SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #726 (93), Friday, November 30, 2001
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TITLE: Another Vice Governor Faces Probe
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A criminal case has been initiated against acting Vice Governor Alexander Po tek hin, who heads the City Hall Media Committee, and his deputy, Dmitry Solonnikov, officials from the Northwest District Prosecutor's Office announced this week.
 Although no charges have been filed, prosecutors said that the two officials would be charged soon on counts of illegal business activity. Federal law bans public officials from engaging in private commercial activity. The investigation was formally initiated on Nov. 21.
 "We have had some difficulties here linked to the official registration of some necessary documents. As soon as this is completed, we will file charges," said Vladimir Goltsmer, spokesperson for the Northwest District Prosecutor's Office, on Wednesday.
 "The case stems from materials derived from another case and concerns Potekhin's activities in 1999 and 2000," Goltsmer said. 
 He added that the original investigation had been initiated against Solonnikov, who was arrested in October 2000 and charged with embezzling public funds. He was released last Dec. 29 after paying a 130,000-ruble bond ($4,300) and signing a promise not to leave the city pending his trail, which is scheduled to begin next month.
 "Despite the fact that it is against the law, [Potekhin and Solonnikov] were participating in a business directly as well as through other persons [acting on their behalf]," Goltsmer said.
 Goltsmer refused to identify the name of the company involved, but the newspaper Kommersant reported Wed nes day that it is the Municipal Center to Develop Public Relations, a non-commercial organization created by an acquaintance of Solonnikov's in 1999. The newspaper reported that the company was regularly employed by the City Hall Media Committee to conduct public-opinion polls. 
 In May 2000, the company received 1.2 million rubles ($40,000) of budget funds to conduct a survey on "the social and economic position of the Northwest region," Kommersant reported.
 Asked about the Kommersant report, Goltsmer refused to confirm or deny the information. "I can't talk about it," he said.
 The Municipal Center to Develop Public Relations could not be reached for comment on Wednesday or Thursday.
 Potekhin, however, in a statement issued by the City Hall press office Tuesday, denied wrongdoing.
 "We were allegedly charged with illegal business activity, but I must say that I was never involved with any business, since that would contradict the status of a state employee," Potekhin was quoted as saying. He also said that the prosecutor's office had not spoken to him directly yet.
 "I must abstain from any comment ... because I don't know any more about the case than journalists do," he said, according to the statement.
 According to Article 289 of the Criminal Code, anyone found guilty of "illegal participation in a business activity" would face suspension from state employment and a fine of up to 20,000 rubles ($660) or two years in prison.
 Potekhin is the second top official in Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's administration to come under investigation in recent weeks. At the beginning of the month, Yakovlev suspended his long-time political ally, Vice Governor Valery Malyshev, after prosecutors filed abuse-of-office charges against him on Oct. 25.
 Malyshev was originally charged in July with "receiving a particularly large bribe." Although the prosecutor's office has refused to reveal details of the charges, the media at the time reported that the indictment stemmed from an interest-free loan that Malyshev allegedly received from Exi-Bank. The term for the investigation of Malyshev's case has been extended to Dec. 3.
 "The investigation might be completed by that date, but not everything depends on us. There's no guarantee that the accused or his lawyers won't request further examination of the case," Goltsmer said.
 As was the case when charges were filed against Malyshev, the latest accusations unleashed a volley of criticism from City Hall.
 "The main question here is why the prosecutor's office is talking publicly about something when it hasn't even talked to the suspect yet," said Ya kov lev's spokesperson, Alexander Afa na si ev, on Wednesday. "That's how our valorous prosecutor's office works, the one that has solved so many prominent cases," he added sarcastically.
 Representatives of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly, who have long been critical of Potekhin, also voiced skepticism about the prosecutors' motives.
 "I have no sympathy for Potekhin, but he is not so stupid that he would sign agreements in his own name to purchase or deliver something for his own needs," said Olga Pokrovskaya, the Yabloko spokesperson at the Legislative Assembly. "I think this is another empty case pursued for only one reason: to harass the governor and Potekhin once again."
 "Our prosecutor's office has often been shown to be a tool for settling scores. I'm fed up with these empty bubbles," Pokrovskaya added. "The time has come for the prosecutor's office to give some explanations."
 A spokesperson for Northwest District Governor General Viktor Cher ke sov, President Vladimir Putin's local representative, was also puzzled.
 "I'm surprised, to be honest," said spokesperson Aleksei Gutsailo. "I've heard only good things about Potekhin with just a few exceptions."

TITLE: Helping the Littlest Victims of HIV/AIDS
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two-year-old Zhenya sways silently and incessantly back and forth while sitting at a table, a habit he picked up while spending his entire life in a special ward of St. Petersburg Children's Hospital No. 3 for children born to HIV-positive mothers.
 Now, little Zhenya is one of 17 children living in a special orphanage for such children who have been abandoned by their parents that opened here in October. According to city officials, there are now more than 50 such children in the city.
 So far, the diagnosis for Zhenya and the rest of the children at the orphanage looks positive. Initial blood tests from all of the children, who range in age from four months to two years, are HIV negative. A final test is yet to be done to confirm that they are free of the deadly virus that causes AIDS.
 About 25 percent of babies born to HIV-positive mothers contract the virus themselves, and that risk can be substantially lowered if the mothers receive proper care during pregnancy.
 "Most of these kids' mothers, though, didn't have such treatment because they were mostly drug users and didn't care about anything like that," said Olga Lozovator, the orphanage's head doctor.
 The first known instance of an HIV-positive woman giving birth in St. Petersburg occurred in 1988. In 1998, 16 such births were registered. In 1999, there were 22 and last year, 54. The Botkin Hospital, the city's leading hospital treating infectious diseases, opened a special maternity ward for such women.
 Overall, the city registered 9,858 new cases of HIV infection in the first nine months of this year, nearly doubling last year's figure of 5,417 and dwarfing the 1999 figure of 440 cases. This infection rate is among the highest in the country, officials said. One hundred forty people have died of AIDS in St. Petersburg.
 Maria Kurilskaya, the city pediatrician who oversees the care for the children born to HIV-positive mothers, said that there are currently just over 100 of them. Forty-one of them have been abandoned by their parents, she said.
 But until this October, there was no special place for these children, most of whom became semi-permanent residents of local children's hospitals.
 "There was no way that they could keep on living like that," Lozovator said.
 So the city Health Committee organized a separate orphanage for these children, moving the children from city orphanage No. 10 out to other facilities. Initially, the staff at the orphanage was uncertain about working with their new charges, but ultimately most of them decided to stay and help them.
 "I had second thoughts about staying, especially because my husband was worried about me," said nurse Violetta Nikitina. "But later I put these doubts aside, and I'm not afraid anymore to work with these children."
 Dasha, another resident of the orphanage, is 14 months old and has two HIV-negative test results. Her grandmother comes to visit her regularly and says that she is planning to take the baby home when her final test result comes in. Dasha's mother has never seen her.
 Lozovator stresses that life at the orphanage is fairly routine. The children eat and sleep, play and go for walks. However, nurses don gloves to wash the children or to give them injections. Their toys are regularly disinfected.
 The orphanage is expecting Hospital No. 3 to send another 20 children, all under the age of three, within the next few months. The HIV status of most of them is uncertain, although some are HIV-positive. Lozovator doesn't know what the fate of these children will be. 
 "Healthy children will be sent to ordinary orphanages, but we have already had cases of those orphanages refusing to take any children from us," she said.
 
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 A conference of St. Petersburg health-care workers and NGO representatives was held this week to raise AIDS awareness on the eve of International AIDS Day, Dec. 1. 
 Nikolai Panchenko, head of the Help AIDS Patients NGO, told the conference that his organization has begun handing out free condoms to encouraging the practice of safe sex. His organization provides a range of assistance to HIV-positive individuals.
 The idea of handing out condoms was controversial, as it has been around the world. Representatives of an organization called the Teachers' Initiatives Center argued that the AIDS crisis was caused primarily by the collapse of the country's morals. They blamed the media for bringing "too much negative information" and advocated promoting abstinence outside of marriage. 
 Yet another local organization, the AIDS Profilax Center, has partnered with the St. Petersburg Electro-Technical Institute to create computer games that teach children about AIDS while entertaining them. In one of these games, an "Aggressor Army" of viruses fights against a "Defense Army" of immune-system cells.
 "We should keep track of the interests of the younger generation and find ways to educate them that are attractive to them," said Alla Davydova, head of the AIDS Profilax Center.

TITLE: HIV Rate Soaring in Former Soviet Bloc
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - HIV is spreading faster in the former Soviet bloc than anywhere else in the world, with the numbers in Russia almost doubling annually since 1998, according to a UN report released Wednesday.
 "The epidemic is still in its early phase in Eastern Europe and it will get worse before it gets better," Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS, or UNAIDS, said while releasing the report in Moscow.
 The highest rate in the region is in Ukraine, where 1 percent of the adult population is HIV-positive, he said.
 In 1995, only 200 cases of HIV infection had been reported in Russia, but so far this year 75,000 new cases have been recorded, Piot said. Russian health officials said they feared the number could reach 100,000 by the end of the year, compared to 56,000 last year.
 Vadim Pok rov sky, head of the Federal AIDS Center, said the true number of people infected this year could be as high as 1 million, since people are often diagnosed only after they have become sick, usually more than five years after infection.
 "Most [infected] people don't know they are infected," he said at a news conference Monday. 
 Since the AIDS epidemic began 20 years ago, more than 20 million people have died and about 40 million are now HIV positive. AIDS is the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa and is the world's fourth-leading killer. 
 Russia's figures pale by comparison. Since 1987, more than 163,000 cases of HIV have been registered and 1,655 patients have died, according to the State Statistics Committee. But while the spread of HIV has peaked in most Western countries, the epidemic has taken off in Russia, and most of the new infections are in young people. "It is a teenage epidemic - teenagers experimenting with drugs, teenagers experimenting with sex," Piot said.
 Intravenous drug use is the source of 93 percent of all HIV cases diagnosed in Russia, Pokrovsky said, but many drug users fund their habit through prostitution and the rate of infection from heterosexual contact is growing. The epidemic among drug users started in Kaliningrad and spread to Nizh ny Novgorod and Tver before hitting the country's largest centers, he added.
 According to the State Statistics Committee, the Moscow region is the administrative region with the highest number of HIV cases (15,746), followed by Moscow (13,926), the Sverdlovsk region (12,187) and St. Petersburg (11,973). 
 In terms of prevalence per 100,000 people, the Irkutsk region leads with 398, followed by Khanty-Mansiisk (376), Kaliningrad (367) and Samara (339). 
 Pokrovsky said federal funding for AIDS prevention and treatment was far too little - about 120 million rubles ($4 million) this year, with little prospect of a significant increase next year.
 "The fate of millions of people is at stake," Pokrovsky said.
 With treatment for HIV-positive patients running to thousands of dollars a month, Russia is unable to provide the medication that is available in the West.
 Pokrovsky called on pharmaceutical companies to follow the example of Merck Sharp & Dohme, which last week reduced the cost of its AIDS treatments to Russia by two-thirds.

