SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #678 (45), Friday, June 15, 2001
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Missile Defense To Dominate Summit
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: U.S. President George W. Bush will sit down for the first time with President Vla dimir Putin on Saturday in Ljubljana, Slovenia, to begin discussing his vision for a new strategic relationship that could prove to be one of the U.S. leader's most enduring legacies.
 After a year in which, first as a candidate and then as a newly elected president, Bush took a tough line toward Moscow and flirted with detachment, Bush now says that he seeks a "constructive and realistic" relationship with Russia.
 "Russia is not the enemy of the United States," he said at the conclusion of a summit with his European Union allies in Goteborg, Sweden, on Thursday. "The Cold War is over and the mentality that used to grip our nations during the Cold War must end."
 While no one discounts the possibility of a surprise - playing down expectations is a familiar Washington pre-summit parlor game - the stated U.S. goals for summit with Putin are quite modest.
 "We're not expecting major agreements here," U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters. "What we really are doing here is establishing a foundation with these two presidents in their personal relationship," she said.
 Although a number of issues are on the summit agenda, the focus clearly is on Bush's plan to build a missile defense system. He is expected to outline inducements - including an offer of arms purchases, aid and joint antimissile exercises - to entice Russia's cooperation with missile defense, which he says is intended to defend against limited missile attack from "rogue" states.
 Bush's plans for missile defense, NATO expansion and a fledgling European defense force headed the agenda at the NATO meeting in Brussels on Wednesday. Bush explained to his allies the reasoning behind his push to discard the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. However, Bush's plans encountered stiff resistance.
 He issued his strongest statement to date against the ABM Treaty on Tuesday in Madrid, Spain, where he opened his European tour.
 "The ABM Treaty is a relic of the past. It prevents freedom-loving people from exploring the future, and that's why we've got to lay it aside," he said, previewing the case he will take to Putin on Saturday. Bush was animated in making his case.
 "It starts with explaining to Russia and our European friends and allies that Russia is not the enemy of the United States, that the attitude of mutually assured destruction is a relic of the Cold War," Bush said.
 "I realize it's going to require a lot of consultation," he added. "But I'm willing to listen."
 As a side note, Bush said that U.S. aid to Russia might be affected by decisions that country makes. "While we will never dictate to Russia the choices she ought to make," he said, "I will make it clear that when Russia makes the right choices U.S. capital will be more likely to flow into Russia."
 Bush received his first earful of criticism Thursday from Duma Defense Committee chair Andrei Nikolayev, who branded Bush's Madrid comments as "irresponsible."
 Nikolayev said it represents a kind of "psychological, moral and political attack" on the part of the U.S. leadership, Strana.ru reported.
 The United States believes that Bush's proposed new strategic framework, based on missile defenses rather than "mutually assured destruction," has the potential to revolutionize the international security environment. 
 It reflects Bush's conviction that today's real threat is weapons launched by rogue states like Iran, North Korea or Iraq, not the Moscow-led Cold War behemoth.
 Ivo Daalder, a European affairs adviser to former U.S. President Bill Clinton who is now with the Brookings Institution, contends Bush essentially was forced into the Putin summit.
 The president realized his only hope of winning international support for his missile defense program was "if not to get the Russians on board, at least to have demonstrated that you had tried, to the maximum extent possible," Daalder told a Brookings briefing.
 Laying groundwork for the Bush-Putin session, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met Friday at NATO headquarters for 1 1/2 hours. They agreed both their countries face serious new threats, but they disagreed on how best to defend against them.
 "How to parry these threats or how to approach them in the future - we don't have absolutely identical views," Ivanov said. "There is nothing terrible, nothing tragic, about that."
 In remarks to reporters before the meeting, Ivanov was more blunt. He said religious extremism, terrorism and drug-trafficking are the chief threats to Russia today, while adding that in the longer term Russia would take "very, very seriously" the threat of medium-range ballistic missiles from "unstable regimes."
 As for the threat of attack by intercontinental ballistic missiles - those capable of reaching U.S. territory - "that is nowadays an entirely hypothetical problem," Ivanov said. "There is no chance of it coming back onto the agenda for a long time."
 In Brussels on Wednesday, Bush also touched on the sensitive subject of expanding NATO, which just two years ago added new members Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. He did not mention any candidate countries by name, but made clear he believes NATO should keep its door open to democracies.
 "We must extend our hands and open our hearts to new members to build security for all of Europe," he said.
 Decisions on which countries to invite to join are expected at NATO's next summit, set for November 2002 in Prague. Moscow is opposed to NATO expanding closer to Russia's borders. Among the candidate countries are the Baltic nations of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which had been part of the Soviet Union, as well as former Warsaw Pact members Romania and Bulgaria.
 Former President Boris Yeltsin chimed in Tuesday on the summit defense debate, telling Putin to beware of strong-arm U.S. negotiating tactics during his meeting with Bush. 
 Yeltsin, who had summits with George Bush Sr. and whose talks with Bill Clinton were known as the "Bill and Boris show," warned that U.S. negotiators liked to play hard ball.
 "Even such a phrase by the young George Bush that 'I want to meet Putin to look this kid in the eye' sounds crude from the president. This is the American style," Yeltsin said on ORT television, referring to remarks Bush made several weeks ago about the upcoming meeting.
 "You have to get used to it and prepare for it, so that you do not give in to this pressure," Yeltsin said. "I never gave in, and I do not think that this kind of thing will be successful with Vladimir Putin either."
 <i>- AP, Reuters </i>

TITLE: Legendary Rockers Suing for Royalties
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Former members of the legendary Leningrad-based Soviet rock group Kino are seeking creative recognition and modest royalties in an unprecedented lawsuit lodged against the estate of the band's late lead singer, Viktor Tsoi.
 In the lawsuit, filed in February by guitarist Yury Kasparyan, bassist Igor Tikhomirov and drummer Georgy Guryanov - all members of the band's last and best-known line-up - the musicians are asking for status as &quot;co-arrangers,&quot; or musical collaborators, on the group's last eight albums. 
 Tsoi died in a car accident in 1990 at the age of 29.
 But the Tsoi estate has for the past 11 years refused to disburse any royalties collected on re-releases of Kino's works, something that the remaining band members say disregards their creative input into the music that started the Soviet rock revolution. 
 The band members, however, do not stand to make millions or even thousands of dollars on the suit, according to their lawyer Konstantin Talov. 
 Talov said that royalties for the albums in question come to about 50,000 <i>rubles</i> a year. The largest portion goes to Tsoi as the composer, lyricist, and co-arranger. The remaining royalties, for co-arrangers, musicians and producers, is less, and the surviving band members would be sharing a small portion indeed if the band's suit is successful.
 For the musicians, though, the modest sum represents an important symbolic acknowledgment of their place in the history of Russian rock. As such, they are not suing for back royalties that have accrued since 1990. 
 &quot;We want legal confirmation of the fact that Tsoi, Tikhomirov, Guryanov and I were co-arrangers,&quot; said Kasparyan in an interview this week.
 But the suit could open a can of copyright worms in a legal climate that is not yet capable of dealing with such subtleties. Kino was active from 1981 to 1990 - but there is no mention in Russian copyright law of musical &quot;arrangement&quot; before 1993.
 &quot;Our suit is to establish a precedent. Nobody has ever posed the question in [a Russian] court about rights to arrangement or co-arrangement of musical works,&quot; said Talov.
 The case also revisits the files of Soviet censors who did not recognize Kino until 1988, when their underground album <i>Noch </i>(&quot;Night&quot;) was released. Prior to that, the band had released Noch privately, as well as three other wildly popular underground albums. 
 After Tsoi's death, his widow, Marianna Tsoi struck a deal with Moscow-based Moroz Records to re-release Kino's back catalogue albums and various compilations of the band's material. Royalties were paid to the Tsoi estate.
 The Tsoi estate is contesting the band's claims. 
 &quot;We consider that [Kasparyan, Tik ho mirov and Guryanov] cannot be considered co-arrangers because they are essentially performers,&quot; said the Tsoi estate's official response to the suit.
 Both sides of the dispute were heard at the Petrograd District Federal Court on June 6, after which the judges decided to send an inquiry to Moroz Records regarding the contract with Ma rianna Tsoi. 
 The next hearing of the case is set for October 18.
 The Tsoi estate's lawyer, Vasily Tyutin, said that the suit was directed against the wrong people. In an interview this week, he said that &quot;if they feel their rights have been violated, they should sue the Moscow record company.&quot; 
 Moroz Records could not be reached for comment.
 Tyutin also said that he doubts the trio can prove anything as subtle and subjective as musical influence.
 &quot;In our opinion, the works were originally created by Viktor Tsoi as works for an ensemble consisting of guitar, bass, drums and keyboards,&quot; said Tyutin. &quot;[Tsoi] implied the definite sound of his works from the very beginning.&quot;
 But a witness for the plaintiff, Andrei Tropillo - who worked as a producer on three of Kino's albums between 1982 and 1985 - testified that the music made by Kino was a collaborative effort. 
 &quot;As for the music on the albums, which include the three produced by me, they are the product of teamwork,&quot; he said in an interview this week. And indeed, all of Kino's albums say in the liner notes that all musical arrangements are by Kino - not just Tsoi alone.
 Timur Novikov - another witness for the musicians in the suit and a long-time friend of the band - said that Tsoi made a point of involving all the musicians in the composing process.
 &quot;In interviews, Tsoi always said that the band Kino is one collective, they do music together.&quot; he said. 
 In one such interview in the rock magazine Rio, Tsoi said: &quot;There's a tendency in press lately [to write] 'Victor Tsoi and Kino.' Why Tsoi and Kino?&quot;
 It's not clear, Tsoi continued. &quot;I don't like this tendency and don't want it to be this way. We do it all together and no one should draw distinctions.&quot;
 Novikov added that it was not until 1988 that musicians began to get paid for their recordings. When Kino officially released the album Noch that year, Novikov said the band members split the money evenly.
 Guitarist Kasparyan, however, underscored that the suit has nothing to do with claming co-authorship of the songs. The suit itself reads that the songs were undisputedly written by Tsoi alone. 
 But Kasparyan went on to say that the witnesses testifying on his and the others' behalf &quot;think that the music is ... made by the band in co-authorship.&quot; 
 &quot;It depends on what one considers 'music,'&quot; said Kasparyan. &quot;The main tendency is that in rock and roll, music is made by all [the musicians] together. If it isn't, it's just pop.&quot;

TITLE: Putin, Jiang Search for a United Front
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: SHANGHAI, China - A five-nation Central Asian group led by China and Russia and aimed at combating Islamic militancy expanded Thursday with the admission of Uzbekistan, which is fighting one of the region's strongest Mos lem rebel groups. 
 Leaders of the &quot;Shanghai Five&quot; said they had agreed to set up a new group to coordinate action against Moslem separatists. 
 Presidents Vladimir Putin and Jiang Zemin of China met to discuss closer ties and their shared opposition to a planned U.S. missile defense system, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said. 
 Russia and China are united by unease over what they regard as American dominance of global affairs. Beijing is believed to be pushing the Shanghai Five as a regional counterbalance to Washington's influence. 
 Spokesman Zhu Bangzao said the group &quot;has brought about a new security outlook&quot; and will serve as a world model for &quot;building up a new international political and economic order.&quot; 
 Other members are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, whose presidents all attended the Shanghai meeting. The group gives Moscow a structure to bind itself more closely to those republics, which shed its rule in the 1991 Soviet collapse. 
 In a joint statement Thursday, leaders of the group announced the admission of Uzbekistan, the most populous Central Asian nation which sits on oil and natural gas that China hopes to use to fuel its economy. 
 The group sees the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has led armed incursions across the region over the last two years in an attempt to create an independent Islamic state, as the chief threat to regional stability.
 Underlining its determination to crack down on the group, Uzbekistan recently jailed 73 people for up to 18 years for aiding Islamic extremists.
 China fears such unrest will fuel a separatist movement in its northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Muslim radicals from the Uighur ethnic minority have carried out bomb attacks and murdered government officials.
 Formed in Shanghai in 1996, the Shanghai Five initially focused on border tensions. Its agenda has grown, however, to include economics, cross-border threats and joint efforts to combat the thriving drug trade in Central Asia. 
 Topping the agenda this week are talks on containing Islamic militancy, especially the threat of armed groups linking up across borders. Central Asian governments, including China, are grappling with separatist or rebel groups. Many receive arms and training from the Taliban, Afghanistan's Islamic rulers. 
 Russia, which is fighting Moslem guerrillas in Chechnya, wants a multinational effort against religious militancy. So does Uzbekistan, where rebels fighting for an independent Islamic state have made forays into neighboring countries. 
 China's communist leaders fear such fervor could spill over into its western region of Xinjiang, which borders several Central Asian republics including Afghanistan. 
 Beijing faces its most violent internal resistance from Moslem separatists in Xinjiang. Militant Uighurs, ethnically related to Turkic groups dominant in much of Central Asia, have waged a campaign of bombings and assassinations against Chinese rule. 
 Uighur groups in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in the region are believed by Chinese and Western scholars to be supporting the separatists, helping them run drugs and buy arms. Chinese scholars believe Uighurs are receiving training in Afghanistan, along with Uzbek, Tajik and Kyrgyz militants. 
 
