SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #716 (83), Friday, October 26, 2001
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TITLE: Talks With Chechen Rebels To Begin
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The presidential envoy for the Caucasus region said Wednesday that he had been approached by a senior Chechen rebel figure with a request to begin talks with Russian officials.
Viktor Kazantsev, President Vla di mir Putin's envoy in the Southern Federal District, said on television that an aide of rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov wants to discuss the Kremlin's latest initiatives to end the conflict in the separatist region.
"Akhmed Zakayev called me to say that after long deliberations he was asking for a meeting here in Moscow to discuss proposals made in the statement of President Vladimir Putin on Sept. 24," Kazantsev said.
However, a Kremlin spokesperson downplayed the offer, saying it does not amount to "the start of a new dialogue between Moscow and Grozny."
Saying that Putin's statement had focused on the disarming of illegal armed groups and "the procedure of integrating them into normal life," Kazantsev added, "I think this meeting will take place in the next 10 days."
In an interview with NTV television, Za kayev confirmed that, "if nothing ... happens," he and Kazantsev would meet in the coming 10 days.
Kremlin spokesperson Sergei Yastrzhembsky and the Moscow-appointed head of Chechnya's administration, Akh mad Kadyrov, both reiterated the Kremlin's position that the only topic of discussion would be procedures for the rebels' disarmament.
Kadyrov said Maskhadov and his allies were hoping to create "an illusion of negotiating as equals" when, in fact, the only topic of discussions would be when, where and how they would hand over their weapons, Interfax reported.
But Zakayev disagreed. "Disarmament cannot be a pre-condition for beginning talks," he said. "Unquestionably, it is a topic for negotiations among many others ... [including] the return of refugees, ending military action and economic issues."
Putin, in a major policy speech on Sept. 24, ruled out any compromise with the Chechen rebels and gave them 72 hours to start discussing disarmament. Maskhadov welcomed the invitation to talk and appointed Zakayev as his liaison, but the deadline came and went without any significant response from the rebels or punitive action from federal forces.
It was not clear whether the rebels' latest move toward rapprochement would prove more fruitful. Some analysts said that even assuming Mask hadov was ready for peace talks with federal officials, it was not clear whether this would make any difference on the battlefield, since the bulk of Chechen fighters take their orders not from Maskhadov but from warlords like Shamil Basayev and Khattab.
Some prominent political figures, such as Chechnya's deputy in the State Du ma, Aslanbek Aslakhanov, expressed cautious optimism about the talks. Others, including former Grozny Mayor Bislan Gantamirov, voiced doubts that the talks would lead to a peace settlement.
Nonetheless, Putin's efforts to equate Russia's crackdown in Chechnya with the U.S.-led anti-terrorist campaign in Afghanistan appear to be paying off, with Western governments giving him a noticeably easier ride on the issue. The most recent signal of the softer line came Monday when visiting French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said in Moscow that terrorism had to be fought where it was found, "including if it shows itself ... in Chechnya." Analysts said that with Putin enjoying high visibility on the world stage by his support for the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, this could be a good time for him to try to drive a wedge in the ranks of the Chechen resistance.
A government commission in charge of rebuilding the war-torn republic met Thursday to hear reports by 25 federal agencies involved in the work.
Vladimir Yelagin, the cabinet's minister for Chechnya and the deputy head of the commission, which is overseen by Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko, called the reconstruction effort "satisfactory, at worst," his spokesperson Alexander Arapov said Thursday. According to the latest report issued by Yelagin's staff, more than 7.5 billion rubles of the 14.4 billion ($244 million) allocated for Chechnya's reconstruction in 2001 had been spent as of Oct. 1.
The money went toward social payments such as pensions, child support and unemployment benefits, as well as supplying gas to 70 percent of Chechnya's towns and villages, television and radio transmission across most of the republic and rebuilding 448 schools, Arapov said. He added that construction work started moving full speed ahead in August.
However, Yelagin said after the meeting that 53 million rubles ($1.8 million) had been misappropriated, Interfax reported. Under the existing procedure for funding reconstruction in Chechnya, the local administration - led by Moscow appointees Akhmad Kadyrov and Stanislav Ilyasov - selects priority projects and federal agencies carry them out using their own funds. Then, Chechen officials and a special directorate within Gosstroi, the state construction committee, must sign off on the completed work, after which the Finance Ministry reimburses the relevant agencies.
Although Chechen officials participate in the process, they do not have direct access to funds, and that has provoked discontent. "If they'd send money to Chechnya directly instead of dispersing it in Moscow, local citizens would rebuild the republic in several months," Edi Isayev, Kadyrov's Mos cow spokesperson, said in a telephone interview this week.
"They would do their best because they would be building for themselves."
But Arapov said that control of funding for federal programs should remain in the hands of federal agencies.
"If they transfer this right to the Chechen government, which federal bodies can do as long as they retain responsibility for the funds, they risk ending up hostages of the Chechen government."
Embezzlement by local officials in Chechnya was widespread after the first military conflict there in from 1994 to 1996. Arapov also questioned the local government's ability to handle the job.
"They have just a handful of specialists ... while Gosstroi is a very powerful agency able to run large-scale projects."
According to the Yelagin report, as of Oct. 1, the Chechen administration had received nearly 1.9 billion rubles of 2.2 billion allocated for 2001 to cover administrative costs. The local government also collected 640 million rubles in taxes as of that date, 360 million more than planned, the report said.
"This is a good indication that the government in Chechnya has started working," said Arapov.
Last week, however, the republic's leadership showed signs of internal conflict when Kadyrov accused non-Chechen government staff of indifference and self-interest, and replaced the chief of staff, an Ilyasov ally, with his own man. The spat was quickly downplayed by local officials, but it was unclear how long the truce would hold.
- Reuters, SPT
TITLE: First Remains of Kursk Victims Recovered
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Forensic experts of the Russian Navy on Thursday began removing remains of the crew from the wreck of the Kursk nuclear submarine, while officials said its twin nuclear reactors and missile arsenal posed no danger.
Officials have so far removed three bodies from the rear section of the submarine and some more bodies had been seen, said Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, who is leading the team investigating the disfigured carcass of the Kursk.
Most of the Kursk's 118 sailors were killed immediately by the powerful explosions that sank the submarine during naval exercises in August 2000, but at least 23 survived the crash for hours in the stern compartments, according to letters found by divers who recovered 12 bodies from the sunken vessel a year ago.
After the bodies are recovered, the next immediate task will be to secure the Kursk's nuclear reactors and its 22 Granit cruise missiles, each containing enough explosives to sink an enemy aircraft carrier. Water samples taken from inside the reactor's compartment confirm that there has been no radiation leak, said Russian Navy spokesperson Captain Igor Dygalo.
Russian Navy Chief Admiral Vla di mir Kuroyedov said that experts would enter the reactor's compartment later Thursday to check its condition and make sure that it was properly heated to keep it from freezing. The next task will be to remove the Granit missiles. Kuroyedov said the silos containing the missiles apparently haven't been damaged, allowing navy experts to remove the weapons in a normal fashion, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Fleet officials had previously said it might be necessary to cut the missiles out of the Kursk's hull along with the silos if any deformation prevented their normal removal. The navy has dismissed allegations that the missiles could blast off by themselves, saying the lack of electric power on board excludes even the theoretical possibility of that.
Investigators led by Ustinov continued inspecting the disfigured wreck of the Kursk, searching for clues to the cause of the disaster. Skeptics say, however, that if any clue could be found, it would be located in the submarine's mangled first compartment, which was left behind when the Kursk was raised.
Russian officials have said they will try to raise those fragments next year.
On Tuesday, Ustinov led investigators onto the deck of the Kursk. Crew members on the barge that lifted the submarine from the Barents Sea floor and towed it to a floating dock in Ros lya kovo, near the Arctic port Murmansk, lowered wreaths into the water to honor the Kursk's 118 dead.
The Giant-4 barge then headed away as the Kursk was raised to the point where its conning tower, with its shattered glass windows and red Russian eagle seal, could be seen above water.
With the Kursk fully out of the water, Ustinov, top navy officials and a team of about 40 investigators observed a moment of silence before stepping onto the submarine's deck. The first on board was Lieutenant Gleb Liachin, the son of the Kursk's late captain Gennady Liachin.
"What we did is called examining the site," Ustinov said later.
Investigators entering the vessel must wear gas masks, since toxic gases have built up in the submarine during its 14 months at the bottom of the sea following its sinking, ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who is responsible for the Kursk salvage operation, said that it would take up to three days to dry out the submarine for a thorough internal inspection, the Interfax news agency reported.
He dampened expectations of what the investigation could reveal, saying "nothing new will be found in the raised submarine" that could help "in understanding the causes of the Kursk catastrophe," Interfax reported.
Many Russian and foreign experts have said the initial explosion was sparked by an internal malfunction, but government officials - including most notably Klebanov himself - say the Kursk may have collided with another vessel or World War II-era mine.
The submarine was raised and towed to shore in a risky, complicated operation that cost the Russian government some $65 million.
Klebanov said that the plan to lift the first compartment would be ready by the end of November, Interfax reported. Russian officials have said the navy would handle the operation on its own, but Klebanov said foreign companies might be asked to take part as they did in the lifting of the submarine.
- AP, SPT
TITLE: Assembly Approves Budget by One Vote
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Legislative Assembly passed the first reading of the 2002 city budget on Wednesday by a margin of just one vote.
Twenty-six deputies voted for City Hall's draft, despite criticism from some deputies that it did not differ substantially from this year's budget. Five deputies voted against the budget, seven abstained and 12 did not vote.
"These is no additional income in the budget," said Deputy Sergei Andreyev at the debate on Wednesday. Andreyev argued that the 7-billion-ruble ($233 million) increase in revenues projected for 2002 was due to inflation, rather than real growth. The draft budget predicts total revenues of 53.8 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) and total expenses of 52.7 billion rubles ($1.76 billion).
Andreyev's words clearly angered Governor Vla dimir Yakovlev. "If you can't see anything with those glasses, tell us and we'll give you different ones," he retorted.
The Legislative Assembly's Audit Chamber also argued that the 2002 draft undercounted potential revenues. According to a draft-budget analysis completed last week, City Hall underestimated revenues by at least 4 billion rubles (about $135.5 million).
"City Hall has not included a number of laws that will start working next year and will give the city additional income, including an increase in the tax on the gambling industry and some others," said German Shalyapin, deputy head of the Audit Chamber, in an interview on Monday.
"We will make our corrections and recommendations before the second reading," he added.
Other deputies had expressed concerns about particular items within the budget, but City Hall managed to mute much of the criticism by promising to increase lawmakers' so-called "reserve funds."
The reserve funds, which before the 1998 crisis gave each deputy a discretionary fund of about $1 million to spend on pet projects, was first introduced to the city budget by then-Mayor Anatoly Sobchak in order to entice the assembly to reschedule the 1996 gubernatorial election.
The ploy worked, but Sobchak lost the election anyway. Ironically, Yakov lev also resorted to the reserve-fund tactic in 1999 as he set up his successful bid to win a second term. Some deputies believe he is once again holding out this carrot in order to preempt a detailed debate of the budget.
"Unfortunately, I'm afraid that there is not going to be that many questions since [City Hall] has offered lawmakers an additional 500 million rubles to spend in their districts," said Natalia Yev dokimova, a deputy from the Yab lo ko faction, in an interview on Monday, two days before the budget vote.
Yevdokimova said that Viktor Krotov, head of the City Hall Finance Committee, increased the amount allocated for the reserve funds to 1.9 billion rubles ($64 million) on Monday.
Many observers have criticized the reserve funds, arguing that they are a source of suspicious dealings. Several deputies have been accused of financing projects for their friends rather than spending the money on the needs of their districts.