TITLE: Mironov in Line for Upper Chamber Job
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A pro-Kremlin group of representatives in the Federation Council has announced its intention to nominate Sergei Mironov, former vice speaker of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, to succeed the chamber's current speaker, Oryol Region Governor Yegor Stroyev.
 Although the chamber will vote on the nomination on Dec. 5, Mironov's victory seems likely, since the group that nominated him is made up of 100 of the chamber's 178 senators.
 "[Mironov] has significant experience in parliamentary and legislative work and could facilitate cooperation between the upper chamber of parliament, the State Duma and the president," said Valery Goreglyad, a Federation Council senator representing the Sakhalin Region who named Mironov, in an interview Wednesday.
 Mironov told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday only that the right to choose a speaker was the prerogative of Federation Council senators.
 Mironov was elected to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly in 1994 and became vice speaker in 2000. The same year, he became involved in Vladimir Putin's presidential campaign, working for four months as Putin's local representative and as the deputy head of his St. Petersburg campaign headquarters.
 "I believe that Mironov maintained close contact with Vladimir Putin even after he left City Hall when [Governor Vla dimir] Yakovlev defeated [Anatoly] Sob chak [in 1996]. This, I think, gained him Putin's trust," said Viktor Yevtukhov, a Legislative Assembly deputy from the pro-Kremlin Unity faction, on Thursday.
 "I have no doubt that he is going to be elected," he said. 
 Aleksei Musakov, a local political analyst and head of the St. Petersburg Center for Regional Development, agreed.
 "Why Mironov? At a time when Pu tin's position was not like it is now, he kept being loyal to people close to Pu tin, which was dangerous considering the City Hall staff in 1997 and 1998," Mu sakov said. "Putin has always promoted people like this."
 Political analysts agreed that the other candidate for the post, Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko, has no chance to win the vote.
 "Since the [nominating] faction controls more then 50 percent of the votes, the question looks decided to me," said Ro man Mo gi lev sky, head of Gallup St. Petersburg media-research company.
 "Such a faction wouldn't come out with such a decision just like that. There were ... consultations with the presidential administration beforehand," Mogilevsky said.
 However, Lyudmila Krylova, a spokesperson for the presidential administration, denied that Putin had discussed the issue with Mironov.
 "[Mironov and Putin] have probably met since they have common interests and both are from [St. Petersburg], but they have not discussed that," she said Thursday.
 Local politicians were quick to endorse Mironov's candidacy. 
 "I worked with him for six years and he always kept his word," said Legislative Assembly Deputy Konstantin Serov. 
 Boris Vishnevsky, a deputy from the Yab loko faction, said that Mironov would stand out from the majority of Federation Council senators, "many of whom don't know a thing about legislative work."
 "Some of them can't even find the regions they represent on a map since [they] are either former government officials who worked in Moscow or oligarchs," he said. He pointed to the former chief of the General Staff, Valery Ma nilov, who represents the Primorsky Region and former Le ningrad Oblast Governor Va dim Gustov, who now represents the Vla dimir Region.
 "There are many senators like that who have no clue about the regions they represent," Vishnevsky said.
 Since Putin became president in March 2000, more than 40 high-ranking officials and several hundred lesser figures have been appointed by his administration from St. Petersburg, forming the so-called St. Petersburg elite surrounding the president.
 "History has many examples like that. Take the Dnepropetrovsk elite [that formed around former Soviet Communist Party boss Leonid Brezhnev], for instance. Power is always looking for ways to rely on personal trust," said Leonid Kesselman, a political analyst with the sociology department of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

TITLE: Cabinet Calls Rail Minister to Carpet
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Embattled Railways Minister Nikolai Aksyonenko was recalled from vacation Wednesday for a one-day cabinet meeting where he was promptly lambasted for his investment plans for the railroad.
 Meanwhile, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said a criminal investigation into charges Aksyonenko abused his office is expected to wind up shortly, suggesting that the minister could soon see his day in court.
 "We have no doubt about the evidence gathered for this case," Ustinov was quoted by Interfax as saying. Prosecutors intend "to complete this investigation by the end of this year." 
 A criminal investigation was opened on Oct. 22 into Aksyonenko, one of the most influential cabinet members, and he was charged with abuse of office. Prosecutors say his conduct cost the government 70 million rubles ($2.3 million).
 If found guilty, Aksyonenko faces three to 10 years imprisonment.
 Shortly after the criminal investigation was opened, Aksyonenko left Moscow for a vacation until Dec. 7.
 However, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov ordered Aksyonenko to show up Wednesday for a cabinet meeting to discuss the Railways Ministry's 2002 investment program.
 Trade Minister Andrei Sharonov demanded that the program be altered to coincide "with the general line of structural reforms, including the aspects of finding real sources of financing," RosBusinessConsulting reported.
 The Railways Ministry investment plan calls for 110 billion rubles ($3.7 billion) to come through amortization funds and 13 billion rubles ($434.3 million) to come from net profit.
 One point in the program that drew the cabinet's ire was the earmarking of funds for the construction of a bridge from the Far East mainland to Sakhalin Island, said a spokesperson at the Economic Development and Trade Ministry. That project was not supposed to even be considered by the cabinet until February.
 After three hours of discussion, Kasy anov said a more effective investment program was clearly needed and instructed the Railways Ministry, Finance Ministry, Tax Ministry and Economic Development and Trade Ministry to go back to the drawing board.
 After the cabinet meeting, Aksyonenko refused to comment about the criminal investigation.
 But political analysts said it looked increasingly certain that Aksyonenko was on his way out of office.
 "It seems like the president has made his choice, " said Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the Center for Strategic Studies. 
 Piontkovsky said it was unlikely that the railways minister would be imprisoned. "They don't want blood. They need control over the financial resources," he said.
 Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst at Moscow's Carnegie Center, said Aksyonenko was probably ordered to show up Wednesday so President Vladimir Putin's team to portray him as a bad manager in a ministry where he had previously received praise for his work.
 Kasyanov, who like Aksyonenko belongs to former President Boris Yelt sin's team, does not have the same agenda, Ryabov said.
 Despite the tongue-lashing Aksyonenko got at the meeting, Kasyanov came out in defense of the minister in an interview published Wednesday.
 "I haven't found anything criminal about [the investigation]," Kasyanov was quoted by Argumenti i Fakti as saying.
 "I don't understand," he added. "Aksyonenko is a good minister."

TITLE: UN Seeks $32M in Aid For Chechen Refugees
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Seven United Nations agencies launched a joint appeal to donor countries Tuesday for $32 million to cover UN humanitarian operations in the North Caucasus.
 Funds raised are to be spent on legal protection, food, health, education, water and sanitation for some 600,000 Chechen refugees, the UN's acting humanitarian-affairs coordinator in Russia, Rosemary McCreery, told journalists Tuesday.
 The United Nations plans to send 70 percent of the humanitarian aid to Chechnya, with the remainder going to 160,000 Chechen refugees in tent camps in neighboring Ingushetia.
 "We respect the principle of the voluntary return of Chechen internally displaced people to their homes," said McCreery, adding that the Russian government shares these views.
 Last year, the United Nations appealed for $42.5 million and 90 percent of that sum was granted by the governments of the United States, Canada and countries of European Union and Arab League. McCreery said the Russian government, although not a donor, was the largest contributor of humanitarian aid for Chechen refugees and in restoring Chechnya's economy.
 McCreery said she had already presented the appeal to representatives of donor countries, and was "extremely satisfied with donors' response." 
 The security situation in the North Caucasus is a major constraint for moving the UN-led operation to the territory of Chechnya, McCreery said. However, she said, UN agencies, together with the Chechen administration, are seeking a way to create a safe UN presence in Grozny.
 
 *************************
 Federal forces began a large-scale operation Tuesday to uncover weapons and ammunition caches in Grozny, Interfax reported.
 Other large-scale special operations had already been under way in and near the republic's mountains for the past few days. Participants had been tasked with locating and neutralizing the main rebel leaders and cutting the channels through which the guerrillas receive financial support from abroad. They were also destroying bases that the rebels had prepared for winter.
 About 50 people were detained on suspicion of rebel ties on Monday and Tuesday in the towns of Serzhen-Yurt, Chiri-Yurt, Noviye and Stariye Atagi and Zakan-Yurt, a Chechen government official said, and ITAR-Tass reported that 21 rebels had been killed. 
 Defense Ministry units, interior troops and special services had confiscated six machine guns, some 6,000 cartridges, grenades, mines and shells. In one house, 2,500 kilos of explosives were found.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: NATO Chief in Baltics 
 

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) - NATO Secretary General Lord Georege Robertson stopped in Estonia for a brief visit Thursday amid growing optimism that the three Baltic states now have a good chance of entering the alliance. 
 The Baltic states, whose membership bids have been seen as potentially contentious because of Russian opposition, say they're confident they'll be invited to join during next year's NATO summit in Prague. 
 "The signals are strong. We're optimistic the year 2002 will be the year of Baltic accession," said Lithuanian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Petras Zapolskas. Robertson was meeting with Estonia's president, prime minister and defense officials. 
 Estonian leaders were encouraged by a 372-46 vote in the U.S. Congress earlier this month to grant $55 million in security assistance to NATO candidates, including Baltic neighbors Latvia and Lithuania. 
 "You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that you don't give money to countries that you don't want in NATO," Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Ilves said. 
 
 
Faulty Docking
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian cargo craft has failed to complete docking with the International Space Station, creating technical difficulties for the launch of the U.S. Endeavor, Mission Control said Thursday. 
 "They have docked, but there is no seal linking the two ships," a spokesperson for Mission Control said. 
 "The Americans are also waiting for our decision to decide whether to launch their shuttle," she said, adding the decision would be made by the end of the day.
 The vessel, carrying food, fuel and equipment for the Zarya module, docked Wednesday night with the ISS. It had lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday. 
 The U.S. shuttle was scheduled to be launched Friday.
 
 
U.S. Cash for Ukraine
 

KIEV (AP) - The U.S. Embassy has announced a $200,000 assistance program to help improve the Internet capacity of Ukrainian regional print media. 
 The grant was announced by Ambassador Carlos Pascual and U.S. Assistance Coordinator for Europe and Eurasia William Taylor, the embassy said Wednesday in a statement. 
 The program opens a national competition for local non-governmental newspapers and seeks up to 25 winners. It will fund new Internet connections or upgrade existing information Web sites and cover the cost of new equipment, training and online charges, the statement said. 
 The program is controlled by the U.S. Media Fund, created this year amid concerns about the independence of Ukrainian media. 



