SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #712 (79), Friday, October 12, 2001
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TITLE: Xerox Is First Sponsor Of 2003
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Xerox-CIS signed on as the first general sponsor of St. Petersburg's 300th-anniversary celebration at a ceremony with Governor Vladimir Yakovlev at Smolny on Thursday. As general sponsor, the company has pledged to provide $3 million for the festivities.
 "We want to be among those who will be making this city more beautiful for this important date, and we are proud to be part of it," said Xerox General Director Igor Simonov at the signing ceremony. "We think this is going to be the most important event in Russia in the next several years."
 "The 300th jubilee of St. Petersburg is not an event of local importance. It is an event of European significance and it must be celebrated at a high level," Yakovlev said. "We very much appreciate Xerox's contribution."
 As a general sponsor, Xerox-CIS will be granted VIP status at all events related to the jubilee, including those involving President Vladimir Putin. The company's contribution will be recorded on a memorial plaque on one of the buildings constructed for the occasion.
 Xerox-CIS will also have its trademark placed on numerous promotional materials, advertisements on transport, posters and banners across downtown city streets, as well as numerous other benefits.
 In addition to the sponsorship money, Xerox will be the jubilee's exclusive provider of several types of technical equipment and will organize and sponsor its own related events.
 According to Simonov, these initiatives will include an exhibition of Russian economic achievements in the 21st Century and a world congress of scientific and cultural leaders.
 "The upcoming jubilee is an excellent opportunity not only the recall the distinguished past of a great city, but also to show the world Russia's recent achievements in economics, science and culture," said Simonov in a statement issued Thursday. "An acquaintance with these achievements is a convincing demonstration of Russia's great economic and intellectual potential, and the jubilee will affirm Russia's position among the world's elite."
 The city expects that the exhibition will be one of the most important business-related events of the jubilee year. Leading Russian and Western companies will be invited to present their most innovative projects carried out in Russia during the last several years.
 Although Xerox-CIS is the first general sponsor of the celebration, it may not be the only one. Anatoly Buzuluksky, deputy chairperson of Fund St. Petersburg, a special structure set up to raise money for the event, said that a number of companies are currently negotiating with the city concerning sponsorships at various levels of financing, including the general sponsor level. He has declined, however, to name any of these companies.
 Yakovlev also refused to name names at the signing ceremony.
 "Some of [the companies] have made decisions in principle, but it would be premature to make this public information before the deals are signed," Yakovlev said.
 Last week, however, the governor was quoted by news agencies as saying the JT International had expressed interest in becoming a general sponsor.
 The Japanese tobacco giant has refused to confirm this speculation.
 "JTI is traditionally attentive and responsive to the city's needs, as well as to the requests of the St. Petersburg administration," Irina Galieva, public relations manager of JT International, said on Thursday. "For example, our company has recently purchased 20 microbuses for the city. We sponsor productions at the Mariinsky Theater. JTI has also donated $1.2 million to restore the Mikhailovsky Gardens Fence."
 Xerox-CIS has a network of 120 dealerships and 15 distribution organizations in all the countries of the CIS. It has regional offices in St. Petersburg, Mos cow, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Minsk, Kiev, Almaty and Tashkent. The company's turnover this year is expected to be about $110 million, an increase of 23 percent over last year.
 According to Simonov, all the financial and legal documents for the sponsorship agreement were prepared very quickly and efficiently.
 "If our further cooperation continues in the same way, we will undoubtedly achieve all the goals we have set," Simonov said.

TITLE: City Feels the Effects Of Tourism Slump
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States have dealt a harsh blow to the local economy, which is increasingly dependent on international tourism. Local tourist operators and hotels have reported a significant decline in business in the month since the attacks.
 "At first, the flights were just delayed, but people were coming anyway. Then a few days later we started receiving cancellations, and not only from Americans but from European tourists as well," said Yelena Blokhina, commmercial manager for the St. Petersburg Hotel.
 In all, the hotel has lost 40 percent of its overseas reservations over the last month, Blokhina said.
 Other upper-end hotels also reported significant loses. The Nevskij Palace Hotel experienced a 12 percent decline, according to hotel spokesperson Natalya Belik.
 "Although we have not felt it that seriously yet, [tourism] has dropped dramatically. We will [feel it]. We don't live on a separate island," Belik said.
 The Grand Hotel Europe also experienced a noticeable decline, according to Public Relations Manager Snezhana Zamaliyeva, and it was trying to counter the effect by marketing more energetically toward Russian business travellers.
 "I would suggest that other hotels adopt such a strategy as well," Zamaliyeva said.
 The City Hall Tourism Committee has not released any estimates on the total decline and continues to hold out hope that the figure of 3 million foreign tourists that it predicted for 2001 as recently as July will still be realized.
 Boris Shevenko, deputy head of the committee, said that the decline was most noticeable in the first two weeks after the attacks, but had normalized after that.
 "It is mostly American tourists who are not coming," Shevenko said. "They are very obedient people, so if the State Department says that they shouldn't travel, they won't."
 "It is difficult to make any predictions for the year, since we don't know what will happen in the world. I don't think that there would be a significant effect if we lost as many as 200,000 tourists because of this, because the numbers coming in on cruise ships this year have been much higher," he said.
 Commericial operators, however, have noticed a more widespread and sustained pattern. Belik said that her hotel had lost three tour groups coming from Spain and Greece.
 Irina Sokolova, general director of the Russian Travel tourism company, said that all her company's groups from Germany had cancelled after the Sept. 11 events.
 "The Germans are refusing to come, and this is linked to air travel. We still have the same number of tourists coming from Scandinavian countries, especially Finland, because they travel by bus," Sokolova said.
 The airline industry has experienced a global decline in the wake of the terrorist attacks. British Airways and Air France, for example, reported declines in revenue-passenger kilometers of more than 20 percent compared to last September.
 Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's spokes person, Alexander Afanasiev, expressed hope that the city would see a quick recovery.
 "It won't last long because in four or five months people usually forget about bad things," Afanasiev said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: King Travels On
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - King Carl XVI Gustaf and his wife Queen Silvia left St. Petersburg on Thursday morning, continuing their state visit to Russia by flying on to Arkhangelsk, Interfax reported.
 The royal couple visited the monastery complex at Solovki on Thursday, returning to Arkhangelsk late in the afternoon.
 While in Arkhangelsk, they will meet with university students and visit local cultural attractions in the company of Arkhangelsk Governor Anatoly Yefremov.
 The couple travels on to Murmansk on Oct. 12, according to Interfax.
 
 
Lift the Ban
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Antimonopoly Minister Ilya Yuzhanov advocated changes to the Russian Federation legislation controlling the advertising of alcohol and tobacco, Interfax reported.
 Speaking at a conference in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, Yuzhanov noted that the law states that advertising of alcohol and tobacco products is allowed only at places where such products are either manufactured or sold, but this law is constantly violated in practice.
 "What is the sense of pointlessly fighting with these violations of the law on advertising? It makes more sense just to just allow them," Yuzhanov said, according to Interfax.
 
 
Shutov Bows Out
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Legislative Assembly Deputy Yury Shutov, who is currently on trial charged with multiple counts of organizing contract murders, has withdrawn his candidacy for the State Duma mandate from the 209th district, Interfax reported Thursday.
 Shutov sent a letter to the City Election Commission from his jail cell in which he writes that he is withdrawing from the Oct. 14 poll because of "the absence of fair conditions for conducting an election campaign, compared to those of other candidates," Interfax reported.
 
 
Mirilashvili Charges
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Prosecutors have formerly charged local businessperson Mikhail Mirila shvili with murder, Interfax reported Wednesday.
 In addition, Mirilashvili was charged with organizing a criminal conspiracy with intent to kidnap and with organizing a criminal group.
 Mirilashvili, who is the chairperson of the board of the Conti group of casinos, was arrested on Jan. 23, 2001, in connection with the disappearance of Koby Kakushadze and Rostom Dvali. Prosecutors believe that Mirilashvili thought the men were connected with the kidnapping of Mirilashvili's father.
 
 
Container Order
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A factory in Petrozavodsk will build a special container for the transportation of spent nuclear fuel next year under a special order from the Nuclear Power Ministry, Interfax reported Tuesday.
 Petrozavodskmash reported that it anticipates getting orders for additional containers after the successful fulfillment of this order, according to the news agency. The container will be made of metal-reinforced concrete.
 Petrozavodskmash produces machinery and equipment for the paper-processing industry. 



TITLE: Silent Locals Wait as Kursk Comes Home
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MURMANSK, Far North - More than 14 months after setting out for what became its last mission, the Kursk nuclear submarine returned home Wednesday, greeted by the silent residents of a small, heavily guarded Arctic port.
 Accompanied by two military ships, the Giant 4 barge, with the crippled submarine clamped to its bottom, was hauled by a tugboat to the Roslyakovo shipyard, slowly moving past the submarine's home base in Severomorsk where a crowd stood on the pier in a biting wind bidding farewell to the once reverred Kursk.
 The Northern Fleet commander, Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, called through loudspeakers for five minutes of silence to commemorate the submarine's 118 crew members, who died last August when an explosion sank the Kursk in the Barents Sea during naval exercises. Northern Fleet ships docked in Se veromorsk and Ros lya kovo raised their flags and sounded 30-second siren signals to commemorate the killed sailors.
 Having spent most of the day maneuvering through the narrow Kola Bay, by 6 p.m. the barge was finally set on four floating anchors half a kilometer from the shipyard, completing its two-day journey from the disaster site.
 The submarine was lifted from the Arctic seabed on Monday by a consortium including Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International. In an unprecedented and surprisingly trouble-free salvage effort, the submarine was hoisted up using 26 cables lowered from Giant 4 and was then attached to the bottom of the barge with its protruding conning tower and tail fins fitting into specially carved niches. 
 The lift-and-tow stage of the operation, which began July 9, suffered almost a month of setbacks due to bad weather and technical difficulties. The delays gave rise to widespread doubts that the Kursk would be raised at all.
 One of the fears that prompted the $65-million salvage operation was the possibility of radiation leaks from the sub's two nuclear reactors. Northern Fleet spokesperson Captain Vladimir Navrotsky said radiation checks, which would involve cutting holes in the reactor compartment to sample water for possible leaks, were to begin Wednesday evening. Throughout the operation, monitoring equipment has showed no signs of radiation. However, the decision to bring the submarine to Rosklyakovo stirred panic among residents and prompted local officials to draw contingency evacuation plans. 
 After the radiation measurements were completed, workers spent Thursday fitting Giant 4 with two giant pontoons designed to lift the barge and submarine 7 meters higher than they are now, Navrotsky said. The work will continue on Friday as well.
 The effort to place the Kursk into the 70-meter-wide dock will begin Saturday and is expected to last five days during which the pontoons and barge will be detached and water from the dock drained, Navrotsky said, to allow experts to begin the timely and challenging task of dismantling the sub.
 Navrotsky said docking the submarine will be a far more complicated procedure than the lift.
 "The situation in PD-50 [the Ros lya ko vo dock] is very tense as people feel a high sense of responsibility," he told reporters Wednesday.
 Admiral Popov said Tuesday he would feel he had carried out his duty to the dead seamen and their families when the body of the last Kursk crew member had been laid to rest. 
 Asked whether camera crews would be given access to the sub, Popov said curtly, "For sailors, a sunken ship is like a dead body and showing a disfigured wreck is morally wrong."
 Navrotsky said officials expect to find no more than 40 bodies, as the remains of crew members in the front compartments are likely to have been shattered to pieces by the powerful blasts that sank the submarine. Twelve bodies were recovered during initial salvage work last year.
 Navy and government officials have said examining the submarine's hull should help them determine the cause of the disaster, but some experts believe that the most pertinent evidence lies in the Kursk's mangled front compartment, which has been left on the seabed in the heavily guarded disaster area. A decision on whether to lift the front section is expected next month.
 Popov said it will take at least a year to dismantle the submarine, which will involve cutting out and disposing of the reactors, as well as the sub's arsenal of 24 supersonic Granit cruise missiles and an unspecified smaller number of torpedoes.

TITLE: City Readies To Receive Kursk Crew
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: At least 30 graves have been prepared at the Serafimov Cemetery for the remains of crew members from the Kursk nuclear submarine whose families wish them to be interred in St. Petersburg.
 "The number of the graves prepared is based on the 30 applications from Kursk relatives wishing to bury their sons and husbands in St. Petersburg," said Yelena Kuznetsova, spokes person for the St. Petersburg Submariners Club.
 Almost one year ago, two crew members from the Kursk, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Brazhkin and Lieutenant Captain Dmitry Kolesnikov - whose bodies were recovered shortly after the disaster occured - were buried at the Serafimov Cemetery, which functions as both a civilian and a military cemetery.
 Kolesnikov became known all over the country when a note that he had written to his wife inside the stricken vessel was recovered and its contents made public.
 Although 30 concrete graves have already been prepared in three rows next to those of Kolesnikov and Brazhkin, no one yet knows how many bodies will be actually recovered and how many crew members will eventually be buried there, according to city administration spokesperson Alexan der Skvortsov.
 According to Kuznetsova, symbolic capsules of water from the Barents Sea and fragments of the Kursk will be placed in the graves of sailors whose bodies are not recovered, a ritual that is sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church.
 The city has created a special commission that will organize the burial of the crew members and that will plan a memorial for the Kursk to be erected near the graves. 
 The city has allocated 1.6 million rubles ($53,000) for both the funeral and the memorial.
 Kuznetsova said that the funeral will most likely take place some time in November, after the bodies have been identified.
 "I must say that this time is very hard for the relatives who have been living in a funeral atmosphere for a year already," she said.

TITLE: Kuchma Will Accept Findings From Crash
AUTHOR: By Marina Sysoeva
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV - Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma on Wednesday promised to accept any conclusion in the investigation into the crash of the Sibir plane, even one that implicates his country's military.
 Ukrainian officials have until now strongly denied accusations that a Ukrainian missile mistakenly hit the Tu-154 plane as it flew over the Black Sea last Thursday.
 All 66 passengers and 12 crew members aboard the airplane were killed.
 But Ukraine's stance appeared to be shifting after a top Russian investigator said Tuesday that experts have found fragments resembling the missile's payload at the Black Sea crash site.
 "Whatever the joint working group signs, I will agree with it," Kuchma was quoted by Interfax as saying during a meeting in Kiev that was closed to foreign journalists.
 He also said he believed Ukraine's prestige would not be damaged, no matter what the outcome of the investigation is.
 "Just look around. Errors do happen everywhere, in the world and in Europe," Itar-Tass quoted him as saying.
 Thirteen of 14 bodies recovered so far have been identified, Interfax quoted the Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow as saying. The cause of death was listed as barotrauma, which occurs when there is a huge shift in pressure.
 Sergei Fridinsky, deputy prosecutor general, said Wednesday that carbon monoxide was found in the victims' blood, proving there had been a fire on board, Itar-Tass reported.
 U.S. intelligence officials believe the plane was hit by a Ukrainian S-200 missile during exercises on the Crimean Peninsula, which juts into the Black Sea.
 Russian investigators initially focused on the possibility of a terrorist attack, but Russia appears to be preparing to blame the Ukrainian military for the crash.
 On Tuesday, presidential aide and former Russian Air Force commander Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, a member of a state commission investigating the disaster, said small metal balls found in the bodies of those killed and in the fragments of the plane's sheeting resemble the S-200 missile payload.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Ivanov Says No to U.S.
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov reaffirmed Wednesday Russia's policy of refusing U.S. warplanes airspace to attack Afg ha ni stan, despite its support for the U.S.-led strikes against the Taliban.
 Ivanov told the Federation Council only transport aircraft ferrying relief supplies to zones affected by the strikes would be granted air corridors.
 "Russia is ready to make air corridors available only to transport aircraft, I would like to stress this. There is not, and cannot be, any question of warplanes," Ivanov said in remarks carried by RTR television.
 