 <i>- AP, Reuters </i>

TITLE: Nevsky Gets Modern Traffic-Light System
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Deadlocked traffic snarls may never become a thing of the past in St. Petersburg. But on Sunday officials unveiled a new system of modernized traffic lights that they hope will ease some of the congestion. 
 Paid for by the Nevsky Prospect Improvement Project - which is underwritten by credits from the World Bank - new lights, which run on timers and are more visible to drivers because of special reflectors, have been installed at 25 intersections along Nevksy Prospect. The cost of the project was $3.6 million. 
 According to Verner Panov, deputy director of St. Petersburg Construction Projects Investment Fund, these 25 intersections are just the beginning: Over the next five to 10 years, 500 more of the city's 860 intersections with traffic lights will be fitted with the new hi-tech lights. 
 The lights - manufactured by the German company Siemens - are able to detect traffic as it builds at intersections and can adjust the speed at which traffic is allowed to flow to avoid the bumper-to-bumper build-ups and interminable waits so familiar to city drivers. The lights also have a central control station at 66 Ulitsa Salova, near Warsaw Station.
 We hope to reduce city traffic jams in this manner,&quot; said Alexander Yonkov, head of the third department of St. Petersburg State Traffic Safety Department, or GIBDD, in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
 &quot;But then, St. Petersburg streets were never meant to have so much traffic.&quot;
 According to Ionkov, there are about 1 million cars registered in St. Petersburg, meaning that approximately one out of every five city residents owns an automobile. 
 &quot;This is three times the amount of cars that we had registered seven years ago,&quot; Yonkov said. 
 &quot;For now, such lights are the cheapest way to at least partially solve the problem of traffic jams, at least in comparison to building more roads,&quot; he added. 
 The lights are not the only experiment the GIBDD is conducting to ease traffic. On the same day that the new lights went up, traffic police closed the passage on Staro-Nevsky running from Ploshchad Vosstaniya to Poltavskaya Ulitsa to all but public transport. 
 Now private vehicles wanting to get to Stary Nevsky from the north must use Goncharnaya Ulitsa, which branches off of Ploshchad Vostaniya to the south. Then they will have to turn left on Pol tav skaya Ulitsa, which intersects with Staro-Nevsky.

TITLE: Journalists Divided on Union's Real Objectives
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: With television celebrities from Mos cow and a blessing from the Kremlin, a newly formed journalists' union held its inaugural conference this week to outline plans for redefining the media's role in President Vladimir Putin's Russia.
 The ambitious but shabbily organized &quot;Our Time&quot; media forum, which opened Wednesday to present the new Media Union, was a bizarre mixture of social event, professional conference and variety show - complete with leggy models presenting a military-inspired pret &agrave; porter collection for the viewing pleasure of presidential envoy Vik tor Cherkesov and about 500 journalists from 120 cities, followed minutes later by a priest reading out a greeting from the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
 &quot;Having come together, we must tell the state that it doesn't exist in a vacuum, that it is hired by society and should not divide the media into friendly and hostile,&quot; ORT television's anchor and deputy director Alexander Lyubimov, who started the Media Union last fall, said in opening remarks.
 He added that, as a union, journalists will be better able to resist pressure from both government and media owners, and serve a self-regulatory function.
 &quot;It's necessary to draw up a new ethical code for journalists,&quot; he said.
 The buzz behind the scenes at the three-day conference was that the Kremlin orchestrated the new union to undermine the existing Union of Journalists, which, after years of stagnation, became intensely critical of the government during the recent struggle for Media-MOST. In an indirect confirmation of the reports, the conference was attended by Kremlin spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky, Deputy Press Minister Mikhail Seslavinsky and other government officials, but no Media-MOST representatives were present.
 But organizers said their goal was to establish a new system of relations with the Kremlin and defend editorial independence.
 Cherkesov said the advent of oligarch-dominated capitalism in the last five years had made the media less independent than in the early 1990s.
 &quot;One has to admit that Russian media have not yet achieved the level of influence and independence that media have in some other countries,&quot; Cher ke sov said. &quot;The press was used to defend the interests of certain clans and interest groups.&quot;
 Cherkesov, now Putin's representative in the Northwestern Federal District, is a former KGB officer infamous among human rights advocates as a persecutor of dissidents, among them environmental whistle-blower Alexander Nikitin.
 Cherkesov said setting up a system of government &quot;interaction&quot; with the media is a priority. &quot;The authorities and the press are not business and political partners, but they are certainly not enemies,&quot; he said.
 However, television journalist Vladimir Pozner countered later that the &quot;eternal contradiction&quot; between the media and the authorities will never make the cooperation suggested by Cherkesov possible. But he said he was willing to give the new Media Union the benefit of the doubt, particularly as a professional self-regulatory body, which can formulate and enforce ethics without government involvement.
 Many of the journalists present took a wait-and-see position and attended the union's conference without signing up as members. After the general session Wednesday, the diverse crowd broke up into &quot;guilds&quot; uniting journalists according to their beats.

TITLE: Audit Chamber Suspects City Misspent Funds
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg Audit Chamber announced on June 6 that it may have found violations in the way the city spent funding allocated for the territorial road fund in 1999. 
 The chamber believes that at least 264 million rubles were misspent and has asked Gov. Vladimir Yakov lev's administration to explain. As a result of these findings, the Legislative Assembly has suspended its process to approve City Hall's report on the 1999 budget.
 &quot;The inspections that the Audit Chamber has done in past have been objective, so maybe they did find some violations this time,&quot; said Andrei Korchagin, a Legislative Assembly lawmaker, in a telephone interview last Friday.
 &quot;We will set up a special commission to look into this question and we'll approve the report only after everything is clarified,&quot; he said.
 The 1999 budget included 920 million ($32 million) in various fees intended for the territorial road fund. This money was to be spent on work to restore the broken metro line between Lesnaya and Ploshchad Muzhestva stations, according to Article 10 of the budget. 
 However, the Audit Chamber report asserts that City Hall spent 264 million ruble (about $9 million) of this money to finance the construction of Yubileiny Sports Hall facilities, including a heating plant, a new ice rink and various technical buildings, in preparation for hosting the 2000 World Hockey Championship. 
 &quot;Part of the money was allocated under a spending article labeled 'renovation of the territory around Tuchkova Dam,' which means that it was used to finance construction of technical facilities on that piece of land,&quot; Audit Chamber chair German Shalyapin said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
 But Shalyapin said City Hall spent only 287 million rubles (about $10 million) of this funding to renovate the metro line. He could not say what the other 369 million rubles had been spent on or even whether it had been spent.
 &quot;Perhaps City Hall did a good thing in preparing St Petersburg for the 2000 World Hockey Championships,&quot; Shalyapin said. &quot;We are not saying that this is definitely a financial violation, but we would like City Hall to explain why it happened.&quot;
 City Hall had no direct comment on the report. &quot;This is not our business,&quot; said Vladimir Solovyov, deputy chair of the municipal Maintenance Committee, on Thursday. &quot;We spend the money allocated to the territorial road fund that is included in the city budget. So this is what we did.&quot;
 Alexander Afanasiyev, Gov. Yakovlev's spokesperson, said that &quot;this is an old story,&quot; but he does not know anything about the latest report.

TITLE: Kremlin's Land Code Goes Before Duma
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Lawmakers will consider on first reading Friday a government-approved Land Code that opponents say will allow the sale of 98 percent of the country's land, including farm plots, to a handful of people.
 The Kremlin and other supporters of the code say the economy will remained mired in stagnation if legislation is not approved regulating the ownership of land.
 The Land Code going before the State Duma on Friday opens the door to the sale of commercial and private land to Russian and foreign nationals and sets no limit to the amount of land that can be owned by individuals and companies, according to Duma deputies. 
 The draft code, drawn up by a team led by Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, bars the privatization of nature reserves and land occupied by defense and nuclear facilities, said lawmakers. Limited would be the sale of land under existing structures such as docks and railroad stations.
 The draft does not authorize or ban the sale of agricultural land, stating only that such sales will be regulated by a special law and that each region would handle them under its own legislation.
 The draft's failure to specifically exclude the sale of farmland raised the ire of Communists and other nationalist lawmakers on the eve of the Friday hearing. They fear that the vast agricultural lands will be sold off much like the infamous sell-offs of the 1990s under privatization guru Anatoly Chubais that saw prime state assets snapped up by a handful of politically connected insiders.
 &quot;Privatization according to Chubais made us poor, but we will turn into slaves if we pass the code drafted by Gref,&quot; Nikolai Kharitonov, head of the Agrarian-Industrial bloc in the Duma, told agricultural producers in Nizhny Novgorod last week.
 The issue of farmland is so controversial that it has stalled previous versions of the Land Code sent to the Duma over the past seven years. The latest version that the Duma passed in all three required hearings was heard in 1998 but never signed into law by then-president Boris Yeltsin. 
 The Duma will have to vote to scrap the 1998 legislation before it can take up the new code Friday, Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, a Communist, said Thursday.
 But with the parliament dominated by liberal and pro-Kremlin factions, the vote should be nothing more than a formality.
 President Vladimir Putin ran into the farmland barrier earlier this year when he ordered the government to tackle land reforms. In a bid to get at least some land ownership legislation into the books, he moved to appease nationalists by agreeing to drop the matter of agricultural lands from the Land Code and address it in a separate law. 
 &quot;We agreed that the code will exclude the part about the sale of agricultural land,&quot; Communist Party head Gennady Zyuganov said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy last week. &quot;But when the code was provided to the State Duma [late in May], quite a few articles had been rewritten and now, according to this code, 98 percent of the country could be sold off.&quot;
 &quot;The problem is that the draft opens a door, gives a loophole, that could be widened later,&quot; Kharitonov said.
 Communists and Agrarians are also up in arms about the provisions in the code that allow land to be owned by foreigners and that it can be sold in unlimited quantities.
 Seventeen regions including Saratov and Samara have passed laws allowing the sale of agriculture land. But the market, in the absence of a Land Code, has developed very slowly because buyers are afraid they will lose their plots if a code is passed banning land sales.
 Sergei Levochsky, spokesperson for the Duma's property committee, which is in charge of the Land Code, said his committee has received a number of protests about the draft.
 &quot;It will be heavily amended after the first hearing,&quot; he said.
 The final version passed by the Duma will still allow foreigners to buy land, &quot;but not everywhere and not by all foreigners,&quot; Levochsky said, without elaborating.
 &quot;And in some regions they will only get the right to rent land,&quot; he said.
 Levochsky said expert studies conducted for his committee found that the absence of a Land Code has led to an enormous black market for land.
 &quot;There is an illegal criminal turnover of land that is not regulated by the state or municipal bodies. In the Moscow region, the criminalization of this market is enormous,&quot; he said, quoting a report prepared by Grigory Bystrov, a scholar with the Moscow State Legal Academy and vice president of the European Academy of Agrarian Law.
 &quot;Instead of forming a strong municipal budget out of the profits of legal land sales and building houses and infrastructure, the State Duma for many years has been involved in idle discussions about whether land must be sold in Russia,&quot; the report states.
 If the Duma gives the go-ahead to the Land Code in first reading Friday, the legislation will have to be passed in two more readings before it can be sent to the Federation Council for approval. Then the code goes to Putin for his signature putting it into law.
 The Duma on Friday may consider alternatives to the Land Code put together by the government. The shelved 1998 code may be pushed forward by nationalists, as may be a draft penned by the liberal Union of Right Forces faction.
 Under government pressure, the Duma voted Thursday to move up the first hearing of the code from the end of June. Nationalists complained that the government was trying to prevent them from collecting enough support against the code from regional legislative assemblies.
 &quot;The deadline for the regions' responses was this Friday,&quot; Mikhail Silvanovich, spokesperson for Agrarian Party leader Mikhail Lapshin, said in a telephone interview Thursday. &quot;But the Duma decided to hold a extraordinary hearing Friday to push the first reading through quickly, before we could gather all the opinions of the regions.&quot;
 Lapshin said in a statement Thursday that Land Code opponents need the backing of at least 30 regions to prevent the legislation from being passed.
 &quot;If the State Duma receives negative opinions from no less than 30 regional legislative assemblies before the second reading, we will win the battle for Russia's land,&quot; Lapshin said.

TITLE: Journalism's Dirty Little Secret Is Revealed
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Ever wonder how newspaper editors decide which stories to print - or not to print?
 According to more than a dozen sources, including government officials, advertising agencies, academics and journalists themselves, the answer is money. Lots of money.
 These sources say that the &quot;black PR&quot; practice of placing paid articles in newspapers and magazines, known as <i>zakazukha </i>in Russian, is a multimillion-dollar industry involving nearly every publication in the country. 
 It is so routine, in fact, that most publications have an official price list that they distribute to discreet PR companies, that charge their clients based on how long the article is, which page it is printed on and how &quot;disguised as nonadvertising&quot; it is.
 One PR company actively involved in this industry, Lobbynet, actually monitors nine of Moscow's leading newspapers and publishes a monthly estimate of how much each makes from zakazukha.
 According to Lobbynet's Business Success Monitor, which is published in Stringer, a monthly muckraking newspaper owned by former president Boris Yeltsin's former personal security chief Alexander Korzhakov, the champion of zakazukha is Komsomolskaya Pravda, which pulled in an estimated $540,000 for the month of April alone.
 Komsomolskaya Pravda, the second-largest paper in the country by circulation, is owned by Vladimir Po ta nin's Interros group, which also controls Iz vestia, which was No. 2 on Stringer's list with $310,000. Gazprom's Trud was No. 3 with $280,000, followed by Novaya Gazeta with $280,000, City Hall's Mos kovsky Kom somolets with $270,000, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzh kov's Versia with $270,000, state-owned Ros siiskaya Ga ze ta with $230,000, Bo ris Berezovsky's Ne za visimaya Gazeta with $120,000 and Par lamentskaya Ga ze ta with $40,000.
 When asked about these figures, none of the newspapers named would respond on the record, though several as much as admitted it off the record.
 Lobbynet founder Oleg Tekh me nyov, a former journalist, said he started his monitor out of professional curiosity - and as a personal crusade to expose the practice.
 Yuliana Slaschova, co-chairwoman of the American Chamber of Commerce's marketing committee and a partner at the PR agency Mikhailov & Partners, wasn't surprised by Lobbynet's figures.
 &quot;For one Western client we placed an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda about some event taking place on this day on that square and it was printed in the middle of the page inside a thin frame but with no other signs that it was an advertisement,&quot; she said. 
 &quot;The client found out because a few days before a journalist from KP called our client directly, offering to print information for money,&quot; she said. 
 Slaschova said the telephone call from the KP journalist alerted her client to the practice and they wanted to know more. &quot;We took one issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda and put green stickers on every paid article, she said. &quot;By the time we were done the paper was as green as a tree, up to 70 percent of all the information in the paper was bought.&quot;
 Tekhmenyov said that business works both ways, meaning that newspapers will accept money for <i>not printing </i>a story. &quot;You can shut up five leading newspapers for $100,000 a month,&quot; he said. &quot;The average price is $20,000 a newspaper per month.&quot;

