend on the government, they depend on something else.
 And when I read your newspaper, I observe the adjectives you use, what articles you run in the opinion section, and all the other things that illustrate what kind of leanings your newspaper has. I'm not saying that this is good or bad, just that you, like every other newspaper, cannot rise above your view of the world.
 We may prefer one kind of dependence to another, and our preference leads to fighting. We may &quot;fight for freedom,&quot; but we are always fighting against somebody as well. If we decide that it is all right to continue, then we should know that we are fighting for our own ambitions, without blinding ourselves with cliches and universal attitudes.
 It was as difficult to discern the facts on NTV as it was on every other station. So what did we lose? What did we gain? Nothing.
 <i>Larisa Maizels,
 St. Petersburg
 </i>
 <strong>Voting With Rubles</strong><i>
 In response to &quot;Another Shareholders Meeting Gone Wrong,&quot; a letter by Andrew Fox, April 13.
 </i>
 <i><strong>Dear Editor,
 </strong></i>As St. Petersburg begins its workday, the sun is beginning to set out here in Vladivostok. While my colleagues in the capital are pouring a little Wimm-Bill-Dann milk into their morning cup of coffee, I'm already thinking about stopping in at the corner store to pick up a couple of liters of cold local brew on my way home. Another day, another 28 rubles and change.
 It is the change, actually, that is hard to find here. It's the same old story, no matter where you look. Why buy a new fishing vessel when you can buy a used one for the price of scrap metal? Why sell company assets off at full value and share it with all shareholders when you can use some age-old transfer pricing scheme to sell it to yourself and pocket the margin?
 Why focus on the legal merit of a court case when you can simply threaten or pay off the judge? Why encourage open discussion or debate when you can simply stifle your critics using good old-fashioned strong - arm tactics?
 Why buy all the shares in a company, when you really need only buy 51 percent ( and ignore the other 49 percent )? Why even have a legal corporate structure meant to be an efficient vehicle for pooling capital and thus advancing the interests of all parties if there is no rule of law or no means of enforcing court decisions?
 In fact, from what I can ascertain, it is a matter of pride to many Russians to really give somebody (especially those arrogant foreigners) the full treatment as if that required any brilliance. 
 So it's still pretty much just business as usual here from what I can observe. Certainly, Andrew Fox is correct to point out that it would be madness for any foreign investor to put millions of dollars into this market. Sure the laws are on the books, but nothing, really, has changed.
 So those green investors learn their lesson eventually, and they vote with their feet, as the saying goes. They implement their exit strategy write it off and head for Sheremetyevo to catch the next flight out.
 But as much as it stings for the foreign investor, it's easier for him to quantify his losses than it is for the average Russian guy on the street, who doesn't have an exit strategy. He might not even be aware that he's the loser. Unfortunately for him, he is. He's got to stay and try to build his future in this environment, with little hope for improvement. 
 The people I truly feel bad for are the above-average Russians, the young, educated and enlightened ones, the ones that have inherited this mess and whose task it is now to try to reform it. Perhaps a few of them realize that until this changes, Russia will see very little economic improvement or at least, not much help from beyond Russia's vast frontiers. Some will adapt and learn the same business skills as we've seen showcased recently by Wimm-Bill-Dann at our local brewery. And some will just learn to accept it as a fact of life.
 Maybe a few will just silently pass up that Chudo yogurt or J-7 grape juice at the store, and opt for that &quot;other leading brand.&quot; Probably not, unless such a protest were to be properly organized and financed, but imagine the crippling effect that would have. Of course then, Wimm-Bill-Dann would seek full legal recourse under existing laws. But under what law?
 Imagine if the average Russian consumer simply chose not to reward those companies that damage the national economy by mistreating minority foreign shareholders, who is to stop him? That is his choice to spend his hard-earned ruble however he chooses. 
 I know that I would benefit as a local beer consumer if Sun Brewery (who along with Fox was not allowed to attend the illegally held annual shareholder's meeting) decided to invest $15-20 million here in a state-of-the-art quality beer-production operation, as would the average guy on the street. In fact, as I write this, I feel somewhat cheated.
 The same principle could apply to NTV, the average citizen who is even remotely aware or concerned about the future of the free press in this country, might simply choose not to watch that channel any longer. Ratings would tumble, advertising revenues would fall. Soon shareholders would be forced to do something.
 But I won't let it bother me. Instead I'll just stop into the corner store today and pick up some other beer shipped in from St. Petersburg. That is the beauty of a free market economy, even here. I'll vote with my rubles, and I'm not even a shareholder.
 <i>Mark Sewell,
 Vladivostok </i>

