SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #727 (94), Tuesday, December 4, 2001
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TITLE: Unity-Fatherland Super Party Is Born
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After months of courtship and several bouts of cold feet, the pro-Kremlin Unity movement and its allies from the Fatherland-All Russia bloc gathered Saturday for the founding congress of their new party - All-Russian Unity and Fatherland - a rigidly structured organization likely to dominate the national political scene in the coming few years.
Party leaders addressing more than 3,200 delegates at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses said the new party, called Unified Russia for short, would strive to consolidate society, reject all forms of radicalism and support a "socially responsible" market economy and a strong government headed by President Vladimir Putin.
"We espouse a pragmatic combination of boldness and caution, of tradition and energetic innovation," said Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who was elected one of the three chairpeople of the party's Higher Council.
While Unity and those who have joined forces with the movement have often been called "the party of power" because of their tendency to toe the Kremlin line and because of their influential members, a different idea was reiterated by all of the most prominent speakers at the founding congress, including Putin, who showed up for about 30 minutes before the noon break: Don't call yourself the party of power until you've earned the title; strive instead to be the party of the majority.
"To declare yourself the party of power would be rash," Putin cautioned his audience.
"Today Russia needs parties that ... will consistently defend the rights and interests of the citizens. Only then will you truly be able to become the party of the majority," said the president. After a pause, he added: "I hope your party is up to this task."
With a wave of their ID cards, the delegates passed two documents - a very general party program and the new party's charter, which establishes a rigid administrative structure compared by many to that of the Soviet-era Communist Party.
The program, still a work-in-progress, does little more than outline four basic principles advocated by the party: freedom, rule of law, fairness and consensus.
The 30-page charter, on the other hand, meticulously details the powers of each of the party's five ruling bodies, as well as the rights and obligations of members and the rules for nominating candidates - one of the party's most important functions in the run-up to the 2003 parliamentary elections and the presidential race set for the following year.
Under the law on political parties passed earlier this year, only those organizations that go through the complicated procedure of re-registering as parties - a legal status that has not existed up until now - will be able to nominate candidates for elections to any government office.
Presenting the charter, Alexander Bespalov, the new chairperson of Unified Russia's General Council, said that more than 1,600 amendments had been incorporated into the original draft, making it "clearer and stricter."
In addition to approving the two documents, the delegates - assisted by rosy-cheeked college students in blue and white neckties - voted at special electronic consoles on the make-up of the party's various governing bodies. The quickest vote was for the somewhat decorative Higher Council, chaired by Luzh kov, the head of Fatherland; Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, who heads Unity; and Tatarstan President Mintimir Shaimiyev of the All-Russia movement. This 18-member group, which includes Olympic stars Alexander Ka relin and Alina Kabayeva, is the party's public face, but true power lies with Bespalov's 13-member General Council - which snickering delegates quietly compared to the Communist-era Politburo.
Political analysts called Bespalov an ally of the security and defense officials "imported" by Putin from St. Petersburg. And they interpreted his appointment to the key post of General Council chairperson as a sign that, for the time being, the Petersburg siloviki had gotten the upper hand over the political elite formed under Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin - the other group fighting to influence the president's decisions.
"The opposition [between these two groups] exists along various lines - both in the fight for the ministries and for various political resources, including the State Duma," Andrei Ryabov of the Moscow Carnegie Center said in an interview Friday. Without a doubt, Ryabov added, Unified Russia was also "a focus of this battle."
Since its inception in the run-up to last year's presidential election, the new party's core, the Unity movement, has been perceived as a faceless, amorphous organism that simply does the Kremlin's bidding. And delegates at Saturday's congress were well aware of this.
"We must not become a thoughtless voting machine," Duma Deputy Oleg Morozov warned his colleagues. Alexan der Zhukov, head of the Duma's Budget and Tax Committee, added that the new party must "articulate a clear position and offer the government alternative plans of action."
Ryabov said Unified Russia was not likely to support the president absolutely blindly because other powerful interest groups would exert pressure on separate factions within the party.
But the lack of a common ideology was evident not only from the ambiguous party platform. It shone through the irreconcilable phrases with which speakers opened and closed their addresses - from "dear comrades" to "may God bless you!"
Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov said that, in order to win the support of the majority of Russians, the new party would need to develop its own ideology.
Ryabov agreed that the party's ideological vacuum was a weak point.
"If the president's position in society and political circles starts to grow weaker," he said, "there is little that can save the party from internal erosion."
TITLE: The Army May Be Interested in Your Jeep
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Niva owners, beware!
As of this month, the federal traffic inspectorate has introduced a new layer of paperwork for owners of Russian-made sports-utility vehicles and reinforced the state's right to snatch up their cars if military officials believe the country's defensive capacity depends on it.
On Friday, the agency sent out a written order to regional traffic inspectorates demanding that, prior to registering their cars with traffic police, owners of Russian-made SUVs will have to pay a visit to local military-enlistment offices to have their all-wheel drives registered with the Defense Ministry.
Commandeering automobiles in the event of war is nothing new. The Soviet-era practice was updated by a 1998 presidential decree on military transport and an order of the Defense Ministry issued Dec. 31, 1999. But the new order, currently in the form of an internal instruction of the traffic inspectorate, adds domestically produced SUVs such as Nivas and UAZs to the list.
The new regulation immediately ran into harsh criticism.
"It is an illegal demand," Leonid Olshansky, a Moscow lawyer famous for his long-time rivalry with the traffic police, said by telephone Monday. "Any limitation of citizens' rights can be imposed only by federal law, but no federal law allows for the registration of a privately owned car at the military-enlistment office."
But federal traffic inspectors and military officials defended the measure.
"We are just following the presidential decree," said Alexander Kostrov, a spokesperson with the inspectorate's agitation and propaganda department. "The initiative for the [new] registration was the Defense Ministry's."
Ministry spokesperson Andrei Kuznetsov linked the new regulation with the attempts to revive the country's military potential.
"It is one of the ways to strengthen Russia's defense at a time when the army is going through personnel cuts," he explained in an interview Monday. "It is a standard process."
Since Soviet times, traffic police have required clearance from the Defense Ministry before registering trucks, buses, motorcycles with sidecars owned by private citizens and all vehicles belonging to legal entities.
The new registration rules don't mean that all Niva and UAZ owners will have to line up outside the enlistment offices, or voenkomats, right away. But those who now buy or sell such vehicles or otherwise change their registrations will have to deal with the new paperwork.
Although Kostrov of the traffic police could not estimate the number of privately owned Nivas and UAZs, he explained why last week's order focused on Russian-made SUVs.
"Unlike foreign cars, they are easier in terms of repair and maintenance, and we have a stock of spare parts for them," he said.
"A foreign country will hardly support us with spare parts in wartime," an officer with the department of vehicle registration at the Moscow city voenkomat said by telephone Monday.
The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that privately owned vehicles can be commandeered by the military not only in the event of war, but also during the annual training sessions for reservists. However, he said this was unlikely to happen.
The last time private vehicles were commandeered by the military was in 1941, when the Soviet Union was attacked by Hitler's forces, said the officer.
But he acknowledged that the new rules would be a headache for car owners, not least of all because his department is open only two days a week.
Drivers are not likely to be happy with the new registration procedure.
"If I know that nobody's life depends on my car's being in the hands of the military, I am not going to give it up to them, even in the case of war," said Andrei, 30, the owner of a slick new Niva, who declined to give his last name. "Incidentally, by taking my car from me and damaging or losing it, the Defense Ministry risks losing considerable money because my car is insured."
Here, Andrei is mistaken, as insurance companies regard war as force majeur circumstances.
"Usually, any confiscation of a client's property by state bodies is a force majeur that stops any pay-out to the client," Kheiraddin Mamedov, a lawyer from RESO-Garantia insurance company said in a telephone interview, adding that this is an international practice in the insurance business.
The client may opt for a special contract that would cover such cases, said Mamedov, but the premium would be significantly higher than usual.
Registration problems could also deal a blow to the domestic Niva market, sales professionals believe.
"When people buy trucks that they have to register at the voenkomat, they have no alternative because the truck is needed for business activity," said an employee at the sales office of the Avtomir car dealership, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Buying a Niva, which is almost always used as a private car, hardly anybody would be happy knowing that the car doesn't belong entirely to them."
According to Avtomir's statistics, Niva sales accounted for 9.2 percent of total sales of Russian-made automobiles in Moscow in the first 11 months of 2001.
Those who refuse to give up their dream of owning a "Russian-made jeep" have two options, believes Olshansky, the lawyer.
One is to go to the voenkomat. The other way out is to go to the court.
"You must file a lawsuit against the traffic police department that refuses to register your car without clearance from the voenkomat," said Olshansky. "Demand that your car be registered without any preconditions and you should win."
TITLE: After Kursk Report, Putin Fires Admirals
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Hours after gingerly casting blame on the navy for the deadly sinking of the Kursk submarine, President Vladimir Putin on Saturday disciplined several high-ranking commanders.
The Northern Fleet commander, Ad miral Vyacheslav Popov, was fired from his position, as was Vice Admiral Mik hail Motsak, the fleet's chief of staff, and Vice Admiral Oleg Burtsev, its submarine commander. Their new jobs were not announced.
The head of the navy, Admiral Vla di mir Kuroyedov, who announced the demotions, said eight other admirals and three senior captains had been dismissed, Interfax reported.
General Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the General Staff, told reporters the actions had "absolutely no link to the loss of the Kursk" but were the result of failings within the Northern Fleet.
But just hours before, Putin observed that the Kursk investigation "enables us to draw a rather definite conclusion about the quality of preparations for, and organization of, military exercises and the organization of search-and-rescue operations." The remarks are the closest Putin has come to placing blame on Russian commanders for the Kursk's sinking.
The president received a preliminary report Saturday from Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov on the August 2000 naval exercises during which the Kursk sank. Putin told Kuroyedov, Kvashnin and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov during a Kremlin meeting that it was too early to issue a definitive ruling on what caused the Kursk disaster.
But he ordered measures to improve the fleet and unspecified "staf fing decisions." A year ago Putin rejected as premature attempts by Kuroyedov and Popov to resign, saying they should stay until the full facts surrounding the tragedy were known.
Ustinov, who is heading a legal probe into the loss of the Kursk, attended Putin's somber Kremlin conference Saturday after briefing the president on the findings of his initial investigation.
Ustinov said Northern Fleet investigators had uncovered "major breaches" during preparations for the naval wargames, but had not yet discovered a direct link to the disaster.
But independent defense analyst Alexander Golts dismissed official protestations and said the link between the demotions and the Kursk disaster was clear, even if the exact chain of events had yet to be published. The navy had failed to explain why its rescue operation began 12 hours after the blasts that sank the Kursk were picked up by a Norwegian monitoring station, he said.
"Putin had to punish these people. Military exercises were going on and all navy systems had to be ready to monitor any explosion," said Golts. "If you believe a foreign submarine caused the disaster, it shows Russia's forces were not prepared and failed to monitor these submarines."
Putin had cleverly used the prosecutor's office to justify his course of action, he added.
- WP, Reuters
TITLE: Duma: Prosecutors Ignored Corruption
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Prosecutor General's Office obstructed justice for more than two years by refusing to act on evidence of widespread corruption in Nikolai Aksyonenko's Railways Ministry, according to a new report by the State Duma's anti-corruption commission.
The scathing report, made available to lawmakers Friday, also says that the Prosecutor General's Office, by looking the other way, facilitated further embezzlement at the ministry from when the Audit Chamber first presented evidence of wrongdoing in 1999 until October this year, when Askyonenko was charged with abuse of office.
Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov last week said the criminal investigation into Aksyonenko's conduct would be completed by the end of the year, suggesting that the former Yeltsin insider could soon see his day in court. Prosecutors say Aksyonenko's conduct cost the government 70 million rubles ($2.3 million), but the Duma commission says the figure is closer to $1 billion - and it wants a word with Ustinov.