 
Uzbekistan on Alert
 

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan (AP) - Uzbek President Islam Karimov called on his country's citizens to be on "relentless alert" against extremists, and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Wednesday that regional rapid-reaction forces would soon hold an exercise in Kyrgyzstan.
 Ivanov also endorsed reassembling a single air-defense system for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Itar-Tass reported.
 In an interview published Wednesday in the People's Word newspaper, Karimov tried to assuage fears that by allowing use of its base, Uzbekistan was opening itself up to retribution by the Taliban. Russian Border Guard chief Colonel General Konstantin Totsky said Monday he had received reports of Taliban fighters massing close to the Uzbek border.
 "Some people fear that firmness in defending our motherland and membership in the international anti-terrorist coalition will make us targets in the jihad," Karimov was quoted as saying.
 
 
Moscow Sapper Unit
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov on Wednesday ordered the creation of a 64-man sapper unit within the city's police force.
 The unit, to be equipped with sniffer dogs and armored robots for destroying explosives at a distance, will be used to search for and defuse bombs and to investigate explosion sites.
 The unit's staff will be drawn from police officers who now serve in the force, Interfax quoted police spokes person Sergei Shevtsov as saying. He said 50 of the 64 sappers will be on City Hall's payroll, while the rest will be covered by the federal budget.
 "Earlier, police just collected information about suspicious objects and then we had to wait until sappers from the Federal Security Service arrived to check it," a police spokesperson said in a telephone interview. "Now we can deal with the problem ourselves."
 
 
Border Reinforced
 

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - Russia sent troops to reinforce its border with a breakaway Georgian region on Wednesday, fearing a new front in its war against Chechen rebels.
 Officials of the breakaway region, Abkhazia, claimed, meanwhile, that their forces had surrounded 200 guerrillas, including ethnic Georgian fighters and rebels from Chechnya.
 The Russian troops were sent to the border a day after Abkhazian leaders mobilized military reserves in response to guerrilla raids.
 "We took urgent measures to strengthen the entire Russian-Georgian border, including its Abkhazian part," said Russia's Defense Minister Igor Ivanov.
 Abkhazian separatists drove out Georgian forces in a 1992-93 war that ended in a cease-fire and de facto independence. Attempts to reach a political solution have failed and the Black Sea province has remained plagued by violence.
 Russia is fighting separatists in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, and has long accused Georgia, which borders Chechnya, of harboring Chechen rebels.
 
 
Politkovskaya Flees
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, well-known for her reporting of human-rights abuses in Chechnya, has fled to Vienna in fear of her life after receiving threatening e-mails.
 Politkovskaya said Thursday that she believed the threats were connected to a story she wrote that suggested a military helicopter shot down last month in Grozny had been fired on by Russian troops, not a lone rebel as reported by the army. Ten high-level officers including two generals died in the crash.
 Politkovskaya said one of the officers, Lieutenant General Andrei Pozdnyakov, was on orders from President Vladimir Putin collecting information about the behavior of federal troops in Chechnya.
 She interviewed Pozdnyakov while he waited for the helicopter.
 "He was supposed to make this report to Putin the next day and was carrying the documents," Politkovskaya said by telephone from Vienna.
 
 
Report: Khattab Hurt
 

NAZRAN, Ingushetia (AP) - A leading warlord in rebel Chechnya was wounded during fighting with Russian troops, an official in the region said Wednesday.
 Jordanian-born Khattab was injured when his unit clashed with federal forces in Sta rye Atagi, the official in the Mos cow-appointed Chechen administration said on condition of anonymity.
 The official, who said he was citing the Federal Security Service, did not elaborate on the nature of the wounds. The claim was impossible to verify, and official military spokespeople did not confirm it.
 Meanwhile, nearly 500 residents of the village of Prigorodnoye blocked a road outside of Grozny for the fourth day in a row, Interfax said. They were protesting the death of a 10-year-old, who died of shrapnel wounds Saturday, presumably from a grenade thrown by federal troops.
 Scattered fighting continued Wed nesday, with nine soldiers killed over the past 24 hours, the official said.
 
 
Forests in Danger
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Researchers released the first-ever map of Russia's northern forests Wednesday, warning that loggers are threatening Europe's last great wilderness.
 A five-year study using images from both Russian and American satellites, as well as field trips to the areas, has found that only 14 percent of the actual northern forests remain untouched by man, according to the map and accompanying report by the World Resources Institute's Global Forest Watch and Greenpeace Russia.
 Much of that virgin forest is in danger, the report said.
 "Intact forests are particularly important as they group together a mosaic of ecosystems," said Lars Laestadius, the editor of the English version of the report. "A pack of wolves can roam and never have to cross a road."
 Greenpeace is running a campaign to persuade companies not to use the wood from such wilderness forests. Swedish furniture giant IKEA and the Svetogorsk Paper Mill are among the companies that have agreed to boycott timber from the forests. 



TITLE: Land Code Awaits Presidential Signature
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Federation Council approved the Land Code on Wednesday, putting an end to a decade-long debate in parliament over land sales, but leaving open the most controversial issue, the sale of agricultural land.
 The code will regulate the sale of 2 percent of land in cities and villages, which attract's 75 percent of all investment in the country, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said.
 "Today is a sad day for a huge number of bureaucrats," Gref said after the bill was approved.
 The code will reduce the problem of shadow land turnover, which costs the government $1 billion to $2 billion a year, he said.
 The legislation, which is expected to be signed into law by President Vla di mir Putin within a week and then published in the official government newspaper, Rossiiskaya Gazeta, treats foreigners the same as Russians with the exception that they will not be able to buy plots in areas close to federal borders.
 The cabinet now needs to develop a mechanism to determine land values in different areas, said Maxim Kalinin, senior associate in the St. Petersburg office of Baker & McKenzie's CIS Real Estate & Construction Practice.
 "I hope it will be done in a month," Kalinin said. "Then the sales will be able to start."
 The Federation Council passed the Land Code by a vote of 103-29, with nine abstentions. The State Duma had overwhelmingly approved the code in its final reading late last month.
 About 200 protesters gathered outside the Federation Council building, holding signs bearing the slogan, "The Sale of Land = Occupation." Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told the mostly elderly picketers the vote for the sale of land would be "an announcement of a big war throughout all southern Russia."
 Nikolai Kondratenko, former Krasnodar governor and now the southern region's representative on the Federation Council, told senators before the vote that the code would "destroy our country."
 He said Krasnodar land is already being snapped up by Kurds, Jews, Mesk he tian Turks and Armenians, and not Russians, adding that the code would not stop the shadow turnover of plots.
 The Communist Party has filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court, saying that the rights of the 36 regions were violated when the Duma passed the code.
 Ivan Starikov, deputy head of the Federation Council's Agriculture Committee, said Tuesday that only one region, Adygeya, had properly filed a protest with the Duma. He said nine other regions sent appeals that did not meet the criteria established by the parliament.
 "I hope the Constitutional Court will throw out this complaint," Starikov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 Gref said after the vote that the government will be ready to introduce legislation covering the sale of agricultural land to the Duma in about six months.

TITLE: ICAO Eases Restrictions On Russia's Aging Jets
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian airlines may no longer face an outright ban on flights abroad after noise and emission standards come into force next year, thanks to a resolution approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) allowing the slow withdrawal of noncompliant aircraft, an air official said Tuesday.
 Yury Romanenko, secretary of the Russian liaison commission to the ICAO, said that organization approved at a general-assembly meeting in Montreal last week an environmental-protection policy under which noncompliant aircraft will be gradually phased out.
 "This is a big achievement for the assembly. The deadline has been extended, and not only for us," Romanenko said.
 Previous regulations laid out by the ICAO would have banned all but 5 to 7 percent of Russia's 6,540 planes from European airspace starting in April 2002. Russian airlines have acknowledged that only a handful of their Il-96-300, Tu-204, Tu-214 and upgraded Tu-154 jets meet the strict requirements, while no Tu-134, Il-86 or cargo Il-76 planes qualify.
 The cost of upgrading each plane to meet existing Chapter 3 noise and emission standards runs from $3 million to $15 million. Aeroflot, which operates mostly foreign-made planes on international routes, has upgraded enough Russian jets to cover the other overseas routes. A few other carriers are also taking steps to upgrade their aging fleets.
 The ICAO resolution, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times, states, "Admitting that introducing restrictions on use of currently operating craft can increase the spending of airlines and create serious economic difficulties especially for carriers that do not have financing to upgrade their fleet, ICAO highly recommends ... that countries allow noncompliant craft to be gradually decommissioned over a period of at least seven years."
 The resolution also recommends that European countries permit aircraft to use their airports if they have been in service for less than 25 years.
 Viktor Samokhin, the deputy head of the airworthiness department at the State Civil Aviation Service, said that the decision means that the Russian planes will be able to fly for their entire lifespan.
 The aviation service had said ahead of last month's conference that it would lobby for an extension on the use of noncompliant aircraft.
 Several Russian airlines are applauding the ICAO's new recommendation.
 Mikhail Koshman, spokesperson for No. 2 national airline Sibir, called the decision by the ICAO positive given that the government has not yet outlined its position with regard to upgrading Russian aircraft or whether it will subsidize the cost of modernizing the fleets of domestic carriers.
 Dmitry Stolyarov, spokesperson for the Volga-Dnepr cargo airline, added, "We are satisfied with the decision. Now it's important that the ICAO member states embrace this recommendation."

TITLE: Property Committee Wins in DLT Battle
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: When an extraordinary shareholders meeting late last month elected Alexander Kondratiev as general director of the Dom Leningradskoy Torgovly (DLT), a three-year battle by the City Property Committee (KUGI) to regain control over the firm finally came to a successful end.
 The meeting elected a new board of directors for the company, which operates one of the city's largest department stores, and passed a new set of company regulations but representatives of the former management of the store say they're not giving up yet.
 The three-year battle for control included the filing of 11 court cases, but the difficulties at DLT actually began in 1993, when the store's minority shareholders decided to drop KUGI from the list of shareholders. The decision was made at a shareholders meeting at which representatives of KUGI, which owned 74.37 percent of the company's stock, were not present.
 KUGI had acquired the stake in DLT as a result of the privatization of the company in 1991. Another 15.63 percent of the shares were given to DLT's employees, while the remaining approximately 10 percent of the stock was divided up between Baltiisky Zavod, Svetlana Union and the Vologodskoye Garment Factories Union in exchange for investment in the company.
 The 1993 decision was compounded at a subsequent shareholders meeting in 1996, when a new set of corporate regulations was passed for the company, including a new charter, which did not list KUGI as a shareholder, and a decision was also reached to increase the company's capital through the emission of more shares.
 But it wasn't until October 1998 that KUGI finally filed its first court action against the other shareholders. According to Daniil Petrov, the deputy head of KUGI's legal department, the five-year delay between the 1993 decision to freeze KUGI out of the shareholders list and the filing of the first suit was the result of the fact that officials at the City Property Committee knew nothing about the decisions.
 "We were not informed at any time by them and only found out that we were no longer shareholders from the St. Petersburg Registration Chamber," Petrov said in a telephone interview Thursday. "DLT officials claimed in court that they had been sending us registered letters to this effect, and even produced receipts for them, but the city post office doesn't have any record of these ever being sent."
 Since learning of the changes in the DLT charter, KUGI has enjoyed success in the major decisions handed down during the ensuing battle. In March 1999, the Northwest Region Federal Arbitration Court declared the company charter adopted in 1996 invalid. A year later, in March 2000, the same court moved to annul the results of the March 1993 shareholders meeting and to restore KUGI's 74-percent stake in DLT.
 The department store's management tried to strike back in December 2000, petitioning to have the results of the privatization and the joint-venture agreement that set up the company declared void. The Northwest Region Federal Arbitration Court refused the petition.
 The most recent court decision, handed down in August, confirmed the legality of an order from the Northwest Region office of the Federal Security Commission annulling the second emission of shares.
 But Lyubov Zvonkova, chairperson of DLT's supervisory council, says that the fight is not over yet and that the old management at DLT is still in place. Lyudmila Andreyeva, who held the title of general director at the company during the years of disputes with KUGI, is still managing the firm according to both KUGI's Petrov and DLT's Zvonkova.
 "The election of a new general director was illegal," Zvonkova said Thursday. "The personnel at the store aren't at all required to obey the KUGI-appointed director. They already have their own general director, and Lyudmila Andreyeva holds that position."
 Zvonkova says that the votes at the Sept. 20 shareholders meeting were illegal. DLT has so far ignored the court's rulings and, because it doesn't recognize KUGI's shares as valid and itself boycotted the meeting, the store's management says the vote represented only 0.33 percent of DLT shares.
 According to the business daily Vedomosti, before the court's decision affirming KUGI's stake in DLT, Andreyeva owned 19.9 percent of all shares and Zvonkova held the second-largest interest, representing 11.7 percent of all stock. Records at the regional office of the Federal Securities Commission show that five senior managers at the firm had concentrated about 46 percent of the shares in their hands.
 DLT, which is located downtown at 21-23 Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa, was opened in 1909. The department store itself contains 9,000 square meters of shopping space, while the company operates a chain of 22 Detsky Mir stores in the city. The children's stores total another 19,500 meters in shopping area. In 2000, the firm's revenues totaled more than 900 million rubles (about $31.5 million by the exchange rate at the end of the year).
 Kondratyev, the new general director chosen at the September meeting, had previously headed the St. Petersburg Economic Committee's Department of Consumer Rights Protection.
 According to information posted on the KUGI Web site (www.commim.spb. ru), 99 percent of shares voting at the meeting supported both Kondratyev's election and that of the new DLT board of directors.
 Now all that remains is for KUGI actually to gain control over the store. KUGI's Petrov says that the new management will ultimately end up in charge, but that this is a problem for the new management team itself, and not for KUGI.
 "It appears that the old management team is not ready to give up its place," he said. "Of course its understandable why they don't want to go, but we are ready to offer them all some sort of job."
 Petrov says that KUGI hopes that there will be no need to involve law enforcement agencies in ensuring the transfer.
 "We hope that this won't be necessary at all and aren't threatening this. The old management should leave of its own accord."