Most deputies expressed satisfaction with City Hall's draft.
"City Hall included my amendments in the draft before it was sent to the Legislative Assembly," said Deputy Stanislav Zhitkov, the only Communist member of the assmbly. "If they don't leave them in there, I'll offer up so many more in the second reading that they won't know what's happening."
Deputy Igor Mikhailov said that the draft budget looks "absolutely fine" to him.
"In 1995, it was only 20 pages long. Now there are 18 volumes. It would take a year to study all this and only those who work on the budget all the time can be against it," Mikhailov said on Wednesday.
The Legislative Assembly now has two weeks to offer amendments before voting on the second reading of the budget.
TITLE: Duma Adopts Another Mass Amnesty
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma gave preliminary approval on Wednesday to an amnesty that would free about 24,000 people, mostly women and minors, from the country's overcrowded prisons.
The amnesty was passed in a first reading 358-1, Interfax reported. The move comes more than a year after a major amnesty set some 200,000 inmates free, bringing the number of prisoners nationwide to just below 1 million.
If passed into law, the latest amnesty will cover convicts who committed crimes as minors, women prisoners with underage or disabled children, pregnant women and women over 50, as well as some invalids and tuberculosis patients, news agencies reported. It would not apply to those convicted of murder, rape, terrorist acts or other grave crimes.
The bill will only affect prisoners whose sentences are six years or less, which includes many of those convicted on the infamous Article 158 of the Criminal Code. This article, which provides for a prison term of up to five years for organized, large-scale or recurring theft, is often used to sentence minors to long prison terms for small offenses, such as stealing food with a group of cohorts.
Nongovernmental organizations dealing with penal reform hailed the amnesty, but also called for more systemic changes.
"Our lawmakers are going in the right direction," said Lyudmila Alperina of the Moscow-based Center for Prison Reform. "But we still need a separate approach to juvenile and women's penal systems," she said, adding that most judges hand down the same sentence for a given crime irrespective of a defendant's age or sex.
The head of the Duma's legislative committee, Pavel Krasheninnikov, hinted Wednesday that changes addressing this concern might be in the offing.
"We should give the representatives of such unprotected groups ... as women and minors a chance to return to normal lives," Interfax quoted him as saying. "The principle of ... punishment fitting the crime should take precedence over the haphazardness and cruelty that our judicial system has inherited from the past."
According to Justice Ministry estimates, about 10,000 minors and 14,000 women would be freed under the amnesty.
Alexander Barannikov, the member of the Union of Right Forces faction who presented the amnesty to the chamber, said 738,500 people are incarcerated nationwide.
This figure appeared not to include the 200,000 people justice officials have said are behind bars, in pretrial detention centers. Barannikov said 45,900 of the inmates are women and 18,900 are minors.
TITLE: A Telling Tale of Two Different Liberal Parties
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - It was a coincidence, but a telling one. This week, Russia's two leading liberal parties - Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, or SPS - gave out prizes to writers.
Both competitions were organized by professional groups, and politicians were there for the sake of prominence and funding. Both shared the stated goal of fostering the rise of a civil society. Yet the difference between their prizes and mottoes gave an indication of the different mindsets on the liberal flank of Russian politics - who sees the glass as half empty, who sees it as half full.
Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky presented electric tea kettles and cameras, along with bouquets and diplomas, to provincial journalists chosen as winners of a competition called Vopreki, or Against All Odds.
The annual contest, held for the fourth year, is named in honor of Larisa Yudina, the editor of Sovietskaya Kal my kia newspaper and a Yabloko activist who was killed in 1998, allegedly for exposing corruption in Kalmykia's regional government. The competition is meant for journalists from regional publications who write courageous reports "against all odds," whether the odds be pressure from local authorities or personal dramas such as debilitating disease.
The stories of 14 reporters and four newspapers selected from among some 400 applications, including some articles that went unpublished, ostensibly due to censorship, covered such topics as chemical-weapons dumping, the Chech nya war, corruption and local governments' attempts to control media, organizers said.
The event, held Monday afternoon at the House of Journalists, was co-sponsored by press-freedom watchdog the Glasnost Defense Foundation, Yabloko and the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.
That evening, a second ceremony took place at the House of Cinematography. On behalf of SPS, former acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and State Duma Deputy Eduard Vorobyov presented Alfa Bank checks of $5,000 to $10,000 to 14 screenwriters. The winners were picked from about 500 proposals for movies and television series under the motto "Normal Life in a Normal Country."
Organizers said the cash prizes increased the chances of getting the winning film ideas to the production phase, adding that the more important goal was to replace the crime-ridden, catastrophic picture of Russian life depicted over the past decade with the constructive approach of self-reliant, "normal" people - in other words, to promote middle-class values to the broader public.
SPS was not after "political dividends" from the contest, Gaidar said, but was interested in promoting a more positive approach to Russian life.
"We have selected scripts about a difficult life, real life, but not about total and ultimate catastrophe," Gaidar said. "This is not what we have seen ... from 1988 to 1996, when the vast majority of films were about a perverted life in a perverted country."
Yavlinsky denied that there was any fundamental difference between Yab lo ko and SPS' prizes. "In essence, we do the same thing," he said. "Only we support print press and SPS is interested in film."
But Sergei Kolmakov, vice president of the Foundation for Parliamentary Development in Russia, agreed in a telephone interview that the difference in mottoes, Against All Odds vs. Normal Life, was indicative of the two parties' different stances.
"Yabloko appeals to a less [socially] adapted, less successful segment of intellectuals and has a stronger human-rights emphasis," Kolmakov said. SPS, on the other hand, seeks to expand its middle-class base by going after "progressive" youth and self-reliant people who can eventually become middle class.
"Yabloko gives a negative, human-rights and anti-bureaucracy spin to liberal values," Kolmakov said. "SPS stresses that liberal values should be achieved not through endless opposition to the government, but by offering an alternative."
TITLE: Why Did Anthrax Hit Sverdlovsk?
AUTHOR: By Sarah Karush
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YEKATERINBURG, Ural Mountains - On an April morning in 1979, Lazar Karsayev awoke early as usual, drank his customary cup of tea and walked to his job at a nearby ceramics factory. A few hours later the fit 64-year-old was sent home with what doctors said was a bad cold.
Only when medics wearing biohazard suits showed up to take him to a hospital the next day did his family suspect something worse. A few days later, they were taken under police guard to watch Karsayev's coffin - filled with chlorinated lime and sealed in plastic - being lowered into one of dozens of fresh graves on the far edge of a cemetery. Doctors told them he died of anthrax, but nobody told them how or why.
A mysterious outbreak of the disease killed at least 68 people 22 years ago in the industrial city of Sverdlovsk, today known as Yekaterinburg. At the time, neither the victims nor their families suspected they had been hit by a biological attack.
In 1992, then-President Boris Yeltsin, who in 1979 was Communist Party chief in Sverdlovsk, said in a newspaper interview that the outbreak was caused by an accident at a germ-warfare laboratory. Before that, the official explanation had always been infected meat.
The laboratory, known as Military Compound 19, formed part of a network of germ factories in the Soviet Union's giant biological-weapons program, which produced hundreds of tons of anthrax.
The Soviet Union joined the Biological Weapons Convention, banning germ warfare, in 1972. But Russian officials admitted later that Moscow violated the treaty for 20 years.
Despite that admission, the military has never provided details about the Sverd lovsk incident, and a shroud of secrecy continues to hang over it and the still-functioning compound where the leak occurred. "Nobody has ever officially told us that this was from biological weapons," said Karsayev's daughter, Li dia Tretyakova. "Nobody has ever apologized."
No official records from the outbreak are available. The 1979 anthrax cases were skipped over entirely in the regional epidemiological service's annual report, said Viktor Romanenko, deputy chief of the service. Karsayev's death certificate simply lists "infection" as the cause of death, Tretyakova said.
Details of the incident were first described in a 1994 article by Harvard University's Matthew Meselson in the journal Science. Meselson and his co-authors found that most of the 77 known patients lived and worked in the southern part of the city, near Military Compound 19, and concluded that the outbreak was caused by an anthrax aerosol originating at the compound.
The leak is assumed to have occurred in the early hours of April 2, about two days before people began falling ill.
"All those who fell ill were people who, for one reason or another, had been outside at night or in the early morning," Romanenko said. Some, like Karsayev, were not outside, but in factories with ventilation systems that sucked in air from the outside.
Romanenko said he and his colleagues noticed the pattern immediately, but were not free to say so.
Following the official line, local public-health officials took meat samples for testing and cracked down on private butchers.
But they also took measures to prevent the spread of the disease through the air.
In a neighborhood of wooden one-story houses next to the sprawling and heavily guarded Compound 19, residents recalled how immediately after the outbreak their dirt roads were paved and the roofs and walls of their houses washed.
"Nobody told us what was going on," Yelena Klyuchagina said. "We just saw these people in masks washing our houses. There was no information."
Cases of human anthrax were spread for only a few kilometers from the compound. But the bacteria had traveled in smaller concentrations into outlying villages, where they killed animals, which are more susceptible than humans to anthrax.
Alexandra Sankova, her husband and nine children were quarantined in their house for a month during the outbreak.
Anthrax is not contagious, but doctors feared that anthrax spores, which can remain in the air and ground for years, would be left behind from the outbreak.
Oddly, none of the thousands of samples taken in the area since then have shown any trace of the bacteria, Romanenko said.
"It was almost immediately clear that this was not the usual strain," he said.
The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that one explanation for the Sverdlovsk outbreak was recounted in a 1999 book on the Soviet biological- weapons program called "Biohazard," written by the former deputy chief of the project, Ken Alibek.
Alibek writes that he heard a missing air filter was to blame. A clogged filter at Compound 19 had been removed during one shift, and a note was left for incoming workers to replace it, Alibek was told. The note went either missing or unheeded for several hours before the mistake was caught.
The report also said that the Sverdlovsk accident remains the only case of inhaled anthrax on record in which multiple victims died from a weapons-quality strain of the disease.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Nuclear-Waste Protests
YEKATERINBURG, Ural Mountains (AP) - Environmentalists in seven cities along Russia's Trans-Siberian Railway on Wednesday protested plans to transport spent nuclear fuel along the route.
In the industrial Ural Mountain city of Yekaterinburg, about 15 activists gathered at a railroad station in the center of the city and held signs reading "No passage for nuclear waste!"
Many said they were ready to lie down on the tracks if the shipments were sent through the city of 1.5 million.
In July, President Vladimir Putin signed into law a controversial plan to allow the import of spent nuclear fuel for storage and reprocessing.
Proponents of the plan argue Russia could earn $20 billion over the next decade, importing some 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. They say part of the money could be used to clean up existing nuclear pollution.
But liberals and environmentalists fear it will turn the country into a nuclear dump, charging that Russia's crumbling infrastructure and weak government makes importation of radioactive materials an invitation to disaster.
In addition to Yekaterinburg, protests were held at six other major stops along the Trans-Siberian.
Kuzmuk Resigns
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma accepted the resignation of Defense Minister Olek sander Kuzmuk on Wednesday, almost three weeks after his troops accidentally shot down a Russian airliner with a missile.
"I have accepted the minister's resignation and suspended other senior military officials," Kuchma said in an address on state television. "All missile launches have been temporarily banned."
The plane, a Sibir airlines Tu-154 flying to Siberia from Israel, exploded over the Black Sea on Oct. 4 while Ukraine's military was carrying out live missile exercises on the Crimean Peninsula. All 78 crew and passengers were killed.
Houston Consulate?
MOSCOW (SPT) - Russia may open a new diplomatic mission in the U.S. city of Houston, Texas, the Houston Chronicle reported.
An announcement about the opening is expected to be made by President Vladimir Putin during a scheduled trip to the United States in November, the newspaper said Tuesday.
