SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #708 (75), Friday, September 28, 2001
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TITLE: Chechen Rebels Make Peace Overture
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Chechen rebel envoys have contacted federal authorities about possible talks on disarmament in the first serious move toward negotiations in the two-year-old war, officials said Thursday.
The overture came just as President Vladimir Putin's 72-hour offer for talks - his first such proposal - was expiring. Putin in the past has repeatedly rejected Western calls for negotiations, insisting that the rebels must be eliminated.
Viktor Kazantsev, the presidential envoy in the Southern Federal District, whom Putin appointed to oversee negotiations, said he had spoken with representatives of rebel leader Aslan Mask hadov but gave no details of the meeting.
"We have just barely started," Ka zant sev said on RTR television Thursday night from a plane to Moscow. "I'm not saying they're ready. They are still doubtful."
He said there would be further discussions with undisclosed Maskhadov envoys but would not say when.
Kazantsev met with pro-Moscow Che chen officials in Grozny on Wed nes day and spent much of Thursday in the southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz.
Maskhadov, who played a key role in fighting the Russians in the 1994-96 war and in negotiating a peace deal, welcomed the Kremlin peace offer and named Akhmed Zakayev to negotiate with Kazantsev.
Kazantsev's deputy Nikolai Britvin said in a telephone interview from Groz ny that an unspecified small number of rebels had already surrendered. He said the federal authorities would continue to welcome rebels willing to disarm after the 72-hour offer expires.
"The process has started and it will continue tomorrow and for some time in the future," Britvin said.
Shamil Burayev, the head of Achkhoi-Martan administration, said Thursday that no rebels had surrendered yet, but their relatives were asking the authorities about conditions for disarmament.
"Many rebels were waiting for such an offer, but they need more than 72 hours to come down from the mountains," he said in a telephone interview.
Bislan Gantamitrov, a pro-Moscow Che chen official, said on NTV television Thursday that civilians in Chechnya had handed over two grenade launchers, four pistols and one rifle. Gan tamirov said that there have been some contacts between federal authorities and rebel representatives, but refused to give any details.
Word of the overtures came on the heels of a U.S. endorsement of Putin's peace offer on Wednesday, when U.S. President George W. Bush said that he believed that Chechen rebels are affiliated with bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization.
The U.S. endorsement came as a major diplomatic coup for Putin, who also won a softer line on Chechnya from the leaders of Germany and Italy, as he began to see the diplomatic fruit of his offer to cooperate with the U.S.-led effort to combat terrorism.
"The Chechen leadership, like all responsible political leaders around the world, must immediately and unconditionally cut all contact with international terrorist groups such as Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization," White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said.
Fleischer, giving the first official U.S. response to Putin's offer to the rebels, said it opens the door to a political settlement in Chechnya.
"The United States has always said that only a political process can resolve the conflict in Chechnya, and we welcome the steps by the Russians to engage the Chechen leadership," Fleischer said.
"Respect for human rights and accountability for violations on all sides are crucial to a durable peace," he said.
The United States and Europe have criticized Moscow in the past for using excessive force in Chechnya. That stance appears to be changing.
"Europe must open itself up to Russia," Italian Prime Minister Silvio Ber lus coni said at a news conference after meeting with Putin in Berlin on Wed nesday. "Europe must reconstitute itself on the basis of its Christian roots. Europe must be convinced ... that Russia is a peaceful country, a peaceful European country."
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said Chechnya was in a region with "an elevated threat, which we have now experienced. The different aspects of Russian policy should be judged accordingly."
Fleischer denied the United States had violated any principles in wooing states including Russia to join an anti-terror coalition.
"American policy will still be based on what's right for America, in accordance with enduring principles of human rights [and] cooperation with nations around the world in accordance with those principles," he said.
A senior State Department official said Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov's acceptance of Putin's offer was "the first positive development in this conflict in months."
"We believe that President Putin made a sincere proposal to the Chechen side and hope that Mr. Maskhadov's quick response indicates his sincere commitment to work toward a lasting peace in the Caucasus as well," the official said Tuesday on condition of anonymity.
- Reuters, AP, SPT
TITLE: Soviet-Era Housing Gets New Lease of Life
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The very symbol of sub-standard housing, the lowly krushchyovka, may be being given a new lease of life, at least if the Danish Foundation for the Construction of Attic Apartments in Russia has its way.
The foundation presented its pilot project for the reconstruction of some of St. Petersburg's most unappealing housing to delegates at the Third Annual Baltic Development Forum Summit on Tuesday.
Khrushchyovka is the popular name for the five-story mass-produced housing projects that were built in great haste during the reign of Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s and 1960s in order to ease the post-war housing shortage and to try to bring the benefits of socialism to average people.
However, from the beginning they were widely ridiculed for their cramped living space. Now, 40 years on, the hastily constructed buildings are badly worn, often nearly dilapidated.
St. Petersburg alone has about 1,500 khrushchyovka buildings.
Now the Danish foundation and six Scandinavian commercial companies have carried out a pilot reconstruction project at 16 Torzhkovskaya Ul. The project, which took nine months to complete, added a mansard for nine apartments, insulated the facades to improve heat retention and renovated the building's heat plant.
Now the gleaming six-story building with glassed-in balconies and fresh white paint is the envy of the neighborhood, surrounded by its decaying former twins.
"We look like Cinderellas next to [this building]," said one resident from a neighboring khrushchyovka. "We'd be happy to undergo a similar reconstruction," she added.
"This project may be one way of prolonging the life of these buildings for another 50 years," said Lev Khikhlukha, who directed the program for the Russian arm of the Danish company Velux. He added that the St. Petersburg administration adopted a program last year for further restorations.
Velux provided the numerous skylights for the restoration project, which were intended to create the impression that the small rooms were larger than they are.
Uffe Elemann-Jensen, chairperson of the Baltic Development Forum, who presented the project Tuesday, said that the idea of installing mansards on khrushchyovka buildings came to him nine years ago.
"It was back when I was still the Danish foreign minister, and the deputy of former mayor Anatoly Sobchak, Vla dimir Putin, was showing me around the city and presenting opportunities for foreign investment," Elemann-Jensen said.
Khikhlukha said that a square meter of such a renovation costs $230, which is more expensive than a square meter of new construction.
"However, if we look at the big picture, such projects are cheaper, because there is no need to create new infrastructure such as roads, kindergartens and schools in such districts," he said.
The residents of the new building seem pleased with the results of the pilot project.
"We have never felt so warm at this time of the year," said one. "Because of the insulated walls, we feel much more comfortable."
TITLE: Putin Tells Germany To Invest
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: ESSEN, Germany -President Vla di mir Putin declared the "doors wide open" to foreign investment in his country, telling Germany's top business executives Wednesday that tax and customs reform have created a good business climate in Russia.
The 15 countries of the European Union accounted for a full 40 percent of Russia's foreign trade last year and were responsible for 64 percent of direct investment in Russia, Putin told the heads of some of Germany's most powerful companies, including Daimler-Chrysler and Bayer.
"I'm convinced the good example will bring more," Putin said. "From our point of view, a very serious step has been made toward the creation of a civilized market economy.''
Putin emphasized that Russia has been paying off its foreign debt without help from international financial agencies, making payments of $2.6 billion in the first six months of the year.
The Russian president arrived in Berlin on Tuesday for a three-day state visit that was shaped by the terror attacks in the United States two weeks ago.
During his speech to business leaders in a villa once owned by the Krupp steel family, he pledged additional oil deliveries to Germany if necessary in order to assist in the fight against global terrorism.
The focus on terrorism has pushed disputes such as Russia's foreign debt to the sidelines. Germany holds the bulk of Russia's debt and is also Russia's biggest trading partner, alongside the United States, with $20 billion in trade last year.
In a rare address by a foreign leader to the German parliament, Putin urged the world to set aside Cold War suspicions and work together on fighting what he called the real danger - international terrorism.
"The Cold War is over. The world is at a new stage of development. Without a sustainable, international security policy we will never have stability," Putin told the Bundestag in German in a speech that drew a standing ovation from deputies.
"It's as though we could not realize that the world is no longer split into two enemy camps," he said Tuesday. "The world has become much, much more complicated."
"Meanwhile, we don't recognize the real threats," he said. "Terrorism, national hate, separatism and religious extremism have the same roots everywhere and bear the same poisonous fruit."
Putin also won some new support for Russia's conflict against Chechen rebels. After having breakfast with Putin Wednesday, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said the Chechen conflict should be re-evaluated in the light of the terror attacks on the United States.
Russia has long rejected charges of human-rights abuses in its military operation against Chechen independence fighters, saying that it is confronting a terrorist threat within its own borders.
In addition to his economic address Wednesday, Putin met with the governor of North Rhine Westphalia, Wolfgang Clement.
German business executives praised Putin for improving the investment climate in Russia, but said internal security still left a lot to be desired.
"Rating agencies, banks and investors are still cautious about Russia. There are still some uncertainties; the legal uncertainty continues," Hubert Pandza, chief executive of Deutsche Bank in Moscow, told a conference on Russia. However, Putin's reforms had done much to improve the situation in Russia, he said.
Speaking at the same conference, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref urged German investors to come to Russia. "I do not want investors to feel disadvantaged in our country. We will leave no stone unturned to achieve this goal," Gref said.
Eike Müller-Elscher, who is responsible for joint ventures at German gas company Wintershall AG, which is Gazprom's biggest partner, said, "I have the impression that positive developments are in sight."