TITLE: Vena Grows With Boom In Demand
AUTHOR: By Kirill Koriukin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Local brewery Vena brewery said Wednesday its targeted high-end market segment is growing so rapidly that it is scrambling to increase capacity.
 Vena Managing Director Barry Marshall said its sales soared by almost 130 percent to about 87.5 million liters in the first three quarters of this year.
 The brewery is operating at capacity and is building new facilities to increase production, Marshall said at a news conference. The construction is partially funded by the EBRD, which is disbursing $27 million of a $100-million credit line this year. In the meantime, Vena, controlled by Carlsberg, has signed a contract with rival brewery Bravo to bottle some of Vena's beer.
 The Russian beer market has been growing by more than 20 percent a year for the past three years, but analysts predict that the growth rate may plunge. However, Vena is forecasting a growth rate just slightly below last year's levels, with production expected to reach 6.3 billion liters this year compared to 5.5 billion liters last year.
 The premium sector, which Vena targets with its main Nevskoye brand and Tuborg, is growing vis-à-vis the mainstream sector, analysts said. The premium sector is likely to reach 20 percent of the market by 2004 compared to an estimated 15 percent this year, Vena said, citing industry analysts.
 The share of premium-beer retail sales in urban areas in July and August grew to 22 percent from 16 percent of the total market, or by 34 percent year on year, according to the Business Analytica market research agency.
 Vena is zeroing in on the Moscow market, where sales are expected to grow to 50 percent of overall sales from 23 percent last year and 19 percent in 1999, he said. Its share of the Moscow market grew to 5.3 percent this August from 1.9 percent in August 2000.
 Marshall said the brewery was fighting the inclusion of beer in the list of alcoholic beverages, restrictions on advertisement and prohibitive taxes. A law on state regulation of the beer market is being discussed in the State Duma.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Telia Plans Investment
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Sweden's Telia International Carrier (TIC) outlined plans Tuesday to tap the potential it sees in Russia's Internet market by upping its activities in Moscow and St. Petersburg
 "TIC came late to Russia and our strategy is to [acquire] customers and build market share in the carrier market," said Lars Rydin, vice president for strategic development.
 "Broadband networks and IP connectivity are probably our fastest-growing [business areas] right now here in Russia," he said.
 The bulk of new TIC investment is earmarked for the Baltic Cable System, a fiber-optic cable project begun last year in cooperation with long-distance monopoly Rostelecom that will evenutally connect St. Petersburg, Moscow, Helsinki and Stockholm, as well as the Baltic states. The line from St. Petersburg to Helsinki is slated to be completed in the first part of 2002.
 
 
PTS Profits Up
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Total profits at St. Petersburg Telephone Network (PTS) will increase by 6 percent this year over 2000 and will reach approximately 400 million rubles (about $13.5 million) according to an Interfax report quoting the company's management on Wednesday.
 According to Igor Golikov, PTS manager for economics and finances, the total 2001 revenues will be about 3.9 billion rubles (about $132 million), which is more twice the figure for 2000.
 PTS' revenues for the first 9 months of 2001 were 2.8 billion rubles (about $95 million).
 The main shareholders of the company are Svyazinvest (41.02 percent), Brunswick Warburg Nominees (18.14 percent) and Bank Credit Swiss First Boston (10.5 percent).
 
 
UES Gets Loan
 

LONDON (SPT) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development granted a 100-million-euro ($90 million) loan to Unified Energy Systems for restructuring and development, Interfax reported Thursday.
 According to a statement by UES, the loan will enable the energy monopoly to initiate the restructuring plan that was approved by the government this summer.
 "By agreeing to this measure, the EBRD is taking on a task that is expected to include long-term participation in the restructuring of the energy sector. The EBRD is sending a signal to the international investment community that the first crucial step toward reform has already been taken," said EBRD President Noreen Doyle, according to Interfax.
 A large part of the loan, half of which is coming from a syndicate of international banks, will be used to modernize crucial parts of Russia's power grid. 
 
 
Fitch Hikes Rating
 

LONDON (SPT) - The Fitch international financial rating agency has raised its long-term rating for St. Petersburg's foreign and domestic debt from "CCC+" to "B" and described its future outlook for the city's debt as "stable," Interfax reported on Wednesday.
 At the same time, the agency raised the rating on the city's short-term debt from "C" to "B."
 The agency said that the improved ratings reflect the stabilization of the budgetary situation in the city, the improvement in local macroeconomic conditions and tighter controls over budgetary expenditures, Interfax reported. 



TITLE: Fighting Heats Up on the Ideological Front
TEXT: <strong>The New York Times
</strong> SINCE the end of the Cold War, the Voice of America's radio programs have metamorphosed from government echo into real journalism. The station, which broadcasts in 53 languages worldwide, is for many people the only available counter to their governments' propaganda. Surveys of men in Afghanistan last year showed that 67 percent listened to the VOA every day. The need to maintain a credible alternative source of news for Muslims today makes the U.S. government's efforts to censor the VOA all the more objectionable. The VOA today is an independent agency, but it is government-funded and still susceptible to State Department and congressional pressure. The advent of war should be an occasion to strengthen its independence. 
 Last month, the VOA obtained an interview with the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Although such an interview is indisputably newsworthy, the State Department asked the VOA not to broadcast it. The station hesitated for several days and then included a few excerpts in a larger report. Even this limited use of Mullah Omar's remarks has now inspired calls in Congress to turn the VOA back into a voice for U.S. policies. Others want to recreate Radio Free Afghanistan, which existed during the Soviet occupation as an ideological alternative to the VOA. A second station broadcasting in Pashto and Dari would undoubtedly drain reporters and resources from the VOA 
 In addition, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the leader of Qatar last week that he was concerned about the inflammatory rhetoric used by the Qatar-based Arabic-language satellite television station al-Jazeera. The emir of Qatar told reporters after the meeting that Powell had asked him to rein in al-Jazeera. The station is the most important independent broadcaster of news in Arabic. Its journalism has aroused the ire of various Arab governments, much to its credit. 
 Al-Jazeera has angered some Americans by replaying, several times, a 1998 interview with Osama bin Laden. It is surely bin Laden's favored news outlet, the one he chose to disseminate the video made after the Sept. 11 attacks. Al-Jazeera is also the only station permitted to have a reporter inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. All these broadcasts are legitimate and valuable, and news organizations worldwide have repeatedly run al-Jazeera's tapes and reported its scoops.
 The more worrisome feature of al-Jazeera is that it often slants its news with a vicious anti-Israel and anti-American bias. Islamic radicals dominate its talk shows, and the station reported that Jews were told not to go to work in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, promoting the rumor, widely believed by Muslims, that Jews were behind the attack. Its biases mirror public opinion in the Islamic world, but this deeply irresponsible reporting reinforces the region's anti-American views.
 The correct response to al-Jazeera, however, is not to ask Qatar to censor it. The Islamic world has far too much censorship already. Instead, Washington should shower al-Jazeera with offers of interviews with U.S. officials or respected Muslims who can counter the anti-American propaganda. The station's Washington bureau chief has complained that officials rarely agree to interviews, while the channel has broadcast interviews with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel, Powell and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. If al-Jazeera becomes so ideological that it is not interested in nonradical views, then the West can start its own Arabic satellite channel. 
 
 <i>This comment first appeared as an editorial in The New York Times.
 </i>
 <strong>The Washington Post
</strong> AS U.S.-led air strikes continued against targets in Afghanistan this week, another crucial theater of conflict was opening up in cities across the Muslim world. In Pakistan, thousands of supporters of Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban regime burned buildings and fought with police. In Indonesia, Islamic militants protested in front of the U.S. Embassy and threatened to hunt down and kill Americans if the government did not break relations with the United States. In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians fought gun battles against their own security forces following a demonstration by more than 1,000 Islamic students in support of bin Laden. 
 As these events vividly demonstrated, the terrorist enemy that the United States and its allies are facing includes not just networks of fighters and their leaders, but an extremist ideology that has gained a substantial following. Its tenets were encapsulated in the chilling statement from Osama bin Laden released Sunday and repeatedly broadcast on both Middle Eastern and Western television. The world, says the al-Qaeda leader, is divided into Muslims and nonbelievers; the &quot;head of the international infidels'' is U.S. President George W. Bush, who, in league with Arab governments and Israel, is inflicting injury on Iraqis, Palestinians and other Muslims. &quot;Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion,'' Osama bin Laden said - a task he says will not be fulfilled until Israel is destroyed, the Saudi monarchy overthrown and U.S. forces driven out of the Arabian peninsula. 
 As President Bush said in his own television address, this is a grotesque distortion of a great religion, delivered by criminals in order to justify mass murder. But the sobering truth is that Osama bin Laden's noxious mix of religious cant and anti-Western demagoguery strikes a chord among people in many Muslim countries, especially among the poor and disenfranchised. These people are not the majority in any country, even Afghanistan. But they are numerous enough to intimidate otherwise friendly governments into withholding support from the campaign against terrorism - as Indonesia has done - or support it only quietly and with reservations, as have Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The governments also make little or no effort to counter the diffusion of the extremists' ideological pitch, which provides Osama bin Laden and other terrorist organizations a continual stream of fresh recruits. 
 The war against terrorism will be won only if this extremist ideology is defeated and discredited, just as the ideology of communism was during the Cold War. President Bush and his cabinet, along with some other leaders such as Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, clearly understand this challenge. That is why they have placed so much emphasis on separating the terrorist enemy from the community of Muslims. But this week's events suggested how hard the struggle will be, and also how far many of the Muslim governments are from being prepared for it. 
 Osama bin Laden is a formidable opponent, adept not only at plotting suicide bombings but also at fighting a propaganda war in the age of satellite broadcasts. But the response of Muslim governments for years has been crude and inept - too often it has consisted of volleys of gunfire against demonstrators, as happened this week. There is no cogent answer to the propaganda, no real defense of mainstream Islam or secular government, not even much insistence on what should be the cardinal point, that terrorism in pursuit of any aim is wrong. In fact, often governments in countries such as Egypt and the Palestinian Authority - governments that too often have shunned democracy and rejected or postponed modernization - have sought to buy peace by allowing the unimpeded broadcast of the terrorist message on state-run media. 
 The Bush administration has focused so far on winning the help of friendly Arab governments in shutting down al-Qaeda's networks, and in forcing others to choose. But soon it must move to the harder task of inducing Muslim governments to answer Osama bin Laden. They, and their state-supported clerics, can do so in part by broadcasting the truth about Islam. But ultimately, message alone cannot win the war, just as one-sided concessions to the Palestinians and Iraq would not. Instead, Muslim countries will have to offer policies that promise economic progress and political liberty. Only that can trump the extremists' program of hate. 
 
 <i>This comment first appeared as an editorial in The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: Lucky To Get Away With Just Dysentery
TEXT: LOOKING back from my sickbed in Moscow, it seems strange that I didn't get typhoid or anthrax. Looking back, it is surprising that I got away with just plain dysentery.
 After all, the only thing I didn't do was drink from a foul-smelling pit in the ground on the Afghan-Tajik border the locals called a well. Splashing in that well, deadly bacteria competed blissfully over which one got a human host fastest.
 Here, however, is what I did:
 I took bread from strangers.
 I ate a pomegranate purchased on a mountain roadside.
 I washed my hands in a mountain spring (that poured out of a rusted metal pipe, but who said all mountain springs have to be unspoiled by civilization?)
 In short, I did everything you would have done had you been traveling from Tajikistan to Afghanistan on assignment on a sunny September day when the temperature soared to 40 degrees Celsius and teenage donkey herders sang Farsi songs that reverberated off the sandy cliffs of the Pamir foothills.
 It started almost like paradise. I didn't even mind having sacrificed all of my night's sleep to write a story about the growing opium trade in the region. Nor did the fact that I had to push our sputtering old Lada for nearly 3 kilometers to the nearest repair shop cast a shadow over what looked like a joyful day of travel.
 Then, we hit the camp.
 There, several thousand Afghan refugees loathe the sun.
 The sun beats down upon them without mercy 10 months a year, boosting the temperature to 50 degrees Celsius during the day, only to let it drop to just above freezing by night. The sun devastates the fruitless desert around them, turning the former river algae underfoot into the finest dust that penetrates the pores of their skin, pollutes their lungs and irritates their bloodshot eyes. The few winter weeks of scarce rain are not enough to turn that dust into slush.
 Riding the dust, diseases whirl in the dried-out wasteland, clogging the dusty straw walls of the refugees' rickety huts, hopping from a sickly mother to a condemned child. Anthrax, malaria, dysentery, typhoid, diphtheria, hepatitis - just to name a few - thrive in the desert.
 Hiding from the sun under the straw awning of her hut, young Firyuza clutched her baby sister, who was dying of malaria. Wrapped in a dirty rag that once had been a blanket, the baby stared into the cruel, cloudless sky. &quot;The preachers have been praying to Allah to help her,&quot; Firyuza said. &quot;But so far, it hasn't worked.&quot;
 South of Firyuza's camp stand Taliban troops, ready to shoot at anyone who dares enter their territory. To the north of the camp are Russian-commanded border guards, ready to shoot at anyone who attempts to cross into theirs. The nearest hospital is in Dushanbe, 250 kilometers away. It is a distance neither Firyuza nor her baby sister may ever live to travel.
 I traveled that distance, and beyond, to a clinic in Moscow, where polite doctors quashed my ailment with ultramodern antibiotics. They gave me shots against polio, typhoid and diphtheria and gave me pills to stave off malaria in the future.
 As I took my time to recover from dysentery in my Moscow apartment, somewhere under the hot Afghan sun, on a dusty, flea-infested bed, somebody died.
 
 <i>Anna Badkhen is a freelance correspondent based in Moscow. </i>

TITLE: Why Accept Accidental Killing?
TEXT: SPEAKING in Belgium, President Vladimir Putin explained to European politicians, softened by many years of peace, that you needn't worry too much about civilian casualties when going to war. The rich experience of the Chechen campaign taught the president that innocent civilians inevitably suffer when you do battle with terrorists, but that blame for this can be apportioned to the terrorists. Western politicians listened and apparently liked this line of thought.
 After the Sept. 11 attacks, a multitude of experts, pundits and politicians have all been repeating the same line: Now the West will review its attitude toward Chechnya; now they will understand us; finally they will abandon their double standards. Although it is not said exactly what the West should approve of, it is implicitly stated that the West should jettison its annoying ideas about human rights. Or, to be more specific, the West needs to understand that human rights only apply to white-skinned Christians and that it's nonsense to apply such European inventions to Muslims and other enemies of civilization.
 The state should be entrusted with a license to kill. Moreover, it should be authorized to do so without trial or investigation. While terrorists used to be considered those who attack civilians, now any innocent civilian in proximity to a terrorist not only forfeits his right to protection by the state, but can also be killed by the state in the name of the &quot;common cause.&quot;
 By adopting such an approach, the dividing line between terrorists and a state's armed forces ceases to exist. However, there is still a difference: Due to better arms and numerical superiority, an army can kill many more innocent civilians than all the world's terrorists combined. And on top of that, all the blame falls squarely on the terrorists' shoulders.
 This greatly simplifies the work of law enforcement agencies. Previously, for example, hostages had to be freed, putting at risk the lives of special-forces operatives. Now, they can quietly be wiped out along with the terrorists.
 Sadly, Western civilization's newfound defenders correctly divined a trend that is strengthening in the West. Putin's words struck a chord with many in Europe and even more in the United States. 
 During the Balkan conflict, military propagandists coined the phrase &quot;collateral damage.&quot; This means that casualties among civilian populations do not count, so to speak, if they are unpremeditated. &quot;We're the good guys, so if we killed some innocent people, well, we didn't do it on purpose.&quot; 
 The bad guys, on the other hand, are being bad intentionally. In Chechnya, collateral damage accounts for tens of thousands of lives; in Iraq, the trade embargo has probably taken hundreds of thousands of lives. In Chechnya, the war is not against innocent civilians, but against Shamil Basayev and Khattab; the Iraqi people are not the target of the embargo, only Saddam Hussein. The tragedy is that innocent civilians are dying in droves, while Basayev, Khattab and Saddam thrive.
 War does not come without casualties, and losses among civilian populations are unavoidable. For precisely this reason, responsible politicians should do everything within their power to avoid resorting to force.
 However, justifying civilian casualties in advance and giving the military carte blanche to commit war crimes is not only amoral and irresponsible, but also politically shortsighted. By relieving the military of blame, politicians transfer it to themselves. This already happened in the Third Reich, and the Nuremberg Trial dealt with the consequences.
 While Arab countries have been trying - in their own interests - to discourage Western leaders from rash actions, Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union have come out in support of the harshest of measures. They seem to adhere to the logic that the more blood spilled and the more brutally the West behaves, the easier it will be for them to justify the horrors that occur at home.
 Political expediency does not always coincide with moral principles. And Putin's position remains shortsighted. The experience of contemporary Russia teaches us just how futile and ineffective reliance on the unlimited use of force is.
 The victors are rarely indicted for war crimes. However, even a very powerful army cannot always win, and for this reason political responsibility comes into the equation sooner or later. The new crusade has been proclaimed in the name of democratic principles, but it seems that it will end up going precisely against these principles. So, it seems that it is not just from terrorists that freedom must be safeguarded.
 
