SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #664 (31), Tuesday, April 24, 2001
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TITLE: Transport Prosecutors Face VAT Rap
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Northwestern Prosecutor's Office said on Monday that it was investigating 27 St. Petersburg-based companies for possible value-added-tax fraud on a significant part of 10 billion rubles, or $345 million, that was refunded last year. 
 Tax Inspectorate officials said that prosecutors of the Transport Prosecutors's Office and customs officials could be involved. 
 RTR television's news program Vesti reported on Tuesday that a number of prosecutors within the Transport Prosecutors' Office were about to be charged with the embezzlement of VAT- a tax charged to an export distributor selling goods produced, in this case, by Russian firms. One hundred percent of the VAT is then reimbursed to the Russian distributor. 
 The local Tax Police representatives said that last year Russian companies received 104 billion rubles (about $3.6 billion) VAT in returns in total, which is twice as much as that received in 1999.
 But prosecutors are charging 27 companies with obtaining their reimbursements illegal - and apparently prosecutors may have been involved.
 Vesti said that the Northwestern Prosecutor's Office is about to charge several transport prosecutors with VAT money misappropriation. 
 Alexander Travin, a former prosecutor for the Transport Prosecutors' Office, is already under investigation for his alleged involvement in a 3.5-ton heist of chicken legs, which his office confiscated. The shipment then disappeared. He is currently free under an agreement that he will not leave the city during the investigation. 
 While being careful not to suggest all members of the Transport Prosecutor's Office were involved in crime, a tax inspectorate spokesperson said the temptation must be great.
 "Those officials have to deal with all the papers which approve the types of export cargo, so this [temptation] is possible," said Gennady Bezserebrennikov, the Tax Inspectorate spokesperson in a telephone interview on Monday.
 Without any connection to the cases involved, the Transport Prosecutor's Office was abolished March 31 by Yury Chaika's Federal Justice Ministry.
 Vladimir Goltsimer, a spokesperson for the Northwestern Prosecutor's Office, said individual prosecutors of the transport division were not being targeted. 
 "We just have those 27 cases initiated and no prosecutors are involved - just companies ," he said in a telephone interview on Monday.
 "You must understand that all the schemes could happen without the participation of any officials at all," he said.
 Goltsimer would not specify any of the companies involved in the investigation. But Gennady Bezserebrennikov of the St. Petersburg Tax Inspectorate said one of the companies that tax agencies are looking into is Master Group ,a local industrial equipment exporter. According to Bezserebrennikov, Master Group delivered equipment abroad which was literally thousands of times higher than the market value. 
 "Last year, one of the Master Group sister companies exported engines with a price declared at 120,000 rubles, when the market price for those old engines is just 120 rubles," said Bezserebrennikov.
 As another example, Bezserebrennikov cited the exporting of fireplace screens to Africa - at 40,000 times the market value. Bezserebrennikov would not name the company responsible. 
 However, Sergei Zhukov, spokes person for Master Group, denied Bez se rebrennikov's allegations, and accused the tax inspectorate of suppressing honest business. 
 "We got a price for the equipment, which is that on the world market and if the tax inspectorate has anything against that, let them prove that we are wrong," said and indignant Zhukov in a telephone interview Monday. 
 Zhukov said last year Master Group won two cases against the St. Petersburg tax inspectorate, which had to pay them back about 8 million rubles of VAT.
 As a result, Bezserebrennikov complained that the tax inspectorate almost always lost in VAT return cases, "We lose ... almost one hundred percent of them," he said.
 But tax and prosecution authorities admit that it is extremely difficult to establish whether or not a company has engaged in phony exports to cash in on the VAT. 
 "A typical scheme involves first creating a company in name only for one day, which sells goods to another company," explained Goltsimer of the Northwest Prosecutors' Office 
 "This then in its turn exports goods to a company located abroad. All three companies have accounts in one bank [in Russia] and there is no money involved, only paper," said Goltsimer .
 "When the deal is done the so-called company disappears and the exporter demands a tax return which is absolutely legitimate, according to law. And in this case we can't check whether there were any goods they declared," 
 According to St. Petersburg Tax Inspectorate statistics, there were 1.5 million companies - of the 2.7 million registered countrywide - registered in Russia last year that existed for just one day.
 On an equally grim note, the St. Petersburg Tax Police anticipated that it will shell out 5 billion rubles on phony VAT taxes.

TITLE: Skeletons Out of the Closet at Local Factory
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Every day, Rufin Yefremov is surrounded by dismembered limbs, gaping wounds, skeletons and skulls, and contorted, lifeless human torsos. At age 72, this has been his work for over four decades, for Yefremov is chief artist and sculptor at Medius, the only place in the country to provide models and mannequins for medical students, hospitals and even the Emergency Situations Ministry.
 "This work demands total concentration, accuracy and precision," says Yefremov. "But you know for sure that someone depends upon what you do."
 The Medius factory - where around 70 employees bake, mold and paint everything from human scalps to spiraling intestines - is like a Hollywood special-effects department gone mad, a place that would have made Dr. Frankenstein turn green with envy. As university students palpitate rubber models for signs of cancers, high-school kids gaze and grimace in anatomy class, or government officials are trained to deal with the effects of an explosion, few of them know the origin of the materials on which they are practicing.
 Medius was founded in Leningrad in 1934 as Medical Training Supplies, the monopoly manufacturer of practice material for Soviet schools and institutes. A private company since 1994, factory director Sergei Vasilyev says that these days they have more orders than ever before, and they still have no competition.
 "Ours is a very complex kind of production," says Vasilyev. "It takes a lot of money to keep making all these models. But with the growing number of large-scale technological disasters and the high-technology industry itself, the volume of our work doubles each year."
 As well as making anatomical and botanical models for medical schools, Medius' clients include the Emergency Situations Ministry, Unified Energy Systems, the Interior Ministry and the army, who use the company's products (which include gory replicas of maimed limbs) for first-aid training.
 The mannequins used to teach artificial resuscitation are given the brand name "Maxim" - life-size imitations of humans with life-like postures of closed eyes, open mouths and even lolling tongues.
 What's more, a one-minute mouth-to-mouth and heart-massage session, if done correctly, will cause the latex victim's pupils to narrow and elicit a pulse, a sure sign of successful emergency aid.
 In comparison with their Western "counterparts" - which cost from $2,000 to $3,000 - St. Petersburg-made mannequins are quite cheap at about $500. This, however, is still too expensive for the local Emergency Situations department, whose employees have to practice on each other. "We'd love to have these things, but we have no money to buy them," said the department's deputy head Sergei Sysoyev.
 Nikolai Ivanchenko, chief of the Northwest Emergency Situations department, said he wasn't entirely sure of the provenance of his 24-strong team's mannequin, nicknamed Gosha-2. But he did say it was a valued member of the department.
 And he added that even though not every school could afford such a model, "every one should have one." 
 Although the Basics of Life Safety, a program replacing military training in schools in the early 1990s, deals with first aid, mannequins on which students can learn resuscitation are not common.
 "Russia has a rate of accidental deaths four to six times as high as in the rest of the world," said Vasilyev. "Schools mostly buy facilities for biology and botany classes, but not models for reanimation, so now we're taking the matter up with the Education Ministry."
 Medius is still a strong presence in the nation's medical curriculum - "It is more human to practice on our products than on live human beings," as Vasilyev puts it. And at 900 rubles ($31), the company's plastic skeletons have even found their way abroad, as foreign students purchase them to take home; abroad, they cost three times as much, he said. 
 According to Olga Fionik, a professor from the department of surgery at St. Petersburg State University's medical faculty, plastic and rubber models are absolutely indispensable for students. 
 "Students have to divide their studies equally between the morgue, the operation theater and the models," says Fionik. "The models can give students - especially those studying clinical medicine - the kind of skills that nothing else can: giving injections, resuscitation, enemas and so on."
 "The quality of the material is not as good as with Western-made models, but they function well and, what's more important, they're affordable," she added.
 "The trick is precision," said Raisa Gritchina, herself a teacher by training but now working at Medius as a senior painter. "We are working for future doctors, so we have no right to make any mistakes [with our sculptures]." 
 It takes nearly three weeks to make a cast of a simple bone - from when it has been cast and molded, to being passed over to the drillers, who refine the overall shape in a noisy and dimly-lit room, to its ultimate attachment to a piece of wire and then a skeleton.
 The factory is especially proud of its unique model of the human scalp, where the shape of each component is clearly visible. 
 Gritchina shows her various brushes and huge paint palette, which she uses to color the circulation system or spice up a kidney. "This is truly creative work, just like an artist's, and I enjoy it greatly," she said. "Get the wrong shade, and a model is ruined."

TITLE: Memorial Points to Mass-Graves Cover-Up
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: GROZNY - The human rights group Memorial says it knows where there are at least three more suspected mass graves in the Chechen capital but is wary of making the information public.
 They fear the sites will meet the same fate as a suspected mass grave in the Oktyabrsky district near a police station manned by federal Interior Ministry troops.
 "They blew the building up the same day information leaked to the public," said Lipkhan Bazayeva of Memorial's office in Nazran, Ingushetia, citing reports from visitors to her office from Chechnya.
 "Having started to talk about it too early, we made a mistake - they managed to hide the evidence."
 In Grozny, anyone can point to places where one or two or more people killed by the bombing and shelling since September 1999 have been buried by their neighbors or are still covered by the rubble of collapsed buildings. But information on mass graves is not common. Sometimes they are discovered because of the smell of decomposing corpses.
 The existence of a grave containing at least 17 bodies in the basement of a shell-shattered dormitory across the road from the Oktyabrsky police station was announced by Grozny Mayor Bislan Gantamirov on April 10. 
 The next day, Gantamirov did an about-face and joined the federal officials denying the mass grave's existence. But by the day after that he was back to standing by his original claim that 17 bodies had been discovered and that OMON troops from Khanty-Mansiisk who had been manning the station were to blame for the killings. 
 It was impossible to approach the building where Gantamirov said the bodies were found. It is 50 meters off the road and shielded by trees, and the area is surrounded by barbed wire. 
 Uniformed men at the checkpoint closest to the building did not allow cars to stop. 
 A Chechen policeman from a local police station located about 300 meters away from the federal station said, "The corpses are there, and we all know that, but we are not allowed to talk about it."
 Zeinab, 67, who believes the body of her son Suleiman is one of the 17 bodies at the site, stood near the checkpoint with a female relative the afternoon of April 13. That morning, she said Akhmad Kadyrov had come to the site with others from his pro-Moscow administration and she had joined the crowd that approached the building.
 "One journalist photographed the site and they confiscated her film," Zeinab said.
 "The basement was apparently blown up and mined," she said. "Kadyrov said it will take time to remove the mines and dispose of rubble to get to the bodies if there are any."
 Zeinab said Suleiman and his brother were both arrested without a warrant 14 months ago by the federal police. Her other son returned home several months later with a terrible story to tell.
 "He said they cut off Suleiman's arm and killed Suleiman at this police station in his presence. I am absolutely sure he is here, and I will come here every day until they get the bodies out," Zeinab said.
 Memorial's Bazayeva said her office interviewed several parents who said that they believed their children were buried in that building.
 Information on the Oktyabrsky district mass grave followed the discovery earlier this spring of about 50 bodies in a village of summer houses on the outskirts of Grozny and near the main military base at Khankala.
 "There were more corpses there and Chechen families were buying corpses from federal troops," Bazayeva said. "One family paid as much as $3,000, most from $200 to $500. That is how we got this information - from those people."
 Women and children were buried together with men, and many people were shot in the head while their hands were tied behind their backs. 
 Human rights groups, which reported the discovery of the mass grave in March, said some of the bodies were identified and were people who had been reported missing after being detained by federal troops. 
 The military has said the bodies most likely belonged to rebels killed in fighting and denied killing civilians.
 Bazayeva said Memorial will keep quiet about the new suspected mass graves in Grozny until the government shows clear signs of starting to enforce law and order.
 "We will not talk about those mass graves because we fear they will immediately disappear, like the one that has recently been made public in the Oktyabrsky district."
 The presidential representative in the North Caucasus Federal District, former military commander Viktor Kazantsev, first confirmed that bodies had been discovered there but later said that an investigation had shown no mass grave.
 In an interview published in Kommersant on April 12, Gantamirov again stood by his claim but refused to give details.
 "Please write down the following: Bislan Gantamirov said that Kazantsev is his superior and Bislan Gantamirov, unfortunately, confirms everything said by his superior."

TITLE: One Dead as Explosions Rock Town
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: YESSENTUKI, South Russia - Two bombs exploded on Monday in a cemetery in a southern Russian town, the second such incident there in a month, killing a woman and injuring at least four other people, officials said.
 Russian media quoted municipal officials in the spa town of Yessentuki as saying the main bomb was packed with ball bearings and other metal objects. A second explosion caused no injuries.
 There was no immediate explanation for the explosions in Yessentuki, a town known for its mineral waters in the Stavropol region, west of breakaway Chechnya. But prosecutors opened a criminal case on suspicion of terrorism.
 The explosions coincided with a hostage-taking in a Turkish hotel by pro-Chechen groups and the fifth anniversary of the death by a guided Russian missile of Chechnya's first separatist president Dzhokhar Dudayev. The hostage-takers later surrendered to Turkish police.
 Prosecutor Robert Adelkhanyan said the main device was linked to a timer. ORT said it had been concealed in a pile of gravel and had sent stones flying.
 An explosion last month in Yessentuki, one of a series of nearly simultaneous blasts throughout southern Russia, injured more than a dozen people. Altogether 23 people died in the blasts.

TITLE: All Travel Restrictions Lifted
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MADRID - Spain's High Court on Monday lifted all travel restrictions on Russian media magnate Vladimir Gu sin sky, following the collapse last week of Moscow's attempts to extradite him, officials said.
 "All the measures have been lifted which means Mr. Gusinsky is totally free," his defense lawyer, Domingo Plazas, said.
 Gusinsky, who says the Kremlin is seeking to silence his Media-MOST media group, was due to travel to Madrid from his villa in southern Spain later on Monday before probably leaving for Israel on Tuesday, Plazas said.
 The businessman, who is wanted in Russia on fraud charges, was arrested in Spain last December by police acting on a Russian warrant.
 While Gusinsky was battling extradition, his Media-MOST group was largely dismantled when state-controlled Russian gas group Gazprom seized control of its flagship television station NTV, a newspaper was closed and editorial staff at a political magazine were fired.
 The High Court also said in a statement that Gusinsky would be reimbursed for the 1 billion pesetas ($5.4 million) he paid in bail to leave jail after his arrest.
 Gusinsky said in a Spanish television interview on Friday he planned to take a holiday in Israel and travel to the United States. The media magnate, who is a dual Israeli-Russian citizen, led Russia's Jewish Congress until recently.
 Last Wednesday, the High Court turned down Russia's request for Spain to hand over the businessman, saying the alleged fraud offences did not represent a crime in Spain.
 A three-day deadline for appeals to the High Court expired on Saturday.
 Russian prosecutors have said they will still seek to detain Gusinsky in other countries and bring him to Moscow.

TITLE: Court Gives 7-Year Sentence to Accused Spy
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Moscow court sentenced a Russian man to seven years in jail after he was caught spying for Britain and Estonia, the FSB said on Monday.
 Ex-intelligence officer Valery Ojamae was convicted of high treason by a Moscow court in a trial that ended on Friday, the security police said.
 In March last year, he was charged with passing secrets to Britain and Estonia through contacts at the British embassy in the Estonian capital Tallinn, police said. RIA news agency said top figures in Estonia's special police force had helped the British embassy recruit him.
 Ojamae had previously worked for Russia's domestic intelligence services. After leaving his job there he started passing on information about Russia's super-secret Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information (FAPSI), police said.
 The British Embassy in Moscow said it does not comment on intelligence cases. Estonian Embassy officials could not be contacted.
 Ojamae's arrest was followed by another spy row in August when Moscow and Tallinn each expelled two of the other country's diplomats.
 
 <i>A decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, spy cases continue to grab the headlines. Following is a chronology of some of the major cases.
 </i>. February 1994 - The United States arrests Aldrich Ames, a top CIA counter-intelligence official. In April, Ames pleads guilty to spying for Moscow and is sentenced to life in prison. His wife is sentenced to five years in prison. The United States and Russia each expel one of the other's diplomats over the affair.
 . 1996 - Moscow expels nine British diplomats it says are running a spy ring. Britain responds by expelling four Russians. Russia charges low-ranking diplomat Valery Obukhov in the affair. Obukhov, son of a senior Soviet diplomat, is convicted but his sentence is overturned and a new trial ordered. As of April 2001, the case is still pending.
 . Nov-Dec 1997 - Russia holds U.S. technician Richard Bliss for a month on spying charges. Bliss worked for a U.S. firm using a satellite system to install mobile telephone equipment in the Russian town Rostov-on-Don.
 . Nov. 18, 1999 - Russia's FSB domestic security service charges Igor Sutyagin, nuclear specialist at Moscow's USA and Canada Institute, with high treason, which covers spying.
 . Jan. 20, 2000 - Poland expels nine Russian diplomats for spying. Moscow orders out nine Polish diplomats.
 . June 14, 2000 - The United States arrests retired army Colonel George Trofimoff, the highest ranking military officer charged with spying.
 . Dec. 6, 2000 - A Moscow court sentences retired U.S. navy intelligence officer Edmond Pope to 20 years for spying. Pope is later pardoned by President Vladimir Putin.
 . Feb. 18, 2001 - FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested on charges of selling secrets to Moscow over the last 15 years of his 25-year FBI career.
 . March 22 - Following the Hanssen case, Washington expels four Russian diplomats as spies and orders 46 to leave the country by July 1, saying it wants Moscow to cut down its espionage activities. Russia says it will match the U.S. expulsions one for one.
 . April 18 - The FSB says it has charged scientist Valentin Danilov, head of a physics centre in Siberia, with treason for trying to sell space technology to China.

TITLE: Greenpeace Ship Sails Into Town
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The MV Greenpeace - one of environmental group Greenpeace's international ships - has been through many polluted waters. Boats like it in the Green peace fleet have stood up to whaling ships ten times their size and won. 
 The MV Greenpeace is itself no stranger to danger - in 1991 it examined pollution following the war in the Persian Gulf and a year ago carried out pollution readings on the Russian Arctic Island of Novyaya Zemlya, leading to the arrest by the Federal Security Service of all its crew members. 
 Now the boat is docked here in St. Petersburg as part of a three-year mission called &quot;Toxic-Free Future,&quot; a project that began in Latin America and will end with a plumbing of toxic waters in May of this year in the Baltic Sea - which environmentalists say is desperately polluted by St. Petersburg's factories and sewers. 
 Over 10,000 St. Petersburgers were able to tour the ship at its dock on Angliiskaya Naberezhnyaya near the Lieutenant Schmidt bridge since its arrival Friday evening. 
 &quot;There was a huge line of people of all ages to get onto the ship. Seeing so much attention, especially from youngsters, was very encouraging,&quot; said Penelope Gardner, a British volunteer dockhand from MV Greenpeace. 
 &quot;[Russian] citizens have shown much concern about, and much knowledge of, environmental issues.&quot;
 According to Alexei Kiselyov, toxic-water expert for Greenpeace Russia, the tour, complete with actions like a rock concert on the ship's heliport on April 19, are aimed at drawing attention to the Baltic Sea's plight.
 &quot;St. Petersburg and its oblast alone feature over 10 &quot;environmental hotspots&quot; polluting the sea,&quot; he said.
 Indeed, since the 1970s environmentalists have been warning that pollution levels in the Baltic Sea - which links Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Poland - are alarming and have exceeded critical levels. But the following decades have brought little progress. 
 &quot;There is still a long list of pollution sources in the whole region,&quot; said Wytze van der Naald, a Greenpeace International toxic waters expert. 
 &quot;Scandinavian countries have taken action to reduce pollution, but Russia and the Baltic states have yet to follow.&quot;
 Ecologists stress that even if all the Baltic countries closed down all of their garbage incineration facilities, the problem still wouldn't be solved because dioxins are persistent organic pollutants, meaning they won't decompose for many years to come.
 During its tour, ecologists aboard the MV Greenpeace examined organic pollutants in the Baltic Sea region as well as its malicious influence on marine birds, fish, ecosystems and the human population. The research was funded by Greenpeace International and carried out by experts from Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter, U.K. A full version of the report is available on the organization's Web site at http://www.greenpeace.org/~toxics/ reports/popbaltic.pdf.
 According to van der Naald, it is difficult to find out who is the region's biggest pollutant as environmentalists simply have neither the means nor sufficient information to do so. &quot;Russian mills and factories are often too lax to cooperate,&quot; Kiselyov said.
 The Swedish government advises women of child-bearing age to abstain from Baltic salmon, trout or herring, limiting their consumption to no more than once a month. The rest of country's population was warned not to eat them more often than once a week.
 In St. Petersburg, however, there are no such recommendations - though its citizens have obviously been exposed to the same risks. And the city authorities have been unwilling to run additional tests to estimate these hazards. 
 With the absorption of the State Environmental Committee by the Ministry of Natural Resources onthe orders of President Vladimir Putin last May, there is little hope that the Russian state will adopt measures to counter pollution. 
 The &quot;Toxic-Free Future&quot; will end in Stockholm on May 22 to 23, to coincide with the introduction of an international treaty which would oblige world governments to eliminate the production, use and release of persistent organic pollutants. If Russia doesn't sign the treaty, environmentalists, yet again, will have reason to worry.