TITLE: Activist: Destroy Chemical-Weapon Dumps
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram 

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia and other former Soviet republics have about 500 hidden dumps containing undeclared, old chemical weapons, according to scientist and ecological activist Lev Fedorov.
 Fedorov, president of the Union For Chemical Safety, called on the government to announce the existence of the alleged sites and begin destroying the weapons containing mustard gas and other chemicals, which were produced between 1915 and 1946.
 &quot;Our country is not answering its international obligations,&quot; Fedorov told a news conference Wednesday, referring to the responsibility of Russia and other signatories to the Chemical Weapons Convention to destroy all chemical weapons stores.
 Officials at the Munitions Agency, which is responsible for destroying the nation's chemical weapons stores, vehemently denied Fedorov's claim, saying that when Russia ratified the convention in 1997, it opened the country up to inspections to verify its chemical weapons stores.
 &quot;It's obviously delirium,&quot; said Alexander Gorbovsky, deputy director of the agency's department for Convention-related chemical and biological weapons problems. &quot;There were more stores earlier, but that's history 60 to 70 years old. When we signed and ratified the convention, there were seven sites.&quot;
 The government has estimated the cost of destroying the weapons at $7 billion, although Munitions Agency head Zi novy Pak has said costs could be trimmed by up to half.
 Last week, Russian officials and foreign diplomats traveled to Shchuchye, in the Ural Mountains region, where the biggest chemical weapons destruction facility is planned.
 The U.S. government has earmarked $888 million to help Russia destroy its chemical weapons stores, but Congress has withheld funding for construction at Shchuchye for two years to prod Russia and European nations to increase their own share of funding.

TITLE: Chemical-Arms Plan To Cut Costs in Half
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The cabinet on Thursday approved a new chemical weapons destruction plan intended to cut costs and asked for an extra five years to eliminate the world's largest arsenal of the deadly munitions.
 Russia ratified the international Convention on Chemical Weapons in 1997, committing itself to destroy the 40,000-ton stockpile within a decade. But it has failed to begin the destruction, saying it could not afford the $7 billion program - despite pledges of aid from the United States, Europe and Canada.
 &quot;We can no longer tolerate this situation,&quot; Prime Minister Mikhail Kasya nov told the cabinet. &quot;Today we must clarify the program of destroying chemical weapons stockpiles and be certain the program will be fulfilled.&quot;
 The new program is expected to cut costs by up to half, in part by scaling down the original plan for seven destruction plants to three or four. Chemical weapons at four other storage sites would be made harmless and transported for complete liquidation.
 Zinovy Pak, the head of the Munitions Agency in charge of the destruction effort, said experts would also explore ways to profit from the byproducts of destroyed munitions to recoup the costs of destruction, Interfax reported.
 However, he said &quot;ecological problems would in any case be the first priority,&quot; according to Interfax.
 People living near the planned destruction sites say they're nervous about possible accidents - though proponents of destruction have pointed out that accidents or theft are also theoretically possible at the seven sites where the weapons are currently stored. Inspectors have reported some leaks in the aging containers, and international observers have expressed concern that security is not tight enough to deter terrorists.
 The government budgeted $120 million for the destruction effort in this year's budget - six times more than in 2000. Former prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko, now a presidential representative overseeing the chemical-weapons destruction process, said Russia should earmark 9 billion rubles ($310 million) next year for the program, but that 6 billion rubles would be more realistic, considering the nation's economic straits.
 Kiriyenko also said that the government would request the five-year extension the convention allows, until 2012, to complete the liquidation program.
 None of the planned destruction plants - each expected to cost some $1 billion - has been completed. The first plant for destroying stores of mustard gas and other so-called choking agents, in the town of Gorny in the Vol ga River region, is not expected to start until next year.
 U.S. officials helping construct a nerve agent destruction plant in the Urals town of Shchuchye say that facility will not start operating until 2006 at the earliest - and then only if the U.S. Congress resumes the funor supporting infrastructure.

TITLE: Suit Derails Cherepkov's Bid
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIVOSTOK, Far East - A court struck a former Vladivostok mayor from the ballot for governor of the Primorye region in the Far East on Thursday, forcing officials to reprint ballots three days before the run-off.
 The court ruled that Viktor Cherepkov violated election rules by failing to pay for television and radio appearances during his campaign and for starting his campaign early.
 Cherepkov came in second with 19.75 percent in the first round on May 27. He and businessman Sergei Darkin, who received 24.9 percent, were to face a run-off Sunday.
 Instead of Cherepkov, Gennady Apanasenko, a deputy to President Vladimir Putin's representative in the Far East region, will take Cherepkov's place in the run-off. Apanasenko won 14.16 percent in the first round.
 Alexander Plotnikov, one of the Primorye residents who brought the suit against Cherepkov, told the court that Cherepkov's violations gave him an unfair head start.
 But the regional election commission said the violations were not serious enough to strike Cherepkov from the ballot.
 Cherepkov did not take part in Thursday's court hearing, but spoke to reporters from a hospital, where he checked in saying he had heart trouble.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Borodin Stays Mum
 

GENEVA (AP) - Former Kremlin property manager Pavel Borodin stayed silent during questioning by Swiss authorities Monday over his alleged involvement in the laundering of some $30 million in kickbacks, his lawyer said.
 "He has no need to explain himself because he has committed no crime," said defense attorney Robert Assael.
 But Borodin, who is free on bail, told reporters after the three-hour interrogation by Geneva magistrate Daniel Devaud that he would continue to appear before Swiss authorities as required.
 Under the terms of his bail he is required to travel to Geneva for questioning whenever Swiss authorities ask.
 
 
Student Injured
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A 16-year-old student accidentally caused a serious shrapnel wound to a 12-year-old student while the older boy tried to disassemble an unidentified firearm, Interfax reported Wednesday. 
 The injured boy was hospitalized in a critical state, police reported on Wednesday.
 Both boys, whom the police would not name, attend School No. 162. The older boy was apparently trying to disassemble an unidentified device when it emitted a shot, causing severe neck injuries to the younger boy. The older boy did not suffer any injuries. 
 The accident took place on 37 Shota Rustaveli Ul. in the Kalininsky district, in the city's northeast. Police are investigating.
 

 Swedish King To Visit
 

MOSCOW (AP) - Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf will pay a state visit to Russia from Oct. 8 to 13, the Swedish ambassador to Russia was quoted as saying. 
 Ambassador Sven Hirdman said the monarch would be accompanied by Queen Sylvia and Crown Princess Victoria, Itar-Tass reported. 
 They will visit Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Arctic cities of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, and the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. 
 
 
Canada on Envoy
 

OTTAWA, Canada (Reuters) - Canada said it expects Russia to mete out severe punishment to a Russian diplomat who hit and killed a woman in Ottawa in a drunk-driving incident in January. 
 Russia refused to waive the immunity of Andrei Knyazev and recalled him to Moscow, launching criminal proceedings in February. A team of Russian police spent last week in Ottawa investigating the case. 
 Canadian Foreign Minister John Manley told reporters Friday that he fully expected the Russian authorities to charge Knyazev and bring him to trial. 
 The Russian team told reporters the maximum sentence Knyazev could receive would be five years. Had he been tried in Canada the maximum sentence would have been 14 years. 
 Canada is covering the cost of the Russian probe, estimated at 12,000 Canadian dollars ($8,000). 
 
 
Policeman Stabbed
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Va dim Osipov, a 33-year-old officer with the traffic police, or GIBDD, was stabbed to death by several unidentified suspects, Interfax reported on Wednesday.
 Osipov was off duty when the attack occurred.
 The St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast police press service said Road Inspector Osipov was discovered by an ambulance at 12:47 a.m. at the entrance to the Vstrech Cafe, located at 13 Prospect Prosveshcheniya in the city's northern Vyborgsky district. Osipov died from his wounds en route to the hospital, Interfax said.
 Osipov's attackers fled the scene in cars, police said, according to Interfax.
 
 
Lecturer Reprimanded
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Federal Security Service said Wednesday it had reprimanded a American lecturer over attempts to gather information about local companies, but stopped short of expelling her. 
 A spokesperson in the Omsk branch of the FSB said the agency had spoken to Elizabeth Sweet after she asked her students at Omsk State University to prepare a report on the region's social and economic situation. 
 The FSB, which has recently launched high-profile spy cases against academics and foreigners, did not approve of Sweet's methods, the spokes person said. 
 "This type of information, gained through unofficial sources, does not give a true reflection of the situation and if it was published abroad it could harm the image and competitiveness of our businesses," she said. 
 
 
Flood Aid Sought
 

GENEVA (Reuters) - Russia has appealed for supplies including tents, food and medicine for nearly 50,000 people driven from their homes in Siberia by heavy flooding, the United Nations said. 
 The appeal, sent by the Foreign Ministry to Kenzo Oshima, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said the worst affected area was the republic of Sakha in the northeast. 
 More than 6,000 residential buildings were flooded last month when a surge of meltwater caused major rivers to burst their banks, it added. 



TITLE: Gazprom's Books Reveal Mixed Message
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Gazprom shareholders are cautiously optimistic: After a decade of fierce resistance and two weeks of a new boss, the gas giant's books are slowly being pried open. 
 Paradoxically, analysts and investors are calling this both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because the world's largest gas company is trying to improve its reputation of being a secretive asset-stripping corporate juggernaut powered by nepotism. And bad because this new transparency campaign is revealing, in the words of one brokerage, just how badly the company's finances were run by the old management team.
 Alexei Miller, who replaced long-serving CEO Rem Vyakhirev in a boardroom coup orchestrated by President Vladimir Putin, took the step last week of presenting Gazprom shareholders with a breakdown of some $2.6 billion in loans the company has guaranteed - many to companies owned or controlled by family members of Gazprom management.
 Stroitransgaz, for example, received guarantees worth 5.8 billion rubles ($200 million) last year. The company is headed by Gazprom board member Arngolt Bekker and co-owners include Vyak hirev's daughter, Tatyana De di ko va, and the sons of Bekker and Viktor Cher nomyrdin, Vyakhirev's predecessor. 
 Another company, Interprocom, received guarantees of 14.36 billion rubles. Its owners include relatives of Vyakhirev and board member Vyacheslav Sheremet. 
 &quot;It's depressing to watch how Gaz prom is desperately seeking money on international financial markets while at the same time giving guarantees to companies that belong to the children of Gaz prom management,&quot; William Browder, managing director of Gazprom shareholder Hermitage Capital Management, was quoted by Vedomosti as saying.
 Despite the embarrassing revelations, Miller is trying to ensure shareholders ahead of the annual meeting June 29 that Gazprom's dark days are over.
 &quot;We will try to raise the company's market capitalization and make the cost structure transparent,&quot; Miller said, adding that a detailed breakdown of the cost structure would be delivered at the annual meeting.
 Miller is also expected to present a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers on Gazprom's links to Itera, an offshore vehicle that acquired huge assets that once belonged to Gazprom. Gazprom managers have always denied any links to Itera. But if that is so, why would management guarantee 5.5 billion rubles in loans to a competitor, shareholders are asking.
 As investors anxiously await the results of the Itera audit, some other long-awaited data has been released.
 This week, the head of Gazprom's price department, Yelena Karpel, revealed some of the details of the company's cost structure for the first time. She said the cost of gas extraction for export and domestic supplies were 55 rubles and 150 rubles per thousand cubic meters, respectively, while the cost of transporting 1,000 cubic meters averages 10.3 rubles per 100 kilometers.
 During a weeklong PR push, Miller and other Gazprom officials - chief financial officer Sergei Dubinin, head of investor relations Alexander Semenyaka, and top strategist Vladimir Rezunenko - disclosed a slew of other operational figures.
 Miller also ordered his underlings to get the company's financials audited according to international accounting standards by June 29, one day ahead of the date specified in a contract with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Gazprom said last week that the financials could be released as early as June 25. 
 &quot;This is a major shift in the company's policy,&quot; said Dmitry Avdeyev, oil and gas analyst with United Financial Group. &quot;But transparency requires more than just talking to journalists.&quot;
 &quot;The company is transparent only when its shareholders are informed of the costs, profits and profits ditribution,&quot; said Valery Nesterov, oil and gas analyst with Troika Dialog.
 &quot;The main task that Miller faces now is to increase transparency for the company's main shareholder - the government,&quot; said James Henderson, head of research with Renaissance Capital. 
 The government, which owns 38.37 percent, is keen to put its hands on the company's cashflows, which remained mostly out of its reach for much of the last decade.
 In the past it was thought that only a couple of Gazprom board members, including Vyakhirev, were allowed to peep into the company's registrar, which holds the complete list of shareholders. 
 One of the stories that made headlines in the mid-1990s was that then-Prime Minister Chernomyrdin owned more than 5 percent of the company and had amassed a fortune of about $5 billion from his links to the gas monopoly. Although technically no longer with the company, Chernomyrdin, recently appointed ambassador to Ukraine, is again on the list of candidates to the board.
 Chernomyrdin denied the allegations, which were never proved. But he also never sued over the reports, which contributed to the belief that they were true and perpetuated Gazprom's reputation of being a Russian <i>chaebol </i>- a large South Korean corporation with diverse interests in various fields and famous for opacity, red tape and reliance on personal connections.
 &quot;Miller has to get an idea first of how Gazprom's operations are being managed,&quot; Henderson said. 
 So it is unlikely that major shifts, save for some personnel changes, will take place in the next 12 months, he said.
 There was speculation that Vyak hi rev and his team would resist Miller's reforms, but Vyakhirev himself acknowledged Wednesday that the dissolution of his team is imminent. 
 &quot;There are old men in the company who will leave,&quot; he said, adding that Putin made &quot;an intelligent decision&quot; in removing him.