Apart from the embassy in Washington, Russia has missions and consular offices in New York, San Francisco and Seattle. In Russia, the United States is represented by the embassy in Moscow and consulates in St. Petersburg, Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg.
Officials at the Foreign Ministry and presidential press service said it was too early to verify the report or the exact itinerary of Putin's upcoming trip. U.S. State Department officials were also unable to confirm the report.
Houston is the fourth-most-populous city in the United States and the center for the U.S. oil and space industries, both areas of key interest to Russia.
Italians Repatriated
MOSCOW (AP) - Russian officials on Wednesday handed over to Italian officials the remains of 1,064 Italian servicemen and prisoners of war who were killed in the former Soviet Union during World War II.
The ceremony at the Chkalovsky military airfield outside Moscow was organized by Russia's War Memorials organization. Its representatives had exhumed the remains together with experts from the Italian Defense Ministry.
An Italian priest read prayers for the dead at the ceremony, which was attended by Italian Ambassador Giancarlo Aragona and Russian Defense Ministry officials.
Four soldiers carried a large wooden crate holding a container with the remains to a waiting plane.
Between 1991 and 2000, the remains of 6,860 Italian soldiers were repatriated to Italy for burial, Itar-Tass said.
5 on Trial for Murder
MINSK (AP) - Five men went on trial Wednesday in a Minsk court on charges of murdering a Belarussian camera operator for Russia's ORT state-controlled television.
Dmitry Zavadsky went missing on July 7, 2000, after he left for Minsk airport to meet a Russian colleague. He was one of several well-known people who have disappeared in Belarus in recent years.
The government says Zavadsky was kidnapped by a group led by a former officer of the elite Almaz police force, Valery Ignatovich, who was angered by his reports. However, opposition groups suspect government involvement, saying those who disappeared were targeted because they ran afoul of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Chernobyl Cancers
LISBON, Portugal (Reuters) - Chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear accident, is linked to nearly 2,000 thyroid-cancer cases, the largest number of cancers associated with a known cause on a specific date, scientists said Tuesday.
Although it is 15 years since a cloud of radioactive dust spewed from the explosion of Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor in 1986, new cases of cancer associated with the accident are still being reported.
"Four years after the accident, an excess of thyroid cancers was noted among children who had been exposed to fallout from the disaster," Professor Dillwyn Williams of the Strangeways Research Laboratory at England's Cambridge University told the ECCO 11 cancer conference in Lisbon. "That increase has continued and new cases are still being seen in those who were children at the time of the accident."
Sharansky Visit
MOSCOW (AP) - Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky said Wednesday that he had found understanding among Russian officials for Israel's tough stance toward the Palestinians, but there was still a strong divide between Tel Aviv and Moscow over providing military technology to Iran.
"Israel expects tougher steps from Russia to step up control over the flow of technologies to countries such as Iran," Interfax quoted Sharansky as saying.
"Although certain progress has been made here, we believe that Russia can do much more."
Sharansky met Tuesday in Moscow with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. He also held a series of meetings with Russian Jewish community leaders and gave several interviews to Russian media in which he defended Israel's position.
Cheaper and Faster
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Beginning Thursday, the Oktyabrskaya Railroad reduced the cost of tickets on express passenger trains between Moscow and St. Petersburg by 25 to 30 percent.
"The cuts are motivated by the seasonal decrease of passenger volume on this line," said Viktor Korsakov, head of the Oktyabrskaya Railroad press office.
Train traffic between the two cities was halted Wednesday because of final work to straighten a 5-kilometer deviation in the track about 190 kilometers south of St. Petersburg. Rail service will resume at midnight on Thursday, Interfax reported.
As a result of the work on the line, travelling time between the two cities will be about 10 minutes shorter, the press service said.
Vishnevskaya at 75
MOSCOW (SPT) - President Vladimir Putin congratulated opera diva Galina Vishnevskaya, wife of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, on the occasion of her 75th birthday on Thursday, Interfax reported.
"You embody all that is best and most respected in the Russian operatic school," the president wrote in a congratulatory letter.
Putin also noted that Vishnevskaya's charitable and pedagogical work bore "enormous significance for the future of Russian art," Interfax reported.
10 Years of Prusak
NOVGOROD, Northwest Russia (SPT) - Governor Mikhail Prusak celebrated 10 years as the head of the Novgorod Region on Wednesday, Interfax reported.
Prusak was appointed governor on Oct. 24, 1991, by a decree signed by then-President Boris Yeltsin. In December 1995, he became the region's first elected governor. He was re-elected on Sept. 5, 1999, garnering more than 91 percent of the vote.
"If we have accomplished anything," Prusak said Wednesday, "it is due to our desire to all work together. I am very pleased that many of those with whom I started this work are still here with me."
Customs Firings
MOSCOW (SPT) - Mikhail Vanin, head of the State Customs Service, stated Thursday that the heads of the Northwest and Baltic customs districts had been removed from their posts for "processing goods that do not exist," according to Interfax.
Vanin said that Vladimir Sha mak hov, head of the Northwest Customs District; Alexander Puchkov, head of the Baltic Customs District; and Mikhail Prokoviev, head of security for the Northwest Customs District, had been dismissed because enormous quantities of goods had been processed as imported from the European Union that, according to the EU, "either are not exported at all or are exported only in insignificant quantities."
Vanin noted, for instance, that according to the EU, 23 tons of palm oil had left the EU for Russia, while documents at the Northwest Customs District show that 12,000 tons were imported.
According to Vanin, the documents were most likely falsified to mask the importation of other goods. When asked how much money the budget may have lost as a result of this corruption, Vanin said, "I hate to think about it."
TITLE: EBRD Wish List Has Strong Oblast Flavor
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Responding to a request from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the federal government has put together a short list of priority projects it would like the organization to help fund, and three of the four are located in the Leningrad Oblast.
The three local projects are the continuation of work on a flood-protection dam at the entrance to the city's harbor, construction of two bridges as part of the Ring Road project and the development of a regional system for navigation safety in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland.
The fourth project is for reconstruction work on Moscow's Ostankino television tower, which was damaged in a fire last September.
The government is asking the EBRD to provide $392 million in loans out of a total cost of $810 million for the four projects. Of thaat total, $379 million would be earmarked for the three local projects, with $215 million going to the flood-protection dam, $157.5 million for the Ring Road bridge and $5.4 million to the navigation system.
Two more projects - the establishment of a ferry line between the Ust-Luga port in the Leningrad Oblast and the German ports of Kiel and Mukran; and the construction of a highway connecting cities of Chita and Khabarovsk, which would complete road linkage between Eastern Siberia and the Far East - are presently also under discussion by the government.
German Gref, the minister for economic development and trade, who, like President Vladimir Putin and a large number of the members of the cabinet, is originally form St. Petersburg, denied that there was any bias in the selection of the main projects.
"All of the projects were selected on the basis of strict criteria of social and economic necessity," Gref said in a report by business daily Vedomosti last week. "The government has received a large number of project proposals, so we had to narrow down the list."
Over the last 10 years, the EBRD has had extensive involvement in Russia, funneling about 13 billion euro ($11.57 billion) to projects here, with 4 billion euro ($3.56 billion) of that coming from the bank's own coffers. In accordance with the EBRD's charter, about 85 percent of these funds has been channeled to Russia's private sector.
In 1999 and 2000 the largest group of recipients wasthe financial sector, which was the target of 31.7 percent of all EBRD money, followed by the energy sector at 26.7 percent, the industrial sector with 24.3 percent, transport and telecommunications with 12.1 percent and about 2 percent each to the agricultural sector and infrastructure projects at the municipal level.
According to Richard Wallis, the EBRD press secretary for Russia, the bank itself requested that the government provide its wish list to give it a better idea of the government's priorities.
"Financing infrastructure projects is central to the strategy of the bank," Wallis said Wednesday. "We asked the Russian government to provide the list of the most important projects and now we will carry out a very difficult and detailed process in researching these projects and negotiating with the government."
"It's too early to comment on the chances that these projects willbe approved by the bank. he added"
Lev Sovulkin, senior analyst at the Leontief Center for Socio-Economic Research says that the federal government has a large number of plans for development projects, but has to find funding somewhere.
"What private, commercial companies would be interested in financing these works in the public sector? The simple answer is none," he said Thursday. "Private investors would only be interested if they had ownership after the construction was completed, but that's not in the government's plans."
TITLE: Gazprom Opens Major Gas Field in the Arctic
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Gazprom on Wednesday officially opened a giant Arctic gas field, underscoring the monopoly's readiness to supply gas to Europe, as well as its reticence to expand past its traditional production base.
Zapolyarnoye - with reserves estimated at 3.3 trillion cubic meters - is the first field of its kind to become operational since the fall of the Soviet Union. When Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller took the helm in June, he said getting the field online was his top priority.
At maximum, the field is planned to provide about 100 billion cubic meters of gas a year, much of which will compensate declines expected at Gaz prom's older fields. In 1992, Gazprom produced 602.7 billion cubic meters. This year it expects to pump 520 billion cubic meters, a 16-percent decrease.
Zapolyarnoye is a welcome bright spot against the background of disappointments Gazprom investors have suffered. A committee formed to liberalize trading in the monopoly's shares could not agree on how to go about it, so the two-tiered share system will continue to irk investors in the near future. Gazprom has also failed to recoup assets it sold to rival producer Itera on the cheap.
Adding to Gazprom's burden, the Kremlin will put off raising domestic tariffs, which are far lower than the cost of producing and transporting natural gas, until next year. And reform of the monopoly is a question that has been taken off the agenda.
Despite slow progress, investors such as Adolf Lundin, chairperson of the Vostok Nafta Investment company, are bullish on Gazprom's long-term strategy, which includes increasing supplies to Europe.
"The need for Russian gas in Europe will definitely grow," Lundin said. "Production in the North Sea is going down."
Russia currently supplies Europe with one-fourth of its gas, about 129 billion cubic meters a year.
Although analysts predict a decrease in European gas prices next year, Lundin says short-term price vacillations don't affect Gazprom's value.
"You need to look at the medium and long term," he said. "Energy is going to get more expensive."
Vostok Nafta's bullishness is evident in its investment portfolio. In 1998, Gazprom accounted for 12.5 percent of the portfolio. Lundin says that figure is now more than 50 percent.
Production at Zapolyarnoye actually started Oct. 5, and this event signals a shift in the balance of power between Russia and Europe, said Peter Zeihan, an analyst with Stratfor, a U.S.-based intelligence-services firm.
"Gazprom's tapping of Zapolyarnoye should help solve many of the company's problems," Zeihan said. Poor management, ridiculously low domestic prices and asset stripping have prevented Gazprom from opening many new fields in the past decade.
Most of Gazprom's fields are concentrated in the Yamal-Nenetsk Autonomous Region, but in recent months, President Vladimir Putin has given direct orders for the monopoly to expand its base past West Siberia, although it is unclear how such expensive ventures will be financed.
In addition, oil companies have made inroads into Russia's gas sector, robbing Gazprom of market value and income.
However, Russia's hegemony in European gas supplies should not be taken for granted, the Russian Oil and Gas Report said earlier this year, citing an executive of the Norwegian state-run oil and gas corporation Statoil.
The rapidly nearing depletion of "cheap" Russian reserves and insufficient investment in exploration will undermine Gazprom's competitive ability, the executive said.
While exact figures are unavailable, Gazprom is estimated to have spent billions of dollars in bringing Zapolyarnoye on stream.
TITLE: Sibneft Players Form $3 Bln Holding
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A group of Sibneft shareholders announced Wednesday that they have consolidated their oil, metals, aviation and other assets in a financial-industrial powerhouse called Millhouse Capital.
