SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #705 (72), Tuesday, September 18, 2001
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TITLE: Putin Pledges Support for U.S. 'War'
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: YEREVAN, Armenia - Russia said on Saturday that it opposed the indiscriminate use of force to punish perpetrators of terror after the U.S. Congress authorized strikes against those responsible for last week's attack on the United States.
President Vladimir Putin, who has pledged Moscow's support to Washington in efforts to root out "international terrorism," said on a trip to Armenia that Moscow wanted a thorough investigation to precede any military action.
"The evil must be punished," Putin told a news conference. "But we should not liken ourselves to bandits who strike from behind. We must weigh up our decisions and make them on the basis of proven facts."
Washington has said that last week's kamikaze attack on its landmarks with thousands feared dead was a declaration of war, and Congress authorized President George W. Bush on Friday to use "all necessary and appropriate force" in response.
U.S. officials say Saudi-born Islamic militant Osama bin Laden tops the list of suspects, fueling fears that military action against Afghanistan, where the exiled millionaire lives as a guest of the hardline ruling Taliban, was imminent.
Russia, which accuses bin Laden of feeding money and resources to separatist rebels in its southern province of Chech nya, keeps a sizeable military presence in Tajikistan, an impoverished former Soviet republic on the Afghan border.
Moscow used Tajikistan in 1979 to launch an ill-fated 10-year occupation of Afghanistan.
Russian spy and security agencies have said they were in contact with U.S. secret services over a potential attack but Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has already dismissed the possibility of a NATO country deploying forces in ex-Soviet central Asia.
Ivanov, who was with Putin in Yerevan, told the Itar-Tass news agency that hasty indiscriminate strikes would do little to help Washington achieve its goals.
"The use of force on a large scale - carpet bombings and the like - is unlikely to solve the problem of punishing those inhumane people who carried out that terrorist attack," he said.
"The right thing to do would be to discuss the issue, possibly even on a multinational level, to single out the targets and to plan everything carefully," Iva nov said.
Putin has held numerous telephone conversations with Bush in the aftermath of Tuesday's attack.
Central Asian leaders, including the prime minister of Tajikistan, said they were willing to support America's efforts to punish terrorists.
In the central Asian country of Ka zakh stan, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasya nov said he was not aware of any U.S.-Russian talks on staging strikes on Afghanistan from central Asia, which Moscow views as its own backyard.
Kasyanov was meeting with his counterparts from four central Asian republics - two of which border Af gha ni stan, where suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden is said to be seeking refuge - and China.
The group was formed in part to respond to what the secular governments in the region see as a growing threat from Islamic militants recruiting adherents among impoverished residents of the economically stagnant region.
The group issued a statement condemning the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"We are prepared for close coordination with all states and international organizations to take effective measures in the uncompromising struggle to uproot the global danger coming from terrorism," the group said.
The prime minister of Tajikistan, Akil Akilov, said his government would be willing to consider a U.S. request to provide air corridors for strikes on neighboring Afghanistan, though he said the country would have to consult with Moscow.
On Sunday, however, a Tajik Foriegn Ministry spokesperson said the country will not allow Western countries to launch attacks on neighboring Afghanistan from its territory.
"Reports in some media on the use of the Tajik territory by a third country to inflict strikes on military camps of the Taliban and international terrorists in Afghanistan are groundless," chief Foreign Ministry spokesperson Igor Sattarov told reporters.
Russia has about 25,000 troops stationed in Tajikistan.
Tajikistan is still struggling to recover from a five-year civil war between mostly Islamic opposition forces and the hardline secular government, and its government is heavily dependent on Russia for military and political support.
Turkmenistan President Saparmurad Niyazov also offered to help, saying "he would fully support the U.S. in its war against terrorism," said Eric Schultz, the U.S. chargé d'affaires in the central Asian nation.
Meanwhile, General Anatoly Kvashnin, the head of the Russian General Staff, said it was unlikely that the Russian armed forces would take part in "acts of revenge" for last week's deadly terrorist attacks, the Interfax news agency reported.
"The United States has powerful enough military forces that it can cope with this task on its own," Kvashnin was quoted as saying. He added that there had been no talks on the military level between the United States and Russia about Moscow's participation in any operation.
Kvashnin said that according to his information bin Laden is now hiding in the mountains around Kandahar, the southern Afghan city where the Taliban headquarters is located.
During a speech to students at Yerevan University on Saturday, Putin said that the attacks in the United States could "be compared in scale and cruelty to what the Nazis were perpetrating."
It was a strong statement for a Russian leader, given the massive destruction and millions of lives the Soviet Union lost fighting the Nazis.
"The main lesson that [we] should draw from this tragedy is the need to strengthen our own and international security," Putin said.
Putin urged a new worldwide outlook on security that focuses on the threats of large-scale terrorism and on cooperation among governments to fight it. He did not elaborate on what this "new system of security" should look like.
In the past, he said, "we talked a lot about the threat of terrorism, but apparently we didn't find the words that would have persuaded the world community to create an effective defense against international terrorism."
The chief of Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, said Saturday that Russian officials had warned American counterparts of a threat of terrorist attacks on the United States.
FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev, in remarks carried by Russian news agencies and television, claimed "due attention" was not paid to the warnings. Patrushev gave no details about the threat or warnings.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II also spoke Saturday against retaliation for the American attacks that would threaten civilian lives.
Makhmut Gareyev, who served as the chief Soviet military adviser to Afghanistan's pro-Moscow government in the 1980s, warned Sunday that targeting bin Laden and facing down the Taliban could prove extremely difficult.
"The airstrikes will bring no result. Bin Laden is not alone. He is a part of huge international network of terrorist centers," he said. "So terrorist organizations will survive any strikes even if bin Laden were to be wiped out. The problem will remain."
In Afghanistan, the opposition alliance is made up of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and other minorities in Afghanistan and controls about 10 percent of the country in the northeast, along the former Soviet border.
- Reuters, AP
TITLE: Forgotten Philanthropist Awaits Recognition
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: IVANGOROD, Leningrad Oblast - The steps leading down to the crypt of the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church are crooked and broken. The walls are nearly bare, with just flecks of paint here and there. There is no heat. A bare light bulb hangs from the ceiling. The aged tombstones bear no mention of the names of Alexander Shtiglits and his wife Catherine.
However, Father Alexander, the church's senior priest, notes that people still come to the church just to see Shtiglits's grave. "Alexander Shtiglits's whole life was an example that everyone should follow," Father Alexander said.
Although he is now unjustly forgotten, Shtiglits was once one of the most prominent people in Russia. "The name Alexander Shtiglits is as internationally famous as that of the Rothchilds," wrote a Russian newspaper in the 1850s. The article also called Shtiglits "the king of the St. Petersburg stock exchange."
Shtiglits, who was born in 1814 and died in 1884, was one of Russia's greatest financiers and played a crucial role in the stabilization of the Russian ruble in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. Becoming the head of the Russian State Bank in the 1840s, Shtiglits was able to secure five crucial foreign loans at a time when confidence in the Russian financial system was badly shaken.
But this was just the beginning of Shtiglits's contribution. In January 1876, he donated 1 million rubles of his personal fortune for the construction of the St. Petersburg College for Technical Drawing, which is now called the State Art and Industry Academy and is located on Solyanoi Pereulok. Among the school's most famous graduates are the artists Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva.
Over his career, Shtiglits supported numerous social institutions including a children's shelterand a vocational school in Kolomna, a hospital in St. Petersburg and an art school in Ivangorod.
When he died in 1884, Shtiglits was modestly buried in the crypt of the Holy Trinity Church, which he had built for the workers of his two local factories in 1875.
The condition of the church today - it was severely damaged during World War II and never repaired - makes it obvious that the Russian Central Bank, of which Shtiglits was virtually the first head, has made no effort to commemorate the philanthropist. And neither has the Railways Ministry, which would also be appropriate since Shtiglits was a founder of the Russian Railway Society and financed the rail line from St. Petersburg to Peterhof in 1857.
Father Alexander notes that most of the repairs that have been done were carried out by the church's 250 parishioners.
"Some people brought their own icons. Some just came and helped clean up," he said. "We worked in any weather, with small stoves to keep us warm."
Each year since the church became active again in 1997, Father Alexander has celebrated a memorial mass for Shtiglits on Sept. 14, the anniversary of the philanthropist's birth. His prayers for the reconstruction of the church, though, have so far gone unanswered. Father Alexander says he needs 8 million rubles ($271,500) for the most urgent repairs.
In some ways, though, things at the church are getting better. When the Narva Hydroelectric Station was built in the early 1950s, the church was used as a warehouse, and the crypt was flooded by water from behind the dam. For nearly 50 years, the crypt was virtually inaccessible until locals last year built a drainage canal to remove the water.
"The water was about 150 centimeters high," said Svetlana Zakharova, a television journalist who swam to the tomb in the 1970s.
Margarita Shtiglits, head of the Industrial Architecture Department of the St. Petersburg Committee for the Control and Protection of Monuments and one of Shtiglits's descendants, said that she is glad to see the church coming back to life.
"Of course, progress is very slow. But I remember coming here and just staring into the darkness in complete frustration," she said.
Part of the answer to the dilemma may have been provided by Shtiglits himself. Alexander Bartenev, director of the Shtiglits Museum at the Art and Industry Academy, says that he will encourage academy students to volunteer for the restoration work.
"Our students participated in the restoration of churches on the Solovki islands and in Finland. I am sure that they will be enthusiastic about helping this church," Bartenev said.
"The only reason why this hasn't been done yet is because we have to arrange their stay in Ivangorod, including accommodation," he added.
