SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #718 (85), Friday, November 2, 2001
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TITLE: Corruption Probes Stir Up Kremlin
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina and Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - An unexpected burst of publicity this week for a series of ongoing investigations by the Audit Chamber and General Prosecutor's Office into federal agencies has stirred up a commotion in the political establishment, sending two powerful cabinet ministers scrambling into hiding.
 The prosecutor's office is investigating possible financial mismanagement and corruption involving high officials in the Railways Ministry, Emergency Situations Ministry and state committees in charge of customs and fishing. Interfax reported Tuesday that the investigations grew out of reports by the Audit Chamber, which it said is now looking at other federal agencies, including the Press Ministry.
 Despite repeated denials from the prosecutor's office that its investigation at the Emergency Situations Ministry has anything to do with Minister Sergei Shoigu - the leader of the pro-Kremlin Unity party, who built up support for Vladimir Putin's election as president - Shoigu appeared worried. He checked into a hospital Tuesday, reportedly complaining of high blood pressure.
 Press Minister Mikhail Lesin left unexpectedly for vacation Wednesday after the Audit Chamber began looking into his ministry's activities, Press Ministry officials said.
 Under the Labor Code, officials cannot be fired while they are in a hospital or on vacation.
 Like Railways Minister Nikolai Aksyonenko, who has been on vacation since being charged by prosecutors Oct. 19 with abuse of office, Lesin is closely linked to the Family - former President Boris Yeltsin's inner circle, which has retreated since Putin's rise to power.
 The various investigations began at different times and, at least formally, are not related. But reports carried Tuesday by Interfax and RIA Novosti grouped them together and prompted the Russian media, particularly outlets controlled by Boris Berezovsky, to speculate on a Kremlin-instigated plan to purge the government of Yeltsin-era holdovers.
 Berezovsky's TV6 television and Kommersant newspaper reported, citing unnamed government sources, that Putin's long-time associate and deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin runs a "shadow task force" charged with a creeping reshuffle of the government by means of corruption exposures.
 "One has to report another wave of a natural process: New figures are replacing the old ones," Kommersant wrote Wednesday in its lead article on the front page. "The form is traditionally Russian - with the use of law enforcement bodies."
 The newspaper said that, along with personnel changes at Gazprom, the investigations are targeted at officials who carry out business on behalf of the state, in other words, through whose hands cash flows.
 Political analysts interviewed Wednesday, however, spoke with caution about the possibility of a Kremlin plan and said the development is likely a combination of several factors.
 Yury Korgunyuk, an analyst with the INDEM think tank, said that the view of the Family as one consolidated group fought by Putin's team of young, formerly KGB-affiliated St.Petersburgers is a simplification, and law enforcement bodies are likely doing their job without necessarily doing the work of one political clan or another. But he said that a "natural process" of replacing government elites is also under way.
 "Sooner or later any freebie is over," Korgunyuk said. "In the past, a reshuffle would have been executed by signing a presidential decree. This time around, it is proceeding in a somewhat more civilized way."
 Leonid Smirnyagin, a domestic politics analyst with Moscow's Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that the events are in part related to Audit Chamber chairman Sergei Stepashin's personal ambitions and Putin is unlikely to be playing a personal role.
 "President Putin usually distances himself from tactical issues and allows bureaucrats to deal with other bureaucrats," Smirnyagin said.
 The revelations that the investigations under way in the Prosecutor General's Office were based on the findings of the Audit Chamber puzzled officials there.
 "It is clear that some kind of game is being played and we are being used in it," said an official within the Audit Chamber who spoke on condition of anonymity.
 The Audit Chamber's reports on the Railways Ministry, Emergency Situations Ministry, State Fisheries Committee and State Customs Committee were completed over the past year, and none of them, at the time of completion, prompted immediate investigations by law enforcement agencies, the official said.
 The Audit Chamber, the budgetary watchdog, does not have the power to collect the kind of evidence necessary to justify the filing of criminal charges. No documents can be taken from the federal agency being investigated. Its role is limited to suggesting that an investigation be opened to establish whether there are grounds for criminal charges.
 The results of an audit of the Railways Ministry completed in June were sent to government bodies and the State Duma. In early September the Anti-Monopoly Ministry showed interest in findings questioning whether there were violations of anti-monopoly law.
 "But there was nothing there that could be related to any actual crime," the Audit Chamber official said.
 As for the Emergency Situations Ministry, the auditors have never found anything even remotely serious, the official said.
 According to an official in the Emergency Situations Ministry, the reported criminal investigation involves Vladimir Kulyechev, once Shoigu's deputy and currently the head of the Federal Control Committee for Mining and Industry. Kulyechev's secretary said he was in the office working Wednesday but would not comment.
 Stepashin, however, played up the connection between the Audit Chamber's inspections and the General Prosecutor's Office's investigations.
 "Practically all the results of Audit Chamber inspections are sent to the prosecution bodies," Interfax quoted him as saying. And 48 criminal cases have been opened this year based on the Audit Chamber's reports, he said.
 No officials currently working in the State Fisheries Committee are involved in the criminal investigations. According to Interfax, those targeted by prosecutors are the former head of the committee, Yury Sinelnik, and his first deputy, Mikhail Dementyev, who are accused of bribery in doling out fishing quotas. The case against Dementyev was begun in January, Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Biryukov said Wednesday. Yevgeny Nazdratenko, former governor of the Primorye region, was appointed head of the committee in February.
 Speaking in the Duma, Biryukov said that the prosecutor's office was doing its regular work and he denied that it was at anyone's political bidding.

TITLE: New Charges Put Malyshev on Hold Again
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Governor Vladimir Yakovlev suspended Vice Governor Valery Malyshev on Sunday, in response to new abuse-of-office charges filed by the Northwest District Prosecutor General's Office on Oct. 25. 
 Malyshev, a long-time close political ally of Yakovlev, was originally charged with "receiving a particularly large bribe" in July. Although the prosecutor's office refused to reveal details of the charges, the media at the time reported that the indictment stemmed from an interest-free loan that Malyshev allegedly received from Exi-Bank. 
 The prosecutor's office has also declined to discuss the new charges, but Yakovlev's press spokesperson, Alexander Afanasiev, believes that they are also connected to this loan.
 "This case is rooted in the time when St. Petersburg was preparing its bid to host the 2004 Olympic games," Afa na siev said in an interview Wednesday.
 Exi-Bank has sponsored a number of sporting events in the city, and Malyshev, as the chairperson of the city's Sports, Transport and Communications Committee, oversaw the preparations for the city's Olympic bid.
 Malyshev could not be reached for comment, and his press office stated that "Malyshev is declining all contact with the media." Exi-Bank also refused to comment on the Malyshev case or even to name the sporting events that it had sponsored in the past.
 Malyshev's lawyer, Semyon Heifets, however, said that Malyshev categorically denies any wrongdoing.
 "[Malyshev] said [prosecutors] have no grounds, that the case is unfair and that he did not commit any crime. He believes that someday truth will triumph in this case," Heifets said on Monday.
 Malyshev's suspension came in response to a formal request from prosecutors in accordance with a Criminal Code provision that demands that any official accused of abuse of power be suspended pending an investigation.
 Yakovlev, however, continues to stand behind Malyshev.
 "If the Prosecutor's Office has no other cases and Malyshev's is a priority, all we can do is lift our hands in dismay," Yakovlev said, according to the City Hall press service. When the original charges were filed in July, Yakovlev said "the administration will not abandon [Malyshev] until the charge is proven," according to the newspaper Delovoi Peterburg.
 Malyshev is not under arrest, although he has been interrogated and has pledged not to leave the city, according to Vladimir Goltsmer, assistant to the Northwest District deputy prosecutor. He added that the term of the investigation, which expired earlier this month, had been extended through December.
 Malyshev, one of Yakovlev's 13 vice governors, was re-appointed to that office in October 2000. He had held this office earlier, but resigned it when he was elected to the State Duma on the Fatherland-All Russia ticket in December 1999. 
 He has long been a center of controversy. During his first stint as vice governor, Malyshev served as Yakovlev's liaison with the Legislative Assembly and led the governor's drive in the fall of 1999 to have the gubernatorial election moved forward to coincide with the Duma elections. That controversial move, largely seen as a bid to secure Yakovlev's re-election, was later overturned by the Russian Supreme Court.
 About the same time, Malyshev was investigated by the Interior Ministry for his links to a shell company that allegedly illegally financed the All-Russia faction congress in St. Petersburg on May 22, 1999, with money from the city budget. Although Malyshev's office at Smolny was searched by a special investigative group from Moscow, no charges were filed. Analysts were skeptical that the charges against Malyshev signaled a general crackdown on official corruption.
 "In recent times, [the Prosecutor's Office] has been quite active, but it is hard to say how serious this is," said Boris Kagarlitsky, a Moscow-based political analyst with the Russian Academy of Sciences. "They are very active if they have permission, but otherwise the fight is very selective."
 "If we judge by Malyshev's case alone, it would appear that [federal prosecutors] were fighting corruption in the regions. But looking at the general picture in Moscow, it looks rather like an attempt at the re-division of political influence by various political groups," said Roman Mogilevsky, head of the media-research company Gallup-St. Petersburg, referring to recent accusations leveled against Railways Minister Nikolai Aksyonenko and other high-level figures.
 The prosecutor's office maintained that the case was just part of its general anti-corruption effort.
 "[This office] was set up last May and one of its goals here is to fight official corruption. This case shows that this work is proceeding," Goltsmer said.
 Asked how many officials had been charged since last May, Goltsmer said his office had no such statistics.

TITLE: Customs Forced To Apply Currency Law
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Foreigners leaving Russia may once again have trouble taking cash out with them, and some already have run up against a new customs regulation requiring them to have declared the money when they came into the country.
 Clearing up some confusion that has been buzzing around the expatriate community in recent weeks, the State Customs Committee on Monday explained that it was forced to change its regulations as of Oct. 1.
 Foreigners leaving Russia are now required to produce a stamped customs declaration showing that they brought in any hard currency that they are intending to take out with them. An alternative is to get documentation from a Russian bank showing that the money was transferred from abroad.
 This new requirement is actually enshrined in a 1999 federal law on currency regulation. But when it was enacted, this law resulted in many angry travelers - people were stopped for having as little as $50 in their pocket, some missed flights while trying to figure out what to do. The law was seen as particularly unfair to foreigners who work in Russia and receive their salaries here. 
 The State Customs Committee responded to the complaints by issuing an order in January 2000 allowing foreigners the same right as Russians - to take out up to $1,500 without any documentation.
 The problem arose when the Justice Ministry, which must register government orders, refused to register this order, saying it contradicts the federal law, according to a State Customs Committee statement issued Monday.
 "The reasons of the State Customs Committee were not taken into account and the State Customs Committee had to abolish the above mentioned directive by order No. 933 of Sept. 24," the statement said.
 Igor Volkov, deputy head of customs at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, said the regulations came into force Oct. 1.
 "Unfortunately, we're the ones who have to enforce these regulations," Vol kov said Monday.
 The German Embassy said it has received many complaints from German travelers who were tripped up by the new unpublicized regulations. But it was not clear how systematically they have been enforced in the weeks since Oct. 1.
 One difficulty the new regulations pose for foreign travelers, particularly those traveling in the weeks before the change was announced, is that they are not required to declare currency when entering the county. Some who have bothered to fill out customs declaration forms have even complained of having to persuade customs agents to stamp them. 
 Under the new regulations, cash that was not declared can only be taken out of the country in traveler's checks or by changing the money into rubles.
 The State Customs Committee said that foreign embassies were notified via the Foreign Ministry.
 German Embassy spokesperson Tobias Bergner confirmed that his embassy was informed, but he said this was not enough to get the word out to foreign travelers.
 "With the instability and incalculability of existing rules you never really know which ones customs applies," Bergner said Monday.
 In response to a series of recent complaints, the embassy issued a statement Friday asking for the new regulations to be publicized by posting them in the airports and by distributing leaflets with them outlined in various foreign languages.
 "We want to have transparency of these regulations. That is why we went public," Bergner said.
 The German Embassy statement also called for setting a "reasonable" amount of money that foreigners are allowed to take out of the country freely.
 The Customs Committee, however, said any changes to the existing regulations will now be possible only as amendments to the law.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Hoaxes on the Rise
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The direct expenses incurred by municipal agencies as a result of suspicious letters or anonymous bomb threats since the beginning of the anthrax scare have reached 70,000 rubles ($2,330), Interfax reported Wednesday, citing Vice Governor Mikhail Mikhailovsky.
 Police Major General Alexander Serov told reporters Wednesday that more than 100 cases of "biological terrorism" had been registered, not one of which turned out to be substantiated, Interfax reported.
 Nonetheless, law enforcement authorities continue to receive new reports of suspicious letters and to investigate them. Police departments have formed special rapid-reaction groups to deal with such cases, Interfax reported.
 
 
Politician Plucked
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Legislative Assembly Deputy Leonid Romankov was robbed on Tuesday, Interfax reported.
 According to the news agency, Romankov, 64, was approached by four unidentified assailants at about 8:30 p.m. near the entrance to his home in the Nevsky District.
 The thieves took 13,000 rubles ($430), his mobile phone, some railroad tickets to Moscow, his apartment and office keys and some other documents. Romankov was not injured, according to Interfax.
 
 
Tax Haul Is Up
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Over the first nine months of this year, the city increased its tax collections by 17 percent compared to the same period in 2000, Interfax reported Thursday.
 The city gathered 55.477 billion rubles ($1.85 billion) in taxes and fees in the period from January through September. Of that amount, 23.78 billion rubles ($793 million) were sent to the federal budget, and 31.69 billion ($105.6 million) went to the city budget. The remainder went to the municipal road fund, Interfax reported.
 
 
Shutov Files Libel Suit
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Legislative Assembly Deputy Yury Shutov, who is currently on trial for allegedly organizing several contract killings, has filed a civil libel suit against State Duma Deputy Lyudmila Narusova, widow of former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, Interfax reported Thursday.
 Shutov sent the documentation for the suit from the prison hospital where he has been for the last several days. The suit alleges that Narusova defamed Shu tov in an Oct. 13 interview with the news paper Argumenty i Fakty, in which she made several statements that injured Shutov's honor and reputation, Shutov's lawyer, Andrei Pelevin, told Interfax.
 The news agency quoted Narusova as saying: "I am not concerned about the suit, and I think that Shutov is using this trick to attract attention to himself."
 
 
Kursk Victims' Burial
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The bodies of three crew members recovered from the Kursk nuclear submarine arrived in St. Petersburg on Thursday for burial, Interfax reported.
 The bodies were those of Captain, 3rd Class, Ilya Shchavinsky; Captain, 3rd Class, Aleksei Mityaev; and Captain, 2nd Class, Vasily Isaenko, according to sources at the Northern Fleet. Shchavinsky and Mityaev were from St. Petersburg, and Isaenko was originally from the Crimea.
 In all, more than 50 bodies have been recovered from the vessel, which sank during a training exercise in August 2000. More than 30 of them have been identified, Interfax reported. 
Skinheads Rampage
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Hundreds of skinheads brandishing iron bars rampaged through Moscow market stalls run by vendors from southern Russia and the Caucasus on Tuesday night, killing two people, news reports said.
 About 300 young people charged through a market outside Tsaritsyno metro station in southern Moscow, attacking the dark-skinned vendors there. Afterward, a large group of skinheads headed to the area where Moscow's Afg han community is based, to continue the violence.
 Media reports said one person was killed during the raids and another died in a hospital Wednesday morning. Twenty-two people were injured.
 Police detained 26 people and went on high alert to prevent new outbreaks of violence, officials said Wednesday, amid fears that the victims' relatives may try to retaliate.
 It was unclear what prompted the attacks. Interfax said they were organized by members of the ultranationalist Russian National Unity party, a paramilitary group that wears insignia similar to a Nazi swastika.
 