The new British-registered holding is worth $3 billion to $4 billion, comparable to the country's largest holding Alfa Group, analysts said.
Millhouse will manage an 88 percent stake in Sibneft, Russia's sixth-largest oil company, a 50-percent stake in the world's No. 2 aluminum producer Russian Aluminum, and 26 percent of Russia's flagship airline Aeroflot, a Millhouse source said.
The holding will also manage controlling stakes in GAZ, Russia's second-largest automaker, the Ingosstrakh insurance giant, the Nosta metals plant and medium-sized Avtobank. In addition, it will have stakes in Irkutskenergo, the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric plant and the Ust Ilinsky pulp-and-paper plant.
Millhouse will be headed by Sibneft president Eugene Shvidler.
"The company aims to be a progressive force for change on the Russian corporate landscape," Shvidler said. "Millhouse will target undervalued assets where growth in shareholder value has been hindered by ineffective management, lack of investment or bad corporate governance."
The Sibneft shareholders behind the move are believed to be led by Roman Ab ramovich, who has said he owns 44 percent of Sibnef and who celebrated his 35th birthday Wednesday.
Millhouse was minted in the mold of Alfa Group, which manages Alfa Bank and Tyumen Oil Co. among other companies, and has about the same value, $3 billion to $4 billion, said James Fenkner, equity strategist for the Troika Dialog brokerage.
"It might even be bigger than Alfa," said Eric Kraus, chief strategist at the NIKoil brokerage.
The only major holding, Interros, the slowly eroding metals-and-banking empire of Vladimir Potanin, is worth somewhat less, analysts said. Calculating the precise value of Interros, Alfa and Millhouse is difficult because many companies in the holdings aren't actively traded.
Fenkner said Millhouse is an example of how industrial consolidations have fundamentally changed since the 1998 financial crisis.
"It used to be the financial arm that used to acquire assets for the industrial arm," he said. "Now, these industrial assets are the cash cows. Russian Aluminum is a massive cash cow."
Kraus agreed, saying that this new kind of holding is healthier than the groups formed in the mid-1990s, such as the now-defunct Menatep, that drew much of their revenue from speculation-prone banking divisions.
"The most logical reason for this is to consolidate the cash flows of the different companies," Kraus said. "Everything suggests that Sibneft isn't holding to its stated intention of behaving like a public company."
Although the appearance of Millhouse marks a new stage of consolidation, it does little to quell corporate-governance concerns.
"Millhouse doesn't really change anything," Fenkner said. "It doesn't give any more information as to who the beneficial owner or owners really are."
When potential investors are left in the dark, they aren't able to calculate the owners' incentives, thus making investments riskier.
Sibneft shares showed little reaction to the Millhouse announcement, closing down a mere 0.4 percent at $0.60. The shares had plunged 10 percent a day earlier after a late Monday-night conference call in which management told investors that a 27-percent stake of Sibneft - acquired from the main shareholders and held in the company's treasury - had been sold back to the same shareholders, who will receive dividends on the shares.
Sibneft executed the sale without consulting with the board, and market watchers said the transaction was probably made at the oil company's loss.
Sibneft said Wednesday that Millhouse was created as an umbrella in which assets will be set apart to avoid a threat of cross-subsidization. When structures close to Abramovich began buying up Aeroflot shares earlier this year, Sibneft minority shareholders expressed concern that Sibneft cash would be used to subsidize the airline.
Millhouse will work with oil-trading company Nafta-Moskva and Siberian Aluminum, controlled by businessperson Oleg Deripaska, to strengthen Avtobank's and Ingosstrakh's position on the market, the three companies said in a statement. Siberian Aluminum controls the other half of Russian Aluminum.
Millhouse, Siberian Aluminum and Nafta-Moskva will cooperate in improving Nosta's financial performance, the companies said. Nosta shareholders have already signed a contract with Russian Aluminum for assistance in reforming the beleaguered metal plant.
TITLE: EBRD Looking To Purchase 20% Stake in Vneshtorgbank
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The EBRD is in negotiations to buy a 20-percent stake in state-owned Vneshtorgbank, the second-largest bank in Russia after Sberbank.
The government has for months been discussing privatizing Vneshtorgbank, which deals mostly with foreign trade, as part of a much-awaited overhaul of the rickety banking sector.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said Tuesday that it has made an offer for the 20-percent stake and is now waiting for Russian authorities to give the green light.
"We are working on various options regarding Vneshtorgbank and are ready to move forward if we get the agreement of the Central Bank and the Russian government," said Jeff Hiday, head of media relations at the EBRD.
"We don't have anything to comment on yet as we need to wait for the government and Central Bank to decide," said Boris Sergeyev, head of Vneshtorgbank's external-relations department.
The EBRD and Vneshtorgbank declined to put a price tag on the stake. Reuters quoted an unnamed EBRD source as saying the bank was offering $300 million, part of which would pay for the costs of privatizing Vneshtorgbank.
The Central Bank, which owns 99.9 percent of Vneshtorgbank, would guarantee a share buyback from the EBRD if the privatization of the bank is delayed, the source said.
The privatization of Vneshtorgbank and another Central Bank-controlled bank, Vneshekonombank, is scheduled to be discussed at a cabinet meeting Thursday.
A key question that is expected to be brought up is whether the government and Central Bank are ready to allow foreigners to take a big chunk of what until now has been considered national property.
The cabinet earlier said the Central Bank would be stripped of the shares by 2003, and now a final decision must be made on whether to privatize the banks or transfer the Central Bank's shares to another governmental body.
Vneshtorgbank is unquestionably a prime asset. Established in 1990 to service the country's trade operations, the bank currently has 33 branches, four affiliated banks in Russia and is a major shareholder in five former Soviet trade banks, located in London, Paris, Vienna, Luxembourg and Frankfurt.
Ratings agencies Fitch and Moody's have given the bank the highest payability ratings of any Russian bank. The Banker magazine last year ranked Vneshtorgbank in the 222nd spot of the world's 1,000 largest banks by capital.
As of Aug. 1, the bank had 47.57 billion rubles ($1.6 billion) in capital and assets worth 145 billion rubles ($4.8 billion), according to the Rating Information Center, a Russian agency.
The World Bank has given its blessing to the sell-off of Vneshtorgbank. Among its recommendations on banking reforms, the World Bank suggested that the state sell a stake in Vneshtorgbank to a strategic foreign investor.
If it should be privatized, the billion-dollar question would be who besides the EBRD would be interested in owning stakes. A $300-million price for the 20-percent stake would value the remaining 80 percent of the bank at about $1.2 billion, a hefty sum for any single investor.
"Even if we talk about $750 million, which would be needed to take a controlling stake in Vneshtorgbank, the amount is too high for Russian banks, and I don't think that anyone would pay so much," said Mikhail Matovnikov, deputy director of Interfax Rating Agency, which tracks banks.
"Vneshtorgbank still has a lot of homework to do before it is ready for a strategic investor," he said.
Sergeyev said he hoped EBRD's interest in Vneshtorgbank would help convince other Western investors to come on board.
"I hope that the position of the West will change when the EBRD finds out what is going on inside the bank," he said.
Matovnikov said oil companies are just about the only Russian companies that could afford to plunk down large wads of cash for acquisitions. However, many oil firms have already dabbled in banking and found the business to be a headache with insufficiently high profits to make it worthwhile, he said.
TITLE: There's More to This War Than Bombing
AUTHOR: By Nicholas Guyatt
TEXT: IN the aftermath of Sept. 11, the United States finds itself embroiled in two different battles. The first, waged on the plains and in the mountains of Afghanistan, pits the world's richest country (and most powerful military) against the world's poorest. It is not hard to predict that America will win this "war," although its task in finding a legitimate replacement for the Taliban may be much more difficult.
The second battle, however, is of an altogether different order of magnitude. Since the September attacks, the United States has been engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of global public opinion, and especially for the approval of the Islamic world. President George W. Bush, learning from America's unfortunate response to its Japanese population in the 1940s, has stressed at every juncture that this new "war against terrorism" is not a clash of religions or civilizations. In Bush's parlance, it is a fight between decent and law-abiding people everywhere and a tiny minority of terrorists who are committed to destroying freedom in the world.
It's unlikely that even Bush believes this line about the causes of the attacks. Although the president has regularly reassured the American people that it's their way of life that the terrorists seek to destroy - as if Mohammed Atta and his colleagues had arrived in Florida with open minds and were disgusted by the crass commercialism and sprawling theme parks of the sunshine state and then plotted their terrible deeds - his advisers will surely have reminded him that radical Islam is neither innately anti-American nor expansionist. Islamic militants have been committed to political change in the Middle East for almost three decades. Since the death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul-Nasser in 1970, organized Islamic opposition parties have risen to challenge secular regimes across the Islamic world.
The United States, with extraordinary consistency, has stood against these militant groups wherever they posed a threat to American interests in the region. Virtually the only place in which the United States gave its blessing to militant Islam was Afghanistan, where an even more terrible incubus - the Soviet Union - forced a compromise with the Islamists in the name of anti-communism.
The war between militant Islam and the United States, then, has a much longer history than the past six weeks. Islamists have bridled at American support for corrupt regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and a pan-Islamic movement against U.S. involvement in the Middle East has been brewing for many years. The levels of anger among militant Islamists are certainly a cause for American concern, but perhaps an even greater challenge to American security comes from the broad popular sympathy for the militants' objectives (if not their methods) among ordinary Arabs and Muslims.
Although there's still confusion over the identity of the Sept. 11 assailants, many of them seem to have come from ordinary backgrounds or even from rather secular, professional families. While the United States needs to do everything in its power to identify existing militant cells that might carry out additional attacks, the truly daunting challenge is to cut off the supply of these militants before they reach groups like al-Qaeda. If it is to be successful in this, the American government simply has to address the root causes of discontent throughout the Islamic world.
Policymakers in Washington privately admitted that Osama bin Laden's videotaped statement of Oct. 7 was quite effective in conveying a rationale for attacks on America. Moreover, the Bush administration paid bin Laden the compliment of censoring his subsequent statements, as the major U.S. television networks and newspapers agreed not to broadcast bin Laden's words or even to print transcripts of any statements. Bush probably wishes he could block the statement from appearing outside the United States as well, not least because bin Laden appears to have targeted more moderate Muslims with his rhetoric.
Unlike Bush, whose Manichean worldview and eccentric phraseology ("evildoers") baffled even many Americans, bin Laden appears to have a very good sense of how to maximize sympathy for his cause. His statement emphasized three concrete examples of injustice in the Middle East, each one inextricably linked to American involvement: the continuing presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia; the destructive effects of UN sanctions (at the insistence of the Americans) on Iraq; and the continuing carnage occasioned by the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
It is worth emphasizing that one needs no Islamic militancy or even belief in Islam to concur with bin Laden that these are deeply troubling and unjust situations. Bin Laden has carefully avoided reference to, say, the corruption of Hosni Mubarak and the need for an Islamic state in Egypt, and has instead outlined a general agenda for protest that will undoubtedly appeal to many Muslims.
Even if we admit the legitimacy of these complaints, we can observe that they hardly justify the slaughter of more than 5,000 people - the vast majority civilians - in New York and Washington. We might expect people in the Middle East to remember the terrible images of Sept. 11 for many years and to identify bin Laden's rhetoric as opportunistic or twisted, even if the problems he's outlined are real and legitimate. What many people in the United States fail to understand, however, is that the ordinary inhabitants of the Middle East genuinely believe that the United States is impervious to any kind of criticism or even dialogue and that bin Laden's methods, however terrible, represent the only means of conveying protest to America.