TITLE: Local Bank To Gain Control of Radar MMS
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Tyomkin

PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The Leninets holding, which specializes in military technology, is set to lose control of one of its better-known daughter companies, Radar MMS. As a result of a further emission of stock approved by Radar's board at the end of May, St. Petersburg's Promstroibank will become the major shareholder in the enterprise.
 Radar MMS produces missile guidance systems, as well as radar location systems, and in 2000 the company turned a profit of $3 million. About 70 percent of the company's production is for export, and the value of foreign orders this year is estimated at $25 million.
 Presently 37.5 percent of Radar's shares are owned by Leninets, with 19.9 percent held by Promstroibank-affiliated structures and around 32 percent in the hands of companies controlled by Radar's management.
 The Leninets holding specializes in navigation and radar systems as well as guidance systems for a variety of types of missiles. Besides Radar, Leni nets controls about 70 military-production companies with combined revenues of about 2 billion rubles ($69 million) per annum.
 The dispute between Leninets and Radar became evident in March 2000 when, on the initiative of shareholders associated with the company's management, an extraordinary shareholders meeting voted out all of Leninets' representatives on the Radar board.
 Leninets responded by holding a number of meetings itself, at which it tried to regain control of the factory. But the general director of Radar, Geor gy Antsev filed and won a suit to have the results of these meetings declared invalid.
 Early this year, shareholders affiliated with Radar management sold a 19.9 percent block of shares to Promstroibank. As a result, a controlling stake in the company was concentrated in the hands of the bank and shareholders on the side of the general director.
 Finally, on May 17, shareholders voted to authorize another emission of Radar stock. Leninets representatives were not present at the meeting.
 A May 31 meeting of the Radar board of directors set the parameters for the new emission, which will raise the charter capital of the firm by about 121 percent, with the total value of the additional emission being about 31.7 million rubles ($1.1 million).
 The first option to buy shares from the new emission will be divided equally between Lenstroi-Invest-Management - a company that is part of the Promstroibank group - and three other companies - Slavyanka-L, Stroitelny Matarialy AIR, and Yunis - all of which are controlled by Radar's management.
 Because of the new emission, the bank's interest in the concern will rise to 23 percent, while Leninets will lose its blocking share, dropping to 19.5 percent. The remaining shares will be divided between different companies associated with Radar's general director, Antsev.
 According to the head of one military production firm, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Radar is high up on the list of Russian military production companies from the standpoint of its potential to attract foreign contracts.
 Because of this, experts in the sector say it is difficult to understand why Ra dar would prefer to be affiliated with a major shareholder involved primarily with the banking sector.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: 'No Gas Thefts'
 

KIEV (AP) - Dismissing claims from Gazprom that Uk raine was continuing to siphon off Rus sian gas, Moscow's ambassador to Uk raine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, said there were no such thefts in 2000 and 2001. 
 Chernomyrdin, the former chief of Gaz prom who took his new assignment in Kiev in late May, made his statement at a meeting Thursday with new Prime Minister Anatoliy Kinakh. 
 Russia's gas export system, whose pipelines run through Ukraine, "worked in a normal regime" in 2000 and 2001, he said, Interfax reported. 
 Earlier, Gazprom claims of fresh gas thefts were denied by President Leonid Kuchma, the state oil and gas company Naftogas and former Gazprom chairman Rem Viakhirev. 
 
 
Itera Limits Gas
 

CHISINAU, Moldova (SPT) - The Itera group has limited natural gas supplies to Moldova over $400,000 of unpaid bills, Prime-Tass reported the head of the Moldova-gas joint venture, Mikhail Lesnik, as saying Wednesday. 
 According to Itar-Tass, Itera is selling gas to Moldova for lower prices than gas giant Gazprom, $65 per 1,000 cubic meters, but on tougher terms of payment. 
 Moldova's debt to Gazprom has reached $10.5 million for this year's supplies. In all, its debt for gas, including the debt of its breakaway Trans-Dniester province, is about $800 million, a part of which has been converted into government instruments.
 

 TNK Joins Chamber
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Tyumen Oil Co., or TNK, said Thursday it had become the first Russian corporation to join the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
 The announcement comes before Saturday's meeting of presidents Vla di mir Putin and George W. Bush in Slovenia.
 "Tyumen Oil is honored to have been invited to become a member of this prestigious organization. ... [The chamber] has been a champion for the expansion of commercial relations between the United States and its leading trading partners, including Russia," said Simon Kukes, TNK's president and CEO.
 TNK, Russia's No. 2 oil company in reserves and No. 4 in production, has affiliations with other U.S. business organizations. Kukes recently became the first Russian member of the board of directors of the Washington based U.S.-Russia Business Council, which promotes trade between the two countries.
 
 
RTS Falls 1.03%
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian shares extended recent losses and closed down Thursday, but traders said turnover was low as global economic uncertainty kept investors away.
 However, the market was inclined to resist a major drop for now, they said.
 The benchmark RTS shares index ended off 1.03 percent at 207.97 on volume of $12.17 million. The broader Reuters composite was down 1.88 percent at 1,284.12.
 Martin Diggle, a director at Brunswick UBS Warburg, said bad company news abroad was undermining investor confidence, spreading global malaise into the Russian market. 
 "We have the old global market twinges starting to affect us," Diggle said. "Russia as a standalone - no problem," he said. "We still see better buyers than sellers. People still feel comfortable with the fundamentals in Russia." 



TITLE: Primorye Learns Korean Habits
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ARTYOM, Far East - In this crumbling former industrial center in Russia's Far East, where legions of unemployed depend on meager government handouts, Svetlana Kovalenko is blessed with a steady job that even pays for lunch.
 But the sewing work has its drawbacks, including degrading punishment. After the flu kept her home for two weeks, Kovalenko was forced to stand by a wall near her South Korean boss' office for four hours. She won't miss work again. &quot;Where else can I find a job?&quot; she asks.
 Kovalenko stitches at one of nine South Korean-owned clothes factories in the city of Artyom, whose own garment industry collapsed after the 1991 Soviet breakup. The foreign owners bring desperately needed jobs and tax revenues - and a clash of cultures.
 With deadlines tight in the global export business, Korean managers have little patience for workplace habits dating back to the Soviet era.
 &quot;In Korea, if someone has the flu they work anyway because they know their wages depend on profits,&quot; said Lee Yong-moon, chairman of the South Korean Sewing Association in the Pacific coast region of Primorye, where Artyom is located. &quot;Here, people don't work but they are required to be paid,&quot; he said, adding that up to 10 percent of the garment factories' workers are out sick on a typical day.
 The factories in Artyom make T-shirts, shorts and underwear from imported material for export to U.S. retailers such as Gap and J.C. Penney.
 Russian workers still enjoy broad protections from Soviet times - at least formally. Attempts to fire them often result in court battles, with judges siding with workers. And employers certainly don't have the right to make their workers stand in the corner.
 But economic reality gives the factories a lot of influence. Seamstresses start at 1,130 rubles ($39) a month, plus a 360-ruble ($12) lunch subsidy - not bad pay for the area. The factories employ 2,000 of Artyom's 113,000 residents. Lee said tax payments added $7 million to Primorye government coffers last year.
 For the foreigners, Primorye is a bargain. Eighteen South Korean sewing plants opened in the region after a global financial crisis hit Russia in 1998 and sparked a sharp devaluation of the ruble.
 The businesses were attracted to the region's ports and members of the ethnic Korean minority, who can serve as translators in the factories.
 And operating in Russia allows South Korean businesses to circumvent restrictive U.S. import quotas on Asian textiles. Globally, the Primorye factories exported $80 million worth of clothing last year.
 Yet the Korean businesses bring their own idea of labor conditions. Artyom inspectors in March found that employees at Kovalenko's firm, K.A. International, were regularly punished by standing near a wall. If a manager catches someone on a stool, he might knock it out from under the woman, factory office manager Albina Park said.
 Workers have attempted on occasion to create unions, but most failed.
 Government authorities say they are trying to reduce friction between managers and workers by frequent inspections. Though possible fines top out at just 10,000 rubles ($345), the Foreign Ministry also can refuse to issue visas for managers. &quot;We have no mercy on them if there are violations of labor conditions,&quot; said Yury Chernozub, a lawyer with the State Labor Inspectorate.
 The strategy has brought results. Some factories raised their average monthly wage to just over 2,000 rubles ($69) and three tolerate trade unions. One plant spent 2.5 million rubles ($87,000) on improving labor safety last year.
 There's another answer to Russian labor demands: importing seamstresses from nearby China. At K.A. International, 270 Russians work side by side with 72 Chinese women. The Chinese don't question working overtime and on Saturdays, Park said.

TITLE: Illarionov Feeling Left Out
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Members of a Kremlin working group, including President Vladimir Putin's top economic adviser, have blasted the government for failing to include their proposals in a plan to reform the country's power sector. 
 In a June 6 letter to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov and others accused the government of defying Putin's orders to incorporate their recommendations, Reuters reported. 
 The government on May 19 tentatively approved a blueprint to overhaul power monopoly UES despite the objections of minority shareholders, who said only a plan backed by the Kremlin group would protect the value of their assets. 
 Putin ordered the government to take a month to revise the plan, taking into account recommendations by the Kremlin working group. It is due to be approved in its final form on June 19. 
 &quot;Despite the order of the president of the Russian Federation ... recommendations by the working group have still not been taken into account,&quot; the letter said. 
 Besides Illarionov, the letter was signed by the chairman of the Kremlin working group, Viktor Kress, energy officials and a minority shareholder. They demanded the government take into account the group's proposal to leave chunks of the national power grid with regional utilities.
 Another demand was that the state, which owns 53 percent of UES, should ensure shareholders' stakes were proportionally reflected in regional utilities that will be spun off from the company.
 A source close to the negotiations said Thursday that Putin called Illarionov, UES chief Anatoly Chubais, and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref to the Kremlin to discuss the reform late Wednesday, and indicated the plan would be signed by Kasyanov as scheduled June 19.
 The government fell out with Illarionov and minority shareholders over the plan when a draft was first sent back for reworking in December.
 The government wants to spin off and privatize regional power plants and marketing units, leaving the grid and central dispatch under UES control.
 <i>- Reuters, SPT </i>

TITLE: U.S. Needs Comprehensive Policy, Not NMD
AUTHOR: By Sam Nunn

TEXT: DESPITE the broad agenda facing presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin at their summit meeting this weekend in Slovenia, media attention has tilted toward one particular plot line: Will Bush make progress in persuading his Russian counterpart to drop objections to U.S. missile defenses? It is a story line that is interesting and important - but dangerously out of focus.
 The clear and present danger is not from North Korean missiles that could hit America in a few years but from Russian missiles that could hit in 30 minutes, and from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and materials in Russia and the former Soviet Union that could fall into the hands of terrorist groups. The likeliest nuclear attack against the United States would come not from a nuclear missile launched by a rogue state but from a warhead in the belly of a ship or the back of a truck delivered by a group with no return address.
 Bush's challenge, which will hover over his efforts this weekend and beyond, is to prepare for the more remote threats without leaving us more vulnerable to the immediate ones. His success should be judged not by whether he wins Russian acquiescence on missile defense but by whether he can begin to broaden and strengthen cooperation with Russia in defending against our common dangers. The goals: ensuring strategic nuclear stability, reducing the risk of accidental launch, cutting the risk of terrorist attack, countering the threat of a rogue nation's attack, and limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction by safeguarding weapons, materials and know-how throughout the weapons complex of the former Soviet Union.
 The threats we faced during the Cold War - a Soviet nuclear strike or an invasion of Europe - were made more dangerous by Soviet strength. The threats we face today - accidental launch, the risk of weapons, materials and know-how falling into the wrong hands - are made more dangerous by Russia's weakness.
 We addressed the Cold War's threats by confrontation with Moscow, but today there can be no realistic plan to defend America against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that does not depend on cooperation with Moscow. George W. Bush said as a candidate: &quot;A great deal of Russian nuclear material cannot be accounted for. The next president must press for an accurate inventory of all this material, and we must do more. I will ask the Congress to increase substantially our assistance to dismantle as many of Russia's weapons as possible as quickly as possible.&quot; He is right - but try doing that without Russian cooperation.
 Whether the Bush team wins Russia's cooperation depends in part on how skillfully it seeks it, or whether it even wants it. It's still too early to know. The Bush administration has yet to make several pivotal decisions that will define its policy on reducing the threat from weapons of mass destruction.
 First is the matter of our nuclear-weapons policy. Today U.S. and Russian nuclear postures may well increase the risk both were designed to reduce. The United States has thousands of nuclear weapons on high alert, ready to launch within minutes - essentially the same posture we had during the Cold War. Today U.S. capacity for a rapid, massive strike may well increase the chance of a Russian mistake. Stability is eroding because Russia's ability to survive a massive first strike is increasingly in doubt. Russia can no longer afford to keep its nuclear subs at sea or its land-based missiles mobile and invulnerable. This reduces Russia's confidence that its nuclear weapons can survive a first strike, which means it is more likely to launch its nuclear missiles on warning - believing its choice may be to &quot;use them quickly or lose them.&quot; Adding to the dangers is the fact that Russia's early warning system is seriously eroding. If the shoe were on the other foot, the United States would be alarmed by the danger of Russia's capacity for a first strike and plans to defend against the few missiles that would be left.
 Our offensive posture has a huge effect on how Russia views our defensive plan. The most important element in Bush's May 1 speech wasn't missile defense; it was his public commitment to &quot;change the size, the composition and the character of our nuclear forces in a way that reflects the reality that the Cold War is over.&quot; If this is done right and coordinated with Russia, it could increase our security in a way that a missile-defense system will not be able to achieve even 10 to 20 years down the road. These changes would also make it much more likely that Russia would agree to needed modifications in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that could allow for a prudent, limited national missile defense.
 A second decision facing the Bush administration is its policy on nonproliferation, particularly efforts to limit the flow of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, materials and expertise out of Rus sia. More than 1,000 tons of highly enriched uranium and 150 tons of plutonium still exist in the Russian nuclear complex, enough to build 60,000 to 80,000 weapons. Storage sites are poorly secured, and weapons scientists have no steady paychecks. We have already seen hostile efforts to sell, steal and recruit weapons designs, materials and know-how out of Russia. Osama bin Laden has said acquiring weapons of mass destruction is &quot;a religious duty.&quot; We dare not risk a world where a Russian scientist can take care of his children only by endangering ours.
 Earlier this year, a distinguished bipartisan task force headed by Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler published a major report on the need to secure Russian weapons, materials and know-how, declaring it &quot;the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States,&quot; and calling for a four-fold funding increase for these threat-reduction efforts. The Bush budget instead cut funding 15 percent, and at least one administration official involved in the review has said we should expect further cuts. The review by Bush must answer a fundamental question: Is keeping nuclear, chemical and biological materials out of terrorist hands a priority or an afterthought?
 A third decision facing the Bush administration is the matter of missile defense. There are traps on both sides of the missile defense debate. Some insist we must have it, without regard to cost, so we will never be vulnerable to nuclear blackmail by a rogue state. They should temper their rhetoric. By declaring that we desperately need missile defenses to avoid being blackmailed by a few nuclear missiles, they may invite rogue states to believe that, even though we could identify and devastate a nation that launched a missile, we would yield to blackmail if they threatened an American city with a nuclear, chemical or biological attack with or without a ballistic missile. If we had preached that doctrine during the Cold War, could we have deterred Soviet aggression around the world?
 On the opposite side, some argue against missile defense of any kind, and they seem to embrace the idea that the only deterrence option for the United States and Russia is the threat of nation-ending destruction, an outmoded and increasingly dangerous concept. Bush is right to search for a way to change this Cold War posture.
 A limited missile defense has a place in a comprehensive, integrated plan of nuclear defense, but it should be seen for what it is - a last line of defense. Our first line of defense is diplomacy, intelligence and cooperation among nations, including Russia. It would be far better to prevent a missile from being built than to wait eight to 10 years and hope we can hit it in mid-air on its way over here. It's not that we shouldn't have an insurance policy , but we shouldn't spend so much on the premium that we can't afford a lock for the door.
 These three reviews now underway in the Bush administration address separate elements of the U.S. response to the threat from weapons of mass destruction. But they should not and must not be formulated into separate policies. They must be woven into a comprehensive defense against weapons of mass destruction - in any form, from any source, on any vehicle, whether triggered by intent or accident.
 
