SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #710 (77), Friday, October 5, 2001
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TITLE: City Submits Its Draft 2002 Budget
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Smolny kicked off the budget-debate season last week by submitting a 31-volume draft for 2002 to the Legislative Assembly that included increases in spending on education and health services by 56 percent and 32 percent, respectively.
 The city administration's proposal anticipates a surplus of 1.1 billion rubles (about $37.3 million at the current Central Bank rate), but lawmakers and analysts say that this figure will likely change in the process of give and take with the Legislative Assembly.
 The proposed surplus is based on forecast revenues of 53.8 billion rubles (about $1.8 billion) and planned expenditures of 52.7 billion rubles, and is essentially the same as the figure for 2001. Smolny is forecasting a year-end exchange rate of 31.4 rubles to the dollar and an inflation rate of 22 percent. By comparison, the federal budget submitted to the State Duma by the Kremlin last week foresees an inflation rate for 2002 of about 13 percent and an average exchange rate of 31.5 rubles to the dollar.
 The most significant jump in spending in the city budget is in the area of education, where the city is proposing expenditures for 2002 of 10.6 billion rubles (about $359 million). The figure for 2001 was 6.8 billion rubles ($231 million). The largest part of the increase is in salaries paid to teachers, which will total 6.7 billion rubles, a jump of 87 percent over this year.
 "Teachers are one of the most unfortunate groups in our society," Alexander Afanasiev, spokesperson for Governor Vladimir Yakovlev said in an interview on Thursday. "Even though teachers here are paid more here than in any other part of Russia, their salaries mean that they are basically surviving day to day."
 "It's the same case with medical personnel," he added.
 Medical salaries paid under Smolny's plan will jump by 63 percent from 2001, as total health-care spending will rise to 6 billion rubles ($203 million) from 4.6 billion rubles. Social-welfare and cultural expenditures are both set to double, to 685 million rubles ($23 million) and 220 million rubles ($7.5 million), respectively.
 In total, social- and health-policy expenditures, not counting education, will be 13 billion rubles (about $440 million), or 25 percent of the 2002 draft budget.
 Natalia Yevdokimova, a Yabloko faction deputy in the Legislative Assembly, says that the rise in the social-spending totals in the Smolny draft is a bit misleading.
 "Part of this jump is simply the result of inflation," she said Thursday. "Another problem is deciding which numbers to use in comparing."
 "For example, this year monies for subsidies to public transportation organizations for senior citizens, the handicapped, etc., were included in the transportation portion of the budget," she added. "Next year, this funding will be included in the social-spending section. This is only one example."
 The budget's revenue side shows a figure about 10 billion rubles - an increase of $300 million once the change in the Central Bank rate is taken into consideration.
 Some of the money being made available in these spheres may derive from a drop in the percentage of total expenditures earmarked for servicing the city's debt. The 2002 plan sets this figure at 3.7 percent, down from 6 percent in 2001 and 8.5 percent in 2000.
 City Hall officials say that while the most significant factor behind the increase is inflation, a continuing improvement in the local economy will also play a part.
 "Most of this growth is inflation-related, but considerations like the growth in regional GDP, the improvement in the collection of rents owed to the city and federal economic policies that allowed us to keep all of the personal income tax collected in the city are all playing a part," Sergei Dyomin, deputy chief of the City Hall Finance Committee, said on Tuesday. "Collections have improved this year as a result of the government's tax-reform steps."
 City Hall is also planning to finance additional programs in preparation for the city's 300th-anniversary celebrations in 2003. These include the renovation of downtown courtyards, for which 353 million rubles ($12 million) will be allocated next year; repairs to building facades for 94 million rubles ($3.2 million); repairs to streetlights, with an allocation of 24 million rubles ($813,000); street repairs, for which 3.35 billion rubles ($113 million) have been earmarked; and restoration works on historical monuments, for which 146.5 million rubles ($5 million) have been allocated.
 Dyomin said that the 1.1-billion-ruble surplus would probably go to paying off more of the city's debts, which will have been paid down to 10.7 billion rubles ($362.7 million) by the end of 2001 from 15.7 billion rubles ($532 million) at the start of the year.
 The budget includes a $118 million payment scheduled to be made June 18 on Eurobonds issued by City Hall in 1997 to restructure internal city debt. The original total of bonds issued was $300 million, with $182 million to have been paid off by Smolny at the end of this year.
 "Our main goal isn't to erase the city's debts totally," Dyomin said. "There is always the option of World Bank loans [which can be taken] or issuing more bonds. There is no reason for us to leave this market."
 Next year City Hall plans to take out $40 million in additional loans, including a $3-million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to renovate the Krasny Bor toxic-waste storage facility, a United States Export-Import Bank loan to complete an energy-saving project and Danish government loans for a number projects to improve the environmental performance of municipal heating and sewage systems.
 While social spending in the budget is up, a number of lawmakers say that the City Hall proposal doesn't do enough to promote economic development.
 "Due to the rise [in social spending], there is going to be less money provided to develop the city's economy and production facilities," Sergei Nikeshin, the head of the Legislative Assembly's Budget Committee, said in an interview on Tuesday. "This is going to hinder our efforts to continue developing local industry."
 Dyomin said he expects that there will be a battle between the Legislative Assembly and City Hall over the final form of the budget and that the fight has already been started.
 "Some lawmakers say the total for economic development is too low, while others say the financing for the social sphere is not enough. The first reading will be devoted to searching for some kind of compromise between these polar-opposite points of view," Dyomin said.
 Lev Savulkin, senior analyst at the Liontief Center for Socio-Economic Research, said that City Hall has left itself some leeway in the horse-trading process that lies ahead as the revenue projection of 53.8 billion rubles is probably low.
 "Given a 22-percent rate of inflation, it is clear that the expenditures were understated by City Hall in order to leave some room for maneuver in the negotiations with the deputies," Savulkin said. "This is what was done last year, and it's going to be done again."
 "As a result, I think the portion of the budget earmarked for economic development will be increased," he said.
 The first reading of the budget is scheduled for Oct. 26. Most changes in the budget take place between the first and second readings, a process that can take months. Last year the budget actually had two first readings, with the city resubmitting a second draft version projecting revenues of 668 million rubles (about $27 million) higher than in the first. The third and final reading only took place on Dec. 6, barely ahead of the New Year's recess and the new fiscal year.
 During 2001 the City Hall Financial committee has also upped its revenue figures, collecting an additional 4.3 billion rubles.
 The city's lawmakers don't yet seem to be up to speed on the budget's specific contents.
 "I have it on my desk, but I haven't looked through it all yet," independent Legislative Assembly Deputy Alexander Shelkanov, said on Thursday.
 Boris Vishnevsky, economic adviser to the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly, said that the only thing he knows at the moment is that the draft budget is very big and heavy.

TITLE: Sniper With Dreams of Chechnya
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: VLADIMIR, Central Russia - Galina Sinitsyna has spent months trying to persuade the military to send her to Chechnya to kill rebels for money.
 Inspired by the sudden wealth of contract soldiers returning from the war zone, she wants to use her skills as a competitive shooter to become a sniper.
 "Where else can I earn enough to buy a new apartment for us?" said Sinitsyna, 40, who has an 18-year-old son. 
 She lost her job last year as a sports instructor for the trolleybus park in Vladimir, a city about 200 kilometers east of Moscow, when new management decided to cut the budget. The best job offer she's gotten since then was as a contract killer, but she turned it down. 
 "I've heard that snipers in Chechnya are paid 1,800 rubles a day, plus some extra for every Chechen rebel they kill," she said last week while cuddling her kitten in her home, a communal apartment on a pig farm.
 Even though the military is eager to hire contract soldiers to fight in Chechnya, enlistment officers in Vladimir have repeatedly turned down her application, saying she is too old.
 "According to the law on military service, the first army contract can be offered to a person older than 18 but younger than 40," a local officer said.
 But Sinitsyna refuses to give up the idea. "I will go as a cook or as a nurse," she said. "There, in Chechnya, I'll make up my way to the snipers, who receive the highest wages among the troops." 
 Despite what Sinitsyna says, the so-called <i>kontraktniki </i>serving in Chechnya are paid about 6,000 rubles ($200) a month, according to independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, who said no distinction in pay for snipers has ever been announced.
 &quot;They used to set the standard pay for contract soldiers at 2,000 rubles, plus combat pay of 850 rubles to 950 rubles a day, but the Defense Ministry cut their pay in May. Now, privates in Chechnya are paid double the standard pay, plus a 60-ruble per diem, which comes out to about 6,000 rubles.&quot;
 &quot;There are few volunteers today willing to go to Chechnya for 6,000 rubles a month,&quot; Felgenhauer said. &quot;Moreover, those kontraktniki who went to Chechnya earlier are deserting their units because of the low pay.&quot;
 In August, when NTV television came to film a report about her, Sinitsyna used the opportunity to storm into the regional enlistment office, or <i>voyenkomat.</i>
 &quot;I brought the TV crew with me to the voyenkomat and pleaded with them again to sign me up,&quot; she related agitatedly. &quot;The officers did not say no and promised to contact me soon.&quot;
 Sinitsyna said she has nothing personal against Chechens. &quot;The Chechens I know are great people. In a way, they are better than our Russian guys, and I'd never ever think of killing any of them.
 &quot;As for the rebels, I don't know them personally, so I wouldn't care about shooting them,&quot; she said.
 Since losing her job, Sinitsyna has earned a meager living sweeping entryways in her native town, Lesnoi, some 20 kilometers from Vladimir. The town's 3,000 residents inhabit 12 crumbling, five-story concrete buildings, the property of a giant pig farm that is the town's only employer.
 Cigarettes here are usually sold separately because few can afford to buy a full pack at once. And in the local cafe, town people offer visitors electric tools made at a plant in Vladimir, for absurdly low prices.
 Eleven years ago, the farm where Sinitsyna worked taking care of the pigs after graduating from school gave her and her son a room of 12 square meters in a communal apartment.
 &quot;We share a common kitchen, bathroom and toilet with another family, and I am sick and tired of this kind of communism,&quot; Sinitsyna said, flashing a smile of decaying and missing teeth. 
 Sinitsyna is obsessed with getting her own place. &quot;Serving in Chechnya for just six months is enough to buy a new apartment,&quot; she said with conviction. 
 When she showed up at the military enlistment office for the first time, the officers looked at her wide-eyed. &quot;They asked me whether I knew what war was,&quot; she recalled. &quot;I asked them if they knew what work in a pig sty was.&quot;
 Sinitsyna, who was once the regional champion in long-distance running, swimming and shooting, said she was offered a job as a contract killer by one of her old friends, who, as she put it, became &quot;a serious businessperson.&quot;
 &quot;Once he was giving me a lift in his Alfa-Romeo and suddenly he offered me a job killing his rivals,&quot; Sinitsyna said. &quot;To test me, he produced a Colt revolver, handed it to me and as we were driving through the forest asked me to hit the trees that he pointed at. I did it six times without a single miss.&quot;
 The businessperson promised to buy her a new apartment, a car and to pay a hefty sum for each successful assignment. She declined. Asked her reasons, she did not offer any ethical arguments.
 &quot;Contract killers don't last long,&quot; she said simply.
 Her son, Viktor, whom she brought up alone, is now in the army. 
 &quot;He wrote me a letter asking for my permission to volunteer for Chechnya,&quot; Sinitsyna said, tousling her boyish hairdo nervously. &quot;I agreed, because where else can the boy earn money in this country?&quot;
 The idea of fighting in Chechnya was first planted in her mind by reports about the so-called White Stockings, female snipers from the Baltic countries or Ukraine, said to have fought on the rebel side during the first Chechnya conflict from 1994 to 1996.
 In the second war, the relative wealth accumulated by contract soldiers has turned the idea into an obsession.
 Sinitsyna said her own nephew recently signed up for a second six-month tour in Chechnya, after coming home from his first tour and buying a car and new clothes.
 &quot;I asked Vova what he needed all this money for when he returned home in the summer from his first trip,&quot; she said. &quot;And he told me that he cannot live with our misery any more and a week later he went back to Chechnya.&quot;
 Still believing that the military enlistment office will consider her appeal, Sinitsyna has not given up.
 &quot;I'll survive through the winter, I have my fridge fully stuffed now,&quot; she said with pride. &quot;With mushrooms and berries, but no meat, of course.&quot;

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Palace Contract 
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A contract for the restoration project at the Konstantinovsky Palace in the suburb of Strelna will be signed within the next week, Interfax reported Tuesday.
 Vladimir Khilchenko, president of the local holding company Faeton, told journalists that the contract would be signed before Oct. 10 and will engage Faeton to develop and implement a financing plan that will ensure the project is completed "even in the complete absence of funding from the state budget," according to Interfax. 
 Khilchenko was skeptical that the state will finance more than 10 percent of the total cost of the project, so Faeton is working on plans to attract financing from banks and other commercial structures. The company is using the financing plan developed for the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow as a model, Interfax reported.
 

 Kaliningrad Plan
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The cabinet has approved a development plan for the Kaliningrad enclave, sources told the Interfax news agency Thursday.
 The plan will cover the period from 2002 to 2010 and will involve $3 billion in expenditures, 20 percent of which will come from the federal budget.
 The plan will include the development of the transportation infrastructure of the enclave, including the construction of a major container terminal at the Kalingrad port. The plan also includes construction of a deep-water port at the city of Baltiisk.
 Further, the plan envisions improvements to the heating infrastructure of the region and the reconstruction of a natural-gas pipeline. It also includes measures to increase tourism and to improve the environment, Interfax reported.
 
 
Daylight for Kursk?
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Netherlands company Mammoet intends to proceed with the lifting of the Kursk nuclear submarine this weekend or next week, Interfax reported Thursday.
 "We believe that if the weather permits, we wil raise the vessel this weekend. If not, then it will happen early next week," Mammoet President Frans Seumeren told Izvestia this week.
 He also denied that he had discussed with the Russian authorities the possibility of postponing the operation until next year, Interfax said.
 
