SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #684 (51), Friday, July 6, 2001
**************************************************************************
TITLE: Court: Chas Pik Libeled Nikitin
AUTHOR: By Charles Digges
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Environmentalist and former espionage defendant Alexander Nikitin won a libel lawsuit against the newspaper Chas Pik and journalist Alexander Zubarev for an article that the Kuybishevsky Federal Court deemed libelous.
The article was published on May 14 - five months after Nikitin's final acquittal on all the espionage charges that had been brought against him by the Federal Security Service, or FSB. Entitled "When Politicians Talk, Themis is Silent," - in reference to the Greek god of justice - it argued that Nikitin had been acquitted for political reasons.
In finding for Nikitin on Thursday, the court ordered Chas Pik to publish a retraction of Zubarev's article and to pay a modest but undisclosed sum to Nikitin.
Reached by telephone in Norway, Nikitin had not yet heard of the decision, and his response was characteristically low-key. "The courts did what we consider to be the right and just thing," he said. "We are not out for revenge or money and want to put the suit behind us. But the decision shows there may be hope for an independent judiciary in Russia."
Nikitin's lawyer, Yury Shmidt, would not reveal the amount of the settlement, claiming that it was "too little to discuss."
"It's a bit tacky when winners in such cases talk about how much or how little they've won, which in this case would be close to nothing," Shmidt said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "This suit was about principle and about defending a man's name."
Schmidt said that Nikitin had been particularly concerned about one of the passages in Zubarev's article that accused the activist of continuing to sell "military secrets about Russia's nuclear potential abroad, and the verdict in this case mutilates the meaning of 'innocence.'"
Zubarev also claimed that Nikitin, a former naval captain, was initially paid $1,200 for the information and that he received an additional $10,000 later.
Zubarev, reached by telephone on Thursday, said he that is innocent of libel and plans to appeal. He offered no further comment.
Chas Pik editor Natalya Chaplina could not be reached for comment.
Thursday's decision is the third-straight libel suit that Nikitin has won. The first was against then-Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov, who last summer called Nikitin "a spy" in a magazine interview. Adamov was dismissed from the cabinet in March.
Nikitin also won a libel judgment against the City Hall-controlled newspaper Sankt Peterburgskiye Vedomosti, which also called him "a spy" in a March 2000 article.
A fourth suit is currently pending against local television station TKR Peterburg and its program "Peterburgskiye Bezopasnosti." The program ran a series of investigative reports that it claimed proved Nikitin's guilt and that accused a number of journalists covering the case of being Western spies.
The broadcasts were aired while Nikitin's trial was underway during the fall and winter of 1999. The suit will be heard in a city court in October.
But Thursday's victory over Chas Pik is particularly meaningful. The weekly newspaper is edited by Natalya Chaplina, who is married to Northwest Region Governor General Viktor Cherkesov. Prior to taking that post last spring, Cherkesov served as the director of the St. Petersburg branch of the FSB throughout the Nikitin case.
Almost from the moment of Nikitin's arrest in February 1996, Chas Pik ran numerous articles that were based exclusively on unnamed FSB sources and that shrilly accused Nikitin of being a paid foreign agent betraying Russian state secrets.
Nikitin, 49, first caught the FSB's attention in 1995 when the Norwegian environmental group Bellona published his now-famous report, which came complete with photos of rusting nuclear submarines parked in Murmansk dockyards, as well as accounts of numerous accidents and near-meltdowns on both Soviet and Russian Navy vessels.
The FSB picked him up for questioning and ended up holding him for nearly 11 months, claiming that his report revealed state secrets. They initially denied him a lawyer, and for most of his stint in jail he was not even formally charged. In 1997, Amnesty International named Nikitin a prisoner of conscience - their designation for anyone imprisoned solely for his or her political beliefs - making Nikitin the first Russian to hold that title since Soviet dissident physicist and Nobel Prize-winner Andrei Sakharov.
Over the years, Nikitin has become a cause celebre in international human rights and environmental circles. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien are among those in the world of politics who have lobbied the Russian authorities for his freedom.
Nikitin has also received numerous honors and awards, including the prestigious California-based Goldman Environmental Foundation's 1997 prize, which comes with $75,000 and is considered to be the Nobel Prize for environmentalist activists. In 1997, Nikitin was awarded the Norwegian Free World Prize.
He is also the winner of this year's prize in honor of the slain Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova, with which he is financing a seminar series on environmental studies in Washington D.C.
Simon Ostrovsky also contributed to this report.
TITLE: Assault on Artist Called 'Political'
AUTHOR: By Sam Charap
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Avant-garde artist and political activist Kirill Miller was badly beaten in what appears to be politically motivated violence, according to the artist and his colleagues.
Olga Kurnosova and two other leaders of the grass-roots, civil rights group Civil Position - Albert Varodi, and Dimitry Gres - related the details of the incident at a press conference Thursday, as did Miller himself in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times.
While walking from his home to a nearby store at about 2 p.m. Monday, Miller was forced into a car by three young men at the corner of Bolshoi Prospect and Ulitsa Lenina on the Petrograd Side. The assailants wore black outfits and dark glasses and identified themselves as officers of the "special services" - a common euphemism for the Federal Security Service, or FSB.
They then began beating Miller and threatened to kill him if he refused to answer their questions. They had a simple message, according to Miller: "Stay out of politics."
Until just a few months ago, Miller - an eccentric painter and fixture of local underground culture - had little to do with politics. He was known for his provocative performance art and was a founder of the Art Clinic, a bar and art gallery on Pushkinskaya Ulitsa that later moved to the SpartaK Club on Kirochnaya Ulitsa. He now spends most of his time working on his own art and supporting the city's artists and musicians through the Zhivaya Kultura (Live Culture) charity fund.
With Gazprom's hostile takeover of NTV in April, however, Miller began participating in demonstrations. That is when he got involved with Civil Position, he said.
The group is loosely organized and member-financed, according to Kurnosova.
Since the NTV scandal, Miller has actively participated in the group's political activities, protesting against the proposal to allow the import of nuclear waste and campaigning for reform of the country's armed services.
Miller's abductors took him out to a deserted industrial area near the Zhdanovka River, also on the Petrograd Side. There, they continued to beat him and cut off his trademark shoulder-length hair with a knife, demanding to know who finances Civil Position's activities.
Threatening to cut off his tongue and ears and burn him alive while brandishing a gasoline container, Miller's assailants named other members of Civil Position and told him that they should not "mess around in politics."
"They said that I should tell my friends that the same thing would happen to them if they continue their activities," Miller said, adding that the men told him there would be no more warnings.
"They said to me: 'This is the order we have in this country. You should understand this. There is no civil position in this country and there never will be.'"
They then drove off, leaving a thoroughly disoriented Miller at the site after ordering him to remain there for 20 minutes. Miller then walked all the way back to his home.
"I was thinking, 'I've had enough. I want to leave this country,'" Miller said. Later, his friends took him to a hospital.
The members of Civil Position were visibly shaken by the event and asserted that the beating was meant to send a message to all civil rights groups.
"They wanted us to understand that politics in this country is a big business and that those who don't have money, shouldn't get involved," said Gres.
"The guilty party here is the state security organs and the special services," he continued. "I'm not saying that they did this act, but they are responsible for making sure that such things don't happen."
"If we react calmly to something like this," Kurnosova added, "the next time there will be a murder."
An official in the St. Petersburg office of the FSB refused to comment on the event.
Miller said that he doubted that the men were actually FSB agents because of their unprofessional behavior. "[The FSB] wouldn't need me to answer those questions. Maybe the special services gave the assignment to different people to scare me," he speculated.
"In any case, it's frightening ... if some criminal organizations can present themselves as officers of the special services, that's food for thought."
"I now understand that at any moment, they could simply kill me. In this country, in this city, I am a hostage. I live in fear. I can't walk by myself. ... After such an event, a deep apathy sets in. I don't have any desire to do anything more in this country," Miller said.
Ruslan Linkov, the chair of the local chapter of the Democratic Russia party, commented that the event represented a "precedent."
Linkov personally called Alexander Smernov, the deputy chief of police, to direct his attention to the Miller case and he received assurances from Nikolai Vinichenko, a deputy of Northwest Region Governor General Viktor Cherkesov, that he would oversee the investigation.
Linkov also contacted the Interior Ministry and was told that Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov was "aware of" the matter.
TITLE: Kremlin Moves on The Audit Chamber
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Audit Chamber, parliament's largely toothless budgetary watchdog, could soon lose its independence in exchange for wider powers under legislation being discussed in the State Duma.
The bill, which would give President Vladimir Putin the right to choose the Audit Chamber's head and order investigations, was recently approved by the Duma budgetary committee and could go before lawmakers as early as the fall.
The legislation is raising fears that the body once envisioned as the country's main tool to fight government corruption could be turned into a Kremlin weapon against its political enemies.
The bill's drafters argue that moving the Audit Chamber closer to Putin will give it clout to fight government corruption. They say the chamber needs more pull to prevent the government from dragging out its investigations.
Valery Galchenko, one of the authors of the legislation, said Tuesday that the bill would give Putin the right to name candidates to head the chamber, a post currently held by Sergei Stepashin, and the Duma would only be able to approve or reject the nominees.
Currently, the Audit Chamber head is appointed by the Duma, which is the sole body that has any say about the chamber's work.
Galchenko said the bill would also allow the president to order investigations into how the federal budget is being spent and receive reports on audits conducted by the chamber, two other rights currently reserved for the Duma.
The changes would "raise the chamber's status" and make the government "change its attitude toward the Audit Chamber," Galchenko, who heads a Duma subcommittee dealing with state auditing, said in a telephone interview.
The Audit Chamber has had difficulty forcing the government to turn over financial documents for inspection and has seen its warnings and reprimands ignored, he said.
The chamber has several times submitted its findings to the Prosecutor General's Office for investigation of possible wrongdoings and seen the cases go nowhere.
Galchenko said the Audit Chamber's lack of power stems from the way it was perceived during the President Boris Yeltsin era - as a Communist-controlled body whose sole role was to trip up the reformist government.
Even now, he said, the government is dragging its feet on giving a final opinion on the bill, although state officials participated in its drafting and were satisfied with the result.
Government representatives declined to comment Tuesday.
Tom Adshead, an analyst at Troika Dialog, agreed that the Audit Chamber needs more powers, but said that doing so by giving more leverage to Putin could be "the bad way of doing the right thing."
The chamber's clout could be increased by simply awarding it more pull, without tying the move to Putin, Adshead said.
Instead, the chamber, which was supposed to be parliament's way of controlling the president, would now be put under the president's control, he said.
"If it is subordinate to the president, the chamber will never start an investigation into the presidential administration, for instance," he said. "So it's crucial that it should be used properly and not as another power tool."
Earlier this year, Audit Chamber deputy head Yury Boldyrev decided not to seek reappointment in protest against what he called the chamber's transformation into "a branch of executive power."
He complained that changes in the Duma and the Federation Council had turned both houses of parliament into an obedient body that would not support an independent investigation without the Kremlin's backing.
"The State Duma that backed the Audit Chamber in the past as a controlling body independent of the executive powers, of the president, does not exist any more," Boldyrev said in an interview at the time.
The Audit Chamber declined comment Tuesday.
TITLE: Kidnapped Baby Boy Is Found
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Police have retrieved the newborn baby boy who was abducted last week from Maternity House No. 10. The baby has been returned to his parents unharmed, and police have arrested 25-year-old Oksana Chernik, who has reportedly confessed to kidnapping the infant.
The baby was abducted late at night on June 29 from the ward where he was sleeping together with his mother, 28-year-old Viktoria Lisichkina. Although it is normal practice for there to be several women in each ward, Lisichkina had paid an additional fee for a private room.
From the start, the police suspected a young woman who had been hired by the maternity ward as a cleaner just the week before. According to reports in the local press, the woman introduced herself as Natalya Semyonova, and was hired immediately without a check of her references and documents. She disappeared after the incident, and her documents turned out to be falsified.
"It is hard to check new employees when we have only one cleaner instead of the 15 we need, and that one is paid 230 rubles [$7.70] a month and has been working without days off or holidays for several months," said Yevgenia Lukina, the maternity house's chief doctor. "It didn't cross our minds that someone might seek employment in order to carry out a kidnapping."
According to Gennady Ryabov, a spokesperson for the City Prosecutor's Office, a police sketch was shown on the late-night television program "TV Security Service" on Tuesday, after which police received a call from a woman living in a communal apartment at 14/2 Ulitsa Lebedyeva.
The woman said that she recognized Oksana Chernik, who also lived in the apartment, from the sketch. She also reported that she had heard an infant crying in Chernik's room, although Chernik was not known to have any children.
According to Igor Gavrilov, an investigator with the prosecutor's office of the Krasnoselsky Disctrict where Maternity House No. 10 is located, Chernik has confessed to abducting the baby and will be charged with kidnapping. If convicted, she will face up to 10 years in prison.
Gavrilov said that the police have not yet established a motive for the crime. However, Ryabov stated that Chernik has said she cannot have children herself and that she kidnapped Lisichkina's baby because she could not cope with her desperation. She will undergo a psychiatric examination.
Chernik is reportedly an employee of an organization called the Credit and Consultation Center for Mutual Assistance, but it has not been established what that organization does.
Ryabov also said that Chernik had made no attempt to contact the baby's family or demand ransom. However, investigators have not ruled out the possibility that she intended to sell the child. Police have not determined whether Chernik specifically wanted to kidnap Lisichkina's baby.
The boy's father is 28-year-old Valery Lisichkin, who runs a successful local printing-supplies business.
According to Lukina, the kidnapper must have used a back door or even a window to carry the baby past security, and the crime was most likely thoroughly prepared. Access to Russian maternity houses is highly restricted and even fathers are usually barred from entering.
TITLE: City Streets Getting the Ultimate Wash-and-Go
AUTHOR: By Oksana Boyko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In the early hours as the city sleeps, its empty streets are the setting for an unusual experiment. Spetstrans, the municipal street cleaners, and the Severnoye Siyaniye Perfumes and Cosmetics Factory have begun using the factory's soapy, waste, run-off water to clean city roads.
The idea has met with criticism from city officials who say it is too expensive, and from environmentalists who say the soap may be harmful to the environment.