 <i>Sam Nunn, a former Democratic senator from Georgia, co-chairs the Nuclear Threat Initiative. He contributed this comment to The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: Yabloko's Real Efforts Lie Beneath the Surface
TEXT: THE First National Yabloko Party Congress, which took place in St. Petersburg last weekend, may have come as a big surprise for many who believed that the only thing that party and its leaders do is criticize the present administration.
 Grigory Yavlinsky has often been criticized by his opponents for being all talk and no action. They say that he has not proposed anything substantial to, for instance, improve the country's economy. 
 &quot;He had the chance to influence government policy, but refused to take a position in the government.&quot; &quot;He doesn't want to cooperate with authorities.&quot; &quot;He likes to be in opposition to the power, and he does not need anything else.&quot; These are the kinds of things you hear about Yavlinsky all the time. But last weekend's congress demonstrated that these statements aren't fair.
 It turns out that Yabloko's critics have only noticed the tip of the iceberg - Yavlinsky himself. They have failed to acknowledge all those Yabloko people who are doing real work in regions across Russia - many of which make corrupt local authorities decidedly unhappy.
 The main goal of the congress was to exchange experience among Yabloko's regional representatives to make their work more effective, especially regarding regional economics. And there was indeed a lot of experience to share.
 Our local Yabloko people discussed their experiences dealing with municipal finance. Igor Artemyev, the former chairman of the Municipal Finance Committee, presented the results of his work with Governor Vladimir Yakov lev's administration, especially on a Yabloko effort to set up a truly transparent financial-management system. 
 During the two years that Artemyev was in power, he succeeded in making the city budget more transparent and set up a new, open system to attract bank loans to finance city projects. The system, though, was not long-lived. Shortly after Artemyev left City Hall in 1998, it collapsed.
 &quot;You know how it was before with loans,&quot; Artemyev told the congress. &quot;The authorities would make a call to a bank and negotiate a loan at 30 percent interest, when the market rate at the time was 25 percent. It isn't hard to figure out that the difference ended up in somebody's pocket.&quot;
 Artemyev's new system was really just a computer that gathered data on the terms of various bank loans on a particular day when the city needed a loan. Three officials - one from the Financial Committee, one from the city treasury and one from the FSB - would use this information to see if the city could have gotten a better deal. Naturally, the authorities didn't like this system much, but it worked well for several months anyway. 
 &quot;Shortly after I left office,&quot; Artemyev said, &quot;I was told that the [computer running this] system had accidentally burned up.&quot;
 But one thing did remain, which is still considered a big Yabloko achievement for city's economy: a more or less transparent budget. Before Artemyev took office, the municipal budget was about eight pages long. When he left, it was 600 pages.
 &quot;There are still many regions where authorities are happy with three-page budgets, and this is intolerable,&quot; Artemyev declared and he urged his colleagues to work on this matter when they returned home.
 &quot;It's very easy for officials to hide wrongful spending under vague budget articles... This our taxpayers' money, so we must do something about it,&quot; he said.
 The congress, then, was something of a public-relations action to show the country that Yabloko is really involved in some important, practical activity in the regions. Such an event should have taken place a long, long time ago, but better late than never. 
 And it looks like it worked to some extent. There were about 300 Yabloko members from 45 regions at the congress - a number that surprised some journalists, including one from the pro-government news agency Itar-Tass. 
 &quot;Why have you hidden the fact that there are so many members of Yabloko working in legislative and executive branches all across Russia?&quot; she asked. That made Yavlinsky smile.

TITLE: Mailbox
TEXT: <i><strong>Dear Editor,</strong></i>
 The Russian and foreign media, including The St. Petersburg Times - which I greatly respect - are filled these days with articles, essays, interviews or exclamations about Boris Berezovsky's firing of Vitaly Tretyakov. [In response to &quot;Tycoon Revamps Media Outlets,&quot; June 8.] If it were not for a quote about &quot;freedom&quot; that I heard, I believe, on the <i>Vek </i>program, I would not have picked up my pen. If you believe a program that pretentiously calls itself &quot;one hundred years,&quot; one era ended with Tretya kov's firing and another began.
 Can you imagine anything more absurd? Has our regard for ourselves and the times in which we live fallen so low? The Soviet Union fell apart, the socialist bloc ceased to exist, Czechoslovakia was divided, Yugoslavia was bombed for humanitarian reasons, South African apartheid came to an end, many other events occurred, and Vek would have us believe that all this was merely a chronicle of the times of Vitaly Tretyakov. Meanwhile, what took place was nothing more than a scuffle between two well-known &quot;peas in a pod&quot; that ended, as happens in nature, with the victory of the strongest. That is how it is, no matter how much they assure the public of their love for one another.
 For me, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta that was born on the wave of glasnost and perestroika died in 1995 when Tretyakov announced to his closest advisors and co-founders of the publication that he was closing shop in view of insurmountable financial problems.
 When their categorical objections, a virtual revolt, brought him to his senses, he was not grateful, but mortgaged his &quot;independent&quot; newspaper to Berezovsky. With the help of a special police detail, he rid himself of those who wanted to try living and writing without being in thrall to the oligarch. Since that time, Nezavisimaya Gazeta has become and remains what it is today.
 There is a joke from Soviet days about Stalinist questionnaires: Has there been any wavering in carrying out the general Party line? There has been wavering, but in unison with the general Party line.
 Thus wavered Tretyakov over the past five years, along with co-workers grieving over his departure. He would have continued swaying in time with Berezovsky, except the latter decided to sway by himself. And perhaps Tretyakov decided to sway with Putin.
 In human terms, I sympathize with Tretyakov. I am ready to wish him success in whatever field of endeavor he chooses. Judging by his stated intention to create a new media group, he is not in such a bad situation. But what does all this have to do with this era? No matter how hard things get, life will continue without Tretyakov and even without Berezovsky.
 <i>Boris Pankin
 Stockholm, Sweden
 </i>
 <i><strong>Dear Editor,
 </strong></i>I am not an alarmist and yet I find myself alarmed by the upcoming Bush-Putin meeting, intending to abrogate the 1972 Ballistic Missile Treaty and thus clear the way for the discredited Star Wars development and concentration on China as a new Cold War adversary. Let me hasten to advise you that I am no Bush-basher, although I have much reason to be. I have learned to pick my fights and the current threat overrides all others in my opinion.
 I am old enough to have witnessed the waste of resources attendant to arms races, not the least of which is neglected infrastructure and social progress. Even at that, we did not defeat the Soviet Union - the wheels merely came off their failed system.
 The practical side of me, when perplexed by government, tends to ask who profits and who loses - where the money goes. The winners in a Star Wars, Cold War II environment will be those who have been dear to Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the last 25 years: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, TRW/Raytheon etc., supported by an endless slipstream of subcontractors. They are a lobbying group of unparalleled proportion.
 The losers will include a mass of humanity with far less lobbying clout. Nations condemned to remain poor with further neglect of the social infrastructure - which includes schools, the arts and nearly all civic progress worth speaking about.
 Looking deeper for a subtext, one might consider that China, that long sought-after and bottomless source of consumers so dear to U.S. business, has recently flexed its muscles as a producer. Quite often a black-market producer, occasionally annoying and yet, with nearly a quarter of the world's population, might not that annoyance grow to threaten U.S. interests? Horrors! Was it such a good idea, this WTO membership? Might not a China impoverished by an arms race be better as gradual consumer rather than imminent producer? It merits attention, this possible rethinking of the business climate. When in doubt, follow the money.
 There is not a single military voice in support of this treaty abrogation. Not one. Nor is there a credible threat from China, busy as it is with a grinding of gears from communist to consumerist society. In the absence of any viable superpower other than ourselves, the vision of space-delivered weaponry against us is ludicrous. If there is a threat it is a terrorist threat and delivery of a bomb will be by suitcase and rental car rather than missile.
 Peace among the superpowers (or what remains of that once mutually threatening group) has been achieved after 40 years of great expense, waste of human resources and precipitous international fear and an unparalleled degree of mistrust. Presidents Bush and Putin must not be allowed to put us once more on that course of Cold War.
 <i>James Freeman 
 Jablonec nad Nisou, Czech Republic
 </i>
 <i><strong>Dear Editor,</strong></i>
 Corporate taxes are favored among those who like government programs. [In response to a comment piece by Boris Kargalitsky published on June 13.] Corporate taxes are popular for two reasons. One, corporate taxes are easier to collect income taxes from individuals because corporations need accounting to survive and thereby reveal themselves. Second, socialists like to point at &quot;big corporations&quot; when they need to blame someone, while socialists rarely blame government.
 Therefore, taxing corporations is a favorite bully pastime. But, what about the poor? When the bread company and the milk company are taxed, the poor pay tax because the price of the product reflects the cost of doing business. Also, exports are hurt because tax adds cost to the product for export, again hurting working people.
 Socialists don't seem to realize that when government is provided money, elected officials invite corporations to bid for the available funds in order to achieve their political ends. Soon, company representatives offer all the knowledge that is known in the halls of the legislature while the working man is working. Legislators then become dependent on corporate bank accounts to fund re-election to office. So, if you're comfortable with a future of massive corporate contributions to your politicians for favors and business, go ahead.
 But, Americans don't like what's become of the corporate/government partnership here in the United States. User fees are the preferred method of taxation for those who seek to avoid conflict of interest with their politicians.
 <i>Marty Riske
 Fargo, North Dakota </i>