 
Central Asia Visas?
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The heads of several regions of Northwest Russia have called for a visa regime along Russia's borders with the former Soviet republics of central Asia, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 Yury Spiridonov, head of the Republic of Komi, told reporters that "under the current conditions on the borders with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, we must immediately implement a visa system," according to the news agency.
 The governor of the Vologda Ob last, Vyacheslav Pozgalev, also expressed this opinion. "Under the present world conditions, there can be no doubt that it is necessary to seal Russia's borders," Po za lev told Interfax Tuesday. "We are already facing a flood of illegal migrants from central Asia ... and they are already appearing in Vologda," Pozgalev said.
 Arkhangelsk Governor Anatoly Efremov told the agency that "we must not allow refugees from Afghanistan into Russia." He stated that Ark han gelsk Oblast already has a "large number" of illegal immigrants from central Asia. 



TITLE: Russia-Bound Flight Crashes in Black Sea
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Russian airliner carrying up to 78 passengers and crew on a flight from Israel exploded and plunged into the Black Sea in unexplained circumstances on Thursday.
 Ukraine quickly dismissed American suggestions that the plane might have been hit by an accidental missile strike from Ukraine, and President Vla dimir Putin said it might be a &quot;terrorist act.&quot;
 The mid-air explosion of the Sibir Airlines Tupolev-154 jet, on a scheduled flight from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Siberia, inevitably triggered fears of sabotage following the airliner attacks in the United States on Sept. 11.
 &quot;A civilian aircraft crashed today, and it is possible that it was the result of a terrorist act,&quot; Putin told a meeting of European justice ministers in Moscow.
 But a U.S. official in Washington said, &quot;We want to get away from this notion ... that this was a terrorism act.&quot;
 &quot;It could well have been a training accident. It could have been the Ukrainian military conducting a live-fire test. it could be a tragic accident,&quot; said one official, who did not wish to be identified, noting that Ukraine had been test-firing live surface-to-air missiles from the Crimea at the time.
 But Ukrainian military spokesperson Konstantin Khivrenko said: &quot;Neither the direction nor the range [of the missiles] corresponds to the practical or theoretical point at which the plane exploded. So the Ukrainian military has no involvement, either practical or theoretical, in this accident.&quot;
 And Russian security sources, quoted by Interfax news agency, said the Ukrainian exercises had been taking place more than 320 kilometers from where the plane came down.
 &quot;[Ukrainian forces] were using missiles that do not have the required range,&quot; a source told Interfax.
 In Moscow, Deputy Transport Minister Karl Ruppel said that the crew of an Armenian airliner in the area had informed Russian air-traffic controllers that they saw an explosion aboard a plane flying nearby. Ruppel said he didn't know what caused the explosion. He was confirming Russian media reports that there had been a blast on the Russian plane.
 The plane went down some 185 kilometers off Russia's coast in water about 1,000 meters deep, an official from the Emergency Situations Ministry said. Russia sent a rescue ship and plane to the scene and began searching for bodies.
 Official accounts of the number of passengers and crew on board varied between 74 and 78. An official from the Emergency Situations Ministry in Novosibirsk said the crew were all Russian but that most of the 65 or so passengers were Is raeli citizens.
 A Reuters reporter who watched the Ukrainian exercises said surface-to-air missiles were being fired from the east side of the Crimean peninsula at 20 or more airborne drone targets at around the time the plane came down.
 Nikolai Patrushev, the head of Russia's domestic federal security service, or FSB, passed Armenian reports of the mid-air explosion to Putin during a crisis meeting in the Kremlin.
 Putin spoke by telephone to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Itar-Tass quoted a spokesperson as saying.
 The disaster provided a grim background to a meeting taking place later on Thursday between the Kremlin leader and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who arrived in Moscow to discuss the international crisis.
 Israeli Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh said there was no clear evidence that the plane crashed as a result of a terror attack. Nevertheless, after the crash Israel suspended takeoffs of foreign flights from its main airport, Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv.
 Interfax quoted the FSB as saying: &quot;Taking into account the latest events in the world, the theory of a terrorist act is being investigated first of all.&quot;
 A Sibir Airlines official in Novosibirsk said the plane would not normally have passed over the Black Sea and appeared to have been off course. &quot;Why should they have been given such an air corridor?&quot; she asked.
 
 <i>- Reuters, AP </i>

TITLE: Little To Celebrate on This Anniversary
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The black-and-white portraits went past one by one: 43 proud, blurred, smiling, serious faces and three blank pieces of posterboard, all with a small black line cutting across the left-hand corner.
 As the procession stopped outside the Ostankino television center, the portrait-bearers formed a circle, the photos facing inward. A Russian Orthodox priest began reading prayers for the dead.
 The poorly dressed crowd of about 300 people gathered Wednesday to commemorate the loved ones they lost in Moscow's bloodiest clash since World War II - one that many believe brought the country to the brink of civil war.
 The demonstrators were a motley collection including communist pensioners left penniless by post-Soviet reforms and certain their government had betrayed them, bereaved relatives and political extremists.
 Some held up signs saying &quot;Long Live the Soviet Constitution&quot; riddled with mock bullet holes. Others sold nationalist newspapers, music tapes or virulent Stalinist or anti-Semitic literature.
 &quot;We come here every year to remember those people who were innocent victims of October '93,&quot; said Leonid Bakchuk, one of the organizers of the demonstration, which wound its way from the pond opposite the television tower.
 &quot;These people were shot here,&quot; said Communist Duma Deputy Alexander Kunayev, pointing to the photos. &quot;Shot by machine guns from this building. I was a witness.
 &quot;It's a crime of the regime - Yeltsin's crime,&quot; he added. &quot;Unarmed people came here to conduct negotiations with the head of the television center, and in response they got a bullet in the back.&quot;
 Few agree that the crowd that descended on Ostankino on Oct. 3, 1993, was unarmed. Many reports from the time say the protesters were not only armed but that they attacked first, and the elite OMON troops opened fire in response.
 In general, there is little agreement on the details of the battle. What's clearer is what preceded it.
 Eight years ago, on Sept. 21, the patience of then-President Boris Yeltsin snapped. Frustrated by having his reforms continually blocked by an intransigent parliament with as many powers as the president himself, Yeltsin disbanded the conservative legislature, called the Supreme Soviet.
 His vice president, Alexander Rutskoi, sided with the opposition. They barricaded themselves inside the White House, which now serves as the main government building but was then parliament headquarters, declared Rutskoi the president and a bitter two-week standoff began.
 The mood in the city seemed quite the opposite of the pro-Yeltsin fervor that had brought thousands of people to defend the White House two years earlier when Yeltsin himself was holed up there, facing down a coup against his predecessor Mikhail Gorbachev by Communist hardliners.
 In the fall of 1993, on the contrary, Muscovites came out to show their displeasure with Yeltsin, for everything from his role in the breakup of the Soviet Union, to failure to follow through with full-fledged democratic reforms, to the country's inflationary nightmare.
 On Oct. 3, the standoff erupted into violence when Rutskoi's supporters broke through the police lines fencing them in near the White House and split into two groups, one that headed for the mayor's office neighboring the parliament and another that donned helmets and marched off to storm the broadcasting unit at Ostankino.
 That night outside the television center, police shot dead 46 people. The following day, Yeltsin ordered tanks to shell the White House.
 If the indelible image of the 1991 coup attempt was a beaming, victorious Yeltsin standing atop a tank in front of the White House, the lasting picture of the clashes in 1993 was the building's blackened facade and dead bodies on the streets of central Moscow. Officially, 147 people were killed. Unofficial estimates put the figure much higher.
 &quot;Eight years ago there was unity of sorts against Yeltsin,&quot; said Boris Kagarlitsky, a political analyst and, in 1993, a deputy of the Moscow legislature who lined up against Yeltsin.
 Those against Yeltsin were &quot;a mixture of those who wanted a return to Soviet times, the far right and frustrated democrats,&quot; said Kagarlitsky.
 &quot;It was a coalition that could not win,&quot; he said. &quot;It was politically unsustainable.&quot;

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Royal Visit
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - King Carl Gustav XVI of Sweden will make a state visit to Russia from Oct. 8 to 14, President Vladimir Putin's administration stated Thursday.
 The monarch will be accompanied by his wife, Queen Sylvia, and his daughter, Princess Victoria, who is the heir to the throne, Interfax reported. The Swedish foreign minister and trade minister, as well as a large delegation of Swedish businesspeople will also accompany the king.
 The delegation will visit Moscow, St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, Interfax reported.
 
 
Kovalyov Sentenced
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Moscow City Court on Wednesday handed down a nine-year suspended sentence to a former justice minister charged with embezzling millions of rubles.
 Valentin Kovalyov - who gained notoriety in 1997 after RTR aired seamy but blurry footage of a man identified as him cavorting with several women at a banya - was originally accused of channeling more than 4 billion non-redenominated rubles from a public fund into his private accounts. He was also accused of taking $40,000 in bribes and expensive gifts while minister.
 Under the suspended sentence, Kovalyov, who spent 14 months behind bars from 1999 to 2000, will not be allowed to run for public office and will be subject to travel restrictions. Kovalyov says he is innocent. His aide received a six-year suspended sentence.
 
 
Prison Guards Detained
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Three guards from the high-security Butyrka prison in Moscow have been detained in connection with this week's escape by an inmate using a fake Justice Ministry identification card, a prison spokesperson said Wednesday.
 "We haven't excluded the possibility that the guards took part in planning [the escape], although it is too early to say whether the escape was the result of their negligence or a conspiracy on their part," Ilya Kolubelov, a spokesperson for the federal prisons directorate, said in a telephone interview.
 The guards, who were detained late Tuesday, could be accused of abetting Ivan Vinogradov, 39, who escaped a day earlier after a sanctioned meeting with his mother in the prison visitors' room during the three guards' shift.
 The fugitive, who was wearing civilian clothes, escaped using a forged identification card identical to those used by employees of the Justice Ministry's prisons directorate, according to law enforcement officials.
 Vinogradov's jailbreak - the second in less than a month - forced the prison's warden, Rafik Ibragimov, to tender his resignation. 
 As of Wednesday, there was no official confirmation that the resignation had been approved.
 
 
New Belarussian PM?
 

MINSK (SPT) - Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko nominated Deputy Prime Minister Gennady Novitsky, 52, to become the country's new prime minister Monday in a move seen as a bid to ensure the government remained loyal to him following his controversial re-election last month.
 
"The new prime minister is faceless," said one Western offical. "Lukashenko wants to weaken the government and strengthen his power."
 Novitsky's appointment still must be approved by the Belarussian parliament.

TITLE: SibAl Grabs Bank and Insurer
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark and Kirill Koriukin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Siberian Aluminum chief Oleg Deripaska, together with Sibneft chief Roman Abramovich, has extended his industrial empire by taking over top-10 bank Avtobank and leading insurer Ingosstrakh.
 None of the companies have confirmed the acquisition, but analysts and sources in the industry say it's a done deal and value it at $90 million. 
 Along with Avtobank and Igosstrakh, SibAl and Sibneft are buying Nosta Metals Plant.
 The deal is beneficial for all sides, said Mikhail Matovnikov, deputy director of Interfax Rating Agency. &quot;SibAl could get Avtobank, Ingosstrakh and [its affiliate] Ingosstrakh-Soyuz - immediately a bank-insurance empire,&quot; he said. &quot;Avtobank has a fairly good reputation.&quot;
 The possible acquisition comes a year after SibAl took over the Gorky Automobile Plant, a strategic partner of both Avtobank, a top-10 bank, and Ingosstrakh. Ownership of GAZ may have helped.
 An Avtobank spokesperson said it was holding talks with downstream oil company Nafta-Moskva, believed to be a go-between for SibAl. 
 Nafta-Moskva has lost its main strategic partner - No. 3 oil producer Surgutneftegaz - and could be looking for a new alliance.
 Ingosstrakh is holding talks on a strategic partnerhip with both Nafta-Moskva and SibAl itself, said Tatyana Grosheva, a spokesperson for the insurance company.
 Although SibAl is allied with MDM Bank, analysts say the metals major may be looking for a bank it can directly control. 
 Furthermore, SibAl can now easily settle GAZ's debt to Avtobank. Ownership of GAZ would help SibAl take control of Avtobank for a relatively low price.
 &quot;SibAl became a major borrower of Avtobank through its subsidiary GAZ. This is a significant factor that could allow SibAl to bargain for very good terms for a bank that urgently needs to sell a stake,&quot; said Matovnikov.
 A takeover by SibAl would also be advantageous for Avtobank, which may be looking for a powerful ally in its fight against Alfa Group over Nosta. 
 Nosta, which owes Avtobank 234 million rubles, is now under the temporary management of Alfa, which may bankrupt the plant.
 &quot;A strategic partnership could help change Avtobank's situation,&quot; Matovnikov said. &quot;Avtobank will probably not recover its loans to Nosta if it is bankrupted. This would leave a huge hole, about 17 percent of its capital would disappear,&quot; he said. 
 &quot;The situation is extremely unstable for the bank. In order to get out of it, the bank will need a way to put up resistance - most likely against Alfa Group - to avoid losing a large chunk of its assets.&quot; 
 Deripaska may have struck a deal with Andrei Andreyev - the former chairperson of Nosta's board of directors who reportedly controls Avtobank - to sell off shares in the bank and Ingosstrakh, Matovnikov said. Andreyev nominally owns a tiny stake in both companies.
 RusRating published a report Thursday lowering Avtobank's rating by two notches to CC from B - already fairly low. The agency had frozen the bank's rating and began investigating the change in real ownership in September.
 &quot;The lower rating reflects not only the uncertainty over ownership, but also basic economic fundamentals,&quot; said Ri chard Hainsworth, head of RusRating. 
 &quot;Avtobank is in a position to overcome their difficulties if management and ownership are committed to Avtobank's remaining a going concern.&quot;