Surprisingly, there has been little discussion of restoring Shtiglits's name to that of the academy. The academy was originally named for him, in accordance with the philanthropist's will. In a wave of post-war, anti-German sentiment, it was renamed in 1953 in honor of the Soviet sculptor and artist Vera Mukhina. Her name was dropped just last year.
Galina Prokhorenko, a senior researcher at the Shtiglits Museum, said that academy staff was divided about restoring Shtiglits's name.
"Those working here now were brought up when the school already was no longer named for him. They believe that the school's contemporary history and international reputation have no connection with Shtiglits and that therefore there is no need to restore his name. They think it will only confuse their colleagues abroad," Prokhorenko explained.
Zakharova, however, is angry and frustrated by the public indifference toward this man who did so much for his country. She believes that the Holy Trinity Church and its crypt are nearly in as poor condition as they were when she visited 20 years ago.
"What does it take to make Russians feel grateful? The country deserves only contempt for such negligence," she said.
Margarita Shtiglits echoed these sentiments. "How can we talk about reviving the traditions of sponsorship - once so powerful in Russia - while we ignore the roots of those traditions?" she said.
TITLE: 117 Russians Missing in U.S.
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: One hundred seventeen Russians were listed Sunday as missing following the terrorist attacks in the United States last week, according to the Web site of the Russian Embassy in Washington.
The embassy is compiling the list at the Web site www.russianembassy.org in response to worried family and friends who are bombarding the embassy with telephone calls after failing to contact loved ones believed to have been in the vicinity of the World Trade Center or Pen tagon at the time of the attacks.
No Russian citizens have been confirmed missing or dead in the attacks.
Forty-one people who originally appeared on the list had been found by Sunday.
Russian officials are checking inquiries against the lists of dead and injured being released by U.S. authorities, the embassy said.
Officials are also asking people who find their names on the list to call the embassy's hotline at 1 (202) 298-5772 in Washington or the consulate general in New York at 1 (212) 348-1717 to assure their families and friends in Russia that they are safe.
TITLE: Activists Win Ruling on Secrets
AUTHOR: By Sarah Karush
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Supreme Court struck down parts of a Defense Ministry decree that has been used to prosecute researchers for espionage, a court spokesperson said Thursday.
A group of human-rights advocates had challenged the secret 1996 decree, which defines military secrets, saying it violates the constitution and a law on state secrets. They said the list of classified data must be determined by lawmakers and made open to the public.
Supreme Court spokesperson Nikolai Gastello said "some clauses" of the decree had been struck down Wednesday, but refused to elaborate. He said the hearing had been closed to the public because of the nature of the issue. Since the court was expecting an appeal from the Defense Ministry, he could not give details about the decision.
A Defense Ministry spokesperson said the ministry had no comment.
In recent years, Russia has seen a wave of espionage cases against journalists, academics and others who have contact with foreigners. Human-rights groups say the charges are unfounded and based largely on murky decrees and internal rules.
"We want state secrets to be preserved, not agency secrets, as is the case now," said former navy officer Alexander Nikitin, who was tried and acquitted of espionage and who is among the group bringing the suit against the Defense Ministry. The constitution says the list of classified information must be determined by federal law, and a 1993 law on state secrets lists the categories.
According to Nikitin and his colleagues, various state agencies can determine which data fits into those categories, but they do not have the right to name new categories.
The Defense Ministry decree names new categories, including information about military fatalities and illness among military personnel, the group said. The decree itself is classified, it said.
Other agencies have taken the same liberties and often the same information is considered classified by one agency and open by another, Nikitin said.
Nikitin was accused of divulging naval secrets, as was journalist Grigory Pasko. Pasko was acquitted of espionage charges, but his case is being heard again in the Pacific port of Vla di vostok after prosecutors appealed the verdict.
Another researcher, Igor Sutyagin, is on trial in Kaluga, just south of Mos cow, for spying for the United States. Sutyagin studied arms control, and his supporters say he never had access to state secrets.
"A new term has appeared: analytic espionage," Nikitin said of the Sutyagin case. "As a result of their work, scholars, environmentalists and journalists can create a document that can be made secret."
TITLE: Moscow Marks Bombing Anniversary
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev and Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The mourning following the deadly terrorist assault on the United States coincided with the second anniversary of the most devastating in a series of apartment blasts that rocked Russia in 1999, killing some 300 people.
Starting before dawn on Sept. 13, relatives of those who lived at 6 Ka shir skoye Shosse began gathering in the courtyard in southern Moscow where a chapel now marks the spot where the nine-story brick building once stood. The blast - which hit at 5 a.m., reducing the building to a smoking heap of rubble - killed 124 people, including 13 children.
The worst in a wave of explosions that kept the country in terror for months, the blast on Kashirka - as the thoroughfare is commonly called - left only two survivors.
Rescuers attributed the high casualty count to the building's brick construction, which - unlike concrete slabs - collapsed in a tightly packed pile, leaving no pockets of space for survivors.
Two years after the tragedy, investigations of the explosions in Moscow and the southern town of Volgodonsk have made little progress.
Law enforcement officials have been saying for months that they know the identities of the plotters, but have been unable to catch them.
Achemez Gochiyayev, 31, is the top suspect in masterminding the Moscow bombings - a smaller-scale Russian counterpart to Osama bin Laden. Gochiyayev is No. 1 on the most-wanted list displayed on the Web site of the Federal Security Service, or FSB.
According to earlier statements by investigators, Gochiyayev - a native of Karachayevo-Cherkessia and a staunch Wahhabi, the follower of a strict Islamic sect - was trained in terrorist camps set up in Chechnya by Jordanian-born warlord Khattab. Investigators have said Khattab ordered the blasts and paid Gochiyayev and four accomplices $500,000 to carry them out, then helped the men hide in Chechnya. The FSB has also blamed Gochiyayev for plotting a series of new attacks, which the agency claims to have averted.
In one such case, five suspected plotters are on trial in the southern city of Stavropol. Taukan Frantsuzov, Gochiyayev's brother-in-law, is among the defendants, all of whom are also charged with participating in "illegal armed formations" in Chechnya. At the start of the closed trial, prosecutors demanded 25 years for each suspect.
Some media reports linked Frantsuzov with the Moscow bombings on Ulitsa Guryanova and Kashirskoye Shosse, but others said the allegations arose because in July 1999 Gochiyayev came to Moscow and used Frantsuzov's passport to register at a hotel.
Vadim Romanov, chief investigator of Stavropol's regional prosecutor's office, said law enforcement officials had not found any evidence of Frantsuzov's involvement in the bombings.
"[The five defendants] are being charged with preparing new terrorist attacks in Moscow but not of carrying out the Moscow bombings," Romanov said in a telephone interview from Stavropol on Thursday.
Asked for more details on the progress of the investigation, the FSB's press service in Moscow declined to comment. "We are too busy here now because of these bombings in America," an FSB spokesperson said.
Of the four blasts that shook Russia in the fall of 1999, only one has resulted in convictions. Last March, a court in Dagestan sentenced two men to life in prison and gave lighter sentences to four others for blowing apart a 50-apartment residential building in the Dagestani town of Buinaksk. The blast claimed 62 lives.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Putin in Armenia
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) - President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that Russia could act as a guarantor of a peace deal for the disputed Na gor no-Karabakh enclave, but insisted that Mos cow was not meddling in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
"Russia could act as a guarantor of agreements" on the settlement, Putin said during a visit to Armenia's capital Yerevan, according to news agencies. But he added, "It's your problem, and Armenia and Azerbaijan should work out the status of Nagorno-Karabakh."
Putin also pledged to continue protecting Armenia's borders and agreed with his Armenian counterpart to boost trade and investment guarantees.
Putin and Armenian President Ro bert Kocharian signed six agreements after the talks on long-term economic cooperation, investment protections, tourism and other spheres.
Cargo Ship Launched
MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off Saturday with a new, three-berth docking port, rocketing toward the International Space Station after a last-minute repair of the booster's control system.
The rocket was carrying the Progress M-CO1 cargo ship with the Pirs docking port attached to it instead of the regular fuel tank and cargo section, said Mission Control spokesperson Valery Lyndin.
A check of the booster on the launch pad revealed a flaw in its control system, which technicians fixed. Final tests confirmed that the rocket's systems were in order, the Itar-Tass news agency reported, quoting cosmodrome officials.
The docking port will be attached to the Russian-built Zvezda segment of the ISS and will have the capacity to accommodate three Soyuz or Progress space ships. It can also be used as a pressure chamber where cosmonauts prepare for spacewalks.
The Progress was also carrying a small crane to be installed outside the space station, a new spacesuit along with spares and other equipment for spacewalks and French and German scientific gear.
Kursk Recovery
MOSCOW (AP) - Divers on Sunday cleared debris from holes cut in the hull of the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk in preparation for lifting the vessel from the sea floor.
Divers fully cleared eight of 10 holes of the fourth section of the submarine, Itar-Tass reported. The remaining two holes on the section were expected to be finished by Monday.
A total of 26 holes have been pierced in the Kursk, to which steel cables will be attached to raise the rest of the submarine, a navy statement said Saturday. Clearing the holes was necessary to remove any items and mechanisms that could impede installation of the cables.
Sunday's operation was conducted from the salvage vessel Mayo, which replaced the barge that conducted the operation to sever the submarine's bow.
Salvation Army Loses
MOSCOW (AP) - A Moscow court on Sept. 12 ordered the Salvation Army to shut down its Moscow operations in the latest fallout from a strict 1997 law that has raised concerns about religious freedom in Russia.
