SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #719 (86), Tuesday, November 6, 2001
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TITLE: Harvard Offers a Dose of Reality
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: BOSTON - Alfred Kokh, of Gazprom-Media fame, has given Russia's relations with the United States new depth and a new twist, calling it a marriage of sorts. 
 "America demands more from Russia than it does of its other international neighbors," a wry Kokh told Harvard's fifth annual Russian Investment Symposium here on Saturday. "It's like an Italian-Sicilian marriage with passionate dish-breaking and tears, followed by a passionate reconciliation filled with kisses and embraces."
 The events of Sept. 11 have brought Russia and America closer together politically, and investors and the government hope this will translate into increased economic cooperation. 
 Stanley Fischer, advisor to the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said it's about time the United States took notice of the changes that have taken place in Russia since the August 1998 financial crisis. America, he said, has effectively been ignoring its spouse for the past 18 months.
 Unlike in years past, delegates to the symposium - which included leading investors, businesspeople, government officials and academicians - were cautious about proclaiming Russia's recent economic upsurge another false dawn. While growth in the stock market and gross domestic product outpaced flagging economies - most notably the United States' - a corrupt judicial system and a weak banking sector are still keeping large investors on the sidelines.
 The major financial industrial groups like Alpha Group, Interros and Millhouse, together with the Moscow elite, have fallen out of favor as foreign investors look for greener pastures in the regions and small business, participants at the symposium said.
 "All of us tend to get mesmerized by big corporations," said Johannes Linn, the World Bank's vice president for Europe and central Asia. "The thing to watch is small and medium-sized businesses. If they don't start to quickly grow, growth will not continue."
 On the first day of the three-day conference, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref proudly recited Russia's statistical achievements over the past year of President Vladimir Putin's reign. A third more in collected tax revenues this year and an 8 percent increase in overall investment didn't shock anyone who is already "on the ground" in Russia, but they did catch the attention of investors and entrepreneurs waiting in the wings.
 While established strategic investors have earned robust returns on investments made after the 1998 crisis, large and influential portfolio investors such as the California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS, remain unconvinced that their money will be safe in Russia.
 "If CalPERS comes into the market, then it would mean that Russia is an investment market, not a speculative market," said William Crist, CalPERS president and chairperson. But such a watershed - if it ever happens - will not be in the immediate future, despite improvements in corporate governance.
 Putin's push for a code on corporate governance, presented last month by Russia's Federal Securities Commission and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, inspired vociferous debate in private conversations during the symposium. Off the record, many argued that the code was purely cosmetic, to be used as a trap for naive foreign investors. 
 Ironically, the recent behavior of Sibneft, which often brags about its corporate governance, was cited as the prime example of bad corporate behavior. Last month, the company spooked investors and analysts with a post-facto announcement of a murky transaction involving 27 percent of the company's shares. "The large dividends were the only thing that saved its reputation," one Western fund manager said.
 Others argued that a written, concrete code is better than nothing.
 "While the code may not deter behavior, it will let us say, 'Hey, you guys passed this thing' when we feel our rights as minority shareholders have been violated," said Ronald Freeman, CEO of Lipper & Company International.
 With a third of the country's assets still under government ownership, the economic structure is still a work in progress until these businesses are privatized in the much-hyped "third wave" of selling anticipated to occur between 2005 and 2010.
 This privatization - in contrast to the loans-for-shares schemes of the mid-1990s - will strive to include foreign investors in the process, said First Deputy Property Minister Alexander Braverman. Last week, a proposed single procedure for all privatizations passed a Duma committee hearing, in which limits on foreign investors during privatization can only be defined by federal law.
 In addition, Braverman said that the sale of government shares in the natural-gas monopoly Gazprom and in the Railways Ministry has already been planned. Next year should see the sale of stakes in 365 companies estimated to be worth $1 billion. This includes the government's 6.1-percent stake in LUKoil, Russia's largest oil company, in the first quarter of 2002, and parts of the Magnitogorsk Metal Factory.
 The Property Ministry has repeatedly put off the sale of this LUKoil stake, which is to be issued in American Depository Receipts, due to adverse political and economic conditions. The potential listing was shifted to London earlier this year after U.S. Senator Jesse Helms wrote a letter to U.S. securities officials that criticized the company's "roughish behavior" and business practices.
 With political interference from the U.S. side now relegated to background noise - and with Helms about to retire - the ministry is reconsidering a placement on the New York Stock Exchange, Braverman said.

TITLE: It's Too Early To Forgive Vlasov
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina and Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Mention the name Vlasov to an ordinary Russian and one word will pop into mind: traitor.
 Ask whether history should smile down on Lieutenant General Andrei Vla sov, the Soviet commander who defected to the Germans in World War II, and the ground would be laid for hours of heated debate. Several generations of young Soviet students were taught to hate Vlasov as a traitor who turned his back on the fatherland at a time when defenders were most needed.
 These days, the line is growing blurred as evidence mounts that Vlasov may have changed sides in a bid to give his countrymen a better life than the one they had under Stalin.
 But the story is apparently not far enough in the past to forgive and forget the man whose life and deeds are still largely seen through a cloud of political agendas and historical cover-ups.
 The country's top military court refused Thursday to rehabilitate Vlasov, who was convicted of state treason and hanged in 1946 after being turned over by the Allies a year earlier.
 The appeal of the original conviction was launched by the small monarchist group For Faith and Fatherland.
 "Vlasov was a patriot who spent much time re-evaluating his service in the Red Army and the essence of Stalin's regime before agreeing to collaborate with the Germans," one of the group's leaders, suspended Orthodox priest Nikon Belavenets, was quoted as saying in the Gazeta newspaper.
 But judges at the Military Collegium were less supportive of Vlasov's methods of combating oppression at home.
 "The truth is that although some argue that he was fighting against the Soviet regime and, thus, should not be seen as a traitor, by doing so he also fought against the state and the people. And this is treason," said Nikolai Pe tuk hov, chairperson of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court and deputy chairperson of the Supreme Court.
 Vlasov was born in 1900 in the Vla di mir Region. The son of a wealthy peasant, he was drafted into the Red Army in 1919 and became a career officer. He joined the Communist Party in 1930.
 From 1941 until his defection to German Army in July 1942, Vlasov was a key commander in defending Kiev and Moscow. It is unclear whether he was captured, as Western history books say, or surrendered, as Soviet books say.
 In any case, he agreed to cooperate with Nazi Germany.
 Vlasov was one of millions of Russians who ended up in Germany voluntarily or as POWs during the war. They found themselves caught in a tragic situation - they were suddenly free of Stalin's totalitarianism but were looked upon as Untermenschen by the Nazis.
 Vlasov maintained that he underwent a profound change of heart that left him a dedicated anti-Communist during the days before he went with the Germans. Those days were spent on the Volkhov front after he and his troops were surrounded by Nazis.
 Once in Berlin and surrounded by SS officers, Vlasov presented himself as a Russian patriot and refused to wear a German uniform. He wanted to lead an armed Russian force into the Soviet Union, apparently to start a revolt against the Stalin regime and create an independent Russia.
 While the Nazi leadership eagerly used Vlasov as a key tool in a propaganda war, they didn't risk forming an armed Russian force until the end of the war. In the summer of 1943, Vlasov was taken on a tour through occupied northwestern Russia and was welcomed so enthusiastically that the Nazis cut the trip short, sent him back to Berlin and put him under de facto house arrest.
 In November 1944, the Germans finally allowed Vlasov to inaugurate his Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, which proclaimed among its goals "the overthrow of Stalin's tyranny," civil rights, private property and "honorable peace with Germany."
 However, sufficient proof exists to indicate that military formations under Vla sov's command were involved in training spies and saboteurs for territories controlled by the Red Army, Petukhov of the Military Collegium said in a telephone interview.
 Finding himself at the crossroads of history, Vlasov thought he could become a third force in the battle of totalitarian giants.
 Vlasov's army is viewed by Nobel Prize-winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn and some historians as an episode of Russia's Civil War removed in time by a quarter of a century.
 "These people who have felt with their own skin 24 years of Communist happiness knew already in 1941 what no one else in the world yet knew: that on the whole planet and in all history there has never been a regime more evil, bloody and at the same time wily and shifty than Bolshevism," Solzhenitsyn wrote in "The Gulag Archipelago."
 The memoirs of Vlasov followers, known as Vlasovites, suggest that the general was convinced that if he had a full army, Soviet generals would join him and the Communist regime would fall.
 "I will end the war by telephone with [Marshal Georgy] Zhukov," Vla sov was quoted as saying on several occasions. Zhukov was one of the top Soviet commanders.
 But even in the last weeks of the war, when the Soviet Army was already at the German border, only two incomplete divisions led by Vlasov were armed. One of them helped liberate Prague when a popular uprising took place in the city in May 1945. But the Vlasovites left to give way to the Soviet Army.
 "Looking into the events surrounding the liberation of Prague in May 1945, when Vlasov's forces turned against the Germans, we found that the switch was not prompted by orders but came as the decision of ordinary soldiers," Petukhov said.
 The judges, however, did decide Thursday to strike one point from the original verdict - the charge under which Vlasov was found guilty of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. This charge was used frequently during Stalinist repressions. Under current laws, the charge is automatically removed from all convictions made during the 80 years of Soviet rule.
 The hearing on Thursday also addressed the cases of 11 of Vlasov's subordinates in his Russia Liberation Army. They were all denied rehabilitation.

TITLE: Chubais Speaks Out To Defend Minister
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Anatoly Chubais, the chief of Unified Energy Systems, stepped forward over the weekend to defend Railways Minister Nikolai Aksyonenko, who is under criminal investigation.
 "I do not understand how the authorities can treat ministers in such a manner. The authorities must treat members of the government more gently," Chubais said Saturday at a news conference in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.
 The Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal investigation into the Railways Ministry on Oct. 9. On Oct. 19, Aksyonenko was charged with abuse of office that resulted in the loss of 70 million rubles ($2.3 million) in government funds.
 Chubais said the complaints against Aksyonenko, particularly that he over-staffed the ministry and rewarded his employees, "can provoke nothing but a smile." Aksyonenko, who is one of the last members of former President Boris Yeltsin's inner circle to retain a post in the government, has been accused of using state funds to buy apartments for ministry employees.
 Chubais called Aksyonenko "one of the strongest leaders in the country." "Losing him would be very, very serious," he was quoted as saying.
 It was unclear why Chubais suddenly chose to publicly defend Aksyonenko, with whom the UES chief has never seemed to have a terribly friendly relationship. As national monopolies, both UES and the railways play an important role in the economy in terms of the tariffs they set, and the two monopolies are interdependent. A hike in the price of electricity causes a hike in transport tariffs and vice versa.
 UES and the Railways Ministry have been involved in series of disputes over their debts to each other. The railways are a major consumer of electricity, while UES depends on the railways to transport fuel to its power plants.
 Some Russian media have speculated that oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who heads Siberian Aluminum, was somehow behind the charges against Aksyonenko. 
 Deripaska has protested against Aksyonenko's tariff policy and his plans to restructure the ministry. Deripaska has repeatedly denied playing any role in the investigation of the railways minister.

TITLE: Talks on Chechnya Fail To Materialize
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The provisional 10-day deadline for opening talks between the Kremlin and Chechen rebel leaders came and went this weekend with no official reports of any such meetings.
 For many, this came as no surprise.
 As soon as Viktor Kazantsev, the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, announced on Oct. 24 that he would meet with a representative of rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, it became clear that Moscow and the separatists had differing views about the terms and substance of the talks.
 Moreover, Chechnya experts say, the lack of a single center of power among the rebels is bound to undermine the significance of any negotiations.
 "Many political groups, including Russian troops, hold power in Chechnya but no one is strong enough to give any guarantees [that agreements will be implemented]," said Timur Muzayev, an expert with the Panorama think tank.
 Experts agreed that, while the bulk of rebels act on their own, the separatists can be divided into three basic groups, each with its own leadership.
 Maskhadov, the Chechen president elected for a five-year term in February 1997, leads those rebels who see Chechnya's future as an independent state based on ethnicity rather than Islamic fundamentalism. Maskhadov's forces are strongest in southwestern Chechnya, but his control over other rebel leaders is very limited, experts say.
 "In contemporary Chechnya, where a leader's political influence is measured by the number of guns brandished by his supporters, Maskhadov is just an ordinary warlord and not the most powerful one," said Alexander Iskandaryan, head of Moscow's Center of Caucasian Studies.
 Although Maskhadov cannot give direct orders to other prominent rebel leaders, experts believe he can influence them to some extent, as he is the one who gives the cause an air of legitimacy.
 "Without Maskhadov, the other rebels would seem to many to be ordinary terrorists, and this could severely reduce political support for them outside Russia," said Muzayev.
 Iskandaryan warned that Maskhadov's significance should not be overestimated.
 The second group - the largest and the most active one - is led by Ba sa yev and his Arab lieutenant Khattab, whose stated goal is Chechen independence coupled with radical Islam.
 This group - which regularly challenges the Russians' formal control over southern and southeastern Chechnya with deadly boobytraps and ambushes - gets financial support and fighters from radical Muslims worldwide, but has failed to win broad support in Chechnya.
 "Last year, Kadyrov's Moscow office held a poll among refugees in Chechnya and Ingushetia that showed that ordinary Chechens feel most negative toward federal troops and Khattab's Wahhabis," said Beno, referring to the radical followers of an austere brand of Islam. "The people want foreign fighters out of Chechnya."
 The third group, led by Ruslan Ge la yev, seceded from the common cause in the summer of 2000 after a personal conflict with Mask hadov and settled in neighboring Georgia. This group, experts say, includes people who cannot articulate any ideological basis for fighting.
 Although the experts were pessimistic that talks would help resolve the region's stalemate or improve the lives of ordinary Chechens, they said both sides could reap certain political benefits from a semblance of rapprochement.
 For the Kremlin, public attempts to meet the rebels halfway would allow President Vladimir Putin to capitalize on the West's new willingness to be less critical of the war in Chechnya in light of Mos cow's support for the campaign in Afghanistan and the general mood of an international war on terrorism.
 Beno said he believed Kazantsev's announcement of impending talks was intended for Western consumption. "Russia is formally demonstrating the maturity and wisdom of its political regime," he said. "But, by presenting Mask hadov with such unacceptable preconditions as disarmament, the federal authorities have precluded any viable prospects that could come out of the talks."