"The Prosecutor General's Office will be questioned as to why, in 1999, it stayed quiet, thereby giving the Railways Ministry an opportunity to accelerate its illegal activity and why it didn't start talking until [this] October," Dukhanin said.
"Audit Chamber findings presented to prosecutors [in 1999] sat univestigated until June of 2001, when the Audit Chamber sent an additional [report] that discovered even more significant violations," says the report.
Dukhanin said that Aksyonenko will not be the only subject of the Dec. 18 meeting with Ustinov - similar commission reports on investigations into a host of other past and present ministers will also be discussed, including Transportation Minister Sergei Frank, former nuclear power minister Yev geny Ada mov and former Deputy Finance Minister Andrei Vavilov. Duk hanin declined to provide other names, but stated that there were more on his list.
According to the report, prosecutors should have acted on corruption in the Railways Ministry in 1998, when several major newspapers published allegations of massive fraud. In response, the Duma encouraged Aksyonenko to defend himself against "information that blackened his honor and dignity," but he declined, saying he was too "busy."
Aksyonenko's silence made the anti-corruption commission suspicious and it sent requests to investigate to several law enforcement bodies, including the General Prosecutor's Office, the Audit Chamber, and the Federal Security Service, which was then headed by President Vladimir Putin.
In 1999, all of these bodies urged the Prosecutor General 's Office to act on the "violations of law" at the Railways Ministry, the report says. At first, the Prosecutor General's Office said it was too busy. But a few months later, in Sept. 1999, it confirmed most of the alleged violations, but explained them away.
One example was Aksyonenko's awarding a $104 million contract to the Baltic Construction Company to reconstruct of one of the most profitable railroads running from Moscow to St. Petersburg without a tender. The Audit Chamber discovered massive misuse of this money, including payments to non-existing companies. The prosecutor's office didn't pursue it because, it said, the contract was signed before the Economic Ministry had issued guidelines for holding tenders.
The chamber also found that the ministry cost the state millions of dollars in revenues by giving massive discounts to several private cargo companies that were owned and operated by family members of top Railways Ministry officials, including Aksyonenko's son and nephew. Prosecutors justified this nepotism as "economic expediency," according to the report.
In all, the Audit Chamber, in an updated report completed this year, found misappropriations totaling more than 11 billion rubles ($370 million) in 1999 and 2000.
Aksyonenko, who went on vacation leave shortly after the investigation began, was in the hospital Monday recovering from an operation related to high blood pressure, Interfax reported.
TITLE: Officials Urged To Do More on AIDS
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Foreign and local AIDS experts have urged politicians to do more about AIDS in the run up to World AIDS Day on Saturday.
"The public is really worried about HIV/AIDS, but for some reason the politicians are busy with other things," Vadim Pokrovsky, chief of the Federal AIDS Center, said Thursday.
By the end of this year Russia, which has one of the world's fastest-growing HIV-infection rates, is predicted to have 200,000 registered cases of HIV. Although as yet few in Russia are sick from AIDS, 99 percent of those infected are expected to die in the next 20 years.
Although politicians have often justified the scant resources to fight HIV/AIDS - 120 million rubles ($4 million) in this year's budget - by saying there was not enough money, funds always seemed available for other unexpected events, Pokrovsky said.
"There are many dubious expenditures by our government. In many cases money spent on HIV/AIDS could be more effective," he said.
"I spoke to Prime Minister [Mikhail] Kasyanov about it and he said, 'Yes, yes. We understand. It's a very important problem.' But there was no change in the HIV/AIDS budget. I doubt the president is even aware of it," he added.
The presidential press service had no comment on President Vladimir Putin's stance on the issue. Pokrovsky said that money was not the answer to all the problems posed by the epidemic and that attitudes could be changed relatively cheaply.
Peter Piot, director of the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS, agreed.
"We are not asking for the moon. These are things that don't cost a lot," he said as he outlined an anti-AIDS program for Russia. AIDS should be addressed as a national security issue by the top political leadership, he said.
In addition, every regional administration should have a program and a budget to fight HIV/AIDS. Special programs, probably best run by non-governmental organizations, should address at-risk groups such as young people and drug users.
"There should be a major effort in terms of openness about AIDS and everything else to do with it, including sex and drugs," he said.
While the breakdown of social support in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union has undoubtedly contributed to the rise of drug abuse and the spread of HIV, the media has evolved to a point where it could have a powerful positive effect.
"That also means influencing the opinions and attitudes of politicians. With AIDS, journalism can save more lives than doctors," Piot said.
"What I would like to see, and it's happening in some countries, is compulsory free television time for AIDS advertisements with these messages in prime time, not after midnight," he added. "That's how they started in Thailand 10 years ago and it made a big difference."
While no country has succeeded in stamping out addiction to heroin, which is the main drug injected in Russia, treatment programs using methadone, a synthetic analog of heroin, have been found to be the most effective in assisting drug users to get off heroin when used as part of a comprehensive treatment and prevention program, experts said this week.
Such programs cannot be launched in Russia because methadone use is illegal. Like heroin, methadone is addictive, but it allows addicts to lead a relatively normal life, Pokrovsky said. While it is not a panacea, methadone is being considered as a treatment for HIV-positive drug users in order to stop them spreading their infection through sharing syringes, he said.
TITLE: Putin Calls for Closer Integration of CIS
AUTHOR: By Sarah Karush
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin welcomed the heads of 11 former Soviet republics to the Kremlin on Friday and called for closer integration among the countries that make up the Commonwealth of Independent States. At a news conference after the main CIS summit meetings, Putin said recent world events had demonstrated the need for strong international partnerships.
"The tragic events of Sept. 11 showed how vulnerable a country is on its own - even a country that is very powerful, economically and militarily," he said.
The CIS members have sought varied levels of cooperation, with some, such as Georgia and Uzbekistan, determined to stake out an independent course. At the other extreme is Belarus, which has formed a far-reaching, though largely symbolic, union with Russia.
"I am in favor of the highest degree of integration, which was developed in the Soviet Union," said Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Opening one of the meetings, Putin said the CIS had "serious potential" for growth as a common economic market, and that "financial and economic stability in the world as a whole" depends on the CIS, since a number of its members are key energy suppliers. Putin also called on the CIS leaders to ensure that minority rights were respected - bearing in mind the approximately 25 million ethnic Russians left outside Russia's borders in the former Soviet Union.
In a joint declaration on Afgha ni stan, the summit participants praised the U.S.-led military operation there, particularly the coordination of strikes with Afghanistan's northern-based anti-Taliban opposition, which Russia has long supported. The presidents also said the fight against terrorism should be conducted on "a comprehensive and long-term basis."
In another session on Friday, with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze looking on, Putin said Georgia's Pankisi Gorge had become a base for insurgents and drug traffickers and questioned Georgia's ability to keep order on its own soil. Putin also cast doubt on claims that Russian planes had bombed Georgian villages this week. Shevardnadze proposed creating a bilateral commission to investigate.
"If we are talking about an alleged bombardment of Georgian villages by Russian planes, we must ask ourselves: What kind of bombardment was this that caused no casualties?" Putin said.
Georgian officials say six Russian jets crossed into Georgian air space late Tuesday and dropped bombs on villages in the Pankisi Gorge. No one was injured.
The Pankisi Gorge is home not only to "rebels, their bases and weapons warehouses, but to narcotics factories," Putin said. "They are poisoning the people of our countries." He added that "radio-transmission towers, through which fighters in Chechnya contact their sponsors in the Gulf states and Afghanistan" are also located there.
But Putin said he was in favor of forming the bilateral commission Shevardnadze proposed.
Shevardnadze said that the Tuesday incident had harmed relations between the two countries but that he did not think Russian authorities had been aware of any decision to strike Georgia. Later, after meeting privately with Putin, the Georgian president acknowledged that there is drug trafficking in the gorge and that Chechen warlord Ruslan Gelayev had been in the area at some point. He expressed satisfaction calling the discussion "a very frank conversation among comrades. I think this meeting can be called revolutionary."
The U.S. State Department has lent support to the Georgian allegations, saying Wednesday that helicopters had crossed from Russia into Georgia and attacked the Pankisi Gorge.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Hands Off Iraq
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Russia would oppose a U.S. military strike against Iraq and believes diplomacy is the only way to solve the arms-inspections impasse between Washington and Baghdad, a Russian envoy visiting the Middle East said Sunday.
Nikolai Kartuzov said Moscow, a key ally and major trading partner with Bagh dad, was making a great effort to prevent an attack on Iraq. Kartuzov said targeting Iraq would have serious repercussions in the Middle East.
Speculation that America might attack Iraq has intensified following Baghdad's continued reluctance to let UN inspectors determine if Iraq's programs to build weapons of mass destruction have been dismantled.
Kartuzov, who visited Iraq last week, said a diplomatic solution was the only viable means to deal with the weapons-inspection issue. He also said Washington had not provided any justification for launching an attack on Iraq nor produced evidence implicating it in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Khatab Aide Caught
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said Friday it had captured an Arab guerrilla in Chechnya who was a lieutenant to Khattab, a prominent rebel commander in the republic.
President Vladimir Putin himself made the announcement at a meeting of CIS leaders.
"During the first part of the day, Russian special units captured the well-known deputy of one of the most odious Arab mercenaries in Chechnya, Abu Sayakh, who has funded and organized terrorist acts in Russia and maintained contacts with his formations in Georgia," Putin said.
Russian officials described Abu Sayakh as the deputy of Khattab, an Arab commander who has fought alongside Shamil Basayev, Russia's most wanted man.
Ilya Shabalkin, a spokesperson for the Federal Security Service in Chechnya, told ORT television that Sayakh was being held by federal forces but had been wounded during his arrest and was "in a very serious condition."
No Concessions
MOCOW (Reuters) - A senior member of the military, in tough remarks that dimmed the afterglow of a cordial U.S.-Russia summit, has ruled out any concessions to Washington on strategic weapons and missile defense.
Colonel General Yury Baluyevsky, first deputy head of the General Staff, also said Friday that although Washington had not violated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty by missile-defense tests, there were signs that it was close to doing so.
"From the Russian side, there are no concessions. There have been none and there will not be any on the question of missile defense and strategic arms," Baluyevsky told reporters.
Baluyevsky was also cool on the subject of a new relationship with the NATO military alliance, saying everything that had taken place up to now in NATO-Russia relations had been "a simple waste of time."
Crash Kills 18
MOSCOW (SPT) - Up to 18 people were feared dead Sunday after an Il-76 cargo jet apparently exploded in midair as it tried to make an emergency landing, a senior Emergency Situations Ministry official said.
The military plane came down near the city of Okhotsk in the far eastern Kha barovsk Region shortly after the captain told air traffic control he was making an emergency landing due to an onboard fire.
The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear.
TITLE: Draft Budget Clears Key Hurdle in Duma
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Russian Federation's first budget with a built-in surplus - and more money for education than the military - sailed through the State Duma in the key third reading late Friday, as lawmakers put aside fears that falling oil prices will retard revenues.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, speaking to Duma members before the vote, called the balanced budget an essential element of economic and social stability.
"The key to macroeconomic stability is the federal budget. The guarantee of stability is absolute confidence that there won't be a deficit or any changes in external forces," Kasyanov said.
The vote, which passed 291 to 16 with one abstention, was a foregone conclusion, as a simple majority is needed and seven of nine parliamentary fractions had already pledged their support.
The Communists and Agrarians moved to strike the budget from the agenda, but failed.
"The most surprising thing about Friday's session was that the discussions went so late," said Alexei Moiseyev, an economist at investment house Renaissance Capital.