After two years of legal wrangling, Judge Svetlana Grigorieva reached a ruling quickly in Wednesday's proceedings in the Tagansky District Court, the Salvation Army's headquarters for eastern Europe said in a statement.
The Moscow government sought to shut down the Salvation Army, accusing it of not registering on time and failing to report regularly its activities to authorities.
The missionary group, which operates soup kitchens and does other charity work, said it would appeal the ruling.
It was unclear what immediate effect the ruling would have on the Salvation Army's religious services and aid work with the homeless, elderly and prison inmates in Moscow.
The 1997 law, championed by the influential Russian Orthodox Church, requires all religious groups to register with Russian authorities. Several groups, particularly foreign-based, have had legal troubles since it was passed and say it limits religious freedoms won with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Salvation Army is also active in other Russian regions where it has not had serious registration troubles.
Gongadze Remembered
KIEV (Reuters) - Thousands of people marched through Kiev on Saturday in memory of Georgy Gongadze, the journalist whose murder sparked Uk raine's biggest political crisis.
Some 3,000 opposition activists joined the demonstration to mourn Gongadze, an Internet reporter critical of President Leonid Kuchma. Gongadze disappeared a year ago, and his headless corpse was discovered in November.
Chanting "Kuchma out!" and carrying blue-and-yellow national flags and banners with the slogan "Impeach Kuchma!," the protesters gathered on the capital's main street to hear tributes to Gongadze from leading opposition politicians. A plaque bearing the names of 18 journalists killed during the 10 years of Ukraine's independence from the former Soviet Union was unveiled at the Union of Journalists' office.
Exxon Eases on Whales
MOSCOW (AP) - Oil giant Exxon, criticized by environmentalists for seismic surveys that have allegedly pushed endangered whales from their feeding grounds, said Friday that it had halted the tests and followed strict standards to protect the animals.
The four weeks of tests off Sakhalin Island in the Far East were completed last weekend, said Glenn Waller, director of external affairs for Exxon Mobil in Moscow. He said the survey ship was accompanied by two others for monitoring, as well as overflights, and the work was observed by Russian and foreign scientists and government officials.
The company "implemented the most stringent mitigation measures ever undertaken by the industry in a major seismic survey to be protective of the unique population of gray whales," Waller said. According to a World Wildlife Fund study, the seismic tests pushed the whales to feed in areas where there was less or lower-quality food.
Vodka Kills 56
n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A deadly batch of bootleg booze has claimed 56 lives in southwestern Estonia over the past week, police said Sunday. A police spokesperson said 66 people were still being treated in hospitals for symptoms of poisoning from moonshine containing methyl alcohol.
Shells Kill Two
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Two people were killed and one was injured Sunday when several shells dating back to World War II exploded in the Novgorod Region by the side of the highway linking Moscow with St. Petersburg, RIA news agency said.
TITLE: Surplus Not Expected To Provide Big Payout
AUTHOR: By Kirill Koriukin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia is expecting a grain harvest of 78 million tons in 2001 - a 19 percent increase over last year - which would give Russia a surplus of at least 5 million tons, as well as the possibility to export, the government says.
Production had totaled 67 million tons by September, according to the Agriculture Ministry. Half of this will be produced in the main grain-producing regions in the south: Rostov, Stavropol and Krasnodar, said Yury Gnatovsky, an analyst with the OGO food producer.
The grain crop totaled 65.4 million tons in 2000, when exports passed 1 million tons. About 8 million tons remain from last year's harvest.
Grain production has bounced back considerably since 1998's crop of 47.8 million tons, the lowest harvest in 40 years. Russia made it through the shortage with surplus from 1997's harvest and a little help from the West. In 1999, production was just 54.7 million tons, and exports were less than 1,000 tons.
Most analysts say this year's surplus could pass 5 million tons of grain, with one estimate going as high as 8 million or more.
One reason for the increase in grain is a steady decline in livestock breeding. Analysts estimate that the number of cattle and pigs has declined by 50 percent over the last 15 years.
But the bumper crop is mostly due to favorable weather conditions, rather than an overall improvement in Russian agriculture, analysts say. Farming equipment is in a state of decay, and a shortage of fertilizer remains a setback. Russia could have tens of millions tons of surplus grain in few years if those problems were solved, Gnatovsky said. "Unfortunately, Russia is still too dependent on the weather."
Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev has said that as much as 5 million to 6 million tons of this year's grain could be exported. One million tons already had been exported by early September, Interfax quoted him as saying.
But analysts disagree, saying Russia probably won't be able to export all of the surplus. "I don't think that more than 2 million tons of this year's grain could be exported," said Irina Ibragimova, an expert with the Aricultural Market Institure. Gnatovsky gave a similar figure.
Long transport distances is one of Russia's biggest hindrances. "Long distances, which means higher costs ... makes Russian grain less competitive," Gnatovsky said.
One ton of grain costs between $60 and $90 in Russia. However, OGO analysts estimate that transport alone costs about $40 per ton. Thus, in addition to other expenses, exporters can expect to make a maximum of $20 profit on each ton of grain. If Russia exports 2 million tons, profit would only total about $40 million.
The Agriculture Ministry, in an effort to encourage exports, has urged the government to lower railway tariffs to reduce the cost of transporting grain.
Another hindrance is the a lack of ports through which grain can be exported profitably. According to Gnatovsky, the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk is "virtually the only port through which you can transport grain avoiding excessive costs."
However, Novorossiisk is not equipped the handle all of the grain that Russia may want to export, Gnatovsky said.
TITLE: OMZ Makes Move to GAAP Accounts
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - United Heavy Machinery, or OMZ, on Friday released GAAP results showing sales of $241 million and a net profit of $340,000 in 2000, becoming the country's first machine-building company to publish U.S. GAAP accounts.
OMZ joins a small group of Russian companies with U.S. GAAP financial statements, including most of the oil majors and several mobile-telecommunications companies.
Under GAAP, OMZ's sales increased 157 percent in 2000 over 1999, when the company took a loss of $132 million. Under Russian accounting standards, the company saw in 2000 sales of $239 million and a net profit of $11.3 million.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires companies planning to list American Depositary Receipts, or ADRs, to present their financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP.
"The advantage [of a GAAP audit] is that the company, with the help of these accounts, can get access to one of the biggest financial markets in the world," said Sergei Ishchouk, audit partner at Ernst & Young, which audited OMZ's GAAP accounts. "The drawback is the higher demands than in other financial markets, that is, higher management accountability and the need to implement accounting and management information systems that would allow information to be provided to investors more quickly and in greater volume than IAS and RAS."
"The results were not particularly strong, but the positive spin is that there is strong underlying growth and the company is expanding rapidly," said Kim Iskyan, analyst at Renaissance Capital. "The next step is to integrate the moving parts to achieve economies of scale and post an operating profit."
Renaissance Capital maintains its strong buy recommendations on OMZ stock. Other analysts were less bullish.
"We are lowering our recommendations because we are lowering our expectations for sales and operating profitability," said Andrei Kormilitsin, a manufacturing analyst at Troika Dialog. "They forecast sales for the full year of 2001 - Russian accounting for the sales revenue should not differ strongly from GAAP - to be about $350 million, which is lower than they previously expected and lower than we expected."
TITLE: Russian Markets 'Sensitive' To Developments in U.S.
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Stocks regained most of earlier losses Monday after the U.S. Federal reserve decided to cut interest rates to close down about 1 percent on lukewarm demand.
But traders warned that any fallout from the reopening of the New York Stock Exchange for the first time since last Tuesday's terrorist attacks would be felt in full Tuesday. The RTS Index closed 1.09 percent down at 189.93 on turnover of $15.5 million. Earlier, shares had slipped about 5 percent.
"There is no panic on the market, but it is very sensitive to the news," said Jacques Polier, head of sales and equity at Troika Dialog.
Russian trading overlapped with New York trading for 30 minutes. The initial bloodshed seen in New York did little to move the Russian market. After falling more 5 percent, U.S. stocks began rebounded slighly by midday before closing nearly 700 points down.
Traders said the U.S. Fed's announcement that it was cutting short-term interest rates from 3.5 percent to 3 percent an hour before U.S. markets opened was not unexpected and had served to shore up Russian stocks.
"Such a decision showed the nervousness of financial authorities and political pressure," said Alexei Kazakov, senior analyst at NIKoil.
Traders also applauded a decision by the European Central Bank to reduce its interest rate late Monday from 4.25 percent to 3.75 percent in a move to match the U.S. interest cut.
"It's a good cut. It'll prolong the agony of the markets' contracting," said Sam Barden, a trader at Renaissance Capital.
Since the attacks in the United States last week, the RTS has shed more than 9 percent. Still, market players said they remain confident that Russia will be able to weather any fallout from the West.
"We believe the Russian market is somewhat insulated against world markets due to its strong economy, strong growth and the simple fact that Russia is, and has been all year, fundamentally very cheap," said Barden.
TITLE: NYSE Reopens With 681-Point Dow Fall
AUTHOR: By Lisa Singhania
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Scared investors sent stocks reeling Monday as Wall Street resumed trading after its longest shutdown since the Great Depression. The Dow Jones industrial average set a new record for a one-day point drop and closed below 9,000 for the first time in more than 2 1/2 years.
The Dow ended the day down about 681 points at 8,924, according to preliminary calculations. Its previous record for a one-day drop was 617.78, set April 14, 2000.
The heavy selling had been widely expected in a market that was already fragile as a result of poor corporate profits and outlooks. And since the attacks, which shut down the country's main stock market for four days, the major airlines have announced cutbacks and reduced schedules, adding to investors' nervousness about the future of the economy.