Martin Orth, who works for KPMG Business Development, said improving internal security was a priority.
"Russia needs more reform particularly in internal security. There is a feeling among investors that money could be going into the wrong hands. There is still a mafiosa image prevalent," said Orth.
"Investors sometimes think investing money in Russia is like pouring water into a bath without a plug," said Orth, who spent a year in Russia in 1997 and who deals with Russian businesses.
- AP, Reuters
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Putin to NATO?
BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - NATO Secretary General George Ro bert son on Wed nes day played down a report that President Vladimir Putin would become the first Russian or Soviet leader to visit NATO headquarters during a visit to Belgium next month.
Earlier, RIA Novosti said Putin would hold talks with Robertson at the alliance's sprawling, prefabricated headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels during the Oct. 2-3 visit.
"Frankly, I think it is of lesser importance where my meeting with the Russian president is than the substance of the talks themselves," Robertson told a joint news conference with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.
The main reason for Putin's visit to Brussels is a pre-scheduled summit with the European Union. But the Sept. 11 attacks by hijacked aircraft on the United States now look likely to dominate his talks with both the EU and with NATO.
Arms for Afghans
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia will supply Afghan rebels with old Soviet weapons best suited to the harsh Afghanistan terrain rather than new top-of-the-range equipment, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Ivanov, speaking to journalists in Brus sels, gave details of Russian arms supplies to the Afghan Northern Alliance following President Vladimir Pu tin's pledge on Monday to step up military assistance to the Afghan opposition forces.
"The Northern Alliance only likes Soviet-made weapons. It openly says it does not need any other types of weapons, not even modern Russian ones," Interfax quoted Ivanov as saying.
Ivanov, who on Wednesday briefed his NATO counterparts on Russian policy following the attacks, gave details of the Northern Alliance's arms wish list.
"If you take tanks, then the Northern Alliance needs T-55s, which have been in Afghanistan for 20 years. For the Afghans, there has never been anything more reliable than the Kalashnikov [assault rifle],'' he said.
He said the Northern Alliance also needed artillery systems, armored personnel carriers and ammunition.
U.S. Backs Putin
WASHINGTON (WP) - The U.S. administration called on separatist rebels in Chechnya Wednesday to cut their ties to "international terrorist groups" that have provided weapons for their fight for independence, and it urged the rebels to accept peace talks with the Kremlin.
The administration's statements - aligning the United States with Russia's frequent attempts to blame the insurgency on Islamic extremists from abroad - marked a major change in U.S. tone, which for years has sharply criticized Russia's human-rights record in the breakaway southern republic. It comes on the heels of Moscow's offer to let the United States use Russian bases and airspace in a war on terrorism.
"To the extent that there are terrorists in Chechnya, Arab terrorists associated with the al-Qaeda organization, I believe they ought to be brought to justice," President George W. Bush said. "We do believe there's some al-Qaeda folks in Chechnya."
Kursk Lift Awaits Barge
MOSCOW (AP) - Divers working on the sunken Kursk nuclear submarine were completing preparations this week for the arrival of a huge barge that is to hoist it to the surface.
The Giant 4 barge is to anchor itself in position over the sunken submarine, a process expected to take about 24 hours. Divers are then to start attaching steel cables linked to hydraulic jacks on the barge, which is expected to take up to five days depending on the weather, said Vice Admiral Mikhail Barskov, who is in charge of the salvage effort.
Barskov said the Kursk might be lifted to the surface Sunday or Monday if the weather is good. The lifting itself is expected to take about 12 hours and requires calm seas.
Weather experts forecast that the seas will become rough around Sunday, most likely leading to a new delay in the lifting, which was originally set for Sept. 15, but has been pushed back repeatedly due to storms and technical difficulties.
Don't Say 'Genocide'
YEREVAN, Armenia (Reuters) - Pope John Paul II paid a moving tribute Wednesday to as many as 1.5 million Armenians who were killed in the early 20th century, but he stopped just short of using the word "ge no cide" to describe what happened.
"Listen, O Lord, to the lament that rises from this place, to the call of the dead from the depths of the 'metz yeghern,'" he said at a prayer service at the towering Tzitzernagaberd memorial, which is flanked by an eternal flame.
The pope's entire prayer was in English except for the words "metz yeghern," which means "great crime" or "great evil" in Armenian.
For more than 75 years, the Armenians have used the term "metz yeghern" to refer to what they say was genocide. Some dictionaries say "yeghern" has come to mean "genocide" over the years.
The issue is complex and significant, because Turkey denies Armenian charges that Ottoman Turk armies carried out genocide against 1.5 million of their people as the Ottoman empire collapsed during World War I. Turkey says Armenians died as part of normal warfare, and if the pope had uttered the word "genocide," it could have sparked a diplomatic storm with Ankara.
The pope added, "We are appalled by the terrible violence done to the Armenian people and dismayed that the world still knows such inhumanity," after laying a flower by the eternal flame.
TITLE: Oil-Wary Government Approves 2002 Budget
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government signed off on the draft 2002 budget this week while voicing concerns about the impact of crumbling global oil prices on planned revenues.
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin offered assurances on Tuesday that Russia would make good on future debt repayments.
Energy Minister Igor Yusufov said he has agreed to cooperate with OPEC in trying to stabilize oil prices, which plummeted to fresh 17-month lows Tuesday.
The cabinet gave final approval to a budget with a surplus of 78.3 billion rubles ($6.06 billion), or 1.63 percent of expected gross domestic product. Revenue is set at 2.126 trillion rubles and spending at 1.947 trillion rubles. GDP is to grow 4 percent, compared to an expected 5.5 percent this year.
The draft forecasts the average price for a barrel of oil next year at $18.50 a barrel. The budget loses $90 million for each $0.10 drop in oil prices.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told the cabinet meeting that oil is a wild card that is raising concern.
"Despite positive trends [this year], there is a series of uncertainties that the government must take into account," Kasyanov said.
He noted that the price of Urals blend crude has lost about $10 a barrel in value in recent weeks.
Oil's volatility comes at an inopportune time for the government, which is trying to pass a strict budget that will allow Russia to pay $19 billion in debt obligations due in 2003.
Analysts say that Urals is trading dangerously close to the $18.50 a barrel forecast in the 2002 budget.
"Lower oil prices would clearly be a negative for Russia, but our initial analysis shows that if prices fell to the 10-year average of $17 per barrel, it would certainly not be a catastrophe," said Philip Poole, ING Baring's chief economist for Eastern Europe.
If oil prices did in fact fall this low, they would turn a projected budget surplus into a deficit of $5.7 billion, which would need to be funded by additional external or domestic borrowing, Poole said.
Kudrin said the government is reserving the right to borrow $2 billion on international markets in the event that budget revenues come in lower than expected. But he was quick to add that Russia would fulfil all its debt obligations no matter what the price of oil turns out to be.
"We will ensure that the debt payments are completely paid off and that the level of social expenditures will not be lowered," Kudrin told journalists. "The government will be required to analyze a series of protection measures so that our obligations will be met no matter what the market conditions are."
The Duma has lobbied for more social expenditures than originally planned, meaning a relaxation of fiscal discipline. Kudrin said that any possible additional expenditures would have to be tied directly to the amount of extra revenues.
He said that revenues earmarked for a special reserve fund to help meet future debt obligations have been raised from 57.9 billion rubles to 109.8 billion rubles ($3.73 billion).
The budget goes to the State Duma for a first reading Friday.
Alexander Zhukov, head of the Duma's budget committee, said the budget has a "good reserve of strength" and has a strong chance of being passed in first reading.
"Spending will be financed even if the price for Russian oil drops to $17 a barrel," Zhukov was quoted by Interfax as saying after the cabinet meeting.
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Kudrin said Wednesday the recent oil -price fall may mean the 2002 budget was based on overly optimistic forecasts, but he ruled out the need for talks on its huge debt burden.
But analysts warned that 2003 debt payments could be more difficult to finance because of the new oil-price outlook.
Prices for oil, the backbone of exports and budget revenues, slumped this week just as the government approved a rise in expected budget revenues next year of 127 billion rubles ($4.32 billion) at parliament's request.
Kudrin told the State Duma that the oil price was a worry.
"I cannot rule out that the average 2002 price for oil will be lower than the one we have based our draft budget on," Kudrin told the Duma, which will debate the bill on first reading Friday.
But he added: "Russia is fulfilling all its foreign debt obligations. It is in the state's interests to be oriented to a full repayment of debt in 2002-2003."
"We are not so far planning restructuring talks with the Paris Club," he added, referring to the club of creditor countries to which Russia owes $39 billion from its total foreign debt burden of just over $140 billion. "Russia is a solvent country and will pay its foreign debts in accordance with the schedule it took upon itself," he added.
On top of financing 2002 spending, the government plans to set aside funds for the 2003 debt peak.
The government has calculated 2002 revenues at an average $22 per barrel of Urals blend, which Russia mainly exports, while spending was calculated at $17.
Alexei Moiseyev, an analyst at Renaissance Capital, said the 2002 budget would have a surplus if oil stayed above $16 a barrel, although the government would have to privatize more and boost borrowing and sales of state precious-metals reserves.
"After the government increased the revenue target and oil prices fell, the quality of the budget fell. It became more dependent on oil prices, on the possibility to privatize and to borrow," he said.
- SPT, Reuters
TITLE: Insurance Gap May Ground Airlines
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian airplanes bound for international destinations may be grounded if the government does not offer guarantees for insurance of risks against terrorist acts or war.