TITLE: mariinsky's macbeth premiere falls short
AUTHOR: by Simon Patterson
TEXT: With 2001 officially declared the year of Verdi by UNESCO, marking 100 years since the composer's death, it is no surprise that opera companies the world over have been clamoring to stage his works. Valery Gergiev has not missed out on the action either, and has already conducted a premiere of Verdi's &quot;Un Ballo in Maschera&quot; in Florence, directed by Andrei Konchalovsky who was also responsible for the Mariinsky's production of Pro ko fiev's &quot;War and Peace.&quot;
 And in July, Gergiev and singers from the Mariinsky will be putting on no less than six Verdi operas at Covent Garden in London - including the production of Macbeth which was premiered at the Mariinsky this Wednesday.
 Coming towards the end of his first period, Macbeth is not one of Verdi's better-known or better-loved works, with a common criticism being that the music is simply too light and bouncy to carry the weight of Shakespeare's drama. It was not until Verdi had considerably matured as a composer that he set a Shakespeare work to music again, with his masterpiece &quot;Otello&quot; worthy of the play it was based on.
 The stage design by Tanya McCallin and direction by David McVicar, themselves both from Scotland, is excellent: a suitably bleak backdrop that uses the full expanse of the Mariinsky stage, that extends right to the dilapidated back wall of the theater, exposed for all to see. A large guillotine blade descends and ascends from time to time, and the mood is appropriately oppressive. The costumes are also excellent - in fact, the production values are difficult to fault.
 The singing cannot be so praised. Sergei Murzaev was a rather shaky Macbeth, and Irina Gordei was also not very sure of herself as Lady Macbeth, while Yevgeny Strashko as Malcolm was mostly unable to make himself heard over the music. Perhaps the star of the singers was Gennady Bezzubenkov as Banquo, and many in the audience may have regretted his demise early on in Act II.
 The whole production, unfortunately, had a distinctively under-rehearsed feel to it, with the witches' chorus sounding rather ragged, and many of the participants of crowd scenes seeming rather unsure as to what they were supposed to be doing.
 Sometimes the sheer number of characters on stage may have been excessive: there are over 20 witches, while 20 murderers come to kill Banquo and Fleance, whose escape becomes all the more miraculous. However, one of the mass scenes is also perhaps the highlight of the production : the &quot;Scottish exiles&quot; scene at the beginning of Act IV, which, incidentally, does not figure in Shakespeare's play.
 At times, the performance felt more like a dress rehearsal than a real premiere - though it must be said that this applied more to the first half than to the second. No doubt many of the shortcomings of the production will be ironed out over time, as the singers become better acquainted with their roles. With Golden Mask winner Viktor Chernomortsev also rehearsing for the role of Macbeth, it may be worth seeing Macbeth again in a few months time, when Gergiev and the Mariinsky singers return from Covent Garden.

TITLE: stalingrad epic an uneasy mixture of romance and violence
AUTHOR: by Tom Masters
TEXT: Weaving a romantic melodrama around the holocaust at Stalingrad was always going to be a controversial move, and predictably enough, the $80 million German-made &quot;Enemy at the Gates&quot; falls victim somewhat to its own indulgence.
 This is not, however, apparent from the unforgiving first half hour of the film, in which the camera follows a train load of untrained Red Army recruits in their attempts to cross the Volga, under fire from both the Germans and often even their own officers, whose sole concern is to deliver the latest dispatch of cannon-fodder to the struggling Soviet forces. Indeed, the suggestion that a film with such an opening is overly sentimental may seem initially ridiculous.
 In fact, Enemy at the Gates is an oddly inconsistent mixture of tightly-edited combat drama and rather saccharine romance, which suggests that the film's writer did not have sufficient faith in the story itself, and threw in a love interest for good measure. This is a shame, as the storyline itself is easily strong enough to stand alone, even as the subject of an epic war film.
 Jude Law plays Vasily Zaitsev, the real-life Red Army sniper who becomes a poster boy and propaganda weapon for the flagging Soviet forces at the key battle of World War II. Discovered and manipulated for his own benefit by Political Commissar Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), Zaitsev becomes a legend as he picks off German officers in the crumbling city's remains. The film is driven by the tension between man and myth, with Zaitsev driven by a responsibility to live up to the legend that the Stalinist propaganda machine has created around him. Zaitsev becomes such a thorn in the side of the Germans that they eventually send their own top sharp-shooter into one-to-one combat against him.
 The cat-and-mouse game that ensues as louche Major Konig (Ed Harris) gradually closes in on Zaitsev is involving, psychologically more than anything, as each man attempts to predict the other's next move.
 Yet the taut, intimate narrative that develops between the two strangers is consistently and pointlessly distracted by a love-triangle between Zaitsev, fellow Russian sniper Tanya Chernova and Danilov.
 While there is some interest to this sub-plot, particularly the Soviet-era debate about the role of the &quot;man of action&quot; and the &quot;man of ideas&quot; in society, it is given far too much screen time in an already long film.
 Despite this, Enemy at the Gates is very engrossing, from the brutality of the war scenes to the upper-level intrigues that go on in the Soviet camp and the comic relief offered by Bob Hoskin's Krushchev.
 Director Jean-Jacques Annaud clearly has no time for a simplistic good-versus-evil approach, and shows the weaknesses on the Soviet side as well as the human side to the Germans, all of whom are ultimately tools in Hitler's struggle with Stalin. Annaud has made a film that is unequivocal in its portrayal of war's horrors, and comparisons to Spielberg's &quot;Saving Private Ryan&quot; are not absurd, albeit rather generous.
 Fiennes excels as the intellectual Danilov, reminiscent of Babel's Lyutov from &quot;The Red Cavalry,&quot; and Harris also impresses as the ice-cold Konig. Russophiles will, however, wince as Zaitsev's first name is mispronounced throughout, while Krushchev (complete with cockney accent) can barely make a stab at his own surname.
 James Horner's striking score is purposefully dominant throughout, often to the point of distraction, and provides, along with the magnificent sets, a very suitable backdrop to the all-pervasive despair and brutality of war.
 Without doubt, the impact of the film would have been stronger were it not for the &quot;two months later...&quot; epilogue that is both historically untrue and unspeakably trite - but there is definitely enough in this film to make these tacked-on crowd pleasers forgivable, if not desirable.
 
