SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #698 (65), Friday, August 24, 2001
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TITLE: Dispute Has Disegni in Hot Water
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Disegni General Director Harald Jonassen says he came to do business in Russia with an "innocent optimism." But following police raids, the arrest and detention of the administrative director of his firm and the seizure of all its assets, that blush of innocence is gone.
 In July, police investigators closed down and then conducted four raids at the main office of the clothing-store chain, removing 21 boxes of documents. They also froze Disegni's accounts. 
 Disegni was set up in December 2000 by Jonassen. Two months later, the German investment company Quadriga Capital Russia, which was managing two European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) funds here, gave Disegni the first tranche of a $1.8 million investment. The EBRD, in return, received 48 percent of Disegni stock.
 However, according to Jonassen's lawyers, the raids at Desegni were part of an effort by his former business partner, Ruben Kalashyan, to take control of a different business that the two had formed together.
 "This hasn't been a standard investigation," said Boris Gruzd, an attorney with Yury Shmidt and Partners, who represent Jonassen. "We strongly believe that the real motivation for the investigation is to help Kalashyan take over Eldorado Group."
 Before forming Disegni, Jonassen - an American citizen who was born in Norway - had been part owner of another clothing company, Eldorado Group, which initially sold the Disegni label under a contract with the American Disegni International clothing firm. Eldorado was founded with Kalashyan, who was initially the general director of the firm and held 45 percent of its stock. Jonassen held the remaining 55 percent of the shares.
 EBRD representatives are now concerned that Disegni has been dragged into the fight.
 "The attitude the prosecutor's office is taking in regard to the biggest investor in Russia is incorrect," said Anna Gurevich, senior investment officer at Quadriga Capital Russia, on Monday, referring to the EBRD. "The criminal case concerns only the two partners at the Eldorado Group. The actions in investigating Disegni are absolutely illegal."
 Kalashyan, who Disegni Administrative Director Yulia Chebotayeva says has not taken part in running Eldorado for 2 1/2 years, took the first step in trying to take control of the firm by having his own stake in the company annulled.
 Under Russian corporate-governance laws, elections of officers at closed joint-stock companies such as Eldorado must be approved by a three-quarters vote of all shareholders. Kalashyan's 45 percent stake had originally belonged to a different firm: TOO Eldorado, which Kalashyan owned together with his wife, Irina Kalashyan. 
 Irina Kalashyan filed suit against her husband, arguing that his purchase of the 45 percent stake in Eldorado Group from their company had been illegal and that he had had no right to vote with them at shareholders meetings.
 On June 4, the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast agreed with that argument and ruled that Ruben Kalashyan had never been a shareholder of Eldorado Group, returning control of the stake to TOO Eldorado and voiding Jonassen's election as general director.
 Kalashyan then filed his own suit on June 15, this time in the Smoliinsky Federal Court of St. Petersburg. That suit claims that Jonassen had illegally signed a consulting agreement with Delaware-based U.S. First Moscow Group Inc., which is wholly owned by Jonassen. Kalashyan charges that, in 2001 alone, Jonassen transferred $196,000 to First Moscow Group for consulting services that were never performed and that, as a result of Jonassen's activities, the company had lost in total about 6.1 million rubles (about $208,000). The court has not yet set a date for hearing this case.
 Kalashyan's suit is odd because it claims that the consulting agreement was signed with First Moscow Group on Dec. 1, 1998, two months before Jonassen took over as general director, seeming to mean that Kalashyan himself would have had to sign off on the agreement.
 Jonassen and his lawyers categorically deny the charges, saying that no money was transferred under the agreement.
 "I didn't do anything illegal at all," Jonassen said. "In fact, I even paid $900,000 of Eldorado's debts, which were there when Kalashyan left."
 Three days after the second suit was filed, a criminal investigation against Disegni was opened, and Gruzd believes that Kalashyan probably submitted a complaint to investigators as well.
 "I've seen the documents outlining the nature of the criminal investigation, although I'm not allowed by law to get a copy, and the focus of the investigation as listed there is the same as the claims in Kalashyan's suit," he said.
 "This is a very complicated case, and the details are still unclear to me," Jonassen said. "But I think that the investigation has been paid for."
 "Kalashyan is a doctor by profession, not a businessman, and this whole situation is just a vicious attempt on his part to destroy something really successful that we've built here," Jonassen said.
 Repeated attempts over the last week to contact Kalashyan have been unsuccessful. Valery Tsykun, the senior police investigator in the case, declined to comment.
 The pressure on Jonassen and his staff has not been limited to law suits and police searches. Jonassen says that shortly after the criminal case was opened, his wife received a call at their home in France from a man who hurled a number of insults at her husband in broken English. Normally Jonassen commutes between his home just outside of Paris and an apartment he rents in St. Petersburg. He is presently staying in France on the advice of his lawyers.
 Chebotayeva says that her own apartment has been raided twice by investigators and that she was arrested last Thursday under suspicion of being involved in criminal activities. She was held at a pretrial detention center and was only released on Saturday without any charges being filed after she signed an agreement not to leave the city.
 Jonassen further alleges that the police have been involved since before the investigation was even opened. At the end of June, he and Kalashyan met to review the company's annual financial report. Accompanying Kalashyan at that meeting was a man who didn't identify himself and who Jonassen thought was a lawyer. Later, however, one of Jonassen's staff members claimed to recognize the man as a member of the tax police who had taken part in an earlier raid of the office.
 "I asked him who he was, but he refused to show any identification or answer me, so I got my camera to take his picture," Jonassen said. "When I started taking his picture, he covered his face and then ran and hid behind a door."
 Disegni's lawyers applied to the Kuibishevsky Federal Court of St. Petersburg to have Disegni's offices re-opened and its accounts unfrozen. The court decided on July 31 that the freezing of the accounts had been illegal. On Aug. 17, it further ruled that the sealing of the warehouse was also against the law. The firm's offices, however, remain closed.
 Jonassen's lawyers say that Kalashyan has already de facto grabbed the company in Jonassen's absence, appointing his own general director in Jonassen's place.
 Disegni's four outlets in St. Petersburg remain open as do others in Moscow, Rostov-na-Donu, Nizhny Novgorod and 19 other Russian cities.
 Chebotayeva, who earlier worked for Eldorado, says that the firm was set up in December 1997 and initially was successful. The speed of its growth eventually got it in trouble, she said, causing it to take a number of loans in order to continue growing.
 "As a result of the crisis [in August 1998], Eldorado Group found itself in a very difficult situation," Chebotayeva said. "At the time the company had two large loans from banks as well as debts to foreign suppliers. At the end of January 1999, Kalashyan said the firm was unable to pay its debts and that he was unable to continue working as general director."
 In February 1999, Kalashyan officially resigned the post and Jonassen took over as general director. According to Chebotayeva, Kalashyan ceased all activities related to the operation of the company.
 "He just couldn't take the pressure anymore," Jonassen said. "He basically gave us two hours' notice that he was leaving. He called a shareholders meeting and then just walked in and said that he was quitting."
 At the time of Kalashyan's resignation, the total debt of the Eldorado Group was 29 million rubles (about $1.3 million according to the January 1999 Central Bank rate), Jonassen said.

TITLE: Toppling 'Iron Felix' and the KGB
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Vladimir Isayev joined the thousands of people who formed a human chain around the White House on Aug. 20, 1991.
 He stuck with the crowd on Aug. 21, when the air was filled with the palpable fear that the White House would be stormed.
 And he cheered with other defenders on Aug. 22, when the tanks retreated, signaling the collapse of the coup by hardline Communists.
 But, Isayev said, those cheers were mixed with something else - shock that bloodshed had been avoided, disbelief that democratic forces had prevailed, and sheer exhaustion.
 "For me, it was a day of very strong emotions," said Isayev, then a 22-year-old math student. "There was a feeling of victory, a feeling of being involved in a historic event. And everybody was stressed out."
 With those conflicting feelings, the crowd desperately needed some relief. They found it in Felix Dzerzhinsky.
 Late that night, a crowd of about 10,000 people toppled the towering statue of Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret services, on Lubyanka Ploshchad, near KGB headquarters.
 The fall of "Iron Felix" marked the culmination of the popular protest against a retreat to the Soviet past. It also served to mark the end of the omnipotent and omnipresent Soviet-era KGB. Four months later, the once-dreaded secret service was broken up into a handful of agencies. They would only see a reawakening of their former Soviet glory after one of their own, Vladimir Putin, became president almost a decade later.
 But all that was far from the minds of the tired but jubilant crowd outside the White House on Aug. 22, 1991. 
 President Boris Yeltsin addressed a victory rally, thanking Russians for their support and calling for a ban on the Communist Party. Ruslan Khasbulatov, acting head of the Supreme Soviet, announced that he had drawn up a bill to nationalize the Communist Party headquarters on Staraya Ploshchad.
 Then, like a roaring wave, the defenders marched past gutted trolleybuses and crude barricades onto a nearby street, crisscrossed with deep indentations left by tank treads. They headed for an informal victory parade through Red Square.
 But something was wrong.
 "The people felt something had not been completed," said Lev Ponomaryov, one of the organizers of the White House rallies and a deputy in the Supreme Council. 
 As if trying to release the tension, White House defenders tried to storm the Communist headquarters. They found the entrances locked and barricaded, and were only able to shatter a couple of glass plates on the facade.
 The disappointed crowd - by this time largely drunk, after gulping down victory toasts - then moved to Plo shchad Dzerzhinskogo, now called Lubyanka.
 Protesters considered storming the KGB building, but then the 15-ton statue of Dzerzhinsky caught their attention. They swarmed around it.
 "I think it was good that this energy eventually focused on the monument," said Konstantin Borovoi, then head of the Russian Raw Materials and Commodities Exchange. He brought 2,000 brokers to the White House victory bash.
 According to some reports, there were about 1,200 KGB staffers inside the headquarters at the time.
 Borovoi said he was one of about 15,000 protesters at the monument.
 The imposing Dzerzhinsky, in his silent tribute to the KGB's power, only seemed to intensify the crowd's rage.
 At about 5 p.m., people began scaling up the iron statue, tying rope around the monument in hopes of pulling it down with a truck.
 "I remember sitting on the lane near the pedestal, watching some guys climbing on the monument, clinging to it with ropes," said Boris Belenkin of the organization Memorial. The statue "swayed slightly but remained standing. It looked pretty dangerous, given that there was an underpass and metro underneath."
 Ponomaryov barked through a megaphone, urging the crowd to wait for proper equipment to arrive to uproot the statue. 
 "I saw some drunken people climbing on the statue and thought that something bad would happen," he recalled in a recent interview. "But the crowd was hardly controllable, and all we heard were insults in response."
 Borovoi called Deputy Mayor Sergei Stankevich to ask for equipment to bring the statue down "in a civilized way," but Stankevich refused to deal with what he called a drunken crowd. 
 As dusk set in, Stankevich came to plead with the crowd to hold off until the next day. He was met with jeers.
 Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov, in a book describing the days around the coup, said he finally caved in to the crowd, fearing they would riot. 
 But he was faced with a problem that only the U.S. Embassy could resolve.
 "It turned out that it could not be thrown onto the ground. Metro and underpasses were underneath," Popov wrote in "In Opposition Again."
 "We failed to find equipment of the necessary capacity," he said. "The U.S. Embassy offered help. They had construction underway on the embassy's grounds and had the crane we needed."
 Meanwhile, on the square, rain showers tested the mettle of the crowd. Some called it quits and went home.
 The borrowed crane arrived at about midnight and raised Felix off the pedestal, the body swinging in what looked like a hangman's noose. The crowd broke out in loud cheers.
 Then the statue - which had been erected in 1958 at the height of Nikita Khrushchev's reign - was trucked off to a backyard for forgotten Soviet-era monuments near the Central House of Artists, where remains to this day.
 Throughout much of the 1990s, the KGB successors, including the domestic Federal Security Service, or FSB, had been mostly toothless tigers. Then their fortunes began to change. Putin, a former KGB agent in East Germany, was appointed FSB chief in 1998. A year later, Yeltsin named Putin as his heir apparent, a post Putin easily won in 2000.
 Putin has since been steadily building up the FSB's reputation, handing many top government posts to former FSB men. The agency's activities have won the media spotlight, particularly for its increasingly staunch and controversial steps against alleged spies. A number of Russian researchers - and two Americans - have been accused of espionage over the past two years. Many of the suspects said they were using openly available information.
 Moreover, Putin has also put the FSB in charge of the military campaign in Chechnya. While the secret services were thought to have played a role in the Afghan War and first Chechen conflict, the president made no secret of the FSB's involvement this time around.
 The apparent revival of the secret police was applauded by 43 prominent Communists in a recently published open letter. That letter also called for the secret services to be handed broader powers.

