SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #704 (71), Friday, September 14, 2001
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TITLE: Thousands Feared Dead in U.S.
AUTHOR: By Marjorie Olster
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - Hopes were fading on Thursday that more survivors would be found from an attack two days earlier that demolished the World Trade Center towers, now feared to be a mass tomb where thousands may be buried.
The preliminary death toll had reached 82 by early Thursday but was expected to rise sharply in the days and weeks to come. New York City ordered 30,000 extra body bags.
About 40,000 people worked in the buildings, and New York Mayor Ru dolph Giuliani said he feared a few thousand had been trapped in each of the towers.
Coordinated attacks leveled the landmark 110-story towers on Tuesday, stunning the world. Hijackers took over two other jetliners the same day. One crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington, and the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania.
In a feverish around-the-clock search for survivors, hundreds of emergency workers used everything from heavy machinery to their bare hands to sift through tons of crushed concrete and twisted steel. Sniffer dogs searched the rubble of what had been a symbol of America's financial power.
"They are sending the dogs in. When the dogs get a hit, they dig," said Chief Lawrence Cleary of the fire department from the scene of the rescue effort. "But as time goes on, it doesn't look good for finding survivors."
The results of the monumental rescue effort were dismal. As anxious families waited to find out what happened to their loved ones, only nine people were found alive in searches all day Wednesday. Another two survivors were discovered on Tuesday.
President George W. Bush called the attacks "an act of war," and officials pointed a finger of blame at Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born dissident living in Afghanistan. Bin Laden has repeatedly denied involvement.
New Yorkers were only beginning to comprehend the enormity of the catastrophe, which is certain to claim a heavy toll on lives, property and any sense of security they may have felt before.
The city of 8 million was eerily quiet on Wednesday, residents were palpably nervous and police stepped up their presence on the streets.
About 1,500 National Guard troops were deployed, and a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was stationed a few kilometers away, off the south coast of Long Island.
The devastation to the Wall Street financial district shut down the stock market through Thursday at least. That is the longest stretch of suspended trading since the outbreak of World War I.
The stock market may reopen on Friday or Monday. Bond trading is due to resume on Thursday after a two-day halt.
At the site of the disaster, bright searchlights lit the hellish ruins to allow searches throughout the night.
"It's burning inside. It's like Dante's 'Inferno,'" said rescue worker Giusep pe Sergi. "There is a fear the temperature is too high, so the metal may still collapse."
The sidewalks and streets surrounding flattened buildings were strewn with mangled cars, demolished rescue equipment and personal belongings. Thick layers of dust and paper that rained down after the explosions covered dozens of blocks.
Southern Manhattan below 14th Street was shut down.
In the center of the complex was a huge crater filled with tangles of metal beams. Firefighters with flashlights in hand walked gingerly over the beams and dug with their hands.
"They are searching anything open like this," said Chief Peter Rice pointing down into a crater. "A void that someone might have fallen into."
Rescuers, some in face masks to protect against the dust, used motion detectors to search for survivors and construction equipment to remove tons of still smoldering debris.
Toward the end of a grueling day for emergency workers, One Liberty Plaza, a 54-story building nearby, appeared in danger of collapse and the area was evacuated. The owners said later the building had suffered no structural damage.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, said 450,000 tons of debris would have to be cleared from the twin towers and another 15,000 from the third building that collapsed. Giuliani said 3,000 tons of debris had already been removed.
Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said he felt "sick to my stomach" looking down on the devastation as he flew into the city. "The beautiful tall towers that symbolize New York, they're gone, and replaced by a pile of acrid smoke."
Doctors at nearby hospitals reported disturbingly few people to treat.
"There were a lot of body bags. There were a lot of body parts," surgeon Andrew Feldman said at the rescue scene.
In wrenching scenes played out over and over, panicked family members rushed from hospital to hospital looking for missing relatives.
The dead include hundreds of firefighters and police officers who rushed to the scene to help after the attack. Most were probably killed when the towers collapsed.
Skies were devoid of the usual steady stream of airplanes and buzzing traffic helicopters; subways were nearly deserted and streets largely empty. Some businesses, most schools and Broadway theaters were closed. Many New Yorkers stayed home while others gathered in city parks and held vigils for the dead.
TITLE: St. Petersburg Grieves
TEXT: Almost as soon as news broke of the devastation in New York City and near Washington, D.C., traumatized local residents and expats began gathering near the U.S. Consulate on Furshtatskaya Ulitsa.
They brought flowers - which formed an ever-growing pile near the building - and stood a silent vigil. Among the first of thousands to sign the condolence book was St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. On Thursday, flags across Russia stood at half-staff, and President Vladimir Putin decreed a minute of silence at 12 p.m. Acting U.S. Consul General Michael Klechesky thanked the city for its sympathy. Security measures were tightened across the country, causing delays at Pulkovo International Airport. Yakovlev, who canceled a trip to Finland in order to oversee the city's security measures, said, "The city must be calm, but prepared for any emergencies." By Wednesday, 7,000 law enforcement officers had been activated throughout the city..
TITLE: The Timetable of Destruction
AUTHOR: By David Finkel
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Before all of it, when the World Trade Center still existed and the Pentagon was intact, when the president wasn't yet being temporarily hidden and people across the country weren't yet in tears, when the U.S. borders were open and no mass evacuations had been ordered, there was the ordinary business of four jets climbing into the air.
American Airlines Flight 11. Boston to Los Angeles. Ninety-two people on board. Scheduled departure time 7:45 a.m.
United Airlines Flight 175. Boston to Los Angeles. Sixty-five people on board. Scheduled departure 7:58 a.m.
United Airlines Flight 93. Newark to San Francisco. Forty-five people on board. Departure scheduled for 8:01.
American Airlines Flight 77. Washington-Dulles to Los Angeles. Sixty-four people on board. Departure scheduled for 8:10 a.m.
Up they went, without incident. And then, one by one, they began coming down, each crash taking a country from astonishment, to disbelief, to panic, to, finally, a numbed awareness that this was a day in U.S. history unlike any other.
How, then, does such a day begin?
"We felt this incredible shaking and looked up," said Vanessa Gotthainer, who was a block away from the World Trade Center when the first suicide plane struck. It was around 8:45 a.m., and American Airlines Flight 11 had just been deliberately steered into the north tower of the World Trade Center's twin 110-story buildings. Within minutes, the spectacle of a smoking, burning, punctured skyscraper was being televised coast to coast. For Melvyn Blum, 55, the view of what was unfolding came through a telescope in his 44th-floor office a few kilometers away on Manhattan's Seventh Avenue.
"We watched the flames and the gaping hole and people waving towels and hanging out the windows on the upper floors," Blum said. "And then as we were watching, we started to see people jump off the building ... from above where the plane hit, probably the 100th floor.
"And as we were watching the northwest tower burn and people jump, all of a sudden we saw the second plane hit from the south."
The time was now just past 9 a.m. The second plane was United Airlines Flight 175, which steered into the south tower.
On television, the sight of UA 175 swooping into sight, banking, dipping, hitting and exploding played again and again, including in the office of an elementary school in southwest Florida, where President George W. Bush attending an event to promote reading.
At 9:04, just after UA 175 made impact and both towers were on fire, Bush was listening to a teacher reading to her 16 students when Chief of Staff Andrew Card approached him. He visibly tensed as Card whispered in his right ear.
The event continued. When it was over, he smiled and said to the students, "Really good." On his way out of the classroom, questioned by reporters about the World Trade Center, Bush said he would have something to say "later."
At 9:17, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered all New York area airports closed.
At 9:21, all bridges and tunnels in the New York City area were ordered closed.
At 9:30, Bush gave his first remarks of the day to the country, calling what had happened in New York "an apparent terrorist attack on our country" and a "national tragedy," and saying he was returning to Washington.
At 9:40, the FAA closed down flight operations across the country for the first time in U.S. history. No number has been released about how many planes might have been in the air at that moment, but one of them was being tracked with growing concern because it was headed on a high-speed path toward the White House.
This was American Airlines Flight 77.
Controllers couldn't identify it because its transponder, the piece of equipment that transmits identifying information to radar screens, had been turned off. No radio contact could be established, either. All that Dulles controllers could do was warn controllers at Ronald Reagan National Airport and then watch as the plane headed closer and closer toward White House airspace, then begin a right turn and then drop below radar level.
9:43. The Pentagon's turn. "A big ball of fire," is what Steven Bezman, 53, who was stuck in traffic on Route 27 adjacent to the Pentagon, said he saw.
Part of the Pentagon was now on fire, the twin towers were on fire, a man in one of the twin towers who answered the phone yelled amid screams that everyone was "dying," the stairwells of the twin towers were filled with panicking people, the streets of lower Manhattan were covered with bodies and body parts, rumors were circulating that more of Washington was under attack - and now air-traffic controllers were watching yet another flight, this one United Airlines Flight 93, Newark to San Francisco, which made a sudden turn over Pennsylvania and began heading for Washington.
At 9:45, the White House and other federal buildings began to be evacuated.
At 9:55, Air Force One departed from Sarasota, not toward Washington, but on a path that would bring Bush briefly to a military base in Louisiana.
10 a.m.: "When it decided to drop, it dropped all of a sudden - like a stone," said Tom Fritz, 63, who lives in Pennsylvania and was sitting on his porch when he heard a sound that "wasn't quite right." "It was going so fast you couldn't make out what color it was," he said.
Gray, probably. That's the color of United Airlines, where, onboard flight 93, a man who said he was locked in one of the bathrooms called authorities on his cell phone and screamed: "We are being hijacked! We are being hijacked!"
By 10:06, the first 911 calls about a plane crashing into the woods midway between Pittsburgh and Camp David were being received.
Four planes up, and now four planes down. Two hundred sixty-six people were said to be on board. The plane crashes were over, but the effects kept snowballing through the rest of the day.
Just before 10 a.m., the first of the World Trade Center towers collapsed.
Ten minutes later, as secret-service agents armed with automatic rifles were deployed in Lafayette Park, part of the Pentagon collapsed.
Fifteen minutes after that, the second of the twin towers collapsed. And every minute brought another piece of news, another reaction, another astonishment.
The virtual closing down of federal Washington. The evacuation or closure of every imaginable national icon still standing, from all of lower Manhattan, where the Statue of Liberty presided over a landscape obscured by smoke, to the Chicago Loop, to the Golden Gate Bridge, to Disney World.
And briefly, the Oval Office.
By nightfall, though, with thousands of Americans thought to be dead and tens of millions unsteady in ways they couldn't have imagined 12 hours earlier, the Oval Office was open again.
"Tonight," said Bush, back in Washington, "I ask for your prayers."
TITLE: Hunt Is on To Find Perpetrators
AUTHOR: By Alan Elsner
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: WASHINGTON/NEW YORK - An international probe into the shadowy Middle Eastern figures allegedly behind this week's terror strikes on the United States gathered pace on Thursday, as U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration continued diplomatic efforts to mobilize a global coalition to crush those responsible for Tuesday's four deadly hijackings.
The Pentagon was briefly evacuated again early on Thursday and the FBI arrested a man after a telephoned bomb threat, two days after a hijacked plane slammed into a section of the U.S. military headquarters. Armed-services officials have said that around 200 military and civilian workers were missing in addition to 64 passengers and crew on the airliner.
A mounting pile of evidence pointed to an Arab connection behind the plot, and investigators were focusing on the organization of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born dissident now living in Afghanistan who is blamed for bombing two U.S. embassies in East Africa and other anti-American attacks. Bin Laden has denied organizing those attacks and, reportedly, has denied any connection to this week's events in the United States.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, told reporters after an intelligence briefing that authorities in Boston had recovered a flight manual in Arabic from a bag that was believed to have belonged to one of the hijackers.