 
Police Raid Protested
 

TBILISI, Georgia (Reuters) - State security police raided the offices of Georgia's main private television news station late Tuesday, sparking an angry outcry from company staff and liberal parliamentary deputies and prompting the resignation of a top Georgian security official.
 Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze ordered an inquiry into the raid and pledged to uphold press freedom in the former Soviet republic.
 Shevardnadze accepted Security Minister Vakhtang Kutateladze's resignation as the "right" decision during a security council meeting Wednesday, but criticized staff at Rustavi-2 television station for defying a court order to open their financial records for examination.
 "There is no threat to the freedom of speech in Georgia," said Shevardnadze. "It is inviolable."
 
 
Aid for Afghanistan
 

LONDON (Reuters) - The British government said on Thursday it had put in place a joint initiative with Russia to transport thousands of tons of food aid into Afghanistan.
 Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokes person said convoys will carry about 9,000 tons of food into northeastern Afghanistan over the next two months.
 Shipments should start within two weeks, he said, with local drivers negotiating the "difficult, dangerous" route.
 
 
Rumsfeld To Visit
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will leave on Friday for a whirlwind visit to Moscow and the region near Afghani stan to discuss cooperation in the war on terrorism and warming U.S.-Russian ties, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.
 Speaking as U.S. warplanes bombed targets in Afghanistan for a 25th consecutive day, Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke declined to say what other countries the secretary might visit. But she said he expected to return home on Monday.
 Rumsfeld earlier visited several moderate Persian Gulf states and Uzbekistan, where hundreds of U.S. troops are now based, to discuss support for the opening round of a war on terrorism declared by Washington after the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
 "We are scheduled to leave on Friday, mid-day. We are going to Moscow and other countries in the [central-Asia] region still to be determined,'' Clarke told reporters.
 
 
Anthrax in the Baltics
 

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) - A laboratory in Lithuania confirmed Thursday that traces of anthrax were found in at least one mailbag from the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius, the first such discovery in Europe. 
 Kazimiera Rutiene, chief of the microbiology laboratory at the Lithuanian Public Health Center, said that chemical analyses indicated anthrax and that mice injected with the suspect substance Wednesday had died by Thursday morning. 
 "This is real proof that there were traces of anthrax there," she said. She said she was now "100 percent" sure they had found anthrax. 
 "This news of anthrax cases in Lithuania is shocking," said the head of Lithuanian State Security Department, Arvydas Pocius. "This proves that no place on the planet is safe from the threat of bioterrorism." 
 U.S. Embassy spokesperson Mi chael Boyle said the diplomatic pouches had come straight from the State Department in Washington - appearing to rule out that the contamination could have come from letters sent within Lithuania. 
 Public buildings in Vilnius, as well as embassies, were closed Thursday for All Saint's Day. Boyle said the embassy hadn't yet decided whether to stay closed beyond Thursday as a safety precaution.
 
 
Straw in Moscow
 

MOSCOW (AP) - British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw conferred with Russian officials Wednesday on joint efforts to uproot the terrorist network in Afg ha nistan and help build a stable government there.
 Straw's visit is "part of intensive political dialogue reflecting the high level of bilateral relations," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said President Vladimir Putin has accepted British Prime Minister Tony Blair's invitation to visit Britain, with the exact dates to be set later.
 
 
Missile Silos Destroyed
 

KIEV (AP) - Ukraine destroyed its last nuclear-missile silo on Tuesday, fulfilling the nation's pledge to give up the vast nuclear arsenal it inherited after the breakup of the former Soviet Union.
 The silo was blown up at a military range in the southern Mykolaiv region near Pervomaisk, Interfax said. The U.S.-Ukrainian Cooperative Threat Reduction Program oversaw the process.
 A team of U.S. and Ukrainian officials joined three schoolchildren in turning six keys to detonate the explosives that destroyed the nuclear-missile silo, the last of 46 to be dismantled. The land beneath the silo is to be cleaned and converted for agricultural use, officials said.
 "So far, Ukraine confirmed its commitment to secure peace and stability, and made a significant contribution to strengthening the international regime of arms nonproliferation," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Serhiy Borodenkov.
 Ukraine inherited the world's third-largest nuclear stockpile with the 1991 Soviet collapse, including 130 SS-19 missiles, 46 SS-24 missiles and dozens of strategic bombers. It later renounced nuclear weapons and transferred all missiles and its 1,300 nuclear warheads to Russia. After processing, nuclear materials from the warheads were brought back to Ukraine as fuel for power plants. 



TITLE: Local SPS Thrown Into Turmoil
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg branch of the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, political faction, one of the most popular local movements, suspended its activity in the city last week after local party members split over an argument about the new head of the St. Petersburg political council. The faction's national governing council set up a special committee last week to resolve the crisis and choose a new local leader.
 But a local SPS group, opposing the decision of the national governing council, gathered signatures this week to support the newly elected head, saying that the national council "did not understand the situation in the right way."
 "People were revolted by the fact that they were not asked. ... Some say that Bo ris Berezovsky is behind us and that we complain about the president. We don't complain about anyone," said Vladimir Iotko, a member of the disputed local political council at a press conference on Thursday.
 The crisis began Oct. 9 when the director of St. Petersburg's commercial fishing fleet, Eduard Sergeyev, was elected to head the SPS political council. The vote was controversial in part because Ser ge yev only announced his candidacy for the post just before the voting.
 A number of key party members, including Lenenergo General Director And rei Likhachyov - the former head of the council - and Legislative Assembly Deputy Mikhail Tolstoy, an alternative candidate to head the political council who is supported by the national faction, reacted to Sergeyev's election by refusing to participate further in the council.
 "It was clear that some members of SPS were unhappy about the current policy, and it is possible that Ser ge yev had made some promises to them that something would be changed [if he was elected]" said Legislative Assembly Deputy Mikhail Brods ky in an interview earlier this month.
 Irina Khakamada, a State Duma deputy and a leader of the St. Petersburg SPS, initially said that she did not see anything wrong with Sergeyev's election.
 "Sergeyev's appointment was unexpected for many, including me. But he will help [develop] the local branch, being a representative of the business elite," said Khakamada on Oct. 10.
 Last Thursday, however, SPS's national political council moved to resolve the crisis by suspending the activity of the local party and appointing a 23-member committee to resolve the dispute.
 The committee includes many current and former local SPS activists, including Likhachyov, State Duma Deputy Grigory Tomchin, human-rights activist Boris Pustyntsev and Brodsky.
 "The federal council made a very difficult decision while being surprisingly tolerant and liberal," Tomchin said at a press conference in Moscow last week. "The St. Petersburg political council had violated the party's charter many times and quite flagrantly ... ." 
 "Officially we say that the party's charter was violated, but practically there is a political issue involved," Khakamada said at a press conference last week.
 Iosif Spakovsky, a spokesperson for the local branch, said that the crisis stems from the fact that the local party has grown tremendously in recent months. He said that in May, the party had just 30 registered members, while now there are more than 300.
 "The former management failed to evaluate the situation correctly, and that's why intrigues of different kinds started appearing here," Spakovsky said in an interview on Monday.
 The initiative group to defend Eduard Sergeyev has gathered the signatures of more than 150 local SPS members and intends to hand them over to the special committee, which will decide the issue.
 "We respect Mikhail Tolstoy's candidacy, which was offered by the national council, but SPS has been doing nothing here - in the second city of Russia - for a long time," said Larisa Bekova, another member of the disputed political council.
 In the State Duma elections in 1999, SPS took second place in St. Petersburg, garnering 17.42 percent of the vote, just 0.26 percent less than the pro-Kremlin Unity faction.
 "We only have a few hundred people registered in the party, but look how many voted for SPS. The party has great potential here," said Brodsky.

TITLE: Growing in Numbers, Museums Form Union To Push Agenda
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: More than 600 museums from across Russia created a new union last weekend, with the goal of developing corporate relations among culture professionals and making themselves heard by national and local authorities.
 Museum delegates gathered in St. Petersburg last Friday to discuss the most urgent problems of the cultural sphere, including poor financing, a lack of exchange projects among museums and shortcomings in legislation that often make it difficult for museums to survive.
 "The Museums' Union must define and defend the professional interests of the country's existing museums and create a basis upon which new museums can emerge and develop," said Natalia Kugel, head of the Vsevolod Meyerhold Visual Arts Museum in the Central Russian city of Penza.
 The new union brings together museums as institutions, rather than merely representing the interests of people who work in them. 
 "We reached the point where it became essential to form a coherent museum policy," said Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State Hermitage Museum, who was elected the new union's director. "We realized that the museums should defend their rights and voice their problems together through their own union."
 Paradoxically, the number of state-run museums has jumped by 707 over the last 10 years, reaching a total of 1,964 last year, according to Russian Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi, who addressed the union's founding meeting. The exact number of all museums in Russia - both state and private - has not been calculated, although some experts estimate that it is nearly 3,000. 
 Deputy Culture Minister Natalia Dementieva could not explain this dramatic growth, but said the attitude toward museums varies dramatically in the country's regions. 
 "We have heard so much about the plight of museums , so let me give a positive example," she said. "The president of the Republic of Komi, Yury Spi ri donov, moved a furniture store out of a large and beautiful mansion to make space for an ethnographic museum."
 According to Piotrovsky, the union's budget will be based on membership fees. "There won't be a fixed amount to pay. The dues will depend on each museum's resources," Piotrovsky said.
 Shvydkoi said that having a corporate voice will help museums to improve their financial situation, although it was unlikely that additional funding would be available through the Culture Ministry. For this reason, Shvydkoi said that he supports the creation of the union.
 He also encouraged the museums to communicate with politicians. 
 "According to the law, all ministries are politically neutral, but the union can cooperate with political parties and movements and get support from them," Shvydkoi said.
 The congress adopted a petition addressed to President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasya nov, the Federation Council and the heads of the subjects of federation.
 "Without the country's historical and artistic legacy, which is preserved by museums, the nation's historical memory would be obliterated, making Russia's further development impossible. ... What museums need is not just the state's financial support, but its understanding - from officials at all levels - of what museums are and how they function," reads the petition. 
 The new union is expected to be of particular help to smaller and less well-known museums, which should be able to learn survival strategies from more developed ones, as well as to draw public attention to the problems they face. They should also benefit from the museum exchanges that the new union has pledged to organize.
 "The impression that the union has been created only to help, promote and develop provincial museums is wrong," Shvydkoi said. "Many of them have unbelievable, fantastic collections. Masterpieces were frequently sent from Russia's greatest museums to the provinces during the culture campaigns in the 1930s. Showing them even in St. Petersburg or Moscow would be a big event."

TITLE: Liberal Deputy Deprived of Duma Immunity
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - At the urging of both prosecutors and the presidential administration, the State Duma partially stripped a liberal lawmaker of his legislative immunity Thursday.
 Vladimir Golovlyov, a renegade member of the Union of Right Forces faction, or SPS, is suspected of financial abuses while serving in the Chelyabinsk Regional Government in the early 1990s. Golovlyov said Thursday that he would challenge the Duma's decision, which he claims was made in breach of existing legislation and under political pressure.
 Earlier this week, the Prosecutor Ge ne ral's Office asked the Duma to lift his immunity and allow investigators to question him in connection with financial abuses allegedly committed by the Chelyabinsk State Property Committee. The investigation was opened in 1996 by the Chelyabinsk prosecutor's office.
 The request denied Wednesday, when the Duma fell 12 votes short of stripping Golovlyov of immunity, but was put on the agenda again Thursday without prosecutors filing a new demand, as required by procedural norms. The decision sailed through by a vote of 387 to 2. 
 Some deputies warned Thursday that this amounted to a serious breach of procedure that could lead to the annulment of the Duma's decision by a court. "I don't understand how the prosecutor's office will implement this decision ... since it goes against both the Constitution and the law on the status of deputies," Interfax quoted Communist deputy Sergei Reshulsky as saying.
 But the presidential representative to the Duma, Alexander Kotenkov, insisted that the procedure for stripping a deputy of immunity at the request of prosecutors was not clearly defined, Interfax reported.
 Addressing the Duma's Mandate Committee on Tuesday, Deputy Prosecutor General Yury Biryukov said his agency wanted to order searches of Golovlyov's office and home and have him detained. But deputies refused to allow prosecutors to arrest their colleague.
 Golovlyov called the Duma's decision his "victory" Thursday. "Now everybody got the chance to see this was essentially a political decision," he said.
 Golovlyov says the attempt to strip him of immunity was punishment for his political activity, namely the new Liberal Russia party he founded together with another liberal deputy and a human rights activist, Sergei Yushenkov. "Liberal Russia is the only political party that has openly stated its opposition [to the Kremlin]," he said after the vote. 
 The new movement has not yet gained prominence on the political scene, although Golovlyov said it had already gathered about 20,000 members. Earlier this year, he and Yushenkov approached Boris Berezovsky - a former Kremlin insider now living in self-imposed exile - to discuss funding for the party.
 Prosecutors believe Golovlyov pocketed funds earned through the privatization of state property in Chelyabinsk in the early 1990s and used them, in part, to build houses in the Moscow region, Interfax cited documents presented to the Duma as saying.