TITLE: Slavneft Loan Guarantee Stuck in German Courts
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - At the time, it seemed to be just another routine transaction.
 In May 1998, someone at Slavneft - an oil major jointly owned by the governments of Russia and Belarus - signed a letter that guaranteed part of a $6-million loan to a Finnish oil-trading company.
 Back then, when businesses were running months behind on payments to suppliers and workers, companies signed off on such guarantees to ensure that they would get paid. Perhaps the trading company - Uni-Baltic Oy - owed Slavneft money, and Slav neft smoothed the way by offering a guarantee to a bank that was willing to lend.
 That is one theory. In any case, the loan came due and Uni-Baltic defaulted. Earlier this year, lender Ost-West Handelsbank sued Slavneft for payment in a Frankfurt court. Slavneft filed a countersuit, and thus began an odyssey involving managers new and old, where truth and signatures became blurred by ambiguity.
 Anatoly Fo min, former president and board chairperson of Slav neft, says he has ended up at the center of this scandal by accident.
 &quot;People who say that I am involved are only trying to confuse the situation because I have never signed any letters of guarantee to benefit Uni-Baltic in my life,&quot; Fomin said in a recent interview, sitting stoically at the head of a table in his office.
 Against the pattering of rain on his windows, Fomin's voice suddenly rises.
 &quot;Let those who have been saying all this come forward with my signature,&quot; he said.
 In a statement issued Aug. 8, Slavneft said Fomin's signature was on the guarantee.
 Fomin has every reason to be angry. The latest allegations, which he says he didn't learn of until recently,wouldn't be the first time he has been made a scapegoat for Slavneft's troubles. He was relieved of his duties at Slavneft during the August 1998 financial crisis.
 He was notified of an extraordinary shareholders meeting convened to oust him while on vacation and told a criminal case had been opened against him.
 At the time, the official reason was the company's poor financial performance, even though Slavneft posted results better than the industry average that year.
 Fomin spent months afterward searching for documents that proved his guilt or at least stated what the charges were. He never found them, and he never had his day in court.
 &quot;[Belarus President Alexander] Lukashenko told me that I should just ignore it all and go on vacation,&quot; said Fomin, who was deputy fuel and energy minister in the mid-1990s.
 No documents have surfaced this time around, either. Slavneft issued its statement blaming Fomin during its court battle with Ost-West Handelsbank, a subsidiary of Russia's Vneshtorgbank, which in turn is 99-percent controlled by the Central Bank. Since then, the Slavneft press office has refused to release copies of documents relevant to the case.
 Sources in Slavneft acknowledge that Fomin's signature wasn't on any letter, but no one can explain why Fomin would be chosen as a fall guy. Contrary to Slavneft's official version, industry sources say that Uni-Baltic was bought out in 1997 by Slavneft-Holding, the company's international division. Upon receipt, the $6-million loan was funnelled to Slavneft's Yaroslavl refinery as prepayment for fuel that was never delivered.
 Contrary to an earlier statement by Slavneft, Slavneft Vice President Andrei Shtorkh said Thursday that Slavneft-Holding acquired Uni-Baltic in 1997 and sold it two years later. Thus, Uni-Baltic was already part of the Slavneft group when it applied for the loan.
 Axel Breitbach, lawyer for Ost-West Handelsbank, said he didn't understand why Slavneft was going to such trouble to avoid the debt payment.
 &quot;It's a strange case,&quot; Breitbach said by telephone from Frankfurt. &quot;The German courts do not often come across a situation where a company won't pay a guarantee because a different person holds the post of president.&quot;
 A Frankfurt court froze $2.6 million - the amount Slavneft guaranteed - in credits owed to Slavneft by companies in Germany. Slavneft has hired a German lawyer and is appealing the ruling, Breitbach said. The appeals hearing has not yet been scheduled.
 Breitbach refused to release the letter's contents and reiterated that its signature belonged to a Slavneft president. When asked which one, he said he didn't recall the name.
 In making its case, Slavneft said that it shouldn't be required to repay the loan because the original process of approving the guarantee had been plagued by &quot;gross violations&quot; of the company charter. The board of directors never approved the guarantee and the Central Bank did not give the requisite permission for any foreign-currency payments to be made. Slavneft's former management was also supposed to deliver supporting documents with the letter. However, only the letter was received.
 Ost-West Handelsbank turned to Slavneft in early 2000 after several unsuccessful attempts to get its money back from Uni-Baltic. In response, Slavneft president Mikhail Gutseriev wrote a letter to the Fuel and Energy Ministry explaining that prompt payment of the debt would violate even more currency restrictions.
 Shtorkh said it wasn't a matter of money but of principle.
 &quot;There is no legal mechanism that will let us pay this loan, and why should we if the guarantee was signed under illegal and suspicious circumstances?&quot; Shtorkh said. &quot;Why should our shareholders give up the right to an extra $2.6 million in dividends?&quot;
 Shtorkh said he found it odd that Fomin had not heard of the scandal - and his role in it - until recently.
 &quot;I don't know whether he's lying or not,&quot; he said. &quot;How could he not know when you know and I know and it's been in all the newspapers?&quot;
 But Fomin remains flummoxed by the entire affair.
 &quot;The incomprehensibility of this doesn't surprise me,&quot; Fomin said. &quot;Nothing does anymore. What it boils down to is stupidity.&quot;

TITLE: Car Giants on Different Roads
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia's two largest carmakers have taken diverging paths so far this year: one boosting production while the other has lagged.
 AvtoVAZ, which produces 70 to 75 percent of the cars built in the country, increased its output by 8 percent in the first nine months of this year to 570,000 cars, driving overall sector growth.
 The Gorky Automobile Plant, or GAZ, which manufactures large cars, as well as GAZelle and Sobol light and mid-weight trucks, vans and other vehicles, has continued sputtering.
 Overall production of GAZ in the first nine months of 2001 was down 26 percent year on year to some 37,000 vehicles. Car production fell 38 percent to 59,600 cars, while truck production slid 10 percent. Overall production had already dropped 5 percent in 2000.
 GAZ may have turned a corner in September, when production grew by 8 percent month on month. &quot;The production growth indicates that GAZ may be starting to recover,&quot; said Julia Zhdanova, transport analyst at UFG.
 The auto industry overall continues to putter along, with production up 0.8 percent to 812,800 vehicles in the first eight months of the year. Car production rose 3.4 percent to 670,800 units, according to the Avtoselkhozmash Holding, Interfax reported.
 Though showing a modest increase, the car industry has suffered from a typical Soviet hang-up.
 &quot;The whole focus on production is a bit misguided because it harks back to the Soviet mentality of production as the paramount goal, rather than profitability,&quot; said Kim Iskyan, an analyst at Renaissance Capital.
 Andrei Ivanov, an analyst at Troika Dialog, said the main factor for GAZ's drop in production is the decrease in demand. He also mentioned as contributing factors a temporary lull in manufacturing earlier this year and a change in short-term sales strategy toward the production of fewer cars with higher price tags.
 GAZ has been in the process of a major restructuring since Siberian Aluminum - the automotive and machinery company owned by Russian Aluminum head Oleg Deripaska - strengthened its control over the factory in January.
 &quot;[SibAl] has been solely focusing on restructuring operational and sales management, a task that requires no industry-specific abilities,&quot; Ivanov said. &quot;However, SibAl hasn't indicated any long-term strategic goals, which makes it difficult to evaluate its ability to compete in the automotive industry.&quot;
 Iskyan agreed. &quot;It's still unclear what's really going on there. They may still be in the process of working out how things should be functioning, or they may be in over their heads,&quot; he said.
 &quot;Though GAZ has the most diverse product range among Russian auto-manufacturers, some of its models aren't selling. The company may decrease production in unprofitable lines, which would be good for the company's long-term performance,&quot; said Iskyan.
 &quot;Demand for existing car models is in decline and demand for light trucks is already mature. SibAl will either need to create new models or shift output to medium-sized trucks,&quot; said Ivanov.
 Although the company has not released financial results for the first nine months, a spokesperson said there has been marked improvement.
 &quot;Because of the change in management, the auto manufacturer has significantly improved its financial indicators ... [some indicators] are 15 times better,&quot; SibAl'sValery Sarichev said.
 GAZ reported a 16-percent drop in revenues to $451 million with a net loss of $10 million in the first half of 2001.
 In the first half of this year, AvtoVAZ increased revenues by 38 percent year on year to $1.73 billion, while income leaped 223 percent to some $125 million.

TITLE: Big Russian Steelmakers Hit by Dumping Charge
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Novolodskaya
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - Four U.S. steel majors have demanded that prohibitive import duties be imposed on cold-rolled steel from 20 countries, including Russia.
 The companies - United States Steel, Bethlehem Steel, LTV Steel and National Steel, which together control 69 percent of the internal U.S. market - have accused the countries of dumping and applied to the U.S. Trade Department asking for a 150-percent import duty.
 These countries last year provided more than 80 percent of U.S. imports of cold-rolled steel, used mostly in auto manufacturing and appliances.
 Russian companies, which export 310,000 tons of cold-rolled steel worth over $75 million a year to the United States, say that the 150 percent duty would effectively freeze them out of the U.S. market.
 The Russian government agrees.
 &quot;The last time this problem was raised, we voluntarily limited our exports to the U.S. by applying quotas,&quot; said a government official involved in trade issues. 
 &quot;But this wasn't enough for them, and they threatened us with anti-dumping measures.&quot;
 From 1997 to 1998, U.S. steel firms started to push through anti-dumping measures against various types of Russian steel.
 Before prohibitive duties on Russian imports, which could have been applied to arrears on previous deliveries, were introduced, Russia's steelmakers agreed on a compromise.
 In July 1999, they signed the Steel Agreement and voluntarily limited exports to the United States, including a ceiling of 310,000 tons for cold-rolled steel.
 But the vouluntary reductions turned out ultimately to be unnecessary as the U.S. Foreign Trade Committee eventually decided steel imports from Russia posed no threat due to their minimal market share. By that time, it was too late to tear up the agreement.
 This time, the Russian companies plan to fight to the bitter end.
 Though Russia's share of the U.S. steel market is far from vast - only 6 percent of total U.S. imports - there are big profits to be made.
 &quot;The American market is one of the most attractive for us because prices for steel in the U.S. are on average $20 higher than in other countries,&quot; said Alexander Tumanov, sales manager for Severstal, the No. 1 producer of cold-rolled steel in Russia.
 Moreover, Russia could lose more than just the U.S. market.
 &quot;The losses suffered in one market tend to have a domino effect. We've already seen this happen,&quot; said Andrei Petrosyan, deputy general director of the Novolipetsk Metals Plant, the No. 2 Russian producer of cold-rolled steel.
 &quot;First, one country starts its anti-dumping investigation, then another, then another, and so on. Therefore, it would be strategically unsound to accept anti-dumping measures.&quot;
 If the U.S. steel companies have their way, it may be difficult for Russian steel to find new markets.
 In Europe, quotas are already in effect on Russian supplies, which have already been a topic of discussion between President Vladimir Putin and European Union leaders in Brussels.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Gazprom Oil Deal
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Gazprom on Thursday signed a cooperation agreement with Roshelf and state-owned Rosneft to develop the Prirazlomnoye oil field, Gazprom said in a press release.
 The agreement proposes putting together a consortium with 50 percent belonging to Gazprom and its subsidiary Roshelf and the other 50 percent going to Rosneft.
 With 76.4 million tons of recoverable reserves, the field is Gazprom's biggest foray into the oil sector to date.
 The German company Wintershall was a partner in the project before Tuesday, when it announced a one-year moratorium on any further investment.
 
 
S&P Confirms Rating
 

LONDON (Reuters) - International credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's said Thursday it had affirmed Russia's single-B rating and revised the outlook on its long-term issuer credit to positive from stable.
 The agency also said it could upgrade Russia in the coming months if economic reform progressed, while delays in structural refom could put downward pressure on ratings.
 S&P said the positive outlook reflected improvement in Russia's policy environment, which was sustaining a strong momentum for reform that began in May 2001.
 It said progress in economic reforms, including implementing those already agreed on, and prudent debt management could lead to a further upgrade.
 
 
Oil Exports Rise
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Crude-oil exports outside the Commonwealth of Independent States rose 7 percent year on year to 91.80 million tons (2.76 million barrels per day) in the first eight months of 2001, State Customs Committee data showed Thursday.
 Exports of petroleum products to countries outside the CIS rose 8 percent from January to the end of August to 45.75 million tons.
 
 
MTS Bond Issue?
 

LONDON (Reuters) - No. 1 cellular operator Mobile TeleSystems may issue bonds but will avoid equity markets in 2002, Vice President Alexei Buyanov said in London on Tuesday.
 The company has no urgent need for funds because it still has $150 million from its initial public offering and was earning the equivalent of $200 million a year, said Buyanov.
 In addition, it would not like to dilute the holdings of its existing shareholders.
 "It may be necessary for us to raise money [in 2002], " said Buyanov. "[But] our shareholders do not appreciate dilution of their stakes in MTS. Without a doubt, it should be from the debt market."
 The company may buy a competitor or a third-generation mobile-telephone license before raising any cash, he said.
 The cost of a Russian third-generation license might reach $200 million in a worst-case scenario, said Buyanov.
 
 
MinFin Debt Agency
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Finance Ministry will consider a strategy for managing state debt, including setting up a debt-management agency on Oct. 16, a ministry source said Wednesday.
 The strategy will set out the principles of managing domestic and foreign debt, state assets and liabilities, the early analysis and prevention of risks and smoothing out a 2003 foreign-debt payment peak, the source said.
 Russia faces $19 billion in foreign- debt payments in 2003 after $14 billion this year and next.