The experiment, which started last week and will continue for two more weeks while City Hall decides whether the method is feasible, is concentrated in the Central, Admiralteisky, Vasiliostrovsky and Moskovsky districts. The trucks make their rounds between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.
The process involves one truck that scrubs the streets with the soapy water, followed by three more trucks with ordinary water to rinse the soap away, said Spetstrans director Nikolai Melnikov.
The idea originated with Severnoye Siyaniye, which was looking for a way to get rid of the several tons of sudsy water it generates each week after it cleans its detergent vats. The factory contacted Spetstrans, which was eager to try the soap on some of the city's most heavily trafficked thoroughfares.
Melnikov is hopeful the program will be approved and expanded, and he is contacting other factories for supplies of soapy water. "At present we get about 40 tons a week that has to be divided among three of our 16 depots," he said.
But some officials say the plan is too expensive. Galina Zemskaya from the City Parks Committee said assigning two extra trucks to rinse up after each shampoo truck will not prove cost effective.
Nikolai Lyalin, head of the Spetstrans depot in the southern Moskovsky District, said he wouldn't be using the detergent approach. "Cool water is enough to remove dust during summer. The new technology takes more time, water and fuel," he said in a telephone interview.
"For example, we send two extra machines to wash suds away, and then there is a shortage of vehicles on other streets."
Environmentalists have also opposed the plan, but Nikolai Borovkov, an official from the St. Petersburg State Sanitary Inspectorate, said that his labratories have tested the suds and found no harmful toxins. "It poses no danger to people," he said in a recent telephone interview.
It also poses no danger to plants or trees, according to Zemskaya.
TITLE: Reporter: My Chechen Sources Were Killed
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya has said that many of the residents of Chechen villages who complained to her in February that paratroopers from a nearby base were kidnapping villagers for ransom were later killed by the military in retaliation.
"Those who spoke openly to me, ignoring any [possible] consequences, are not alive any more," Politkovskaya wrote in this week's issue of the newspaper.
"They disappeared. They were murdered. Their corpses were bought back [by their relatives]. ... How I am supposed to live with all this?"
In February, Politkovskaya and Zeinap Gashayeva, co-founder of the Echo of War human rights group based in Ingushetia, visited several villages in the mountainous Vedeno district, including Khatuni and Makhkety. Politkovskaya spoke to villagers and saw the deep pits at the 45th airborne unit, located near Khatuni, where they said people were held until ransom was paid. She then reported what she saw and heard.
In Monday's article, Politkovskaya listed the names of 15 civilians from four villages in the Vedeno district who were killed in April, May and June in what she believes was revenge for giving her information about atrocities committed by the military. Gashayeva, in an interview, added nine more names to the list.
"About 2 a.m. [on May 7] unknown people in masks came to the Khuguyevs' home and killed Yaragi Khuguyev, 52, his wife Markha Khuguyeva, 47, a local activist, and their son Akhyad Khuguyev, 17," Politkovskaya wrote. In an interview, she confirmed that Khuguyeva was among the people she had talked to.
Her article also gives the names of 21 people who were kidnapped after her visit, although it was not clear whether they were among those she had interviewed. To free someone who was kidnapped, or even to retrieve the body of someone who died in military custody, relatives had to pay in cash or weapons, according to Politkovskaya.
There is nothing new in the idea of Chechens being held in pits. Saipudin Mumayev, a surgeon in Grozny's main hospital, said in an interview in April that many people with swollen legs, some with gangrene, come for treatment after spending days in deep pits filled with icy water.
But Politkovskaya is the only journalist who has succeeded in seeing them and writing about them. She said she walked into the 45th unit and persuaded the commander to show them to her. But as soon as she left, she was arrested at a checkpoint and held at a military unit for a few days. She had gone to the Vedeno region to follow up on a letter signed by 90 local families, who asked to be relocated in part because they feared the paratroopers.
At a news conference after coming back to Moscow, Politkovskaya called for international protection for the 90 families.
"I was told by a deputy to Stanislav Ilyasov [head of the Chechen government] that I didn't need to worry about the people I wrote about, that they would be helped and assisted in their problems," Politkovskaya said in an interview Monday.
It was not clear how many of the villagers who Politkovskaya and Gashayeva say were killed were among those who signed the letter, which also was sent to authorities in Chechnya. The signatures are difficult to read and often have initials instead of first names.
After Novaya Gazeta printed Politkovskaya's article about the pits, and following investigations by the Chechen military prosecutor's office and presidential human rights envoy Vladimir Kalamanov, Politkovskaya said people she had interviewed were called into the military commandant's office and warned not to talk about atrocities committed by federal troops.
After a few months of quiet, she said, the army got even with the people who complained. "What is going on in this country?" Politkovskaya wrote. "Death comes after talking with a journalist?"
Many of those who killed were among the most respected in their villages, she said. "Look, they killed activist Khuguyeva. ... Also Sultan Arsakhanov, 56, a retired Soviet army colonel. He was very much an authority in the Tevzani village whom people listened to. And a deputy school director from Tevzani, Ramzan Ilyasov, 56."
"What they want is for the rest of the people to be like cattle, just silently sitting in their barns," she said.
Although journalists try to protect their sources, and Politkovskaya used no last names in her report, the villages were too small and the Moscow reporter too conspicuous to prevent anyone from figuring out who had talked to her.
Alexei Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Fund, said protection of sources is the most sensitive question for journalists, especially in Chechnya where "sources are so distinctive that even if they are not named, they are effectively revealed."
"Our journalists who write about human rights from this war are basically in a vicious circle," he said. "And this is Anna's personal tragedy."
TITLE: Day of Mourning Held for Crash Victims
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: YEKATERINBURG, Ural Mountins - Sirens wailed and flags were lowered to half mast on Thursday as Russia observed a day of mourning for 145 people killed in the country's worst air disaster in years.
Experts who sifted through charred wreckage in a clearing in Siberian woods said they had no explanation as to why the Tupolev Tu-154 jet plunged to the ground from 850 meters as it made its third approach to Irkutsk on Tuesday night, killing all 136 passengers and nine crew members.
"It is so hard to comprehend how it could happen... based on an elementary knowledge of aerodynamics. It is a weird accident,'' Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu told reporters at the crash site, with charred and smoking wreckage in the background.
The plane was carrying 136 passengers - six of them children-and nine crew members, said Emergency Situations Ministry spokesperson Vasily Yurchuk. Twelve passengers were foreigners, believed to be from China.
Relatives of victims were flown to the center of Siberia to attempt to identify bodies laid out in an Irkutsk city morgue. Television showed them sobbing as they were led to hotels.
Flight attendant Yulia Zaikina, who flew on the ill-fated plane to Yekaterinburg before it took off for Irkutsk, was devastated when she heard news of the crash. She said among the crew members killed was a married couple who left behind seven children.
"We flew on the crew on this plane to Yekaterinburg, and we watched it go on. Before the flight we wished our colleagues a safe flight,'' she said.
"We don't know what to do, how to feel .... But we don't blame anyone, it was technical malfunctions. When we flew, the plane was in fine condition,'' she said.
The ground controllers who handled the last moments of the flight were suspended while the crash was being investigated, ITAR-Tass said.
The ground controllers' last radio contact with the plane was four minutes before the crash, regional air transport official Yury Zhuralev told Itar-Tass.
There were no reports of casualties among people on the ground.
Security officials did not rule out a terrorist act and were searching for signs of explosives, the Interfax news agency said. But the wreckage was found in a fairly compact area, indicating there was no mid-air explosion, Interfax quoted Deputy Transport Minister Karl Ruppel as saying.
Factory bells and sirens rang out, calling for a moment of silence in Yekaterinburg, where the doomed plane took off on Tuesday evening bound for Vladivostok on the Pacific coast.
At the charred crash site, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, head of a commission set up to determine the cause of the crash, told journalists the damaged "black box" flight recorders had so far yielded few clues. The plane was to land in Irkutsk for refueling and to let some passengers off. The amount of fuel at the crash site indicated the plane had not run short, ITAR-Tass said.
"Today the main task is to work with the families," he said.
President Vladimir Putin ordered flags lowered across the nation for Thursday's day of mourning and asked for entertainment programs to be struck from television schedules. Newscasters wore black.
Whatever the cause of the crash, it drew attention to the safety of Russia's aging, mostly Soviet-era civil air fleet.
"Tuesday's crash - as any crash here would be - was a blow to all Russian carriers who have worked so hard over the last few years to meet Western aviation standards," an official for one leading Russian air company told Reuters.
The doomed flight was operated by VladivostokAvia, one of hundreds of "babyflots" - tiny domestic carriers that split off from Aeroflot, once the world's largest airline, when the Soviet Union collapsed. The three-engine Tu-154, was first put into commercial service in 1972.
- Reuters, AP
TITLE: Disaster Puts Planes' Safety Under the Microscope
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia's biggest air disaster in a decade is raising new fears about the safety of the country's mostly Soviet-built aircraft.
But aviation experts scoffed at the jitters Wednesday, saying that while the thousands of planes may be considered past their prime by Western standards, they are still among the safest aircraft in service anywhere. And the Tu-154, they said, is among the best in the world in terms of safety.
President Vladimir Putin was quick to order the government to take a look at aviation safety regulations, which are widely perceived as being poorly adhered to by some of the country's cash-strapped airlines.
"I count on the government to pay attention to the need to strengthen controls over the condition of equipment," Putin told Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov in televised remarks. "The State Civil Aviation Service should report to you in the near future about what must be done in this regard."
There has not been a fatal crash on a scheduled commercial flight in Russia since 1997. In that accident, a propeller-driven An-24 aircraft flown by Stavropol Airlines disintegrated in flight over southern Russia, killing all 50 people on board. The crash led to serious holes found in safety regulations and triggered a major revamp of the system.
Tu-154's have crashed on three other occasions on Russian soil since 1994, killing more than 350 people, Reuters reported.
But safety hit rock bottom several years before that, in the early 1990s after Aeroflot was broken up into hundreds of smaller airlines, said Alexi Komarov, editor of Air Transport magazine.
Following the 1997 disaster, aviation authorities tightened the screws on safety regulations, leading to a steep drop in the number of crashes of commercial and private planes.
Those incidents - which include crashes as well as other problems such as forced landings and engine failures -dropped to a post-Soviet low of 17 last year, according to the State Civil Aviation Service. Only five of those incidents were fatal and 20 people were killed.
The Tu-154's accident rate is comparable to its equivalent in the United States, the Boeing 727, according to Moscow-based aviation analyst Paul Duffy.
Until Tuesday's crash, the performance of commercial airlines was, in fact, so good that international civil aviation organizations were assimilating Russia's safety record to zero, Agence France Press reported.
The rating does not take into account military accidents.
Aviation experts said the Soviet-designed Tupolev-154, the workhorse of Russian aviation, is far from an outdated dinosaur.
We don't know about the reasons yet [for Tuesday's crash], but we can say that it's a very reliable aircraft," said Alexander Lykov, deputy designer of the Tu-154.
"If we talk about Tu-154's, it's worth remembering that those planes were designed and built in the Soviet Union, where funds were readily available for extensive research and plenty of tests," said Yevgeny Semyonov, deputy director of the Infomost aviation consulting agency. "It's an old but pretty good aircraft."
Aeroflot, whose fleet includes 24 Tu-154's, calls the aircraft "stable and reliable."
Originally designed at the end of the 1960s, the Tu-154 was put into mass production in 1972. The upgraded Tu-154M version was launched in 1984 and produced until 1996.
About 900 Tu-154s were built, of which some 300 are still being flown in Russia and an unknown number abroad. The government has said most of those in Russia will be airworthy until at least 2006.
Since the rollout of the first Tu-154, about two dozen have been involved in fatal accidents. Five were fired at in military or terrorist attacks, two were involved in midair collisions and most of the rest were the result of bad weather and human error.
The plane is commonly known as Tushka, or Hulk.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Missing Children
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A police search is underway for two 12-year-olds, Karina Petrova and Sergei Akchurin, who were reported missing on Saturday from a summer camp on Lake Ladoga in the Vsevolozhsk region of the Leningrad Oblast.
Some 36 emergency workers from Vsevolozhsk joined the search, as did police and local residents, who are using every means available including a motorboat and a helicopter, Interfax reported on Wednesday.
The two teens - who both live at St. Petersburg orphanage No. 12 - left the camp around 5 p.m. on Saturday. A rubber boat was found missing after their dissapearance.
Unity Sends Aid
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg branch of the pro-government Unity party sent humanitarian aid to Yakutia residents who were hit by severe floods in mid-May, Interfax reported on Thursday.
The floods hit Yakutia, in northeastern Siberia, after an exceptionally harsh winter. Meltwaters from the rivers - which run from south to north in Siberia - prompted rapid rises in water levels as the rivers tried to batter throughpersistent ice blockages in the colder north.
The floods almost destroyed the town of Lensk, forced more than 19,000 people from their homes into rescue centers and tent camps, and icaused more than $200 million in damage.
Tseriteli Does Di
MOSCOW (AP) - A prominent Moscow sculptor known for mammoth and sometimes controversial works has made a statue of Princess Diana for a museum in the Moscow, his office said Wednesday.
Zurab Tsereteli, president of the Russian Academy of Arts, sculpted a two-meter bronze statue on his own initiative, roughly timed around what would have been her 40th birthday on July 1, said Yelena Larionova, spokesperson for the academy.
The statue, which portrays Diana standing in a ruffled evening gown and tiara, is to be installed in a modern art museum in central Moscow later this month, Larionova said.
Lukashenko Beaned
MINSK, Belarus (Reuters) - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko was struck by a small object thrown from the crowd as he competed in a roller-skiing race along a street in Minsk on Tuesday.
Lukashenko said he suffered a light scratch on his leg when he was hit by the object during an Independence Day roller-ski relay race.
Interfax said police had arrested several people and authorities would scan video footage to find the culprit.
Witnesses said that they saw Lukashenko, wearing a huge grin, blue shorts and a red No. 1 jersey, raise his fists in the air as he crossed the finis line in first place.
TITLE: Compromise Labor Code Over First Hurdle
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The State Duma on Thursday gave preliminary approval to a new compromise Labor Code that has the support of the Kremlin and the main trade unions. The Communists, though, remain opposed.