But the Federal Reserve, hoping to boost the economy and the market's confidence, cut interest rates by a half-point - the eighth rate cut so far this year - an hour before trading began.
The nation's financial leaders had called on investors to treat the market's reopening as a buying opportunity instead of a reason to sell.
New York Stock Exchange chairperson Richard Grasso was sanguine about the volatility after the opening bell: "Today's market is not important. It's the market a year from now, two years from now."
Many investors didn't seem to be unnerved by the market's drop. Ronald Loftus, a broker in Springfield, Massachusetts, said he was fielding phone calls from people who wanted to know what was going on, but said he'd seen no panic selling.
"In fact, the reaction has been just the opposite," Loftus said. "Some people are looking to buy primarily out of patriotism and to show their support. They are saying it's something they can do."
The Dow fell in 50- and 100-point bursts as its 30 components opened for trading. When American Express, the last stock to open, began trading, the Dow's loss surpassed 600 points, and the index fell below 9,000, dropping to 8,976. The blue chips last closed under 9,000 on Dec. 3, 1998, when they fell to 8,879.68.
The market fluctuated as expected throughout the day, with the Dow recovering to a loss of about 460 points before turning lower again in the afternoon. Shortly before 3:00 p.m., the index was off 721.56, reaching its biggest-ever intraday decline, topping the 721.32 it fell on April 14, 2000.
The NASDAQ composite index fell 115 points and the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index was down 53.
While the point declines in the Dow and NASDAQ were very large, their percentage losses were more moderate, with both indices off about 7 percent. As a point of comparison, the Dow dropped more than 22 percent when it lost 508 points in the crash of 1987.
Before trading began, the New York Stock Exchange observed two minutes of silence followed by the singing of "God Bless America."
The opening bell was rung by members of the New York Police and Fire departments along with representatives of other agencies involved in the rescue and recovery efforts at the World Trade Center disaster site.
"Let us celebrate these wonderful men and women," Grasso said, calling them "our heroes." He was surrounded by federal, state and local officials on a balcony overlooking the exchange floor.
Outside, a huge American flag was draped across the NYSE's famed columns.
The four-day market closing was the longest for the NYSE since March 1933 when the government shuttered the exchange for more than a week for a banking holiday during the Depression.
TITLE: Uncertainty Hangs Over LUKoil's Licenses
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Natural Resources Ministry on Friday delayed a decision on determining the fate of some LUKoil oil field licenses in the Timan-Pechora Region.
Ministry officials previously threatened to take away licenses to 730 million barrels of undeveloped crude reserves, accusing Russia's No. 1 oil major of not making the progress required by its agreement with the government.
Over the next couple of months, the ministry's expert council will carefully examine LUKoil recommendations to change the licensing agreement, said Kirill Yankov, a deputy minister in charge of the licensing department.
Hydrocarbon reserves in those Timan-Pechora fields officially belong to Arkhangelskgeodobycha, or AGD, 74 percent of which is owned by LUKoil. Another 25.5 percent belong to the state-owned oil company Rosneft.
"The situation surrounding AGD is very complicated," Yankov told journalists. "There are many details we still don't understand completely."
LUKoil officials on Friday could not be reached for comment.
If the ministry is going to demand strict adherence to licensing agreements on the part of oil companies, then the same should be required of federal and regional government officials, Yankov said.
The United Financial Group brokerage viewed the ministry's threats as a negative development for LUKoil in one of its most strategically important regions.
"This example shows that LUKoil's resources are stretched and that without a greater focus on shorter term goals the value of its assets may be impaired," UFG said in a research note.
While Yankov said that recommendations from all sides - the ministry, the administration of the Nenets Autonomous Region and LUKoil - should be analyzed before a decision can be made, he didn't offer the same treatment to Severnaya Neft, a mid-sized oil producer fighting to keep its own license to Timan-Pechora fields.
Severnaya Neft - and its license to the Val Gamburtseva fields - has become the poster child for the ministry's newfound mission to punish companies that it accuses of improperly acquiring their licenses or that let lucrative oil fields lie idle.
Russia's oil majors cried foul in March when Severnaya Neft was granted the Val Gamburtseva license, but the previous natural-resources minister maintained the tender was conducted fairly.
Severnaya Neft's luck changed with the appointment of a new minister, who promptly announced that Val Gamburtseva will once again go on the auction block.
Alexander Samusev, president of Severnaya Neft, complained earlier last week that his company wasn't afforded the same consideration as LUKoil.
"We were invited to a meeting of ministry experts," Samusev said. "I sent a representative, and he was asked why he even bothered to show up. He presented his case, and then the ministry officials kept on talking as if he never made his presentation."
The ministry declined to comment on the Severnaya Neft dispute.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: TNK Stops Bond
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Oil producer Tyumen Oil Co., or TNK, said Monday it would postpone a $300 million to $500 million Eurobond to 2002 from this year, but would continue borrowing domestically.
"We won't hurry with Eurobonds this year," Vice President Oleg Surkov told a news conference.
He declined to say whether the postponement was connected with market instability after the terror acts in the United States. Surkov said TNK would offer 3 billion rubles ($102 million) worth of bonds to local investors in November.
Gazprom Eyes Sale
VILNIUS (Reuters) - Gazprom said Monday it was interested in a 25-percent stake of Lithuanian gas utility Lietuvos Dujos and wanted another 25-percent stake sold to local gas supply intermediaries.
"Our formula is 25, 25, 25. Twenty-five percent for a Western investor, 25 for Gazprom and 25 for local companies," Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said after a meeting with Lithuanian Economy Minister Petras Cesna.
Germany's Ruhrgas and Gaz de France have also said they are eyeing the sale.
GKO Auction
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Finance Ministry plans to auction up to 10 billion rubles ($339.6 million) in three- or four-year OFZ bonds and six-month GKO treasury bills in October, Deputy Finance Minister Bella Zlatkis said.
"We plan a paper with a three- or four-year maturity ... and probably one six-month paper. The two would be worth not more than 10 billion rubles," Zlatkis said.
She also said she expected the annualized average yield on an issue of five-month GKOs on Wednesday not to exceed 14 percent.
IMF Paid $24M
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia paid a scheduled $24.98 million to the International Monetary Fund on Monday, a Finance Ministry official said.
Russia has to pay about $2 billion to the fund this year, and the next payment is due on Sept. 28.
TITLE: An Anti-Terrorism Plan
AUTHOR: By Caryle Murphy
TEXT: THE suicide bombers who drew us into a frightening new war last week were Muslims with a horribly twisted version of Islam. They obviously hated us.
President George W. Bush declared that the terrorists - said to be minions of the radical Islamic militant and Saudi Arabian fugitive Osama bin Laden - had presented the United States with "an opportunity to do generations a favor, by coming together and whipping terrorism; hunting it down ... and holding them accountable."
If the recent past is any indication, whatever the United States does next to battle this brand of terrorism will require an expertise that hasn't been evident in the years since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. While it strains the national patience at a time like this, the first step in an effective anti-terrorism policy is to examine how such terrorists come to be and why they despise us so.
It's no secret that in the Middle East, Islam's birthplace, that faith is at a complex historical juncture that has left many Muslims frustrated and angry. Having spent many years living in the region and learning about Islam, I believe that three major factors have contributed to this: authoritarian governments that have inadvertently created extremist movements by failing to develop a civil society that permits dissent; the inability of modern interpretations of Islam to prevail over outdated, orthodox versions; and America's failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Clearly, these forces have not turned every Muslim into a kamikaze. But in recent decades, they've helped create a climate that produces a fanatically extremist minority. From his hideaways in Afghanistan, bin Laden is the mastermind of a dangerous band of outlaws and the suspected author of Tuesday's attacks. It's no coincidence that his recruits are coming mostly from countries where these factors breed frustration, anger and hate toward America.
From Algeria to Egypt to Yemen, from Iraq to Pakistan, military or authoritarian governments - many of them U.S. allies - restrict public debate and cast a wide net over civil society. Even in the freest of these countries - Egypt - President Hosni Mubarak has been in office for 20 years, re-elected by referendums with dubious results, usually in the 90 percent range.
As Rifaat El-Said, an Egyptian politician, once said, "Civil society is a very vague concept. It is composed of a parliament, of a free press, a free system of education, a free trade union, an independent judicial system and so on. But in Egypt ... all these elements are linked together in a key chain. And the key chain is in the pocket of the president."
Those who go too far in defying these authoritarian states face dire consequences, ranging from torture to years in prison without trial. As a result, many young people have given up trying to change their governments.
But they haven't given up thinking about Islam. Indeed, Islam is experiencing unprecedented intellectual and theological ferment. As a crowded, competitive, technology-driven 21st century begins, more Muslims than ever before are re-examining their faith in light of the political, economic and intellectual challenges of contemporary life. They are pondering hefty questions: How can Islam and democracy be wed? Who holds authority in Islam? Should Islamic law, or sharia, be overhauled? Is there such a thing as "Islamic secularism?" If intellectual freedom is a right, how far can a modern Muslim go in expressing doubts about his faith without being called an apostate?
"There is a technological revolution. We need to be part of that," a teacher in Jordan once told me. "I don't think we have succeeded yet in combining our modernization with the indispensable part of our life, which is Islam."
The downside of this introspective ferment is that it has set off a raging fight within Islam. Secularists, moderate Muslims, orthodox thinkers and extremists are proffering competing versions of Islam. "One problem in the Muslim world is that Islam with all its cultural strength has no hierarchy to speak on its behalf," said Laith Kubba, founder of Islam21, a forum for liberal Muslims. "Today there are countless numbers of self-appointed authorities claiming they have an interpretation that is valid."