 <i>Enemy at the Gates is currently showing at the Avrora. Check listings for details. </i>

TITLE: legendary gong drummer plays st. petersburg
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Pierre Moerlen's Gong is intended to be the focal point of the SKIF5 festival, which opens Friday. The drummer extraordinaire, who has become part of rock history through his work with the French progressive rock band Gong and Mike Oldfield, will present his Russian outfit - which he calls &quot;the best band I've ever had.&quot;
 Moerlen's new band, consisting of local musicians including ex-Akvarium guitarist Alexei Zubarev, has been rehearsing intensively over the past two weeks.
 &quot;A few months ago I was contacted by Alex [Alexei Plyusnin] of SKIF,&quot; said Moerlen. &quot;They found my Web site and asked me if I was interested in coming here to play - and I said yes, but wanted to know the details. We found out that it wasn't possible to bring the entire band for financial reasons, so I thought: Why don't we form a band in Russia with local people?&quot;
 Plyusnin, a musician himself, came up with the general line-up in the beginning, but Moerlen made several rearrangements in the course of rehearsals.
 &quot;I've made a couple of changes, added some percussionists from a classical orchestra here, which my music requires,&quot; said Moerlen. &quot;[In addition to] bass, drums, guitar, keyboards, maybe woodwind instruments, I always need two mallet percussionists - vibraphone, xylophone, bells, timpani... I would use more if I could. I need these for the color of my music - it's important.&quot;
 &quot;In the rock world, percussion means congas, it never means vibes. This is also percussion, and it's in metal, there's really heavy metal in there. It has a wonderful sound.&quot;
 The set will consist of both new compositions and older ones, which have been rearranged. &quot;There's always a difference between an album and a live band anyway,&quot; said Moerlen. &quot;I welcome people to have their individual ideas and suggest things, so we have changed some things slightly, even sometimes quite a lot.&quot;
 &quot;Since I don't have a band right now, this may as well actually be my band. I would love to play more shows in Russia. I don't see a different country every show, I see musicians everywhere, and I have wanted to see and live in Russia for a while for a long time - to experience Russia the way I experienced England, Germany, Spain, Italy and America.&quot;
 Though playing with Russian musicians is new to Moerlen, he has always played with musicians of different cultures.
 &quot;Daevid Allen, who created Gong is Australian, the bass player who played in Gong at the time when I joined is from Fiji, Steve Hillage is English, Tim Blake is English, the sax player Didier Malherbe is French, Mike Oldfield is Irish ... so it seemed to be the natural pattern for line-up creation in Gong.&quot;
 Moerlen was born Oct. 23, 1952, in Colmar, Alsace, France, studied classical percussion, and played with various bands and for musical theater productions until he joined Gong in January 1973.
 Moerlen, who now mainly teaches and composes, spent some time with the Classic Gong featuring Allen in 1997-98, but quit. &quot;I left because it seemed like overkill - I thought, why do it all over again?&quot;
 Moerlen communicates to his current musicians in English, while they use Russian to speak to each other, which can be difficult at times - but as far as music goes there is almost perfect understanding.
 &quot;I've just noticed that in the East there's a strong interest in the kind of the music I do,&quot; he said. &quot;I see it in the people who play - [keyboardist] Misha [Ogorodov], for instance, he has got all my albums and quite a lot people know my music. And that's pleasing, of course. I've played with a band before with musicians who didn't really like my music that much and it can be difficult - here it's not the case. They really like it.&quot;
 Russian pirates have recently put out much of Gong's back catalogue, but Moerlen himself is in two minds about the issue.
 &quot;Of course, when people sell CDs for cheap, they take the money and put it in their pockets - they don't pay us,&quot; he said. &quot;But if it's not a bootleg, then it goes to the record company [Virgin] to pay old debts, because Gong spent a lot of money on touring in the past.&quot;
 &quot;Nobody in Gong gets enough money to survive - it all goes into the record company's pocket. We get only a little bit of the publishing - everything else is taken by those big capitalist pigs in England. Bootlegs sold in the street and Richard Branson taking our money - what's better? I don't know. It doesn't work either way.&quot;
 
 <i>Pierre Moerlen's Gong in concert at the SKIF5 Festival at LDM at 10:30 p.m. Friday, April 20. </i>