TITLE: 'Kukly' Aiming To Show That It's Nobody's Puppet
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The &quot;Kukly&quot; puppet show set out Sunday to test the new NTV management's promise not to censor one of the country's most popular political satirical programs. 
 In the show Sunday, President Vla di mir Putin, or more precisely his latex version, was depicted as a Chinese leader at the time of the Cultural Revolution fighting the enemies of the state. 
 The enemies, in this case, were NTV founder Vladimir Gusinsky, who lost control of the channel last week, and Boris Berezovsky, who has offered ousted NTV management and reporters refuge at his TV-6 television.
 &quot;A fatty goose has been practically exterminated,&quot; said former finance minister Alexander Livshits, using a nickname for Gusinsky, whose surname begins with the Russian word for &quot;goose.&quot;
 &quot;But evil offshoots of <i>bereza </i>[birch] are still sprouting here and there,&quot; he added, in a nod to Berezov sky's nickname.
 But the main enemy, Putin was told, would prove to be sparrows - journalists - because they flutter around out of control and are inclined to discharge droppings on people's heads.
 &quot;That could have been me,&quot; Putin said early in the show after seeing a bird dropping land on a nearby head.
 The government concluded that the battle plan for fighting enemies of the state was simple and announced to Chinese citizens over the radio: Sing and dance to prevent the sparrows from resting. After 20 minutes in flight they will simply die of exhaustion.
 With fears growing that press freedom in Russia is in danger, the show from all appearances was aired without any censorship. 
 Vasily Grigoryev, the founder and producer of &quot;Kukly,&quot; said NTV's new general director Boris Jordan has offered his word that the show will continue to be uncensored. 
 Unless, of course, proven otherwise.
 &quot;If there are three or more repeats of old shows, that will mean that there are signs of censorship,&quot; said Grigoryev. 
 But Grigoryev said he firmly believes that Jordan will do everything in his power to protect the show from any external pressure. One of the more immediate problems for the new management will not be censoring the show but securing funding for it, he said. 
 &quot;Kukly&quot; is probably &quot;the most expensive show to produce apart from feature films,&quot; he said, declining to elaborate.
 Seemingly unharmed in the turbulent takeover of NTV by state-connected gas giant Gazprom, Kukly, nevertheless, did not leave the battlefield without losses. Of the 50 people who film Kukly, one person left - the show's screenwriter and prominent television personality Viktor Shenderovich. 
 Notably, Shenderovich, who is widely seen as the best of the show's screenwriters, was also the only one in the team who was on staff at NTV, which itself suffered deep losses as angry managers and journalists left the channel in droves.
 &quot;Having seen Jordan break one promise, I have little faith in trusting the management to leave 'Kukly' untouched,&quot; Shenderovich said, referring to Jordan's promise not to use force to take over NTV.
 Jordan's team peacefully seized NTV's offices in a night raid. 
 &quot;I don't know how long they will go on without censorship,&quot; Shenderovich said. &quot;Three weeks, three and half?&quot;
 Grigoryev refused to discuss whether the Kremlin's patience with &quot;Kukly&quot; would run thin.
 &quot;'Kukly' is Putin's favorite show,&quot; Grigoryev said. &quot;I don't think there will be much need or desire to get rid of such a popular program as 'Kukly,' especially now that Gusinsky has announced his departure from the company.&quot;
 Gusinsky said Thursday that with Gazprom controlling NTV he would sell the rest of his stock in the channel.
 &quot;Kukly&quot; was launched in 1994 and has become an irritant for a handful of top officials and average citizens alike. Already in 1995 the Prosecutor General's Office was after the show, saying it &quot;publicly humiliated&quot; the &quot;honor and dignity&quot; of top government officials. It also accused Grigoryev with tax evasion and with illegally using hard currency to pay for transactions. Prosecutors dropped investigations into the show and its founder in 1996.
 Over the years, politicians, especially leftists and nationalists, have indicated a deep dislike for the show.
 Then in February 2000 a group of professors from St. Petersburg slammed &quot;Kukly&quot; in an open letter, saying it had insulted Putin.
 Putin's press secretary thanked the petitioners but said that the president would not take any legal action against the show.
 The show appeared to have a special message for Putin on Sunday night about not taking any action against the press.
 When the sparrows finally flew themselves to death, China was faced with a bigger problem than bird droppings. Locusts gobbled up all the crops, leaving the country to starve.

TITLE: OSCE Honors 2 Slain Journalists
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Slain journalist Georgy Gongadze, whose killing has sparked a political crisis in Ukraine, was one of two reporters named Saturday as the winners of an annual $20,000 journalism prize. 
 The other winner of the Prize for Journalism and Democracy was Spanish newspaper columnist Jose Luis Lopez de Lacalle, believed to have been killed last year by the armed separatist group ETA.
 The prize is given annually by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly to reporters or organizations that have helped develop principles of human rights and democracy. 
 Gongadze died &quot;after a long distinguished career in investigative journalism, uncovering critical circumstances in a secretive political environment,&quot; the parliamentarians said in a statement.
 Past winners include Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky, Adam Michnik, a former Polish dissident and editor of Poland's first independent newspaper, British journalist Timothy Garton Ash and CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

TITLE: Chechen Hostage-Takers Give Selves Up
AUTHOR: By Elif Unal
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: ANKARA, Turkey - A Turkish militant of Chechen origin emerged as the apparent leader of a hostage-taking protest at a top Istanbul hotel, five years after playing a leading role in hijacking a Russian ferry in Turkey.
 Muhammed Emin Tokcan, a slight, bearded man in his mid-30s, surrendered to police along with 12 other gunmen on Monday after releasing 120 hotel guests and staff they held overnight at Istanbul's Swissotel in what they called a protest against Russian military action in Chechnya.
 In 1996 Tokcan seized a boat carrying 200 passengers to show solidarity with the Chechen cause, which strikes a chord among many Turks who see the Caucasian rebels as fellow Muslims fighting Russian oppression.
 Tokcan surrendered to police after the ferry hijacking, but escaped from jail along with most of his colleagues shortly afterwards. He was recaptured in 1999 and ordered to serve the rest of his eight-year jail term.
 It was not immediately possible to confirm whether he had taken advantage of a limited amnesty that halved Turkey's jail population late last year.
 Mehdi Cetinbas of Turkey's Caucasus Association said Tokcan recently gathered 12 people in his northwestern home town of Duzce, where many have Chechen roots, with the initial aim of sending them to Chechnya as volunteers to fight Russia.
 But instead of travelling there, the group raided the hotel on the shores of Istanbul's Bosphorus waterway in the early hours of Monday, rounding up guests in the lobby and firing into the air.
 &quot;The reason that this operation was chosen was to bring the attention of the world and the world media to what is happening in Chechnya,&quot; Cetinbas said.
 He quoted Tokcan as saying he regretted staging the operation during a &quot;difficult period&quot; in Turkey, which has endured over two months of financial crisis that has battered its currency and sent prices soaring.
 Public sympathy is widespread for the Chechen cause in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey, where millions of Turks trace their blood-lines to the Caucasus region.

TITLE: Prosecutors Claim Courts Not Ready for Reforms
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prosecutors lashed out Friday at a planned revamp of the country's Criminal Procedural Code that would strip them of the right to issue arrest warrants and appeal acquittals to higher courts, saying Russia is unready for such changes.
 The State Duma is scheduled to hold a second reading this week for the overhauled code, new legislation meant to bring the judiciary system in line with both the Constitution and Western procedures. The current law dates back to the 1960s.
 Deputy Prosecutor General Sabir Kekhlerov told reporters that his office is &quot;categorically opposed&quot; to the proposed reforms that would, among other changes, require prosecutors to get court approval for arrests and search warrants.
 &quot;This would be possible only when the courts are ready to take over this huge responsibility, and they are not ready at the moment,&quot; Kekhlerov said.
 &quot;I am not the only one saying so. This is also the position of the head of the Supreme Court and the president's administration,&quot; Kekhlerov said. 
 President Vladimir Putin approved revamping the Criminal Procedural Code earlier this year, but then he abruptly backpedaled as prosecutors, the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service lobbied fiercely against it. 
 The Kremlin says courts need an additional $50 million a year and an extra 3,000 judges and 6,800 legal assistants to carry out the envisioned reforms. 
 Liberal Duma deputies accuse Putin of bowing to pressure from governmental security agencies.
 Still, lawmakers drafted and recently managed to pass a new Criminal Procedural Code in the first reading.
 Kekhlerov, who represents the Prosecutor General's Office in a working group on judicial reform led by Dmitry Kozak, the head of the presidential administration's legal department, suggested on Friday that the group is wrapping up its work but said broad differences remain. 
 &quot;If you hear that the group has reached this or that conclusion, it doesn't mean that everybody in the group supported it,&quot; he said. &quot;I was very often a solitary voice against some of the concepts debated there.&quot;

TITLE: UN Censures Russia for Rights Violations
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Fowler
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GENEVA - The top UN human rights watchdog has censured Russia, after last-minute attempts to reach a compromise failed. 
 Twenty-two members of the UN Human Rights Commission voted 'yes' on Friday to a European Union resolution condemning Russian actions in Chechnya. Twelve members voted against and 19 abstained. 
 The EU mustered support from commission members including the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, while Russia won the backing of China, India and Nigeria. 
 The EU resolution condemned Russia for &quot;attacks against civilians&quot; and breaches of international law, as well as &quot;serious violations of human rights&quot; including &quot;forced disappearances&quot; and both summary and arbitrary executions. 
 It expressed concern about the slow pace of Russian internal investigations into alleged human rights abuses by its troops in Chechnya and also attacked the actions of Chechen rebels, who are accused of torture, taking hostages and the indiscriminate use of land mines. 
 On Wednesday the 53-member body postponed voting after the EU asked for more time for last-minute negotiations. But commission procedures meant agreement on a softer consensus statement had to be reached by late Friday afternoon to avoid a vote. 
 The Russian delegation at the commission was locked in talks with its EU counterpart up to the deadline in an attempt to reach a consensus. Without a compromise the vote was initially expected to be held Monday. 
 In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry on Saturday harshly criticized the resolution and blamed the United States for forcing the body to take a hard line. 
 &quot;Russia does not consider itself bound by the provisions of the unobjective and biased resolution,&quot; a Foreign Ministry statement said. 
 It noted that the resolution was passed only after attempts to reach a compromise had failed and &quot;the Russian Federation considers all responsibility for the breakdown in making a consensus statement to lie with the United States.&quot;

TITLE: Mass Grave Discovered in Chechnya
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ - A Russian reconnaissance unit has found the remains of at least 18 people in a mass grave near a rough mountain road in southern Chechnya, officials said Sunday. 
 The victims appeared to have been killed in 1996 or 1997, but it was not immediately clear who they were, said a spokesperson for Kremlin aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky. 
 The border guard reconnaissance unit discovered the remains Thursday while searching for guerrillas near the village of Gizikhoi in the Itum-Kale district, just north of the border with Georgia. 
 The bodies were exhumed Saturday. All appeared to have been shot in the head and then beheaded, the spokesperson said. 
 Interfax quoted Chechnya's Kremlin-appointed Press Minister Vasily Vasilenko as saying the victims were believed to be Georgian construction workers who had been kidnapped in 1995 while they were building a road through the rugged region. 
 The head of the Itum-Kale regional administration, Edilbek Uzuyev, said the bodies appeared to have been removed from other burial places and recently cast together in the common grave, Interfax reported. 
 Officials were also looking into the possibility that body parts from torture victims were buried in the grave, Interfax reported, citing an unidentified official from Yastrzhembsky's office. The report said remains from up to 30 people might be in the grave. 
 Meanwhile, one Chechen policeman was killed and 16 servicemen and police were wounded over the last 24 hours in 17 rebel attacks, Interfax quoted the military command as saying Sunday. Casualty figures are impossible to verify.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Nuclear-Fleet Overhaul
 

MOSCOW (AP) - The Transport Ministry has begun an overhaul of the country's nuclear icebreaker fleet, and plans to begin construction on a new generation of the massive, powerful craft by 2010, Interfax reported on Sunday. 
 The repairs are necessary to keep shipping lanes open in the Arctic Ocean off Russia's northern coast, where the sea is frozen most of the year, said Deputy Transport Minister Vyacheslav Ruksha, Interfax reported. 
 He said nuclear power reactors on seven vessels will be upgraded in the program, and that a new ship costing about $500 million will be commissioned before 2010, the report said. 
 
 
Election in Tula Region
 

MOSCOW (AP) - A Communist who helped plot the failed hardline coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev faced off Sunday against a gas magnate in disputed runoff elections for governor of the Tula region. 
 Vasily Starodubtsev, a member of the group that tried to depose Gorbachev in August 1991, won the most votes in first-round voting earlier this month. But he failed to win more than 50 percent of the vote, forcing a runoff. 
 
 
Lenin's Birthday
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - At least 1,000 Russian leftists filed into the mausoleum holding Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin on Sunday to mark his birthday and denounced suggestions that his body should be moved elsewhere and buried.
 The group, made up mainly of elderly people and led by Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov, moved slowly through Red Square and placed bouquets outside the red and black stone building before going inside.
 Three men stood in front of the mausoleum holding up a large red banner reading "Hands off Lenin!"
 "The decision to place Lenin here was made by our ancestors. Not one or two people but a [Communist Party] congress," Zyuganov told reporters, noting that some 400 people had been honored in Soviet times by being buried in the Kremlin wall.
 
 
Rights Worker Injured
 

GROZNY - A prominent human-rights worker who has spoken against the war in Chechnya was shot and seriously wounded, a lawmaker said on Saturday. 
 Viktor Popkov was wounded near the village of Alkhan-kala when unidentified gunmen fired at a car carrying him and a doctor from the hospital in Grozny on Friday, said Yury Shchekochikhin, the deputy chairman of the State Duma's committee on security, according to news reports. 
 Popkov has worked in Chechnya since 1995 and has helped in the rescue of hostages there, Shchekochikhin was quoted as saying. 
 
 
NASA Clears Tito
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA has agreed to allow U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito aboard the International Space Station next week, TIME.com reported. 
 Tito, 60, a wealthy space buff, is believed to be paying Russia $20 million for the trip. NASA has expressed safety concerns about Tito's flight, saying the Californian is not adequately trained and might prove a distraction to the crew. 
 The deal reached would essentially mean neither Tito nor his family would sue NASA if anything went wrong, and it would require he pay for anything he broke, TIME.com said Friday, citing sources it said were close to the negotiations. 
 Partners include U.S., Russian, European, Canadian and Japanese space agencies. 



TITLE: NTV-St. Petersburg Resumes Work With Moscow Channel
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After a week of emergency news broadcasts on Channel 11, NTV-St. Petersburg resumed working with Moscow-based NTV and began airing its local news slots on that channel on Monday. 
 &quot;The loss of [the old NTV] is the audience's loss, but we have kept our team here together, and that's the only thing we were trying to do,&quot; said Andrei Radin, NTV-St. Petersburg's editor-in-chief and news presenter, on Monday.
 &quot;It was a relief to come back to the [five-slots-a-day] schedule. Last week, we had to shoot news in the morning and go on air late in the evening, and it was nonsense.&quot;
 Andrei Mokrov, NTV-St. Petersburg's director, was quoted by Interfax on Friday as saying that the move was the result of negotiations with NTV managers Boris Jordan and Vladimir Kulistikov, leading to terms &quot;that suited everyone.&quot;
 Although it is part of Media-MOST, NTV-St. Petersburg is a distinct legal entity from NTV in Moscow, which has its own bureau of correspondents in the city.
 Media-MOST head Vladimir Gusinsky announced last week that he was selling all his shares in NTV.
 The move back to Moscow's fold came a week after NTV-St. Petersburg began broadcasting on Channel 11, part of the TNT network. TNT is also owned by Media-MOST.
 NTV-St. Petersburg journalists at the time said the move was partly because of the Gazprom takeover in Moscow, but also because contracts with NTV to buy St. Petersburg programs - such as &quot;Wake up, Piter&quot; and news slots - had expired.
 But on the weekend, it was announced that the news contract had been resumed, although &quot;Wake up, Piter&quot; would be dropped as unprofitable.
 Radin said he did not rule out what he called ideological pressure being brought to bear on him and his colleagues by the new Gazprom-appointed managers of NTV, perhaps by bringing in someone to supervise their work. However, he said that NTV-St. Petersburg's legal status might ensure its independence.

TITLE: Americas Agree On Trade Bloc at Summit
AUTHOR: By Niko Price
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: QUEBEC CITY, Quebec - After the protesters left and a steady drizzle washed away the clouds of tear gas, 34 leaders of the Americas scrawled their names on a sweeping accord that would unite the Western Hemisphere in the world's most powerful trade bloc.
 The Summit of the Americas ended Sunday with President Bush and other presidents and prime ministers agreeing to inaugurate the free-trade zone by the end of 2005. They still have fierce differences, though, about the details of the zone, which would unite their $13 trillion economies, eliminate national subsidies and increase competition.
 &quot;I'm very optimistic about what took place here,&quot; Bush said. &quot;It gives us a great chance to expand the opportunities around our hemisphere knowing that it'll help our own country.&quot;
 The leaders also agreed that the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, will include only democracies. Any country that veers from democracy - with a military coup, for example - could be kicked out.
 The leaders rebuked Haiti for its flawed elections and sent the head of the Organization of American States to help sort out the political chaos on the impoverished island.
 Meanwhile, anti-globalization protesters battled with Canadian riot police for two days, hurling bricks and bottles and tearing down parts of a wall built to keep them from the summit.
 The leaders hope the trade blueprint, linking everyone from Buenos Aires to Boston, Valparaiso to Vancouver, will bring their countries the prosperity that eludes most of the world's population. The protesters say it will deepen poverty. But even some protesters conceded that the march of free trade will be almost impossible to halt.
 &quot;No one says trade is bad. There must be trade and there must be openness in the Americas,&quot; Joe Gunn of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said at an alternative conference organized by summit opponents. &quot;But the current model does not help us.&quot;
 Europe has already gone further than the Americas into a deep union that continues to grow, and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are toying with the idea of forming an Asian Union that would bring in China, Japan and South Korea.
 &quot;We have a choice to make,&quot; Bush said. &quot;We can combine in a common market so we can compete in the long term with the Far East and Europe, or we can go on our own. Going on our own is not the right way.&quot;
 The leaders at the summit, who were whisked from meeting to meeting amid the acrid sting of tear gas in the air, acknowledged the protesters' concerns and pledged to protect human rights and the environment as best they could.
 &quot;With this agreement we are going to attach great priority to the fight against poverty, the inclusion of each family in the country's development, the training of human capital and carrying out an educational and technological revolution in our countries,&quot; Mexican President Vicente Fox said.
 Because of the leaders' concessions, and the media attention to the demonstrations, many protesters felt triumphant.
 &quot;Before Quebec, few Americans knew about George Bush's plans to create the FTAA,&quot; said Robert Cox, president of the Sierra Club. &quot;After Quebec, millions know that the proposed FTAA imperils safeguards for the environment and working people in the United States and throughout the Americas.&quot;

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: WTO Entry 'Difficult'
 

BERLIN (Reuters) - The World Trade Organization's director general said Monday said that Russia had to make a lot of hard decisions before joining the WTO.
 The principle issues for Russia involve restructuring agriculture and the economy, WTO Director General Mike Moore said. "We have a working party. It is extremely difficult."
 The WTO will attempt a fresh round of global trade talks in Qatar in November. Moore will be replaced in September by Supachai Panitchpakdi, a former Thai deputy prime minister.
 
 
Aluminum Exports Up
 

MOSCOW (MT) - Russia exported 4.5 percent more primary aluminum year-on-year in the first two months of 2001, but 11.5 percent less nickel and 8.5 percent less copper, Interfax reported Monday.
 The State Customs Committee reported that the country exported 503,000 tons of aluminum, 32,900 tons of nickel and 105,500 tons of copper in the two months, or $627.7 million, $223.6 million and $172.8 million in dollar terms.
 Almost all the nonferrous exports went to countries outside the Commonwealth of Independent States.
 
 
Debt-for-Equity Talks
 

BERLIN (Reuters) - The German Finance Ministry said talks about converting Moscow debt into equity stakes in Russian enterprises were continuing despite media reports that the Russian side had lost interest in the idea.
 "Talks about transferring ruble debt and [debt-for-equity] swaps are continuing as planned," a Finance Ministry spokesperson said Friday.
 Some 40 percent of Russia's $40 billion debt to Western governments is owed to Germany. The two countries have been working on ways to settle some of it by providing Germany, Moscow's main trade partner and creditor, with investment openings in Russia.
 German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and President Vladimir Putin failed to agree a debt deal when they met in St. Petersburg this month. 
 
 
Cabinet Calls Off Debts
 

MOSCOW (AP) - The cabinet has ordered that some of the nation's defense enterprises' debts be written off and is planning to give them broader access to the world arms market, officials said Friday.
 Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov issued an order Thursday to forgive defense plant debts resulting from delayed payments for products manufactured on government orders, Itar-Tass reported.
 The order didn't specify the amount of debts to be written off.
 Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said Friday that Russian weapons manufacturers must be allowed to independently provide spare parts and maintenance for weapons that are sold abroad. 



TITLE: Moscow Outlines Reform Plans
AUTHOR: By Daniel Mclaughlin
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia laid out on Monday long-awaited short- and mid-term plans to bring about a liberalization in the economy and speed land and tax reform as it strives to tame inflation and improve a gloomy investment climate.
 The government and Central Bank said in a joint memorandum on economic policy for 2001 and beyond that they are also planning to bring international accounting standards and transparency to the financial sector and encourage greater competition between banks.
 Analysts said these steps were vital to making the Russian market more attractive to investors, and highlighted as a key element a government pledge not to place limits on foreign investment in Russian banks or on repatriation of profits.
 The reforms could clinch Western support for restructuring Russia's huge foreign debts as a payment crunch looms in 2003.
 &quot;The main elements for improving the investment climate are strengthening property rights, reducing administrative interference in economic activity and the development of financial markets and institutions&quot; the statement said.
 The government and the Central Bank are also aiming to make Russian banks adhere to international accounting standards by 2004, to create fair competition between banks and to encourage foreign investment in the sector.
 But reform could spell the beginning of tough times ahead for domestic lenders who are not ready to go up against foreign competition, analysts said.
 &quot;The actual adoption of the law could be a long and painful process with big opposition from the Central Bank, but if there is more liberalization and more open doors it is a good sign,&quot; said Raiffeisenbank Austria economist Yelena Romanova.
 Romanova said that about 12 percent of Russia's 1,300 or so banks were in poor financial shape.
 Oleg Vyugin, chief economist at Moscow brokerage Troika Dialog, said that foreign banks might not be particularly eager to dive straight into a murky financial pool.
 &quot;International accounting standards are very important but they are first steps, not a total panacea,&quot; Vyugin said. &quot;Steps have to be taken to make foreign capital feel more comfortable, but it seems to me foreign banks won't hurry to get involved.&quot;
 The government also announced that it wants to lower inflation in the mid-term to 7.0 or 8.0 percent from a predicted 14 percent this year and to stabilize real gross-domestic-product growth at 4.0 to 5.0 percent. Growth is now slowing down from last year's 7.7 percent.
 The government of President Vladimir Putin has touted all of these goals as central to its economic policy since taking office last year, and concerns over the country's ability to make payments on debts that were accrued during the Soviet period have evinced such comments with more regularity.
 Russia has agreed with previous economic policy statements made by the International Monetary Fund, but officials have said the 2001 program was &quot;designated for internal use&quot; as the country did not need a formal deal with the fund this year.
 A senior World Bank official said the bank and the IMF would discuss the plan at a joint meeting this week.
 Russia restated its pledge to repay its total $144 billion foreign debt but said it may face problems in 2003, when a peak of some $18 billion in payments falls due.
 Russia hopes to restructure debts ahead of the crunch, but must secure the IMF's backing to do so. Moscow has turned down IMF lending in 2001, the plan for up to 2004 outlined reforms which the fund has often urged Russia to implement.
 The memorandum said Russia wanted to introduce land reform and simplify the tax code, lowering the overall burden and making a new profit tax a priority for 2001.
 The government said that it would not impose any new limits on foreign trade or tighten currency controls, which analysts have said is part of the problem that encourages capital flight. Putin has also said that Russia lost some $20 billion in capital outflows last year alone. The government published the statement in electronic form on its Web site (www.pravitelstvo.gov.ru).