TITLE: Global eye
TEXT: <b>Tone Deaf</b>
 &quot;Changing the tone.&quot; &quot;Bringing a new era of civility and respect to American politics.&quot; &quot;Moving forward from past rancor to an era of unity and understanding.&quot;
 Such are the stirring themes sounded by the good Christian president now &quot;setting the tone&quot; in Washington. George W. Bush hardly steps out of the White House without folding his hands in humble prayer, asking God to &quot;bring us together.&quot;
 But in this, as in so many other respects, Mr. Bush seems to have a unique understanding of the words he employs. Last week, for example, his respectful tone-changing White House unleashed a vociferous assault - including threats of physical violence - against the young mother who had the temerity to call the police when the president's daughters were having their illegal booze-up in an Austin restaurant last month.
 Bush aides dropped heavy hints to the press that the restaurant's management included &quot;liberals&quot; out to &quot;get&quot; the president's offspring, the Washington Post reports. That was the signal to unleash the Republican attack dogs at FreeRepublic.com, the prominent right-wing hatesite that pounces hungrily on anyone the Bush clan identifies as an enemy.
 Within hours of the White House spin shot, FreeRepublic was orchestrating an Internet assault on Mia Lawrence, the bar employee who called the police when Jenna Bush presented a patently fake I.D. The &quot;Freepers&quot; posted Lawrence's address, date of birth, driver's license number, physical description - and information about her infant child, the American Political Journal reports. They also posted details from a personal bankruptcy claim that Lawrence filed earlier this year, including all the dish about her huge medical bills.
 Freepers suggested that this info be used for &quot;identity theft,&quot; running up massive debts in Lawrence's name. Also suggested was constant surveillance of Lawrence and her child. &quot;Take pictures and post them on the Internet. Let her know that her picture is being posted. Make this chick paranoid,&quot; said one Bush supporter. Other helpful suggestions: &quot;Go to the bar and pour drinks on her.&quot; &quot;Pour acid all over the bar.&quot; &quot;Phone police repeatedly to make phony reports of suspicious activities at her home.&quot; Others said conservatives should storm the restaurant and &quot;set the place on fire while fully occupied.&quot;
 By week's end, of course, it was revealed that the White House smear was, as usual, a lie: The owner of the restaurant was in fact a donor to the <i>Republican </i>Party. But no apologies were offered - and Lawrence's details were still whizzing through the ether, helpless prey to any spin-maddened madman with a modem.
 God help her.
 <b>Honking Horn</b>
 Fox in Charge of Henhouse, No. 895: President Bush has nominated Wade Horn to be Assistant Secretary for Family Support at the Department of Health and Human Services. There, Horn will hold sway over government policy on welfare, child care, foster care and adoption.
 Horn brings a distinct - a cynic might say &quot;biased&quot; - perspective to these issues. As founder of the &quot;National Fatherhood Initiative,&quot; and columnist for cult leader Sun Myung Moon's plaything, The Washington Times, Horn has forcefully expressed his child-care philosophy for several years. Put simply (which is definitely how he puts it), his approach boils down to this: Daddy knows best, and single women are sluts.
 Horn advocates cutting off poverty-stricken, single-parent families from public benefits - like housing, job training, school loans and preschool programs - until all &quot;two-parent&quot; families are served. If there's not enough left to go around - tough, says Horn. We must get &quot;serious about encouraging marriage, and, by extension, fatherhood.&quot;
 It's vitally important, you see, because little girls raised by single mothers have &quot;a tendency toward early and promiscuous sexual activity.&quot; And the little boys reared by such slatterns? It seems they have &quot;an obsessive need to prove their masculinity&quot; - hence, the rise in youth violence (which statistics show actually declined remarkably during the 1990s, but never mind).
 Armed now with the full power of the state, Horn can continue his war for fatherhood - but fatherhood of the <i>proper </i>type, naturally. None of this namby-pamby &quot;New Nurturing Father&quot; stuff: &quot;The New Nurturing Father was expected to change precisely one-half of all the diapers, and to be as adept at fixing his baby's formula as he is at fixing a flat tire. This, of course, is nonsense,&quot; says Horn.
 Reports that Assistant Secretary Horn plans to post the personal details of all slutty single mothers on the Internet could not be confirmed at presstime. But Freepers say they're ready whenever he gives the word.
 
 <b>Eastward Ho</b>
 A Polish woman on a visit to relatives in Florida was kicked out of the United States last week because immigration officials thought that her hands &quot;looked too rough,&quot; the Miami Sun-Sentinel Reports.
 Bozena Weglinski, 44, was denied entry into the U.S. at Miami International Airport after an immigration inspector found her dermis a bit too unlady-like for his delicate tastes. &quot;He said it looked like she was coming here to work,&quot; said Weglinksi's American cousin, Renata Sadej.
 Weglinski was shoved into a backroom and interrogated for several hours to see if she was really one of those scummy East European loser-types trying to sneak into the Promised Land, hoping to land the kind of plush job all those other illegal immigrants get - like scrubbing toilets and cleaning cat boxes for decent, God-fearing two-parent families and Bush cabinet appointees.
 It turns out that Weglinski actually owns a prosperous Warsaw plumbing business, but just happens to suffer from a skin condition. Or at least that was her <i>story. </i>Immigration officials knew better - after all, why would God, who, as we all know, bestows wealth only on the worthy, smite one of his Blessed Elect with such an affliction? They deported Weglinski immediately - and just for good measure, they canceled her 10-year visitation visa, which she'd used to visit Chicago last year.
 You can't be too careful these days. And anyway, who does she think she's fooling? <i>Plumbing, </i>in Warsaw? Everybody knows they just use straw in all those mud huts east of the Oder.

TITLE: tindersticks: a new freedom
TEXT: Tindersticks, which turned 10 last month, have just released their fifth studio album &quot;Can Our Love...,&quot; a follow-up to the 1999 &quot;Simple Pleasure,&quot; and claim to have found a new freedom. The London-based, six-piece band, which can hardly be compared to anything else around, will come to Russia for two shows next week.
 In a telephone interview with </i><strong>Sergey Chernov </strong><i>from London last Friday, Tindersticks' singer/lyricist Stuart Staples discusses second-hand suits, his Neil Diamond influence and a problem with paper.
 </i>
 q: How would you describe the new Tindersticks album, &quot;Can Our Love...&quot;? Is it a departure for you?
 a:I suppose for us it's a kind of new-found freedom in our music that we lost a while ago, a kind of new adventurism.
 
 q:What are you going to play in Russia? Will it be much different from your show in Bristol yesterday?
 a:I would imagine so. We usually decide what to play after we have had the soundcheck and get a feeling of the place where we are. We usually go with the feeling; we don't always have a set of songs we're going to play. We just see where it takes us. But I think playing our music to people who've never had a chance to see us before is very exciting for us.
 
 q:Have you ever been to Russia or maybe had some Russian experience, influence or connection?
 a:No kind of obvious one. I've never been there. It's somewhere that we are excited about, being able to go there and play the songs.
 
 q:How does it feel to play to foreign audiences, who don't speak much English?
 a:One of the things we realized with the music that we make, I suppose, is that we think about the essence of music, and the feeling that hits you, and the various details like words and other things. But the main thing is a feeling that hits you and a connection with that. We've played in so many non-English-speaking countries, but I think the main thing that catches you in singing is the feeling. It doesn't have to be understood - in the words, that is.
 
 q:How do you see yourself - more of a poet or a musician?
 a:I never think about myself as a poet. The words that I write, I never work on paper, I never write things down. So they're always words that sound, and I make them grow into music in my head. I never think about myself as a poet, I don't really think about our music as being intellectual, no.
 
 q:Do you read poetry?
 a:No. It's not that I'm closed about it, though. I've got a problem with written words, really. I'm happier with words that aren't written down. They come from some kind of urges, they come with melodies.
 
 q:What made you get involved in music in the first place?
 a:I don't feel like I had much choice. Looking back, from when I was 14 or 15 it was the only thing I could think about. I started off playing in a band when I was about 16, and I lost a lot of jobs because I was always thinking about music. (Laughs.)
 
 q:What kind of music was dominant then - was it punk?
 a:I suppose that was the first kind of music that I had for myself, that you didn't have to listen to with other people.
 
 q:Your singing style sounds like you have been influenced by crooners.
 a:When I was very young, I only got my mother's music, which was '70s crooners, like Neil Diamond and people like that. Perhaps you can never escape from that. (Laughs.) I was made to listen to Neil Diamond before I could say his name.
 
 q:The idea of wearing expensive suits on stage - did it come from this crooner connection?
 a:When we started off this band, we wore suits from second-hand shops. They never fit us, and we gradually got to a point where we had hand-made suits and we played with an orchestra. That was in about 1997. And when we reached that, we had to break it down. It was an empty place to be. I suppose it was like almost achieving your dreams. I think since then we've been looking for something else. I wear suits if I like, but not very often these days.
 
 q:Was David Bowie an influence? You covered his song &quot;Kooks.&quot;
 a:Yes, definitely. When I was young, definitely - I think everybody had to go through the David Bowie phase. (Laughs.) I still think &quot;Hunky Dory&quot; is an amazing record.
 
 q:When you started did you feel like you were in opposition to, say, mainstream rock music?
 a:I don't think about an opposition. I think we always were isolated, but in a good way. I suppose especially now. It feels like a really good thing to be with yourself. It's not opposition, it's a reaction for having music in your own way and wanting to follow that way.
 
 q:Did you like Morrissey?
 a:Yeah. I think he's a unique British singer, yeah.
 
 q:Do you feel the two first records were different from what you've done recently? 
 a:The first three, I think. Afterwards we thought about the first three as a kind of a trilogy, I suppose. And when we realised this, we said, &quot;Let's go somewhere else.&quot;
 
 q:Have Tindersticks become more formulaic then?
 a:When I listen to it, I think when you make records, it's freedom in state of mind, with no rules - a kind of adventurism. That was the way we started off. When we started off, we had no technique. And I suppose you learn the technique and then you feel trapped by it. And then you have to free yourself from it.
 
 q:Do you have your own favorite Tindersticks record or records?
 a:No. They all have a point. In a way, I think mistakes are important if you make them yourself, because you end up where you are - we've just make this record that you would feel good about. I don't know if it's better or worse than any of the others, but it had a real strength of feeling, and that's all you can ask for, really.
 
 q:How do you see your audience? Do you need to be somewhat special to like the band?
 a:I don't think so. No, I think it's like all music, it has to do with a connection - there's a certain respect in our music, there always has been with the people that we know. So it's a personal thing, like all music.
 
 q:What makes Tindersticks different, in your opinion?
 a:When you're in a band, you get a collision of personalities. A musical personality. Sometimes that can create a special thing, and sometimes we can make a special thing. It's just hard to define it, there's no formula for it.
 
 q:Is it difficult to you to stay creatively independent and free?
 a:Sometimes. I think in the past we made it very difficult, but it feels quite naturally easier at the moment. Just the people around us and the people we make records with, it seems a very natural thing at the moment. It seems to please everybody. We'll see what happens when the dust settles.
 
 q:What do you think about the current state of the British music scene? Do you feel like a part of it? 
 a:[I feel] less a part of it than I used to. In the last ten years you've seen so many things come and go. I suppose at the moment everybody is desperately waiting for something. It's like in London you have to have something new all the time. There doesn't seem to be any dogma around at the moment, which I think is a healthy thing.
 
 q:You keep releasing vinyls - is that a usual thing to do?
 a:It's not usual, but I think a growing number of people here and across Europe appreciate that it sounds better. When it's done properly, I think records sound better than CDs. If I have a record, I have it on vinyl and I listen to it. On vinyl it's like you want to sit down and listen to music. If I'm just doing stuff I'll put a CD on. There's something special about vinyl that never leaves me. It can be more of a specialist thing.
 
 q:Have you heard anything particularly interesting lately?
 a:I think nothing to completely blow me away. There's nothing at the moment that takes my breath away.
 
 <i>Tindersticks in concert at TyuZ (Theater of Young Spectators), 1 Pionerskaya Ploshchad, Tel. 112-41-02, on June 19. The Moscow show will take place at the Tochka Club on June 21. </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: HIM, </strong>the Finnish metal monsters, spared the city by not appearing at what was supposed to be their concert debut in Russia last week. An electronic music publication blamed it on Russian customs officers, who allegedly held &quot;their infernal majesties&quot;<i> </i>at the border for many long hours.
 However, Thursday's newsletter from the show's local promoters offered a different version, attributing the cancellation to &quot;the band's belated arrival on the border due to transportation problems.&quot; The concert has been rescheduled for Dec. 19.
 <strong>Tindersticks </strong>looks to be the central event of next week. With Stereolab's local show canceled, it could be the first interesting international rock act in St. Petersburg since David Thomas and the Pale Boys' concert in December.
 The sextet, which celebrated its 10th anniversary both with a four-night special event in Brussels (a different set each night, plus special guests) and the European launch of its new album &quot;Can Our Love...&quot; last month, will come to the city in its classic line-up of Stuart Staples, Al Macauley, Dickon Hinchliffe, Dave Boulter, Neil Fraser and Mark Colwill. <i>See the interview on page ii.</i>
 Tickets cost between 280 and 400 rubles and are available from theater ticket offices, Titanic record stores and TYuZ, where the concert will be held on June 19.
 <strong>Boris Grebenshchikov, </strong>who said he would go to the Tindersticks show &quot;because it's interesting to me&quot; in an interview with this newspaper, seems to dominate the rest of the month by appearing four times in the city.
 Akvarium's traditional summer show at Lensoviet Palace of Culture - described by the band as the end of its &quot;Territorium Period&quot; - will feature both old and new songs on June 21.
 Akvarium will feature at the Pushkinskaya 10 arts center anniversary concert at the same venue on June 27.
 Then the band will appear at the Dyusha Romanov memorial at SpartaK on June 29, though it will be performing as <i>Boris Grebenshchikov. </i>According to promoters, Grebenshchi kov is doing this out of respect to the late Akvarium flautist, who did not recognize Grebenshchikov's 1990s band as Akvarium.
 The concert, which will also feature various former Akvarium members' projects, will be a showcase for Romanov's long-awaited memoirs. By buying a 95-ruble ticket you will get the a copy of the book - which will not be available in shops until the next day.
 Finally, Akvarium will take part in the Pitersky Rock Festival on July 1.
 Akvarium finished its Volga tour on Wednesday. It was marred by a conflict in Kazan, where - as Kommersant reported - Grebenshchikov folded the stadium show after the police attacked a dancer in front of the stage.
 <strong>Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov, </strong>who was criticized by Grebenshchikov in a recent interview with this reporter for becoming too similar to the hooliganish image he projects, will stage a presentation concert for his Tri Debila project's album at Moloko on June 16.
 See him &quot;solo&quot; at Faculty on June 23.
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: looking back on an age of wood
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In Russia, wood has always been one of the favorite materials for sculptors. Since ancient times, carved wood decorated the facades of houses and wooden sculptures were frequently installed in churches. While the 18th and 19th centuries saw wooden sculptures being widely replaced by sculptures made of bronze and marble, in the 20th century wood enjoyed a genuine renaissance.
 A new exhibition which runs through the end of July in the Benois Wing of the State Russian Museum on Kanal Griboyedov is entitled &quot;Russian Wooden Sculpture. 20th century.&quot; It focuses on the evolution of wooden sculpture in the country over the last 100 years.
 The exhibition, which occupies the whole of the ground floor of the Benois Wing, greets visitors with works dating from 1912 to 1918 by Sergei Konyonkov - &quot;Grandmother&quot; and fragments from &quot;Stepan Razin and His Men,&quot; which has only partially survived - with whose name the revival of wooden sculpture in Russia is primarily associated.
 Wood was very popular, in particular, among Russian avant-garde artists. Boris Korolyov's &quot;Salome&quot; and &quot;Grotesque&quot; created in 1921-1922 bear the influence of Kazimir Ma levich's suprematist art. 
 After the revolution, wood also became a common material for propaganda art. The strong-willed faces of workers and peasants and muscular females nursing babies predominate the first two halls. Particularly impressive are Beatrisa Sando mir skaya's sanguine 1926 &quot;An Uzbek Woman from Fergana&quot; and 1929 &quot;Motherhood. Chernozyom.&quot;
 For some artists, their forays into wood are minimal. But one can instantly appreciate Natan Altman's artistic intuition, which allowed him to see a wounded animal in a crooked branch.
 Russia's current generation of sculptors also often tends to favor wood as an artistic medium. The so-called &quot;Ozerki&quot; group is a case in point, with group leader Dmitry Kaminker's 1989 &quot;Boy on a Sledge [Young Hero]&quot; also on display in the Benois Wing. Several years ago, a number of St. Petersburg sculptors chose the Ozerki district in the north of the city as a place to both live and create. They established a community which is now known as the &quot;Village of Artists,&quot; and work mainly with wood.
 Dmitry Pilikin's 1989 &quot;Morning Before Battle,&quot; which the artist dedicated to the 750th anniversary of Alexander Nevsky's victory on Kulikovo Field, offers quite an original take on the war theme, providing much comic relief as Pilikin places three rows of chopping boards on a panel with a huge knife above them. 
 The exhibition also illustrates the differences between the Moscow school, which tends to be more decorative and ornamental, and the St. Petersburg school, which is more traditional and classical.
 