TITLE: for medieval meat, try montfort
AUTHOR: by Molly Graves
TEXT: Boasting wall tableaus of knights slaying dragons by fog-covered castles, alongside a meaty menu that would satisfy the most die-hard of carnivores, the &quot;Montfort&quot; restaurant promises to provide a &quot;unique medieval experience&quot; that will sweep you back in time. And while the restaurant may not hit the medieval mark on all accounts, it certainly does provide a dining experience unlike any other - though not one highly recommended for vegetarians, or those turned off by taxidermy.
 Walking into the dimly lit building, still in its final stages of <i>remont, </i>my dining companion and I were greeted by an unusual scene: A crew of medieval-era clad attendants sat huddled around a dark corner table near the bar, unenthusiastically sipping Fanta.
 The waitresses (costumed in tummy-baring, crop-top <i>bustiers</i> laced tightly up the front) didn't exactly spring to their feet - and they didn't have to. My companion and I were immediately drawn past them - as if by a force beyond our control - into a second chamber, which was bathed in crimson light from above. 
 Besides the nonplussed bustiered beauties, our hosts also included a man in thigh-high boots and another in squire-attire. We were soon tied up in red bibs featuring the Montfort crest - a nice effect, though to go all-out, we decided, they should have refused us forks and knives as well. Other rusticisms included stoneware crockery adorning our table, with our Bochkarovs (50 rubles) also served (surprisingly cold) in a crockery jug.
 My first surprise concerning the menu was the &quot;salads&quot; section: there wasn't one. With a heavy meat emphasis, the Montfort menu jumps from soups to hot entrees, though an array of six small (and quite tasty) mixed salads can be ordered for 65 rubles. We decided to split the six-salad assortment between ourselves for starters, and my companion also ordered the mushroom soup (105 rubles) - which was declared &quot;not bad.&quot;
 No appetizer, however, could prepare us for what was to come. Though their advertisement proclaims &quot;gigantical [sic] platters - medieval-style,&quot; I don't think my companion and I really took this to heart - until our host brought a steaming (and truly &quot;gigantical&quot;) caldron of hot coals right to our table, on which our chicken and salmon filets (230 rubles each) were served shashlik-style on skewers.
 But the size of the portions was nothing in comparison to their overall presentation. High above the caldron's glowing coals extended an iron spire - upon which perched an honest-to-god stuffed and mounted eagle, its wings spread and beady glass eyes staring fixedly at our kabobs!
 Our plates heaped with meat and fish fillets, we gorged under the eagle's watchful gaze until we could manage no more - finding the fish to be a bit overly salty but the chicken tasty enough.
 We decided to skip the &quot;sensuous theatrical presentations&quot; which were said to start at 8 p.m. - and were hinted to include, among other enacted scenes, a beheading. However, we got a taste of what might have been when a chiffon-adorned queen and a knight with sword and shield wafted through the hall, offering a moment of impromptu rehearsings to go with our cappuccinos (25 rubles each).
 Desserts we could not muster, and after they had played &quot;Nights in White Satin&quot; for the second time, we decided it was time to rejoin the civilized world.
 
 <i>Montfort, 4/2 Petrovskaya Nab., 232-51-00. Dinner for two with beer, 805 rubles ($29). Credit cards accepted. </i>

TITLE: porcelain museum on show at hermitage
AUTHOR: by Barnaby Thompson
TEXT: While the emotive battle for ownership of the 250-year-old Lomonosov Porcelain Factory, or LFZ, ended last year with foreign investors in control, the fate of the factory's museum was resolved only recently.
 On condition that the collection itself would not be moved, the museum came under the jurisdiction of the State Hermitage Museum. As of Wednesday, the Hermitage unveiled a small number of porcelain masterpieces in an exhibition entitled &quot;Four Views on Porcelain.&quot;
 The LFZ museum - still a state-owned body - houses 40,000 pieces of porcelain covering the factory's 250-year history. &quot;Four Views on Porcelain&quot; is less ambitious, but still well worth the visit. The exhibit presents the work of four LFZ artists - Tatyana Afanasyev, Elvira Yeropkina, Nelly Petrova and Galina Shumak - over the period of a quarter of a century.
 &quot;This is a new stage in our cooperation with the porcelain museum,&quot; said Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage, in remarks at the exhibition's opening. &quot;These four St. Petersburg artists define the creative image of the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory.&quot;
 Comprising plates, tea sets, sculptures and figurines, and even a chess set, the exhibition is as interesting for the approach of the four artists to their art, as it is for the art itself - all the more so because this is the first exhibit of contemporary LFZ artists to be held in the Hermitage. While all four women work in the same place, use the same materials and even graduated from the same arts institute, the inspiration for their themes and ideas varies greatly.
 Nelly Petrova, who has worked at LFZ for 26 years, is clearly motivated by a love of her country.
 &quot;My themes spring from history, and the history of Russia,&quot; she said on Wednesday. &quot;Whenever I travel to the towns where my relatives live, I see how our [rural] life is disappearing ... I see the destruction of our culture.&quot;
 This rural and nostalgic disposition expresses itself in a mixture of themes of antiquity, mythology, history and religion, ranging from Petrova's &quot;Invasion&quot; - a Madonna and child icon &quot;attacked&quot; by an avenging knight with angel's wings - painted in 2000, to her 1979 &quot;Sleeping Russia,&quot; a recumbent female figure in a rural setting and a church in the background. The subdued, even melancholic colors Petrova chooses fit her subjects admirably.
 In contrast to this permanent source of inspiration, Shumak chooses her subjects more spontaneously. &quot;For example, on [Wassily] Kandinsky's jubilee, I saw an album of his work and I wanted to dedicate something to him,&quot; she said. &quot;When I went to Greece, Italy and Malta several years ago, I was inspired by the colors of the Mediterranean. Whatever strikes me [becomes my subject].&quot;
 Displayed elegantly and sympathetically by the Hermitage in the Arabian Hall, &quot;Four Views on Porcelain&quot; is exactly that - a display of four masters of their art, each of whom has her distinct style and vision. Now that some of the LFZ museum's work is in a central location, one can go and see exactly what the factory's workers have been battling to defend as theirs.