In many parts of the world, particularly in the West, moderate Muslim activists seeking to make their faith more relevant to modern life are gaining advantage. But in the Middle East, they remain the underdogs. Barred from organizing and staging public debates by authoritarian governments, they are hounded by their orthodox and extremist brethren, who respond to modernity by rejecting it.
The Taliban, Afghanistan's ruling Islamic movement, is the most radical example of this extremist orthodoxy, which is based on a literal reading of the Koran, Islam's holy book. Its proponents, who seek to expand Islam throughout the world, display a woeful ignorance of life in the United States, reject moderate Islam's historical tolerance for other faiths and show no interest in the scientific mindset at the root of the West's technological prowess. In other Middle East countries, the forces of orthodoxy are less radical but problematic nonetheless.
Against this unsettled backdrop, the 50-year-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians rages on. Seen through Muslim eyes, it's a conflict prolonged by America's bias toward Israel. Muslims don't comprehend, for example, how the United States, which gives Israel more than $3 billion annually, could not have stopped Israel from allowing more than 200,000 Jewish settlers - half of them since the 1993 Oslo peace agreement - to move into occupied territory Palestinians had envisioned as their homeland.
If we want to avoid creating more terrorists, we must end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict quickly and in a way both sides see as fair. We must demand that authoritarian governments open up, and we must make a greater effort to engage and encourage those Muslims who promote moderate and modernist versions of Islam. That's an anti-terrorism program worthy of our lost loved ones.
Carlye Murphy covers religion for The Washington Post and was the paper's bureau chief in Cairo, Egypt, from 1989 to 1994. He contributed this comment to The Washington Post.
TITLE: City-Oblast Merger Can Benefit Both
TEXT: GOVERNOR Vladimir Yakovlev's recent call for a referendum on uniting the city and Leningrad Oblast into a single subject of the federation is a sensible step, although perhaps a bit premature.
Done properly, such a merger would almost certainly bring immediate and long-term benefits to both regions. Most importantly, if the two regions were able to pursue a coordinated investment strategy - one that focused on developing industry in the oblast and tourism and corporate-headquarters development in the city - instead of competing for the same limited opportunities, economic growth would certainly be spurred.
If, for instance, the city sought international investors to relocate urban factories into the oblast, it would certainly make St. Petersburg more attractive as a tourist and a conference destination and free up a lot of space that is currently zoned for industry that could be used more productively playing to the city's strengths. If the city and the oblast were a single entity, then the city would continue to derive tax benefits from industrial enterprises that relocated to the oblast.
Obviously, the oblast would also reap significant benefits from such a policy. It would benefit enormously if the tax revenues to be reaped from St. Petersburg's growing tourism sector could be partially invested in, for example, developing agriculture and forestry in the oblast.
St. Petersburg would also, of course, benefit from a more coordinated policy regarding attracting tourism. As a destination, it would be even more desirable than it already is if it were packaged together with the many largely unknown attractions in the oblast.
As a political entity, the merged subject would immediately gain weight in Moscow and, over time, that enhanced influence would likely grow. The new subject would also be more influential within the Baltic region, development of which is quickly becoming a crucial opportunity for the future.
However, as is usually the case, this common-sense idea is bogged down in politics. Analysts speculate that the Kremlin might not be interested in a thriving St. Petersburg. Others say that the proposal has more to do with getting Yakovlev a third term than with rational economic development.
At the same time, politicians aren't fools. They know that a combined entity would only need one administration and one legislature. Prestigious jobs would be slated for cutting, which is always about as difficult a task as one could imagine.
Still, hope springs eternal. Maybe the beautiful logic of the idea really can prevail. Supporters of the idea should start developing it in detail now and, just as importantly, start actively educating the public on exactly why it is the thing to do.
TITLE: It Smells Like A Whole New World to Me
TEXT: FRIENDS from Europe and the United States often tell me that Russia smells differently compared to the rest of the civilized world. They say that the scent of garlic and other, to put it gently, non-aromatic smells assault their nostrils almost as soon as they find themselves within Russia's borders.
"It doesn't matter where you enter the country," they say, "you start sensing the smell of Russia immediately."
Of course, after they spend a while here, they get used to the local smell. Within a year or so, they cease to notice any difference at all.
I always dismissed these claims and steadfastly denied that Russia has its own odor. But last week, I discovered that I was wrong. You see, last week I stopped smoking, and my own sense of smell has suddenly awoken from its stupor.
Last Wednesday I went to the Legislative Assembly and made the entire office laugh when I got back. "You know what?" I said. "The Legislative Assembly stinks. I never noticed it before." Everyone thought this was pretty strange since the assembly is my regular beat and I'm there almost every day when it is in session.
However, based on my limited experience at the Legislative Assembly, I can say that the smell of Russia that everyone is talking about has nothing to do with garlic. It is the smell and the taste of cheap cigarettes that have saturated the walls of all the buildings in the country over the course of decades of Soviet power.
I've observed local government and legislative officials for years now, and I know that it isn't possible to exist within the corridors of power without being a smoker. Most people in the executive branch take up smoking because they have a lot of time to kill. Some of them have about three packs a day's worth to kill.
Legislators, on the other hand, like to be surrounded in halos of carcinogens while they contemplate, for example, the best way to improve local health care.
Cigarettes can play an important role in shaping history. I remember back in early 1998 when I was covering the assembly with my colleague, American Brian Witmore. Whenever we tried to smoke, the deputies would corner us in the vestibule and start peppering Witmore with questions about how the U.S. legislative system works because they were in the throes of drafting a new city charter, sort of our local constitution.
Surprisingly enough, some of the ideas that Witmore spouted together with his smoke were actually adopted by the city. Cigarettes facilitated the exchange of international parliamentary experience.
But times have changed. Now the deputies seek their inspiration outside the walls of the Mariinsky Palace, from various lobbying groups and other interested parties. A cigarette doesn't buy any influence anymore. The romantic age is dead.
Maybe that's why Governor Vladimir Yakovlev decided to issue a decree this spring banning smoking in government buildings. The governor, they say, is worried about the health of his administration.
But the joke is on him. The new decree merely means that each cigarette wastes more time, as officials now trot out into the city hall garden to smoke, leaving their butts behind when they wander back to their offices.
"I'm not bothering anybody here," the governor's spokesperson, Alexander Afanasiev, told me once. "It is my problem."
TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: Perhaps their knives were made of stone - chipped flints, sharpened to a deadly point: the earliest human technology. Perhaps that's how their weapons were smuggled past the sleek security machines, scanning for metal, for iron and steel. Perhaps that's how the guardians of the world's greatest power were defeated by a handful of men.
A handful of men, maybe no more than a couple dozen or so. Men dedicated to God, willing to die for their cause - virtues celebrated throughout the civilized world. Old-fashioned men, too: This was not push-button war, there were no guided missiles streaking across vast oceans, no bomb bays opening somewhere above the clouds. This was the real thing, the raw thing, fierce and elemental. They came to kill and they came to die. They killed; they died.
And so the unimaginable has come, at last, to America. Unimaginable, that the innocent could lie dead by the thousands, buried beneath the ruins of ordinary life. Unimaginable, that the destruction that has swept back and forth across the world in great waves, leaving the innocent lying dead by the millions, should have at last spilled over the strong seawalls that preserved the country's wealth and tranquility. Unimaginable, that Americans should know what so many, too many, have known before: the sudden, gutting horror of mass-murdering injustice.
How did it happen? America spends $30 billion a year, year after year after year, on "intelligence." Untold trillions have been spent on "defense." The country bristles with powerful ordnance, it "projects dominance" (as the strategists like to say) all over the globe. And yet its leaders are like blind men, raging like Oedipus, unable to see their attackers or defend their people or understand what is happening to them.
Struck and wounded, they fall back on empty rhetoric: "an attack on democracy" - as if the suspected plotters, who spent years in a war to the death with the Soviet Union, give a damn what America's political system might be. Then come the metaphysical explanations: "A new evil has come upon us." "This is a war between good and evil."
Well yes, it's evil - as the killing of every innocent person is - but it isn't new. It's as old as the hills, as old as any chipped flint dug up from the past. It's religion, tribalism, lust for power and - let's be painfully honest about it - a falling-out among former allies, old comrades in undercover war. Each one of these is a powerful engine of hatred - churning in the dirt of the real world, in the mixed matter of the human brain, in the murk and folly of human history.
Religion: the implacable, impenetrable conviction that absolute truth is in your sole possession. You are good; your enemies are evil. Tribalism (or in civilized terms, nationalism, patriotism): the belief that your country, your people, your grievances, your interests are above all others, that your values are so important that sometimes innocent people have to be sacrificed for them. Lust for power: the burning desire to impose your will on the whole world - or failing that, to bring the whole world crumbling down around you.
And a falling-out. The White House points the finger of blame at Osama bin Laden - a demon made to order, right out of central casting, remorseless, demented, crafty, rich. Like Saddam Hussein - another sinister figure suspected of collusion in this week's horror - bin Laden was first armed and empowered by America itself. The same intelligence services that now stand blind, struck and wounded, cynically embraced these brutal renegades as pawns in the Great Game of geopolitics; embraced them, armed them, paid them, built them up into autonomous powers - then, like Dr. Frankenstein, lost control of their creatures. The used became the users, and in Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Afghanistan - and now, New York and Washington - they have killed their thousands, and their tens of thousands.