TITLE: City Hall Sums Up 2001 Road Work
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: City Hall reported Monday that 5.2 million square meters of city roads had been repaired this year and approximately the same amount is slated for repair in 2002.
 "We will not reduce the pace of work next year but will maintain the current level," said Vladimir De dyu khin, head of the City Hall Roads Committee at a press conference on Monday.
 Summing up its work this year, Dedyukhin particularly stressed the work on Sadovaya Ulitsa, Nevsky Prospect, Bolshoi Prospect on the Petrograd Side, the Smolnaya Embankment, the Alexander Nevsky Bridge and Birzhevaya Ploshchad.
 "Residents have been given an additional 2.5 kilometers of road along the Smolenskaya Embankment, which we won back from the Neva [River]," Dedyukhin said. In addition to building the roadway itself, the city paved sidewalks along the embankment, transplanted the lime trees that had been growing in front of Gostiny Dvor on Nevsky Prospect and created a new, 17,000-square-meter park.
 The city also completed a new pedestrian zone between the 6th and 7th lines on Vasilyevsky Island.
 The new pedestrian zone joins three other such zones created since 1997: the Cappella yards, Malaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa and Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa. 
 Dedyukhin also reported that 60,000 square meters of city parks had been repaired this year, including Catherine Square and Marsovoye Polya, which has been under renovation since 1998. Work recently began in the Alexander Garden in front of the Admiralty as well.
 By Nov. 15, City Hall expects to complete work on Ploshchad Isskustv. The city will also switch on new illumination at the Lieutenant Shmidt and Tuchkov bridges later this month.
 The city's priorities for next year's construction season include continued work on the Troitsky Bridge, which is scheduled to re-open in the spring of 2003. City Hall also expects to complete work on Stachek Prospect, Obvodny Canal, the Malookhtinskaya Embankment and Sredny Prospect on Vasilyevsky Island next year, in addition to many smaller projects.
 Dedyukhin noted that the major renovation project underway on Sennaya Ploshchad would be completed by May 2003.
 According to City Hall statistics, 5.8 billion rubles ($200 million) were spent from the Federal Territorial Road Fund to finance renovation projects this year. A similar amount is slated to be spent in 2002.

TITLE: India's Vajpayee Arrives in Russia for Talks
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee arrived in St. Petersburg on Sunday for talks on fighting terrorism and Afghanistan's future, and to sign a deal on joint construction of a nuclear-power plant.
 The trip is the start of a 10-day world tour for Vajpayee that will also take him to the United States and Britain and is aimed at ensuring India a greater say in a post-Taliban Afghanistan.
 Vajpayee and President Vladimir Putin were expected to issue joint statements on international and strategic issues during the four-day visit.
 "India and Russia ... have been fighting terrorism for a long time. We are glad that other countries realize that terrorism must be eradicated," Vajpayee said in an interview with RTR television before his departure.
 The day before Vajpayee arrived in Russia, India's cabinet approved plans for a 2,000-megawatt nuclear-power plant, to be built with technical and financial assistance from Russia, a government statement said.
 The cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, the highest economic policy-making body in the government, gave the go-ahead for the project Saturday. Vajpayee will sign an agreement with Russia during his visit to Moscow, which started Monday, the statement said.
 The power plant, comprising two units with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts each, will be located in Kudankulam in southern Tamil Nadu state, the statement said.
 Construction on its two Soviet-designed 1,000-megawatt VVER reactors is scheduled to begin next May. The first unit is expected to be completed by 2007, and the second by 2008, the statement added.
 "The project will open a new window for the country in the high-technology area of advanced Light Water Reactors," the statement said. It will also carry forward the scientific and technological cooperation in the field of atomic energy between India and Russia, the statement added.
 The cabinet sanctioned 67.55 billion rupees ($1.4 billion) from the government budget for construction of the power plant. The rest would be raised on credit from Russia.
 The Indian prime minister began his visit to Russia in St. Petersburg, where shipyards in recent years have built submarines and a frigate for the Indian Navy. India is a key customer for Russian weapons.
 Vajpayee traveled Monday to Moscow to meet Putin, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov.

TITLE: Helicopter Tragedy in Oblast Kills 6
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Six crewmembers died Monday afternoon in a military helicopter crash near the Leningrad Oblast village of Krasny Bor, about 30 kilometers south of the city.
 The MI-8 helicopter flew into the antenna of a radio-broadcasting center and crashed, according to the Emergency Service of Leningrad Oblast. No one on the ground was injured.
 The helicopter's unit is based in the Lipetsk Region, about 350 kilometers south of Moscow. 
 By 5 p.m. on Monday, firefighters had extinguished the fire and rescue workers recovered the bodies of the six crewmembers. The cause of the crash is still under investigation, but the Interfax news agency was quoting military sources as saying that pilot error might have been to blame.
 "It could also have been because of bad weather," said a representative of Leningrad Oblast Emergency Service, referring to the Monday's heavy rains and wet snow.
 The St. Petersburg Military Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal investigation of the accident. It also organized a special Defense Ministry commission to investigate the cause of the crash.
 As a result of the crash, two St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast radio stations - Gardarika and Monte Carlo - went off the air. It was not clear when transmission would be restored.

TITLE: Georgian Crisis Calms Down
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia - Hundreds of student protesters rallied Friday and Saturday near the Georgian government offices, demanding the resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze, who ousted his entire cabinet on Thursday. 
 But the political crisis, triggered by security agents' raid on a critical television station Tuesday, appeared to subside. Friday's crowd of demonstrators, shrinking and swelling at times to about 1,000, was far less than the thousands who massed in the capital the day before, and on Saturday only about 200 protesters remained in front of the government seat in downtown Tbilisi. 
 Their demands were confused. While some said they wanted Shevardnadze out, others pressed only for new elections to the legislature. Some were simply euphoric, crediting the student protest movement with ousting corrupt officials. 
 "I'm for the president's resignation. It's about time to give way to the young," said Manana Khoperia, a philosophy student at Tbilisi State University. "It's about time for our grandfather [Shevardnadze] to rest and take care of his grandchildren." 
 Speaking on Saturday at the opening of a new university building in Batumi, Shevardnadze said the organizers and participants in the rally would not be prosecuted. 
 U.S. President George W. Bush called Shevardnadze on Friday to express support for his "struggle for democracy and freedom" and the fight against corruption, Shevardnadze's press service reported. 
 "You are fighting for democracy and freedom, and the United States will always stand by you in this fight," the press service quoted Bush as telling the Georgian leader in a call to Tbilisi. 
 At the White House, officials confirmed Bush had made the call but declined to detail the conversation. 
 "At the moment when doubts appeared about the real existence of freedom of speech in Georgia, I did everything possible to reaffirm Georgia's inevitable march to democracy and freedom," Shevardnadze told Bush, according to the press-service report. 
 In Batumi, capital of the autonomous Adzharia republic, Shevardnadze said he was aware that "the youth protests were prompted by concern about the future of freedom of speech and democracy." He said that as president, he would guarantee that both democracy and freedom of speech would be preserved. 
 Shevardnadze's announcement Thurs day that the entire government was out seemed to take the sting out of the protests. 
 Shevardnadze also urged the demonstrators to go home, saying Thursday that he should stay in office to lead the country through these "radical changes." 
 The Georgian leader had been due to leave for Brussels on Monday but has chosen to stay and focus on drafting a new list of ministers. His spokesperson said Shevardnadze had indefinitely put off the trip to boost ties with the European Union and NATO. 
 Shevardnadze's choices for the top ministerial posts must be submitted to parliament within a statutory two weeks after dismissing the government. To date, there have been few clues as to whom he plans to pick, although Russian television reports speculated that Adzharia's leader Aslan Abashidze could be offered a ministerial post. 
 Deputies said they expected to select a new parliament speaker next week to replace Zurab Zhvania, a one-time Shevardnadze loyalist who also quit in protest at the scandal. 
 The row claimed another victim with Friday's resignation of the head of state broadcasting, Shevardnadze's spokesperson said. 
 
 <i>- Reuters, AP </i>

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Chubais Boosts Reform
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Anatoly Chubais, chairperson of Unified Energy Systems and a leader of the Union of Right Forces political faction, told journalists Saturday that the current successes of the Russian economy are directly connected to the reform policies of former acting Prime Minister Yegor Gai dar in the early 1990s, Interfax reported.
 "The country is living the language of Gaidar. It is living according to the ideology, the politics, the conception that was introduced to Russia by Gaidar and his team 10 years ago," Chubais said at a conference dedicated to the 10th anniversary of reform.
 Chubais also said that the recently adopted Land Code was of principal importance for the country, as were the pension, tax, judicial and military reforms currently under discussion, Interfax reported.
 He gave particular credit to the team of "Petersburg reformers" currently holding key posts in Moscow, including Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and the chairperson of the Antimonopoly Committee, Ilya Yuzhanov.
 "That which we were unable to do then is being done today," Chubais said. "A new Russian history began with Gaidar, and this will become increasingly clear to millions of Russians with each passing decade."
 
 
No More Kursk Bodies
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The chances of recovering any more bodies from the Kursk nuclear submarine are "minimal," according to investigators working on the wreck, Interfax reported Monday.
 Military Prosecutor Vladimir Mulov told reporters that the investigation is currently concentrated on the second and third compartments of the submarine, the sections that were most heavily damaged during the explosion that sank the vessel in August 2000.
 "The chances of finding any more members of the crew are minimal," Mulov said, according to Interfax.
 As of Monday, investigators had recovered 56 bodies, 49 of which have been identified, Interfax reported.
 The agency also reported that Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, commander of the Northern Fleet, traveled to the city of Kursk on Monday for a memorial service to be held on Tuesday. Seven Kursk crewmembers who were natives of the city will be laid to rest during the ceremonies, Interfax reported.
 
 
Kuznetsov Tapped
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The former head of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, Alexander Kuznetsov, who stepped down in May 2000, was named head of a Transportation Ministry department that coordinates international air, railroad, automobile and sea transportation, Interfax reported Friday.
 Transportation Minister Sergei Frank presented Kuznetsov at a ministry meeting last week, according to Interfax.
 Experts immediately began speculating that the appointment could be a step toward Kuznetsov's eventual appointment as railways minister, Interfax reported. 
Extremist Crackdown
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vla dimir Putin told his justice minister Friday to speed up work on a law on extremism after a nationalist mob this week attacked Moscow street markets, killing two non-Russian traders. 
 "Regretfully, we are facing today many phenomena that the country did not have to deal with before," Putin told Justice Minister Yury Chaika in televised remarks from their Kremlin meeting. 
 "Many crimes stem from various kinds of extremism. I know your ministry is working on a bill on fighting extremism," Putin said. "That work has to be accelerated." 
 Putin said the government was largely failing to stem extremist violence and urged the minister to come up with fresh solutions to tackle the problem. 
 
 
Radio's Terrorist Fears
 

PRAGUE (Reuters) - The U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty headquarters in Prague was of great interest to Iraqi intelligence, the head of the Czech secret service BIS said Friday. 
 Czech authorities increased security around the downtown Prague glass-plated headquarters of RFE/RL after the Sept. 11 U.S. attacks, saying they had information it could become a terror-attack target. 
 "I can confirm that Radio Free Europe was at the center of interest of the Iraqi intelligence services," BIS chief Jiri Ruzek told a news conference. He did not elaborate. 
 
 
Communists Say No
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Controversial television anchor Sergei Dorenko said Friday that he plans to join the Communist Party.
 "I'm not talking about just joining, but participating in the leadership of the party," Interfax cited Dorenko saying in an interview.
 The former ally of tycoon Boris Berezovsky said he is yet to speak with the party's leaders but suggested that they would be pleased by his intentions. 
 The Communist Party, however, reacted less than enthusiastically to Dorenko's reported statements.
 "If he wants to convince us that he is a fervent upholder of the socialist path of development, then we, excuse us, don't believe it," the party's city committee said in a statement, according to Interfax.
 The committee representative said Dorenko's statement was most likely just an attempt to gain publicity.
 "We advise him to try the LDPR," the press service said, referring to Vladimir Zhirinovsky's nationalist party.
 
 
Chechnya Deal Denied
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov's representative Akhmed Zakayev and President Vladimir Putin's envoy Viktor Kazantsev reached a preliminary accord in talks that started Wednesday, the daily Izvestia reported Thursday.
 The newspaper cited an unnamed source in the federal forces saying that Maskhadov and his gunmen agreed to end their fight in exchange for a safe exit from Chechnya. Maskhadov was expected flee to Malaysia, where his son lives.
 However, President Vladimir Putin's spokesperson Alisher Khodzayev was quoted Thursday by the Associated Press as refuting the newspaper's report. Khod zayev said no talks between Zakayev and Kazantsev had taken place yet and thus no deal had been reached.
 
 
14 Years Sought
 

MOSCOW (AP) - Prosecutors last week demanded a 14-year term in a high-security prison for arms-control researcher Igor Su tya gin, accused of spying for the United States.
 The Federal Security Service, or FSB, accused Su tya gin of compiling sensitive data for a London-based consulting company allegedly linked to U.S. secret services. Sutyagin, who has been in jail since his arrest two years ago, denies wrongdoing and insists that all his material came from open sources.
 In a lengthy speech on Thursday at the court in Kaluga, about 160 kilometers south of Moscow, the prosecutor repeated the accusations against Sutyagin and asked the court to take into account the gravity of the crime, defense lawyer Anna Stavitskaya said. 
 "We heard nothing new today," Stavitskaya said by telephone from Kaluga, insisting that the prosecutors had failed to prove that Sutyagin had access to secret information in his work as a researcher for the United States and Canada Institute.
 The court took a recess until Nov.12, when the defense will present its closing arguments.
 
 
Vremya Novostei Fear
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Vremya Novostei daily newspaper found itself on the brink of closure Thursday after its financiers withdrew all funding.
 Editor Vladimir Guryevich frantically negotiated throughout the day with potential new shareholders in a last-ditch attempt to keep the paper afloat.
 "The newspaper has problems, but I cannot say today which side the ultimate decision is going to be on," Guryevich was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 Vremya Novostei is officially a nonprofit organization funded by unspecified businesses. The newspaper, which claims a print run of 51,000 copies, was widely considered to offer quality news and balanced analysis, but it never became popular.
 Vremya Novostei is believed to be associated with presidential chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, a member of former President Boris Yeltsin's inner circle.
 Guryevich said there was no political pressure behind the paper's financial troubles. 