The FBI has identified a team of about 50 people who helped plan or carry out Tuesday's attacks, the Los Angeles Times reported. Forty "infiltrators" had been accounted for, including those who died in the suicide attacks, and 10 remained at large.
The U.S. Transportation Department said on Thursday it had ordered U.S. national airspace reopened to commercial and private aviation. But Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said in a statement that U.S. airports will be reopened and flights resumed on a case-by-case basis, only after they implement more stringent levels of security.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said the hijackers had "significant ground support. They operated with technical proficiency. To target and to land an aircraft of that size with the deadly accuracy of these acts of war, was something obviously that resulted from a complex organization with significant ground support," Ashcroft said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
German police said on Thursday they had detained an airport worker "of Moroccan origin" in connection with the attacks. Police also said two of the suspected hijackers in the attacks had lived in the northern German city of Hamburg, including Mohammed Atta, 33, who was on the passenger list of one of the hijacked planes.
President Bush won support from a range of world leaders as his administration worked to forge an international coalition against terror. Bush, in office just eight months and dealing with the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, said on Wednesday: "This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil, but good will prevail."
A bipartisan resolution vowing U.S. retaliation won unanimous congressional approval in the early hours on Thursday. The House of Representatives passed the nonbinding measure by a vote of 408-0, about 12 hours after the Senate approved it 100-0.
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and veteran of the Vietnam War, said the United States had a message for those behind the attacks: "We are coming after you. God may have mercy on you, but we won't."
U.S. officials have said that bin Laden, now a "guest" of the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan, was almost certainly responsible for the attacks. Bush won the public support on Thursday of two key countries in the region - Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - as his administration planned its response to the attacks.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said investigators had identified many of the hijackers. "Our first effort is to identify any associates in the United States who might be related to the hijackers and to remove those associates ... and to remove any threat to the air system in the future."
The word "war" was on the lips of many U.S. lawmakers, who either called the attacks an act of war on the United States or called on Congress to declare a war of its own.
"America came face to face with undisguised evil," said Representative Nick Smith. "These acts of war may have bloodied America, but America will remain unbowed."
"There is no such thing as a measured response to this horrific attack," said Representative Shelley Berkley. "This act of war will be avenged."
Other lawmakers called for caution. "I think we need to give ourselves a bit of time," said Senator Byron Dorgan. "We need to take some dramatic action - this is clearly an act of war - but it's a different adversary and one without uniforms or geographical boundaries so I would want us to have a pretty good discussion to understand the ramifications on that."
"We've got to make sure when we retaliate, it's against the people who were involved in this terrorism and not just strike out blindly," said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a senior member of the House International Relations Committee.
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DALLAS - Fox News reported on Thursday that AMR Corp.'s American Airlines sent out an internal memo two weeks ago warning its employees to be vigilant about imposters after one of its crews had uniforms and ID badges stolen in Italy.
The world's largest airline declined to comment on the report, and airline employee sources said they had never heard of such a security warning.
No comment was immediately available from the FBI on the report on the Fox News Web site that the uniforms and identification were stolen when the crew's Rome hotel room was broken into a few months ago.
Federal law enforcement sources told Fox that they are looking at the incident with "renewed focus" to determine whether it is connected with the hijacked planes involved in Tuesday's deadly attacks on New York and outside Washington.
An airline spokesperson said that he could not comment on the report because the carrier is cooperating with the FBI and any information could affect investigations.
Two American Airlines aircraft and two jetliners from United Airlines were involved in the devastating attacks.
TITLE: Russia, U.S. Confer on Ways To Beat Terrorism
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin held a late-night telephone conversation with U.S. President George W. Bush, the Kremlin said on Thursday, one of a series of exchanges to discuss joint action on guerrilla attacks.
Russian media speculated the intense exchanges might signal that preparations for operations against the suspected brains behind Tuesday's deadly assault on the United States were under way. They singled out Afghanistan as the most likely target.
Deputy Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov, a former spy chief, talked to U.S. Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage, who was in Pakistan.
Trubnikov was speaking hours after Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service pledged to work with its former Cold War adversary on stopping terror.
Renegade Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden, sheltered by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, is a prime suspect in Tuesday's raids, although an Arab journalist in neighboring Pakistan quoted bin Laden saying he had nothing to do with the attacks.
Russia suspects bin Laden of supporting the armed Islamic insurgency in Chechnya.
Putin spoke twice with Bush on Wednesday as the two sought to put aside recent policy disputes and forge a new relationship built on a joint battle against terrorism. Putin offered two planeloads of medicine and supplies, as well as 70 rescue workers, and promised to share any intelligence information gathered about the origins of the airborne assaults on landmark buildings in New York and Washington. In deference to the U.S. tragedy, Putin canceled a military exercise simulating warfare with the United States and ordered a nationwide moment of silence Thursday.
In televised comments on Wednesday night, Putin blamed bin Laden and his associates for helping Chechen rebels who have been waging a war of independence inside Russia for most of the past seven years and were blamed for a series of 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow.
"We have reason to believe that bin Laden's people are connected with the events currently taking place in Chechnya," he said. "We know his people are present there. Our American partners cannot but be concerned about this circumstance. So we have a common foe, the common foe being international terrorism."
The calamitous events on American territory might provide an opening for Russia to redefine its relationship with the United States. The Kremlin has tried for some time to shift the international dialogue away from divisive issues such as missile defense and Russian abuses in Chechnya to the global threat of Islamic terrorism.
Russia has justified its campaign of repression in Chechnya as a necessary response to acts of domestic terrorism it blamed on Chechen rebels. Now, Russian officials say, Americans should sympathize more with Russia's determination to bring Chechnya to heel.
They have been equally quick to note that Bush's proposed nuclear shield would have done nothing to stop the hijacked planes that plowed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Russia's well-informed Vremya Novostei daily quoted sources in the Defense Ministry as saying they expected that Washington would make the first shots in its proclaimed "war" against perpetrators of Tuesday's attacks within the next two weeks.
It said the United States had steered clear of giving Moscow details of the operation, but presumed a political agreement might already have been reached on Russia aiding Washington in any campaign against Afghanistan, which Soviet troops invaded in 1979, beginning a disastrous decade-long occupation.
Russia maintains a sizeable military presence in ex-Soviet Tajikistan, which borders Afghanistan and would be a convenient base for an attack against targets inside the impoverished state.
Russian experts agreed that bin Laden was the most likely suspect as a prime organizer of Tuesday's attacks. But they differed on whether factions within the Taliban are willing to hand him over.
"Inside the Taliban, leaders differ over whether bin Laden should be extradited so that the Taliban can achieve the world recognition it needs in order for the regime to survive," said Yevgeny Pakhomov, a Russian journalist who specializes in the region.
Vyacheslav Belokrenitsky, chairman of the department of the Near and Middle East at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said, "The radical Islamic Arabs in Afghanistan, including bin Laden, are not only guests but partly masters of the situation in the country, making it very difficult for the Taliban to maneuver."
- Reuters, WP
TITLE: Counselors Say Trauma Will Have Impact All Over World
AUTHOR: By Patricia Reaney
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Harrowing images of the attack on the World Trade Center beamed into homes will have triggered trauma and grief not just in the United States but around the globe, experts said on Thursday.
Even people with no link to the tragedy may suffer vicarious trauma - seeing the horror and imagining that it could have happened to a family member or a friend.
Counsellors and psychologists said the full impact of the world's worst terror attack in which thousands are feared dead will be difficult to predict because it is unprecedented.
"The effects of seeing graphic portrayals of death and destruction and people leaping out of windows is likely to have a profound impact on people for a long time to come," said Rhian Thomas of the Samaritans in London. "It is likely to affect people internationally quite deeply."
The British-based charitable group that aids people in distress and at risk of suicide has had no increase in pleas for help, but Thomas said it was still quite early days.
Whether through tearful embraces, church services, candle lighting, telephone calls, e-mails or Internet chat rooms, people in the United States and around the world are openly expressing their grief.
But depression and thoughts of suicide surface when people suppress their feelings.
"We pick up the pieces when people have no one to talk to," Thomas said.
Trauma expert David Tredea, who counselled victims of the U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi in 1998, said that the emotions felt by survivors, victims' families and people everywhere will be incredibly complex for a very long time.
People's view of their own and the wider world is shattered and distorted and that is coupled with a sense of impotency about how to make it better.
"For many, many months people will have strange reactions," Tredrea said.
TITLE: City Rallies Behind Americans
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: At first, people refused to believe. Old women who lived through the blockade of Leningrad cried and crossed themselves. Everyone was glued to their television sets.
News of the terrorist attacks in New York and outside Washington D.C. began to seep through St. Petersburg at about 7 p.m. on Tuesday. "American cities attacked. The World Trade Center collapsed. The Pentagon is on fire," came the reports in a steady staccato. Like the rest of the world, the city in shock.
"May God save them!" an elderly woman near the Prospect Bolshevikov metro station repeated over and over again as she stood among a small crowd listening to the radio.
Early on Wednesday, average citizens began appearing at the U.S. Consulate on Furshtadskaya Ulitsa, placing flowers on the sidewalk and lighting candles in memory of the victims of the attacks. Small groups stood quietly with their heads bowed as the consulate's beefed-up security checked nearby cars.
"I'm shocked by what has happened," said Eteri, a pediatrician who asked that her last name not be used. With her mother and sister, all three dressed in black, Eteri placed red carnations on the growing pile of flowers.
Except for visa services, the consulate worked as normal on Wednesday. By Thursday, work had resumed in full, but it was interrupted by a bomb scare. An anonymous caller claimed a bomb was set to explode at 12 p.m., apparently timing his threat to coincide with a national minute of silence proclaimed by President Vladimir Putin for the same time.
The consulate was evacuated and searched by police. Nothing suspicious was found, and workers went back into the building about two hours later.
"I've worked in St. Petersburg for a year now, and during this year we have never received such calls," acting U.S. Consul General Michael Klechesky explained to reporters after the situation was resolved. "And the worst thing was that it happened on such a day."
Vil Afanasiev, 69, was among those who came to the consulate on Wednesday. For three hours he stood outside as his son and his American daughter-in-law, who are both deaf and who arrived from New York on Aug. 22, were inside trying desperately to get news about her parents who live in New York City.
"It was such a restless night. We couldn't get through to the United States to find out if Margo's parents are alive. Her father works right next to the World Trade Center," Afanasiev said.
When Margo Gray, 36, emerged from the consulate, it was obvious from her face that the news was good. "They're alive! Alive," she managed to say with difficulty. Her blue eyes filled with tears and the trio embraced.
As the day went on, the pile of flowers grew and a line of well-wishers appeared to sign the condolence book.
"When Russian people realize that I'm an American, they approach me and hug me," said Paul Kloesel, 50, an electrical contractor who said that he heard the news about the tragedy as he arrived from America at Pulkovo International Airport on Tuesday.
Klechesky appeared in front of the consulate to thank local residents and the government for their sympathy and support. "It wasn't just an attack against America. It was an attack against all civilized countries, all countries where human life has value," Klechesky said, adding that both Russia and the United States are more united than ever in the fight against international terrorism.
On the consulate bulletin board, a fresh notice warned "all American citizens to exercise extreme caution and keep a very low profile, not drawing attention to themselves."
"We came to figure out the traveling-schedule matters," said one man who was in a group of four tourists from California that exited the building.
A pale young man standing nearby looked lost. "You know, I am just standing here and trying to understand why they did that. Do you understand? Do you know why?" Twenty-year-old Magomet asked.