In addition, the broadcasts of al-Jazeera - the Qatari TV network that has faithfully covered the second intifada, the effect of sanctions on Iraq and other betes noires of American foreign policy - offer a constant reminder that for every dead civilian in lower Manhattan, there is a dead Palestinian or Iraqi. The calculus of human suffering is far less clear from the perspective of the Middle East, and the awful images of Sept. 11 fade quickly when supplanted by Israeli attacks on Bethlehem or even the "collateral damage" of the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan. The ongoing effects of American policies in the Middle East suggest that bin Laden will have no trouble finding new recruits for his struggle unless the United States decides to strip him of his legitimacy and direct its own resources toward winning moderate support throughout the region.
Will the United States acknowledge the importance of this second battle and begin to reach out in earnest to the disenchanted majority in the Muslim world? There are at least some hopeful signs in this regard. President Bush has recognized the need for a Palestinian state and has put some pressure on Ariel Sharon to curb Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian urban areas. However, the ongoing bombing campaign in Afghanistan and the efforts of some Bush administration officials to drag Iraq into the military conflict will no doubt have given heart to bin Laden, who surely realizes that an intemperate and self-interested American policy in the Middle East will have a miraculous effect on his standing: Against all the odds, it will make his struggle seem legitimate and reasonable.
Nicholas Guyatt is a fellow in the Department of History, Princeton University. His most recent book is "Another American Century? The United States and The World After 2000." He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: New Ad Law Is Reason for Celebration
TEXT: EVEN in these troubled times it seems that politics can bring people happiness. The State Duma's adoption of amendments to the law on advertising in its second reading has convinced me of this. The amendments toughen up the rules for showing advertisements on television and radio, in particular during children's and educational programs and, above all, during films. In short, there will be fewer advertisements on television.
Scarcely had the results of the vote been made public,when I received a phone call from an old acquaintance wanting to share his delight with me. He has his own score to settle with television advertising. All his life he had dreamed of seeing Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris." Not so long ago, the opportunity presented itself when one of the channels aired the film late at night. But by the third ad break, he had fallen asleep, and the film was only just getting started.
My acquaintance is not alone in finding the deluge of advertisements on television, starting from the middle of 2001, to be disagreeable. According to an opinion poll conducted by Monitoring.ru, 82 percent of respondents supported cutting airtime for adverts in the mass media. So, the day the new provisions actually come into effect should be declared a national holiday.
How is it that the television companies - and it is television advertising that is the chief irritant - contrive to rile their own public to such an extent?
The August 1998 crisis dealt television a terrible blow. According to data from the Russian Association of AdvertisingAgencies, in 1999, when the aftermath of the crisis made itself felt most strongly, federal channels' advertising budgets fell by more than half, from $480 million to $190 million. The following year saw major growth as the television advertising market grew by 42 percent, or $270 million. Growth has continued in 2001. Estimates suggest that by the end of the year advertising revenues will exceed pre-crisis levels. It is perfectly obvious and understandable that television channels have sought to claw back some of their losses by increasing airtime for showing advertisements.
However, there are factors other than economic ones that drive domestic television companies. State Audit Chamber reports published every year on the activities of the state-owned VGTRK and partially state-owned ORT, as well as information gleaned over the past year on the financial management of NTV under Gusinsky, clearly show that national television channels - both state-owned and private - are managed in an almost boundlessly wasteful fashion. The financial flows from advertisers to advertising agencies and on to television companies are, by all accounts, a terrible tale that deserves to be told separately. In this respect, however, the advertising frenzy on state and private federal channels is just another attempt to compensate for poor management at the viewer's expense.
And this is why 82 percent of the country's citizens are annoyed by ads.
What will the impact of the Duma's decision be on the economic health of broadcasters? The best possible scenario, in my opinion, is as follows. Today, television advertising budgets are spent extremely irrationally and incorrectly. Last year, regional television stations - and there are no less than 500 of them, including quite a number of good-quality and quite popular stations - received a mere $40 million in advertising revenues. One would hope that the inevitable rise in advertising prices on federal channels will serve as a stimulus for serious advertisers to go out and work with regional media. Preferably, directly and not through Moscow-based middlemen.
Alexei Pankin is the editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals(www.internews.ru/sreda).
TITLE: PR: Just Like Political Heroin
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: A FEW months ago, two public-relations consultants representing rival candidates in a key regional election met in the corridors of the State Duma. It is no secret that provincial elections are "made" by teams coming from Moscow, each of which long ago became a kind of wandering circus traversing Russia in pursuit of easy money.
The interlocutors had no trouble finding a common language. One told the other that $1 million had been earmarked for a smear campaign on a third candidate.
"We thought about it and came to the conclusion that it would be better simply to steal this money." The other found this to be a great idea: "In fact, that way it'll be better for you and for us." After which the first interlocutor, assuming a businesslike tone, said, "And how much will you pay us to pilfer our own funds?"
This conversation is not a fabrication or an exaggeration. I simply removed the strange mix of Russian obscenities and American English in which representatives of this worthy profession tend to express themselves.
In general, if you can do nothing but pretend to speak English and you really want to make money, then you go into public relations. Furthermore, the client should not be a private-sector company but some major political structure or gubernatorial candidate, preferably with Kremlin backing. In this case, you are guaranteed an unlimited budget and zero accountability.
A faith in the omnipotence of PR is a key feature of contemporary Russian political culture. This faith was conceived during the famous 1993 referendum on confidence in Boris Yeltsin, when all the television channels beat voters over the head with the senseless jumble of words: "yes, yes, no, yes." Today, no one even remembers what the questions were, but the "yes, yes, no, yes" formula can be reeled off by any Russian citizen.
The culmination was the 1996 Yeltsin presidential re-election campaign in which television and the print media turned the helpless and inarticulate Communist candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, into a monster. At the time, a certain famous liberal journalist pronounced a sacred phrase: "For the duration of the elections one has to put one's conscience in a safe and keep it under lock and key." Akram Murtazayev, one of the founders of Novaya Gazeta, later snidely remarked that most of his colleagues proceeded to lose the key.
Yeltsin's victory was achieved somehow or other, as a result of which the PR maestros and their clients started to believe that PR was capable of anything.
In the first half of the 1990s, former Soviet citizens, disoriented by the changes raining down on them, were ideal targets for propaganda. They had already dismissed the old Soviet rhetoric, and advertising gimmicks borrowed from the West worked well due to their novelty. By the middle of the 1990s, political technologists had developed a weapon of unprecedented strength: They conflated the propaganda traditions of Soviet agitprop with the methods and forms of U.S. commercial advertising.
The content of political slogans no longer had any importance. The PR agent's goal was not to convey a candidate's idea to the electorate but to distract the general public from his political program and, if possible, to kill off completely all political debate.
However, the effectiveness of propaganda falls over time because it is a specific kind of drug. In order to get the same effect, you must continually increase the dosage. But it is a harder addiction to maintain than one to heroin.
First, there is a habit, but this is followed by fatigue and finally rejection. People are no longer so naive and are becoming harder and harder to manipulate. The PR community, for its part, corrupted by big money and having made lies and toadying its main speciality, has finally gone rotten to the core. If people lie to the public 24 hours a day, it is no surprise that they start to deceive even their clients.
Today, PR campaigns are much less a means of winning elections than a way of concealing their falsification. Everyone knows the rules: In order to beat an incumbent governor, you have to get at least 5 percent more votes. If the candidate has Kremlin support, then the gap should be double that. Otherwise, no matter how many votes are garnered, you will lose to the candidate of the party of power by 2 percent to 3 percent.
With such administrative resources behind him, he has to be a complete idiot to lose. Surprisingly, though, the party of power loses elections all the time.
Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist.
TITLE: Does Putin Need Such A Railways Minister?
TEXT: NIKOLAI Aksyonenko and his Railways Ministry are under investigation. It's about time. The Prosecutor General's Office said Monday it has opened a criminal investigation into the Railways Ministry and Aksyonenko has been charged with abuse of office. The probe is focusing on the misspending of $2.3 million and a tax debt of $370 million.
Aksyonenko maintains his innocence. He is blaming the investigation on unnamed parties who he says are angered by his plan to overhaul the inefficient railroad system.
The thrust of the plan is to place the profitable parts of the ministry into state-owned Russian Railways Co. Private operators would be allowed to compete with this company. The cabinet tentatively approved Aksyonenko's proposal in April.
But the railways minister, one of the last insiders from President Boris Yeltsin's days to retain a powerful government post, is the odd man out in a breed of ministers handpicked by President Vladimir Putin. His independent style has led to clashes with the administration. And his connections with former Kremlin power player Boris Berezovsky almost certainly don't sit well with the Kremlin.
Ak syo nenko won no new friends in the Kremlin in July when he balked at a Putin-backed rail-restructuring proposal to introduce a unified tariff system. He furiously demanded $785 million to cover the losses that he said his ministry would suffer this year.
In addition, Aksyonenko and his ministry have a track record of refusing to cooperate. For example, in June 1999, when he was first deputy prime minister, Aksyonenko rejected a State Duma request to explain the relationship between the Railways Ministry and TransRail, a Swiss-based freight agent. Rail-industry insiders alleged that TransRail had attained a monopoly position through preferential treatment by the ministry and speculated that rail officials were using the firm to redirect cash flows into their own pockets.
More recently, the State Audit Chamber in March angrily accused the Railways Ministry of sabotaging an assessment it was preparing for the cabinet.
Aksyonenko is now stubbornly refusing to resign, even though in a government that professes to embrace Western-style reforms and transparency he is a clear liability. His first retort to the charges was that he would take the matter up with the Kremlin, a telling sign that he is stuck in the mindset that he is above the law. He seems to have forgotten that the Kremlin itself has said all minsters are accountable to the courts.
It's time for Aksyonenko to bow out gracefully and give the Putin-led government a chance to get railroad reforms on track.
This comment originally appeared as an editorial in The Moscow Times on Oct. 24.
TITLE: babslei keeps artistic control on album
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After 3 1/2 years of club gigs, the local all-girl folk-punk band Babslei is finally releasing its debut album. While "Yeldyrina Sloboda" was originally due in September, the enhanced CD was delayed a number of times.
The launch event is now set for Nov. 8, when Babslei will promote it with a concert at the Red Club that will also feature such bands as S.P.O.R.T. and Nordfolks.
According to Babslei's founder and drummer Katya Fyodorova, the album was delayed because the video that the band shot in June was not quite ready.
The video was made by Fyodorova's husband, alternative video director Alexander Rozanov, who based it on a Soviet film classic, and cast some of the most important local rock personalities. The video has now finally been cut and will also be on the CD.
The album contains 15 Russian folk-oriented tracks written by all the members and performed with their typical punk fervor. The recordings were made in two sessions in March and May. In between, two members of the band took time out to have babies. Fish Fabrique's Pavel Zaporozhtsev claims that a Babslei club gig is a guarantee for a large and diverse audience, ranging from butch lesbians to the occasional sailor.
The album was briefly available in very limited release on cassette at a concert on Oct. 4, when Babslei supported Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Band.
Conceived by Babslei's local label as a major publicity event for the band, its set turned out to be much shorter than the planned 30 minutes. Because Kusturica's group prohibited the supporting act from changing anything on stage, Babslei walked out after playing only three songs.
"Their drummer is almost 2 meters tall, but I was not allowed to change anything or move any of the stands," said Fyodorova.
"Everyone had the same sort of problems. We had a bagpipe player who was not given a microphone because [the No Smoking Band] didn't have a bagpipe player. After playing three songs, we heard it was a mess on stage, so we left."
Last week, Fyodorova, who also plays with the experimental noise band Zga, returned from Britain, where she had been touring with Germany's prog rock band Faust.
She was helping out the band's drummer Zappi Diermaier, who couldn't operate the full drum set because of a spinal problem. Diermaier had suggested that Fyodorova might be the best replacement for him, remembering her from a jam in 1999 when Faust came to play at the SKIF 4 festival in St. Petersburg.