TITLE: U.S. Turns Blind Eye to Allies' Abuses
AUTHOR: By Matt Bivens
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - As Mirza Khalmohamedo, a short, thickset man in his 50s, stood outside the courthouse and talked of his son's torture, his relaxed manner was jarring. He could have been remarking on the day's pleasant weather, or on the schoolchildren walking past, and not recounting how police alternated beatings and salt rubdowns on his 27-year-old son, Khidhir.
 "They tied him naked to a table and sodomized him with a bottle," he said with a barely perceptible shake of his bald head under its square Uzbek cap.
 Stories like these - and there are thousands of them - are being re-evaluated in light of a "qualitatively new relationship" between the United States and Uzbekistan, announced three weeks ago in Tashkent by Uzbek President Islam Karimov and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
 Uzbekistan has agreed to provide an air base from which U.S. forces could send planes into Afghanistan; the United States is promising as yet unspecified amounts of cash, and has agreed to defend Uzbekistan from fuzzily defined future foes.
 Karimov ended that Oct. 5 press conference by pouncing enthusiastically on a startled USA Today reporter in cowboy boots, shaking his hand and praising America. U.S. officials have been equally complimentary, and over the weekend, the State Department handed Karimov another triumph: It released its annual report on international religious freedom, and failed to list Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia as "countries of particular concern."
 All of those countries are described by the White House as allies in U.S. President George W. Bush's campaign against international terrorism. Had they been listed as states that deny their people religious freedoms, they could have faced U.S. diplomatic criticism or even economic sanctions under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.
 "Clearly, the administration doesn't want to offend key allies in the coalition through excessive truth-telling," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, in a press release. "By not designating Uzbekistan a 'country of particular concern,' the administration missed an opportunity to show that the war on terrorism cannot be a campaign against Islam."
 The State Department recognizes that Turkmenistan has harassed its citizens for their religious beliefs, and that it is also the only post-Soviet state to actually confiscate and destroy mosques and churches. For good measure, Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov last month also outlawed all opera, ballet and theater, noting that the "semi-nudity" of ballet offended his people's morals.
 Perhaps most striking is the omission of Uzbekistan. The State Department report acknowledges that Uzbekistan has committed "abuses against many devout Muslims for their religious beliefs," including torturing them. International and local rights activists say there are already more than 7,000 "independent" Muslims in jail, none of whom stands accused of advocating or participating in any sort of violence.
 Rights groups have documented the systematic, horrific tortures of such people, both pretrial and post-sentencing, and even harassment of their extended families - a policy endorsed by President Karimov, who warned two years ago that "the fathers who have raised [perceived enemies of the state] will be brought to account with their children."
 Nor has it slackened since the Americans arrived. Not two weeks after Karimov and Rumsfeld announced their new honeymoon relationship, Uzbek police returned Ravshan Haidov's body to his family on Oct. 18. They explained that they'd arrested him the night before as a rogue Muslim, but he'd had "a heart attack."
 Those who viewed the corpse of the 32-year-old father of two say his neck was broken, one leg was broken below the knee and there were bruises everywhere. Haidov's 25-year-old younger brother, police added, was still in custody, in a hospital.

TITLE: Foreign Cars Expanding Niche in Market
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Russian market for foreign cars is booming and, according to representatives from the leading European, North American and Asian auto makers, foreign companies will sell twice as many cars in Russia this year as they sold in 2000.
 Representatives from both domestic and foreign firms are in St. Petersburg this week promoting their products at the 9th annual Automobile and Automotive Equipment Exhibition, which opened Wednesday and runs through Friday at the Lenexpo Exhibition Complex.
 Over 70,000 people attended last year's exhibition, and organizers expect about the same number this year.
 This year's show stands out from those of previous years as a number of the firms involved are presenting either models that are entirely new or are new to the Russian market.
 Among the new models being presented are the BMW 735i, which has attracted the most attention from visitors, and the new Toyota Camry, Volkswagen Polo, Opel Frontera and Volvo S60 AWD.
 Along with preliminary results for 2001, the representatives of the different automakers all made positive predictions for sales of foreign models in Russia in 2002.
 Toyota announced projected sales of 7,000 vehicles in Russia for 2002, up from the approximately 4,000 that will be sold this year, and Toyota's Moscow office general director, Norio Naka, said that the company's long-range plans are to up sales to 20,000 cars per year.
 BMW, meanwhile, is projecting sales of about 4,000 vehicles next year. According to information from the company, BMW expects to sell 2,700 cars in Russia this year.
 According to Benkt Karlsson, the Volvo general director for Russia, the company sold only about 2,000 cars in the first 10 months of 2001, but that number was three times as much as for for the same period last year.
 Mikhail Logutenko, general director of Laura, General Motors' official dealer in the St. Petersburg, said that the growth in foreign-car sales is largely the result of the improvement in Russia's economy in general.
 "As people's incomes rise, sectors like construction, tourism and a number of others tend to grow," Logutenko said. "One of the signs of economic growth is that people are looking to buy more attractive and higher quality items, including quality foreign cars."
 Logutenko says that the growth in sales of foreign vehicles is just a continuation of a trend that began two years ago. 
 "The first boom in sales was in Korean cars," he said. "Now it appears to be the turn of more expensive Japanese and German vehicles, especially Volkswagens and Opels."
 Heidi McCormack, the general director of General Motors for the CIS, agrees.
 "Russia is a unique market. Sales in the rest of Europe are down, but the growth in sales here goes on," she said. "This year the level of the cars we have imported and sold here is about four times that of last year."
 General Motors is in the process of strengthening its position in Russia. The automaker has formed a consortium with domestic producer Avtovaz and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to build a factory in Tolyatti, Central Russia, to produce Chevy-Neva 4x4 vehicles. The plant is scheduled to be completed in Sept. 2002.
 Ford is in the process of putting its own compact Escort model into production at its Vsevolozhsk plant in the Leningrad Oblast, with full-scale production runs slated for the middle of next year.
 Even though the sales figures for foreign car makers are significant compared to past years, their position in the market is still relatively weak.
 A study conducted by GFK Market Research Russia earlier this year showed that only 6 percent of respondents were interested in buying new foreign cars and another 16 percent were interested in second-hand foreign vehicles.
 Most Russians, 49 percent, still look to purchase a second-hand, domestically produced vehicle, while 29 percent said they would be most interested in buying a new domestic model.
 The most significant factor behind these numbers is price.
 A small-sized, new Russian car can range in price from $4,000 to $7,000, while the price-tag on a comparable foreign model is much higher.
 The Volkswagen Polo, for example, has a list price of $12,000.
 Availability also plays a role. Major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg not only have better access to new cars from foreign companies, they also have better access to parts. Away from major centers, foreign models are much less popular.

TITLE: Kremlin To Boost Local Software
AUTHOR: By Alexander Boreiko
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Communications Ministry and the Russian Academy of Sciences are developing a plan to help Russia's software producers that includes changes to the Tax Code and the creation of a venture fund with state participation.
 Tax discounts for some IT companies are also being discussed, and one of the program's authors plans to lobby the government to urge foreign companies to buy Russian software.
 After meeting with IT industry players in April, President Vladimir Putin ordered them to develop a proposal on developing software exports. Later, experts at the academy brought a similar proposal to the president to develop the entire industry, and Putin asked them to write up a concrete plan.
 Ivan Kurnosov, deputy head of the ministry's information department, told Prime-Tass that some companies specializing in new technologies and offshore programming may be able to get tax discounts within the program.
 Russia's IT exports total $100 million a year, while countries like China and Korea - Russia's main competitors in the sector - have exports worth $40 billion, Kurnosov said.
 The program includes a number of legislative measures, including changes to Chapter 25 of the new Tax Code, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2002.
 The chapter makes selling programs unprofitable since the entire cost of a product would be considered profit, said Boris Naruliyev, head of the 1C company, who participated in drawing up the proposed changes to the legislation.
 Olga Uskova, acting executive director of Cognitive Technologies, who also participated in the development of the program, plans to lobby the government to stimulate demand for Russian programming.
 "[If] a foreign company wants to sell furniture or fruit or anything in Russia ... why shouldn't it have to buy Russian program products?" said Uskova.

TITLE: Decree Creates New Anti-Laundering Agency
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin signed a decree late Wednesday creating a new state agency to fight money laundering, making good on a promise he made at the World Economic Forum the day before. 
 Putin appointed a fellow St. Petersburger, Deputy Tax Minister Viktor Zubkov, to head the newly created Financial Monitoring Committee, or FMC, which complements the anti-money-laundering law Putin signed this summer and will work under the Finance Ministry. 
 Zubkov's new post also comes with a new title: deputy finance minister. The FMC is expected to start functioning Feb. 1, the same date the new law aimed at fighting dirty money takes effect.
 Zubkov's new boss, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, said the FMC will employ 300 people in Moscow and another 100 in the regions. "This does not mean more government officials though, as some people will be transferred from the audit department within the Finance Ministry," he added.
 Russia is currently blacklisted by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force, an arm of the 29-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which was set up to attack the global growth of money laundering.
 Russia narrowly averted embarassing "dirty money" sanctions by the FATF in September, but the task force decided to keep the country on its black list because while Russia had "enacted significant legislation over the summer," it had yet to do enough to be taken off the blacklist of "noncooperative jurisdictions" altogether.
 Other nations on that list include the Cook Islands, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia and Nigeria. 
 Kudrin stressed that no representative of the "force ministries" (defense, interior, etc.) will be involved in the FMC's work and that the new agency is not entitled to trace terrorist money unless "similar international organizations" are granted similar powers.
 As for access to commercial secrets, Kudrin said it might be given to the FMC only in instances involving criminal cases of an international character.
 Declaring company documents "commercial secrets" has been a way to avoid the scrutiny of law-enforcement officials. Putin was asked at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday if the creation of the FMC would lead to a ban on commercial secrets at Russian banks. "Are there any now?" Putin replied. 
 Analysts interviewed Wednesday said the move was good for publicity, but a lot of questions remain as to how effective the new agency will be.
 "This is good PR and it removes the last formal obstacle to being getting off the FATF blacklist, but I doubt that it will really work," said Alexei Moiseyev, an economist with Renaissance Capital investment bank.
 "The effectiveness of a new beauracratic initiative in any country depends on how it's implemented, and what the problem is this new structure is trying to solve," according to Bruce Bean, head of foreign direct investmet at the Russian office of U.S. law firm Clifford Chance.
 Moiseyev said it is important to distinguish between money laundering and capital flight.
 "The measures will only make 'dirty transactions' more costly, but they can't stop people from making them. It just makes their task more difficult," he said.

TITLE: Putin Draws Kudos At Economic Forum
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin poured on the charm Tuesday as he fielded questions from a gathering of more than 350 business leaders at the World Economic Forum, leaving participants clearly impressed with the Kremlin's plans for economic reform.
 On the sidelines of the talks, ExxonMobil Corp., the world's largest oil producer, announced Monday night that it was ready to start developing Sakhalin-1 early next year. It pledged to invest $4 billion over the next five years in the $12-billion Far East oil project.
 Putin told investors at the opening of the second and final day of the forum in Moscow's Marriott Grand Hotel that the government is working on further reform and new tax breaks.
 "We will further develop the pace and quality of reform," Putin said.
 "A first direction is further reform of the tax regime," he said. "Maybe it is somewhat premature to speak about it, but we are thinking about cutting a few taxes, including taxes such as VAT."
 Value-added tax is currently 20 percent, with the exception of some food items, which are taxed at 10 percent.
 Many of Putin's comments were on a lighter note as he bantered with investors in an attempt to convince them that it is worth doing business in Russia. His presentation was interrupted several times by laughter and applause.
 Later, Putin said, "I want both Russian and foreign investors to feel at home in Russia."
 Foreign attendees said they were impressed.
 "This is the first time that I saw Putin, and I can say he is a wonderful speaker and a talented politician," said James Balashak, a Russia partner at Deloitte & Touche. "I was particularly impressed by his knowledge of technical details and ability to address any particular issue."
 Other participants praised the government for its commitment to market reforms and the results that have been reached. "The progress we have seen in six months between the last two sessions of the Foreign Investment Advisory Council meeting can be compared with changes between the first and the seventh FIAC," said Nevill Isdell, vice chairperson with Coca-Cola HBS, referring to regularly scheduled investor talks headed by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov that coincided with the World Economic Forum.
 Government officials said some reforms are going faster than planned.
 "We have prepared 126 new laws for this Duma session, and sometimes we can't remember what has already been approved," Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref told the conference.
 "It was in June 2000 that we were sitting with Mr. Gref at the Davos forum in Salzburg and I was asked what I think of the new Russian government," Johannes Linn, a World Bank vice president, recalled in an interview. "At the time I was impressed by the government's ambitious reform program. Now, 1 1/2 years later, we are impressed by the results."
 With legislation for many reforms now in place, the focus is now shifting toward their implementation.
 "It is within the administrative framework that reforms should be implemented and WTO accession can become a self-reinforcing clue," EBRD President Jean Lemierre said.
 Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Russia could join the World Trade Organization by 2004. "I think it is possible," he said, pointing out that a 2004 entry depends on the findings of a working group of WTO member states that are expected at the end of next summer.
 The fact that the U.S. administration has begun consulting with members of Congress about retracting the Jackson-Vanick amendments to the country's trade law, which have blocked Russia from receiving most-favored-nation status, is an important step in this direction.
 "The sooner we play by common rules, the better. Nowadays, business cannot be done as one separate country: We are all connected," Igor Bocharov, general director for Airbus Russia, said in an interview.
 "The WTO will give everyone equal chances for competition," he said. "We have serious contracts in Russia, but if we have cooperation with a certain industry, we also need access to the domestic market. We think that the Russian aviation industry should be opened for all international companies."
 Aeroflot announced recently that as of Nov. 1 it will phase out the use of 28 Ilyushin aircraft - 13 Il-62s and 15 Il-86s - on regularly scheduled flights and replace them with its fleet of 11 Airbus A-310s, which are more cost efficient.
 Despite Russia's strong economic performance and continued reform, foreign investors at the forum largely avoided the big question on the Kremlin's mind: When will they invest in Russia?
 The notable exception was the announcement by U.S.-based ExxonMobil on Monday. The Sakhalin-1 project, with $12 billion in financing over its expected life of 30 to 40 years, would be the biggest single foreign investment in Russia. Oil production is set to start in 2005.
 The fields, located off Sakhalin Island, contain an estimated 2.3 billion barrels of oil, much of which is to be shipped to Japan.
 The Sakhalin-1 project had been stalled since the mid-1990s while investors negotiated what tax breaks they would get under a production-sharing agreement.
 Some $600 million has already been spent on exploration.
 Russia is expected to receive $35 billion to $40 billion in taxes from this project over the next 30 years.
 ExxonMobil is the operator of the project and 30-percent owner in a Sakhalin-1 consortium that includes Sakhalin Oil & Gas Development Co. of Japan (30 percent), India's ONGC Videsh Limited (20 percent), and Russian companies Sakhalinmorneftegaz-Shelf (11.5 percent) and RN-Astra (8.5 percent).
 "This declaration is an important step forward in the process of attracting significant foreign investment to Russia, whether in the oil and gas sector or elsewhere," the United Financial Group brokerage wrote in a research note Tuesday.
 Other investment projects will be announced if Russia keeps up with reforms, said Linn of the World Bank.
 "If the Russian government continues reforms at their current pace, then after 10 years of hard work, the history of the previous 80 years of isolation and centralized economy may be overcome," Linn said.
 "The Hungarian economy was very questionable in the mid 1990s, and it took China almost 10 years to reform its economy. But now both countries are enjoying huge inflow of foreign investments," he said. "So Russia's 1 1/2 years of reform is a rather short period."