The U.S. Consulate advises people who would like to check on friends and relatives in the United States to call the following numbers:
Hotline in Moscow: (095) 258-2525. Hotline in the United States: +1 (866) 487-8472 or +1 (405) 552-7300.
TITLE: Local Officials Implement Tighter Security Measures
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and Le nin grad Oblast Governor Valery Ser dyu kov were among the dozens of Russian officials expressing their condolences to the people and government of the United States on Wednesday. Both governors visited the U.S. Consulate on Wednesday morning to leave sympathy messages in a condolence book and to speak with acting U.S. Consul General Michael Klechesky.
"This tragedy shows yet again that international efforts against terrorism must be unified to prevent disasters such as this," reads Serdyukov's entry.
"The worst thing that can happen in St. Petersburg now would be for people to start panicking," Yakovlev told reporters Wednesday. The governor called for an emergency meeting of the special anti-terrorist commission that was created several years ago to coordinate all city efforts in light of the Chechen conflict. Yakovlev has been holding regular meetings with the heads of local police, military units, traffic police, the Federal Security Service, the emergency-situations board and other bodies charged with ensuring public safety.
St. Petersburg Police Chief Veniamin Petukhov told reporters Wednesday that his office had received an order from the Interior Ministry in Moscow to prepare a coordinated set of anti-terrorism measures in St. Petersburg.
Seven thousand police officers are currently implementing safety measures in the city in the wake of Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and outside Washington D.C., Petukhov said. On Wed nesday morning, Petukhov held a joint meeting of district police heads of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast in order to coordinate their efforts.
"I am convinced that the forces we have mustered and the mechanisms we have developed to provide public safety in St. Petersburg and the surrounding area will be sufficient," Petukhov said. "We are aware of what our vulnerable spots are, and we know where the most important and sensitive objects are."
Officers of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and the St. Petersburg traffic police have also been involved in enforcing the heightened safety measures. The Interior Ministry has authorized local police to use students of St. Petersburg military schools for assistance if necessary.
"The Leningrad Atomic Energy Station, all railway stations, highways and airports have been put under special control," said Alexei Vostretsov, spokesperson for the St. Petersburg FSB. The U.S. Consulate and its staff have received additional protection.
Vice Governor Mikhail Mikhai lov sky said that particular attention is being paid to abandoned cars throughout the city. They are being searched, as are basements and attics.
"On Tuesday alone, 74 abandoned cars were searched by the traffic police," he said, adding that nothing suspicious was discovered.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Alexander Golovin, head of the safety department of Pulkovo Airlines, said that flight paths for arrivals to Pulkovo International Airport had been re-routed in order not to pass over central St. Petersburg. All flights over the territory of the city have been banned.
"Pulkovo Airlines does not fly to the U.S. but Western airlines such as Finnair and Air France have canceled their flights to the United States," Golovin said. "No other flights have been canceled."
Starting Wednesday, customs officers at Pulkovo were authorized to confiscate all sharp-edged items such as knives, scissors or razor blades from passengers, Golovin said.
"Mechanisms separating the cockpit from the passenger area, including all doors, will be checked," he added.
"In fact, we constantly live in a situation of potential risk of a terrorist attack given the crisis in Chechnya," Petukhov said. "In addition, we routinely get several phone calls everyday warning of bombs. We must check out each of these calls, so we have plenty of training."
Although Petukhov expressed concern that sympathizers with Chechen separatists might respond to the U.S. disaster by organizing their own terrorist acts, he denied speculation that Chechen nationals or other Caucasians would be targeted for scrutiny.
"There won't be any kind of Chechen hunting," Petukhov said. "We will look for suspicious activity, not particular skin color."
"We all learn a lot from others' experiences. The American tragedy has shown everyone that methods of fighting and preventing terrorism must be changed," Petukhov said.
Anyone wishing to report any suspicious activity is advised to call the normal emergency number, 02.
TITLE: Texas Mosque Is Firebombed
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: DALLAS - A firebomb was hurled at a mosque and Islamic school in Texas, a day after windows were shot out at a similar Islamic center near Dallas, police said on Thursday.
Damage was minor at the Islamic Society of Denton after the homemade firebomb burst against a front window late on Wednesday, police in the city about 64 kilometers north of Dallas said.
"It was a Molotov cocktail made out of a beer bottle," said police duty officer Wanda Rollans.
Mosque officials blamed the attack on misplaced anger against Muslims after Tuesday's terror attacks in New York and outside Washington, linked by a mounting pile of evidence to an Arab connection and possibly to Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden.
About 150 Muslims attend services at the center, the only mosque in Denton, he said.
The FBI and agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were helping with the investigation, Denton police said.
TITLE: Local Markets Relatively Calm
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark and Kirill Koriukin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The dollar remained relatively firm against the ruble Wednesday and Thursday despite speculation, while stocks rose 1.8 percent Thursday after falling more than 5 percent Wednesday after the attacks on the United States.
The panic that made Russians dump dollars on Tuesday was over by Wed nes day morning. Exchange rates - which fell as low as 15 rubles per dollar at some exchanges - returned to normal.
At some exchanges, dollar prices didn't match the Central Bank rate, but experts expected they would catch up. The Central Bank rate was stable, losing 1 kopek over the two days to finish at $29.47 on Thursday.
The Russian Central Bank decided not to intercede in trading, but currency dealers said activity was low anyway. The number of transactions was limited partly because fewer go-betweens were involved, which is normal in a volatile environment, said Artyom Roshchin, a dealer with the Aljba Alliance bank.
Tuesday's panic prompted several top officials to urge the public to stay calm. Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov went on television Wednesday to say there was no reason for the dollar value to drop. "Don't panic, and don't sell at 20 rubles," he said. Central Bank head Viktor Gerashchenko backed Kasyanov, saying the bank maintained its control over the foreign-exchange market and would keep the ruble-dollar rate stable.
Banks that slashed dollar rates to cash in on the panic would be punished, Interfax quoted Central Bank Deputy Chairman Oleg Mozhaiskov as saying.
Under a Central Bank instruction, the difference between the buying and the selling rates at hard-currency exchanges may not exceed 15 percent - which many exchanges ignored Tuesday.
"Everything is normal now," Mozhaiskov said. "Certain banks behaved inappropriately, and I am very sorry that many of my compatriots exchanged their [dollar] savings at a rate that was obviously unfair," he said.
However, the ruble-dollar exchange- rate stability is not necessarily good for Russia in the long term, one economist said. As the dollar falls against European currencies, the ruble will fall with it.
Analysts are having difficulty predicting the effect on the local equity market because the situation in the United States is unclear - with markets not expected to open until later this week.
Russian investors continued to buy Russian stocks, said James Fenkner, equity strategist with Troika Dialog. However, he said the RTS will fall at least another 20 percent in the next two months.
"The attacks will change the U.S. consumer's view of risk and consumption. It will change their equity appetite," said David Herne, chief investment officer at Brunswick Capital Management, at the Euromoney conference. "Over the short term, there will be chaos. Over the medium term, you're going to have some significant downside for all markets that are perceived as risky."
Furthermore, the events in the United States may hold back initial public offerings. "The IPO market is developing. It was possible to raise money for a company both domestically and internationally. [This] is now delayed maybe six months," Herne said.
TITLE: Central Banks Step In To Stabilize World Currencies
AUTHOR: By Peter Nielsen
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LONDON - Guardians of the global economy stabilized shaky financial markets and shored up business and consumer confidence on Thursday to prevent worldwide recession from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Although the European Central Bank kept its key interest rates unchanged, it pumped in fresh money to avoid a cash crunch in banking systems unsettled by Tuesday's terror attacks on the United States.
In a statement the ECB signaled its readiness to act in concert with other major central banks to defuse any economic impact from the attacks by hijacked aircraft on landmarks in New York and outside Washington.
Underlining their concern that European banks could face difficulties, the ECB and the Federal Reserve agreed to a swap arrangement, under which the ECB would be able to draw up to $50 billion, while the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will get an equivalent amount of deposits in euros.
Markets remained broadly stable on Thursday with very thin trading volumes, calmed by injections of some $120 billion of cash by central banks so markets could continue to function.
European stocks were slightly higher in an uncertain mood without a lead from Wall Street. U.S. Treasuries, trading for the first time since Tuesday, surged in anticipation of fresh Federal Reserve rate cuts to fend off recession.
As the smoke clears from the rubble of the collapsed World Trade Center and the damaged Pentagon, it is becoming apparent that global economic growth will be affected due to the disruption of financial markets and the serious blow to the confidence of U.S. consumers.
The only question is how much. So far the International Monetary Fund expects limited impact, but longer term it depends on the U.S. political and military response to the attacks.
"Our present assessment is that despite the scale of the human tragedy these terrible events will have only a limited impact on the international economy and global financial system," IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler said on Wednesday.
The world economy was already facing its first serious downturn in a decade before Tuesday's suicide attacks on U.S. landmarks and economists fear a large-scale reaction by the U.S. could push it over the edge.
"The attacks come at a time when the outlook for both the global and U.S. economy was finely balanced between a [subdued] recovery, versus a deeper slowdown or even recession," investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston said.
Before the attacks, the IMF had already revised downwards its global growth forecasts several times, most recently to 2.7 percent this year, down from almost 5 percent last year.
The terror attacks are expected to deal a heavy blow to the confidence of U.S. consumers, who were looked to as a counterweight to the decline in corporate investment.
"The risks for the [US] economy must therefore now be seen as tilted toward the pessimistic scenario," CSFB added.
While a limited reaction by the U.S. against terrorist groups would have little economic impact, all bets are off if the response is more widespread.
"In contrast, a conflict that directly involves another nation state - particularly an oil-producing nation - would have much more serious ramifications," investment bank J.P. Morgan said, describing the attack as a significant but very temporary blow to the economy.
Asian companies were already starting to feel the ripple impact on Thursday, with delays ranging from stock market listings to billion-dollar plane orders.
The Asian Development Bank said recovery will be delayed.
"We were relatively confident of a turnaround in the first quarter of 2002 but the catastrophe will have a dramatic impact, delaying the global recovery by a couple of quarters," assistant chief economist Nagarajah Gnanathurai told a news conference.
Japan's economy, the world's second- largest, remains on the verge of recession with a member of the Bank of Japan board saying the economy continued to move backwards.
Europe's economy is also showing feeble growth, with the eurozone economy growing by 0.1 percent in the second quarter of this year compared to the first quarter, for an annual rate of 1.7 percent, down from 2.4 percent in the first quarter.
The closure of U.S. financial markets since Tuesday has cut trading volumes, some saying by up to two thirds. This has dried up trading in many other financial instruments, such as Asian bonds and credit derivatives, which use Treasuries to hedge interest- rate exposures.
The first warning of stress in the financial system came from Tokyo where traders encountered minor problems settling some dollar trades in New York, leaving banks to unexpectedly cover short positions because matching funds had not arrived.
The foreign-exchange settlement systems, which under normal circumstances handle volumes of some $3 trillion daily, are the backbone of the world financial system and any problems could quickly lead to total global gridlock.
But the Bank of Japan said there were no notable problems and international-payments experts played down the impact, saying authorities had anticipated all sorts of problems stemming from disruption of trading systems at the Word Trade Center.
Leading central banks and governments are coordinating their response to the financial effects of the terror attacks.
The ECB said that while normal market conditions were expected to prevail in the period ahead, it would continue to monitor developments in financial markets and take action if necessary. "The Eurosystem is coordinating its activity with the Federal Reserve System of the United States and other major central banks of the world," it added.
The outlook for the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington on Sept 29 and 30 were unclear with Germany saying they may not take place.