TITLE: Revamp of Railways Tax To Leave $680M Hole
AUTHOR: By Bulat Solyarov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko's railroad tariff commission decided this week to cancel the Railways Ministry's international tariff of on all deliveries exported from seaports. 
 As a result, there will be a single tariff for domestic and export shipping operations that will be 20 percent higher than the present domestic rate, Khristenko said. 
 The move will leave a 19.7 billion-ruble gap ($680 million) in the Railways Ministry's annual budget.
 In order to cover the deficit, the ministry will be forced to cancel tariff exemptions and discounts, curtail its investment program and possibly turn to the government for help, Khristenko said. Shipping operators, who enjoyed exemptions, will now have to take on unforeseen expenses.
 The single tariff in reality will be differentiated for various deliveries and distances, said Khristenko. Some deliveries will be shipped at a tariff exceeding the current domestic tariff by 64 percent. The cheapest deliveries will include the transporting of construction materials and coal. The shipping of metal, both ferrous and non-ferrous, will be the most expensive. The tariff rates are expected to be determined by May 20 and be confirmed by the Anti-Monopoly Ministry by June 20.
 The time frame named by the tariff commission is overly ambitious, said Khristenko. The Railways Ministry itself lobbied for a gradual unification of tariffs in a more conservative time frame, said Anti-Monopoly Minister Ilya Yuzhanov. In the middle of February, during a train ride from Tomsk to Omsk, President Vladimir Putin conducted a meeting with officials from all the relevant agencies and suggested a gradual unification of the tariffs. However, government officials decided not to delay the process.
 &quot;So you are delivering a potato from Moscow to St. Petersburg. If you are planning to eat it, the tariff will be one ruble. But if you are planning to export the potato from there, the tariff will be three rubles. Starting in June, that crazy system will no longer operate,&quot; said Yuzha nov. It should be remembered the Railways Ministry earns up to two-thirds of its income from international tariffs.
 The Railways Ministry could easily fill the hole in its budget by canceling the system of exemptions, said Yuzha nov. &quot;The sector [in 2001] could save 4 billion rubles on domestic deliveries and 18 billion rubles on international deliveries just by canceling exemptions,&quot; said the Yuzhanov.
 That is a great deal more than the amount estimated by independent auditor Andersen, which recently presented the results of its study. From 1999 to 2000, the exemptions cost the Railways Ministry 16 billion rubles, according to Andersen. But Yuzhanov does not trust this big-five company. &quot;The so-called independent audit was conducted with the use of money from the Railways Ministry,&quot; he said.
 The exemptions were offered in an illogical and selective fashion, said Yuzhanov. He offers the example of the two fertilizer makers Shchekinoazot and Nevinnomyssky Azot.
 &quot;One of those companies received a 30 percent exemption from the Railways Ministry, but the other did not receive any exemptions for some reason. As a result, one of them lost its competitiveness on international markets,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Takeover Rages for Petersburg Metals Plant
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Norlisk Nickel may have to swallow its pride, but the metals giant may still get the disputed St. Petersburg-based copper maker Krasny Vyborzhets.
 &quot;We will take over Krasny Vyborzhets by the end of April,&quot; Oleg Dyachenko, the head of Technology and Investments company, said in an interview Friday.
 Technology and Investments, acting on behalf of Kolskaya Mining Co., a Norilsk Nickel subsidiary, went on a buying spree last year and has accumulated a 51.8 percent stake in Kras ny Vyborzhets.
 After it called an extraordinary shareholder meeting for April 14, however, one of the minority shareholders, presumably acting on behalf of the Krasny Vyborzhets management, obtained a court ruling that declared the upcoming meeting illegal and arrested shares belonging to one of the companies affiliated with Technology and Investments.
 Dyachenko ignored the court ruling, held the meeting and appointed himself general director of Krasny Vyborzhets.
 But on April 16, he was denied access to the plant's headquarters and turned to the court to help him take over the company. Within 10 days, said Dya chenko, the court will put him in charge of Krasny Vyborzhets.
 Dyachenko still has a fight on his hands with the copper maker's managers.
 On Friday, Krasny Vyborzhets leaked information that a criminal case had been filed against Dyachenko and his lawyer - but refused to produce any evidence that the two were under investigation.
 &quot;They have only filed a request to open an investigation,&quot; Dyachenko said. 
 The St. Petersburg Prosecutor's Office was not available for comment.
 The head of Krasny Vyborzhets' supervisory board, Galina Burenina, said there was no evidence Dyachenko possessed a controlling stake and sent a copy of the court ruling prohibiting the shareholder meeting that appointed him director general.
 &quot;We've been involved in negotiations with Norilsk Nickel concerning the sale of the plant,&quot; Burenina said in a telephone interview from St. Petersburg. &quot;We could have cut a deal, but [Dyachenko] intervened.&quot;
 She did not exclude the possibility that talks with Norilsk Nickel or its affiliates would resume.
 It appears, however, the company will first have to talk to Dyachenko because Norilsk Nickel has bailed out of the project.
 &quot;We sold the 19.9 percent stake that belonged to Kolskaya Mining Co. [to companies affiliated with Dyachenko],&quot; said Anatoly Komrakov, spokesman for Norilsk Nickel.
 The other 31.9 percent of the shares bought by Dyachenko at the request of Kolskaya have also been sold to Technology and Investments and its affiliates.
 Dyachenko said his task now is to wipe out the old management team, clean up the company, repackage it and resell it, tentatively to Norilsk Nickel.
 &quot;Formally, I can sell it to anybody,&quot; he said. &quot;But from the point of view of business ethics, it will be unseemly if it goes to anybody else [but Norilsk Nickel].&quot;
 Krasny Vyborzhets rolled out 13,200 tons of non-ferrous metal products in 2000, up 53 percent on a yearly basis. Sales were up 108 percent to 700 million rubles ($25 million).
 In March, sales were down 25 percent month on month. &quot;I expect a further drop in April,&quot; said Burenina. &quot;Who will sign contracts with managers facing the threat of layoffs?&quot;

TITLE: Report: Growth Rate To Slow in 2001
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Economic growth in Russia will be cut by more than half in 2001 as oil prices decline and the ruble strengthens, hitting growth in the rest of the former Soviet Union, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said Sunday. 
 The EBRD, the development bank for Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, said in the latest annual update to its transition report that growth in Russia would decline this year to 3.4 percent from 7.7 percent in 2000. 
 It said a key risk for Russia and the rest of the Commonwealth of Independent States was the impact of a weaker global economy on commodity prices and exports. 
 The challenge for Russia and other oil-rich CIS states would be to keep fiscal policy tight and to allow currencies to adjust to changes in the terms of trade. 
 Russia benefited from high world oil prices and competitiveness gains from the depreciation of the ruble in 1998-99, the EBRD said. However, growth had already slowed with the oil price lower and the exchange rate appreciating. 
 It said the International Monetary Fund had forecast that every $1 decline in the price of oil cut Russian government revenues by about $450 million. 
 The bank said forecasts for Russian growth would depend on whether increases in domestic demand could be sustained with the ruble appreciating. 
 It saw domestic demand rising 5 percent this year, after 11 percent in 2000, supported by rising private consumption and continued investment growth. 
 Export growth would decline to 4 percent from 6 percent and import growth to 10 percent from 16 percent. 
 The bank forecast consumer price inflation in Russia would pick up to 22.4 percent this year from 20.8 percent in 2000.
 The EBRD said inflationary pressure would remain high in Russia as long as the Central Bank maintained its policy of targeting the nominal exchange rate.

TITLE: Local Firm Banking on the Man From Moscow
AUTHOR: By John Varoli
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In October, Mikhail Moshiashvili left a high-powered job in Moscow as head of corporate finance for Yukos Oil Co., Russia's second largest oil producer, to work for ZAO Ilim Pulp Enterprise, a privately-owned St. Petersburg pulp and paper industry holding company.
 Top managers prefer Russia's capital, but Moshiashvili sees a chance to shape a growing company's destiny, and one with sales last year of $1 billion. Under his guidance, Ilim Pulp is launching a program to increase company value to prepare for an initial public offering (IPO) and American depository receipt (ADR) issue in the West in 2003.
 Moshiashvili, who is 27 and was born in Georgia, is part of the company's effort to bring in foreign experts and Russians with Western experience. He previously worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. and ABN Amro Bank in Moscow.
 Moshiashvili said his main goal is to streamline and modernize production, recruit foreign managers, and adopt international accounting standards. The company also plans to expand output of high-value wood products, which are now a negligible portion of sales.
 &quot;Ilim Pulp is a great opportunity because I am responsible for development and increasing corporate value,&quot; said Moshiashvili. &quot;Here I can make a difference in the way the company develops.&quot;
 Since Russia's 1998 financial crisis and ruble devaluation, exporting processed timber is more profitable, and Ilim Pulp sales have grown about 20 percent annually. Ilim Pulp's plants are in northwest Russia and Siberia, and it ranks in the world's top twenty pulp and paper companies in terms of output.
 Despite its large size, up until a year ago, the company's name never appeared in the press. It deliberately kept a low profile until it had solidified its position in the market. Now, Ilim Pulp is flexing its muscles, though plotting its course carefully.
 &quot;We want to hold off on the IPO and third level ADRs until 2003 because by then our business will be better developed,&quot; said Moshiashvili, whose official title is First Deputy Chief Executive Officer. &quot;Increasing corporate value is not a PR exercise, but our company's new philosophy at every level.&quot;
 Ilim Pulp accounts for nearly 35 per cent of Russia's pulp and board volume, and exports 70 per cent of output. Founded in 1992 as a company trading pulp and paper products, in 1996 it began buying its pulp and paper manufacturing suppliers and this process accelerated after the crisis.
 &quot;Suddenly, after the ruble devaluation, these companies became cheap to buy, especially for us because our company was, and is, earning hard currency from exports,&quot; said Svatoslav Bytchkov, Ilim Pulp's director of corporate communications.
 In 2000 sales increased 25 percent to nearly $1 billion. In 1999, sales were $800 million while the company had a profit of $100 million. The company has not released profit figures for 2000.
 Among Ilim Pulp's leading shareholders are offshore companies, such as Intersetz S.A., Interpulp Ltd., and Alcaria Ltd. These companies are believed to be controlled by company directors, but the company would not clarify. Ilim Pulp did say that Promstroibank of St. Petersburg, the largest bank by assets in northwest Russia, is also a shareholder, but it would not comment on the exact stake.
 Sputnik Group, the investment company controlled by American financier Boris Jordan, has spent $30 million over the past two years to build its National Timber Company (NTC) in the Volog da region, which is about 460 kilometers northeast of Moscow. The company sells logs and sawn timber to Russian and European markets, and Sputnik will invest at least $50 million in it over the next three to five years.
 &quot;Our main goal is to create a vertically integrated timber company, made of units which are located in various regions of Russia,&quot; said Jordan, president of Sputnik, and the new general director at the TV station, NTV. &quot;We plan to acquire more timber companies, to implement modern production technology and attract more investment to this sector.&quot;
 Sputnik estimates that NTC's annual sales will reach $70 million in 2001.
 Given the changes in the Russian economy since the financial crisis in August 1998, analysts are optimistic about opportunities to develop domestic timber production.
 &quot;Sputnik and others like it have good chances of being successful in the timber industry because the ruble is weak, making it advantageous to export finished goods, and because the domestic market is growing&quot; said Lev Savulkin, senior analyst at the Leontief Center for Social and Economic Research in St. Petersburg.
 But there are dark clouds on the horizon that might spoil this growth.
 &quot;While worldwide there has been an increase in investment and sales in the timber industry, as the world moves toward recession, things could become tougher as demand declines,&quot; said Savulkin. &quot;Also, if the ruble strenghtens, that will make exports less profitable.&quot;
 Nearly 83 percent of the timber Ilim Pulp cuts goes toward pulp and paper production, to make items ranging from raw pulp to carton and paper. The remainder is used in products such as furniture and construction materials.
 The company's main program for increasing corporate wealth centers on improving sales of wood products, which is a high value product, as opposed to pulp and paper which are low value products, said Moshiashvili. Of the company's nearly $1 billion in sales, only $40 million was in wood products.
 &quot;Right now, the most valuable part of the trees is processed as pulp, which is a low value product,&quot; said Moshiashvili. &quot;Every dollar invested in wood products gives two to three more times profit than that in pulp and paper.&quot;
 He said that after production is restructured in favor of wood products, total sales should reach $1.8 billion in 2004, and nearly $400 million of that should be from wood products, a tenfold increase over current levels.
 According to Moshiashvili, the company is now valued at about $700 million or $800 million, and Ilim Pulp will soon choose an international auditing firm to make a more exact appraisal. The company's goal is to boost its value to $1.5 billion in 2003, in time for the IPO.
 But like most Russian companies, the company's directors want a strategic foreign investor but do not want to give up control.
 &quot;We plan to sell no less than 15 percent and no more than 25 percent of our shares in the IPO,&quot; said Moshiashvili.
 And so Moshiashvili's most important task will be convincing foreign investors that their investment is safe with Ilim Pulp's directors.

TITLE: Navy Orders a Birthday Yacht
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Ministry of Defense will finance a $2 million parade boat to be built at St. Petersburg's Severnaya Verf, a shipyard in the city's southwest. It was announced last week that it had been contracted by the Defense Ministry to build a $2 million dollar parade boat to be used by the navy for official ceremonies.
 According to a press release issued by the shipyard, Russia's navy has ordered from it a 27.4-meter-long cutter for the Leningrad Naval Base command in St. Petersburg. Severnaya Verf said that the contract was signed at the end of March. Construction is expected to begin on April 28, and the ship will undergo preliminary testing in fall, 2002.
 Numerous defense officials contacted by the St. Petersburg Times were unaware of or refused comment on the project. According to officials at the naval base, its commander, Vice-Admiral Alexsander Kornilov, was on vacation and could not be reached for comment, and the navy had &quot;no information on the project.&quot;
 The ship will be used in a naval parade, which has been planned to celebrate St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary in 2003, and is to carry &quot;the country's top officials,&quot; according to the press release. The cutter will be fitted with &quot;furniture of the highest comfort, paneled with teak and built in a modern design.&quot;
 &quot;The boat's launch will not be a big or major event and isn't worthy of coverage.&quot; Svetlana Yermolayeva, press spokesperson for Severnaya Verf General Director Valery Venkov, said.
 Naval representatives from other nations were surprised to hear of the construction of such a luxury vessel.
 &quot;The Finnish Navy only owns ships with military functions,&quot; Commander Ilpo Birjholm of the Finnish Navy's information department said.
 &quot;Flagships, which are used as communication platforms and have light armaments, carry the naval command,&quot; Lieutenant Bill Speaks, a spokesperson for the U.S. Navy, said. &quot;But the U.S. Navy has no specially designated parade or leisure ships of its own.&quot;

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Lingo Apartheid
 

LONDON (Reuters) - Pressure groups from around Eastern Europe on Monday accused the bank set up to help the region adapt to the market economy of practicing a sort of "language apartheid" by issuing its documents in English.
 Representatives of more than 190 groups in 20 countries presented letters they had written, all in local languages, to the directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, protesting the practice.
 The EBRD, which channels 2.7 billion euros ($2.44 billion) worth of funding a year to countries from Poland to Azerbaijan, is holding its 10th annual meeting this week in London.
 Despite the fact that its presidents have always been French, it is based in the British capital and uses English as its lingua franca.
 
 
Daimler Stress
 

FRANKFURT, Germany (Reuters) - Investors are braced for an ugly set of first-quarter results on Wednesday from auto giant DaimlerChrysler, crippled by a costly recovery plan for its stricken U.S. Chrysler unit, but hope the worst is over.
 "The company will have reached its low point in the first quarter," said Georg Stuerzer, an analyst at HypoVereinsbank.
 The group announced restructuring measures at the end of February which showed the bulk of one-off charges will be included in the first quarter, with the aim of getting the worst out of the way.
 Analysts said they will be looking for an update on progress of the restructuring. Earlier this month DaimlerChrysler said it was on track to achieve its goals, including returning the U.S. Chrysler unit to profit in 2002. 



TITLE: Legislation and Creativity Themes of Ad Conference
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The whole event was pretty low key, with many of the participants spending a lot of their time socializing with each other in the bars and restaurants, but this didn't mean that about 500 representatives of Russia's advertising sector didn't have serious things to discuss.
 The Days of Russian Advertising 2001 conference, was held for the sixth consecutive year over the weekend at the Baltiyets hotel in the St. Petersburg suburb of Repino. It was established by the city's IMA-press ads agency and the St. Petersburg Advertizing. What started as an event bringing together 87 participants from St. Petersburg and Moscow has grown to its present size, gathering together advertizing representatives from 31 regions of the country to contribute to the conference's exhibition hall, to pick winners for the best advertisement in each of four categories, and to hold round tables to discuss a number of issues within the sector.
 The conference demonstrated the lighter side of the industry by choosing a television ad for Kommersant business daily in which President Vladimir Putin is shown frying cucumbers to receive the overall grand prize.
 To the background sound of Kremlin bells, the camera in the ad pulls back to show an actor playing the president, who then says: &quot;Well, what else should I do if there's no <i>Ko ryushka</i> in Mos cow,&quot; and then cuts to a headline in Kommersant making the same statement, implying that the business daily is an important source of information for Putin. Korushka - a small fish normally caught in the spring - has a strong cucumber-like smell.
 &quot;The entire meeting seems to be a primarily informal event,&quot; said Dmitry Mu rash kin, a representative from Volga, a Niz hny Novgorod-based television broadcast company. &quot;The contest creates an atmosphere of competition.&quot;
 &quot;Unfortunately our company's advertisements didn't make it onto the short-lists for the prizes, but we met with colleagues here and discussed the ideas we are all working on.&quot;
 According to the chairman of the committee of judges for the competition, Eduard Moradpour, creative ideas are lacking in Russian advertisements.
 &quot;Russian advertisers follow the same marketing strategies as those followed by their international counterparts,&quot; Moradpour wrote in an information bulletin to the conference. &quot;But their creative standards are not high enough and the problem is that the market is not developed.&quot;
 &quot;Clients don't see what ad agencies can offer and don't understand that ideas are the most important content of the product.&quot; 
 &quot;But an advertisement industry does exist in Russia and festivals like this are needed to show its professional development,&quot; he added.
 In addition to the annual selection of the best advertisements in each category, this year's conference centered around political developments vital to the industry.
 &quot;This year's festival has a special meaning, as it is taking place with a discussion of revisions to Russia's advertising laws providing a background,&quot; Vla di mir Kismereshkin, the president of the Advertising Council of Russia said in a press release. 
 &quot;In particular we are looking today for a decision on what direction advertising here will develop in the future and whether the industry will be able to defend its rights and interests,&quot; Kis me reshkin said. 
 The bill of which he spoke, which passed on first reading in the State Duma at the beginning of February by an overwhelming 275-73 vote, contains a raft of amendments to Russian advertising laws which would prohibit the interruption of films, radio shows and educational and children's programming to show commercials. The bill was drafted up by the Astrakhan Legislative Assembly introduced by Communist Party Deputy Nikolai Arefyev.
 The introduction of the bill sparked widespread protest from industry executives and a number of television advertisements opposing its contents.
 The bill still has to pass votes on two more readings - another session for debate is scheduled for April 27 - as well as a vote in the Federation Council, before it is sent for Putin's presidential approval, and Kis me resh kin hopes to bring about significant changes in its content. 
 &quot;The people involved in this process are not only Duma deputies,&quot; Kismereshkin said. &quot;They also include representatives of the Russian Advertising Council, which submitted 27 pages of amendments, which were subsequently accepted by the Duma.&quot;
 &quot;In our application to the Duma at the next reading we plan to push to have the final reading and decision held back until October so that there can be a general reading of the entire advertising law,&quot; he said. &quot;By that time we hope to have come up with our own amendments.&quot;
 &quot;Advertising industry players want to have stable rules, which is a very simple logic which I will use to convince the deputies.&quot;
 The set of amendments the Duma has already accepted would counteract the legislation that has raised so many backs in the industry, while new amendments submitted would include the industry's own wish list.&quot;
 The bill in its original form could further cripple an advertising market still in the process of trying to rebound from the 1998 financial crisis. Even without the restrictive bill, television ads are expected to generate only $300 million this year - 30 percent below 1998 levels.
 According to the Press Ministry, commercials run during national broadcasts make up about 60 percent of all TV advertising revenues. And on regional levels, the figure jumps to 80 to 85 percent.
 According to the Russian Association of Advertising Agencies (RARA), total revenues in the advertising market in 2000 totaled $1.1 billion, representing a 45 percent growth over 1999. The Russian Public Relations Group (RPRG), puts the number a little higher at $1.4 billion, but both figures are below the record level of $1.8 billion reached in 1997. 
 According to Gallup AdFact, the most active advertiser in Russia is Procter & Gamble, with $429 million spent on advertising in 2000. Wrigley finished second with $222 million while the Russian company with the highest spending in the market, Wimm-Bill-Dann, occupied only seventh place, spending $121.5 million.

TITLE: Europe's Beef Scare Is Only a Ripple in Russia
AUTHOR: By Florence Gallez
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the world turns away from European beef, Russians have been diving into their plates of meat as heartily as ever before. But should they?
 Outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in European livestock are wreaking havoc on EU rural economies already shaken by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad-cow disease. But as Western European farmers slaughter their cattle, consumers panic and the world bans meat and grain imports from some or all European Union nations, many people in Russia have been keeping their cool. Some experts say Russia is better able to handle possible contagion, and some officials even see potential profits where their foreign counterparts see economic catastrophe.
 But perhaps Russia is suffering from a false sense of security: German lawmaker Helmut Lamp has been quoted in the media as suggesting that unwanted EU beef be sent as &quot;food aid&quot; to Russia, North Korea and Mongolia; and the Moscow City government is reported to have made a highly controversial deal in February to import beef from Bavaria, despite reports of BSE infection in Germany and a Russian ban on beef imports from three German states in effect since January.
 