TITLE: Crystal Investment Story Not So Clear
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova and Kirill Koriukin
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Before deciding to invest in Russia - as President Vladimir Putin recommended to 350 business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Moscow this week - foreign enterprises should listen to the story of Sawyer Research Products, the No. 1 U.S. crystal-quartz producer, which says it lost $8.2 million after investing in a plant in the Vladimir Region.
 The company was thrown out of the plant in July after a local court invalidated the lease of one of the factory's workshops, where Sawyer developed quartz crystals. The company still can't recover $1.2 million worth of inventory and $3 million worth of equipment.
 A court ruling Tuesday forbade Very Pure Quartz Glass - the Russian company that took over the Vladimir plant - from using Sawyer's equipment, but the U.S. company's lawyer, Anna Murray, said VPQG has not obeyed the order.
 The future looked rosy back in 1997 when Sawyer founded the venture at the plant, at the time known as the Gus-Khrustalny Quartz Glass Plant. Without external investment, the plant was doomed to closure after running up $8.5 million in debt. A Vladimir court appointed an external manager to the plant, which was to have been carved into eight units and then leased piecemeal by a special holding company.
 Then Sawyer paid off some of the debts, rebuilt the plant's main workshop, which it leased for 25 years, and installed its own equipment, helping resume operations.
 Four months ago, however, a Vla di mir court voided the lease, saying it did not follow the procedure set out in the external management's plans, which had been approved by the plant's creditors.
 Dmitry Vasilyev, a former chairperson of the Federal Securities Commission who now heads the Institute for Corporate Law and Corporate Governance, called the reason for the lease's invalidation a "perhaps minor violation of bankruptcy legislation that does not contradict the spirit of the law."
 "Using this approach, one could revise most such deals or at least hassle entrepreneurs - which happens quite often," he said.
 Furthermore, the takeover was done improperly, said Murray.
 "From that time until Sept. 12, none of us - or even bailiffs who tried to take inventory of our equipment and machinery left at the plant - were allowed into the workshop," said Murray.
 When bailiffs and Sawyer representatives were finally allowed to visit the plant, Murray said, only 348 items of machinery and tools out of 568 were still in place, and most of those were damaged - with inventory plugs ripped off or electronic parts replaced with simpler mechanical devices.
 "As for our nine machine-tools - mechanical saws for cutting crystals, each of which cost $50,000 - three of them were missing, and the rest were painted green so that our labels were not visible," Murray said.
 Dmitry Dorokhin, a lawyer for VPQG, said the owners of the plant had the right to use the facilities and the sales inventory, and have the support of the local government.
 "[Sawyer] must agree that the Russian side should keep the equipment. We consider it all ours," said Dorokhin. "The profit they have made has been several times what they have invested."
 Vasilyev said that Vladimir authorities and prosecutors have interfered in the dispute, taking the side of the Russian company, a typical problem for foreign investors.
 "As an example of a foreign investment in Russia, all this looks very bad, and especially stupid in a situation when the overall attitude of investors toward Russia is improving. The consequences may go far beyond Sawyer's $8 million," he said.
 Sawyer still hopes to resolve the issue peacefully.
 This summer, Sawyer President Gary Johnson began seeking assistance from both the Russian and U.S. governments. The dispute was among several similar cases that U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans discussed with the Economic Development and Trade Ministry during his visit to Russia last month.
 The issue is a bellwether for the foreign-investment climate, said Johnson. "Russian leaders should show the political will necessary to provide existing investors equal protection under the law. The Vladimir investment dispute represents a clear and practical opportunity for Russia to demonstrate its commitment to improving the investment climate," he said Wednesday by e-mail.
 A source in the Vladimir government, who asked not to be identified, said the region has no proof of Sawyer's large investment into the venture.
 "There is no documented proof that they are a strategic investor and put millions of dollars into the plant," the source said. "What we see is that the American firm took control over the strategic workshop very impudently."
 "Now that they have lost, they're trying to use the old thesis of Russia's investment climate and biased authorities."

TITLE: Big Names Head West for Boston Symposium
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In past years, it has given the stage to billionaire financier George Soros - who described Anatoly Chubais as "tainted."
 It also once hosted a satellite linkup with then-U.S. Treasury Undersecretary Lawrence Summers - who said that aid to Russia ended up in "Swiss bank accounts."
 Never one to shy away from controversy, the Russian Investment Symposium opens Thursday in Boston, where hundreds of Russian and U.S. government and business leaders are to hobnob and discuss how far Russia's boom can go.
 "We're giving everyone the opportunity to simply just talk to each other, as well as present projects to a high-powered audience," said Irina Zonova, a division head at the Institute of Direct Investments Fund, which is coordinating the Russian side of the fifth annual event.
 U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref are to open the conference, which is sponsored by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs within the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
 The three-day conference is slated to cover banking-sector reforms, opportunities for investment in the consumer market and the state of corporate governance in Russia.
 The list of speakers resembles a Who's Who of Russian business - including the likes of Jean Lemierre, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; David Yakobashvili, board chairman of Wimm-Bill-Dann; Mikhail Khodorkovsky, CEO of Yukos; and Alexander Knaster, CEO of Alfa Bank.
 With few countries currently posting growth as rapid as Russia's - gross domestic product is estimated to grow by 5.5 percent this year, against negative growth predicted in the United States this year - foreign and domestic investors are bringing their capital back onshore.
 The stock market is up nearly 40 percent since January, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped more than 14 percent over the same period.
 The three-day investment symposium opens on the heels of Moscow's World Economic Forum, which ended Tuesday.
 President Vladimir Putin gave the investment symposium an optimistic start at the World Economic Forum when he said he wanted "both Russian and foreign investors to feel at home in Russia."
 Zonova said she expected 400 to 500 participants to attend this year's symposium and no speakers had canceled in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
 "The dialogue between both countries will continue," Zonova said.
 "The people in power continuously change, so this symposium never gets old."

TITLE: Family Name Steps In as New Ford CEO
AUTHOR: By Ed Garsten
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DEARBORN, Michigan - The Ford name has always been at the top of the automaker's headquarters, but the ascension of William Clay Ford Jr. to chief executive officer puts a Ford family member at the top of Ford Motor Co. for the first time in 22 years.
 "I love this company. I bleed Ford blue," Ford told employees Tuesday morning from an auditorium at the automaker's headquarters. "We've been given an amazing legacy, and we're going to build an even better one," he said.
 Ford, 44, is a great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford. He has been chairman of the company since 1999, but left most of the day-to-day activities to Jacques Nasser, who was ousted Monday.
 The last Ford family member to serve as CEO was Henry Ford II, who resigned in 1979.
 "This seemed to be the right time," Ford said at a news conference at company headquarters. He said events such as the Firestone tire controversy and lawsuits against the automaker were distracting Nasser from focusing on the company's core automotive business.
 Ford said Nasser resigned following a meeting Monday between the two at the company's world headquarters. The move was made official during a Tuesday morning board meeting, Ford said.
 Nasser's severance package is being negotiated, Ford spokesperson Nick Sharkey said late Tuesday.
 Christopher Cedergren, managing director at automotive-marketing firm Nextrend, said Nasser "dropped the ball."
 "The family lost confidence in Jacques in not thinking he could change his vision," Cedergren said. "What's unfortunate is it's great to have ideas, but first you have to cover the bases, and ... build a good car."
 Assuming the duties as CEO was not something he sought, Ford said, but it was something the board thought was necessary. He said he intends to do the jobs "for the foreseeable future."
 Aside from his pedigree, Ford has a 22-year work history at the company. He joined in 1979 as a product-planning analyst and held a number of positions in manufacturing, sales, marketing, product development and finance.
 In 1982, he served on the bargaining team for contract talks with the United Auto Workers.
 Ford subsequently was chairperson and managing director of Ford Switzerland and elected to the Ford Motor Co. board of directors in 1988.
 Ford brushed aside any thoughts he would be a figurehead family member farming out most of the heavy duties.
 "When I approach this, I don't approach it as a family member going into the job: I approach it as somebody who loves this company and is worried about the situation that we find ourselves in and is determined to fix it," Ford said.
 Fixing the company will take some major repairs, one analyst said.
 "They will have to have more aggressive cost cutting and will likely terminate some of Jacques Nasser's programs to turn Ford into a company that deals with the entire vehicle lifetime from initial sales, repair, to trade-ins and recycling," said Efraim Levy, senior automotive analyst for Standard & Poor's.
 Ford's market share in the United States fell during the first nine months of 2001 to 22.6 percent from 22.8 percent a year ago.
 Through September, sales of Ford vehicles were down 11 percent from the first nine months of 2000, a record sales year for the industry. By the third quarter of 2001, Ford's losses dipped to $692 million, a reversal from the same quarter a year earlier, when it earned $888 million.

TITLE: Sources Say Microsoft Is Close to Settlement
AUTHOR: By D. Ian Hopper and Ted Bridis
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Microsoft Corp. and the U.S. Justice Department, urged on by a judge concerned with the national psyche, tentatively agreed to settle the historic antitrust case already won by the government. Attorneys general from 18 states are weighing whether to sign onto the deal.
 They are deciding whether they can be satisfied with proposed penalties Microsoft would face for at least the next five years, according to people familiar with the negotiations, and are seriously considering whether to ask a federal judge for more time to talk.
 An agreement could offer the economy and the technology industry a glimpse of national optimism when both have been battered amid concerns about terrorism and the dramatic downturn in financial markets.
 U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had set a deadline of Friday for any settlement, citing "the recent tragic events affecting our nation." Absent a settlement, the next stage of the trial will decide how to punish Microsoft.
 Assistant U.S. Attorney General Charles James revealed the prospective agreement to state officials Wed nesday and told them Microsoft had already largely accepted it, sources said, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
 Secret talks in downtown Washington continued Thursday morning among the state attorneys general and top lawyers from Iowa, New York, Connecticut and Wisconsin. If they reject the settlement, they can pursue several options, including continuing the suit on their own.
 In midday trading Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock Market, Microsoft shares were up 4 percent, or $2.35 a share, at $60.50.
 Terms of the settlement were closely guarded, and people close to the talks cautioned that precise language on important provisions was still being written. The Justice Department filed the case in 1998 under the Clinton administration.
 U.S. President George W. Bush has been relatively cold toward the lawsuit since his campaign, though the White House has said he hasn't interfered in the case.
 The settlement would impose some restrictions on Microsoft during the next five years and could be extended two more years - until 2008 - if the company violates terms of the deal, according to a person familiar with the agreement. A three-person panel would monitor Microsoft's compliance. The current antitrust case is rooted in allegations that Microsoft violated a related 1995 agreement with the Justice Department.
 The prospective settlement would not require complete disclosures by Microsoft of the "source code" blueprints for its monopoly Windows operating system, the underpinnings of its multi-billion-dollar business, according to business analyst David Readerman of Thomas Weisel Partners in San Francisco. But portions of the Internet Explorer Web browser would be disclosed.
 Microsoft would have to offer a version of Windows without extra features side-by-side with versions that "bundle" those features. The settlement also would prohibit restrictive contracts between Microsoft and computer makers that would discourage them from buying the slimmed-down version, Readerman and other sources said. But it would permit Microsoft to continue to offer financial incentives, such as price discounts, to entice computer makers to sell the fatter Windows.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Emergency Plan
 

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - Argentine President Fernando de la Rua on Thursday gave the first details of a planned voluntary debt swap he said would save the cash-strapped country $3 billion to $4 billion in 2002.
 De la Rua said the new debt issued would pay 7 percent interest and would be guaranteed by the state. He did not, however, say how large the widely expected multibillion dollar swap would be or whether it included both foreign and local debt holders.
 "The voluntary debt restructuring to lower the cost of servicing payments and change bonds that currently pay 11 percent for ones that pay 7 percent interest ... has the advantage of increased guarantees that the state will provide," De la Rua said.
 The government had said it could announce a widely expected package of economic measures - which include a swap that local media have speculated could total anywhere from $16 billion to $92 billion - later on Thursday even if it fails to break a deadlock over federal funding to the provinces before then.
 
 
OPEC Quota To Drop
 

LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC Secretary General Ali Rodriguez said on Thursday that the oil-exporting cartel will probably cut a million barrels per day from its production ceiling, even after improved compliance with current curbs.
 The cartel that controls two-thirds of world exports is struggling to contain an oil demand slump that has sent prices to two-year lows this week.
 OPEC significantly tightened its compliance with existing curbs in October, prompting some analysts to speculate that it would not have to reduce official quotas for a fourth time this year if compliance continued to improve.
 "It is most probable that, even with full compliance as we are now reaching, it will be necessary to cut, maybe 1 million barrels per day," Rodriguez told reporters after a meeting with Norwegian Oil Minister Einar Steensnaes in London.
 "Probably we will cut a million barrels per day," he added later.
 The 10 OPEC members with quotas, excluding sanctions-bound Iraq, pumped 850,000 barrels per day above their 23.2-million ceiling in October, according to preliminary estimates by consultants who monitor exports.
 
 
IBM Pulls Out
 

ZURICH (Reuters) - Information technology firm IBM Corp. withdrew from bidding for collapsed Swissair Group's Atraxis unit on Thursday amid efforts to speed up the sale of businesses serving the former flag carrier.
 Frenetic talks are taking place to try to sell three airline-related units of the Swiss aviation conglomerate to stave off a fresh liquidity crunch that could deal a big blow to a salvage plan for the core national airline operation.
 The main units are the SR Technics maintenance company, the Swissport ground handling unit and the information-technology unit Atraxis, which operates flight information services and booking systems that are vital for both airports and airlines.
 "We were interested in Atraxis and had a joint bid with [German national airline] Lufthansa," a spokesperson for IBM Switzerland said. "We withdrew our bid a short while ago."
 A spokesperson for Lufthansa Systems Group said it was still interested in Atraxis. "We are currently involved in negotiations and there are other interested parties, but no final decision has been reached," he added. 