 <i>See listings for more details.
 Links: http://www.rusmuseum.ru/ </i>

TITLE: salkhino: georgia's finest
AUTHOR: By Robert Coalson

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: I'll always count a gray, freezing evening last November as one of the luckiest days of my life. That was the day I first stumbled into a tiny Georgian cafe named Salkhino, which is undoubtedly one of St. Petersburg's best-kept secrets.
 The clean but unpretentious interior - about a dozen small tables in an overwhelmingly green room that is hung with large, delightfully bright Georgian-primitivist paintings - gives the visitor not a hint of what glories lie ahead.
 However, as soon as you cross Salkhino's threshold, you enter another world - one in which Ketino Kitiashvili, the cafe's founder, chef, host and guiding spirit, is completely in charge. A native of Kutaisi in western Georgia, Ketino greets nearly every customer personally with an infectious smile that radiates sincere hospitality. If you have had too much of being ignored or even abused at local restaurants, Salkhino will surprise - no, shock - you.
 Salkhino's menu goes well beyond the Georgian staples of <i>khachpuri, satsivi </i>and <i>shashlik. </i>Ketino is delighted to guide you through any unfamiliar territory and to point out the freshest delights of the day. At a word, she is ready to take charge completely and conjure up an exotic feast from beginning to end. Be warned though: Ketino's eyes are likely to be bigger than your stomach.
 On our most recent visit, Ketino steered us toward the eggplant and walnut salad (100 rubles), saying that the eggplant was particularly succulent that day. And she was right. After the salad came <i>bazhe </i>with pike (170 rubles). Bazhe is a cousin to satsivi, although the walnut sauce features a delicate saffron flavor and the meat is fried crispy before being dipped in the sauce. Salkhino also offers bazhe with chicken and with trout (170 rubles each).
 Next, our attention turned to the soups. Generally, I order soup - <i>kharcho </i>(100 rubles), a spicy mutton soup that is particularly welcome when the weather is cold and gloomy. This time, however, Ketino recommended the <i>chanakhi </i>(100 rubles), which is similar to kharcho but has more vegetables and makes generous use of those delightful eggplants. The soup portions at Salkhino are enormous - in fact, a soup and khachapuri make a satisfying meal - but Ketino happily serves up half portions.
 In addition to an excellent regular khachapuri, Salkhino serves <i>adzharskiye khachpuri. </i>This bread comes to your table piping hot with a raw egg in the exposed center. The waitress then stirs the egg into the hot cheese until the mixture becomes a creamy cheese filling for the bread. It made an excellent companion to the soup.
 For the main course, Ketino recommended the grilled lamb (350 rubles), which was very tender and seasoned perfectly. When I commented on the aroma, Ketino told us that she imports all her spices from Georgia herself, using them only if they are fresh and fragrant. For my wife, Ketino chose <i>chashushuli </i>(290 rubles), which is spicy veal and grilled onions in a tomato sauce.
 Salkhino offers a complete selection of Georgian wines by the glass (90 rubles) or the bottle (675 rubles). Don't offend Ketino by ordering beer, although she has it on the menu for philistines. And don't even think of asking for a soda.
 An evening at Salkhino is like having dinner with good friends. It is perfect for a romantic date or for a lively celebration. My only warning is: call ahead. The cafe is sometimes closed for private parties and seating is limited. But once you get a table, you are in for a treat.
 
 <i>Salkhino Cafe. 25 Kronverksky Prospekt (Metro: Gorkovskaya). 273-78-91. Open daily. 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Complete dinner for two with glasses of wine, 1,725 rubles ($59). No credit cards accepted. </i>

TITLE: a perfect mix of opposites
AUTHOR: by Kenneth Turan

PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: Films we can categorize, that's what we're used to. Good or bad, fiascoes or masterpieces, we put them in their place, every one. What we're not used to, what we haven't had much of at all, are films that transcend categorization, that remind us - simply, powerfully, indelibly - what we go to the movies for. Ang Lee's &quot;Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon&quot; is that kind of a picture.
 A delightful one-of-a-kind martial- arts romance where astounding fight sequences alternate with passionate yet idealistic love duets, &quot;Crouching Tiger&quot; is a fusion film from top to bottom. By joining emotional sophistication to the most thrilling kind of Hong Kong-style acrobatic action, by having classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma and preeminent fight choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping in the same film, &quot;Crouching Tiger&quot; brings a specific national cinema fully into the world spotlight. It can do all this so successfully because Lee reconciles these opposites in his own life and work.
 Lee, who at varying times has called this film &quot;'Sense and Sensibility' with martial arts&quot; and &quot;Bruce Lee meets Jane Austen,&quot; was born in Taiwan and moved to the U.S. when he was 24. He followed his first three Taiwanese features (the &quot;Father Knows Best&quot; trilogy of &quot;Pushing Hands,&quot; &quot;The Wedding Banquet&quot; and &quot;Eat Drink Man Woman&quot;) with the English-language trio of &quot;Sense and Sensibility,&quot; &quot;The Ice Storm&quot; and &quot;Ride With the Devil.&quot;
 But Lee, now 46, had a childhood dream of making a film based on the <i>wuxia</i> novels and films he grew up with, where the rules of behavior are strict but the laws of gravity do not apply. It's a Chinese genre about the adventures of Confucian-era wandering warriors described by co-screenwriter and frequent Lee collaborator James Schamus as &quot;knights-errant skilled in martial arts and Taoist spiritual practices [who] fight on behalf of their principles as well as against their own desires.&quot;
 It's a world of hidden identities and mystical situations, of legendary swords and stolen secret manuals that &quot;Crouching Tiger&quot; takes us into, a maelstrom of forbidden loves, bitter rivalries and indomitably heroic looks. With impeccable production and costume design by Tim Yip and sweeping cinematography by Peter Pau, it's also a strikingly beautiful world, featuring elaborate costumes and picturesque vistas selected from all across mainland China.
 It was director Lee who found the 70-year-old Wang Du Lu novel that Schamus, Wang Hui Ling and Tsai Kuo Jung adapted. He was also the person who insisted on a thrilling but almost impossible-to-shoot battle at the tops of bamboo trees and who opted to film &quot;Crouching Tiger&quot; not in the more commercially viable English or the Cantonese of most of his cast but his more lyrical native Mandarin. &quot;Otherwise,&quot; he has said, &quot;it would be like watching John Wayne speak Chinese in a Western.&quot;
 The director of &quot;Sense and Sensibility,&quot; concerned in many of his films with women and their options for freedom, was not surprisingly drawn to a story that focuses on women not as objects of romance (though there is that, too) but as fierce and relentless fighters, resourceful and defiant. Three indomitable women are the centerpiece of &quot;Crouching Tiger,&quot; and it would be a mistake to anger any one of them.
 Though Lee has admitted to going further with romanticism here than ever before, his natural reserve and discretion as a filmmaker are equally important to &quot;Crouching Tiger's&quot; success. Rather than start the film with a major action sequence, Lee has the confidence to carefully set his stage. &quot;Crouching Tiger&quot; gradually widens its vistas, both physical and emotional, continually surprising us by increasing our involvement.
 Equally confident is the film's top-of-the-line cast, though each had a reason not to be. Asian superstar Chow Yun Fat was not only not the director's first choice (he got the part after action master Jet Li dropped out), he'd also never handled a sword before. Co-star Michelle Yeoh, a martial arts veteran, was hampered for a time by a knee injury and had to do one of her key dramatic scenes with her leg stretched out on an off-camera apple box. And newcomer Zhang Ziyi, recommended to Lee by director Zhang Yimou, was a 19-year-old drama student when she got her part, and needed the permission of her school to accept it.
 &quot;Crouching Tiger&quot; starts with a reunion between Yu Shu Lien (Yeoh), the head of a security service, and Li Mu Bai (Chow), the great martial artist of his day - a couple we sense might have more than friendship between them if codes of behavior permitted.
 Despite his skill, Li has returned from a meditation retreat determined, like Alan Ladd's Shane, to put his profession behind him. As a token of this, he asks Yu to deliver his legendary, 400-year-old sword, the Green Dynasty, to a court official named Sir Te in Beijing. Though he regrets not being able to avenge the death of his master at the hands of the sinister Jade Fox (Cheng Pei Pei, a star of 1960s martial arts films), Li feels he has no choice.
 When Yu hands over the sword, she meets a beautiful and well-born bride-to-be named Jen (Zhang Ziyi), a prim porcelain doll who says she envies the freedom of the martial arts life women such as Yu enjoy. Yu tries to tell Jen there are obligations as well as adventures to this life, a truth that all the film's characters get to experience for themselves when the Green Dynasty is mysteriously stolen and the connections between what has happened in the past and what the future might bring come into focus in the battle for its recovery.
 Setting &quot;Crouching Tiger&quot; apart from the standard martial-arts film is the care both the screenwriters and the actors have taken with the dialogue. Lee fought for this even though he understood it was &quot;almost against nature&quot; because paying attention to language and character might distract an actor and cause an injury during the action sequences.
 It is that action everyone will remember most about &quot;Crouching Tiger.&quot; Choreographed by the masterful Yuen Wo-Ping, who brought his decades of expertise to bear on &quot;The Matrix,&quot; the fights feature intricate hand-to-hand combat with a variety of weapons as well as bare hands. Best in show, however, are the airborne battles that particularly characterize the genre.
 Actors move with reality-defying speed and lightness, floating over rooftops and tiptoeing across lakes with unimaginable grace. With its gift for showing things that can't be described, &quot;Crouching Tiger's&quot; blend of the magical, the mythical and the romantic fills a need in us we might not even realize we had.
 
 <i>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is currently playing in Russian at the Avrora and Crystal Palace cinemas. </i>

TITLE: Video May Offer Key To Liberia's Renewal
AUTHOR: By Tim Sullivan

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MONROVIA, Liberia - The production quality is terrible - a tangle of distorted voices, jerky angles, blurry images. But every once in a while a few words punch through the garble, and the video's sickening reality becomes clear.
 &quot;I will talk,&quot; pleads panic-stricken Liberian President Samuel K. Doe, half-naked and tied up on the floor of a nondescript office. &quot;I will tell you something ... Please, please let me go. I beg you.&quot;
 His captor, a militia leader named Prince Johnson, stares back drunkenly from behind a large desk, guarded by a dozen soldiers. The militia leader turns away from the just-ousted president, a barely literate man whose repressive, U.S.-backed regime savaged this country through the 1980s.
 Johnson looks bored. He waves his hand: &quot;I say cut off one ear.&quot;
 For years, this was the most-watched movie in this war-shattered country - a Camcorded chronicle of bloodshed. Filmed in September 1990 by a friend of Johnson's, it is a horrific record of Doe's last hours, ending with an excruciatingly long close-up of his mutilated corpse.
 Now, with Liberia trying put the war behind it, the video has become an uncomfortable memory. The tape has been pulled from stores, thrown away, forgotten. The government banned its sale. Many Liberians, desperate for reconciliation, won't even discuss it.
 Through much of the 1990s, while Liberia was being devastated by one of the most vicious civil wars in West African history, the video was a hit.
 In a country increasingly callous to violence, the movie celebrated a dictator's downfall with a surreal blend of documentary and horror. Liberians crowded into Monrovia's tiny, generator-powered theaters to watch it. Johnson distributed hundreds of copies. The movie circulated quickly throughout West Africa.
 But things have changed in Liberia. The civil war ended five years ago with one final spasm as feuding warlords fought for supremacy. In 1997, the most powerful of those warlords, Charles Taylor, was elected president.
 &quot;The country remains divided,&quot; said James Verdier Jr., director of the Justice and Peace Commission, Liberia's foremost rights group. &quot;National reconciliation is a farce.&quot;
 Years after the war's end, members of Taylor's old militia dominate the government. The security forces, a thuggish collection of ex-fighters, harass ordinary civilians for money and frighten government critics into silence.
 Diplomats say Taylor and his inner circle have grown rich while the country remains mired in 80 percent unemployment and widespread poverty. Few Liberians have seen a working electrical outlet or water faucet for 11 years.
 For more than a year, the country has faced a rebellion along its border with Guinea. Paranoia runs high and Taylor doesn't move without an army of soldiers around him.
 A billboard, not far from Taylor's mansion, urges &quot;Total Reconciliation by 2024.&quot;
 Twenty-three years sounds likely to Verdier, who wonders if watching the movie could help Liberia.
 &quot;Let people see what happened,&quot; he said. &quot;They don't want to admit the atrocities they committed.&quot;

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: The Rule of Law
 

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) - Chile's justice minister said on Wednesday that ex-dictator Augusto Pino chet must be fingerprinted and photographed in connection with charges that he covered up extrajudicial killings during his 1973 to 1990 rule.
 The comments by Justice Minister Jose Antonio Gomez contradicted earlier statements by lawyers for both the defense and prosecution. They had told reporters that a legal loophole allowed the civil registry office to avoid having to register Pinochet like any other suspect.
 But the minister said Pinochet, 85, would have to strictly abide by the law. "It's absolutely false that General Pinochet has been registered in his absence," Gomez told journalists.
 "Under the law, registration of suspects has to be done in person. They have to have photographs taken and go through the correct procedure."
 Pinochet is being investigated on accusations that he covered up killings of political opponents. A judge is weighing the charges before deciding whether to accuse him formally.
 His lawyers have argued that he is too old and ill to be brought before police to have a mug shot and fingerprints taken like a common criminal.
 