TITLE: Chubais Drives Pace of Energy Restructuring
AUTHOR: By Mikhail Yenukov and Tatyana Lysova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Over the past year, Anatoly Chubais has managed to guide his plan for reforming Unified Energy Systems well on its way to fruition. The government has approved the plan, a running battle with minority shareholders has fizzled out almost entirely and representatives of Russian financial and industrial groups are taking an interest in the opportunities that the restructuring process might offer.
 True, the strategic international investors that Chubais mentioned a year ago have yet to get on board. But he has abandoned his tendency to idealize domestic investors. No longer does the head of UES believe that every major energy consumer will take an interest in developing the sector. And the impending redistribution of property will only take place &quot;through a tender and with strict investment conditions,&quot; he says.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>It's not just UES managers and officials who are involved in reforming the electrical-energy sector. A special working group has been set up to consider this question at the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and there is a committee for reforming the energy sector established within UES itself. Could you explain what these organizations are doing? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>This is a natural process in which each interested group receives a certain platform from which it can protect and lobby its interests. The committee at the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs represents the industrialists, or, as they are disparagingly known, the oligarchs, whose interests are quite clear. You have Oleg Deripaska [of Siberian Aluminum] for whom energy costs account for 30 percent of the production cost of his goods. So his interest is quite clear. The same goes for [Severstal general director] Alexei Mordashov, who has entered wholeheartedly into this process. [Troika Dialog's chief] Ruben Vardanyan is the head of the committee. And it is absolutely proper for this post to be occupied by a person who represents business, who has no direct interest in lowering or raising energy tariffs. His priority is that financial flows and markets should take shape around the energy sector.
 The UES restructuring committee under the UES board of directors has a completely different structure - it is made up of shareholders, investors and UES representatives - and it has completely different interests. The group is headed by David Hern of Brunswick Capital Management, who could never be accused of being a &quot;UES agent.&quot;
 Could this group have been &quot;captured&quot; by appointing myself or [UES deputy chairman] Valentin Zavadnikov as head? Yes, it could have been. But this would have been wrong.
 It is important that this group includes representatives not just of minority shareholders, but of international financial structures such as the EBRD and the Finnish energy company Fortum. Fortum is a strategic investor and the biggest energy company, not just in Finland, but in Europe as well. It thinks along different lines than speculative investors.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>Does Fortum have a practical interest in the restructuring process? A year ago you said you were negotiating with a number of Western energy companies that might invest funds in the Russian energy sector. Can you say anything more concrete about this today? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>I can't boast that we have moved our negotiations with any of them to the stage of a full-fledged project. But last year we went through an important transition. We separated out those investors who generally interested us from those who generally didn't. The former include a number of major companies such as EdF [France], EON [Germany], Union Fenoza [Spain] and Enron [the United States]. We met with the president of the Tokyo Electric Power Co., and there is interest from the major Japanese trading houses, including Marubeni. In general, they are interested. They want to see concrete projects and they are prepared to devote time and effort to this end.
 I sat with the president of EON in this room for four hours, drew him flow charts, told him about the various stages of the restructuring. The next stage is to move from general talk about the restructuring to specific investment projects. To get beyond this, we had to put serious money into developing serious projects.
 PricewaterhouseCoopers was involved in producing what we call our 5,000-megawatt program. It incorporates 12 projects, four of which are completed, and the remainder of which will be finished soon. We have prepared detailed presentations of them with complete financial assessments and technical sections with experts' opinions.
 Almost all of these projects will help complete ongoing construction projects. We're not, of course, talking about $5 billion in investments but several hundred million. In terms of the energy sector, these aren't big projects, but they're set up and ready for implementation.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>How much is this program expected to cost? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>They aren't finished yet, so I don't have any final figures. But I do have four complete packages of documents about the projects that I will put in my briefcase and take with me on a road show from Moscow to Buenos Aires and then, I hope, on to New York and London.
 The International Energy Congress will be taking place in Buenos Aires, where strategies are gathered from all over the world. The main thing at such a large gathering is not so much the presentation I give, but the opportunities for dialogue with the heads of the biggest energy companies in the world. This won't be a conversation along the lines of &quot;So Ken [Kenneth Lei president of Enron], how do you feel about energy restructuring in Russia?&quot; Rather, it will be: &quot;Here are four projects. They cost such and such. How much time do you need to give me a yes or no answer?&quot;
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>How might these projects affect the AO-Energo or RAO UES ownership structure? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>They won't affect the ownership structure of UES one bit. They could affect the ownership structure of AO-Energo, however. This is because they are realized at the starting phase of restructuring. A number of projects, for example, are connected with modernizing the existing stations that are part of AO-Energo's assets.
 Take plans to modernize the Dzerzhinsky power station, which is a subdivision of Nizhnovenergo. To start with, the power station must become an independent legal entity; it needs to be reorganized into a joint-stock company. Then we have to understand how consumers will actually use it. If it is to work on the Nizhny Novgorod market, can we conclude long-term contracts with consumers and put not just an assessment of the work, but the prices and the long-term energy supply contracts on the investor's table?
 If this doesn't work out, the power station will be spun off from Nizhnovenergo and moved to FOREM [the Federal Wholesale Market of Electricity and Power]. There will be buyers in any event, and the price will be fixed by regulating bodies.
 Based on this example, I have shown that not only structural changes are required, but that the future sales market with its basic price parameters must be demonstrated. Having been closely involved in this process, we now know that every project should be treated individually, requiring the efforts of all our departments, the general directors of the energy systems, even the governors. And, of course, they must be considered by the board of directors.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>You told Alexander Lebed, the governor of Krasnoyarsk, that you had found an investor who would finish off the Boguchansk hydroelectric station. Can you name this investor? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>The Boguchansk hydroelectric station is nothing like the Dzerzhinsky power station. It is a huge project that at best will come on line in 2006 or 2007. The cost of a single kilowatt will be about $1,200 - three times higher than that of a normal power station. We're not talking hundreds of millions of dollars. This would require $1 billion in investment. There is one major Russian financial and industrial group that has expressed a serious interest in the Boguchansk hydroelectric station. At this point, I can't name it. We're not at the stage where we have a fully formed project and investment obligations.
 But we do have real investments in the form of subscribers' payments that we collect from energy systems. This is an old Soviet construction that we aren't particularly keen on, but it does exist, and as such, we have introduced order to it. Now all investments are made only in live money.
 There are already examples of more progressive financing schemes. Construction of the Mutinsk geothermal station in Kamchatka is going ahead using an EBRD loan of $100 million. This is a real project that was studied thoroughly by the bank: All financial flows were analyzed, the guarantees and practical aspects of the scheme were assessed. As a result, intensive construction work is underway and the first generator of 25 megawatts will be introduced Dec. 22. The second will be introduced in the first quarter of next year.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>But it is surely unlikely that you will manage to attract EBRD credits for every such project. After all, it's a very lengthy process. Are Russian investors interested in investing in the Russian energy sector? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Of course. The further we get with the restructuring as a whole, the more we feel the interest of Russian investors. And some of them are very interested. A whole range of major industrial companies have approached us with proposals for buying the power stations that supply their energy and that are partially located on the same territory as their enterprises.
 In general, this is fine. But our position is that their participation must not be limited to making a purchase but should include investment obligations. We don't just want to transfer property from one set of hands to another, but to create a scheme that will guarantee that the station is modernized. The second condition is that even if the station has only one pretender, an auction or tender will be held. This applies to everyone. 
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>How much of the legislative base for reforming the energy sector has been prepared? When will this document be discussed by the State Duma? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Let's start with the most important things: the laws. Pursuant to Instruction No. 1040, the Russian government plans to adopt five draft laws, including amendments to those that already exist, as well as to the new law on electrical energy. Each of them requires considerable work. The corresponding draft laws have already been developed by the departments concerned, and our specialists are participating in discussions about the laws. The first two of them are to be put to the government in the coming days.
 
 <i><strong>Q: </strong></i><i>No one would have predicted that changing the general director of Mosenergo could produce such a severe conflict. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Moscow authorities stood up for [Alexander] Remezov's interests. Can the new director that you appoint work normally if the mayor of Moscow is opposed to him? 
 </i><strong>A: </strong>Here one must follow the letter of the law. The legal standpoint is that neither the mayor nor the governors have the right on ethical or corporate grounds to stop shareholders from getting rid of their general director. They may not agree with this but they cannot forbid it. I have a standard rule: Don't appoint a general director that the governor rejects categorically. Despite all my respect for Yury Luzhkov, I insist that the governor of the region, Boris Gromov, who proposed [Arkady] Yevstafiev as a candidate, also has the right to argue his case.
 It is specifically for this reason that at all levels in the process of appointing a new general director for Mosenergo, we have been trying to come to an agreement with the regional heads. And now when Yevstafiev has been legally appointed acting general director, our doors remain open for compromise.

TITLE: Russia and NATO: Achieving the Impossible
AUTHOR: By Ira Straus
TEXT: IN Germany last week and again in Brussels this week, President Vladimir Putin raised the question of Russian membership in NATO with greater specificity than ever before. What he called for was not immediate admission into NATO, but for NATO to begin immediate discussions with Russia to work out the terms and conditions for Russian membership in the alliance.
 This is the only professional way to do it, and Putin said that this has already been delayed far too long. In light of the terrorism crisis, it would be hard to disagree with him.
 Yet it is quite possible that there will be no serious response from NATO. Many people in NATO, as in Russia, believe that it is impossible to achieve a solution that serves the interests of both sides. In fact, very few people in NATO have any idea of how it could be done; most of them take it for granted that Russian membership would simply be bad for NATO. Putin's meeting with NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson in Brussels on Wednesday has, however, yielded pledges of closer cooperation from both sides. Howcould this be done?
 Let me start with a radical proposition: There is only one concern that really matters on each side, and that is the extent of Russia's influence in NATO. All the other concerns - standardization of weapons, the human-rights record in Chechnya, NATO's intervention in Kosovo, civilian control of the military, all the supposed standards for NATO membership - are secondary. Many of them are completely irrelevant. 
 Who needs to insist on standardization of weapons prior to achieving membership? The original NATO members have been working on standardizing their weapons for 50 years and still have a long way to go on it. This hasn't stopped them from sticking together in NATO. As to civilian control, it is a good thing, but Turkey's military has been one of the forces keeping the civilians in line with the modern world.
 What NATO really fears is that Russia will get veto power and use it to make it impossible for NATO to reach any of the decisions it wants to reach and needs to reach. What Russia fears, or has objected to in the past arrangements, is that, under the formula of a &quot;voice not a veto,&quot; it has not had enough influence to make a difference, and that NATO will never give it any real influence.
 The question boils down to: &quot;How can Russia have real influence in NATO, commensurate with its natural importance, without holding a veto that it could wield arbitrarily to make a nonsense of NATO?'' Or, &quot;How can we find a middle term between the two extremes of 'a powerless consultative voice' and 'an absolute power of veto?'&quot;
 The answer is not difficult to find. Every democracy knows of a middle term between a &quot;voice&quot; and a &quot;veto,&quot; one that is a much better modus operandi than either of them. It is a vote.
 There are many other possible middle terms. There can be &quot;consensus minus one.&quot; There can be voting with a 90-percen- majority threshold for decisions, or 75, or 67, or 50 percent. Votes can be taken among countries or among individual citizens. Each country's vote can be weighted, whether by population, by economic size, by geographical size, by military strength or by any other factor. And there can be a variety of methods of making decisions, some used ordinarily while others are held in reserve as emergency options. In every legislature, numerous minor matters are passed unanimously, i.e. without anyone objecting, while the party leaders decide which issues need to be put to the test of a serious debate and a vote.
 The lack of middle terms is not the problem. The problem is the lack of serious consideration of them, on the part either of Russia or of NATO.
 One reason for the lack of consideration is that most people believe that every country in NATO has the right to veto every decision. In reality, under the North Atlantic Treaty there is no legal right to veto decisions in NATO; instead, the North Atlantic Council sets its own procedures. The council has in fact usually preferred to operate by consensus, in the sense of getting all members to agree not to dissent publicly or disrupt the public front of unanimity, and NATO rhetoric has emphasized this in a manner that gives an impression that there is genuine unanimity and that every country would have veto power if it disagreed. However, agreement to waive objections is far from genuine unanimity, and there have been occasions, particularly in the early 1980s, when even the public front of unanimity was breached and decisions were made while allowing the dissenters to publish their disagreement in footnotes to the common document.
 Since the council controls its own procedures, let us offer a model of a procedure that it could adopt that would satisfy both the needs of Russia for genuine influence, and the need of NATO to be safe from the threat of irresponsible vetoes. The model is weighted voting combined with consensus.
 Consensus would remain the normal operating procedure, but an option of two-thirds weighted voting would be held in reserve for use in case some country or countries were being too frequently obstructive. The fairest way to weight the vote would be by population. It is the most stable and democratic measure, and gives everyone a sense of equal dignity. Consensus would continue to be used as the normal operating procedure, so there would not be a sharp break from past NATO practices and methods of operation. The option of voting would, however, enhance the workings of consensus, by putting obstreperous countries - like France, Greece or Turkey - on notice that they cannot gain anything by behaving too obstructively.
 In this model, Russia could join NATO and gain a weight in decision making nearly 60 percent as large as America's and twice as large as any other European country's. Every Russian would have the same voting power as every European and American. However, neither Russia nor America would have enough weight to give it veto power.
 This example suffices to show that a way can be found to satisfy concerns on both sides and end up with a result that makes it workable to have Russia in NATO. And by being workable, it would benefit both sides tremendously. Russia would get into the main institution of European security instead of being left isolated outside. Russia would gain influence on decision making and have enough weight to be able to organize coalitions around itself and impel the alliance to pay serious attention to Russian interests. NATO would get its expansion without alienating Russia. And above all, Russia and the West would be allies not adversaries, adding tremendously to the ability of each side to realize its security interests.
 I repeat, this is not the only model. There are many workable models. The point is that all of them, by the mere fact of being workable, make Russia's membership in NATO a matter that serves tremendously the interests of both sides. And this makes it possible, if not obligatory, to start serious discussions about them between Russia and NATO.
 