TITLE: Lessons of Dagestan
AUTHOR: By Robert Bruce Ware
TEXT: AS we struggle to understand the motives of Islamic extremism and methods for coping, it may be helpful to consider the experience of Dagestan, the southernmost Russian republic, which lies between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea. When Islamic extremism was exported from Afghanistan in the late 1980s, Dagestan was the second place where it arrived. Throughout the 1990s Dagestanis struggled with the extremist movement that they call Wahhabism. 
 Political Islam became a force in the Soviet Union during perestroika when the Islamic Party of Revival was organized in Tajikistan. A Dagestani man named Akhmed-Kadi Akhtayev, who was residing in Tajikistan, became the IPR chair, and soon returned to Dagestan, where he founded a spiritual and educational institution known as Islamia. With funding from organizations and individuals in the Persian Gulf, Wahhabi missionaries and activists worked to spread their views throughout the republic.
 More than 90 percent of Dagestan's more than 2 million people are Muslims. Yet while Islam has been an important social force in Dagestan for centuries, its practice is traditionally tolerant. Dagestanis are proud of their multicultural heritage, including Christian and Jewish minorities, and sexual equality is generally comparable to that in Western societies. Yet as Wahhabism began to take hold in Dagestan, Wahhabis demanded that fellow villagers uphold their puritanical strictures.
 The spread of Wahhabism in the Caucasus is fed by a deep disillusionment with the prospects for economic development, and by widespread despair over the moral and political decay that is rapidly overwhelming societies in the region. Though Wahhabism rejects secular political authorities, its radical social agenda sometimes resembles an ideological, more than a religious, movement.
 From 1996 to 1997, as Wahhabism spread through Dagestan, violent clashes between Wahhabis and traditional Muslims began near the village of Karamakhi. By the end of 1998, Dagestani authorities had lost control of this area in the heart of the republic. Throughout the next 18 months, as Dagestani and Russian officials sought to negotiate with Islamic separatists in the Karamakhi vicinity, violence between Wahhabis and traditional Muslims erupted elsewhere in Dagestan.
 Meanwhile Akhtayev became a religious authority in Chechnya. In April 1999, he helped to organize the Caucasian Conference in Chechnya, where Chechen warlords, such as Shamil Basayev, called for the "liberation" of Dagestan. In August and September 1999, Basayev and Khattab led militant extremists in invasions of Dagestan. Many Dagestanis were slaughtered, villages were destroyed and 32,000 people were displaced. The Dagestanis spontaneously organized citizen militias and appealed to Moscow for military assistance. The invaders were driven out of the republic, Karamakhi was leveled and Wahhabi leaders were killed, imprisoned or forced into hiding.
 On Sept. 16, 1999, the same day that the invaders were expelled, the Dagestani Assembly enacted legislation outlawing Wahhabism and extending new administrative powers to the republic's traditional Islamic organization, known as the DUMD. In order to control Wahhabi influence, the DUMD was charged with regulating Islamic activities in Dagestan.
 Yet as an ill defined, loosely organized spiritual movement, Wahhabism proved difficult to regulate, and the DUMD has been competing with secular political authorities for greater power. Since the Dagestanis fought Wahhabism in order to prevent an Islamic state, it is ironic that the DUMD is, in some ways, tending toward one.
 Meanwhile, Moscow has rebuilt Karamakhi and provided Dagestan with a sixfold budgetary increase. It has also sought to stimulate Dagestan's economic development by giving the republic a central role in the transfer of oil and gas reserves from Caspian fields to Western markets. Dagestan is showing early signs of economic recovery. 
 What can we learn from Dagestan? First, there are many approaches to Islam. For nearly a decade, traditional Muslims in the Caucasus and central Asia have been under attack by religious extremists. Russia and the West alike must recognize this important distinction and reject anti-Caucasian and anti-Islamic prejudices. Second, sustained efforts to settle peacefully with extremists proved pointless in Dagestan, where citizens endured horrendous acts of aggression until they finally achieved a military solution. Third, Dagestanis preserved their freedoms from extremist assault only to diminish those freedoms themselves in their subsequent efforts to ensure their security. Fourth, extremism feeds upon political corruption, economic despair, moral decay and spiritual disorientation. Its antidotes are political justice, economic opportunity and ethnic and religious toleration. 
 If the world is to triumph over Islamic extremism, then we must avoid the former and ensure the latter.
 
 <i>Robert Bruce Ware is an associate professor at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Is This the Real War on Corruption?
TEXT: SOME issues of the paper just seem to have a theme, and the current issue <i>du jour </i>is plainly official corruption and the tantalizing, but still hard-to-believe, possibility of a serious fight against it.
 Locally, the suspension of Vice Governor Valery Malyshev is a long-awaited and welcome move. Although it has by no means been proven that he has done anything wrong, the allegations are certainly substantial enough - and have been for months, if not years - to justify his suspension. What is most alarming in this case is that Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, who should be out in front in the war on corruption at the local level, has moved so slowly and reluctantly in this case. 
 Instead of dragging his heels on Malyshev, the governor should have suspended him <i>and </i>made it publicly clear that if Malyshev does not cooperate with the investigation and make every effort to return to work promptly, he will be removed, regardless of whether or not the charges are proven.
 At the same time, prosecutors in Moscow seem suddenly to have gotten some energy and, for the first time ever, seem to be taking some damning material unearthed by the State Duma's Audit Chamber seriously. 
 True, both in the case of Malyshev and in those of Railways Minister Nikolai Aksyonenko or Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, there are plenty of indications that what we are really talking about are politically motivated vendettas. It would certainly be more heartening if the long arm of Russian law didn't seem quite so selective in whom it chooses to pursue. 
 However, when Aksyonenko responded to the allegations against him by saying that he would complain to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who would no doubt call off the dogs, a government spokesperson sensibly responded that ministers are not above the law and advised Aksyonenko to exonerate himself in court. If that isn't some measure of progress, then what is?
 Russia is in a time of tremendous flux. As Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref recently stated: &quot;We have prepared 126 new laws for this Duma session, and sometimes we can't remember what has already been approved.&quot; It is certainly going to take some more time before we get the rule of law to go along with all those new laws, but there is every sign that - however fitfully - the two are coming along.
 During the transition, we need to be able to count on principled leadership - whether from our governor or from our president - to see us through the uncertainty. We have the right to expect genuine character from them and to demand that they require nothing less from those who serve them.

TITLE: Press Minister's Latest Bid for Total Control
TEXT: SOCIALISM may have slipped into the past long ago, but our ministers aren't averse to managing the economy. 
 We have always suspected that Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, one-time owner of the biggest advertising agency in the country, Video International, needed his post to establish a commercial monopoly over the media.
 Some say that it was none other than Lesin who set the Kremlin against Vladimir Gusinsky, and who, by way of a reward, requested a superholding comprising VGTRK, NTV and ORT. There was no easy victory, however, and the Kremlin did not hand him the superholding, enraged as it was by the shameful and protracted fight. 
 Now Mikhail Yurich is lobbying for a new project: He wants to control Russia's pulp and paper industry. 
 Lesin sent the prime minister a most curious letter together with the proposed text for a government decree &quot;On Measures for Regulating the Internal Newsprint Market of the Russian Federation.&quot;
 The letter states a worrying fact: It appears that the manufacturers of Russian newsprint - of which there are eight - hatched a cunning plan to dictate their prices to the media by fixing them higher than average world prices. 
 So in order to stop these monopolistic practices and ensure the constitutional right of citizens to receive information, the minister proposes, first, that 35 percent of the total production of newsprint be sold to Russian consumers. And second, he thinks that the export duty on newsprint should be established at 35 percent, including VAT. But in the event that a certificate is provided confirming that the 35-percent target was met, the duty shall be reduced to 10 percent. Who issues the certificates? The Economic Development and Trade Ministry - with the Press Ministry's consent, of course. 
 There is indeed a difference between the price of newsprint on the domestic and foreign markets: On the domestic market it costs about $570 per ton, while it costs $510 to $530 on the foreign market. 
 The difference can be explained not by a plot formed between the eight producers but by protectionist duties. Foreign newsprint is subject to 15-percent duty and 20-percent VAT and costs $710 in Russia per ton. It would be sufficient to remove the duty, and the prices would be the same. 
 But Lesin is ready to take on the difficult task of regulating the market and taking the reins of the pulp and paper plants. 
 The idea is doubly advantageous. Both for private individuals and for the state. The state benefits in that paper sellers can be told exactly which publications should be supplied with cheap newsprint in order to receive a certificate for exporting it abroad, and which it is best not to supply. 
 On the other hand, there are benefits for private individuals. For example, what if it suddenly emerges that in order for some Volga paper company to receive a license, there is no need at all to meet this 35-percent target? And what if, though it is terrible to say, a certificate can simply be bought? By doing so the company receives the right to export 100 percent of its production at the lower customs rate. 
 And there is another dreadful consideration. Imagine that some factory or other comes to the Press Ministry and doesn't get a certificate. It doesn't get anything for one month, two months, three months. The factory suffers; it loses money. While punctually supplying paper to the domestic market, it nonetheless cannot get a license to sell it abroad. Naturally the factory will ask why it is so disliked. And the answer will come back: &quot;You just pass out some shares, and everything will all be fine.&quot;
 In other words, by introducing the certificate, a certain administrative capital is created that, theoretically, could be exchanged for shares in a company. It would be logical to write still another resolution, according to which the Press Ministry would be able to control the prices for the machine tools that manufacture the newsprint, for the metal from which the machine tools are made, for the pellets from which the metal itself is made. ...
 
 <i>Yulia Latynina is a journalist with ORT. </i>

TITLE: Still Waiting To Be Convinced
TEXT: The bombing of Afghanistan has been going on for severalweeks already. Hostility toward the United States is growing, and not only in the Arab world. The bewilderment and exasperation can be felt in Western Europe as well, despite assurances of loyalty on the part of those countries' leaders. It's not just the ever-growing number of victims among the civilian population, but also the fact that London and Washington, having already commenced military operations, have yet to present the world with cogent arguments.
 The famous address by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that won the support of the British Parliament, by his own admission, did not contain sufficient evidence for a British or U.S. court. Most of it had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, but merely described the prior and already well-known terrorist activities of Osa ma bin Laden.
 The official version of events leaves such a large number of unanswered questions that even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a loyal ally of the United States in the Middle East, could not refrain from voicing certain doubts. Mubarak is himself a professional pilot and does not understand how terrorists with minimal flying skills could have steered the planes to their targets. The Russian General Boris Agapov, a well-known specialist on Afghanistan, cannot understand how bin Laden and the Taliban, with their primitive organization, could have executed such a large-scale act of terrorism. He believes that one of the more competent secret services must have had a hand in things. The German Berliner Zeitung and the Indian Mainstream newspapers asked how the terrorists could have implemented their plan without a single U.S. citizen as an accomplice.
 And why is the United States so interested in bin Laden's money, while ignoring Saudi &quot;charitable&quot; foundations that sustain a number of extremist organizations? The list of such questions is almost endless, and one merely has to explore U.S. Internet sites - which today have come to resemble Soviet samizdat of the 1970s - to find a lot of them.
 In any case, the extent to which perceptions of Sept. 11 inside the United States and outside of it differ is striking. U.S. citizens support the war because they hope that they can rid themselves of the nightmare that was unleashed on Sept. 11. For the rest of the world, the war is itself a nightmare and, moreover, one that has been imported from the United States.
 Commentators writing in serious newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times whisper in the ear of the Bush administration: &quot;Provide more evidence.&quot; However, if we are talking about evidence that is gathered retrospectively in order to corroborate a version of events already agreed upon, then it will convince very few people. Such evidence will appear convincing mainly to governments receiving handouts from the United States, and the larger the handouts the more convincing the evidence will seem. In demanding solidarity at all costs, the Bush administration is destabilizing its own friends and compelling them to go against the grain of the views of their own people.
 Having annointed bin Laden as the main culprit, the Bush administration has not only provoked doubts regarding the justification of its actions, but also made it more likely that other criminals will go unpunished. Only a full-scale and thorough investigation will make it possible to uncover all of the culprits. If bin Laden was not behind the Sept. 11 attacks or played only a secondary role, then the current war against terrorism is providing other terrorist leaders with the opportunity to cover their tracks.
 A doctor who undertakes a surgical operation in spite of doubts about the diagnosis is acting amorally at the very least. For this very reason, politicians and doctors fear retrospective revisions of diagnoses more than anyone.
 The fear of new terrorist acts compels the American public to accept any course of treatment offered by the government. However, there will most probably not be any more large-scale acts of terrorism. Not because the administration's measures have been effective, but simply because those who blew up the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 - whoever they were - have already achieved their goal, just as those who blew up apartment blocks in Moscow in 1999 accomplished theirs. 
 Terrorism is a means of changing the balance of political forces through violence. Such a change has already taken place. And the current war against terrorism is no solution, but instead is just aggravating the problem.
 
 <i>Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist. </i>

TITLE: Sibneft's Deal Means Russia's Still a Gamble
TEXT: A WORD of caution to the world's leading business figures gathered for the World Economic Forum's Russia meeting.
 A week ago, Sibneft provided a textbook case of corporate-governance malpractice that serves to highlight the continuing dangers of investing not just in Sibneft, but in any Russian equity. Sibneft's announcement of record high earnings for the first half of 2001 was overshadowed by news that the core shareholders, i.e. Chu k hot ka Governor Roman Ab ra mo vich and Co., had bought back a 27-percent stake in the company, which they had sold to Sibneft for $542 million last December.
 Minority shareholders learned, for the first time, about a transaction that took place just before Sibneft made a record dividend payout in August. Equally worrying, scant information was provided about the sale except to say that compensation was in cash and &quot;other investments&quot; and that the transaction was completed at &quot;market prices.&quot; Those &quot;other investments&quot; might just as well be in reindeer ranches for all anyone knows. And outside shareholders will have to wait until June 2002, when full-year U.S. GAAP accounts are published, to find out more about the transaction.
 Such skulduggery in Britain or the United States would be classed as insider trading and could carry a hefty prison sentence for those convicted (the core shareholder team benefited from a generous dividend payout on the basis of privileged information). However, Sibneft was able to shift roughly $1 billion of assets out of the company unbeknownst to minority shareholders apparently without breaking the law. If a publicly traded Russian company such as Sibneft can conceal information that is crucial for an accurate valuation of the company, then investing in Russian stocks is not much different than playing roulette or shooting craps.
 Russia's sixth-largest oil company, which never ceases to remind the world of the importance it attaches to sound corporate governance and respect for minority shareholder rights, has certainly undermined trust as well as laying itself open to accusations of hypocrisy and cynicism.
 Sibneft CEO Eugene Shvidler, in a comment written just two months ago, boasted of Sibneft being the first Russian company to adopt a corporate governance charter. But where are the so-called independent, non-executive directors, whose job it is, according to the charter, &quot;to safeguard shareholders' investments and the company's assets?&quot;
 He finishes up with this clarion call: &quot;Sound corporate governance must no longer be regarded as a luxury, but instead as a necessity.&quot; Otherwise, &quot;capital will continue to take a detour around Russia, instead heading for other, safer havens.&quot;
 Maybe Sibneft's CEO should practice what he preaches.
 