The real show was outside the Duma, where a few thousand demonstrators gathered in the morning. From the dramatic TV footage it appeared to be an impressive protest against the Labor Code. But on closer look, it was in essence a collection of people impoverished by the changes of the last decade who had come to express their grievances. There also were people chanting support for the new code: members of the youth organization Moving Together, who on occasion come out to back Kremlin initiatives, and representatives of trade unions.
Although the street in front of the Duma was packed with police, tussles broke out, and at least three people were detained. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an outspoken Duma deputy, was attacked by a mob as he entered the building, and his security struck back. One woman who had swung her purse at him was knocked flat. Elsewhere, eggs went flying, with some of them hitting the pro-Kremlin youth. Miners sat banging their helmets against the pavement. Other demonstrators, though, just stood calmly listening to speakers or chatting. They held red flags or banners with slogans protesting against the new code or against reforms in general.
Thursday was the first hearing of the new Labor Code, long needed to replace Soviet-era legislation that does not recognize private employment. The result is that some 80 percent of the workforce operates outside a legal framework.
Seven proposed codes were drawn up and four were presented for a vote Thursday. The one that passed, 288 to 133, was the one called the compromise version. It was the result of a special working group comprising representatives of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions, organizations of employers, government officials and Duma deputies. Authors of all seven drafts were invited to participate.
The Kremlin had hoped to get a new Labor Code passed last year, but its initial draft code so angered the trade unions and pro-labor deputies that it backed down and formed the working group. The resulting compromise was approved by all but some small trade unions.
Even the liberal Yabloko faction led by Grigory Yavlinsky, which is cautious about supporting Kremlin initiatives, gave the proposed code a mark of approval in a statement distributed to journalists in the Duma.
Yabloko especially liked three provisions of the new code: minimum monthly wages must be not lower than subsistance level, now considered 1,400 rubles ($48) a month; the employer must pay workers two-thirds of their wages if they remain idle through some fault of the employer; and the employer must pay penalties for delays in payment of wages.
The proposed code also leaves the 40-hour work week, specifying that employees must agree in writing to work overtime and must be paid extra: 50 percent more for the first two hours and double thereafter. And the total number of overtime hours is limited to 120 a year.
Some lawmakers said one shortcoming of the draft is that it is unclear about the form in which wages must be paid. It allows for payment in goods, with the exception of drugs, alcohol and weapons, but does not specify what share of wages can be paid in something other than cash.
The draft code first proposed by the Kremlin had been criticized as too business-friendly. The compromise code still gives private employers the formal right to hire and fire workers, but discourages short-term employment.
After the code was passed, Labor Minister Alexander Pochinok said "several thousand amendments" are expected before it comes up for a second reading in the fall.
One of the biggest problems, he said, is that more than 2 trillion rubles ($69 million) would be needed to raise all wages to the subsistance level of 1,400 rubles.
Few of the people who gathered outside on Okhotny Ryad Ulitsa were familiar with any of the specifics of the proposed code.
"I came here because these new laws are very bad for the people," said Viktor Borovkov, 70, a retired plumber. No, I didn't read the draft of the code. How many drafts did you say there are? Seven? No, we are not Communists. Where did we get the red flags? Someone gave them to us here.
"I used to live well on my 120 rubles a month. Now I can't fix my teeth on the 1,500 rubles of my pension. I can't get any other treatment. We are not living, just trying to survive," Borovkov said.
Natalya Grachyova, the head of a trade union at a McDonald's processing plant in Novoperedelkino, said the approved code sounded "not bad."
But, she said: "I can't believe that employers will pay those fines for every day they don't pay wages to their workers. Who will control these payments? And the staff ? With our level of unemployment, would they run to the court to make them pay if they delay wages for a few weeks or even months?"
TITLE: Anti-'Dirty Money' Bill Passes 2nd Reading
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma has taken a big step toward passing crucial legislation to combat money laundering and to help the country avoid potentially humiliating international sanctions.
With 237 deputies in favor and 43 against, the Duma passed a bill Wednesday in a vital second reading aimed at fighting the tide of "dirty money."
"This is the first serious step in the fight against dirty money that is passing through Russia. The presence of this law will strengthen our financial system," Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said in concluding remarks before the vote.
The bill would require banks to report most significant transactions by their clients and demand identification from people wishing to buy stock or foreign currency for cash.
Under the bill, banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions would be required to inform authorities about most operations exceeding 600,000 rubles ($20,500).
These deals would include withdrawals from and deposits into private accounts, buying or selling foreign currency, paying cash to buy stock, exchanging bills for different denomination notes, and using cash as start-upcapital for a new company.
Banks would also have to report transactions involving numbered accounts, and would be required to demand identification from anyone wishing to open a numbered account or set up an account in the name of another person.
Movement of funds in accounts held by companies that had existed for less than three months would also have to be reported - an apparent attempt to block the creation of front companies for the laundering of criminal proceeds.
An initial version of the bill set tighter requirements, demanding that all deals over 500,000 rubles ($17,250) be reported. The latest revision also removes the requirement to report significant real estate deals, which are covered by other legislation.
The government has strongly urged lawmakers to approve the bill, warning that Western countries may take sanctions against Russia if it fails to pass. Government officials also sought to reassure businesspeople and to guard themselves against potential lawsuits by promising that suspicious operations wouldn't be immediately frozen.
The debate was given added urgency last month when the Financial Action Task Force, an international agency devoted to fighting the legalization of criminally obtained funds, sharply criticized Russia for being a hub of money laundering.
The agency, set up by the G-7 group of the world's richest industrialized nations, also threatened financial restrictions by the end of September if steps were not taken to fight the practice.
The FATF first put Russia on its list of countries lacking the arsenal to tackle dirty money in June 2000.
Only two other countries - the Philippines and the tiny Pacific island of Nauru - were targeted. Both have pledged to take urgent action to meet the FATF deadline.
- AP, Reuters
TITLE: Rostelecom Alters Cost of Calling Abroad
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In an unusual, though seemingly logical, move to maintain its place on the market, Russia's long-distance monopoly Rostelecom has announced it was changing its international telephone tariffs. The company is dropping the rates it charges local providers - such as Petersburg Telephone Network, or PTS, in the city - to European and North American destinations, but raising those for CIS countries.
Begining on Thursday, PTS raised its tariffs to Ukraine and Belarus by 40 percent and to the Caucasus region - including Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia - by 33 percent. Moreover, the tariffs for calls to the Caucasus countries will be the same regardless of the time of day at which the call is placed. Previously calls made at night were significantly less expensive than those made during the day.
At the same time, calls to the United States and Canada fell by 19 percent, while calls to major European countries fell by 23 percent. The list of European countries includes Austria, Belguim, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy among others.
According to PTS spokesperson Kirill Voloshin, the new tariff system was a directive from Rostelecom, which is the exlusive carrier for St. Petersburg international traffic. The new, lower tariffs were introduced in Moscow on July 1.
The reduced tariffs are in effect in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Moscow and Leningrad oblasts which were defined as a seperate territory by Rostelecom on June 25, when the company divided its Russian map of operations into seven regions.
According to Vyacheslav Nikolayev, a telecommunications analyst with Renaissance Capital Investment Group, the creation of a separate region with its own tariffs was financially logical.
"Moscow and St. Petersburg are the two major cities [in Russia] with a high concentration of businesses, and where the living standard is higher. Around 70 percent of all international calls made to the West are made here," said Nikolayev in a telephone interview Thursday. "Rostelecom is notorious for its incredibly high international tariffs. But they needed to cut them in order not to lose in competition with alternative providers."
According to Nikolayev, the high prices were also dependent on other fields of operation, such as inter-city calls. According to Antimonopoly Ministry regulations, Rostelecom, as the major long-distance provider in Russia, is entitled to part of the revenues of local providers for inter-city calls as well. Owing to recent increases in the payment for these calls - previously, these tariffs had been very low - Rostelecom will be able maintain its revenues while reducing the price for international calls and reinforcing its place on the market.
It may, however, lose more customers with the hike in tariffs for calls to the CIS. The traffic to those countries from Russia is much higher than that coming the other way. Rostelecom pays more for calls placed to CIS destinations than it receives for calls originating there, and then costs were barely covered by the old tariffs. Given the higher tariffs, alternative providers may step more aggressively into this market.
"I'm not sure whether this is a good change. Rostelecom may turn this field of service into a profitable one, but still lose part of its customers," said Nikolayev. "In the long run, though, the whole revamp of the rate structure could bring positive results."
TITLE: Gazprom Reports $10 Bln Profit
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Gazprom puzzled the market Wednesday, reporting a whopping net profit of $10 billion for 2000 - by far the largest ever reported by a Russian company.
Consolidated results under International Accounting Standards, which the gas giant released for the first time since 1997, showed net profits of 286 billion rubles ($10.2 billion) on sales of 540 billion, an astonishing turnaround to last year's net loss of 95 billion rubles from sales of 400 billion rubles.
Already the country's largest taxpayer, Gazprom is now also the country'smost profitable company, more than tripling the previous record set last month by oil major Yukos, which posted a $3.3 billion profit under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
A careful look at Gazprom's books, however, shows a different picture.
"These profits are entirely due to changes in the taxable base," said Derek Weaving, an analyst with Deutsche Bank in London. "Gazprom is still a very healthy business [by all standards], but its performance should be assessed after deferred tax figures are taken out."
Such adjustment having been made, Gazprom's profits shrank to about $2 billion, a rather unimpressive figure given that 2000 was a period of abnormally high oil prices, which fueled a growth in sales for all power producers.
The difference between the $10 billion figure and the $2 billion figure isa result of Gazprom revaluing its assets upward, giving it the right to deduct more from taxable profits for depreciation. That move alone added 98 billion rubles - more than a third of the total - to its net profit figure.
In addition to this $3.3 billion in deferred taxes, Gazprom gained another $4 billion in paper profit from inflation and fluctuations in the ruble-dollar rate.
Inflation stood at 20.2 percent in 2000, while the ruble lost a meager 4.3 percent against the dollar, appreciating in real terms. As a result, Gazprom's ruble-denominated assets became much more expensive in dollar terms, while liabilities, including some $10 billion in hard-currency loans, remained virtually unchanged in ruble terms.
"What Gazprom showed is mostly a paper profit," said an analyst at one Western investment bank, who asked not to be named.
In 1998-99, when the ruble dropped at a faster rate than inflation rose, Gazprom's dollar-denominated liabilities distorted the picture in the opposite direction, leading to losses of 147 billion rubles and 79 billion rubles, respectively.
"Normally, IAS figures should be lower than those reported under Russian Accounting Standards," said Gennady Krasovsky, oil and gas analyst from NIKoil. "But this time everything is upside down."
Under domestic accounting rules, some expenses are deductible, so net profit figures are bloated by expenses already incurred. As a result, IAS results are usually more modest.
Gazprom reported a profit of 60.7 billion rubles ($2.1 billion) under Russian Accounting Standards at its annual shareholders meeting last week, and management said the IAS results would be similar.
Although slightly misleading, Gazprom's figures still show the company made some progress last year. Gazprom enjoyed record energy prices, which bloated its export revenues by 55 percent to $14 billion.
"What impresses is Gazprom's ability to curb costs," said Krasovsky.
The company's operating expenses were up by just $1 billion in 2000.
Despite a record financial result, the company's stock barely reacted, edging up just 2.2 percent to 17.17 rubles on the Moscow Stock Exchange.
"In the past, when Gazprom reported losses its shares barely suffered as a result," said Weaving, adding that the company's valuations were not affected by monetary gains but were based first of all on operational results.
Most analysts wouldn't venture a forecast for Gazprom's 2001 figures.
"In many ways Gazprom is still a black box," said Krasovsky.
Late Wednesday, Gazprom announced it was terminating the monopoly enjoyed by the Moscow Stock Exchange on the trading of its shares.
TITLE: Murdoch, Berezovsky Tap Petersburg Radio Market
AUTHOR: By Leonid Konik and Anatoly Temkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Logovaz News Corp., owned by Boris Berezovsky and Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch, stepped into the St. Petersburg radio market last week with the purchase of radio station Modern.
Modern has two broadcasting licenses for St. Petersburg and holds 14 licenses for broadcasting in the regions, including Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Kaliningrad and Sochi.
Berezovsky and Murdoch bought the station from its managers, Sergei Nikolayev and Leonid Kukushkin, and an entrepreneur, Oleg Zherebtsov.
Some 223,000 people, or 5.3 percent of St. Petersburg's radio audience, tune in daily to Modern, making it the No. 10 FM station by audience size, according to market research agency Comcon-St. Petersburg.
Logovaz News Corp., or LNC, belongs equally to structures under Berezovsky and Murdoch, and owns Nashe Radio, which has about 40 transmitters broadcasting to 129 cities across Russia and the CIS, as well as Ultra Radio and the recording company Real Records.
"The deal is unique because it was concluded in an absolutely transparent manner without employing any substitutes or offshores," said Nikolayev, also a former board chairman. "The three owners opened accounts in a Russian bank to which LNC transferred the full amount of the purchase."
Nikolayev said that each of the three owners paid taxes worth "several tens of thousands of dollars," but he declined to disclose the value of the deal.
Radio market analysts estimated that LNC paid between $1 million and $2 million for the station. A commercial director at another Petersburg station valued Modern, along with its regional network, at no higher than $1 million.
Nashe Radio general producer Mikhail Kozyrev said that entering the St. Petersburg market had been a goal of the company since it was founded in December 1998. "In the course of negotiations with many Petersburg stations, we would suddenly learn that their owners had either been killed, or had escaped from or were in prison," Kozyrev said.
Kozyrev said LNC is going to purchase one more radio station in Petersburg, the name of which he did not disclose. Its frequencies will be used by Moscow's Ultra FM station, or it will be a new project of the Russian-Australian media holding, Kozyrev said.
TITLE: World Bank Congress Aimed At Questions of Legal Reform
AUTHOR: By Thomas Rymer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Discussions of economic development and legal reform often take on a chicken-and-egg character - which comes first?
About 450 judges, ministers, parliamentarians, scholars, lawyers and representatives of NGOs from 75 countries will be in town to take up this question at the Global Conference on Law and Justice organized by the World Bank and co-hosted by the Russian government, beginning this Sunday.