TITLE: Putin Tells Cabinet To Readjust Budget
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Alarmed by the sliding price of oil, President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered his government to find ways to adjust next year's federal budget to accommodate lower revenues from crude exports.
 &quot;The government should react appropriately to the recent changes, and we have the means,&quot; Interfax quoted Putin as telling a cabinet meeting Monday.
 A petrodollar economy, Russia's unprecedented economic growth of 8.3 percent in 2000 and an estimated 5.5 percent this year has been funded largely by unusually high oil prices. But the downward trend of crude prices, exacerbated by the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, are now threatening the government's 2002 budget math. 
 &quot;What is happening on the world's markets must not catch us off guard,&quot; Putin said.
 The price for Russia's benchmark Urals blend is hovering at a 52-week low, closing Monday at $18.41 a barrel - below the $18.50 &quot;safety level&quot; set in the 2002 draft budget. 
 The draft budget has already passed its first and second reading, locking in total expenditures at 2.125 trillion rubles ($68 billion at the projected average exchange rate of 31.5 rubles per dollar), so it is unclear exactly what changes will be introduced. Nevertheless, Putin assigned Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko to solve the problem before the budget goes to the third of four readings Nov. 30.
 Economists polled Monday said any amendments would likely alter the way the so-called &quot;reserve fund&quot; will be accumulated and managed. The fund is a budgetary device designed to put aside $19 billion by 2003, when foreign-debt payments peak.
 The 2002 budget anticipates an average price for crude of $23 per barrel - a figure that would allow the reserve fund to grow up to $3.5 billion. 
 However, analysts said the difference could be covered from this year's budget surplus - estimates of which vary from $2.5 billion to $5 billion - as well as various limitations on the use of any additional income generated during the year.
 And even if prices continue to fall to $13 to $14 per barrel, Russia is unlikely to face an abysmal crisis similar to the financial meltdown of August 1998, said Oleg Vyugin, chief economist with Troika Dialog.
 Unlike in 1998, when oil prices averaged $12 to $14 per barrel, Russia has no short-term debts and the existing long-term debt payments, although large, are much more manageable.
 &quot;If worse came to worst, Russia now has the International Monetary Fund and the Paris Club on board, clearly indicating that a helping hand will be offered,&quot; Vyugin said.
 The optimism over Russia's capacity to withstand shrinking oil-export revenues was shared by presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov, who said that &quot;even if oil prices fall to $10 to $12 per barrel,&quot; Russia will have no problem servicing its foreign debt. 
 &quot;From an economic standpoint, foreign-debt servicing is not a problem,&quot; Illarionov said in an interview published Monday in Profil magazine. Illarionov said the Central Bank's foreign-exchange reserves, currently at $38.8 billion, could be used to pay the debt - even ahead of time.
 But, to be better prepared, the government might choose to make the task of forming the reserve fund less dependent on a surplus, said Aleksei Moiseyev, senior economist with Renaissance Capital investment bank.
 It has yet to be determined whether the reserve fund will, as intended, be used solely for debt servicing or to bolster other budgetary line items. Of the projected surplus of 178.3 billion rubles ($5.7 billion), just 110 billion rubles is earmarked for the reserve fund.
 But all those calculations depend on one thing the government has little control over: The price of oil.
 Even if crude prices stay below the level that would create a budgetary surplus, Moiseyev said, it might be a good thing.
 &quot;If the price goes down to $16 to $17 per barrel, there would still be no crisis and enough money. But the government would have to act without the money fountain we have seen lately,&quot; Moiseyev said.
 But petrodollars are still what Russia seems to be eagerly pursuing. Russian oil exports rose to 125.9 million tons (3.04 million bpd) from January to October this year from 117.3 million (2.82 million bpd) in the same period last year, a rise of 220,000 bpd, Reuters reported. 
 The output continued to grow throughout October, right up to the time when the Organization of Pet ro leum Exporting Countries began mulling a fourth output cut this year to support global oil prices. OPEC Secretary General Ali Rodriguez said Monday that the cartel may consider a reduction in crude output of more than 1 million bpd at its Nov. 14 meeting.
 OPEC currently delivers some 27 million bpd to the market, or about 1 million bpd more than its own quota set in September.
 According to Stephen O'Sullivan, head of research at the United Financial Group, a return to a better compliance rate by some of the OPEC members might deliver the same result.
 O'Sullivan noted, however, that non-OPEC countries like Russia, Norway and Mexico are still far from stepping up their support for OPEC by cutting production. The price would have to slide much closer toward single digits before non-OPEC states like Russia would consider output cuts, he said.

TITLE: RTS Bucks World Trend for October
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The benchmark dollar-traded RTS index defied global market gloom and falling oil prices in October, rising 13.4 percent for the month and breaking the psychologically important 200 barrier for the first time since the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings in America. 
 The RTS index finished its October rally at 204.04 before coming down to end the week at 203.4, which is still some 16 percent above the September lows reached in the aftermath of the attacks.
 Analysts and dealers last week applauded the long-awaited market rally, but were split on the upside potential for the market in November.
 &quot;Tarket did well in October mainly because oil prices stabilized at new levels at about $20 per barrel, which is still O.K. for Russia,&quot; said Steven O'Sullivan, head of research with investment bank United Financial Group.
 O'Sullivan said that internal corporate news was the main force behind the rally. &quot;Most of the corporations that produced news last month - three oils [Yukos, Sibneft and LUKoil] and one utility [UES] - announced results that were either in line with expectations or even better,&quot; he said.
 Shares in Unified Energy Systems were the most actively traded for the month, accounting for $291.426 million, or 25.3 percent of total trading volume on the RTS. 
 Sibneft, however, was the leading gainer, seeing its stock price vacillate wildly before ending the month up 36.6 percent at $0.69 - mainly on a huge dividend announcement that countered a recent public-relations fiasco over a murky transaction involving 27 percent of the company's stock. Sibneft shares closed at $0.622 Friday, already some 10 percent off October's close.
 Other big winners included top crude producer LUKoil, up 18.7 percent, and rival Yukos, which rose 16.8 percent.
 &quot;UES and Yukos were good and, overall, Sibneft was also good as people made lots of money on it,&quot; said Sullivan. 
 Some brokers, though, were disappointed with LUKoil's first-half net profit, which the company announced Thursday was $1.43 billion, down 2 percent year on year. 
 &quot;Figures for H1 2001 were somewhat disappointing mainly due to a higher tax charge and the continuation of the company's financial and operational underperformance relative to its peer group,&quot; Renaissance Capital said Friday in a research note. 
 Renaissance Capital remains the most bullish investment bank, reiterating last week its aggressive outlook for Russian equities and forecasting an RTS level of 250 by year's end. 
 &quot;With a strong support level building at the 200 point level on the RTS, the Russian equity market is looking remarkably strong. We continue to maintain our bullish stance on Russian equities and remain very confident about Rus sia's fundamentals, despite the worrying trend in oil prices,&quot; the company wrote.
 Troika Dialog's chief strategist James Fenkner was more conservative: &quot;I did not expect such a strong market as global fundamentals are still weak. I will be surprised if we have another strong month in November. I rather expect it to be flat,&quot; he said.
 Fenkner said that although the market is unusually strong, intra-day trading volumes remain low, which means that major emerging market investors are reluctant to jump in until everything settles.
 &quot;Before stepping onto the Russian bandwagon with both feet, remember that Argentina's default, the slowest train wreck in history, has yet to reach its destination,&quot; Troika said Friday.
 O'Sullivan said major market movers this month will be possible tariff increases for natural monopolies, which will effect earnings and indicate the direction and speed of overall reforms. &quot;Also, it will be the first cold month in the U.S. and, together with the OPEC meeting, will likely support oil prices, which is positive for the Russian market,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Miller's Return Quiets Rumors at Gazprom
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller went back to work Monday after two weeks of illness, which had sparked rumors that he had resigned from his powerful but politically sensitive post.
 Media reports had said Miller had quit due to conflicts at the top of the firm and dissatisfaction in the Kremlin over the way it was being run.
 &quot;Miller came back to work and plans to hold a series of meetings today,&quot; a Gazprom source said, declining to make further comment.
 The source said it was unclear if a board meeting, a monthly event that groups government officials and other shareholders, was to take place Tuesday as announced earlier.
 As one of his first acts on returning to work, Miller appointed a new deputy chief executive, Alexander Ryazanov, and a new official in charge of company assets, Alexander Krasnenkov, a company statement said
 Ryazanov's appointment was new, while Krasnenkov replaced another official.
 Miller was appointed by President Vla dimir Putin in May to replace scandal-tainted veteran CEO Rem Vyakhirev.
 Putin has said that enormous amounts of assets were lost at Gazprom during Vyakhirev's reign and Miller's job was seen as restoring state control over the firm. Gazprom has always denied any wrongdoing, despite allegations by some shareholders that assets had been stripped and given away to related companies on the cheap.
 An international audit found no Russian laws were broken.
 The resignation talk began when Miller missed a key board meeting two weeks ago and then failed to show up at a special ceremony to mark the opening of a new giant gas field in Russia's Arctic last week. Gazprom said Miller was simply ill, but daily newspaper Izvestia last week quoted a source close to the Kremlin as saying the search was on for a new CEO.
 It said the Kremlin, seen as wanting to boost control over Gazprom, a key player in the Russian economy, wanted someone who had more experience of the gas sector.
 Miller was a relatively unknown junior official at the Energy Ministry before being moved to Gazprom in May. Like Putin, Miller is from St. Petersburg and the two worked together in the administration of former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. The newly appointed Krasnenkov is also from St. Petersburg and was appointed - at the recommendation of Putin, who was in charge of the city's external affairs - in 1993 to operate the city-owned Astoria Hotel. He became Miller's advisor Sept. 3.
 Ryazanov was the director of the Surgut gas factory from 1988 to 1994. After taking part in various electoral campaigns, he was elected to the State Duma in 1999 as a representative from Nizhnevartovsk. He later joined Putin's Unity political faction.
 
 <i>-Reuters, SPT </i>

TITLE: Former Interros Boss Going With the Grain
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The entrance to the building reeks of its Soviet past. The marble memorial to workers fallen in World War II, the uniformed guard barking into a walkie-talkie for an escort to &quot;get over to Post 1,&quot; the brittle chairs stacked to the ceiling in a corner.
 Upstairs, amid heavy dust and hammering, construction workers are transforming Soviet halls into sleek, modern offices. An Internet connection is still on the way. 
 Welcome to Roskhleboprodukt, descendant of the State Committee for Grain Products and now home to Agros, the $100-million agricultural company set up last month by Interros Holding, one of the country's top financial-industrial groups.
 The question is whether Agros can transform Roskhleboprodukt as easily as it is remodeling its office building, and in the process make the famous black earth of Russia yield gold. 
 Last month, Dmitry Ushakov stepped down as general director of Interros Holding to nurture the fledgling project. 
 &quot;There is always someone who is looking for certain projects. It was me who was always trying to lobby for an agricultural project. I have been looking at this sector of the economy for a long time. I always thought it had potential, that it was a nice investment target,&quot; he said in an interview last week.
 &quot;About a year ago, it was very difficult to convince our shareholders to go into agriculture. The main reason was the bad reputation of this business,&quot; Ushakov said. &quot;I don't believe agriculture has ever been viewed as a business. It was seen as distressed assets, always looking for money, always having problems - too much rain, not enough rain.&quot;
 Interros is the latest of the titans to enter the agricultural sector, a long seen as hopelessly debt-riddled and a drain on the government's coffers. Metalloinvest, a steel holding, founded the meat, milk and grain holding Stoilenskaya Niva last year, while smaller agricultural-based companies, such as Yug Rossii and Efko, have been carving out niches for themselves by thinking like businesses.
 In the month since Interros unveiled Agros, the agribusiness company has absorbed Contract Holding, a major pig farm and grain producer in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, and struck an agreement to buy a preliminary 55 percent in Roskhleboproduct. 
 Contract Holding will receive less than a blocking stake in Agros. &quot;We have started the valuation of Contract Holding. The understanding was that they will not receive more than 25 percent,&quot; Ushkov said. 
 Contract Holding's two main companies are Ilyinogorsk, a major pig farm and meat-processing plant, and Contract Produkt, a grain operator and animal-feed producer. Ilyinogorsk has about 140,000 pigs and output of about 25,000 tons of meat per year. Contract Produkt produced 110,000 tons of grain in the 2000-01 growing year and plans to produce 500,000 tons in the next year.
 &quot;Other acquisitions will be for money. We do not expect to have any more deals like the one with Contract Holding. The reason we structured that transaction in such a way is that they have very good management and we wanted to bring them here. That's why we gave them something sweet,&quot; Ushakov said. 
 He has not unveiled the price for shares in Roskhleboprodukt because the acquisition is ongoing and Agros is intent on snapping up a minimum 75 percent stake.
 Roskhleboprodukt, former government agent for grain purchases, is a loose confederation of 82 companies, including such plums as grain elevators with capacity to hold 1 million tons of grain, mills nationwide and eight large poultry farms, with expected output of 20,000 tons of meat in 2001. Roskhleboprodukt has a controlling share in about half of the companies.
 Agros is analyzing its core businesses, what it needs to own and what can be outsourced, spun off or sold, Ushkov said. &quot;Ideally, we will merge all our core assets and increase our participation to 100 percent.&quot; he said.
 &quot;We will use Roskhlebprodukt for the brand, the name, the people, and in terms of management, bring other people here [such as] Boris Myzin, the former president of Contract Holding. Everyone is now based here,&quot; Ushakov said from his temporary one-room office. A suite for the Agros president is being renovated across the hall. 
 The company is still hungry, looking for further acquisitions, in particular, land, so the company can move into grain. Ushakov predicted Agros would have 100,000 hectares by next year's harvest. &quot;Our major acquisitions will be of farms in different regions, for example in Voronezh. But also in Krasnodar, Stavropol and Novosibirsk.&quot;
 Exports of grain will be restricted for the next three years, Ushakov said. One reason, he said, is that there will be an increase in the number of pig and poultry farms in the next two years, so domestic demand will grow. Another problem is a lack of export infrastructure, which Agros is already planning to overcome by setting up a project - possibly in conjunction with other grain majors - in the Black Sea port of No vo rossiisk to build a new terminal and elevator, he said.
 Domestic infrastructure is also lacking. There is no grain exchange and many farmers are limited in their ability to bring their goods to market. The result, Ushakov said, is a free lunch.
 &quot;Obviously, it is profitable to have geographical arbitrage and it is stupid not to take part in it if you can buy grain in Novorossiisk at one price and sell it in Moscow at another, especially if you have elevators, which we do,&quot; Ushakov said. 
 &quot;We will take part in this game. Although we will be doing it with our right hand, while with our left hand we will take part in founding a Russian grain exchange, most likely through the Internet.&quot;
 So can a company that has focused on metals, banks, oil and gas and machine building succeed in agriculture?
 &quot;If Norilsk Nickel moved into agriculture, I would hestitate, because it is not its core business.&quot; Ushakov said. &quot;But there is no core business in Interros except investments. There is always the concept that Interros should invest in growth areas, where the profit margins are high, the risk is acceptable and there is a clear exit strategy. That is why Interros invests into banks, into Norilsk Nickel. But I wouldn't say that people at Interros know how nickel is produced or what the banking norms are. They don't care much. They look at financials, they analyze the perspectives and they work on the exit strategy. Interros's major strategy has always been to buy industrial assets and convert them into financial assets.&quot;

TITLE: Lenenergo Feud With City Takes Two Twists
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: For different courts to offer contradictory decisions concerning the same case is not unheard of anywhere and is an especially common occurrence in Russia. For the same court to contradict itself in two rulings concerning the same case is somewhat less common.
 Last week the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast managed to accomplish this feat.
 On Tuesday, the court ruled that St. Petersburg Electricity Network (SPb Electroseti), a utility company created by the city administration to operate the local electricity-transmission network, actually had no legal right to do so.
 But three days later, on Friday, the same court ruled that the transfer of the 500-million-ruble (about $17 million) transmission network to SPb Electroseti, which was carried out under the auspices of the St. Petersburg Property Committee (KUGI), was proper and that the company was therefore the legal owner of the system.
 Both cases were brought by local electricity-and-heating utility Lenenergo as part of its ongoing struggle to have the creation of SPb Electroseti at the beginning of the year to run the network, which is presently operated by Lenenergo, wiped out.
 The city administration says that the creation of the company was in compliance with a plan put forth by national energy holding Unified Energy Systems (UES), which owns 49 percent of Lenenergo. The UES plan calls for different aspects of local utility companies, including the delivery of power, to be split up and taken over by smaller, independent companies.
 The plan, which has yet to be accepted by either the federal government or by UES shareholders, does not set out who would operate the smaller companies.
 KUGI's argument is that the physical network used to transmit the power through the city was built with budget funds during the Soviet period and was transferred to the city after 1991.
 But Lenenergo and UES have steadfastly opposed Smolny's plan.
 At the end of September, the federal Prosecutor General's Office filed its own suit, demanding that the order by St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakov lev to set up SPb Electroseti be rescinded.
 After the court's decision was handed down on Friday, Larisa Semyonova, the press secretary at Lenenergo, said that the court story will continue.
 &quot;It's very difficult to come up with a comment on these court decisions,&quot; she said Monday. &quot;But we do not agree with [Friday's] decision, and this will not be the end.&quot;
 &quot;Lenenergo has no problem with the money from operating the city's electricity networks going to the budget,&quot; she added. &quot;But this means that it shouldn't be handed over to a private company.&quot;
 For their part, KUGI representatives were not commenting on the decision.
 &quot;We don't even have any contact with Electroseti,&quot; Tatiana Prosvirina, KUGI press secretary said Monday.
 The next court battle will take place Wednesday, when the same court will hear the case filed earlier by the federal prosecutor's office.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Aluminum Lobby 
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Russia's leading aluminum companies are petitioning the government to tie export tariffs to the price of world metals, regulate railroad tariffs and put pressure on the European Union to lower their 6-percent import duties.
 Russia's export duties are currently fixed at 5 percent.
 Top producers Russian Aluminum and SUAL Holding, along with smaller independent plants, are expected to sign the letter this week, said representatives from Russian Aluminum and SUAL.
 RusAl last month laid off administrative staff and began putting some wages into arrears in response to low world aluminum prices. SUAL, however, is not planning to lower wages, saying labor is only about 10 percent of its production costs.
 