 <strong>INVINCIBLE IVAN
 </strong>Russia's response to the crisis has been unique. &quot;A Healthy Nation: In Russia There is No Fear of Foot-and-Mouth,&quot; declared the daily Izvestia on its March 15 front page. &quot;Don't worry, it's just madness. We are being frightened, but we are not scared,&quot; challenged the daily Kommersant's Dengi magazine in February. &quot;Our plain-looking but disease-free cows will save the world from mad cow,&quot; trumpeted Moskovsky Komsomolets.
 Not that the Russian press is uncritical of the government's response to the epidemics. But a prevalent opinion in agricultural circles is that the country is at low risk of contamination by both BSE and foot-and-mouth due in part to the lack of technological progress and resources in the cash-starved cattle-breeding industry.
 &quot;It's not a problem in Russia. And it's poverty that has protected us so far,&quot; said Konstantin Mezentsev, vice president of the Farmers' Association, or AKKOR, which represents only private farmers, who work 9 percent of the country's land.
 Russian farmers do not use feed containing ground bone of other mammals, which is believed to be linked to BSE, but rather much cheaper animal protein-free feed such as grass, he said. They practically stopped manufacturing animal-derived feed about 10 years ago and even then they produced it in very small quantities, he said.
 As for imported bone meal, it is beyond their pockets. Last year a kilogram of imported German animal feed cost $17, while Russian-made animal feed costs $5 to $6, which is still a high price for local farmers, he said.
 &quot;Protein-free feed is much cheaper and there are no risks of being infected. So our cows are poorer but they are healthier,&quot; he said.
 His prediction: &quot;I don't expect it [BSE] will spread to Russia. We are too poor to use this feed - we will never use it.&quot;
 Vasily Ganzenko, deputy general director of AKKOR-Agro, a branch of the association that specializes in farming equipment, confirmed cattle breeders' attitude.
 &quot;Russian farmers are not concerned about this problem. They are not affected by it. So far nobody has approached us about it,&quot; he said. &quot;Of course it's a very serious problem, especially because it's well-known that Russia imports the cheapest meat. It might be infected, who knows. So far people are not falling ill, so I guess it's OK.&quot;
 
 <strong>MAYBE NOT
 </strong>However, there is fierce disagreement among experts as to what type of feed Russia has been using. Late last year, the daily Vedomosti quoted Viktor Yatskin, head of the trade and information committee of the Russian Meat Union, saying: &quot;In Russia, bone powder has traditionally been used to feed all animals.&quot; Russian Meat Union head Musheg Mamikonyan disputed this, saying that such feed is used for pigs only, while cattle are fed hay or pasture grass.
 The State Statistics Committee estimated that in the course of last year Russia imported 117,967 tons of feed containing ground bone.
 However, Deputy Agriculture Minister Sergei Dankvert said in an interview in February, &quot;We have been feeding vegetable-derived proteins to our animals for the past 10 years. Most farmers have not used feed from bone meal since the late '80s because they had no money to buy expensive fodder from abroad.&quot;
 As for the danger posed by foot-and-mouth disease, if it is to spread to Russia, it will more likely come from the east, and Russia has been carrying out inoculations in view of its high exposure to contamination from its eastern borders.
 First identified in 1897, the viral infection was almost eradicated in Europe but has persisted throughout Asia. Russia is no novice in dealing with the disease, as outbreaks have been reported in Mongolia last summer and again this year. In mid-March, Russian authorities killed 3,000 antelopes suspected of infection, after they crossed the border from Mongolia, Interfax reported. Russia also successfully repressed an outbreak in its Primorye region last April, Interfax reported.
 According to Valery Zakharov, deputy director of the All-Russia Research Institute of Animal Protection based in Vladimir, inoculations in Russia cover 18 percent of cattle and 19.5 percent of sheep and goats. This year, inoculations were administered in Siberia's Buryatia and Chita regions, the North Caucasus, and the Rostov, Volgo grad, Stavropol, Krasnodar, Vla dimir, and Moscow regions, among others.
 The Associated Press reported on March 22 that Dutch veterinarians had also begun vaccinating herds of cattle after the government confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth disease in three farms in the eastern Netherlands, however no confirmation of any inoculations had been given by the Dutch Agriculture Ministry. Until now, EU members had avoided vaccination, fearing it would strip them of their disease-free status in world markets. Another reason why vaccination is controversial is that inoculated animals bear the same foot-and-mouth antibodies as infected animals, and it can be difficult to tell them apart.
 But what makes Russia so sure it is safe from harm, amid worldwide worry and beef bans? After all, the state of Russia's livestock and meat industry was dire enough that the government imposed an all-out ban on imports of some EU meat products on March 26. The government has said the ban will continue at least until Thursday.
 The country's cattle supply, in both state and private farms, is plummeting, from a total of 54.7 million heads in 1992 to 27.9 million heads as of Feb. 1 of this year, according to the State Statistics Committee.
 Russia's cows have seen their ranks shrinking, from 20.6 million heads in 1992 to 13 million this year, according to the committee. Pig supply has gone from 35.4 million heads to 16.1 million heads within that period.
 As a result, production of processed meat goods, including poultry, is also on a steep decline, from 8.26 million tons in 1992 to 4.313 million tons in 1999, according to the committee. The latter said that these figures apply to the whole year.
 According to Yatskin of the Russian Meat Union, imports account for a third of the 6 million or so tons of meat consumed across the country annually. In the event of an all-out ban, the local meat industry would need at least two years of significant investment to compensate for imports from EU countries, he said.
 According to an Agriculture Ministry spokesperson, the ministry has officially declared that there are no cases of mad-cow disease in Russia. No cases of infection had been registered, neither in live cattle nor meat produce, she said in mid-March.
 These findings come from the ministry's Veterinary Department, on whose shoulders rests the entire responsibility of dealing with the effects of the meat crisis, from research to decision-making.
 In a February study entitled &quot;Diagnosis and Monitoring of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in Russia,&quot; senior veterinary official Nikolai Yaremenko and other veterinary experts stated: &quot;At present, BSE has not been registered in Russia.&quot;
 This verdict is based on research conducted by the Veterinary Department, which consisted of tests of 472 samples of brain tissue &quot;of cloven-hoofed animals&quot; across the country.
 Another spokesperson for the ministry, Irina Rozanova, said that no cases of foot-and-mouth disease had been registered, although she added that previous outbreaks of the virus occurred in the mid-'90s. &quot;For now the situation in Russia is safe,&quot; she said.
 
 <strong>SAFETY GAP
 </strong>Despite these figures, several cases of possible BSE-related infections in cattle as well as humans have been reported in Russia.
 In his study, Yaremenko writes that his team has found clinical signs similar to those of BSE in the brain and spinal cord tissue of cattle in the Kaluga region.
 According to Moscow's Center of State Sanitary-Epidemiological Inspectorate, last August a 32-year-old man from Murmansk was admitted to Infectious Diseases Hospital No. 1 in Moscow with symptoms of generalized sclerosis. He was later diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). And in December, a 29-year-old sailor died from CJD, Agence France Presse reported in late January. In neither case was it stated whether the patients were suffering from new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the fatal brain disorder believed to be linked to BSE, however Agence France Presse reported that the sailor was Russia's first case of a possibly BSE-related death.
 
 <strong>BEEF CRIME
 </strong>The food crisis has renewed fears of associated criminal trade. On Feb. 27, Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev denounced the possible dumping of unwanted, infected meat from the EU onto the Russian market, The Associated Press reported Interfax as saying, expressing fears among Russian officials that such meat would be exported to Russia instead of being destroyed.
 Earlier this year, Russian veterinary authorities seized two tons of what was deemed to be possibly BSE-infected French beef, suspected of having been illegally imported via the United States, Agence France Presse reported.
 A spokesperson for the State Customs Committee said that so far the committee had not received any directives to alter its customs policies to curb illegal imports. &quot;There are border control checkpoints, and no changes are planned,&quot; she said.
 The foot-and-mouth epidemics have also unleashed a banning spree, starting in March with the ban of imports of animal products from China, Vietnam, Taiwan, South and North Korea, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, into the Russian Far East and culminating with the banning of European meat products on March 26.
 Rozanova of the Agriculture Ministry said that the Veterinary Department ordered a ban on all meat and live animals from Britain in the wake of the latest outbreak. The ban, in effect since Feb. 21, will be removed once the cattle epidemic is over, she said.

TITLE: Lenoblast Hits the Road To Seek Investment
TEXT: The Leningrad Oblast has enjoyed marked success in attracting foreign investors to do business in the region, as well as plaudits from various businesses set up and working there.
 But, while the oblast administration is happy with the results it has so far achieved, Sergei Naryshkin, who chairs the Leningrad Oblast International Relations and External Economic Relations Committee, told staff writer </i><strong>Andrey Musatov</strong><i> that it is not yet ready to rest on its laurels.
 </i>
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>The governor of the Leningrad Oblast, Valery Serdyukov, is planning a visit to the United States from May 15 to May 20. Can you provide a little bit of background on the nature and purpose of the trip? Will you yourself be going?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>The visit consists of two parts. The first is connected to our sister-region relations with the state of Maryland. Up until now this relationship has been based on a general understanding of the relationship, but while the governor is there he plans to sign an official partnership agreement with the government of Maryland. 
 The second aim of the visit is to try to attract more investment from American companies to the Leningrad Oblast. About a month ago we ran an on-line conference via the Internet, which was aimed at potential foreign investors to the region, so the visit will just be the next in a chain of promotional activities with the goal of establishing the Leningrad Oblast on the international market and, in this case, on the American market for investment.
 During the first two days, when the delegation will be in Washington, it will take part in a in seminar-format meeting with a number of American companies. In particular, we'll be meeting with companies working in the agricultural and food processing sectors. The oblast side will also be represented by the heads of large companies based in the Leningrad Oblast.
 As for the second question, yes, I will likely participate in this trip. 
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>When you say the heads of major companies in the oblast, about which companies are you speaking?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>They include the chiefs of Sevzapmoltorg [a major dairy-product producer and processor working in the Leningrad Oblast], Parnas-M, which is actually a holding company uniting firms in a number of sectors, the Luzhsky Meat-Processing Plant and Kraft-Jacobs.
 Then, after the seminar, there will also be negotiations and a number of meetings with U.S. Trade Department, authorities from the World Bank, the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation and with the U.S. Export-Import Bank.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>It seems then that you already have the list of participants set up. Do you, by the same token, already have an idea of what investment projects will be discussed? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>The goal of this visit is not so much the proposal of specific projects but promoting knowledge of the positive conditions for business in the region. An analysis of our work over the last three or four years indicates that mostly strategic investors come and stay in Russia, and that they generally come here with their own projects and their own business idea, so they don't need to have specific projects proposed to them.
 Ford is a perfect example. We're not going to approach them with an offer to participate in a project to build a sea port - even if it was a very promising project. Ford has an expertise and is in the business of making automobiles, and it will make automobiles in whatever region it chooses to operate.
 For the first three or four years during which we were actively trying to attract investment, we proposed a number of projects to potential investors. But then we realized that we could be much more effective by creating better conditions for business, providing information about these conditions to our prospective foreign partners, and by simply promoting the region itself. We think that the conditions here are good enough that they should attract investment on their own. 
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>According to information found on the Leningrad Oblast Internet site, the oblast administration has a target of $10 billion in investments it hopes to attract. Which sectors are most in need of this investment? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>The Leningrad Oblast's economy is made up of a lot of different sectors. Practically every possible industrial sector has some representation, and it's no secret that every sector and almost all of our facilities would benefit from further investment. A large number of plants which were built during the Soviet period require modernization and reconstruction as the degree to which they have deteriorated is significant. There are really very few exceptions in this case.
 This said, the sectors requiring the largest volume of investment are the transport sector and the transport infrastructure in general. A large amount of investment has already come to these sectors. These include a project for the construction of sea ports on the Gulf of Finland, projects for road construction, and a very promising project in developing our infrastructure through the construction of new terminal complexes. All of these transport projects are especially important because the oblast has a very advantageous geographic location. The oblast's territory can serve as a sort of connection chain with the nations of the European Union.
 Among the major sectors there is also the energy sector. One of the biggest projects in this sector is the reconstruction of Kirishineftorgsintez [oil refinery] complex. What the reconstruction really entails is the construction of a brand-new $700 million facility. 
 Food is also one of the more important sectors which has received a significant portion of all investment in recent years. And, of course, there are a number of market sectors - tobacco, for example - which became much more attractive after the 1998 crisis and created a much higher impetus for domestic production and producers.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Who's idea was it to stage the visit to the United States?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>The idea really isn't all that new. I think that it's really difficult to say who was the author of the idea. It's standard practice for the head of a large and fast-developing region to take a business-oriented trip abroad - to a more developed country - in order to increase the flow of investment. As the head of one of the subject bodies of the Russian Federation, it's also one of [the governor's] chief functions in the field of external economic activity. 
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>You said earlier that you consider the situation in the oblast right now &quot;good enough&quot; to attract significant investment. The most recent step the Leningrad Oblast administration took to improve this situation was to pass tax legislation which is favorable to new investment. What else does the oblast plan on doing to further improve the region's attraction for investment?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>The original law improving the tax position for investors was first passed in 1997 but, for a number of reasons, it has already been revised three times.
 One reason for the revisions is that we are always working to try to make the legislation better. But, on two occasions, we also had to revise the law in order to keep it in compliance with federal legislation, which, unfortunately, was changing very quickly. We will continue work on the revision of these laws to make them more effective.
 But the government of the Lenin grad Oblast will also work on the development of other, new laws. Presently legislation is being prepared to address the question of external trade from the oblast. The proposed legislation contains a list of measures aimed at stimulating exports from the region. The primary focus is on high-technology and high intellectual input products.
 At the same time, the legislation will deal with import questions as well. The aim is to stimulate imports of goods which for obvious reasons can't be produced here. Tropical fruits are a prime example - you just can't grow them in this climate.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>What specific proposals are you looking at to encourage certain categories of exporters and importers?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Once again, we're focusing on tax policy as an instrument. The basic proposal is to create better tax conditions for certain categories of traders. At the same time, the law shouldn't reduce the oblast's tax base. 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>About the changes the federal government made to its laws you spoke of earlier, do you think that these particular revisions were necessary?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>For a certain period, due to the changes in federal tax law, regional governments were not legally permitted to offer firms exemptions on the regional portion of the profit taxes they owed. We had already decided to provide just such exemptions to investors, so we had to adjust our laws to ensure that we could continue doing this. 
 More than anything else, investors are interested in stable conditions, including stable legislation. Thus, it's hard not to see that these changes in federal tax law brought, and still bring, an unnecessary level of anxiety and concern among investors. So our main task is to try to work toward ensuring that these anxieties and this level of concern don't increase.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>A large number of investors say that the registration process is one of the most difficult steps in opening a business in Russia. Are you planning to do anything to ease this process?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>I don't really think that is the hardest step. It's largely routine. What's worse is that to start a company where the base capital will be above a certain level then that company has to be registered in Moscow. In my opinion, the registration of any company, regardless of the level of capital involved, should take place where the company actually operates. St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast aren't that far from Moscow, but what about companies which open farther away - across the Urals or in Siberia, for example? I think that this is one of the conditions that should be changed.
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>What are the characteristics of the oblast that work most strongly to attract investors and, conversely, what are those that most deter prospective investors? 
 </i>A: The positive characteristics can basically be broken down into two categories - objective and subjective.
 With regard to objective characteristics - those given to us &quot;from above&quot; - one of the most important is geographic. The oblast borders Finland and, thus, the European Union. We've already built two automotive crossing points and a third is on the way. We also have access to the sea and to the two largest markets in Russia - St. Petersburg and Moscow.
 As far as the subjective factors are concerned, the basic policies of the oblast administration, the ready availability of information and the well-developed infrastructure are all important. Included among the infrastructure-related factors are well-developed banking, legal, insurance and consulting sectors.
 On the negative side, we still have a very involved system of developing, agreeing upon and approving projects and all of the necessary documents - the process takes too much time. I think that this system should be simplified. In some ways this is within the competence of the Leningrad Oblast administration, but this is not entirely the case because much of the system depends heavily on the actions and regulations of federal-level departments.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Is there significant competition between the oblast and the city of St. Petersburg to attract foreign investment?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Well, we do have a list of common projects. One example is a project being run in conjunction with the TACIS program in the field of creating a common development strategy under the name &quot;Synergy.&quot; The name comes from the synergetic effects of common action, which can achieve more than the sum of each administration's separate actions. We've already seen practical results within the framework of the agreement, the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Business Guide, which is aimed directly at attracting investment.
 There is, at the same time, competition, but it's not for the same type of investment, really. A large portion of the investment coming to St. Petersburg comes from real-estate developers. At the same time, I think it makes a lot more sense to continue the industrial development of the oblast. I am myself a St. Petersburg native and would like to see industrial facilities moved out of the city.
 There is a bit of competition between the two all the same, as there are many investors willing to come either to the city or to the oblast and the question of the deciding factor comes down to which can provide the greater advantages.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Why do you think St. Petersburg has been less active than the oblast in trying to attract investment?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>I wouldn't say that St. Petersburg has been less active. The city administration also includes many highly skilled specialists in this area. I think that, perhaps, they are faced with more difficult conditions. The city's administration is larger and, as is often the case, it's more difficult to coordinate actions between its different parts.
 But, if you compare the oblast and St. Petersburg statistically, annually the city attracts a large amount of investment. At the same time I don't think the city takes advantage of all the opportunities to attract even more to the extent the oblast has. But, you know, I really don't want to criticize my colleagues in the St. Petersburg administration.

TITLE: IndonesianEconomy In Danger, Says IMF
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Thatcher
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: JAKARTA, Indonesia - The IMF on Monday warned Indonesia its economic recovery was at risk, pressing the troubled country to urgently introduce measures to keep its ballooning budget deficit under control.
 Over the weekend the government slashed growth predictions for its battling economy, badly bruised by mounting domestic political crisis and an almost complete loss of investor confidence.
 In a statement at the start of a donors' meeting in Jakarta, the fund said the rupiah, down 20 percent this year, had &quot;overly depreciated&quot; and that inflation had become a key risk after hitting 10 percent in March.
 &quot;These developments are beginning to affect the macroeconomic framework - especially the fiscal outlook for 2001 - and place Indonesia's recovery at risk,&quot; it said.
 &quot;Therefore the priority is to restore [investor] confidence ... This will require renewed strong assurances of macroeconomic stability, especially fiscal sustainability, and an acceleration of economic reforms.&quot;
 The IMF - Indonesia's lifeline to the international financial community - has already delayed a fresh $400 million loan because of numerous concerns over Jakarta's lagging economic reforms.
 And Jakarta itself on Monday warned hopes for a new deal with the Fund would have to wait at least another month because of the time it would take parliament - whose approval is essential - to agree on the budget revisions.
 &quot;We believe that we will have parliament's consideration of this package [of revisions] by mid-May,&quot; chief economics minister Rizal Ramli told donors, acknowledging that economic reforms had been slow in coming.
 Indonesian officials said on Sunday that the budget forecasts were revised in the wake of the plunging rupiah, lower revenues and higher interest rates.
 The rupiah has slumped 20 percent against the dollar this year and interest rates are at 21-month highs, further cutting into what has been a very fragile economic recovery.
 The IMF said it was pleased that progress was being made in dealing with the fiscal problem, adding it had agreed on broad areas where measures needed to be taken.
 But Indonesian officials cautioned that IMF backing on the fiscal changes did not necessarily mean it was ready to sign a new pact of reforms.

TITLE: IT Firms Ride Outsource Boom
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Forget oil and gas, there's another natural resource that's making this country big bucks - creativity. 
 Russia's offshore software development industry is growing at an estimated rate of 50 percent a year. And while the industry leaders may not yet be powerful enough to run regional governments like their oil and gas colleagues, they are very bullish on the future.
 &quot;From year to year, offshore software development will play a more and more important role in the Russian economy. Russia has all the conditions necessary for growth in this industry,&quot; said Nikolai Nikolsky from Moscow-based Cognitive Technologies.
 &quot;One plus is the mentality of [Russian programmers],&quot; Nikolsky said. &quot;Our programmers are used to solving the whole problem in its entirety.&quot;
 It is just that attitude that has put Russian universities at the top of the list at international programming competitions over the last few years - an accomplishment that has not gone unnoticed by the Microsofts and IBMs of the world.
 As demand for programmers worldwide continues to outpace supply, the world's information technology companies are increasingly outsourcing work abroad. And companies like Cognitive Technologies, an incubator that helps grow small IT startups, may cash in not just on that trend, but on the increasing demand for software solutions at home. 
 One project the firm has invested in is the Siberian Information Technologies Center, which opened in November. SibIT has already attracted investments from within Russia totalling between $10-15 million, mostly from Russian investors such as the Factor industrial group, which specializes in non-ferrous metals and energy, Nikolsky said.
 Another Cognitive project is the Chernogolovka center, a start-up based in a chemistry-physics institute in the nearby Moscow region. Chernogolovka has been open for less than a year and it is already forecasting revenues of $10 million for 2001. The Chernogolovka center is one of many software companies that have been formed around universities and academic centers.
 Another success story is the IBS Group, which got its first outsourcing contract with IBM and Boeing in 1999. Now, 80 percent of the company's contracts come from abroad, with the remainder coming from domestic mobile telephone operator Vimpelcom and several leading banks.
 Dmitry Loschinin, CEO of IBS's programming unit Luxsoft, said that the strength of software companies in Russia is better measured by the number of employees it has as opposed to the amount of revenues it generates.
 &quot;If some company grows above 500-600 employees, that will indicate that the revenue stream is quite good,&quot; he said. 
 Luxoft currently has about 260 employees, including a rapidly expanding sales and market team. The company plans to grow to 350 by the end of the year, with increases of 70 percent to 80 percent for the next several years.
 Loschinin would not reveal the company's revenues, but he said that he expects them to grow at about the same rate as the number of employees.
 A handful of &quot;large&quot; companies focusing on offshore software have between 150 and 250 employees. With an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 programmers involved in offshore programming, that translates into hundreds of small teams, many with only about 10 employees.
 &quot;The future of the market depends on how the industry manages to consolidate ... Some leaders are emerging, such as Luxoft, but it is still not clear whether this will be a sector dominated by 2 or 3 houses or many small teams,&quot; said Alexander Andreev, financial analyst at Brunswick UBS Warburg.
 &quot;There is a revitalization in Russia, despite the crisis with U.S. companies,&quot; said Valery Medvedev of the Auriga Software Development Center, an affiliate of U.S.-based Auriga. &quot;Russian companies are seeing an upswing.&quot; Auriga SDC, located at Moscow State University, has approximately 100 employees involved in research and development and programming.
 Value estimates for the industry range from $80-120 million per year, but actual numbers are slippery because it is so hard to define the market itself. Many companies offer offshore software development in addition to other services, such as maintenance and consulting.
 There are other reasons besides the bottom line to encourage growth.
 &quot;It is some sort of success story that can balance all those bad stories that you hear related to Russia,&quot; Luxoft's Loschinin said.
 &quot;It also makes good use of people who used to develop weapons.&quot;