 <i>Ira Straus is U.S. coordinator, Committee on Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO, and Fulbright professor of international relations at Moscow State University and Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Life in the Shadow of the Oblast
TEXT: IT has by now become a tiresome clich&eacute; to say that the Leningrad Oblast is more investor-friendly than St. Petersburg is. From tax incentives to reduced bureaucracy to just a general sense of cooperation, the oblast has consistently outshined the city in this arena for years now, making it a national example of how to court and keep international investment.
 Nonetheless, we can't help pausing for a moment to consider a recent example that once again underscores this point, showing pretty clearly that the city administration still has not absorbed the lessons of years of coming in second place.
 Last week, Netherlands Trade Minister Gerrit Ybema was in town with a delegation of more than 40 Dutch businesspeople. When the dust settled, what were the results of this long-planned visit?
 Serious plans to construct the cargo terminal at Ust-Luga in cooperation with the port of Rotterdam. Talks about another port facility in Primorsk. Plans to build a bakery in Vyborg. Plans to sell wood-processing by-products from oblast factories to the Netherlands for use as fuel. Plans to build a warehouse for the Dutch company Sanatra - in the oblast. In short, oblast, oblast, oblast.
 And why not? The head of the oblast's External Economic Relations Committee, Sergei Naryshkin, was practically like Ybema's shadow the whole time he was here. Leningrad Oblast Vice Governor Grigory Dvas was also omnipresent, seeming to have the necessary documents and letters of intent in his pocket for whatever situation happened to arise.
 And how about the city? Well, we had the honor of hosting the oblast's triumph in one of our fine hotels, but that was pretty much it. St. Petersburg Vice Governor Yury Antonov didn't show up at the meeting and didn't bother sending a substitute or even his regrets. When The St. Petersburg Times called his office Thursday to find out the reason for his absence, we were told that he had been in Finland on business the day before Ybema's seminar last Friday. Presumably he was too jet-lagged to attend.
 True, the head of the city's External Relations Committee, Kirill Avdeyev, was at the seminar. He even addressed the meeting and pointed out that the Netherlands is the leading source of foreign investment in St. Petersburg, accounting for 38 percent. Naturally, this information merely makes Antonov's absence and the city's generally lackadaisical attitude all the more bewildering.
 President Vladimir Putin has made considerable efforts to increase St. Petersburg's international visibility. The tercentennial celebration in 2003 is already paying dividends as well. But all this will come to naught if the city is not eager, aggressive, encouraging and responsive when serious foreign investors come to town.

TITLE: Decisiveness, But No Decisions
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: VLADIMIR Putin's main political virtue is his ability to be all things to all people. To some, he appears to be a Western-leaning, liberal reformer, while others are convinced he is reviving the traditions of the Soviet state. To some, he promises that order will be established without balking at the use of tough measures. To others, that human rights will be observed. Alas, this situation is not compatible with making serious decisions.
 To give our president his due, however, he has managed to occupy the presidency for more than a year without making a single decision of significance for the fate of the country (reorganization of the administrative apparatus doesn't count, as it doesn't affect the lives of ordinary citizens). The favorable economic situation has allowed the country to drift along in an unclear direction without hitting any reefs so far. The fall of 2001 could see an end to this.
 The conflict in Afghanistan and the war in Chechnya require the Kremlin to take a decisive stance. The defeats meted out to Russian forces in Chechnya in August and September demonstrate the pointlessness of military operations there. Talk of new, tougher measures to be taken by the military are little more than a bluff. Everything that could have been done already has been. Regarding Afghani stan, the Kremlin cannot ignore a potentially huge conflagration on Russia's borders. The Russian authorities must therefore resolve two issues at once: whether to make peace with the Chechen fighters and whether they are ready to get involved in the Afghan conflict on the American side.
 The Kremlin's response is very revealing. Putin has proposed negotiations, but only on terms of unconditional capitulation. Furthermore, the offer was couched as an ultimatum. The result came as no surprise: Had the rebels planned on surrendering, they would have done so with or without an ultimatum. It is comical to propose that your enemy surrenders when he has just beaten you in Vedeno and Gudermes. Of course there was no surrender, but Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov received Putin's proposal positively. He understood that Putin was simply unable to offer him negotiations in any other form. It's another matter that the offer of serious negotiations means that Moscow has made serious concessions (the war began with Putin's promise that there would be no negotiating with bandits).
 Words and actions are therefore at odds with one another. Moscow is ready to give in, but expresses its readiness by demanding that the other side capitulate.
 The situation with Afghanistan is similar. Putin promises participation in the American operation but not in military operations. Rather, he says, Russia will provide &quot;humanitarian supplies&quot; and &quot;search-and-rescue operations.&quot; Moscow seems to think American bombardments will be some kind of natural disaster. However, in practice, Mos cow's promises serve an entirely different purpose. While not offering Mos cow's direct assistance in military operations, Putin has opened up the possibility of the country gradually being dragged into war. Humanitarian supplies could mean transport, foodstuffs, and medical supplies for the Americans and their allies. Search-and-rescue operations could include covert operations conducted by Russia's reconnaissance units to make sure that U.S. missiles hit their targets.
 The mass supply of military hardware to the Northern Alliance will sooner or later lead to the arrival of numerous military instructors, followed by tank divisions made up of volunteers and could end with full-scale intervention.
 While in Chechnya a path has been opened for escalating the peace negotiations, in Afghanistan it has been opened for the escalation of military efforts. But while the results of the decisions adopted appear contradictory, the method is the same. The Kremlin is avoiding an intelligible and unambiguous position. No matter what Putin's administration does, it will reserve the option of pulling back. It allows its words to be interpreted ambiguously and even disowns them if necessary. The Kremlin clearly considers this to be the highest form of political wisdom. Nothing has been decided for sure, and thus no one has to take responsibility for anything.
 The Russian authorities may, however, find themselves hostage to processes beyond their control. Storm clouds have replaced the political calm of the past 1 1/2 years. By allowing itself to be carried along by the waves, the administration risks sooner or later being smashed against a reef.
 
 <i>Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist. </i>

TITLE: How Terrorists Exploit Economic Powerhouses
AUTHOR: By Roslyn Mazer
TEXT: WE could be in for appalling news of the ways in which terrorists turn the fruits of our economic powerhouses against us: It's highly likely that some funds used to finance terrorist networks are being derived from the sale of products ripping off iconic American companies, such as Microsoft or Nike.
 Recent developments suggest that many governments suspected of supporting al-Qaeda are also promoting, or at the very least ignoring, highly lucrative trafficking in counterfeit and pirated products capable of generating huge money flows to terrorists and other organized criminal groups.
 While serving in the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice from 1998 to 2001, I helped catalogue these disturbing trends. We documented the links between intellectual-property crimes, and the even more nefarious crimes they pay for, and noted some startling developments.
 (1) According to 1995 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, New York's Joint Terrorist Task Force had reason to believe that high-level players who controlled a counterfeit T-shirt ring were using the proceeds to support terrorist groups such as the one that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.
 (2) Last year in Paraguay, Ali Kha lil Mehri was charged with selling millions of dollars of counterfeit software; he allegedly funneled proceeds to the militant Islamic group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
 (3) Last December, several news organizations reported that trademark pirates based in Pakistan were filling orders from Afghanistan to produce T-shirts bearing counterfeit Nike logos and glorifying bin Laden as &quot;The great holy warrior of Islam.&quot;
 (4) In April, Microsoft officials based in London alleged that counterfeiters were using the Internet to sell pirated software, with some of the proceeds funding terrorism and drug running.
 (5) In 1999, an International Chamber of Commerce official cited &quot;compelling evidence of the involvement of organized crime and terror groups&quot; in commercial-scale piracy and counterfeiting, including accounts that the Irish Republican Army was financing its activities with pirated videos such as &quot;The Lion King.&quot;
 We can dismantle the links between terrorists and their financing only through robust intergovernmental cooperation in the United States, pan-industry alliances, and coordinated investigative and intelligence-sharing networks with our allies. Law enforcement and industry alliances must be upgraded if one of the feeder lines of terrorism is to be cut off.
 
 <i>Roslyn Mazer served as associate deputy attorney general and Criminal Division special counsel for intellectual property in the Clinton administration. She contributed this comment to The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: almond: too old to be a pop star?
TEXT: Marc Almond has been busy lately. He released his 15th solo album, &quot;Stranger Things&quot; in June, and is touring with the reformed Soft Cell, the chart-topping duo with David Ball that brought him fame in the early 1980s with such hits as &quot;Tainted Love&quot; and &quot;Say Hello, Wave Good-bye.&quot;
 He is coming to Russia this week, not only to showcase his new songs, but also to read excerpts from &quot;Tainted Life,&quot; his 1999 autobiography and to start working on his &quot;Russian&quot; album, aimed specially at the Russian fans he has gained since his first visit nearly 10 years ago.
 <i>Marc Almond spoke to </i><i><strong>Sergey Chernov </strong></i><i>by telephone from London on Tuesday.
 </i>
 <strong>Q:</strong>Please tell us about your Russian concerts. What will they be like?
 <strong>A:</strong>I'm coming over accompanied by my guitarist and keyboard player Neil Whitmore, a musician who regularly plays with me. I usually use another keyboard player as well, but unfortunately, he is stuck in America at the moment. So we're using backing tapes instead.
 We're going to be playing a very intimate kind of show, I think. [We'll play] some new songs from my new album, &quot;Stranger Things,&quot; some from my last album, &quot;Open All Night,&quot; and probably a couple of old songs as well.
 
 <strong>Q:</strong>You'll also be reading excerpts from your autobiography &quot;Tainted Life&quot; at a special event in Moscow. Can you tell us something about the book and what inspired you to write an autobiography?
 <strong>A:</strong>I think it's a very interesting journey through my life, about the problems I've overcome and my experiences working in music.
 I hope it's an interesting and entertaining story for people to read. There are a lot of very dark passages in the book because of some of the things I've been through in my life, but I also think it's written in good humor.
 There's also a lot about my first tour to Russia in 1992, because it was such an intense experience for me. I've never experienced anything like that before. I'm sure that Russia has changed very much now, but it was still in a period of a changeover back then.
 
 <strong>Q:</strong>How has Russia changed since your first visit, for worse or for better?
 <strong>A:</strong>Well, I've visited it twice now, and the first time was very difficult because there were a lot of changes happening. Coming from England, it was a big surprise for me, and I didn't just go to Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also to places in Siberia.
 On my second visit a couple of years ago, I thought things had changed a lot, and the people had become much more open. I think they have overcome some of the difficulties, and there are a lot more outside influences.
 From my point of view, things have gotten a little easier in Russia. I think maybe people can express themselves a lot more in Russia than they used to be able to.
 
 <strong>Q:</strong>When you came for the first time, you got stuck on the Estonian border and were denied entry because of visa problems.
 <strong>A:</strong>We had many adventures. They wouldn't let us into Russia to play our concert in St. Petersburg, and we nearly had to miss it. It was quite a shock. I think when you come from British society you have things very easy sometimes, and you don't know about the difficulties the other people have to face in other cultures. Still, I learned a lot about Russia and the Russian people, and Russia became one of my favorite places in the world. I had a great experience and I met so many fantastic people, with so many artists and people doing very interesting things. There's a great creativity in Russia, and the people have a fantastic spirit that I really learned a lot from.
 
 <strong>Q:</strong>Can you tell us about the &quot;Russian album&quot; that you are planning?
 <strong>A:</strong>Hopefully, I will do some recording when I'm over there this time. I'm planning an album mainly intended for my fans in Russia, working with some Russian musicians, singing some Russian songs, both modern songs and classics.
 It's going to be quite an interesting project, I think. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be able to work with Akvarium in St. Petersburg and a 40-person choir of sailors. One singer I'm hoping to meet in Moscow is Alla Bayanova. I hope I can work with her. I hope to write a couple of original songs, there will be a couple of songs by Akvarium that I like and also some old-style <i>romansy, </i>songs by Alexander Vertinsky, for example.
 
 <strong>Q:</strong>Why do you describe the Russian album as an &quot;Absinthe-style album?&quot;
 <strong>A:</strong>I made an album of French songs called &quot;Absinthe&quot; at the end of the 1980s, and I want the Russian album to have something of this atmosphere, something of the same style of music and songs.
 I hope to sing some Russian, as well as English, and I'll sing with a couple of Rus sian singers. There's going to be a mixture of English and Russian, with Russian musicians and Russian influences.
 <strong>Q:</strong>To sing in Russian for a foreign singer is quite a challenge. I can't think of any attempts of this kind that have been successful.
 <strong>A:</strong>I would still like to do it. I don't think I can sing entire songs in Russian, because my pronunciation would be probably insulting to Russians. But it would be nice to pick out some bits for me to sing in Russian.
 
 <strong>Q:</strong>During your last visit in 1999, I met you at Club 69 in St. Petersburg, but I know you visited many other places as well. Which ones did you like and what did you like them for?
 <strong>A:</strong>I like [Club 69] very much, it's a very friendly club. You can go to Russia now and visit a gay club, which is great. We met many different types of people there. I went to a few other places, but I can't really remember the names of all the places that I went to. But I'm always interested in going to interesting places while I'm in Russia. It gives me inspiration for writing songs and things.
 