 
Russia, EU Steel Talks
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Russia and the European Commission are to begin talks on Tuesday on a new trade agreement covering exports of Russian steel products to Europe. 
 The previous agreement, which sets quotas, runs out on Dec. 21. It has been in effect since 1997.
 Salvatore Salerno, head of the commission's trade directorate, is to meet in Moscow with Yevgeny Manakin, head of the trade policy at the Economic Development and Trade Ministry.
 The European Union is the second-largest export market for Russian steel after Asia.
 
 
Transneft Pullout
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Pipeline monopoly Transneft has decided to pull out of the Transoil production venture, Prime-Tass reported the company as saying Monday. 
 Transneft has not provided any reasons for the move. 
 Transneft has 12 percent of the joint venture, while state-owned Krasnoleninskneftegaz has 50 percent and Proftekhkonsalt, also state-owned, has 38 percent. 
 Transneft most likely will sell its stake in the venture, a company source said. 
 Transoil, which was formed last month, would have been Transneft's first upstream project.
 
UES Eyes Investors
 

MOSCOW (SPT) Unified Energy Systems is in talks with 15 foreign electricity companies on 11 investment projects in the local energy sector, Kommersant reported UES chief Anatoly Chubais as saying Monday.
 UES expects responses from the companies within three months, Chu bais said. 
 He also said that there are foreign investors who "are interested in investing in the export infrastructure, including laying the underwater electrical cable from the Kaliningrad Power Station to Sweden and a regular electrical line to Poland." 
 Chubais said he expected foreign investments in the energy sector to begin between 2002 and 2004. 
 Earlier Monday, UES deputy CEO Yakov Urinson said Russia's power sector would require $50 billion of investment over 10 years, adding that neither the government nor UES has this money. 
 UES has called on foreign investors to take part in projects totaling $30 million to $450 million to upgrade or construct new power plants, Urinson said. 



TITLE: States Face Split Over Microsoft Settlement
AUTHOR: By D. Ian Hopper
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The 18 states that joined the U.S. government to sue Microsoft for antitrust violations face the prospect of splitting apart as some prepare to accept a settlement with the software giant while one rejects it and others consider the same.
 New York will sign the agreement with some added restrictions on Microsoft, a source close to the deliberations said Mon day. New York officials have been in touch with Microsoft and Justice Department law yers, the source said, and an announcement was planned for Monday.
 Meanwhile, Mas sachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly said the settlement has too many loopholes and refused to agree without major changes.
 &quot;Microsoft will use this agreement to crush competition,'' Reilly said Sunday.
 Top lawyers for 18 states and the District of Columbia have until Tuesday morning to tell a judge whether they will join the deal agreed to Thursday night by the Justice Department and Microsoft.
 On Friday, the states asked for more time to read the details of the 21-page settlement. Reilly and his staff spent the weekend scrutinizing the agreement.
 &quot;Every definition is riddled with exceptions,'' Reilly said.
 In Illinois, Attorney General Jim Ryan said he is inclined to sign the agreement.
 &quot;I am pleased that the Microsoft case appears headed for resolution and that Illinois consumers will have gained a freer and more competitive marketplace as a result,'' Ryan said.
 The states' discussions Monday reflect their many divergent views and different levels of commitment throughout the case as well as the effort by the coalition leaders - including Iowa and Connecticut - to keep the states together.
 The proposed settlement would require Microsoft to give independent monitors access to its books and plans for the next five years and to provide information to help rivals make their products Windows compatible. It would also give computer manufacturers more latitude to remove Windows features and replace them with competing products. 
 If any states refuse the settlement, they could try to scuttle the deal by convincing a judge that it is not in the public interest. They may also continue the suit on their own. 
 California recently hired a top Washington lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, on behalf of the states. In case any states split off, Sullivan would be their chief advocate in a penalty trial that would take place early next year.
 Separately, the European Commission said Monday it was pressing forward with its probe into Microsoft. The commission is investigating whether Microsoft had violated antitrust laws by bundling its Media Player into Windows. The EU said that Microsoft may have used illegal practices to extend its dominance in personal computers into server markets.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Sales Pitch
 

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens wishes to fill an expected shortfall of tax revenue next year with additional sales of shares in state-owned companies, the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) said on Monday.
 In a statement ahead of its Tuesday's publication, the FTD quoted Hans Georg Wagner, budgetary spokesperson for the Social Democrats, as saying that both SPD and Greens were in favor.
 "We would be able to reach almost exactly what was required. The planned new indebtedness of 21.1 billion euros remains within reach," Wagner told the FTD.
 Budgetary experts in the finance ministry expect that the tax revenues for the central government, states and local authorities will be 10 billion euros ($9 billion) lower than originally forecast in May, the FTD said. Wagner did not say what he believed the state should sell off.
 
 
Tightening the Tap
 

LONDON (AP) - Alarmed by a relentless slide in oil prices, OPEC members are likely to agree to cut production by as much as 1.4 million barrels a day when the cartel's delegates meet next week, an OPEC official said Monday.
 Such a cut would be as much as 400,000 barrels a day larger than the potential reduction aired publicly in recent weeks by OPEC members.
 OPEC members are considering cutting output by as much as 1.4 million barrels a day, or 5 percent to 6 percent of official production, said the OPEC official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
 "Given the sick market, I think they might need to cut more than 1 million barrels," the official said.
 The comments came after OPEC Secretary General Ali Rodriguez told reporters that cuts of more than 1 million barrels a day were a "possibility."
 
 
Hands Down
 

SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Shipments of handheld computers fell 9.5 percent in the third quarter as buyers delayed purchases in anticipation of new devices with improved hardware and software features, according to a study released on Monday.
 Worldwide shipments of personal digital assistants, or PDAs, dropped to 2.54 million in the third quarter from 2.81 million in the second quarter, according to preliminary data from Dataquest, a unit of research firm Gartner Inc.
 Gartner said customers held off on purchases of new devices, due in part to anticipation of the Pocket PC 2002 updated handheld operating-system software from Microsoft Corp.
 Palm Inc. remained dominant in the market for the wallet-sized digital organizers, although its market share fell to 30 percent from 32 percent worldwide and to 38 percent from 40 percent in the United States.
 Industry No. 2 Handspring Inc., which began shipping new models during the quarter, gained market share. It claims a 14-percent stake globally, up from about 11 percent, while its U.S. share grew to 22 percent from 17 percent.
 Palm and Microsoft, makers of competing PDA software, are battling for a market expected to grow significantly in coming years as devices evolve. 



TITLE: Behemoth Holdings Represent Russian Oligopoly’s New Face
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina, Kirill Koriukin and Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A jovial President Vladimir Putin wowed a standing room only crowd at the World Economic Forum in Mos cow last week, fielding questions from every direction and clearly pleasing the more than 350 business leaders in attendance.
 And why not? Most say the coy confidence with which the former KGB colonel defended his economic record is well deserved. His litany of achievements - tax reform, land reform, ruble stability, reasonable inflation, etc. - have helped produce unprecedented annual economic growth of nearly 7 percent over the last two years.
 Yet all is not well and much needs to be done if, as Putin put it at the forum, the average Russian will &quot;be happy&quot; by 2010. Indeed, 10 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and just over three years since the devastating financial meltdown of August 1998, history seems to be repeating itself.
 During the Boris Yelstin era of &quot;bandit capitalism,&quot; as many have come to refer to it, much of the nation's wealth ended up in the hands of a small coterie of Kremlin-connected intriguers that came to be known as the oligarchs. Some of those oligarchs, like MOST-Bank and NTV founder Vladimir Gu sin sky, have been forced into exile. But others, like Uneximbank founder Vla di mir Potanin, Alfa Bank founder Mik hail Fridman and Roman Abramovich, Boris Berezovsky's prot&eacute;g&eacute;, not only emerged from the 1998 crisis relatively unscathed, but have actually multiplied their wealth and expanded into a wide variety of sectors.
 As in the pre-crisis years, a huge slice of the nation's GDP is controlled by a handful of powerful industrialists that have at times appeared to violate if not the letter, then certainly the spirit of the law. And as during the pre-crisis years, the true extent of these industrialists' empires is literally impossible to calculate.
 But under Putin, overt political activity has transformed into aggressive lobbying; corporate governance has become a topic of discussion and action; and the idea of taking enormous profits and investing them domestically instead of exporting them abroad looks appealing.
 Call it the new face of Russian oligopoly.
 
 <strong>The Holding Giants
</strong> Over the last couple of years, a handful of companies, like Alfa Group, Interros and and a newly-formed entity called Millhouse, have turned themselves into monster conglomerates by snapping up chunks of major enterprises in non-core sectors with the profits from their core business - exploiting natural resources.
 They still pump oil, dig up metals and bank, but now they also insure, produce turbines, build telecommunications systems, trade grain and even raise pigs. They each contribute a significant share of the nation's GDP and belong to a group of insanely wealthy individuals.
 But the reason behind this shopping spree may not be simply, as some believe, greed or lust for power, but the absence of a proper banking system - and orders from the Kremlin to invest here.
 &quot;The question is: What are the oligarch[s] doing with their money? They could take it out of the country as they used to, but Putin has told them they would be in trouble if they did,&quot; says Al Breach, economist with Goldman Sachs.
 With, apparently, a directive from above and an unwillingness to entrust cash to anyone but themselves, Alfa Group, Interros and Millhouse are gorging on new assets.
 &quot;Both in economic terms and in political terms it makes sense to invest. The question is in what to invest,&quot; Breach said.
 
 <strong>Millhouse Capital
</strong> Technically Millhouse is only a few months old, but it is purely a child of the Yeltsin era. Earlier this month Sibneft, Russia's No. 6 oil producer, announced that its core shareholders had shifted control of a huge amount of their assets, including 88 percent of Sibneft, to a newly registered British company called Millhouse Capital.
 The news was big because it helped clarify one of the most enduring mysteries in Russian business: What exactly does Roman Abramovich, Sibneft's &quot;core shareholder,&quot; actually own?
 Overnight, Millhouse came to control not only Sibneft, which expects profits of more than $1.2 billion this year, but 50 percent of Russian Aluminum, the world's second largest aluminum company and a multi-billion dollar conglomerate in itself. The holding also includes a 26 percent stake in Russia's flagship airline, Aeroflot, electric power stations, and enterprises in the automobile, truck, bus, pulp-and-paper processing, insurance and banking sectors.
 The lack of transparency surrounding the mysterious Abramovich and the fact that many of the new conglomerate's divisions are not public companies make it difficult to put a price tag on the new business heavyweight. However, according to James Fenkner, Troika Dialog equity strategist, Millhouse is probably worth $5 billion and contributes about 3 to 4 percent of Russia's GDP.
 Just like the other major holdings that survived the crisis, Millhouse was built with cash from exporting oil and metals. Before 1998, large-scale holdings were predominately created around banks, the majority of which collapsed as a result of the ruble devaluation and debt default in August of that year.
 Sibneft itself was created in 1995-1996 with help from well-connected ex-oligarch Alexander Smolensky's now-defunct SBS-Agro bank and a number of companies affiliated with it. There, at its birth, was also controversial media tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who is now living in self-imposed exile. The latter's relationship with the company remains a mystery, because Sibneft denies that Berezovsky owns any stake in the company, but the former Kremlin insider has periodically said that he owns as much as half of the oil major.
 In 1995, however, Berezovsky's presence was undeniable. Around that time a series of firms connected to the powerful entrepreneur snapped up Sibneft for next to nothing in a chain of loans-for-shares auctions.
 Sibneft was carved out of state-run oil giant Rosneft and originally created to be the financial tap for Berezovsky-controlled ORT, the nationwide television channel.
 The loans-for-shares scheme itself, under which investors lent the government money in return for the right to manage state-owned stakes in partly privatized companies, has been widely criticized, as the stakes often went to the very companies that were tapped to organize the loan tenders for the government.
 Abramovich's involvement with Sibneft stretches back at least until 1996, when Runicom, a Swiss company with its Moscow office being run by Ab ra mo vich, bought a 12.2 percent stake in Sib neft at a cash auction. Subsequently, Ab ramovich became head of Sibneft's Mos cow office. The 35-year-old businessman has said that he controls a 44-percent stake in Sibneft, but some reports suggest a figure twice as high.
 In the years to follow the company became one of the leaders in the industry, winning praise for its corporate governance charter and record dividends. But it horrified the investment community last month when it announced, with few details, that it had secretly sold, just before announcing a huge dividend, a 27 percent stake in the company back to the same &quot;core shareholders&quot; it bought the stake from last December.
 Sibneft has also been pursuing other acquisitions in areas that are totally unrelated to its core businesses, such as Omsky Bekon, the nation's top meat processor. Last year, Sibneft's shareholders snapped up about a third of the Russian aluminum industry and then merged on a 50-50 basis with Oleg Deripaska's Siberian Aluminum Group to form Russian Aluminum, or RusAl, which now controls 75 percent of the country's aluminum production. About 80 percent of RusAl's output is exported and it has revenues of over $4 billion a year.
 Despite the questionable synergy of uniting such a wide assortment of companies, analysts maintain that such diversity is a natural stage in Russia's economic development.
 &quot;Different groups have different investment strategies. Such groups used to exist all over the world. This is just no longer a fashion in the West. You concentrate on one thing you know well. Russia is not ready to adopt this model yet,&quot; Breach said.
 The rules of the game are rather similar for all of the holdings, or in fact the entire Russian economy - lending to outside corporate groups is minimal, while Russia's investment requirements are extremely high. As a result, a situation where there is a company capable of providing sustainable cash flows from its mineral-export arm to other group members in need of investment provides the impetus for the creation of big holdings.
 &quot;More than anything what's behind the creation of conglomerates such as Millhouse is the weakness of Russian banking system,&quot; Fenkner said. &quot;There is no proper way to invest and diversify.&quot;
 