 <i>Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist. </i>

TITLE: Putin Should Stand Fast In Ukraine Investigation
TEXT: PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin's decision to support the U.S. anti-terrorism operation - and to nudge Russia's central Asian satellites to do the same - was perceived as something of a turning point in Mos cow's relationship with the West. And legitimately so, for the move implied that we may not be full partners, but we are clearly no longer enemies.
 Perhaps a more accurate litmus test of the degree to which Russia has shed its Soviet-era mentality will be its stance on last week's crash of a Tu-154 passenger jet, which the Pentagon has blamed on a Ukrainian missile gone astray during military exercises.
 The blast, which killed 78 people, demands a thorough investigation that could reveal some nasty truths about Ukraine, with whom Russia's relations are just starting to warm up.
 Moscow must apply the full force of its influence on Kiev to ensure the probe is as complete, transparent and conclusive as possible. This will be politically riskier than the decision to support Washington's strikes.
 With that decision, Putin may have angered some hawks, but overall, his move put Moscow in a win-win situation: It kept the country from becoming an outcast, placed a brawny American buffer between Russia and the imminent warfare on its southern flank and helped tone down Western criticism of the Chechnya war.
 All that in return for some intelligence data that Russia, on its own, couldn't have used much anyway and a bit of illusory independence for its central Asian neighbors. Not a bad deal.
 With Ukraine, the stakes are higher: a $1.4-billion gas debt Mos cow still hopes to collect, a promising market for Russian firms and a slew of up-in-the-air treaties.
 Putin has shown that he understands how badly his image could suffer - in the West, at least - if he blindly defends Ukraine's military and allows Kiev to withhold information.
 While he initially said he had &quot;no reason to doubt our Ukrainian partners,&quot; two days later, as Washington became ever firmer in its claims, Moscow said the president was &quot;not satisfied&quot; with the evidence from Ukraine.
 Putin has drawn fire once before for hush-hushing a military accident - recall the Kursk disaster, that Putin himself has called the lowest point of his presidency.
 With the Tu-154 probe still in full swing, it seems especially symbolic that the Kursk has finally been lifted, rattling its chains like the Ghost of Christmas Past - a sobering reminder of how not to handle an investigation, even one that threatens to shame the military and dampen relations with an old neighbor.
 If Putin ever wished for a way to make amends for Kursk, here's his chance to start.
 
 <i>This comment originally appeared as an editorial in The Moscow Times on Oct. 10. </i>

TITLE: keeping alive cynical spirit
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: &quot;Cynic is the place where everything is permitted, except aggression,&quot; says Vla di mir Postnichenko, the club's founder. &quot;You can do whatever you want as long as you don't get in anyone else's way. That's the only requirement here.&quot;
 It could be a spontaneous concert by a rock group that just happened to drop by or an amateur strip show, but most things are not planned at Cynic, the inexpensive underground-style club that opened near the Moscow Station in February and has been packed on most nights since.
 &quot;We never know what will happen. A crazy French band dropped in and played a show after their concert. Tres Muchachos came and played a great concert before leaving for Moscow. And girls sometimes get up and dance on the tables,&quot; says Postnichenko.
 Nevertheless, Cynic is not a music club. It is rather a place where young people meet, spending hours sitting over a beer and sometimes stargazing, as the club is often visited by members of bands like Multfilmy, Pep-See, Tequilajazzz or Volkovtrio. In this respect, Cynic is the closest the city has to Saigon, the unofficial name for the now-defunct coffee house that served as a hangout for unofficial artists, writers and musicians for two decades during the Soviet era.
 There have been reports recently that Cynic might be closed soon, as the owners of the building plan to pull it down to free the space for a hotel. But the management claims that Cynic will be around for a long time, and if it is forced from its current location, it will reopen somewhere else in the center.
 &quot;Cynic has succeeded as a club and an idea. The city needs a club like this, and it will continue to exist, if not here then in another place. We promise that we will keep the spirit of Cynic alive,&quot; says Postnichenko.
 Postnichenko has been the drummer for the band NOM for the past 12 years, and says Cynic draws the best from the many different places that he saw during the band's tours in western Europe. &quot;A few times, Londoners have come [to Cynic] and say they feel like they're in London, while a friend from Berlin came here yesterday and said, 'It's a Berlin place.' But it's simply my place, the place where I feel good.&quot;
 Postnichenko says that Cynic was his answer to the shortcomings of the other clubs in the city, and the need for a place to meet friends.
 &quot;From the very beginning, I decided that I wouldn't invent a concept and follow it. I wanted to do it for myself, which means for my friends, for my friends' friends and so on,&quot; he says.
 Although Cynic drew some of the crowd from nearby Fish Fabrique when it first opened, Postnichenko insists there are enough people for several clubs of this kind in St. Petersburg.
 &quot;The circle of artists, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, and people who like this atmosphere of freedom and creativity is large enough in our city, because it's the second capital,&quot; he says.
 Indeed, after 8 p.m. Cynic is usually so packed that wooden doors are put between tables to create more space, while beer barrels are used as chairs.
 Initially, Cynic planned to introduce club memberships, but eventually dropped the idea. &quot;We do have face control, but it's not visible,&quot; says Postnichenko. &quot;The district is quite problematic, as it's near the Moscow Station, so we had a few problems initially when some rednecks tried to get in. You don't notice [the face control], but [the rednecks] no longer come here.&quot;
 Although the club does not pay musicians and has no proper P.A. system or even a stage, some bands like to play there. Ogorodov Rubanov Ragazanov, or ORR, the improvisational trio fronted by Auktsyon's saxophonist Nikolai Rubanov, has played in Cynic a couple of times simply because they like the atmosphere. Strangely enough, the sound was actually quite good.
 &quot;It's exactly what I was trying to achieve,&quot; says Postnichenko. &quot;Musicians don't think about the pay and don't count how many people come and what their percentage will be, but simply play if they want to.&quot;
 
 <i>Cynic, 4 Goncharnaya Ul., M: Ploschhad Vosstaniya. 277-5164. Sun.-Thurs., 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. Fri.-Sat., 10 a.m. to 7 a.m. No cover charge. </i>

TITLE: early music festival revolutionizes repertoire
AUTHOR: by Giulara Sadykh-zade
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Early Music Festival is in many ways a unique phenomenon for St. Petersburg. The festival, now in its fourth year, is not intended for the general concert-going public that is used to grandiose romantic symphonies and pathos-ridden concertos, but for the enlightened, and even slightly overin dulged music connoisseur who values refined expression and imaginative repertoire above all. For listeners like these, the festival provides truly priceless opportunities: Over the space of three weeks, they can hear Old Russian singing by the Moscow Patriarchate, enjoy the clavesin compositions of Couperin and Scarlatti and marvel at 16th-century Dutch love songs.
 In one fell swoop, the festival has expanded the scope of concert repertoire, which generally begins with the 18th century, to include music from as far back as six centuries ago, much of it wonderful but largely unknown, which gains even more in authentic performance.
 If the performers are able to immerse themselves in the style and spirit of bygone musical epochs, while also drawing on their own experience, and if following authenticity to the letter does not harm the individuality of the performance, then something genuine and significant can be brought to the concert hall.
 A good illustration of this was served by two festival concerts held at the Cappella - the performance by the Dutch ensemble Currende on Oct. 3 and the performance on Oct. 4 by two countertenors, Michael Chance from the U.K. and Mikael Bellini from Sweden. The Dutch group played polyphonic songs and canonic fragments from masses: Kyrie, Gloria and Agnus Dei. The expert intertwining of polyphonic voices demonstrated the remarkable union of method and technique in Dutch polyphonic composition The passionate outpourings to the Lady Beautiful were performed with spontaneous emotion, which was all the more catching as it was strengthened by a very subtle and precise performance. The romantic flourishes that appeared in the playing and singing of the ensemble were clearly borrowed from later times, but they seemed to be completely in place and organic in these songs telling of the torments of the heart.
 Michael Chance demonstrated a different manner of performance on the following day. A favorite of St. Petersburg audiences, this is the third time he has performed at the festival, and he drew a full hall for his concert. Newcomer Bellini was greeted less warmly, and this turned out to be justified. The two countertenors sang arias and duets from Purcell and Handel with varying success. Where Chance showed a fiery temperament and an irrepressible ardor, Bellini remained dry and cold. His voice occasionally fell out of hearing during the duets, the ends of phrases were often swallowed, and the intonation of the ensemble was dubious at best.
 In the second half, things began to improve. &quot;Le&ccedil;ons dans la t&eacute;n&egrave;bre&quot; by Francois Couperin proved to be an extremely interesting composition. The opus was written on biblical themes, and designed to be performed at evening service on Ash Wednesday. Its recitative-declamatory mould and grief-stricken, narrative intonation obviously surpasses the genre of Protestant Passions, and the singers were able to bring across fully the heartfelt conviction and melancholic mood of the music.
 The festival, meanwhile, is continuing. The most important concerts are still to come, as it seems the organizers like to leave the best for last. Next Monday will see a hammerklavier concert by the pioneer of Russian authentic performance, Alexei Lyubimov, on Wednesday singer Evelyn Tabb and lutist Anthony Rooley from Britain will perform the program &quot;A Many Colored Coat&quot; and the festival will close next Friday with a performance by the renowned Italian ensemble Il Giardino Armonico.
 
 <i>See listings for details. </i>

TITLE: bourgeois takes over hermitage
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: &quot;Louise Bourgeois at the Hermitage.&quot; This laconic title speaks for itself. One of the greatest living artists, whose work stretches over most of the 20th century, French-born U.S. artist Louise Bourgeois has finally brought her art to the Hermitage.
 &quot;Since the times of Catherine the Great, it has been our mission to show our audiences the best of the world's contemporary art,&quot; said Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky. 
 &quot;Some would find it strange to see these works here. But Bourgeois looks very much at home at the Hermitage, with her spiders and 'personages' fitting in with our collections of Scythian bronze and Stone Age female sculpture.&quot;
 The exhibition comprises Bourgeois' most important works, including &quot;Nature Study,&quot; &quot;Destruction of the Father&quot; and &quot;Fillette,&quot; selected by the artist herself, her assistant Jerry Gorovoy and contemporary-art curator Julie Sylvester. 
 Twenty-five sculptures and more than 200 drawings will be on display for three months and will then travel to Helsinki, Stockholm and Oslo.
 The exhibition occupies several different locations in the museum, making for a longer journey through the Hermitage. A several-meter-high spider, Maman - one of the symbols of Bourgeois' art - occupies one of the halls in the Winter Palace, while a baby spider can be seen in the museum's courtyard. 
 Meanwhile, Bourgeois' 1994-1995 &quot;Insomnia Drawings&quot; - labyrinths, clock faces and flowers growing on sheet music - completes the exhibition in one of the halls on the museum's second floor.
 Sylvester, the curator of the exhibition, believes that the varied locations work to the exhibit's advantage. &quot;The idea is for people to travel from one part of the exhibit to the other and have time to think about what they've seen here while they are walking through the treasures of the Hermitage,&quot; she said.
 Bourgeois' artistry bears the influence of virtually all the major artistic trends of the last century, yet her pieces are strikingly original and deeply personal, unveiling childhood impressions, painful memories and insomniac thoughts.
 &quot;Louise's works deal with universal emotions. Her humor is of a black and somewhat sarcastic nature,&quot; Bourgeois' assistant Jerry Gorovoy said. &quot;It is a certain way of fighting back or teasing someone, and also a way of defending herself.&quot;
 Bourgeois is reluctant to explain her works, preferring that they remain enigmatic, thought-provoking and diversely interpreted. She hopes her drawings and sculptures will communicate with audiences.
 &quot;We wanted to bring the masterpieces. Even though &quot;Destruction of the Father&quot; is fragile and doesn't travel often, she very much wanted it to be here because it is one of her greatest works,&quot; Sylvester said. &quot;Certain sculptures can't be displayed here because of their size. They wouldn't fit through the doors.&quot;
 The credit for Bourgeois' first exhibition in Russia should go first to Sylvester. The idea came to her from conversations with the artist herself. &quot;There aren't many things that truly impress or interest Louise: She has won so many awards and had major shows at the greatest museums around the world,&quot; Sylvester said. &quot;And when I wondered what could possibly be exciting, in one second she replied, 'Oh, L'Hermitage!'&quot;
 Bourgeois, who will turn 90 in December didn't attend the opening Tuesday in person, but recorded a greeting on video tape that is being screened at the exhibition, where she talks of her visit to Leningrad back in the 1930s, before she began her artistic career. While it may be hard to say whether Bourgeois' travels had any impact on her future art, the memories of the trip seem to have influenced her decision to hold this exhibition.
 
 <i>&quot;Louise Bourgeois at the Hermitage&quot; can be seen through Jan. 13, 2002. See listings for details. </i>

TITLE: classical venue gets all kitschy
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Who said that a classical venue can't host a piece of kitsch? Only the St. Petersburg Philharmonic is brave enough to organize a festival that has the word kitsch in its title. In fact, over the next few weeks, the Philharmonic will be treating its audiences to an array of performances that many may find unusual for one of the country's most respected classical venues. And the festival &quot;Refined Kitsch,&quot; which kicks off on Oct. 14, is only one of the surprises.
 &quot;Kitsch as an idea has its roots in the past,&quot; says Leonid Gakkel, deputy artistic director of the Philharmonic. &quot;It turns out that composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Mozart and Schubert weren't entirely averse to kitsch.&quot;
 Consisting of just two concerts, the festival starts with a percussion performance, in which the Mark Pekarsky Percussion Orchestra from Moscow will be joining baritone Andrei Slavny, poet Dmitry Prigov, a children's choreographic troupe and a children's drummers' group. Called &quot;Nostalgia,&quot; the project rolls back the decades, taking the audiences straight back to the Soviet Union. 
 &quot;Pekarsky is not only an outstanding musician, he is a talented composer. He has composed a few musical pieces specifically for the program. 'Nostalgia' promises much more than a good concert. It is going to be a memorable show,&quot; Gakkel said.
 Following &quot;Nostalgia&quot; in the festival's program will be a performance by the internationally renowned Jacques Loussier trio Play Bach on Oct. 21. A renowned jazz veteran, pianist Loussier established his trio in 1959. The group's first album, &quot;Play Bach,&quot; sold nearly 6 million copies.
 For their concert at the Philharmonic, Play Bach will perform music by Vivaldi, Ravel, Debussy and, of course, Bach.
 November will bring more suprises. The shows &quot;Tango, Piazzolla, Tango&quot; by Buenos Aires Tango Hoy and choreographed by Margarita Fernandes, along with a group of five soloists of the highly acclaimed Colon Theater, will perform at the Shostakovich Philharmonic from Nov. 1 through Nov 4. Local accordionist Andrei Alexeyev and a chamber orchestra will perform alongside the dancers on stage.
 These concerts, quite a departure from the Philharmonic's traditional repertoire, are part of its new policy of actively reaching out to new audiences. Last season, the venue hosted a fashion show, ballet and literary evenings and even a Brian Ferry concert, and all of them were packed, showing that the Philharmonic has benefited from its new strategy. As tickets to these concerts are more expensive, they fill both the coffers and the halls.
 