In the name of religion. In the service of patriotism. In the lust for power, to project their dominance.
This is not a new evil. It's as old as the hills and is with us always.
But atrocity tends to raze the ground of history. In the aftermath, with the cries of lamentation rising over fresh graves, it is always Zero Hour. "That which happened" - to borrow the poet Paul Celan's phrase for the Nazi's unspeakable horror - buries what came before, effaces the paths that led us to this place, strips away the cloak of reason (a thin rag in the best of times), and leaves nothing but the bare, anguished call for revenge.
So the leaders, the blind men, assemble. They call urgently for war against someone, somewhere; they cannot say who, because they cannot see. The intelligence services are put to work - perhaps they will find a new pawn to turn on the one that has turned against them; someone new to embrace, to arm, to pay, to empower. Perhaps the missiles will streak and the bomb bays will open indiscriminately, as before. Or perhaps it will be left to assassins, surgeons of death who will use the terrorist's own treacherous weapons of surprise and deceit to destroy the culprits - and the inevitable "collaterals."
Blood will have blood; that's certain. But blood will not end it. For murder is fertile: It breeds more death, like a spider laden with a thousand eggs. And who now can break this cycle, which has been going on for generations? Past folly undoes us, but who, in the Zero Hour, can ignore the lamentations? Who can deny the ghosts, these loved ones gone, the red food demanded by the dead?
There is no answer. It will not stop. They say the world has now changed irreversibly, that nothing will ever be the same. But it will be the same. The same engines of hatred, the same murk, the same dirt, the same mixed matter in human brains.
This is not a new evil. It's as old as the hills, and it is with us always.
"Even unto the end of the world."
TITLE: The U.S. Sends Thanks for Russia's Support
TEXT: Over the last week, The St. Petersburg Times has received more than 100 letters of gratitude from Americans across the United States and around the world. Here are just a few of them.
Editor,
I am an American citizen who, like so many others here in the United States, has been horrified and saddened by this week's events. My wife and I have a wonderful son, 2-year-old Nicholas, whom we adopted from Russia in 2000. He is our joy. As an American and the parent of a Russian-born son, I have tremendous gratitude for the actions of President Putin and the Russian people. I know I am forever linked to the Russian people because of my son, and of that I am glad. But I now feel even closer to Russians all over the world. Thank you Russia for your offers of help. They are appreciated and needed.
Phillip Tutor
Anniston, Alabama
More Than They Know
Editor,
I grew up during the Carter and Reagan administrations in the United States. For most of my childhood, I lived in fear of the Soviet Union because of the Cold War. I guess all of us did.
I can't tell you how much it means to me and, I would say, many others in my country, to have the support of the great country of Russia at such a hard time. After all, we are all just people who want the best for our families, and who don't want to live in fear.
So, I would like to say thank you to our Russian friends for their support. It means more than they know.
Glen Overschmidt
Union, Missouri
Editor,
After having spent a very enjoyable two years in Russia, I can easily appreciate the warmth flowing toward the American people in this dark hour.
I am now working in Ghana, and I am pleased to say that all our employees stood silent for three minutes this morning to pay our respects to those killed by this despicable act, presumably done in the name of God.
To hear the American national anthem played at Buckingham Palace on the orders of the Queen was a big signal to America that the Britain is with the United States as well.
All people of good will are united. Good will triumph.
Chris Doggett
Tarkwa, Ghana
Proud of Russia
Editor,
Having traveled to Moscow, Novosibirsk and Tomsk only last month, I already knew what a warm and caring people Russians are. The grief and support that Russia has extended to the United States has been truly touching. I have been telling friends and family and anyone who will listen how proud I am of Russia.
The Russian people are truly wonderful and caring. Both Russia (as part of the former Soviet Union) and the United States have often fallen victim to their own foreign policies and good intentions. We have both felt tragedy and bloodshed strike close to home, but have never felt anything on this scale before.
The fact that Russia, from the highest government official to the most ordinary citizen, is willing to take such a strong stand in support of us and in the quest to find the aggressors involved is truly beyond anything U.S. citizens could ever have dreamed of.
Many of us have seen the outpouring of sympathy that is being displayed throughout Russia and especially at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. These are troubling times for all countries, but it makes me proud to know that at least Russia has vowed to stand with us since the beginning of this incident.
I loudly applaud President Putin, the entire Russian government and the wonderful Russian people for their tireless support at this horrible time. I hope this is the beginning of a long and deep friendship between our two great countries.
Mark Fitzpatrick
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Dark Times
Editor,
I followed the press closely when Russia suffered the Kursk tragedy and prayed for Russia then. Now Russians are following our dark days after a terrorist attack that has stunned our country and has forever changed our lives. How sad it makes me to realize that it takes a catastrophic tragedy to unite the world. We in the United States are all grateful for the kindness and compassion of the Russian people during this dark time of our lives.
Marlene Jones
Bothell, Washington
Editor,
I would like to thank the Russian people for their show of sympathy and support for the United States at this time. I have made two trips to Russia in the past year, and I was very impressed with the kindness and hospitality I was shown by so many people.
In light of recent events, perhaps together we can change the world and our friendship can grow stronger as nations and as common citizens of our planet. Thank you and God bless.
Mark Hodges
Martinez, Georgia
Thanks, St. Pete
Editor,
I am truly touched by the support that the Russian government and people have expressed at this terrible time of grief and suffering in the United States.
It is an attack against all free-thinking peoples of the world, and all free-thinking peoples and their governments must unite to eradicate the evil of terrorism in the world. As we in the United States attempt to go about our daily lives in the face of such horror, we look to one another and all people of love throughout the world for prayer and gestures of support and aid. Thank you, St. Petersburg and Russia, President Putin and all caring citizens of the world.
Linda Schwartz
Phoenix, Arizona
Can We Forgive?
Editor,
First of all, the hate I am hearing is awful, and I will not let anyone fill my heart with hate. Although it's hard, while I pray for the victims, survivors, rescuers and their families, I also pray for God to put forgiveness in my heart for those who committed these acts and those who support them.
However, that forgiveness for them as individuals does not mean that I endorse what they do. Nor does it mean that I feel the United States should not respond with military actions.
I believe that nothing less than military strikes against these terrorists and those countries that harbor them are required to save our people and our country.
Janna Charlton
Houston, Texas
Special Friendship
Editor,
In June and July, I had the pleasure of visiting Moscow, Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Vladimir, Suzdal, Ivanovo and St. Petersburg, volunteering to help orphans. I am a minor in Russo-Byzantine studies and have always loved Russian culture.
What happened in New York City and Washington last Tuesday morning was horrendously terrible. But later I saw ordinary Russians putting flowers at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and the Kremlin flag lowered to half-staff. I had such a relief come over me, and I felt immediately the poignant thoughtfulness and caring of the Russian people.
I would like to express my thanks and appreciation to the wonderful Russian people. I hope the special relationship between our countries continues and blossoms. Spasibo.
James Wiener
Sarasota, Florida
Editor,
As an American who has visited and studied Russia, I extend my heartfelt thanks to all those Russian citizens who have offered condolences and concern over America's recent tragedy.
I've always been impressed by how similar Russians and Americans truly are, and how they share the same moral attitudes and sense of justice. We now live in a time when Americans and Russians can stand together as friends and global neighbors. At this time of crisis, all Americans, including myself, are proud to be able to call the people of Russia our friends.
The vicious sword of terrorism hangs over all our heads as we begin this new millennium. Together, we can make the world a safer place for all innocent people.
Rick Phillips
Highland Beach, Florida
Counting Friends
Editor,
There are times when one must count one's friends. How comforting and reassuring it is to see that not only has Russia stood up to be counted as a friend of the United States but that Russia was among the first to do so. From the American heartland, thank you!
John Miesner
Manhattan, Kansas
Editor,
I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the Russian people for their sincere demonstration of grief during our hours of darkness here in America. I am not surprised by this because I have come to know the Russian people as warm, caring and very open. I look forward to visiting the Krasnodar region next summer to see my wife's family. This will be my third trip, and I am always amazed by how friendly everyone has been.
Russia has, of course, seen its share of terrorist activity in recent years. To receive your support has been a bright moment in this otherwise dark time. To all the Russian people who have expressed their support, from President Putin to the people in the smallest of villages, I say thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Michael Weaver
Ephrata, Pennsylvania
Cool Heads
Editor,
Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. President Bush seems to be surrounded by good men like Colin Powell who are keeping their cool. We, the people of the United States, will not rush into the reactions that the Russians seem to fear. Yes, we want justice. Yes, we want revenge. But as a citizen who lives just south of Boston, I trust the folks who represent me. They are keeping their cools and setting a good example.
Charlie Adams
Norwood, Massachusetts
Special Kinship
Editor,
Like others who have written to you, I am an average American. I am an air-traffic controller who lives and works in San Diego, 4,800 kilometers from where the disaster of recent days took place.
Like all Americans and others throughout the world, I am emotionally affected by the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001.
I have been very impressed by the support and sensitivity of the people in Russia and in other countries around the globe. I wanted to let the Russian people know how profoundly grateful I am to know that they feel as touched about what has happened as we do. I have suddenly felt a kinship with the Russian people that I had not felt before, for which I am now sorry.
It has been enlightening to rediscover that we are all God's children and that we are all caring, feeling human beings. To all those who share in our grief, thank you. Thank you for feeling our pain and for providing emotional and other support in any way you can. God be with you and bless you all.