The third reading focused on debating hundreds of amendments, many of which were the result of a sharp decline in oil prices since Sept. 28, when the first reading, which sets overall expenditures, was passed. The first reading locked in revenues of 2.125 trillion rubles ($67.3 billion at the projected exchange rate of 31.5 rubles to the dollar) and spending of 1.95 trillion rubles, forcing the government to find ways to lessen dependence on hydrocarbons, its main source of revenue.
The Duma approved the government's plan to postpone 68.5 billion rubles in spending until the fourth quarter, to be paid contingent on actual revenues, and made little headway in its efforts to increase social spending between the first and third readings.
"In reality, the Duma only increased expenses by about 52 billion rubles [$1.65 billion], and the government got the Duma to agree to the possibility of lowering revenues by 68 billion rubles [$2.16 billion], which is very good," said Moiseyev.
The draft budget that passed Friday gives the government maneuvering room to ensure social and economic stability, Kasyanov said after the vote, according to Prime-Tass.
Kasyanov assured the Duma that key reforms, including judicial and military reforms, would continue to be priorities and would be carried out.
"We have already managed to ensure the budget's margin of safety and its independence from [oil] prices, taking into account all risks," news agencies quoted Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin as saying after the vote.
"Russia's development forecast is one of the most stable compared to other countries," said Kudrin, who is also finance minister.
Kudrin defended the GDP forecasts. "Our forecast is stable, and GDP growth will be 4 percent to 4.3 percent." Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said last week that growth would likely be no lower than the pessimistic scenario of 3.5 percent.
The Duma agreed to keep the financial reserve, planned as a buffer for the 2003 debt peak, which could reach almost $20 billion. It will be formed from three potential sources: the surplus of the 2001 budget, the planned 2002 surplus and a portion of any earnings in excess of budgeted revenues.
Unless oil prices recover, however, the planned sources of funding will not materialize.
TITLE: BBH Buys Part of Carlsberg's Vena Stake
AUTHOR: By Sergei Rybak and Anatoly Tyomkin
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: International brewing giant Carlsberg announced on Friday that it will sell just less than a 50-percent interest in the local Vena brewery to Baltic Beverages Holding (BBH).
Once the deal is finalized, Vena, one of the country's fastest-growing beer companies, will come under the management of Russia's biggest brewery holding.
BBH was set up in 1991 by Finland's Hartwall and Norway's Orkla companies. At the beginning of this year, Orkla was absorbed by Netherlands-based Carlsberg, which now owns a 50-percent stake in the holding
In its turn, BBH owns 75 percent of local Baltika breweries, 60 percent of the Yarpivo brewery in Yaroslavl and controlling stakes in Tula's Tulskoye Pivo, Don-pivo in Rostov-na-Donu, Zo lotoi Ural in Chelyabinsk and Kras no dar-based Pikra. BBH holdings account for 29 percent of all Russian beer production.
The agreement for the sale of the brewery by Carlsberg, which owns 99 percent of all shares in Vena, also gives BBH an option to buy the remainder of Carlsberg's stock in the brewery after Oct. 1, 2003.
According to Carlsberg spokesperson Margreth Skov, the company's decision to sell the stake in Vena was based on BBH's wide experience in managing beer-production plants in Russia.
"We had only one brewery in Russia, while BBH was managing six," Skov said. "So the decision just seemed logical to us."
Both Skov and Christian Ramm-Schmidt, the president of BBH, refused to comment on the financial specifics of the deal. Ramm-Schmidt would only say that the full sum would be paid to Carlsberg, even though it owns half of BBH.
According to Sofia Rogulina, an analyst with the NIKoil brokerage, the value of the 50-percent stake in Vena would be worth between $45 million and $50 million.
The Vena purchase is a significant move for BBH as the company had yet to establish a real presence in the Russian beer market's premium segment. The majority of the BBH-produced brands (such as Baltika and Yarpivo) are medium-priced beers, while Vena produces more expensive brands like Sinebrychoff, Nevskoye and Tuborg, which is produced under license.
This is particularly significant as the share of the market going to premium brands has been experiencing a steady increase. While premium labels garnered 13.8 percent of all beer sales in Russia last year, the corresponding figure for the first 10 months of 2001 was 18.6 percent, according to figures from the Business-Analytica market-research firm. On a percentage basis, Vena's market share has been climbing at an even greater pace, from 1.6 percent last year to 2.6 percent by October.
Despite the sale of the stake, Vena's management operations will be run separately from those of its new shareholder. According to Sergei Khudoleyev, executive director of Vena, the companies are not planning to integrate their marketing or distribution departments.
TITLE: Customs Crackdown Hits Estonian Border
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Recent changes in Russian customs procedures produced massive backlogs of trucks trying to cross the country's border with Estonia this weekend.
Lines as long as 14 kilometers were reported at the Luhamaa border crossing on Sunday. The Estonian newspaper Postimees reported that local customs officials closed one of the roads leading to the main motorway as a result of the traffic jam at the Russian checkpoint.
In October, the Northwest Customs Administration issued orders requiring customs officials to perform 100-percent cargo inspections of trucks carrying any of a number of specified goods, including household appliances, furniture and coffee. The instructions were issued as a result of an investigation carried out by the Customs Committee that determined that many goods were being imported into Russia under false manifests in order to avoid customs duties.
"Customs has recently discovered that trucks from Lithuania import goods with false declarations. That is why it was decided to search all trucks carrying, for instance, consumer goods," said Yevgeny Vensko, a spokes person for the Northwest Customs Administration, on Monday.
"This is not the truck drivers' fault," said Valeriya Glebovnya, a representative of the Lithuanian Truckers' Association, "but that of those in Russia who order the goods. The Russian companies are responsible for the documentation."
The same customs instructions created long lines at checkpoints on the Russian-Finnish border last month and also jammed St. Petersburg's cargo port. A spokesperson for the International Cargo Importers' Association said on Monday that the situation on the border with Finland "has returned to normal."
According to the Estonian National Customs Board, only 15 of the 82 trucks that started the day waiting at the Estonian side of the border near Luhamaa were able to clear customs and enter Russia on Sunday. Glebovnya said the waiting time for truck drivers had increased from five hours to five days this week.
However, Northwest Customs Administration officials said that the situation had improved on Monday, with the backlog being virtually cleared at the Narva and Koitula checkpoints.
At Luhamaa, the waiting time for trucks had been reduced to between 12 and 18 hours, according to representatives of the International Cargo Importers' Association.
TITLE: Local Facility Gears Up To Export More Oil
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - As OPEC tries to persuade global oil producers - particularly Moscow - to limit crude output, Russia is quietly preparing to launch a pipeline that will increase the country's export capacity by about 240,000 barrels per day.
The pipes of the Baltic Pipeline System, or BPS, were filled with oil last week, and the new export link built by the state-owned Transneft pipeline monopoly is due officially to be opened Dec. 25.
On Sunday, workers finished loading oil reservoirs at the Primorsk port, BPS's final destination on the Gulf of Finland while carrying out system checks and some final fine-tuning. Before year's end, the first tanker full of Russian export crude oil will set sail from Primorsk.
BPS, a project that kicked off in 1999, is designed to allow Russia to reduce dependence on existing oil terminals in the Baltic states of Latvia and Lithuania. Russia has had no Baltic Sea oil port since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Most of the country's oil exported through the Baltic goes through the Latvian port of Ventspils.
BPS's initial capacity of 12 million tons of crude a year is just a start. Eventually, the pipeline is to ship about 30 million tons of oil a year from Siberia and Timan-Pechora in the north of European Russia.
The first phase of the pipeline runs 270 kilometers from Kirishi to the newly-built terminals in Primorsk, located 120 kilometers north of St. Petersburg.
Once completed, the BPS project will also stretch from Kharyaga in the Komi Republic to Usinsk, and it will include an updated version of the already-existing Yaroslav-Kirishi pipeline connecting Usinsk-Ukhta and Ukhta-Yaroslavl.
Although initially planned as a political response to the separation of the Baltic states from the Soviet Union, BPS now appears to have a solid economic foundation.
The project is expected to cost $1.8 billion and is likely to be finished by 2004.
"This is a much-awaited and much-needed project," said Leonid Mirzoyan, an oil analyst with Deutsche Bank. "It will add necessary support for Russia's oil-production growth."
The Dec. 25 opening date, although scheduled some time ago, will end up taking place at a time when the world - and particularly the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries - is waiting for Russia to make a decision on whether to cut output in response to an OPEC bid to boost weakening oil prices.
Oil prices have lost a third of their value since Sept. 11. To remedy this, OPEC has said it would cut 1.5 million bpd, but only if other major non-cartel producers like Russia, Norway, Mexico and Oman join in with a collective cut of 500,000 bpd. While Norway, Mexico and Oman have already pledged to cut a total of up to 325,000 bpd, Russia has only offered to cut of 50,000 bpd.
Adding extra export capacity in the form of the BPS is not likely to win Russia any fans at OPEC.
"The pipe is certainly much needed," said Dmitry Avdeyev, oil analyst with United Financial Group. "Production is growing faster then export capacity. But this is probably not the best time since it would make it more difficult for Russia to create the impression that exports are being reduced."
Avdeyev said the opening ceremony would probably be low-key compared to another pipeline opening Russia attended earlier this week.
Officials of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, including the Russian, U.S., Kazakh and Oman governments, inaugurated on Tuesday the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a $2.6-billion pipeline running from the world's sixth-largest oil field, Tengiz on the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan, to the Russian Black Sea port of Anapa.
By the end of the year, the pipe will ship 1 million tons from Tengiz. By 2002, it will have a capacity to export 20 million tons.
Once completed, at an expected final cost of $4 billion, the CPC will be able to carry up to 1.3 million bpd, more than double its initial capacity.
TITLE: Enron Files Suit After Filing for Chapter 11
AUTHOR: By Mark Babineck
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HOUSTON, Texas - In one of the largest corporate bankruptcies in U.S. history, Enron filed for Chapter 11 protection and sued rival Dynegy Inc. for $10 billion as it tries to reverse a tailspin that has crippled the one-time energy giant.
The filings were largely expected after Enron's credit rating collapsed and Dynegy scuttled the proposed buyout. Enron listed just under $50 billion in total assets, including those of 13 Enron subsidiaries, and $31.1 billion in liabilities, according to the filing.
In the lawsuit against Dynegy, Enron asserted that its fellow Houston-based company breached a merger agreement by backing out of its Nov. 9 deal to buy Enron.
Enron Chairperson and CEO Kenneth Lay said the filings, made in Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, will help the company regain lost confidence. He said the company's operations will continue running normally.
Dynegy Chairperson and CEO Chuck Watson called the lawsuit "frivolous and disingenuous." He said it was an example of Enron refusing to take responsibility for its decline.
"The reality is, Enron invited Dynegy to participate in merger negotiations. Dynegy entered those negotiations in good faith and provided $1.5 billion in cash to Enron. Despite assurances that Enron's liquidity situation had stabilized, the cash was gone in less than three weeks, and Enron has had difficulty providing an accounting," said Watson.
Enron would use any proceeds from the lawsuit to repay its creditors. In the meantime, the company said an undetermined number of workers, mostly among the 7,500 in Houston, would be laid off.
Enron also said it is in "active discussions" with several financial institutions to secure credit for the continued operation of its wholesale energy-trading business and to get additional funding to keep the rest of the company operating.
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst Jim McAuliffe said Enron's ability to win new financing will be crucial to a successful reorganization.
"That's going to be the tricky one," he said.
Cash and credit crunches following disclosures in mid-October of questionable financial partnerships has made it difficult for Enron to continue business.
Enron said it would ask the court to consider several motions to continue payments for Enron's payroll and health benefits and for vendors.
Enron shares plunged to $0.26 Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. A year ago, shares were trading at nearly $85.