 
Spy Chief's Crime Ring
 

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - A congressional committee investigating an alleged crime ring linked to fugitive former spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos charged Peru's new armed forces chief on Wednesday with an irregular arms deal in a new blow to the scandal-racked nation.
 In a final report after a seven-month investigation, the panel accused the head of the joint chiefs of staff, General Miguel Medina, of falsifying information about the 1996 purchase of Russian MiG-29 jets.
 "General Medina is included in the list over the purchase of MiG jets," the panel's head, David Waisman, told Panamerica Television. "It is ... a criminal charge."
 Medina had promised to usher in a new era in the history of the discredited armed forces when he was appointed in April amid efforts to cleanse a military long seen as being under Montesinos' thumb.
 According to the report, irregularities in the purchase of the MiG jets generated an $80 million kickback. Waisman alleged that Medina declared the jets were newer than they were.
 "The general has not made any comment yet," said Rosa Chiang, secretary for the joint chiefs of staff.
 Waisman said his report implicated up to 180 public figures - including military chiefs, politicians and businessmen - in what he called Montesinos' "extraordinarily well-established and organized mafia."
 
 
Flooding Kills 38
 

PAPALLACTA, Ecuador (Reuters) - Days of pounding rain across Ecuador flooded rivers and triggered massive landslides that left at least 38 people dead and forced thousands from their homes, authorities said on Wednesday.
 The government declared a state of emergency in four Amazon provinces to channel resources to areas devastated by the storms.
 Thirty people were killed when an avalanche of mud and rocks destroyed a shelter where they had stopped to rest on Monday night on their way to the town of Papallacta, 32 kilometers east of the capital. The motorists had been stranded on a highway blocked by landslides.
 Another six people died in mudslides near Papallacta, and two others drowned farther east in the Amazon region as rivers swelled from five days of torrential rains, the Red Cross said. Another 13 people were missing across Ecuador.
 The Civil Defense Agency, a government relief body, reported 30 people killed, 20 missing and thousands affected by storms nationwide.
 
 
Drug Lord Arrested
 

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A suspected kingpin in a top international narcotics trafficking ring, who allegedly moved tons of Colombian cocaine into the United States, has been arrested, Mexi can authorities said on Wednesday.
 Alcides Ramon Magana, allegedly a capo in the ruthless Juarez drug cartel, was arrested late on Tuesday in Villahermosa in southeastern Tabasco state, Attorney General Rafael Macedo de La Concha told a news conference.
 Magana, who was alone and armed only with a pistol, was nabbed by Mexican anti-drug agents and soldiers, who identified him despite the fact that his physical appearance had changed dramatically from obese and bearded to clean-shaven and thin, Macedo said.
 Accused of directing the Juarez gang's operations in southeastern Mexico, Magana faces drug trafficking, weapons and other charges.
 He could also face extradition for trial in the United States. Within hours of his arrest, the U.S. attorney's office in New York unsealed an indictment against Magana charging him with drug trafficking.
 The indictment alleges that Magana worked with Mario Villanueva, a former Mexican state governor arrested last month, to ship more than 200 tons of cocaine between 1994 and 1998 from Mexico's Caribbean state of Quintana Roo into the United States.
 
 
China 'Strikes Hard'
 

BEIJING (AP) - Chinese authorities have executed 13 people for arson and gang activities, part of a crackdown on crime that diplomats say has already seen more than 1,000 people put to death in two months.
 Eight people were executed by gunshot Wednesday after the high court in Lanzhou, capital of northwest China's Gansu province, upheld death sentences handed down last month, the Legal Daily and other state-run newspapers reported Thursday.
 They were members of a gang that demanded protection money from businesses and committed armed robberies, burglaries and other crimes that terrorized residents and caused the deaths of at least six people, the reports said.
 About 30 other people were prosecuted in connection with the case. Twenty-seven received life sentences or suspended death sentences, which are sometimes commuted to life imprisonment for good behavior.
 In an unrelated case, five people were executed Tuesday, also by gunshot, after the high court of northeastern Liaoning province upheld death sentences for their involvement in a 1999 fire at a hotel in Shenyang, the provincial capital.
 Yang Qing, manager of the Xihu Hotel, ran into financial difficulties and took out a property insurance policy worth $605,000 in June 1999, according to a report in Thursday's Beijing Morning Post.
 On Aug. 29, 1999, two men hired by Yang and his accomplices set fire to the hotel. Nine people died, 15 were seriously injured and damages amounted to more than $58,000, the report said. 



TITLE: Letter to IOC Threatens Beijing Supporters
AUTHOR: By Stephen Wilson

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - A letter purportedly from a radical Tibetan group threatening IOC members who vote for Beijing as the host city of the 2008 Olympics has been turned over to Swiss police.
 The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter, which threatens &quot;serious bodily reprisals&quot; against IOC members who support China's candidacy.
 The one-page typed letter, signed by a self-described radical faction of the Tibetan Youth Congress, was faxed to IOC members around the world and to IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.
 IOC director general Francois Carrard said the committee was taking the threats seriously and passed the letter on to the Swiss authorities.
 IOC members have been flooded recently with e-mail and faxes from groups opposed to the Beijing bid on grounds that China violates human rights in Tibet.
 The Tibetan Youth Congress, based in India, actively opposes Chinese policies in Tibet. China occupied Tibet in 1950.
 Beijing is considered the front-runner in the race for the 2008 Olympics. Toronto and Paris are the main challengers, with Osaka, Japan, and Istanbul, Turkey, as outsiders. The IOC will select the host city on July 13.
 Karma Yeshi, a Tibetan Youth Congress official in Dharmsala, India, said the organization had &quot;no knowledge of the document.&quot;

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Tiger Tops List
 

EVANSTON, Illinois (AP) - Watch out, Tiger. Women are gaining on you.
 Tiger Woods ranks as sports' most appealing product endorser for the third-straight year, beating out Michael Jordan, according to an annual survey by Burns Sports & Celebrities Inc., a sports marketing firm.
 But three women cracked this year's list for the first time: tennis' Anna Kou r nikova, soccer's Mia Hamm and track's Marion Jones.
 They ranked fourth through sixth among vote-getters in the survey of more than 1,500 advertising agency and corporate marketing executives nationwide.
 Neither Jordan nor the No. 3 sports celebrity, cyclist Lance Armstrong, was close to Woods in the survey.
 "Tiger Woods has replaced Michael Jordan as the world's top product endorser in a much shorter period of time than anyone could have imagined," said Bob Williams, the president of Burns Sports.
 Rounding out the top 10 endorsers were Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali, Kobe Bryant and Wayne Gretzky.
 
 
Sore Hingis Suing
 

ROME (AP) - An Italian sportswear company sued by Martina Hingis said an earlier case found no basis for Hingis' claims that her sneakers caused foot injuries.
 In her $40 million lawsuit, filed Monday in New York, Hingis said she was forced to withdraw from several tournaments because Sergio Tacchini outfitted her with "defective" shoes "unsuitable for competition."
 The shoe company would not directly comment on the current case, but said "the company can do no more than note that with Sergio Tacchini sneakers, Martina Hingis became the undisputed leader of women's tennis worldwide, winning her last Grand Slam dressed in Sergio Tacchini."
 Hingis wore Sergio Tacchini clothes and shoes as part of a five-year 1996 endorsement deal that was to pay her $5.6 million.
 Court papers said two doctors - one of them recommended by Tacchini - examined Hingis' feet and determined that her shoes were partially to blame.
 In April 1999, Tacchini fired Hingis as a spokesperson for breach of contract.
 
 
Friendly Golf Game
 

SPARTANBURG, South Carolina (AP) - A golfer was slashed across the chest with a hunting knife after he was kicked out of a foursome and tried to hit a former partner with a golf club.
 The injuries to 39-year-old Victor Earley were not thought to be life-threatening, police said.
 The trouble began Tuesday when Earley's partners asked him to leave after nine holes for what police said was annoying behavior. Earley played behind the group and the men got into a fight between the 13th and 14th holes.
 Earley tried to hit Paul Hughes with a club and Hughes responded by cutting Earley with the hunting knife, sheriff's deputies said.
 Hughes, 37, has been charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.
 Lieutenant Ron Gahagan said the players in the foursome knew each other.
 "The impression the officers had is that they really didn't like this guy," he said. "But they decided to let him play because he is related to one of them in some capacity."

TITLE: Lakers Take Commanding 3-1 Lead in Series
AUTHOR: By Chris Sheridan

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania - On his first dunk, Shaquille O'Neal caught Dikembe Mutombo in the face with an elbow. On his last dunk, O'Neal put an emphatic end to the 76ers' final run.
 It wasn't just dunks, though, that made it a great night for O'Neal and the Los Angeles Lakers. He also threw timely passes when double-teamed, outrebounded everybody and cut off drives into the paint, leading the Lakers to a 100-86 victory over Philadelphia on Wednesday night and a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals.
 &quot;I told you all I was going to come back with a vengeance,&quot; said O'Neal, who had 34 points and 14 rebounds as the Lakers played their best game of the series and looked all but unbeatable.
 Los Angeles held a double-digit lead for almost the entire second half and tied the NBA record with its seventh consecutive playoff road victory.
 If the Lakers can close out the series Friday night in game 5, they will finish with the best postseason run in NBA history - 15-1.
 &quot;I had an inkling we were going to play a game like that,&quot; Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. &quot;I felt we had a better game in us than we played the other night.&quot;
 Did they ever.
 O'Neal had 20 points and 11 rebounds by halftime as the Lakers opened a 14-point lead, and Kobe Bryant came within one assist of a triple-double. The role players helped out, too, as Robert Horry, Derek Fisher and Tyronn Lue combined for seven of the Lakers' 10 three-pointers.
 Three of those three-pointers deflated the Sixers after they used an 11-0 run to pull to 77-70 early in the fourth.
 After O'Neal ended the run with a powerful dunk over Mutombo, he found Brian Shaw for a wide-open three-pointer. Lue and Horry followed with threes to get the lead back to 17 with 6 1/2 minutes left, and from there it was only a matter of running out the clock.
 &quot;I'd say with the way we're playing and the way we are focused right now, it's up to us. It's really not up to them,&quot; said Lue, who again helped contain Allen Iverson by playing such tight defense that the Sixers often had difficulty just getting him the ball.
 Iverson left the game with 1 1/2 minutes left after scoring 35 points on 12-for-30 shooting. Mutombo added 19 points and nine rebounds.
 Tyrone Hill had another subpar game, Jumaine Jones was scoreless and Aaron McKie shot just 1-for-9. The Sixers had just 15 assists on their 33 field goals - a telling sign that they were not playing good team ball.
 &quot;When you consider the fact that we did make a run and they didn't panic but made good plays, that's why they're a championship team,&quot; Philadelphia coach Larry Brown said.
 The Lakers now have the 76ers in dire straits, as no team has ever come back from a 3-1 deficit in the finals.
 &quot;We still haven't put together a great game like we did in the first three series, but we're doing enough to win. And that's what it's all about - winning,&quot; O'Neal said. &quot;In a perfect world, we'd be talking about winning the whole thing right now, but we let game 1 slip away.&quot;
 The 76ers hurt themselves by missing 11 free throws, which was an even bigger factor considering Los Angeles missed 14.
 But aside from that statistic, the Lakers dominated this game much like they did during the first three rounds of the postseason when they went 11-0 against Portland, Sacramento and San Antonio.
 Game 5 is Friday night.
 &quot;We have to be very, very prepared, emotionally poised and set,&quot; Jackson said. &quot;We have to have the same determination we had tonight because it will be a totally different ballgame.&quot;
 O'Neal grabbed five offensive rebounds in the first quarter and the Lakers had nine second-chance points in taking a 22-14 lead.
 The Sixers opened the second quarter with a full-court press that gave the Lakers trouble and allowed Philadelphia to close to 26-22, but they switched their defensive attention to double-teaming O'Neal, and the results were not good.
 Harper hit a backdoor layup off a pass from O'Neal and then hit a three-pointer, and Horry and Lue also hit threes in a 20-7 run that gave Los Angeles a 46-29 lead.
 O'Neal missed two from the line with 5.3 seconds left in the second quarter, but rebounded his own miss and scored for a 51-37 halftime lead.
 Early in the third quarter, O'Neal grabbed three offensive rebounds on one possession and converted two foul shots for a 58-42 lead. Bryant went around Raja Bell for a three-point play with 3:47 left in the third to give the Lakers their first 20-point lead, 68-48, and Fisher followed with a steal leading to a wide-open dunk by Bryant just seconds later.
 O'Neal scored six points on pretty moves in the lane in the rest of the quarter to help the Lakers take a 77-59 lead into the fourth.
 &quot;We knew they were going to give us one last run, and we held our composure,&quot; O'Neal said.