Much of the World Bank's work involves the use of financial instruments to promote development, but Ko-Yung Tung, World Bank vice president and general counsel, says the topics to be addressed at the conference are also crucial to the organization's activities.
"The World Bank's main mission is to fight poverty," Tung said by phone from Washington on Thursday. "It's obvious from our experience with working with transition economies that without judicial institutions and legal systems that function effectively, there's no way to create growth."
"Issues such as anti-corruption laws and developing transparency are vital."
Corruption and transparency are two of the most often mentioned barriers to Russian economic development and, while the agenda for most of the conference - which runs from Sunday through Wednesday at the Tavrichesky Palace - doesn't focus on any particular country, Tung says the World Bank hopes that holding the conference in St. Petersburg will bolster Russia's efforts in this field.
"We thought coming here was a really good idea as, if Russia is serious about implementing reform, we want to support their efforts and provide a showcase for them," he said.
"I hope that the Russian audience will understand that so many of the issues that confront the country are not dissimilar to those faced in other places, Tung said. "Questions such as how to train judges to be professional and not corrupt aren't just questions of ethics and salary, but are much more complex."
Tung and the World Bank are hardly alone in stressing this point. In comments made to The Associated Press earlier Thursday, James Collins, departing U.S. ambassador to Russia, expressed much the same view.
"If in fact the priority for [President Vladimir] Putin and the administration is to modernize the economy ... to compete in the modern economic system and participate fully in the system of industrial democracies, then you're going to have to ensure that this rule of law is the principle of the future," Collins said.
The idea of using St. Petersburg as the venue for the event - the second global legal conference the organization has held - came out of contacts made last June at the first conference, which was held in Washington.
According to Tung, the 700 participants at that event included a large Russian delegation, which was so impressed that they approached the organization, eager to host a similar event themselves.
President Vladimir Putin was originally scheduled to attend next week's conference, but has decided to send Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko in his place.
The opening ceremony will be held on Sunday evening, featuring opening remarks by World Bank President James Wolfensohn and speeches from Khristenko, Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, and Dmitry Kozak, deputy chief of the presidential administration.
After Wolfensohn delivers the keynote address Monday morning, the next three days will feature panels dealing with issues of legality and judicial reform. While the scope of the conference is global, a special session - the Europe and Central Asia Forum - on Wednesday afternoon will discuss legal issues pertaining specifically to the region.
TITLE: Smolny Turns Up Nose at Profit-Tax Reduction
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg's Finance Committee has rejected a proposal that would have lowered profit taxes for the city's businesses from 24 to 20 percent.
The new Federal Profit-Tax Law, which was approved by the State Duma in the second reading late last month, calls for corporate profit taxes to be lowered from 35 percent to 24 percent. The third and final vote, which in most cases is merely a formality, was scheduled to be held on Friday. The law breaks down the distribution of the 24 percent, with 7.5 percent earmarked for the federal budget and 16.5 set aside for regional governments.
Smolny has supported legislation that eased some of the tax burdens for businesses in the past, but it appears that the City Administration is feeling less supportive of such measures as its own portion of the tax has been whittled down.
Under the present profit-tax regime which will remain in place until next year, St. Petersburg businesses are taxed at a level of 29 percent - six percent lower then the federally mandated maximum figure of 35 percent. The city foregoes part of the 24 percent of the total tax set aside for its budget.
According to a press release posted Wednesday on the Finance Committee's Web site, www.fincom.spb.ru, the administration had already planned to forego another 1 percent of itsportion of the tax, bringing the level to 17 percent by 2003, so the new profit-tax law moves further in this area than Smolny had planned.
The budget mathematics associated with the tax cuts are still unclear, as not only the rates have been changed. The legislation also removes some of the concessions regional governments had been allowed to grant to corporate taxpayers in the past, along with providing better exemptions for items like advertising and staff training.
Nobody at the Finance Committee on Thursday was able to say what the result of the changes would mean in real terms for the city's coffers. "We couldn't foresee that the Duma was going to lower the tax even further," said one official at the finance committee who spoke on condition of anonymity.
However, the committee's chair, Vladimir Krotov, is quoted in the press release as saying "The budget project proposed by the Duma and the government of the Russian Federation for 2002 ... will not result in any major losses to our city's budget when compared to our current tax system."
Mikhail Krylov, deputy chair of the committee was quoted by business daily Delavoi Peterburg as saying that the city's budget would receive an additional 600 million rubles ($20.5 million) as a result of the new law because some tax concessions will be revoked.
But the committee source said that this was unlikely, "The 600 million is only extra to the profit tax," the source said. "As far as the city budget is concerned, it won't be affected. It's just a redistribution of taxes to different areas."
Nevertheless, analysts believe that the new tax law is a big step forward. Tom Stansmore, manager of the St. Petersburg office of Deloitte & Touche, said "the loosening of the restrictions on deductibility is a real step forward, Russia is starting to look like a tax haven with a 13 percent income tax and the new profit tax. It's making a concerted effort to encourage investment and liberalize its economy."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: EBRD Invests $2.5M
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will invest a total of $2.5 million in the production of Russian candy and computer components, the bank said Thursday.
The EBRD said in a statement it would extend about $1 million to the Advakom firm to produce components for computer networks, including data networking cable and fiber-optic products.
A group of private Swedish investors will provide another $1.3 million, and a further $500,000 will come from Sweden's state-owned risk-capital fund, Swedfund International AB.
Russia's biggest confectionery plant, Krasny Oktyabr, said it had reached a deal with the EBRD and Dutch Rabo Black Earth BV, which manages an EBRD venture fund, on a $1.5 million investment for new equipment to hike wafer output.
Nuclear Power Exports
MOSCOW (SPT) - Nuclear power concern Rosenergoatom plans to export electricity to Finland, Turkey and Ukraine, Interfax reported Tuesday.
By the end of the year it is expected to supply Turkey with 900 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, Rosenergoatom deputy executive director Sergei Yashechkin told a news conference in Moscow on Tuesday. He added that the contract will last five years.
Yashechkin said Rosenergoatom has already sent an offer to the central dispatch department at Unified Energy Systems to use the company's grid to transport the electricity.
June Inflation Falls
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Inflation dipped in June month on month, but a rise in the first half of the year reaffirmed analysts' views Thursday that price rises were clouding an otherwise positive economic picture.
The State Statistics Committee said in a statement that inflation in June was 1.6 percent month on month compared with 1.8 percent in May.
The figure for the first half of 2001 was 12.7 percent, compared with 9.5 percent in the same period a year ago and 12 percent annual inflation, which was forecast in the government's 2001 budget. It later revised the forecast to 14 to 16 percent.
TITLE: TNK, Canada Scrap Over Oil Company
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Khanty-Mansiisk court on Wednesday ordered guards hired by Tyumen Oil Co. (TNK) to leave the premises of a Siberian oil complex claimed by a Canadian producer.
A standoff of sorts had been expected on Thursday, when the court bailiff was scheduled to present the document to the new management of Yugraneft Corp. TNK installed Alexander Berman as Yugraneft general director at an extraordinary shareholders meeting called by TNK-controlled Cherno gor neft last week.
But the bailiff never showed up. According to Yugraneft lawyer Anatoly Nikitin, the bailiff had said that he was too busy to get to the firm's premises but would try again Friday.
"Tomorrow is another day," Nikitin said. "But for now, Berman and the guards are still there."
"I haven't seen any papers yet," Berman said from Nizhnevartovsk in western Siberia. "When the bailiff comes, then I'll decide what to do."
This court order is the latest strike in the war for possession between TNK and Norex, an oil-services company that was given millions of dollars of Canadian government guarantees to invest in Yugraneft, which now produces about 350,000 tons a year. Under the terms of the 1992 joint venture, Norex owned 60 percent and Chernogorneft 40 percent.
TNK insists it still owns 40 percent, though Norex says it owns 2.36 percent.
The court order, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times, nullifies an agreement Berman signed with the Rus security company last Friday, the day after his appointment at the shareholders meeting.
The judge's decision also shows that the Khanty-Mansiisk Arbitration Court continues to recognize the authority of ousted general director Lyudmilla Kondrashinaya because she submitted the suit on Monday, said Nikolai Gulidov, head of Yugraneft's Moscow office.
Khanty-Mansiisk Governor Alexander Filipenko held council on the dispute on Tuesday. He called both Kondrashinaya and TNK CEO Simon Kukes to his office to discuss the conflict, sources close to the governor said. Kukes came in with a packet of court orders.
Before Kukes could finish explaining his company's actions, Filipenko interrupted. "I just want you to explain one thing," he said. "The first thing Berman did as general director of Yugraneft was sign a contract to sell oil to TNK at a third of the normal price. Why?"
According to the source, Kukes was at a loss to explain.
Though it is difficult to pull apart the intertwined loyalties in the Tyumen region, one thing is clear, Gulidov said. Yugraneft is the biggest taxpayer in its district, and the governor knows that. A threat to Yugraneft's profits is a threat to the budget.
When filing the suit, Kondrashinaya and Yugraneft lawyers said that Berman did not have the authority of general director when he signed the contract for security because he did not possess the company stamp and documents.
TNK officials in Moscow said they had no information about the suit. "This is very doubtful," said TNK spokesperson Dmitry Ivanov. "If it is true, then it seems strange that they won over such trivial details as a stamp."
Last week, TNK asked an arbitration court to freeze Norex's shares in Yugraneft, basing its petition on the claim Norex did not contribute $5.8 million in charter capital that it said it did. Once those shares were frozen and voting prohibited, TNK called the shareholders meeting and put Berman in charge.
It is unclear who is running the operation and just as unclear who is right and who is wrong. Even the Khanty-Mansiisk court can't decide, at first freezing Norex's shares and giving TNK its window of opportunity, but then refusing the authority of TNK's general director.
The fight for Yugraneft has reached the upper echelons of the diplomatic world. After TNK deployed its armed guards, the Canadian Embassy released a statement saying that the conflict "looks like the use of force and the potential for violence" and is "a major negative signal to Canadian and foreign investors."
TITLE: Kasyanov: WTO Asks Too Much
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov blasted the World Trade Organization on Monday for its decision to postpone further talks on Russia's membership until it adjusts all its legislation to WTO standards.
Kasyanov told business leaders and political officials at a World Economic Forum in Salzburg, Austria, that no member of the WTO has had to go through what Russia was asked to do last week in order to join the multilateral trade group. "We are being given requirements unprecedented for any other WTO applicant. ... Such tactics are out of place," Kasyanov said. "We still plan to become a full WTO member."
Kasyanov painted a rosy picture of the Russian economy, saying that, boosted by both domestic foreign and investment demand, it is showing strong signs of growth that will help it survive huge upcoming debt repayments.
"For the first five months of 2001, gross domestic product growth is 4 percent or slightly higher," Kasyanov said. "We are quite capable of surviving through 2003." Russia will see the repayment of various debt packages rise to a peak of $18 billion in 2003.
Kasyanov said the pattern of growth was encouraging, though he cautioned that the economy was still finding its feet, with inflationary pressures building.
- Reuters, SPT
TITLE: Microsoft Rivals Contest E-Russia Tender
AUTHOR: By Elizabeth Wolfe
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The federal government's 50-billion-ruble ($1.7-billion) plan to wire its public school system is being contested by international computer majors left out of the project.
At least three IT companies, Sun Microsystems, Apple Computer and Russia's Arsenal, say that the Education Ministry, which is overseeing the project, chose Microsoft as the software supplier without considering similar products of their own.
The cabinet is slated to consider "the creation of a singular educational informational environment, 2001 to 2006" on Thursday. The first stage, which the government expects to complete by the end of the year, calls for providing Internet access and 50,000 computers to 3,000 rural schools.
Sun, Apple and Arsenal all claim that the government did not hold a proper tender for software suppliers. They say that their proposals to the Education Ministry went unheeded because Microsoft was chosen before the competition was announced in March.
"Microsoft is doing the same [as] what Microsoft is doing worldwide. It's absolutely clear monopoly behavior," said Yevgeny Butman, head of DPI, Apple's representative in Russia.
"From unofficial conversations with Microsoft, I can conclude that they made every effort to see that only their platform and software were considered in the tender," Butman said.
Olga Dergunova, managing director of Microsoft Russia and CIS, said that the ministry ran an open review of different technologies before the tender announcement, and that Microsoft took part with other vendors.
But the feud is aimed not so much at Microsoft as at the ministry for not doing its homework in full, the companies said.
Education Ministry documents obtained by The St. Petersburg Times show Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office were technical requirements for the competition announced in March. That requirement still did not completely close the door to others, however, since Apple's software, for example, operates on a Microsoft platform.
The Education Ministry said the Economic Development and Trade Ministry had given it the go-ahead to choose a supplier in this fashion. Microsoft was chosen because it is already used in the country's schools, said Yevgeny Vishtinetsky, head of the Education Ministry's computerization department.
"Microsoft is everywhere," he said.
Microsoft's competitors argue that this shouldn't be the only consideration in choosing a supplier, while touting their own experience in computerizing education. Sun's manager in Russia, Sergei Tarasov, said that the government, which according to sources is paying Microsoft approximately $5 million to install its products, is wasting its money. He said that Sun offers a comparable product, Star Office, for free and that Sun was prepared to offer schools free CD-ROMs to install the program.
The complaints followed the publication of an "open letter" last week on the Internet signed by the country's most powerful players in the IT sector, including Anatoly Karachinsky of Information Business Systems and Dmitry Mendrelyuk of Computerra.
The letter called for fair tender procedures and equal treatment of Russian and foreign producers and had a slight nationalist tone. However, right after it went on the RuNet, Karachinsky said he was taking his name off the list. He complained that the words had been changed and that he had visited the Education Ministry and was convinced the process was fair. He said that the letter was a throwback to Soviet times and anti-foreign propaganda.
Karachinsky was put off by the tactics of one company, Arsenal, which he says sent letters to the Security Council complaining about the selection of Microsoft. According to Karachinsky, one letter said, "Let's not teach our children on foreign products." The initiator of the "open letter," Mikhail Donskoi, created Russian Office, a competitor to Microsoft Office, for Arsenal.
For all the fuss, there is a consensus that many rural schools are in desperate need of computers and Internet access. "It's one of the few government programs that is concerned with the future," Karachinsky said.