After hijacked aircraft struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Sept. 11, international insurers limited their third-party liability coverage to $50 million, down from $1 billion to $2 billion, effective Sept. 25. Now the industry needs the government to pledge money to bridge this insurance gap.
"Insurance companies basically said they can no longer assume war risks that are above $50 million," the International Air Transport Association's director of corporate communications, William Gaillard, said Wednesday by telephone from Geneva. "So for the airlines to continue flying they are to get a guarantee by their governments that the difference between the $50 million and the rest of liability would be covered."
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov was quoted by Interfax as saying the government on Thursday will discuss measures to be taken to ensure that Russian airlines fly unhindered. He said the cabinet is ready to offer guarantees on this type of insurance and will introduce proposals to the State Duma if needed.
Aeroflot's chief financial officer, Alexander Zurabov, said by phone Wednesday that the issue "in full measure concerns Aeroflot."
According to Zurabov, until now Aeroflot's third-party liability coverage has been $200 million in Europe, $750 million in the United States and up to $1 billion in Hong Kong.
"When insurers said that the premiums that airlines pay are only enough to cover the liabilities at $50 million, leasing companies were the first to react, then followed airports and civil-aviation authorities, saying that airplanes that do not have third-party liability coverage for more than $50 million will not be allowed into their airspace and will not be allowed to land," he said.
Zurabov said Aeroflot has now secured its coverage to $150 million. "We don't have it up to $750 million as the market is very nervous now," he said.
TITLE: City's Ailing Mortgage Market Gets Boost From DeltaCredit
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: DeltaCredit, a branch of the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund, is continuing its efforts to perk up the local mortgage market, despite the generally unfavorable climate in a sector that lacks funds and credit-worthy consumers.
Over the last year, DeltaCredit has approved about 500 loans nationally for a total value of $16 million. About 17 percent of that total was lent in St. Petersburg, according to Yelena Kle pi ko va, head of DeltaCredit's local office.
"The difference between Moscow and St. Petersburg is significant," Kle pi ko va said at a press conference on Thursday. "Apartments in Moscow are more expensive than in St. Petersburg, and here credit amounts are about half as much as in Moscow."
The U.S-Russian Investment Fund's mortgage program was created in 1999. At present, loans are processed through 15 Russian partner banks, four of which - Petrovsky, Inkasbank, Petersburg Industrial-Construction (PSB) and Russian-Capital - are based in St. Petersburg.
Loans are granted for terms of up to 10 years at interest rates from 6 to 15 percent, depending on the number of individual exemptions.
In order to provide cheaper refinancing to its Russian partners, the fund agreed to purchase the Russian-based subsidiary of New York's J.P. Morgan & Co. earlier this month. According to analysts, this purchase will enable DeltaCredit to raise more financing, lower mortgage rates and issue its own mortgage bonds and ruble-denominated mortgages.
"Russian banking laws say that banks refinanced by non-lending organizations have to create a significant reserve fund at the Central Bank," Kle pi ko va said. "Having our own bank, we solve that problem and make it easier to work with our partner banks."
"We hope that the credit climate will improve, and we think that the creation of our own bank will give us the opportunity to work more intensively with individual clients," she added.
The final deal on the J.P. Morgan purchase will be signed by the end of the year. The bank will be renamed the DeltaCredit Commercial Bank and will specialize in mortgage lending.
"The creation of a mortgage system in St. Petersburg will mostly depend on the banks themselves," Kle pi ko va said. "There is the Federal Mortgage Crediting Agency in St. Petersburg, which planned to launch its own lending program, but except for a few pilot credits, we have no information on its activity."
TITLE: OPEC Balks at Making Oil-Supply Cuts
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: OPEC producers on Wednesday decided to leave oil supplies unchanged at the expense of their own budgets, rather than take any blame for contributing to the world's slide into recession.
The cartel also made overtures to Russia against the background of sliding oil prices, inviting the world's second-largest producer to become an OPEC member.
Before the meeting, influential Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi asked Russia to become a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the first time such an offer has been made in recent memory.
Al-Naimi said the cartel's best option was to allow time for existing output curbs to be felt in a world oil market where crude prices have slumped under the threat of an impending economic downturn.
"Let's not take drastic action. OPEC should not rush into decisions," Naimi told reporters before Wednesday's meeting. "We must hold steady and watch this for a while."
Ministers said they had no option but to leave production quotas unchanged at 23.2 million barrels per day, despite a 25-percent fall in oil prices since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.They made a formal announcement and released a statement ratifying their pact Thursday morning, after a meeting with officials from non-OPEC countries.
Al-Naimi directed the OPEC membership request to Energy Minister Igor Yusufov, who is in Vienna as an OPEC observer. Yusufov replied that Russia's joining isn't possible at the current time but would be something to think about in the future, Interfax reported.
Coming from the Arabs, this gesture is a straightforward invitation, said Christopher Weafer, head of research at the Troika Dialog brokerage.
"Of course they [the Russians] are not going to do it," Weafer said. "Politically, it wouldn't be smart right now. But interestingly enough, the oil companies want to join, they want this kind of protection. They think that the overall higher prices would compensate for the decreases in production they would be forced to implement."
Oil companies on Wednesday declined to comment on the situation.
Libya's representative, Ahmed Abdulkarim, said there was already a consensus on keeping supplies steady. Another meeting is likely to be called for early November, he said.
Helpless to prevent oil dropping out of its target range of $22 to $28, OPEC is suffering the economic aftershock of the U.S. attacks.
"I think the current situation is not because of the fundamentals in the market. I believe there is no reason to panic," said Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh.
Yusufov had urged members before the meeting to keep the price of oil within the corridor.
Earlier this week, the minister revealed that he had already met with Russia's industry representatives to discuss forming a special committee to stabilize prices.
The committee would closely follow oil-price dynamics and decide whether to limit or expand the volume of Russia's exports accordingly.
Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khris tenko late Tuesday gave more details about the committee, saying that it would not like to be a formal body. He said the government should discuss all aspects of the oil-and-gas business with companies.
"Such consultations are important so that Russia can more precisely position itself in relation to OPEC, so that our positions are as open as possible to one another," Khristenko said.
He added that the Russian government and the oil business should consult with each other more often.
"It is precisely those factors that have currently sparked a high level of uncertainty on the oil market that have created the need for more active consultations," Khristenko said. "I wouldn't agree to it being a direct analogue of OPEC."
Hopes are that the political constraints tying OPEC's hands in the wake of the assaults will soon be lifted, allowing it to revive its successful two-year strategy of keeping prices in a high band.
This usually entails cutting production, but President Vladimir Putin said he would do just the opposite if it was necessary.
"In case of regional conflicts breaking out, Russia is prepared to supply more oil," Putin told a gathering of 350 top German industrialists in the northwestern city of Essen. "And I say this loud and clear."
It was the only point in his address that was interrupted by applause.
Russia produced 323 million tons, the equivalent of 6.5 million barrels per day, and exports stood at 140 million tons. Forecasts for this year put output at 340 million to 350 million tons and exports and 155 million tons.
But Russia is increasing production while demand decreases, as industry, business and consumers cut back on consumption of jet fuel, gasoline and diesel and oil traders appear to have lost confidence in the cartel's ability to prop up prices.
"It's a no-win situation for OPEC," said consultant Yasser Elguindi of Medley Global Advisors. "If they cut they stand to lose a lot politically while gaining very little."
London benchmark Brent in early afternoon trade Wednesday fell another $0.77 a barrel to $21.61, taking losses in the two weeks since the attacks to more than $7 a barrel.
Saudi Arabia's Naimi said the aim was still to target $25 crude, but OPEC's reference basket of crudes now is valued at just $19.87, its lowest in 18 months.
- Reuters, SPT
TITLE: Yevstafiev Takes Over From Remezov at Mosenergo
AUTHOR: By Kirill Koriukin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Arkady Yevstafiev settled into his new office as head of Mosenergo on Tuesday as a battle over control of the electricity supplier showed some signs of abating.
The longtime ally of UES chief Anatoly Chubais faces an extraordinary shareholders meeting in a few weeks that will decide whether Unified Energy Systems gets to keep its candidate at the helm or whether the post should go to somebody else. Alexander Remezov, the ousted director and favorite of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, appears to be out of the running.
Analysts gave a big thumbs up to the shake-up, predicting a new management would probably bring UES-heralded reforms to Mosenergo.
Mosenergo's board of directors appointed Yevstafiev as general director Friday. He moved into his new office Monday after court bailiffs effectively removed Remezov from the building. Mos ener go security refused to let in Yev sta fiev, who most recently was Remezov's deputy in charge of public relations, forcing bailiff guards to break into the office.
Yevstafiev is perhaps best known for an incident during then-President Boris Yeltsin's re-election campaign in 1996 when he was caught carrying half a million dollars in cash out of the White House. At the time, Yevstafiev handled public relations for Chubais.
The source of the cash was never established, but Chu bais conceded that the money was raised to finance Yeltsin's presidential race. The money went to pop stars hired to perform at concerts staged as part of the campaign.
Yevstafiev appears to be getting a warm welcome from the market, which had been vexed by the fight between UES and Remezov.
Renaissance Capital said Tuesday it was upgrading its recommendation for Mosenergo from "hold" to "buy" following Remezov's "definitive ouster."
"This signals that the battle between UES and the Moscow city government over the replacement of the Mosenergo CEO is nearing conclusion ... allow[ing] management to refocus on the company's operations," the brokerage said in a research note.