TITLE: Vyborg Mayor Faces Pressure From Locals
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: VYBORG, Leningrad Oblast - More than 3,000 signatures have been gathered on a petition to force a referendum on removing the mayor of the Leningrad Oblast town of Vyborg, in what many locals see as a conflict over key local business interests.
 The petition drive earlier this month was organized by Vitaly Kiryakov and Yevgeny Zhzhonov, both former deputies of the Vyborg City Council. The aim of the drive is to force a referendum to remove Vyborg Mayor Geor gy Poryadin.
 The ostensible reason for the drive is widespread public outrage about a City Hall order that took effect in March requiring local residents to pay 80 percent of the communal-services expenses for their apartments. Since the order took effect, residents of this town, which is 140 kilometers northwest of St. Petersburg and 40 kilometers from the border with Finland, have seen their bills triple on average.
 "And this doesn't include electricity," said 45-year-old Galina Ko les ni kova on Wednesday. "I'm unemployed at the moment, so it did affect my life negatively. I would think it would be only right for the authorities to resign after doing things like that." 
 However, local analysts see the petition drive as an attempt to use the social tension to settle political and financial scores. They say that the petition is the latest development in a long-running conflict between two major local business groups vying for control over City Hall. 
 Kiryakov, they say, is connected to Sergei Rubinovich, a controversial local businessperson who is part owner of Venco, which has a dominant position in the local gasoline market. According to a recent report in Novaya Gazeta, Rubinovich owns 48 percent of the company.
 Konstantin Sholmov, deputy editor of the newspaper Vyborgskiye Vedomosti, said that Rubinovich is seeking full control over Venco, of which 15 percent is currently owned by City Hall.
 "[Rubinovich's team] is very good at using the public's mood here to solve their own issues," Sholmov said.
 In an interview Wednesday, Kirya kov refused to confirm or deny a connection with Rubinovich.
 "Some local businesspeople have agreed to help us," he said, declining to be more specific. He maintained that the only impetus behind his action was the communal-services rate hike.
 "Poryadin has surrounded himself with criminals, and what they are doing is creating an excuse to take apartments away from people who live downtown but can't afford the new tarrifs," Kiryakov said. 
 He added that he mostly blames Deputy Mayor Oleg Tsoi, who Kirya kov alleges controls the administration's policies.
 "Since 1993, Tsoi has been one of the managers of a security company called Oreon, which has done some things that were investigated by the police. But the police backed off because [the administration] has its people everywhere," Kiryakov charged.
 According to Sholmov, however, this is not the complete story. He says that Tsoi set up Oreon together with Rubinovich. The two had a falling out only after the 1999 takeover dispute at the Vyborg Pulp and Paper Factory. 
 In 1997, the state-owned factory was purchased by Cyprus-based Nimonor Investment Ltd., which later sold the factory to the British company Alcem U.K. in 1999. According to reports, the factory had been controlled by Rubinovich before it was sold to Alcem.
 In October 1999, this deal led to a hostage drama when special-forces troops in ski masks tried to seize the facility in the middle of the night on behalf of Alcem, which claimed that its managers had been locked out by employees.
 Some employees, led by Kiryakov allegedly at the instigation of Rubinovich, beat up Alexander Sabadash, who had been appointed the factory's director by Alcem.
 Sholmov said that there have been rumors that Sabadash paid Rubinovich and Tsoi $5 million to allow him to take over the factory, but Tsoi and Rubinovich argued over how to divide the money.
 "The money should have been divided among all [parties] who participated in the process, but only Rubinovich got it," Sholmov said.
 Rubinovich and Tsoi could not be reached for comment.
 City Hall has generally refused to comment on the conflict or on the petition to oust the mayor. 
 "Do you think I should look everywhere for Kiryakov and ask him not to write about me like this? It is beneath my dignity," said Poryadin at a press conference earlier this month. "Everyone has the right to express his views in this country. So if [the petitioners] act legally, I will not put any obstacles in their way."
 Tamara Skoptsova, the head of the Vyborg City Council management office, denied that there was any criminal activity in City Hall.
 "No cases have been initiated against anyone there," she said.
 Other supporters of the mayor justified the increase of communal-services rates.
 "It is absolute rubbish that people here pay far more than in other regions of the oblast. We are in fourth position among the regions, and we had not had a rate hike in the last three years," said Deputy Mayor Valery Kalinin in an interview on Thursday.
 However, a recent survey by a local research firm called Gloria, which is allegedly controlled by City Hall, unexpectedly revealed that more than 70 percent of local residents think that City Hall is controlled by criminals.
 "Since Vyborg is a border city, it has a higher level of criminality than the average for Russia," said Boris Kagarlitsky, a Moscow-based sociologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
 "The trend now is for criminals to try to gain power themselves rather than through agents, as they did before. I think this is happening because they are not sure anymore who they can trust," Kagarlitsky said.
 Leningrad Oblast officials doubted that Kiryakov's group would be able to force a referendum. Nikolai Dulayev, a member of the Leningrad Oblast Election Commission, said that Kirya kov's group was not officially registered.
 "They have no rights there at all. The mayor was elected to a four-year term in May 2000," Dulayev said.
 But Kiryakov insists that the City Charter says that a petition signed by 2 percent of the voters is sufficient to force a referendum. Vyborg's total population is 136,000.
 "We plan to run the referendum in December together with the Leningrad Oblast Legislative Assembly elections," he said.

TITLE: Muted Celebrations Mark 'Flag Day'
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina and Kevin O'Flynn

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Boris Yeltsin turned down an invitation on Wednesday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his victory over a hardline Communist coup. Vladimir Putin was too busy vacationing in Novgorod.
 But a couple hundred people in Moscow marked Flag Day with a solemn memorial at noon for three men killed during the 1991 coup, and thousands turned out for an evening rock concert sponsored by the liberal Union of Right Forces party, or SPS.
 "The state has not done anything to celebrate this holiday," Valery Borshchev, a human rights activist and a former State Duma deputy, said at the concert outside the White House. "Hopefully, one day it will eventually be recognized as a cause for celebration."
 Wednesday was the 10th anniversary of the collapse of the coup - a tense three days, engraved in the minds of millions in the image of Yeltsin facing down the hardliners from atop a tank at the White House.
 When the coup ended on Aug. 22, the Supreme Soviet declared the imperial white, red and blue tricolor as the Russian flag. Yeltsin in 1994 confirmed that decision and decreed Aug. 22 Flag Day. But the tricolor was only officially made the national flag at Putin's urging last December.
 SPS head Boris Nemtsov told the flag-waving crowd at the concert Wednesday that he had visited Yeltsin around noon and presented him with a silver statue of a larger-than-life likeness of himself with his foot on a small tank and a flag in his hand.
 "It's unbelievable how much strength, how much energy this person lost for the sake of freedom," Nemtsov said.
 He earlier said that Yeltsin had declined an invitation to attend the evening festivities, but that he had spoken "very warm words about the Muscovites who did everything possible to thwart the coup," Interfax reported.
 NTV quoted Nemtsov as saying that Yeltsin was "very ill." But Nemtsov said on TV6 that the former president was not sick.
 Yeltsin, whose health deteriorated throughout his second term as president, has largely remained secluded since stepping down at the end of 1999.
 Putin on Wednesday was wrapping up a weeklong vacation in northwestern Russia. He took a tour of Novgorod and visited a military base. He made no mention of Flag Day.
 The presidential press service said Putin would not send out a congratulatory message in honor of the day, unlike the usual protocol on national holidays.
 Political observers said Putin does not want to alienate the segment of the population still mourning the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 Russia discarded the red Soviet flag bearing a hammer and sickle a decade ago, when it adopted the tricolor flag that first appeared during the reign of Peter the Great's father, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.
 A 200-member procession kicked off Flag Day on Wednesday with a march to a memorial over the underpass at Novy Arbat, where Ilya Krichevsky, Dmitry Komar and Vladimir Usov died in the early hours of Aug. 21, 1991, in a clash with armored personnel carriers. The marchers carried a 20-meter-long tricolor, much like one that White House defenders carried through Red Square in a victory celebration on Aug. 22, 1991.
 In the evening, the concert began with pop groups taking the stage. The crowd was a mix of White House defenders and teenagers who were too young to remember the events 10 years ago.
 "It was my duty to come here," said Vladimir Kiryanov, a 44-year-old hairdresser proudly wearing a Defender of the White House medal. "It is kind of painful that we are now ignored, and that there was not even a small greeting from the president."
 Between songs, documentary footage of the August 1991 events flashed across a 3-meter-wide screen: tanks rolling through Moscow, civilians building barricades, Yeltsin passionately addressing the crowd.
 Some of the younger participants expressed skepticism about the SPS' motives for the concert.
 "I don't think any of it is sincere. It is all organized for getting support for the party," said Oleg, 15, who refused to give his last name.
 But Kiryanov shrugged off the ambivalence of the teens.
 "There is no need to teach them history here and now. They should just be allowed to have some fun," Kiryanov said. "The learning should be done in the school."

TITLE: Movement on for Return of 'Stalingrad'
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If some politicians in the city of Volgograd have their way, the city could soon return to its old name, Stalingrad.
 Nikolai Maksyuta, the governor of the Volgograd Region, has come out in support of the change, saying it would be a fitting tribute for the 60th anniversary of the battle of Stalingrad in 2003.
 "As a citizen, I support the idea of returning the name," said Maksyuta last week.
 The idea has already gained support from the Communist Party, with leader Gennady Zyuganov speaking in favor.
 "There is history, there is reality, there is the memory of our fathers and grandfathers who were defending that city and were fighting in the name of Stalin," Zyuganov said in remarks reported by the BBC and Russian media.
 "Stalin headed the country for nearly 30 years. There were mistakes, there were violations of law, but there were also great victories. Let us be accurate about history," he added. 
 Volgograd has a history of changing names. Until 1919, it was known as Tsaritsyn. In 1925, it was renamed in honor of Stalin. Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd in 1961.
 Stalingrad was the site of one of the most crucial and bloody battles of World War II, marking the turning point in the fortunes of the invading German forces. 
 More than 1 million Soviet and German soldiers died during the five-month battle.
 Renaming the city would require approval by either the city's population in a referendum or by the City Duma.
 The plan has caused outrage, with opponents saying the city should not be renamed in honor of a man responsible for the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens. 
 "I think it's completely unnecessary," said Anna Kornilina, a lawyer with Memorial, a human rights organization that works with victims of Soviet repression. "It will get a negative reaction from most people. Maybe for those who took part in World War II it means something, but I don't think it's realistic."

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Allen Throws Party
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - American Paul Allen, co-founder of the computer software behemoth Microsoft, threw several extravagant parties last weekend, one in the Tauride Palace on Saturday night and the other in the Catherine Palace in Pushkin on Sunday night, said individuals involved in the events' organization. They declined further comment, however, saying that they had signed a non-disclosure agreement swearing them to secrecy.
 Allen, reported to be worth around $30 billion, invited about 350 guests from Europe and America, flying them in to Helsinki at his expense and then shipping them to St. Petersburg on a cruise ship, where the guests also lived for the weekend. Merv Griffin Productions, a leading American events production company, organized the event.
 
 
ABM Is Dead 
 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is prepared to withdraw unilaterally from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so it can go ahead with missile defense plans if no agreement is reached with Russia on the accord, a senior U.S. diplomat said Wednesday. 
 "We remain hopeful that we can talk to the Russians," U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said. "If contrary to our hopes and expectations we're not able to move together jointly, we will exercise the express right provided by the ABM treaty to give notice of our withdrawal." 
 
 
Mined Buildings
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A World War II-era mine was found by residents of a residential apartment building Wednesday, Intefax reported. 
 Experts from the Emergency Situations Ministry were called and said that the mine was armed. 
 The mine was found at 31 Prospect Ispitatelyei in the city's northeast Primorskoye District, the agency reported.
 
 
Nazi Slave Payouts
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Payouts to former Nazi slave laborers who live in Russia will begin Aug. 31, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 The Russian foundation in charge of handing out 835 million Deutsche marks ($390 million) said the German foundation offering the money set the date after the Finance Ministry promised the payouts would not be taxed, Interfax said.
 Lyudmila Narusova, who heads the supervisory board of the Russian foundation, had said Tuesday that no payouts would be made before the tax question was decided.
 
 
Ukrainian Sought
 

SACRAMENTO, California (AP) - A note scrawled on a photo has led U.S. authorities to the body of a 3-year-old boy, the son of a man charged with killing his pregnant wife and four relatives.
 Nikolai Soltys and his toddler son had been missing since the Ukrainian immigrant allegedly stabbed to death his wife, aunt, uncle and two cousins Monday. Authorities posted a $10,000 reward Tuesday and pursued dozens of tips in a nationwide manhunt for the suspect.
 The note - on the back of a photo of his wife holding their son - was discovered Tuesday in the suspect's car, which was found abandoned in a parking lot Monday night. It had been tucked into a car-door pocket, said Sergeant James Lewis.
 The bloody body of Sergey Soltys was found in a large box under a light tower in a rural area in Placer County, east of Sacramento, Lewis said. The cause of death was not immediately known, authorities said. 



TITLE: FSC Nod Last Step In Norilsk Revamp
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With 97 percent of its shares already having been swapped, metals giant Norilsk Nickel said on Wednesday it was nearing the end of its complicated and contested restructuring process. But if the Federal Securities Commission has its way, the home stretch could be longer than the company initially planned.
 The final step remaining in the metals giant's reorganization is the process of registering the swap results with the FSC, Russia's stock-market regulatory body, which should take about five or six weeks. Once accepted by the FSC, Mining and Metals Co. Norilsk Nickel, which accounts for about 80 percent of Norilsk's profits, would then become the traded company.
 But the head of the FSC, Igor Kostikov told Vremya MN newspaper in an interview published Wednesday that the market watchdog would again file a protest against the restructuring, which began in April 2000 with the acquisition of metals trading company Norimet.
 The FSC maintains that the Norimet acquisition was illegal. And analysts say that when the restructuring is completed, minority shareholders' stakes in Norilsk will be diluted by 11.5 percent.
 Norilsk said that a lawsuit would not be in the best interests of the shareholders. "Ninety-seven percent of Norilsk's shares have been swapped for shares in MMC. I don't think the people will be deliriously happy if they're told, 'In your interests, everything you've done has to be nullified,'" said Norilsk spokes person Alexander Komrakov.
 Analysts don't foresee a problem, saying Norilsk likely has little to fear from the FSC. "Unfortunately, previous lawsuits [against Norilsk] show us that Norilsk has a better chance than the FSC," said Kaha Kiknavelidze, metals analyst at Troika Dialog.
 The FSC could delay registering the results, which would leave domestic shares in market limbo, but is likely to give in by the end, said analysts.
 "The longer the restructuring drags on, the longer the period in which no sufficient dividend stream is allocated," said Mikhail Seleznyov, metals analyst at UFG.
 Alexei Zhdanov, deputy general director of Norilsk and MMC Norilsk, said Wednesday the ownership structure remained basically unchanged. The Interros group retained a controlling stake, foreign shareholders hold 17.5 percent through American Depositary Receipts, individuals own 8 percent to 10 percent, and Russian companies own 4 percent.
 Norilsk retains about 17.5 percent of the shares, said Zhdanov. He promised the cross-held shares would be "liquidated" either in 2001 or the first quarter of 2002, depending on potential tax benefits and following consultations with shareholders.