TITLE: Russia, Watch Out! The Dangers of NATO Expansion
AUTHOR: By Norma Brown
TEXT: IN recent weeks, The St. Petersburg Times has printed two opinion pieces by Americans urging the further expansion of NATO to include the former Soviet republics in the Baltic region. The authors would have us believe that such expansion is inevitable, that it is somehow in Russia's greater interests, and that Russia should cease its hopeless efforts to block it. Most recently, Michael McFaul of the Carnegie Endowment advised that Russia would be better off by &quot;demonstrating that Russia is too strong and self confident to worry about the ascension of the tiny Baltic states to the NATO alliance.&quot; Such advice is sophistry. The arguments of the pro-expansionists are ludicrous against the backdrop of NATO's strategic concept and the reality of what has happened in the wake of its thus-far limited expansion.
 NATO's first &quot;new strategic concept&quot; of November 1991 was a far cry from its previous cautious and highly defined doctrine, but it retained some element of restraint in recognition that the Soviet Union still existed. After the Soviet collapse, however, NATO documents began to shift toward a more assertive posture, issuing warnings to Russia on its behavior toward former Soviet states and the countries of central Europe.
 The logical culmination of NATO's emerging policy, as embodied in documents issued between November 1991 and April 1999, was NATO's revised strategic concept. This is an aggressive and pre-emptive doctrine that provided justification for the bombing of Yugoslavia and will justify similar responses to any situation deemed by NATO to be directly or indirectly &quot;threatening&quot; in the future. The 1999 revised strategic concept set forth an extremely vague rationale for NATO action - military or otherwise - in an undefined territorial area (&quot;in and around the Euro-Atlantic area&quot; and &quot;at the periphery of the Alliance&quot;) and in response to a range of situations that could and almost certainly would involve strictly internal issues of non-member countries.
 Among the stated risks to NATO security that would serve as potential triggers for NATO action are &quot;territorial disputes, inadequate or failed efforts at reform, the abuse of human rights, and the dissolution of states,&quot; as well as &quot;organized crime&quot; and &quot;the uncontrolled movement of large numbers of people, particularly as a consequence of armed conflicts.&quot; NATO also identifies as a risk to its security states on NATO's periphery that sell or acquire or attempt to acquire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and delivery means. Last, but hardly least from Russia's perspective, NATO states in its 1999 strategic concept that there is potential for the re-emergence of &quot;large-scale conventional aggression against the Alliance.&quot; This is as close as the strategic concept comes to naming names without actually naming names.
 The merits of NATO's intervention in Kosovo have been and will long continue to be a subject of considerable controversy. What cannot be denied is that the effort to attain a quick and bloodless (for NATO combatants) solution to a centuries-old problem has not achieved the Alliance's stated goals. There is not and has never been a long-term strategy for preserving territorial integrity while protecting the rights of minorities. Kosovo is not a multi-ethnic society. Repression previously directed by Serbian authorities against ethnic Albanians now is directed by the criminal KLA against ethnic Serbs, Roma and politically irritating ethnic Albanians. On the bright side for NATO members, ethnic Serbs and others fleeing repression in Kosovo are by and large heading for Serbia proper rather than for Western Europe. In this sense, the bombing of Yugoslavia may be considered by some NATO members as a success.
 Most recently, we have witnessed a cynical &quot;movement&quot; of ethnic Albanians, armed from Kosovo, against the legitimate authorities in Macedonia. In that event, we were also treated to the spectacle of NATO - which created the monster - feverishly attempting to turn a blind eye to the dispute. Instead of joining forces with the Macedonian government to put down the terrorists, NATO and the EU urged the Macedonian authorities to come to a &quot;political settlement&quot; with those who took up arms against it in pursuit of Greater Albania. We thus see that NATO is very good at military adventures, especially against essentially defenseless &quot;opponents,&quot; but pitifully incompetent when it comes to avoiding the negative political consequences of its military actions - of which it was repeatedly warned in advance from many quarters. Despite this fresh history, we are still to believe that adding more countries to NATO to help out in future ill-conceived military adventures will add to stability on the continent.
 Russia is right to consider further NATO expansion against this background. In the conflict against Kosovo, Russia was &quot;protected&quot; from the folly of disagreeing with NATO actions by having Hungary and Bulgaria collaborate in blocking Russian efforts to provide assistance to Belgrade. Now many are keen to invite Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the NATO fold, which would mean moving NATO infrastructure up to Russian borders and putting Russia squarely in the area of &quot;the periphery of the Alliance&quot; - where NATO actions in response to that vast array of potentially destabilizing events would be justified by the Alliance's strategic concept. Indeed, with regard to Kaliningrad, it would put non-member Russia <i>within </i>NATO territory. It is in this context that we should judge arguments that the inclusion of the &quot;tiny Baltic states&quot; - and no doubt everybody else in the former Warsaw Pact except Russia - is in Russia's interests.
 NATO has already demonstrated its readiness to use its power and resources in pursuit of self-serving, short-term goals without any sort of long-term policy or vision. It has demonstrated a blithe lack of concern about using force unilaterally and in defiance of international law. Is there thus any serious reason to believe that advancing NATO to Russia's doorstep - that is to say, up against a country that NATO's own strategic concept has set out as a potential future enemy - would heighten European security? Is this a step that Russia should regard as helpful to its own security? Is the prospect of the Baltic and central European states collaborating to block Russian defense of its vital interests in the face of NATO &quot;crisis response&quot; one that Russia should embrace? In the case of NATO's bombardment of Yugoslavia, the only negative fallout was the expansion of armed separatist action to Macedonia. In the case of Russia, the results of miscalculation carry much graver risks.
 Russia should not abandon its efforts to persuade Europeans and Americans that further expansion of NATO is not in anybody's interests. What is needed today is a new Euro-Atlantic security system that recognizes Russia's right to be fully engaged as an equal partner. It is inarguably in the interest of Europeans and Americans to forge a genuine partnership with Russia that will avoid the creation of an artificial enemy. A bigger NATO is simply a bigger threat to both European and global security.
 
 <i>Norma Brown is a retired U.S. diplomat who served on the U.S-Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission and was head of Ambassador Bill Walker's political reporting unit at the OSCE Mission to Kosovo. She contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: An AIDS Vaccine Is the Only Long-Term Hope
TEXT: FOUR years ago, doctors in Kenya noticed something unusual about a group of prostitutes in a Nairobi slum. Unlike many other Kenyan prostitutes, they were not contracting AIDS. Tests showed that these women had very high levels of cytoxic T cells, which stimulate the immune system to kill viruses. These findings, in turn, led to a new AIDS vaccine candidate, and last month doctors began using Kenyan volunteers to test its safety.
 Scientists and public health officials have long known that a vaccine offers the only long-term hope of conquering AIDS. Yet 21 years into the epidemic, only one candidate has made it to the final stage of clinical tests - trials testing its effectiveness in humans.
 As of now, even the most optimistic development schedule suggests that an effective AIDS vaccine will not be available on a worldwide basis for at least seven years, a period when tens of millions of new infections will have established themselves.
 One reason progress has been slow is that scientists have never before faced the challenge of developing vaccines that work by stimulating an immune response against a disease that destroys the immune system. In addition, the AIDS virus mutates very fast, allowing it to outwit potential vaccines. But the non-scientific obstacles have been even more formidable.
 One problem is that AIDS vaccine research has no concentrated political constituency. While people with AIDS are mobilizing worldwide, those who would benefit from a protective vaccine are still healthy and thus feel no similar urgency to press for vaccine development. There are other hurdles. The pharmaceutical industry has been reluctant to undertake the necessary research. The market for vaccines is mainly in poor nations, and vaccines are far less profitable than AIDS treatments, which patients need to take every day.
 This is a classic case where markets do not work and governments should step in. They were slow to do so. In 1995, spending on vaccine research amounted to only $125 million worldwide, compared with billions for AIDS treatments. Then came the establishment, in 1996, of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. This group has worked to fill in the gaps that have hindered vaccine development. It provides venture capital to stimulate promising research, in return for which companies must make the vaccine affordable to poor nations. If they do not, the group will license the vaccine to someone who will.
 Today, the world spends more than $350 million a year on vaccine research. It is crucial that governments and foundations maintain this commitment, thereby ensuring that neither lack of money nor bureaucratic lethargy impede the fastest possible development of an AIDS vaccine.
 
 <i>This comment originally appeared as an editorial in The New York Times. </i>

TITLE: It Was Almost Nuclear War
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: THE Cuban Missile Crisis - the moment the world came closest to all-out nuclear war - happened in 1962, but it still seems to be a story worth telling. Last week, a group of veterans from both sides of the crisis gathered in Moscow for a special screening of Kevin Costner's film about the incident, &quot;Thirteen Days.&quot; The group included former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, John F. Kennedy's former political adviser Theodore Sorensen and several former Soviet political and military chiefs.
 The Russian veterans genuinely liked the film despite inevitable Hollywood blunders such as a Russian nuclear-missile base in Cuba that has the atmosphere and appearance of a modern-day Moscow vegetable market during a weekend shopping rush hour, with hundreds of men and vehicles moving erratically in all directions while liquid rocket fuel is pumped into the missiles, and a Russian SAM missile knocking a U.S. U-2 spy plane out of the sky by hitting it directly in the wing, when in fact the SAM's warhead should explode tens of meters off target. The film also showed the U-2 performing missile-avoiding maneuvers that this high-altitude, extremely low-speed plane cannot do. And so on, and so on.
 To the Soviet veterans, though, the film remakes a world in which they were young and Russia was a superpower truly feared by everyone. Also, the main drama it depicts is not between East and West. The battle is between the White House and the hawks in the Pentagon who believe that Kennedy is too weak and are pushing him to bomb Cuba, invade the island, destroy Fidel Castro's regime and the Russian bases. The way they figure it, if the invasion of Cuba provokes a world war, that's not so bad since it will exterminate the Soviet menace once and for all.
 McNamara stated after the film last week: &quot;At the time, we did not know there were tactical nukes on Cuba. The CIA did not know there were any operational Soviet nukes or missiles on the island.&quot; Sorensen asked the audience: &quot;What if Kennedy took the wrong advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and attacked Cuba? The Soviets could have used the missiles before they were destroyed and we would be not be here today.&quot;
 The Russian veterans paint a somewhat different picture. General Mikhail Titov (chief of the operational department of the command staff of the Russian armed forces in Cuba in 1962) told me: &quot;Kennedy saved our lives. Our command on Cuba did not have the authority to use nukes even if the Americans attacked. As the missile crisis developed, the Kremlin even took away the right to use tactical nuclear weapons. If attacked, we would have begun to phone Moscow. When and if concrete instructions would have been issued, the air offensive would have wiped out all our missiles. I'm sure we would not have managed to hit the United States with a single nuke. The 40,000-strong Russian force on the island and the 200,000 badly trained, badly armed Cuban militia would have been decimated by air attacks. When the U.S. Army and Marine divisions landed, they would have met only token opposition. We would have been wiped out and we knew it. Our supreme command was in fact planning to hide in the Cuban mountains and maybe launch some guerrilla attacks.&quot;
 It seems the Joint Chiefs and Acheson were right to some extent. The United States could have successfully invaded Cuba in 1962. America might have even won a nuclear world war: The enemy would have been devastated by thousands of nukes, while the Soviets would have hardly managed more than 10 to 20 nuclear hits of U.S. territory. In the 1970s and 1980s this option was gone: Russia had too many warheads and delivery systems.
 But of course, today the world is in fact dominated by the United States. Kennedy and McNamara are vindicated, their &quot;soft&quot; approach was right. In the end, the Soviet Union collapsed without a battle.
 In 1962 I was scared, since I was listening to the BBC's World Service coverage. But most Russians were not because the Soviet propaganda machine downplayed the crisis. It was a miracle that the Kremlin leadership did not destroy itself and Russia in 1962, but they did it later. The Kremlin that rules its subjects with the help of vicious state propaganda is Russia's worst enemy: It has misled the nation into failure before and today seems to be gearing up to do so again.
 
 <i>Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent, Moscow-base defense analyst. </i>

TITLE: 10 Years Later, The KGB Time Bomb Explodes
TEXT: EVERYONE has their own jubilee dates, and I am no exception. Exactly ten years ago, in late April 1991, Moskovskie No vosti - then a newspaper on the front line of perestroika - published my feature story called &quot;The Time Bomb: A Political Portrait of the KGB.&quot;
 The heart of my analysis was that the Soviet security forces were the most disciplined and organized part of the bureaucracy and would do everything in their power to stop the democratic reforms sweeping the country. I couldn't have been more right. Just four months later, they made their attempt, bringing tanks into Moscow's streets. But they failed then.
 &quot;When I see the euphoria of my colleagues now and hear them saying 'Yes, we are finally back in power,'&quot; a retired KGB general and longtime source told me the other day. &quot;I recall those days in August 1991. We were sitting in our offices with wet pants, guessing what was going to happen to us. We expected the worst.&quot;
 By &quot;worst&quot; they meant something similar to the storming of the Stasi building by angry crowds in Berlin, the opening of secret files and the purge of the bureaucrats in epaulets and their associates. Such things had happened in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and later would sweep through Poland, the Baltic States and Bulgaria.
 But Russia - along with the other former Soviet republics, Yugoslavia and Romania - chose not to conduct a systematic revision of its administrative structures, rules, and personnel. Empirical studies show the correlation: Those countries that bore the burden of such reforms have much lower levels of corruption and have carried out speedier liberal and economic restructuring than those that did not.
 Galina Starovoitova, the People's Deputy and most vocal advocate of a law on lustration, aimed at banning the political police from top governmental and elected positions, is long dead. Her assassin remains unknown. Meanwhile, our publishing houses are rushing to bring out more and more books glorifying President Vladimir Putin's KGB past.
 Just this week I picked up a new one by Putin's former colleagues with the telling title, &quot;Yury Andropov and Vladimir Putin.&quot; The book's message is clear: Putin is the true heir of Andropov, longtime KGB boss and founder of the infamous ideological counterintelligence section (the Fifth Directorate) and, ultimately, the leader of the Soviet Union. The authors praise Putin for emphasizing the resurrection of the military-industrial complex and note that, for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, the defense budget has been increased this year. They explain why it is necessary for Putin to take firm action against those media organs that &quot;rock the boat&quot; and urge him not to compromise in his drive to restore Russia's status as a superpower.
 &quot;Either Putin - in the interests of the nation and the state and of the resurrection of a great power - will truly take power in his own hands,&quot; the authors conclude, &quot;and will introduce order with harsh methods disregarding all complaints about authoritarianism, or he will become merely a decorative figure.&quot;
 This back-to-the-USSR book was sent to the printer in January, before Putin's shakeup of the military and law-enforcement ministries and before the latest crackdown on the opposition media and before last week's creation of a de facto fully obedient legislature that abandons any pretense of separation of powers in Russia.
 All these steps - considered together with Putin's recent address to parliament with its notion of economic liberalism and a reformed bureaucracy along with persistent rumors about further purges in the president's closest circles - suggest that the so-called &quot;Pinochet scenario&quot; is underway. The logic of recent events allows for ever fewer doubts that Putin is trying to accommodate the aspirations of his corporation. It remains to be seen how &quot;economic liberalism,&quot; increased military expenditure and the restoration of a great-power ideology will combine and play themselves out. Personally, I don't believe that combining all these things is even possible, but I fear the human costs of trying may be enormous.
 
 <i>Yevgenia Albats is an independent, Moscow-based journalist. </i>

TITLE: An Ominous Path
AUTHOR: By Ira Straus
TEXT: THE decline of media freedom in Russia - symbolized by the takeover of NTV and the assaults on Segodnya and Itogi - will have damaging consequences for Russia both at home and abroad. Domestically, it will damage Russia's ability to govern itself, to oversee its leaders and restrain itself from blunders small and great. Abroad, it will damage Russia's ability to win even a normal degree of international trust and sympathy and to make deals that promote its national interest. 
 The domestic consequences of loss of media freedom are well known, but the international consequences are no less severe. A government without a free, inquiring press takes on the character of a conspiracy against the external world. No one knows what it is really thinking. The external world responds with distrust of its intentions at every step. When President Vladimir Putin makes an overture to Europe, it is received as a scheme to divide the Atlantic alliance - and it is rejected as such. Rejected by Europe as well as by America, any such proposal becomes counterproductive for Russia.
 Russia is rapidly sinking back into the diplomatic condition of the Brezhnev era, when any overture was automatically perceived as intended to &quot;divide and deceive&quot; the West. The Soviet regime was viewed - not without reason - as a conspiracy against the outside world. With its closed-off ways, it enjoyed a sense of power and self-determination, but it also paid a huge price. 
 It trained the world to suspect its intentions, until this suspicion became second nature. Even its friendly overtures were routinely received as hostile acts.
 It took Mikhail Gorbachev many years to overcome this suspicion and enable the country to participate normally in the international arena. To do so, he had to make a long series of concessions over many years, gradually wearing down the instinctive suspicion and winning a more or less normal degree of international trust. However, the effort succeeded and after 1991, Russia - despite a daunting legacy of problems to be overcome - was treated largely as a normal player in international circles.
 It is this trust, purchased at such a high price, that is now being thrown away. Putin is increasingly viewed with suspicion. With a few ill-considered moves in the course of a few months, he is taking upon himself the worst spiritual legacy of the Soviet regime - the legacy of a closed society, of conspiracy and distrust.
 Whereas Gorbachev - once the regime opened up its processes enough for people to see the real discussion - radiated sincerity and whereas it was clear to everyone that Yeltsin stood for at least some degree of pluralism, Putin radiates a conspiratorial mentality. People wonder what he is plotting, even when he has nothing up his sleeve. Even those of us who have been the most persistent over the last dozen years in arguing that the West has fundamental common interests with Russia and ought to concentrate on pursuing them and integrating Russia into global structures so that we can all strategize together - even we find ourselves having to hedge more and more against the possibility of double-dealing and concealed motives in the Kremlin.
 By tightening the noose around the media, Russia is undermining its ability to pursue its national interests constructively. And eventually, some years down the road, the country will again have to pay a terrible price to win back elemental trust.
 All this damage is being inflicted on Russia, evidently for the sake of nothing more than revenge against journalists and media - media that have said things that hurt, and that hurt because they were true.
 How much farther will the losses to media freedom go? Most likely there will be compromises at this stage. Some remnants of NTV and the related journalistic collectives will continue. It would take a decade to roll back all the freedoms developed since 1985 in the absence of a major war or an overriding crisis. It is not something that could be done overnight, even if Putin wanted to. 
 The world would like to believe that Putin is truly sincere in his pronouncements about the importance of a free press. However, this is not only a question of Putin's conscious intentions; it is also a question of the dynamics of the situation - the bandwagoning dynamics of a policy that cuts the negative feedback loops and the narrowing dynamics of a mentality that perceives &quot;enemies&quot; and tries to expurgate them. Putin's administration exudes this mentality, even to the extent of intertwining state information and security doctrines. 
 The restraints on the state have been weakened - including the restraints against further assaults on the media. Each restriction paves the way for further restrictions. It is like watching a movie of the Gorbachev era - in which each opening led to a further opening - run in reverse. When the prevailing ideology is one of &quot;opening,&quot; each opening is not an isolated event, but the beginning of a chain reaction. Likewise, when the prevailing ideology is one of restriction, a single closing leads to the shutting down of channels of discourse that had served as constraints against further closures.
 The writer Arthur Koestler once observed that each turn in the road opens up new vistas, new scenery and perspectives for the traveler, new opportunities for some people to win and others to lose. Means create new, unanticipated ends. Russia's current prospects, then, are ominous indeed.
 
 <i>Ira Straus is the U.S. co-ordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO and a senior associate at the Program on Transitions to Democracy. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Itera, We Are Still Waiting For Answers
TEXT: FINALLY, after the business community has been pounding on Itera's doors for years clamoring for hard information about its owners and structure, the company has responded with a significant but far from satisfactory gesture toward transparency. For the first time in its nine-year history, Itera - whose growth into the world's seventh-largest gas company in less than a decade is both highly suspicious and little short of miraculous - released a partial breakdown of its complex ownership structure this week.
 Never mind that Itera president Igor Makarov had the gall to claim that he is &quot;fed up&quot; with all the speculation about Itera's questionable ties to Gazprom and to complain that such conjecture &quot;disturbs our ... normal, objective work.&quot; We'll forgive Makarov his petulance if he'll forgive us our understandable dissatisfaction with the sketchy and evasive information that his company provided.
 If Itera thinks this single press release will ease pressure on it to come clean, it is mistaken. This thing raises a lot more questions than it answers, and we still need to know the basics: Who is getting rich on Russia's gas and who set them up to do it?
 The crux of the controversy surrounding Itera is its relationship with Gazprom and with Gazprom's managers. Itera's &quot;miraculous&quot; growth provides plenty of reasonable grounds to suspect that Gazprom has squandered or stolen billions of dollars worth of Russia's resources in what would appear to be a thinly veiled effort to cheat the state, which controls 38 percent of Gazprom.
 Such suspicions have even taken root in Gazprom's board, although oddly not among those members who supposedly represent the state's interests.
 Minority shareholders, though, have called repeatedly for an independent audit of the Itera-Gazprom connection.
 Like the rest of us, those shareholders would like to know exactly why Gazprom's gas production has fallen over recent years just as Itera's has increased.
 Itera's statement this week merely outlined a vague system of trusts that control its shares. The company claimed that only Itera employees are beneficiaries of those trusts and that no &quot;Gazprom managers, their children or relatives&quot; are among them. However, after facing years of stonewalling, we need a lot more than mere verbal assurances.
 Until a believable, independent audit such as minority shareholders have called for is carried out - one that details the history of the company as well as its current status - with the full and willing cooperation of Itera management, the company's &quot;normal&quot; work will continue to be dogged by our impertinent conjectures.