Enron's loss of credibility in the market stemmed from revelations that its former chief financial officer was running partnerships that allowed the company to keep $500 million in debt off its books. In early November, Enron restated its earnings since 1997, eliminating more than $580 million in reported income.
Smaller rival Dynegy descended to rescue its downtown neighbor, but even its top officials were surprised when Enron later disclosed it had a $690-million debt due within a week.
Neither the bankruptcy nor the lawsuit surprised Ralph Pellecchia, an analyst for Fitch Inc.
"That's one of the reasons we kept Dynegy on negative watch because of the possibility there would be litigation filed," he said.
U.S. Congressional leaders are calling for hearings into the Enron fallout and the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating. Both investors and employees have filed several lawsuits.
According to BankruptcyData.com, Texaco Inc. filed the largest bankruptcy in history in 1987 when it had $35.9 billion in assets. Adjusted for inflation, that amount would be about $56.4 billion today, the Boston-based company said.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Turkey Carving
ANKARA, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkey announced plans to lay off tens of thousands of public-sector workers, slash overtime and cut spending on Monday as an IMF delegation arrived to discuss $10 billion in new loans.
Turkey has promised the fund it will reduce bureaucracy and cut costs as it negotiates the details of a $10-billion addition to a $19-billion lending pact.
Turkey aims to report a public-sector budgetary surplus before interest spending on a heavy domestic debt of 6.5 percent of gross national product in 2002. That requires a tight, and probably unpopular, budget.
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit on Monday made public a circular to state officials that orders the contracts of all public-sector workers over the age of 50 to be ripped up and the workers paid off with retirement benefits.
Barrel Bounce
LONDON (Reuters) - World oil prices rebounded to trade sharply higher on Monday after OPEC's president said he was certain of a production-cut deal with Russia.
International benchmark Brent crude for January delivery climbed up from negative territory to trade $0.54 cents higher at $19.68 a barrel. U.S. light crude was up sharply by $0.91 cents at $20.35.
"I am certain that there will be an agreement and that's why I am relaxed," OPEC President Chakib Khelil told reporters.
Dealers said fresh turmoil in the Middle East was also supporting the market.
Price Freeze
PARIS (AP) - European aircraft maker Airbus SAS said Monday it will freeze prices on spare parts and all customer-service related work for six months to soften the blow for airlines suffering an industry slowdown.
The European plane-making consortium, the top rival to Chicago-based Boeing Co. in commercial jets, also said it will absorb some costs related to improving cockpit security and provide pilot training at a lower price.
"Our customers are in a difficult situation and to the extent we can, we will help," Patrick Gavin, Airbus vice president for customer services, said in a statement. "We will be continuing to examine areas in which more help can be provided."
An Airbus spokesperson said the company had not estimated how much the price freeze would cost.
Machinists Walk
NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than 5,000 machinists from United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney aircraft-engine business walked off the job on Monday after union and company negotiators failed to find common ground on pension and job security provisions for a new labor contract.
The strike comes as demand for Pratt's jet engines is pressured by a financial crisis among commercial air carriers, which has led to job cuts among airlines and makers of aircraft and aircraft parts.
Employees represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers formed picket lines in front of four Connecticut facilities at 12:01 a.m., the moment their old contract expired. The workers voted to strike on Sunday, the union said.
Pratt & Whitney spokesperson Mark Sullivan said the four plants were continuing operations with 2,000 salaried employees.
TITLE: Business Still Waiting To Learn City's Approach to Land Code
TEXT: Prior to the passage of the new Russian Land Code, the muddied situation concerning land-ownership rights in St. Petersburg was often cited as one of the negative factors influencing investment rates and business development in the city. When the long-awaited code came into effect after the official version was published on Oct. 30, one of the myriad inconsistencies between the Russian Constitution and the laws in effect in the country seemed to have been cleared up. But, as staff writer Andrey Musatov reports, the new code's effectiveness will depend much on the way it is applied and administered by regional governments, including City Hall.
While the right of individuals to own and trade in land is set out in the Russian Constitution, the legal basis on which land rights could be sold, transferred and guaranteed were never clearly established in federal law. Former President Boris Yeltsin confirmed the constitutional right in presidential decrees issued in 1992 and 1994, and a number of regions followed by beginning to sell land to individuals and legal entities
St. Petersburg was one of these regions but, as legal experts point out, before the passage of the code, there was no guarantee that such sales of land were supported by the body of Russian law.
"The St. Petersburg administration, along with the governments of Samara and Tatarstan, got in line with Yeltsin's point of view and gave permission for the purchase of land by private investors," Maxim Kalinin, a partner and real-estate expert with the Baker&McKenzie law firm's St. Petersburg office, says. "However, these were never established as 100-percent legal."
The main reason Yeltsin supported the sale of land was not so much the guarantee provided in the constitution, but practical considerations arising from the privatization process. The Privatization Law, which was passed under Yeltsin, was supposed to decide ownership questions relating to the land on which privatized enterprises stood according to a separate federal law. But such a law wasn't promulgated until the appearance of the Land Code. In the case of the privatization of existing enterprises or of opening a new business, questions sometimes arose over the ownership of a property.
Boris Moshensky, a real-estate analyst at Colliers International, says that the new code is intended to remove this disincentive to investment and development.
"Previously, if investors wanted to build their own building or facility, instead of purchasing the land they would sign a lease agreement, usually for 49 years. If for some reason [the City Property Committee] decided to annul the lease agreement, it was unclear what to do with the building the investor had built on the property," Moshensky says. "That is really weird, especially for foreign investors who have a real difficulty understanding how it could work."
Popular Ideas
"There's a high level of interest among the companies working in St. Petersburg and the northwest region in buying the territory on which they have located their facilities." Maxim Popov, a manager with the law firm Andersen Legal. "It's basic corporate policy for many Western companies to have full title to the land on which they work."
"It's the company's choice whether it wants to pay the price based on the land-tax rate or simply to rent," he added. "But rents are less stable than the tax. Many companies are much more comfortable with a title of ownership - they can achieve a return of their investment into the land, as opposed to by leasing, in case they decide to dispose of the [project later."
Kalinin says that the Land Code finally provides the conditions in which these firms can choose the policy they find most appealing.
"The land code finally figures out the set of rights related to the ownership of the land, the mechanisms of dealing with the land from a legal standpoint," Kalinin says. "It will finally provide the opportunity to integrate the land and buildings located on it into one unitary object of property."
Bottom-Line Question
While the number of companies that did take advantage of St. Petersburg's regulations to buy the land on which their businesses were located was small, some, like Industrial giant Kirovsky Zavod, have already found the opportunity advantageous. In 1997, Kirovsky Zavod bought the 190-hectare territory it occupied for $2.2 million and has touted the purchase as a significant factor in the rationalization process that has allowed the company to increase profitability. The company, which is now a holding with wholly-owned subsidiaries producing tractors, steel, turbines, etc., also rents land out to 300 other companies, bolstering the firm's revenues.
But other huge enterprises, such as Electrosila, which as its primary business produces giant electrical motors and occupying hundreds of hectares of city real estate, haven't availed themselves of the option to buy. Analysts say that the main reason for this was not legal, but economic.
"Economically, the purchase of land was not a profitable move, so most investors just preferred to rent the land, even though they were entitled by law to purchase it," says Alexander Shabasov, the chairperson of the city's Investment-Tender Commission and deputy chairperson of the Construction Committee, says.
At least for the present, the new Land Code will result in a significant reduction in the cost of purchasing land. The cost of purchase for the land is calculated on the basis of the land-tax rate for the property and depends on the region of the city in which the land is located and the purpose for which it is being used.
The code sets out parameters for the multiples of the land-tax rate that will be assessed in the purchase price based on the population of the municipality in which the land is located. In cities with a population above 3 million (Moscow and St. Petersburg), the price is from five to 30 times the land-tax rate. In cities with populations between 500,000 and 3 million, the price falls to between five and 17 land-tax rates. In towns with a population less than 500,000, the price is to be set at three to 10 times the rate. This represents a significant reduction in the case of St. Petersburg, where the city had been charging between 12 and 112 times the land-tax rate for property.
According to Vladislav Myagkov, a manager with Andersen Legal, the land-tax rate in St. Petersburg varies from $0.06 to $2 per square meter per year, depending on location and usage. Rental prices vary, again depending on location, from about $0.01 to $450 per square meter per year.
The city administration uses the two main determinants, location and zoned usage, to split land into 19 different price ranges, some of which have sub-groups differentiated by the physical characteristics of the land, such as infrastructure and existing buildings.
Whether buying instead of renting land for business purposes will be a popular alternative will depend on the actions of Smolny, which is responsible for setting the local land-tax rate. In a presentation to a meeting of the Real Estate Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow after the code passed its second reading in July, Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Alexander Maslov, who was the person responsible for the negotiations during the code's creation, said that businesses should seize the opportunity to buy their land early. Maslov said that local administrations will likely raise their rates from the minimum set out under the code.
"In theory, the Land Code decreased the average price by two-thirds," Kalinin says. "But the land tax-rate can be changed every year, so it's still difficult to say what kind of influence the Land Code will have on real price calculation."
Old Dog, New Tricks
The new Land Code raises other difficulties for Smolny than the relatively simple question of price. While the city already had a process established for the sale of property, it was not in complete compliance with the new code. Though the process of discussion and debate over the code had been protracted, the city found itself unprepared for a quick shift to the new rules, causing two weeks of confusion for both city officials and investors.
On Nov. 19, the city's Investment-Tender Commission (ITK) announced that the administration had determined that the commission's process of confirming investment and construction projects was not in complete accordance with the new federal law. As getting the go-ahead from the ITK is one of the major steps required in order to receive approval for investment projects, the city called off all work on new projects while it examined how its own regulations would have to be changed to harmonize them with the federal code.
Even though the ITK has resumed its work, there still appears to be a lack of consensus among legal specialists as to how the new code has altered the process.
According to Alexei Skvortsov, senior attorney at Reim Consulting, which provides property- and development-consultation services, one of the results of the new code is that those planning new commercial development no longer need the ITK's approval before moving on to sign an agreement for the purchase of land with the City Property Committee (KUGI).
"Article 7 of the Land Code says that any kind of legal usage for the land may be chosen without any additional permission and confirmation being required," Skvortsov said after the ITK had postponed a session on Nov. 22. "According to our analysis, the new code allows investors to skip the approval procedures at [the ITK] and sign an agreement for land usage directly with KUGI," Skvortsov said.
He also said that, according to his reading of the Land Code, to begin a project, an investor needs only to check the State Land Registry List, which not only catalogues all of the land in an area but sets out how it is zoned, to determine whether the land may be used for the intended purpose.
"The problem is that, on the basis of that understanding, the approval process seems too easy, which is unusual," Skvortsov said. "Meanwhile, the Land Code itself does not go into detail explaining how these procedures should go. The city government is probably waiting for further explanations from Moscow in order to set up its work according to the Land Code."
Four Russian cities, Novgorod, Ka zan, Irkutsk and Ufa, have already moved ahead without any further information from the Kremlin and taken a big step to implement the provisions of the new code by creating complete registers of all of the land in their municipalities, along with their respective zoning regulations, and Myagkov says that this has allowed the administrations in these places to streamline their land-purchase procedures. A register of a number of properties within certain central regions of St. Petersburg has been put together, but it still leaves a lot of the land in the city uncovered.
Business as Usual
But ITK chairperson Shabasov says that the committee will definitely continue it's work as it did before the adoption of the code, explaining that the interruption in the committee's activities had only to do with the examination of construction projects.
"The reason for the delay was a logical one," Shabasov says. "It's much easier to bring local laws in accordance with those at the federal level that have already been approved. If for some reason the president hadn't signed the Land Code and, instead, sent it back for correction, we would have had to go back and correct the regional laws as well, which would mean wasting both time and resources."