Tim Quinlan
San Diego, California
Unending Cycle
Editor,
The images on television horrified and sickened me. Then our political leaders came on television, and I was horrified and sickened again. They spoke of retaliation, of vengeance, of punishment. I thought: They have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the history of the 20th century, from a hundred years of retaliation, vengeance, war, a hundred years of terrorism and counter-terrorism, of violence met with violence in an unending cycle of stupidity.
Will we now bomb Afghanistan, and inevitably kill innocent people, because it is in the nature of bombing to be indiscriminate? Will we then be committing terrorism in order to "send a message" to terrorists? Yes, it is an old way of thinking, and we need new ways.
A $300 billion military budget has not given us security. Military bases all over the world, our warships on every ocean, have not given us security. Land mines, a "missile defense," will not give us security. We need to imagine that the awful scenes of death and suffering we are witnessing have been going on in other parts of the world for a long time, and only now can we begin to know what people have gone through, often as a result of our policies.
We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.
Howard Zinn
Boston University
Editor,
I would like to express our great appreciation for Russia's support and sympathy in our time of suffering. We are thankful for all that has been said. We cannot express how much your kindness means at this time.
One of the great ironies of all of this tragedy is that the American people don't uniformly support Israelis or their policies. The average American is painfully ignorant of what's happening in Israel now. In a national opinion poll a few years ago, more than 50 percent of the Americans polled stated that they didn't trust the Israelis. There is no strong support for Israel by the average citizen.
I don't believe the terrorists and their confederates had any idea the fury that would be generated in the United States. America will unleash unbelievable resources to punish these killers. Their actions have caused the American people to come closer together. After fighting two world wars and standing up to the Soviets for 45 years, America has no intention of having terrorists tell it what to do. There will be no negotiating with these people. They will be killed.
Americans have suffered from Palestinian terrorist acts for more than 30 years. Still, the American people will not listen to terrorists. Instead of using violence that doesn't work, the Arabs and Muslim community should use their resources to appeal to the American people. They must use innovative means to communicate their message. They must make a consistent and determined effort. American foreign policy will change when the man and woman in the street understand that the Palestinians live in conditions similar to apartheid. These horrendous acts of terror only bring Israel and the United States closer together. When the Israelis ask us for money, most people here will gladly give them all they ask for. These atrocities will prove disastrous to the Palestinians.
I do believe that the Palestinian cause for civil rights and self-determination is a just cause. There will be no peace in Palestine until the foreign-born Palestinians can come home. But I cannot approve of the methods of the Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Osama bin Laden or Hezbollah.
I would like to stay to the murderers of my countrymen: "If you think that my people do wrong, and then you kill my brother to change the way I act, do you think that I will listen to you? Or will I instead want to kill you first?"
I fear that there will be an incredible amount of killing for a long time.
Lloyd Chappell
Dallas, Texas
TITLE: Getting Back to Business in New York
AUTHOR: By Hillel Italie
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - With a mix of pain and can-do, this city declared Wall Street open for business and braced for the flood of commuters even as smoke and dust lingered in the air and rescue crews worked amid rubble and body parts.
The missing haunted the streets: Posters with smiling faces stared from telephone poles and windows. The confirmed death toll hit 190, with 4,957 missing. Rescuers reached a train platform 25 meters below the World Trade Center's remains but found no survivors.
"Just going about everyday business is going to be hard. I'm here, and thousands aren't," said Anna Blasi, returning to her casting-director job a few miles north of the devastation.
But six days after terrorists toppled the twin towers with two hijacked jets, the New York Stock Exchange and the Mercantile Exchange, as well as City Hall, other government buildings and courthouses, were to reopen Monday.
Anxious investors waited to see how the markets would respond after the longest shutdown since the Depression; business owners worried how a fragile city would cope.
"You've got to move onward and show that they didn't succeed," said Tony Sewell, an accountant who lives a few blocks from the country's financial center. "People are going to come together and say 'We need to sit through this and make it through this together."'
"The life of the city goes on, and I encourage people to go about their lives," Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Sunday.
They'll just have to step carefully. The narrow streets of the city's southern tip - home to the city's financial and government sectors - were crisscrossed with heavy utility cables. Portable generators hummed on sidewalks. Telephone and electricity service was spotty.
The Wall Street subway station is closed, and only subways on the east side of downtown Manhattan will run at all. A new ferry service will carry passengers across the East River from the borough of Brooklyn. Streets are closed to vehicles and some thoroughfares are blocked altogether.
The New York Stock Exchange had a successful test Saturday of its computer and communications systems. The computerized Nasdaq Stock Market, which doesn't have a trading floor as the NYSE does on Wall Street, said it had also conducted a successful test of its systems.
Maintenance staff and chief executives also tried to prepare.
Felix Fajardo mopped the foyer of a Wall Street law firm Sunday, trying to clear off the film of fine gray dust that spread for blocks, sticking to shop windows, ATMs, awnings - "all over the place."
So far, the latest statistics left scant room for hope.
"The recovery effort continues and the hope is still there that we might be able to save some lives. But the reality is that in the last several days we haven't found anyone," Giuliani said.
No survivors have been pulled out since Wednesday, and Giuliani said that most of what rescuers found was body parts, not bodies.
Among the grisly finds have been a pair of hands, bound together, found on a rooftop. Another was the torso of a Port Authority police officer, identified by the radio still hanging from his belt.
TITLE: Phone Calls Tell Tale of Heroism Aboard Hijacked Flight 93
AUTHOR: By Martha Raffaele
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SHANKSVILLE, Pennsylvania - Just before United Flight 93 crashed, some of the passengers learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center and may have overpowered the hijackers to keep the jetliner from hitting another landmark.
Authorities have not disclosed whether there was a struggle on the plane and have not said what caused the airliner carrying 45 people to plunge into a Pennsylvania field. But some of the victims called relatives from the plane and said that they had resolved to wrest control of the flight back from their captors.
Passenger Jeremy Glick, 31, telephoned his wife, Liz, after terrorists took over, Glick's uncle Tom Crowley said Wednesday. She conferenced the call to an emergency dispatcher, who told Glick about the New York attacks.
"Jeremy and the people around them found out about the flights into the World Trade Center and decided that if their fate was to die, they should fight," Crowley said.
Among the passengers was Thomas Burnett, a 38-year-old business executive from California. In a series of four cellular phone calls, Burnett had his wife, Deena, conference in the FBI and calmly gathered information about the other hijacked flights.
Burnett said "a group of us are going to do something," his wife said, and he gave every indication that sacrificing the passengers wasn't part of their plan.
CNN reported obtaining a partial transcript of chatter from the plane recorded by air-traffic controllers as the jetliner approached Cleveland.
The network said tower workers heard someone in the cockpit shout, "Get out of here," through an open microphone. A second transmission from the plane is heard amid sounds of scuffling with someone again yelling, "Get out of here."
Next to be heard is a voice saying: "There is a bomb on board. This is the captain speaking. Remain in your seat. There is a bomb on board. Stay quiet. We are meeting with their demands. We are returning to the airport."
CNN said an unidentified source who heard the tape claimed that transmission was of a voice speaking in broken English. The microphone then went dead, CNN reported.
Officials have said the Secret Service feared the target of the United flight was Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland about 135 kilometers from the crash site. Others speculated that the White House or Pentagon could have been targets.
During the flight, passengers screamed through cell phones to share final words with their loved ones. Not Burnett, who seemed unshakable from his first call. "He said: 'I'm on the airplane, the airplane that's been hijacked and they've already knifed a guy. They're saying they have a bomb. Please call the authorities,'" his wife said.
She called 911, who patched her through to the FBI. She was on the phone with agents when his second call came. "I told him in the second call about the World Trade Center, and he was very curious about that and started asking questions. He wanted any information that I had to help him," she said.
By the third phone call, "I could tell that he was formulating a plan and trying to figure out what to do next," she said.
In his last call, Burnett said he and some other passengers had decided to make a move. "I told him to please sit down and not draw attention to himself and he said 'no.' He said 'no,'" Deena Burnett said, shaking her head with a half-smile.
In Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft said each of the planes was seized by three to six hijackers armed with knives and box cutters. Crowley said Glick described the terrorists as "looking and speaking Arabic" and reported that they were armed with knives and had a "large red box" they said contained a bomb.
The plane had left Newark, New Jersey, at about 8 a.m. for San Francisco. But it banked sharply as it approached Cleveland and headed back over Pennsylvania, losing altitude and flying erratically.
It slammed nose-first into a field about 130 kilometers southeast of Pittsburgh at 10 a.m. - an hour after the Trade Center crashes and about 20 minutes after the Pentagon attack.
"We may never know exactly how many helped him or exactly what they did, but I have no doubt that airplane was bound for some landmark and that whatever Tom did and whatever the guys who helped him did they saved many more lives," said Burnett. "And I'm so proud of him and so grateful," she added, breaking off to choke back a sob.
TITLE: Muslims Face Violence in U.S.
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRIDGEVIEW, Illinois - Dozens of anti-Moslem attacks were reported throughout the United States in an ugly backlash to the terror attacks in New York and Washington on Sept. 11.
Police turned back 300 marchers - some waving American flags and shouting "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" - as they tried to march on a mosque in a Chicago suburb late Wednesday.
Three demonstrators were arrested, said Bridgeview Police Chief Charles Chigas. There were no injuries and demonstrators were kept blocks from the closed Muslim worship place.
"I'm proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have," said 19-year-old Colin Zaremba who marched with the group.
In Chicago, a Molotov cocktail was tossed Wednesday at an Arab-American community center and a firebomb was hurled at a mosque in Montreal. No one was injured in the attacks.