TITLE: <strong>RUBLE AROUND TOWN </strong>
TEXT: Monday's ruble/dollar rates in St. Petersburg:
 
 Address Buy Sell
 
Avto Bank 119 Moskovsky Prospect 28.40 28.95
 Alfa Bank 6 Kanal Griboyedova 28.40 29.10
 BaltUneximbank Grand Hotel Europe 27.30 29.15
 Baltiisky Bank 34 Sadovaya Ulitsa 28.40 29.35
 Bank Sankt Peterburg 108 Ligovsky Prospect 28.35 29.10
 Impexbank 58 Nevsky Prospect 28.25 29.00
 InkasBank 44 Nevsky Prospect 28.40 28.99
 Promstroi Bank 4 Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa 28.40 29.00
 Petrovsky Narodny Bank 7 Naberezhnaya Reki Moiki 28.30 28.95 
 RusRegion Bank 54 Nevsky Prospect 28.70 28.95
 
 <strong>Average 28.29 29.05
 </strong><i>Change from last week +0.01 +0.06

TITLE: Negotiating the Petersburg Property Maze
AUTHOR: By Curtis Budden
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Foreigners in St. Petersburg frustrated with the dual-pricing system will be happy to know that there are some transactions in which state law treats foreigners just like Russians - for example, in the purchase of real estate. 
 As Marina Sirenko of Nevsky Prostor real estate agency points out: &quot;There are no special rules that apply just to foreigners. For a foreigner to buy an apartment, all he needs is a passport - with a notarized Russian translation.&quot;
 If you are in the market for an apartment, however, there are certain necessary steps to follow - not to mention potential pitfalls to avoid. But in most cases, there's little to worry about if you do some research, hire professional help and rely on your common sense.
 The process requires five essential steps: hiring an agent, searching for an apartment, signing and notarizing an agreement, making the payment for the apartment and registering your rights to the real estate.
 One situation that may arise is a particularly Russian problem linked to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the subsequent privatization of property. Sirenko explains that when trying to purchase an apartment there are two basic cases. The first is that you will deal with a person who has purchased the apartment and thus has the right of ownership. The second scenario is that you'll be dealing with a person who doesn't have the right to ownership but only the right to live in the apartment, which he received from the state when the property was privatized.
 &quot;When purchasing an apartment from a person who has the right to live [in that apartment], he has to be re-registered elsewhere. It is, in fact, necessary to receive his agreement to sell something that doesn't really belong to him. In some cases it's not possible to receive this agreement. If that person cannot be registered anywhere else, the apartment becomes, in a sense, outside the law. The injured party may apply to a court, and the apartment can be placed 'under arrest,'&quot; Sirenko said.
 Maxim Kalinin, a lawyer at the St. Petersburg office of Baker & McKenzie, gives a relevant example that, though not extremely common, does occur. In many cases, the apartments that foreigners are buying today were communal apartments in the Soviet period. This means that an apartment that housed several families was privatized, renovated and sold as a single apartment. As in the case mentioned above, when the state privatized property, the persons living in any one place received the right to continue living there, though not the right to ownership. When applied to communal apartments, the resulting situation is that a number of individuals were all given the right to continue living in a single area, but no one person received the right to the entire property.
 &quot;What has happened,&quot; Kalinin explained, &quot;is that some people who received this right to live [in a certain place] left the country when it became easier to travel after the Soviet period. While they were abroad someone sold their communal apartments into private ownership. Upon returning, however, they still had the right to live in their former place of residence. As a result, what has happened is that someone will come forward with a legitimate claim to live in a certain apartment that has been sold and now is under private ownership.&quot;
 Sirenko added that such a situation is further complicated by the fact that the state does not guarantee the right to the ownership of real estate. &quot;Almost every country in the world ensures the right to ownership of real estate, but such a guarantee is not provided in Russia. When you buy real estate [in other countries] you can be sure that you have the right to that property and that no one can make you leave. In Russia, such laws have not developed yet, and thus the state cannot provide such guarantees.&quot;
 Fortunately, however, there are certain steps that one can take to avoid such a situation. The first step is to look for an apartment that has been recently privatized. The next measure is taking the time to check out the history of the apartment you plan to buy. If you know the property's cadastre number you can ask the City Property Fund for any available information regarding the apartment's current legal status and any past transactions. In such a case, it's possible to find out who is the official owner of the property, if one exists, or if the property has been mortgaged, or pledged in another transaction. 
 &quot;This is not something you have to do yourself. Most agencies are experienced in checking property histories, and if they're good they'll do it for you. I would recommend, however, not using the same agent as the seller. It may cost more, but it's worth it,&quot; Kalinin explained. Using different agents will avoid any conflicts of interest that may arise, or collusion on the part of the seller and the agent.
 In avoiding these problems the solution really lies in the agent you choose. But how do you know that the person or agency you choose has the experience necessary? And perhaps most important of all, how do know that you can trust the agent you hire?
 As one foreign businessman, who has now bought two apartments in the city, explained: &quot;The first time I bought an apartment my biggest fear was of being cheated. That was probably what contributed most to my decision to go with a foreign-owned real estate agency.&quot;
 The businessman, who asked not to be named, eventually bought another apartment, this time using a Russian agent recommended by a friend. 
 &quot;The main difference,&quot; he said, &quot;was that the first [foreign] agent was more communicative. He called every time he found a new place to look at or whenever he needed some more information. I often didn't hear from the Russian agent for weeks.&quot; He explained, however, that the main advantage of the Russian agent was, in fact, that he was a local and could recommend certain areas to live in and urge caution about others. Whatever your choice, however, you'll eventually have to determine where you want to live and how much you want to spend.
 But location is not the only factor taken into account when pricing an apartment. Further factors to look for are the quality of the renovations and the presence of creature comforts such as independent heating, water filters and building security. Depending on the particular combination of factors present, an apartment can cost anywhere from $300 to $4,000 per square meter.
 Once you have agreed on an apartment, you'll need to do some paperwork - which may turn out to be the simplest part of the process. Once again, any professional agent will be able to do most of this for you. They'll provide the purchase-and-sale agreement and arrange for you to meet with the seller at the office of a notary, in whose presence both the buyer and seller have to sign the agreement for it to be official. 
 Baker & McKenzie's Kalinin said that any notary will be able to answer questions concerning documentation. Once all of the appropriate documentation has been signed then it must all be delivered to the City Bureau for the Registration of the Rights to Real Estate.
 &quot;Your rights only begin upon registration,&quot; Kalinin added. Thus, simply signing and notarizing the agreement for the purchase and sale of the apartment does not make you the owner. Additionally, there is a fee for the registration of any real estate transaction, but it is &quot;quite small&quot; according to Ka linin and varies according to the value of the transaction and how quickly you want to carry out the registration.
 Everyone interviewed for this article pointed out that the agreement will almost never contain the real transaction value. The seller simply isn't willing to pay the full amount of taxes and thus officially registers the transaction with a lower value. They also pointed out that, though it is illegal to conduct transactions in a foreign currency, almost all transactions are actually carried out in dollars.
 If you need to wire money into the country it will be necessary to open an account with a local bank, which requires nothing more than your passport. Kalinin, however, warns that you shouldn't pay all of the money for the transaction up front. An agreement should be worked out in which a small down-payment is made and the remainder of the money is transferred after the registration is approved, since only then will you actually have the legal right to ownership of the apartment.

TITLE: How Does The New NTV Team Compare?
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As any TV watcher will already be aware, there is now no NTV as we used to know it - and may stone-hearted cynics and inveterate optimists forgive me: I'm shedding my personal tear here. 
 Indeed, putting the issue of press freedom aside, the NTV crackdown and resulting reshuffle of TV presenters and their shows have led to many a sad consequence - perhaps the least painful being that viewers must now watch TV all day if they actually want to see their favorite presenters, as the programming schedule is a complete mess.
 First of all, you will surely have noticed that NTV's news service has considerably worsened since Gazprom appointees took over the channel and most of the journalists quit. Be it that there are too few proficient correspondents left or that Boris Jordan, the new general director, has started &quot;improving the station's finances,&quot; I now have the feeling that I'm denied half the news that I would have heard previously, and the way in which what news I do hear is presented leaves much to be desired. Previously, it would have been impossible to imagine an NTV political correspondent calling Yuly Rybakov a member of the Yabloko Faction, given that he is really from the Union of Right Forces, or that news presenters could acquire a style of speech one would expect from a regional channel like Petersburg Television - indistinct, stumbling articulation, not to mention zero personal appeal. 
 However unperturbed the channel has made itself seem with the loss of most of its leading journalists, all its bosses can do now to stop their ratings from dropping is to show cheap re-runs. Thank God it didn't come to Swan Lake, but I'm still inconsolable when I think I won't see ex-NTV's <i>Vox Populi </i>- the best political talk show in Russia - anymore.
 Next, we saw yet another massive exodus - this time from TV-6, a commercial TV network controlled by Boris Berezovsky. The ex-NTV team's news slots were at first aired on TNT, but that was a temporary move. TV-6 journalists rebelled when confronted with Berezovsky's decision to appoint Yevgeny Kiselyov, NTV's former head, the channel's interim general director. I understand the tycoon's hope to better ratings by inviting a famous team, but Kiselyov's behavior - not unlike that of the new NTV masters - was uncomely, if not unreasonable, for somebody who has been trying on the halo of a freedom-of-speech advocate. Now both TV-6 and NTV air news at the same hours. Meanwhile, NTV St. Petersburg, the team which makes local news for the channel, adds to the mess, as they first moved to TNT, but returned to NTV a week later.
 While channels fight for their ratings, the audience is the major loser: We've been utterly confused by the schedule of news slots; lost several wonderful shows, but seen tons of ads; switched our channels madly in search of our favorite presenters and been fairly disappointed upon eventually finding them. Above anything, TV-6 has poor reception in St. Petersburg.
 If anyone has gained from this chaos, it has to be TV advertisers. But I doubt that their incomes are the audience's paramount concern.

TITLE: Local Star Lights Up Moscow
AUTHOR: By Kimberly O'Haver
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After a promising and early rise to her career at the Mariinsky Theater, ballerina Anastasia Voloch ko va suddenly disappeared from the starting lineup after the theater's artistic director - the same man who had plucked her from dance school to perform a principal role in &quot;Swan Lake&quot; when she was only 18 - was ousted from his post. 
 Caught in the middle of a management conflict, Volochkova was not only dropped from performance schedules, but she stopped receiving the invitations sent to her from Western companies. With 15 classical roles under her belt, Volochkova left her hometown and made a gutsy move to Moscow to join the Bolshoi Ballet as a principal dancer. She also recently appeared as a guest artist with the English National Ballet. 
 The St. Petersburg Times caught up with the 25-year-old ballet sensation this week and spoke to her about ballet, life's tough choices and her upcoming solo performance at Mosocw's Rossia concert hall.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>You split your time between three cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg and London. Where do you spend most of your time?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Now I spend most of my time in Moscow because I have a contract with the Bolshoi Theater. Last month I was in Moscow to dance for the premiere performance of Vladimir Vasilyev's &quot;Swan Lake.&quot; Right now I am preparing a solo program I will be doing at the Rossia concert hall on April 25. I will be performing 10 different pieces, both contemporary and classical.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>How do Russian audiences differ from English audiences, and for whom do you prefer to dance?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>It is difficult to say where I prefer to dance. I like to dance everywhere, but in Russia it is a little bit easier for me because I am more known here than in the West. At the same time, I don't have the luxury of making any mistakes here. Even if I think the audience will forgive me, I don't want them to. I want the audience to be a very tough judge. 
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>With whom have you worked to organize the performance and select the pieces for April 25?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>This was all my doing. Even the organization of the concert is my project. My mom is the only person who is helping me. 
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Could you tell us more about the pieces you have selected to dance?
 </i><strong>A:</strong> I will be dancing a pas de deux from the ballet &quot;Don Quixote&quot; - a very famous piece. Also, a pas de deux from &quot;Scheherazade,&quot; a very nice adagio choreographed by Mikhail Fokin. I will dance the &quot;Dying Swan,&quot; a very recognizable piece, and the Russian Dance from Vladimir Vasilyev's &quot;Swan Lake.&quot; All the other pieces are by contemporary choreographers.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>You were turned away three times from the St. Petersburg Vaganova ballet academy before finally being admitted. You said you had &quot;no feet, no high leg [extensions], no nothing.&quot; How did you overcome these obstacles in ballet school?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Everything I have achieved in my life and in my art is because of my work and the work of my professional teachers. And my parents, of course, because they spent all of their money to pay for my private teachers. As a child I worked from morning until night. Looking back at that time, I don't think it would be possible for me to live like that now. I was in school from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. and then I came home and started up with my private teachers. It was like that every day. 
 But I had a wish. Actually, I think my desire was the only thing I had at that time. No possibilities. No ability to dance. But I wanted to be a dancer - to be a professional ballet dancer - and I got my wish. 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Are there fewer obstacles for you now?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>I run into more obstacles every day, every month, every year. They are technical. They are mental. They are everywhere: in my art, in my life. They are like a signal telling me that I have to be strong. I am grateful for the difficult times, because they have helped me to be smarter.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>You danced 15 principal roles in St. Petersburg - the full gamut of the Mariinsky's classical repertoire. When and why did you leave? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>I left three years ago. It was a very difficult decision. Even now I miss St. Petersburg. But at the Mariinsky I no longer had the opportunity to dance. I couldn't go where I was invited. I couldn't work with the choreographers who wanted to work with me. I was locked out of my art, and I couldn't live like that anymore. I went to the Bolshoi because I was invited by Vasilyev, then the theater's director, to join the company as a principal dancer. I couldn't refuse; it was my life's dream to dance on the stage of the Bolshoi. 
 Moscow was a new city for me, and I had to start a new life from the beginning - from finding a place to live to getting used to the atmosphere - new people, a new mentality. It is strange, but there is a very big difference between St. Petersburg and Moscow.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>As a dancer, what is your favorite role? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>My favorite ballets are &quot;La Baya d&egrave;re,&quot; &quot;Giselle&quot; and &quot;Swan Lake.&quot; At the same time, I long to dance in &quot;Ro meo and Juliet&quot; by [Kenneth] MacMillan at the Covent Garden Theater. 
 My favorite among contemporary works is &quot;The Russian Hamlet&quot; by Boris Eifman. I danced the role of Catherine the Great. I love this role, because it is about a real person who led Russia and kept it together by her strength, her beauty, her power and her intelligence. It feels far different to play a historical character rather than a swan or a character from a fairy tale. 
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>How did you come up with the idea for your solo concert?
 </i><strong>A: </strong>About a year and a half ago, I was in between theaters and I had nowhere I could dance. It was at that time I came up with the idea to create my own solo concert. Being without a company, I had two paths from which to choose. To go one way was to die, because a ballet dancer without work is not a dancer. I chose another way - to do something special, to do some work to help me stay in shape and to be able to show audiences my dancing. 
 It is incredibly difficult to dance 10 pieces in one evening. I can compare it to four or five performances in one evening. But at the same time, I would like to show myself as a classical and contemporary dancer - showing the audience everything I can do.

TITLE: Super Bowl Champs Fare Well at NFL Draft
AUTHOR: By Barry Wilner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Super Bowl winners aren't supposed to fare so well in the NFL draft.
 Don't tell that to the 1999 league champion St. Louis Rams or the 2000 champs, the Baltimore Ravens. Both got what they were looking for this weekend.
 St. Louis, with three first-round picks and five in the first 83, bolstered a defense that fell apart last season. The Rams went from powerhouse to wild-card-round playoff loser mainly because they couldn't stop anyone.
 &quot;They knew the defense had to be fixed,&quot; new defensive coordinator Lovie Smith said. &quot;We had a plan to put the defense back together and it's falling into place.&quot;
 Thanks, greatly, to trades that sent quarterback Trent Green to Kansas City and disgruntled defensive end Kevin Carter to Tennessee. Both deals brought first-round picks.
 The Rams grabbed defensive tackle Damione Lewis of Miami, safety Adam Archuleta - a converted linebacker - of Arizona State and defensive tackle Ryan Pickett of Ohio State in the first round. They got linebackers Tommy Polley and Brian Allen, both of Florida State, with their next two selections.
 &quot;I know this sounds like I'm crowing and bragging,&quot; coach Mike Martz said. &quot;But honest to goodness, our top four guys ... that's how it went off. So we're very fortunate.&quot;
 The Ravens should feel the same way. They sought a tight end and got the best pass catcher at that position in Arizona State's Todd Heap. And Baltimore wanted a safety to replace Kim Herring and got that in Gary Baxter of Baylor.
 Throw in center Casey Rabach and the Ravens aggressively filled some potential holes despite picking at the end of each round.
 &quot;If you look at some of the needs we hoped to address - a tight end, a lineman, a safety, a linebacker and a running back - that's kind of the way you hoped it would go down,&quot; coach Brian Billick said. &quot;From that standpoint, it's a very successful draft.&quot;
 This draft began with a bang. One day before the first pick was made, it was traded as San Diego dealt with Atlanta. The Falcons took Virginia Tech quarterback Michael Vick, considered the one franchise player available - albeit not for awhile, considering he played only two seasons in college.
 &quot;I'm glad the trade was made. I'm glad to be closer to home,&quot; said Vick, a native of Newport News, Virginia. &quot;It's a blessing in disguise.&quot;
 The Chargers still got their future quarterback, taking Drew Brees of Purdue with the opening selection of the second round. San Diego also used the first-round pick it got from Atlanta (No. 5 overall) for highly productive running back LaDainian Tomlinson.
 &quot;I'm glad they chose me,&quot; Tomlinson said. &quot;I look at it like this - if they would have gotten Vick, I don't know if they would have gotten a better running back or even had a chance to get a running back who can play next year.&quot;
 Bolstering defenses was the main theme early in a draft loaded with talent at defensive tackle, wide receiver and along the offensive line. With Baltimore smothering opponents last season, the copycats around the NFL went wild for defenders: seven of the first 13 picks were defensive linemen. Nine went in the opening round Saturday.

TITLE: Foreign Student Struggles To Overcome Stereotypes
AUTHOR: By Baris Altintas
TEXT: I was sitting alone in my room - pathetically staring at a copy of Nabokov's &quot;Lolita&quot; in Russian, which had finally convinced me to declare the language unlearnable - when I felt the first revolutionary sparks of self-realization within me. Continuing my train of thought, I turned to the cheap reproduction of Matisse's &quot;Vase of Irises&quot; on my wall, a piece from the Hermitage collection.
 The Hermitage is the favorite museum of almost everyone who lives in <i>obshezhitiye </i>number <i> </i>5 - the St. Petersburg State University dormitory, which is, in theory, for foreigners. The uniform taste, however, is not limited to that only. For instance, everyone in the dormitory owns a copy of the Oxford Russian Dictionary. The taste in music is also strikingly homogeneous: The tribute CD for Victor Tsoi can be heard playing in each room, and the CD has nearly always been bought at the Yunona market - which is one and a half hours away from where we live. Everyone has a copy of the Lonely Planet Russia Guide, and there's not a single person who doesn't have plates with a blue-circle pattern on them. Those who smoke, again almost without an exception, prefer Peter I, and the radio stations of choice are Radio Maximum or, for some strange reason, Ruskoye Radio. The correct vodka to drink would be Stolichnaya.<i> </i>The existing standardization is even reflected by the slippers on everyone's feet. At the risk of constructing a shameless generalization, I will be adding other foreign students I've met in the city to my category of &quot;everyone,&quot; especially those coming from the West. As a Turkish citizen, I don't know exactly where I fit in, but I will admit to having the Oxford.
 Russia can be tough for a beginner, and it is only natural that people who live together in an unfamiliar environment share useful advice and information with each other, in order to better adjust to their host country. This is also, most certainly, the main reason behind this dreadful standardization that I've been subject to. However, the standardization is so overwhelming that even the slightest attempt at divergence can become a major challenge.
 Once, when I was in a friend's room in the dormitory, I couldn't help but notice the presence of a Longman dictionary on one of the bookshelves. Needless to say, I was infuriated. Unable to hold back my anger, I accused him of trying to be different. Why was he trying to separate himself from the rest of us? Was he planning to start listening to the Russky Shanson radio station tomorrow? Or was he going to refuse visiting one of the places recommended by the Lonely Planet Guide? Could there be, perhaps, a Butusov CD hiding under that Kino tribute CD case? Why was his dictionary a Longman? Why? Was he trying to be an individual?
 Affronted by my accusations, my poor friend's face turned white. He tried to defend himself, saying he never used it anyway, and that he was planning to get one of those Oxfords as soon as possible. Of course, I didn't believe him. I couldn't.
 I had been living in Russia for about four and a half months then, but I was finding it impossible not to be assimilated by the unique Western-foreigner student culture which I was surrounded by. That Longman caught my eye at a time when I was beginning to question my own conformity to the established standards of foreigner conduct, dictated by the dorm culture. For example, I'd begun to find the ordeal to Yunona nonsensical, since I'd found out that CDs were being sold at the same price as in Yunona at the store down the street. 
 For the last couple of weeks, I was, secretly, allowing myself to listen to music other than Kino or the Kino tribute CD. I had started talking to those in the dormitory who came from different corners of the Russian Federation and I was finding them interesting. I had also made Russian friends.
 Still, I was the proud owner of an Oxford, and so I thought I had each and every right to interrogate my friend.
 However, as I stared at the Matisse on the wall that day, it dawned on me: I wasn't Western. I was not even a foreigner. I was an individual living in Russia and that was all I was. I was actually a person. With the happy realization of these facts, I rushed to my CDs. While I was trying to chose between Ottoman Palace Music and Radiohead, I heard a knock on the door.
 It was Pavel, one of my Russian friends, who had arrived for a drink. I only had a bottle of Stolichnaya in my room, which I had no intention of drinking as a born-again individual, so I turned to the bottle of cologne on the shelf as the next best choice, but thinking better of it, we headed off to the store. 
 
 <i>Baris Altintas is a Turkish student living in St. Petersburg. She submitted this column to The St. Petersburg Times. If you would like to write One in 4.7 Million, please contact masters@sptimes.ru </i>

TITLE: The End of April Defined by Both Triumph and Tragedy
AUTHOR: By Tom Masters
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Empress Elizabeth anticipated Napo leon at her coronation on <strong>April 25, 1742. </strong>The daughter of Peter the Great placed the crown of the Russian Empire on her own head, something that was traditionally done by the metropolitain. However, Elizabeth was not noted for conformism - she enjoyed transvestite balls (her favorite costume was that of a Dutch sailor) and young lovers, walked naked through her palaces, and had a peculiar fetish for having her feet tickled. Indeed, British Envoy Extraordinary Sir George Macartney described her as &quot;abandoning herself to every excess of intemperance and lubricity.&quot; 
 Other observers were kinder, including the future Catherine the Great, who attended court and many of Elizabeth's transvestite balls. She remarked in her memoirs that: &quot;The only woman who looked well and completely a man was the Empress herself. As she was tall and powerful, male attire suited her. She had the most handsome legs I have ever seen on any man and her feet were admirably proportioned.&quot;
 Despite her fondness for male clothing, Elizabeth owned 15,000 ball gowns at the time of her death.
 Pyotr Tchaikovsky was born on <strong>April 25, 1840, </strong>in the town of Votkinsk, from where he moved to Moscow and later St. Petersburg. The composer's influence is hard to overstate, and his works are part of ballet and opera repertoires the world over. He died from drinking unfiltered water from which he contracted cholera in 1893 and is buried at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.
 World War II was effectively over when Soviet and American forces met each other on the Elbe on <strong>April 25, 1945. </strong>Throughout the spring of 1945, American forces had successfully forced the Wehrmacht east, and it was to be only a matter of time until they met the approaching Red Army near the town of Torgau an der Elbe. 
 One of the greatest catastrophes of the past century occurred fifteen years ago at the Lenin Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine.
 At 1:23 a.m. on <strong>26 April, 1986, </strong>the testing of reactor No. 4 - during which numerous safety procedures were disregarded - launched a chain reaction in the reactor, which soon spiraled out of control and created a fireball that blew off the reactor's heavy steel and concrete lid. Thirty people were killed immediately, and some 135,000 people had to be evacuated from the area.
 Information about the accident was repressed for several days until a top-level decision to make public details of the disaster. Then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev spoke to the nation on television: &quot;Good evening comrades. All of you know that there has been an incredible misfortune - the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It has painfully affected the Soviet people, and shocked the international community. For the first time, we confront the real force of nuclear energy, out of control.&quot;
 Ranking as one of the greatest industrial accidents of all time, the Chernobyl disaster and its impact on the course of Soviet events can scarcely be exaggerated. The city of Chernobyl is still inhabited by almost 10,000 people, and although the plant was finally shut down in December 2000, it will take years to make the leaky concrete and steel sarcophagus that encases the ruined reactor No. 4 environmentally safe.