 <i>This comment appeared as an editorial in The Moscow Times on Oct. 29. </i>

TITLE: mariinsky, bolshoi stage swap
AUTHOR: by Raymond Stults
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: At 7 p.m. on Saturday, the curtain will rise at the Mariinsky Theater on the Moscow Bolshoi Theater's production of Tchaikovsky's ballet &quot;Swan Lake.&quot; In Moscow, at precisely the same moment, an audience at the Bolshoi will be hearing the opening strains of the Mariinsky's staging of the same composer's &quot;Sleeping Beauty.&quot; Both performances will be repeated on Sunday.
 The exchange continues two weeks later when, on Nov. 17 and 18, the two theaters exchange opera stagings, with the Bolshoi traveling to St. Petersburg for two performances of Tchaikovsky's &quot;Eugene Onegin&quot; and the Mariinsky returning to Moscow with Sergei Prokoviev's &quot;Semyon Kotko&quot; and a concert performance of excerpts from other works in its repertoire.
 The exchange reflects the two theaters' new-found friendship, following years of not-very-well-hidden hostility, and represents the second step in a long-term program of exchanges agreed to last fall and initiated, on a modest scale, earlier this year.
 The Bolshoi's offerings in St. Petersburg are reconstructions, both unveiled last season, of earlier stagings. This &quot;Swan Lake&quot; first appeared in 1969, and &quot;Eugene Onegin&quot; dates back to 1944. In both cases, however, the original director was still on hand to oversee the revival.
 &quot;Swan Lake&quot; is the work of Yury Grigorovich, the dictatorial ballet master at the Bolshoi for 31 years, who was abruptly dismissed in 1995. Two seasons later, this production was replaced by a new version choreographed by former star dancer and then Bolshoi artistic director, Vladimir Vasiliev. However, Vasiliev's departure from the theater in August 2000 paved the way for Grigorovich's return and, with it, the return of his &quot;Swan Lake.&quot;
 The elegant sets and costumes by Simon Virsaladze were lovingly recreated, while Grigorovich retained most, if not all, of his amendments to the traditional choreography of Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov and Alexander Gorsky. Most striking among Grigorovich's innovations, now as before, is the substitution for Rothbart of a so-called Evil Genius, part tormentor of Prince Siegfried and part a reflection of the prince's darker side. A novelty this time around is the return of Tchaikovsky's intended tragic finale, replacing the happy ending that was forced upon Grigorovich by the Soviet Ministry of Culture in 1969.
 The cast on both evenings in St. Petersburg is identical to that of last March's premiere. Strong and exciting performances can be expected from Andrei Uvarov as Prince Siegfried and Nikolai Tsiskaridze as the Evil Genius. Anastasia Volochkova, already well-known to local audiences from her four seasons at the Mariinsky, dances Odette/Odile. Volochkova cuts a lovely figure on stage, but the quality of her dancing remains controversial. The lesser roles feature three of the Bolshoi's brightest young stars: Maria Aleksandrova, Maria Allash and Svetlana Lunkina.
 &quot;Onegin&quot; is the latest - and possibly the last - in a recent series of Bolshoi restorations of Stalin-era stagings and sets. From its original premiere in 1944 until it disappeared from the Bolshoi stage in 1990, the production of the now 84-year-old Boris Pokrovsky played more than 1,000 times.
 Although this version was replaced for a decade by another, not-very-well-received &quot;Onegin&quot; also by Pokrovsky, the venerable director returned his earlier treatment of the work to the theater's repertoire last fall. His staging is strictly traditional, framed by the detailed, realistic and rather overpowering sets by Pyotr Vilyams. Certainly the spirit of the production is far removed from Tchaikovsky's original concept, which was to create what was virtually a chamber work for performance by students of the Moscow Conservatory.
 The best singing among the announced casts will likely come from one of the Onegins, baritone Vladimir Redkin, and the Gremin of both performances, Leonid Zimnenko, who - although sometimes heard at the Bolshoi - makes his musical home at Moscow's Sta nislavsky and Nemirovich-Dan chen ko Musical Theater.
 As for the rest, the Bolshoi seems to be putting something less than its best foot forward. A major curiosity lies in the choice of pop star Nikolai Baskov to sing Lensky the second evening. Considering Baskov's limited and decidedly non-operatic vocal means, his appearances in the role this past year - on a stage once graced by such magnificent Lensky's as Leonid Sobinov, Sergei Lemeshev and Ivan Kozlovsky remains a puzzle to many listeners. 
 Produced under the auspices of the Golden Mask Theater Awards Festival, the current Mariinsky/Bolshoi exchange involves more than 1,000 artists and is budgeted at 10 million rubles ($337,000). The Culture Ministry and the St. Petersburg and Moscow city governments are contributing 40 percent of that amount, with the remainder to be covered by private sponsors and ticket sales.
 
 <i>For details of the performances, see listings. </i>

TITLE: sofits again bring no surprises
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city's most prestigious theatrical award, the Golden Sofit, continued its long tradition of controversial selections at this year's seventh annual awards ceremony on Oct. 29.
 Critics and audiences alike have long complained that Golden Sofit juries are far too conservative, and this year's list of recipients gave no cause to silence the criticism.
 The Bolshoi Drama Theater, which has won at least one award every year since the Golden Sofit began in 1995, again did not go home empty-handed this year. Grigory Dityakovsky's version of Racine's &quot;Phaedra&quot; was nominated in three categories - best large-scale stage production, best female actor and best setdesign - and walked away with all three awards.
 In contrast, the Maly Drama Theater, which has had considerable success at the national Golden Mask awards over the last few years, failed to merit even a single nomination in the hometown competition. Slighting the Maly has become a regrettable Sofit tradition.
 Another predictable award went to the Mariinsky's artistic director, Valery Gergiev, who was named best conductor for Rimsky-Korsakov's &quot;The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and Maid Fevronia&quot; and for Tchaikovsky's &quot;The Nutcracker.&quot;
 These were not the Mariinsky's only triumphs, however, as the theater also took Golden Sofits for best set design in musical theater for Mikhail Shemyakin's imaginative work on &quot;The Nutcracker&quot; and for best female opera singer for Olga Sergeyeva's performance as Maid Fevronia in Dmitry Chernyakov's staging of &quot;Kitezh.&quot;
 Chernyakov's conceptual and meta phoric take on Rimsky-Korsakov, however, lost the best-director battle to the Zazerkalye Theater's Alexander Petrov, for his staging of Puccini's &quot;La Boheme.&quot; 
 Popular choreographer Boris Eifman - whose ballets always play to packed houses, although many critics pooh-pooh Eifman for supposedly pandering to popular whims - took a Golden Sofit for best ballet production for his &quot;Russian Hamlet.&quot; 
 Surprisingly, Eifman beat out John Neumeier's three ballets for the Mariinsky. It was hard enough to imagine Eifman even being considered in the same category with Neumeier, and the only possible justification for this embarrassing verdict is that only one of Neumeier's three productions was a premier staged specifically for the Mariinsky.
 The award for the best ballet dancer went to Yelena Kuzmina, who danced Empress Catherine II in Eifman's &quot;Russian Hamlet.&quot; Kuzmina's rivals - Mariinsky stars Ulyana Lopatkina and soloist Ilya Kuznetsov - went home empty-handed. 
 Alexander Galibin's interpretation of August Strindberg's &quot;Miss Julie&quot; garnered four nominations - for best female actor, best male actor, best small stage production and best set design - but failed to go take home any awards. Ivan Latyshev's production of &quot;Christmas 1942, or Letters About the Volga,&quot; at the Theater of Young Viewers took Golden Sofits for both best small stage production and best ensemble performance.
 Vladimir Matveyev won the best male actor award for his performance as Aleksei Karenin in Gennady Trostyanetsky's &quot;Karenin. Anna. Vronsky.&quot; at the Lensoviet Theater.
 Each year the jury presents a few special awards. This year, the Alexandrinsky Theater's Nina Urgant and BDT's Zinaida Sharko were feted &quot;for artistic longevity.&quot; The Theater of Young Viewers' artist Mikhail Nikolayev was honored &quot;for his input into the development of St. Petersburg stage design.&quot;
 The jury also did not forget Sergei Spitsyn, chief doctor at the Dyuny sanatorium, who was noted &quot;for his support of the theatrical arts of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast.&quot; Spitsyn is a unique figure among local doctors, as his sanatorium has been providing free or sharply discounted courses of treatment for members of the local theatrical community for many years.

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Vladimir Belinsky of Wild Side fame and until recently the director of <strong>Red Club, </strong>an expensive-looking but rock-oriented club that opened near Moscow Station on Sept. 28, was dismissed recently and already the first effects of this change are being seen. 
 No strip shows yet - the repertoire is still rock with a drop of mainstream jazz - but the shameful system of charging men and women different cover charges has been introduced (100 rubles for men, and 50 for women). 
 Probably the most interesting event at Red Club next week will be a show on Nov. 8 presenting <strong>Babslei's </strong>debut CD and video. The all-girl folk-punk band will be supported by friends, <strong>S.P.O.R.T. </strong>and <strong>Nordfolks. </strong>
 Despite early reports, <strong>Tequilajazzz </strong>will not play at the Babslei event, but will appear next week in an unlikely role at the Deboshir Film Festival's opening night. This alternative, guitar-driven band will provide a live backing to &quot;Stachka&quot; (Strike), Sergei Eisentein's 1925 silent film, on Nov. 6.
 <i>Deboshir Film Festival, Dom Kino, Nov. 6-9.
 </i>This weekend's &quot;big Western act&quot; is <strong>Yes, </strong>which will play with a &quot;full symphony orhcestra&quot; as part of their Yessymphonic tour. The band itself will bring its 1970s line-up of John Anderson on vocals, Steve Howie on guitar, Chris Squire on bass and Alan White on drums. No Rick Wakeman, though.
 <i>Ice Palace, 7 p.m., Nov. 3. Tickets cost between 400 and 2,000 rubles.
 </i>The <strong>Efes Pilsener Blues Festival </strong>finally comes to St. Petersburg, but promoters have to print new posters as the line-up of the U.S. blues stars taking part in the festival has recently changed.
 Previously announced, and much anticipated, Big Bill Morganfield, a son of the legendary Muddy Waters, is not coming, but Otis Taylor, Michael Hill and Eddie &quot;King&quot; Milton will be on stage.
 The annual festival originiated in Istanbul, Turkey, where it was held for the first time in 1990. Since 1999 it has been held in Moscow and has now been expanded to include St. Petersburg.
 <i>Yubileiny Sports Palace (Small Arena), Nov. 7. Tickets cost 700 rubles.
 </i>The local club scene will grow even bigger on Nov. 10, when the ambitious <strong>International Cultural Center and Par.spb </strong>will open at Alexandrovsky Park.
 Despite being oriented toward contemporary dance music (Dr. Bob Jones of Chilli Funk will be brought in from London for the opening), it will occasionally host live acts. This week's sensation will be <strong>Julee Cruise, </strong>the ethereal voice behind David Lynch's television series &quot;Twin Peaks.&quot;
 The song &quot;Falling,&quot; which recurs throughout the series, brought fame to Cruise, who once worked as a talent scout for soundtrack-composer Angelo Badalamenti.
 Apart from her Lynch/Badalamenti collaborations, Cruise has acted and even sang with the B-52s as a replacement for the band's founding singer Cindy Wilson during 1992 and 1993. 
 The New York-based Cruise will perform with DJ Khan and guitarist Kid Congo Power.
 <i>The center and club will open at 10 p.m. on Nov. 10. Tickets cost 330 rubles. Par.spb, 5b Alexandrovsky Park. Metro: Gorkovskaya. Telephone, 233-3374.
 </i>
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: the best beer in the city
AUTHOR: by Robert Coalson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Recently reopened after a seemingly interminable <i>remont </i>during the heat of the summer, Tinkoff Brewery still provides the best beer in town, straight from its own gleaming chrome vats. There is just nowhere else to take any brewing connoisseurs, as long as money is no object, since the smallest mug runs 89 rubles ($3) and the prices skyrocket from there. Although Tinkoff seems like a great place to sit for hours and unwind, only the idle rich can really afford to do so.
 When we stopped by for lunch recently, we were a bit surprised at how little had been changed during the repairs. Perhaps they spent most of their time polishing the glistening vats, but the restaurant features the same sterile entryway and essentially the same interior it had before. The sushi bar that appeared in the front room last summer is still there, the charming wooden sushi boats still spinning around on their endless voyage of discovery.
 The restaurant's surprisingly successful strategy of going after the market segment that doesn't give a damn about money - it should be recalled that the place opened during the height of the 1998 ruble crisis, offering 17-ruble beers at a time when most people were stocking up on canned meat and sugar - is still firmly entrenched. Even if you, however reluctantly, pass on the fresh-brewed beer, it is hard to leave Tinkoff without spending at least $20.
 The Tinkoff menu has changed little since the restaurant reopened. The best-value items are the pizzas, which run from 269 to 469 rubles ($9 to $15.60) for full size, but which also come in a generous half-portion size for reasonable prices. Tinkoff pizzas feature an excellent, light crust and a spicey sauce that is unlike any other in town. One of my dining companions went for the &quot;Pizza Four Types of Cheese,&quot; which was both tasty and filling.
 Also worth mentioning are the pasta dishes, which are in the 239- to 419-ruble range ($8 to $14). My other dining companion opted for the meat lasagne (269 rubles, or $9), which surprised us first because it was so unimaginatively presented - just a square of lasagne dumped by itself on a plain white plate - and second because it was so blatantly bereft of sauce. This made the entire product quite dry, although the combination of ground beef and Italian sausage at the heart of the matter was quite pleasing. The portion was also less-than-generous, leaving this dining companion reaching across the table for my other dining companion's leftover pizza.
 I should perhaps also mention that we whetted our appetites with two starters: the mussels in garlic butter (six mussels for 259 rubles, or $8.60) and the deep-fried battered cheese sticks with barbecue sauce (six sticks for 279 rubles, or $9.30). The mussels were delicious and delicately seasoned, while the cheese sticks were quite ordinary and the &quot;barbecue sauce&quot; was a disappointment.
 I followed my appetizer with the chateau briand in green-pepper sauce, which is served with vegetables for 349 rubles ($11.60). The meat was excellent and cooked perfectly, and the pepper sauce had just the right level of piquancy to compliment the meat. The portion was also generous, and I walked away pleasantly stuffed. 
 As we sipped our small cappuccinos (69 rubles, or $2.30), we looked back on a delicious lunch that was made all the more enjoyable by the excellent service. If it weren't for the sticker-shock of the entire experience, we would have left entirely satisfied. For those with heftier wallets than us, though, Tinkoff thoughtfully offers souvenirs with the Tinkoff logo for sale, from baseball hats for 439 rubles ($14.60) to a large porcelain for 2,699 rubles ($90). We left with just the memories, though.
 
 <i>Tinkoff Brewery, 7 ul. Kazanskaya, 314-8485. Open daily, 12 p.m. to 2 a.m. Lunch for three including one beer, 1,580 rubles ($53) Menu in English and Russian. Credit cards accepted. </i>

TITLE: nabokov's chess novel comes home
AUTHOR: by Kenneth Turan
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: Maybe it's the iconography of the pieces or the intensity of the players, but for such a subtle, interior game, chess transfers very well to the screen. &quot;Searching for Bobby Fischer&quot; was one of the best films of 1993; a chess drama, &quot;Dangerous Moves,&quot; won the best foreign-language Oscar in 1984; and the game itself has enlivened dramas from &quot;The Thomas Crown Affair&quot; to &quot;The Seventh Seal.&quot; 
 &quot;The Luzhin Defence&quot; is a worthy addition to that list though it's a bit more problematic, especially in its final act. Director Marleen Gorris (&quot;Antonia's Line,&quot; &quot;Mrs. Dalloway&quot;) does not ordinarily have a gift for subtlety, but she has done exceptionally well in selecting both her actors and her production people, and so this somber, difficult romance set against the backdrop of a chess tournament has a considerable amount going for it. Not the least of these strengths is having a scenario based on an early Russian-language novel (its title is usually translated into English as &quot;The Defence&quot;) by the great St. Petersburg-born writer Vladimir Nabokov. 
 As adapted by veteran BBC writer Peter Berry, the film co-stars John Turturro as the obsessed, possessed chess genius Luzhin and Emily Watson as Natalia, the woman he meets and falls in love with at a world chess championship in northern Italy in the summer of 1929. As much a presence as the actors is the film's beautifully mounted setting, which includes a Lake Como villa that was the childhood home of director Luchino Visconti. Tony Burrough is the production designer, and as with films such as the Ian McKellen &quot;Richard III&quot; and the Gwyneth Paltrow &quot;Great Expectations,&quot; Burrough (working with cinematographer Ber nard Lutic and costumer designer Jany Temime) made his settings so satisfying that they're a reason to see the film all by themselves. 
 All by himself for understandable reasons is eccentric grandmaster Luzhin. First glimpsed as a hand frantically scrawling chess moves in a tiny book, Luzhin is so not of this world that though a band is waiting to greet him when his train arrives at his Italian destination, he forgets to get off. Ill at ease in all social situations, harried by invisible demons, Luzhin is masterful with chess pieces but has absolutely no gift for people. Individuals like this are hardly new to film (in fact &quot;The Luzhin Defence&quot; plays like the dark side of &quot;Shine&quot;), but Turturro has the ability and the insight to make the chess player an individual, not a caricature. Also helping are extensive flashbacks that show what Luzhin cannot speak about: the troubled childhood that left him so emotionally scarred. 
 Staying at the same Italian hotel as the tournament players is fellow Russian Natalia (Watson), vacationing with her mother, Vera (Geraldine James), a difficult woman of the &quot;travel in Europe has become unbearable&quot; variety. Though Vera wants to fix her daughter up with the very eligible Comte Jean de Stassard (Christopher Thompson), Natalia is not the social climber her mother is. She's intrigued by Luzhin, entranced by the very things that horrify her mother, like his complete lack of small talk, the intensity of his fascination with her, and how completely childlike his impulsive and emotional enthusiasms are. 
 Soon enough, Natalia becomes the only one of Luzhin's interests to rank close to chess, an obsession that's consumed him so completely that, if asked, he can tell you exactly how long he's played the game: &quot;9,263 days, four hours and five minutes.&quot; While Turturro's role as the manic genius is by nature the showier one, Watson's job of being persuasively intoxicated by this near-madman is much more difficult. Yet the actress, always a pleasure to watch, is wonderfully convincing as she sparks to Luzhin's eccentricities and becomes, as much as she can, the angel who watches over him. 
 Naturally, there is a devil lurking nearby as well, and that is Valentinov (Stuart Wilson), a shadowy figure from Luzhin's past who clearly is up to no good and whose overtly melodramatic machinations are part of the film's difficulties. But &quot;The Luzhin Defence&quot; is about more than this tug of war. It also deals with the price of genius and, by implication, the toll of being an artist. Carefully made, involving and old-fashioned, the superior work it's inspired gives it an impact that lingers even when the endgame is over.
 <i>&quot;The Luzhin Defence&quot; is playing at Dom Kino. </i>