Fyodorova admits that the audiences were smaller than Faust usually attracts, with one concert of the planned seven canceled - after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, people became less enthusiastic about radical music styles.
"In my view, there were quite a lot of people, but they thought it was less than usual for them," says Fyodorova.
Fyodorova played drums, and accordion on one song, though she admits she cannot play the instrument. She describes her playing with Faust as "modest."
"I think that they expected more from me. What I played at SKIF with [Zga] was a very good concert, I played quite wildly," says Fyodorova. "But with them I was a little scared and watched what was happening around me."
Although Babslei's label, Bomba-Piter, is the biggest in St. Petersburg, it cannot guarantee national sales, which is why even remotely popular local act usually attempt to be signed by a Moscow record company. Fyodorova says she chose the label because the band is used to working with friends and having complete artistic control, which would not be possible with a Moscow label.
Bomba-Piter's promotion campaign also included the appearance of Babslei on the cover of the local rock magazine Fuzz and on the accompanying CD single last month, but Fyodorova says that taking the usual rock-and-roll road is not really appropriate for Babslei.
"I don't think that's the way for us," she says. "We would rather appear at folk festivals than on the cover of Fuzz. We don't quite fit in."
"Radio ROKS has already rejected our album because of its title," says Fyodorova who explains that it comes from the absurdist writer Daniil Kharms. "They thought 'Yeldyrina Sloboda' came from the word yelda [a vulgar term for penis]."
Babslei plays at Manhattan on Saturday. The showcase concert for the album "Yeldyrina Sloboda," featuring S.P.O.R.T. and Nordfolks, is scheduled for the Red Club on Nov. 8.
TITLE: golden sofit: less bias this year?
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg theatrical community is getting ready for the most important event of the year this Monday, when the Golden Sofit, the most prestigious theatrical award in town, will announce the winners in 14 categories.
The award, which was established in 1995, has earned a controversial reputation during its brief history. The most common accusation is that the circle of theaters and even artists receiving the Golden Sofit is too small - and for political rather than for artistic reasons.
For instance, many critics have wondered why the Bolshoi Drama Theater is one of the constant nominees, and just as regular a winner, while productions by the Maly Drama Theater, which has received several Golden Masks (Russia's highest theatrical awards), are usually overlooked.
This year, the BDT production "Phaedra" has been nominated for several awards: best female actor (Marina Ignatova), best major stage production (director Grigory Ditya t kov sky) and best set design (artist Ma rina Azizyan).
Another multiple nominee is Alexander Galibin's production of August Strindberg's "Freken Julie" at the Baltiisky Dom, battling for the best female actor (Irina Savitskova), best male actor (Dmitry Vorobyov), best small stage production (director Alexander Galibin) and best set design (artist Emil Kapelyush).
In the meantime, neither the Maly Drama Theater nor the Theater on Liteiny Theater have received a single nomination. The Vasilievsky Ostrov Satire Theater is mentioned only once, competing for the best ensemble (Svetlana Svirko's "Zaklikukhi").
Andrei Platunov, an official from the St. Petersburg Culture Committee who was invited to join the Golden Sofit expert council, said that, although speculation continues to be heard about the bias of the awards, the situation has recently improved. "This is the first time I have been a member of the expert council. I observed the first six ceremonies from outside, as a part of the audience, and I can say that the award is getting more objective," Platunov said. "Experts vary in age, views and tastes, and the debates have been very intense."
"As perhaps with every award, there are nominations with easily predictable winners and nominations where everything depends on the jurors' tastes. Here everything happens during the vote, and always comes as a surprise," said Ella Makhrova, who is also on the council.
Platunov predicts that at least one jury verdict will cause many complaints, in the category of best male actor. "All four nominees - Vladimir Matveyev, Sergei Barkovsky, Dmitry Vorobyov and Sergei Byzgy - are very talented and almost equally impressive in their roles. I know it will be very difficult to choose and anticipate contrasting public reaction," Platunov said.
Interestingly enough, the nomination for best choreography has been replaced by best ballet production. This was to allow the inclusion of John Neumeier's ballets that premiered at the Mariinsky Theater last spring. Only one of the three ballets, "Sounds of Empty Pages," was created specifically for the company, which is not quite enough for a Golden Sofit.
The nomination for best musical theater production no longer exists, but opera companies compete for the category of best opera director.
"For this nomination, the major criterion was that the production have a fresh new approach or idea," Makhrova said. "The nominees are Viktor Kramer, for the first Russian version of Berlioz's "The Troyans" at the St. Petersburg Conservatory; Alexander Petrov, for the unusual interpretation of Puccini's opera "La Bohème" at the Zazerkalye Theater; Dmitry Cher nya kov, for his fresh take on Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh" at the Mariinsky Theater; and Stanislav Gaudasinsky, for his operatic version of Verdi's "Requiem" at the Mussorgsky Theater.
TITLE: bolshoi, mariinsky do swap
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia's two greatest opera and ballet giants - Moscow's Bolshoi Theater and the Mariinsky - used to go for years without paying each other a visit. But both have recently reconsidered, with mutual exchange tours becoming a regular event.
This November, the Bolshoi brings the reconstruction of Boris Pok rov sky's production of Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin," which will be shown on Nov. 16 and 17. [Pop singer] Nikolai Baskov will be singing Lensky in one of the performances, making it likely that popular- music lovers will squeeze operagoers out of the hall on that day. The company's ballet division will be represented by Yury Grigorovich's adaptation of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" on Nov. 3 and Nov. 4, with Anastasia Vo loch ko va, Anna Antonicheva and Nikolai Tsiskaridze in lead roles.
The Mariinsky is responding by showing Golden Mask-winning Yury Alexandrov's staging of Prokofiev's "Semyon Kotko" and the reconstruction of Marius Petipa's production of "The Sleeping Beauty" as well as a gala.
"In my opinion, cooperation is far more natural for our companies [than rivalry]," said Anatoly Iksanov, the Bolshoi's general director. "Both the companies and audiences will only benefit."
"When companies avoid contacts, they only demonstrate their weakness," said Eduard Boyakov, head of the organizing committee of the "Golden Mask," which arranged the exchange tours.
"The Bolshoi Theater doesn't belong to Moscow, just as the Mariisnky [doesn't belong] to St. Petersburg," he added. "These troupes are cultural sanctuaries."
As the Bolshoi Theater is going to close for reconstruction in just 14 months, with repairs planned to take up to three years, the company is negotiating with the Mariinsky about the possibility of performing on its stage for at least a month each year after the reconstruction starts.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: The rumors about Tricky touring Russia in December died soon after they emerged. He is not coming, as despite all the love the British Council has for electronic acts, it is not prepared to support his 16-member entourage. Get ready for another round of tours by British DJs instead.
One act that will be coming is the Sabri Brothers, Pakistan's leading musical export, who will be playing on Nov. 18.
The eight-member band, which released its first record in 1958, performs Qawwali, which is the devotional music of the Sufis, mystics of Islam, and is "the divine message which stirs the heart to seek God," according to the band's press release.
"While the poetry is all important to the Sufi, the passion and intensity of the music also have the power to move someone who cannot understand the words, seeming to touch the heart and stir the spirit directly, causing an intoxication, a rapturous joy and an understanding which speaks in a transcendent language."
The venue is yet to be confirmed.
According to press releases, Internet postings and occasional street posters, there is a so-called "Captain Inter-Club Festival" raging in the city. In reality, however, the program lists a number of dates in several clubs, which had been scheduled anyway. There is a strong suspicion that all the fuss has been made to increase the sales of a book by a certain local writer, which reads like a bad Russian translation of Charles Bukowski.
The whole trick is reminiscent of the scheme introduced by Moscow art-gallery-owner-turned-political-PR-man Marat Guelman who came with a stately but eventually failed mission to do away with the local governor and included the programs of several clubs in his so-called "festival of arts" last year.
Babslei will play Manhattan/Kotyol Saturday (see the article on Page ii for details.) The place was originally conceived as an elitist club for film directors, actors, artists and directors, but soon changed its artistic management and became a haven for a more diverse, though no less self-respecting, audience. Babslei's friends Nordfolks had a chance to play there, and they report that the audience liked their Pogues-style accordion-driven folk punk and happily banged their mugs of beers on the tables to the Irish beat of the band.
Griboyedov celebrated its fifth anniversary last week with an all-night party featuring some of the live acts and DJs who performed and were largely associated with the club over its long - by St. Petersburg standards - history. The bunker club has been operated by the ska-influenced band Dva Samaliota since Oct. 1996.
Lovingly made, if inexpensive, compilations of music by the acts that have played at the club always contain a few truly interesting numbers, and are preferable to any other Russian music compilation on the market.
"Griboyedov Music 3" and "Griboyedov Music 4" have just been released and are available from the club. According to the producer, Dva Samaliota's drummer Mikhail Sindalovsky, the former concentrates on live acts, while the latter is devoted to electronic music.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: jackie chan to the rescue
AUTHOR: by Simon Patterson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Believe us, dear reader, when we say that every week we try to avoid reviewing a Chinese restaurant. It is just that things have gotten to the point where it is impossible to avoid them. Finally, we had to give up this week and turn our attention to Jackie Chan, which has long been a favorite lunch spot among certain journalists who work nearby.
At least Chan can claim a slightly more interesting name than most of its counterparts - the city already boasts a number of Golden Dragons, two Harbins and several Pekings. It even stands out among its neighbors. On the very same street, Kazanskaya Ulitsa, there is a Golden Panda a mere stone's throw away, and even closer, an establishment named simply "Kitaiskaya Kukh nya" (Chinese cuisine). If you walk along to Voznesensky Prospect, you will find a Guan Bao. Surely this is somewhat excessive? Can the demand for Chinese food among St. Petersburg residents really be that high?
You would be forgiven, of course, for not checking out Jackie Chan, since for starters the sign on the street reads "Saigon," and bills itself as a "nightclub." This is presumably a reminder of an earlier incarnation of the restaurant. The interiors are also far from promising, with plenty of faux mahogony and mirrors in grim Soviet restaurant style, and usually the music playing involves Alla Pugachyova. But strangely enough, the food is excellent. On a number of visits, we have seen large groups of tourists from China, which is usually a sure sign that the cuisine measures up.
We began our meal with soups, the hot-and-sour soup for 22 rubles, while my dining companion had a seafood soup for 29 rubles. While the menu also offers a business lunch for only 88 rubles, this, like many other business lunches, is best avoided, consisting of a fairly bland assortment of fish or chicken with noodles or pelmeni. Given that the rest of the menu is cheap enough anyway, there is little point in trying to economize even further.
I found my soup brought tears to the eyes, and I gulped down my tomato juice (20 rubles) while my companion calmly sipped her mineral water (20 rubles).
For mains, I chose the chicken Gun Bao (88 rubles) with fried rice with vegetables (25 rubles). The chicken was served with peanuts, in a spicy sauce, and the portion was more than enough for one person. My companion also struggled to finish her sweet-and-sour pork (110 rubles), which was unfortunately rather on the bland side. The selection of dishes is wide, though, and most of what is on offer is of high quality.
While we were hardly in the mood to eat any more, my companion had already ordered a dessert of bananas in syrup (65 rubles), which our waitress was considerate enough to suggest we eat with a pot of green tea (20 rubles) to mitigate the sweetness.
The currently very popular series of detective novels by Kholm van Zaichik, the pseudonym of local Sinologists/novelists Vyacheslav Rybakov and Nikolai Alimov, envisages a Russia united with China, preserving the best traditions of both countries, and a St. Petersburg where Buddhist temples, mosques and Orthodox churches sit side by side. Increasingly, their vision of the city looks more and more like it is becoming a reality.