TITLE: FLC Inks 6-Plane Leasing Deal in Far East
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The company that pioneered Russia's nascent domestic aircraft leasing industry said Wednesday that it had struck a deal with Far Eastern airline Dalavia to lease six new Tupolev passenger jets - tripling the number of craft currently in its leasing portfolio.
 "We have signed an agreement for leasing six Tu-214 craft," said Yevgeny Zaritsky, general director of Financial Leasing Co., which made civil-aviation history this year when it delivered Khabarovsk-based Dalavia a Tu-214.
 The announcement comes just days before the government plans to announce the name of the company that will get state support for aviation leasing, which insulates lending institutions from risk. FLC is one of the four contenders in the tender, along with Ilyushin-Finance Co., the Leader group and Tsentroleasing, which is backed by Russia's second-leading airline, Sibir.
 FLC has applied to the government to support the six-craft deal with Dalavia, but said it would pursue the project either way. In addition, FLC has agreements with other airlines for seven more craft for which it is seeking state support, Zaritsky said. He declined to name the potential customers.
 FLC, majority owned by the government of Tatarstan, was set up in 1997 by oil major Tatneft, the financial investment company Solid and Moscow-based Zenit bank, and has since leased in the automobile and defense industries.
 Dalavia received the first domestically leased passenger jet in May, and the second craft is expected to be delivered shortly. Produced at the Kazan aviation plant, the $25 million Tu-214 is powered by two PS-90 engines made by Perm Motor plant. The aircraft carries up to 210 passengers and has a range of 7,200 kilometers.
 The Tatarstan and Khabarovsk regional governments helped finance the previous Dalavia-FLC contract, but this time financing is coming from a pool of Russian banks including Zenit, Zaritsky said. He declined to comment on the details, save that the aircraft will be leased for an average of 12 years with monthly payments of $300,000 per aircraft.
 Yelena Sakhnova, analyst with Aton brokerage, said Wednesday that the likely interest rate would be around 12 percent annually, less than twice the average in the West. "From a financial point of view the deal looks beautiful, it's economically viable," she said.
 Zaritsky said the Kazan plant would begin assembling the first craft next year and all six would be delivered by 2005.

TITLE: Money-Laundering Ring Busted
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After a 33-month investigation that tracked money flows through 14 countries, German prosecutors said Tuesday they have sufficient evidence to charge a former Russian citizen with being part of an organized gang that laundered about $3.5 million.
 The case marks the first time a country has been able to carry out a Russian money-laundering investigation with the assistance of Russian authorities, the prosecutors said.
 "The gang members clearly relied on there being little or no international cooperation between investigative officials," the German federal crime office said in a statement.
 Norbert Unger, spokesperson for the office, said a 40-year-old man with German citizenship faces charges of laundering $825,000 of $7 million that the Russian government handed a Russian company in 1995 to set up a bakery and mineral-water bottling facilities in the Caucasus region.
 Unger would not identify the suspect or the company, saying doing so could prejudice the trial. He said, however, that the suspect was an organized-crime boss and one of the so-called thieves-in-law at the top of the Russian criminal world.
 The suspect was arrested in May 1999 on charges of fraud, attempted money laundering, attempted blackmail and tax evasion, the federal crime office said. He is jailed in an undisclosed location.
 Unger said charges would probably be filed shortly in court.
 "We have not only succeeded in showing that money was being laundered through 14 countries, but also that before it was laundered, a crime - the diversion of government subsidies - took place in Russia," Unger said by telephone from Wiesbaden, Germany. "According to German law, no money laundering takes place if the money did not come from a crime."
 The crime office said in its statement that Russian officials investigated misuse of the funds from 1996 to 1998 but had concluded that they had insufficient evidence to bring charges.
 The Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow declined to comment on the case. The Finance Ministry said it had no information about it, and no one from the State Duma's budget committee was available for comment.
 Unger described the collaboration with Russian authorities in the investigation as very positive and said it augured well for further probes.
 He hinted that other people could be charged as a result of the investigation.
 "It is definitely an organization that stands behind this," Unger said.
 The German announcement comes as Russia steps up a fight against money laundering. President Vladimir Putin signed an anti-money-laundering bill into law on Aug. 7 in a clear bid to get Russia off a Group of Seven blacklist. The G-7's Financial Action Task Force has been pressing Russia to crack down on money laundering by Sept. 30 or face financial restrictions.
 The German investigation began in November 1998 after a bank tipped off prosecutors about suspicious money flows.
 "German banks are obliged to inform the authorities if they have suspicions of money laundering, and the investigation grew from that," Unger said.
 The Russian firm bought German and Canadian equipment worth only $3.5 million and misled the Russian government about the rest of the money with a trail of forged contracts and front companies, the crime office said.
 The unspent $3.5 million was sent through a series of offshore countries - including Luxembourg, Lithuania, the Isle of Man, Andorra and the Bahamas - to cover its Russian origin, the office said.
 A simultaneous investigation into the case is being carried out in Luxembourg, which could result in the freezing of about $1.5 million in Luxembourg accounts.

TITLE: Armenia To Swap Plants To Pay Soviet-Era Debts
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia is hammering out a debt-for-factories deal with Armenia under which it would forgive Yerevan's post-Soviet debt of $114 million for stakes in at least two rundown defense enterprises.
 President Vladimir Putin is expected to sign the agreement on a trip to Armenia Sept. 14 to 16, Armenian officials said.
 The plants under discussion are Mars, a Soviet-built robot producer, and the Mergelyan Cybernetics Institute, which makes computer chips for defense hardware, Armenian Deputy Trade Minister Ashot Shakhnazaryan told the Arka news agency earlier this month.
 A third factory, Molibden, could also be included in the arrangement, according to a source close to the negotiations.
 It remains to be determined whether Russia would receive minority stakes or take control of the enterprises. Either way, Russian and Armenian officials say the swap would be a win-win situation.
 "It is not important how the enterprises would be owned," Armenian Defense Minister Serge Sargsyan was quoted as saying in Kommersant last week. "The main issue is that Russia will invest in them and put them back on their feet."
 Armenia, which has the largest state debt per capita of the former Soviet republics, would also get a much-needed boost from Russian orders. The Russian side would be able to swap an uncollectable debt for tangible assets.
 Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who oversees the defense industry, discussed the deal during a visit to Yerevan last month. In April, Klebanov said plans for a 10-year overhaul of the industry call for closer ties with companies in Armenia and Belarus, as reported in The Financial Times.
 The agreement, if signed, would mark the latest in a number of deals Putin has struck in recent months to clean up Russia's ledgers. At a Group of Eight summit in July, Putin's team announced that Russia would write off $572 million in debt owed by 23 Third World countries.
 In addition, Russia is trying to get some of its own debts, worth around $150 billion, restructured or written off.
 Analysts say the debt-for-factories swap with Yerevan would add to Armenia's military might, a move that could, in turn, increase tensions with neighboring Azerbaijan. The two countries are embroiled in a decade-long dispute over the Nagorny Karabakh region.
 "Armenia cannot raise these enterprises itself," said Alexander Pikayev, an expert from Carnegie Endowment for Onternational Peace. "Russian investment would help Armenia solve its armament problem." The deal would assure Russia that it had Armenia as an ally in the region, he added.
 Nagi Gurbanov, an adviser to the Azerbaijan Embassy in Moscow, refused to comment on the deal, saying it was unclear whether the plants would produce weapons or civilian goods. Azerbaijan Defense Ministry spokes person Ramiz Melikov in Baku declined to comment.
 The World Bank's spokesperson for Armenia, Virgen Sargsyan, said politics are far outweighed by the economic boost the deal could provide. "The economic expediency of the plan dominates over the political one," Sargsyan said by telephone from Yerevan. "Armenian defense enterprises have considerable economic potential, they are functioning, and in the Soviet period their products were of better quality than those produced in other republics."

TITLE: Berezovsky Negotiating Sale of Sibneft Shares
AUTHOR: By Anna Raf

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Prosecutor General's Office earlier this month dropped all criminal cases against oil major Sibneft, while Boris Berezovsky said he has plans to pull out of the oil business.
 Although these two events are connected only tenuously, they are both prerequisites for making the company fully acceptable to investors, said Chris Weafer, head of research at the Troika Dialog brokerage.
 "There is a general feeling in the market that Sibneft is looking for a strategic foreign investor," Weafer said. "A foreign company is not going to get involved when there is an open criminal case against Sibneft and Berezovsky is still a major shareholder."
 In a letter dated Aug. 1 obtained by the Vedomosti newspaper, senior investigator Gennady Teterkin of the Prosecutor General's Office told Sibneft president Yevgeny Shvidler that the cases were dropped "because nothing criminal was found in the actions of the company's managers."
 Begun in May, one investigation concerned allegations that No. 6 oil company Sibneft failed to pay 12 million to 14 million rubles ($409,000 to $477,000) in taxes and obtained tax privileges it was not entitled to. Another concerned the 1995 loans-for-shares privatization of Sibneft, the controlling packet of which was then sold to the Oil Finance Co. for $300,000 above the starting price of $100 million. Oil Finance Co. was at the time headed by Berezovsky, who is now living in self-imposed exile in Europe.
 Roman Abramovich, who is said to control Sibneft through a network of subsidiaries, was called in for questioning. An oil-and-metals tycoon who was a close Berezovsky ally in the 1990s, Abramovich was perceived as "untouchable" because of his Kremlin ties.
 It is unclear how many Sibneft shares Berezovsky owns through third parties, or whether he owns any shares at all.
 "Negotiations are being conducted concerning my oil assets," Berezovsky told the Izvestia newspaper in an interview published Wednesday." As of today, the fate of Sibneft hasn't been decided. This is the only part of my business where talks are taking place."
 Berezovsky has often changed his story. In June, he told Kommersant that he owns half of Sibneft and that there has been no talk about reducing the size of his stake. Earlier, he said he owned 7 percent of the company. According to the oligarch, his shares in Sibneft are managed by a team overseen by Abramovich.
 Market watchers were reluctant to say that Berezovsky's announcement and the prosecutor's actions were related.
 Konstantin Chernyshyov, head of research at the NIKoil brokerage, said he simply did not know whom to believe.
 "I really don't know whether or not Berezovsky has shares," Chernyshyov said. "And, honestly, I think these events are a coincidence, not a cause-and-effect relationship."

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: CPI To Stay Flat?
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Consumer prices are likely to stay flat or edge up just 0.1 percent in August (following a 0.5 percent rise in July), if current price trends continue, the State Statistics Committee said Thursday.
 It also said in a statement that prices had slipped 0.1 percent in the period between Aug. 14 to 20. Consumer prices were flat since the start of the month, it said.
 
 
Sakhalin Stonewalls
 

MOSCOW (Vedomosti) - Sakhalin Energy, which operates the Sakhalin-2 oil-and-gas production-sharing agreement, has refused to give information on its activities to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry. 
 "The company is not obliged to provide the Russian party with the requested information ... you put our right to work under doubt," Steven McVeigh, executive director of Sakhalin Energy, told the ministry earlier this month. 
 The ministry, which is responsible for PSAs, said it wants to establish a transparent reporting system allowing it to know whom Sakhalin Energy concludes agreements with, and to ensure that subcontractor tenders are conducted fairly. 
 The Sakhalin-2 project - which includes RoyalDutch/Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi - was signed prior to adoption of the Law on Production-Sharing Agreements in 1997. Under the law, "old" projects, including Sakhalin-2, are not required to observe norms that were not included in their agreement. 
 
 
MGOK Cleared
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Kursk Region Arbitration Court has fulfilled a request by the regional prosecutor's office to terminate the bankruptcy case against the Mikhailovsky GOK, Interfax reported Thursday.
 The Kursk Region prosecutor who had submitted the original complaint in early August filed to withdraw the charges Tuesday. 
 The original complaint against MGOK, the country's second-largest producer of iron ore, was based on a review of the company's 1999-2000 financial performance. The review was carried out by the regional branch of the Federal Service for Financial Improvement and Bankruptcy, or FSFO. 
 
 
LUKoil to Run Stations
 

VILNIUS, Lithuania (Reuters) - Lithuania's competition watchdog said Thursday it would allow LUKoil's local arm to run nine gas stations that were put up as collateral for an 8.5 million lita ($2.2 million) debt of ailing local firm Lietuvos Kuras.
 LUKoil Baltija Servisas owns 75 gasstations in Lithuania and holds some 20 percent of that market, said Raimundas Dabravalskas, deputy director of the company.
 
 
Fuel Export Tariff
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia may not need to increase its fuel-oil export tariff this winter, although it is ready to do so if necessary, Energy Minister Igor Yusufov was reported as saying Thursday.
 Russia regulates fuel oil exports in the winter to ensure that domestic needs will be met.
 "We're looking at the possibility, but at the moment it looks like there are enough stocks to see us through the winter period," RIA Novosti quoted Yusufov as saying.
 Last winter, the fuel-oil export tax hit a high of 31 euros ($28.30) a ton. Export quotas were also in place until March 1. 