President Vladimir Putin put his stamp of approval on the proposal in December, calling it "necessary to support" in a memo to the cabinet. The federal government, regional governments and sponsors will foot the 50-billion-ruble bill evenly, the Education Ministry's Vishtinetsky said.
TITLE: Reports: Russia Swapped Airbuses for Orders
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Did Russia agree to buy 36 airplanes from Airbus in return for securing $1.8 billion in orders from the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co.?
Two reports on Monday's landmark deal between the EADS and the Russian Aviation and Space Agency, or Rosaviakosmos - citing sources from both sides of the negotiations - said Russia promised, as a quid pro quo, to buy some $1.5 billion worth of Airbus A-320s.
Agence France Presse linked the future Airbus order to the deal with the EADS, which owns 80 percent of Airbus, and to getting support from Paris for Moscow to launch its Soyuz rockets from the European space center in French Guyana.
And the Russian business daily Vedomosti quoted Rosaviakosmos chief Yury Koptev as saying that "the [Airbus order] is not tied up to the agreement that we signed, but it's tied up with life." He then added that the maximum number of A-320s on the table was 32.
Industry watchers say the only Russian airline capable of financing anywhere near that many aircraft is state-controlled Aeroflot, which already leases 11 Airbus A-310s. Reports that Aeroflot was interested in a large order of A-320s first surfaced during company CEO Valery Okulov's visit to Paris last December. Those reports triggered an outcry from domestic airline-industry workers, leading to protest rallies in front of the White House that included employees of top aircraft design and production centers Ilyushin and Tupolev.
On Tuesday, Aeroflot, Rosaviakosmos and the EADS all denied that a deal with Airbus had been cut, but Aeroflot has made no secret of the fact that it is shopping to upgrade its fleet.
"There was no such clause in the agreement, and there are no other separate agreements on that," said EADS spokesperson Gregor Kursell.
"Nothing has been signed as yet. We are in talks with various manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus included," Aeroflot spokesperson Alexander Lopukhin said. Rosaviakosmos spokesperson Sergei Gorbunov reiterated Lopukhin's denial, but added that there had been pressure from Airbus to buy its planes.
Aeroflot has said that "nationality" is not an issue in purchasing planes, but it lambasted Ilyushin earlier this year when it failed to deliver scheduled passenger and cargo craft - a delay that forced the flagship carrier to adjust its flight schedule.
The A-320, a medium-range craft, is seen by the domestic industry as a competitor to the Tupolev Tu-204, which, at $25 million, is roughly half the price.
A Tupolev official, who asked not to be identified, said that importing Airbus craft would "spell death for the domestic industry."
TITLE: War Crimes Tribunal's Troubles Only Starting
AUTHOR: By Jenny S. Martinez
TEXT: THE extradition of Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague represents both the greatest victory and the most important test for the United Nations' war crimes tribunal and for the emerging regime of international human rights law. It is not at all clear that either is ready for the test.
There are fundamental problems with what is going on in The Hague that the international community must confront if the Milosevic proceedings are to be anything more than a costly show trial whose main accomplishment will be to assuage European and American guilt.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was created by the UN Security Council in 1993 with great fanfare as the first international attempt since the Nuremberg trials to enforce the Genocide Convention and other human rights norms. But since only lower-level defendants have been apprehended until now, the tribunal's day-to-day operations have received little scrutiny.
But more critical eyes from around the world will now turn to The Hague to watch the tribunal's first trial of a former head of state, and the tribunal needs to get ready for the scrutiny.
To start with, the tribunal is plagued by procedural and administrative problems. The first of them is the enormous expense and inefficiency of the operation.
Last year the tribunal's budget reached $95 million, almost 10 percent of the UN's operating budget. By comparison, the UN Commission on Human Rights, which covers not just the former Yugoslavia but the whole world, gets only about $20 million a year.
For that much money, you would expect a top-of-the-line operation, but that is, sadly, not what you get. The trials of even low-level offenders are endless - two years from opening statement to verdict is not unusual - and appeals and remands can take years more.
As a result, some defendants are spending years in pretrial detention (compared with a few months for criminal defendants in U.S. courts), bringing the tribunal dangerously close to being in the embarrassing position of violating international human rights norms on speedy trials. This problem will come to a head as Milosevic steps into line behind 15 other defendants who have already been awaiting trial for up to two years.
Then there are the problems with defense attorneys: Many are, frankly, incompetent, and UN investigators found credible evidence of corruption. The prosecutor's office is by and large earnest and competent, but there have been occasional embarrassing lapses in the past (such as the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence, last-minute amendments of charges on the eve of trial and surprise witnesses). The judges, likewise, are mostly skillful and hard-working, but many are international law experts with little criminal trial experience.
The result is often a meandering trial process. And then there was the decision earlier this year that the fact that one judge appeared to be sound asleep through major parts of a trial was not, in fact, a violation of the defendant's rights.
It's a safe bet that no one will sleep through Milosevic's trial. But will the public be allowed to watch? The tribunal's statute guarantees a public trial, but out of concern for the safety of witnesses, the tribunal's rules also allow for private sessions. In some trials half the testimony has been closed to the public, over the objection of defense attorneys who rightly question the legitimacy of such secret proceedings and their potential to descend into ethnic grudge matches.
This litany of criticisms is by no means intended to denigrate the many hard-working individuals - prosecutors, judges, staff, defense counsel - earnestly striving for justice in The Hague. In fact, the tribunal's shortcomings do a disservice to these individuals and the cause they believe in. But there is no room for error now. It is time for the tribunal to learn from its mistakes, because any missteps in the Milosevic trial have the potential to set back the cause of international justice for years to come.
Jenny S. Martinez, a Washington lawyer, spent a year as a law clerk to a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. She contributed this comment to The Washington Post.
***************
By Alton Frye, Jeremy Rifkin and Peter R. Rosenblatt
THE multiple indictments of Slobodan Milosevic testify to the evils he has fostered. Milosevic bears grave responsibility for the calamities visited upon the Balkans. He should be held accountable. Yet the demand that he can be held accountable only at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague is misguided. The imperative stance adopted by the tribunal's prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, reflects understandable outrage over the horrors perpetrated under Milosevic.
Outrage, however, is no guide to sound policy. The international community needs to rethink the options for prosecuting Milosevic.
Democratic processes have dislodged Milosevic from power and installed new leadership committed to a just constitutional order. Milosevic's successor, Vojislav Kostunica, and the new prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, argue that the former president should be tried in Belgrade, although Djindjic grudgingly supported Milosevic's extradition.
Their contention need not be considered an expression of national pride alone; the health of Serbian democracy depends on the community purging its own demons. That means enabling Serbs to confront the crimes done in their name through a proceeding that unveils the full evidence of Milosevic's abuses. The suffering of his own people reinforces the claim for a Serbian court to address the abuses. As Kostunica put it recently, "In order for the people to realize what justice is, it should be in their hands, not in the hands of foreigners."
That brings us to the double-edged precedent that would be set if The Hague is seen as the only appropriate venue for trying Milosevic. That proposition amounts to a verdict, a priori, that the people and government of Serbia are incapable of rendering justice in this case.
Such a judgment flatly contradicts a central provision of the statute governing the planned International Criminal Court, or ICC.
Although a signatory to the ICC treaty, the United States is not likely to ratify the agreement any time soon, if ever, largely because of concern that U.S. soldiers or other citizens would be subject to its jurisdiction. The U.S. position is that it alone will try its own citizens. In the ICC negotiations, the United States won approval of the principle of "complementarity" - a provision that the court will rule any case inadmissible if a state has undertaken appropriate action.
That principle would be vitiated if, as has come to pass, the current Hague tribunal forced Belgrade to hand over Milosevic before observing how the Serbs would deal with the war crimes charges against him. Such a precedent mocks the concept of complementarity.
The ICC will come into existence with or without U.S. participation. There is no avoiding the possibility that some day an American may be taken into custody in another country and come under ICC jurisdiction. That American's right to a U.S. trial will hinge on the complementarity principle.
Pressing Belgrade to deliver Milosevic to The Hague did not serve the U.S. interest in protecting that crucial principle.
The My Lai case is relevant here. The prosecution of Army Lieutenant William Calley for crimes committed in a Vietnamese village was triggered by a single American soldier, whose report of hearsay prompted a U.S. investigation. Would the U.S. public have given credence to the My Lai proceedings if they had arisen from allegations, prosecution and verdicts by foreigners? More important, would the public have absorbed the terrible lessons of that episode if they had been imposed from abroad?
One doubts it. In that self-awareness lies a proper appreciation of the dilemma surrounding prosecution of Milosevic.
The Serbs need and deserve the chance to try Milosevic themselves. If they botch it, there will be time enough, added justification and a sound legal basis for international prosecution. On crimes of this magnitude, there is no statute of limitations.
Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, Alton Frye, a fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Peter R. Rosenblatt, a Washington lawyer, contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.
TITLE: With Chechnya, Kremlin Fighting on 2 Fronts
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: LAST week, the Kremlin spin machine worked overtime to celebrate the latest glorious victory from Chechnya. The death of rebel commander Arbi Barayev was touted as the latest proof of the success of the federal campaign. Of course, military experts know that in a war like this one, the death of a single field commander is not only meaningless, but may complicate matters as well.
The rebels have no problem recruiting new leaders and one will pop up to take Barayev's place - most likely one who is less predictable, more radical and more hostile. The assassination of former Chechen president Dzhokar Dudayev, for instance, resulted in a group of radical field commanders coming to the forefront - a development with which Russian forces have been unable to cope in the ensuing years.
I found it interesting that the public barely reacted to the news about Barayev. The authorities have been promising to kill Chechen leaders for at least two years now, so if it had come 18 months or even a year ago, people might have taken it as progress. But achieving such a psychological effect this late in the game is impossible. It's too late, and too many people understand what is happening in Chechnya. The public is tired of the war and so is the army.
Propaganda is not all-powerful. People develop immunity. By now, the people are only going to believe in victory when it actually comes, i.e., when the soldiers come home, regardless of what they leave behind.
This war began with burning all bridges and squandering all hope of peace. Both the authorities and most "opposition" politicians came out so vehemently in support of the war that they can't change their minds now.
Starting two hopeless and senseless wars isn't a problem. Even losing two such wars isn't fatal. But concluding yet another shameful peace settlement cannot be done without risking a serious political crisis. Anyone doing so may save his country, but he'll also sacrifice his political career. The Kremlin understands this and no one is rushing to put his or her head on the block.
By putting a decision off, the Kremlin merely compounds the difficulty, and the ensuing crisis will therefore be more profound.
The recent government attacks on the press have been motivated by Moscow's military failures. Not able to achieve results on the battlefield, the Kremlin can only redouble its propaganda, and that demands constant control over the media. This means opening a second front, at home, against journalists.
Opposition to the war is creating an ideological background that makes criticism of the government's social policies seem all the more forceful. It is even stimulating serious doubts about the fairness of the new economic system.
The Kremlin's only escape is open and total censorship. But creating effective censorship is not something that can be done overnight.
So, the Kremlin is pressuring the press, but cannot control it. The situation on the second front is the same as on the first in Chechnya. The state is just multiplying its enemies. The real political battle has not yet begun. Sooner or later, some settlement will have to be reached in Chechnya. Some settlement will also have to be reached with the press. Most likely, though, both decisions will be made too late to solve the problems.
Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist.
TITLE: Global eye
TEXT:
Return Engagement
Liar. Oathbreaker. Conspirator. Criminal. Cheerleader for brutal murderers. Subverter of the U.S. Constitution.
Yes, it must be another White House appointment by George W. Bush!
Last week, the eminent statesman once more fulfilled his promise to "restore honor and integrity to government" by naming Elliott Abrams to a prestigious post on the White House National Security Council. For sheer hoots-pa (as they say down in Austin), it's probably Dubya's most dazzling appointment yet.
Abrams, as you'll recall, worked closely with Oliver North, the super-patriot who ran the illegal "Iran-Contra" operation back in the Reagan-Bush glory days, employing drug traffickers, gun runners, money launderers and international terrorists to circumvent a law banning U.S. military aid to the right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
As assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, Abrams was a key figure in the Reagan-Bush team's panicky efforts to cover up the scandal. He brazenly lied under oath to U.S. Congressional panels investigating the affair, concealing his knowledge of North's activities, his own involvement in shaking down an Arab oil sheik for millions in secret cash, and his familiarity with key conspirator Felix Rodriguez, who had been fed into the operation by a top aide of the then-vice president: one George H.W. Bush.
In 1991, facing multiple felony charges, Abrams copped a plea to two counts of deceiving Congress in his sworn testimony. He was rescued from ignominy, however, by a last-minute pardon in late 1992 from the then-lame-duck-president: one George H.W. Bush.
It was one of several such Iran-Contra indulgences granted by Bush, who was facing further investigation himself after prosecutors uncovered a crucial diary he had kept hidden from them for six years. Bush was due to testify in the upcoming trial of former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger - but then Cap got a pardon too! The trial was quashed and the whole Iran-Contra investigation was cut off at the knees. Convenient, nicht war?
From this legacy of unethical public deception, Abrams went on to become the director of - are you ready? - The Ethics and Public Policy Center. Now Bush the Younger has rewarded him for his loyal service by appointing him the NSC's director of "democracy and human rights."
This too is pretty rich, considering Abrams' past record as an apologist for some of Latin America's most brutal authoritarian regimes. His reputation as perhaps the fiercest partisan of the Reagan-Bush era (political opponents were not just foes or rivals; they were "vipers" with "blood on their hands") also puts a slight crimp in Dubya's pretty talk about "bipartisanship" and his pledge to "change the tone" in Washington.
Maybe he meant he was going to change the toner in Washington. You know, just spruce up the Oval Office a bit, put some paper in the copier, refill the stapler, that kind of thing. God knows he couldn't have been talking about some kind of moral stand, now could he?
End Game
But let's not be cynical. The United States celebrated its 225th birthday this week, and we should all stand up and salute this tremendous milestone of democracy.