TITLE: Report: Corruption Rife at Central Bank
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - An independent study released Tuesday warns of the deep-reaching roots feeding corruption at the Central Bank.
 "The Central Bank as an independent, absolutely opaque and uncontrolled administrative-financial system did not arise by chance or overnight," said the authors of the study - the Mos cow Carnegie Center and Dmitry Vasilyev, former head of the Federal Securities Commission - in a 70-page report.
 Vasilyev said in an interview Tuesday that one of the major "corruption-causing" problems with the bank is that it regulates the entire banking industry while being a profit-seeking participant. Another problem is the lack of clear, straightforward grounds for issuing licenses or approving operations, which provides ample opportunity for bribery.
 He said that he and co-authors Pa vel Drobyshev and Alexei Konov analyzed the legislative basis that creates fertile ground in which corruption thrives, focusing on five main areas - the bank's judicial status, its budgetary independence, the lack of controls over the bank's activities, its regulatory powers, its lack of transparency and its administrative-licensing powers.
 "The value of this system for society is doubtful, but the value for the Central Bank and its managers is obvious, as it allows them to get involved in any economic processes in the country and allows them to selectively support commercial banks," Vasilyev said. "There are thousands of regulations, but billions of dollars are leaving the country as capital flight. Banks go bankrupt. The system doesn't work."
 One example of the system not working is that while the law stipulates that 50 percent of the Central Bank's profits be distributed to the government (as compared to 90 percent in the United States), "the other 50 percent is used for the benefit of at least some of the 80,000 bureaucrats employed at the Central Bank." Vasilyev said.
 The Central Bank uses its self-given right to categorize any information pertaining to its activities as "secret" to avoid disclosing such things as salaries and pension benefits of top managers.
 In addition, the secrecy provides a material incentive to speculate on the state securities and currencies markets, Vasilyev said.
 The Central Bank - whose main manifest is to support the stability of the ruble - holds, together with Sberbank and Vneshtorgbank, a 30-percent stake in the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) and speculates on the securities and currency markets, according to the report.
 Indeed, audits of the Central Bank conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1999 found the Central Bank had apparently earned unreported profits from using IMF loans and its hard currency reserves to speculate on the Russian treasury- bill market. 
 The Central Bank would not comment officially on the report, but an employee who asked not to be named said: "The Central Bank is not a commercial organization. ... There are no conflicts of interest whatsoever ... as if the Bank of England is transparent through and through. We're less bureaucratic than the Bank of England."
 The report was presented to representatives of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, the presidential administration, the Security Counciland the World Bank. But the authors made no charges of actual instances of corruption. "Our goal was to find where the roots lie and how to eradicate them. Naming names is a matter for the Interior Ministry," Vasilyev said.
 "We can change one bureaucrat for another, but if the preconditions for corruption remain, corruption will remain," he said.

TITLE: North-West GSM Luring New Clients
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: On Dec. 5 Moscow-based Mobile Te le systems (MTS) will begin operating St. Petersburg's long-awaited second GSM-standard cellular-telephone service, and North-West GSM, the already-existing provider, is firing up for the competition.
 North-West GSM General Director Igor Nikodimov and Marketing Director Konstantin Sukhin announced a number initiatives by the company at a Wednesday press conference, including a new system of tariffs, the opening of five new North-West GSM service outlets and the elimination of connection charges for new subscribers who sign on with the company between Nov. 27 and Jan. 10.
 While businesses that handle payments for cellular service as well as selling handsets and connecting new subscribers are everywhere in the city, North-West GSM has only three of its own service outlets - two on Va si li ev sky Island and one on Artillereiskaya Ulit sa, near the Cherneshevskaya metro.
 The locations for two of the outlets have all ready been selected. One will be located on Moskovsky Prospect and another on Ulitsa Marata, with the three remaining locations yet to be decided.
 Last year over the Christmas and New Years holidays North-West GSM cut the rates it charged new subscribers to connect to the system, but this year's period of free connection is a much more aggressive move.
 According to Konstantin Sukhin, last year's campaign attracted 42,000 new subscribers and the goal this year is to draw in 80,000 new clients.
 "We are planning to increase our total of subscribers to 1 million by the end of next year," Sukhin said. "By that time MTS will probably have signed up about 300,000 subscribers."
 North-West GSM presently provides service to 550, 000 clients, almost double the 300,000 it was serving at the beginning of the year.
 The company is also renaming its main service packages, which will mean savings for some of its existing clients.
 One of the company's most popular packages, "Simple-Plus," will be renamed "Triumph-SPB" and will charge $0.17 per minute for outgoing calls regardless of the time of day. At present, subscribers to the package are charged $0.25 per minute for day-time calls and $0.17 in the evenings and at night.
 Sukhin said the company had spent about $60 million this year preparing for a tough year of competition ahead. The company and MTS will also have to share the market with a new, third-generation CDMA digital network that Petersburg Telecom plans to launch.

TITLE: IMF Setting Up Sovereign Bankruptcy Plan
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Michel Camdessus can sleep well now.
 Shortly after leaving the International Monetary Fund, Camdessus said that during his 13 years as managing director there were only two nights when he did not sleep: before Brazil announced the devaluation of the real in 1999 and the night before Russia defaulted on its debt, Aug. 17, 1998.
 This week the IMF finally unveiled a concrete plan to develop an international system that would allow troubled countries to file for bankruptcy protection when their debts become unsustainable.
 Since 1998, the IMF has spent billions of dollars to prevent financial crises in Turkey and Pakistan - and has already spent $48 billion to help rescue Argentina from defaulting on $132 billion of debt.
 The new plan, to be discussed by the IMF's board in December, would make the IMF the gatekeeper of a new bankruptcy system in which it will decide whether to grant countries a stay on their debts in order to negotiate an orderly restructuring.
 The program, which would offer sovereign creditors the type of bank ruptcy protection enjoyed by private companies, could have helped Russia in 1998, analysts said.
 "What happened to Russia in fact was an effort to find the same type of solution," said Martin Gilman, who headed the IMF's representative office in Russia from 1997 to 2001 and is now a professor with the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics.
 Oleg Vyugin, who was deputy finance minister in 1998 and is now chief economist with Troika Dialog, agrees that the "IMF de facto approved Russia's default." 
 "The new IMF initiative is [a far cry] from the way the IMF acted in Russia in 1998, as there was no legislative framework at that time, and Russia had to invent many things for the first time," Vyugin said.
 Since Russia repaid in full $1 billion of its first sovereign Eurobond this week - the first time the country has fully repaid or redeemed a debt instrument without restructuring the original terms - experts agree that fully servicing foreign-debt obligations is one of the government's debt priorities.
 Analysts said, however, that Russia will not need the new IMF emergency mechanism for the foreseeable future.
 "It is clear that Russia won't need anything like that any time soon as the Russian economy is performing surprisingly well," Gilman said.
 Furthermore, Russia is currently under-invested, he said, so there is no danger of excessive capital inflows.
 "But in the future, when Russian re-establishes its financial markets and financial system, theoretically such needs may occur," he said.
 "There is a very little chance that Russia may need such a mechanism in the future," Vyugin said. 
 "The Russian budget was, and for the foreseeable future will remain, strongly dependent on oil prices, which are highly volatile," he said. "I doubt the government will find the strength to eliminate this dependence, and this means that Russia also can't afford to have large debts."
 According to IMF officials, so far only four of the Group of Seven leading industrial countries, including the United States and Britain, are "strongly in favor" of the idea. The others have yet to take a position.

TITLE: Budget Likely To Get the Nod
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The draft 2002 budget was scheduled to go to the State Duma for a third reading Friday with crucial support from the Duma Budget Committee and centrist factions, despite fears that weak oil prices could upset spending plans.
 The government expressed confidence that the 2.12 trillion-ruble ($67.3 billion) budget would be approved after the cabinet and Budget Committee agreed on a contingency plan on how to divvy up revenues should oil fall below the budget estimates.
 "It is possible to talk about the budget being accepted in the third reading," Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Thursday after meeting with Yabloko faction members, Interfax reported. 
 Earlier this week, the four pro-Kremlin centrist factions in the Duma - Unity, Fatherland-All Russia, Russia's Regions and People's Deputy - promised Kudrin that they would back the budget.
 The contingency plan earmarks up to 68.5 billion rubles ($2.2 billion) as "contigent" expenses, which would be released in the fourth quarter of 2002 only if there is enough cash left in the budget for the government to meet its obligations. 
 The draft budget puts the average oil price for 2002 at $23.50 per barrel of Urals-brand blend, which is currently trading closer to its pessimistic scenario of $18.50.
 If the oil price drops below $16.50, the government will forego setting up a planned financial reserve for future debt repayments, according to the plan. After that, the government would have the green light to start cutting spending.
 The Budget Committee met late Thursday night to discuss which budgetary items could face cuts. The government has promised not to touch pay increases promised to state workers, including civil servants, doctors, teachers and the military. The regions are likely to suffer, potentially losing up to 15.7 billion rubles ($506 million) in funding.
 "There are a mass of painful questions for the regions that the document doesn't answer," said Valery Goreglyad, deputy chairperson of the Federation Council's Budget Committee, according to Interfax. "The hardest is the distribution of tax revenues and wage increases," he said. 
 Nonetheless, he predicted the budget would be accepted by the Duma after "difficult" discussions.
 "The budget code does say that all government obligations are [on an equal footing]," said First Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Ulyukayev in an interview published Thursday in Vedomosti. 
 "We will gradually move toward forming a 'budget of accepted obligations,' determined by legislation and fulfilled entirely under any non-emergency situation, and a budget with additional obligations, to be fulfilled in more favorable circumstances," he said.
 With the world economy rolling toward recession and demand for oil drying up, the government is considering scenarios with oil prices at $14 to $15 per barrel, according to media reports.
 "If the average price of Urals crude drops to $14.50 per barrel, the federal budget will lose about $7 billion, or 215 billion rubles," Ulyukayev said. "Of this, 68 billion [$2.2 billion] is 'contigent' spending, and 109 billion rubles [$3.5 billion] is the originally planned financial reserve, which will simply cease to exist. Another 35 billion to 40 billion rubles [$1.1 billion to $1.3 billion] is not covered, but we have money in the treasury."
 Analysts named $14 to $15 per barrel as a breaking point for the budget.
 "If the oil price drops below $14, the government will have to scramble - turn to the International Monetary Fund, cut costs, borrow domestically, increase privatization, spend some of its 100 billion rubles [$3.2 billion] in reserves," said Alexei Moiseyev, economist at Renaissance Capital. "If the price of oil is below $18 per barrel, the government will need to cut some of the 37 billion [rubles] in contigent expenses. 
 "I believe sequestering 31 billion rubles [$1 billion] in spending will begin when the oil price hits $16."
 "The Russian budget has a lot of good things going for it," said James Fenkner, strategist at Troika Dialog. 
 Foremost, he said, there is no real controversy between the government and the Duma over the numbers, meaning cuts can be made after serious discussion. In addition, the government has some flexibility because the 2001 budget surplus will be about $2.5 billion. 
 Plans for a financial reserve to pay off foreign-debt obligations, which will peak in 2003, will probably have to be ditched, said Moiseyev.
 "It's not even worth talking about a financial reserve because the government has to pay $6.8 billion to service debt next year," he said. "If oil prices exceed $20, of course there will be a surplus of about 50 billion or 60 billion [$1.6 billion to $1.9 billion] rubles. All the money will go immediately to paying down debt.
 "Financial reserves are realistic only if the oil price exceeds $23.50."