Andrei Abramov, an analyst with NIKoil, which is also recommending Mosenergo as a long-term buy, said the ouster would no doubt prove beneficial for the company.
He said Remezov statements on company strategy had disappointed investors. For example, Remezov named supplying the city with heat as one of the top priorities. Investors would have preferred to hear a more ambitious strategy, such as the transformation of Mosenergo into an unrivaled leader on the regional electricity market, he said.
Abramov said it was a logical move for UES to appoint its own man at Mosenergo since it is, after all, the controlling shareholder, while the city of Moscow owns a minor stake. Also, shareholders can now hope that a long-awaited plan for UES restructuring will be adopted at Mosenergo, he said.
Remezov, meanwhile, is not giving up the fight. He met Tuesday afternoon with Moscow Deputy Mayor Boris Nikolsky, Remezov's spokesperson Raifa Islamova said. She said Nikolsky told Remezov that the city would stand by him.
Luzhkov once again lashed out at Chubais over the ouster Tuesday. A day earlier, he promised to appeal to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
Moscow has threatened to sue UES for its multibillion-ruble debt to the utility. Remezov also plans to file suit, Islamova said.
UES remains unworried. The holding has said it would reregister Mosenergo in the Moscow region if need be.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Dutch Trade Mission
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Gerrit Ybema, the Netherlands foreign trade minister, will be in St. Petersburg from Sept. 27 through Sept. 29, leading a trade mission of about 40 Dutch companies.
Ybema will be accompanied by representatives of such companies as Marecon, Royal Haskoning Group, Berenschot International Solutions, Koop Pipeline Division BV and others.
On Thursday, Dvas met with Leningrad Oblast Vice Governor Grigory Dvas to discuss a program by which the oblast would provide waste materials from wood-processing plants to the Netherlands for use as "biological fuel."
The delegation will meet with local businesspeople at the Nevskij Palace Hotel on Friday at a seminar organized by the Netherlands' consulate.
Since 1995, the Netherlands Economics Ministry has invested about $4.2 million in ecological, agricultural, industrial and transport projects in St. Petersburg and the oblast.
IMF Inflation Warning
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia may need to take monetary-policy measures to rein in inflation, which is running ahead of projections and could be a threat to economic growth, the International Monetary Fund said in its latest assessment of the world economy.
In a semiannual report released Wednesday, the IMF forecast Russia's economy would expand at a 4-percent pace this year and next.
"Despite stronger-than-expected fiscal surpluses, inflation is running ahead of projections, suggesting that monetary policy may need to be tightened," the report said.
The fund said consumer prices are likely to rise 22.1 percent this year and 12.9 percent in 2002.
The IMF said the Russian authorities face a difficult task of creating tight domestic liquidity conditions to restrain inflation while avoiding an overly rapid appreciation of the ruble currency that could threaten economic growth.
Despite some weakening in oil prices from their peaks of late 2000 and continued high capital outflows, the external current account and overall balance of payments are expected to remain in strong surplus, the IMF said.
BPS Output Plans
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Pipeline monopoly Transneft said Wednesday it would be able to export up to 18 million tons of crude by the end of 2002 through its new export terminal on the Gulf of Finland.
Transneft head Semyon Vainshtok said the company would put on stream the Baltic Pipeline System, shipping crude from western Siberia to a terminal in Primorsk, by the end of 2001 and then gradually boost its throughput.
By the end of this year, the capacity of the $450 million BPS will stand at around 12 million tons of crude.
"To boost the throughput capacity to some 18 million tons we will need less than $200 million," Vainshtok said.
Moscow-Helsinki Line
MOSCOW (SPT) - The Railways Ministry is planning an express rail link from Moscow to Helsinki, Prime-Tass quoted the Oktyabrskaya Railroads' press service as saying Wednesday.
The project, which is expected to be finished by the end of 2002, includes a new express link between St. Petersburg and the Finnish border at Vyborg.
A large part of the line from Moscow through St. Petersburg to Vyborg has already been prepared for electric express track, said Gennady Komarov, a manager with Oktyabrskaya Railroads.
So far, 14 billion rubles ($478 million) have been spent on the reconstruction of the Moscow-St. Petersburg express line.
TITLE: Market Patriotism
AUTHOR: By Robert Reich
TEXT: WE'RE on the verge of a new kind of patriotism. A growing chorus is telling Americans that one of the best ways to demonstrate that the country won't be cowed by terrorism is to continue to buy shares of stock and retail goods. Vice President Dick Cheney said he hoped Americans would "stick their thumb in the eye of the terrorists and ... not let what's happened here in any way throw off their normal level of economic activity." House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt proclaimed that Americans were "not giving up on America, they're not giving up on our markets." Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said, "We're going to show we have backbone." On Thursday night, President George W. Bush asked Americans for their "continued participation and confidence in the American economy."
Call it market patriotism.
The theory is that we demonstrate our resolve to the rest of the world by investing and consuming at least as much as we did before, preferably more. The terrorists tried to strike at the heart of American capitalism. We show that American capitalism is alive and well by giving it as much of our credit card as possible.
But spending seems an odd way to demonstrate patriotism, which normally suggests a willingness to sacrifice for the good of the country. And if voluntary restraints don't work, government resorts to rationing.
But now, in fighting terrorists, our patriotic duty seems to be to buy more and save less, to continue the binge we've been on for years.
The difference, of course, is that full-scale war mobilization requires a lot of the country's productive capacity. The war effort comes first; consumer needs second.
We're not in a full-scale war mobilization, and it is to be hoped we won't be. In fact, right now America still has much unused productive capacity, and that creates a problem of its own. The immediate economic threat isn't that we can't produce enough to meet demands, it's that there may not be nearly enough demand for what we can produce. And since consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of all economic activity, any hesitancy by consumers could spell big trouble, as it already has for the country's airlines. The worry is that, having endured the horror of Sept. 11 and fearing more to come, American consumers will tighten their belts.
Keeping consumers confident has been especially important since the start of the downturn last year, because American consumers have almost single-handedly kept the U.S. economy afloat. Businesses have stopped buying much of anything. They overspent in the late '90s, mostly on capital equipment and software, and began cutting back last year at the first sign of trouble. The technology sector took the initial hit, but as profits continued to drop, capital investment of all kinds plummeted.
Government isn't filling the gap. As long as the federal government has a budget surplus, it takes in more than it spends. Rather than spur demand, this reduces it.
So American consumers have been about the only bright lights in the global-capitalist firmament. If they cut way back on their buying, the bottom could drop out of the economy. And if the bottom drops out, it will be harder to mount a war against terrorism. Not economically harder - we would have even more productive capacity to spare, including a lot of unemployed people who could be put to work making all sorts of things even remotely connected to waging war - but politically and psychologically more difficult. A sharper economic downturn would unsettle an already rattled country.
The exhortations to invest and consume are understandable. Yet the reality is that Americans are in no position to do what's being asked of them. Even before the terrorist attack, personal-savings rates were nearing a 70-year low and personal debt was at record heights. Mortgage debt was in the stratosphere. Millions of consumers were already stepping back from the brink in recent months. In June, they paid down $1.8 billion of their debts, and in July they took on no additional debt - the biggest two-month retreat from borrowing in nine years.
Consumers are also understandably worried about their paychecks. Non-farm payrolls fell by 113,000 in August, and unemployment bounced up to 4.9 percent. The surge of layoff announcements in the past several months added to anxiety. The more than 100,000 layoffs announced just in the last week won't help.
And despite the patriotic calls to invest in the stock market right now, the sad truth is that many middle-income Americans got into the market way over their heads during the boom years of 1997 to 2000 and are now paying a steep price. Their spending binge after 1997 was fueled in part by the rapidly escalating value of their stock portfolios.
Just before the terrorist attack, the prudent thing for most families to do was to trim their budgets somewhat, pay down more of their debts and put a bit more of their savings into bonds. After the terrorist attack, that's still prudent behavior. There's no patriotism in being a spendthrift, no heroism in exposing one's family to unwarranted financial stress.
Witnessing the mass murder of thousands of Americans isn't the sort of experience likely to inspire trips to the mall or optimism about future share prices. But an appeal to patriotism is unlikely to have much effect when families are already overextended. Government could boost confidence far more effectively by putting more money in people's pockets. Since 80 percent of families pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes, one obvious way would be to cut payroll taxes, at least temporarily. Another would be to expand unemployment insurance to cover more people who might lose their jobs in this downturn. Right now, less than 40 percent of job losers are covered.
If political leaders want a display of market patriotism, an appropriate target would be companies on the verge of announcing new rounds of mass layoffs. More big cuts will only further erode consumer confidence. Companies should be asked to forbear laying off more workers, if they possibly can, for at least the next six months. What better way of demonstrating we're all in this together and showing our patriotic resolve?
Robert Reich, U.S. secretary of labor from 1993 to 1997, is a professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University and national editor of the American Prospect magazine. He contributed this comment to The Washington Post.
TITLE: Does Putin Think Russia Is a Safe Bet?
TEXT: SOMETIMES random juxtapositions tell us a lot about the real state of affairs around us. This week, for instance, President Vladimir Putin has been in Germany, telling all who will listen in his fluent German that Russia is a great place to invest, that the future here is bright, that his slate of reforms has created a good business climate in Russia.
Travelling with the president, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref heavily underscored the theme. "I do not want investors to feel disadvantaged in our country. We will leave no stone unturned to achieve this goal," he said.
Ah, if only a shortage of unturned stones were the problem! But it is not.