True, it's a democracy controlled by a man who was not actually elected by the people. And yes, this situation actually runs counter to the bedrock American principle enshrined in the Declaration of Independence: that no state can be legitimate without the consent of the governed. And O.K., so the same Supreme Court that usurped the lawful election process and installed this unelected, unconsented ruler in office has also systematically stripped away many of the basic freedoms once enjoyed by the common people, while augmenting the power and privilege of massive corporations to operate with brutal impunity. And yeah, all right, you can now be jailed in America for driving without a seatbelt, or get a life sentence for committing three petty crimes, or be barred from voting because your skin is too dark, or get executed with an IQ of 40 or below. But hey, at least it's a free country, right? You can stand up and say whatever you please, right?
Well, American journalist Gregory Palast might disagree. Palast has unearthed some of the most damaging stories on the Bush family Cosa Nostra, including Jeb's state-ordered "voter purge" in Florida that barred thousands of likely Democratic voters from casting their ballots. He also reported on Big Daddy's dirty deals with a Canadian conglomerate, Barrick Gold Mining, which snapped up $10 billion worth of mining rights on U.S. federal lands for a mere $10,000 back when Daddy ruled the roost. Needless to say, Bush père later went on Barrick's payroll as a corporate flack, helping broker big international deals for the company. Needless to say, Barrick supplemented Pop's pay by kicking in large donations to Junior's campaign.
With the American media being the staunch and fearless guardian of the people that it is, Palast was forced to publish his stories overseas, mostly for The Observer in London. But as Michael Corleone could tell you, the Cosa Nostra has a long reach. And now Barrick has made an aggressive move to punish The Observer for publishing Palast's Bush-bashing stories - and to force Palast to remove the offensive articles from his own U.S.-based Web site.
Barrick is suing The Observer under the U.K.'s low-bar libel laws. One claim is that Palast libeled Barrick honcho Peter Munk by saying he got his start in the gold business with funding from Saudi arms dealer (and Iran-Contra player) Adnan Khashoggi. And the source of this filthy canard? Er, Peter Munk, who offered this info to his own biographer. The rest of the case is just as strong - almost - as this.
Barrick, its coffers stuffed with Bush-abetted gold, is more than a match for The Observer, which is funded by an independent trust. Even without bringing the case to trial, they can pile up huge legal costs until the trust is bled dry - and Palast's stories are removed forever from the land of the free.
Guess the Revolution is finally over, huh?
TITLE: vnezapny sych bounces back
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Vnezapny Sych, a legendary local band, returns with an album and new lineup, which will be showcased at the Faculty club on Friday. Though the band's own music hasn't been heard much lately, co-founder and songwriter Kirill "Kesha" Spechinsky's songs constitute the finest of Pep-See's repertoire - the girl-fronted alternative pop band, which Spechinsky helped to form in 1993.
Released by the local independent label Zvezda Records, "Koroche Ty Ponyal" is in effect the band's debut - and so far only - album from 1990, but has finally made it onto CD,with the addition of two more recently recorded tracks.
Vnezapny Sych have come through a troubled decade; two of the three original members died, allegedly from drug-related causes, and this can be felt in the band's gloomier recent material, somewhat reminiscent of Lou Reed - a far cry from its more light-hearted early songs.
These days, Spechinsky, 35, is rehearsing with a new lineup on a daily basis. After the band's singer, Pavel Matveyev, died on Jan. 19, he also had to take on the vocal responsibilities.
The new lineup features Sergei Sukonkin on lead guitar and drum machine, with Yulia Zuban and Anna Filatova on back-up vocals. Both were brought in when Spechinsky injured his throat in a fight, damaging his singing voice in the process.
Vnezapny Sych was founded in 1989 by Spechinsky and Matveyev, who spent a lot of time together drinking beer, smoking marijuana and writing songs. Spechinsky attributes the band's unusual name to the effects of cannabis.
The third member, Misha Malin, happened to know the famous British musician Brian Eno, who gave him a home studio as a present. Malin was so impressed with Vnezapny Sych's material that he asked to join the band in exchange for free access to his studio.
Against the background of the pompous rock bands of the 1990s, Sych's songs sounded unusually fresh and became popular with trendy youths fed up with social criticism and the God-seeking of such bands as DDT and Alisa.
"In the early '90s, Sych had every chance of becoming Russia's No. 1 group, filling the gap left by Kino," said music writer Andrei Burlaka. "Their songs had catchy melodies, amusing and cynical lyrics, and could have become a healthy alternative to Tsoi's heroic stance."
The band did indeed achieve a great deal, touring extensively all over Russia and releasing videos. At one point, Spechinsky said he came across five different concert tape bootlegs by the band in one kiosk. "We did the most a band of 25- to 27-year-olds could have achieved at the time with no outside investment," said Spechinsky. Unfortunately, the band split in 1995 when Malin left to pursue his solo career - only to die the following year.
Vnezapny Sych has appeared a few times since then - either as projects of Spechinsky or Matveyev, who both had the right to the band's name - but brought no visible results until last year when the duo reunited and played some concerts and recorded some tracks.
At any rate, Spechinsky's biggest success so far has probably been with Pep-See, with whom his songs became real hits, getting heavy rotation on radio and television. All their best-known songs, such as "Vovochka" and "Lyzhniki" ("Skiers"), were written by him.
Spechinsky said some of them were originally intended for Sych, but were not realized for different reasons. For instance, Pep-See's hit "Parni, Muzyka, Narkotiki" ("Guys, Music, Drugs") - Spechninsky's answer to "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll" - was originally called "Devki, Muzyka, Narkotiki" ("Chicks, Music, Drugs").
The band's problems are often seen as connected to drug abuse. Spechinsky admitted it led to Sych's disbanding in 1995, as they split time between "work and taking drugs."
"Certain things don't go with music," said Spechinsky. "When you're taking large amounts of heroin, it has a long-lasting effect and it's impossible to work. When we recorded [later material], Petya and I were both using drugs the whole time. We used to record guitar tracks, then run to buy smack, and what we recorded later was axed because it was a total mess. When we turned up sober, in withdrawal, it was all erased. That's why the songs came out a little sad."
According to Giedre Kriksciunaite of Zvezda, the label chose to put out Sych's album with a view to releasing the band's next album of more recent material, which sounds more heart-felt and sophisticated than the early songs, as the "Griboyedov Music" compilations demonstrated recently.
"Kesha is a very talented poet, while Petya [Matveyev] was a very talented performer. They contributed a lot to music culture," said Mikhail Sindalovsky of the club Griboyedov, who included Sych's two tracks on the compilations. "But their problem was that they could not record or play a concert [decently]. It's not an accomplished band. It was and is a bare idea, in my opinion."
"They need minimalism. The songs included on the Griboyedov compilations were recorded in the studio, but when they relaxed and started drinking after the session, a sound engineer turned on the microphones without telling anyone. Kesha has no more to do with rock and roll than Serge Gainsbourg - he doesn't need to put his work into a rock-and-roll form."
Rock music or not, the quality of Spechinsky's songwriting and his new-found energy give hope for a brighter future for the band.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: The worst thing that happened last week was probably the end of Phantom FM - the radio station that had been entertaining sophisticated listeners since April. As it was technically part of Radio Nostalgie, it had to fold when Nostalgie was bought by a Moscow station. Phantom was a fresh alternative to brain-dead contemporary Russian radio. It was diverse and open-minded, and the only station that played groups like Stereolab or Sonic Youth, as well as local club bands.
Sergei Shnurov went off the air even earlier. His "Sergei Shnurov's Show and Tell," a unique show that featured Leningrad's mainstay swearing and drinking vodka, had its last broadcast on June 13.
"Something strange happened," Shnurov said. "We did the show for a while, then [Phantom program director] Denis Rubin called and said, 'Don't do it today because we will be off the air because of maintenance.' Then we learned that there was no maintenance, just a normal broadcast. So we were taken off the air before Phantom FM was."
Rubin, who founded the station, said the program was cancelled because of Shnurov's use of four-letter words in his last two shows. "We are not against this, but they take away broadcasting licenses because of this sort of thing," he said, adding that he plans to continue to work with Shnurov in the future. Rubin is now speaking to other radio stations in the hope of resuming Phantom FM. "If it reappears on some other frequency, it will confirm the phantom-like image of the station," he said.
Leningrad's ever-changing Web site now has nothing but a blank page with the message: "The site has been closed. A new version will appear soon."
"We're in the deep underground now," Shnurov explained by telephone on Tuesday. "There's only so long you can be in the public eye. We'll be busy with ourselves for the time being."
Shnurov is now busy recording soundtracks and writing songs for movies and TV series, and does not plan any local concerts until September. He also plans to re-release the band's debut album, "Pulya," in its original form - the label that released it in 1999 took liberties, axing some tracks and changing the track order.
Wine concerts have been canceled, as frontman Alexei Winer, formerly known as Gelter, has not come back from Paris, where he has been living recently. Instead, he has gone to Orleans to paint.
The Moscow club 16 Tons, whose best achievement so far was bringing Stereolab for one concert in May, unveiled further U.K. band dates in Moscow. Laika will perform at the venue on July 28, Ladytron and Plaid will follow on Sept. 1 and Nov. 24, respectively.
Of these groups, Laika - not to be confused with the Finnish surf band Laika and the Cosmonauts - is probably the best known, with some of its records pirated in Russia. On its Web site, the band explains that one of reasons for taking the name, was that "it was probably the most high-profile animal experiment ever - Laika died up there in her capsule - and we are strong believers in animal rights and things that seem kind of obvious to us, like not eating them."
Check out www.laika.org and www.16tons.ru.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: more modern art for city
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
TEXT: July is a time when the smaller museums of St. Petersburg experience an unusual influx of visitors - if, of course, the museums have joined the annual project of the Pro Arte Institute, which aims to bring together contemporary and traditional collections of art.
The project had its very successful debut last year with 10 lesser-known local museums, including the Memorial Museum of the Narodovolets-2 Submarine, the Museum of the St. Petersburg Academy of Veterinary Medicine and the Arkhip Kuindzhi Apartment Museum, hosting 14 modern-art exhibitions and installations. This year, projects by St. Petersburg, Moscow and German artists will be on display in 11 museums between July 7 and 30.
On weekends, free buses will be circulating among the museums, so anyone who feels like digesting it all in one day will have such the opportunity. On weekdays, however, be sure you have your own means of transportation.
Just like last year, the projects take a fresh approach to a theme inspired by the museums' permanent displays. Maria Zaborovskaya and Nik Barabanov have decorated the walls of the Veterinary Museum with drawings of skeletons of mythological creatures, enriching the existing exhibition with a new surreal context. Yevgeny Yufit and Vladimir Kustov used the space of the Forensic Medicine Museum to unveil their installations meditating on death - real or observed.
To join the Pro Arte festival, the projects won special grants commissioned by the Ford Foundation. The competition involved over 70 artists, and more than half of St. Petersburg's 200 museums agreed to host their exhibitions.
"The mentality of St. Petersburg museum managers in general is evolving, and this year more museums expressed interest in our proposals," said Yelena Kolovskaya of the Pro Arte Institute. "Last year's participants were very enthusiastic about future collaboration with us. Some of them saw an unprecedented number of visitors during the project."
The curators of the Kuindzhi Apartment Museum, for example, were pleasantly surprised last year with over 1,000 visitors during the first weekend of Pro Arte project. Normally, the museum is lucky to get 1,500 visitors a year.
This year, the artists did not choose this venue to host their projects, but the museum looks forward to cooperating with Pro Arte in the future.
"A festival like this was bound to emerge soon," said Mikhail Berg, a member of the council awarding the grants. "The city has so many museums and archives, it breathes tradition, and it would be natural for its citizens to appreciate modern art through the traditional. It is essential for them to see what this art has grown from. And this is what our festival is about."
Ideally, the goal of Pro Arte Institute is to see all museums welcoming modern art and sponsors investing more in such projects. "In Russia, sadly, people are still quite sheepish when it comes to such investments, and there is a long way to go to build a powerful contemporary-art market comparable to, say, Western Europe," Berg said.
For further details, call the Pro Arte Institute at 233-00-40 or 233-05-53. Links: http://www.proarte.spb.ru/
TITLE: comeback for 'jewish jazz'
AUTHOR: by Sam Charap
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Throughout Eastern European cities such as St. Petersburg 150 years ago, a new musical form was emerging in the then-thriving Jewish communities. An amalgam of various strands of Jewish folk music, Yiddish dance and the liturgical traditions of Torah chant, the form came to be known as klezmer - a word which is itself an amalgam of the Hebrew kle, instrument, and zemer, song.
Klezmer's roots extend back to medieval Eastern European shetls, the Jewish villages that speckled the landscape until World War II. Klezmorim would play their uniquely vibrant music - described by some as "Jewish Jazz," using the clarinet, violin, accordion and drums - at weddings and festivals.
With the massive pre-war Jewish migration to the West, klezmer all but died out. But thanks to a U.S.-based revival during the 1970s, klezmer became alive again, and was renewed. New styles, incorporating jazz, experimental, and rock emerged and new groups, such as Brave Old World and the Klezmatics, brought klezmer out of obscurity and back onto the cultural stage.
While klezmer is thriving in America and Western Europe, it hasn't yet caught on again in its Eastern European birthplace - a trend that is being countered by the St. Petersburg Klezfest, which is taking place this week for the fifth year running.
"We wanted to return klezmer to the country where it was born," said Alexander Frenkel, the director of the Jewish Association of St. Petersburg, which is organizing Klezfest. The fesitval is the only such event held in Russia.
More than 40 klezmer musicians from Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova will be gathering in St. Petersburg to learn and share stories with four international klezmer stars - Zalmen Mlotek and Adrienne Cooper from New York, Merlin Shepherd from London, and Leonid Sonts, the Kazan-based leader of Russia's first professional klezmer band, "Simcha."
"It's a unique opportunity for musicians from the former Soviet Union to gather together, to share their experiences, achievements, and knowledge , and to acquaint the Petersburg public with their art," said Frenkel.
These musicians from the former Soviet bloc aren't the only ones who enjoy the Klezfest, according to Cooper, who is returning to St. Petersburg for the fourth consecutive year.
"I teach in seminars similar to this in format throughout the U.S., Canada and Western Europe. And this week in Russia, these participants are the most enthusiastic, most consistently high-level, emotionally engaged, imaginatively free and expressive of all the Jewish musicians I encounter. I feel blessed to be involved with them and with this program" she said.