Jackie Chan, 33 Kazanskaya Ulitsa, 315-4354. Lunch for two, 450 rubles ($15). Open daily, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. No credit cards accepted. Menu in Russian and Chinese.
TITLE: fractured fairy tale not just for kids
AUTHOR: by Kenneth Turan
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: A gleeful piece of wisenheimer computer animation, "Shrek" doesn't have much patience for traditional once-upon-a-time fairy tales: The only time one appears, its pages end up as reading material and then some in the hero's outhouse.
That hero is a fierce ogre with a name that's Yiddish for fear. He made his debut in William Steig's 1990 children's book, about a cheerfully ugly monster who's "tickled to be so repulsive," that has become something of a classic.
As the more wised-up version of that wised-up modern fairy tale, "Shrek," the film, is all comic attitude, all the time. Casual, carefree, consistently amusing, it plays a lot like the earlier "Aladdin," which Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, lead writers and co-producers here, also wrote.
Like "Aladdin," which did wonderful things with Robin Williams as the irrepressible genie, "Shrek" is blessed with Eddie Murphy as a motor-mouth donkey named, well, Donkey. Though his sidekick work in "Mulan" seemed forced, Murphy (taking off from a script by Elliott & Rossio and Joe Stillman and Roger S.H. Schulman) is spectacular here, and he's in good company.
Mike Myers, using a Scottish accent that echoes one of his Austin Powers characters, brings not only sharp comic timing but also a kind of sensitivity to the role of Shrek, an ogre who's more troubled by the world's disdain than he was in the book. And Cameron Diaz is appropriately feisty as Fiona, a princess with a secret and a woman who hasn't let being trapped in a tower affect her attitude or her style.
Though Steig's book did without a classic villain, "Shrek" adds a dandy one in Lord Farquaad, a tiny Richard III type (wonderfully voiced by the tall John Lithgow) whose enormous head is packed with evil thoughts, like how best to give the third degree to a gingerbread man who's reluctant to talk.
Farquaad is the ruler of a super-sanitized place called Duloc, which he's determined to turn into the most perfect kingdom on Earth. (Any resemblance between Duloc and a certain amusement park run by "Shrek" producer Jeffrey Katzenberg's former employer is probably not coincidental.)
As part of this quest for perfection, Farquaad places a bounty on fairy-tale characters like Pinocchio and the Three Bears and forcibly exiles them. Donkey is one of them, and when he's saved by Shrek, whom he admires as "a mean, green fighting machine," he decides the two of them should be buddies. "Freaks got to stay together," he declares, adding, with perfect animated logic, "every monster needs a sidekick."
Shrek doesn't quite see it that way. He's a privacy-loving Garbo type who just wants to left alone, which is why he keeps his property posted with "Beware of the Ogre" signs. So when all those dispossessed fairy-tale types invade his swamp, Shrek stamps off to Farquaad's castle to complain.
That miniature man is having crises of his own. His magic mirror informs him that to have the perfect kingdom, he must marry a princess. In one of "Shrek's" many pop-culture references, the mirror parodies "The Dating Game" by presenting him with a choice of three bachelorette princesses, including one, Snow White, who comes with the advisory "though she lives with seven other men, she's not easy."
Farquaad settles on Fiona, and when Shrek presents his case, he tells the ogre that he can have his swamp back if he rescues the princess from her dragon-guarded castle. So off Shrek sets on what turns out to be a most unconventional quest with the determined Donkey, "a dumb, irritating, miniature beast of burden" tagging along. "Yes, he talks," Shrek says of his annoying companion. "It's getting him to shut up that's the trick."
"Shrek's" pair of first-time directors, Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, keep the pace brisk enough to balance flatulence jokes with an earnest theme about being comfortable with who you are. The team also makes good use of advances in computer technology that allows human creatures to look more like flesh and blood. The film also shrewdly utilizes pop classics like "Try a Little Tenderness," "You Belong to Me" and "On the Road Again" to underline emotion and appeal to the parents of the film's intended audience at the same time.
Some of "Shrek's" best moments, however, are when it goes off message and simply fills the screen with sharp riffs on the fairy-tale characters it keeps running across. There's fun to be had with three blind mice as well as three little hip-hop pigs, and a classic run-in with Robin Hood and his chorus line of merry men that includes a great visual reference to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Smartly constructed to appeal to children and their parents, this fractured fairy tale not only knows there's no substitute for clever writing, it also has the confidence to take that information straight to the bank.
"Shrek" opens at the Mirazh Cinema on Thursday.
TITLE: Kandahar Endures Intense Bombardment
AUTHOR: By Steven Gutkin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KORAK DANA, Afghanistan - U.S. attacks on the Taliban's southern headquarters of Kandahar hit a bus at the city gates Thursday, killing at least 10 civilians in a fiery explosion, the Taliban and residents said.
Previous night-and-day bombardments have almost emptied Kandahar of its half-million civilians.
Bombing at Kandahar persisted into the day, while overnight attacks elsewhere struck targets around the strategic northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif - where opposition forces are trying to close in from the south - and in the western city of Herat.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged the United States might not be able to catch Osama bin Laden, but he predicted that the Taliban, Afghanistan's ruling regime, would be toppled.
Rumsfeld told USA Today it would be "very difficult" to capture or kill the terror suspect.
"It's a big world," he said. "There are lots of countries. He's got a lot of money, he's got a lot of people who support him, and I just don't know whether we'll be successful."
In any event, Rumsfeld said, he thought bin Laden's terrorist network would carry on without him.
"If he were gone tomorrow, the same problem would exist," he told the paper.
With U.S. military action against the Taliban intensifying, diplomats stepped up efforts Thursday to have a viable post-Taliban government ready if the Islamic regime falls.
Saudi Arabia dispatched its foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, for talks with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on post-Taliban Afghanistan. Afghan tribal representatives, meanwhile, were ending a two-day meeting in Peshawar aimed at paving the way for a new government.
The United States and Britain launched the military campaign in Afg ha nistan Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused repeated demands to surrender bin Laden, the chief suspect in last month's terror attacks in the United States.
On Thursday, Taliban spokesperson Mullah Amir Muttaqi reported "severe" air strikes on Kandahar, which has been pounded incessantly since the bombing campaign began.
He told Afghan Islamic Press, an independent Pakistan-based news agency, that one of Thursday's bombs hit a bus. The bus caught fire, incinerating at least 10 people inside, resident Jalal Khan told another news agency, the South Asian Dispatch Agency.
Pakistan's largest ambulance service said it was bringing six survivors for treatment in the Pakistani border town of Chaman.
The Taliban have expelled most foreign journalists from the country, making it difficult for the outside world to examine casualty claims. The United States says bin Laden, his al-Qaida network, and its Taliban allies are its true targets and insists it is trying to minimize civilian casualties.
The Taliban also reported overnight attacks at Herat and in the provinces of Balkh and Samagan, where the opposition northern alliance has been fighting the Taliban to open the road to Mazar-e-Sharif.
At Afghanistan's other key front, north of Kabul, opposition commanders complained anew that U.S. attacks have not been strong enough to dislodge Taliban positions.
"If America wants to finish off terrorism and the Taliban in Afghanistan, they must bring in ground troops," insisted Eztullah, leader of a small group of opposition fighters at the town of Korak Dana near the front.
Northern alliance forces claim to be bringing thousands of troops toward the front line, ready for any order from their leaders to march on Kabul, 45 kilometers away.
The fractious alliance of opposition forces, which ruled Afghanistan for four bloody, chaotic years, lost power in 1996 when the Taliban routed them from Kabul. The alliance lost Mazar-e-Sharif to the Taliban two years later, severing vital supply links with the neighboring countries of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Opposition forces have been trying to regain both cities ever since.
In Peshawar, Pakistan, representatives of Afghan tribes pressed ahead in a two-day council to discuss formation of a broad-based government to replace the Taliban.
Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani, a longtime supporter of the exiled Afghan King Mohammad Zaher Shah, said tribal leaders would ask the Afghan people "to revolt against the Taliban dictatorship."
TITLE: Northern Alliance Pushes for Troops
AUTHOR: By Steven Gutkin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SHERKAT, Afghanistan - A day after the heaviest U.S. bombing yet in their sector, anti-Taliban fighters on Thursday called on the United States to bring in ground troops and quickly liquidate Afghanistan's ruling militia.
"If America wants to finish off terrorism and the Taliban in Afghanistan, they must bring in ground troops," said Eztullah, leader of a small group of opposition fighters near the front line north of the capital Kabul.
"This should be quick," said Eztullah, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name.
Northern Alliance officers in the Bagram district, where the anti-Taliban opposition has control of a former Soviet air base, said they had seen 12 U.S. jets dropping two bombs each along the front lines in the Bagram and neighboring Rabat districts on Wednesday afternoon. They said the bombardment ended around 6 p.m.
Opposition commander Haji Bari said on Wednesday that the Northern Alliance was bringing in thousands of new troops and weapons in anticipation of a green light from alliance leaders to march on Kabul.
"We're waiting for the order," said Bari, deputy brigade commander in the Rabat district.
President George W. Bush ordered air strikes against Afghanistan after the ruling Taliban repeatedly refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, the main suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist bombings in New York and Washington, and his followers in the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
U.S. attacks this week have focused on al-Qaeda and Taliban positions facing Kabul and on the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, in hopes that the Northern Alliance can advance on those cities.
So far, the U.S. strikes have not brought an opposition advance.
The Northern Alliance is also fighting to dislodge the Taliban from the northeastern town of Taloqan to open up urgently needed supply routes.
The opposition fighters say they are short of weapons, ammunition and the most basic necessities. With winter around the corner, supplies will become even harder to transport, and a new airstrip that the Northern Alliance is building is still unfinished.
"It's our main problem: We don't have enough supplies," said Gul Mohammad, a commander at the front line in Bagram.
"If our stomachs were full, we could capture Kabul easily."
Eztullah said it was imperative for the U.S.-led anti-terrorist coalition to defeat the Taliban quickly, arguing that the Islamic militia could gain sympathy abroad if the bombardment drags on.
He also said that Taliban fighters were taking refuge in civilians' houses both in Kabul and along the front lines, finding ways to hide among civilians.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Serious Allegations
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesia's police chief denied allegations Thursday that officers working with illegal smugglers forced asylum seekers onto an unseaworthy boat that sank, killing 374 people.
General Suroyo Bimantoro told reporters before a weekly cabinet meeting that "it is not true" that about 30 police officers in the town of Lampung coerced the passengers onto the boat that was headed for Australia.
Senior UN officials in Indonesia on Wednesday called for the government to investigate allegations by survivors that police threatened to kill them if they did not board the vessel.
Achmad Hussein Ali, an Iraqi who survived the shipwreck, said Wednesday that police armed with pistols and automatic weapons forced 418 passengers to board the boat even though several did not want to after seeing its poor condition.
Thai Arsenal Blast
PAK CHONG, Thailand (Reuters) - Seventeen people are missing after a truck loaded with explosives blew up at a Thai military weapons warehouse on Thursday injuring about 70 people, officials said. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said in Bangkok 12 soldiers and five civilian security guards working inside the compound before the explosion were missing.
"I was just briefed over the phone that everything is under control. ... We still have 17 people missing," Thaksin told reporters.
The only confirmed death was a 70-year-old man who died of a heart attack due to shock, officials said.
Renewed Relations
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope John Paul II called Wednesday for the restoration of diplomatic ties between the Vatican and China and again apologized for any "errors" made by missionaries in the past.
"I feel deep sadness for those errors and limits of the past, and I regret that in many people these failings may have given the impression of a lack of respect and esteem for the Chinese people on the part of the Catholic Church, making them feel that the church was motivated by feelings of hostility towards China," he said.
China and the Vatican broke formal relations in 1951, when the Communists kicked out missionaries and forced Catholics to sever ties with Rome.