 <strong>Q:</strong>The songs on your last album are probably not as catchy and memorable as the songs on &quot;Open All Night.&quot; Was this your intention?
 <strong>A:</strong>I didn't want it to be a very commercial pop album. What I do is not really considered to be pop in Britain anymore. I like more experimental music and more esoteric things. But I wanted the new album, &quot;Stranger Things,&quot; to be much more than an esoteric album. It probably has more in common with singers like Bj&ouml;rk, for example, than pop music.
 I think there are a couple of commercial songs on &quot;Stranger Things,&quot; things like &quot;Glorious,&quot; for example, that have had a lot of attention here and have been played on the radio a lot. I think it's quite a commercial song, but I don't think of it as being a commercial pop track. I'm too old to make pop music, I think.
 
 <strong>Q:</strong>One of your current projects is Soft Cell, again. Why did you decide to reform the group?
 <strong>A:</strong>We really wanted to make an album again because we have a lot of new ideas. We've been writing together in the studio, and we liked the songs so much that we decided to make an album and do some more live dates. And we got a fantastic reaction when we played here in Britain. We started touring in Britain and then Europe, and we will probably record a new album, but whether it will be a permanent thing I don't know yet. We will see how it goes.
 Soft Cell is very different [from] my solo stuff. It is probably more [commercial], whereas what I do alone is quite experimental.
 
 <strong>Q:</strong>Tim Gane of Stereolab told me that, &quot;The charts are really just for children nowadays.&quot; Do you agree?
 <strong>A:</strong>I wouldn't exactly say that. There is more manufactured music for kids, but I think pop charts really always have been like that. Pop music should be for young people, and you should be young to make pop music.
 I do believe that when you get to a certain age, you have to grow out of that and stop chasing that elusive [dream] of being a pop star. I like to think that I'm a singer, a songwriter, a producer, and I have made as many as 15 albums. Some of them have been successful and some have not, but I keep on making albums, and that's all I want to do now. And I'm lucky to reach a lot of people all over the world.
 
 <i>Marc Almond will be performing at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Music Hall, 4 Alexandrovsky Park. 232-6165. Tickets cost between 200 and 700 rubles. </i>

TITLE: more festivals, fewer premieres
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Local opera-goers are eagerly anticipating the coming weekend, when the Mariinsky Theater will raise its famous blue curtain once more. The 219th season opens on Saturday with Yury Alexandrov's rendition of Verdi's &quot;Otello,&quot; which premiered last June. Performing will be Alexei Steblyanko (Othello), Olga Guryakova (Desdemona) and Sergei Murzayev (Iago). It is still unclear when local audiences will be able to enjoy tenor Vla di mir Galuzin in the lead role. Galuzin, with whom Mariinsky director Valery Ger giev initially planned to stage Otello, has already performed the role twice with the company at Covent Garden last summer.
 The new season will be slightly shorter on premieres than last year's. In line with Gergiev's policy of promoting the theater as a prestigious venue for guest stars to perform, new festivals will be making their appearance. In addition to the Stars of the White Nights and the Mariinsky Ballet Festival, which debuted in February 2001, the company is planning to organize a festival of Igor Stravinsky's music, perhaps inspired by the 30th anniversary of composer's death in April 1971. There will also be a festival of musical works inspired by Nikolai Gogol, a nod to the 150th anniversary of the writer's death in 1852.
 The 10th annual Stars of the White Nights Festival will be dominated by Russian music next year, with works by Dmitry Shostakovich and concert performances of Sergei Prokofiev's &quot;The Love for Three Oranges&quot; and &quot;The Story of a Real Man.&quot;
 The first premiere of the season will be a new interpretation of Verdi's &quot;La Traviata&quot; by French director Philippe Alraud, who has also designed the sets. The production, to premiere in November, has already been shown during the Baden Baden festival last spring, where it received a warm reception. According to Gergiev, Alraud's approach is likely to cause controversy. &quot;This rendition can certainly not be accused of lacking imagination or fresh ideas,&quot; Gergiev said of the production.
 Gergiev's grandiose plans to include all of Richard Wagner's &quot;Der Ring des Nibelungen&quot; in the company's repertoire will continue with the premiere of &quot;Siegfried,&quot; the third opera in the cycle. German director Gottfried Pilz, responsible for this year's production of &quot;Die Walk&uuml;re,&quot; will continue working with the company, and &quot;Siegfried&quot; is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 25.
 In February, the Mariinsky will stage Mozart's &quot;Cosi fan tutte,&quot; with the theater's principal guest conductor Gianandrea Noseda serving as musical director.
 Ballet fans will also see their share of premieres. Dutch Royal Ballet soloist Alexei Ratmansky, whose one-act ballets have already become part of the Mariinsky repertoire, is currently discussing a possible staging of Prokofiev's &quot;Cinderella.&quot; The ballet, initially choreographed by Rostislav Zakharov, first saw the stage at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow in 1945 and has become favorite of the Russian ballet repertoire. Konstantin Sergeyev choreographed two versions of the ballet for the Mariinsky - in 1946 with Natalia Dudinskaya in the lead role, and in 1964 with Irina Kolpakova.
 Russian-born international musical celebrities such as mezzo-soprano Olga Bo rodina, conductor Maxim Shos ta ko vich, pianist Alexander Toradze and violinist Vadim Repin will be giving recitals during the season. The first performance to look for is a concert by Olga Borodina on Nov. 25.
 
 <i>For details, see listings. Links: http://www.mariinsky.ru </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: <strong>Leningrad</strong> has released yet another album, and is getting ready to promote it with a major show at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture.
 With &quot;Pulya+,&quot; which appeared in stores last week as a double album, Leningrad is compensating for the damage done to the band's 1999 debut album by the Moscow-based O.G.I. label. Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov has restored the original song order, notably including the track &quot;Contact,&quot; which was censored by the label.
 The album contains &quot;Pulya's&quot; original 16 tracks, as well as 16 more tracks that were recorded roughly at the same time. Some were intended for the first album, which was to include 24 tracks. There are, however, also some newer songs, as well, for instance &quot;XXX,&quot; in which, according to one fan, Shnurov outdoes himself in his use of obscene language. In a recent interview, Shnurov described the song as a &quot;provocation.&quot;
 &quot;Pulya&quot; remains the classic Leningrad recording, and the only one that includes the lead vocals of Igor Vdovin, who quit the band shortly before the album was released and has been involved in electronic music ever since.
 Along with the cheap version, which costs the same as pirate releases, there is a collector's edition that comes in a wooden box with a booklet and a small bottle of vodka. It is available from up-market record shops for around 900 rubles.
 Though the album was released by the label Muzykalny Express, formerly known as Triarios, Shnurov says he has not left his current label, Gala. &quot;I simply handed the rights for 'Pulya' to the other label for three years and nothing more,&quot; he says.
 Shnurov says the show won't be &quot;anything special&quot; and describes it as a &quot;typical Leningrad concert.&quot; As usual at such performances, Leningrad will perform two sets of songs, both old and new.
 Although Leningrad is performing on the same night as Marc Almond, Shnurov claims he is not afraid of competition.
 &quot;Though the audience overlaps a lot, there are still a lot more people living in St. Petersburg,&quot; he said. &quot;I've been to Almond shows two or three times myself, so I don't regret playing on the same night.&quot;
 Leningrad continues to record music for television and films, and is also recording an album of new material that Shnurov plans to release next February.
 Meanwhile, <strong>Babslei</strong>, the all-girl folk-punk band, has canceled its gig at Fish Fabrique, which was also planned for Saturday.
 The band's drummer and founder, Katya Fyodorova, will leave the country on Friday to replace the drummer from the German &quot;Kraut-rock&quot; band Faust for a seven-date U.K. tour.
 According to Fyodorova, she met Faust at the SKIF festival in 1999 and took part in a jam with the band at the Pushkinskaya 10 art center. She had not heard from them until the invitation arrived.
 Babslei, which is getting a lot of publicity these days, will release its debut album, &quot;Yeldyrina Sloboda,&quot; later this month. The title stems from Daniil Kharms' absurdist writings.
 
 <i>- By Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: location, location, location
AUTHOR: By Robert Coalson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: When I first heard this summer that the owners of Pizzicato were opening another restaurant, I was excited. I've long thought that all things considered - food, atmosphere, value, service - Pizzicato was one of the finest restaurants in town, coming up only a bit short in the category of &quot;location,&quot; since it is more than a few steps off the beaten path in the basement of the House of Composers on Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa.
 The new place, Barometer, has definitely fixed the location problem, finding its home practically on the corner of Nevsky and Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa, with a bold street-front facade that makes the place not only easy to find, but hard to miss.
 Inside, Barometer is cozy, with only about seven tables and a long bar to sit at. The interior is dark and generally tasteful, although an obnoxious mirrored disco ball and black lights are obviously out of place, at least during the day. On weekend evenings, the clever managers contrive to squeeze some live music on to a postage-stamp stage in the corner, and I imagine that the disco ball seems more appropriate then.
 Fans of Pizzicato will recognize most of the dishes on the menu, and will be thrilled to know that the cook and most of the staff have been shuffled over from Barometer's older sibling. Barometer's menu boasts an ample selection of salads and hot and cold starters in the 20- to 300-ruble range, with the boiled crayfish being the priciest choice.
 Most importantly, almost all of Pizzicato's best pasta dishes are to be found here, although &quot;pasta&quot; is a bit of a misnomer, since all the plates on offer feature spaghetti. However, you'll find generous portions of Amatricciana, Carbonara, Marinara and other favorites in the 70- to 440-ruble range. Like all of Barometer's dishes, the spaghetti is served on large plates, with considerable attention devoted to presentation. It comes with fresh Parmesan cheese on the side.
 For main courses, Barometer offers a page of fish dishes and two of meat and chicken courses. Vegetarians will have a bit of stretch here, but should be able to come up with a satisfying meal of salads, pasta and starters.
 We chose the fried hot dogs (70 rubles) and the baked spare ribs (160 rubles) for our starters. The hot dogs were about as good as hot dogs can be, and were considerably livened up by the spicy mustard (20 rubles) that we were requested. The spare ribs, though, were a wonderful surprise, meaty and juicy, and so flavorful that it would have been a sin to serve them with any sauce.
 My dining companion went for a fairly plain grilled chicken fillet (170 rubles) and mashed potatoes (20 rubles). The portion was generous and the chicken tender, dabbed with a butter-and-basil sauce.
 I opted for the pepper steak (300 rubles) with a side of big-cut fries in soy sauce (20 rubles). Both were delicious. The steak was tender and cooked exactly as I'd ordered it, and the pepper sauce was creamy and flavorful.
 Although I was stuffed after that experience, my dining companion tipped me off to the fact that the desserts are great, so I ordered <i>bliny </i>in chocolate sauce (60 rubles) and a cappuccino (30 rubles) to top things off. The bliny were indeed marvelous, making me want to go back for the apple pie and the cheesecake sometime.
 Although the beers are overpriced (Carlsberg for 80 rubles), Barometer is a pleasant place for a drink. It is also inviting for the coffee-and-a-snack crowd, as well as for a casual meal. I liked it so much, in fact, that I went back for lunch the next day.
 
 <i>Barometer, 7 Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa, 315-5371. Open daily around the clock. Dinner for two with beer, 1,370 rubles. Menu in English and Russian. No credit cards accepted.
 </i>

TITLE: 'ariadne' an exercise in futility
AUTHOR: by Simon Patterson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It was W.H. Auden who said that while some works of literature are unjustly forgotten, none are unjustly remembered. The Vasilievsky Ostrov Theater of Satire's decision to stage &quot;Ariadne,&quot; a work written in 1924 by Marina Tsetayeva but never before performed, may be seen as a laudable effort to resurect this largely forgotten play.
 Unfortunately, judging by the theater's production that premiered last Tuesday, the neglect this work has suffered is justified. Written in Tsetayeva's characteristically terse verse, the work is extremely static, and no more suited to the stage than any other post-Shakespearean verse drama, a genre that has never really been very successful in any European language in the 20th century.
 The myth that Tsetayeva draws upon, the story of Theseus, who is aided by King Minos' daughter Ariadne in penetrating the maze of Crete to slay the fearsome minotaur, is hardly short on dramatic interest. Unfortunately, all the drama of the situation is lost in favor of set speeches that the characters pronounce while paying little attention to what is going on around them.
 The most interesting part of this story, the actual slaying of the minotaur, is absent from the play, and the characters barely even discuss it. The contemplations on love and war seem more the stuff of lyric poetry, and do nothing to move the action forward. 
 Essentially, most of the faults of the production can be blamed on the play itself. The production looks good, although the costumes sometimes seem to have been borrowed from Alice in Wonderland, and the acting is as good as any in trying to breathe life into a lifeless text. The words of the chorus, the 14 men and women who are sent with Theseus to be sacrificed to the minotaur, are often set to music, and the songs, by composer Alexander Kuznetsov, are actually rather good.
 Yevgeny Dyatlov makes a perfectly acceptable Theseus, though the multi-colored apron he wears hardly lends him heroic stature, and the sword he wields looks more like a miniature cricket bat. Olga Kulikova makes an enchanting Ariadne, though she is forced to resort to a great deal of grimacing and leaping about the stage to liven up the proceedings. Yury Itskov is also convincing as the troubled King Minos, but all the actors are extremely disadvantaged by having such unwieldy, at times even laughable, lines to deliver. Tsetayeva's verse is difficult at the best of times, and certainly more suited to be read to oneself than performed on stage. The native speaker with whom I attended the performance said even she had difficulty in making out some of the dialogue, with its frequent archaisms and convoluted syntax.
 While there is no doubt that the Theater of Satire has excellent resources at its disposal, with fine actors, directors and production values, all these assets are wasted in plays as unpromising as this one. One can only wonder why on Earth they decided to stage it.
 