TITLE: chernov's choice
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Some say he was a musical genius, some say he was a fascist, but the festival established in memory of the late local new music composer and pianist Sergei Ku ryok hin has turned into a chaotic three-day long celebration of music and the arts.
 It also makes all the other events in the city irrelevant, being a center of attraction for most artists, musicians and fans.
 SKIF5, the Fifth Sergey Ku ryok hin Festival, which opens Friday, will take place at LDM, or the Palace of Youth. Not as conveniently as Baltiisky Dom, which hosted last year's festival, the place still provides good opportunities for such a massive event, which will feature over 100 acts from different parts of Russia and the world.
 The bands will perform non-stop on four stages from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. - except the Main Stage which will close at midnight.
 SKIF5 will offer many kinds of music - from avant-garde to punk rock, but also performances and aural sculptures. This year some attention will be dedicated to world music, and there will be a special program of contemporary music from Scandinavia.
 One of the main attractions this year is <strong>Pierre Moerlen's Gong </strong>- the drummer who played with Gong, Mike Oldfield and Brand X has formed a band with local musicians which be playing Friday. 
 New York-based <strong>Frank London, </strong>trumpeter/composer for the Klezmatics and Hasidic New Wave, will perform in trio with Lorin Sklamberg and Rob Schwimmer. London is famous for making Jewish music contemporary and exciting.
 &quot;My projects span the spectrum from traditional/folkloric to jazz/improvisational to rock/noise to classical and film/dance/theater works,&quot; London told Jewish Culture News. &quot;Usually, these different elements are combined in the same work or band!&quot;
 Dutch musician and composer <strong>Theo Louvendie </strong>will stage his opera with Moscow's Ensemble of Modern Music (ACM). Called &quot;Johnny & Jones,&quot; it tells of a jazz duo which was popular in Amsterdam in the 1930s.
 German experimenter <strong>Hans Reichel, </strong>known as the inventor of <i>daxophone, </i>will appear in duo with Carl R&uuml;diger, who plays accordion, saxophone and clarinet.
 Finland's all-women group <strong>Me Naiset </strong>sing polyphonically, making their own contemporary version of the Finno-Ugric tradition.
 <strong>Borah Bergman, </strong>considered one of the most single-minded and unique pianists in the history of jazz, will perform on Saturday.
 By emphasizing the equality of his left and right hands with his cross-handed playing, he has created a style which allows him to improvise differently from any other pianist.
 
 <i>More information can be found at www.kuryokhin.com.
 </i>

TITLE: U.S., China Continue Spy-Plane Talks
AUTHOR: By Martin Fackler
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING - The U.S. and China ended a second day of talks described as productive but producing no sign of agreement Thursday on the return of an American spy plane or Beijing's demand to end surveillance flights near its coast.
 The Americans had threatened to break off the meeting Wednesday. Talks resumed Thursday only after U.S. Ambassador Joseph Prueher won a promise from Chinese officials to discuss the return of the American plane. The two sides gave few details, but Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Peter Verga, leader of the eight-member U.S. team, sounded a positive note.
 &quot;We covered all the items that were on the agenda, and I found today's session to be productive,&quot; Verga said.
 A Chinese spokesperson called the talks &quot;very frank.&quot;
 &quot;The sides have agreed to keep in touch, and future talks will be held at a time and place to be determined through diplomatic channels,&quot; Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhang Qiyue told reporters.
 In Washington, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer described the 90-minute session as businesslike, and said the next meeting will discuss how to avoid future incidents. He said a meeting previously scheduled for Monday has been postponed to allow time for preparing an agenda for the next session.
 As for the U.S. demand that the Navy plane be returned, Fleischer said: &quot;The Chinese officials have said they will continue to discuss the matter.&quot;
 China has held the U.S. Navy EP-3E surveillance plane, worth some $80 million, since it made an emergency landing April 1 on Hainan island in the South China Sea. The 24 crew members were released only after 11 days of protracted negotiations.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Flag Controversy
 

JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) - With the possibility of an economic boycott looming, Confederate heritage groups called on people to accept Mississippi's decision to keep its state flag with the Rebel emblem.
 "The voice of the people has been heard. The people of Mississippi do not want another flag. Mississippians are proud of their families, this state and its rich history," William Earl Faggert, a leader of the state Sons of Confederate Veterans, said Wednesday.
 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People raised the threat of a boycott Wednesday after voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal that would have replaced the Confederate symbol on the flag with a cluster of 20 stars signifying Mississippi's admission as the 20th state.
 
 
Burundi Coup Ends
 

BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP) - A group of junior army officers who attempted a coup to oppose President Pierre Buyoya's negotiations with Hutu rebels surrendered Thursday, the defense ministry said.
 In a statement, Defense Minister Cyrrile Ndayirukiye said the 30 officers, who had billed themselves as the Patriotic Youth Front, gave up after spending the night in the studios of state-run Radio Burundi from where they had announced their coup.
 Soldiers had been stationed around the radio station in downtown Bujumbura, Burundi's capital, but were under orders not to storm the building.
 Although Hutus form the majority in the tiny central African country, Tutsis have controlled the military, the government and business for all but a few months since independence from Belgium in 1962. 
 
 
New Endeavor
 

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Space Shuttle Endeavor was set to blast off toward the International Space Station on Thursday, carrying a huge robotic arm to aid construction of the $95 billion orbiting laboratory.
 The launch from Kennedy Space Center was scheduled for 2:40 p.m., with a launch window of just five minutes. At dawn, NASA officials were optimistic of an on-time lift off under clear skies with a light wind and cool temperatures.
 Endeavor's crew is being billed as the most international of any shuttle mission, with four Americans, one Russian, one Italian and one Canadian aboard.
 
 
Bush Urges Restraint
 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President Bush has called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to urge restraint following a flare-up in Israeli-Palestinian tensions in Gaza, the West Bank and the outskirts of Jerusalem.
 Bush spoke with Sharon late Wed nesday after a series of Palestinian mortar bombs slammed into Israeli targets, White House and Israeli officials said.
 The two leaders agreed during their 15-minute telephone conversation on the need for restraint to avoid greater violence, a White House official said.
 Israeli military officials said Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had fired 13 mortar bombs in several bombardments inside Israel and on Jewish settlements in Gaza Wednesday. They said this was the most in a single day since a Palestinian uprising erupted seven months ago.
 