TITLE: No Happy Ending for NTV Television Station
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In the words of its founder Vladimir Gu sinsky, &quot;NTV does not exist anymore.&quot; 
 Gusinsky made this somber announcement from exile in Spain after Gazprom-Media's takeover of the station earlier this month and the subsequent exodus of leading journalists.
 NTV, in many respects, is indeed dead. NTV's name was taken from the abbreviation for <i>Nezavizimaya Televidenie </i>- Independent Television - and even though the channel didn't always live up to its name, it did provide its viewers with something different from that offered on state-run channels ORT and RTR.
 &quot;There will never be another channel like it,&quot; said news anchor Marianna Maximovskaya.
 Since its creation, NTV has never been far from controversy - be it its daring coverage of the first military campaign against Chechen separatists, the &quot;faces-in-the-snow&quot; raid, its shameless participation in former president Boris Yeltsin's re-election campaign, its refusal to line up behind Vladimir Putin in his run for the presidency or its partnership with Gazprom that turned sour and eventually led to the station's demise. 
 The idea of NTV was born with a couple of conversations in May 1993. Gusinsky and Sergei Zverev, an executive in Gusinsky's MOST group, were looking to launch something bigger than the newspaper Segodnya, Gusinsky's first foray into mass media. At about the same time, popular ORT anchor Yevgeny Kiselyov and ORT producer Oleg Dobrodeyev were growing disgruntled with the atmosphere at the state-run station, which was curtailing journalists' freedom in light of Yeltsin's conflict with parliament.
 They joined forces. Gusinsky hired Igor Malashenko - now his first deputy - who had recently been fired from ORT. NTV had Gusinsky's money, and it had talent. What it needed was an audience, and to reach that audience, it needed access to one of Russia's main national terrestrial channels.
 In a process documented in Chrystia Freeland's 2000 book &quot;Sale of the Century,&quot; Zverev steered the lobbying effort for the presidential decree that would give the MOST group rights to broadcast on channel 4. At the time, the channel was jointly controlled by two state-owned companies. During the day, the Rossiiskiye Universitety education program filled the airwaves. Programs rejected by ORT or RTR ran in the evening.
 After months of tea drinking and negotiating with Yeltsin's advisers, Zverev had the decree on Yeltsin's desk by January 1994, and with one stroke of a pen and payment of a nominal sum, NTV began broadcasting from 6 p.m. to midnight on channel 4.
 Thinking through the events of these last couple of years, Zverev said he saw this month's events as &quot;very predictable.&quot; He added that NTV would continue to exist, &quot;just in a different way.&quot;
 &quot;It's unfortunate that the collective fell apart,&quot; he said by telephone between long pauses. Zverev, now president of the Kross public relations agency, said he sympathizes with NTV employees - past and present - but doesn't maintain contact with Gusinsky anymore.
 
 <strong>FACES IN THE SNOW
 </strong>The transition from part-time to full-fledged channel did not go smoothly. In December 1994, Gusinsky was the target of what became known as the &quot;faces-in-the-snow&quot; incident, when three of his bodyguards were beaten and pushed face down in the snow. The image was captured on film by Western television companies.
 According to the memoirs of the former head of presidential security guards, Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin had given him orders to deal with Gusinsky the day before. The attack was inspired by Gusinsky's refusal to help out the Kremlin by airing compromising information on Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who was beginning to set his sights on the presidency.
 Gusinsky restored good relations with the Kremlin in 1996 when he joined forces with the other oligarchs to keep Yeltsin in office. He used NTV to promote the unhealthy, unpopular Yeltsin and to destroy his Communist opponent. Gusinsky even sent Malashenko to the Kremlin to be its PR strategist during the campaign.
 As a reward, NTV received round-the-clock broadcasting rights in September 1996 when Yeltsin signed decree No. 1386. 
 &quot;I won't conceal the fact that, if not for our participation in the election campaign, NTV would have been unlikely to obtain the entire channel,&quot; Malashenko said at the time. &quot;It was never a prior condition. But we understood that if Yeltsin won the elections, then we would get that channel. And that is what happened.&quot; 
 In addition to full-time broadcasting, the government allowed NTV to set up its own satellite network, and a state-controlled bank provided guarantees for millions of dollars in loans. In late 1997, Media-MOST had no trouble obtaining a second broadcast license for THT, its second-tier television network.
 NTV became immensely popular among viewers with its police dramas, hard-hitting journalism and satires, including the puppet show &quot;Kukly,&quot; which parodies the goings-on in the Kremlin.
 
 <strong>POLITICAL WEB
 </strong>Relations with the Kremlin, however, soured in the run up to the State Duma elections in 1999 and the presidential elections in 2000 when Gusinsky refused to renew his &quot;contract.&quot; Gusinsky told journalists last year that Kremlin Chief of Staff Alexander Voloshin - who is credited with helping mastermind Putin's rise to power - offered him $100 million not to be &quot;in the way&quot; during the elections. Gusinsky said his refusal was seen by the Kremlin as a declaration of war.
 But it was Media-MOST's relationship with Gazprom, the natural-gas monopoly that is 38 percent state-owned, that put the media holding in a vulnerable position.
 Gazprom first bought into NTV in 1996, when it acquired 30 percent of NTV as part of a satellite broadcasting joint venture, later to become NTV-Plus.
 Gazprom later guaranteed loans to Media-MOST from Credit Suisse First Boston - $211 million borrowed in March 1998 and $261 million in July 1998 at 19.5 percent interest.
 Gazprom's financial backing was seen as further Kremlin payback for Gusinsky's help in 1996. But by taking on so much debt and trying to grow so fast, Gusinsky weakened his own position.
 Media-MOST's financial problems, the kind that could be calculated and analyzed on a spreadsheet, began to add up in the ruins of the August 1998 financial crisis. As advertising revenues - NTV's bread and butter - dried up, so did Media-MOST's hopes for an initial public offering.
 By the end of 1999, Media-MOST managers found themselves in a liquidity crisis with the first CSFB loan coming due in March 2000. Gazprom was open to the possibility of a deal that would give it equity in Media-MOST. In exchange, Gazprom would forgive the loans.
 However, Russia's political atmosphere changed when Yeltsin resigned from office on New Year's Eve 1999, ushering in Putin and a new administrative order.
 Unfortunately for Media-MOST, the Gazprom board meeting that was expected to approve the debt-for-equity deal was scheduled for January 2000. But by then, power had already changed hands. The deal never appeared on the agenda for that meeting, and Media-MOST officials were never officially told why. In describing the situation off the record, many have used the terms &quot;blackmail&quot; and &quot;extortion,&quot; but failed to elaborate.
 &quot;Officially, no one gave us any reason as to why this question was not put on the board's agenda,&quot; said Media-MOST spokesperson Dmitry Ostalsky. But to Media-MOST, it was clear that the deal fell through because of Kremlin pressure.
 
 <strong>ALL OVER
 </strong>It was after this deal failed that the blows began to rain down hard on NTV and Media-MOST. In January 2000, Dobrodeyev vacated his post as general director of NTV, one that would later be filled by Kiselyov. The Moscow media community saw Dobrodeyev as a stalwart of high journalism standards and took his leaving as a sign of deep disturbances among NTV management as a result of political pressures associated with the election season and the Chechnya campaign.
 Dobrodeyev eventually became head of the state-owned radio and television conglomerate. He announced his resignation on April 14, as new NTV general director Boris Jordan was moving into the station, to support the station that he helped found. Putin refused to accept his resignation later that week.
 In an open letter to Kiselyov, Dobrodeyev reflected on NTV's reputation and his own disillusionment.<br> &quot;The channel's moral capital that was earned during the first Chechnya campaign was transformed, by participating in the Kremlin's actions, into real capital, including endless loans from state-controlled Gazprom,&quot; Dobrodeyev wrote.
 He said he was pushed out after voicing his opposition to highly critical coverage of the second Chechnya war. Gusinsky, Malashenko and Kiselyov figured that upping the criticism would give them leverage over the Kremlin, Dobrodeyev said. And if they later agreed to soften the coverage, it was assumed that Media-MOST would receive an extension on its loans.
 They miscalculated. The month after Dobrodeyev left, Gazprom abandoned its policy of non-involvement in NTV, and Gazprom CEO Rem Vyakhirev said he did not consider NTV's position on the Chechnya problem &quot;entirely correct.&quot; The next week, the Supreme Arbitration Court struck down an arrangement that gave NTV access to government discounts on state broadcast services.
 In May, armed and masked federal agents raided Media-MOST headquarters and accused his security service of eavesdropping. In June, Gusinsky's arrest on embezzlement charges was icing on the cake.
 After his release, Gusinsky signed over his companies to Gazprom and fled to Spain. He later backed out of the deal saying he signed it under duress, but by November he had reached another deal with Gazprom.
 This agreement gave Gazprom 16 percent of NTV, raising its stake to 46 percent. Gusinsky also agreed to put up a 19 percent stake as collateral for the second CSFB loan, which will be due in July.
 Enter Ted Turner. With Gazprom claiming the 19 percent stake and pressure mounting on NTV, Malashenko put a call into billionaire financier George Soros and asked for help. Soros put Malashenko in touch with Turner.<br> Heralded as the savior of free speech in Russia, Turner began negotiations with Media-MOST in late 2000. He struck a deal to buy some of Gusinsky's shares and acquire all of his voting power. Negotiations between Turner and Gaz prom started afterward but sputtered out when Jordan and Alfred Kokh, NTV board chairman, took over operations on April 14. Jordan and Kokh were appointed at an April 3 shareholders meeting that NTV boycotted and Kiselyov and his followers contend was illegal.
 As Jordan began exercising his control over the station, Kiselyov and journalists loyal to him left. Boris Berezovsky stepped in and offered them a place at TV-6, where he holds a 75 percent stake. As a result, another scandal boiled over, and several leading TV-6 managers and journalists resigned, while others took vacation time to look for other jobs. Some might go work for NTV.
 
 <strong>'BEEHIVE WITHOUT BEES'
 </strong>Where does this all leave Turner? The station he intended to buy a stake in ceased to exist when the face of the channel left for another. Turner's goal was to keep an independent television station in Russia afloat. The station's independence has been disputed in the past, but now it is unequivocally under the control of Gazprom-Media, a 100 percent subsidiary of Gazprom. Gusinsky said that in light of the changes at NTV, buying shares wouldn't make any sense; it would be like &quot;buying a beehive without the bees.&quot; Turner's people are keeping a low profile, saying that they are still evaluating all their options.
 Gusinsky, who holds 49 percent of NTV, including the 19 percent put up as collateral, said he no longer wants any part of the television station and will sell his entire stake.
 Some at Media-MOST want to build a new television station with a clean slate: no government patronage, good financial control and no journalistic compromises. The realization of such a project would depend on whether Media-MOST could attract investment despite its tattered reputation. And whether it could bring in someone with Turner's influence.
 NTV is dead. The survivors are many. What will take its place?

TITLE: Montenegro Split by Elections
AUTHOR: By Dusan Stojanovic
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PODGORICA, Yugoslavia - Surviving its first major test, Montenegro's pro-independence movement won a slim majority in parliamentary elections, adding momentum to its push to call a referendum this summer on breaking away from Yugoslavia. 
 With 65 percent of the vote counted from Sunday's balloting, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic's coalition - called &quot;Victory Belongs to Montenegro&quot; - led with 43.3 percent, according to unofficial returns. The anti-independence &quot;Together for Yugoslavia&quot; bloc trailed with 39.6 percent, the state electoral commission said. 
 &quot;We have won,&quot; declared Djuka no vic early Monday as he addressed his cheering supporters. &quot;We made a huge step toward independent Montenegro,&quot; he said as the crowd chanted &quot;We want our country!&quot; 
 Djukanovic spokesman Miodrag Vukovic said the president would form a new governing coalition with the separatist-minded Liberal Party, which won 9 percent of the vote, and that together they would push for a referendum on independence perhaps as early as June. 
 Djukanovic said the unofficial results suggested that supporters of independence would take a combined 44 seats in the 77-seat parliament - 35 seats for his faction, six seats for the liberals and three for small ethnic Albanian parties, which also support independence. 
 The results also emboldened the opposition and may have disappointed Djukanovic's hopes for a stronger mandate for independence. 
 Opponents of secession said they considered it a victory that the pro-independence bloc had failed to muster a two-thirds majority in parliament, which under the constitution would have made it much easier to break away. They vowed to block further efforts to declare independence. 
 &quot;The result which we accomplished guarantees our remaining in Yugo sla via,&quot; said Vuksan Simonovic, a &quot;Together for Yugoslavia&quot; leader, addressing thousands of cheering supporters. Some fired guns into the air to celebrate. 
 Officials said voter turnout was a record at over 80 percent. Final official figures were to be released Tuesday. 
 Montenegro has long chafed at domination by Serbia, the other, larger republic making up Yugoslavia. But the government's drive for independence comes amid warnings from the West that it could encourage separatists in neighboring Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia itself. 
 &quot;The western Balkans are now facing another crisis,&quot; Sweden's foreign minister, Anna Lindh, cautioned on Sunday. Only close cooperation with the European Union and a commitment to a reformed Yugoslav federation will transform &quot;the troubled corner of Europe,&quot; she said. 
 Djukanovic has insisted that Montenegro, because of its size, can never be equal to Serbia in a joint state and that it can achieve democracy and prosperity quicker without its dominant partner. Serbia has 9 million people, Montenegro just 600,000. 
 Yugoslavia once included Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia before those republics broke away in the early 1990s, precipitating a series of bloody ethnic wars. 
 Before Slobodan Milosevic's ouster as Yugoslav president in October, Montenegro's leadership had argued that the republic needed to escape his heavy-handed rule. Now that he's gone, the independence drive has continued despite opposition from the pro-democracy leadership in Serbia. 
 Polls have showed that most Montenegrins support an independent state, but there is fierce opposition, especially in the north of the republic bordering Serbia. 
 &quot;We can survive only if we are independent from Serbia, which has been sucking our blood,&quot; said Danilo Ljumovic, a university student. 
 Mirjana Camovic, a 60-year-old housewife, disagreed. 
 &quot;There is no life for us without Yugoslavia,&quot; Camovic said. &quot;Milo and his criminals want to secede only to form their private mafia state.&quot; 
 Montenegro's secession would mark the end of Yugoslavia, which was first formed as a kingdom for Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, at the end of World War I. Montenegro at that time gave up its sovereignty and name to join the southern Slav state, becoming the only allied country to disappear from the map after World War I. 
 In 1943, during World War II, the late communist leader Josip Broz Tito formed the second Yugoslavia of six republics. 
 When Milosevic came to power in Serbia in 1989, his nationalism quickly disrupted the fragile ethnic balance, leading to the secessionist wars and shrinking Yugoslavia to only Serbia and Montenegro.

TITLE: Gunfire Disrupts Palestinian Funeral
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip - A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and 11 people were wounded during a funeral Monday, and witnesses said the shots came from the direction of a Jewish settlement guarded by Israeli troops. 
 Israel's army said it was checking the incident. 
 In the Israeli working-class town of Or Yehuda, a pipe bomb exploded Monday, injuring four people lightly. Police said the explosive was probably planted by Palestinian militants - the third such blast in a day. 
 On Sunday, a Palestinian militant detonated a bomb near a bus in the town of Kfar Saba, near Tel Aviv, killing himself and an Israeli doctor and wounding 50 people. The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility, and said a resident of Gaza City carried out the bombing. 
 Israel, meanwhile, said that while it had serious reservations about an Arab proposal for restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, it has not rejected it outright. 
 The Palestinians have endorsed the Jordanian-Egyptian plan. Visiting Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel discussed the initiative on Sunday with Israeli leaders, and met Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Belgium assumes the presidency of the European Union in July. 
 In the Palestinian town of Khan Yunis, about 1,500 Palestinians joined the funeral procession of a Palestinian police officer who died of injuries sustained during an Israeli rocket attack last week. 
 During the procession, several dozen gunmen fired in the air from time to time. The Khan Yunis cemetery is adjacent to Neve Dekalim, a Jewish settlement guarded by Israeli troops. After the burial, mourners began dispersing, and witnesses said they suddenly heard long bursts of fire. Mourners sought shelter in abandoned apartment buildings. The witnesses did not see Israeli soldiers shooting, but said the fire came from the direction of the Israeli post. 
 A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and 11 people were wounded, according to doctors at Khan Yunis Hospital. 
 Israeli police, meanwhile, said a bomb that went off late Sunday at a major intersection in the northern port city of Haifa, lightly injuring three police officers, was planted by Palestinian militants. 
 The bomb was hidden in a bag placed near the junction. A passer-by touched the bag, felt something heavy inside and called the police. &quot;When people were being cleared away, it went off,&quot; said police spokesman Yehuda Maman. 
 Also Monday, the Israeli army said it has arrested a Palestinian man from the West Bank who was carrying an explosive device. Israel radio said the suspect was on his way to the Jewish settlement of Har Bracha and that the device was set to be detonated by a cellular phone. 
 Islamic militants have carried out nearly a dozen bombing attacks in Israel since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting seven months ago, and said they would set off more explosions. 
 Israel has held the Palestinian Authority indirectly responsible for the attacks, saying Palestinian security forces are doing nothing to rein in the militants. 
 A round of talks on renewing security coordination was to have been held late Sunday, but was postponed indefinitely. The coordination, one of the mainstays of interim peace accords in recent years, broke off after the start of hostilities last September. 
 The Arab initiative would also require Israel to announce a complete freeze of construction in Jewish settlements. Once peace talks begin, the two sides would try to conclude a treaty within half a year, according to the proposal.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Dhaka Bomb Blasts 
 

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) - Nine small bombs exploded in Dhaka on Monday as the opposition began a three-day, nationwide strike aimed at forcing the resignation of Bang la desh's prime minister, police and witnesses said. At least two police officers were wounded when opposition supporters ignited a tin pot stuffed with explosives and nails near a luxury hotel, police said. Eight other blasts near a closed market wounded three people, police said. 
 Most schools, businesses and private offices were shut and cars stayed off the roads during the strike in 64 towns and cities across Bangladesh. 
 During the night, opposition supporters threw three bombs at vehicles in Dhaka, wounding eight people, police said. The four-party opposition alliance spearheading Monday's strike accuses Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government of corruption, incompetence and harassment of political opponents. Hasina denies the charges and vows to stay in power until her five-year term ends July 13.
 
 
Philippine Cop Shot
 

MANILA, Philippines (Reuters) - Communist rebels shot dead a Philippine provincial police chief on Monday just four days before the resumption of stalled peace talks, officials said. Superintendent Andres Santos was driving his jeep through a town in Agusan del Sur province on southern Mindanao island when several guerrillas opened fire, killing him on the spot, national police chief General Leandro Mendoza told reporters. 
 The attackers fled after taking the officer's rifle, a pistol and his money, Mendoza said. The government and the communist-led National Democratic Front (NDF), whose leaders live in exile in the Netherlands, are to resume negotiations on April 27 in Oslo, Norway. Talks between the two sides collapsed in 1999 after the NDF accused the government of then president Joseph Estrada of violating previous agreements they had signed.
 
 
Amazon Crash Mystery
 

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Relatives of American missionaries whose plane was shot down over the Amazon River said the aircraft received clearance to land moments before the Peruvian air force fired on it without warning. The Peruvian military has a different account: the plane was flying unannounced and did not identify itself as it made its way through a remote jungle region frequented by drug traffickers. 
 Missionary Veronica "Roni" Bowers, 35, and her infant daughter, Charity, were both killed by the Peruvian gunfire Friday. But as investigators try to piece together what happened, key facts are in dispute, including the U.S. role, the existence of a flight plan and how the Peruvian jets conducted their intercept mission. 
 
 
Nazi Suspect on Trial
 

MUNICH, Germany (AP) - A former Nazi SS officer whose case was reopened after new evidence surfaced went on trial for the murder of inmates at the concentration camp where he was a guard.
 Anton Malloth, 89, is charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder for the deaths, which occurred when he was a guard at the Theresienstadt camp in what is now the Czech Republic.
 The first day of the hearings, which are scheduled to run two hours every day and end on Friday, was to focus on whether Malloth is fit to stand trial.
 Nearly blind and suffering from cancer of the esophagus, he was taken into custody last year. Because of his health, he is being tried at the prison where he is jailed.
 Prosecutors had closed their case against Malloth in 1999 due to lack of evidence, but reopened the investigation after a new witness came forward in the Czech Republic later that year.
 An earlier investigation had also been called off in 1979.
 
 
Ferry Kids Unclaimed
 

COTONOU, Benin (AP) - Thirty children from a ferry that ended a mysterious voyage off Africa this week remained unclaimed Friday, strengthening suspicions they were victims of child traffickers, officials said.
 Only one of the 31 minors who were aboard the MV Etireno when it docked Tuesday in Benin after several days at sea has been collected by relatives, said Nicholas Pron, a senior UNICEF official in the West African country.
 The Nigerian-registered ferry became a focus of worldwide attention last week when Benin's government, citing officials in Cameroon, said a ship loaded with child slaves had been turned away from two African ports and was headed back to Cotonou.
 A ferry marked as the Etireno pulled into Cotonou early Tuesday. It was carrying a crowd of exhausted and frightened men, women and children.
 