 <i>See listings for details. </i>

TITLE: cure for ills at sem sorok
AUTHOR: by Thomas Rymer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: During my university days, I had a friend who insisted every time I got sick that what I needed was some &quot;Jewish penicillin,&quot; or chicken soup with matzo balls. Given that she was Jewish I took her word on the nomenclature and, since she was pretty bright, I took her word on the medicinal qualities of the dish as well. She never steered me wrong.
 The fact that I found myself ill and with plans to check out a Jewish restaurant this weekend was merely fortuitous.
 Sem Sorok (Seven Forty) restaurant is located a bit off the beaten path, but it's worth the trip out into the city's Vyborgsky region.
 My dining companion and I arrived and were shown to our table, passing on the way the three-piece combo (violin, clarinet and guitar) that added to the atmosphere for the evening, playing Jewish folk music with the occasional pop ballad thrown in to break things up a bit.
 Our table was at one of the second- floor windows, revealing a view of trees and leaves to which I had become unaccustomed living in the city center.
 In fact, the atmosphere in the restaurant manages to turn the rare trick of being folksy without being tragically dark and being bright enough without seeming like a cafeteria.
 Perusing the wine list, we discovered a number of Israeli wines on offer, picking a 1998 Samson Cabernet Sauvignon (700 rubles), along with a couple bottles of mineral water (30 rubles each) to accompany our meal.
 Turning to the bill of fare, we were pleased to find a menu with a wide variety of options. Skipping past traditional offerings like the gefilte fish, herring, potato latkes and bliny served with sour cream and salmon, my companion opted for the roast duck stuffed with apples marinated in rum (325 rubles), which was served with a red bilberry sauce that sweetened the dish nicely.
 I went with the tried-and-true elixir, the chicken soup with matzo balls (120 rubles) and was not at all disappointed.
 For the main course, my companion was a bit braver (or, alternatively, less queasy) than I, choosing the stewed chicken hearts served with baked mashed potatoes (220 rubles). After a bit of coaxing, I did finally try a bit of her entr&eacute;e. I remain skeptical, but my companion definitely enjoyed it
 For myself, I ordered the roast meat (Rost Fleish) with stewed potatoes and prunes (300 rubles).
 I was a bit taken aback to discover that the meat dish I had ordered was more in the way of a stewed beef than the standard roast beef that I had been expecting. But I soon found myself enjoying the tender pieces of beef done in a semi-sweet sauce with a hint of rum.
 The fact that I'm not a fan of prunes and that the starch dishes were in separate bowls made trading easy, and I enjoyed the potatoes that had been baked after being mashed.
 The choice of entr&eacute;es on the menu was also broad, with fish dishes including perch, salmon and holy fish, with the assortment of meat dishes also including lamb, beef tongue, veal and mutton.
 To top it all off, we shared a dessert of pastries filled with ice cream and ladled with red bilberry sauce (110 rubles), accompanied by a cappuccino for my companion (50 rubles) and a regular black coffee (50 rubles) for me.
 In all, the meal, if a bit pricey, was excellent, as was the service, which was very professional and attentive without being overly conspicuous.
 Sem Sorok is definitely worth the trip north, although be warned that the food is not, in fact, kosher.
 
 <i>Sem Sorok, 108 Bolshoi Samsonovsky Pr., 246-3444. Open noon to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Mondays. Dinner for two with wine 2,025 rubles (about $70). Menu in English and Russian. Mastercard, Maestro and Visa accepted. </i>

TITLE: business finds a way to help
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As the city's 300th birthday approaches, authorities are seeking support from local and international businesses to refurbish the city, as the money allocated from the federal budget is woefully inadequate to the task of recovering from decades of neglect.
 &quot;St. Petersburg has more than 300 statues and 1,700 memorial plaques, and they require a great deal of money to be properly taken care of,&quot; said Vla di mir Timofeyev, director of the St. Petersburg Sculpture Museum. This, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg, when one considers all the palaces, buildings and architectural details that also need care.
 According to Timofeyev, this year alone the amount of money donated by the sponsors for various restoration projects was almost three times the 10 million rubles provided by the state.
 One of the most impressive ongoing projects is the restoration of the beautiful Mikhailovsky Gardens fence, carried out with the support of JT International. This year alone, the company donated over $200,000 for the work. 
 The project started in 1998, long before the massive jubilee campaign began. In early 1998, JTI and Governor Vladimir Yakovlev discussed the city's plans for celebrating St. Petersburg's tercentenary. Governor Yakovlev described his plans to restore a number of historical sites but expressed concern that funds had been lacking for all of the projects planned.
 The company chose the Mik hai lov sky Garden project because it has great cultural significance for the city and was in an urgent need of restoration. The fence, designed by architect Alfred Parland, was installed in 1907.
 Irina Teterina, chief architect at the State Russian Museum, said that by 1998 the fence was in a state of grave disrepair. Expert analysis showed that nearly 60 percent of the metal constructions had corroded, the brick pillars were falling apart and the brass lanterns and column tops had been lost. 
 &quot;The metal parts were heavily rusted, the level of corrosion high, and some of the details missing,&quot; Teterina recalls. &quot;The columns had become chipped and tarnished. Everything was just crying out for repairs.&quot;
 The restoration has been going on for more than two years already. Approximately 50 percent of the repairs have so far been completed - 19 restored sections of the Fence as well as the main gate are already in place - and organizers hope to complete all the work by May 2003. 
 &quot;Without a doubt, the process would have taken years longer if it hadn't been for the sponsorship,&quot; Teterina said. &quot;This year, the State Russian Museum doesn't have the money to contribute to the repairs, but next year we are planning to help out.&quot;
 The restoration is particularly expensive because special equipment had to be produced to forge the more intricate parts of the fence.
 &quot;We are understandably proud of this project,&quot; said Mark Shaver, JTI general manager for Russia. &quot;The contribution from our company will ensure that the fence, which has been mentioned by a number of Russian literary giants in their works, including Vla di mir Nabokov, will be returned to its rightful place as an integral component of the Church of the Saviour on the Spilled Blood architectural complex.&quot;
 Baltunexim Bank, which provided $1.4 million for the restoration of the Ros tral columns on the tip of Va si le v sky Island two years ago and a further $120,000 for the restoration of the &quot;Taming of Horses&quot; sculptural ensemble on Anichkov Bridge this year, is another company determined to help beautify the city.
 &quot;The Rostral columns before restoration were a miserable sight, with fragments missing and an eroded surface,&quot; said Baltunexim Bank spokes person Snezhana Nikolayeva. &quot;The bad condition of these historical monuments, especially in the very heart of town, worked against the city's image as cultural capital.&quot;
 The dismal condition of both the Rostral columns and the &quot;Taming of Horses&quot; had long been recognized by the state, but money was not available even to start renovations. &quot;The bank's goal was not only to restore the monuments, which are symbols of St. Petersburg, but also to draw more sponsors to other projects,&quot; Nikolayeva said.
 JTI's Shaver concurs with this strategy. &quot;JTI hopes its cooperation with the city of St. Petersburg will serve as a model and encourage other companies - Russian as well as international - to support the ongoing program for the restoration and preservation of St. Petersburg's priceless historic and cultural treasures,&quot; Shaver said.
 This strategy is paying off already. For example, the local political movement Choice of St. Petersburg has sponsored the restoration of the lion sculptures on Admiralteiskaya Naberezhnaya. The lions were unveiled to the public this month. 
 &quot;Lions are the guardians of the city,&quot; Sergei Mironov said, explaining the movement's choice. &quot;Very sadly, we have seen that other lion sculptures in the city are also in quite a depressing state.&quot;
 According to Mironov, Choice of St. Petersburg will keep track of the condition of the restored monument, carrying out additional restorations if necessary.
 The glorious fence of the Summer Garden along the Neva embankment - one of the truly unique gems of the city - has also found a sponsor in Sberbank. Preliminary studies are being carried out to determine the extent and cost of the repairs, which will begin next year. According to Summer Garden Director Tatyana Kozlova, Sberbank has already agreed to provide whatever sum is necessary.
 &quot;The bank signed a long-term agreement with the Summer Garden in May 2001,&quot; said Sberbank spokesperson Svet lana Sergeyeva. &quot;We would like to contribute to the anniversary preparations by funding restoration of this famous fence, which was last repaired 20 years ago.&quot;
 Kozlova said the restoration of the fence will be finished by the spring of 2003, but the Summer Garden itself needs additional support.
 &quot;Even with more money provided by the state for the restoration of the garden, we won't be able to cover all expenses,&quot; Kozlova said. &quot;Our problems are decades old. Until several years ago we didn't even have the budget to hire our own landscape designer.&quot;
 The local company Power Machines is sponsoring the restoration of the two sculpture groups that stand at the entrance of Manezh Exhibition Hall on St. Isaac's Square. The first will be open to public next month, while the second will be completed by 2003.
 According to Timofeyev, several companies are now discussing the possibility of restoring the statue of Tsar Nicholas I in the center of St. Isaac's Square, the sphinxes on Universitetskaya Naberehznaya and the statue of the Bronze Horseman.
 Renovations are underway at the Lutheran Saint Maria Church on Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa, thanks to the efforts of Finnish churches and parishes. According to Jamsen Kauko, consul general of Finland, nearly 20 million Finnish marks have been earmarked for the work, which started in 1999. 
 Built in 1805, the church was turned into a dormitory in 1938. It also served as a House of Nature in the 1970s and 1980s, until it was given back to the parish in 1990. The inside and outside of the church have gradually returned to their original appearance. Three services are held every Sunday, and the church's charity takes care of more than 100 elderly people.
 Many businesspeople feel that any company with serious long-term plans in St. Petersburg simply must pitch in now and become a full-fledged member of the local community, incorporating support for social work, the arts and restoration works into their corporate visions.
 &quot;Everywhere we do business, we bring a deep commitment to corporate citizenship and community involvement,&quot; Shaver said. &quot;Indeed, through corporate sponsorships and contributions, we support a wide range of social and charitable activities, and St. Petersburg is no exception.&quot;
 Many other monuments remain orphans, waiting for their sponsors to appear. The city lists the statue of composer Mikhail Glinka on Teatralnaya Ploshchad, the statue of writer Maxim Gorky on Kamenoostrovsky Prospect and the statue of poet Mikhail Lermontov on Lermontovsky Prospect as some of the most urgent cases.
 According to Timofeyev, it has been particularly difficult to attract sponsorship for the restoration of Marsovoye Polye because of its associations with the Soviet era.
 &quot;People associate it with communism and are reluctant to help, not taking into account that the first burial sites appeared there after the February Revolution in 1917,&quot; Timofeyev said. &quot;The red color [of the granite there] strengthens the association.&quot;
 Timofeyev also worries about the maintenance of both restored and unrestored monuments. 
 &quot;Unfortunately, often it is not just time and humidity that are responsible for the poor state of our monument,&quot; Ti mofeyev said. &quot;If you happen to be on Ploshchad Dekabristov in the evening, you may well see youngsters climbing on the Bronze Horseman. It is also not uncommon for people to steal parts of monuments and sell them for scrap metal.&quot;
 Timofeyev noted that within a few days of the unveiling of the newly restored lions on the Admiralteiskaya Naberezhnaya, some vandal had already scratched them.

TITLE: keeping city architecture alive
AUTHOR: by Sami Hyrskylahti
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The recent trend in St. Petersburg architecture has been a kind of historicism, which has also been called the Petersburg style. The facades of new buildings that have filled some of the few available empty plots in the city's historical center have been stylized to fit the old neighborhood. As a result, new buildings look much the same as those built more than 100 years ago. 
 Ordinary citizens may be satisfied that the city is doing something to preserve the unique harmony of downtown St. Petersburg, but many local architects have other ideas. 
 &quot;We think that St. Petersburg should be a living organism, and architecture should represent its own time. If we go out now, for example, we will see buildings in different styles from different times: baroque, classical, art nouveau. They stand next to each others, but still they look perfect together,&quot; says architect Dmitry Melentev, 28.
 Melentev's personal list of outstanding local architecture is not limited to the pre-revolutionary period. He also points to certain objects built in the style of 1920s or 1930s constructivism or even 1940s and 1950s Stalin-era architecture, naming buildings such as the Sovetskaya Hotel, the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall, the Theater of the Young Spectator, as well as the new building that houses the Russian National Library at Park Pobedy. 
 Whereas many would see these as &quot;Soviet monsters,&quot; Melentev praises them. &quot;They are not only outstanding architecture, but they are also representative of their time.&quot;
 But when asked to mention an example of fine architecture built in post-Soviet St. Petersburg, Melentev prefers to remain silent. &quot;One could say that [for the past 10 years] artistic quality has gotten worse. Now everybody just wants to stylize,&quot; Melentev sadly claims.
 Born and raised in Russia's southern Republic of Dagestan, Melentev moved to St. Petersburg in 1990 to study architecture at the famous Repin Academy of Arts.
 &quot;For any architect, St. Petersburg is an important city. And the people who actually built this city studied at the Repin Academy,&quot; he stresses. 
 According to Melentev, the education he received at the academy was very traditional but strong. &quot;We had one of the best libraries in Europe and [our] teachers knew what was happening in international architecture, just as they did even during Soviet times,&quot; Melentev says.
 After graduating in 1996, Melentev and several other former students started an architecture studio called Vitruvii & Sons, named after Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a first-century B.C. Roman architect and the author of &quot;Ten Books on Architecture.&quot; 
 A year later, Melentev also participated in the Prince Charles of Wales Urban Design Task Force project in Sidon, Lebanon.
 Such projects, however, were not enough to survive on in the newly capitalistic Russia. Living in the post-Soviet world meant finding a job like everybody else. &quot;We were very lucky, because we immediately got some interesting clients,&quot; Melentev recalls. 
 One of the studio's first projects - an interior for a house in the southern St. Petersburg suburb of Pushkin -won second prize at the High Style of Interior Festival in 1997.
 Later came more success, such as winning the Modulor festival in 1999 for the interior design of the Christopher restaurant on Bolshaya Morskaya Ul. 
 The studio also won several tenders, such as the reconstruction of the Lensoviet Palace of Culture, as well as projects where some old factories or even whole former industrial blocks were supposed to be turned into modern shopping centers.
 Unfortunately, the studio was unable to realize most of these projects as a result of the economic crisis that hit Russia in August 1998. 
 Melentev finds several practical problems when attempting to compare contemporary Russian architecture with Western architecture. 
 &quot;In Russia, we very rarely complete projects. We are also late [in incorporating] new building techniques. And the quality of construction work and the materials that are used is often poor,&quot; Melentev says.
 Melentev indicates a short list of architects who have influenced him, including Italy's Renzo Piano, Switzerland's Peter Zumtor and England's William Alsop, who is the only really big Western architect with a studio in Russia, in Moscow. Again, Melentev prefers not to mention any contemporary Russian architects. 
 &quot;When it comes to Russian interior design, however, there are already several designers who are at the top international level. Interior design has developed here because it doesn't demand large investments, and a large number of projects have already been completed,&quot; Melentev explains.
 Still, he believes that there is a great future for Russian architecture. &quot;If the economy keeps on growing, everything will be fine. The quality of [Russian] architectural education is very high,&quot; Melentev says. &quot;Finally, there will also appear a characteristic contemporary architecture for Russia, like there is in Japan or in Finland, for instance,&quot; Melentev adds. 
 Melentev points to the magazine &quot;Project Russia&quot; as a good example of developing Russian architectural culture. 
 Established in 1995, &quot;Project Russia&quot; is a Dutch-Russian architecture publication that is very professionally produced and read throughout Russia.
 At present, Vitruvii & Sons is busy with several projects in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Suzdal. But Vitruvii & Sons really hit the jackpot last summer, when it won a competion among architecture firms to plan work on the 18th-century Konstantinovsky Palace. The Konstantinovsky Palace, virtally destroyed during World War II and situated in St. Petersburg's southwestern suburb of Strelna, is supposed to be converted into a seaside retreat for President Vladimir Putin. If all goes according to plan, the work is to be finished by the city's 300th anniversary in May 2003.
 In cooperation with the Russian Academy of Sciences' design institute GipoNII Ran, Vitruvii & Sons will be responsible for the general planning and designing of a number of additional projects at the Konstantinovsky Palace complex, including a five-star hotel, a sports complex, a yacht club, a congress hall and a diplomatic village. The project is expected to cost about $200 million.
 The studio's most exciting project, however, is the so-called Castle of Water, which is still in the proposal stage. This project is a strange hybrid of Russian tradition and the latest high technology.
 The Castle of Water is to be a discussion chamber, which is to be kept underground in the form of a fish pond when not in use.
 &quot;It's one of our principles, that every architectural project should be based on some story and also include the memory of that place, its context,&quot; Me lentev says.