Cooper, along with Mlotek, Shepherd and Sonts, will lead the seminars and master classes, which will be taking place from Saturday through Wednesday.
There will be two gala concerts, which will feature both solo and big- band performances, and, according to Frenkel, will last up to three hours. The first concert, on Sunday July 8 at 6:30 p.m., will take place at the Hased Avraam Jewish Center, 45 Bolshoi Sampsoniyevsky Prospect, and is free of charge. Tickets for the second concert, which will be held at the Beloselskykh-Belozverskykh Palace at 41 Nevsky Prospect on Wednesday July 11 at 7pm, are available at the Jewish Association at 3 Ulitsa Rubinshteina and other Jewish community centers around the city.
Tickets range from 20 to 50 rubles. For more information, call 113-38-89 or 311-64-40.
TITLE: kalif fills, shakes bellies
AUTHOR: by Barnaby Thompson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: From the people who brought you La Strada pizzeria comes the "oriental restaurant" Kalif, with an unremarkable exterior that probably isn't helping it much in attracting the thousands of tourists that throng nearby Palace Square.
Inside, however, it's a different story, with attractively presented tables nestling among murals, decorations and even waitresses that are unmistakably Central Asian. One is greeted in the traditional Uzbek way - with bowls of nuts, raisins and dried fruit complementing a pot of refreshing green tea - as one peruses an admirable menu and wine list that are extensive without being overwhelming. The selection covers a range of prices , from 440 rubles ($15) for an excellent bottle of Mukuzani, to around $1,000 for Chateau de Je Ne Sais Quoi, circa 1986. And yes, there is horse meat on offer. It took me right back to school dinners.
In retrospect, I regret not having gone for the fixed-menu options, in part because they looked so good and in part because I would have had a wider range of food on which to comment, since they were of the a-bit-of-everything persuasion. But our starters were excellent, nonetheless. I plumped for something called the Dakar (140 rubles) - chicken livers, onions and mushrooms on a bed of lettuce and fabulous Uzbek bread - which was pronounced by my dining companion as superior to her Shakarab salad (120 rubles), slivers of what the menu said was peacock, with chili (which wasn't really in evidence) and pomegranate (which was). Good, but not very interesting, was her verdict.
Before we get to the main course, a word or two about the people. It must be said that the service was excellent - no mess, no fuss, all courtesy and attentiveness. I'm not so sure, however, about the floorshow. The belly dancers ("dancers of the stomach" in Russian) and circus runaway were fine, but the cheap disco lights spoiled the effect. In addition, no one saw fit to shake their tailfeather in my face, which is what I thought belly dancers were supposed to do, opting instead for a rather staid family of four at a neighboring table where the effort was entirely wasted. I demand a refund.
Anyway, our first-course fortunes were reversed, as I found when I tucked into the Gyushlyar Aralashmyasidan kebab (280 rubles), a mix of lamb, beef, pork and chicken plus fries (50 rubles) that promised more than it delivered. Again, good but hardly inspiring. But the dolma, or stuffed vine leaves (360 rubles), was a different story. The wondrous vegetable sauce, and the juicy pepper stuffed with rice in the middle of the plate compensated for the dryness of the mincemeat. By this time, my companion had gorged herself on more of that Uzbek bread - and who could blame her? - so there was plenty of dolma left over for me.
Uzbek food is not the type of cuisine to leave the consumer feeling unsatisfied, meaning that our stuffed stomachs were unable to deal with dessert.
Kalif doesn't reach the culinary heights of some of the other oriental eateries in town, but it is bang on the tourist trail and well worth the visit. There are lots of things we didn't try - the grappa, the soups, and the hookah pipe, which is available at 300 rubles per portion of tobacco - but Kalif did enough for me to want to go back and experiment. Especially with the belly dancers.
Kalif, 21/6 Millionaya Ulitsa. Dinner for two with wine, 1,530 rubles ($53). Open daily 12 p.m. to 12 a.m. Tel: 312-22-65. Major credit cards accepted.
TITLE: tomb raider: the game was better
AUTHOR: by Kenneth Turan
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: It's got perhaps the most popular of video games as source material. It's got a sought-after star as its marquee attraction. It's got one of the longest and most convoluted writing credits in recent history. But what "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" has really got is, as the old song would have it, plenty of nothing.
Though it is busy enough, and must have spent a fortune on computer-generated effects, "Tomb Raider" is almost completely lacking in genuine thrills. Even the attractive presence of star Angelina Jolie can't keep this leaden, plodding, completely underwhelming film from playing like "Lara Croft: Yawn Inducer."
While on the surface "Tomb Raider" may sound indistinguishable from "The Mummy Returns," the differences, should anyone want to compare them (kids, don't try this at home), are considerable. Though "Mummy" is not going to be on many 10-best lists, its liveliness, pacing and pervasive sense of fun are well beyond what "Tomb Raider" can manage.
Simon West, a man whose previous "Con Air" and "The General's Daughter" have the distinction of being lamentable in completely different ways, is the director here and the man probably responsible for many of the questionable choices the film makes.
For one thing, the action editing on "Tomb Raider" is much too quick and rapid, making it difficult to get the full effect of what probably were elaborately staged fight sequences. It's a measure of how much the film outsmarts itself that its most visually involving scene is not an action one but an impressive midair training sequence on rubberized ropes referred to as the bungee ballet.
And though it did location work in distant parts of the world, from Cambodia's Angkor Wat (filmed for the first time since 1964's "Lord Jim") and the snowy vastness of Iceland, neither locale is used effectively. In fact, except for random snippets, for all we see of Iceland the crew might as well have camped out where the Coen brothers shot "Fargo."
West is also mentioned in the film's writing credit, a document more complex and potentially interesting than anything that appears on screen: story by Sara B. Cooper and Mike Werb & Michael Colleary, adaptation by Simon West, screenplay by Patrick Massett & John Zinman based on the Eidos Interactive game series developed by Core Design.
Perhaps because he asked for and didn't get a full-on credit, West has been publicly dismissive of the writing process. "It's easy," he told Premiere magazine, "to throw a bunch of ideas down on a sheet of paper." Well, if you don't take the time to make the ideas involving and are oblivious to the twaddle your characters say, you probably do think the process is a snap.
The story, such as it is, involves the attempt of a shadowy group called the Illuminati to seize the opportunity of a once-in-5,000-years planetary alignment to reunite the two hidden halves of something called the Triangle of Light. Once whole, this ancient object gives the bearer the godlike power to control time and even undo the past.
Being armchair types, the Illuminati have hired the nasty, dressed-in-black Manfred Powell (Iain Glen) to do the actual triangle uniting. Wouldn't you know it that Lara Croft just happens to have, courtesy of her father, the late, seen-only-in-flashbacks Lord Croft (Jolie's real-life dad, Jon Voight), the very mechanism Powell needs to do the deed.
Given to wearing tight tops and short shorts, Lara Croft resides chastely in one of Britain's stately homes with a live-in butler and a house nerd ("Shine's" Noah Taylor). Nominally a photojournalist, she's in reality a Modesty Blaise-type freelance adventuress with a flirtatious but disapproving relationship with mercenary fellow raider Alex West (Daniel Craig).
With the trademark long braid and weapons strapped to either hip, Jolie certainly looks as much like Croft as it is possible for a human to resemble a computer-generated image. Spunkiness personified and always unfazed, Jolie is a game performer who does as much as she can with a cartoon role. If this elaborate film hasn't been able to find much of interest for her to do, we can always hope (or perhaps one should say fear) that a sequel will give it one more try.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is currently showing at the Avrora cinema.
TITLE: pro arte: city institution
AUTHOR: by Giulara Sadykh-zade
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Pro Arte Insititute has managed to establish itself firmly in St. Petersburg over a very short period of time: It has a new financial sponsor in the Ford Foundation, has founded courses of modern art and media technology and has created a new concert hall in the city in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The new hall in the old granery is small - it only seats 100 people - but cozy. When concerts of modern music are held, there is usually standing room only.
The insititute has also got its own ensemble of modern music - a flexible collective of performers from various orchestras, who simply call themselves "eNsemble."
While it is not entirely correct to call the group the first modern music ensemble in the city, it is certainly true that thanks to these musicians, modern music has gradually become a much bigger part of musical life in St. Petersburg. With their regular monthly concerts, eNsemble even has its own group of admirers, a small group of which is gathered around the Pro Arte Insititute. The programs for the concerts were certainly anything but banal: Some were controversial, some were shocking, but all of them were interesting and, for many, something of an educational experience. At least, they soothed the mind and the imagination of the inveterate snobs in the audience.
Cage and Martynov, Webern and Zagny, Gesualdo and Filanovsky, Psoy Korolenk and Schubert - the repertoire of the ensemble, put together with the help of art director Boris Filanovsky, endeavoured to embrace the entire European musical tradition, seen through the prism of modern compositional thought.
The sixth and last concert of the season was held in the White Mirror Hall of the Sheremetev palace. The program was selected accordingly: As was promised in the invitation, there was no "musical hooliganism." The concert, which was announced as an "evening of octets," took place with the proper decorum, in the best traditions of St. Petersburg chamber music.
The concert began with Schubert's Octet in F major, and it became clear that to play this beautiful, well-structured and melodic work is actually much more difficult than to play works by modern composers which are completely unfamiliar to the audience. The ensemble, it must be said, tried their hardest: They managed to catch the Schubertian style, but only approximately. They are still a long way from attaining true ensemble playing, where every note, every flourish and rhythmic detail is played with exactitude.
This was followed by Yanis Xenakis' Anaktoria (1978), Jansen's Octet (1978), Cua (tre tempi) by Giacinto Scelsi (1959) and Edgar Varez' Octandre (1924). Scelsi's composition received the most interest. This composer is almost never performed in Russia, although he is considered one of the most important representatives of the avant-garde.
Scelsi's work was pleasing both melodically and by the well-selected harmonic combination of timbres. A completely different world of sound was heard in Jansen's Octet: Rarified, dry, consciously mundane and awkward, it bore the mark of the urban artistic consciousness of the last third of the 20th century.
On the whole, eNsemble's first season can be pronounced a success. The weighty thematic programs, which can be judged by their titles alone - "The Narrow Path," "Emptiness in the Cage," "The Other Side of Easter," 'The Tour of the Turin Mass" - benefited from competent organisation, the efforts of young ensemble players and the atmosphere of an elite club at the concerts, which made each new musical act by Pro Arte an important and informative occasion. It was helped by musical critics from Moscow and St. Petersburg who gave their unanimous support to the Institute and its mission of enlightenment: to put modern music at the fore of St. Petersburg concert life.
TITLE: Falun Gong Refutes Report of Mass Suicide
AUTHOR: By John Leicester
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING - China has said that followers of the outlawed Falun Gong sect hanged themselves in a mass suicide at a prison camp, but the sect claimed the inmates were tortured to death.
Reports of the number of dead of ranged from three to 15, with the number differing even among government officials.
A judicial official in northeastern Heilongjiang province, Lan Jingli, said 14 followers hanged themselves from bunk beds with sheets at the province's Wanjia labor camp before dawn on June 20. Another 11 followers hanged themselves, but were rescued by camp guards before they died, Lan said.
However, a spokesperson for the central government's State Council Information Office said three died and eight were rescued. All 11 were women, he said.
The other eight are now "out of danger," said the spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. He also said the suicides occurred June 21, instead of June 20.
A human rights group, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, first reported the deaths, and said that 16 Falun Gong practitioners had hanged themselves as a protest and that 10 of them died.
It said the suicides came after camp officials extended their sentences by three to six months to punish them for a hunger strike.
Falun Gong denied the group committed suicide, saying at least 15 followers were beaten to death at Wanjia on or around June 20.
On Wednesday, about 30 Falun Gong members staged a sit-in protest outside China's representative office in Hong Kong, the Chinese-governed territory where the group remains legal. They called on the United Nations to investigate the deaths.
Sharon Xu, a Falun Gong spokesperson in Hong Kong, cast doubt on the official claim of suicide, saying prisoners are watched around the clock in labor camps.
"There's no way they could be allowed to have the opportunity to even find anything to hang themselves," she said.
Lan, an office director in the Heilongjiang bureau that oversees the province's labor camps, said camp guards patrolled every five minutes. But he said the followers took advantage of a gap in patrols to hang themselves from their cell bunks with sheets.
The State Council spokesperson identified the three dead as Zhao Yayun, 53, Zhang Yulan, 54, and Li Xiuqin, 60. All three women were from Heilongjiang, he said.
Falun Gong also identified Zhao, Zhang and Li as among those it said were killed. Li's body was cremated before her family could view it, the group said. Zhang's family saw her body June 23 and observed deep marks on her neck, it said.
Zhao's body had strangulation marks on the neck, bruises on the back and shoulders, and finger marks on the face, the group said.
During the government's two-year crackdown on the spiritual movement, thousands of followers have been sent to labor camps where China says they are counseled into breaking ties with Falun Gong.
China's government says Falun Gong is a cult that has led more than 1,600 followers to their deaths, mostly by encouraging practitioners to use meditation instead of medicine to cure medical ailments. Officials claim followers have also killed themselves in the belief they will go to heaven when they die.
Lan accused Falun Gong practitioners overseas of having a hand in the suicides.
"Those organizations are using all possible channels to pass on the so-called 'instructions' to the practitioners in the reform camp in order to make them believe that going to heaven after their death is the highest level of practicing," he said.
Falun Gong says its teachings forbid all forms of killing, including suicide, and says the government is running a smear campaign against it.
Falun Gong says 250 followers have died from police brutality since July 1999, more than half of them in the past six months.
The Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy says it has confirmed 153 deaths in the crackdown.
Falun Gong said the Wanjia camp tortures practitioners to make them renounce the group. Guards doused one practitioner with water and shocked her with an electric baton, and threw 50 female followers into cells with male prisoners after they refused to sign statements denouncing the group, it said.
Lan said Beijing officials ordered labor camps to improve surveillance of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners following the suicide. Falun Gong followers will now be watched constantly, he said.
TITLE: Battery Heart Offers Patient New Life
AUTHOR: By Mike Chambers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOUISVILLE, Kentucky - The man who received the world's first self-contained artificial heart had been in "dire" condition, but the device may enable him to have a long and productive life, one of his doctors said.