China now has a state-sanctioned Patriotic Church that doesn't recognize papal authority, including the right to name bishops.
Another Anthrax Scare
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's parliament, the Riksdag, was sealed off on Thursday and partly evacuated in an anthrax scare after a suspect letter was found in the mail room.
"We have received a letter which was leaking a powder. We have sealed off part of the premises where parliamentary sessions are held and we plan to close further parts," Riksdag security chief Goran Forsell said.
A reporter saw three fire-brigade trucks, a chemical-decontamination vehicle and an ambulance parked outside the parliament building, and three fire fighters dressing in plastic protective bio-hazard suits and putting on gas-masks.
TITLE: Safin Advances to Quarterfinal
AUTHOR: By John Varoli
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It has so far been a bad week for top seeds at the St. Petersburg Open. The past three days at the tournament have produced several upsets, with top seed Juan Carlos Ferrero losing 7-6, 6-4 to unseeded Rainer Schuettler in a first-round match, while fourth-seeded Tommy Haas lost 3-6, 7-6, 6-4 on Wednesday night in a tough battle with unseeded Andrei Medvedev of Ukraine.
Spain's 21-year-old Ferrero, though ranked fifth by the ATP, has been out of form lately, losing his last three matches. Schuettler, on the other hand, says he's been feeling great as of late.
"I've been practicing hard this year, and was playing well in practice, but not so well in tournament matches," he said at a press conference after the match. "But now the hard work is paying off."
On Thursday, Schuettler defeated the Czech Republic's Daniel Vacek in straight sets, 6-3, 7-6 to advance to the quarterfinals where he will play against Belarussian Max Mirnyi.
Mirnyi advanced to that spot by downing seventh-seeded Briton Greg Rusedski in straight sets, 7-6, 6-4. Following the match, Mirnyi told reporters that he hopes his victory will inspire a few more players to come out of Belarus and follow in his footsteps.
While Germany's Haas lost to the unseeded Medvedev, he made no excuses and said his opponent played a fine match.
"I have to give him credit, he played some good tennis," said Haas during at a post-match press conference.
Fifth-seeded Goran Ivanisevic advanced to the quarterfinals with a 7-6, 7-5 win over Spain's Felix Mantilla on Wednesday. He'll take on Russia's Marat Safin on Friday night in what is expected to be one of the tournament's hardest-fought matches.
Safin, seeded third, cruised past Germany's unseeded David Prinosil 6-4, 6-2 in an uneventful first-round match on Wednesday night that lasted little over an hour.
On Thursday night, however, Safin was almost knocked out of the tournament, losing the first set and fighting hard to come from behind to beat Spain's unseeded Alberto Martin, 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, in a mara thon match that brought the crowd roaring to its feet when the 21-year-old Russian finally won.
Safin played poorly, making a number of unforced errors in the first set, and taking out his frustration by swinging and throwing his racket. Later, during the press conference, Safin blamed the balls, which he said were "dead."
The cooler Martin was clearly the stronger player, often running Safin around the court with ease.
But Safin never gave up and after losing the first set in a tiebreaker, he held on to win the second set. Both men treated the crowd to a fantastic duel of finesse and nerve in the final set, with Safin coming from behind in the tiebreaker to win the match.
"I didn't play my best match, but I was happy that people supported me," said Safin after the match. "It's not always possible to play your best. I'm not a robot."
TITLE: Organizers Shorten the Tour de France
AUTHOR: By Michael McDonough
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - Tour de France organizers unveiled the shortest route ever for next year's race, with hopes of fighting drug use and saving the suspense for the end.
The route announced Thursday covers 3,276 kilometers over 21 stages, including the prologue. This year's race was 3,447.8 kilometers long.
But four of the six key mountain stages next year will take place in the last eight days, making the outcome uncertain almost until the finish in Paris.
This year, Lance Armstrong wrapped up his third-straight title with a whole week to go thanks to his domination in the mountains, leaving little suspense for the rest of the race.
"We were criticized because nothing happened in the final stages," Tour Director Jean-Marie Leblanc said. "[Next year], the suspense will be maintained as far as possible until the finish."
Armstrong had been due to attend Thursday's news conference but withdrew "because of the Sept. 11 attacks," Leblanc said. He didn't discuss details.
Leblanc also said security for the race had not been reassessed but, "We will wait to see how the situation evolves."
The race director said the 2002 tour was made shorter to help fight doping in what is one of the world's toughest sports events. The endurance drug EPO was at the center of the doping scandal that nearly wrecked the 1998 race.
"You can't say you're fighting doping and impose a heavier work load for the riders," he said.
The 2002 tour starts July 6 in Luxembourg and takes riders through Germany, the flat planes of northern France, the Pyrenees mountains, the southeastern Provence region and the Alps. There is one more mountain leg than last year.
The race finishes with the traditional ride down the Champs-Elysees in Paris on July 28, three days after a grueling mountain stage between Aime and Cluses in the Alps.
Other difficulties include a 220-kilometer stretch through Provence that ends with an exceptionally difficult climb up Mont Ventoux, one of cycling's toughest challenges. Armstrong finished second there in the 2000 tour, taking a big step toward his second title.
Mont Ventoux comes after two mountain stages in the Pyrenees and before three-straight Alpine stages, with a rest day in between. A 178.68-kilometer leg between Les Deux-Alpes and La Plagne will be key to deciding the winner.
Despite the changes, Leblanc said he expected an outcome similar to this year's.
"We will have the same leading riders as this year," he said.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Freedom of Speech?
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The World Boxing Council indefinitely stripped Australian Anthony Mundine of his ranking on Wednesday over controversial remarks the super middleweight made this week about the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S.
Mundine, a Muslim, said on Monday that the U.S. had brought the Sept. 11 attacks upon itself. He later apologized for the comments through a statement on his Web site, but the damage had apparently already been done.
"The World Boxing Council read with stupefaction the statements made recently by Anthony Mundine justifying the terrorist attacks and the consequent deaths of so many innocent victims that occurred on Sept. 11 in New York," WBC president Jose Sulaiman said in a statement.
"Mundine is currently rated in the super-middleweight division and, therefore, the WBC announces that he will be sanctioned by dropping him indefinitely from the WBC ratings, since such statements are unbelievable and intolerable and seriously hurt world society and boxing.
Games Get Go-Ahead
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - Athletes have offered their support to International Olympic Committee (IOC) plans to push ahead with next year's Salt Lake City Winter Games despite the tragic events surrounding the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The IOC Athletes Commission said in a statement on Wednesday, sent to the IOC, that one of the fundamental principles of the Olympic Charter is that "the practice of sport is a human right."
"It is essential that the athletes of the world who meet the qualification criteria and who have trained hard for several years, have the right to participate in the Olympic Games, added the statement."
The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) also said in a statement sent to the IOC on Wednesday that it had "total confidence" in the precautionary security measures being undertaken by the IOC, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, the state of Utah and the federal government of the United States ahead of the 2002 Winter Games.
The vote of confidence comes a day after IOC Director General Francois Carrard said that nothing short of a third world war could prevent the Games, set to take place from Feb. 8 to 24.
Gonzalez Free Agent
CLEVELAND (Reuters) - The Cleveland Indians declined to pick up their 2002 option on veteran slugger Juan Gonzalez on Wednesday, making the outfielder one of the top free agents this offseason.
In an apparent cost-cutting move that is sure to draw the ire of Indians fans, the Tribe decided to part company with the 32-year-old All-Star, who drove in 140 runs, batted .325 and belted 35 homers in 140 games last season, his lone campaign with Cleveland.
Gonzalez was signed to a one-year, $10-million contract in January - considered below his market value - to fill the sizeable run-production void left by the free-agent defection to Boston of Manny Ramirez.
The former Texas Rangers slugger did an admirable job in leading the powerful Indians lineup as Cleveland captured the American League Central Division title for the sixth time in seven years.
Allison Shipped to L.A.
BOSTON (Reuters) - Disgruntled Boston Bruins center Jason Allison, who has not played this season because of a contract dispute, was shipped to the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday as the centerpiece of a four-player trade.
Allison, Boston's captain and leading scorer last season, and left wing Mikko Eloranta were sent to Los Angeles in exchange for right wing Glen Murray and center Jozef Stumpel, a pair of veterans who began their careers with the Bruins in the early 1990s.
Allison, who joined the Bruins during the 1996-97 campaign, led the club with 95 points last season, collecting 36 goals and 59 assists while not missing a game.
After finishing tied for fourth in the league in scoring, Allison, a restricted free agent, reportedly asked the Bruins for a three-year deal worth more than $8 million per season.
The Bruins refused to meet his demands and he decided to hold out, rather than play for Boston, while seeking a trade.
Jordan Gets 50th Cover
NEW YORK (AP) - Michael Jordan has already added to one of his many records, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated for the 50th time. The Oct. 29 issue, which hit newsstands Wednesday, features Jordan's return with the Washington Wizards.
Jordan's first SI cover appearance was as a college player with North Carolina teammate Sam Perkins on the issue dated Nov. 18, 1983. The last cover on which he appeared was dated Feb. 14, 2000, shortly after he joined the Wizards' front office.
The last Wizards or Bullets player on the cover was Elvin Hayes on May 7, 1979.
Jordan also has appeared 43 times with the Chicago Bulls, twice as an Olympian, and once each playing baseball and golf. Muhammad Ali is second with 38 SI covers, followed by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (28), Magic Johnson (26) and Jack Nicklaus (23).
U.S. Exits Fed Cup
LONDON (AP) - The defending-champion United States withdrew Thursday from next month's Fed Cup finals in Madrid, citing security concerns in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11.
The U.S. Tennis Association said the current situation made it inadvisable for elite American athletes to compete abroad as a team representing the country. The decision came after input from team captain Billie Jean King, players and government officials, the USTA said.
International Tennis Federation spokesperson Barbara Travers said a replacement team would be selected no later than Monday, and perhaps by the end of this week.
TITLE: Court Injunction Granted In Case of Home Run Ball
AUTHOR: By David Kravets
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN FRANCISCO - Barry Bonds' 73rd home run ball was caught in legal limbo Wednesday after a judge ordered the man who ended up with the record-setting ball not to sell it until an ownership dispute is settled.
San Francisco Giants fan Alex Popov first caught the ball Oct. 7, but he lost it after fans piled on top of him. On Wednesday, he sued Patrick Hayashi, who wound up with the ball that could fetch an estimated $2 million.
Lawyers said it was the first time they knew of anyone asking a judge to settle a dispute over ownership of a ball obtained from the field of play at a major-league baseball game.
"I've never heard of such a thing. This is a free country. Anybody can sue," said Donald K. Tamaki, Hayashi's lawyer.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge David Garcia, who ordered the ball not to be sold, set a hearing for Nov. 13.
Popov's lawyer, Marty Triano, said the decision was a victory for baseball fans.
"My whole issue is this is America's pastime," Triano said. "I want kids - big or little - to be able to go to the ballpark and catch the ball with their eyes wide open."
The sports agent brokering the sale of the ball hit at Pacific Bell Park believes it might fetch considerably less than the $3 million Mark McGwire's 70th homer sold for just three years ago to comic creator Todd McFarlane.
Michael Barnes said Bonds' baseball either could be sold privately or publicly auctioned and estimated that it will sell for $1 million to $2 million.
Television replays show Popov, a health-food restaurateur from Berkeley, gloving the ball before being mobbed by fans. The ball was ripped from his mitt, and it ended up in the hands of Hayashi, a Silicon Valley engineer.
"What Popov's asking the court to do is to get involved in something that happens at every baseball game in the country," Hayashi's lawyer said. "Does this mean that people going to enjoy the national pastime can suddenly find themselves as defendants in a lawsuit?"