The wires on Thursday evening were humming with the news that the head of security for Promstroi Bank, Nikolai Shatilo, was shot to death by unknown gunmen near the entrance to his downtown home. When word came through, many on our staff began spontaneously listing other recent hits, murders that are - to be frank - too commonplace even to be considered news.
Less gruesomely, some readers may have noticed the Disegni store on Nevsky Prospect, just across the way from Gostiny Dvor. A sign in the darkened store window tells customers where they can pick up items that they left to be altered, while the main entrance bears a forbidding, ominous official seal.
The chain of stores is at the center of a nasty legal squabble between a foreign businessperson and his former Russian partner, a squabble that bears all the hallmarks of a "drive-out-the-foreigner" type situation. Just like the one memorialized by the Minutka cafe down the road that still looks oddly like a branch of the American Subway chain. However the Disegni case turns out - and these processes are usually virtually unending - the safe bet is that a once-thriving business will be killed off.
Of course, it would be unfair to place too much emphasis on such cases, although it is no less unfair to pretend that they do not exist. There are many examples of thriving foreign-owned and joint-venture businesses, and it is certainly possible to argue that these examples are more indicative of future trends.
But anyone in the news business knows the saying that bad news races around the world while good news is still putting on its shoes.
The Netherlands consulate currently has a trade mission in town. The British Consulate is bringing one soon. Can we really tell these guests that Russia is "leaving no stone unturned" in order to make their potential investments here secure?
TITLE: Civilization Has Come Full Circle
TEXT: TWO and a half thousand years ago, in his "Critius" dialogue, Pla to told the story of Atlantis, a prosperous state that collapsed under the weight of its own wealth and the arrogance of its people.
Putting this into modern economic parlance, Atlantis perished because its GDP was excessively large.
Until Sept. 11, 2001, it would have seemed absurd to suggest this as the cause of a state's downfall. Although it is worth noting that over the millenia, many an empire came to an untimely end exactly in this way.
Around prosperous states - whether Sumerian cities, Rome, Byzantium or Mongol China - enclaves of nomads formed sooner or later, violently envious of and despising their neighbors. "It's a disgrace that idle and lazy people eat out of beautiful dishes, while courageous people have no place to rest their heads," the German leader Alaric, who sacked Rome in 410 B.C., is reputed to have said.
The barbarians could neither read nor write. They were inferior to the inhabitants of the empire in all respects, except in bravery and envy, in which they excelled. This dismal situation was overcome in the 15th century with the invention of firearms. From this moment on, a state's prosperity was determined by its military might.
And now everything has come full circle. As it turns out, contemporary civilization is so complex and its citizens so mollycoddled that a dozen suicide terrorists, armed with knives, were able to kill more people than the Japanese killed at Pearl Harbor.
For the last decade, a Pax Americana has held sway in the world. Americans - just as before them the Romans in the epoch of Augustus or the Chinese in the era of the Sung dynasty - justifiably considered themselves more enlightened and superior to the surrounding tribes.
This national spirit has best been expressed in Hollywood blockbusters in which courageous U.S. Secret Service agents always avert some terrorists' terrible plans at the last moment.
The reality was somewhat different. The United States, neither desiring nor finding it morally permissible to conquer the world by force of arms, tried to rule it by creating seats of tension.
Here, Islamic extremism very much came in handy. It was most useful in Afghanistan, where the young Osama bin Laden helped the United States to fight the Soviets. It was also useful in Yugoslavia and, when the Yugoslav conflicted ended, in Macedonia.
Thus, the United States has never fought to the bitter end. They fought against Saddam Hussein, but never dealt the final blow. They fought against Slobodan Milosevic, but also failed to deliver the final blow. They sought world supremacy, but were quick to remove their soldiers from those places that were too nightmarish.
The terrorist acts of Sept. 11 demonstrated the futility of creating a strategic missile-defense system. They showed that everything needed to destroy a technologically advanced civilization is contained within it.
For the time being, however, there is no sign that U.S. President George W. Bush - who is intellectually somewhat lazy - really grasps the scope of the challenge that has been thrown down before the civilized world. His response is perfunctory: military operations, targeted first and foremost at Afghanistan. This seems to resemble the ABM program with the huge expenditure and minimal return.
The lessons of the Soviet Union - a country that also believed a war in Afghanistan was needed to lift the national spirit - seem to be lost on the United States.
Well, good riddance to the Soviet Union. The world has become a freer place without it. But right now it seems that Bush does not understand what's at stake: It is neither his popularity ratings, nor boosting military expenditure; what's at stake is whether the modern civilized world will repeat the fate of the Roman Empire or not.
Yulia Latynina is a journalist with ORT.
TITLE: dead dog equals good food
AUTHOR: by Simon Patterson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Dining out and drowning a dog are two concepts that have perhaps never been brought together. Until the cafe Mumu came along, that is.
Drawing its name from the teary Turgenev tale of the deaf-mute serf Gerasim who puts his pooch to death in the nearest pond, Mumu is certainly one of the oddest choices for a theme restaurant you could hope to find. Especially when you see the decor, which has spared nothing in realism, with plenty of stuffed dogs dotted here and there, including one with a brick around its neck, its eyes bulging as it plunges to its death.
In this atmosphere, some may find enjoying a meal rather difficult. But one would be best to put such qualms aside, as the food is excellent. The restaurant is divided into two rooms, and we sat in the less interesting one, as the first one was full. The first part of the restaurant is tastefully decorated, with various amusing pictures of Petersburg on the walls and a stuffed Gerasim sitting at the entrance.
The second part has more of a sports-bar feel, with a dart board next to the drowning dog and a television that was broadcasting a soccer game between Spartak and Bayern Munchen. (Bayern Munchen won 3-1.) And just when we thought it couldn't get any more eclectic, someone began playing the piano in the next room, and was soon joined by a saxophone. Thus the sorrows of Mumu and Gerasim were somewhat forgotten, and we were able to inspect the menu without too many thoughts of canine corpses going through our minds.
The prices are certainly very reasonable, and we began by ordering two 1/2-liter Nevskoye beers for 25 rubles. Not many places where you can get that anymore. I ordered a solyanka soup (72 rubles), while my companion took an olivie salad (48 rubles). Yes, the menu is not particularly imaginative, but it is extensive enough to suit most tastes and even features an interesting cocktail called "Gerasim": vodka, rum, tequila, gin and Coca-Cola. Now there's an idea.
I found my soup almost a meal in itself, while the salad was also very substantial. The solyanka was rich and wholesome, certainly the perfect thing with the temperatures dropping a few degrees shy of zero after the Indian summer.
However, we still had our mains to come. My companion ordered the beef stroganoff (116 rubles) while I had the medallions (142 rubles). The size of the portions was something to behold, especially when augmented by a side order of fried potatoes (30 rubles each). There was also a side order of an intriguing spicy cabbage and carrot salad, which seemed to combine the culinary ingenuity of Korea and the Caucasus.
As for the medallions, they were thinly sliced pieces of beef covered with a vegetable ragout, and were more than I could eat. My companion also struggled with her stroganoff, but was perfectly satisfied. While neither of these dishes provided anything unexpected, they were both delicious in their own way.
For the hungry serf who has just fled his master's estate and only has a few kopeks to his name, Mumu is a good bet. This massive meal, with ample quantities of beer, cost only 551 rubles. Just don't go swimming after you eat there - with this much food in your stomach, you risk sharing the fate of Gerasim's spaniel.
Mumu, 94 Sadovaya Ulitsa, 114-5084. Open daily, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Dinner for two with alcohol, 551 rubles. Credit cards accepted.
TITLE: red club aims to please everyone
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Plenty of space, good equipment and air conditioning are not something local rock clubs are famous for. But Red Club, which was launched last Friday, provides all of this and more.
Though it might look more like a club in Moscow, club founder and director Vladimir Belinsky insists there is an audience for a mainstream rock club in St. Petersburg.
"I've been to many Moscow clubs. Club culture is very well developed there, while here people gather in kitchens or at cheap pubs. But I think there are a lot of people like me in St. Petersburg who would go to a club like this."
The club occupies a two-story, redbrick building on deserted Poltavskaya Ulitsa, behind the Moscow Station. The two floors have a total area of 500 square meters, with a concert hall, a smaller stage upstairs, two bars, and a billiards room.
"We live in the 21st century, and people who listen to music need certain services, from toilets to drinks in the bar," says Belinsky.
"The fact that a person earns money and owns a car doesn't mean that he wants to listen to bad music."
Belinsky's previous club, Wild Side, which existed from 1993 to 1997, was also oriented toward the middle class. Though inconveniently located on the industrial outskirts, Wild Side made its name as one of the most popular clubs with live rock music at the time.
"It simply wasn't relevant anymore," says Belinsky explaining why the club folded. "Many new clubs started opening at that time, and we started to lose clientele and money."
"When I was planning this club, I tried to make it appeal to all lovers of good music, from students to well-off working people. We want students to be able to relax here, as well as [older] people who haven't forgotten what a rock concert is like."
The 5-kilowatt P.A. system, put together by sound engineer Alexander Kro shkin, formerly of Dva Samaliota and Spitfire, is one of the best in the city and has everything that a musician could want.
"There are still some problems with the sound in the hall, but it's not because of the equipment," says Belinsky, who at one time played in a rock band. "The equipment needs some time to adjust itself to the space, and in a couple of months or even less there will be no place in the city that has better live sound."