 
Drug Lord Caught
 

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombian troops captured Brazil's most powerful drug lord, the army said, ending a drawn-out manhunt for an escaped convict accused of arming leftist rebels in exchange for cocaine. Luis Fernando da Costa, known by his Brazilian nickname of Fernandinho Beira-Mar, surrendered to the army on Saturday after a 50-minute standoff deep in Colombia's jungle province, near the southeastern border with Venezuela and Brazil. 
 Da Costa was accompanied by another Brazilian, who was also captured Saturday. Da Costa, 33, escaped from a Brazilian prison in 1996. The government said he has been operating out of the Colombian jungle since fleeing Paraguay several months ago.
 
 
UFO Bureau Closes
 

LONDON (Reuters) - The British Flying Saucer Bureau is closing after chronicling UFO activities for nearly 50 years - because of a sharp decline in the number of reported sightings. 
 The group, which once had 1,500 members worldwide, used to receive at least 30 reports a week of sightings of unidentified flying objects, but they have now virtually dried up, it was reported Monday.
 "I am just as enthusiastic about flying saucers as I always was, but the problem is that we are in the middle of a long, long trough," Denis Plunkett, 70, who founded the bureau in 1953 with his late father Edgar, said.
 Plunkett, a retired civil servant, believed there may be a rational explanation for the decline in sightings. Perhaps alien visitors had completed a survey of the earth, he said. 



TITLE: Justice Prevails in Yankees Late-Inning Win
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - A pair of home runs in the bottom of the 10th inning led the New York Yankees to a crushing 4-3 win over the Boston Red Sox on Sunday. Paul O'Neill and David Justice both homered into the right-field seats as the Yankees overcame two homers by Manny Ramirez earlier in the game and a go-ahead run by the Red Sox in the top of the 10th. It was only the third time the Yankees had defeated Boston in seven meetings this year. 
 With one out in the 10th, O'Neill lofted a pitch from Derek Lowe (1-3) to right field. Darren Lewis moved back to the wall, but his attempt to rob O'Neill came up short as the ball settled just beyond the fence.
 One out later, the teams appeared headed to the 11th before Justice, who had struck out four times on the day, swung at the first pitch and sent a ball to right that looked like an instant replay of O'Neill's homer.
 Once again Lewis made a vain attempt at a game-saving catch, only to miss by a few centimeters.
 
 <strong>Baltimore 10, Tampa Bay 8. </strong>In Florida, the Baltimore Orioles outlasted the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, 10-8, in the deciding game of the three-game series.
 Rookie Chad Paronto (1-0) tossed two perfect innings to earn his first major league victory.
 The Orioles were out one away from an 8-5 victory in nine innings but closer Ryan Kohlmeier gave up a two-run homer to Russ Johnson and a solo shot to Greg Vaughn.
 Mike Judd yielded five runs and six hits over 3 2/3 innings for the Devil Rays, who dropped to 1-4 since Hal McRae replaced Larry Rothschild as manager on Wednesday.
 
 <strong>Seattle 5, Anaheim 0. </strong>In Seattle, the Mariners are off to the best start in team history after they completed their first four-game sweep of the Anaheim Angels with a 5-0 triumph.
 Anaheim starter Ramon Ortiz (2-2) allowed five runs and 10 hits in five-plus innings. He walked three and struck out three.
 The Mariners, who are off to a 15-4 start, had never swept a three- or four-game series from the Angels in Seattle. They had, however, twice previously swept three-game series in Anaheim.
 <strong>Cleveland 11, Detroit 3. </strong>In Cleveland, Jim Thome was up to his old tricks again as he hit a two-run homer for the second straight day as the Cleveland Indians won their sixth straight, 11-3 over the Detroit Tigers.
 Dave Burba (2-1) picked up the victory by going five innings and allowing three runs with six hits. The veteran righthander improved to 7-2 in 13 games against Detroit. The Indians have won eight of their last nine games and matched their longest winning streak since reeling off six in a row from August 2 to 7, 2000. 
 
 <strong>Minnesota 4, Chicago White Sox 2. </strong>The Minnesota Twins, owners of baseball's best record, completed a second straight weekend sweep of the Chicago White Sox with a 4-2 victory. Minnesota (14-3) has recorded a team-record 14 April victories and leads the White Sox by a shocking eight games in the division. 
 The Twins have won five straight and 11 of their last 12. On Sunday, they victimized Chicago closer Keith Foulke (0-2), who entered a 2-2 game in the eighth inning, threw three pitches and allowed three hits and two runs.
 
 <strong>Kansas City 5, Toronto 1. </strong>In Kansas City, Dan Reichert gave up two hits over eight-plus innings and Mark Quinn and Mike Sweeney smacked two-run homers, powering the Kansas City Royals to a 5-1 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays.
 Reichert (2-1) allowed an unearned run and five walks with six strikeouts. He retired 13 straight batters before issuing consecutive four-pitch walks to Alex Gonzalez and Raul Mondesi to start the ninth.
 
 <strong>Texas 11, Oakland 2. </strong>In Arlington, Texas, Rafael Palmeiro hit a three-run homer and Alex Rodriguez had three hits and scored three times as the Rangers routed the Athletics and their ace, Tim Hudson, 11-2.
 The teams many figured to battle for the American League West Division title split their four-game set.
 Oakland is 6-13 while Texas is 10-10. 
 Texas starter Rick Helling (1-3) allowed two runs and six hits in 6 2/3 innings. He walked three and struck out eight.
 Hudson (2-2) was tagged for seven runs and eight hits in 5 2/3 innings.

TITLE: Rahman Knocks Out Lewis in 5th
AUTHOR: By Ed Stoddard
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: BRAKPAN, South Africa - Little-known American Hasim Rahman caused one of the biggest upsets in boxing history when he knocked out Lennox Lewis in the fifth round of their world heavyweight title clash in South Africa on Sunday. 
 Rahman, 28, took the WBC, IBF and IBO crowns from the 35-year-old British champion with a devastating right hook that flattened his opponent. 
 &quot;You know that was a lucky punch,&quot; Lewis said afterward. 
 &quot;Lennox didn't do anything wrong. In boxing it takes just one punch,&quot; said Emmanuel Steward, the former champion's trainer. 
 Lewis appeared to be in control of the bout in the early rounds, keeping Rahman at bay with his strong jab and right uppercuts. 
 With the fight taking place at altitude, Lewis did appear to be struggling for breath but he still remained in charge and looked poised to pick off Rahman as the bout entered the middle rounds. 
 Rahman, known as &quot;The Rock,&quot; had the crowd chanting for him when he briefly slugged it out with his opponent in the fourth round, and in the fifth he caught Lewis flush on the jaw with a huge right. Although the Briton attempted to struggle to his feet, he was unable to beat the count. 
 Rahman, whose career record improved to 35 wins and two defeats, said he was prepared to fight any heavyweight, but he would be happy to give Lewis a rematch. &quot;He gave me the opportunity and it is only fair to give him one in return,&quot; he said. 
 The devout Muslim from Baltimore had made a great impression in South Africa, visiting AIDS centers and mosques and training in a tough downtown Johannesburg gym. 
 Lewis, in contrast, had been accused of arrogance and overconfidence by the local press and frequently showed up late to news conferences and other events. 
 The relaxed attitude Lewis seemed to take to the fight was also reflected in concerns that he had arrived too late to acclimatize to Johannesburg's altitude of 1,867 meters above sea level. 
 Although he arrived only two weeks ago - Rahman traveled to Africa a month before the fight - Lewis said that had not been a factor. 
 The shock result ranks alongside Tyson's upset defeat at the hands of Buster Douglas in Tokyo in 1990. 
 Rahman's victory also echoed the other great boxing upset on the African continent, when Muhammad Ali knocked out the seemingly indestructible George Foreman in Zaire in 1974. 


TITLE: Celtic Wraps Up Scottish Premier League
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GLASGOW, Scotland - Substitute Lubomir Moravcik added sparkle to Celtic's league-title celebration with the goal that sealed a 1-0 victory over Hearts on Sunday.
 Moravcik, who had been on the pitch for just five minutes, scored in the 68th minute to ensure the party for the 60,000 fans at Parkhead did not turn flat on the day Celtic received the Scottish Premier League trophy.
 Celtic, Scottish league champions 37 times in their history, had made sure of winning the title for only the second time in 13 years two weeks ago.
 Martin O'Neill's side were presented with the trophy after the match by Scottish Premier League chief executive Roger Mitchell.
 That unleashed a giant celebration inside the stadium as tickertape, balloons, and flags covered the arena.
 The win was Celtic's 29th in 34 games, giving them 91 points with four games remaining.
 Fifth-placed Hearts, seeking to qualify for next season's UEFA Cup, threatened to spoil the party.
 Goalkeeper Antti Niemi denied Henrik Larsson and Alan Thompson with superb saves in the first half and then tipped away a 25-meter Moravcik shot after the Slovakian international had come on in the 63rd minute.
 But Moravcik broke the deadlock soon afterwards, latching onto a pass from Larsson to steer home a right-foot shot from 14 meters.
 Larsson, seeking his 50th goal of the season, had a couple of chances to add to the lead but, for once the Swede could not find the finishing touch.
 Afterwards, manager O'Neill revealed that Moravcik, who will be turning 36 this June, was ready to sign a new one-year contract to keep him at the club for next season's Champions League campaign.
 Captain Paul Lambert replied to a barb by Rangers midfielder Joerg Albertz that Celtic had won the title only because &quot;Rangers were bad, not because Celtic were good.&quot;
 &quot;Our record speaks for itself,&quot; Lambert said. &quot;We deserve to be champions and anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.&quot;
 <strong>England. </strong>Gary McAllister was Liverpool's savior for the third time in a week when he scored a 73rd-minute penalty to help his side to a 3-1 home league win over Tottenham Hotspur Sunday.
 The victory keeps alive Liverpool's hopes of finishing in the top three and earning a Champions League place but it was never in total control against a spirited Spurs team full of reserves.
 McAllister, who scored the last-minute winner against Everton Monday and followed up with the penalty against Barcelona that secured a UEFA Cup final place Thursday, was on target from the spot 17 minutes from time just when Liverpool looked to have run out of ideas.
 Robbie Fowler's header two minutes from the end sealed the win that takes Gerard Houllier's team above Chelsea to fifth place with 56 points, six points adrift of third-placed Ipswich Town but with two games in hand.
 Leeds United is fourth with 59 points, having played one game more than Liverpool, which has five remaining.
 Liverpool got off to a flying start when Patrik Berger slipped a through ball into the path of Emile Heskey who took it in his stride before placing it past Neil Sullivan after seven minutes.
 Injury-ravaged Tottenham initially was at full stretch to keep the host at bay and had a narrow escape when Michael Owen had a header ruled out for offside after 23 minutes.
 But while Liverpool was still complaining about the decision Spurs quickly broke through Oyvind Leonhardsen who crossed for Dutchman Willem Korsten to tuck in the equalizer.
 Steven Gerrard clipped the bar with a trademark long-range shot 10 minutes before halftime but Heskey had to leave the fray with an injury shortly after.
 Liverpool struggled to regain control in the second half and almost got caught on the break twice, Sander Westerveld making one excellent save to deny Stephen Clemence.
 With the Anfield fans getting edgy the breakthrough came when Alton Thelwell handled a Fowler shot in the box and 36-year-old McAllister again stepped up and to fire it low into the corner.
 Liverpool still had to endure some nervous moments before Fowler glanced in a perfect Markus Babbel cross to complete a great week for the club.

TITLE: Jordan Hints That Comeback Rumors May Be True After All
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - Michael Jordan has given another strong hint that he could be back playing in the National Basketball Association next season.
 The 38-year-old said in an interview on NBC television during Saturday's playoff coverage that he still feels the competitive urge.
 Jordan, part-owner and president of the Washington Wizards, said his return would be a certainty if his former Olympic teammate Charles Barkley could get his own weight down to under 120 kilograms so they could make a comeback together.
 Barkley has been tipping the scales at over 140 kilograms since retiring from the game at the end of last season.
 Jordan, 10-time NBA scoring champion and five-time Most Valuable Player, has been pushing himself hard in pick-up games and workouts.
 &quot;It's definitely the challenge,&quot; Jordan said about considering a return. &quot;I'm not coming back for money, I'm not coming back for the glory. I think I left the game with that, but the challenge is what I truly love.&quot;
 Jordan provided a fairy-tale end to his fabled career in the 1998 NBA finals when he hit his final shot to give the Bulls a title-clinching win over the Utah Jazz.
 In the NBC interview, which was taped Friday, Jordan said he began playing pick-up games to battle a weight problem.
 He said his weight has come down from 110 kilograms to about 100, slightly above his one-time playing weight of 96. Jordan said only recently he was &quot;99.9 percent&quot; sure he would not return to the court and admitted in the interview that it was still a long shot.
 &quot;Mentally, I can reduce that because mentally I'd like to get my skills back,&quot; said Jordan, who led the Chicago Bulls to six titles.
 &quot;I'm not convinced as of right now that I can find those skills,&quot; the former superstar admitted.
 Jordan would not put a timetable on a comeback decision, and would not even say if it would be the Wizards he would play for should he return.
 Jordan has left the NBA and returned in triumph before. He retired in 1993 to play baseball in the Chicago White Sox's minor league system but came back two years later and led the Bulls to three more NBA championships.

TITLE: Lakers' Late Flourish Too Much for Blazers
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SACRAMENTO, California - The Los Angeles Lakers enjoyed a first-game victory in the other Western Conference encounter, overcoming the Portland Trail Blazers 106-93. 
 The Phoenix Suns silenced the home fans Sunday as they took the opening game of their NBA first-round playoff series 86-83 over the Sacramento Kings. 
 In the Eastern Conference, New York overcame Toronto 92-85 and Milwaukee beat Orlando 103-90 to gain vital early advantages in the best-of-five playoffs. 
 <strong>
 Los Angeles Lakers 106, Portland 93. </strong>In Los Angeles, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant both started poorly but finished well as the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers again broke the Portland Trail Blazers in the fourth quarter of a playoff game Sunday.
 The Lakers, who overcame a 15-point Portland lead in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of last season's Western Conference finals, stormed to victory over the Trail Blazers with a 32-21 final quarter.
 O'Neal missed 12 of his first 15 shots but finished with 24 points and 20 rebounds. Bryant missed his first seven shots but scored 25 of his 28 points in the second half - 15 in the fourth quarter - and added seven assists.
 &quot;I'm proud of the way the team played today, and Kobe did a great job of getting everybody involved,&quot; O'Neal said.
 <strong>Phoenix 86, Sacramento 83. </strong>In Sacramento, the Suns ignored the raucous Arco Arena crowd and got big games from Jason Kidd, Shawn Marion and Rodney Rogers to upset the Sacramento Kings.
 Kidd had 18 points, 14 assists and six rebounds, Marion added 21 points and 10 boards while shutting down sharpshooter Peja Stojakovic and Rogers scored 18 points off the bench to help the sixth seeds overcome the third seeds.
 &quot;We knew we could play with them but when you come in here with the great fans, it's tough,&quot; Rogers said. &quot;We had to play through it and we were able to get the win.&quot;
 &quot;They [the crowd] got discouraged a bit and we just ran with it,&quot; Marion said. &quot;You hear the crowd, but you have to tune it out.&quot;
 Game 2 of the best-of-five Western Conference series is on Wednesday, also at Sacramento.
 
 <strong>New York 92, Toronto 85. </strong>In New York, point guard Charlie Ward was booed for his reported remarks about Jews but ultimately drew cheers as his New York Knicks stymied Vince Carter and beat the Toronto Raptors. 
 &quot;Everyone was happy and excited,&quot; Ward said of the cheering. &quot;That was a great thing, that I was able to go out and play like I'm capable of playing. But it's not me. It's only the Holy Spirit that lives in me that I'm able to go out and do those things, under all the circumstances and all the scrutiny of what happened.&quot; 
 Allan Houston topped all scorers with 23 points, Kurt Thomas had 17 and Latrell Sprewell 13 while leading the swarm that held the not so &quot;In-Vince-Able&quot; Carter to five-of-22 shooting and just 13 points, along with a game-high five turnovers. 
 The Knicks swept the Raptors out of their first playoff appearance last year, holding Carter to just 30 percent shooting, and their dominance continued this time.
 With Sprewell in his face and a variety of Knicks coming on double and triple teams, Carter missed 10 of his first 11 shots.
 
 <strong>Milwaukee 103, Orlando 90. </strong>In Milwaukee, despite a poor shooting performance from the team in general, Scott Williams and Ervin Johnson had double-doubles and were an overpowering presence as the Bucks held off the Magic to take the lead in their Eastern Conference first-round series.
 During the regular season, Ray Allen and Glenn Robinson and point guard Sam Cassell had led the Bucks' attack as Milwaukee won their first Central Division title in 15 years.
 The trio combined to average 62 points per game as the Bucks finished as second seeds for the playoffs.
 However, the &quot;Big Three&quot; were held by Orlando to just 48 points on 17-of-52 shooting, but this perimeter defense opened the paint for Williams and Johnson.
 Williams, who averaged 6.1 points and 5.5 rebounds this season, collected 19 and a playoff career-high 16 as he made eight of 11 shots. Johnson also excelled, with 12 points and 10 boards off the bench.
 The Bucks shot just 40 percent (39-of-97) but grabbed 23 offensive rebounds and 25 second-chance points, leaving Orlando demoralized.

TITLE: Defending Champs Finally Get Best of Upstart Hurricanes
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: RALEIGH, North Carolina - The New Jersey Devils finally eliminated the Carolina Hurricanes from the Stanley Cup as Randy McKay scored twice and Bobby Holik got three assists in a 5-1 victory on Sunday.
 The Devils, who led 3-0 in the best-of-seven series but then lost two games, reached the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Toronto Maple Leafs for a rematch of last year's conference semis, which New Jersey won in six games.
 The defending Stanley Cup champions felt fortunate to escape with a series win over the Hurricanes.
 &quot;We were definitely worried,&quot; admitted New Jersey captain Scott Stevens. &quot;That team worked hard, they never quit.&quot;
 &quot;I'm proud of my players and what we accomplished,&quot; said Carolina coach Paul Maurice.
 &quot;They played with pride and discipline after the first two games. I don't know if we scared New Jersey, but they are the champions and have a very great team.&quot;
 Devils coach Larry Robinson said: &quot;Well, we finally put them away, but I give them full credit for playing with character and discipline.
 &quot;No one wants a seventh game, and when you win the first three you should win the fourth, not let them come back.&quot;
 After going just one-for-22 in the first five games, the league's best power play during the regular season connected on its first chance in this contest.
 Carolina defenseman Dave Karpa was penalized for holding at 13:30 of the opening period and Patrik Elias scored off a rebound of Petr Sykora's shot a minute later.
 At 15:51, Sergei Brylin was unchecked in the left face-off circle, took a cross-ice pass from Alexander Mogilny and whipped a shot into a half-empty net for his second goal of the series.
 Defenseman David Tanabe brought the Hurricanes to life with a power-play tally 5:18 into the second period, but McKay scored back-to-back goals bridging the final two periods to help the Devils pull away.
 &quot;We played much better today, had the puck in their end most of the game and didn't try to do too much individually,&quot; McKay said. &quot;No way any one of us wanted a seventh game, anything can happen in one game.&quot;
 Alexander Mogilny capped the scoring with 5:33 remaining.
 New Jersey's Martin Brodeur faced only 15 shots.
 Arturs Irbe stopped 34 shots for Carolina.
 &quot;We've had a taste of playing a better team and managing to win a couple of games,&quot; said Tanabe. &quot;This will carry over next year. The Devils had to take us seriously and I'm proud of forcing them to realize they were in a real series.&quot;

TITLE: Ri Pak Ends Sorenstam's Win Streak
AUTHOR: By Tim Dahlberg
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LINCOLN, California - Annika Sorenstam still has one streak going. She just has to share it with a few other non-American players.
 Sorenstam's attempt to tie the record of five straight wins set 23 years ago by Nancy Lopez came to an end Sunday in the Longs Drugs Challenge, but another streak continued.
 Se Ri Pak's second win of the year left Americans 0-10 on the LPGA Tour this season this year, though not for a lack of effort.
 The latest came from Laura Diaz, who was tied for the lead with Pak while standing on the 18th tee, but ended up two shots behind.
 &quot;Yes, Americans have not won this year, but we're all trying,&quot; Diaz said. &quot;In the whole scheme of things, it doesn't really matter if you're from the U.S. or Korea or Europe. You're just going out and playing golf.&quot;
 Sorenstam has four of the wins, while Pak's win was her second of the year, with two other second-place finishes.
 The South Korean managed only a pair of 71s over the weekend, but it was good enough after an opening 66 gave her the lead.
 &quot;This year is going to be the best year for me I feel,&quot; Pak said. &quot;I just feel really comfortable. I really enjoyed it.&quot;
 Sorenstam didn't, shooting a 75 to finish 12 shots back in her bid to tie the record set by Lopez in 1978.
 Sorenstam had shot under par in 18 of her 21 rounds, but could manage par only once in three rounds in a tournament shortened a round because of rain.
 &quot;I enjoyed the ride, obviously,&quot; Soren stam said. &quot;It just wasn't meant to be this week.&quot;
 Pak, who left several birdie putts short on the front nine and three-putted 13 to fall out of the lead, made an 8-footer on 16 and followed it with a 12-footer on the next hole to regain the lead.
 Diaz bogeyed the 18th hole after a wayward drive, and Pak had a two-shot margin to play with on the final hole.
 &quot;I'm just really happy to have another trophy in my home,&quot; Pak said.
 Pak, a South Korean who caused a sensation by winning two majors in her rookie year in 1998, talked to her golf ball in English on the front nine but couldn't convince it to drop in the hole enough.
 But she strung together eight straight pars, through the 12th hole, then played 1-under the rest of the way in to win.
 Diaz, who shot a final-round 68, held the lead while playing the 15th hole after bogeys by both Pak and Redman. She may have been the only person on the course who didn't know it, though, as she tried not to look at the scoreboards.
 &quot;I could tell from the crowd I was in contention, but I just wanted to play my game,&quot; Diaz said. &quot;It wasn't until the 17th green that I saw where I was.&quot;
 Diaz was tied for the lead as she teed off ahead of Pak on 18, but bogeyed the hole despite a remarkable break when her errant tee shot rolled over a small bridge that runs across the fairway.
 Diaz, in her third full year on tour, was left with just a short punch shot, but hit it too firm and it rolled over the green. She had a tricky chip down the hill from the back of the green, left it 20 feet short and missed the par putt.
 Sorenstam, who won after trailing by 10 shots going into the final round last week, couldn't find any of the same magic on the Twelve Bridges course.
 Though she drew a bigger gallery than the leaders, Sorenstam gave them nothing to cheer about as she missed a short birdie putt on the second hole, then three-putted the third.
 &quot;That's when it hit me that it wasn't going my way,&quot; Sorenstam said.