"I don't see anything wrong with the way we went about it. A week of working in the wrong direction could have meant half a year of making corrections," he added.
The changes in the regional regulations consist of three orders from Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. The first, setting the land-tax tariffs in accordance with those set out in the federal legislation, was signed by the governor on Nov. 22. A second, requiring that the City Architecture Committee issue a document for each construction project, clearly defining the borders of the land under consideration, was signed on the same day. The third requires that those wishing to purchase land for development have a Land Choice Act document approved by the city administration. The Land Choice Act is a document required for the first time as a result of the Land Code, which the potential buyer of the land gets after receiving preliminary approval for a construction project in a particular region. Shabasov says that the governor will sign the last document soon and that the approval process won't be changed significantly by the regional regulations from what it was before the adoption of the Land Code.
"The Land Code doesn't alter the existing scheme for dealing with investment documentation," he said. "The governor's amendments just provide a legal foundation to what we've already been doing for the last few years."
But according to one property expert, who asked not to be identified, the delay during the wait for the new regulations will cause some hardship for investors with projects already in the process of being approved.
"To receive approval for any development project, an investor has to collect a certain number of documents, a process that usually takes a few months," he says. "Each of the documents has an expiry date, so the delay in the ITK's activities might wipe out a few months work on the part of some investors."
"If the city administration had paid more attention to this question, it could have made all of the corrections to the procedures and laws earlier, or at least let investors know beforehand about the pause," he added.
But Shabasov says there won't be any problems as a result of the delay.
"As a result of the delay, a few documents pertaining to some projects might in fact expire, but this won't be a big problem," he said. "The Investment Department of the Construction Committee is already prepared to extend the dates on these documents so that projects already in the process of being approved will not suffer."
Maxim Kalinin says that, while the city didn't seem to be prepared to deal with the new situation after the code was passed, part of the blame should be shouldered by the federal government.
"The approval of the sale of lots for construction projects was interrupted because there was no clear understanding of the Land Code yet at the regional level," Kalinin says. "It seems, though, that this is not the St. Petersburg administration's fault because the Land Code came into effect immediately on the date of its official publication, Oct. 30, and this left the regional government no time to prepare."
And, while Kalinin says that the Land Code doesn't bring significant substantive change to the process of approving projects and handing over the deeds to property, he says that the city administration used the pause in its activities to clear up a few other contradictions between the regional and federal laws that existed even before the Land Code's adoption.
"For instance, in the project-approval process there was no Land Choice Act, even though this requirement was not spelled out in the Land Code for the first time," Kalinin says. "On the other hand, some of the contradictions, like the city's ability to turn land over to certain projects without an open tender being held, were confirmed by the code and now that action of city administration is absolutely legal."
Streamlined?
Andersen Legal's Popov, says that some negative aspects of the former development-approval process will be removed as a result of the new code. In the past, the city administration required a preliminary-design approval for each plot of land that was to be provided, which served to create a barrier to investors who intended to acquire additional land based on expansion intentions for the future without an exact development design.
"The Land Code makes it to possible in certain cases to rent or purchase land without having to submit a preliminary approval of the construction project," Popov says. "As a condition to acquiring the plot without preliminary approval of the construction project, the investment project has to be in compliance with the overall area-development plan."
There are still concerns about what the Land Code will mean in practice and over the possibility that there will still be changes in its implementation. In his July presentation, the deputy minister for economic development and trade said that further changes might still be on the way. But Maslov said that these would be aimed at upping the tempo of land purchases.
"The Land Code on its own won't be able to change the situation completely, because there is a very notorious bureaucratic tradition existing in this country and an ineffective justice system," Maslov said. "We're going to monitor the process and the prices of land sales very closely. If they are slow and few, we will take action by introducing amendments into the law."
For a number of businesses, it's still too early to determine their course under the new code. Given the minor confusion that has characterized the first few weeks of the city's work under the new code, they have decided to move cautiously.
A source at one St. Petersburg industrial concern, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the firm was taking a wait-and-see attitude.
"The Land Code just came into effect and will likely have to undergo a number of serious corrections like any other law," the source says. "We prefer to wait until hearing certain conclusions from state officials and from our legal experts before making any definite plans."
TITLE: These Predators Are Killing Small Businesses
TEXT: In response to "Small Business Looming Large in Fueling Economy's Growth," Nov. 20.
Editor,
Support of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) is indeed a fashionable topic. But like most fashions, it is mostly hot air and cheap talk. The fact that nothing real or helpful is being done is no surprise and certainly not news.
One hears a lot about the obvious problems: the lack of credit, bureaucratic complexity and the absence of tax incentives/benefits. While these are real burdens, everyone is studiously avoiding the core problem facing the sector.
The real enemy of the SME is the bureaucratic predator. The wilderness between government power and business is teeming with them. The further from Moscow, the more there are.
These predators live to use government regulation to inflate their importance, creating fiefdoms of power to extract tributes. They come at SMEs armed with a blinding whirlwind of orders, acts, instructions and bizarre interpretations thereof. Often the predator will openly laugh as it goes through the list of outlandish, impossible-to-comply-with, regulations and instructions. The legal system forces the victim to prove the predator's interpretation wrong or to comply, no matter how bizarre the request. Since a ministry or similar powerful agency is behind the predator, a fight is both dangerous and expensive, even if a successful outcome is assured.
SMEs, not having the resources to fight, are often forced to resort to the old-fashioned conflict-resolution method: coming to "an agreement." These agreements are expensive and time consuming. Just listening to the babble and sending them away takes time and energy better spent on clients and management.
Many large companies have the resources (lawyers, staff time, money and access to power) to fight off predators. So predators go after the smaller companies again and again, often tripping over each other for their turn and always turning each other on to potential victims. The effect of such harassment on a small company can be crippling.
Interestingly, the system also serves the large, entrenched corporations in a way. In mature economies, giant companies enjoying economies of scale have much to fear from small, nimble and innovative companies. It would not be surprising for some to celebrate, and even encourage, barriers put in the path of potential competition from below. Cozy relationships between big business and government make this all the more convenient.
The predator system is written into law, usually through over-regulation and poorly written, ambiguous legislation and instructions. The predators represent agencies needed to fulfill the qualifications for many licenses, certifications or registrations. Without their approval, no license, registration or certification will be granted and the company cannot work legally.
Survivor SMEs work out ways to deal with them, often devoting up to 50 percent of their management time to fighting off predators. But countless others simply decide that it is not worth it and move into the gray economy or simply close their doors.
The system exists thanks to a compromise that leaders have made with the legions of bureaucrats and power structures. Instead of paying bureaucrats properly and reducing their numbers, the government continues to permit them to earn their money the old-fashioned way. The buck is passed. Federal and local budgets won't pay and large companies won't pay, so the SME sector takes the lion's share of the burden. The real losers are the consumers, who do not enjoy the service quality and innovation that small companies provide in a healthy economy.
The good news is that, in spite of the lack of support, the sector will grow. But the enemies will fight to make it a slow, painful growth. As Niccolo Machiavelli said, "Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new."
Christian Courbois
St. Petersburg
Victory Looming
Editor,
The recent bombing in Afghanistan has helped to turn the tide toward a Northern Alliance victory.
Due to the success of the bombing campaign, the Taliban appeals to international opinion in hopes of stopping the U.S. Air Force from its mission against terrorism are muted. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has rightly defended the coalition bombing campaign in Afghanistan.
The Taliban regime oppresses its own people while harboring the al-Qaeda terrorists who murdered about 5,000 people in the worst single terrorist act in history.
Approximately 60 years ago the British people were locked in a life-and-death struggle against Hitler and Nazi Germany, which was won, in part, by a tremendous bombing campaign by the U.S. and British air forces. Sadly, Britain and the United States again face a Hitleresque and charismatic personality who threatens civilization.
Osama bin Laden hopes to foster oppressive fundamentalist regimes across the Arab world and uses terror to reach his objective.
Bombing is a legitimate tool for the defeat of the terrorists. We must stand and fight using our air power while minimizing the harm to innocent civilians. You might remember that during World War II some bombs missed their targets and struck innocent civilians. Nazi propagandists made much of such errors and appealed to world opinion, thus hoping to stop the Allies. Now as then, the bombing must continue, and a threat to our free way of life must be destroyed.
We are one day closer to victory in the war on terrorism. May God bless America, the Afghan people and the international coalition.
Philip Chapman
Highland, Illinois
Russia Will Join
In response to "Putin: Russia Not Seeking To Join NATO," Nov. 27.
Editor,
A new myth is being created: that Russia does not want to join NATO and that President Vladimir Putin has just renounced the idea of joining NATO. This myth is based on a series of inside-out spins that have been put on Putin's words, first of all by NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson and then by virtually the entire Western press repeating after him.
During his recent visit to Moscow, Lord Robertson seized upon remarks made by Putin - or upon a misleading translation of them - to give them the opposite spin. Apparently hoping to reassure the Russophobes inside his own alliance, he said that Putin did not want to join NATO. "He said this was not some back-door method of Russia getting membership in NATO, and he already ruled out going in the front door," Lord Robertson said at a press conference.
Here Robertson combined two misleading translations or paraphrasings of two statements made at different times, and then gave them a spin opposite to their actual intentions by the way he put them together. His line sounded clever, however, and it was picked up uncritically by the Western media, including its finest newspapers, The New York Times and the Financial Times. No one bothered to consider that to object to "standing in queue" is not at all the same thing as to oppose the idea of entering the door.
The actual quote from Putin did not contain anything about refusing to go in the "front door," but read this way: "Russia is not standing in the queue to join NATO. But, on the other hand, it is ready to develop relations as far as the North Atlantic alliance is prepared for this." Read literally, this means that Russia is ready to join NATO, if NATO is also ready for Russia, but it isn't going to beg or be put through a humiliating wait in line for joining.
The Western media have picked up repeatedly on Robertson's bon mot, giving it the stature of a publicly accepted truth and a basis for making further deductions. This is falsifying its understanding of Russia's intentions, to its own disadvantage and in a manner that could turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ira Straus
Moscow
Witness to History
Editor,
With news that the American president would host a foreign leader at his own home, I decided that some business I had near Waco, Texas, could be accomplished during the Crawford, Texas, summit. From the perspective of someone growing up during the Cold War, the idea of having the Russian leader in Texas was quite fascinating.
As I headed south on Interstate-35 near downtown Dallas, I passed Dealey Plaza and couldn't help but remember the Cold-War days of the early 1960s. As I thought of President John F. Kennedy, still one of my favorite American presidents, I was reminded of how his leadership and diplomacy during those tense times very likely saved us from nuclear war. His skills dealing both through formal means as well as clandestine ones were crucial to America's and the rest of the world's future.
Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev worked together in a way as to maintain each country's dignity while at the same time averting nuclear war. Though both leaders and their countries had different governments, agendas and methods, their most common goal was the same: the survival of mankind. Both of these leaders succeeded and deserve credit for this monumental contribution to their countries' futures.
With this backdrop to the recent summit between President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin, together with their wives Laura and Lyudmila, I continued my two-hour journey southwest. Listening to the radio, channel-surfing as usual and hearing various discussions about America and the war against terrorism, I thought of the great impact of this meeting being held at the Bushes' Prairie Chapel ranch. About 20 kilometers northeast of Waco, I suddenly spotted a very large airplane making a circle and heading back toward Waco. I realized from the unusual markings on the plane that this was very likely Putin coming in from Houston, where he had just spoken at Rice University.
The thought of a Russian airplane over Texas soil now contrasted with what the thought of Cold War-era planes over U.S. soil in those days would have meant. In those days, most Americans over 15 years old probably were aware of what that could mean.