TITLE: South Korea Pays Off Debt Ahead of Schedule
AUTHOR: By Christopher Torchia

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea paid off the last of its debt to the International Monetary Fund on Thursday, closing a chapter in the 1997-98 Asian crash that forced one of the world's biggest economies to appeal for a foreign bailout.
 The $140 million payment closed out the $19.5 billion loan two years and 10 months ahead of schedule, said Yoon Dae-hee, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Finance and Economy.
 "We've retaken our economic sovereignty," Yoon said. "From now on, we no longer need prior consultations with the IMF in planning and executing our economic policies."
 Still, many analysts say South Korea's economic troubles are not over and that corporate restructuring has a long way to go.
 South Korea recently adjusted its growth forecast for this year from 5 percent to 3 percent amid a drop in exports and the U.S. economic slowdown. Its economy grew 10.7 percent in 1999 and 8.8 percent in 2000.
 "The crisis is not over," said Rhee Namuh, a senior analyst at Samsung Securities Co.
 "The government has succeeded in repaying IMF, but failed to strengthen the country's economic structure to ensure sustained growth," said Jun Min-kyu, an analyst at LG Investment & Securities Ltd.
 South Korea was hit by a severe liquidity crisis in late 1997, forcing the country to appeal for a record $58 billion, IMF-led bailout package.
 The recession was triggered when Thailand devalued its currency and set off a chain reaction across the region. Thousands of financially weak companies in South Korea collapsed. Unemployment soared in a country where workers were accustomed to lifetime jobs.
 In the end, South Korea used only $30.2 billion of the international aid package, including $19.5 billion provided by the IMF. It has already paid back all of the loans it drew from the World Bank and other international financial organizations.

TITLE: Toxic Troubles
AUTHOR: By Dr. Glen Browder

TEXT: DESPITE American and Russian ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997 - a full decade after the Bush-Gorbachev Bilateral Chemical Weapons Destruction Agreement of 1990 - the specter of chemical weapons still haunts both countries and international society.
 On June 8, I participated in a ceremony in Shchuchye - one of seven former Soviet chemical-weapons arsenals - marking ostensible progress in Russia's chemical demilitarization efforts. On that same day, in my home community of Anniston, Alabama, a comparable ceremony marked construction of a demilitarization facility at the second of eight stockpile sites in America. Appropriately, optimistic speechifying filled the air at these simultaneous, uncoordinated ceremonies.
 However, after spending the last five years as an academic observer and active adviser to the chemical-weapons-nonproliferation-and-demilitarization movement, I must report that a cloud of mounting questions and declining confidence hangs over the CWC and the bilateral destruction agreement. More fundamentally, several stubborn realities continue to confront these arms-control regimes and obstruct our efforts toward eliminating chemical weapons.
 First, and most important, is the fact that, despite almost universal official condemnation of chemical warfare among CWC signatories, there's abiding interest among national and nonstate entities in cheap, clumsy, mass-dispersal weapons that indiscriminately burn human flesh and destroy the human nervous system. Jonathan Tucker, who runs the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, says progress under the convention has been mixed and indefinite. "On the one hand," he says, "a few CW states-parties that had previously denied possessing a CW capability have come clean and begun destroying their stockpile. On the other hand, a number of known or suspected CW proliferators appear to be enhancing their CW capabilities to include more sophisticated nerve agents and delivery systems."
 Second, the Chemical Weapons Convention itself is experiencing significant difficulty. Despite some admirable accomplishments, the CWC's Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is finding operational implementation and financial support more problematic than expected. Alexander Pikayev of the Moscow Carnegie Center says Russia, which possesses the world's largest chemical-weapons stockpile, missed the first treaty deadline to eliminate 1 percent of its weapons by April 29, 2000. "Moreover," he writes in a recent publication of the Monterey Institute, "prospects look bleak for meeting the second original deadline in the CWC: destroying 20 percent (8,000 tons) of the Russian CW stockpile by April 29, 2002." 
 Ironically, the United States over the past few years has turned from moral champion into political truant. "Overall, Washington's treatment of the CWC has had less to do with a particular conception of the U.S. national interest than with political expediency and lack of high-level government oversight," says Amy Smithson of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project at the Stimson Center.
 Third, the bilateral destruction agreement, a now critical correlative element of the CWC, is in disarray. Despite ceremonies such as those at Shchuchye and Anniston, technological disputes, environmental concerns, and growing reservations in the various stockpile communities have afflicted chemical-demilitarization programs in both countries.
 Fourth, is the sagging spirit of the international peace community and environmental movement. Some countries, groups, and individuals - such as Mikhail Gorbachev, Ted Turner, and former senator Sam Nunn - have stepped forward with political and financial support for chemical-weapons initiatives; but the urgency and energy and drive for arms control seem to be declining in the post-Cold War era.
 Fifth, American and Russian political leaders (except for a few exceptions such as Senator Richard Lugar) are insufficiently inclined toward such costly endeavors that have little demonstrably compelling constituency. Competing policy inclinations, shifting financial priorities, and apparent public apathy have undermined attention to chemical-arms policy and similar international issues as we enter the new century.
 Of course, it would be irresponsible to proclaim the Chemical Weapons Convention a failure at this point. As Brad Roberts of the Institute for Defense Analysis says, "The interesting test comes over the next five to 10 years when the treaty regime will either get stronger or visibly begin to unravel."
 However, it is now clear that things are going seriously awry. A number of countries have not passed requisite CWC implementing legislation; some have diluted key verification provisions. Some have not paid their normal assessments; some refuse to reimburse the costs of verification activities; and a variety of difficulties have plagued the promised destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles.
 So, despite impressive-sounding arms-control regimes, the continuing realities of our Cold War toxic legacy are stark and ominous. The Russians, until recently, did not seem serious about their chemical-weapons treaty responsibilities; and the United States bears particular blame for some of these problems.
 Fortunately, there are some encouraging signs of late. President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin seem to be reviewing these problems, and Russia has reorganized its chemical-demilitarization program under Zinovy Pak, who appears to be making headway. 
 What we need now is for both the United States and the Russia - the White House and the Kremlin, the Congress and the State Duma - to declare the elimination of chemical weapons as our continuing, mutual, national and international interest; and America and Russia, along with the world community, must insist on real compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and the bilateral destruction agreement.
 
 <i>Dr. Glen Browder, a former member of Congress, is a scholar of American democracy at Jacksonville State University and a distinguished visiting professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Stop Trying To Honor Josef Stalin
TEXT: EVERY once in a while the idea of restoring the name Stalingrad to the southern city of Volgograd gains currency and starts making the rounds. Now the region's Communist governor, Nikolai Maksyuta, has endorsed the idea, as has his party as a whole.
 Pro-Stalingraders always trot out the same reasoning: The name would serve to honor and commemorate a great battle, one that was heroically fought against tremendous odds and that marked the turning point in the war against Hitler and fascism. Nearly 1 million people - soldiers and civilians, Germans and Soviets - died in this colossal confrontation.
 Almost as soon as these arguments are uttered, however, proponents of the name change start moving further and, indeed, getting at the real issue. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov did as much this week when he weighed in on the matter.
 &quot;Stalin headed the country for nearly 30 years. There were mistakes, there were violations of the law, but there were also great victories. Let us be accurate about history,&quot; Zyuganov said.
 In other words, renaming Volgograd would be done, in a sense, to rehabilitate Stalin, to honor his victories and to &quot;be accurate about history.&quot;
 And this is why it is an outrageous proposal. Moreover, it is not a local idea, but one that every former Soviet citizen has the right to weigh in on.
 Stalin was a monster. His sadistic crimes cannot be covered up by the grotesque euphemism &quot;violations of the law.&quot; Stalin was an unmitigated tragedy for Russia and the other republics of the Soviet Union - one with which millions of people are still coping. Stalin is collectivization. Stalin is a government intentionally condemning its own people to starvation. Stalin is terror and labor camps. Stalin is genocide.
 Naming a city in his honor is nearly as insulting to the Russian people and to all the peoples of the former Soviet Union as naming a city after Hitler would be.
 The world will never forget what the Red Army and the entire Soviet nation did and sacrificed at Stalingrad. The name of that battle is immortal. Its heroes - both the generals who led the fight and the soldiers who bore the burden of the battle - will never be forgotten, and nothing can detract from their glory. Merely to suggest that it could is an insulting defamation.
 But the name of Stalin is infamous, and attempts to whitewash history are inexcusable. Zyuganov and his ilk should think about the communist past before they start reading us lectures on how to be &quot;accurate about history&quot; - truth was never their strong suit.

TITLE: Wilson's Words Reverberate 80 Years Later
TEXT: &quot;DO not become a tool of the [enemy] by passing on the malicious, disheartening rumors which he so eagerly sows. Remember he asks no better service than to have you spread his lies of disasters to our soldiers. And do not wait until you catch someone putting a bomb under a factory. Report the man who spreads pessimistic stories, divulges - or seeks - confidential military information, cries for peace or belittles our efforts to win the war.&quot;
 You're probably sitting there thinking that this was an excerpt from some flyer you might find glued to the walls of Moscow's malodorous apartment-building stairways. This passage does look like something the Kremlin might compose in its ongoing effort to spin the war in Chechnya.
 Yet it was not written by a group of Russian officials seeking to weed out all dissent. A clerk at the U.S. Justice Department in Washington typed this pamphlet - entitled &quot;Spies and Lies&quot; - more than 80 years ago, when the xenophobic administration of President Woodrow Wilson was commanding U.S. troops in World War I.
 Needless to say, German-Americans were Enemy No. 1. &quot;Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this republic whenever he gets ready,&quot; Wilson said at the time. To make sure no one succeeded at sabotage, the president pushed through the Espionage Act and set up the Creel Committee on Public Information, soaking the country with prejudice against Germans.
 Now, replace the words &quot;hyphen&quot; and &quot;republic&quot; in Wilson's statement with &quot;Chechen passport&quot; and &quot;Russia.&quot; Does it sound familiar?
 In America, 80 years later, the propaganda continues. American high-school students won't find the flyer in their history textbooks. Most textbooks portray the openly racist president as a hero and are silent about his misdemeanors (like, for example, his invasion of Haiti in 1915 or his tacit condoning of increases in racial violence in the United States). Inquisitive teenagers may discover a reprint of it (and many more embarrassing facts about U.S. history that often contradict what is taught in schools) in &quot;Lies My Teacher Told Me,&quot; an iconoclastic book about the way history is taught in America, written by historian James Loewen in 1995.
 Russian high-school history textbooks say nothing about the military's latest campaign in Chechnya because it is not history yet. But 80 years from now, what will they say?
 Mainstream Russian media provide the official spin on the war. They say the army is doing the right thing by trying to rid the volatile southern region of evil Islamic extremists who seek independence. Few newspapers dare report the random detentions, arbitrary killings and routine trade in imprisoned Chechens - or the bodies of murdered Chechens - that are emblematic of this campaign. The military underreports the number of casualties among its troops. The media never question the figures.
 And even so, the military is not happy with press coverage of the war. Last month, military commander Anatoly Kvashnin criticized journalists for reporting too much bad news from the region. &quot;You are not doing a very good job,&quot; he said.
 Will historians do better? And if they do, will there be a James Loewen to write a book about it?
 
 <i>Anna Badkhen is a freelance journalist based in Moscow. </i>

TITLE: Why the State Collapsed in '91
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Albats

TEXT: I DON'T blame President Vla dimir Putin for not saying a word on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the 1991 coup. After all, what could he say?
 He belongs to the breed of second-rank Soviet nomenklatura who succeeded in gaining the most out of those events. His upbringing, career, professional culture - a whole set of beliefs - has been keeping him on the other side of barricades, opposite those Russians who were sincerely ready to die by throwing themselves under the tanks (and in fact, three were killed), defending democracy a decade ago.
 I also can't blame former president Boris Yeltsin for betraying the ideals of the Soviet-era democrats who supported him then, or for offering up the fruits of the August 1991 victory to a man who represents the KGB, the main force behind the attempted coup. By declaring a KGB man his heir, Yeltsin openly acknowledged the role those KGB colonels and their pals in other key Soviet institutions played in those events.
 This role should not be underestimated. The coup, after all, failed primarily because the second echelon of power did not support the leadership of the state institutions.
 There were three factors that contributed to this rational disobedience. First, hierarchical control had been loosened. By 1991, discontent had spread beyond the public and into key Soviet institutions. Opportunists from the party apparatus, the KGB and the military-industrial complex enjoyed the (albeit still silent) support of colleagues who were tired of their bosses. The second echelon could not face reality and dreamed of pushing the bosses aside and making their own way to the top.
 This was an important, but not sufficient, factor in the collapse of the Soviet empire. Decades earlier, the same sort of opportunism allowed Nikita Khru shchev to oust the powerful secret-police chief Lavrenty Beria. It also brought down Khrushchev himself in 1964. However, these Byzantine-style coups did not shake the foundations of the regime.
 The second important factor in 1991 was the desire of regional elites to wrest power from central institutions. Yeltsin himself was from the Urals and a profound advocate of this drive. There was no unity among regional elites, however, and their interests were too diverse to make things happen.
 That is why a third factor, in combination with the first two, was necessary for the coup de grace that brought down the regime. That factor was the commercialization of the Soviet bureaucracy, a process that had been rapidly under way since 1989 when Article 6 of the Soviet constitution, which guaranteed the Communist Party's monopoly on political power, was repealed.
 When this happened, Soviet institutions rapidly lost their appeal to the second-rank nomenklatura. These institutions were no longer able to ensure their personal well-being. Shrewd and intelligent conformists within the party apparatus and the KGB quickly realized that they needed to find another feeding trough outside their institutions.
 Some, like Putin, decided to sit on two chairs. Others chose to capitalize on their old positions while transferring party and KGB assets into newly created businesses. That was the end of the story, as the regime was split apart by the multiplicity and diversity of the personal interests of the nomenklatura.
 The state was dead long before we pulled the sheet over its face. As early as the beginning of 1991, top party apparatchiks were acknowledging in secret memos that state-owned banks were bankrupt and no longer capable of servicing the country's foreign debt. Sberbank, which held the private deposits of ordinary citizens, appeared to be empty as well. The state eroded away.
 The failure of the August coup made the process of stealing state assets legitimate. But the turbulent ensuing years were not easy for the nomenklatura. Many of them lost what they had gained. Others realized that they still needed the state to protect their assets, which they knew would be quickly lost in a world of free-market competition.
 This is where Vladimir Putin comes in. Under him, the bureaucratic state is back, alive and well. As for those like me who believed back then that we were part of a truly democratic revolution, well, those three days will forever remain the best days of my professional life. I still feel lucky that I had a chance to be part of that grand illusion.
 