TITLE: aqua-park project has uncertain future
AUTHOR: by Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In about two years, the citizens of St. Petersburg, as well as tourists visiting the city, could have the opportunity to swim in the pools of a new $42-million aqua park. Construction of the project began last month in the city's Frunzensky District.
 In 2003, a local company call Pervy Peterburgsky Aqua Park plans to complete construction of a 26,000-square-meter complex, which will contain a variety of water attractions including 11 indoor swimming pools with artificial waves, as well as a 100-meter outdoor pool, water slides, saunas, Turkish and Roman baths, a restaurant with room for 240 guests and a business center with a conference hall.
 According to the company's representatives, the aqua park, which is located near Park Internatsionalistov on Prazhskaya Ul., will attract about 1,800 visitors daily. 
 But City Hall representatives, as well as specialists from Finland's spa business, expressed doubts that such a facility could be a successful and profitable project in Russia.
 Lyudmila Likhachyova, the City Hall Architecture Committee spokes person, said that Oleg Kharchenko, vice governor responsible for city planning, had recently approved the project. 
 &quot;Kharchenko said that the project looks better compared to the others that were recently submitted. [Some] People tried to draw something that looked like the [shores] of the United Arab Emirates, which would require a tremendous amount of money to build,&quot; Likhachyova said.
 The Architecture Committee has received seven different draft aqua-park projects over the last few years. One of the companies submitting a draft was Gepard, which suggesting building an 8,000-square-meter water amusement center in the Kalininsky District. 
 Another company called Petersburgsky Aqua Park tried to assure City Hall that it could find sufficient funds to build the same kind of facility in the Primorsky District on a plot of land that had previously served as a garbage dump. None of these projects ever made it off the ground.
 &quot;We have already started building it, [and we are] preparing the construction site at the moment,&quot; said Alexander Kuznetsov, head of Pervy Peterburgsky Aqua Park in a telephone inteview.
 &quot;You'll see the walls next year,&quot; he said.
 Eero Mattila, the general manager of the Finnish Serena Aqua Park in Helsinki, said it would be a mistake to build such a facility in St. Petersburg.
 &quot;If you had money to invest in an aqua park, you'd better eat it or it's going to be wasted anyway,&quot; Mattila said in a interview. &quot;It will only be possible to recoup your investment if a ticket costs [at least] $150 for a one-day visit. But I don't think there are [many] people in St. Petersburg who would be happy to pay this money.&quot;
 Mattila said the 150-million-mark ($25 million) Serena park built in 1989 is currently bankrupt. The visitor fee, which is currently $16, is enough to cover only 10 percent of the park's operating costs. &quot;[The visitor fee] doesn't cover all the costs of heating the complex, changing the water or cleaning [the complex],&quot; he said.
 &quot;We attract about 1,000 people a day on weekends, but look what's going on here during working days! And another thing is the number of visitors does really depend on weather. If it's sunny and warm, more people come,&quot; Mattila said.
 &quot;I don't think St. Petersburg would be very different from Helsinki in this sense,&quot; he added.
 Mattila said that hundreds of spas were built in Finland in the 1970s and 1980s, but none of them is profitable, mostly because of bad weather conditions.
 Likhachyova also said that the project is unrealistic, since the construction would cost about $3,500 per square meter. &quot;It would be hard to recoup any investments under these conditions because the [average] income of Russians is quite low. And this is not just about [the amount of money] invested, but also about other works such as anti-corrosion measures and water heating, which would demand a lot of money,&quot; she said.
 &quot;It would be much cheaper to take children to swim at the Serena Aqua Park in Finland,&quot; Likhachyova said.
 According to a recent Gallup survey conducted in St. Petersburg in March 2001, the majority of city residents support the idea of building an aqua park, while 80 percent of them would like to visit it. Forty-four percent said they would go there regularly. 
 The survey also showed that those who enjoy banyas and who frequent the city's swimming pools would also be most likely to visit an aqua park.
 &quot;This project looks completely realistic, and according to our calculations, it should be possible to recoup any investmetn,&quot; said Alexander Lesovsky, Gallup St. Petersburg representative in a telephone interview this month.
 &quot;We are relying on a very conservative forecast here. I mean that people usually overestimate when they say how many times a month they would go to an aqua park. But even having this conservative view [the conclusion is] that any investments will be recouped, and [the aqua park] could even become competition for the Finnish aqua park,&quot; Lesovsky said.
 Nikolai Kook, head of Eko-Police, a St. Petersburg-based construction company responsible for the project, said that investment into the aqua park would be recouped within 4 1/2 years in accordance with calculations that were made a few months before construction started.
 &quot;It is true that only 25 percent of aqua parks in the world are profitable, and that's why we came up with the idea of using it not only during the day, but also at night. We'll use it as a nightclub or as a concert complex,&quot; said Kook.
 &quot;We understand that it would be a problem [to compensate for all the expenses] since the ventilation systems would have to work around the clock to get rid of 800 cubic meters of moisture extracted from the pools every hour. That's why we're going to work 21 hours a day instead of just 12 hours with a technical break from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.,&quot; he said.

TITLE: admiralty district reborn
AUTHOR: by Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Admiralty District lies in the heart of the city, home to such pearls as the Admiralty, St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Bronze Horseman and the Mariinsky Theater.
 However, alongside these shining jewels are some rough stones, waiting to be polished and brought to public attention. With the upcoming city jubilee, local authorities are motivated to turn their attention to New Holland, Sennaya Ploshchad, the Warsaw Railroad Station and the General Post Office building, or <i>Pochtamt.</i>
 &quot;In fact, the Admiralty District intends to complete 20 projects by 2003,&quot; said Yunis Lukmanov, head of Admiralty District Administration. &quot;That's quite a lot considering that the entire city is planning to complete 134.&quot;
 The reconstruction of Sennaya Ploshchad is one of the most important and expensive projects of the entire city, according to Lumanov.
 This central square, which has been a key gathering point since the days of Pushkin, has been a noisy and dirty construction site for nearly a decade now. Badly disfigured in 1961 when the Holy Virgin Assumption Church was destroyed, the square has been an open junk market for years, attracting masses of homeless people, street children and pickpockets. It is also home to a nasty concentration of rats.
 Now, however, the city is pouring millions of dollars into the total reconstruction of the square and has committed itself to completing the work by 2003. This is a massive project that will include a $35 million business center next to the Sennaya Ploshchad metro station. There will also be a number of retail developments in the neighborhood.
 St. Petersburg's head architect, Oleg Kharchenko, told the Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosti newspaper recently that the square will also include handsomely paved pedestrian areas, street cafes, benches and a fountain. He even holds out hope that the cathedral itself will be rebuilt sometime around 2010.
 Other projects for which funding has already been secured include the restoration of the facades of St. Isaac's Cathedral, the General Post Office, the Mariinsky Theater, the conservatory and the Admiralty. Work on these projects has already begun.
 The administration is also devoting attention to the green spaces in the district. Repairs to the Alexandrovsky Garden began last month. The Yusu pov Garden is next on the agenda.
 Somewhat less certain is the fate of the Warsaw Railroad Station, which is currently closed and in a bad state of disrepair. The administration hopes to develop the property into a multi-use cultural center and has already received several applications from organizations wishing to give the building a new lease of life.
 Lukmanov also proudly notes that the administration is devoting considerable attention and resources to the reconstruction of residential courtyards.
 &quot;We will receive 110 million rubles [$3.7 million] for improvements to 200 yards [in the district] in 2002,&quot; he said.
 However, he also emphasized that local residents have been taking the initiative and collecting money among themselves to improve their own yards.
 &quot;The yard at 3 Makarenko Pereulok is our pride,&quot; he said. &quot;Its residents collected money and installed the gates in the street entrance, built a playground and even put a billiard table inside,&quot; Lukmanov said.
 Lukmanov is proud of his district and dreams of a time in the not-so-distant future when proper attention can be paid to even the smallest details.
 &quot;Our district is romantic, &quot; he said. &quot;And so I also hope that such charming spots as Potseluyev [or &quot;Kisses&quot;] Bridge or Kalinkin Bridge will have their turn to be restored properly,&quot; he said.

TITLE: slums disappear from city center
AUTHOR: by Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: More than 2 million people each day visit Nevsky Prospect, the heart of St. Petersburg's Central District. This district includes such landmarks Kazan Cathedral, Palace Square and the Summer Garden. The list is practically endless.
 However, until recently, the visitor had only to walk a few steps from Nevsky to step back into the world of a Dostoevskian slum: run-down buildings full of communal apartments and dismal courtyards with heaps of rubbish in the middle.
 But that has been changing, slowly but surely, over the last few years and the upcoming jubilee has given additional momentum to the process.
 &quot;The Central District is the financial heart of St. Petersburg,&quot; said Vladimir Antonov, head of the Central District Administration. &quot;The more we invest in this area, the more profit we will receive in the future.&quot;
 It is also the most densely populated part of the city, with 278,000 people living on just 17.2 square kilometers of land. Thirty-five percent of them live in communal apartments, although that figure has declined steadily over the last few years.
 Although the process of rebuilding the heart of the city has been going on for at least five years now, the 2003 jubilee has pushed the administration to devote even more money and attention to this process. In the summer of 2001, the reconstruction of the lighting, traffic control and sidewalks of Nevsky Prospect itself will be completed, as will the work on Sadovaya Ulitsa.
 Antonov also points proudly to the transformation of Malaya Konyushennaya and Malaya Sadovaya streets into pedestrian areas.
 &quot;You know, after those streets were reconstructed, the trade circulation on that territory increased by 10 times! This is what I have in mind when I talk about investing in the district,&quot; he said.
 Antonov said that in the case of these projects, the municipal budget paid for about 60 percent of the work, with the rest coming from private investors interested in developing these areas.
 As if to show that the district's transformation is not another Potyomkin village, Antonov points out that 20 of the 100 courtyards along Nevsky Prospect have either already been completely reconstructed or are in the final stages of work. 
 All of the yards, for instance, linking Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa and Karavannaya Ulitsa have already been completed, with new pavings, lighting, benches, play areas, trash containers and other details.
 Antonov notes that as these repair works are planned and carried out, the buildings themselves are bought up and transformed. Communal apartments are resettled, and new owners repair stairways and improve security. Property values in these repaired areas rise noticeably.
 The district now intends to transform the courtyards between Karavannaya Ulitsa and the Fontanka.
 In addition to the repair work to Nevsky Prospect itself, the main project currently underway in the Central District is the complete reconstruction of Ploshchad Iskusstv, which is scheduled to be finished by the end of November. This square is being repaved with granite and cobblestones and will be the centerpiece of a pedestrian area that will envelope Manezhnaya Ploshchad, Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa, part of the Kanal Griboyedova embankment, the Cappella yards, part of the Moika River embankment and Palace Square.
 Palace Square itself is set to undergo a facelift during the period from April to November 2002. It will also be repaved and completely closed to traffic.
 Drivers are also dreading the effects of the Oct. 9 closure of Troitsky Bridge, which will remain closed until November 2002, inevitably slowing up traffic throughout the center.
 Looking to the future, Antonov sees one simple, but very important thing missing: trash cans on Nevsky Prospect.
 &quot;Nevsky needs at least 500 of them,&quot; he said, adding that he hopes businesses along the thoroughfare will help solve this problem.

TITLE: gloomy castle gets a face-lift
AUTHOR: by Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Mikhailovsky Castle has always been one of the most mysterious, tragic and sadly forgotten spots in St. Petersburg. Until now, that is.
 The building is best known as the site of the murder of Tsar Paul I. In fact, many still think that his ghost wanders its endless corridors. The paranoid son of Catherine the Great, Paul ordered this fortress built both because he feared that he would be assassinated and because he hated his mother so much that he refused to live in her home, the Winter Palace. 
 Four years in the making, the building - complete with moats and drawbridges - was completed in 1801, but Paul lived there just 40 days before his premonition came true and he was murdered by his inner circle on the night of March 11, 1801.
 After Paul's murder, the royal family moved out of the new palace, considering it a place of bad fortune.
 Later, the fabulous building was turned into a military engineering academy - it is still sometimes called the Engineers' Castle - and the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky studied there.
 After the 1917 October Revolution, the building became state property, and housed a number of state organizations and offices.
 For the last few decades, though, the run-down building has hardly been fit even for ghosts. That, however, is changing fast, now that the State Russian Museum has taken over the building and adopted an ambitious renovation plan that encompasses both the interiors and exteriors of the building and the surrounding territory. 
 Much of the work is scheduled to be completed in time for the jubilee in 2003.
 &quot;Although the building has undergone several partial reconstructions, this is actually the first complete restoration in its entire history,&quot; said Nina Smolnikova, chief architect of the Mik hai lov sky Castle.
 The entire plan will not be completed until 2008, by which time 22,000 square meters of display space on the castle's four floors will be opened up to the Russian Museum. Currently, the museum is unable to show much of its collection due to lack of exhibition space.
 Work is already underway. The outside of the building is being painted; its landmark spire is being re-gilded; the main staircase is being rebuilt; and all its engineering systems are being changed.
 &quot;The new facade is something that we are proud of and worry about at the same time,&quot; Smolnikova said. Historical research had great difficulty determining the building's true original color, which turned out to be a slightly orange-tinged brick color. 
 According to another castle legend, Paul chose this color when he saw a glove that one of his favorites had dropped on the ground. Finding and applying this unusual color of paint has proven difficult.
 &quot;It's one of the most difficult facades for restoration I have ever dealt with,&quot; said Svetlana Stepanova, head of the facade works. &quot;Sometimes, we bring back to life only several centimeters of it a day.&quot; 
 The Russian Museum took control of the building in 1988 and began planning the restoration work in 1991. However, work began seriously only as the city's 300th anniversary approached and more state funding began to be allocated to renovation projects for the city's museums.
 The total budget for the Mik hai lovsky Castle renovation is 734.3 million rubles (about $25 million), all of which has been allocated by the federal government.
 However, Smolnikova notes that as the work inside the building proceeds, new damage is uncovered, and the total cost of restoring the building will be much greater than was initially anticipated.
 &quot;Since Paul was in such a hurry to move into his new residence, the family moved in when the castle still wasn't dry enough. The building has suffered ever since from excess humidity. Therefore, the artificial marble it was made of has partially decayed, and the floors have decomposed,&quot; Smol nikova said.
 She said that every time they open the floors of another hall, they discover damage that wasn't originally taken into account.
 &quot;This is slowing down the work process,&quot; she said. &quot;When the initial sum was allocated, it was an appoximate figure, and we couldn't tell what the future expenses would be with complete certainty.&quot;
 &quot;We wouldn't mind outside sponsorship,&quot; Smolnikova added. &quot;For instance, we need to restore the details on the pediment that existed during Paul's time, but don't any more. It's another extra task for which money was not allocated.&quot;
 Smolnikova also confessed that the restoration group worries that after 2003 the government will lose its interest in the restoration of the city, and they may not be able to get financing for further work.
 &quot;Therefore, we work without vacations, using every minute to do as much as possible before that date. A lot of other projects in the city are working this way too,&quot; she said.
 The restoration of the Mikhailovsky Castle spire is scheduled to be completed at the end of this month and will be unveiled at a special ceremony.