"At the moment one does not see oneself in the position to let the IMF meeting take place in Washington on the scheduled date," a spokesperson for the German Finance Ministry said. The same applied for the G-7 meeting, he said.
TITLE: Insurers To Face Over $3 Bln in New York Claims
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: NEW YORK - The damage caused by the two airplanes that crashed into New York's World Trade Center on Tuesday will cost insurers worldwide billions of dollars in what may be the most expensive man-made insured event ever.
The total bill, which could take years to establish, is likely to top the $3 billion insurers paid out for the Piper Alpha oil platform explosion off the coast of Britain in 1988, the most expensive man-made event to date.
It will certainly be the most expensive man-made insurance loss in U.S. history, topping the $775 million paid out after the Los Angeles riots of 1992.
Insurers face claims for the complete destruction of the two World Trade Center towers, which cost $750 million to build in the early 1970s. Insurers will also pick up damage to surrounding buildings and cars, plus the costs of firms relocating and making up their lost income.
TITLE: Financial District Struggling To Reconnect
AUTHOR: By Jim Krane
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Teams of utility workers, trying to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed by Tuesday's terrorist attack in New York City's financial district, raced Thursday to reconnect telephone, electric and other services necessary for the resumption of stock trading.
Although Treasury bond and futures contracts resumed trading early Thursday, the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ Stock Market and American Stock Exchange were all shuttered for a third session because of the widespread destruction caused by the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers early Tuesday. Market officials said the severity of the damage was expected to keep stock trading from starting until Friday at the earliest, but no later than Monday.
The attacks knocked out phones, electricity and other basic services across Manhattan's financial district, and market officials said it might be Monday before workers are able to restore then fully. The local telephone provider, Verizon, said one of its five switching centers near the disaster cite was knocked out of service. Some 200,000 lines and 3 million data circuits, or private lines that normally serve business customers, are housed in the building.
The damage to the American Stock Exchange, which was located in a building not far from the World Trade Center, was so severe that some parts of its operations might be temporarily relocated at the NYSE, which remains intact, or at other regional markets, NYSE Chairperspon Richard Grasso said Wednesday.
The offices of hundreds of companies were destroyed, and hundreds of other firms were forced to flee buildings that were damaged or closed. Even as they were in the process of trying to locate missing employees, the firms worked nonstop to set up operations at replacement offices far from Wall Street's narrow alleys.
Many firms, while speaking of their new arrangements, declined to specify exact locales for security reasons.
Information services company Electronic Data Systems Corp. was hustling to set up temporary New Jersey offices for a large brokerage whose World Trade Center quarters were destroyed. EDS declined to identify the company.
Merrill Lynch cannot presently access its football-field-sized trading floors in the World Financial Center, which also suffered significant damage.
"We have contingency plans for activities to be carried out at other locations. In fact, I'm speaking to you from an emergency location right now," said Merrill Lynch spokesperson Rich Silverman.
Still, the industry's task was being made somewhat easier by the fact that many financial firms have their operations in other parts of New York or in other cities.
Although the Bear Stearns brokerage firm kept a facility in the financial district to help process trades, its primary operations are in midtown Manhattan and New Jersey, said spokesperson Elizabeth Ventura.
"Our ability to trade was not impaired by this horrible tragedy," she said. "But we do have emergency backup facilities. We have very large trading facilities ready that we would be able to move into were there an emergency."
Morgan Stanley, the biggest tenant in the World Trade Center towers that were wiped out by the attacks, keeps its trading desk elsewhere in New York. The two towers were home to stock brokers who dealt with investor accounts, and those ofices are being relocated.
With its corporate headquarters in the World Financial Center unaccessible, American Express is shifting staff to other Manhattan locations and New Jersey. The company's trading operations are in Minneapolis, said Ted Truscott, chief investment officer at American Express Financial Advisers.
Larger financial companies and institutions generally keep duplicate computer networks and financial data in sites outside Manhattan, making the process of restoring operations possible, said Dan Burke, a brokerage industry analyst for Gomez Advisors of Lincoln, Massachussetts. Many of those data centers sit across the river in New Jersey or in other locations in the country.
"They can be up and running very quickly in an alternate location," Burke said.
Problems occur with smaller companies who back up information manually, rather than maintaining duplicate computer networks. For them, data on trades executed Monday night on overseas markets might not have been saved before the attacks, said John Jackson, president of the disaster recovery division for Comdisco, of Rosemont, Illinois.
"Based on my knowledge of the companies, there is some significant data loss," said Jackson, whose company is helping rebuild networks for six World Trade Center-based companies and 29 others whose nearby offices are shuttered. "Anything they've done since the last backup occurred is lost."
Typically, the missing data is retrievable through paper records or employees' memories.
"But in this case, all the paper is gone because the building is gone. The employees who might otherwise have been able to recreate the transactions might have been killed," said Jackson, whose company also recovered data for companies displaced by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Melissa Solomon, a reporter at Computerworld Magazine, said her office had been deluged with calls from information-technology workers interested in helping out.
"We've been getting hundreds of calls," she said. "We're hoping to soon have information on our Web site on how people can add their names to a list of volunteer information-technology workers to help."
TITLE: Traffic Halt Leading to Record Loss For Airlines
AUTHOR: By Stephanie Nebehay
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: GENEVA - World airlines face $10 billion in immediate revenue losses and extra costs due to the terror attacks in the United States, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Thursday.
William Gaillard, spokesperson for the IATA whose member carriers include all major airlines, also told Reuters in an interview that the industry could be facing "record losses" this year in the wake of Tuesday's attacks.
About 4,000 of the world's 12,000 commercial airliners have been grounded since four commercial jets were hijacked in the attacks. U.S. air space has been essentially closed since then and only reopened to commercial traffic on a case-by-case basis from 1 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday (9 p.m. local time).
The U.S. market is worth about $1 billion per day, according to IATA. But the slowdown on Canadian and Mexican markets, as well as in transpacific and transatlantic traffic, must also be taken into account.
"This is a ballpark figure, but we could be talking about immediate losses of $10 billion dollars this week alone. There could be a ripple effect, too," Gaillard sid in an interview at IATA headquarters near Geneva's Cointrin airport.
"A week ago we were talking about losses of about $2.8 billion dollars on international scheduled traffic this year. There is no doubt it is going to be more," he added.
"And if we add U.S. domestic to that, which is a big chunk of the whole thing, we could be facing record losses. This would be the first time since 1994," Gaillard said.
The IATA annual figures cover only international scheduled flights and do not include the U.S. domestic market.
Last year, IATA's members made a small profit of $2.8 billion on international services, slightly up on 1999 but well under 2 percent of their overall revenues.
The world's airlines suffered heavy losses in the period from1990 to 94. The worst year was after the 1991 Gulf War, with IATA airlines reporting combined losses of $7.5 billion in 1992, Gaillard said.
"We have to restore confidence in flying, the economy is pretty soft. All this contributes to rather dim prospects for the future," Gaillard said.
"It means enormous financial losses, of course, but right now the airlines are not thinking about dollar signs, they are thinking about lives. They are thinking of saving the lives of their passengers and their crews," he added.
IATA has strongly condemned the attacks by suicide hijackers who flew the commercial aircraft into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington.
It has called an emergency meeting of its security committee, likely to be held in Montreal next week, to discuss how best to prevent this new form of hijacking, he said.
"We are also thinking about this new threat, which is something that we are not used to - terrorists who are ready to lose their life in the attacks," he said.
"This is not something that existed in previous decades. We dealt with hijackers in the 1970s, and we dealt with bombs in the 1980s. This is definitely something that leads us to completely reconsider some of the security measures that exist."
TITLE: This Is Not War - This Is Terrorism
AUTHOR: By Nicholas Berry
TEXT: THE first impulse is to strike hard. "America Under Attack" headlines CNN. Anger boils. Members of Congress call for a robust military response. Conventional wisdom expects retribution. The conclusion from Secretary of State Colin Powell to virtually every newspaper columnist is that "this is war."
This is not war. This is not another Pearl Harbor. This is terrorism.
Although military action is now mandatory, terrorism must be treated differently from an attack upon the United States by a foreign country, which is clearly an act of war.
War is the use of armed force to break an enemy's will to resist. The enemy is a state (or a group hoping to organize a state), and that state's economy, population and political authority are the focus of combat and psychological operations. The goal is to reach the point at which the enemy does not have the option to continue the war. War ends when terms are accepted.
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda (the Base) terrorist network - presumably the only organization other than the IRA capable of such a complex, professional terrorist attack (according to a high CIA official interviewed recently) - is not a state, has no economy and has no constitutional political responsibilities. It can exist as long as its leaders and members survive. It has no incentive to accept terms. In fact, the United States has no terms to offer people like bin Laden.
Terrorists use violence to weaken a political authority, such as the United States. They do not plan to conquer America, but to induce Washington to do something stupid and counterproductive. Terrorists want the United States to overreact by killing innocent civilians. They want drama, big drama, to advertise their anti-U.S.-Israel struggle. The more massive the use of force the United States directs at al-Qaeda and its supporters, the higher the terrorist's political cause is elevated. A direct, showy military confrontation only publicizes the contest and makes any setback by the United States - losing aircraft, having a raiding party decimated or captured or incurring massive collateral damage - appear to be another major victory for the terrorists. A quick and clumsy response could very well bog down U.S. forces in protracted operations on difficult terrain.
The United States should not play this game.
Instead, show patience. Gather evidence. Track the directorate of al-Qaeda and its main lieutenants, for surely they have all gone to ground and all known terrorist bases have been evacuated. Energize and network with foreign intelligence agencies - especially those of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Egypt and Israel - that have agents and monitoring capabilities on terrorists and their cells. Make a solid case identifying the guilty to America and the world. Act when there is a high probability of success. And that will take time and extensive planning.
What of those who harbor the terrorists? It was a mistake for President George W. Bush to proclaim, "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." A distinction must be made. Attacking Afghanistan, Iran and/or Iraq would have adverse consequences. First, their political authorities have been electronically monitored, and no major terrorist operation would risk revealing its plan to these authorities prior to the attack. Afghanistan's Taliban was undoubtedly as surprised as everyone else. Second, the governments of these countries have priorities other than inciting and confronting overwhelming U.S. armed might. Some officials may applaud the attack, but they want nothing to do with al-Qaeda's operations. Third, attacking them would unite all factions in these governments and their populations against the United States and Israel. This would expand support for the terrorist organization. This would be war.
Does the United States want to promote - in alliance with Israel - a wider conflict against major oil producers? Does the United States want to endorse the policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon? Is Washington willing to use enough force in the air and on the ground to compel these states to give up the terrorists and the officials who harbor them?
This is not war and should not be made one.
The object of war is not to destroy and eliminate a state for all time. A Carthaginian peace involves genocide or mass murder. But the object of a campaign against such a dangerous terrorist organization as al-Qaeda is to destroy and eliminate it for all time.
Al-Qaeda cannot be reformed, cannot be lived with and cannot be allowed to exist. Its leaders must be removed, its popular support diminished, its sanctuaries denied and its rank and file compelled to melt away. Although military forces must necessarily be involved in performing these tasks, their role is more that of police than of warriors. Like police work, the apprehension of the perpetrators presages public trials according to legal processes that serve to condemn and punish the bloody deeds of the guilty. Specific officials who harbor terrorists should likewise be indicted. Unlike the brute force of terrorists, trials are the civilized means of ensuring justice. The rule of law thereby contrasts with the rule of the jungle. A distinction is made between a civil society and a lawless one. Of course, as with police work, it may be necessary to shoot when apprehension is resisted, although killing all the suspects would be a political setback.
Diplomats, too, have a role in eliminating the terrorists' political cause. Peace in the Middle East is long overdue. Bush's hands-off policy has not enhanced the security of Israel. Ultimately, Israel and Palestine will have to be reconciled.