It's ironic that one of the topics of the summit was missile defense. Many Texans may not realize that a more primitive form of missile defense existed during those days. Dallas, as well as most large U.S. cities, was defended on four sides by the Nike Hercules missile system. This system was designed as a second line of defense against Soviet bombers, the Tu-95 Bears, should they get by our jet interceptors. Fortunately, they were never needed and have since been dismantled, now providing an interesting side-trip for those interested in Cold-War history.
Arriving in Waco, less than 15 kilometers from the Bush ranch, my first stop was the Texas State Technical College Airport, the former James Connally Air Force Base. Sure enough, the radio station out of Austin, Texas, announced that Putin's Il-96 airplane had just landed a few minutes earlier. I parked for a moment to see what I could and soon saw two Marine helicopters taking off, obviously headed for the Bush's ranch near Crawford.
Driving to the far side of the airport, I saw the Russian plane parked near a terminal. I hurried to the area where I noticed many people gathered carrying small American and Russian flags. I saw the welcoming committee, including the Baylor University band, local residents, school children and members of the press corp, leaving the area.
I had missed the arrival, but in talking to people they described the plane's landing and the Putins getting off, waving. Putin shook a few hands, the band played and the crowd waved Russian and American flags.
It was quite an occasion for this Texas city and its residents, as indeed it was for Americans and Russians everywhere. I really felt good about the welcome Texas was giving our Russian guests. In a world where so many countries hate us, it's good to have as your friends the president and people of one of the world's most powerful countries.
As I left Waco, I noticed all the patriotic signs along Highway 185, as well as the ones welcoming the Russian president and his wife. The Russians will learn, as will the rest of the world, what a kind people the citizens of the United States really are. Misunderstanding is often the cause of hostility and mistrust between countries.
All efforts to bridge the gap between countries and peoples are the key to the long-term success for world peace. Bush has a sincere desire to lead our country in the right direction and is a genuinely caring leader who would like to help make the world a better place. I believe that he will do all that is possible to effect better relationships with not only Russia, but all countries. Inviting the Putins to their home in Crawford where they can sit down face-to-face in a relaxed environment to discuss today's issues created an atmosphere of down-to-earth simplicity, which is almost always successful.
As evening arrived with a cool rain on the Texas prairie, I could imagine the two leaders sitting on a back porch somewhere drinking coffee, listening to the gentle rain and attempting to achieve that better understanding essential to world peace. Times really have changed since those Cold-War days, but what we all really want hasn't. Nor has the value of sitting down to get to know your neighbors, regardless of the size of the neighborhood.
Bill Yearby
Dallas, Texas
Afghans Suffering
Editor,
Most people in Afghanistan do not even know what happened on Sept. 11, who did those things and what were the motives. But still the people of Afghanistan have to suffer all these intense air raids just because they are in the wrong place and ruled by the wrong people. All Iraqis, Cubans and North Koreans are also villains, while the Saddams and Castros are still in the saddle. The common person must suffer, starve or die, but why?
Just because the wrong person is ruling over them. It doesn't matter whether they can do anything or not to change the situation, they have to suffer. In all probability, in Afghanistan millions of children will die of hunger, just as in Iraq. And still the likes of Madeleine Albright will coldly say, "These deaths are a small price to pay for what Iraq has done to Kuwait."
The people of Afghanistan can't do anything about the bombings. They don't know where Osama bin Laden is hiding, and they can't do anything against the Taliban. Fate couldn't be harsher to anyone than it has been to the Afghans.
The United States is seen as a perpetrator of conflicts and interference all over the world. This is certainly the dominant perspective in the Muslim world, where most judge the United States through the prism of Israel.
Given that this is the case, it would not be that surprising if ordinary Muslims were to fall for the fundamentalist rhetoric of these networks. Why wouldn't ordinary Palestinians want to destroy Israel and United States when they have to face bullets and even shells from tanks on a daily basis? Why wouldn't they be willing to die for such causes when they must join the funeral processions of their nearest and dearest literally every day.
It would be naive to assume U.S. foreign policy is responsible for the terrorits attacks, but such actions and meddling do create problems. The situation is such that any resistance toward U.S. dominance is openly hailed in the streets of the Middle East and elsewhere. Uneasiness regarding the United States persists, although the bombings are too hard to swallow, even for most hardliners.
Sanjeev Ranjan Upadhyay
New Delhi, India
TITLE: Falling for Putin
AUTHOR: By Joanna Weiss
TEXT: THERE he was, standing with U.S. President George W. Bush on a podium in Texas, wearing a black-on-black get-up with a velvet collar - at once the model of Western chic and the mysterious foreigner. As relayed by C-Span, the fact was hard to refute: Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is hot.
Hot in the sense that Putin is the world leader with just about the biggest buzz these days, as he forges a remarkable friendship with Bush and works on anti-missile treaties and wartime coalitions.
But also hot in a more visceral way. Hot meaning, come on, George, stop talking so the cameras can turn back to Vlad! Hot meaning ... well, you know what.
This must be a sign of how far we've come since the Cold War. Through most of the 20th century, Russian leaders seemed to fit a general mold: beefy, slightly decrepit men with super-Slavic features, a proud proletarian contempt for style and, in some cases, a deep love for vodka. And now, along comes Putin: compact and athletic, with a Mona Lisa smile.
He doesn't drink. He loves the West. He plays sports and is visibly buff. Also balding, in a cute, Jean-Luc Picard sort of way. Or maybe a Thom Yorke sort of way: A couple of years ago, a New Jersey rock fan set up a web site comparing the president to the Radiohead lead singer.
That fan, Sarah Lewitton, now 21 and living in New York, admits she'd been taking a lot of Robitussin at the time. But she says the web site draws a surprising amount of traffic - at least a couple of hits a week, even two years after its birth. In her guest book, one web visitor wrote that "Vladimir is much cooler, smarter and more powerful than Thom.''
And while Lewitton's heart lies with Radiohead, she can understand the Vlad mystique.
"He dresses pretty decently, you know,'' says Lewitton, who now works for VH1 and writes for Spin. "He's got this, like, thing. He's got this rock star-ish look. He's definitely cute. And anyone in power is always very good.''
Powerful men are sexy; dangerous men can be, too, and it's not too presumptuous to assume that Vlad is a little dangerous. He started his career with the KGB. He is hardly kind to Chechens or other foes. He is not, scholars say, to be trusted completely.
"If you cross him, you are very vulnerable,'' says Marshall Goldman, associate director of the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University, who runs off a list of Vlad critics who have managed to lose their property and their standing.
And yet, somehow, this dark side seems to bolster his appeal. At home, Goldman says, Vlad benefits from the strength he projects; in polls Russians say they like the fact that he brings a sense of order. There's also a long-standing human fixation with spies and shady characters; there's a reason James Bond has endured for so long, and a reason his bad-guy nemeses are often darkly sexy, too.
And if you think it's just a function of America's weakness for foreign accents, consider what Russians have to say. A year ago, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda conducted an Internet poll in which Putin was rated the sexiest man in Russia. A 32-year-old woman with an admitted spy fixation explained the mystique: "Even when Putin is shaking someone's hand on television with a little smile to show that he is human, I'm frightened of him - in other words, I want him.''
Vlad has managed to make the bulk of Russians want him on some level, Goldman says. His approval ratings hover around 75 percent. And he knows, in a spy-savvy sense, how to manipulate his image for the masses. He has a solid propaganda machine and a slick Internet site. He sponsors youth groups dedicated to Putiniana; at a rally in Moscow last May, thousands of them gathered, wearing T-shirts that bore his face.
He has also figured out how to get at the American heart: by taking questions from the audience. At the Oprah-esque event with Bush in Texas, at a call-in show on National Public Radio, Putin managed, even while speaking in Russian, to feel America's pain, to roll "covert'' and "sensitive'' into the same dashing package.
On the radio show - which drew 2,000 questions by e-mail - Putin talked about Sept. 11, about his deep admiration for the freedom of the press (a recent enthusiasm, it would seem), about NATO (no enlargement) and Chechnya (no compromises) and about how useful it has been to have worked in KGB intelligence, because "it helps me establish human interaction.''
He also talked about how he still practices judo.
Imagine Boris Yeltsin doing that.
Joanna Weiss is a staff reporter for The Boston Globe, to which she contributed this comment.
TITLE: Stop Playing Games With Corruption
TEXT: NO one here derived any satisfaction from writing the front-page headline on last Friday's edition of The St. Petersburg Times, "Another Vice Governor Faces Probe." The fact that a second of our 13 vice governors has attracted the unwanted attention of the Northwest District Prosecutor's Office is not something to be pleased about.
There are, of course, many aspects to these cases that make one skeptical and cautious. Not the least of which are the fully justified concerns that our prosecutors seem a lot better at making scandalous accusations in the press than at proving charges in court.
In the case of acting Vice Governor Alexander Potekhin - against whom charges will be filed shortly, prosecutors claim - the fact that prosecutors are talking to reporters before even questioning Potekhin seems to lend credence to suspicions that the point of this exercise is public relations rather than good government. Following its usual modus operandi in such matters, the prosecutor's office was willing to discuss the nature of the investigation and to identify those being investigated without releasing any information about the investigation itself that might actually enable the public to understand to what extent the probe is justified.
If the government is concerned - and it should be - that the public sees the administration of justice as nothing more than a game among political power centers, it will look into the way prosecutors have acted in this case and others like it.
However, of no less concern to us is the attitude of Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, who has once again missed an opportunity to come out forcefully and convincingly against corruption in his administration. No one believes more firmly in the principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty than we do, but we also are convinced that public officials - we'd like very much to call them "public servants" - have special obligations to put the public welfare before their own interests. This includes doing whatever they can to bolster public confidence in government.
One of the details in the Potekhin case that caught our attention was the fact that his deputy, Dmitry Solonnikov, was actually arrested in October 2000 and released on bond last December pending his trial on embezzlement charges. His trial is scheduled to begin this month.
So The St. Petersburg Times called Yakovlev's office to inquire about why an official facing trial on charges of embezzling public funds would be allowed to continue working in a responsible post in the governor's administration. It turns out that our governor's policy is not to suspend such officials.
No wonder the public believes that the "battle against corruption" is just another political game.
TITLE: Stop Worrying About Where We Have Sex
TEXT: YOUNG people today are completely out of hand. They have lost their faith in everything. They have no values. All they care about are drugs, sex and "trip-hop."
Maybe it was thoughts like these that prompted City Hall's Youth Committee this fall to allocate $160,000 from the municipal budget to create a media campaign that would promote a positive image of life within local youth society.
"The most popular thing for young people to do these days is to go out, have a drink somewhere and then have sex in a staircase," said the head of the media company that won the tender to buff up the image of young people. "We've got to do something to take our young people out of the staircases, and this promotion program is the first step toward doing that."
His company has signed an agreement with the committee to place articles in the local press and to prepare radio and television broadcasts about the good life that some members of the younger generation are experiencing.
Naturally, being a member of the tainted younger generation myself, I am skeptical about the campaign. Now I'm pretty sure that there was just about as much sex on staircases in the early 1960s as there is now, and I'd need to be convinced that morals have dropped significantly lately. It seems more likely to me that City Hall is getting itself involved in the eternal conflict between the generations- the age-old problem of fathers and sons. Don't those people read the classics of literature anymore?
What if the city spent its $160,000 on a campaign to promote safe sex instead? Now this is a problem that really needs to be addressed. I remember arriving for the first time in Helsinki in the early 1990s and being particularly struck by the condom posters all over the city. I remember sitting around with other Russians who had also seen them, laughing about this together.
Just a couple of years ago, an attempt to place such an advertisement on Russian television was killed off by the protests of the older generation, the ones who claim never to have done it in a staircase. It turns out that they are so puritan that they can't stand even the sight of condoms.
In fact, they are so squeamish that even the fact that HIV-infection is growing geometrically throughout the country with each passing year is not enough to make them reconsider. According to estimates offered last week by Vadim Pokrovsky, head of the Federal AIDS Center, more than 1 million people in Russia may have been infected by the virus this year.