 <i>Yevgenia Albats is an independent journalist based in Moscow. </i>

TITLE: Silence Doesn't Replace Presidential Leadership
TEXT: EXACTLY one month ago, the papers, including this one, were full of praise for President Vladimir Putin and his new policy of openness with the media. At that time, a gaggle of reporters was being ushered to the site of the Kursk recovery operation, and Putin himself held a free-wheeling press conference with hundreds of reporters.
 Although we were certainly pleased with the way that the wind seemed to be blowing and urged the Kremlin to continue in its newfound ways, we were cautiously skeptical. In an editorial, we conjectured that the openness was just a matter of improved stage-managing on the part of Kremlin spokesperson Sergei Yastrzhembsky, and that the first time some unexpected or difficult situation emerged, we would see the old Kremlin again.
 Now, it seems, we have the right to say, &quot;We told you so.&quot; Putin's stubborn silence on the topic of the 10th anniversary of the 1991 coup attempt that ultimately brought down the Soviet regime is certainly far more in the unfortunate style of his handling of the Kursk crisis than in the style of the so-called new Kremlin openness.
 Everybody with any initiative whatsoever, with the puzzling exception of former president Boris Yeltsin, has weighed forth already on the coup.
 Except Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin, of course, is now a private citizen, and in poor health as well, so his silence is his own business. But Putin is the elected head of state, the man that the entire country turns to for leadership and inspiration. His silence, then, is troubling, and even a dereliction of his duties as president.
 Based on Putin's past performance, analysts are reasonably speculating that the president is maintaining his silence precisely because of the controversy and divided public opinion surrounding the 1991 events.
 &quot;Putin strongly dislikes publicizing his views on such divisive matters,&quot; said Georgy Satarov, a former Yeltsin aide.
 Satarov went on to say that Putin's much-ballyhooed visit to the Solovetsky Islands - a monastery complex that was used as a labor camp during the Soviet era - was a &quot;coded message&quot; of reconciliation, even though the ex-KGB chief said nothing about the people who suffered and died there under the totalitarian regime.
 The question is, then, does Russia need &quot;coded messages&quot; now, and is it really leadership when one chooses to unite the country only around issues about which it is not divided?
 Is the president not obliged to tackle the divisive issues and help the country derive progressive lessons from its past? Is this not what leadership is all about?
 
 <i>This comment originally appeared as an editorial in The Moscow Times on Aug. 22. </i>

TITLE: bringing the best acts to russia
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Go to almost any concert by any even remotely interesting British group in St. Petersburg, and it is likely that you will see a tall, curly-haired man somewhere near the stage making sure that things are running smoothly. Nick Hobbs, a London-based concert organizer, musician and actor, has been on the Russian scene since the mid-1980s and has been involved in bringing some of the finest Western acts to this country.
 Hobbs first visited the Soviet Union in 1982, making a trip to Riga, Latvia, where he stayed unofficially with an underground musician. A few years later, he went to Moscow, where he helped to organize performances by Everything But The Girl and Misty In Roots who played at the 1985 International Youth Games.
 &quot;For the first few years it was a labor of love, continuing something I had begun in Eastern Europe in the early '80s,&quot; Hobbs wrote in an e-mail interview this week. In the early 1990s, he worked with the Interweek Festival in Novosibirsk's Akademgorodok. With the support of the British Council, the festival made it possible to arrange tours by The Shamen, Nitzer Ebb, Marc Almond, Peter Hammill and also Hobbs' own bands Mecca and Infidel.
 He also took part in the Britronica electronic music festival in Moscow, and he was responsible for organizing tours by such bands as Laibach, The Band Of Holy Joy, World Domination Enterprises, Sonic Youth, The Young Gods, The Sugarcubes and Fun-Da-Mental, among others. 
 Hobbs admitted that working with Igor Tonkikh at the Moscow-based label and concert agency FeeLee was a vital part of this development, as they have very similar tastes in music and ambitions.
 &quot;Gradually, starting with David Byrne and The Rollins Band, it became more like a job for me. But I hope it is one that doesn't hinder more obviously cultural projects like Tindersticks,&quot; said Hobbs.
 Russia and its music business have changed drastically since the first years of openness. &quot;Although I make more money now than I used to from concert organization in Russia, I miss the exciting and adventurous times of the early '90s,&quot; he said.
 After many years working in Russia, Hobbs has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of tall stories to tell. He lists the following as particular highlights: &quot;The Band of Holy Joy's concert on a train between Minsk and St. Petersburg with the singing chef, Mecca playing Vilnius and me feeling like a pop star, The Band of Holy Joy also playing Vilnius and also feeling like pop stars, and me being denied entry into Russia with Marc Almond at the Estonian border.&quot;
 He also mentioned &quot;the Britronica near-disaster, where the promoter was half-mad, but it was great anyway. Or the Young Gods in St. Petersburg with the mafia on stage, flying with Nitzer Ebb into Moscow and discovering that the promoter had disappeared, and being locked up in prison with Laibach in Chelyabinsk.&quot;
 Finally, Hobbs said, he made &quot;some of the best friends in my life, including my future wife, Lena, from [the Moscow band] Atas.&quot;
 According to Hobbs, the Russian music business has a long way to go before it becomes civilized. Technically, tours are supposed to &quot;promote albums.&quot; With piracy widespread in Russia, this obviously doesn't work here.
 &quot;As long as there is a high level of piracy, there cannot be a 'normal' Western-style music market in Russia,&quot; he said. &quot;Legitimate record companies can only make small profits in Russia and therefore can invest very little in bringing artists here to play live. From the point of view of Western record companies, there is very little point in playing Russia. The only point ... is either money, if the concert fees are high enough, or cultural interest.&quot;
 Many Western artists are also simply not interested.
 &quot;Fifty percent of Western artists would play Russia if the money were good enough. Forty percent are not interested at all, or just don't have time. Ten percent would actively like to play Russia, even for less money than normal,&quot; said Hobbs.
 Though the Russian concert-going public has lost some of its naivety since the early 1990s, Hobbs described it as generally less cynical and warmer. &quot;But in terms of contemporary culture, Russia is almost completely 'Western,' and even fans model their behavior on MTV models,&quot; he added.
 While massively popular Western stars such as Sting are packing stadiums in St. Petersburg, more creatively interesting acts that are not supported by the Russian media have difficulties filling smaller venues, as the Tindersticks concert demonstrated in June.
 &quot;I was involved with five bands playing Russia over the summer: Tindersticks, Red Snapper, Placebo, Deftones and Megadeth. The only one of these that was profitable was Red Snapper, so I would answer that commercial success is related to many factors, not just mass popularity.&quot;
 Busy with concert organization, Hobbs' own musical projects have been put on the shelf. &quot;Mecca hasn't existed for some time. We released two very good albums, but very few people bought them. The Infidel album is still waiting for me to raise the money to finish it. I will record the first Galensadko album [the name of his new project] with my wife this year.&quot;
 &quot;I have been acting and writing, which I greatly enjoy, but my theater work is as leftfield as my work in music, so it's impossible to make money from it. I have to carry on my professional work as music manager and concert organizer.&quot;
 As to the future of Western artists in Russia, Hobbs sees some perspectives, although he still has his reservations.
 &quot;It seems that the possibilities in Moscow are quite good, though there's a great shortage of smaller venues, and the only arts center I'm aware of is Dom. In St. Petersburg, I was depressed that the Tindersticks concert lost money and was not better attended. Outside Moscow and St. Petersburg, there are hardly any reliable 'alternative' promoters at all, which is a great shame.&quot;
 
 <i>Check out Nick Hobbs' official Web site at www.charmenko.net </i>

TITLE: photo pioneer comes to st. pete
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: German avant-garde artist Jurgen Klauke, one of the key figures in contemporary European photography, came to town this week to introduce his art to Russia's cultural capital.
 Hosting the exhibition, which Klauke calls &quot;Absolute Calm,&quot; is the Benois Wing of the State Russian Museum, where the exhibition will be on display through Nov. 11.
 Klauke is the curator of his own exhibition and has assembled an impressive anthology of his experiments in photography from the 1970s to the present day. Occupying two floors of the Benois Wing, the exhibition is the first time that 58-year-old Klauke - long renowned as a pioneer of photography in his home country - has been fully represented in Russia.
 The evolution of his artistry shows striking diversity. In his earlier works, Klauke questions the role of human gender. His preoccupation at that time was staged photography. Klauke became one of the first artists to use his own body as a focus and inspiration, making a significant impact on the Body Art Movement in Germany. In addition to photography, Klauke has experimented widely in body art and performance art, especially during the 1970s.
 In his early career, the artist tries to interpret the division into the feminine and the masculine as a way of hiding or masking human identity. He attempts to reflect the hidden parts of people's souls, their suppressed desires and passions, the parts most people hide even from themselves. This goal explains the nature of these works, which some find daring, others call shocking.
 Exploring the relations between a human being and an object is the series &quot;Formalization of Boredom.&quot; Seven profile photographs of a man in a dark suit with a black bucket on his head form the center of one display. Little white captions indicating the names of the days of the week are the only difference in each photograph. Next to them are smaller photographs of the same person. There are 12 of them on each side with the captions indicating the names of months and years.
 The exhibition also provides an opportunity to see Klauke's spectacular performances over the past 30 years, with videos shown on special monitors that are installed in one of the halls.
 Eventually, Klauke chose to stray from depicting reality. He lost interest in staged photography, turning to experiments such as using rays of light transmitted from computer screens. This most recent phase of his work is revealed in the series &quot;Prosecuritas,&quot; which is displayed on the second floor. Thus, the exhibition gives visitors unaccustomed to Klauke the chance to acquaint themselves with the artist's work in all its diversity, while providing fans of the artist with a rich mixture of the old and new.
 <i>Links: http://www.rusmuseum.ru/. For more information, call the Russian Museum at 318-1608 or see listings. </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Neither stargazers nor the paparazzi found any trace of the Western pop megastars who, &quot;according to reports,&quot; were supposed to visit the city for a &quot;billionaire party&quot; last weekend. Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and even Madonna all seem to have failed to attend the event, which was to include &quot;a ride to a shooting range,&quot; where the stars were to fire weapons &quot;previously used by the KGB.&quot;
 Local events start this weekend with <strong>Svobodny Polyot 4, </strong>or Free Fly Fest 4, a two-night festival of experimental electronic music. Free Fly Fest was previously based at the SpartaK Club, which folded last month.
 There are more than 30 acts listed, with the better-known ones including <strong>New Composers, </strong>Dead ushki, Nozhik Chups, Fizzarum, EU and Novosibirsk's Nuclear Los. The international component is limited to Keuhkot from Finland. In the spirit of the festival Deadushki will not be performing any songs from their last album and instead are busy preparing what they call an &quot;electronic fantasy.&quot;
 Promoted by the Nochlezhka Foundation and the Drugaya Kultura Association, the goal of the festival is &quot;changing youth's negative attitude toward homeless people.&quot; The location could not be more appropriate; the Friday Club, which opened earlier this year, is located right between Sennaya Ploshchad and Sennoi Rynok, the city's best-known hangout for the homeless. Tickets cost 100 rubles for one night and 150 for both nights. <i>Friday Club, Friday to Saturday, 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. See Gigs for location details.
 </i>Right in the middle of the week comes a rock festival called <strong>Modernization. </strong>Previously this festival was promoted by the local Radio Modern, but since the station was recently bought by Moscow's Nashe Radio, the event is now organized by different promoters who seem to have no idea about the festival's origins, though they still use the Modern logo on the promotion posters.
 The lineup, however, is identical to Nashe Radio's anodyne &quot;Russian-rock&quot; repertoire. You will get BI 2, Chaif, Aria, Splean, Nochniye Snaipery, Ocean Elzi and Smysloviye Galyutsinatsii. <i>Yubileiny Sports Palace, Aug. 29, 5 p.m. Tickets cost between 250 and 350 rubles.
 </i><strong>Fish Fabrique, </strong>which along with Moloko and Griboyedov is one of the top local music clubs, will be closed for minor renovations starting Monday, but not for long. According to the management, repairs will take only seven to 10 days. However, the annual joint birthday party for both the club and Tequilajazzz - the band with which the club is primarily associated - has been postponed due to the band's tour and will take place in mid-September.
 Fish Fabrique opened Sept. 2, 1994, at its old, more spacious venue at 10 Pushkinskaya Ulitsa, while Tequilajazzz traces its beginnings back to Sept. 4, 1993, when the band made its stage debut at the TaMtAm Club.
 Further on in the club scene, Markscheider Kunst's <strong>Seraphim </strong>will celebrate his birthday at Faculty with a concert featuring friends on Thursday.
 Seraphim Selenge Makangila was born on Aug. 31, 1968, in Kasongo, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since the early 1990s, he has been active on the local music scene, first as a member of M'Bond Art, a band formed by African students living in St. Petersburg, then Motema Pembe, and finally Markscheider Kunst.