And that will not require war, either.
Nicholas Berry is a senior analyst with the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Where Will Anti-Terrorism Alliance Lead?
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: THE unthinkable has happened in New York and the carnage - comparable to the aftermath of a nuclear attack-may prompt the United States to respond in unthinkable ways.
The main target of U.S. wrath is obvious: the Saudi dissident millionaire Osama bin Laden, who has for several years taken refuge in Afghanistan. In public statements, bin Laden has threatened to attack not only U.S. military and government targets, but also civilians. In a 1997 interview with CNN, he said, "Regarding the American people, they are not exonerated from responsibility because they chose this government and voted for it despite their knowledge of its crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and other places." In the same interview, he mentioned the U.S. nuclear attacks on Japan in 1945 as an unpunished crime.
In retrospect, a terrorist air attack is not as difficult as it seems. It's easy to hijack a civilian U.S. airplane simply by threatening to use arms and explosives, without necessarily actually having any. Airport metal detectors are not of much use as American and European pilots are trained to obey orders from hijackers to save innocent passengers' lives.
The only issue that would require serious organizational preparation is training suicide bombers to fly the planes once the pilots have been overpowered. Many civilian commercial pilots are trained each year, including pilots from Third World countries, to fly for their countries' airlines. With bin Laden's money and connections in the Muslim world, it would probably not be impossible for him to slip several of his men in.
Then the only problem would be to book tickets. It's significant that all the hijacked planes were on internal flights, boarding for which does not involve passport or any other serious identity checks. So all the hijackers could get airborne at approximately the same time.
The attacks were a peculiar combination of "regular" air terrorism and the tactics of Japanese suicide pilots who slammed their planes into Allied warships during World War II.
This tactic caught the security services off guard, but next time they will certainly be ready. U.S. authorities have already declared no-fly zones near big cities, nuclear power stations and other high-risk targets. The United States has air-defense missiles, fighters and radars to control the skies and impose such restrictions. It is also possible that armed guards may be put on civilian planes as the Israelis have been doing for years.
In 1983, a Soviet fighter shot down a South Korean Boeing 747 that strayed into Soviet air space. The destruction of the aircraft carrying passengers was condemned by the international community. However, today the United States might be prepared to shoot down its own civilian planes if they stray off course.
America is clearly on a war footing, and retaliatory action is imminent. In August 1998, it attacked targets in Afghanistan and Sudan less than two weeks after terrorist bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
On that occasion, bin Laden escaped unharmed because cruise missiles with conventional warheads were powerless to destroy reinforced underground bunkers. During the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, bin Laden engineered the construction of large underground bunkers that could withstand direct hits from the Soviet Air Force. Today, he is probably sitting in one of these shelters.
When the United States strikes again, it will surely use more firepower than it did in 1998. Bin Laden may or may not be guilty, but it doesn't really matter because he has previously taken responsibility for attacks on U.S. targets. To land a decisive blow, the United States may even use nuclear bombs delivered by B-2 stealth bombers in combination with conventional weapons to kill bin Laden and possibly also Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar in bunkers in the Qandahar area of Afghanistan.
Russia has actively been supporting anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, and President Vladimir Putin is apparently ready to support the United States if it decides to "wipe out" Islamic radicals. Last year, Moscow secretly offered Washington the use of its bases in Tajikistan to launch an attack against bin Laden. Now, Putin may expect Washington to support Russia's "anti-terrorist" operations in the Caucasus in return.
At the same time, however, Russia wants to sell up to $10 billion worth of modern weapons to Iran and Syria - countries the U.S. authorities accuse of supporting terrorism. Thus, the newly forged anti-terrorist alliance between Moscow and Washington may well be short-lived and end in acrimony.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst based in Moscow.
TITLE: Americans, Russians Come Together in Grief
TEXT: A statement from the U.S. Embassy.
[On Tuesday] a terrible tragedy was visited upon the United States and the American people.
Today, our thoughts and prayers go out to the thousands of people who were killed or injured in the senseless attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania and to their families. We acknowledge the bravery and dedication of their fellow citizens involved in rescue operations, many of whom also lost their lives.
I would like to express the heartfelt gratitude of the Government of the United States and of the American people to President Putin and to the Government of the Russian Federation for their condolences and kind offers of assistance. I would also like to thank the countless ordinary Russian citizens for their outpouring of sympathy. Your calls and the flowers you have left in front of the embassy are deeply appreciated.
Terrorism can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but it cannot shake the resolve of the American people. We will persevere. These despicable acts will not change the way we live. They will not change the way we work. They will not change the way in which our government pursues its interests and values around the world.
As President Bush said [Tuesday]: "America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism."
Alexander Vershbow
United States Ambassador to
The Russian Federation
Editor,
We are sorry to hear what happened to the United States on Tuesday, and we offer our condolences to our U.S. clients and to those families, relatives and friends of people who lost loved ones in this tragedy.
We did not expect ever to see something like this, and we are deeply shocked by the incidents that happened Tuesday.
Anatoly Litkin
Russian Connection
St. Petersburg
Editor,
My name is Igor Salnikov. Although I wrote the song "Autumn Generation" a long time ago, it came back to my head when I saw the New York bombing on television last night. Thousands of nice people from all over the world are gone.
But they will stay with us. I have friends living in Manhattan and don't know yet what happened to them.
I dedicate "Autumn Generation" to the memory of those who left us on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York.
You can find the song on my band's page www.mp3.com/zachem.
Igor Salnikov
St. Petersburg
Editor,
It's been 3 1/2 years since I came to America to go to the university. The morning of the attack, I was on my way to school. There was traffic as usual driving down the highway. It was a sunny gorgeous day. I had a lot of worries on my mind planning my senior year, as well as the future.
All of that got wiped out after I heard the news of the first plane crashing into one of the towers. I can't explain how it felt. You feel totally helpless and lost. You definitely do not think about yourself and the plans you've made. I totally could not believe something like this could happen in America. The second attack just minutes later made it clear that is was an act of terrorism, an act of war.
Everyone in schools and offices was listening, watching the more and more surrealistic news and praying for those hurt and killed.
It is odd. Manhattan looks like a war zone. It just does not make sense in this country. Some Americans think that there are other countries that are cheering. I believe the opposite, and it makes me proud of my people and my country when I see a chance for Russia to help America in any possible way. I am proud of my country. I believe that in this horrifying situation, Russia has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to show the whole world that it can be relied on. I think every Russian person here in the United States feels the same.
I want to say thank you to all the Muscovites and other Russians who showed their support to the American victims and their families. My American friends ask me if I think Russia will be supportive of America. They believe that Russia is a country that actually could help in a lot of ways. I say: "Of course, I have no doubt. I believe my country would not let anyone down."
Here, on the other side of the world, we are hoping that no more attacks will happen. It is just too scary. It gives me goosebumps every time I look at the photos or watch the news. Lost fathers, sons, families.
A few of us spent an hour today trying to donate blood for the victims of the attack. There were lines at the Red Cross center and hundreds of concerned citizens waiting for their turn to donate blood. I wish we could do more.
Natalia Kurtuchova
New York City
Editor,
As you read this, please, take a moment of silence to remember and pray for the victims of the attack upon America. Thank you.
We must be careful now of how we respond to this vicious assault upon the Free World as a whole, and when we do retaliate we must be absolutely sure about any evidence that points a finger towards any group and/or country. We must provide our evidence when it is gathered, truthfully and completely for the entire world to see. To do otherwise would be playing into the hands of the people who have committed this act of aggression.
America has a great responsibility that comes with being the most powerful country on Earth, and it must now provide an example for other countries to follow. The people responsible for these cowardly acts of mass murder and destructiveness are certainly wondering at this time: What are you going to do now, America?
Freedom remains undaunted. Bravery is undeterred, and America still stands proud. Buildings and institutions can be replaced, and the many victims are now nestled safely and lovingly upon the palm of God.
I feel at this moment that I could leave my home and go anywhere and up to anyone at all in my country or any other country in the Free World for that matter, and no matter who that person may be - rich, poor, young, old, man, woman, black, white, Oriental, whatever - and join them in saying: "We shall get through this great tragedy and we shall become stronger because of it. My friend, we shall stand together."
I also feel great hope for the future in knowing that we will never forget Tuesday, Sept. 11th, 2001.
Brad Westcott
New York City
Editor,
I want to thank all of Russia, for not only showing solidarity with all Americans but for all civilized people of the world. As I speak to you, I'm watching my local news in Los Angeles. Six thousand body bags have been ordered to the site of the towers. Everyone must remember that Russians, Africans, Central and South Americans and so on have been killed brutally and without reason.
My sincere hope is that both our countries can cooperate, work together, get over all our menial disagreements and get on with the business of securing our world from terrorists.
George Jorochilov
Los Angeles, California
Editor,
I wish to thank everyone who has sent flowers to the American Embassy in Moscow and who has thought and prayed for us at this terrible time. It means much to each and every one of us who has seen such heartfelt sypmathy and friendship from around the world. Thank you.
Chris Feistner
Villisca, Iowa
Editor,
I am just an American citizen who would like to thank all the citizens of the great country of Russia for all the support and thoughts for the people of the United States at this difficult time. We are truely thankful to have Russia among the countries that we can call friends and allies in this very tragic time. I hope that in the future that we will only become closer. God bless you, the people of Russia.
Jeff Schwisow
Monroe, Washington
Editor,
We Americans have been so lucky for so long that this makes me feel like we've just lost our innocence, if you can call it that. We have always thought somehow that we are invulnerable, but of course we are not. No military defense system, no star wars, nothing can stop this kind of attack, but somehow we still believed "it couldn't happen here." Our way of life changed today, forever I guess.
Dee Reid
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Editor,
We see the smoke from our window. So much is lost! I can't imagine what we will learn of the lives gone. We have lost the freedom to congregate in public places and to celebrate what we create together. I think Americans never really knew that in our land.We are all going to realize how much this touches those in our community as we get together in school on the first day. Already I have heard the stories of friends who have not found loved ones. There have been good stories, too: People who worked downtown and were seemingly lost but found a way to contact loved ones after many hours, even into the middle of the night on Tuesday.
I worry about the children. Many I fear will have lost parents. Other children will live in fear of losing parents and loved ones.
I wonder when the plazas and public places will open and how easily we will enter them on a breezy afternoon. There has been in the last few years such a resurgence of cities! All cities in the United States have built parks and public gardens, places to be together. How comfortable will we be when we come together now?
Finally, last night, I heard politicians and reporters talk about our civil liberties and how they need to be tightened. I was most scared of this. What will we lose if we allow terrorists to change our way of justice?
My personal fear: I oppose the death penalty fervently. I always have. This has been a basic tenet for me. Now, I don't know.
Claudine Jellison
New York City
TITLE: VOX POPULI
TEXT: St. Petersburg Times reporter Irina Titova spoke to local residents on Wednesday near the American Consulate on Furshtatskaya Ulitsa. Photos by Alexander Belenky. Galina Boriskina, 56, doctor
I'm in shock. When I saw those people on the upper floors of the World Trade Center waving their scarfs I couldn't breathe. It was terrible to realize that I am seeing them now, and in a few minutes they will be dead. I couldn't help crying.
I think that nowhere in the world should people become hostages of political games. I don't know who did this. What caused such actions? Well, I think there may have been some unfair actions toward someone by the Americans.
And I'm afraid. I'm afraid of the worldwide conflict that may lead to the end of civilization. America is a country that doesn't forgive such things. If it answers, we may not avoid this conflict.