Officials of Jewish Hospital declined to release the patient's name or his home town on Wednesday, but said he was in his mid-to late 50s. Because of his poor condition - he had been given an 80 percent chance of dying within 30 days - he had been turned down for a heart transplant elsewhere, doctors said.
"He had no other option," Dr. Laman Gray told reporters. "He was in as dire shape as you can ever have anybody in." The man has chronic kidney failure, diabetes and had multiple heart attacks, Gray said. He had had previous coronary bypass surgery, around 1992.
Forty-eight hours after the surgery, Gray would not rule out the possibility that the patient could someday leave the hospital powered by the device, called the AbioCor.
Doctors on Wednesday began weaning the man from a ventilator that he has been on since the surgery. He awoke about four hours after the operation and has visited with his family but was unable to talk because of the respiratory device.
Doctors had said they expect the artificial heart to extend the man's life by only about a month, but they don't know how long the device could last.
The surgical team has implanted similar devices in 40 baby cows, all with no serious defects. The devices also have been operating nonstop in a laboratory for more than a year, said Dr. Robert D. Dowling, who participated in the surgery with his colleague from the University of Louisville.
"Our hope is that he lives for months, or years," Dowling said.
The softball-sized titanium and plastic pump was implanted Monday by a team of 14 surgeons and support staff during a seven-hour operation at Jewish Hospital.
It is intended to be a permanent replacement for the man's failing heart. The hope is the mechanism will one day allow recipients to lead a relatively normal life, said John Watson of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, which has given $20 million to research into self-contained artificial hearts.
The AbioCor, manufactured by Abiomed Inc. of Danvers, Massachusetts, is considered a technological leap from the mechanical hearts used in the 1980s, such as the Jarvik-7. Those devices were attached by wires and tubes to bulky machinery outside the body. The AbioCor has electronic controls that adjust the pumping speed, based on the body's activity level, that receive wireless power through the skin by portable battery packs that each last up to four hours.
It raises hope for some that up to 100,000 Americans who require cardiac therapy may have an alternative treatment. Only about half of the 4,200 Americans on waiting lists for donor hearts received one last year.
"We will succeed. Because if we don't succeed, there will be no replacement heart, ever," said David M. Dederman, Abiomed president and chief executive officer. "We will give it whatever it takes so that we succeed eventually."
However, Dr. Robert K. Jarvik, who invented the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, said it raises "false hope" since its size would disqualify most women and would help only about 1 percent of those in need of new hearts.
"I think it's an obsolete approach," Jarvik said, adding that medical science should focus on allowing the natural heart mechanical help in healing itself.
Gray said the doctors labored over the ethical dilemma of a human experiment that replaces the heart, the body's engine. He said the patient volunteered for the surgery, has a medical advocate working on the behalf of the family and that the doctors have no financial connection with Abiomed.
While the two lead surgeons remained optimistic about the man's chance of survival - calling the operation flawless - they said that the patient is still in danger.
The baby cows surgeons previously worked on had a significant advantage over the candidates for the five mechanical hearts; the animals were healthy.
"These patients are so ill that it is very likely that one or more may not survive the 60-day period even if the device functions perfectly well," Dowling said.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Kohl Off the Hook?
BERLIN (Reuters) - Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl won a major legal battle on Wednesday when a court ruled that Germany could not release his East German secret police file without his permission.
If upheld, the ruling could spare Kohl, who has seen his once towering reputation badly damaged by a slush fund scandal, further embarrassment and bar researchers from seeing unique historical files on thousands of public figures.
Kohl filed a lawsuit against the Gauck agency overseeing the Stasi files to stop the release of phone-tap transcripts recorded by communist East Germany's Stasi.
"Our client, Dr. Helmut Kohl, welcomes the Berlin administrative court's decision," attorney Stephan Holthoff-Pfoertner said.
"Files about any victim, including historically significant figures, with personal information gathered by crude, illegal means cannot be read without their permission."
Congo Mob Killings
KAMPALA, Congo (Reuters) - Nearly 400 people were killed by mobs in a witch hunt last month in northeastern Congo and nearly 300 fled to escape the bloodshed, according to a Ugandan military intelligence officer.
"The latest report we have received is that 394 people have been killed and 283 displaced, although 40 have returned to their villages," Captain Alfred Opio said on Wednesday.
Earlier, a top Ugandan army officer, Brigadier Henry Tumukunde, confirmed a report last week in Uganda's New Vision newspaper that 244 people had been killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Aru district by people who suspected them of practising witchcraft.
The paper said that the Ugandan army, which controls most of northeastern Congo, had arrested 89 people in connection with the witch-hunt, while 140 survivors of the mid-June killings had taken shelter with the army, many with machete wounds.
Macedonia Cease-Fire
SKOPJE (Reuters) -The Macedonian government said on Thursday it had signed a cease-fire agreement brokered by NATO, which signed a separate deal with ethnic Albanian rebels.
"A half hour ago we reached an agreement for a cease-fire signed between the Macedonian government and NATO, as we know NATO signed a similar agreement with the NLA yesterday night. The cease-fire will be in effect from today, July 5, at midnight."
Macedonia met an advance by the Albanian guerrilla National Liberation Army (NLA) with heavy shelling on Wednesday. The NLA's revolt in the name of Albanian minority rights has brought Macedonia to the brink of civil war in less than five months.
President Boris Trajkovski said on Wednesday that politicians had agreed to base their search for a peace deal on proposals by a French constitutional expert.
Typhoon Hits Taiwan
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - A typhoon lashed southern Taiwan early Thursday, hours after it battered the northern Philippines with winds nearing 140 kilometers per hour and heavy rains that left at least 23 people dead.
Typhoon Utor's center missed Taiwan, but its perimeter brought storms and rain to the island's southern tip. Authorities shut down several highways because of flash flooding and landslides. They said one person was killed, a fishing boat carrying seven crew members was missing and 46 hikers in mountainous areas were stranded.
Mudslides triggered by the typhoon killed at least 23 people in the northern Philippines and another 14 were missing. At least 25,000 people were forced out of their homes, the northern Regional Disaster Management Center said.
Peace in Sudan
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - The Sudanese government has accepted a Libyan-Egyptian peace initiative which aims to end a civil war which has wracked Africa's largest country for 18 years, claiming nearly 2 million lives.
The plan proposes the formation of an interim government representing all political forces, the foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Mustafa Osman Ismail told a news conference in Khartoum that the government "accepts fully" all the points in the nine-point joint peace proposal.
"We request the Libyans and Egyptians to take the necessary measures for the implementation of the articles in the initiative," Ismail said. He handed over notice of the government's acceptance to Egypt's ambassador Assem Ibrahim and the Libyan charge d'affaires to Khartoum.
It was presented last week to the government, the northern-based opposition Umma party of former prime minister Sadeq al-Mahdi, and the Cairo and Asmara-based opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA), an umbrella movement that includes the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
It calls for the unity of Sudan, democratization, recognition of religious, cultural and ethnic diversity, respect for human rights, freedom of speech and formation of an interim government composed of all political forces.
Tanzanian VP Dies
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania's Vice President Omar Ali Juma has died of a heart attack, the country's president announced on state radio on Thursday. President Benjamin Mkapa said Juma had died suddenly on Wednesday night. He declared a seven-day period of national mourning.
"It is a blow to the nation," Mkapa said. "It is a sudden and shocking death because he performed all his duties yesterday as he normally did."
Juma was a trusted friend and close ally of Mkapa and had been his vice president since the Tanzanian leader came to power in 1995. He was seen as a possible successor to Mkapa when he steps down in 2005.
Death for Corrupt Cops
TOLUCA, Mexico (AP) - A wave of crimes committed by police led a Mexican governor to call for the death penalty for corrupt police officers.
"I suggest we study the death penalty for kidnappers, gang rapists, and for corrupt policemen who participate, protect or promote organized crime," Governor Ricardo Monreal said on Wednesday.
Monreal, of the northern Zacatecas state, has already announced an early bid for Mexico's 2006 presidential elections.
On Tuesday, a family from Ecatepec in Mexico state buried their 10-year-old son, who was killed in what they described as an attempted robbery by four policemen. Relatives of Roberto Blancas identified three police officers from a lineup of suspects in his shooting on Monday.
The officers believed to be responsible were arrested but have not been charged. Investigators said they apparently had been drinking.
TITLE: Reserves Added to All-Star Teams
AUTHOR: By Ronald Blum
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Here's another reason to hate New York: Joe Torre picked seven Yankees for the AL All-Star team.
That gives the three-time defending World Series champions one more All-Star than the host Seattle Mariners, who have baseball's best record, with 12 more victories than the Yankees.
"We have the best record, but it didn't work out that way," said Seattle reliever Jeff Nelson, who was bypassed with the Mariners as he was last year with the Yankees. "Maybe this will motivate some guys who are upset."
The Yankees manager knew he would be criticized.
"I don't apologize for taking seven Yankees," he said after his picks were announced Wednesday. "I think they all have numbers that make their choice appropriate."
Starters Roger Clemens (12-1) and Andy Pettitte (8-4) were picked along with closer Mariano Rivera, setup man Mike Stanton, shortstop Derek Jeter, outfielder Bernie Williams and catcher Jorge Posada.
'I don't mind," Boston's Manny Ramirez said. "We win the World Series this year, maybe Jimy Williams can pick seven Red Sox next year."
The Yankees are the first team with seven All-Stars since Atlanta in 1997 and the first AL team since Toronto in 1993. It is the first time seven Yankees were picked since 1962.
"The guys selected all deserve to go," Jeter said. "People are going to say some players should go and some players shouldn't go, this guy and not this guy.
But that happens every year, regardless of who is the manager and who's chosen."
Seattle's Freddy Garcia and Kazuhiro Sasaki were picked for the AL staff.
The NL roster, which had no more than three players from any team, was notable for its omissions: no Mark McGwire, no Ken Griffey Jr.
Both perennial All-Stars have been injured for much of this year.
San Diego's Tony Gwynn, injured for much of the past 1 1/2 years, was bypassed, but got invited as a special guest.
Gwynn, a 15-time All-Star, and Baltimore's Cal Ripken, a 19-time All-Star with his election to start at third for the AL, intend to retire after this season.
NL manager Bobby Valentine, like Torre, has nine first-time All-Stars, but just two players from his defending NL champion Mets, including Mike Piazza, elected to start at catcher.
"I didn't know they were taking seven guys when I submitted my list," Valentine said.
Completing the AL staff are Minnesota's Eric Milton and Joe Mays, Anaheim's Troy Percival and Toronto's Paul Quantrill. Torre didn't take Seattle's Aaron Sele (9-1) or Jamie Moyer (9-4).
Other AL infielders are Cleveland's Roberto Alomar, Detroit's Tony Clark, Oakland's Jason Giambi, Anaheim's Troy Glaus, Minnesota's Cristian Guzman and Kansas City's Mike Sweeney.
Chicago's Magglio Ordonez and Tampa Bay's Greg Vaughn also were selected as backup outfielders.
Valentine took 11 pitchers: Atlanta's John Burkett, Colorado's Mike Hampton, Arizona's Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, Chicago's Jon Lieber, St. Louis' Matt Morris, Los Angeles' Chan Ho Park and Jeff Shaw, Rick Reed of the Mets, Milwaukee's Ben Sheets and Houston's Billy Wagner.
Atlanta's Greg Maddux (9-5), who leads the league with a 2.38 ERA, was overlooked and may have asked not to be picked.
Florida's Charles Johnson is the backup catcher and may start because Piazza has a broken toe.
Reserve NL infielders are Sean Casey of the Reds, Ryan Klesko and Phil Nevin of the Padres, Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies and Albert Pujols of the Cardinals.
Backup outfielders include Moises Alou and Lance Berkman of the Astros, Brian Giles of the Pirates, Vladimir Guerrero of the Expos and Larry Walker of the Rockies.
Valentine said he didn't bypass Florida's Cliff Floyd (.339) because of their spat earlier this year.
"Just because I've been left off the team, I won't go back and say that he's an idiot," said Floyd, who spoke Tuesday with Valentine. "I'll continue to think - after yesterday - that he's a pretty good man."
Four Seattle players - first baseman John Olerud, second baseman Bret Boone, outfielder Ichiro Suzuki and designated hitter Edgar Martinez - will be in the AL starting lineup, which includes Ripken, Ramirez, Texas shortstop Alex Rodriguez, Texas catcher Ivan Rodriguez and Cleveland outfielder Juan Gonzalez.
Elected to start for the NL were Colorado first baseman Todd Helton, San Francisco second baseman Jeff Kent and shortstop Rich Aurilia, Atlanta third baseman Chipper Jones, Piazza, San Francisco outfielder Barry Bonds, Chicago outfielder Sammy Sosa and Arizona outfielder Luis Gonzalez.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Leafs Ink Mogilny
TORONTO (AP) - Alexander Mogilny, admitting that leaving the powerful New Jersey Devils was not his first choice, signed a four-year, $22 million contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday.
The 32-year-old unrestricted free agent said Toronto's offer was better than one he could have gotten from the Devils. New Jersey had discussions with Mogilny's agent, Mike Barnett, but made no formal offer.
"I knew it wouldn't be easy to go back [to New Jersey],'' said Mogilny, who was the Devils' highest-paid player last season at $5.2 million. "I know how [general manager] Lou [Lamoriello] negotiates contracts."
Mogilny, a 12-year NHL veteran, was sixth in the league last season with 43 goals and was 15th in points with 83 as the Devils reached the Stanley Cup finals, losing to the Colorado Avalanche in seven games. The Russian right wing, who scored 76 goals for Buffalo in 1992-93, has scored 30 or more goals seven times.
U.S. Boxer Dies
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Boxer Beethavean Scottland, knocked unconscious in a bout last week aboard the retired aircraft carrier Intrepid, died on Monday night from his injuries.
Scottland, who had undergone two operations to relieve pressure on his brain, died at 10:36 p.m., a Bellevue Hospital spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Scottland, 26, had been carried off on a stretcher and taken to Bellevue after he was knocked out by light-heavyweight George Khalid Jones in the 10th round the previous Tuesday night.
The Maryland resident, who usually fought as a super-middleweight, moved up in weight to fight Jones when his scheduled opponent, David Telesco, withdrew from the bout after breaking his nose in training.
State boxing officials said they were conducting a review of the fight.