 
Victims Remembered
 

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Hundreds of Oklahoma City bombing survivors and victims' families gathered on Thursday for 168 seconds of silence - one second for each person killed six years ago when a truck bomb destroyed a federal building in the worst act of domestic terror in U.S. history.
 The memorial ceremony began at 9:02 a.m., the time a truck bomb left at the entrance of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh exploded on April 19, 1995, ripping open the massive structure and shattering the lives of all those associated with it. 



TITLE: Bonds Blasts 500th Home Run
AUTHOR: By Paul Gutierrez
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO - Barry Bonds never speaks to the media before games. So why should Tuesday have been any different?
 Even though he was only one swing away from becoming the 17th member of the 500-home run club, Bonds still shooed reporters away from his private corner of the San Francisco Giants clubhouse, a personal sanctuary that features a leather recliner and accompanying television set.
 &quot;Just looking for a stress-free environment,&quot; Bonds said as he retreated to his stall.
 Nearly six hours later, though, at 9:55 p.m., the environment at Pac Bell Park was anything but placid. Not after Bonds, amid exploding camera flashes and garish orange rally rags being waved by the record 41,059 in attendance, blasted a 2-and-0 Terry Adams slider into McCovey Cove in San Francisco Bay for his 500th homer, a game-winning two-run shot.
 After jumping on home plate at the end of his eighth-inning celebratory trip around the bases, Bonds was joined on the field by family members and co-500-home run club members Willie Mays, who is also Bonds' godfather, and Willie McCovey for a nine-minute ceremony that delayed a 3-2 Giants victory over the Dodgers.
 Bonds, in the final year of his contract, was talking then.
 &quot;First of all, I've got to thank my parents for having me,&quot; he told the crowd after the fireworks and water cannons died down. &quot;And I want to thank Willie Mays for being here and Willie McCovey and most of all, thanks to all of you. I love you and I'm proud to be in a San Francisco Giant uniform.&quot;
 At 36 years, 268 days, Bonds is the 11th-youngest member of the 500-home run club. He reached the milestone in his 7,502nd at-bat, an average of one homer every 15.00 at-bats, the fifth-lowest home run-to-at-bat ratio among members of the 500-homer club.
 Bonds' blast was the ninth homer to reach the water outside the right-field wall, the seventh by Bonds. He is the only Giant to homer into McCovey Cove since Pac Bell Park opened last season.
 Bonds, who has homered five times in his last five games, is a three-time National League most valuable player and is the charter and lone member of the 500-homer, 400-steal club. And with only 28 more stolen bases, he will establish the brand-new 500-homer 500-steal fraternity.
 The Sporting News named Bonds, who signed with the Giants as a free agent on Dec. 8, 1992, the player of the 1990s, an honor that irked Ken Griffey Jr. supporters.
 But not Giants Manager Dusty Baker.
 &quot;When you've been the best player for a long time,&quot; Baker said, &quot;you want to remain the best player.&quot;
 Baker began his managerial career in San Francisco the same year Bonds arrived, in 1993.
 &quot;What's more remarkable than the home runs is the home runs and the stolen bases,&quot; Baker said. &quot;That's where he sets himself apart.
 Besides joining the 500-homer club, Bonds needs 84 runs batted in to reach 1,500 for his career.

TITLE: Russia Loses to Czechs, But Still Captures 'Bolshoi Priz'
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Czechs came alive scoring three unanswered goals to upset team Russia 3-2 in the final match of the &quot;Bolshoi Priz&quot; ice hockey tournament Thursday night at the Yubileiny Sports Palace.
 The loss left Russia with six points, tied with Sweden, but Russia took the gold since it beat Sweden in their round-robin matchup. Finland took third place with 5 points.
 The Czech-Russian match was physical with the accustomed level of chippy play. The previous four tournaments featured bench-clearing brawls between these former Soviet allies.
 At times team Russia seemed more focused on fighting than the game, showcasing heavy forechecking and opting to play the man instead of the puck, sending the Czechs into the boards every chance they got.
 After the game Russia cleared their bench egging the Czechs on, but the visitors remained cool, happy with their win.
 The Russians took an early lead lighting the lamp 24 seconds into the match with a Ruslan Zainullin goal set up by Yegor Shastin. At 3:50 Alexander Frolov, voted best forward of the tourney, set up an Alexei Simirnov goal giving the Russians a 2-0 lead.
 Czech goaltender Petr Sulan anchored the comeback with spectacular play in the final two periods turning away 28 shots.
 Winger Lucas Pozivil scored the game winner at 13:13 in the third with a man advantage. Pozivil immediately picked up a 10-minute misconduct after getting into a scrape with a Russian player.
 Miloslav Topol scored the first two goals for the visiting team. First at 17:08 in the opening period on a powerplay. Russian goaltender Sergei Belov finally let one through after heavy pressure from the Czechs. Topol picked up the loose puck outside the crease and chipped it over Belov who was prone in front of his net. Miroslav Blatek, who took home the tournament's best-defenseman award, set up the breakaway.
 Topol evened the score with 19 seconds remaining in the second period. On a breakaway down the right wing he took a shot from the top of the circle that slipped through Belov's five-hole.
 Team Russia took the intrigue out of the tourney when they clinched first place with a 6-2 win over Team Petersburg Wednesday night. The Swedes crushed the Petersburg side 7-2 in Thursday's early match.
 Finland secured at least a tie for third place after tying the Czechs 2-2 in Wednesday's early match. The Czechs failed to get a better goal differential in their match with Russia to knock the Finns out of third.