The face control at Red Club is conducted by stern-looking guards wearing suits and earplugs. This would be an unimaginable sight at other rock clubs in the city, but Belinsky, whose previous club suffered a devastating raid by gangsters, considers this a necessity.
"Unfortunately, these days you can't do without security," he says. "Of course, weapons checks can be a little humiliating, but you feel much safer in the club than you would without them."
Belinsky claims that Red Club will not follow the path of Saigon, which was pompously opened as "the city's premier rock club" in July 1999, only to degenerate into a banal disco with strip shows in a matter of months.
"We don't have any initial goal to be the city's premier club. We just want to be liked by the people who come here," says Belinsky. "We don't want to cram 1,000 fans in for one show. The main thing is to work for a long time. There's no question of compensating for what was spent [on the club] in two weeks."
Since it opened last Friday, the club has featured two concerts every night, but the system is likely to change. According to Belinsky, the architecture of the club allows concerts to be held on two stages simultaneously.
The club's pricing policy is to feature expensive drinks while keeping prices on vodka and beer low. The entrance fee is also kept low, between 30 and 90 rubles.
"There are two types of visitors: those who create an atmosphere and those who pay money for drinks," says Belinsky. "I want to make it interesting for both groups to be here."
Red Club, 7 Poltavskaya Ul., M: Ploshchad Vosstaniya, 277-1366.
Daily, 12 p.m. to 6 a.m. Paid entry from 7 p.m. Official Web site: www.redclubonline.com
TITLE: freud inspires art, lectures
AUTHOR: by Keith Sands
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Throughout next month, one of Petersburg's most unlikely museums, the Freud Dream Museum, will continue its project of commemorating Freud the doctor and Freud the cultural icon by mounting a series of art exhibitions and lectures under the title "Arts and Dreams." The events, jointly organized with the British Council, began last Sunday with an exhibition of drawings by local artist Ivan Razumov and a lecture by Michael Molnar, research director of the Freud Museum in London. Other events are taking place at the museum every Sunday until Nov. 6.
The museum, which opened in 1999 at the East European Institute of Psychoanalysis, was the brainchild of Victor Mazin, a lecturer at the Institute and translator of Freud's works. Freud has been one of those names most likely to spark a fight between academics for over 100 years, and in recent years the father of psychoanalysis has been reviled at least as much as revered. So it's refreshing to meet the garrulous Mazin, a bona fide Freudian, full of enthusiasm for the visiting artists and for the great Viennese doctor himself.
For Mazin, the highlight of the "Arts and Dreams" series will be the visit of Susan Hiller, who will be discussing her work in English on October 28. Hiller is a British artist with an international reputation and an enduring interest in Freud. Her best-known work, "From the Freud Museum," in the Tate Modern in London, was inspired by the Freud Museum in London. Hiller makes her own subversive museum exhibits - neatly arranged in identical boxes - suggestive of what Freud himself repressed in his own life and thought, and exploring the relationship between Freud's collection of primitive art and his theory of the unconscious.
Mazin is enthusiastic about Hiller's work. "If there is one artist in the world who understands Freud and psychoanalysis, it is Hiller," he says, adding that it has long been a dream of his to invite her to speak at the museum. He suggests that Hiller's artifacts are "all about memory, and have an archaeological quality," relating that Freud, when casting about for a name for his study of the unconscious, regretted that "archaeology" was already taken. He settled on "psychoanalysis," but sometimes referred to it in private as "an archaeology of the mind."
Also exhibiting will be the photographer Olga Tobreluts and writer/artist Pavel Peppershtein. There will be lectures by the philosopher Mikhail Rylkin and the leading Russian psychiatrist Victor Samokhvalov.
Mazin is voluble about Freud's influence on art and literature. He points out that while Freud never received the Nobel Prize for his scientific work, he did receive the Goethe Prize - for his prose style. He suggests that one reason Freud's ideas were so widely taken up was because he was such an entertaining writer. However, Michael Molnar, the first speaker in the series, was more cautious about Freud's artistic afterlife, relating that the father of psychoanalysis met Salvador Dali but "didn't really see the point of surrealism."
As well as discussing the forthcoming events, Mazin gives a fascinating account of psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union. It was regarded, of course, as a "pseudo-science" but was "not exactly prohibited. While it was not permitted to treat patients using psychoanalysis, academics continued to study the theories - often by giving them a different name." In 1979, during the Brezhnev era, there was even a major "Conference on the Unconscious" in Tbilisi, where the leading lights of the international psychoanalytic community gave papers, augmented by such figures as the French philosopher Louis Althusser. For Mazin, the conference was a defining moment: Getting a copy of the almost unobtainable conference papers (all four volumes of them) cemented his interest in Freud and set him on his current career.
But why should there be a Sigmund Freud museum in Petersburg at all, a city with which Freud had no connection? Mazin clearly enjoys answering this question, mentioning there were critical murmurings from Vienna when the museum idea was first mooted, but "the psyche has no borders! And St. Petersburg is the most ghost-like of cities. Petersburg does not exist: There is Dostoevsky's Petersburg, Brodsky's Petersburg, Andrei Bely's Petersburg, but it's an immaterial city, a city of symbols. And this is a museum of dreams. An immaterial museum, an anti-museum."
The windowless museum does indeed feel placeless. Its permanent installation combines fragments of manuscripts, letters, photographs, and Egyptian idols from Freud's collection. As you peer at the exhibits you are liable to catch sight of your own face in a piece of broken mirror. This moody exhibit was laid out by the artist Vladimir Kustov with some input from Mazin, who "tightened a screw here and there." There is a brief outline of Freud's life and work in text and photographs, appropriately beginning with an account of his mother, and sketches of Freud's own dreams by Pavel Peppershtein with accompanying text from Freud's books. The overall effect is stylish and eerie, altogether an appropriate venue to explore the meeting place between science, art and dreams.
Freud's Dream Museum at the East European Institute of Psychoanalysis, 18A Bolshoi Prospect, Petrograd Side. "Arts and Dreams "events every Sunday until Nov. 6.
TITLE: early music festival highlight of season
AUTHOR: by Giulara Sadykh-zade
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Fourth International Early Music Festival has chosen a striking picture to go on the festival booklet: a reproduction of a painting from the 16th century, by an anonymous master of the Fontainebleau school. Two half-naked women, who are obviously related, stand in a boudoir. One of them tenderly holds the nipple of the other with two fingers: This gesture indicates that one of the women is pregnant.
The picture is significant on many levels, and the pregnancy can also be interpreted in different ways. The festival, which began four years ago, has given birth to a new world for Petersburg music fans, a world of authentic performance, with old instruments and nontraditional voices adding a new dimension to the local musical scene.
The festival now has a very solid reputation in the eyes of true fans of early music, and some even consider it the most important musical event of autumn. This year, the dates have been moved back slightly: The festival, which began on Thursday, will run until Oct. 19. The selection of venues has also been expanded: The 20 concerts will take place not just in the halls of the Philharmonic and the Cappella, but also in the Glazunov Hall of the Conservatory, the Menshikov and Sheremetev palaces, and even the suburbs of Pushkin and Pavlovsk.
This year, the organizational committee of the festival has been changed from the British Council to the Dutch Institute. Among the highlights are the great English countertenor Michael Chance (Oct. 4 at the Cappella), performing at the festival for the third time, and the Italian ensemble Il Giardino Armonica at the closing concert at the Shosta ko vich Philharmonic on Oct. 19.
On Oct. 17, the Glinka Philharmonic will see a performance by two British musicians, lutist Anthony Rooley and mezzo-soprano Evelyn Tubb, with the title "A Many-Colored Coat: Love Songs of Judaism, Islam, Platonics." Many remember Rooley from previous festivals: Last year he accompanied Emme Kirk by. As the director of the festival Marc de Mauny said at the festival press conference, "For Anthony, Evelyn and Emme are like his left and right hands. He performs with both singers, although they are very different."
Along with the musical delights the festival provides, it is also an excellent opportunity for the city's cultural institutes to join forces. It's encouraging to see this unity at times like this: It would seem that the values of European culture are enduring after all.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: NME Russia has been launched, and the first issue is already available for from 25 to 30 rubles, depending on where you buy it.
Simply looking at the cover gives you a strange feeling, with the familiar NME logo under the unshaven Slavic face of the frontman of Ocean Elzi, a band that comes from Ukraine and has been forced upon young audiences by the powerful duo of Real Records and Nashe Radio.
The content is similarly eclectic: the combination of Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and Splean's Alexander Vasiliev seems extremely strange. Though the result could have been much worse, the slant toward the new pop/rock acts of the Nashe Radio kind is disappointing. Also, no trace of the hugely popular Sergei Shnurov and Leningrad is to be found in the issue.
As MultFilmy's Yegor Timofeyev says in this issue, "When Mumii Troll emerged, I thought, that's great, something is about to happen, but then came Zemfira. But it's just the same old Russian rock. The same swamp, the same depression and the same misery."
NME Russia, which claims it will be published twice a month, will be a serious rival for locally published Fuzz magazine, which has proudly borne the title of Russia's only rock magazine for the past 10 years.
"I think the fate of NME in Russia is not yet clear. It still has to pass the test of time," said Fuzz's associate editor, Leonid Fomin. "On the one hand, we were deceived in our expectations by getting a surrogate version [of the magazine], rather than the NME that we know and love. On the other hand, the journalists there are very active, and they will probably be able to distance themselves from the influence of Russian tabloids and become the 'real NME.' It's rather a question of how big their wallet is."
NME Russia is available at newspaper kiosks around the city.