Ilya Klebanov, 29, office worker
There is no point in considering any political reasons for this terrorist attack. First of all, it's a human tragedy. A terrorist action is the meanest way of fighting. The people who did this simply can do nothing else but this.
What I'm most afraid of now is a thoughtless response on the American side.
Andrei, 16, student
The first impression I had when heard the news was that World War III had started. I was afraid the Americans would instantly fight back, and perhaps against Russia, because our country is a big rival of the United States, and they could have thought that it was us who was attacking them.
My father works in a Russian-American company in St. Petersburg, and he was very much alarmed.
Ikbal, 28,
medical student from Pakistan
We are very sorry for the American people. We were absolutely shocked when we saw the news on television.
Lena Berman, 46, mathematician
My mind can't understand this tragedy. It's so cruel. However, I could do nothing else but bring at least these flowers to the consulate during my lunch break.
I think that all the civilized world should colsolidate now against international terrorism. There have already been terrorist acts in Russia, Israel and other counries. However, I'm also surprised that today I have also heard such reactions as: "America deserves it. They shouldn't think they are the best!"
Viktor Chubakov, 55
The United States has the leading position in the world in all senses. That is why the terrorists made such a significant blow. They wanted to demonstrate their opportunities and to show their strength.
Logically, I understand that the United States will take revenge now, but I'd want them to analyze the situation thoroughly first.
Maxim Nikolayev, 28, businessman
My friends Kelly Kilpac and Max Tyomkin live in Boston and California. They were far away from the scene, but I'm still so sorry for the American people.
Unfortunately, people usually unite only under a common threat. I hope our governments will unite and finally manage to strangle this evil. We can't stand it anymore.
TITLE: 'dear pamela' restores faith in bdt
AUTHOR: by Simon Patterson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If there were any doubts that the Bolshoi Drama Theater was still capable of staging vibrant drama, the new production of "Dear Pamela," which had its premiere on Tuesday, should put an end to them. After the theater's disappointing last premiere in April - its lacklustre staging of Alexander Ostrovsky's "Talents and Admirers" - "Dear Pamela," directed by Andrei Maximov, is a pleasing break with tradition in a theater that tends to favor a very conservative repertoire.
The idea to stage this play belongs to Lyudmila Makarova, one of the theater's veteran actresses, and who plays the lead role of Pamela. The play, written by John Patrick, a contemporary U.S. playwright, has seen several successful productions in Moscow theaters. It would seem there have been considerable, but justified, liberties taken by the translators in their adaption of the work for a Russian audience.
The action is set entirely in Pamela's house, a dilapidated building showing every sign of collapsing any minute, with a rickety staircase and a cracked roof. The stage is cluttered with various bric-a-brac that the actors did their best to maneuver around, although on the opening night they were sometimes not quite agile enough on their feet.
Pamela, who lives alone with her cat and collects junk, is initially picked upon by a trio of crooks who want her to give them her old perfume bottles, as they have a scam passing off "scented urine" as French perfume. When the local police officer (Georgy Shtil) gets wind of their scheme, they hit upon another use for Pamela: They will sign her on as a member of their firm and then kill her so they can get her life insurance.
The plot is hardly new, but the play has a lot going for it, with its own subtle commentary on the nature of good. Pamela, who is not as absentminded as she appears, is a character with real depth who "writes postcards to God" and is incapable of thinking bad things about anybody.
The staging of the play is also commendable, with Pamela's house undergoing some surprising transformations during the course of the evening.
The standout performance of the play was, however, Gennady Bogachyov in the role of Sol, the oldest of the three crooks. He manages to give the role almost Falstaffian dimensions, easily extracting laughter from the audience with the merest gesture, although also providing some splendidly over-the-top moments in his creative use of items scavanged from people's trash.
A tramp who can quote philosphers at length, since he remembers from when he worked as a typesetter, Bogachyov's character is a rich comic creation that he plays to the hilt.
His accomplices pale before him, though Ksenia Nazarova gave a spirited performance as Gloria. Valery Degtyar was somewhat listless in the role of her boyfriend Brad, but the trio as a whole worked well, playing off one another to good effect.
While the production itself is hardly ground-breaking, it is proof that the traditional approach still has a place in the theater today and it is good to see a comedy where the laughter comes naturally. After the success of "Dear Pamela," it seems that the BDT would be wise to add a few more contemporary works to its repertoire to balance out the Chekhov and Ostrovsky.
"Dear Pamela" next plays at the BDT this Saturday.
TITLE: in memory of the soviet benny goodman
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Joseph Vainshtein, St. Petersburg jazz patriarch and band leader, died of heart failure in Toronto on Sept. 1. Vainshtein, who had lived in Canada since 1983, was 82.
Vainshtein, described as the "Soviet Benny Goodman" in the Canadian press, kept big- band jazz alive in the Soviet Union for almost 30 years with his group, officially called the Leningrad Jazz Band, but known to fans as the Vainshtein Band.
The Vainshtein Band's performances packed venues in a manner similar to that of today's popular rock groups, and was described as Russia's "most stylish band" by jazz critic and promoter Vladimir Feyertag.
"Few cities have the musicians Le nin grad does. Leningrad was the first city [in Russia] where jazz started for real. Leningrad has always set the trend," said Vainshtein in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times when he returned to the city after a 15-year absence to celebrate his 80th birthday in October 1998.
Born in Belaya Tserkov, Ukraine, in 1918, Vainshtein moved to Leningrad with his family in 1931 to escape the famines that followed Stalin's collectivization. Graduating from the Mussorgsky Music College, he became conductor of the Baltic Fleet Air Force Jazz Band, which he led until just after World War II. Accused of "financial violations," he was arrested in 1952 and incarcerated for 2 1/2 years, first at Kresty Prison, then at a labor camp.
In 1955, Vainshtein formed the band that would one day make him famous and by 1958 had brought together young talents like Georgy Fridman, Gennady Golshtein, Fridrikh Zapolsky, Igor Petrenko and Nikolai Nosov.
"In the Soviet Union, they called [all popular music] 'jazz,' for instance [Leonid] Utyosov. In fact, we didn't understand jazz," said Vainshtein. "But with the combination of these musicians, we completely reconsidered our approach. I can say that we then became the only Soviet band to perform classical jazz music."
Classical, i.e. American, jazz was something the Communist Party would not tolerate during the years of the Cold War. Nikita Khrushchev, then-leader of the Soviet Union, made remarks such as, "There are jazz bands that one cannot understand and that are simply impossible to listen to." After a 1962 Vainshtein concert in Moscow, Pravda wrote, "[The Vainshtein Band] has nothing of its own. Everything is rented; everything is 'imported.'"
Vainshtein also quoted an order issued by Yekaterina Furtseva, then-minister of culture, saying that "The Vainshtein band in Leningrad slavishly copies American jazz."
"But although the party was a single unified body, the Leningrad authorities protected us from those attacks to a certain extent," said Vainshtein. "We continued working at the Industry Cooperation Palace of Culture."
Locally, Vainshtein's band was a huge success. At one point the management of the palace of culture where the band played on a regular basis had to add a matinee show just to satisfy the public. Performing Western music was banned, but Vainshtein managed to get around these rules.
"I had to tell lies every night," he recalled. "I gave the compositions different titles and attributed them to Czechoslovakian composers, but in fact the music was all American." On an LP release, Vainshtein renamed the jazz standard "American Patrol" "Dozorny" (Scout), while U.S. jazz leader Stan Kenton became the Slav-sounding "Stanislav Kanetsky," in an attempt to deceive the uninformed and tone-deaf authorities.
After four heart attacks, Vainshtein finally gave in to his émigré daughter and moved to Canada in 1983 to undergo critical bypass surgery, which was unavailable in the Soviet Union at the time.
Vainshtein lived with his wife, Ninel, on a Canadian pension in Toronto, where Ninel published "Leningrad Symphony," a book about her husband, in 1997.
The Joseph Vainshtein Band's authorized double-CD compilation, "East Side Story" is due on the U.S.-based label EMMIX in December.
TITLE: Chernov's choice
TEXT: No exceptional new talent was discovered at last Sunday's Sounds of the City contest and festival. The idea of this free, cigarette-company-sponsored, open-air event at the unlikely location of Warsaw Station might have sounded fine in theory, but it involved mud from the recent heavy rains, poor sound and scruffy suburban punks fighting. Headliners Leningrad cynically also played at the launch of another cigarette brand the very same day. Watch out for a similar city-sponsored event called Singing Nevsky on Sept. 16.
Tom Jones, who has arrived in the city and was preparing for his Thursday concert at press time, will be followed by Depeche Mode. The U.K. band's local show is scheduled on Tuesday, while they'll play Moscow's Olimpiisky Stadium on Sunday.
Depeche Mode, which last played in Russia in 1998, is returning as part of its current Exciter Tour. For the tour, the band's lineup of Andy Fletcher, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore is augmented by drummer Christian Eigner, Peter Gordeno on keyboards and Jordan Bailey and Georgia Lewis on backing vocals. Unusually, Depeche Mode will play SKK, the sports and concert complex that has been functioning mainly as a flea market for the past few years, although it was also the place where the band played three years ago.
Closer to the contemporary music scene, Russia's one-off concert by Muse has been announced. The U.K. band will play at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on Sept. 22. The concert will launch the Russian edition of New Musical Express.
Muse consists of guitarist/vocalist Matthew Bellamy, bassist Chris Wolstenhome and drummer Dominic Ho ward. Originally coming from Tynemouth, Devon, the Radiohead-like trio released its debut full-length album "Showbiz" in 1999.
NME, the respected British music weekly, has undergone some crucial changes in Russia. According to its Moscow editors, it is split between translated articles and Russian content and won't even look like the original newspaper. The press release describes NME Russia as a "64-page, full-color magazine in A4 format that comes out twice a month."
Its editor is Ruslan Shebukov, previously of the teenage-oriented tabloid Ya Molodoi and the computer magazine Upgrade. The first issue is due out on Sept. 18.
It is reported that Muse will be playing a full 1 1/2-hour set, preceded by Russian supporting acts Nochniye Snaipery, Smysloviye Galyutsinatsii, Total and Naik Borzov. The choice of groups playing also gives a hint as to what the magazine's domestic content will be.
Anniversary parties for local bands and clubs continue with Markscheider Kunst, which celebrates its anniversary with a concert at Faculty on Friday. The concert will also feature the band's friends, including Spitfire.
Tequilajazzz's own anniversary party is set for Sept. 19, when the band will throw a party with Fish Fabrique, the seminal club, which will be celebrating its anniversary on the same day. The party is invitation-only, but the club will reopen officially the very next day, Sept. 20, with a concert by Deadushki.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: country life in city center
AUTHOR: by Curtis Budden
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If work has been keeping you too busy to get out of the city this summer, don't despair. Now you can enjoy a little bit of country life without leaving the city center.
The restaurant Sverchok (cricket) opened at 20 Nevsky Pr. a couple of months ago, though I somehow managed to avoid noticing it until now.
At the bottom of the stairs - be careful, they're steep - you'll enter the world of the Russian deryevnya, or countryside, as painted wooden signposts are tacked to the wall to point you in the right direction: cafe to the right, restaurant to the left.
Follow the sign to the left and you'll enter the restaurant itself, which consists of three spacious halls. The first one is designed as a log cabin with all the details intact, starting with the outhouse-style bathrooms - don't worry, they're refreshingly clean - right down to "Fedya was here" scratched into one of the wooden posts. The other two halls are larger and a little lighter on the village theme.
Our waitress greeted us right away with a smile and rather bulky wooden-framed menus.
The menu is written in both Russian and English, and compared to those of many other restaurants in the city, the translations aren't bad. There was also an English-speaking waiter on staff.