TITLE: U.S. Air Strikes Take Battle to Front Lines
AUTHOR: By Bassam Hatoum
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Heavy bombers went into action over northern Afghanistan throughout the week, pounding frontline Taliban positions in a dramatic increase in U.S. support for opposition forces on the battlefield.
 In this southern stronghold, Taliban authorities took the first foreign journalists allowed into the city since the air strikes began to the ruins of a hospital they claimed was badly damaged in U.S. military assaults earlier in the day. There was no independent confirmation of the claim, which said 15 people died and 25 were seriously wounded.
 Low-flying American jets and what appeared to be high-flying bombers struck Taliban positions on Wednesday about 48 kilometers north of Kabul, raising huge clouds of smoke as they unleashed bombs and missiles.
 Opposition fighters said it appeared that Taliban field headquarters, as well as other targets, were being hit, although it was impossible to determine the damage.
 The stepped-up attacks on frontline positions came a day after U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that U.S. troops were on the ground in Afghanistan directing bombs at their targets. A Pentagon spokesperson, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem, said Wednesday that B-52 bombers were in use against Taliban lines in the north.
 Opposition forces had been complaining that American attacks were too weak and uncoordinated to bring the ruling Taliban to their knees and open the way to Kabul and other major cities. U.S. officials had complained that the opposition was giving American forces insufficient target information.
 In Kandahar, bombs began falling before dawn Wednesday. Foreign journalists brought to this Taliban stronghold on a media tour watched from a rooftop as detonations lighted the sky.
 Later, the 29 journalists were taken by the Taliban to the bomb-shattered ruins of a hospital operated by the Afghan Red Crescent, the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross.
 With heavily armed Taliban fighters looking on, Dr. Obeidallah Hadid made the claims of dead and injured. Reporters were shown a few of the injured but no bodies, and the numbers could not be independently confirmed.
 The impact punched a crater in the compound of the clinic, where the red-and-white flag of the Red Crescent still fluttered on a pole outside. Part of the building had collapsed. Hospital vehicles were crushed by falling masonry.
 Pentagon spokesperson Bryan Whitman denied bombers attacked the hospital. Asked if reporters taken to the damaged site were misled by the Taliban, Whitman said he couldn't address what journalists were shown but that &quot;time and again,&quot; Taliban leaders have proven themselves to be &quot;accomplished liars.&quot;
 The tour was the first time Western journalists have been allowed into Kandahar, where the Taliban's headquarters are located, since the U.S. air attacks began Oct. 7. Speaking to the journalists, Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil challenged the United States and Britain to send in ground forces.
 &quot;Let them come here on the ground,&quot; Muttawakil said. &quot;We will fight and let's see who will win.&quot;
 In Islamabad, capital of neighboring Pakistan, the Taliban ambassador, Abdul Salam Zaeef, claimed Wednesday that between 1,500 and 1,600 people had been killed in the air campaign and accused the United States of &quot;atrocities and genocide in Afghanistan.&quot;
 The Pentagon has repeatedly denied targeting civilians intentionally and has accused the Taliban of inflating casualty figures. 
 &quot;Our military planners and people who carry out their missions try as hard as possible, more than most, to avoid civilian casualties,'' White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said Wednesday. &quot;Civilian casualties are also unfortunately a reflection of war.&quot;
 Despite the attack on Kandahar, much of the air campaign has shifted this week to battle areas north of Kabul and around the Taliban-held city of Mazar-e-Sharif in the north.
 Children and adults gaped at the skies as the planes roared throughout the day and night north of the capital in some of the most intense air strikes in the area.
 The attacks along the front lines are designed to weaken Taliban positions facing the opposition Northern Alliance, which has been unable to make significant advances on the ground against a larger and better-armed Taliban force.
 With winter approaching, the United States and its coalition partners would like to see gains by the alliance, especially around Mazar-e-Sharif.
 Capturing the key market city would cut Taliban supply lines to the west and open a corridor to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, through which the opposition could be supplied with troops and weapons.

TITLE: U.S. Weighs Additional Security Measures
AUTHOR: By Pete Yost
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The U.S. government is increasing vigilance at the country's borders with better background checks and coordinated enforcement designed to bar suspected terrorists and their supporters.
 The changes announced Wednesday by Attorney General John Ashcroft came as officials acknowledged weaknesses in the visa system.
 &quot;The best way of protecting the United States is to keep these people out,&quot; said Mary Ryan, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs.
 Promising that the government won't allow visitors &quot;to use our hospitality as a weapon,&quot; Ashcroft asked the State Department to designate 46 previously identified terrorist organizations whose members or supporters will not be permitted to enter the United States.
 Ryan said U.S. intelligence agencies don't share their terrorist and criminal watch lists with the State Department, which made it possible for foreigners to get legal visas even if some U.S. agencies would want them barred.
 Shoring up the country's border defenses came on a day the FBI announced that its second-in-command, Thomas Pickard, overseer of the investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks and introduction of anthrax into the mail system, will retire at the end of November. Pickard's retirement is the second major departure since FBI Director Robert Mueller took charge of the bureau in July. Neil Gallagher, head of the FBI's counterintelligence and national-security programs, also plans to retire at the end of next month.
 At a news conference, Ashcroft said the government will delve more deeply into the backgrounds of people seeking visitor visas and will turn the information over to the CIA and FBI for further investigation before issuing permission to enter.
 &quot;This is clear authority that strengthens our ability to say to terrorists, 'You're not welcome in the United States,'&quot; Ashcroft said.
 Under new rules, immigration authorities can bar members of political or social groups that endorse terrorist activities. People who use their prominence to endorse terrorism can also be barred, and anyone certified by the attorney general as a threat to national security can be denied entry.
 Immigration Commissioner James Ziglar said the task force, headed by FBI official Steven McCraw, will provide immigration officials with &quot;real-time access to information&quot; that will enable them to keep out suspected terrorists.
 State Department and immigration officials told Congress they don't know how many foreigners are in the United States illegally with expired student visas or student visas never used for schools where the holders were to have studied.
 Hani Hanjour, suspected pilot of American Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, entered the United States on a student visa after promising to enroll at Holy Name College in Oakland, California. He failed to appear there.
 The State Department said 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks applied for and were granted visas in Saudi Arabia. Before getting their travel papers, their names were checked against lists of suspected terrorists, and six were interviewed.

TITLE: Fourth U.S. Anthrax Death Is Still a Complete Mystery
AUTHOR: By Laura Meckler
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Investigators traced the final steps of a New York woman, trying to discover how someone who worked with neither the media nor the mail could die from anthrax.
 Meanwhile, the bioterror continued its toll on the U.S. Postal Service, with yet another mail handler possibly infected.
 Postal authorities began picking through piles of decontaminated mail in Washington, searching for a possible unopened tainted letter that might help explain why anthrax spores have been found in more than a dozen spots around the capital.
 In New York, dozens of disease detectives spread out over the city looking for clues in the death of Kathy Nguyen, a hospital worker who fell victim to inhalation anthrax on Wednesday, the fourth person to die since the anthrax-by-mail attack was discovered nearly a month ago. Her death worried officials that the anthrax attack, so far concentrated among postal and media employees, could be spreading.
 &quot;We need to find out how she was infected,&quot; said Surgeon General David Satcher. &quot;It's very strange.&quot;
 And authorities awaited test results for a co-worker at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital who has a skin lesion that is suspicious of anthrax.
 Anthrax has killed four people and infected six others with the dangerous inhalation form of the disease. An additional seven people have been infected with the highly curable skin form.
 In Washington, three post offices closed for decontamination reopened and city officials reconsidered whether thousands of mail handlers in offices and post offices need to take the preventive medicine as recommended last week.
 Not so in New York, where investigators were puzzled by the death of Nguyen, a 61-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who checked into the hospital three days earlier. Sedated and using a ventilator to breathe, she was never able to provide investigators clues about where she might have encountered the deadly bacteria.
 Environmental testing at her Bronx apartment and at the outpatient hospital where she worked found no evidence of anthrax. Preliminary tests found spores on her clothing, but it was unclear whether that would help solve what Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health called a &quot;puzzling mystery.&quot;
 The woman worked in a basement supply room that had recently included a mailroom, but there were no reports of suspicious letters or other obvious cause for alarm - a sharp contrast to other cases in which tainted mail has been linked to the disease.
 Satcher said authorities are very concerned that her infection represents a new wave in the anthrax attacks.
 &quot;There might well be some other strategy involved here,&quot; he said Wednesday on CNN's &quot;Larry King Live.&quot; 
 There was similar anxiety over the case of a 51-year-old New Jersey woman who was diagnosed earlier in the week with skin anthrax. She told authorities that she did not recall opening any suspicious mail at the accounting firm where she works, and investigators have not discovered any other way that she may have been exposed to anthrax.
 That suggests that innocent mail may have been contaminated while it was processed, said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

TITLE: Official: Taliban Ready To Negotiate
AUTHOR: By Kathy Gannon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan - Four weeks into the U.S.-led air campaign, a senior Taliban official said Wednesday the ruling militia is willing to negotiate an end to the conflict. But he demanded proof of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
 &quot;That's the message for Americans,&quot; chief Taliban spokesperson Amir Khan Muttaqi said in an interview with the first Western reporter allowed into Kabul since the bombing began Oct. 7.
 &quot;We do not want to fight,&quot; Muttaqi added. &quot;We will negotiate. But talk to us like a sovereign country. We are not a province of the United States, to be issued orders to. We have asked for proof of Osama's involvement, but they have refused. Why?&quot;
 Before the bombing campaign began, Bush brushed aside numerous offers from the Taliban to negotiate bin Laden's status, including offers to hand him over to a third country or even try him here under Islamic law.
 The United States has repeatedly said that the demand to surrender bin Laden and his lieutenants in the al-Qaeda network is not negotiable, and waves of bombers have pounded the capital and other cities.
 During the interview, Muttaqi, who also is education minister, exuded confidence, arguing in effect that Afgha ni stan's weakness was its strength. U.S. bombing, he maintained, will not crack the Taliban.
 &quot;We don't have anything for the American bombs to destroy,&quot; he said. &quot;We are not a country with a sophisticated computer system, a big, important telecommunications system or modern aviation system to destroy.&quot;
 Muttaqi spoke in his spartan office with a Kalashnikov rifle on the table before him. His two security guards also carried assault rifles.
 &quot;Each Afghan has a rifle in his home and each Afghan's home is his bunker,&quot; Muttaqi said.
 Although Islamic governments have distanced themselves from the Taliban, many Muslims sympathize with bin Laden and the embattled Taliban, and Muttaqi hinted at a possible Muslim backlash against the United States if the conflict continues.
 &quot;America, what do you want to do?&quot; Muttaqi said. &quot;Don't make Muslims everywhere angry. Muslims have no problem with Americans. It is American policy they disagree with. America should not oblige thousands and thousands of Muslims the world over to feel for the victims of the bombing because they will cause more trouble for America.&quot;

TITLE: Ortega on Verge of a Return to Power
AUTHOR: By John Rice
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Under pink banners proclaiming peace and love, Daniel Ortega is running hard to regain the presidency of Nicaragua more than a decade after a U.S.-backed military crusade helped drive his socialist Sandinista Party from power.
 &quot;With love, we will build the promised land,&quot; Ortega pledges in banners that hang in the streets of Managua ahead of Sunday's presidential election.
 A Marxist revolutionary icon when he defied U.S. might in the 1970s and 1980s, Ortega now sounds more like John Lennon than Vladimir Lenin. His campaign posters, with their hand-painted daisies, are more reminiscent of flower power than revolutionary zeal.
 On the final day of campaigning Wed nes day, supporters unfurled an enormous U.S. flag behind Ortega as he spoke of the need to reconcile with former enemies. Indeed, the Sandinistas accumulated many of them from 1979 to 1990.
 &quot;Love is more powerful than hate,&quot; Ortega told supporters waving the old-fashioned red-and-black flags of revolution while wearing new pink T-shirts.
 While the old Sandinista anthem called Americans &quot;enemies of humanity,&quot; Ortega's foreign-minister-in-waiting, Antonio Lacayo, has promised to work &quot;shoulder to shoulder&quot; with the United States in the war against terrorism.
 Ortega, whose Sandinista governments clashed with the pope, has taken to wearing a prominent crucifix and has adopted an evangelical rhetoric.
 Polls released this week show Ortega in a statistical tie with Enrique Bolanos of the governing Constitutionalist Liberal Party - a remarkable political accomplishment given the circumstances.
 Only congressional immunity has blocked criminal charges involving allegations from Ortega's stepdaughter that he repeatedly raped her while in office.
 When he lost the 1990 presidential election, Ortega left a war-weary country, long besieged by U.S.-sponsored terrorists, in economic ruins. A scandal arose over Sandinista leaders' personal confiscation of government-seized properties.
 To Ortega's good fortune, opinion surveys show that the only person more disliked by Nicaraguans is outgoing President Arnoldo Aleman. And Bolanos, who resigned as Aleman's vice president a year ago to seek the top job, has had a hard time establishing his own identity.
 Many poor Nicaraguans say life was better in the Sandinista era when there were at least make-work jobs and food rations. Gleaming shopping malls and McDonald's restaurants only irritate the poorest. Forty percent of Nicaraguans live on about $1 a day or less.
 Bolanos, widely seen as honest, has promised a crackdown on corruption.
 But he &quot;studiously looked the other way when he was vice president of the most corrupt administration in Nicaraguan history,&quot; said Thomas Walker of Ohio University.
 Aleman stopped filing financial disclosure forms several years ago after his declared wealth rose from $26,000 to beyond $900,000 during his first seven years as a public employee.
 Ortega has tried to capitalize on the public's revulsion over corruption by naming as his vice-presidential candidate the national comptroller Aleman fired for demanding the president explain his income. That comptroller, Agustin Jarquin, is a Christian Democrat leader and was jailed by Ortega in the 1980s.
 U.S. officials have repeatedly expressed concern about a victory by the Sandinistas, whose massive expropriations of land are still a point of conflict between the two countries. U.S. Ambassador Oliver Garza even invited Bolanos to hand out U.S.-donated food aid in a poor village. Garza said Tuesday that Lacayo's pro-American statements did not ease U.S. concerns about Ortega.
 The elections leave many Nica ra guans feeling they have little choice.
 &quot;If I vote for Bolanos it's like voting for Aleman himself. They're the same,&quot; said Manuel Mendoza, a 36-year-old laborer, wiping fresh paint from his hands. &quot;If I vote for the Sandinistas, that would bring the country even more tragedy. So who am I going to vote for? For nobody.&quot;