 <strong>Interros
</strong> In contrast to newcomer Millhouse, which seems to be taking a kid-in-the-candy-store approach and snapping up everything it finds appealing, Vladimir Potanin's Interros group is nurturing the gem of its empire while cautiously liquidating its oil and gas assets and branching into machine building and agriculture for what appears to be the long haul.
 That gem is Norilsk Nickel, which in addition to having a fifth of the global nickel market controls two-thirds of the world's palladium and one-fifth of its platinum.
 Interros evolved in 1992 with the creation of the International Finance Company, or MFK bank. The next year, Uneximbank was created and, with the help of Potanin's political clout, became one of the most powerful financial institutions in the country. One of the few chosen government agent banks, Unexim handled some of the most lucrative state accounts, including customs accounts, until the 1998 crisis.
 The most auspicious periods in the group's history happened to coincide with Potanin's tenure as deputy prime minister from the fall of 1996 to spring of 1997.
 In 1995, Potanin began the acquisition of Norilsk Nickel, first receiving a 38-percent stake as collateral for a loan in the controversial loans-for-shares scheme, and then buying it out in 1997.
 Earlier that year, Potanin got hold of a controlling stake in the oil company Sidanco and later, together with George Soros, bought a 25 percent stake in the national telephone monopoly Svyazinvest in a deal that gave new meaning to the word controversial. Accusations of insider dealing for the Svyazinvest stake were splashed across the papers for months and Soros later called it the worst investment he had ever made.
 After the August 1998 financial crisis, Interros, which some now estimate to be worth upwards of $4 billion, underwent a major transformation. Rosbank came to replace Unexim as the group's pocket bank and absorbed the former behemoth earlier this year, after the restructuring of its debt. Sidanco was taken over by Alfa Group's Tyumen Oil Co. after a battle that raged for years. And Interros announced its intention to sell its interest in the multi-billion-dollar Kovykta gas project.
 Interros also lost interest in Svyazinvest, which Potanin once called a &quot;tasty morsel,&quot; and has sold part of its stake to Soros. Thus, Norilsk Nickel remains Interros' main asset, and is arguably worth more than all the failed projects combined - it accounts for the lion's share of the roughly 3 percent of Russia's GDP that Potanin controls.
 Norilsk Nickel, which had been suffering from glaring mismanagement before Potanin took over, became a dream asset. The swift streamlining of the company's management coincided with the ruble devaluation and the previously loss-making Arctic Circle giant began turning a profit for the first time in 1998.
 Although Norilsk is expanding and has projects afar afield as Australia, basing an empire on raw materials is always risky, so Potanin is making a foray into machine building.
 &quot;You have to have something in hi-tech, which uses intellectual added-value,&quot; he has said. Interros' hi-tech holdings currently include jet-engine builder Perm Motors and Siloviye Mashiny, a consortium that unites several plants with turbines as their primary product.
 Balancing its high-tech interests with low-tech, Interros last month set up an agricultural company, Agros, with charter capital of $100 million and working capital of $200 million, and bought a stake in major agricultural company Roskhleboprodukt with some of the $1 billion it had earned by selling Sidanco to Alfa and British Petroleum. Through Agros, Interros says it plans to control 7 percent of the world grain market and join the world's top five grain producers at some point.
 Despite spinning off some of its units, Interros remains diversified, retaining a few pieces of its old empire, including several mass media names, including national daily Izvestia, which was Potanin's main weapon in the 1997-98 propaganda battle over Svyazinvest, and Komsomolskaya Pravda. There is also the influential news agency Prime-TASS and the high-brow Expert business magazine. The group also owns a 34 percent stake in the Novolipetsk steel mill, as well as insurance and asset-management companies and plans to create a banking holding with Rosbank and MFK as its core.
 Potanin's strategy now looks more like that of the Alfa Group, with which he tried and failed to create a union in the mid 1990s, than Millhouse's.
 &quot;Interros is completing the asset restructuring process which was started in 1998 and one of the obvious signs of this process is the spinning off or selling off non-core assets,&quot; Potanin has said.
 The Interros transformation may be an indication that the division of assets between rival groups, which has sent shockwaves through the country for years is - at least in some sectors - subsiding.
 
 <strong>Alfa Group
</strong> Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Group is the slickest and nimblest of the three major financial-industrial groups and it may be the mightiest.
 The brokerage Renaissance Capital estimates the value of Alfa to be near $8 billion and its increasing financial and political power is hard to overestimate.
 Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst at Moscow's Carnegie Endowment for World Peace, said that since the crisis, Alfa has managed to build one of the most powerful and effective political lobbies in the country. The appointment last year of Vladislav Surkov, an active Alfa lobbyist, as the deputy head of the presidential administration paved the way for other Alfa agents to follow into in different branches of power, he said.
 Unlike Potanin and Abramovich, Fridman was considered a Kremlin outsider and before the crisis his influence was downplayed by other oligarchs because he did not have a large number of connections within the nomenklatura.
 In the 1980s Fridman tried his hand at virtually every kind of business there was at the time. He started a courier service, an apartment-rental agency, he sold Siberian wool shawls, imported Western cigarettes, perfume, computers and Xerox machines, and he even bred white mice for laboratories before he hit paydirt with the creation in 1988 of the small commodities-trading firm Alfa Eco, which in a few years turned into the powerful financial-industrial consortium Alfa Group.
 In 1991 Fridman founded Alfa Bank, the heart of the group, and soon afterwards recruited Pyotr Aven, former minister of foreign economic relations in Yegor Gaidar's first Cabinet, to raise Alfa's political profile.
 Their first big-league battle ended in defeat, when they lost the fight for Sibneft to Berezovsky and his associates.
 Alfa didn't win as many prized assets as other groups, a fact that compelled it to make the most of what it did receive and to build other businesses from scratch.
 &quot;Alfa, earlier than anyone else, comprehended the problems of Russian legislation,&quot; and acquired assets through bankruptcy process, said Renaissance Capital economist Alexei Moiseyev.
 A well-calculated financial policy, caution and thrift helped Alfa to increase its influence step-by-step.
 Alfa Bank has always been the backbone of the group. While other conglomerates spent most of their efforts acquiring production assets, Fridman and Aven focused on banking.
 As a result, former rivals like MOST-Bank, SBS-Agro, Menatep, Inkombank, Uneximbank, Mosbiznesbank and Rossysky Kredit now stand as empty shells, but Alfa Bank not only emerged from the 1998 crash, it also bolstered its reputation by honoring commitments to creditors and depositors.
 &quot;The bank was the core business for Alfa, so they joined forces, with significant support from the government, to save the bank,&quot; said Mikhail Matovnikov, deputy head of Interfax Rating Agency.
 Alfa Bank is now a leading private bank with a nationwide network, a credit portfolio of $1.3 billion and assets of $2 billion. 
 Its biggest asset is Tyumen Oil Co., or TNK, the No. 2 oil company in the country in reserves and No. 4 in production. Alfa got control of TNK in 1997, when the Kremlin, after Alfa helped Yeltsin's re-election campaign the previous year, sold a 40 percent stake for $810 million. Alfa, which now has a 50-50 partnership in the company with an affiliated firm, Access-Renova, watched TNK's revenues grow from $2.3 billion in 1997 to $4 billion in 2000.
 Last year an 85-percent stake in the coveted Onako oil firm was sold for $1.08 billion to a little-known firm owned by TNK.
 Meanwhile, Fridman nurtured Alfa Eco into one of the largest exporters of oil and importers of sugar and tea in the country and a major metals player through companies like Achinsky Alumina Plant, Zlatoustovsky Me tallurgical Plant and Taganrog Pipe Plant. It also accounts for 8 percent of all wine imports and, after last year's scandalous deal with the Trading House of Descendants of Pyotr Smir nov, expects to soon become one of the largest vodka producers in the country.
 Alfa owns Perekryostok, Moscow's top supermarket chain with expected revenues this year of $220 million from its 33 stores. The group also operates a real estate arm, Alfa Estate, and Alfa Cement, which holds 25 percent of Russia's cement market.
 And the group is showing no signs of slowing down.
 Alfa, which already has representative offices in New York and London, last week announced the creation of a subsidiary in Holland to facilitate trading operations between Russia and EU countries. And last week it officially launched Alfa Insurance, which includes the East European Insurance Agency, Alfa Garantiya and Ostra Kiev.
 In April, Alfa stepped into the telecoms business, buying a 43.8 percent stake in Russia's leading Internet company, Golden Telecom, for $110 million. A month later, it paid $247 million for a chunk of No. 2 mobile operator Vimpelcom and its regional arm, Vimpelcom-R.
 This summer, Crown Resources USA, a newly established subsidiary of the Alfa Group's Swiss subsidiary, Trading Resources, announced it would focus on aluminum trading. Until recently, Crown Resources traded in oil and petroleum products.
 &quot;The Alfa approach to bring in a foreign strategic investor with the ultimate goal of wellling a company. Alfa provides the political contacts and capital to some extent. They sort the company out with the help of the foreigners, who provide the expertise, with the goal of selling the company&quot; said Goldman Sachs' Breach.
 &quot;We are neither bankers, nor oil men, nor telecommunications specialists - we are investors,&quot; Fridman said. &quot;We invest in projects and withdraw from them when we believe that it is the right time, place, and price. We are sure that one day we will withdraw from our oil and banking assets and will possibly be investing in other assets,&quot; said Fridman.
 No one doubts the size of Alfa's operation. But, like Interros and Millhouse, no one really knows exactly how much they own.
 &quot;It is hard to say who controls what and how,&quot; said Alexander Astapovich, deputy head of the Bureau of Economic Analysis. &quot;The lack of transparency is the same in all big holdings,&quot; he said.
 The lack of transparency and the lack of a functioning banking system, analysts say, remain causes for worry, as giant financial industrial groups like Interros, Millhouse and Alfa look poised to add more to their already-sizeable share of the national economic pie.
 &quot;These companies - Interros, Millhouse, Alfa, etc.- are going to be the center of the Russian economy's growth for the better part of the following decade,&quot; said Renaissance Capital's Moiseyev.
 Unless, that is, history repeats itse