TITLE: Energy Secretary Focuses On Russia's World Role
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Visiting U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Wednesday called Russia a key player in world energy markets, capable of helping boost sagging global economic growth.
 Abraham said Russia's economic influence is both increasing and crucial to establishing a fair price for oil based on true market mechanisms - a key component in the global economy.
 "I think Russia is emerging as a separate nucleus of the energy equation," Abraham told reporters after meeting with Energy Minister Igor Yusufov. "We treat the Russian role as a very important one: We have great respect for the energy role that Russia is playing, and we believe it will be an expanded role in the future," he added.
 Russia is currently facing a dilemma over whether to side with oil consumers - the largest being recession-hit America, which consumes about a third of all crude oil traded on world markets - or go along with demands from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut exports to boost and stabilize volatile prices. Crude prices have fallen by a third since the Sept. 11 attacks in America and OPEC, in response, has said it would cut production by 1.5 million barrels per day in January - but only if major non-cartel producers Russia, Norway, Mexico and Oman cut a combined 500,000 bpd. 
 While Norway, Mexico and Oman have agreed in principal to cut production by up to 325,000 bpd, Russia's refusal to offer more than a symbolic cut of 50,000 bpd has infuriated OPEC. On Tuesday the cartel struck back, threatening to "flood the market" with oil and drive prices to $10 a barrel - a price that if sustained would cripple Russia's 2002 budget.
 The Russian government says it will decide on further cuts at a meeting with major domestic oil companies Dec. 10. But Yusufov indicated that Russia may side with the United States, which wants oil to stay under $20 a barrel, over OPEC, which wants oil closer to $25. Currently, benchmark Brent is trading around $18, but has fluctuated wildly recently.
 Yusofov and Abraham also said that a joint Russian-American working group had been established to increase cooperation in the energy sector.
 Some industry watchers said that the new working group is just an official acknowledgement that both sides are working at leveling oil at $20. And while Russia continues to stall OPEC, Russo-American relations seem to be blooming, at least on the Russian side.
 Abraham appeared satisfied following his meeting with Yusufov, suggesting that Russian authorities are in a cooperative mood on a variety of issues ranging from oil prices to nuclear safety and investment prospects, analysts said. It was unclear, however, whether recent efforts to build closer ties with America will produce concrete results.
 "There is no under-the-table deal or agreement so far," said Sergei Markov, the editor of the Kremlin-connected Web site Strana.ru. "Russia might want some, but there are none," he said.
 "It is hard to say how long these attempts will last, but the key for Moscow to continue its cooperation with the U.S. lies not in the economic sphere, but in political issues like [America's] positions on Chechnya, Ukraine or Georgia," he said.
 Russia has frequently been irritated by the West's criticism of its policies in Chechnya and its attempts to influence former Soviet republics Uk raine and Georgia, which have indicated readiness for extended ties with the West, including military cooperation.
 "If these stands do not change, it would show that the U.S. is not sincere and is not ready to accept Russia as an ally and to behave as Russia's ally," Markov said. This may happen and it is clear that [President Vladimir] Putin is just taking time to wait and see."
 On the other hand, Russia's recent openness with the United States makes solid economic sense, said Roland Nash, head of research at Renaissance Capital investment bank.
 "In fact, I think Russia has positioned itself quite well. ... It just has to manage the current price to be around $20 per barrel and balance the interests of OPEC and non-OPEC countries," Nash said.
 "And it would be sensible if Russia moved to be more cooperative with the West," Nash said, adding that Russia's economic interests certainly point that way. "The problem has always been that Russia has never given any particularly strong signals that it is willing to recognize it."
 A new friendliness can certainly be felt across the Atlantic, Nash said. "There has been a marked shift in the way in which investors in Washington are looking at Russia."
 Dangers lurk on the horizon, however.
 Nash said that although there are certain policies that are clearly beneficial to both countries their overall foreign-policy objectives are not the same.
 "So there will eventually be a conflict of interest, and the most obvious source of that conflict is Iraq," he said. "And the question would be: 'What would Russia do if America puts substantial pressure on Iraq?'"

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Unfriendly Skies
 

LONDON (Reuters) - Struggling airline British Airways faces an extra 2.5 million pounds ($3.6 million) in annual interest charges after Standard & Poor's cut its credit rating to junk status on Thursday, an industry source said.
 BA, Europe's biggest airline by traffic, will see its interest payment on its 250 million pound ($357 million) bond rise to 8.75 percent from 7.75 percent, the source said. S&P cut its rating on BA's senior unsecured debt to BB-plus from its previous grade of BBB-minus.
 BA, which last reported net debt of 6.5 billion pounds, has been hit hard by a severe downturn in transatlantic traffic following the Sep. 11 attacks on the United States.
 
 
Off Target
 

LONDON (Reuters) - International rating agency Fitch said on Thursday there was a growing possibility that Germany's budget deficit could breach the three percent limit set out in the European Union's Stability and Growth Pact (SGP).
 The agency said Germany had been hit harder than most countries by a sharp slowdown in growth and that, with one of the weakest budgetary positions in the EU, the German budget deficit was on course for 2.5 percent of gross domestic product this year.
 Under the Pact, countries in the euro zone are required to keep their budget deficits below three percent of national output.
 
 
Diamond Deal
 

LONDON (AP) - In a landmark effort to squelch the trade in diamonds used to fund civil wars in Africa, representatives of the diamond industry, human rights groups and more than 30 governments agreed Thursday that all shipments of rough stones must contain certificates of origin.
 The agreement, reached in Gaba ro ne, Botswana, after 20 months of contentious talks, would set up a global system to track diamonds as they are shipped from their source countries into the hands of brokers and on to the firms that process them into polished gems.
 The United Nations is expected as early as next month to ratify the agreement and put it into effect. 
 
 
Bottom of the Barrel
 

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices will probably weaken by another 20 percent to $15 to $16 per barrel over the next six months, helping drive the world economy out of recession, one of the world's top fund managers said Thursday.
 Robert Parker, Deputy Chairperson of Credit Suisse Asset Management, saw weak demand and swollen inventories depressing oil prices and inflation, despite best efforts by OPEC exporters to get prices back up with big supply cuts.
 "A low oil price is in the interest of everyone except the oil producers," he said.
 
 
Indices Up
 

NEW YORK (AP) -Investors' optimism about the economy cautiously reappeared Thursday, nudging stock prices modestly higher after two days of profit taking.
 In afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 38.06, or 0.4 percent, at 9,749.92, having lost 270 points in the previous two sessions when investors cashed in recent profits.
 The broader market also advanced. The NASDAQ composite index rose 25.88, or 1.4 percent, to 1,913.85 and the Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 5.27, or 0.5 percent, to 1,133.79.

TITLE: Just What Are We Pledging Allegiance For?
AUTHOR: By Cecilia O'Leary and Tony Platt
TEXT: RITUALS of patriotism have made quite a comeback in the last couple of months. The New York City Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution last month to require all public schools to lead a daily Pledge of Allegiance each morning and at all school events. "It's a small way to thank the heroes of 9/11," explained the board's president. In California's Orange County, Celebration USA Inc., a nonprofit patriotic organization, synchronized a countrywide recitation of the pledge at 2 p.m. Eastern time on Oct. 12. Several states are considering the adoption of laws that would require the pledge in all public schools, and Nebraska has dusted off a 1949 state law requiring schools to devise curricula aimed at instilling a "love of liberty, justice, democracy and America in the hearts and minds of the youth."
 In the aftermath of Sept. 11, people are hungry for social rituals and eager to communicate a deeper sense of national belonging. But this new rash of prescribing and orchestrating patriotism is not the answer.
 Rituals of patriotism were first institutionalized between the Civil War and World War I, when organizations such as the Grand Army of the Republic, Women's Relief Corps and Daughters of the American Revolution campaigned to transform schools, as educator George Balch put it, into a "mighty engine for the inculcation of patriotism."
 Balch, a New York City kindergarten teacher and Civil War veteran, held what is believed to be the first celebration of Flag Day as a way of teaching his mostly immigrant students about the flag. But his was not a patriotism that embraced pluralism. His purpose, as he described it, was to instill discipline and loyalty in what he called the "human scum, cast on our shores by the tidal wave of a vast migration." He wrote what is considered to be the first pledge to the flag, a clunky manifesto in which students promised to "give our heads and our hearts to God and our Country! One nation! One language! One flag!" In 1890, Balch published a primer for other educators, "Methods for Teaching Patriotism in the Public Schools," that called for the use of devotional rites of patriotism modeled along the lines of a catechism. "There is nothing which more impresses the youthful mind and excites its emotions," noted the West Point graduate, than the "observance of form."
 To commemorate the first Columbus Day celebration in 1892, Youth's Companion magazine asked Francis Bellamy to write a new pledge to be recited by children at school. Bellamy, a Christian socialist with a commitment to social reform, dismissed Balch's formula as a "childish form of words invented by an ex-military officer." He wanted a pledge that would resonate with American history and make students into active participants in a "social citizenry." For Bellamy, the notion of "allegiance" evoked the great call for unity during the Civil War and "one nation, indivisible" recalled a phrase used by Abraham Lincoln. Bellamy was tempted to add the historic slogan of the French Revolution - "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" - to the language of his pledge, but, in the end, he decided that this would be too much for people to accept. Instead, he settled for the final phrase "with liberty and justice for all." This way, he reasoned, the pledge could be ideologically "applicable to either an individualistic or a socialistic state," a matter for future generations to decide.
 Bellamy's words - "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" - were gradually adopted throughout the country. But the pledge, once imagined as a living principle of justice and liberty, quickly became suffused with militarism and obedience to authority. On Columbus Day 1892, according to newspaper reports, children marched with "drilled precision" as "one army under the sacred flag."
 In the wake of the Spanish-American War, state-sanctioned rituals of patriotism became more common. In New York, soon after war was declared in April 1898, the Legislature instructed the state superintendent of public instruction to prepare "a program providing for a salute to the flag at the opening of each day of school." Daily rituals aimed at reaching children's hearts were backed up with new civics curricula to secure their minds with heroic images of virile soldiers and the honor of dying for one's country. A typical children's primer published in 1903 taught that "B stood for Battles" and Z for the zeal "that has carried us through/When fighting for justice/With the Red, White and Blue."
 During World War I, worries arose about citizens with dual allegiances, and some feared that Bellamy's pledge allowed cunning fifth-columnist immigrants to swear a secret loyalty to another country. To close this loophole, the words "my flag" were changed to "the flag of the United States." Many states now required students to salute the flag every day.
 In Chicago in 1916, an 11-year-old black student was arrested because he refused to respect what he saw as a symbol of Jim Crow and lynching. "I am willing to salute the flag," Hubert Eaves explained, "as the flag salutes me." Meanwhile, Boy Scout troops across the country staged massive operettas in celebration of "America First."
 Between the world wars, thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted and their children expelled from school for refusing to salute the flag. What began as an attempt to encourage loyalty to a country "with liberty and justice for all" devolved into the suppression of dissent and unquestioning homage to the flag.
 In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an obligatory loyalty oath is unconstitutional, thus putting the law on the side of any student who refused to participate in patriotic or religious rituals. But even after the ruling, refusal to say the pledge took both courage and conviction.
 The pledge remained unchanged until Flag Day 1954, when President Eisenhower approved the addition of the constitutionally questionable phrase "under God" to differentiate this country from its godless Cold War antagonist.
 Since the Vietnam War and the divides of conscience it generated, educators have not been inclined to impose rote patriotic drills on their students. Instead, schools began slowly to redefine patriotism in a more inclusive way, a way that speaks to the needs of a multiethnic, polyglot population living in an increasingly globalized world. This is not the time to reverse this trend by reverting to form over substance and rote memorization over democratic participation.
 "What of our purpose as a nation?" pondered Bellamy more than a century ago when he crafted his pledge. Our students today can better use their time debating this question than marching in lock-step loyalty.
 