We started with a plate of salty pickles (30 rubles), as well a basket of bread with garlic butter (3 rubles per person for the bread, and 10 rubles per person for the butter). One of my companions immediately pronounced the pickles every bit as good as his mother-in-law's. They were so tasty that we ordered another plate.
One companion, who ordered Pepsi Light (35 rubles for 200 milliliters), was obviously disappointed that he made the wrong choice of beverage, as he pointed out that the pickles probably went well with our Botchkarov beer (42 rubles for half a liter). He was right.
The bread was also fresh, though the "garlic" butter contained more Russian zelen (greens) than garlic.
From both our light starters, however, it was immediately clear that presentation and service were high on the list of priorities at Sverchok. The rest of the meal did nothing to change that impression.
In addition, one of my companions ordered blinchiki (pancakes) with "meat" and sour cream (65), which were tasty, though a little greasy.
For main courses, one of my companions ordered the chicken tabaka (200 rubles) with french fries (50 rubles), while the other went with the pike-perch and salmon (220 rubles) and fries as well. I decided to try the veal with apples and huckleberry sauce with mashed potatoes (220 rubles, including the mashed potatoes).
One companion declared the chicken tender and juicy, while the other said that the fish was tasty despite the fact that it had been frozen. My second companion also said that the sauce was rather bland, though there wasn't enough of it to impair the taste of the fish. They were both happy with the large portions of french fries.
The veal was tender, though also a little bland. Fortunately, the baked apples and huckleberry sauce helped liven it up a little. The creamy mashed potatoes were a perfect addition.
Sverchok also has a selection of desserts, mostly various types of ice cream and fruit, though we were too full from our meal to try any of them.
So the next time you feel like getting away from it all, don't bother going through the hassle of preparing for a weekend in the country. Sverchok has everything you need two steps from home.
Sverchok, 20 Nevsky Pr. Tel. 312-9160. Dinner for three with beer, 1,058 rubles ($35). Open from noon until the last customer.
TITLE: viennese audience's new favorite
AUTHOR: by Giulara Sadykh-zade
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Conductor Mariss Jansons, born in Riga and educated in St. Petersburg, is now a citizen of the world, a European musical celebrity whose conducting skills are recognized and in demand in all the musical captials of the world: Vienna, Berlin, London and New York. The son of the conductor Arvid Jansons, he has surpassed his father's fame, heading the orchestras of Pittsburgh and Oslo, and next year he will take the post of head conductor of the Bavarian Radio Orchestra.
For many years, Jansons conducted at the Shostakovich Philharmonic in St. Petersburg, initially as an assitant to Yevgeny Mravinsky, and then as the second conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Now he regularly conducts at festivals in Vienna and Salzburg and often perfoms with the Vienna Philharmonic.
Viennese audiences are among the most conservative and critical in the world and to gain their respect is no easy task. But Jansons has succeeded with his impeccable conducting skill and refined musical taste. In recognition of his achievement, in June he was awarded the title of honored member of the Musik Verein of Vienna.
Q:Why do you think the Musik Verein chose you?
A:To become a member of the Musik Verein really is a great honor. Among Russian musicians, only Mravinsky and David Oistrakh have been selected to join it. Every year only one candidate is selected, and there are only a few dozen names on the list. Previous candidates have included Mozart and Schubert (both posthumously), Wag ner and Brahms. Last year Krzysz tof Penderecki was chosen.
Membership in the Verein does not carry any financial benefits or any special privileges. It is an acknowledgement from the Viennese musical world showing that you have achieved a certain degree of success and that your position in the artistic hierachy is secure.
I think I was chosen because I have often conducted in the Musik Verein concert hall. The orchestras I toured with there - the Oslo Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Orchestra - were very well received.
This is not always the deciding factor, of course. Mravinsky didn't conduct in Vienna very often, but his authority and his reputation were such that he was unanimously elected to join the Verein. Every year, the choice is made taking into account the individuality of the artist, and the overall quality of his work. The most important thing is that the musician embody the spirit of Vienna.
Q:Tell us about your experiences in Vienna.
A:I initially studied at the Viennese Academy of Music in 1969 and 1970. I was also an assistant to Herbert von Karajan in Salz burg. Watching him, I learned a great deal, although it was a different sort of learning experience than at the Conservatory.
I first met Karajan when he came to Petersburg in 1968 to conduct seminars for young conductors. There were 12 of us, and we all got to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic in the Philharmonia Great Hall. I remember it well: I conducted the coda from Brahms' Second Symphony.
After the seminar, Karajan invited me to study with him, not at the conservatory, but by being his assistant with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.
This was back in 1968, and the authorities would not permit me to leave the country. The Ministry of Culture turned down my request, but as Karajan had named me personally, the officials decided that I must be of some value, and in compensation for the refusal, they included me on a list of exchange students between Leningrad and Vienna.
I was the third student from Russia to study under Svarovsky and Osterreich. As soon as I got to Vienna, I called Karajan's secretary and got an invitation from him to come to Salzburg. I didn't hesistate. I went and accompanied the maestro wherever he went, from 9:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night. Even the casual remarks he would make during rehearsals and his brief discussions with me during breaks - and Karajan was an incredibly busy man - were indispensable for a beginning conductor.
Karajan had the reputation of being difficult and inflexible, but he was always very kind to me. Of course, he was demanding of his orchestra and of the people around him, but you could understand why, as he had scarcely a moment's spare time. His days was planned in advance, literally minute by minute.This, obviously, did not leave any time for lengthy conversations. Maybe this was why people got the impression that he was unsociable and heartless.
But, in my opinion, Karajan could be very pleasant when he wanted to be. And he had a very high opinion of young talent, believed in it and did a great deal to nurture it. The current generation of conductors aged from 50 to 60 were all discovered by Karajan. He invited them to Salzburg, and they began their careers under his wing.
When my apprenticeship was over, he wrote to me, advising me to take part in his conducting competition. I took 2nd prize, and, according to the rules of the competition, I should have become his assistant for a year in Berlin. But I was once again refused an exit visa.
Later I learned that Karajan had written an incredibly nasty letter about this matter to the Ministry of Culture. And from then on, our relations deteriorated. I saw him occasionally, but the rapport we had once shared was gone.
After I won the Karajan competition, my career really took off. Winning this competition is like being awarded the title of "best conductor." There was a real demand for the winners. I got all sorts of offers and invitations, and I began to go on various tours abroad.
Q:Don't you find it strange that you were allowed to go abroad to tour, but not as Karajan's assistant?
A:Touring was quite common back then, and lots of musicians did it. But to let a young man out of the country so he could live in the West for a whole year unwatched - that was a rarity.
Sometimes I think that perhaps it was for the best that I was not allowed to work more closely with Karajan. He had a very specific sort of entourage, if you know what I mean. On the other hand, that was the reality of conducting back then. Karajan's rival, the one man who threatened to topple him from his place as the No. 1 figure in music, was Leonard Bernstein. Karajan and Bernstein were the two central figures of musical Vienna. The city was divided into "Karajanites" and "Bernsteinites." There was a war between them. Actually, wars like these happen a lot in Vienna. Just remember the battles that used to go on around Wagner and Brahms.
When I was in Vienna, I went to one of Bernstein's rehearsals. He was very colorful, a much warmer person than Karajan. Karajan would never kiss you when he met you. But for Bernstein it was natural. He was very open to people.
Q:As a frequent figure on the Viennese concert podium, you probably know the structure of Viennese musical life very well. What are the concert halls and orchestras like there?
A:The main concert venue is the Vienna Philharmonia. This includes the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, which is made up of the most experienced musicians of the Vienna Opera. To join the philharmonic orchestra, you need at least five years' experience in the opera orchestra.
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra decides for itself which conductor to invite, where and what to play and where to go on tour. It often plays in the Musik Verein Hall and rents it out. The Vienna Philharmonic is a recognized "brand name" as the best orchestra in the world, and a lot of money can be made from it. They make recordings, perform at festivals, play at concerts and operas,and serve almost the entire Salzburg Festival.
When Gerard Mortier became the head of the Salzburg Festival, he tried to let other orchestras participate. There was a huge scandal, and the musicians threatened to quit. As it was clear to everyone that the prestige of the festival would be lost if the orchestra left, the issue was closed.
Salzburg invites the best conductors and directors to put on operas. The program is very classical, with well-known compositions and popular operas. Mortier wanted the festival to become more open to contemporary music and modern ideas of staging, and to be more democratic. He wanted to reach beyond the usual audience of aristocrats and wealthy people, and have more students and young people in attendance. He did not achieve everything he had planned. But he was successful in some areas. He livened up the program and began to invite avant-garde directors.
Although Salzburg may look like Vanity Fair, you have to remember that the people who gather there have a profound love and understanding of music. Not just the rich go there. It's a whole section of society that has been reared in the European musical tradition. This is particularly noticeable in the way the audience reacts, the way they applaud.
Of course, Salzburg is the most expensive festival in the world. But it really is the best. To be invited to Salzburg is a sign of great success in the music world; it is the summit of any musician's career.
To be quite honest, though, Salzburg is not what it was when Karajan was alive. I don't want to be condescending, but 20 or 30 years ago the artistic level was much higher.
Q:So do you think democracy in music means the quality suffers? Karajan was in many ways a dictator in the music world.
A:Salzburg never recovered from the loss of Karajan. The personality of a musician is of enormous importance. Karajan showed the way. He knew what direction the festival should go. And so did Bernstein. They were the greatest conductors of the second half of the 20th century, and now we know that they were irreplaceable.
TITLE: old-style gags drive frantic flick
AUTHOR: by Kenneth Turan
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: "Rat Race's" frantic story of a lot of people running after even more money is the most old-fashioned, live-action comedy of the summer, and if you've seen its competition you know that has to be a good thing.
An amusing revival of elaborate chase movies like 1963's "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World," "Rat Race's" humor actually goes back further still, to the Crashes, Chases and Screams comedies of the silent era. Though the film has its share of misfires and miscalculations and doesn't completely avoid contemporary crudeness (is there a secret MPAA covenant mandating this kind of stuff?), many of "Rat Race's" gags would look familiar to Buster Keaton and the Keystone Kops.
What the silent gang would be impressed with is the scale writer Andy Breckman and director Jerry Zucker (who co-directed "Airplane!" way back when) have to work with. From a punch-out between antagonists clinging to the body of a cow suspended under a hot-air balloon (it's funnier than it sounds) to the antics of an entire busload of Lucille Ball imitators headed for a Lucy convention, this is a film that makes you laugh at things you never thought you'd even so much as see.
"Rat Race's" workable plot is really no more than a trigger device, a bare-bones idea necessary for getting things underway. It starts with eccentric Las Vegas casino magnate Donald Sinclair (John Cleese) and his search for new things for his coterie of compulsive high rollers to bet on.
Sinclair's idea involves the random selection of half a dozen nominally ordinary people, participants alone or with partners in a very special game. Inside a train-station locker in Silver City, New Mexico, about 900 kilometers from Las Vegas, there is a red duffel bag with $2 million in small bills. The first person to get to the bag keeps the money. The only rule is, there are no rules.
Though Sinclair doesn't volunteer the information, he has set up this stunt (which sounds a bit like the premise for NBC's upcoming reality epic "Lost") as something for his gang to wager on. "A horse race with animals who can think and lie and cheat and play dirty," he exults. "It's the gambling experience of a lifetime."