"The terrorists who committed these horrible acts would like nothing better than to see us tear at the fiber of our democracy and to trample on the rights of other Americans," Illinois Governor George Ryan said.
In Huntington, New York, a 75-year-old man who was drunk tried to run over a Pakistani woman in the parking lot of a shopping mall, police said. The man, Adam Lang, then followed the woman into a store and threatened to kill her for "destroying my country."
In Asbury, New Jersey, Ramandeep Singh, a Sikh who wears a turban, said he had garbage and stones thrown at his car and stayed home from work.
A mosque in Lynnwood, Washington, was vandalized and no one showed up for afternoon prayers at the Islamic Center of Spokane.
In a Washington state prison, a fight broke out during television reports of the attacks. A sheriff's spokesperson said that one inmate loudly criticized Muslims and then a Muslim inmate threw him to the floor, causing cranial hemorrhaging.
Tamara Alfson, an American working at the Kuwait Embassy in Washington spent Wednesday counseling frightened Kuwaiti students attending schools across the United States.
"Some of them have already been harassed. People have been quite awful to them," said Alfson, an academic adviser to roughly 150 students.
One student was told, "You should all die," Alfson said. Another was moved to avoid a harassing bus ride to class.
In a show of patriotism, members of the Islamic community in southern Florida registered with blood services to donate Wednesday.
"You feel the pain twice: Once because of what has happened and once because of the looks you get," said Sami al-Arian, an engineering teacher at the University of South Florida.
Abu Nahidian, director of the Manassas Mosque in Virginia, said his congregation has been the target of insults and hate messages left on the office answering machine.
"We have some recordings in our tapes that say, 'We hate you so-and-so Muslims and we hope you die."'
Several other incidents were reported in Canada, where five schoolchildren with Arabic-sounding names were assaulted in Oakville, Ontario, and a Montreal mosque was firebombed.
. In Australia, a school bus carrying Muslim children was stoned and vandals tried to set fire to a Lebanese church in apparent acts of retaliation for the attacks in the United States, officials said.
. While Muslims' lives were clearly changed, also changed were the lives of people who had nothing to do with the Islamic world but who might appear alien to untutored American eyes, according to a report by The New York Times. Indian women chose not to wear their flowing saris. Sikh men, with their religiously prescribed beards and turbans, reported being accosted.
They said they were apparently being mistaken as followers of Osama bin Laden, pictured on television with a turban of a different sort.
"Quite frankly, it's worse for us because they keep showing these pictures of bin Laden on television,'' said Mandeep Dhillon, a California lawyer and an advocate for Sikh rights. "It's making us incredibly vulnerable.''
Amrik Singh Chawla, a financial services consultant, was chased by three men in Lower Manhattan as he was trying to flee the flames and mayhem after Tuesday's attack. Chawla sprinted onto a train and landed in Brooklyn, where he slipped into a shop, stuffed his turban into his briefcase and wore his hair in a ponytail for the rest of the day.
"I'm like terrified for my life now, not just seeing people flying out of buildings, but for my own life,'' Chawla said.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Gadhafi Warns U.S.
SOLLOUG, Libya (Reuters) - Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi warned the United States on Sunday it could fall into a Soviet-style quagmire in Afghanistan if it retaliated there for devastating terror attacks on New York and Washington.
Gadhafi, who has often assailed Washington for its policies in the Middle East and elsewhere, said the United States had the right to respond militarily to the unprecedented attacks in which thousands are feared to have died.
But he urged restraint in the fight against terrorism. "The United States has the right to seek revenge," Gadhafi said at a public rally in the small town of Soloing, 48 kilometers south of the country's second city of Benghazi in eastern Libya.
"The United States is a strong and powerful country, but would it be bravery to attack Afghanistan, a country already destroyed, without roads or factories and where people move around on donkeys or in horse-drawn carts. Would that solve the problem?" he asked.
Massood Buried
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Thousands of people gathered Sunday in a village in Af gha nistan's Hindu Kush mountain range to bury opposition leader Ah med Shah Massood, who died from wounds in a suicide attack against him.
Supporters of Massood shouted slogans against the Taliban militia and also condemned Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, which U.S. officials blame on Osama bin Laden, the fugitive terrorist who has been given sanctuary in Afgha ni stan by the Taliban.
A veteran guerrilla commander, the dashing Massood was dubbed the "Lion of Panjshir" for his military prowess defending the Panjshir Valley against the former Soviet Union during its decade-long war in Afghanistan. He later held the valley against the Taliban.
Iraq Urges Restraint
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq urged Washington on Sunday to reconsider its foreign policy in the wake of the attacks on U.S. cities and said the horror was a consequence of American unfairness.
"We hope that American politicians will take this [attack] as a stimulus for quiet reasoning and reassessment of America's role in the world," Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said.
Sabri refused to comment on whether Iraq, which is on a State Department list of "state sponsors of terrorism," expected to be a target of U.S. retaliation.
Delegation Fails
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Senior Pakistani officials failed Monday to persuade the Taliban's reclusive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar to hand over Saudi-born terror suspect Osama bin Laden to avert U.S. armed retaliation, the AIP news agency said.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press quoted Taliban spokes person Abdul Hai Mutamaen saying that over three hours of talks between the sides had not resolved the key issue of turning over the multimillionaire Islamic militant accused of involvement in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.
"The meeting looked in detail at the aspects of the problem. The talks were positive but I cannot give the details," Mutamaen said. "We are 60 percent hopeful that conditions will be normal."
But on bin Laden, who the Taliban have termed a "guest," Mutamaen reported no progress. "There was no clear discussion on this particular topic."
The Pakistan delegation arrived early in the morning in the southern city of Kandahar and went immediately into talks with Taliban Foreign Minister Mullah Maulawi Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil.
War Preparations
KHYBER PASS, Pakistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have moved a large arsenal of weapons, including Russian Scud missiles, to positions near the border with Pakistan, a Pakistani Army officer said Monday.
"We are already prepared, we are ready to defend the motherland," Captain Abid Bahtti told reporters, speaking at an army checkpoint just 2.5 kilometers from the border with Afghanistan. "The Pakistan border is very secure."
Asked if the situation was warlike, Bahtti said, "Definitely, but it is not a declared war."
TITLE: Baseball Starts Job of Healing the Country
AUTHOR: By Ben Walker
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Less than a week after the events that changed America and the world, baseball told teams they've got a job to do: Play, and make the games seem as if they matter again.
When major-league baseball returns Monday, the standings and statistics will be exactly as they were. Barry Bonds is still chasing Mark McGwire's home-run record and more than a dozen teams are still in pennant chases.
But will anyone watch, will anyone care?
"They asked me a few days ago when I thought we should play again," Minnesota first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz said. "I said spring training."
Instead, with U.S. flags on players' caps and uniforms, fans wearing the stars and stripes, and "God Bless America" set to replace "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch, the games will go on.
As they should.
"It is important for America to get on about its life," said President George W. Bush , the former co-owner of the Texas Rangers.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra will keep performing. The New York City Opera will continue singing. Hollywood actors will go on making movies.
So the ballplayers will return, too, as will athletes in all pro and college sports in the coming days.
"We're the first American sport to get back and do our thing," Arizona first baseman Mark Grace said. "The rest of the 'real world' is back to work. Now it's our turn."
The national pastime has tried to help heal the country in the past. During World War II, President Roosevelt urged the sport to keep going, saying it would boost the country's morale and mend part of its torn fabric.
In 1989, an earthquake interrupted the World Series between the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants. Arizona third baseman Matt Williams was playing for the Giants during that crisis.
"The initial concern for everybody was first of all trying to find people alive on the highway, fires downtown and stuff like that, making sure everybody was safe. That was priority number one, and it has to be," he said.
At Veterans Stadium, Atlanta will play Philadelphia in a key NL East series. Braves pitcher Greg Maddux expects he'll be ready Monday night.
"It's weird. I can't really explain it. You go out there, they hand you a brand-new ball and everything changes," he said. "That's one of the beauties of the game. Once the game starts, you're able to forget about everything else."
Travis Fryman had no trouble recapturing his intensity.
During an intrasquad game this weekend at Jacobs Field, the Cleveland star took a called third strike from John Rocker. Fryman argued, and then threw his batting helmet from the dugout at the plate umpire - who happened to be head groundskeeper Brandon Koehnke.
Later, Fryman apologized.
For others, it will be difficult.
New York Yankees' left fielder Chuck Knoblauch watched the World Trade Center towers crumble from his apartment window.
Minnesota designated hitter David Ortiz heard the crash through his telephone while talking with a friend.
Houston second baseman Craig Biggio counseled his brother, an air-traffic controller who handled one of the doomed flights.
"There are probably players in their minds who, even though they are compensated very well, are just for bagging the season," Chicago Cubs manager Don Baylor said. "If you are a human being and American, I'm sure guys don't think this is as important as it was."
Randy Johnson, baseball's most intimidating pitcher, admitted he might have trouble Monday night when he starts for Arizona at Coors Field in Denver.
"We might physically be there, but mentally our minds might possibly be elsewhere, and that's understandable," he said.
St. Louis pitcher Steve Kline said, "We're still trying to win something, even though it seems shameless and useless."
At Shea Stadium, vehicles with supplies for the relief effort gathered in the parking lot while the New York Mets worked out inside.
On Monday night, the Mets will play the Pirates. Originally scheduled for Shea, the series was shifted to PNC Park in Pittsburgh.
The Yankees' first game back in the Bronx will be next week against Tampa Bay. Devil Rays pitcher Tanyon Sturtze is not looking forward to that flight into New York.
"My shades will be down," he said. "I won't be looking at anything."