The fuss that has been made about Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra has become a little irritating.
Kusturica's band seems to have grown into more than just a hobby for the famed filmmaker, as he is coming to Russia for the second time this year to promote the band's new release, "Unza Unza Time," on Universal. And with a new video out, he seems to want to be an MTV star.
Oktyabrsky Concert Hall, 7 p.m., Thurs., Oct. 4.
Ska-punk band Spitfire (Faculty) and folk-punk band Nordfolks (Manhattan/ Kotyol) will provide good local entertainment this Friday.
At Spitfire you'll have to jump a lot, while at Nordfolks you'll have to drink lots of beer. The choice is yours.
Also, don't miss Spitfire's spin-off project, St. Petersburg Ska-Jazz Review, at Moloko on Thursday. It promises to be more fun than watching Kusturica walking around the stage with a cigar in his mouth on the same night.
Finally, Zoopark, the club that has been closed since early summer, showed signs of life last week by announcing it will reopen on Oct. 20 with a concert by Fyodor Chistyakov and Zelyonaya Komnata.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: 'original sin' is anything but
AUTHOR: by Kevin Thomas
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: The vintage suspense mysteries of Cornell Woolrich, with their bravura plots and romantic fatalism, remain eminently readable, and "Phantom Lady" (1944) and "Deadline at Dawn" (1946) are durable entertainments. Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" is based on a Woolrich short story, and Francois Truffaut filmed his "The Bride Wore Black" with Jeanne Moreau as a striking homage to Hitchcock.
No such pleasure awaits in watching director Michael Cristofer's disastrous adaptation of Woolrich's 1947 "Waltz Into Darkness," renamed "Original Sin" for the screen and starring Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie.
Cristofer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, made his film directorial debut with HBO's "Gia," which won Jolie 1999 Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe best actress awards for her performance as supermodel Gia Carangi, dead at 26 from the complications of AIDS.
Cristofer, however, is seriously miscast as the man to bring to the screen an extravagantly melodramatic 19th century love story. The one director who for sure would have gotten away with such material would be Banderas' mentor Pedro Almodovar, expert at wringing humor and pathos from lurid, over-the-top plots and characters. Cristofer's approach is relentlessly serious and dead-on, devoid of humor, wit or personality.
Perversely, Banderas and Jolie are ideally cast and give their all to their roles. Banderas is Cuban tobacco planter Luis Antonio Vargas, who doesn't want a wife who marries him only for his money. Jolie's Julia Russell is an American who doesn't want a husband who wants her just for her looks - or so she says.
Passing himself off as a clerk in the cigar factory he owns with Jack Thompson's Alan Jordan, an avuncular American (with an unconvincing Southern accent), Vargas accepts picture bride Julia as she disembarks in Havana, not surprisingly forgiving her that she sent him a likeness of a far plainer woman.
After a wedding that could easily go down as the fanciest in Cuban history, the swiftly smitten Vargas is a gentleman who allows Julia time to get to know him before attempting to consummate their marriage. When the moment arrives, Julia responds to him with unabashed ardor; ecstatically happy, Vargas has fallen in love for the first time in his life.
He should have been listening more closely, however, when Julia remarked that "neither of us can be trusted." That's only half true - Vargas actually is an open, even innocent man with nothing to hide, but he really knows nothing definite about his bride, whose refusal to respond to her sister's letters from America understandably puzzles him. Even though Julia seems happy herself, there is an aura of mystery and even sadness about this boldly sensual woman who proves to be a classic femme fatale.
A menacing man (scenery-chewing Thomas Jane) from Julia's past turns up, farfetched plot developments escalate at a dizzying pace - and "Original Sin" plunges into protracted, tedious ludicrousness.
It's too labored and ponderous to qualify as a so-bad-it's-good amusement. "Original Sin" is merely an old-fashioned bore.
Original Sin is currently showing at the Crystal Palace Cinema.
TITLE: U.S. Steps Up Campaign Against Terrorism
AUTHOR: By Christopher Newton
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The U.S. government pressed its fight against terrorism on multiple fronts, calling up more reservists and moving to foil any attempt to use hazardous materials in a new strike against America.
The Bush administration also continued its effort to build a world coalition against terrorists, while a Pentagon official signaled that a military strike in Afghanistan against Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network was not imminent. Stepping back from the blunt war talk of a week ago, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said more information about the location of terrorists and the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan was needed before a strike.
"I think it can't be stressed enough that everybody who's waiting for military action ... needs to rethink this thing," Wolfowitz told reporters in Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday where he appealed to the NATO allies for intelligence-gathering assistance.
"We don't believe in just demonstrating that our military is capable of bombing. The whole world knows that," he said.
NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson said that following a briefing from Wolfowitz, "It becomes clearer and clearer that all roads being pursued lead to bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network."
The NATO gathering was just one part of the administration's anti-terrorism dialogue with foreign leaders. Continuing the parade of world leaders who've visited President George W. Bush in the past two weeks, Jordan's King Abdullah II was to be at the White House on Friday after seeing Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday.
Bush, hoping to get nervous passengers back onto planes and help revive a major segment of the U.S. economy that was staggered by the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings, planned to propose new airport security measures Thursday.
Officials familiar with Bush's plan said it would bring airport security workers under greater federal supervision while leaving them in the employ of private companies. They would face tougher background checks and receive more extensive training, aides said.
Bush also wants to put more armed marshals on airliners to give travelers confidence they will be safe from terrorists, and to require that airlines better secure doors between the cockpit and cabin.
Hijackers on Sept. 11 crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and another plane went down in southwestern Pennsylvania, with passengers struggling with their captors. In all, nearly 7,000 are missing or dead.
The New York Times reported on its Web site Thursday that Bush has authorized two mid-level air force generals to order airliners that threaten U.S. cities shot down when there was not enough time to get approval from higher-level officials or the president.
On the investigative front, 10 people were arrested on charges of illegally obtaining licenses to haul hazardous materials. The move came a day after the Justice Department warned that terrorists might be planning a strike using chemical or biological weapons.
The arrests were made in Missouri, Michigan and Washington state. Authorities said as many as 20 people had the bogus permits, some of whom may have connections to the 19 hijackers involved in the terrorist attacks.
It was too early to tell whether any of those arrested were connected to the Sept. 11 attacks, Justice Department spokesperson Susan Dryden said.
Those arrested got the licenses from the state of Pennsylvania. According to court records, a driver's license examiner in Pittsburgh provided permits to people who didn't take required tests, had suspended licenses or were otherwise not eligible.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, called up additional military reservists. Those tapped included Seabees and other naval reservists as well as security forces with an air force special operations unit.
Across the globe, authorities continued to crack down on terror suspects. In Spain, police detained six Algerians allegedly linked to bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire who is the chief suspect in the U.S. terror attacks.
In Britain, authorities captured a French citizen alleged to have been involved in a plot to attack U.S. interests in Europe. In France, seven suspects in the case are under formal investigation, a step before being charged.
TITLE: Arab Countries Shun Military Action
AUTHOR: By Sarah El Deeb
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAIRO, Egypt - Arab countries are not yet ready to take part in any military action, despite condemning the suicide attacks against the United States, a top Arab official says.
Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Cairo-based Arab League, said the United States alone had a plan for military action against terrorists and Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. He is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan.
"We are still following those [U.S.] moves to see what exactly will happen, but I understand ... that Arab countries are not going to participate in the military action," Moussa said during a press conference Wednesday with visiting British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
Moussa, whose Arab League is made up of 22 countries, said many Arab leaders fear that any military campaign will result in the loss of "a lot of innocent victims."
In Saudi Arabia, its foreign minister said his country "will do whatever [is] in its capability" to assist the United States in its fight against terrorism.
Prince Saud al-Faisal did not elaborate further, leaving unclear the issue of whether Saudi Arabia will allow foreign forces to use bases within the country to launch and control possible strikes against bin Laden's operations in Afghanistan.
The United States wants Mideast backing, from use of military installations or airspace to intelligence.
While Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, support Washington's right to strike at those behind the terror attacks, some have shown a reluctance to join any U.S.-led force, apparently fearing that some Arab countries may become targets of any military strike as mounting evidence points to pan-Arab links to the terror attacks.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been reported as saying that any U.S. retaliation that kills innocent people would fuel greater hatred of the United States and participating allies.
The presence of U.S. troops in the Gulf has been met with past opposition, at times violent. Two bombings in the mid-1990s, carried out by militants opposed to American troops in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's two holiest sites, killed 24 Americans.
Straw was due to meet Mubarak on Thursday. An EU delegation led by Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel also held talks with al-Faisal on Wednesday and was expected to be in Egypt on Thursday.
TITLE: Taliban Gets Huge Support Among Pakistani Students
AUTHOR: By Kathy Gannon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHAMAN, Pakistan - As the road rolls and weaves toward the Afghan border, graffiti scrawled across the mud walls of Islamic schools screams a warning: "If America kills one Osama, 100 other Osamas will take his place."
"We will fight until we destroy the United States."
Half a million Pakistani students are ready to fight alongside the Taliban in a holy war against the United States, said Fazl-ur Rheman, the leader of the Party of Islamic Clerics, which operates more than 100 madrases, or religious schools, in the southwestern region.
His party's black-and-white striped flag flies from most rooftops along the 110-kilometer route from the provincial capital of Quetta to Chaman, the last Pakistani outpost before the Afghan border. Hoping to impose a Taliban-style brand of Islamic rule in the area, his followers routinely harass men who play music or shave their beards.