 <i>'Ariadne' next plays on Oct. 12. </i>

TITLE: 'swordfish': nice explosions, bad story
AUTHOR: by Kenneth Turan
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: To see &quot;Swordfish&quot; is to recall another piscine reference, Virginia wit John Randolph's celebrated description of a corrupt but gifted political opponent as someone who &quot;shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight.&quot; A more pithy and accurate review this film is not going to get.
 A kind of dirty fairy tale in which people with nasty attitudes inhabit a trash-talking, macho world of fast cars and complaisant women, &quot;Swordfish's&quot; tale of cyber-terrorism is pretty much what you'd expect from this first-ever collaboration of director Dominic Sena and producer Joel Silver.
 Sena is a high-powered video and commercials director whose previous features (&quot;Gone in 60 Seconds,&quot; &quot;Kalifornia&quot;) did not inspire confidence in the future. Producer Silver, a veteran action entrepreneur, never met a detonation or a large-caliber weapon he didn't admire.
 Not surprisingly, &quot;Swordfish&quot; has paid a lot of attention to expensive stunts and showy explosions. Its bravura opening blast, the result of a hostage getting blown apart, is so elaborate it used 135 synchronized still cameras and took three months of planning. And don't forget the film's premier physical stunt, which has a helicopter transporting a full-size bus through downtown Los Angeles.
 Though these efforts give &quot;Swordfish&quot; a primitive kind of watchability, it's a victory that turns out to be hollow. Whatever interest the film creates is squandered via the smug, showy amorality that runs through it, as well as a complete lack of regard for even minimal narrative credibility.
 It's not just that you'd need Bill Gates to walk you through the large amount of computer jargon congealed inside Skip Woods' script. Or that &quot;Swordfish&quot; is so over-plotted that it essentially becomes plotless. It's that this is one of those films, filled with could-never-happen moments, in which plausibility was on no one's mind. Its only logic is the logic of the explosion, its only imperative is the addict's determination to do anything for a rush.
 &quot;Swordfish&quot; opens in the middle of its story, with a hostage situation at a downtown Los Angeles bank. Then it backtracks four days to the arrival in L.A. of one of Europe's top hackers. The man makes a couple of preposterous moves that bring him to the attention of Roberts (Don Cheadle), a veteran federal agent burned out on computer crime who doesn't know that the hacker is connected to a certain conniving U.S. senator (Sam Shepard).
 At the same time, a sexual tornado named Ginger (Halle Berry), the devil in a short red dress, is paying a visit to Stanley Jobson (&quot;X-Men's&quot; Hugh Jackman), once the most dangerous hacker in America but now wasting away in Midlands, Texas, and forbidden under threat of future imprisonment to go anywhere near a computer.
 Ginger knows all this, and she also knows that the love of Stanley's life is his innocent young daughter Holly, now in the dastardly custody of an ex-wife conveniently remarried to the porn king of Southern California. Ginger offers $100,000 and the promise of even more loot if Stan will just take a meeting with her boss. He should say no; but if he did, there wouldn't be any movie, would there?
 That boss turns out to be Gabriel Shear (John Travolta), a spy/secret agent grandly described as &quot;someone who exists in a world beyond your world. What he does, you can only fantasize.&quot; Sporting an itty-bitty Mephistophelean beard to go with his angelic name, Gabriel tests Stan's computer skills by having him try to break a Department of Defense code with a gun to his head and a woman's head in his lap. Gabriel is obviously someone who knows what fun means.
 Swordfish turns out to be the code name for a defunct government scheme in which $9.5 billion in funds still lurk behind computer-protected walls. Gabriel, whose stupefying goals are not revealed until much later, desperately wants the money. Stan desperately wants to be reunited with his button-cute daughter. What audiences will desperately want, likely as not, is the peace and quiet of the parking lot.
 Given director Sena's explosive preoccupations, it's not surprising that the actors are on their own. Cheadle is marking time as the glum federal agent, and Berry is attempting to have fun with her sex-bomb persona; Jackman comes the closest to actual acting, though the script defeats even him. As for Travolta, he is game, but he seems to be too soft to be convincingly nasty.
 Travolta does, however, have the film's best scene - its very first, in fact - in which he sits in a coffee shop and pontificates at length on the state of today's movies. &quot;You know the problem with Hollywood,&quot; he says. &quot;They make horse-pucky.&quot; Only he doesn't say horse-pucky.
 It's an amusing scene, but it's also intended as a nose-thumbing gesture toward critics and others who might not appreciate &quot;Swordfish's&quot; wonders. Who cares if you think we're bad, the scene implies, we're going to make a fortune. It's not a subtle message, but, unlike the rest of the film, it at least makes sense.
 <i>'Swordfish' is playing at the Kolizei, Leningrad and Mirazh cinemas. </i>

TITLE: Greyhound Halts Service Following Attack
AUTHOR: By Russ Oates
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MANCHESTER, Tennessee - A passenger on a Greyhound bus slashed the driver's throat, grabbed the wheel and crashed the vehicle Wednesday, killing six of the 41 people aboard and prompting the company to shut down service across an already jittery country.
 The driver was in stable condition following surgery for two 12.5-centimeter-long, 5-centimeter-deep cuts on his neck. The 34 others aboard were also injured.
 The FBI said the 29-year-old assailant was among the dead. He was identified as Damir Igric, a Croatian who entered the United States in Miami in March 1999 with a one-month visa. He boarded the bus in Chicago. 
 &quot;He just went up to the bus driver and, like, slit his throat,&quot; passenger Carly Rinearson, 19, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, told WTVF-TV of Nashville.
 The FBI said Igric was apparently trying to take over the bus. 
 &quot;We believe he was acting alone,&quot; said R. Joe Clark, the FBI's agent in charge of the Knoxville office. &quot;I would say this was a disturbed individual. ... This is not an act of terrorism.&quot; 
 A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the name on the man's passport is not on government lists of known terrorists and those sought by the FBI in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 
 Clark said Igric attacked the driver &quot;with an implement.&quot; 
 &quot;It was sharp, we'll leave it at that,&quot; he said. 
 The driver told doctors that he was attacked with a box cutter, a device believed to have been used in last month's airliner hijackings. 
 The crash happened just after 4 a.m. on Interstate 24 near Manchester, 100 kilometers southeast of Nashville. The bus, which originated in Chicago, was headed for Orlando, Florida. At the time, most of those aboard were asleep. 
 Dr. Al Brandon, chief of staff at the Medical Center of Manchester, said the driver, Garfield Sands, 53, of Marietta, Georgia, told him the attacker was polite and spoke with a foreign accent. 
 &quot;Every few minutes he seemed to ask [the driver] what time it was and where they were,&quot; Police Chief Ross Simmons said. 
 Sands told doctors Igric suddenly &quot;accosted&quot; him, grabbed the wheel and forced the bus into the lanes of oncoming traffic. It crossed the road and tipped over. 
 The driver crawled from the wreckage through a window and tried to flag down passing vehicles. He told Brandon his attacker was thrown through the windshield. 
 Dr. Ralph Bard, the surgeon who stitched up Sands' neck, said the driver's thick neck saved his life. 
 &quot;I'd have been dead,&quot; Bard said. 
 Greyhound shut down service as a precaution, pulling 2,000 to 2,500 buses off U.S. roads. After consulting with federal and state officials, it resumed service at noon, about seven hours later. 
 &quot;The officials have assured me that they believe this tragic accident was the result of an isolated act by a single deranged individual,&quot; said Craig Lentzsch, Greyhound president and chief executive. 
 The shutdown stranded some 70,000 passengers at stations across the United States, Greyhound spokesperson Jamille Bradfield said. The bus company carries 25 million passengers a year. 
 Dana Keeton, a Tennessee Department of Safety spokesperson, said six people died at the site of the crash. 
 By late afternoon, 14 passengers remained hospitalized. Among them was Elena Wilson, who was 8 1/2-months pregnant and gave birth to a girl in an emergency Caesarean section. Both were in stable condition. 
 Others were treated and released. 
 &quot;I was on the bus and I'm alive. That's all I can tell you,&quot; passenger Ricardo Jamal Brooks said as he left a hospital. He chose Greyhound to get from Flint, Michigan, to Atlanta because he was worried about airline safety. 
 &quot;You could understand why [I chose the bus], but you know, you never know,&quot; he said. 
 Elsewhere, Greyhound passengers waited for hours or found other means of transportation. 
 &quot;People are a little panicky about it,&quot; said Joi Smith, a Greyhound agent in New Hampshire. &quot;They are freaked out, which is understandable.&quot; 
 Lentzsch said that Greyhound was offering full refunds to passengers, and that Amtrak had agreed to accept Greyhound tickets. 
 He also said security was being bolstered: As service resumed, carry-on luggage was searched, and passengers in San Francisco, Dallas and Orlando were checked with hand-held metal detectors. The wands were introduced in response to the terrorist attacks. 
 Greyhound does not maintain lists of passengers. 
 &quot;They ought to have a manifest,&quot; Governor Don Sundquist said. &quot;I think bus travel needs to be scrutinized as well as aircraft.&quot;

TITLE: 'Hijacking' Turns Out To Be False Alarm
AUTHOR: By Laurinda Keys
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW DELHI, India - A reported jetliner hijacking Wednesday night that sent commandos storming onto the plane turned out to be a false alarm. The government blamed the mistake on a hoax phone call and confusion aboard the aircraft. 
 Earlier, civil-aviation officials said hijackers seized a Boeing 737 jetliner shortly after its departure from Bombay late Wednesday night, with 54 people on board. 
 National-security-force commandos surrounded the plane early on Thursday morning at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. Fire vehicles and ambulances ringed the runway, and a fuel tanker was parked in front to prevent the jet from taking off. 
 Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain later called it a false alarm triggered by a call reporting a hijacking to an air-traffic-control station. 
 Passengers gave conflicting accounts of what occurred, with some saying the pilot informed them it was a security drill. 
 That prompted criticism from parliament. 
 &quot;If this was an exercise, it should not have lasted more than an hour. This has put the whole nation in a state of anxiety and concern,&quot; said Chandrakant Kharge, a member of parliament from the ruling coalition. 
 &quot;This was not a drill. Until 10 minutes ago we thought it was a hijack,&quot; Hussain said. &quot;It was only when the commandos entered the cockpit that even the pilots realized that it was a false alarm.&quot; 
 The Alliance Air jet had departed Bombay and was headed for New Delhi when the caller reported the plane hijacked, Hussain said. 
 After learning of the call, the pilot, Captain Ashwini Behl, locked the cockpit door, thinking the hijackers were hidden among the passengers, Hussain said. 
 The passengers, he continued, apparently thought the hijackers were in the cockpit. 
 After the pilot landed the plane on an isolated runway at the New Delhi airport, passengers called waiting relatives by cellular phone, many of them unaware of reports of a hijacking. 
 &quot;At 2:30 a.m., the pilot announced that a hijacking had taken place, but he asked us not to panic,&quot; passenger Arun Sathe said. Commandos then boarded the plane, he said. 
 The passengers later were seen disembarking from the plane. 
 Airports throughout India have been on red-alert status - the highest since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States. 
 &quot;We've been taking all precautions and we went through the full exercise. We took no chances,&quot; Hussain said. &quot;We have taken all hoax calls seriously.&quot; 
 On Dec. 24, 1999, five hijackers seized an Indian Airlines flight carrying 178 passengers and 11 crew members after it took off in Nepal. After a weeklong standoff, hijackers left the plane after India agreed to release three prisoners. One passenger was killed. 
 Alliance Air is a subsidiary of state-run Indian Airlines.

TITLE: Truce Coming Apart as Violence Continues in Middle East
AUTHOR: By Greg Myre
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GAZA CITY, Palestinian Authority - A week-old truce was in danger of unraveling as Israeli tanks rolled into Palestinian farmland Wednesday and shelled a string of police posts, killing six Palestinians in retaliation for a lethal raid on a Jewish settlement by Islamic militants. 
 Israel also called off meetings with the Palestinians and declared it was not moving ahead with cease-fire commitments until Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat arrests militants responsible for attacks on Israelis. 
 The Palestinians said the Israeli actions were a grave violation of last week's truce deal, which called for Israel to suspend military strikes and halt incursions into Palestinian territory. But Arafat's Palestinian Authority condemned the attack on the settlement and said it would bring those responsible to justice. 
 Despite considerable U.S. pressure to make this cease-fire stick, violence has increased, the antagonists exchange harsh recriminations daily and militant Palestinians say they will not honor the truce. 
 &quot;Yasser Arafat has made a complete mockery of this cease-fire,&quot; said Israeli spokesperson Dore Gold. &quot;Until it becomes clear that Mr. Arafat is willing to fulfill his cease-fire obligations, what point is there in pursuing this discussion?&quot; 
 Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Israel would not return to talks &quot;until the Palestinian Authority has taken control and stops terrorism.&quot; 
 But Palestinians say excessive force by Israeli troops has undermined the cease-fire. Twenty-six Palestinians and two Israelis have been killed since the cease-fire was formally announced Sept. 26. 
 The two Israeli victims, a 19-year-old woman and her 20-year-old boyfriend, died Tuesday night when two members of the militant Islamic group Hamas, dressed in combat fatigues, burst into the small Jewish settlement of Elei Sinai on the northern border of the Gaza Strip. 
 The attackers fired wildly and threw grenades at houses as terrified residents dropped to the ground or huddled in bathrooms. Fifteen Israelis were wounded, including two toddlers and seven soldiers. 
 &quot;We ran toward a house behind the playground, which was the closest building to us,&quot; Haniel Gross, 12, told Israel Radio. 
 The attackers, ages 17 and 20, eventually holed up in a house whose owners were away. An Israeli commando unit stormed the house and killed the two. 
 Hamas claimed responsibility and its senior leaders were prominent at the noisy funerals of the two slain attackers, whose bodies were carried through the packed streets of the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City. 
 &quot;We are proud of our son,&quot; Fakhria Shaban, mother of one gunman, Abdullah Shaban, said at a gathering of female mourners at the family home. &quot;Our enemy is killing us daily. My son's action is revenge for the killing of the Palestinians.&quot; 
 About 6,000 Israelis live in Gaza settlements among more than 1 million Palestinians, who demand the Jewish enclaves be removed. 
 Early Wednesday, Israel responded by sending at least 11 tanks to seize a 1.6-kilometer-wide strip of Palestinian territory, most of it farmland, just outside Elei Sinai. Bulldozers destroyed crops, while tanks shelled seven Palestinian police posts, Palestinian police said. 
 The main target was Beit Lahia, a Palestinian town of cinderblock homes and garbage-strewn streets. 
 An Israeli tank shelled a Palestinian checkpoint in Beit Lahia, killing four Palestinian police officers and a civilian, doctors said. In an exchange of fire, another Palestinian was killed and seven were wounded, three critically, doctors said. 
 In other violence Wednesday, Palestinian gunmen fired on a crowd of Israelis who gathered to celebrate the Sukkot harvest festival at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, one of the holiest sites in Judaism. 
 Two Israeli women were wounded, one seriously, said Noam Arnon, a spokes person for the Jewish settlers in Hebron. After nightfall, a pregnant Israeli woman and her husband were seriously wounded in a Palestinian drive-by shooting near Jerusalem, police said. 
 The latest round of killing brought the death toll from a year of fighting to 663 on the Palestinian side and 179 on the Israeli side. 
 It also threatened to undermine a new U.S. peace initiative for the Middle East, which has yet to be unveiled. 
 The Americans planned to introduce the plan last month, but it was put on hold after the terror attacks in the United States. President Bush said Tuesday that he supported a Palestinian state, and U.S. officials said the earlier proposals were being reworked. 
 &quot;I think there is a new opportunity,&quot; Palestinian Cabinet Minister Nabil Shaath said, adding that what was needed was for &quot;our Arab brothers and European friends to urge the American administration to act immediately.&quot;