Take a look at the central Russian city of Saratov, with a population of about 1 million. According to a survey by KOMKON, only 16.3 percent of local citizens over the age of 16 bought a condom last year. I would guess that this figure is above average for the Russian provinces.
And how about Europe, where safe sex is energetically promoted? According to the U.S. organization Staying Alive, 60 percent of young people in western Europe now use condoms regularly, a six-fold increase since the early 1990s.
It is no wonder that infection rates have declined steadily in the West over the last decade while the former Soviet bloc - despite its aversion to sex in staircases - is on the cusp of an epidemic. If City Hall wants to do something to help young people, it should stop worrying so much about where sex is happening and start thinking about how.
TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: Gainspotting
Among the isolated, out-of-step losers who dare open their mouths to mutter "doubts" about America's military campaign in Afghanistan, you will sometimes hear the traitorous comment: "This war is just about oil."
We here at the Global Eye take stern exception to such cynical tommyrot. No one who has made a clear and dispassionate assessment of the situation in the region could possibly say the new Afghan war is "just about oil."
It's also about drugs.
For, although we must now hail the warlords of the Northern Alliance as noble defenders of civilization, the fact is that for some time they have also functioned as one of the world's biggest drug-dealing operations. Indeed, one of the main sticking points between the holy warriors of the alliance and their ideological brethren in the Taliban has been control of the profitable poppy, which by God's grace grows so plentifully in a land otherwise bereft of natural resources. (Always excepting the production of corpses.)
In the good old days, when the brethren were united against the Soviet devil, all shared equally in the drug-running trade, under the benevolent eye of that great lubricator of illicit commerce, the CIA. When the Northern Alliance was driven from Kabul - having killed 50,000 of the city's inhabitants during their civilized rule - the Taliban seized the lion's share of Afghanistan's opium production. The noble lords managed to hold on to several prize fields in the north, however, and together with avaricious Talibs, they helped fuel a worldwide rise in heroin traffic.
Earlier this year, the Bush administration bribed the Taliban to stop growing opium - a most effective use of baksheesh, according to the UN, which found that Afghan opium production dropped from 3,300 tons annually to less than 200. But the Northern Alliance leapt manfully into the breach, engineering a threefold rise in opium output on their territory this year.
Now the bountiful southern fields are also theirs for the plucking. For war-ravaged Afghan farmers, the "market realities" are clear: they can plant wheat, and get 50 bucks an acre, or plant opium and pull down $8,000 in hard cash for the same acre. Needless to say, the poppy replanting has already begun. Come harvest time, the drug lords - sorry, the noble warlords - will take their cut and ship the dope off to pollute the minds of decadent infidels in the West. Ah, the spoils of victory!
Hey, maybe their CIA buddies will help coordinate the shipments. Those guys are killer when it comes to covert logistics.
Narco-lepsy
After all, as Attorney General "Jailin' John" Ashcroft tells us, the "war on terrorism" is just like "the war on drugs" - that is to say, a never-ending fount of profitable corruption for the ruthless, the murderous and the well-connected.
Certainly, the "war on drugs" makes little sense otherwise. We all know that if the ingestion of various arbitrarily chosen substances were no longer prosecuted, the level of violence, crime and repression in society would be reduced immeasurably. "Substance abuse" would then become what it is now for drugs like alcohol and nicotine: a matter of personal character and private consequence.
Crack addicts, for example, could have their nightly pipe in the safety of their own home, for the same price as a six-pack of beer, a carton of cigarettes or the latest Disney video. They wouldn't need to resort to crime to feed an expensive criminalized habit. And their resulting stupefaction would be no more harmful to the public good than that of millions of their fellow citizens sitting slack-jawed in front of the tube.
But decriminalization will never happen. Illegal drugs are simply too profitable for the various powerful criminal elements known as "mafias," "warlords" - and "intelligence agencies." For drug-running is the perfect way to fund your black ops - no budget restraints, no legal niceties, no pesky legislators looking over your shoulder.
That's how they did it back in those high old Iran-Contra days, as investigator Robert Parry reports on Consortiumnews.com. Buried in the papers of that thwarted investigation are outright admissions of CIA connivance with the drug dealers who helped finance the murderous Reagan-Bush terrorist network in Latin America.
This is - in part - what G.W. Bush is covering up with his recent autocratic edict sealing past presidential papers. And the fact that his Daddy lied about his own involvement in the criminal enterprise - lies which he drowned certain fathoms deep by pardoning his co-conspirators. Some of these criminal connivers with drug-running now hold high office in the new Bush administration.
You know, the one that "restored honor and integrity" to the White House.
Bottom Line
Let's connect the dots. Drugs help stoke war. Defense firms sell the weapons of war - to governments, warlords, terrorists, whoever will pay. The investors and owners of defense firms - like, say, the Bush family and the bin Ladens - are directly enriched by war. And so the wars go on.
For every American soldier killed, for every Afghan child murdered, George W. Bush adds a few more dollars to his inheritance. His former business associates, the bin Ladens - whom he protected by stifling FBI investigations into their activities, while also crippling probes into Saudi funding of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups - will do quite nicely as well.
Nu, what can you say? Such is the eternal way of the world, where "oft 'tis seen, the wicked prize itself buys out the law." So it was in Babylon, so it was in Rome; so it was in Jerusalem, Mecca, Peking and Thebes. The ruthless, the murderous and the well-connected carry it away.
TITLE: The Ballet Is 'Expressiveness, Drama, Emotion'
TEXT: Altynai Asylmuratova thrives on challenges. A top-flight soloist at the Mariinsky Theater, she has performed with the world's most acclaimed ballet troupes, including The Royal Ballet at London's Covent Garden and Roland Petit's Ballet National de Marseille. She dances classical and contemporary roles with equal aplomb. Now Asylmuratova, 40, is playing a new role. She became artistic director of Russia's oldest ballet school, the Vaganova Ballet Academy, in January 2000. And this role, she says, is her most difficult yet. Asylmuratova spoke recently with Galina Stolyarova about the Mariinsky, the Vaganova and the current state of Russian ballet.
Q: The Mariinsky is acknowledged as the most successful ballet company in Russia. To what do you attribute its success?
A: The Mariinsky has managed to preserve its considerable legacy without becoming old-fashioned. It has also benefited from continuing close ties with the Vaganova. Most of the Mariinsky dancers still come from the academy, and return to their alma mater when they finish dancing. This, in turn, preserves the legacy of the school and the purity of its method.
Q: What differences do you see between the dancers of your generation and those entering the profession today?
A: We lived in an entirely different time and had a totally different mentality. The dancers today enjoy greater freedom, but they also bear more responsibility. We didn't have much opportunity to decide things for ourselves.
Back when I started my career, there was a tacit rule that beginning dancers who had just entered a company were given about five years to reveal themselves. We tried things, and our coaches worked with us slowly, at a moderate pace, like artists work on sculpture.
Now everything happens very fast. Ballet careers develop rapidly, even instantly. Young dancers rush to perform lead roles immediately. And, unfortunately for more and more of them, the striving for technical perfection overwhlems the desire to appreciate the soul of ballet. I understand the reason for this: Life is much more relentless and intense than it was for my generation.
In another sense, today's dancers have rather limited choices. In the Soviet era, when the Vaganova had twice as many students as it has now, graduates received offers from numerous theaters. There was no risk of unemployment. But now many theaters, especially in the smaller towns, have closed down. We do our best to place our graduates in ballet companies, but that task is becoming more difficult every day.
Q: Are today's dancers better prepared in terms of the versatility of their repertoire?
A: In this regard I always envied the older generation of dancers, for whom Leonid Yakobson, Yury Grigorovich, Fyodor Lopukhov and Igor Belsky designed their ballets. Now those were masterpieces! Sadly, my generation was deprived of its share of brilliant choreographers. We had to make do with ballets originally designed for others, and we could only dream of dancing a piece tailor-made for us. We did benefit from more open relations with the West. We got the chance to dance George Balanchine's ballets, to work with Jerome Robbins. But again, these works were not staged for us.
Q: How do you explain the shortage of first-rate choreographers in Russia?
A: It's hard to say. I think one reason was that after the fall of the Iron Curtain, when we were suddenly exposed to the achievements of Europe and the United States in modern and contemporary dance, we fell into a period of confusion, dismay and uncertainty. Russian choreographers tried, perhaps unconsciously, to imitate their Western counterparts, rather than expressing themselves. This was the wrong move. Imitation involves a loss of individuality, and choreographers must be original.
I am certain that this shortage will not last forever. New names have started to emerge. I am very impressed by what [Danish Royal Ballet soloist] Alexei Ratmansky is doing. I find his intellectual, delicate choreography very interesting.
Q: Why are modern and contemporary dance still received less enthusiastically in Russia than classical ballet?
A: It is natural that people like what they have been brought up on. In other countries, they are interested in contemporary dance and bored with the classics. It's just a matter of taste, and Russians are free to choose what they like. Nothing is forbidden now, thank goodness, and people have a choice. The main thing is that any production must be a genuine work of art.
As for the dancers, my experience tells me that it is better to start off with the classics, and only then have a go at modern and contemporary dance. A classical ballet education provides the necessary foundation. After that, a dancer can choose his or her own way. But someone who started out with contemporary dance would find it very difficult to handle the technical demands of performing classical works.
Q: What should be the greatest concern for Russian ballet companies today?
A: Art. The next few years will be crucial for the Russian ballet. While it is understandable that the state is primarily occupied with trying to feed the country, we should not allow commercialization to overrule art.
A ballet-company director's primary concern should be to nurture young dancers, to help them understand that the ballet is far more than showing off one's technical expertise. Ballet must have soul. And soul - expressiveness, drama, emotion - is what Russian ballet has long been famous for.
Q: During the communist era, children from all over the Soviet Union competed to study at the Vaganova Ballet Academy. Has the talent pool dwindled since 1991?
A: It's easier to pick the best students from a large pool of candidates, of course. The vast majority of our students are Russians now. During the Soviet era, young dancers received free tuition at the academy and free room and board in the dormitories. But now all non-Russian students have to pay for their education. The best we can do for students from the Commonwealth of Independent States is to offer a discount. But we maintain good relations with ballet schools across the former Soviet Union, and when they recommend students to us, we do our best to find a place for them.
What I find very encouraging is the devotion to the art of ballet that I see in my youngest pupils. Although they are growing up in a very pragmatic world, they do not look at dance as a way to make some cash. I can see their eyes sparkling during rehearsals. I feel the warmth when they talk about the ballet. And I know that they are not here for money. They are here for art.
Q: The Vaganova has lost a number of its best teachers to emigration. What effect has this had, and what steps are you taking to retain staff?
A: By the time I came on board, the academy had lost quite a few top people. This was very upsetting, but I can't blame anyone because I know that we can't provide the teachers with the conditions they deserve. We do, however, arrange teaching stints abroad for our teachers, and this provides them with a big financial boost.
Those who have left are mostly the younger faculty. The most experienced teachers, who have worked here for 30 or 40 years and make up the backbone of the school, will not leave. They remain out of devotion to the academy, and I am extremely grateful to them.
Q: Having danced with the world's leading ballet companies, you know the strengths and weaknesses of various schools. How do you incorporate that knowledge at the Vaganova?
A: It's true, I have literally lived and danced through all that, and I do have a few suggestions. It is not that I consider our method imperfect, or that I find it wanting. Every ballet school offers basically the same general training. The differences are in the nuances and accents. Our strong points are coordination and torso. But I admire the excellent foot training that the French dancers display. I would like my students to possess the same precision, strength and fluency.
My credo as the academy's artistic director is similar to the physician's Hippocratic oath - not to harm anyone. I won't take any revolutionary measures. The Vaganova Ballet Academy is more than 260 years old. Care, not destructive change, is what this unique institution needs.