TITLE: delights of kitaisky dvor
AUTHOR: by Robert Coalson

PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg restaurants are fast gaining a reputation not only for fine cuisine, but for charming interior design as well. The national decorating magazine Salon - Russia's answer to Architectural Digest - regularly spotlights local clubs and eateries, and the August issue includes no fewer than three of them, including a lovely Chinese place called Kitaisky Dvor on Ploshchad Truda.
 And Kitaisky Dvor is certainly worthy of the honor. Its three small halls, each with its own relaxing personality, make the mere act of choosing a place to sit a pleasure. The main hall is decorated as an outdoor pavilion with a gurgling waterfall and cobblestones, creating the sensation that you have stepped into a classical oriental painting. Quiet, oriental-flavored music completes the scene perfectly.
 But delights for the eye are far from being all this restaurant has to offer. Its menu is simply encyclopedic, featuring about 15 tempting pages with a heavy emphasis on seafood, from the most exotic to the most prosaic. The wine list is broad and in the mid- to expensive range.
 Kitaisky Dvor specializes in traditional Hong Kong cuisine, but offers a nearly complete range of basic Chinese dishes. The chef's special is a seafood smorgasbord called &quot;The Immortality of Dao,&quot; going for an intimidating 2,880 rubles and including lobster, prawns, squid, octopus and other delights of the sea. Also at the top of the line, the menu features steamed and stewed Chinese turtle for 2,280 rubles.
 Needless to say, these delicacies were too rich for our budget, but there was plenty more to choose from, so much in fact that we spent nearly 20 minutes just reading the menu while the attentive waiter stood by patiently. At first we were a bit intimidated by the prices, which range from about 100 to 750 rubles, but then we noticed the healthy size of the portions on neighboring tables. Soups at Kitaisky Dvor, for instance, come in tureens that provide a decent serving for as many as four people, and all the main dishes are suitable for passing around family style.
 We started off with rice-noodle soup with beef meatballs and spinach (200 rubles), which was little short of fabulous. The delicate broth brought out all the flavor of the fresh spinach, and the noodles were certainly freshly made.
 Next, we sampled the meat dumplings, served with a powerful soy and garlic sauce (120 rubles). The filling was a mixture of various meats, ground nicely and flavored with onions and spices. The sauce was excellent, although far from subtle, and it took some time for our palates to recover for the main courses.
 To accompany our main dishes, we ordered both the fried rice and the Hong Kong noodles (both 120 rubles). The noodles were by far the better choice, featuring a delicate sauce that went well with everything. Both dishes had frozen shrimp that probably should have been left out.
 We then tucked into the lemon chicken (280 rubles), which was both beautiful and delicious. A generous platter of batter-fried chicken pieces swam in a bright yellow sauce. We thought we wouldn't be able to eat it all until we got going and found that we couldn't make ourselves stop.
 We also ordered the pan-fried Peking style spare ribs (280 rubles), which turned out to be off that day, leading us to the only mistake of our outing. We ordered the beef and bamboo (250 rubles), which was made of a disappointing cut of beef that reminded both of us of pot roast. The sauce was equally undistinguished, and even the big chunks of garlic made no difference to the flavor.
 All in all, however, the meal was a delight from beginning to end. Although the dishes came a trifle too fast, the service was excellent, and we left both stuffed and relaxed. Kitaisky Dvor is not one of the city's cheaper restaurants, but it offers an authentic and enjoyable experience. When I win the lottery, I'm going back for &quot;The Immortality of Dao.&quot;
 
 <i>Kitaisky Dvor. 3 Ploshchad Truda. 311-4919. Open 12 p.m. to 12 a.m. Lunch for two without alcohol, 1,230 rubles. Credit cards accepted. </i>

TITLE: evolution: a bad mistake
AUTHOR: by John Anderson

PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: Forced like chopped meat through a flagrantly self-reverential &quot;Ghostbusters&quot; template, &quot;Evolution&quot; seems to be producer-director Ivan Reitman's attempt to show he can recreate the success of his biggest comedy ever. What he proves instead is that, given time and money, a comedy director can devolve into a lower life form.
 The basic idea is hardly original (&quot;Men in Black&quot; is evoked more than once, &quot;Jurassic Park&quot; every time a dinosaur appears) but rife with possibilities of the human, if not extraterrestrial, variety. It's your basic shmoes-versus-the-state story: An asteroid crashes into the Arizona desert, bringing with it a strain of organisms that proceed to evolve at a rate beyond human imagination.
 &quot;What took us 200 million years has taken them a few hours,&quot; Dr. Ira Kane (David Duchovny) tells his colleague, adjunct professor and full-time operator Harry Block (Orlando Jones). The government, of course, is useless; only Ira and Harry - not just a geologist, but the women's volleyball coach! - can save the world. 
 Someone must have thought it beyond witty casting the very wry &quot;X-Files&quot; star Duchovny as a community- college professor battling military intelligence over an alien invasion. (&quot;I know those people,&quot; he says, in the movie's one obvious &quot;X&quot; reference.) But Duchovny is no Bill Murray, and Julianne Moore, as Ira's antagonist-heartthrob, Allison, is no Lucille Ball. A government epidemiologist, Allison affects a klutziness that may have been meant as a humanizing element by Reitman, but which comes off instead as a way of deflating both her confidence and competence. As the movie's lone woman (human woman, at any rate), she's a clumsy joke.
 Most of the film's awkward moves are far more blatant: When Duchovny, who has established Ira as a rough diamond among Arizona rubes, drops his pants and moons the army general (Ted Levine) who's kicked him off the asteroid site, it shows how desperate Reitman is to find a laugh.
 For the most part, &quot;Evolution&quot; is an opportunity to 1) startle us with scary monsters jumping at the screen, which works every time; 2) make Reitman seem hip to younger audiences, who'll find the brainless pool boy played by Seann William Scott (&quot;Road Trip,&quot; &quot;American Pie&quot;) sadly familiar, and 3) take the gross-out devices of &quot;Men in Black&quot; and &quot;Ghostbusters&quot; to weird extremes.
 Jones is a particularly frustrating aspect to &quot;Evolution,&quot; giving every indication that he knows how to deliver funny material, if only he had some funny material to deliver. Reitman's previous movies have lived and died by their stars (&quot;Dave,&quot; for instance, which would have been nowhere without Kevin Kline), but he now seems intent on humiliating them, as do writing partners David Diamond and David Weissman (of the hapless &quot;Family Man&quot;) and their temporary accomplice, Don Jakoby (&quot;Arachnophobia&quot;).
 When Jones' character gets a particularly nasty flying alien beneath his skin, he undergoes a rectal probe that seems to go on for weeks. Funny? Sure, and it makes as much sense as the scene with Duchovny, Jones and Scott riding through the desert singing &quot;Play That Funky Music, White Boy.&quot; Why are they part of the movie? Because Reitman, like the growth rate of his aliens, is completely out of control.

TITLE: russian hypocrisy revealed up close
AUTHOR: by Tom Karshan

PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: &quot;Hypocrisy,&quot; according to La Rochefoucauld's maxim, &quot;is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.&quot; Every nation has its own kind of virtue and its own style in hypocrisy. The classic Anglo-Saxon hypocrite is the bustling shopkeeper in Dickens or Benjamin Franklin, who assents to the morality of his age with cynical good cheer. In France, the hypocrite was defined forever by Moli&egrave;re's Tartuffe. According to the great 19th-century Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, people like Tartuffe &quot;are conscious hypocrites, that is, they know it themselves and are aware that other people know it too.&quot;
 The classic Russian hypocrite is to be found in the pages of an ill-remembered classic, Shchedrin's &quot;The Golovlyov Family,&quot; first published from 1875 to 1876, which has just been reissued under the imprint of the New York Review of Books.
 Once described as &quot;the gloomiest book in Russian literature,&quot; &quot;The Golovlyov Family&quot; is a miracle of literature, for it manages to fascinate while recounting the story of a family doomed to bore itself to death with pettiness and trivial malice. One by one, members of the Golovlyov family fail in their worldly endeavors and are sucked back to their remote estate, Golovlyovo, where they die of that most 19th-century of ailments: having nothing to do. And sitting at the center of the web is Porphyry Golovlyov, whose special qualities were recognized in early childhood when his own family nicknamed him Iudushka - Little Judas, or the Bloodsucker. He is an unfeeling wretch who spouts empty pieties, occupies his time with pointless bookkeeping and calls on Providence to sanction all of his misdeeds. For 50 years at least, Iudushka was a byword for hypocrisy - Lenin habitually labeled all of his opponents, ranging from Mensheviks to Constitutionalists, from Trotsky to Kautsky, as Iudushki. Iudushka is not a hypocrite in the French sense, snaking his way through a labyrinth of propriety. Rather, as Shchedrin insists, he thrives in the absence of value.
 &quot;We Russians have no strongly biased systems of education. We are not drilled, we are not trained to be champions and propagandists of this or that set of moral principles but are simply allowed to grow as nettles grow by a fence. We have no need to be hypocritical for the sake of any fundamental social principles, for we have no such principles and do not take shelter under any one of them. We exist quite freely, i.e. we vegetate, babble and lie spontaneously, without any principles.&quot;
 Shchedrin was the pen name of Count Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov, a former civil servant who came to prominence in the 1860s as a radical journalist. He edited the periodical &quot;Notes of the Fatherland&quot; and published in it monthly sketches around a given theme: &quot;Provincial Sketches,&quot; &quot;Satires in Prose,&quot; &quot;Letters on the Province,&quot; and &quot;Trivia of Life.&quot; In 1872, he began a series of sketches titled &quot;Well-Intentioned Speeches,&quot; which aimed to show how little the establishment lived up to the ideals to which it paid lip service. 
 By 1874, it was the family's turn. Shchedrin's imagination was fired by memories of his own family's pathological meanness and casual cruelty, and the first sketches were so promising that Ivan Turgenev encouraged him to develop them into a full-scale novel.
 Nostalgic portraits of the gentry had been a staple of Russian literature since the 1830s, and &quot;War and Peace&quot; (1865-69) was the culmination of this tradition. But in the 1870s, the perspective shifted. &quot;Anna Karenina&quot; (1875-7) presents the instability of family life, and &quot;The Brothers Karamazov&quot; (1879-80) its very dissolution. &quot;The Golovlyov Family&quot; is the starkest example of this new &quot;family&quot; novel. 
 On her deathbed the great Golovlyov matriarch, Arina Petrovna, realizes that, &quot;All her life she had been establishing something, had wasted away for something, now it appeared she had been wasting away over a phantom. Throughout her life the word 'family' had never deserted her tongue.&quot;
 There is a formula, lethal and nearly scientific, that operates in satire: The world is divided into &quot;verbal pus&quot; and emptiness, and all you have to do to kill someone's spirit is to make them see how empty their words are and how pointless the corresponding motives. &quot;The Golovlyov Family&quot; was seized on by Soviet critics because it presents a world without any credible reason for living. Arina Petrovna buys property for the estate even when Golovlyovo had passed to Iudushka, like a mechanical wind-up toy. Later Iudushka, trained in the procedures of the tsarist state bureaucracy, invents busywork to keep him constantly occupied: scrutinizing accounts seven different ways, sending bills for kilograms and grams of gooseberries picked or calculating how much he could get from his milk if all the other cows in the village died. Like Homais in &quot;Madame Bovary,&quot; and many other bourgeois bores of the 19th-century novel, Iudushka is a man of syllables, whose useless prattle has smothered his feelings. He is a boxed figure, an actor without an audience, and when he finally is deprived of company altogether, he has nothing to do but die. It is like the solution to a math problem.
 &quot;The Golovlyov Family&quot; is not a richly detailed canvas in the way of &quot;War and Peace.&quot; The book operates with a sluggish apathy and exists in a foggy atmosphere of confusion and self-deception. It is a series of scratchy pen-and-ink portraits, and its plot consists of its characters imploding, one after another, like popped balloons. There is not much psychological eavesdropping. But Shchedrin circles around his subjects with an obsession that proves oddly contagious, and, along with Goncharov's &quot;Oblomov,&quot; the book captures the lethargy of late 19th-century Russia.
 