 <i>Cecilia O'Leary is an associate professor of history and Tony Platt is a professor of social work at California State University. They contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times. </i>

TITLE: The Police Are in My Bedroom
TEXT: OLNEY, Maryland - This column is usually advertised as written from Washington. But technically, I'm usually in the suburbs of Montgomery County, Maryland. Until this week, I thought, &quot;Well, close enough,&quot; and simply datelined it Washington. But this was the week when Montgomery County decided anonymity wasn't good enough anymore. No, our county leaders have resolved to stand up and face - no, seek out and demand - international ridicule. On Tuesday, our County Council adopted new air quality standards under which, if the neighbors complain, a citizen can be fined up to $750 for ... smoking at home.
 As one County Council member explained to The Washington Post, &quot;This does not say that you cannot smoke in your house. What it does say is that your smoke cannot cross property lines.&quot;
 Russians always used to ask me things like: Is it true Americans won't give their children a single penny after they turn 18? Is it true the police come to your home to make you stop smoking? Is it true feministki in black eyepatches and with knives clenched in their teeth have seized control of your government? I have always replied with a laugh that none of these things is even remotely true.
 And now, here we are. All for a &quot;new&quot; rule that in fact changes nothing. After all, in those rare cases where another home's cigarettes truly are an irritant - say, in poorly ventilated apartment complexes - tenants can already complain under general nuisance laws, which govern loud parties and other bad-neighbor problems.
 Montgomery County, a bedroom community for Washington professional workers, is one of the most affluent counties in the nation. Most people here, particularly those who bother to vote for or serve in county government, live in free-standing homes surrounded by a little lawn moat. Such people will never have to worry about cigarette smoke migrating to the neighbor's castle next door. Instead, this law exclusively regulates the behavior of the county's less-well-off service sector workers - the dishwashers, the manicurists, the lawn-care workers - who live in apartments and townhouses. It's a classic case of do-gooders who are above their own medicine.
 Being fined for smoking at home would, at least, be of-a-piece with the national spirit these days. Every week the federal government brings in more state secrecy and expands arbitrary state and police power. Attorney General John Ashcroft has decreed that law officers can now eavesdrop on conversations between lawyers and clients and has called for rounding up 5,000 immigrants who fit &quot;a set of generic parameters&quot; (?) - a plan so dim and desperate sounding that local police chiefs are muttering in rebellion.
 Already we've got hundreds of such &quot;generic parameter&quot; detainees in jail. The government will neither charge them nor identify them nor even tell us how many there are. (In high school, I wrote a paper about this: It was known as Attorney General Mitchell Palmer's &quot;Red Scare,&quot; the post-World War I detentions of thousands of suspected radicals. I thought it was ancient history.)
 So maybe there's a bright side to this don't-smoke-at-home nonsense. Often it's the local injustices that raise our ire. As word gets out about this one, perhaps it will remind us why Americans are suspicious of unchecked, unchallenged leadership. Not for nothing have we spent centuries of energy and passion trying to control government - because the alternative is to have it control us instead.
 
 <i>Matt Bivens, a former editor of The St. Petersburg Times, is a Washington-based fellow of The Nation Institute [www.thenation.com]. </i>

TITLE: The Coming Day of Reckoning
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: THE friendship between presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush has developed against a background of war in central Asia, world economic crisis and deteriorating relations between Russia and other oil producers. In all of these, Russia comes across as a bastion of the Western world, taking a stand against Islamic terrorism, supporting liberal economic principles and getting into an argument with the oil-producing countries of the Third World.
 For their part, Western politicians are willing to forget not only about the Russian president's career in the KGB, but also about human-rights violations in Chechnya. All the more so as human-rights issues generally are getting far less attention in the West since the current war on terrorism got under way.
 While Putin has received the highest plaudits in the West, at home trouble lies in store for him. The president has enjoyed the support of those who were hoping that the former KGB officer would restore Russia's independence by moving away from the West and strengthening the country's military might. And, at the same time, put the oligarchs in their place. 
 Now these people feel that they have been deceived, although it is unfair to blame Putin for this. He did not deceive anybody because he did not promise anything at all. He never published a proper manifesto and only made vague hints about possibly drawing up positions in the future.
 Those who tied their hopes for national revival to Putin were simply deceiving themselves. They sought hidden meaning in the empty words and slogans, explaining the vagueness by reference to the secretiveness of the president. The idea that vacuousness concealed nothing more than vacuousness turned out to be too complicated for people used to idolizing the authorities just for being the authorities.
 Putin has been lucky. His political honeymoon lasted not 100 days, as is normally the case, but 1 1/2 years. Throughout this period he didn't have to make any crucial decisions, occupying himself exclusively with court intrigues and reshuffles, intimidating waverers, punishing his personal enemies and promoting old friends.
 In the country and the world, economic growth continued by inertia. It could be said that the Putin administration was able to coast along on the back of the hard work done by Yevgeny Primakov's government and the OPEC countries.
 The former brought Russian industry around and the latter pushed oil prices up. But for these two circumstances, there would be no Russian miracle.
 Primakov's reward was to be cast out as a political outsider with a seat in the State Duma, while when OPEC recently asked the Russian government to slash production, Moscow offered such insignificant cuts that it looked as though they were intentionally mocking the organization. Russian officials would have done better to keep their mouths shut.
 Alas, even the sympathy of Bush will not stave off an economic crisis. An upset OPEC has declared a price war on Russia. The minute the oil price fell below $18 per barrel, the ruble started to look unstable and the government started to panic. 
 Unfortunately, in a country where oil companies are divvied up among oligarchs, it is easier to make a declaration than it is to implement it. In fact, it would be harder for oligarchs to agree among themselves how much each should cut their production than it would be for Bush to reconcile with Osama bin Laden. 
 And the government is in no position to force them, as they are the state. The only thing left is to place one's hopes in the oil magnates self-preservation instinct.
 Until now the most serious crises Putin has faced were related to the Kursk submarine and the Ostankino television tower. For all their symbolic importance, these are not issues that affected the fate of the country. In the fall of 2001, Putin for the first time had to make some serious decisions. 
 For those who placed their trust in the new president, his choice turned out to be a major blow. As concerns those who previously treated Putin with suspicion, they are hardly likely to suddenly become enamoured with him. In other words, the regime's social base is narrowing.
 The Kremlin can console itself with the fact that the West has declared its love. However, the experience of Putin's two predecessors shows that such love is rarely a guarantee of the Russian people's sympathies.
 
 <i>Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist. </i>

TITLE: This Is Not the Reform That We Really Need
TEXT: PROPONENTS of the Kremlin-backed judicial reform package approved last week by the State Duma have hailed it as the &quot;cornerstone&quot; of a new relationship between the judiciary and the public - long skeptical, and rightfully so, about the courts' impartiality and competence.
 There is no doubt that the Soviet-era system of criminal law needs an overhaul. But a close examination of the Criminal Procedural Code and the new legislation on judges, which are swiftly moving toward becoming law, suggests that President Vladimir Putin's touted reform fiddles with details without addressing some of the system's fundamental flaws.
 For example: One of the plan's greatest achievements is considered the introduction of jury trials, a right guaranteed in the Constitution. Under the new legislation, jury trials, now held in only nine of the country's 89 regions, are to be available by 2003 for cases involving violent crimes in all courts at the regional level. But there's a proverbial spoonful of tar in the honey: Under the new code, the powers of judges to overturn jury verdicts have been augmented. 
 Some of the reform's supporters have also pointed out that the power of prosecutors has been diminished; however, prosecutors - known for their selective approach to opening investigations - made up one of the two powerful interest groups that helped shape the reform. And pro-Kremlin lawmakers have acknowledged that, first impressions notwithstanding, &quot;the supervisory functions of prosecutors would grow.&quot;
 Prosecutors will still play a role in the presidential advisory commission for appointing judges, and their approval will be required for the opening of any criminal probe.
 Liberals who back the reform are excited about a new provision that takes effect in 2004, transferring the right to issue arrest and search warrants from prosecutors to the courts. But it remains to be seen whether the court's approval will be based on impartial judgments rather than mere formalities.
 The reform, the stated purpose of which is to level the legal playing field, has not discarded certain glaring inequities between the defense and the prosecution. For example, lawyers still need the approval of prosecutors to call a witness in a criminal case. 
 The Kremlin has said that it is trying to make the courts' activity more transparent, in part by implanting officials from the presidential administration into the tight-knit corporations of judges known as qualifications collegia. These corporate bodies hand down major decisions concerning judges - appointing and dismissing them, punishing or commending them. Perhaps, scrutinizing these decisions will help the public understand the real direction of judicial reform.
 
 <i>This comment originally appeared as an editorial in The Moscow Times on Nov. 27. </i>

TITLE: some dances of their own
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Even though the Mariinsky Theater is clearly the heart of the Russian theatrical universe, the troupe's dancers have long dreamt of the chance to perform in tailor-made productions.
 The country's shortage of innovative native choreographers has been painfully obvious for many years now. Although experts argue about the reason for this, many cite the impact of the collapse of the Iron Curtain, after which the modern-dance achievements of the West provoked confusion and uncertainty in Russian ballet masters.
 &quot;[They] were trying - perhaps, subconsciously - to imitate, to copy what Western choreographers were doing rather than simply expressing themselves,&quot; says top Mariinsky soloist Altynai Asylmuratova, who is also the artistic director of the Vaganova Ballet Academy. &quot;Imitation is always a loss of individuality.&quot;
 Many young dancers even envy their predecessors, for whom Leonid Yakobson, Yury Grigorovich and Igor Belsky crafted their ballets. In Asylmuratova's words, her generation has been deprived of its share of choreographers. &quot;We've had to make do with ballets initially designed for others,&quot; she says. &quot;True, my generation benefited from more open relations with the West. We had an opportunity to dance George Balanchine's ballets, to work with Jerome Robbins. But, again, it wasn't staged for us.&quot;
 There are signs, however, that things are changing under the encouraging guidance of Mariinsky Artistic Director Valery Gergiev. In recent years, modern works by Balanchine, Robbins, Kenneth MacMillan, Roland Petit and John Neumeier have been added to the company's repertoire. 
 On Dec. 1 and 2, Gergiev turns over the theater to five young choreographers who have been working with the troupe's dancers for the last four weeks on some innovative one-act ballets. The program includes choreography by Jiulaino Peparini (French born, but working in Italy), Vladimir Angelov (Bulgarian, but working in the United States) and Indra Reinholde (Latvia), as well as Russian ballet masters Kirill Simonov and Svetlana Anufrieva.
 Yana Serebryakova, who will perform in two productions - Peparini's &quot;Loulou: The Dream of an Anti-Star,&quot; set to works by Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky and Kurt Weill, and Angelov's &quot;Last Horizon,&quot; set to Ernest Bloch's Concerto Grosso for String Orchestra with Piano Obbligato - appreciates the opportunities this event presents.
 &quot;I perform two contrasting heroines. One [in &quot;Loulou&quot;] is coquettish and very much aware of her feminine power, while the other [in &quot;Last Horizon&quot;] is sublime and pure. I am just exploring,&quot; Serebryakova said, &quot;even discovering myself as a dancer.&quot;
 The process of finding mutual understanding between the choreographers and the dancers was immediate.
 &quot;In the U.S., it usually takes two or three rehearsals for a choreographer and the company to adjust to each other,&quot; Angelov said. &quot;But here the contact was instant.&quot;
 Serebryakova emphasized that the freedom of expression that modern dance offers will add a new dimension to her interpretation of the classics.&quot;I am becoming more emancipated, liberated on stage,&quot; she said.
 For the choreographers, too, the experience has been creatively liberating. For Reinholde, it does not merely offer the opportunity to work with one of the world's great companies, but also the chance to stage a ballet - entitled &quot;Reflections&quot; - based on Chopin's Sonato for Cello and Piano.&quot;I can't even say that I chose this music. It found me some time ago, and it just occupied my mind,&quot; Reinholde said.
 Angelov, whose ballet is a mix of neo-classical and modern dance, also emphasized the spirit of creative liberation.
 &quot;I do not chew ideas for the dancers,&quot; he said. &quot;The dancers should be given space for improvization. They should be able to bring themselves and their own emotions to the piece.&quot;
 &quot;They ask questions all the time, not like most Western dancers, who mainly just come to the rehearsal, do their job and quit,&quot; Angelov said. &quot;Their desire to learn is astounding.&quot;
 Peparini, once a principal dancer in Roland Petit's Ballet National de Marseille and now Petit's assistant, first came to Russia several months ago to help Petit stage his ballet version of Tchaikovsky's &quot;The Queen of Spades&quot; at the Bolshoi theater in Moscow. His present project, though, is worlds away from this experience.&quot;I was asked to create something absolutely new to this stage, and I suggested 'Loulou' with its atmosphere of the 1930s, the Charleston and music from emigre composers, which excellently fit the ballet's main theme of a young woman seeking her place in life,&quot; Peparini said.
 He also appreciated the opportunity to select the dancers for the production himself. &quot;I saw Yana [Serebryakova] and immediately thought: 'This is Loulou!' It was fascinating,&quot; he recalled.
 Kirill Simonov is already quite familiar with the Mariinsky, being a dancer in the company and having staged &quot;The Nutcracker&quot; together with artist Mikhail Shemyakin. Although Simonov enjoyed working on that collaboration, his new production, based on a piece for two violins and a string orchestra called &quot;Come In!&quot; by Vladimir Martynov, offered him complete freedom to choose everything from the production's title to the music and the soloists.
 Simonov was attracted by the minimalism of Martynov's piece.
 &quot;The major theme, which is repeated many times, seems to stay the same, but this is an illusion. All the parts are different,&quot; he says. &quot;I loved this idea and hope to reveal it through the choreography.&quot;
 <i>
For details, see listings. </i>