TITLE: world bank to help rebuild city
AUTHOR: by John Varoli
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg's historical center will get a boost this month when a World Bank delegation meets with city leaders to finalize a $150-million loan for the reconstruction of the city center.
 The meeting was scheduled for mid-September, but postponed because of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The loan should be signed soon, once a number of minor details are settled, said World Bank officials.
 The loan money, which will go toward improving buildings and dilapidated infrastructure in downtown St. Petersburg, should be released early next year when preparations for the city's 300th anniversary in 2003 will be in full swing. Perhaps the most important point, however, is that the World Bank loan is intended to act as a catalyst for changes in the city's legal system in order to stimulate further private investment.
 The World Bank money will be a significant addition to Russian government plans to spend $1.7 billion over the next three years to rebuild Russia's Window on the West, chief of which will be completing the Flood Protection Barrier, and the Ring Road. Both are crucial to protecting the city center from the combined threats of Mother Nature and an increasing number of cars and trucks.
 Construction on the Flood Protection Barrier, which began in the early 1980s, has been stalled for most of the past decade and will require about $500 million to complete. Flooding occurs just about every year in the fall, but three times in its almost 300-year history - in 1777, 1824 and 1924 - the city has been hit by devastating floods that destroyed large parts of the downtown area.
 The Ring Road, plans for which date back 20 years, is being built at break-neck speed at a cost of just under $1 billion. Besides improving car flows, it is also intended to divert truck traffic between Finland and major Russian cities away from downtown.
 The World Bank loan, however, will focus on projects in the city center. The first part of the loan - $50 million - is earmarked for the partial restoration of major cultural institutions, such as the State Hermitage Museum's General Staff Building, the Mariinsky Theater, the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Philharmonic. Another $100 million will be paid, in several installments, directly into the city government budget, to be used according to the city's own discretion for infrastructure projects.
 Such license might seem to open the door wide to corruption, but World Bank officials said the money will be given in annual installments between 2002 and 2005, and only if the city makes the necessary changes in its laws to create a better investment climate.
 &quot;The terms of the loan are very clear, and if we see that the city is not changing its laws and not rebuilding its infrastructure, then we just won't make the next payment, and we'll say good-bye,&quot; said Alexei Vasiliev, head of the World Bank project in St. Petersburg. &quot;The goal of the loan is to stimulate further investment in the city, and the city government should realize it's [to the city's] advantage that the project be successful.&quot;
 Changing such laws, as well as the current system, will be a gargantuan task. Despite federal and city government promises to attract private investment to rebuild St. Petersburg for its 300th anniversary in 2003, real-estate developers have many grievances about red tape and corruption.
 Russia's infamous red tape - the need for approval from dozens of state regulatory organizations ranging from fire to health boards and historical-preservation committees - hinders investment in St. Petersburg and Russia as a whole, especially in the real-estate market.
 The problem is not so much the need for approval, but the predatory nature of these state boards whose employees are officially paid about $70 a month.
 They look upon any investor asking for a permit as a wolf looks upon a lamb that has wandered into its lair.
 While many complain that bureaucracy is one of the greatest obstacles to working in the real-estate business in Russia, some experts say that the main problem in Russia is actually the lack of bureaucracy.
 &quot;What we have in Russia is <i>chinovnichestvo </i>[a term that denotes arbitrary rule by petty officials] and not bureaucracy,&quot; said Lev Savulkin, senior analyst at the Leontief Center for Socio-Economic Research. &quot;In a well-ordered bureaucracy, the rules are clear to everyone, and the state official follows them. But in our Russian chinovnichestvo, the state official interprets the rules of the game as he wants and in a way that is in his interest.&quot;
 Investors say that besides being vexed by the long list of approvals needed from state regulatory organizations, these officials try to create obstacles to receiving the necessary permission, usually with the goal of waiting to be offered a bribe.
 &quot;The worst state agencies, as far as corruption [is concerned], are the fire-protection and health agencies, and our company has to pay bribes of almost $5,000 each to a number of officials,&quot; said one director of a local real-estate agency that has restored several buildings in the center and rents them out.
 Other agencies, such as the State Committee for Historical Preservation, are not necessarily looking for bribes, but place severe demands on builders wanting to reconstruct historical buildings. Such stringent regulations, from the point of view of preservation seem reasonable, but often they are not economically feasible in a poor country such as Russia, which is starved for investment.
 Restoring a building to its original appearance - most likely destroyed by Soviet misuse and neglect - is sometimes far too expensive, since it might have originally had luxurious interiors fit for a prince, and few Russian, or even foreign, companies have such cash. The result is that investors shy away from many projects, and since the state doesn't have money for preservation, many buildings are left abandoned and continue to decay.
 Still, all agree that St. Petersburg has immense potential.
 &quot;The [development] opportunities in St. Petersburg are enormous because it has one of the finest architectural legacies in the world,&quot; said Richard Blinder of Beyer Blinder Bellie, an architectural firm that worked on restoring Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Blinder was in St. Petersburg this summer for a conference on the reconstruction of the city, which was sponsored by the Faberge Foundation, a Russian-American organization for the arts.
 Tony Goldman, owner of Goldman Properties, a leading Manhattan developer specializing in renovating entire dilapidated neighborhoods in American cities, also said during that conference that he was looking to see if there were opportunities in St. Petersburg.
 The local government, however, will have to take more measures to make sure investors feel secure and that someone won't come along and annul their ownership, said Goldman.
 The World Bank, however, thinks it has a system to beat Russia's administrative disorganization and corruption. The 1997-2001 World Bank pilot project has created an investment system under which the city will sell off buildings pre-approved by regulatory agencies. That means that upon purchase, the owner not only gets the deed to the building, but also all of the required regulatory permissions.
 &quot;This new system will help cut down on corruption,&quot; said the World Bank's Vasiliev. &quot;However, it is still not clear if the city will copy this model beyond the framework of our pilot project.&quot;
 There are some other improvements. Last year, the city created the Investment Tender Commission, which meets once a week to decide issues relating to the privatization of city buildings. The meetings are open to the public, and explanations are provided regarding why a particular project has been rejected. In the past, everything was done in secret, behind closed doors.
 &quot;Measures such as these are helping to cut back on corruption,&quot; said Yekaterina Bogolubova, spokesperson for the St. Petersburg Association of Realtors. &quot;But overall corruption is putting the brakes on the reconstruction of the city center. Russian businesspeople know how to deal with all these problems and ridiculous rules, but most Westerners don't, and so they don't want to deal with them. So they go elsewhere.&quot;

TITLE: the hermitage is planning to take over the world
TEXT: No other museum in Russia has been as active internationally as the State Hermitage Museum. Although the Hermitage welcomed about 2.4 million visitors last year, the administration is dissatisfied even with this impressive figure and is looking for ways to reach a wider audience. Last fall, Somerset House in London became home to the Hermitage Rooms. Last summer, the museum joined forces with the New York Guggenheim Foundation to bring more contemporary art to the Hermitage, as well as to hold joint exhibitions with museums around the world. One of these, the Hermitage Guggenheim Museum in Las Vegas, opened earlier this month. In the meantime, the museum is preparing to open another exhibition center in Amsterdam. Galina Stolyarova reports on the museum’s far-reaching development plans. <strong>cultural expansion
 </strong>Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky says that the museum intends to make its collection accessible to the largest possible audience, especially by establishing facilities to host the museum's exhibits outside of Russia. Piotrovsky even has a name for this: &quot;cultural expansion.&quot;
 Every exhibition center of the Hermitage, whether already functioning or still being planned, has its own character, in addition to serving as an invitation for visitors to come to St. Petersburg. 
 &quot;The Hermitage Rooms in Somerset House are what I would describe as our museum's intellectual presence in England, providing an opportunity to maintain closer connections with the cultural circles of Great Britain,&quot; Piotrovsky said.
 The first exhibition in Somerset House, &quot;Treasures of Catherine the Great,&quot; displayed more than 500 paintings, jewels and other artworks from the Hermitage collection. In the same gallery, computers link visitors to the Hermitage Web site, where 3,000 items from the Hermitage's permanent collection can be viewed.
 The Las Vegas project, in contrast, is an attempt to reach a new audience of people who are not necessarily dedicated museum-goers. The first exhibition at the Hermitage Guggenheim, which opened this month, is &quot;Masterpieces and Master Collectors: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings,&quot; featuring 50 famous works from both the Hermitage and the Guggenheim.
 Thomas Krens, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, believes that the opening of the new museum will provide significant benefits for both the Hermitage and the Guggenheim, as well as their visitors. 
 &quot;The Hermitage is one of the greatest museums in the world. Its collections are the equal of those in the Louvre or the Metropolitan, but they stop at the beginning of the 20th century,&quot; Krens said. &quot;The Guggenheim collections range from the late 19th century to the present, with a strong representation of postwar modern and contemporary art. By combining our expertise and drawing from two great collections, the Hermitage and Guggenheim can create a brand new range of superb cultural narratives and exhibitions.&quot;
 &quot;Las Vegas receives an astonishing 35 million visitors a year. The Hermitage Guggenheim Museum will be a tremendous attraction for those visitors,&quot; said Sheldon Adelson, chairperson of the Venetian Resort Hotel-Casino, where the museum is located. &quot;By collaborating with the Guggenheim and Hermitage museums, the Venetian will bring some of the greatest masterpieces ever created to a city that is rapidly being transformed into a world-class travel destination.&quot;
 The long-term agreement that the Hermitage has signed with the Guggenheim will allow both museums to develop a joint strategy of international projects. One such project will be to mark the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, a grandiose exhibition entitled &quot;300 years of American Art.&quot; In alliance with the Guggenheim, the Hermitage will also display some of the joint projects on the Internet.
 According to Alexei Grigoriev, head of the Hermitage's Information Technologies Department, the Guggenheim is getting ready to present its improved Web site, www.guggenheim.com, with links to the Hermitage Web site, www.hermitage.ru, and extensive materials on the Hermitage exhibitions.
 &quot;Now we have approximately 1 million visitors to our Web site per year,&quot; Grigoriev said. &quot;We are hoping that the numbers will grow because of the partnership with the Guggenheim.&quot;
 Piotrovsky is convinced that the musuem's international activities contribute toward building a positive image of Russia abroad. &quot;When the Hermitage Rooms opened in London, for the first time in years the general tone of Russia-related stories in the British media was more favorable than usual,&quot; he recalls.
 
 <strong>general staff building
 </strong> One of the major tasks facing the Hermitage in St. Petersburg is its 20th-century art department, which will, along with the musem's collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art, will take up a significant part of the General Staff Building, across Palace Square from the Winter Palace. Naturally, Guggenheim's assistance will be invaluable. 
 &quot;Obtaining our own collection of modern art is not realistic as virtually all the best works already have their owners - museums or private collections,&quot; Piotrovsky said. &quot;We will arrange a series of temporary displays.&quot;
 According to Piotrovsky, the exhibition at the General Staff Building will focus mainly on postwar art, but will also include pop-art works and multimedia pieces.
 
 <strong>friends abroad
 </strong> In November 1996, the Hermitage became the first museum in Russia to organize a society for friends of the museum. Svetlana Filippova, head of the Hermitage Friends Club, said the public immediately welcomed the creation of the organization. 
 &quot;Mikhail Piotrovsky announced the decision to create a Friends organization at a press conference on Nov. 22, 1996. The next day people were knocking on our door,&quot; she recalls.
 Although a number of Russia's leading museums and theaters now also boast their own friends organizations both in Russia and abroad, the practice is still very new in this country. 
 &quot;In England, for instance, similar organizations have thousands of members, while we can have slightly less than 1,000 people,&quot; Filippova said. &quot;But in England it is already a centuries-old tradition. Russia has a long way to go before it becomes perfectly natural for ordinary people to get involved in charitable work.&quot;
 In addition to the St. Petersburg chapter of the Hermitage Friends Club, related organizations also operate in the Netherlands, Canada and the United States.
 Doris Smith is the president of the Canadian Friends of the Hermitage, a nongovernmental organization that was founded almost four years ago. She believes that friends' organizations help build an objective image of St. Petersburg. 
 &quot;Misconceptions die hard, and this is one of the reasons I became involved with the Canadian Friends - to get the word out and tell it as it is, so that people know about the beauty and culture to be found in St. Petersburg and its jewel, the Hermitage Museum,&quot; Smith said.
 According to Smith, the State Hermitage Museum Foundation of Canada was established to carry out major projects in support of the Hermitage and its collections and to raise funds for these projects.
 &quot;Many of our members have never been to the Hermitage, but are interested in the visual arts,&quot; Smith said. &quot;Those working in museum-related fields know how much the Hermitage deserves to be known and supported. On the whole, there is a great deal of goodwill towards this exceptional museum and the beautiful palace that it occupies.&quot;
 Not surprisingly, some members of Friends of the Hermitage societies around the world have Russian roots. 
 &quot;Some of my ancestors lived and worked in St. Petersburg from around 1750 to 1920, trading in linen, tobacco, wine and chocolate,&quot; recalls Kees ter Horst, board member of the Foundation Hermitage Friends in the Netherlands. &quot;This connection makes me closer to the city, and I always enjoy coming here.&quot;
 The Foundation of Friends of the Hermitage in the Netherlands was established in 1993 by a group of people who were enthusiastic about the opening up of Russia and who wanted to renew relations between the Netherlands and St. Petersburg. 
 &quot;The Hermitage has without any doubt the best collection of Dutch masters in the world,&quot; said ter Horst. &quot;Our foundation would like to keep these magnificent paintings in excellent condition.&quot;
 &quot;Our foundation raises money from private individuals and other Dutch foundations,&quot; ter Horst said. &quot;One of the ways in which we work at fund raising is by organizing sponsored trips when we also visit the roof and basement of the Hermitage.&quot;
 Naturally enough, the Dutch started their partnership with the Hermitage by focusing on the Rembrandt Hall. 
 &quot;Hermitage specialists restored the hall, and our foundation added an ultra-modern roof and provided new lighting for the paintings in 1998,&quot; ter Horst said.
 Soon a similar project was organized for the Tent Room and the halls between the Tent Room and the Rembrandt room, where 17th-century Dutch art is displayed.
 &quot;Again, the result was stunning. Even the exhibition in these halls was changed,&quot; ter Horst said. 
 But projects by the museum's friends are not limited to sponsoring restoration works. The Canadian foundation has already completed the installation of ultraviolet film covering more than 2,000 museum windows to protect paintings from the sun.
 At present, the Canadian foundation is working on a five-year project to assist the Hermitage to create an electronic inventory of its collections. This in turn will enable the Hermitage to have instant access to its millions of works of art, as well as to share relevant information over the Internet with scholars and the interested public.
 According to Smith, the project will cost at least $3.3 million, and the foundation is continuing to raise funds for it.
 The latest project of the Netherlands' Friends of the Hermitage will be the reopening of the 600-square-meter Petrovskaya Gallery of the Small Hermitage, which has been closed for the public for many years because of its disrepair. 
 &quot;The gallery has suffered water damage from the Hanging Garden, which also has to be restored,&quot; ter Horst said. &quot;After restoration, this gallery will host an exhibition of Dutch artists that are not currently displayed. This, of course, is a great honor for us. It is a new opportunity for important Dutch masters to be shown in one of the three or four most important museums of the world.&quot;
 The restored gallery will reopen in 2003 as a present for St. Petersburg's 300th birthday.
 As Filippova points out, the Hermitage is not just a grateful recipient of Western help. &quot;The museum participates financially, very often on a 50-50 basis, in all projects carried out by our partner friends organizations,&quot; she said.
 Friends societies frequently help arrange Hermitage exhibitions abroad. For example, the Canadian foundation has organized three special Hermitage exhibitions at Canadian museums. The first one, &quot;Rubens and His Age,&quot; spent the summer at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The next exhibition, coming to Canada next fall, will bring French paintings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to the Art Gallery of Ontario, later moving on to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The third exhibition, &quot;Art of Imperial Russia,&quot; comes to Canada in 2004.
 In the meantime, a Canadian exhibition of historical and contemporary art organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, called &quot;Inventing Canada,&quot; opens at the Hermitage on June 11, 2002. 
 &quot;It is very encouraging to see the museum's visitors becoming the museum's friends,&quot; Filippova said. 
 