 <i>&quot;The Golovlyov Family,&quot; by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, 334 pages. New York Review of Books. $12.95. </i>

TITLE: the slow revival of russian culture
AUTHOR: by Celestine Bohlen

PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: By all accounts, the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Moscow Conservatory Great Hall on April 17 marked a low point for Russian culture. Instead of an occasion worthy of Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich, the concert, sponsored by Rosinterfest, a commercial presenter, turned into a musical smorgasbord, laced with free martinis, ordered up by Russia's new rich.
 Among those horrified by the event was Gennady Rozhdestvensky, the renowned conductor and then still director of the Bolshoi Theater, who found himself rudely interrupted in mid-speech by a group of youths shouting: &quot;Enough! Bring on the music!&quot;
 Two months later, Rozhdestvensky, on his way out at the Bolshoi, vented his spleen in an interview in Izvestia. He described the jubilee concert as a &quot;vulgar traveling show&quot; in which &quot;genuine music&quot; was sacrificed to the gods of popular entertainment. &quot;I have encountered this everywhere,&quot; he lamented, &quot;but Russia is in a leading position.&quot;
 In the 10 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its ruling Communist Party, Russian culture has been limping along, surviving such indignities as shrunken budgets, distressed buildings and the onslaught of Western mass culture.
 In the scramble to survive, many cultural institutions have had to find commercial partners and, as Rozhdestvensky argued, dumb down their offerings in order to get audiences. Concert halls are booked with overhyped, overpriced rock performers and imitation Broadway musicals, starring pop stars, play to sellout crowds. Film studios that once turned out prize-winning movies now churn out video clips and television cop shows.
 Some purists see these changes as a threat to a great European culture that spawned the likes of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Eisenstein and Malevich. Others - looking at a parallel proliferation of new theaters, clubs and galleries - see a welcome liberalization of the arts that has both challenged and enriched the older tradition.
 &quot;The Soviet Union preserved a 19th-century hierarchy of taste that was enshrined in the funding and was heavily skewed to the highbrow,&quot; said S. Frederick Starr, a historian of Russian culture and an expert on Central Asia at Johns Hopkins University. &quot;One of the things that has occurred is that it has become more democratic. Culture in the Soviet Union was a producer good; now increasingly it is a consumer good.&quot;
 Interestingly, Mikhail Shvydkoi, Russia's current minister of culture, agreed. &quot;Democracy has taken away the struggle,&quot; he said. &quot;Now, whatever you want to do, you do it. This is reflected in a whole host of small theaters and galleries that have cropped up everywhere. We still have to get used to the mass phenomenon of small manifestations of culture. Yet as it turns out, even after soaking up all the new outside influences, we are learning that our culture can stand up.&quot;
 Shvydkoi, a former theater critic who spent most of the 1990s in the murky world of Russian state television, became minister of culture early last year, just as Vladimir Putin was taking over as president from Boris Yeltsin. From the start, Putin set as his goal a &quot;consolidation&quot; of Russian society, which in some areas has come to mean concentrating more power in the Kremlin. 
 But in the arts, the laissez-faire spirit still lives. &quot;The freedom that the Russian intelligentsia won is unshakable,&quot; said Shvydkoi, &quot;and it remains the basis of the government's cultural policies.&quot;
 To those who remember the old days of censorship and ideological controls, the government's retreat on cultural content is itself an enormous change. &quot;It was not long ago when the specific direction and the prejudices of the state were the only question,&quot; Starr said. &quot;Now it is only one voice in the chorus. That is the good news, and that is very good news.&quot;
 Last summer, a few months after he was inaugurated as Russia's second president in a ceremony fit for a tsar, Putin publicly chaired a meeting of the presidential council of cultural advisers at which he sounded an alarm, not so much about the state as about the status of Russian culture.
 Since then, Putin has made it a point both at home and abroad to give Russian culture - classical and contemporary - a boost. He has met with Alexander Solzhenitsyn among other leading figures in the world of arts and letters. When he was in New York a year ago, he attended the opening of an exhibit by female artists of the early 20th-century Russian avant-garde at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and he has invited dignitaries, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to gala openings at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, where the director Valery Gergiev has revived the Kirov Opera and Ballet, as it was known during the Soviet era and is still known abroad.
 Putin, who is a former KGB agent, has also met twice with Mikhail Chemiakin, a Russian sculptor and artist who was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1971 for &quot;ideological subversion.&quot; Now Chemiakin has won Putin's blessing for a new arts institute in St. Petersburg. The Russian government has stepped up its spending on culture: The Culture Ministry's budget next year is to rise by 25 percent, to $350 million, according to Shvydkoi.
 Not surprisingly, St. Petersburg - Putin's hometown - is getting an extra dose of government support as it nears its 300th-anniversary celebration in 2003. Altogether, the city is to receive $1.7 billion for various projects, including a new beltway around the city and a flood-protection barrier.
 Already, St. Petersburg's Russian State Museum - with its comprehensive collection of Russian art, from icons to the avant-garde - has undergone a $75 million face lift, its first in 100 years. According to Shvydkoi, the Mariinsky Theater will receive money for a new addition and an ambitious performing-arts center - a longstanding dream of Gergiev's - is planned for the New Holland area. The two projects are expected to cost $120 million, of which an undetermined amount will be raised privately.
 The new attention being lavished on the former imperial capital is reasonable compensation for the 70 years of neglect it suffered under the Soviet regime, Shvydkoi said. But he added that St. Petersburg is also Russia's most European city, and &quot;in that sense it is the symbol of what we are striving for.&quot;
 In the last 10 years, many cultural institutions, old and new, have figured out ways to survive. Success stories have attracted corporate sponsors and private philanthropists: Alberto W. Vilar, the Cuban-American opera lover, has become a major, and critically important, supporter of the Mariinsky. The Hermitage State Museum has pinned its hopes on a new mini-museum in Las Vegas that opens next month in partnership with the Guggenheim Museum.
 Freelance directors are now appearing at government-subsidized theaters, noted Alexander Ures, a theater critic in St. Petersburg. These directors &quot;prefer to be independent, outside of the formal theater system that has existed until now,&quot; he said. &quot;This gives them more freedom.&quot;
 Viktor Kramer, director of the Farces Theater, a privately financed theater in St. Petersburg, said: &quot;State theaters get their budget, which is often quite small, whether they perform well or not. It's socialism. Results don't matter. It is hard for a new theater to break in and receive state financing.&quot;
 Gradually, and sporadically, a Russian philanthropic class is emerging, rising from the ranks of the new rich and fed by the same mix of guilt and self-promotion that generates private support for the arts in the United States. One ruble-billionaire has paid for high-profile restoration projects in St. Petersburg. Another is financing a national program to teach teachers how to use the Internet. A third has provided financial support to sustain Russia's jazz scene.
 According to Chemiakin, what is now under way is a gradual, if fitful, reunion between Russia and the West which after long decades of separation will take time to get back together again.
 &quot;You have to remember that this country was torn away from the rest of the world for 70 years, during which there was a virtual genocide of the best and the brightest, the most talented,&quot; Chemiakin said. &quot;To expect that suddenly, all at once, democratic norms will restore the culture is impossible. The country was too disfigured.&quot;

TITLE: Palestinians Survive Helicopter Bombing
AUTHOR: By Mohammed Daraghmeh

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NABLUS, Palestinian Authority - Israeli helicopters fired missiles on a car and wounded four Palestinians on Thursday, but for the second day in a row the intended Palestinian target survived an Israeli air strike. 
 The Israeli helicopters launched two missiles on the car carrying Jihad al-Mussaimi, a leading member of Palestinian leader Yasser Ara fat's Fatah movement in the West Bank city of Nablus. The first missile hit the ground in front of the car, spraying the vehicle with shrapnel. Al-Mussaimi, who suffered injuries to his right leg, said he managed to jump out before the second missile hit the car. 
 Al-Mussaimi was one of two people in the car who were hurt, and two people on the street were also injured, doctors at Rafidia Hospital said. All suffered medium to light injuries, the doctors said. 
 The Israeli military said it carried out the attack against a &quot;very senior terrorist with a lot of Israeli blood on his hands.&quot; 
 Al-Mussaimi was previously a senior police official in Nablus and was regarded as a senior Fatah activist in Nablus, Palestinians said. 
 &quot;It is a failed Israeli assassination attempt,&quot; said Issam Abu Baker, another Fatah leader in Nablus. 
 Israel's raid Thursday came a day after Israeli helicopters targeted leading members of the militant Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, killing one man, but missing those they were after. 
 The helicopters hit two vehicles with four missiles near the Bourej refugee camp south of Gaza City on Wednesday, killing Bilal al-Ghoul, 21, an activist in the Tanzim militia, which is linked to Arafat. 
 But the real targets were al-Ghoul's father, Adnan, and Mohammed Deif, both senior figures in Hamas. 
 Adnan al-Ghoul is considered a master bombmaker, and Deif is a senior Hamas leader who has been on Israel's wanted list for five years, blamed for the bloodiest Hamas bombing attacks in Israel. 
 The Israeli military said the helicopters targeted &quot;terrorist cells engaged in mortar bombings.&quot; 
 In Gaza, Hamas political leader Mahmoud Zahar charged, &quot;It was an Israeli attempt to assassinate a senior member of Hamas.&quot; 
 A crowd gathered around one of the burned-out cars, shouting &quot;Death to Israel&quot; and &quot;Death to Sharon,&quot; referring to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. They waved assault rifles in the air as an Israeli helicopter flew overhead. 
 Israel's policy of targeting Palestinian militants for killing has drawn harsh criticism from the United States and others. The Palestinians call it state terrorism. However, the Israelis insist the operations are self-defense to stop attacks. 
 Overall, seven Palestinians were killed Wednesday. 
 Five died in an early-morning clash with Israeli forces, who opened fire on Palestinians planting a bomb in the West Bank. The Israelis said all were armed, but Palestinians said only one was a gunman. 
 In southern Gaza, another Palestinian was killed in unclear circumstances. A doctor said Mahmoud Jasser, 23, died in an explosion, but other Palestinians said he was shot by an Israeli sniper.

TITLE: Memorial Causing Controversy
AUTHOR: By Brooke Donald

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - It is Washington's most visited memorial, honoring the dead of the 20th century's most divisive war. Now the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, created two decades ago amid bitter acrimony, is becoming the subject of dissension and controversy yet again. 
 The veterans who helped build the memorial want to add a structure nearby to educate visitors, not about the war but about the memorial itself. Critics, not least among them the National Park Service, are appalled. 
 The black granite wedge is engraved with the names of the 58,226 men and women killed in or still missing from the war. Its designer, architect Maya Lin, intended it to be &quot;a quiet place, meant for personal reflection and reckoning.&quot; 
 The proposed 366-square-meter education center would change that intent, says the park service, which manages the memorial in addition to nearby ones honoring George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. 
 &quot;We believe we risk diminishing the original work by adding adjunct structures to this site,&quot; John Parsons, a regional park service official, told a congressional committee last month. 
 Lin's simple concept for the memorial, chosen from a national design contest, roused a furor among many Americans who felt it cheapened and demeaned the memory of those who died. Inclusion of a statue of three combat-weary servicemen overlooking the wall was a key part of the compromise that had the Wall built. Many now consider the monument the most poignant of all the sites on the National Mall. 
 The memorial's purpose, the park service says, is &quot;to separate the issue of the sacrifices of the veterans from the U.S. policy in the war.&quot; A quarter-century after the last American GIs left Vietnam, scholars agree that passions still run so strong as to defy an objective assessment. 
 &quot;Objective, noncontroversial history that everyone can agree on doesn't exist with the Vietnam War,&quot; said Ronald Spector, chairman of the history department at George Washington University. 
 The National Capital Planning Commission, the government agency that reviews federal land-development proposals, also opposes the proposed center. Lin is remaining mum for the time being, according to her spokesperson. 
 Nonetheless, plans for the education center are speeding ahead, and legislation authorizing it is before committees in both the House and Senate, where support is overwhelming. 
 Among the backers are Senators Chuck Hagel, Max Cleland, and John Kerry, all Vietnam veterans. Kerry, who earned three purple hearts in the war but led demonstrations against it after he returned home, said focusing on the veterans makes Vietnam easier to understand. 
 &quot;Despite the war's confusing moral backdrop, we tried to make sense of our mission,&quot; Kerry said. &quot;The faults in Vietnam were those of the war, not the warriors.&quot; 
 Veterans groups also support the idea, saying the project would elaborate on the lives of the men and women whose names are on the wall and provide basic information about the war without interpreting it. 
 &quot;The purpose is not to teach the long and difficult and confusing history of the Vietnam War,&quot; said Jan Scruggs, originator of the memorial and president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. 
 The Vietnam Memorial, which attracts 3.7 million visitors each year, now includes the Wall, two statues and a commemorative flagpole. In the works is a memorial plaque honoring veterans who died after the war but as a direct result of their service in Vietnam.

TITLE: Brazil Lifts Patent on Anti-AIDS Drug
AUTHOR: By Michael Astor

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil's health minister has moved to strip Roche pharmaceutical's patent on the anti-AIDS drug Nelfinavir after negotiations failed to lower the price. 
 Jose Serra said Wednesday he would use a clause in Brazil's 1997 intellectual-property law that allows patents to be broken in cases of national emergency or when companies employ abusive pricing policies. 
 The decision came after six months of negotiation &quot;and after exhausting all the possibilities for an agreement,&quot; the ministry said in a statement. Roche will continue to supply the drug until December 2001, when the contract with the Health Ministry ends. 
 The move marks the first time Brazil has stripped the patent on an anti-AIDS medication, despite previous threats to do so. 
 In Geneva, where Roche is based, spokesperson Daniel Piller said the company was &quot;surprised&quot; by the news and denied that negotiations had broken down. 
 &quot;We are on good terms in negotiations with the Ministry of Health and we were waiting to fix a date for another meeting as previously agreed,&quot; he said Thursday. 
 &quot;In our negotiations with the Ministry of Health we had already given them discounts very close to what they wanted,&quot; he said. He added that the company also had made a certain amount of the drug available free of charge. 
 Because Nelfinavir has a U.S. patent, the Brazilian government should have consulted with the United States, as it agreed to do when the two countries settled their trade dispute in July, Piller added. 
 He said the company would now be checking &quot;exactly who did what and why&quot; before deciding what to do next. 
 Brazil, which has the highest number of AIDS victims in Latin America, distributes a &quot;cocktail&quot; of anti-AIDS drugs free to anyone who needs it. Last year, some 90,000 people received the drugs that would have cost each of them up to $15,000. 
 Thanks largely to the drug handout, in just four years the number of AIDS deaths in Brazil has fallen from 11,024 to 4,136. The program has been hailed by doctors as a model for other developing countries, where few can afford expensive treatment. 
 By manufacturing most of the drugs itself, the government reduced costs by as much as 79 percent. But Brazil has achieved those savings by ignoring drug patents. 
 With new anti-AIDS drugs coming to market, the government said it might be necessary to employ compulsory licensing if drug companies did not move to lower costs. 
 Brazil spends about $88 million, or 28 percent of its anti-AIDS budget, on Nelfinavir every year. About a quarter of all Brazilian AIDS patients use the drug. 
 Last week, scientists at the government's Farmanguinhos lab said they had successfully copied Nelfinavir and were subjecting it to equivalency tests expected to last three months. 
 According to the Health Ministry, the government will realize a 40 percent savings by making the drug at Farmanguinhos.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Tamil Rebels Attack
 

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Tamil guerrillas launched coordinated attacks on army camps in eastern Sri Lanka on Thursday and at least 15 people were killed in the latest battle of a steadily escalating ethnic war, military officials said.
 The air force hit back with bombing raids against rebel positions in other parts of the east after the attack, the biggest on an army camp in more than a year.
 The rebels, fighting for a separate minority Tamil state in the country's north and east, launched three waves of attacks on the Janakapura and Kokkutudu Wai camps in the Welioya area, 240 kilometers east of Colombo.
 "There was very heavy fighting but the situation is now under control," military spokesperson Brigadier Sanath Karunaratne said.
 Seven soldiers were killed and 11 wounded in the pre-dawn battles that were accompanied by a barrage of artillery and rocket fire, he said. The Janakapura camp guards the main road to the Kokkutudu Wai camp, about10 kilometers away.
 