The engagingly drawn contestants break down as follows: Vera Baker (Whoopi Goldberg), a good-hearted soul who's just been reunited with Merrill Jennings (Lanai Chapman), the hard-driving daughter she gave up for adoption 27 years ago; Owen Templeton (Cuba Gooding Jr.), an NFL referee who is in hiding after making "the biggest bonehead call in the history of football"; Enrico Pollini (Rowan Atkinson), a ditzy Italian tourist with an uncertain command of English and a tendency toward narcolepsy; Randy Pear (Jon Lovitz), a ne'er-do-well compulsive gambler who's vacationing in Las Vegas with his wife Bev (Kathy Najimy) and their two children, Duane Cody (Seth Green, "Austin Powers'" Scott Evil) and his brother Blaine (Vince Vieluf), a pair of ineptly larcenous brothers further handicapped by Blaine's inability to make himself understood after some do-it-yourself tongue piercing; and Nick Schaffer (Breckin Meyer), a square attorney who always plays by the rules. He starts to get more adventurous, however, after running into an attractive helicopter pilot (Amy Smart) with a fiery temper.
With all these people doing everything they can all at once to be the first to Silver City, "Rat Race" has a tendency to get too frenetic. Saving it from itself most of the time are several factors that combine to create smiles, starting with the way the film's humor largely avoids the mean-spiritedness so prevalent elsewhere.
As the cast list testifies, "Rat Race" is rich in excellent comic performers. Even smaller roles are filled by practiced professionals, like Wayne King as a catastrophe-prone ambulance driver, Kathy Bates in an unbilled cameo as the Squirrel Lady, and even attorney Gloria Allred, well cast as herself.
If there is one cast member who deserves a special word it is Atkinson. Best known for British TV series like "Mr. Bean" and "Blackadder" and with a memorable part as the minister in "Four Weddings and a Funeral," Atkinson, somehow managing to be simultaneously delicate and broad, can do things with his face that shouldn't be legal. His delighted and delightful Mr. Pollini is a little taste of comic genius.
Also in "Rat Race's" favor is that its jokes are often part of elaborately worked-out comic schemes that play off unexpectedly down the road. That cow, for instance, turns up when you least expect it, though a note on the closing credits should calm the unwary: "Only actors," it reads, "were harmed in the making of this film."
"Rat Race" is now playing at the Kolizei and Leningrad cinemas.
TITLE: Situation in Mideast Turned Upside Down
AUTHOR: By Greg Myre
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - For Israelis, the terror attacks in America produced a moment of shared grief, and an expectation that the United States will be more supportive of Israel's tough policy with Palestinian militants.
For Palestinians, there's fear Israeli military actions will be subject to less international scrutiny and the Palestinian quest for statehood will be put on the back burner.
The hijacked planes that exploded into balls of fires on the east coast of the United States could reshape the conflict that's been burning in the Middle East for nearly a year.
Israelis often argue that other countries unfairly criticize its hard-hitting response to Palestinian attacks, saying those countries don't understand Israel's security problems. Many Israelis now think that's about to change.
"For decades, Israel has fought in the front lines against terror," former Israeli prime minister Binya min Netanyahu wrote in the Maariv newspaper. "There is no other nation that can identify as well as we can with the victims of the shocking terror unleashed against the United States."
In the current conflict, Israel has carried out dozens of targeted killings of Palestinians believed responsible for deadly violence.
And on Wednesday, it sent tanks into three separate Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank used by militants. Seven Palestinians were killed. Such incursions have drawn sharp criticism in the past, but Wednesday's raids were overshadowed by events in the United States.
Israel also renewed its call for stepped up international cooperation against terrorism, saying extremist Islamic groups operating in the Middle East have the ability to strike elsewhere.
"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's rhetorical question - How would the United States react if its capital were attacked by terrorists? - yesterday became corporeal in flesh, blood, fire and carnage," Israeli columnist Sever Plotzker said in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.
The answer, he predicted, would be a "massive, unrelenting, uncompromising payback."
The Palestinians had a different take, believing Sharon will now feel emboldened to crack down without fear of facing pressure from the United States. Israeli Defense Ministry spokesperson Yarden Vatikay said Wednesday the army was intensifying its hunt for Palestinian militants, though he did not link it to the terror in America.
"We fear that Mr. Sharon, who knows the world is giving all its attention to what's going on in the States, will use these circumstances to further escalate his aggression, terror and crimes against the Palestinian people," said Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian leader.
Israel has maintained tight restrictions on the movements of the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, preventing almost all of them from entering Israel proper since the violence erupted almost a year ago.
In the Middle East conflict, both sides place immense importance on international opinion.
The Palestinians are always in search of international help to combat Israel's military and economic superiority. Israel, meanwhile, welcomes U.S. mediation, but staunchly opposes international intervention, feeling many countries are biased against it.
The terror attacks in the United States could potentially strengthen Israel's case at the expense of the Palestinians.
The Israelis portray Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as "giving the green light for terrorism" and say he has refused to stop attacks by militants.
Militant Palestinian groups that have carried out bombings against Israel were quick to deny any involvement with Tuesday's terror campaign in America. While no group has claimed responsibility, suspicion has focused on Saudi national Osama bin Laden, who has been accused of previous attacks against U.S. targets.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Afghans Fear Strike
DUBAI (Reuters) - Arab militants in Afghanistan have left their camps in case of U.S. military strikes over Tuesday's U.S. attacks, a London-based newspaper reported on Thursday.
"Afghan Arabs have evacuated their bases in anticipation of an imminent strike, especially after the United Nations evacuated its staff [from the country]," the Arabic-language al-Hayat newspaper quoted informed Afghan sources as saying.
U.S. officials have pointed the finger at Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, who is living in Afghanistan, as being possibly linked to the devastating New York and Washington attacks.
Al-Hayat said its London office earlier received a statement from a source close to bin Laden hailing Tuesday's attacks.
Pakistan Backs Fight
KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf has promised the United States full cooperation in the fight against terror, official media reported early on Thursday.
"The carnage in New York and Washington has raised this struggle to a new level. Pakistan has been extending cooperation to international efforts to combat terrorism in the past and will continue to do so," Musharraf was quoted as saying by APP news agency.
"All countries must join hands in this common cause. I wish to assure President Bush and the U.S. government of our unstinted cooperation in the fight against terrorism," he added.
The United States on Wednesday said it was asking Pakistan, the main supporter of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban who shelter terror suspect Osama bin Laden, whether it would help respond to Tuesday's devastating attacks that are believed to have left thousands dead.
China Offers Help
BEIJING (AP) - China's president, in a phone call with U.S. President George W. Bush, offered his country's help for rescue efforts and stronger cooperation against terrorism following the attacks in Washington and New York, state media said Thursday.
President Jiang Zemin told Bush on Wednesday night that China strongly condemns the attacks. They "not only brought about a disaster to the U.S. people but also a challenge to the world," Jiang said, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
"China is deeply concerned about the progress of the rescue work and is ready to offer all necessary assistance," Jiang said.
Jiang also said China "is ready to strengthen dialogue and cooperation" with the United States and the international community against "all manner of terrorist violence," Xinhua said.
Pilot Trained Militants
DUBAI (Reuters) - A former pilot with Afghanistan's national carrier was on Thursday quoted as saying that he had helped train 14 Islamic militants, some holding European passports, to fly civilian aircraft.
The London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper quoted the pilot as saying from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan that the trainees had left the war-torn country nearly one year ago to undisclosed locations after they completed their training.
The newspaper did not say if the trainees were among the hijackers who slammed commercial aircraft into the Pentagon in Washington and the World Trade Center in New York on Tuesday.
"A group of 14 radical Islamist men received special training on flying civilian aircraft, including Boeings, of which Afghanistan's Ariana airlines owns three," the newspaper said.
TITLE: Putting Perspective on Fun and Games
AUTHOR: By Ed Schuyler
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: How will replacement officials affect the outcome of NFL games?
Is it important that Michael Jordan play again in the NBA?
Do the New York Yankees and Mets really need a new stadium that will cost a zillion dollars?
In the wake of the horrendous terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, answers that come quickly to mind are: Who cares? So what?
Indeed, at this time, home runs, touchdowns and marching bands are out of place.
Sports are only a thread in the fabric of our society, but it is a thread that has helped bind people together in troubled times. Organized sports boosted morale during the Great Depression and World War II.
Sports will always have a role in our lives, but, of course, society has changed significantly. So, unfortunately, have sports.
Vast sums of television money have enabled sports to become big business to the point that many major events have become elitist - such as the Super Bowl, World Series and U.S. Open tennis championships.
Courtside tickets at NBA games go for a much as $1,000 a game. A ringside seat at a major fight can cost $1,500.
Winning translates into big money, although it also can cost a bundle to watch losers.
Back in the 1920s, '30s and '40s, there was a sports writer named Grantland Rice. It was he who gave birth to the Four Horsemen with his story on Notre Dame's 13-7 victory over Army in 1924 that began: "Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horseman rode again."
Rice also wrote a poem about sportsmanship and competition in a poem that ended: ``It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.''
Granny would be almost certain to be ridiculed in this age for being naive.
Now the important thing is, "whether you win or lose."
The need to win has encouraged the use of performance-enhancing drugs in humans and horses.
Winning has become so important that there is cheating in the Little League, which occurred in this year's world series.
Winning has become so important that parents berate coaches and umpires and get into fist fights over games involving small boys.
Now an important part of sports is gamesmanship, which often is nothing but poor sportsmanship.
Bernard Hopkins, whose Saturday fight against Felix Trinidad for the middleweight title was postponed Wednesday, has complained about not getting his due despite being a champion since 1995.
Yet Hopkins seemed to find it necessary to grab and throw down the Puerto Rican flag at two news conferences. His purpose apparently was to anger Trinidad, perhaps to the point that he would make a costly mistake in the fight.
What Hopkins really did was disrespect the people of Puerto Rico.
American life will never be same after Tuesday's terrorist acts, and in sports, winning or losing will remain more important than how the game is played.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Coach Killed in Attack
SANTA BARBARA, California (AP) - Mari-Rae Sopper, the women's gymnastics coach at UC Santa Barbara, was aboard one of the flights downed by terrorists.
She was traveling on the American Airlines flight from Washington that crashed into the Pentagon on Tuesday, according to a list released by the airline.
Gymnastics had been dropped by UCSB on Aug. 10, but was reinstated three days later for a year, and Sopper was hired as coach two weeks ago.
"We're shocked and dismayed by what has happened," UCSB athletic director Gary Cunningham said Wednesday. "Our deepest sympathies go out to her family ..."
Glenn Reinstated
FOXBORO, Massachusetts (AP) - An arbitrator overturned Terry Glenn's season-long suspension Wednesday, allowing him to rejoin the New England Patriots for their fifth game.
The fourth-leading receiver in team history still must complete a four-game NFL suspension for violating the league's substance-abuse policy. His agent, James Gould, said there are no plans to appeal that now.
"We are very gratified," Gould said in a telephone interview from his Cincinnati office. "Terry's looking forward to returning to the club and is excited about the prospect of contributing to the team's success."
Glenn is not allowed to practice or play with the team during his suspension.
The arbitrator's decision cannot be appealed unless the team challenges it in court, said Richard Berthelsen, general counsel of the NFL Players Association.
Close Call
SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) - Australia's Olympic swimming champion Ian Thorpe could have been on the top of the World Trade Center during the attack if he hadn't forgotten his camera.
The Australian teenager had been on his way to the trade center's observation deck when he suddenly remembered he had left his camera in his hotel.
Thorpe went back to fetch the camera and was about to return to the trade center when the first hijacked plane crashed into the building. "He was probably 20 minutes away from being there," Frank Turner, one of Thorpe's managers, told Australian radio on Thursday.
"He was shocked ... a few minutes later and who knows what could have happened."
Thorpe won three gold medals at last year's Sydney Olympics and another six golds at this year's world championships in Japan.