TITLE: At Last, Floyd Tells Us What Should Be Done
TEXT: In response to Global Eye, a column by Chris Floyd.
 </i>
 <i>Editor,
 </i>We all know that America is duplicitous and its leaders are hypocrites. Please, show us a country where this is not true. The question that Floyd refuses to address is this, &quot;What should [U.S. President] George Bush and Western countries do about terrorism?&quot;
 <i>Donald Marsden
 United States
 </i>
 <i><strong>Chris Floyd responds:
 </strong></i><i>
 Dear Mr. Marsden,
 </i>Your question is a fair one. However, it lies outside the scope of the Global Eye. In general, the column is an effort to supply information and context on issues that are often ignored in the mainstream press, while also offering my own personal opinion on them, of course. It is critical, not prescriptive, in nature. Nevertheless, since you asked, here are few very brief and sketchy suggestions, hurriedly set down, on what, in my opinion, should be done:
 1. Take the billions proposed for the missile-defense shield and pour it into a Manhattan Project-style effort to develop new energy sources and technologies, thereby eliminating or greatly reducing America's reliance on oil in general, and foreign oil in particular.
 2. Demand that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories and dismantle its settlements there, or else face the loss of U.S. financial and diplomatic support.
 3. Demand that the Palestinians accept the 1948 partition and build their own state in these lands, giving up the &quot;right of return,&quot; while accepting the existence of the state of Israel.
 4. Secure UN agreement to enforce the original two-state idea, including the security of Israel's existence, with UN military forces if need be.
 5. Begin the staged withdrawal of American support for undemocratic regimes throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East. Without acting precipitously and creating unwanted chaos, make it clear that the level of U.S. military, economic and diplomatic support will depend on the degree of political and cultural liberty achieved in countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Colombia, etc. No longer allow the United States to be seen as the complacent supporter of repressive and corrupt regimes, whatever their religious or ideological makeup. 
 This doesn't mean isolating the United States from the world or not having any relations with repressive regimes. It does mean we should stop being the mainstay of any such regimes and stop supporting them militarily and diplomatically, as is often the case at present. 
 6. Stop identifying &quot;American interests&quot; solely with the interests of big business. Define &quot;American interests&quot; as those that are best for the American people as a whole, not just small sectors of the most wealthy. Identify &quot;American interests&quot; with the peaceful advancement of our professed ideals of political liberty, free thought and free expression. Do not say, &quot;We stand for freedom,&quot; while, for example, giving billions to a Saudi regime whose leaders are incredibly corrupt and where a form of Islam almost as repressive as the Taliban's is enforced by the state.
 7. Use some of the $30 billion or more we throw at the CIA each year to develop extensive human resources devoted to the Islamic world - not only &quot;intelligence assets,&quot; but scholars, linguists, political experts. Actually, this sort of thing should be done by the State Department, and the CIA should be done away with altogether, with its legitimate functions parceled out to existing cabinet departments. But since we do have this secret behemoth, we should use it intelligently.
 8. Do not create another generation of terrorists with the senseless and aimless bombing of countries like Afgha ni stan. Admittedly, it's too late to close the barn door on this one. In my opinion, what Bush should have done was follow his father's template. Instead of rushing into a full-scale bombing campaign in just a few weeks, he should have patiently built up a huge military force over the course of several months - 600,000 troops or more, as in the Gulf War. 
 While doing this, the U.S. and its allies could have carefully - and publicly - laid out their case against bin Laden, using the months of build-up to solidify their intelligence sources and the firmness of the evidence. This would be accompanied by a diplomatic offensive, which would culminate in a UN vote to place the entire anti-terrorist campaign under UN auspices. Naturally, the usual national and international law enforcement methods would also be going on: tracking down al-Quaeda agents; arresting them; freezing and seizing assets; ratcheting up severe diplomatic pressure on terrorist-friendly regimes (including Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, etc.); and again, building a solid, credible and public case against bin Laden and his organization. 
 At the same time, we could have stepped up humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan, feeding the starving people through the winter, instead of bombing them, building up the good will of the world while again, making public the legal case against bin Laden, which would have solidified world opinion behind a campaign. If, by that time, the Taliban had not folded or been split apart internally from the pressure, or had not finally given bin Laden over to another country, then and only then should a full-scale military action have been launched - a <i>military </i>action against Taliban <i>military</i> forces, not the wholesale bombing campaign against the Afghan people in general, as we are seeing now. 
 But as I said, it's too late for that now. By pushing this blind military fury forward, Bush has simply created a million more extremists, and hardened a new generation against America. 
 So, no, I don't know what to do about that. I think we have ignited a fire that will take many years to burn itself out. However, I do believe that if some of the above steps were taken, it would reduce the level of terrorism enormously. It would bring the U.S. government more closely in line with the ideals it is supposed to represent. It would reduce U.S. support for hated regimes all over the world, with the attendant rancor this support arouses.
 There is no easy solution, no quick way out, no way to magically undo all the horrible murderous decisions our leaders - and others - have taken during the last several decades. You say all countries are duplicitous and their leaders hypocritical. Perhaps so. But the unique power and position of the United States magnify the effects of our particular hypocrisies a thousandfold. Perhaps the results of these idiotic and at times, plainly evil policies over the years are intractable, insoluble. I continue to hope that their effects can be modified and tempered by wiser courses of action.
 However, I also believe the course chosen by George W. Bush will not achieve the peace and security of the American people, and the Western world in general; rather the opposite. I also personally believe he is unconcerned with freedom and democracy, either at home or abroad. I believe he identifies American interests so completely with the interests of his cronies, his financial backers and his family that he literally cannot see beyond this horribly limited range: whatever is good and profitable for his set <i>is </i>&quot;freedom and democracy&quot; to him. And that is why he was able to countenance taking office in such an illegitimate and underhanded way; why he wants to give away $212 billion to the largest U.S. corporations in the middle of a war; why he will continue to support regimes that are corrupt despotisms; and why we cannot hope for any kind of genuine vision from him or the regime that he and his cronies have installed in the United States. 
 Again, this has been written in great haste. But I hope it provides, in broad and rough outline, an answer to your question as to what I think should be done.
 <i>Chris Floyd
 </i>
 <strong>What's Patriotism?
 </strong><i>In response to &quot;Still Waiting To Be Convinced,&quot; a column by Boris Kagarlitsky, Nov. 2.
 </i>
 <i>Editor,
 </i>Boris Kagarlitsky is right. In our world today, we have one great power on a course of its own, while the rest of the world is trying to react to it. Many countries depend on America too much to be able to raise any strong objections to its policies. Some have succumbed to a natural desire to be on the side of the one who appears the strongest. Some, like many in Europe, are bewildered by American behavior, but are hoping that sooner or later the American establishment will &quot;see the light,&quot; realize its mistakes, and apologize to the rest of the world, while promising to respect international laws, instead of the law of the jungle. If only we, the inhabitants of this planet, were that lucky. 
 Like a spoiled child that has managed to get away with a lot of bad behavior, America will continue to defy the principles of reasonable and moral behavior. And why shouldn't it? So far, nobody seriously challenged it. It continues to have its own way all over the world, so why change behavior that produces results?
 And, if you remember some history, the Americans are not the first to believe in their invincibility due to the technological advantages they have over any possible adversaries. But history also teaches us that any such policy can only go unchallenged for so long. Sooner or later somebody, somewhere will have to say &quot;no&quot; to the Americans, and we will all see the irrational rage of the spoiled child denied its way. 
 I am afraid that this will happen sometime soon. I am also very afraid that the recent warming in the U.S.-Russia relationship cannot last. It is very clear here in America that reason has vanished from political discourse. It is as if America has a death wish, that it does not see how to get out of this spiritual crisis, so nicely predicted by Erich Fromm, except by committing suicide. 
 Unfortunately for the rest of us, America will go out with a bang, as they say here, meaning it will take many unwilling neighbors with it. 
 So mark my words: Just like 50 years ago and just like 200 years ago, it will be Russia again that will be under attack. I apologize for the dark tone of this letter. I am not pessimistic - just realistic.
 <i>Branko Dimitrijevic
 San Francisco, California</i>
 <i>Editor,
 </i>I know that I do not speak for all Americans. Too many of us are caught up in the emotional propaganda that is being spread through our media.
 However, a growing number of Americans is not buying the story as told by our government and our media. There are too many questions about the attacks and the ease with which all the &quot;evidence&quot; was found. Many members of the Bush administration have ties to, or own stock in, companies that will profit from this war. Our media is now corporatized and owned by huge conglomerates that are part of the military-industrial complex. The hard questions will not be asked by anyone in our mainstream media.
 Many of us have turned to the foreign media for the truth. We are well aware that our past mistakes in foreign policy have brought us to this horrendous present. We are doing our best to educate our fellow citizens and pressure the media to live up to their responsibilities.
 Thank you for helping us to expose the truth.
 <i>Marcia Roberts
 Bowie, Maryland
 </i>
 <i>Editor,
 </i>Wonderful. At least there are a few &quot;dissidents&quot; left who will still say what needs to be said. In America today, it is &quot;wrong&quot; to speak out against &quot;America&quot; in any way. The methods are a subtle form of coercion but coercion nonetheless. 
 I know that there is at least one person here who has wondered about the evidence and action based upon said evidence. However, the voices of those who wonder are not very loud. If patriotism in America is now unquestioned loyalty, then terrorism has worked perfectly. No matter who committed the acts. 
 Unfortunately, the United States is in a position to carry the world with it wherever it might go. We Americans who believe that questioning is the root of America's greatness hope that the world's dissidents won't stop making their voices heard. Perhaps America will listen eventually.
 <i>Alexi Koltowicz
 Detroit, Michigan
 </i>
 <strong>A Proud Lifter
 </strong><i>Editor,
 </i>As one of the crewmembers of the Giant-4, I would like to say that it was an honor for my colleagues and I to work on the salvage of the Kursk. 
 We are glad that we had the opportunity to help with the raising. During the whole operation, we knew that we were doing more than a normal lift operation. The fact that we did our work above a submarine containing 118 bodies - men who died while they did their work - is something we will never forget. 
 Knowing that these men were also fathers, sons, husbands and brothers just like we are made this whole operation very special to us. 
 We hope that our small contribution will be a comfort for the families and friends of the victims.
 I would also like to thank the people of the Rubin design bureau for their cooperation during the preparations for this difficult operation. 
 <i>Evert van Oostenbrugge
 Norway
 </i>
 <strong>Bravo for Cheap Oil
 </strong><i>In response to &quot;Lower Oil Prices Are Russia's Friends,&quot; a comment by Rudiger Ahrend, Oct. 23.
 </i>
 <i>Editor,
 </i>I am the head of financial markets for central and eastern Europe at ING and greatly appreciated your article. Most of the analytical community simply repeats the mantra that if oil prices go down, Russia is finished. They do this without looking a bit deeper into the issue as you have done.
 Last week, I was making the case to my board that the best thing that could happen in the medium term for Russia is to see oil prices at $15 to $16 per barrel. I believe this not only due to reduced inflationary impact and, hence, less real appreciation of the currency, but also because of the psychological impact from the international investor community. 
 I believe that the investment community, due to the disastrous devaluation/default of August 1998, will not give Russia the benefit of the doubt again. Russia will have to earn its way back toward the possibility of receiving international investment dollars. 
 As long as oil prices are high, investors will say that all the positive changes that we have seen in Russia since 1999 are only because of high oil prices. Therefore, there is no better way of proving this wrong than seeing oil prices at the lower end of the range.
 Of course, this would cause the markets to fall a bit in the short term. However, in the medium term, this would have a very beneficial psychological impact. When I look at Russia's debt ratios (external debt/GDP, debt service/GDP, external debt/reserves) as compared to Hungary's, it is clear that Russia's debt numbers are better. However, between Russia's credit rating of B/B+ and Hungary's A- there are eight credit grades. This difference can only narrow once Russia proves it can get by in a more difficult macro environment.
 <i>Barry Hoffner
 Moscow </i>

TITLE: The World May Be Living on Borrowed Time
AUTHOR: By Brett Wagner
TEXT: THE catastrophic terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11 sent an urgent and long overdue wake-up call to America and the rest of the world to take seriously the continuing efforts by terrorist groups to acquire nuclear weapons. Had any of the attacks involved a nuclear device, we might now be discussing tens of thousands of fatalities, millions of casualties and potential radiation victims and trillions of dollars in collateral damage. 
 We would also be discussing America's failure to take seriously Russia's long-standing offer to sell its enormous under-secured nuclear stockpiles - the most likely source of terrorist nuclear capability - to the United States for use as fuel in nuclear-power plants and for other peaceful purposes. Fortunately, a deal seems to be in the works to secure Russia's &quot;loose nukes,'' before they start slipping into terrorists' hands.
 When the Soviet Union was breaking apart a decade ago, many Americans excitedly toasted the &quot;end of the Cold War'' and even started imaging how we should spend the &quot;peace dividend.&quot; Most Americans failed to ask a crucial question: Wasn't the impending collapse of a nuclear superpower's entire social, political and economic system really a cause for concern?
 A decade later, the discussion has definitively shifted from how much safer the world is now to how much more dangerous it has become. The collapse of the Soviet system has revealed a nuclear-weapons infrastructure without reliable controls, protections or accountability. Some 700 to 800 tons of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and 150 to 200 tons of weapons-grade plutonium (WGP) are stored in makeshift warehouses protected at best by $5 combination locks. The government has no accounting system capable of keeping track of it all.
 It would only take 25 to 30 kilograms of HEU - or an even smaller amount of WGP - to arm a device capable of leveling downtown Washington or lower Manhattan. The blueprints and non-nuclear components necessary to build crude but highly effective nuclear weapons are readily available. Small amounts of stolen or diverted Russian HEU and WGP already have been confiscated by European law enforcement from sellers looking for buyers. 
 The United States currently lists more than a dozen rogue states and terrorist organizations - including Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda - that are looking for sellers. If any of them get their hands on enough material to arm a device, we won't be talking about a 30-minute warning - we may not get any warning at all. One could say that we are already living on borrowed time.
 Against this backdrop of loose nukes, rogue states, arms traffickers, and terrorist groups flush with cash has emerged one of the greatest opportunities of the post-Cold War era: buying up Russia's excess nukes. 
 For several years, Russia has been hinting that it would be interested in selling its enormous stockpiles of excess weapons-grade uranium and plutonium to the United States for use as fuel in nuclear-power plants. A deal was even struck in 1993 by then-President Bill Clinton and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin for the United States to purchase all the uranium from the warheads that Russia is dismantling in compliance with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties. 
 Extending this agreement to include the rest of Russia's excess fissionable materials, including both HEU and WGP, would seem to be the next logical step in this process. Unfortunately, the idea has never caught fire on Capitol Hill, despite a relatively low $10-billion price tag - a price that seems even lower in the wake of Sept. 11.
 A group of international financiers has now come forward offering to underwrite the entire amount necessary to secure all of Russia's excess fissionable materials. The money would be raised in the form of independently issued, government-backed bonds. Just before Congress adjourned for its August recess, Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico introduced a bill that establishes a framework for how such a transaction might take place. Now Representative Lois Capps of California is introducing a bill on the House side. 
 Under the Domenici bill's provisions, the U.S. government would guarantee loans to Russia in increments of $20 million, up to $1 billion at any one time, accepting Moscow's nuclear materials as security. For each $20 million loan, Russia would place one metric ton of HEU and one metric ton of WGP under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards at a facility in Russia that is mutually acceptable to both Russia and the IAEA. As part of the deal, Russia would guarantee that the materials placed under IAEA safeguards would remain there indefinitely, meaning until they are transformed into nuclear fuel or otherwise permanently disposed of. Barring unforeseen delays, this entire process could likely be completed within a decade.
 The current proposal is not without flaws. Among them, the bill currently sets an expiration date of Dec. 31, 2004, for extending new loans, failing to take into account the time frame necessary to complete the process even under optimal circumstances. And it puts a $1 billion cap on loans at any one time - an obvious potential roadblock that could bring the entire process to a halt should the Russians deliver the material to the IAEA-approved sites faster than it can be reprocessed and sold.
 Still, Domenici's bill is a giant step forward, and it provides a valuable foundation for what should become the first major nuclear-arms reduction agreement of the 21st century. Moreover, it represents a tremendous potential bargain for the American people, considering that international investors would be financing virtually the entire deal. The only significant cost to the U.S. taxpayer would be $10 million a year for the cost of administration in the United States and up to $15 million a year to help cover the expenses of the IAEA. This should appeal even to those members of Congress who are most reluctant to lend the Russians money for anything - even when their nuclear stockpiles are in jeopardy. 
 If we let this opportunity slip away through inaction or partisanship, we will have no one to blame but ourselves when we run out of borrowed time. 
 
 <i>Brett Wagner is president of the California Center for Strategic Studies and executive director of the Swords into Plowshares Project. He contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times. </i>

TITLE: Even the Birch Trees Want To Emigrate
TEXT: SOMETHING very weird happened last Tuesday evening on the Russian-Finnish border. A piece of land about 800-square meters in area with two five-meter-high birch trees on it broke away from the Russian bank of the Saimaa Channel and silently drifted off toward the Finnish coast. &quot;It was moving at an average speed of five kilometers per hour,&quot; RIA-Novosti reported.
 &quot;Why wasn't I on that island?&quot; sighed a friend of mine after reading the report. Russian by nationality, she is one of many, many people I know who want to find a different place to live.
 This remark sent me on a search for some statistics on the number of Russians who have left the country for good over the last 10 years. I remember this summer when there were rumors that the United States intended to abolish visas for Russian citizens and a friend said to me that &quot;the day after that happened, President Putin would find nobody to talk to on Moscow streets.&quot;
 What I discovered was that, according to government figures on the Polit.ru Web site, 1.1 million Russians emigrated between 1989 and 1999. Of those, 605,800 settled in Germany; 289,800 in Israel; 114,000 in the United States; 18,200 in Greece; 8,700 in Canada; 7,200 in Finland; and 32,000 went elsewhere.
 And this is just recent history, of course. About 10 million Russians left the country during World War II, and about four million managed to slip out during the first years of Soviet rule, before 1938. In other words, about 15 million got out before immigration even became legal. Or, put another way, if the Communist revolution had come to some Scandinavian country instead of to Russia, that country would be empty by now. Maybe little islands with birch trees would be floating in the opposite direction.
 But things aren't all bad. Experts say that about 400,000 more people enter Russia each year than leave it. So, in terms of raw numbers, Russia isn't likely to be depopulated any time soon. 
 However, the figures say that about 50 percent of the Russians that leave the country are young and highly educated. Most of those coming here are people from the republics of the former Soviet Union, China or Vietnam - many of whom have minimal educations and are happy to take any work they can get. The Moscow city government reports that it has 400,000 such immigrants, mostly working illegally at construction sites or city markets.
 Such figures make our nationalists scream about the &quot;national crisis&quot; and the &quot;brain drain,&quot; but there really isn't anything that can be done about it. Economics and politics push people to move around and, while it may be bad for &quot;nations,&quot; it is hard to argue against individual people doing what is best for them.
 A public-opinion survey in 1990 revealed that about two million Russians were ready to go abroad immediately if they were given the opportunity to do so. Now, we see that more than half of them found that opportunity.
 Of course, that doesn't mean that they all found what they were looking for. I am especially concerned about those who went to Germany, a country that - according to press reports and a recent Deutsche Welle survey - doesn't much care for immigrants. 
 Nonetheless, people always think the grass is greener on the other side and there is no point in talking about the difficulties one might encounter in other countries. As long as bits of Russian land are floating away, there will be people like my friend who are ready to go along for the ride.