 
Philippine Floods
 

MANILA, Philippines (Reuters) - Heavy rain flooded parts of the Philippine capital on Thursday, forcing hundreds of office workers and students to wade through waist-deep water. 
 Four people, including a 4-year-old girl, were injured in suburban Quezon City when six houses collapsed in a landslide because of the torrential rain since Wednesday night, an official at the Office of Civil Defense said.
 Disaster officials said they had no immediate reports of flooding in the provinces.
 Several major streets in Manila were rendered impassable to light vehicles, forcing students in uniforms and office workers either to wade through the floods or catch rides on bicycle rickshaws.
 Agencies performing vital functions would retain some staff to ensure provision of some services, executive secretary Alberto Romulo said in a memorandum from the presidential palace. Normal services would resume Friday, he said.
 
 
Megawati on Tour
 

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Reuters) - Indonesian President Megawati Sukar no putri visited Cambodia on Thursday on the fourth leg of a whirlwind southeast Asian tour to reassure neighbors about her efforts to deal with her country's woes.
 Megawati was scheduled to meet government officials at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh on Thursday and Friday before leaving for Myanmar.
 Before Megawati's arrival, King Sihanouk made rare comments to the media hailing the close ties between the two countries.
 "Her visit is aimed at improving our relationship and co-operating in all fields together on the international stage," the king said.
 Megawati started her Asian tour in the Philippines earlier this week, then headed to Vietnam and Laos.
 Diplomats have said Megawati's regional tour was in part aimed at displaying her confidence in weathering troubles at home.
 
 
Access Granted
 

KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban will allow the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to meet eight foreign aid workers accused of spreading Christianity, Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil said on Thursday.
 "We have no problem. They [ICRC representatives] can see them any time," Muttawakil said by telephone from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. He said the Taliban had not informed the ICRC of the decision yet and gave no other details.
 It was not clear when a meeting could take place and ICRC officials in Pakistan said they had not been informed of any developments by the Taliban.
 The foreigners, two Australians, four Germans and two from the United States, and 16 Afghan employees of a Christian aid agency have been held since early August.
 The Taliban have refused to allow any contact, either consular or legal, with the aid workers of German-based Shelter Now International, who have been detained for more than two weeks.
 
 
Drug Lord Extradition
 

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombia's Supreme Court on Wednesday approved a U.S. request to extradite a former right-hand man of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar who is accused of smuggling cocaine worth $1 billion a month to the United States and Europe.
 Fabio Ochoa, who once waged a bloody war against extradition with the battle cry of "better a tomb in Colombia than a cell in the United States," is currently being held in Bogota's maximum-security prison La Picota.
 In a terse statement, the Supreme Court allowed the extradition of Ochoa and two other former drug kingpins - Jairo Mesa Sanin and Mario Sanchez Cristancho - who were indicted in September 1999 on cocaine and money laundering charges by a Florida federal grand jury.
 
 
Milosevic Challenge
 

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands (AP) - A Dutch court heard arguments Thursday by lawyers representing Slobodan Milosevic contesting the legality of the UN tribunal where the former Yugoslav president awaits trial for alleged war crimes. 
 Calling the tribunal a "marionette court" of the NATO alliance, Milosevic's legal team said the detention of the ousted Yugoslav leader was part of an "anti-Serb witch hunt" and a violation of human rights. They asked for his immediate release. 
 Milosevic remained in the UN detention unit in Scheveningen outside The Hague, and was not in the courtroom. 
 Lawyers representing the Dutch state were to present their arguments later Thursday. 
 The district-court judge will decide, probably within a week, either to quash the case or to call for a full trial. 
 Milosevic's lawyers argued that the court has jurisdiction over the tribunal since it is located in the Netherlands and is not exempt from Dutch law. 
 
 
23 Sentenced for Fire
 

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - Authorities say they have sentenced 23 people to prison for a Christmas fire in a disco that killed 309 people - the second-deadliest fire in China in a half-century. 
 The longest sentence went to Wang Chengtai, a welder blamed for igniting the blaze in the basement of the Dongdu Commercial Building, a shopping mall in Luoyang in Henan province, said a court official who gave only his surname, Zhao. 
 An investigation said sparks from Wang's welding torch set fire to wooden furniture stored in the basement. Wang and other workers escaped, but smoke suffocated guests at a Christmas party in the mall's fourth-floor disco. 
 "The severe sentences given to them demonstrate the Chinese government's strong determination to stop the all-too-frequent occurrence of safety-related tragedies nationwide," the government-run Xinhua News Agency proclaimed in announcing the verdicts Thursday. 



TITLE: Earnhardt Jr. Satisfied With Result of NASCAR Report
AUTHOR: By Pete Iacobelli

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DARLINGTON, South Carolina - Dale Earnhardt Jr. suggested one addition to NASCAR's extensive report of his father's fatal Daytona crash: Set standards for making seat belts. 
 &quot;I don't know if they talked about this or not, but it would be good if they could establish standards for the manufacturers and seat-belt companies, like there are in the navy and air force for seat belts in fighter jets,&quot; he said Wednesday at Darlington Raceway. 
 The 26-year-old son of deceased Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt wasn't picking at seat-belt manufacturer Bill Simpson, one of whose belts was found broken in the elder Earnhardt's car, according to NASCAR's report. 
 His only beef with Simpson products? &quot;My uniform shrinks up after three months,&quot; Earnhardt Jr. said. &quot;But I still feel comfortable with Simpson seat belts.&quot; 
 Earnhardt Jr. talked for the first time Wednesday, after NASCAR released its findings about his father's death on Tuesday. 
 NASCAR's report did not solely blame the broken seat belt found in Earnhardt's car or mandate that drivers wear a head-and-neck restraint device, although many, including Earnhardt Jr., have used them. 
 Earnhardt was not wearing a head and neck restraint at Daytona. 
 Earnhardt Jr., 26, wore the Hutchens device to support his head and neck at the Pepsi 400 last weekend. He was pressured by drivers worried about his safety. 
 Earnhardt Jr. said it was uncomfortable at first, but he adjusted it several times during the race's rain delays, and the device became easier to handle. 
 In all, 41 of 43 drivers at Michigan Speedway wore a head-and-neck restraint. Earnhardt Jr. said he would most likely keep wearing one. 
 Earnhardt Jr. agreed weeks ago to promote Darlington's upcoming Southern 500 on Sept. 2. At the time, NASCAR had not scheduled its news conference about his father's crash investigation. So Earnhardt Jr. was met by about 70 media members, several who drove in from Atlanta to hear his views. 
 &quot;I know NASCAR was scrutinized for being secretive, but I think they did it in a real professional manner,&quot; Earnhardt Jr. said. 
 Since Earnhardt's crash, NASCAR has been questioned about how one of the sport's most popular and successful drivers could die so suddenly. 
 NASCAR outlined several steps Tuesday to improve safety. 
 It said it will install &quot;black boxes&quot; in cars, similar to flight-data recorders on airplanes, to help understand the forces during crashes and improve safety. 
 NASCAR also will use computer models to design safer cars and will be involved in testing race-track barriers. The organization will commission a study on restraint systems to take a closer look at seat-belt strength. 
 NASCAR also will open a research center in Conover, North Carolina, sometime next year, and will continue to work with experts on car safety. 
 The report contained no recommendations on changes to cars or barriers, however. 
 &quot;I pretty much knew everything&quot; in the report, Earnhardt Jr. said. &quot;Or had figured it out myself.&quot; 
 The past six months have not been easy for Earnhardt Jr. His victory at the Pepsi 400 at Daytona in July revived memories of his father, while the constant questions about what NASCAR might discover were a regular topic. 
 Earnhardt Jr. said this week's release gives him and the sport confidence to move forward. 
 &quot;I don't know if you can ever say you move on,&quot; Earnhardt Jr. said. &quot;But it puts a lot of stuff behind us.&quot;

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Wings Sign Hull
 

DETROIT, Michigan (Reuters) - All-Star right wing Brett Hull signed a two-year contract with the Detroit Red Wings Wednesday. Terms of the deal for the 37-year-old Hull were not disclosed, but USA Today reported that the seven-time All-Star had agreed to $9 million to $9.5 million for two seasons, with the possibility of earning substantially more through bonus clauses.
 The Red Wings planned a news conference Thursday to introduce Hull officially.
 Hull scored 39 goals last season for the Dallas Stars, where Hull has spent the last three years. The Stars won a Stanley Cup in 1999 and lost in the finals to New Jersey in 2000.
 Hull's 649 goals are seventh on the all-time list and two behind Mark Messier for first among active players.
 Hull, with one of the hardest slap shots in NHL history, will be joining his fourth team. He has amassed 534 assists and has 1,183 points in a 1,019-game career.
 
 
First Chinese Player
 

SEATTLE, Washington (Reuters) - The Seattle Mariners have made a 16-year-old pitcher, Wang Chao, the first Chinese player to sign with a Major League Baseball organization, team officials said Wednesday. Wang, is the first player the Mariners have ever scouted out of China, the team said. "We are always hard at work to expand our international scouting,'' Mariners vice president of scouting and player development Roger Jongewaard said.
 "Chao is the first player signed out of China, but we think he may be the first of many, as China continues to expand its baseball program,'' he added.
 Wang, a hard-throwing right-hander, has arrived in the United States and was scheduled to work out with Mariners pitching coach Bryan Price prior to Wednesday's game against the Detroit Tigers, the team said.
 Wang will then report to the Mariner organization's practice facility in Arizona and will play in an instructional league this fall, the team said. 



TITLE: Little Leaguers Rewrite Russian Sports History
AUTHOR: By Dan Lewerenz 

PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pennsylvania - Overlooking Little League's Ho ward J. Lamade Stadium, 11-year-old Alexei Kobrinets said the biggest difference between baseball in the United States and Russia isn't the well-kept fields or the high-quality equipment.
 It's the attitude.
 &quot;Nobody cares about baseball in Russia,&quot; Kobrinets said through manager and translator Vladimir Yelchaninov. &quot;Everyone is playing soccer.&quot;
 Thanks to a team from Moscow, that might soon change.
 Ten years after a failed coup ushered in a new political era in the former Soviet Union, Kobrinets and his teammates are writing a new chapter in Russian sports history as the first team from the region to compete in the Little League World Series.
 The Khovrino Little League from Moscow is the leading edge of a new age in Russian baseball, said Yelchaninov, who learned the game in New York when his parents worked for the Soviet government. It began in 1986, when the Soviet Union created a baseball federation to support Olympic competition and grew when the first Russian Little League was formed 10 years ago.
 &quot;There were some Russian players before,&quot; Yelchaninov said. &quot;Most came from other sports, like handball. There's still not many, and in Mos cow there are only maybe eight teams. But maybe this will make more people interested.&quot;
 The barriers to competition in Russia can be substantial. Yelchaninov's team practices and plays in an open field in a park without backstops or baselines, where they have to stop play so that pedestrians and their pets can cross.
 &quot;Compared to this one, we don't have a field,&quot; said infielder Sergei Vol kov, looking at Lamade Stadium.
 The Russians arrived in South Williamsport without baseball shoes, with only one set of catcher's gear (teams can't warm up a pitcher unless there's a catcher in full gear) and without a light bat for the smaller players. So locals and parents from U.S. teams pitched in to buy them nearly $1,000 in equipment.
 They got this far not by wearing the best shoes, but by playing good baseball. At the Europe Region qualifying tournament in Kotna, Poland, the Russians defeated Georgia 12-2 to win the World Series berth. In eight games, they outscored their opponents 74-12.
 Nikolai Lobanov, a fastball pitcher, gave up only four runs in 16 innings at Kotna, and shortstop Kirill Chermoshentsev is one of the best fielders at the series this year. Catcher Tatyana Maltseva also has become a fan favorite as the only girl in this year's series.
 &quot;I don't underestimate those kids,&quot; Guam manager Ramon Aguon Jr. said after his team beat Russia 5-0 Monday. &quot;They play their hearts out, and they're well-disciplined. We committed three errors, and they didn't commit any.&quot;
 Russia didn't fare well in the competition, opening Saturday with a 5-1 loss to Canada, then losing to Guam. Russia lost its final game Tuesday, 2-0 to Mexico.
 This might not be their last chance. Chermoshentsev and Kobrinets are two of four players young enough to return next year. Only one team, Pana ma, has more players young enough to return.
 &quot;We feel that our team is good enough to play with these teams,&quot; Yel cha ninov said.