TITLE: Krylya Sovietov Stays on Top With Late Strike at Lokomotiv
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - A last-minute strike by Andrei Konovalov earned Russian Premier League leaders Krylya Sovietov Samara a 2-1 away win at Lokomotiv Moscow on Wednesday.
 Brazilian striker Anjelo, the league's top marksman, put the visitors in front with his fifth goal of the season in the 29th minute.
 Dmitry Loskov, Russia's leading scorer last year, equalized with a penalty just two minutes later. It was the first goal conceded by Samara in seven league and cup matches.
 The win, Samara's fifth in six league matches, kept them top of the table on goal difference, ahead of Zenit St. Petersburg and Sokol Saratov. All three have 16 points.
 In St. Petersburg, Zenit beat Dinamo Moscow 2-1 to spoil the coaching debut of Alexander Novikov, who replaced Valery Gazzayev just two days ago. Gazzayev quit following Dinamo's 2-1 defeat by Lokomotiv last Saturday.

TITLE: Soccer Referees To Earn $3,000 a Game
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Soccer referees don't have it easy: They get beaten, sworn at, kidnapped, abused in the press and are offered envelopes full of money by shady men. 
 But the Russian Soccer League has a plan to make the lives of the men in black more comfortable: raising their wages to $3,000 a game. 
 Premier League referees now earn only a seventh of that sum, or 12,000 rubles ($413) a month. The amount is a decent wage for most Russians and is considerably higher than the salaries many players earn in the lower leagues. 
 If wages are raised as planned, referees could earn up to $6,000 a month. By comparison, an English Premier League referee earns less than half that amount, Pound900 ($1,290) a game.
 The soccer league, which refused requests for comment, was scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss the proposal. 
 &quot;They want to do it [raise salaries] to make referees more objective,&quot; said Vladimir Radionov, the secretary general of the Russian Soccer Union, which has to approve the decision. &quot;Good wages will compel referees to value their profession.&quot;
 Referees have come under severe pressure this season as managers fiercely criticized their mistakes. Valery Gazzayev, who quit as Dinamo coach this week, said there were only three highly qualified referees in the Premier League. Two referees were suspended this month after making mistakes. 
 But the major reason for the pay hike is a fear of corruption. 
 &quot;It's a good stimulus to earn money honestly, not by taking it in an envelope&quot; said Oleg Medvedev, spokesman for Dinamo Moscow.
 Russian and Soviet soccer have often suffered from corruption. Matches in which the scores are agreed beforehand are quite common in the lower leagues, according to Mark Rafalov, a former referee. Game-fixing can be seen at the end of a season in the Premier League, when teams need points to avoid relegation or to qualify for European cup competition.
 Rafalov remembers being offered bundles of banknotes, which he said he refused, when he was a referee. 
 &quot;If they're civilized,&quot; Rafalov joked, &quot;they put the money in an envelope.&quot;
 Andrei Butenko, a current Premier League referee, said he was taken away by gunmen before a match in Tajikistan in 1991 and told with a gun to his stomach that the Tajik side shouldn't lose, Moskovsky Komsomolets recently reported.
 Referee Viktor Kulagin said earlier this week that he decided to withdraw from Wednesday's match between Torpedo Zil and Spartak Moscow because of family circumstances, Sovetsky Sport reported. But the newspaper said the real reason for the withdrawal was because unidentified assailants severely beat Kulagin near his apartment Saturday after he gave a controversial offside decision in a match between Sokol Saratov and Saturn Ramenskoye.
 Last season, an official of Anzhi Mak hachkala entered the dressing room after a game and punched the referee, but no action was taken against him, Rafalov said. In comparison, then-Sheffield Wednesday player Paolo Di Canio was banned for 12 games in 1998 after pushing a referee during an English Premier League game.
 This season the clubs have a gentlemen's agreement among themselves not to pressure referees to favor their sides, one club official said.
 Not everyone is convinced that raising referees' wages is the right way to stop corruption or reduce mistakes.
 &quot;If a referee makes a mistake, doesn't give a foul, is that really corruption?&quot; said Lom Ali Ibragimov, a former referee. 
 Money won't improve the referee's performance, critics said. Referees, who now only get one training session during the winter while players travel abroad, just need more training, they said.
 &quot;Referees have to tour with teams,&quot; said Ibragimov. &quot;Then at the start of the season they will already be ready.&quot;
 And Ibragimov is not impressed with carping about the quality of referees.
 &quot;What, do our teams play well?&quot; he said. &quot;That's how they play and that's how we referee.&quot;
 The money won't make them run faster or referee better, said Vladimir Kon stantinov, deputy editor of Sport-Express' soccer section. Anyway, he added, the money involved in bribing is far more than $3,000.
 Ibragimov knows whom to blame for corruption, and it's not the referees.
 &quot;If they don't give money, then referees don't take money,&quot; he said. &quot;Those who give money are the ones involved in corruption, not those who take it.&quot;