TITLE: britten's ghosts haunt the hermitage
AUTHOR: by Alice Jones
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg traditionalists, brought up on a diet of Verdi and Tchaichovsky, may balk at the presentation of Benjamin Britten's 1954 opera &quot;The Turn of the Screw&quot; in the oppulently traditional surroundings of the Hermitage Theater. Certainly, the decision to bring a group of young musicians from London's Royal Academy of Music to Russia's cultural capital is a bold one, especially when one considers that the program's artistic director, Damian Iorio, is not yet 30 years old. 
 However, Iorio is by no means alone in his venture. The opera is being presented with the help of the Hermitage Orchestra and has received substantial support from the Hermitage Music Academy Foundation. The project is endorsed by the British Council, which has declared the production to be its most important arts project of the year. The young troupe includes musicians from France, Sweden and Canada.
 &quot;The Turn of the Screw&quot; is appearing only for the fourth time on a St Petersburg stage, albeit in a concert variation. Unfortunately, all three performances are invitation-only affairs, making it difficult for even die-hard fans to experience this excellent rendition.
 Britten's eighth opera, it is based on Henry James' neo-gothic novella of the same name and presents an unusual study of childhood and the journey into adulthood. As the libretto unfolds, we witness the governess trying desperately to win back the souls of her two charges from the evil influence of two ghosts who haunt their English country house. We thus see how the boundaries between childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience, good and evil and finally life and death can become blurred. The intimacy of the chamber opera, with only six voices, is perfect for such a detailed psychological study, and the small Hermitage Theater turns out to be a most fitting surrounding. 
 Iorio describes this production as a &quot;semi-staging&quot; - although performed in period costume, the focus rests firmly on the music, with minimal stagecraft. 
 The absence of sets works well, serving to intensify the mystical, gothic atmosphere. Lighting is used to great effect as the ghosts appear to fade in and out of the black curtains that form the backdrop, and the audience is absorbed as the boundaries and tensions of James' tale become blurred in front of their eyes. 
 The cast approaches the complexities and ambiguities of this work and its characters with sensitivity and nuance. The two ghosts, Quint (Olivier Dumait) and Miss Jessel (Heather Hunter), give fantastic performances as a pair of damned souls unable to find peace, with Dumait's lyrical, haunting tenor sending shivers down one's spine every time he steps onto the stage. 
 Gregory Monk performs the role of the boy Miles admirably, evoking all the contrasting traits his role requires. Ellika Strom's quavering voice conveys perfectly the old-fashioned housekeeper. Flora (Susan Gilmour Bailey) moves about the stage with wide-eyed innocence, and Sarah Tynan shows a complex mixture of primness, romanticism and naivety as the governess.
 In all, this venture is an exciting breath of fresh air. As preparations for the city's 300th birthday in 2003 gather steam, such prestigious international collaborations could go a long way to making St Petersburg the world cultural capital it so dreams of becoming. 
 
 <i>&quot;The Turn of the Screw&quot; will be performed at the Hermitage Theater on Dec. 1 and 2, but no tickets are being sold to the public. </i>

TITLE: prokina: prodigal child
AUTHOR: by Gulara Sadykh-zade
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Yelena Prokina, one of Valery Gergiev's first discoveries, appeared somewhat unexpectedly in town for a single concert last Tuesday in the Philharmonia's Small Hall. The singer was accompanied by pianist Aleksei Goribol, who was also the artistic director of the tour, which brought Prokina back to her musical homeland with concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg, followed by a swing through the Baltic states.
 Prokina is a graduate of the Leningrad Conservatory and made her debut on the Mariinsky stage. Fans particularly remember her Polina in Sergei Prokofiev's &quot;The Gambler,&quot; and certainly haven't forgotten how the BBC televised the Mariinsky's &quot;War and Peace&quot; with Prokina singing Natasha Rostova. That event in 1991 represented a definite breakthrough for the post-Soviet Russian theater and for Gergiev personally, as he had only recently been named the theater's artistic director.
 At this point, unfortunately, Prokina became involved in a dispute with the Mariinsky. At a moment when Gergiev had no one but her to sing Polina, Prokina suddenly left to pursue some lucrative engagements in the West. 
 For her, the gamble paid off, and Prokina made a successful career, working with leading Western directors. But in Petersburg - and particularly at the Mariinsky, which has become the center of Russian opera generally - Prokina's status has remained awkward to this day.
 Although the time has not yet come for Prokina to return to the stage from which she launched her career, a new generation of Russian managers has sprung up and demonstrated an interest in bringing back this prodigal daughter, although perhaps not with the grandiosity that she is used to. She returned to Russia not to sing in a full operatic production or even with a concert featuring crowd-pleasing gems by Tchaikovsky and Rakhmaninov, but with a vocal cycle by St. Petersburg composer Leonid Desyatnikov, elegantly framed by 20th-century classics by Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. The cycle, which was written in 1976 on the basis of the cerebral Romantic poetry of Fyodor Tyutchev, does not break any new musical ground, but it is definitely lyrical and endearing. It's melodies are somewhat worn, but the romantic allusions and the unambiguous references to the genre of the romance evokes a gentle nostalgia for the lost &quot;golden age&quot; of the Russian romance and is soothing to the ear.
 Juxtaposed to the aggressive angularity of Shostakovich's &quot;Satire,&quot; derived from Sasha Chyorny, and Prokoviev's &quot;Akhmatova cycle,&quot; Desyatnikov's romances based on Tyutchev seem even more calm, conservative and reassuringly gentle. Prokina's concert, though, opened with Nikolai Medtner's &quot;Sonata-Vocalise.&quot; To the surprise of Prokina's admirers, her intonations were more than a bit uncertain, which was particularly noticeable during the Medtner, since it was written in a traditionally harmonic rhythm.
 Overall, though, Prokina was in good voice, at times even excellent. But her interpretations were somewhat laconic and uninspired. They lacked a personal approach that would indicate the singer's own relationship to the text before her, the kind of relationship that brings music to life.

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Despite the <strong>Santana </strong>posters plastered all over the city, the great guitarist is not coming to town. This is just another one of those foreign cover bands that Gigant Hall likes to promote. 
 In smallest possible type, these posters - featuring a photo of the real Carlos Santana - explain that the concert will feature Supernatural, a Santana tribute band. Gigant Hall is repeating the dishonest promotion that it used last week with Three Bees, a Bee Gees tribute band. Also be on the lookout for a band called Beatless (sic!) in December.
 With veteran <strong>DJ Bert Bevans, </strong>who started spinning vinyl in New York's seminal Studio 54 in the 1970s, and a sequel to last summer's <strong>Sushi Disco, </strong>a lounge party featuring Japan's Hito and Hanayo, this weekend offers decent entertainment for the trendy, electronic-music-loving crowd. The live-music scene, however, doesn't hold many treats.
 But if you wait until Thursday, you'll find that <strong>Vladimir Tarasov, </strong>the Vilnius-based drummer extraordinaire, is playing a couple of local performances, something he hasn't done for years now.
 Tarasov was a member of the premier Soviet &quot;new-music&quot; act, the Ganelin Trio, also known as Ganelin-Tarasov-Chekasin, or GTCh, from 1971 to 1986. He went solo when the trio's leader pianist Vyacheslav Ganelin moved to Israel. Now he plays both solo and in various collaborations. 
 Surprisingly, Tarasov, who is also known for his sound installations, became the head of Lithuania's Russian Drama Theater in 1999. Tarasov's art of playing drums has been compared to the sound of a symphony orchestra.
 Tarasov will appear at the opening of an exhibition of works by his friend, New York-based artist Grisha Bruskin, at the Russian Museum's Marble Palace on Dec. 6. He will be backed by local double-bass player Vladimir Volkov and possibly by Moscow poet and performance artist Dmitry Prigov. Call the Marble Palace for the exact time at 312-9196. Tarasov's other concert will be at the JFC Jazz Club on Dec. 7.
 In a more traditional spirit, Russia's oldest surviving jazz club, <strong>Kvadrat, </strong>which was founded in 1964, is promoting a concert in another venue. According to Kvadrat founder and manager Natan Leites, the club's current location at the Kirov Palace of Culture is too far from the jazz-club circuit and, hence, poorly attended.
 Kvadrat's own Ivan Vasilyev Band will therefore perform at Berloga, the forest-themed cafe on Moskovsky Prospect, on Dec. 5. Respected pianist Andrei Kondakov is expected to take part in the concert. See Gigs.
 Sadly, a musician from the ska-punk <strong>Spitfire, </strong>one of the finest acts in the city, is in trouble and needs help.
 Trombone player Mikhail Gapak got into an accident after the band performed at the Gaswerk club in Winterthur, Switzerland, on Nov. 2, and now is in a Zurich hospital with a broken spine. He is paralyzed from the waist down. Spitfire has booked a series of charity concerts, but doesn't expect to collect the needed 100,000 Swiss franks (approx. $60,000.)
 To help raise money, the band has opened an account: ZKB (Z&uuml;rcher Kantonalbank), CH-8157 Dielsdorf, Clearing #725, Account #3525-8.236834.5. Account holder: E. Schmid. Transfer reason: &quot;Spende f&uuml;r M. Gapak&quot;. The hospital's mailing address: Universit&auml;t Spital, Culmanstrasse 8, 091 Zurich, Switzerland. Telephone: 255-5280. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: slavic food the way it should be
AUTHOR: by Thomas Rymer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of the fun (and occasionally, annoying) things about living abroad as a Canadian is explaining to people I meet - and often my friends as well - why I maintain that we are different from Americans.
 To my Russian friends, I usually bring up the question of the difference between themselves and Ukrainians. It usually illustrates the point, but not always.
 It occurred to me recently that, although I found the Russia-Ukraine example somewhat clever, I really had no idea what the differences might be in this case. As neither my schedule nor my wallet were up to a research trip to Kiev, I invited a Russian friend along to Shinok, a Ukrainian restaurant that just happens to be in my neighborhood, in hopes of becoming a bit better educated.
 The restaurant's interior has been done up in a rustic peasant style, with lots of lattice work and fruits of the harvest adorning the walls. While I don't know enough about the subject to say that the effect is that of a real <i>khata </i>(as my dining companion informed me a Ukrainian peasant domicile is called), it does create a warm and very comfortable atmosphere in which to eat.
 We began by sharing the aspic with mustard sauce (170 rubles, or $5.67). I'm not a big fan of aspic and, had I been paying attention, I would have lobbied for something else. But this dish was more shredded beef than aspic, and spread on bread with the mustard sauce, it started things off with a zing.
 We followed with two traditional Ukrainian offerings, cabbage rolls (110 rubles, or $3.67) and potato-and-mushroom <i>vareniki </i>(150 rubles, or $5), which some Ukrainians call <i>perokhi</i>. 
 The cabbage rolls were a disappointment, with the filling not particularly meaty and the cabbage leaves and the sauce being pretty bland. The vareniki more than made up for this, though, as the potato-and-mushroom mixture was tasty, with a wonderful texture, and the dough in which the mixture was wrapped was very fresh and had been boiled perfectly. They came with lots of smetana with which to smother them and were delicious.
 The soup course was as impressive as the vareniki. My companion went with the cold borshch (90 rubles, or $3). As he explained, a real borshch should be thick enough that a spoon will stand up in it and, while I remain skeptical on this point, the concoction served at Shinok was more than hearty enough, full of beets, boiled egg slices and onion. My chicken soup with noodles (90 rubles, or $3) actually lived up to its billing by containing more chicken than noodles, with the chicken being tender and delicious while the noodles were fresh.
 For our mains, my companion went with the <i>deruny </i>with sour cream (120 rubles, or $4), which I had tasted before, although under the name potato <i>latki</i>. Shinok's chefs succeeded in doing this right as well, serving up golden-brown rings that were not, as is often the case, overly greasy, and adding in the right mixture of onion, parsley and fennel to fill out the tastes in the dish.
 I went with the house's signature dish, the Shinok cutlet (290 rubles, or $9.67), which was tasty, although not as impressive as some of the other dishes that we had already sampled. The Shinok cutlet is a mixture of ground pork, veal and chicken served with fresh vegetables, field mushrooms and, again, fennel and parsley. For a dish consisting chiefly of a combination of ground meats, the cutlet managed a solid texture, so that it didn't just crumble under knife and fork but also didn't run the risk of being mistaken for a member of the mineral family.
 To wash it all down we chose rather standard fare, Botchkaryov beer for myself (40 rubles, or $1.33) and, to start, mineral water for my companion (70 rubles, or $2.33). He also sampled the kvas (50 rubles, or $1.67) - a slightly fermented draught that is sweeter and usually virtually non-alcoholic - upon receiving assurances that it was brewed in-house. I'm not much of a kvas connoisseur, but it got a thumbs-up from my dining companion, who is.
 Although I'm not sure that I really have more of a feel for Ukraine than I had before checking out Shinok, the restaurant is worth trying, especially if what you are savoring is hearty Slavic fare prepared the way it really should be.
 