As the United States cobbles together an international coalition to flush out suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden and his network of Islamic extremists from bases inside Afghanistan, Rehman's students are setting aside their Korans and taking up arms.
"Some have already gone and the rest are waiting to go," Rehman told reporters in Quetta on Wednesday. "When the call to jihad goes out, they will all go."
Many Pakistanis are enraged by their government's promise to help the United States in its fight against global terrorism. And the Taliban, once Islamabad's ally, have threatened to declare war on Pakistan if it supports a U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan.
If such an attack is launched, the Taliban have promised to declare a jihad, or holy war against the United States. Throughout Pakistan, thousands of religious students are ready to answer.
Some of the Taliban's staunchest supporters are here, in the rugged southwestern province of Baluchistan.
"They want to fight with the Taliban against America," said Abdul Khaliq, an army veteran recently elected to represent the Chaman district. "For sure they are going. We can't stop them. If there is an attack more will go," he said. He could not estimate how many had already left.
In Chaman town, about 1 1/2 kilometers from the border, jittery local officials refused to allow foreigners to stop.
"We are in control, but there are fanatics everywhere who can cause a problem. They are angry with the foreigners," said Mohammed Saqib Aziz, the district's deputy commissioner.
Police and paramilitary troops are even more nervous at the border, where frightened Afghans are rushing to flee their war-ruined, drought-stricken country ahead of looming military action. With wildly flailing arms and sticks, the Pakistani guards beat back Afghans trying to cross into Pakistan and shove people who want to enter Afghanistan through a narrow opening in the fence.
"We can't differentiate between the Afghans and the local people who do business in the big market just across the border inside Afghanistan, and Afghans," said Aziz.
The United Nations estimates that more than 5,000 Afghans are camping out in the open near the Chaman crossing.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Crash Injures 90
BERLIN (AP) - Two trains filled with morning commuters and schoolchildren collided head-on Thursday in southern Germany, injuring 90 people, eight of them seriously, police said.
The accident occurred on a single-track section outside the Bavarian town of Lindau, near the Austrian border, police said.
German national railroad officials said the trains collided at moderate speed at 7:25 a.m. and stayed on the tracks, but were damaged enough that rescuers had to pry trapped passengers from the wreckage.
Malaysians Protest
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - About 25 demonstrators rallied at the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia on Thursday, demanding that any military action against terrorism be spearheaded by the United Nations - not the United States alone.
The group, mostly Muslim students, waved placards which read, "No to war, No to terrorism," "Justice and peace without vengeance," before police guarding the embassy ordered them to stop.
UN Indicts 11
DILI, East Timor (AP) - UN prosecutors in East Timor filed the first indictments for extermination Thursday against 11 men suspected of committing crimes after the territory seceded from Indonesia in 1999.
The suspects - nine anti-independence militiamen and two Indonesian soldiers - are accused of targeting 65 people in the isolated East Timorese enclave of Oecussi.
The victims are believed to have been killed in two massacres in September 1999, said Mohamed Othman, the UN prosecutor general in East Timor.
"This indictment is significant as it is the first indictment for extermination," Othman said. "They segregated young males between 16 and 30 who were educated, tied them up and shot or macheted them to death."
Vatican: U.S. Can Fight
YEREVAN, Armenia (Reuters) - The Vatican on Thursday repeated its position that if the United States had to resort to force to protect its citizens from future threats it could be seen as legitimate self-defense.
In an interview with a Mexican television network on Thursday in Armenia, Vatican chief spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls repeated the basic themes of an interview he gave on Monday while Pope John Paul was in Kazakhstan.
Navarro-Valls told the television that an eventual action by the United States could not be seen simply as "an attack, but an action of active prevention against a threat [of something] that has already occurred in the horror of a few weeks ago and can happen again.''
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Redskins Cut George
LANDOVER, Maryland (Reuters) - The Washington Redskins released much-traveled quart erback Jeff Geor ge on Wed nes day after making a dismal 0-2 start to the season in which they were outscored 67-3.
His release leav es the team with two quarterbacks, six-year veteran Tony Banks, who was relegated to a backup role by the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens last year before being released, and rookie Sage Rosenfels.
George, an 11-year NFL veteran, struggled through two games in 2001 after sitting out most of the preseason with shoulder tendinitis.
George was 23 for 42 for 168 yards and no touchdowns this season. The Redskins' total scoring this year consists of one field goal.
Student Charged
LARAMIE, Wyoming (AP) - A University of Wyoming student was ordered Wednesday to stand trial on eight counts of aggravated vehicular homicide. A state trooper testified that evidence showed Clinton Haskins was drunk when his truck smashed into a vehicle carrying eight members of the school's cross-country team.
Circuit Judge Robert A. Castor said there was sufficient evidence to try Haskins, 21, for the deaths in the Sept. 16 collision. No trial date was set, and Haskins has not entered a plea. He is free on $100,000 bond.
During Haskins' preliminary hearing, trooper Dave Rettinger testified that based on a blood test, Haskins' alcohol level was 0.16 percent, above the state's legal limit of 0.10 percent.
"When I walked up to the pickup, I could immediately smell the odor of an alcoholic beverage, strongly," said Rettinger, who arrived at the scene on U.S. 287 south of Laramie about a half-hour after the wreck.
He said Haskins was lying on a gurney in an ambulance.
"As soon as I stepped into the ambulance, the odor of alcohol - it just reeked," he said.
Alex Fernandez Retires
MIAMI (Reuters) - Florida Marlins pitcher Alex Fernandez, sidelined with elbow and shoulder injuries since early last season, announced his retirement on Wednesday.
The 32-year-old righthander, a member of the Marlins' 1997 World Series championship team, last pitched for Florida on May 18, 2000.
Fernandez finished his career with a 107-87 record and 3.74 ERA in 263 games. He spent the first seven years of his career with the Chicago White Sox before joining the Marlins.
"I have had a great career which was highlighted by a world championship in 1997 with the Marlins," said Fernandez, who starred at the University of Miami.
Just Reward
OAKLAND, California (Reuters) - Mark Mulder, Oakland's first left-handed 20-game winner in 26 years, was rewarded Wednesday with a four-year contract extension that will keep him in Oakland through the 2005 season.
The 24-year-old Mulder, in just his second major-league season, has gone 12-1 with a 2.89 ERA over his last 15 outings to improve to 20-7 with a 3.49 ERA in 216 1/3 innings.
Financial terms of the deal, which includes a club option for the 2006 season, were not disclosed. But ESPN reported the contract was for $14.2 million with incentives that could ultimately make it worth more than $23 million over five years.
TITLE: New IOC Head Lashes Out At Athens for Building Delay
AUTHOR: By Lisa Orkin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATHENS - The IOC's new leader issued a harsh review of Greek Olympic preparations Wednesday, saying the country had no time to spare in meeting the "unparalleled" construction task.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge told Premier Costas Simitis during a meeting that the Greek government must begin building nearly a dozen long-delayed sports venues and facilities.
"There should be no comfort in the fact that 2004 sounds far off in the distance," Rogge said in his first visit to Athens since being elected in July to succeed Juan Antonio Samaranch as IOC chief.
His comments echoed those Samaranch made more than a year ago, when he warned that the Athens Games were in jeopardy unless preparations speeded up. Samaranch later said work was on schedule and the games were safe.
Rogge said he was confident the stadiums and infrastructure would be finished on time, "but we need to witness sustained construction activity to remain so."
Delays are so serious they overshadowed renewed concerns over security following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States.
Rogge said he was satisfied so far with Greece's $600 million security plan for the games and said preparations will be reviewed, "but personally I do not expect big changes, according to what our experts have told us."
He was in Athens to accompany Denis Oswald, who took over from Rogge as head of the IOC committee monitoring Athens' preparations for the Games.
That 44-member panel fanned out across the capital to take a closer look at many planned venues that remain on the drawing board less than three years before the scheduled start of the Athens Games.
Work has begun on the Olympic Village and rowing center, but there has been no progress in at least eight other venues. They include the sailing and equestrian centers, wrestling hall and gymnastics arena. Some are still in the bidding process.
"I met with the prime minister and other Greek officials to underscore the importance of meeting all construction deadlines, since this falls under their responsibility," Rogge said.
In recent days, Simitis for the first time has admitted that the government lags in building venues and infrastructure, but his ministers hope to make up for lost time by speeding up timetables.
"Despite all the work that has been accomplished, the task ahead for the construction sector is unparalleled in the history of Greece and time is ticking away," Rogge said. "There are less than two years left before the majority of the extremely important test events take place, and only 10 months before the first one takes place in sailing."
A regatta is to take place next August, but the area where the sailing center is to be built has not yet been cleared and a nightclub remains on the site.
Tight deadlines may force the government to resort to prefabricated buildings, including nearly all the venues along Athens' southern coast, where boxing, handball and tae kwon do are scheduled.
Many delays have been attributed to a political crisis in the governing Socialist party due to its failure to meet economic targets and pledges for reform.
An emergency convention in mid-October will decide whether Simitis will remain head of the party. Defeat could lead to his resignation as premier and throw the government into chaos.
Greece's failure to meet many of its budget targets in 2001 could also lead to a curtailment of some public works and infrastructure projects, including some roadwork needed for the games.
One project that might be canceled is the expansion of a two-lane road linking a highway next to the Olympic center with the athlete's village.
"There is no country that doesn't feel concerned during the middle of its preparations for the games," Athens organizing chief Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki said. "It doesn't take the city, it takes the country to organize the games."