TITLE: Bayern, Real To Meet in Champions Semifinal
AUTHOR: By Mike Collett
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - European champions Real Madrid and Germany's Bayern Munich will meet in the semifinals of the Champions League for the second successive season after scoring contrasting home victories over Galatasaray and Manchester United on Wednesday.
 Real, trailing Galatasaray 3-2 from the first leg, crushed the Turkish side 3-0 at the Santiago Bernabeu for a 5-3 aggregate victory while Bayern held its nerve to beat Manchester United 2-1 in an edgy return leg at the Olympic Stadium for a 3-1 aggregate success.
 Real will now face Bayern in the semifinals over the first two weeks of May, while Leeds United, which beat Deportivo Coruna 3-2 on aggregate in their quarterfinal on Tuesday, will take on Valencia, which knocked out Arsenal on the away-goals rule on Tuesday after they finished 2-2 on aggregate.
 But Real coach Vicente Del Bosque warned his side against complacency.
 &quot;We have to remember we haven't won anything yet this season,&quot; said the Real coach. &quot;Bayern will be a very strong rival for us.
 And Del Bosque is well aware that Real and Bayern know each other well and are each capable of winning the match.
 Last season they met in the second phase of the Champions League with Bayern winning 4-2 in Madrid and 4-1 at home.
 They then both qualified for the knock-out stage and met again in the semifinals. This time, Real beat Bayern 2-0 in Madrid and despite a 2-1 defeat in the second leg in Munich went through to the final.
 There they met Valencia, and a repeat of last year's all-Spanish final in Paris, which Real won 3-0, is still possible for this year's final in Milan on May 23.
 Real raced out to a 3-0 halftime lead against Galatasaray with two goals from Raul and one for Ivan Helguera.
 Raul notched his first at 15 minutes as he slid in at the near post to direct home a sweeping cross from Michel Salgado. Ivan Helguera added a second 14 minutes later, rising above the Galatasaray defense to direct in a powerful header from Luis Figo's corner.
 The game threatened to become a rout as Raul struck again at 36 minutes. Steve McManaman threaded a pass to his feet for the Real striker to drive it home past Claudio Taffarel.
 Raul is now the top scorer in the competition this season with seven goals and 28 all-time goals in the Champions League - more than any other player.
 
 <strong>Bayern Munich 2, Manchester United 1. </strong>In Munich, where Bayern led 1-0 from the first leg against Manchester United, the hosts started well when Brazilian Elber slid them ahead after five minutes.
 Poor United defending allowed Mehmet Scholl to make it 2-0 on the night, 3-0 on aggregate, five minutes before halftime.
 Ryan Giggs gave United some hope when he lobbed goalkeeper Oliver Kahn after 49 minutes but despite creating a whole series of chances there were no more goals and Bayern held on to avenge their defeat by United in the 1999 European Cup final.
 So while Bayern qualified for their third successive Champions League semifinal, United coach Alex Ferguson was left to rue some poor defending which cost his team the tie.
 &quot;We had some good chances there, I thought Teddy [Sheringham] and Andy Cole had some fantastic chances but they just wouldn't go in, it was one of those nights,&quot; he told ITV.

TITLE: Drug Companies Drop Lawsuit
AUTHOR: By Ravi Nessman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PRETORIA, South Africa - Pharmaceutical giants dropped a lawsuit Thursday against a South African law that could provide cheaper AIDS drugs to millions of Africans, ending an international battle that deeply embarrassed the companies.
 The lawsuit over patent rights and profit was seen by human rights groups and AIDS activists as landmark in the effort to secure medication for the 26 million people in Africa infected with HIV. The law could allow South Africa to import or make cheap generic versions of patented drugs.
 Activists who packed the Pretoria courtroom erupted into cheers and songs when Stephanus Cilliers, a lawyer for the 39 drug companies, told the judge that &quot;the application is withdrawn.&quot;
 &quot;There is no doubt that they have received a black eye,&quot; Mark Heywood of the group Treatment Action Campaign said of the companies, which include giants Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Glaxo Wellcome. &quot;And I think it will embolden people in developing countries around the world to stand up for medicines that are affordable.&quot;
 Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the health minister, said South Africa had not agreed to any deals regarding the law, which passed but has not been implemented. The drug companies also agreed to pay all the costs of the case.
 But Tshabalala-Msimang implied the ruling did not mean the government planned to begin immediately providing otherwise expensive antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients, saying it did not have the necessary infrastructure and also had some concerns about the drugs.
 The government also did not consider that the law gave it blanket authority to import or produce generic versions of the antiretroviral drugs, she said.
 The lawsuit has opened the drug companies to broad criticism since it began six weeks ago. Many have responded by drastically cutting prices on their own. But even with the severe price reductions offered by some companies, the vast majority of people suffering in Africa could not afford the medications.
 Mirryena Deeb, chief executive of the country's Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, said the suit was dropped as a &quot;result of a negotiating process. &quot;She said the government had agreed to consult the companies when they draft the regulations to implement the law.
 In a statement issued in Geneva, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations welcomed the settlement, saying the agreement balanced the health needs with respect for intellectual-property rights.
 &quot;Both the South African government and the industry agree that intellectual-property protection is an essential incentive for innovation, not an obstacle to access,&quot; the federation said. &quot;This agreement ensures that with strong intellectual-property protection, consistent with international agreements, the search for new medicines will continue unabated.&quot;
 The companies that brought the suit argued that a 1997 South African law regulating medicines was too broad and unfairly targeted drug manufacturers.
 The government, AIDS activists and human rights groups have said the drug companies are trying to wring profits out of a public-health nightmare that threatens to devastate South Africa and dozens of other impoverished countries.
 More than 25 million of the 36 million people infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the world's most impoverished regions. In 2000, 2.4 million people in the region died from the effects of AIDS.
 The World Health Organization said the agreement would enable the South African government and the drug companies to focus on implementing key parts of the law stalled by the court case - thus bringing in generic drugs and lowering the cost of medicine.
 Some activists said their task now is to make sure the government mobilizes its resources and creates a new treatment strategy.