 <strong>and friends at home
 </strong> Christian Courbois, head of Westpost, was once just a frequent visitor at the Hermitage. But now his company is a member of the local Hermitage Friends Club. Westpost, as a supplier of postal and courier services, offered to help the friends communicate with all its members around the world. This is perhaps the most important responsibility of the group: to let the members know about what is happening and to make them part of the museum.
 &quot;I joined the Hermitage Friends Club because I am interested in what the museum is doing, and I would like to know more about what is going on there,&quot; Courbois said. &quot;It's important to understand that the club is not just a vehicle for people and companies to support the Hermitage, but also a way for people and companies to become a part of the great museum, and to attend activities, exhibits and other special events.&quot;
 James Hitch, managing partner of the St. Petersburg branch of the Baker & McKenzie law firm, says the Hermitage is very generous to its friends. &quot;All of our personnel have the right to participate in meetings of the Hermitage Friends Club, including the opportunity to see nearly all of the new major exhibitions at the museum,&quot; Hitch said. &quot;We value our cooperation with this great international cultural institution very much, and we look forward to continuing our relationship in the future.&quot;
 Baker & McKenzie has served as special legal adviser to the museum since August 1999. According to the agreement, Baker & McKenzie is committed to providing a specified number of hours of legal advice and services each month to the Hermitage on a pro-bono basis. &quot;In our view, this type of cooperation with such a famous museum brings a new cultural element to our practice of law. Since this great museum is considered to be a cultural emblem of Russia, it is a great honor for Baker & McKenzie to be associated with its name,&quot; Hitch said.
 &quot;Museums and institutions like the Hermitage often represent the art and culture of a city or a country. But in the great museums of the world there is often a club or an organization that becomes the center of a community,&quot; Courbois said.
 &quot;A museum as great as the Hermitage shouldn't be a giant closed building that one visits once a year. It should also be an institution with many events and activities that people can be a part of. While the Hermitage Friends Club is still in its infancy, I am sure that it will grow and offer more to its members and to the community as a whole, by taking its place as a nucleus for art and culture in St. Petersburg,&quot; he added.
 
 <i>For more information, visit: www.hermitage.ru, www.hermitagemuseum.ca and www.hermitagerooms.com </i>

TITLE: U.S. Intensifies Air Strikes on Afghanistan
AUTHOR: By Kathy Gannon and Amir Shah
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan - In the biggest attack so far against Kabul, U.S. jets pounded the Afghan capital Wednesday, and explosions thundered around a Taliban military academy, artillery units and suspected terrorist training camps. Buildings kilometers away shook with the fury of the attack.
 With the United States claiming air supremacy in its campaign to root out Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, American jets roamed across the skies for more than two hours, seeking out targets on the fringes of this war-ruined city of 1 million. 
 U.S. aircraft returned to the skies over this city early Thursday pounding sites near the airport. In two sorties, jets fired at least 11 heavy-detonation projectiles. 
 The private Afghan Islamic Press in Pakistan said U.S. jets and missiles also attacked the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar for the second time in a day and a Taliban military base at Shamshaad, about 6 kilometers from the Pakistani border. 
 A U.S. official in Washington, meanwhile, said two adult male relatives of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar were killed in bombing strikes Sunday on the leader's home in Kandahar in the south of the country. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said a senior Taliban officer was reported killed in strikes near Mazar-e-Sharif in the north. 
 Before the latest bombardment began after sunset, the United Nations reported that Taliban loyalists have been beating up Afghans working with UN-affiliated aid agencies, apparently taking aim at one of the only Western symbols remaining in the country. 
 The barrage on Kabul on Wednesday night appeared to be the longest and biggest yet in the four-day-old U.S.-led air campaign. 
 Powerful explosions could be heard around Kabul airport in the north of the city and to the west in the direction of Rishkore and Kargah - both areas where bin Laden is believed to have terrorist training camps. 
 Most of the attack took place after the 9 p.m. curfew, and it was impossible to determine the extent of damage. There were no reports from Taliban radio, which has been off the air for two days following attacks on communications towers. 
 For many Afghans, the nightly air raids were becoming difficult to bear, even in a war-hardened country. 
 Sardar Mohammed, a Kabul diesel-and-gasoline merchant, said he and his family eat dinner early, then before nightfall move everyone into a room with only one window, which is blocked up with bedding. 
 &quot;To stop the shrapnel,&quot; he said. &quot;We learned this during the civil war.&quot; 
 Omar, the Taliban leader, appealed to Muslims worldwide to back Afghanistan's fight against the United States, according to reports carried Wednesday on Web sites of the British Broadcasting Corp. and the Voice of America. 
 &quot;Every Muslim, having a strong faith, should resolutely act against the egoistic power,&quot; Omar said in a statement published on the BBC Web site. The VOA carried a similar report on its site but did not use the quotation. 
 Hours earlier, White House officials urged U.S. media networks to be cautious in broadcasting prerecorded communications from bin Laden and associates in case they contained coded instructions for fresh strikes. 
 The Americans now plan to use 2,300-kilogram laser-guided bombs against the underground bunkers of Taliban leaders and bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network. 
 U.S. officials said U.S. warplanes also would begin dropping cluster munitions - bombs that dispense smaller bomblets - for use against moving and stationary land targets such as armored vehicles and troop convoys. 
 The United States has coupled the air assaults with a humanitarian effort, dropping packets of food aid into Afghanistan from planes. The Taliban announced Wednesday that angry Afghans were destroying the packets rather than eating the food. 
 Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, called the aid an attempt to &quot;dishonor&quot; the Afghan people by repaying their shed blood with offerings of food. 
 Meanwhile, rebels in Afghanistan's north said the American-led air campaign was helping their cause. Waisaddin Salik, a spokesperson for the northern opposition alliance contacted by telephone from Pakistan, said U.S. jets had bombed Taliban positions in the district of Shakardara on Tuesday night. 
 The district, about 20 kilometers north of Kabul, is along the battle line where the alliance has been facing off against Taliban troops. It was the first reported bombing of such a front-line position by U.S. forces. 
 The Taliban, for their part, said they had repelled a rebel assault in northern Ghor province. Taliban spokesperson Abdul Hanan Himat said 35 opposition fighters were killed. 
 The claims could not be independently verified.

TITLE: U.S. Gets Use of Air Bases in Pakistan
AUTHOR: By Munir Ahmed
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - U.S. personnel are in Pakistan in connection with the confrontation over Osama bin Laden and have been granted the use of several air bases, Pakistani government officials said Thursday. 
 At least 15 U.S. military aircraft, including C-130 transport planes, have landed at Pakistan's Jacobabad air base in the past two days, Pakistani officials and witnesses said. 
 Three days ago, hundreds of Pakistani paramilitary troops began arriving at Jacobabad, about 500 kilometers northeast of Karachi, residents said. 
 Pakistani Air Force and civil-aviation authorities, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the movement of U.S. military aircraft at the base, and said American troops had also been seen at the site. 
 Officials said the movement of aircraft had also been seen at Pasni air base, west of Karachi. 
 Government spokesperson Anwar Mehmood said the personnel, whose numbers he did not provide, were not combat forces. 
 The spokesperson said Pakistan was providing logistical help and intelligence facilities to the United States in &quot;the fight against terrorism.&quot; He said the U.S. personnel would not use Pakistani territory for launching any attack on Afghanistan. 
 A Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the United States would be allowed to use Pakistani air bases, including Jacobabad and Pasani. 
 People living in Jacobabad said they had seen some planes landing at the air base in the past few days and other unusual movements.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Naipaul Wins Nobel
 

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Trinidad-born British writer V.S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for "perceptive narrative" in his writings about travels in India, Africa, Iran and elsewhere. 
 Nai pa ul, who was born in Tri ni dad but is British by choice, has fashioned his novels and journalism from the cultural chaos of the postcolonial world. 
 The Swedish Academy singled out Naipaul's masterpiece "The Enigma of Arrival," (1987) saying that in it the author created an "unrelenting image of the placid collapse of the old colonial ruling culture and the demise of European neighborhoods." 
 
 
Blair Seeks Support
 

CAIRO (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Cairo on Thursday for talks with President Hos ni Mubarak as part of an effort to reassure skeptical Arab allies about the U.S.-led war on Osama bin Laden.
 Blair, who arrived in Cairo from Oman, said on Wednesday the war on terror would not spread beyond Afg ha ni stan without full consultation. A top aide went further, playing down speculation that Washington and London might shift their sights to Iraq in their campaign against violent extremists.
 Some Arabs are concerned that the campaign could be expanded to include Arab states. Analysts have said the surest way to shatter precarious Arab support for the coalition against terror would be to make U.S. arch-foe Iraq one of its targets.
 
 
Plague Outbreak
 

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) -- An outbreak of bubonic plague believed caused by an influx of rats into several Ugandan villages has killed 14 people in the last three weeks, a government health official said Thursday. 
 The rats have entered four villages in the northwestern Nebbi district near the Congo border, said Dr. Dam Okware, who is coordinating the government's efforts to halt the spread of the fatal disease. 
 So far, 23 people have been infected with the disease, which affects the lymph nodes, and 14 have died, but no new cases have been reported since Oct. 3, Okware said. 
 
 
China, U.S. To Talk
 

BEIJING (Reuters) - China and the United States have re-started a human rights dialogue put on ice after U.S. jets on a NATO mission bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.
 "As of October 9, China and the United States started a dialogue on human rights issues in Washington," spokesman Sun Yuxi said at a news conference.
 "The two sides held wide-ranging and in-depth talks on questions of common concern in the field of human rights on the basis of equality and mutual respect," he said.
 
 
Canadian Killed
 

KUWAIT CITY (AP) - A Canadian working in Kuwait was shot and killed on the street as he walked with his wife, officials said. His wife was wounded. 
 Canadian Ambassador Richard Mann identified the victim of Wednesday night's shooting as Luc Ethier, in his late 30s, but would not identify the wife. Mann did not have the victim's hometown. 
 Ethier's wife was in intensive care at a Kuwait hospital Thursday. The motive was unknown, Mann said, adding that Ethier and his wife did not know the assailant. 
 The shooting happened in Fahaheel, south of Kuwait City. The man was shot twice, and died instantly, police said. 
 His wife was shot three times. 
 A neighbor, who refused to be identified, said the dead man had been an aircraft technician at an air base. There was no word which air base. 
 
 
Smugglers Arrested
 

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) - Czech police broke up a gang that earned at least $33 million by smuggling about 60,000 Asian refugees into western Europe, officials said. 
 Ten Czech citizens and four foreigners were detained in various places in the Czech Republic on Tuesday and Wed nes day, according to a statement issued by police spokeswoman Ivana Zelenakova. 
 The criminal organization, active since 1999, had its headquarters in the Czech Republic and branches throughout Europe. It mainly smuggled refugees from Afghanistan, Arab countries and Southeast Asia, the statement said. 
 The organization was hit at all levels and its boss, an unidentified 33-year old foreigner, was arrested in Prague on Wednesday, the statement said. 
 
 
Iraq: Warning 'Stupid'
 

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq has dismissed as "stupid" a warning it received from United States not to take advantage of the Western campaign against Afghanistan to launch military action in the region.
 In a rare meeting with Iraqi diplomats, the chief U.S. envoy to the United Nations, John Negroponte, warned on Sunday night that Iraq would pay a heavy price if it used the current situation to act against its own population or any neighboring states.
 The Iraqi government on Thursday made public the text of a the reply delivered to the U.S. mission by its ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Aldouri.
 "Your message is stupid. Iraq is not afraid of you or anyone else when it has a right to claim. What you warned about is not on Iraq's agenda," Aldouri said. 



TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Terrorism Disclaimers
 

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) - Australian swimmers competing in next month's World Cup and U.S. Open in New York have been asked to sign disclaimers preventing Australian Swimming Inc. from being sued if they are injured or killed in a terrorist attack. 
 "We simply could not get any insurance company to cover us in this regard," Vena Murray, executive director of Australian Swimming, said Thursday. 
 "If the swimmers are hit by a New York taxi, they're covered. But if they're hurt in a terrorist attack, they're not." 
 Don Talbot, the head coach of the Australian team, says he'll sign the disclaimer. 
 "You can't stop living just because these things are going on in the world," Talbot said. "You've just got to count on the intense security precautions protecting you." 
 Brooke Hanson, one of 13 Australians scheduled to compete in the Nov. 27-28 World Cup, said she had received the disclaimer form and intended to sign it. 
 "That freaked me out a bit," Hanson said. "But I promised from the beginning that I wasn't going to let the terrorism get to me." 
 
 
Rhymes Busted
 

WHITE BEAR LAKE, Minnesota (AP) - Former Minnesota Vikings receiver Buster Rhymes faces charges in the carjacking of a 66-year-old woman. 
 Rhymes, 39, and a former Oklahoma star who played for the Vikings from 1985 to 1987, turned himself in at the White Bear Lake police station Monday, attorney Richard Carlson said Tuesday. 
 Officers took Rhymes to the Ramsey County Jail, and he was released on bail late Monday. He was charged with robbery and theft of a motor vehicle. 
 According to the complaint, Rhymes approached the White Bear Lake woman at a traffic light Oct. 4. He yelled for a ride, then opened the back door of the 1994 Lexus and got in. Rhymes overpowered the woman and drove off in her car, the complaint said. 
 Based on a description of Rhymes, police drove to his White Bear Lake home and found the car in front of the house with the keys in the ignition. 
 
 
Larry Johnson Retires
 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Knicks forward Larry Johnson has retired after a 10-year NBA career, the team announced on Wednesday.
 The two-time All-Star, a key player in the Knicks' run to the 1999 NBA Finals, was waived by the team and ended his playing career after being hampered by chronic back problems in recent years.
 "I will miss him personally," said Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy. "I was as close to Larry as any player I have ever coached."
 The New York Times reported that the Johnson, 32, had accepted a buyout from the team that will pay him the $29 million that remains on his contract.