TITLE: Commander Warns of War Over Kashmir
AUTHOR: By Binoo Joshi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JAMMU, India - The commander of Indian troops in disputed Kashmir warned Wednesday that, if pushed, New Delhi could choose military action against Pakistan's army and Islamic guerrillas.
 In the most aggressive comments in years by a military commander, Lieutenant General R.K. Nanavatty said India &quot;must remain prepared to exercise military action,&quot; and that the capture of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir was &quot;achievable.&quot;
 India and Pakistan, which conducted nuclear tests in 1998, have fought two wars over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir in about half a century.
 Tensions have increased sharply since an Oct. 1 car bombing and gunfight killed 40 people at the state legislature in Jammu-Kashmir, the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir. An Islamic group that operates in Pakistan claimed responsibility, then denied it.
 India accuses Muslim Pakistan of supporting Islamic separatists fighting a 12-year insurgency in Jammu-Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state. Pakistan denies the charge. India is mainly Hindu.
 &quot;The nuclearization of the subcontinent might have altered the situation, but despite that, the space exists for a limited conventional operation,&quot; Nanavatty said.
 India's military had refrained from such references to war even during the 1999 frontier fighting with Pakistan that killed hundreds of soldiers.
 Asked about the threat that India is in a position to seize Pakistan's northern areas and its part of Kashmir, General Rashid Quereshi, spokesperson of Pakistan's military government, said it was not worthy of comment. &quot;They are totally mistaken,&quot; he said.
 He also asserted that Pakistan &quot;has tried unilaterally to defuse the situation and prevent friction,&quot; saying Pakistan withdrew forces from the border in Kashmir.
 &quot;If India wants to escalate tensions, Pakistan would continue to exercise restraint and take bare-minimum measures,&quot; Quereshi said.
 Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee wrote U.S. President George W. Bush after the Oct. 1 attack, saying Pakistan needed to understand that India's patience was limited. The United States has urged both countries to avoid escalating tensions in Kashmir.
 Nanavatty, who commands the more than 500,000 soldiers in Jammu-Kashmir, was speaking at a seminar in its winter capital, Jammu. A spokesperson for India's Defense Ministry, P.K. Bandopadhyay, called the general's assessment &quot;theoretically correct.&quot;
 On Wednesday, Vajpayee reiterated India's position that Kashmir will always remain a part of India, which controls two-thirds of the region. Pakistan controls the rest.
 &quot;Let there be no illusion. ... India is ready to face any kind of challenge to its unity,&quot; he told a gathering at a Hindu temple dedication in Ahmadabad in Gujarat state, which borders Pakistan.
 Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokes person Aziz Ahmed Khan said Wed nesday that Kashmir is not part of India.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Megawati Warning
 

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - The head of the world's most populous Muslim country said Thursday that the global coalition against terrorism could crumble if the war in Afghanistan drags on with mounting civilian casualties.
 In her first state-of-the-nation speech since assuming office about 100 days ago, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri said prolonged military action "will not only be counter productive, but will also weaken the global coalition to wage war on terrorism."
 "In relation to this, we call for the ongoing military strikes, directed at finding terrorist suspects and which have taken so many innocent lives, not to continue during the holy month of Ramadan and Christmas Day," Megawati told the People's Consultative Assembly.
 As she spoke, 1,000 Muslim activists protested outside the assembly building demanding the imposition of Islamic law in Indonesia.
 Indonesia initially showed strong support for the U.S. war on terrorism. Since then, Megawati has appeared to backtrack due to intense pressure from conservative Muslim parties that make up the largest part of her ruling coalition.
 
 
Rebel Attack
 

PATNA, India (AP) - Nearly 150 suspected Maoist rebels raided a police station in eastern India on Wednesday and killed 13 police officers, a police spokesperson said.
 The assailants escaped with a dozen rifles and sten guns from the police station, the officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
 Five attackers were wounded by heavily outnumbered police in Topchari, nearly 185 miles southeast of Patna, the capital of Bihar state, the officer said.
 Police blamed the outlawed Maoist Communist Center for the attack. No group claimed responsibility.
 On Oct. 20, six police officers were killed by another communist group, the Peoples' War Group, in a land-mine explosion in Bihar state.
 Several Maoist groups are fighting to establish a Maoist-Leninist state in Jharkhand and the contiguous states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.
 
 
Plan for Pitcairn
 

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - British authorities have given the go-ahead to a private consortium hoping to build tourist lodges and two airstrips on one of the world's remotest spots - the Pitcairn Islands - to begin planning the venture.
 Fewer than 50 people live on Pitcairn, a British territory made up of four tiny islands in the Pacific, half way between New Zealand and Peru.
 The Wellesley Pacific group said Thursday it wants to build a 10-room lodge on Pitcairn Island, 10 chalets on the nearby coral atoll of Oeno, and airstrips on both islands for flying tourists into what could become one of the world's most exclusive vacation destinations.
 Oeno is a coral-rich island used as a resort area by the islanders, 125 kilometers northwest of the main island.
 Pitcairn is home to the descendants of mutineers from the British warship Bounty. Led by Fletcher Christian, the mutineers seized the Bounty from Captain William Bligh and settled on Pitcairn in 1790.
 With a virtually nonexistent economy and facing a population exodus, islanders have told their British governor, Wellington, New Zealand-based British High Commissioner Martin Williams, they want to develop tourism to breathe new life into the islands. 



TITLE: Two-Out Heroics Lift Yanks to Series Tie
AUTHOR: By Ben Walker
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Baseball fans, meet the first Mr. November-Derek Jeter.
 The Yankees star earned that distinction at 12:04 a.m. Thursday, hitting a home run with two outs in the bottom of 10th inning to lift New York over the Arizona Diamondbacks 4-3 and tie the World Series at two games each.
 Tino Martinez saved the Yankees with a two-out, two-run homer in the ninth off closer Byung-Hyun Kim, who also gave up Jeter's shot.
 Until then, the game that started Wednesday night belonged to the Diamondbacks and gutsy Curt Schilling, pitching on only three days' rest. Sitting in the dugout, all he could do was watch it all unravel from the dugout with a look of utter disbelief.
 &quot;We always feel as though we have a chance to win a game,&quot; Jeter said. &quot;When you get to the postseason, you can throw everything out that you've done in the regular season.&quot;
 Jeter, who usually shines in October, sent an opposite-field drive into the seats in right. It was the first game-ending homer of his career, and came shortly after the Yankee Stadium scoreboard flashed: &quot;Welcome to November Baseball.&quot;
 The Yankees spilled out of the dugout to greet him at home plate, where he landed with a two-footed hop. The crowd, already a bit crazed on Halloween night, went absolutely wild while Jeter's parents were hugged by everybody sitting near them in the stands.
 &quot;Surprising things happen,&quot; Yankees manager Joe Torre said. &quot;Yet, when you think about it, it doesn't surprise you, because this ballclub never quits.&quot;
 It was the first time in World Series history that a team tied a game with a ninth-inning homer and won with a homer in extra innings, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
 Schilling, moved up by rookie manager Bob Brenly, did everything Arizona could have asked. But when Kim relieved, the game turned spooky for his team.
 &quot;We had a lead, we had six outs left to go in the ballgame,&quot; Brenly said. &quot;That's the way we hoped it would work out. Unfortunately, it didn't.&quot;
 The Yankees won their record ninth straight home game in the World Series.
 The defending three-time champions sent Mike Mussina against Miguel Batista in Game 5 Thursday night.
 Mariano Rivera broke three bats in a perfect 10th inning for the win.
 Kim, who struck out the side in the eighth, gave up a one-out single to Paul O'Neill in the ninth before striking out Bernie Williams.
 Martinez, who had been hitless in nine Series at-bats, launched a drive over the center field fence to tie it. The fans roared, and several Yankees jumped over the railing in front of the dugout to celebrate.
 Kim set down the first two batters in the 10th. But Jeter, who had been only 1-for-15 in the Series, rose to the occasion.
 Jeter fouled three two-strike pitches and then homered.
 Making Brenly look like a genius, Schilling showed no ill effects in giving up three hits over seven innings. His bid for a record fifth win in a postseason, however, ended when the Yankees rallied.
 &quot;Schilling might pitch tomorrow night, too,&quot; Jeter said. &quot;He did his job.&quot;
 Since 1999, starters working on three days' rest had been just 1-9 with a 9.73 ERA in postseason play.
 Everyone at Yankee Stadium was energized, a sharp contrast to the subdued crowd on hand for President George W. Bush's visit for Game 3. And while Mayor Rudolph Giuliani hollered from the front row, Yankees starter Orlando Hernandez was the most excitable of all.
 El Duque shouted at plate umpire Ed Rapuano, firmly shook off catcher Jorge Posada and accidentally smacked into Arizona's Tony Womack.
 Hernandez made up with Rapuano when he was pulled in the seventh. He made a beeline to meet the umpire along the first-base line and patted him on the chest, and both men smiled.
 With Hernandez gone, the Diamondbacks scored twice in the eighth for a 3-1 lead.
 Reliever Mike Stanton had retired 22 straight batters in Series play before Luis Gonzalez singled to start the inning and Erubiel Durazo followed with a go-ahead double.
 Pinch-runner Midre Cummings later beat Jeter's throw home on Matt Williams' grounder for another run.
 Before then, the only runs had come on homers. Shane Spencer connected for the Yankees in the third and Mark Grace tied it in the fourth.
 Grace, who made a point to tour Monument Park when he first saw Yankee Stadium on Monday, visited another distant spot in the fourth. He launched a home run into the upper deck in right field that made it 1-all.
 Spencer hit an opposite-field homer to right leading off the Yankees' third.
 Game 5, also to be played in New York, was slated for Thursday night.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Moscow in Running
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - UEFA doubts over Moscow's ability to process the visas of thousands of fans could hinder the Russian capital's bid to stage the 2003 Champions League final, Russia's soccer union chief said on Wednesday.
 "Every claimant has its merits and problems, and UEFA has voiced fears we would not be able to process visas for the 30,000 foreign fans likely to travel to Moscow," Russian Football Union director Alexander Tukmanov said, adding there was time to iron out problems.
 "We have enough experience hosting big international sports events," Tukmanov said.
 Moscow's 83,000-seat stadium is the largest of the nine venues in the running to host the prestigious occasion scheduled for May 28, 2003. Other candidates include the Stade de France, Manchester United's Old Trafford ground and Real Madrid's Bernabeu.
 
 
Huber Calls It Quits
 

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - Anke Huber's career ended in disappointing fashion on Wednesday when Belgian teenager Justine Henin crushed her 6-1 6-2 at the WTA Championships.
 Huber, 26, enjoyed one of the finest moments of her 12-year career at the year-end event for the world's top 16 players when she pushed Steffi Graf to five sets in all-German final in 1995.
 "This was definitely my last match," the popular German said after bowing out before her home fans.
 "Of course I would have liked to play better today but that's how it goes.. Justine was just too good."
 Huber, who won 12 singles titles during her career, had intended to play in the Australian Open before retiring but then decided Munich would be her last tournament.
 
 
Waiting for Clinton
 

MELBOURNE, Australia (Reuters) - The possible attendance of former U.S. President Bill Clinton would not be enough to enable the Australian Formula One Grand Prix to make a profit in 2002, an official said on Thursday.
 Australian Grand Prix Corporation chairperson Ron Walker said Clinton had been invited to attend the March 3 race and would be in Melbourne on business that weekend.
 "There's a good chance [he would attend] because he's here on the Sunday, so we're just pursuing that now," Australian Associated Press quoted Walker as saying.
 "We understand he likes car racing, but we'll see what happens."
 Walker said Clinton would bring the event even greater exposure.
 The 2001 Australian Formula One race was marred by the death of local race marshal Graham Beveridge after he was struck by a flying wheel from the wreckage of a collision between Canadian Jacques Villeneuve and German Ralf Schumacher at the Melbourne race.
 
 
Fans Won't Back Down
 

LONDON (Reuters) - Fans of English first division club Wimbledon are to escalate their campaign against the owners of their club and their renewed attempt to move to Milton Keynes, some 100 km north of London.
 Wimbledon Independent Supporters Association (WISA), who are vehemently opposed to the move, has called on the club's chairperson Charles Koppel to stop his "attempts to murder the club" and either renounce the move to Milton Keynes or resign.
 They also plan to demonstrate at Saturday's home league match against Grismby Town with a pre-match march and a sit-in after the game.
 WISA spokesperson Laurence Lowne said: "The march and the sit-in provide opportunities for us to voice our disgust at Mr Koppel's repeated attempts to murder the club."
 
 
Saints Look To Stay
 

NEW ORLEANS (AP)-NFL owners, meeting in Pittsburgh, have approved the latest deal designed to keep the Saints in New Orleans for the next 10 years.
 Another, larger hurdle remains: approval of financing plans by state legislators.
 The total package, unveiled in late September, is worth $186.5 million to the team through 2010, with steep increases in the amounts due in the final five years.
 The legislature will be asked to sign off on the 10-year proposal this spring, at which time lawmakers might find that even getting together the money for the first-year payment will take some financial shuffling.
 The agreement calls for the state to pay the Saints $12.5 million by the beginning of July.
 
 
McGriff Stays Put
 

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Hall of famer in waiting Fred McGriff has exercised his option to return to the Chicago Cubs next season, the club announced on Wednesday.
 The 38-year-old first baseman, who came to the Cubs from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays after waiving his no-trade clause, hit .282 with 12 home runs and 41 RBI in just 49 games with the Cubs.
 McGriff finished the season with a combined .306 average, 31 homers and 102 RBI. It was the ninth time he hit at least 30 home runs and the seventh time he drove in 100 runs.
 For his 16-years in the big leagues, McGriff has 448 homers - 26th all time - and 1,400 RBI while also playing for Toronto, San Diego and Atlanta.