TITLE: Global eye
TEXT: <strong>Constant Craving
</strong> The &quot;Bush Doctrine&quot; now guiding American policy holds that any country that harbors terrorists becomes the enemy of the United States. In that case, the New York City borough of Queens had better brace itself for a barrage of cluster bombs - because a convicted terrorist murderer is being harbored there by a rogue government.
 Emmanuel &quot;Toto&quot; Constant, leader of the Haitian death squad FRAPH, has been in the United States for seven years, tenderly sheltered by the CIA, even after his conviction on mass-murder charges. In addition to your standard rape and pillage, FRAPH is also infamous for its practice of &quot;facial scalping&quot; - peeling the flesh from a dying victim's face with a machete.
 While employing these tactics to destabilize Haiti's government during the last Bush administration, Constant was also an agent for the CIA, which used his thugs to thwart Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The populist Aristide government was overthrown in 1991, ushering in a three-year &quot;reign of terror&quot; by Constant and other warlords. Bush p&egrave;re first protested, then went back to business as usual with the face-scalping killers.
 In 1994, with the U.S. regime temporarily in the hands of moderate forces, Aristide was restored to office. Constant threatened to use biological weapons against U.S. troops and urged his followers to kill Americans. Despite these appeals, Constant used his CIA connections to secure safe passage to the United States. He now lives comfortably in Queens, where he dabbles in real estate, investment consulting and openly plotting to overthrow Haiti's government again.
 Constant was convicted in absentia by a Haitian court last year in a trial conducted by American-trained jurists with international supervision to ensure fairness. But despite calls for his deportation, Toto remains under the protection of American security services, which operate outside the bounds of international law. Having failed in their bid to sabotage Aristide's return in 1994, they confiscated thousands of secret documents detailing FRAPH operations - including their own cozy love letters to Toto, no doubt - then cowed the administration of wobbly moderate Bill Clinton into blocking Constant's deportation for the usual &quot;national security&quot; reasons.
 In the last few days of his term, Mr. Wobbly recovered enough of his always-intermittent nerve to ship the secret FRAPH documents back to Haiti, in hopes of kick-starting the extradition process. But the new Bush regime is openly hostile to Aristide, and most expect the U.S. security services to put up a stiff fight to protect their &quot;honored guest.&quot; In fact, with his old Bush contacts riding high again, Constant is already picking out curtains for Haiti's presidential palace.
 What's that sound we hear in the Port-au-Prince night? It's the steely zing of machetes being sharpened.
 
 <strong>Death Wish
</strong> <i>&quot;Augurs and understood relations have ... brought forth the secret'st man of blood.&quot;
 </i> - Shakespeare, Macbeth.
 
 The president of the United States has assumed the power to order the murder of anyone on earth.
 The Washington Post reports this week that George W. Bush has signed an executive order giving himself the right to issue death warrants for anyone he deems a terrorist or supporter of terrorists. These people will be killed secretly by the CIA, with no pretense of due process.
 Such &quot;targeted killings&quot; - which have worked so well to make Israel the secure place it is today - could also include the financial backers of terrorism. Good thing this executive order was not in effect during the 1930s, when Bush's grandfather, Prescott, was one of the biggest backers of a terrorist organization known as Nazi Germany. Bush was in so deep with Hitler that he kept doing business with the Nazis even after U.S. soldiers were being ripped apart by German lead.
 Ordinarily, this kind of thing might be called treason - but as we know, the niceties of law and morality don't apply to the Bushes of this world. Prescott's Nazi assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, but it was all hush-hush. After all, he was a pillar of the Establishment and had a good lawyer working for him: Allen Dulles, a founding father of the CIA.
 Now the CIA - which operates out of a building named for Prescott's son - will be murdering the designated victims of Prescott's grandson. What lovely historical symmetry, eh?
 Bush's license to kill leaves the meaning of &quot;terrorist&quot; and &quot;terrorist supporter&quot; deliberately vague. The definition is entirely up to the president: There is no legislative oversight, no judicial review, no public scrutiny. If he wants you dead, he can have you killed. It's as simple as that.
 This acceptance of extra-judicial murder degrades the American government to the level of moral savagery. It is the same &quot;principle&quot; underlying all terrorist activity: A threat to a group's interests is arbitrarily defined by its leaders, who then act arbitrarily to eliminate it. It is the same principle invoked by bin Laden to defend Muslim lands from &quot;infidels.&quot; It is the principle invoked by the Taliban when it executed moderate Afghan leader Abdul Haq last week, and by Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian doppelgangers as they trade &quot;targeted killings&quot; and civilian murders. It is the same principle invoked by Prescott's pal Hitler to defend Aryan &quot;purity&quot; by killing Jews.
 It is the principle of evildoers, men of blood, murderers and beasts. And it is now a guiding light of the &quot;civilized&quot; world.

TITLE: Pushing Through Our Masks
AUTHOR: By Chantal Rumble
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: &quot;I've learned to see the world through another's eyes, through the eyes of a painter,&quot; said 16-year-old Marina Semenyuk, a student at the St. Petersburg Pedagogical University, who is participating in an international exchange program called The St. Petersburg Project.
 The project, which was conceived as an artistic, cultural and educational exchange, is the brainchild of New York photographer Mark Scheflen and aims to foster communication and understanding through creativity. 
 The local project, in partnership with the Pedagogical University, calls for a series of exhibitions that will be shown in the New York area next year before returning home for display here during the city's tercentennial celebrations in 2003. The students are already busy creating video, photographic and fine-arts projects for the exhibitions, all of which are unified by the theme &quot;Individuality and Society: Life in Our City.&quot;
 &quot;As a group, [the St. Petersburg students] really work in a collective way,&quot; Scheflen notes. &quot;It's been a struggle for me. I keep trying to get them to work more independently, individually, to see themselves as their own entity. I'm trying to instill some self-confidence.&quot;
 Scheflen adds that one of the art forms explored by the project is self-cast, hand-painted masks, on which the students are currently working. Scheflen introduced the idea because he believes such masks encourage participants to get in touch with themselves, to think about their own identities and the images they project to others.
 However, his students surprised him in many cases by capturing images of St. Petersburg on their masks, rather than exploring themselves more directly. 
 Scheflen's students are also creating photographs and other works that focus on their personal environment and home life. Ultimately, the works will be gathered into English- and Russian-language books that will be included in the exhibition.
 &quot;The one thing that really impresses me,&quot; Scheflen says, &quot;is their gentleness, their delicacy, their ability to be really open with their emotions.&quot;
 Lena Krupenina, 16, applied for the exchange because she wanted to practice her English with a native speaker.
 &quot;But quickly the process and the project became really interesting to me,&quot; she said. &quot;We are learning to see ordinary things in art.&quot;
 When he is not busy making art in St. Petersburg, Scheflen, who is the artistic director of the New York-based Kiboko Projects, has a lot of other things going on. He has worked extensively with deaf students, both in the United States and in Africa. He also contributes to a program that uses creativity to develop literacy among New York immigrants. 
 Scheflen began travelling to Kenya in the 1980s and his international-exchange program grew out of this experience, combining his community-development work in the United States with his newfound connection to Africa. 
 St. Petersburg is the first non-African extension of the program (although Scheflen intends to add Bolivia and Vietnam someday), and Scheflen expects that it will continue to grow. The St. Petersburg Artists Union recently contacted him about developing a joint creative project in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. Scheflen hopes that this initiative will result in an exhibition of works on this subject by St. Petersburg artists being mounted in New York. 
 &quot;I am linking people all over the world,&quot; he says. &quot;They learn from seeing others. There is so much ignorance out there, so much hatred and racism, and that's what it is all about. It may sound naive, but it isn't. You have to operate on this level.&quot;

TITLE: The Scaffolding Comes Off Nevsky Landmark
AUTHOR: By Robert Coalson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Just recently the scaffolding came down from yet another of the long-running facade restorations going on downtown. Although some of the details are yet to be finished, St. Petersburg can once again revel in the full glory of the Yeliseyevsky store on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Malaya Sadovaya Ulitsa.
 Built in 1902-3 by the architect Gavriil Baranovsky, this imposing building features a main trading floor, a large restaurant and a theater, all of which are large and impressively detailed spaces. Fans of the building should make sure that they check out the interiors, which were all fully designed by Baranovsky and which have been largely preserved.
 The massive stained-glass windows and the allegorical statues (still undergoing restoration) on the Nevsky side of the building are distinctive for the city, although Baranovsky used similar devices in his reconstruction of the Yeliseyevsky store on Tverskaya Ulitsa in Moscow, which he carried out in 1901.
 Ever since it was built and continuing on to this day, Baranovsky's creation has been controversial. Many criticize the project for not fitting in properly with the other buildings on Nevsky, for not properly taking its context into consideration. One often hears the words &quot;disharmonious&quot; and &quot;eclectic&quot; used in discussions of this building.
 Of course, the building displays many characteristics of the modern style, which is fairly unusual for Nevsky - which was already built up by the time this style became fashionable - but which is strongly represented in other parts of the city. Many buildings from this period stand out visually because of their enormous windows, a feature that only became possible with the advent of steel-frame construction. Not far from Yeliseyevsky, the building of Dom Leningradskoi Torgovli (DLT, 21-23 Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa) and Dom Moda (21 Nevsky Prospect) are kindred spirits.
 Baranovsky also built a number of other buildings for the wealthy Yeliseyevsky brothers, including 64 Nab. Reki Fontanki and 14 Ulitsa Lo monosova, both of which are less flamboyant than the store on Nev sky, but also sport elegantly detailed facades.
 However, after the Nevsky store, Baranovsky's greatest achievement is probably the Buddhist temple at 91 Primorsky Prospect, which was built on money provided by the dalai lama from 1908 to 1915. The construction was considerably delayed by the government's ambivalence to the project. The building is widely regarded as an improbably successful combination of oriental and modern elements.
 Baranovsky was also the founder and editor of a magazine called Stroitel that did much to influence architecture and design in the first quarter of the 20th century. 
 However, Baranovsky was unable to build again after the revolution, and he died of starvation in St. Petersburg in 1920 at the age of 60.

TITLE: U.S. Braces for Possible Attacks on Bridges
AUTHOR: By Leon Drouin Keith
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - The FBI has alerted law enforcement agencies in eight Western states that it has unconfirmed information that terrorists may be targeting suspension bridges on the West Coast.
 The Justice Department confirmed the warning last week after California Governor Gray Davis said law enforcement officials had &quot;credible evidence&quot; that four California bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, may be targets of an attack.
 The FBI, however, said in its alert that authorities had not yet corroborated the information but decided to issue a warning. The warning was sent Wednesday to law enforcement agencies in California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Montana and Idaho.
 &quot;Reportedly, unspecified groups are targeting suspension bridges on the West Coast,&quot; the FBI said in the message. Six &quot;incidents&quot; were planned during rush hour between last Friday and Nov. 7, the agency said.
 &quot;The best preparation is to let terrorists know we know what you're up to, we're ready for you,&quot; Davis said.
 The bridges in California identified by Davis as possible targets were the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge, both in San Francisco, the Vincent Thomas Bridge at the Port of Los Angeles, and the Coronado Bridge in San Diego.
 Security around the bridges has been heightened and involves the National Guard, U.S. Coast Guard and California Highway Patrol, he said.
 The Golden Gate, a nearly 2-kilometer long suspension bridge, spans across the Golden Gate Strait at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. It carries some 110,000 vehicles per day. The 6-kilometer long San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge carries some 270,000 vehicles daily.

TITLE: Michelle Blows Through Cuba
AUTHOR: By Anita Snow
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HAVANA, Cuba - Hurricane Michelle rolled toward the Bahamas and away from Florida on Monday after hitting Cuba, which evacuated 750,000 people and shut down power for much of the island.
 After hitting Cuba with 200-kilometer-per-hour winds Sunday, a much-diminished Michelle was expected to strike the Bahamas capital of Nassau on Monday. The storm left 12 dead in Honduras, Nicaragua and Jamaica earlier last week.
 Conditions in Cuba were unclear because communications were nearly completely knocked out, but there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.
 Early Monday, more than half of the country remained without power, Radio Rebelde reported. Electric-company workers began driving around Havana at sunrise, checking damage and repairing fallen lines. Company officials told the radio station they hoped electricity would be restored to the capital later Monday.
 Rain and surging ocean water shut down Havana's Malecon coastal highway and extended several blocks into the residential neighborhood of Vedado. Many residents were ordered out of the neighborhood two days before the storm arrived.
 By Monday morning, the rain had stopped in most of Cuba, but there were reports of heavy downpours in Cuba's easternmost provinces of Santiago and Guantanamo as Michelle moved to the northeast.
 Michelle's sustained winds dropped to 120 kilometers per hour by midmorning and were expected to keep declining. A tropical-storm warning was lifted for the middle and lower Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas early Monday, but remained in effect for parts of Florida's Atlantic coast.
 &quot;It looks like Michelle is just giving us a fringe effect; I would not expect any significant damage,&quot; said Max Mayfield, director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.
 Michelle unleashed sheets of rain on the Bahamas early Monday, flooding houses and knocking out power.
 &quot;We have a car outside that is underwater,&quot; said Nassau resident Jackie Albury, standing in knee-deep water in her house, her pants rolled up and a few boxes floating by.
 A group of people were being evacuated from low-lying Cat Island, to the east of Nassau, the Bahamas Air Sea Rescue Association said.
 &quot;I didn't know it would be this bad,&quot; said Mavis Turnquest, who drove to a hurricane shelter with blankets, food, and her Bible in her car. &quot;I can only trust in God.&quot;
 On Sunday, Cuban leader Fidel Castro called an impromptu news conference in Havana, saying 750,000 of the country's 11 million people had been evacuated to shelters, friends' homes or other safe havens. He also noted that Michelle entered Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, on the southern Zapata Peninsula, comparing the hurricane to the invasion by a CIA-funded army of exiles that landed there in a botched attempt to overthrow him 40 years ago.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Ortega Trailing
 

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Reuters) - Nica ra gua's conservative ruling party took a strong lead over leftist Sandinista leader Da niel Ortega as early official results came in from Sunday's presidential election, officials said on Monday.
 Roberto Rivas, president of Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council, said results were in from 5 percent of polling stations and showed ruling Liberal Party candidate Enrique Bolanos with 53 percent support while Ortega trailed with 45.35 percent.
 Unofficial reports said that a "quick count" carried out by an independent observer group showed that Bolanos was headed for certain victory, and Liberal Party supporters began their celebrations early on Monday.
 Ortega swept to power in a 1979 revolution and his socialist government then fought U.S.-backed Contra rebels in a bitter civil war that killed some 30,000 people in the 1980s.
 He was ousted from office in 1990 elections and lost again six years later, but he kept control of his Sandinista party and, with the country in economic crisis, opinion polls had showed him running neck-and-neck with Bolanos going into Sunday's election. 
 