 <i>Shinok, 13 Zagorodny Pr., 311-8262. Open daily 11a.m. until the last customer leaves. Dinner for two 1,270 rubles ($42.33). Menu in English and Russian. No credit cards accepted. </i>

TITLE: Taliban Leaders Call for a 'Fight to the Death'
AUTHOR: By Kathy Gannon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan - Targeted by deadly air strikes and on the run from U.S.-backed Northern Alliance forces, the Taliban leadership is trying hard to bolster support inside its southern-Afghan heartland where rival tribal leaders want low-ranking Islamic militia fighters to defect.
 Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who apparently escaped the massive bombardment of a command bunker near his stronghold of Kandahar on Tuesday, has reportedly ordered his men to &quot;fight to the death&quot; despite the participation of growing numbers of elite U.S. and other Western troops and advisers in the conflict.
 &quot;We are ready to face these Americans. We are happy that they have landed here and we will teach them a lesson,&quot; one Taliban official quoted Omar as saying in a radio message to his field commanders.
 Despite Omar's defiance, anti-Taliban leaders in the south say local Pashtun tribal chiefs are recruiting some Taliban fighters into their own ranks.
 Switching loyalties during wartime has a long tradition in highly tribalized Afghanistan and residents contacted in Kandahar and elsewhere say Taliban troops appeared increasingly demoralized as casualties mount and bombing raids continue. It was unclear, however, how many members of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda force have changed sides.
 Efforts to erode support for bin Laden may have been hampered by deep-rooted tribal rivalry that long predates the formation of the Taliban movement in the early 1990s.
 In the southern border town of Spinboldak, Taliban negotiators broke off talks with Pashtun tribesmen about a possible surrender there on Wednesday after non-Taliban leaders refused to guarantee the safety of Arabs loyal to bin Laden, said tribal official Mohammed Anwar.
 Other sources said the talks failed because of squabbling between the Achakzai and Nurzai tribes that each want to control Spinboldak, which strategically sits astride the Taliban's last major supply route from neighboring Pakistan to the east.
 A major factor affecting morale within the Taliban and al-Qaeda is the escalating number of casualties, both by U.S. bombing and in direct combat.
 In Washington, Pentagon officials said more than half a dozen senior leaders within al-Qaeda as well as several hundred of bin Laden's most loyal fighters have been killed so far.
 But thousands of foreign al-Qaida fighters are still operating in Afghani stan and have apparently mixed in with Afghan Taliban fighters.
 &quot;There will always be pockets that are going to fight to the death,&quot; said Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem. &quot;But getting the leadership and breaking the chain of command is going to render much of that ineffective.&quot;
 &quot;We've driven the al-Qaeda bunch into hiding and [the caves] are one of the places where they may be,&quot; Rear Admiral Mark Fitzgerald of the USS Theodore Roosevelt said Thursday. His battle group is one of three in the Arabian Sea.
 In the north of Afghanistan, hundreds of bin Laden fighters were killed during a three-day prisoner-of-war uprising near Mazar-e-Sharif following their weekend surrender around the city of Kunduz.
 Some Northern Alliance fighters removed bonds from the hands of dead fighters before giving their bodies to the Red Cross on Wednesday. But a key alliance leader, General Rashid Dostum, dismissed suggestions of an atrocity and insisted that his troops had treated the prisoners humanely and in accordance with human rights before the rebellion erupted. 
 Amnesty International has demanded an inquiry.
 CIA officer John Spann was killed in the uprising - the first American combat death of the conflict. U.S. military officials said U.S. infantry have crossed from Uzbekistan into northern Afghanistan to help protect other Americans near two air bases.
 One force near Mazar-e-Sharif is made up of no more than two dozen soldiers, the officials said. The other unit at the Bagram airfield north of Kabul has about the same number.

TITLE: Afghan Conference Agrees on Council
AUTHOR: By Tony Czuczka
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KOENIGSWINTER, Germany - The Northern Alliance and the former king's delegation agreed Thursday on a formula for an interim council to run post-Taliban Afghanistan, an adviser to the Northern Alliance said.
 The two groups, along with two smaller exiled factions, are trying to work out a power-sharing arrangement until a national council of tribal leaders can be convened in March.
 &quot;This is an important breakthrough because had it not come through these talks would have bogged down, but now they have a focus,&quot; said Mohammad Hussin Bakhshi, an aide to Northern Alliance delegate Mohammad Natiqi.
 The two largest delegations have agreed the council would comprise 42 members, with 21 members each from the northern alliance and delegation of former King Mohammad Zaher Shah, Bakhshi said. He added that some provision may be made for representation from the two smaller delegations at the talks, exiles based in Peshawar, Pakistan, and in Cyprus.
 The delegations will decide who will be included on the interim council during further talks Thursday, Bakhshi said.
 There was disagreement, however, on whether the representation would be decided based on the population of Afghanistan's 28 provinces or if it would be based on the country's ethnic makeup, he said.
 UN spokesperson Ahmad Fawzi cautioned that a full accord on the interim council was still being worked out. &quot;We're moving forward on finding names they can agree on,&quot; Fawzi said.
 The UN-sponsored conference at a secluded hilltop hotel near Bonn, now in its third day, is meant to guide Afghans toward first steps toward a new multiethnic government that would bring stability and peace to the war-battered country.
 In Washington, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reminded the sides that a broad-based interim administration was a condition for massive aid promised by the international community.
 &quot;Without a credible partner, we are not going to be able to put in the kinds of resources that will be required to develop the country,&quot; he said after meeting U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
 &quot;I urge them and plead with them for the sake of their people and the country and the region to show the leadership required.&quot;
 The alliance also rejected sending an international security force to Afghani stan, saying its own fighters are providing enough security. By rejecting the outside force, the Northern Alliance put itself at odds with the three other factions.
 The United Nations has three proposals for a security force to ensure peace in Afghanistan once the Taliban are defeated: an Afghan force, a UN peacekeeping force and an international security force. UN officials have indicated an international force would be the most realistic, but Northern Alliance chief delegate Younus Qanooni said the alliance can handle the task itself.
 UN officials and aid agencies have expressed concern over unconfirmed reports that Northern Alliance forces have massacred hundreds of civilians and captured soldiers in their push against the Taliban.

TITLE: U.S. Defends Its 'Aggressive' Tactics in War on Terrorism
AUTHOR: By Larry Margasak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The U.S. Justice Department lawyer overseeing the terrorism investigation told lawmakers Wednesday the government's detention of hundreds of people is necessary to combat &quot;sleeper cells&quot; of terrorists quietly waiting to strike.
 Assistant Attorney General Mike Chertoff testified that the government was lucky enough to avert a millennium celebration terrorist attack on Los Angeles in December 1999 with the border arrest of Ahmed Ressam. But Americans need more than a happenstance thwarting of attacks, he said.
 &quot;We could continue this war and hope we get lucky as we did in the Ressam case,&quot; Chertoff told the Senate Judiciary Committee. 
 &quot;Or we can pursue a comprehensive and systematic investigative approach that aggressively uses every available, legally permissible investigative technique to identify, disrupt, incarcerate and deport sleepers,&quot; he said.
 Chertoff defended the possible use of tribunals as well as the monitoring of jailhouse conversations between lawyers and suspects. &quot;Are we being aggressive and hard-nosed? You bet,&quot; Chertoff said.
 Chertoff said only 16 prisoners' conversations with lawyers were being monitored by the government - 12 convicted terrorists and four people held on espionage charges. He said none was being held in connection with the Sept. 11 investigation.
 Chertoff's comments came one day after his boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, gave the most thorough public accounting of terrorism arrests so far, naming for the first time nearly all of the 104 people who have been charged with federal crimes. Ashcroft declined, however, to identify the hundreds of people being held on immigration violations, suggesting some were members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
 &quot;I am not interested in providing, when we are at war, a list to Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network of the people we have detained that would make any easier their effort to kill Americans,&quot; the attorney general said.
 In all, 603 people remain in detention. One case involves a Pakistani man who took video footage of the World Trade Center a few days before the Sept. 11 attacks. Raza Nasir Khan was accused by federal agents in Wilmington, Del., of being an illegal immigrant who possessed firearms.
 A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms affidavit alleged the Pakistani man requested maps of a hunting area near a New Jersey nuclear-power plant and had a handheld global-positioning system device. The magistrate who ordered Khan held said she didn't see any connection to terrorism.
 In northern California, an Immigration and Naturalization Service affidavit alleged that Nabil Sarama, a Palestinian, made a false statement to obtain a permanent residency card. Sarama was arrested Sept. 16 in Florida, after police found him near a pay phone that had been used to make bomb threats, the documents alleged.
 A search of his suitcase, the affidavit said, turned up a kit capable of making between eight and 12 box cutters - like the weapons used by the Sept. 11 hijackers. He also had a California Department of Motor Vehicles identification card, a Georgia driver's license, four Florida identification cards and a Palestinian Authority passport.