TITLE: CIA Had Advance Information
AUTHOR: By John Solomon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The month before the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks, the CIA received information suggesting Osama bin Laden was increasingly determined to strike on U.S. soil. In the days since, the FBI has linked the hijackers to bin Laden's network through phone intercepts, money transfers and training camps.
 U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, described a trail of evidence they believe points to bin Laden's involvement in the attacks by 19 terrorists who crashed four airliners.
 Among the key pieces of evidence, the officials said, is a series of money transfers between hijacking ring leader Mohamed Atta and a Middle Eastern man named Mustafa Ahmed. The last occurred a few days before the hijackings when Atta wired money back to Ahmed in the United Arab Emirates, the officials said. 
 The FBI believes the transfers may provide a clear link to bin Laden. Agents are investigating whether Ah med was an alias for a man named Shayk Saiid that U.S. authorities long have believed helped run bin Laden's finances, the officials said. 
 In documents sent to banks seeking to freeze terrorist assets, the government has used Saiid's and Ahmed's names interchangeably, records show. 
 Ahmed is believed to have left the United Arab Emirates on Sept. 11 for Pakistan and is a major focus of the FBI's global manhunt. 
 Other evidence includes &quot;general but vague&quot; information the CIA developed in August that heightened concerns that bin Laden was urging his followers to strike on U.S. soil after several attacks overseas in the 1990s. 
 The information indicated bin Laden and his supporters &quot;were trying to bring the fight to America&quot; but details were lacking, a U.S. official said. 
 &quot;There was something specific in early August that said to us that he was determined in striking on U.S. soil,&quot; the official said, speaking only on condition of anonymity. &quot;But there was nothing about who, when, where or how.&quot; 
 The information prompted the CIA to issue a renewed warning that U.S. interests overseas and at home should be vigilant, the officials said. 
 But U.S. intelligence officials, along with congressional officials who have been briefed on the evidence and cooperating foreign intelligence agencies all said that the CIA did not possess any information that identified a specific plot of the magnitude that struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. 
 &quot;We've got plenty of areas we can improve, but I don't want anybody to get the idea that that was a great intelligence failure,&quot; House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, said this week. &quot;If it's anything, it's probably, 'Who would have expected an atrocity of that magnitude?'&quot; 
 The CIA's August warning is being viewed as a piece in the puzzle of evidence. Another piece, officials said, involves a meeting two other hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, had with a bin Laden associate in January 2000 in Malaysia. 
 The meeting was observed and recorded at the time, but its significance was not apparent until just a few weeks before the attacks, officials said. By that time, the two men already were somewhere in the United States.
 The Malaysia meeting took on new significance when U.S. investigators developed evidence in Yemen this year that the man the two hijackers met with in 2000 was involved in the planning of the USS Cole bombing, the officials said. 
 Other evidence comes in the form of intercepted communications. German authorities have confirmed they intercepted a conversation of bin Laden supporters celebrating the suicide hijackings. 
 Another intercept, confirmed by Senator Orrin Hatch, earlier in the investigation, detected a bin Laden sympathizer indicating that intended targets had been hit on Sept. 11. 
 Information gathered by U.S. and foreign intelligence services and law enforcement, officials said, also indicates four of the hijackers trained at Afghan camps tied to bin Laden's network.

TITLE: Britain Plans To Fight the Spread of Religious Hatred
AUTHOR: By Jill Lawless
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRIGHTON, England - The British government said Wednesday it will make spreading religious hatred a crime and tighten asylum and extradition laws to fight &quot;the war on terrorism on every front.&quot; 
 Home Secretary David Blunkett, Britain's top law official, said new legislation would make it a crime to spread religious hatred. Spreading racial hatred is already an offense. 
 Authorities also will consider introducing a new category of &quot;religious aggravated&quot; offenses, Blunkett said. At present, crimes such as assault are considered more serious when they are judged to have a racial motivation. 
 Blunkett told the ruling Labor Party's annual conference that he would toughen laws &quot;to ensure attention seekers and extremists cannot abuse our rights of free speech to stir up tensions in our cities and towns.&quot; 
 Over the summer, racial tension between white and Asian youths - mostly Muslims with roots in the Indian subcontinent - flared into rioting in several northern English towns. 
 Blunkett also said legislation was in the works to force financial institutions to report transactions they suspect are linked to terrorist activity and to give police greater access to air and sea passenger and freight records. 
 Immigration laws will be amended to prevent terrorist suspects from being granted asylum in Britain, he said, and the extradition system will be &quot;streamlined.&quot; 
 But to reduce the number of illegal immigrants seeking asylum, Blunkett also announced rules that will allow immigrants to apply for work visas - proposals similar to the U.S. &quot;Green Card&quot; system. 
 The first phase of the scheme, providing work permits for &quot;highly skilled migrants,&quot; will begin in January, Blunkett said. Other proposals will consider legalizing seasonal workers and allowing foreign graduates of British universities to be able to work in Britain. 
 Anticipating criticism of the measures from civil-liberties groups, Blunkett said the government would &quot;defend our democracy in depth.&quot;

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Reporter Faces Trial
 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban plan to put British journalist Yvonne Ridley on trial for illegally entering the country, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said on Thursday.
 "She will be tried because she broke the laws of our land and entered our country without permission," AIP quoted Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister Mullah Abdur Rahman Zahid as saying. 
 "Right now the investigation of the British journalist is underway and then her case will be sent to the courts for a trial," he was quoted as saying, adding that it was irrelevant whether she was a journalist. 
 Ridley, 41, who works for Britain's Sunday Express newspaper, was picked up along with her two guides close to the eastern city of Jalalabad last Friday while dressed in an all-enveloping Afghan burqa. 
 
 
PFLP Elects Leader
 

DAMASCUS, Syria (Reuters) - The radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) elected Ahmed Saadat to succeed its leader Abu Ali Mustafa, assassinated by Israel in August, the PFLP spokesperson said on Thursday.
 The central committee elected Saadat, a 48-year-old politburo member, on Wednesday, spokesperson Maher al-Taher said.
 Jailed several times by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Saadat lives in the West Bank.
 Israel assassinated Mustafa in a helicopter missile strike in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He was the most senior Palestinian official killed in the year-old Palestinian revolt against Israel's occupation. 
 
 
HIV on Rise in Asia
 

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - After more than a decade of relatively low rates of infection, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has begun spreading rapidly through Asia and the Pacific region, according to a report released Thursday.
 The rise, in some of the world's most populated countries, is mostly in high-risk groups, such as intravenous drug users, sex workers and gay men, the report said.
 The study, conducted by the Monitoring the AIDS Pandemic Network and commissioned by the United Nations, was released ahead of the Sixth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, which starts Friday in Melbourne.
 The five-day conference will be attended by hundreds of experts and activists from around the region.
 MAP, a nongovernmental group of experts, last studied the disease in Asia in 1999, when it found that only Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia showed substantial HIV epidemics. A number of states in India and provinces in China were also heavily affected. 
 
 
France Arrests Suspect
 

PARIS (Reuters) - French anti-terrorist magistrates put another suspect under official investigation over an alleged plot by Islamic militants to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris, judicial sources said on Thursday. 
 Kamel Daoudi, a French citizen deported from Britain last week, was questioned on Wednesday and will now be subject to a full probe for possible links to a terrorist organization, the sources said. Under French law, an official investigation is one step short of making charges. 
 French media have reported that the 27-year-old Daoudi, who used to work in a Paris suburb Internet cafe, is suspected of masterminding logistics and communications for the attack, which was thwarted by arrests made last month. 
 Another suspect, Franco-Algerian Djamel Beghal, gave details of the plot under questioning on Monday. He too faces an official investigation.
 
 
13 Taken Hostage
 

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - Indians took 13 reporters hostage and closed a highway Wednesday demanding that the government make good on a land grant. 
 Officials said about 200 Terena Indians had blocked traffic on the highway periodically for three days before grabbing the reporters covering the standoff. Four hostages were released later in the day. Most of the hostages were from two local television crews. 
 "Taking the reporters hostage is a pressure tactic the Indians use when they feel the government is not attending to the concerns fast enough," said Cid Furtado, spokesperson for the Federal Indian Bureau. 
 He said the Indians had been promised land on a farm near Rondonopolis, 1.600 kilometers northwest of Rio de Janeiro, late last year. That deal was struck after Indians blocked the same highway and took several reporters hostage for five hours. 



TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Super Bowl Date Set
 

NEW YORK (AP) - The Super Bowl will be pushed back a week and played Feb. 3 in New Orleans, a move caused by the terrorist attacks. 
 The change will allow the National Football League to complete its season without altering its playoff format, but puts the big game in the Big Easy during the crowded opening weekend of Mardi Gras. 
 The NFL switched its original date of Jan. 27 with the National Automobile Dealers Association and paid the group $7.5 million to cover the costs of rescheduling its convention. 
 The need to swap dates was caused when the NFL postponed its second week of games after the Sept. 11 attacks. 
 The agreement means that the NFL's regular season will end Jan. 5-6 with the games that should have been played in Week 2, Sept. 16-17. 
 The wild-card round will be played Jan. 12-13, the divisional playoffs Jan. 19-20, and the conference championships Jan. 27. 
 
 
Hampton Suspended
 

NEW YORK (AP) - Colorado's Mike Hampton was suspended for five games and fined by the commissioner's office Wednesday for intentionally throwing at Arizona's Randy Johnson. 
 Hampton did not appeal, meaning the left-hander's first season with the Rockies is over. After signing a record $121-million, eight-year contract, Hampton went 14-13 with a 5.41 ERA, down from a 15-10 record and 3.14 ERA with the New York Mets last year. 
 Hampton hit Johnson in the seventh inning of Arizona's 10-1 victory Tuesday night. Hampton declined comment Wednesday. 
 Johnson hit Colorado's Larry Walker in the back in the first inning, the second time Johnson hit him in as many at-bats. When Walker was hit Sept. 17 at Colorado, he left the game with an elbow injury and missed three games. 
 Hampton later hit Johnson in the side with a pitch, resulting in a warning to both dugouts. 
 "It's just part of the game. If anyone understands that, they've got a veteran team and they understand it," Hampton said after the game. "They hit our best player two times in a row. It probably wasn't on purpose, but that's part of the game, protecting our players." 
 
 
Coffey Retires
 

TORONTO (Reuters) - Paul Coffey, a 14-time All-Star defenseman, retired Wednesday after 21 seasons in the National Hockey League, the players' union announced. 
 Coffey, 40, played on four Stanley Cup championship teams, three in Edmonton and one in Pittsburgh. He ranked second all-time among defensemen in goals, assists and points.
 Coffey was three times awarded the Norris Trophy given to the NHL's best defenseman.
 He played in 1,409 NHL games, totaling 396 goals and 1,135 assists for 1,531 points. Only Ray Bourque (1,579 goals) is ahead of him in points by a defenseman.
 Coffey ranks 14th all-time in NHL games played and 10th in points among all players.
 
 
Contract Extension
 

EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey (AP) - Martin Brodeur, the goalie who has led the New Jersey Devils to two Stanley Cups since 1995 and got them within a game of a third last year, signed a five-year, $40 million contract extension. 
 Under the deal signed Tuesday night, Brodeur will earn $8 million annually in each of the next four seasons starting in 2002-03. The Devils have the option on the fifth year, which would be the 2006-07 season. 
 The entire extension is guaranteed, said Brodeur's attorney, Susan Ciallella, in a telephone interview. 
 While the extension does not include a signing bonus, it does have incentives that could push Brodeur's salary to $8.9 million in any season. 
 A six-time All-Star goaltender, Brodeur will earn about $4.8 million this season under his current contract, which would have expired after this season, thus making him eligible for salary arbitration.