 
Fighting in the CAR
 

BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) - Presidential guard units and soldiers loyal to the Central African Republic's former army chief of staff clashed in the capital on Sunday, a day after government forces tried to arrest ousted General Francois Bozize.
 Government units fired mortars toward the northern sections of Bangui, where about 300 soldiers loyal to Bozize - who was fired from his post two weeks ago - had taken up positions on Saturday. Intermittent clashes continued through the day.
 Witnesses said Bozize's soldiers seemed to be moving toward President Ange-Felix Patasse's residence. They were 15 kilometers from his villa by nightfall. Libyan troops, flown in to help quell a failed coup attempt in May, were seen guarding Patasse's residence.
 Patasse has held power since he won elections in 1993, ending the 12-year military dictatorship of General Andre Kolingba.
 
 
U.S. Scolds Arafat
 

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - The U.S. ambassador to Israel said Monday that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat must do more to crack down on Pa les tinian militants - including shutting down some groups - and decide "where he stands on questions relating to terrorism."
 "We've had some very serious conversations with him and communications at a very senior level ... saying that words are not enough to prove that one is against terrorism. It requires actions," Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer told a meeting of the Foreign Press Association in Tel Aviv.
 Kurtzer's comments follow those of another senior U.S. official, David Satterfield, who said Friday that the Palestinian uprising had turned into "an ongoing campaign of terror." Satterfield is deputy assistant secretary of state for the Near East.
 "There are now specific actions that the Palestinian Authority will need to take," Kurtzer said. "Number one is to act against the organizations themselves, to shut them down, to arrest those who have been responsible for acts of terrorism, to prosecute those people in a fair way."
 
 
Cyanide Spill
 

BEIJING (AP) - Tons of deadly cyanide leaked into a river in central China after a truck overturned, state media and local officials said Monday. Animals had been poisoned, and at least one person had been sickened by the contamination.
 The truck carrying 11 tons of liquid sodium cyanide overturned Thursday on a rutted road along a tributary of the Luohe River, said a county government official in Luoning, Henan province, about 800 kilometers southwest of Beijing.
 Henan authorities erected a pair of dams to contain the spill, said the official, who gave only his surname, Yang. One man fell ill after he ate sweet potatoes washed in contaminated water. Yang said the man has now recovered.
 The truck driver, who fled after the accident, has been detained, Yang said. A representative from a gold mine that bought the cyanide and four other men are also being held, he said. Mines use cyanide to extract metals from ore.
 
 
Musharraf to London
 

LONDON (AP) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led campaign against Afghani stan, will meet with Prime Minister Tony Blair in London this week, Blair's office said Monday.
 The two leaders plan to meet at Blair's Downing Street office on Thursday evening, the prime minister's office said. No other details were immediately available.
 The meeting comes a day after Blair is to fly to Washington on a supersonic Concorde jet for talks with U.S. President George W. Bush.
 Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Blair has mounted an international diplomatic blitz to shore up support for the U.S.-led military campaign against Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
 Musharraf, whose country was once the Taliban's staunchest ally, has joined the U.S.-led coalition and is allowing U.S. planes to use its airspace and bases for operations in Afghanistan.
 
 
Kashmir Suicide Squad
 

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Four Indian soldiers and a separatist militant were killed and five other soldiers wounded Sunday when a suicide squad of a Pakistan-based group stormed an army camp in Kashmir, police and army officials said.
 "Militants fired on an army camp at Dialgam and went inside the camp while firing and hurling grenades early today," a police official said. "The fire fight inside the camp was continuing as the latest reports came in."
 An Indian-Army statement said four soldiers and one militant were killed in the incident.
 "In the ensuing encounter, security forces killed one Pakistani terrorist. Four security personnel were killed," it said.
 But the militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said eight Indian soldiers were killed and none of its members had died. Dialgam lies in Anantnag district 60 kilometers south of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
 At least a dozen militant groups are fighting New Delhi's rule in India's only Muslim-majority state, where officials say about 30,000 people have died in nearly 12 years of conflict.
 Separatists put the toll closer to 80,000. 



TITLE: Diamond Comeback Gives Arizona the Title
AUTHOR: By Ben Walker
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHOENIX - Curt Schilling sat frozen in the dugout.
 Randy Johnson, not far away, couldn't believe his eyes.
 Arizona fans, stunned and silent moments earlier, were on their feet, screaming and hoping for one more twist in an incredible World Series.
 Boy, did they get one.
 Luis Gonzalez hit an RBI single off Mariano Rivera to cap a two-run rally in the bottom of the ninth, and the Diamondbacks won their first championship by beating the New York Yankees 3-2 in Game 7 on Sunday night - one of the greatest comebacks of all time.
 &quot;I wouldn't move on the bench. I wanted to get up and watch for the whole inning, but I was playing the luck seat,&quot; said Schilling, who shared the MVP award with Johnson.
 &quot;It seemed pretty surreal to me, watching this all develop,&quot; Johnson said.
 The Yankees were only two outs from their fourth straight championship and fifth in six years when it suddenly fell apart.
 Tony Womack tied it with an RBI double and Craig Counsell was hit by a pitch to load the bases with one out. Gonzalez, choking up on the bat for the first time this year, blooped a soft single to centerfield.
 &quot;When you're a little kid, you think about the seventh game of the World Series,&quot; Gonzalez said. &quot;It didn't matter how the hit came.&quot;
 Rivera, who had saved 23 straight postseason games, could do nothing but watch the ball fall in to end the Yankees' run.
 &quot;That's baseball,&quot; Rivera said. &quot;There's nothing I can do about it.&quot;
 The Yankees were trying to become the third team in history to win four titles in a row. The Bronx Bombers did it from 1936 to 1939 and from 1949 to 1953.
 &quot;We're obviously disappointed in the result, but not the effort,&quot; Yankees manager Joe Torre said.
 When the Yankees were close to winning, some people started setting up the clubhouse for a celebration. Owner George Steinbrenner threw them out.
 &quot;I'm proud of my team. We played our hearts out. It was a very tough loss. I will be a gracious loser,&quot; he said. &quot;We'll be back. Mark that down. We'll be back.
 &quot;I'm not a good loser,&quot; he said.
 What began as a November duel between Schilling and Roger Clemens climaxed with the Diamondbacks winning the title in just their fourth year of existence.
 It was the fastest rise in history, breaking the mark of five years set by the 1997 Marlins. That Florida team was the last to win when trailing in the ninth inning of a Game 7, doing it against Cleveland.
 The Diamondbacks bounced back from two of the toughest losses in Series history. They dropped Games 4 and 5 at Yankee Stadium, blowing two-run leads in the bottom of the ninth both times.
 Johnson, at 38, earned the victory in relief. He also won Game 6 on Saturday night, a 15-2 romp.
 Johnson was 3-0, making him the first pitcher to win three times in a Series since Detroit's Mickey Lolich in 1968. The Big Unit won five times in this postseason.
 Johnson, Schilling and several Arizona old-timers, including Gonzalez, Mark Grace, Matt Williams and Mike Morgan, won their first championship ring.
 &quot;We went through sports' greatest dynasty to win our first World Series,&quot; Schilling said.
 Arizona's Bob Brenly became the first manager to win the championship in his first year since Ralph Houk did it with the Yankees in 1961.
 &quot;I felt that we outplayed them,&quot; Brenly said.
 The Diamondbacks outscored New York 37-14 in the Series in which the home team won every game, just the third time that has ever happened.
 The Yankees, the team that would not give up, nearly won it for the city that would not give in. A highly motivated bunch, they showed extra resolve after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York.
 &quot;That was the greatest Game 7 ever,&quot; said New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who went to the Diamondbacks locker room to offer his congratulations to them. &quot;As a Yankees fan, I wish it turned out differently.&quot;
 The Yankees were a home-run swing away from elimination in the first round against Oakland, and lost the first two games at Bank One Ballpark.
 But back in the desert, they looked lost.
 Alfonso Soriano's solo homer off Schilling put New York ahead 2-1 in the eighth. Rivera, the most dominant reliever in postseason history, set down the Diamondbacks in the bottom half.
 Then in the ninth, Arizona rallied.
 Grace led off with a single and Rivera threw away Damian Miller's bunt for an error, putting runners at first and second.
 Jay Bell bunted into a force play at third, but Womack lined a tying double to the right-field corner. Counsell, who scored the winning run in Game 7 with Florida in 1997, was hit by a pitch.
 With the infield in, Gonzalez hit it hard enough for a game-winning single that set off fireworks, pounding music and deafening cheers.
 The on-field trophy celebration was still going more than an hour later.
 Rivera had pitched six scoreless innings in the Series before Arizona won.
 &quot;That was the one guy we wanted to stay away from the whole World Series,&quot; Gonzalez said. &quot;We got him the one time it counted.&quot;
 Schilling was nearly untouchable at the start. The first pitcher to start three games in a Series since Minnesota's Jack Morris in 1991, he once again showed no ill effects from working on three days' rest.
 Schilling allowed only one hitter to reach through six innings, and even that guy did not last long on the bases. Paul O'Neill, playing his final game before retiring at 38, was thrown out trying to stretch a double into a triple in the first.
 But given a 1-0 lead in the sixth on Danny Bautista's RBI double, Schilling gave it back.
 Schilling retired 16 straight hitters before slumping Derek Jeter led off with a single and O'Neill followed with a single in front of center fielder Steve Finley.
 One out later, Tino Martinez tied it with an RBI single.
 Clemens, pitching the biggest game of his great career, worked out of several early jams. The Diamondbacks caught up to him in the sixth after Finley led off with a single.
 Bautista was next, and many people thought the man with five RBIs in Saturday's 15-2 romp would bunt. Brenly once again crossed up his critics and let Bautista swing away, and it worked.
 Bautista hit a drive into the left-center gap, and Clemens simply stood on the mound with his right hand on hip, watching the play unfold.
 Clemens was pulled after 6 1-3 innings with 10 strikeouts. He left without a Game 7 victory, the only thing missing on his Hall of Fame resume.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Marathon Records Fall
 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tesfaye Jifar of Ethiopia and Margaret Okayo of Kenya ran the fastest-ever New York City Ma ra thons in an emotional 32nd running of the race through all five boroughs of the city Sunday.
 Jifar, who lost the sight in his right eye when he was kicked by a bull on his family farm at age 12, put on a burst with about three miles to go to leave Japhet Kosgei of Kenya behind and win the race in 2 hours, 7 minutes, 43 seconds.
 It marked the first marathon victory for the 25-year-old, who was seventh at this year's world championships, and earned the Ethiopian a first prize of $80,000, a $50,000 bonus for breaking the course record, and a new car.
 "I am proud to be the first Ethiopian to win this race," said Jifar, who ran a scorching 2:06:49 in finishing second at the Amsterdam Marathon in 1999.
 Okayo surged into the lead just after the halfway point and never looked back after crossing the Queensboro Bridge to reach Manhattan as she won the women's race in 2:24:21, 19 seconds faster than the 1992 mark set by Australian Lisa Ondieki.
 The 25-year-old Okayo, who earlier this year won the Rock 'N' Roll Marathon in San Diego after finishing third in last year's New York event, claimed the top prize of $80,000, a bonus of $35,000 for setting a course record, and a new car.
 
 
3,000 Pay Respects
 

LA CLUSAZ, France (Reuters) - More than 3,000 mourners packed this tiny Alpine village Monday to bid an emotional farewell to France's top woman skier Re gine Cavag noud, who was killed last week in a training accident in Austria.
 More than 600 people, including family, friends and national figures from the worlds of politics and sport, filled the small church of Sainte Foy for the funeral of the women's super-G world champion.
 Another 2,500 or so mourners, including the entire French Alpine skiing team, assembled under gray skies in the village square to follow the service on a television screen.
 Cavagnoud died at the age of 31 in Innsbruck last Wednesday as a result of severe brain injuries sustained when she collided at high speed with German trainer Markus Anwander during downhill practice on the Pitz Valley glacier two days earlier.
 A giant photograph of a beaming Cavagnoud proudly holding up the gold medal she won at the world championships decorated the nave of the church.
 Dignitaries at the service included French sports minister Marie-George Buffet and national skiing federation president Bernard Chevalier. 
 
 
Davenport Grabs No. 1
 

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - American Lindsay Davenport reclaimed the world no.1 ranking but then limped off as the women's season came to an unsatisfactory end at the WTA Championships on Sunday.
 One day earlier the 25-year-old had shrugged off a spirited challenge from Belgian teenager Kim Clijsters in the semifinals to finish the year in top spot for the second time in her career.
 However, she seemed rather subdued at the prospect of knocking compatriot Jennifer Capriati off the top when the final WTA rankings were officially released on Monday.
 "I know it sounds terrible, but I don't really care," the former Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion said. 
 "To get there the first time was an amazing feeling, but this is different because I've been no. 1 off and on for a few years."
 Australian and French Open champion Capriati was the romantics' favourite to finish the year on top after she completed her fairytale comeback by becoming world no. 1 last month.
 The former teenage sensation, whose career was derailed when she lost interest in the sport and dabbled in drugs, would have remained in the driving seat had she reached the final in Munich.
 But she was hampered by fever and a throat infection when she lost to France's Sandrine Testud in the quarter-finals on Friday, leaving Davenport needing to beat Clijsters to take over.
 
 
Next Stop: Sydney
 

PARIS (Reuters) - France's Sebastien Grosjean crowned a superb season when he beat Yevgeny Kafelnikov 7-6, 6-1, 6-7, 6-4 to win the Paris Masters Series on Sunday, a result that puts him into the season-ending Masters Cup.
 "I had had great performances all year in big tournaments but without a win," said Grosjean, whose only previous title came at Nottingham, England, last year.
 "I wanted badly to win a big trophy. To do it here in Paris, it's formidable," he added.
 Grosjean reached the semifinals at the Australian Open and the French Open this season as well as in two other Masters Series tournaments, but had yet to succeed in a final.
 The Russian had beaten him three times before but there was little he could do on Sunday.
 Since the start of the season, Grosjean had made reaching the Masters Cup his main goal. He achieved it in style.
 The Frenchman had no choice but to win the $2.95 million Bercy event to achieve his aim.
 Grosjean had already pleased his home fans by reaching the last four at the French Open, beating defending champion Andre Agassi in the quarter-finals.
 Grosjean is the second Frenchman to win the indoor Parisian tournament after Guy Forget.
 
 
Cougars Climbing Poll
 

NEW YORK (AP) - BYU is making a move in the AP media college football poll.
 The Cougars (9-0), one of three teams without a loss, cracked the top 10 for the first time in five years at No. 9 in The Associated Press Top 25 poll.
 Miami (7-0) and Nebraska (10-0), the other major college unbeatens, remained No. 1 and No. 2 in the poll, and Oklahoma, Florida and Texas held steady from a week ago at Nos. 3, 4, and 5.
 BYU, which beat Colorado State 56-34 last Thursday night, finished No. 5 in the final poll of the 1996 season.
 Tennessee moved up a spot to No. 6, followed by No. 7 Oregon, No. 8 Washington, No. 9 BYU, No. 10 Florida State, No. 11 Washington State, No. 12 Michigan, No. 13 Maryland, No. 14 South Carolina, No. 15 Illinois, No. 16 Stanford, No. 17 UCLA, No. 18 Syracuse, No. 19 Georgia and No. 20 Georgia Tech.
 Colorado was No. 21, followed by No. 22 Michigan State, No. 23 Virginia Tech, No. 24 Auburn and No. 25 Louisville.