TITLE: U.S. Will Have Smallpox Vaccine for Every Citizen
AUTHOR: By Laura Meckler
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The Bush administration says it will have enough smallpox vaccine on hand within a year to inoculate every American, but officials have no plans to use it absent a return of the virtually extinct but deadly virus.
 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services signed a contract Wednesday to buy 155 million doses of vaccine from a British company, preparing for the possibility terrorists would try to spread the highly contagious disease.
 The contract with Acambis Inc. is supposed to bring the country's stockpile to 286 million doses of the vaccine by the end of next year, promising protection for every American. But there are no plans to resume the routine vaccinations of Americans that ended in 1972, HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said. That's because the vaccine can be administered four days after exposure to smallpox and still offer protection and because it can cause some rare but deadly side effects.
 Smallpox hasn't occurred in the United States since 1949 and was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and a Moscow laboratory hold stocks of the virus, and bioterrorism experts worry that samples could fall into terrorists' hands and be used as a weapon.
 Experts believe such a smallpox attack is unlikely, but it could overwhelm communities were it to occur. The virus is highly contagious, and nearly a third of its victims die.
 &quot;The risk does exist and we must be prepared,&quot; Thompson said.
 &quot;Obtaining the vaccine represents an important insurance policy,&quot; added Dr. D.A. Henderson, who led the global campaign that eliminated smallpox and is now Thompson's top bioterrorism adviser. &quot;It's simply a prudent thing to do at this point in time.&quot;
 But the risk of a smallpox attack is not significant enough to justify the risks associated with the vaccine, he said.
 About three in every 1 million people vaccinated would get encephalitis, which can cause permanent brain damage or death. Another 250 among the total population vaccinated would get a smallpox-like rash that also can be fatal if not properly treated. And experts estimate that if every American were vaccinated against smallpox, about 400 people would die from the vaccine.
 Should smallpox reappear, a federal response plan calls for isolating the patient and then vaccinating those in close contact with him or her.
 The government already has 15.4 million doses of smallpox vaccine on hand, and officials are prepared to dilute each one to create five doses, bringing the total to 77 million. Researchers are studying whether each dose could be further diluted, to get 10 doses from each one.
 An additional 54 million doses already have been ordered from Acambis and are expected to be delivered next year. The new contract will bring another 155 million doses, which are expected by late fall 2002. They will cost the government $428 million, or $2.76 per dose.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: N. Korea Against Terror
 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea, eager to get off a U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism, signed two UN treaties designed to stem terrorism, South Korean officials said Thursday.
 The U.S. State Department listed North Korea as a sponsor of terrorism in 1988 because of its alleged involvement in the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airliner in the skies near Myanmar. All 115 people aboard the Korean Air flight died. North Korea, however, has not been cited in any terrorist activities in recent years. It called the attacks on the United States "very regrettable and tragic." Countries on the list include Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria.
 
 
Fatal Assistance
 

BERLIN (AP) - A civilian was killed when a heavy bundle of humanitarian supplies dropped by parachute crushed her house in northern Afghani stan, the U.S. military said Thursday.
 A U.S. military aircraft flying from Ramstein Air Base in Germany dropped the bundle from a high altitude about 175 kilometers northeast of Mazar-e-Sharif, near Afghanistan's northern border.
 The package of wheat, blankets and cold-weather equipment hit the house before dawn Wednesday, according to U.S. Central Command in Florida. The bundle weighed 750 kilograms, according to Central Command spokesperson, Lieutenent Colonel Martin Compton.
 "The U.S. deeply regrets any unnecessary loss of life," Central Command said in a statement. "U.S. Central Command will examine the details of how this tragic accident occurred and will put in place appropriate corrective actions."
 Compton said there were no immediate plans to halt the drops.
 
 
Cuba Hails UN Vote
 

SANTIAGO, Cuba (Reuters) - Jubilant Cuban officials on Wednesday hailed the United Nations' 10th consecutive vote to condemn the four-decade-old U.S. trade embargo on the Caribbean island as a crucial victory over its political archenemy.
 "Everyone agrees that yesterday's vote was a knockout blow," Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told Cuban state TV from New York.
 "It's a triumph that belongs especially to our people and to our commander-in-chief," he said, referring to Fidel Castro. In its annual vote on the issue, the UN General Assembly voted Tuesday 167 to 3 - identical to last year's record vote - for an end to the trade sanctions imposed soon after Castro's 1959 revolution.
 Israel and the Marshall Islands voted with Washington, and three nations abstained - Latvia, Micronesia and Nicaragua.
 
 
German Kidnapped
 

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Armed men have kidnapped a German businessperson in Yemen, security officials and the German Embassy said Thursday.
 Five men abducted the unidentified German at gunpoint from the diplomatic area in the capital Sana late Wednesday and bundled him into a car before speeding toward the southeast part of the city, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
 "We are trying everything to solve the situation, and I'm sure that Yemeni authorities are searching for him," said embassy spokesperson Horst Dopychai. He refused to give further details.
 The kidnapping came as Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh continued a state visit to Germany.
 Kidnappings of foreigners are common in Yemen, a poor and often lawless country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. The government passed a law in 1999 making abductions punishable by death. Three convicted kidnappers have since been executed. 



TITLE: Selig Won't Back Off On Contraction Plan
AUTHOR: By Ronald Blum
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CHICAGO - Baseball owners extended commissioner Bud Selig's contract through 2006 but did not take any action Tuesday on the game's most debated issue - eliminating two teams before next season.
 The unanimous vote of confidence for Selig came at a time when the sport faces economic stress and possible labor problems. He said baseball had lost more than $500 million this year and was under pressure to stem losses.
 Owners left the elimination of two teams - widely believed to be the Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos - on hold as the issue winds its way through the courts.
 &quot;Baseball will contract,&quot; Selig said. &quot;I can't give you a precise timetable today because in some parts it's out of our hands.&quot;
 Robert DuPuy, baseball's chief legal officer, told owners there was a chance contraction would not take place before the 2002 season, according to a person in the meeting who spoke on the condition he not be identified. Owners also were told that the players' association may file an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board.
 Selig said 25 of the 30 teams lost money this year, said $165 million was transferred this year from the six teams with the highest revenue to the six lowest, and said baseball will release specifics Dec. 6, the date tentatively set by the House Judiciary Committee for a hearing on the sport's 79-year-old antitrust exemption.
 He said the commissioner's office had guaranteed loans to an unspecified number of teams to get through this year.
 &quot;We've had to help clubs, quite frankly, to stay afloat,&quot; he said. &quot;We're doing something now we should have done years and years ago: We're addressing our problems. We had an option to do something and we just didn't do it.&quot;
 Selig had Gregory R.D. Nash of FleetBoston Financial Corp. and James Nash of Bank of America Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina, address owners at the meeting. The bankers told owners that with the current recession, loans will be examined more closely in the future.
 Selig said the $500 million loss came on revenue of $3.5 billion.
 &quot;The loss stunned everybody,&quot; Selig said. &quot;The debt is even more worrisome to people we do business with.&quot;
 The public proclamation of losses points to yet another confrontation with the players' association, which has resisted change since the current system of free agency and salary arbitration came into effect in 1976. In that time, the average salary has climbed from $51,000 to about $2.15 million.
 There have been eight work stoppages since 1972, and baseball's latest labor contract expired Nov. 7.
 &quot;There's nothing I can say now. We'll see what happens,&quot; union head Donald Fehr said.
 Selig gave hope there would be a 2002 season, saying a potential lockout of players was &quot;not on the radar screen.&quot;
 The only concrete action taken was the decision to extend the term of Selig, who is thought to make about $3 million annually. He became acting commissioner in September 1992, when he helped lead a revolt that forced Fay Vincent's resignation. When Selig was elected on July 8, 1998, owners said he had a five-year term starting that Aug. 1.
 However, baseball said Tuesday his term actually was set to expire on Dec. 31, 2003, and that the new term runs through 2006.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Good and Bad
 

ZURICH, Switzerland (Reuters) - West Ham United striker Paolo di Canio has won FIFA's Fair Play Award for 2001 after passing up the chance to score against an injured goalkeeper.
 Soccer's ruling body said it was rewarding the Italian, who has a chequered disciplinary record, for "a special act of good sportsmanship in an English Premiership match last season".
 Di Canio was well-placed to score a late winner against Everton in December 2000 when he caught the ball to stop the game and allow Everton keeper Paul Gerrard to receive attention to a knee injury. The match finished 1-1.
 The act drew swift praise at the time from FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who congratulated him "on behalf of FIFA and all fair-minded football fans for this splendid gesture made in the true spirit of fair play".
 However, di Canio made headlines for the wrong reasons in September 1998, when he was banned for 11 games for pushing referee Paul Alcock to the ground while playing for his former club Sheffield Wednesday against Arsenal.
 
 
Another Record
 

EAST MEADOW, New York (Reuters) - American Natalie Coughlin got her second world record in two days at the FINA World Cup meet, shaving more than a second off the previous women's short course 100-meterbackstroke mark on Wednesday.
 Coughlin recorded a time of 57.08 seconds at Nassau County Aquatic Center to erase the previous mark of 0:58.45 set by Mai Nakamura of Japan on Mar. 4 in Kanagawa, Japan.
 "I knew the 100 back was my strongest event," said Coughlin. "I just knew if I could do it in the 200, then I was pretty sure I could go after the world record in the 100.
 "It was just a matter of putting it together. I just went out like it was a 50 and brought it back home."
 On Tuesday night, Coughlin set a world record in the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 2:03.62 seconds to eclipse the old record of 2:06.09 set by China's He Cihong in Spain in 1993.
 Coughlin, who was named female performer of the competition, got her fourth victory at the meet when she set a U.S. record (25.83) in the 50 meter fly, the final race of the two-day competition.
 
 
It's Still Not Cricket
 

LONDON (Reuters) - The International Cricket Council (ICC) has given India one last chance to salvage the crisis surrounding the selection of suspended batsman Virender Sehwag by extending its Friday deadline by 24 hours.
 ICC president Malcolm Gray and Chief Executive Malcolm Speed are now set to meet Indian cricket chief Jagmohan Dalmiya on Saturday in a bid to save the Mohali test match between India and England, which is scheduled to start on Monday.
 This means the initial ICC Friday deadline for India to make a final decision on Sehwag has been put back a day.
 Dalmiya had refused to accept the Friday deadline, which could force the ICC to declare the Mohali test match unofficial and abort England's three-test tour. England has made it clear that it will not play an unofficial test.
 The one-match ban on Sehwag was imposed for dissent in the second test against South Africa. India refused to accept ICC-appointed Mike Denness as the match referee for the third match of the series, which the ICC ruled as unofficial.
 India refused to accept the ICC's ruling and added fuel to the fire by adding that Sehwag, who did not play in the third match, had now served his ban.