TITLE: Having a Good Time Doing Good Things
AUTHOR: By Terry Battles
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The magic of the holiday season in Petersburg transforms all of us, Russians and expats, into excited children longing for fun and festivities. Most importantly, the season lightens our spirit by compelling us to share with those in need.
Although many in the community are busy helping out throughout the year, the holiday season certainly seems to be a focus for renewing and redoubling the charitable impulse. One of the much-awaited landmarks of the local giving season is the annual St. Andrew's Ball, which was held this year on Dec. 1 at the Astoria Hotel. The event is organized and promoted by the Petersburg Caledonia Regional Charity Organization.
Petersburg Caledonia "is no ordinary Tartan-toting St. Andrew's society or whisky-sipping Scottish club," says Adrian Terris, who is general director of St. Petersburg Yellow Pages as well as president and founder of Petersburg Caledonia. In addition to helping charities such as Children's Hospital No. 17 (which specializes in premature births), the St. Nicholas Asylum and the State Russian Museum School for the Mentally Handicapped, the club introduces and promotes Scottish culture among Russians and expats and helps to develop Russian and Scottish business links.
The name of the club itself, Petersburg Caledonia, embodies a strong two-way relationship between the countries. "It's not just about Scotland coming to Russia; it's about Russia going to Scotland." The highlights of Petersburg Caledonia's annual social calendar include the St. Andrew's Ball, the Burns' Suppers and the Highland Games.
The organization was set up in 1998 after representatives of the local House of Friendship -which, in Soviet times, was the only official organization promoting business and cultural links between Russians and foreigners - approached Terris. Amazingly, the House of Friendship had already been holding Burns' Suppers for 15 years. Terris explains, the "Burns' Supper is a highly traditional Scottish activity at which guys get together and read poetry. Robert Burns' poetry."
So really, what does it take to be a true Scotsman? First of all, Haggis must be taken seriously. Robert Burns even wrote a poem about it. Terris says that one of his most beautiful memories from a local Burns' Supper is of "two Scotsmen fighting over the quality of a Haggis and whether or not it even was a Haggis. That's in Russia, and when you've got that you know you're successful."
Secondly ... well, even Scots themselves haven't quite decided what comes next: drink or poetry. Terris passionately explains that the beauty of Burns' poetry is that he combines such disparate themes and ideas as nationalism, brotherhood, religious idealism and anti-establishment values.
"The common denominator of it all was his love of women," he says.
"And drink," adds Doug MacDonald, launch training manager at Ford Motor Company and the club's chieftain for the past year. Needless to say, the third and most vital ingredient in the Scottish mix is their unique sense of humor.
The United Kingdom's Consul General Barbara Hay's heartfelt opening speech touched everyone at the St. Andrew's Ball. She urged all present to consider not only Scotland's past, but also to think of its present and future.
"Poverty shaped us and taught us that nothing in life comes without effort and self-reliance." She emphasized that, for a country of its size, Scotland's contribution to all spheres of human endeavor is extraordinary in its scale. She emphasized the idea of "Scottishness" with its "paradoxes, ironies, contrasts and contradictions" by quoting John Buchan who wrote of two "master elements" in the Scottish character: "hard-headedness on the one hand and romance on the other; common sense and sentiment; practicality and poetry; business and idealism."
Rachel Shackleton, general director of Concept and the club's secretary, has certainly earned her status as an Honorary Scot. She takes pains to keep the focus of our attention on the concrete beneficiaries of the St. Andrew's Ball.
"With the proceeds from tonight's event, we will be able to supply Hospital No.17 with a year's supply of surgical coats. It is wonderful to be helping them with something viewed as very basic yet fundamentally necessary for the running of the hospital," she said.
Mirco Zanini, assistant food and beverage manager of the Astoria Hotel, was pleased with the way this event has developed since it was first held in 1998. About 190 people attended that first ball, while this year's attendance topped 270 with more than 100 others stuck on the waiting list. As champagne and whisky flowed freely, Zanini welcomed men in kilts and black tie and women in enchanting ball gowns. "The entertainment and dancing are intoxicating and fun," Zanini gushed. "This is the ball where everybody dances - literally everybody."
The five-piece "ceilidh" (kaylee, meaning "a Scottish country dance") band Teannaich flew in from the mother country to play the event for the fourth time. Their innovative combination of traditional Scottish music mixed with other styles including rock, jazz, funk and blues played on fiddle, mandolin, bass, guitar and drums ensured that everyone got into the ceilidh spirit.
Each year, in addition to performing at the ball, Teannaich also plays in schools, local bars, the conservatory and other venues. Last Thursday, the band played to 300 delighted students at School No.105. They attained celebrity status as the pupils rushed over with their English textbooks to get autographs.
The band's drummer and expert "caller" (teacher of the dances) Colin enthusiastically says, "The highlight for us is getting people to dance and seeing all these people, whether they be Americans, Russians or whatever nationality, up and dancing a dance that they would never have thought they'd be able to do - and then witnessing the look of surprise that they actually can do it and love it!"
A portrait of Tsar Nicholas II cast an approving, if somewhat bemused eye over the multitude of Tartan displayed at the ball. One couldn't help but think that he would be pleased by the reestablishment of the long-standing ties between Russia and Scotland.
Others at the event were perhaps preoccupied with more mundane, if understandable thoughts as the kilts whirled past. MacDonald, standing beneath the tsar's stern portrait, summed up the magic of his country's native dress.
"Nothing gets a woman quite as excited as talking about a man's kilt ... and especially what's underneath," he grins.
TITLE: Refugees Flee From Kandahar
AUTHOR: By Kathy Gannon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan - The United Nations says thousands of refugees have fled Kandahar as tribal and other opposition fighters press for control of the Taliban's last bastion.
Waves of U.S. warplanes pounded the southern Afghan city, which Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has vowed to defend to the death. One Pashtun tribal commander claimed that hardline foreign al-Qaeda troops, loyal to prime terrorist suspect Osa ma bin Laden, were stopping demoralized Afghan Taliban troops from surrendering. Another tribal force said it had captured a tower near Kandahar airport and was determined to take the facility.
UN High Commissioner for Refu gees spokesperson Peter Kessler estimated that 8,000 Afghans have reached the safety of neighboring Pakistan since the conflict intensified last week.
"It would appear that 2,000 people or more are leaving Kandahar province each day," Kessler said.
Those who have arrived at the Pakistan border outpost of Chaman talked of chaos and fear in Kandahar as well as on the roads east to Pakistan. Other refugees have fled north to the capital, Kabul.
Hamid Karzai, a powerful Pashtun tribal leader, said Monday his forces were 30 kilometers north of Kandahar and had met no resistance.
"There have been some surrenders of Taliban soldiers," he said, adding that the backbone of the Kandahar's defenses appeared to be made up of mainly Arab al-Qaeda warriors. He claimed they were preventing Kandahar's Afghan Taliban force from capitulating. "They can't get out of the city to surrender. The Arabs have blocked the exits of Kandahar," he said.
Mohammed Nasim,a refugee who fled Kandahar on Sunday, said the city's Taliban fighters were playing a secondary role while its Arab defenders "believe in fighting to the death: no retreat. They have no other option, they have been backed into a corner."
A tribal spokesperson, Khalid Pashtun, said anti-Taliban forces, loyal to former Kandahar governor Gul Agha were moving from the south and east toward Kandahar and some fighters were near the perimeter of its airport and had captured a tower on Monday. He predicted forces of tribal leader Gul Agha would seize the airport within a day or two.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. forces would do "whatever is necessary" to root out Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, including bin Laden.
U.S. bombing raids have concentrated on both regions for days. Anti-Taliban commanders near the eastern city of Jalalabad said some U.S. bombs have fallen on wrong areas, killing civilians and opposition fighters. A provincial security chief Mohammed Zeman said Monday that U.S. warplanes bombed a guesthouse in Agom village, 25 kilometers south of Jalalabad, on Sunday evening. He said seven of his fighters and four civilians were killed. On Sunday, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. Mark Compton, a Central Command spokesman in Tampa, Fla., said U.S. warplanes hit their intended targets around Tora Bora, a suspected al-Qaeda hiding place.
TITLE: Weekend of Bloodshed for Israeli Towns
AUTHOR: By Karin Laub
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - A series of weekend suicide bombings against Israel killed 25 people and wounded nearly 200, prompting Yasser Arafat to order dozens of Islamic militants arrested and to promise harsh action. But Israel was deeply skeptical, with hardliners calling for the removal of the Palestinian leader.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cut short his U.S. trip to rush home after meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush.
Bush and other world leaders pressed Arafat to crack down on militants. The Palestinian leader "must do everything in his power to find those who murdered innocent Israelis and bring them to justice," he said.
"It must be understood that we are at a turning point," said cabinet minister Matan Vilnai. He did not say how Israel would retaliate but warned the Palestinian Authority was "endangering its existence" by not cracking down on militants.
The carnage began in Jerusalem just before midnight Saturday, when two suicide bombers set off their nail-filled bombs on Ben Yehuda Street, an area of cafes and bars packed with young Israelis. Ten people, mostly teens, were killed, and 150 were wounded.
At noon Sunday, a third Palestinian blew himself up in a bus in the northern port city of Haifa, sending bodies flying and destroying the vehicle. Fifteen people were killed and 40 injured.
The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombings, in retaliation for Israel's slaying of a Hamas leader nine days ago. Three suicide attackers were killed in the bombings. Hamas said its gunmen were behind the shooting Sunday of an Israeli driver in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers killed the two gunmen in that attack.
Near the West Bank city of Jenin, the army said troops shot and killed four armed Palestinians. The four approached an army position with the intention of carrying out an attack, the army said.
Echoing Bush's comments, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and the European Union demanded Arafat move against groups backing terrorism. Pope John Paul II told pilgrims at the Va ti can that the attacks were "sorrowful and worrisome" and urged prayers for peace.
Arafat promised to take harsh action against the militants and declared a state of emergency in the Palestinian areas. Palestinian police, accompanied by journalists, began rounding up Islamic militants. An official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 90 militants have been arrested, including senior Hamas leaders Ismail Abu Shanab and Ismail Haniya.
Security chief Jibril Rajoub said those involved in the bombings "would pay the price." Skeptical Israelis pointed to a string of past broken promises. "Arafat will be judged according to his actions, not his declarations," said Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
Infrastructure Minister Avigdor Lieberman called for expelling Arafat and sending Israeli troops into Palestinian-controlled territory. Even some dovish politicians said they no longer considered Arafat a partner for peace.
In at least six Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, gunmen fired in the air to celebrate the bombings. But some Palestinians said they were tired of the bloodshed. "The world should help both of us, Israelis and Palestinians, to get out of this pool of blood," said Omar Jumma, 31, an engineer in Gaza City.
A U.S. envoy in the region, Anthony Zinni, denounced the attacks as the "lowest form of inhumanity," but said the violence must not derail his efforts to arrange an Israeli-Palestinian truce.
On Sunday, the bomber in Haifa - identified as Maher Habashi, a 21-year-old plumber from the West Bank town of Nablus - got on a crowded city bus, paid his fare, and within seconds detonated the nail-studded explosives belt strapped to his body, witnesses said.
"I saw the driver of the bus, his face and body covered in blood. I heard people screaming in the bus. I will never forget it," said Manal Masri, 32, an Arab resident of the mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhood where the explosion went off.
The two bombers detonated their nail-packed explosives while standing some 40 meters apart. The 10 victims ranged in age from 14 to 20, police said. Shortly after the suicide bombings, an explosion went off in a car parked near the mall.
Palestinian officials accused Israel of provoking the latest upsurge of violence with its assassination of Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, the leader of the Hamas military wing in the West Bank. Abu Hanoud - who had masterminded several suicide bombings in Israel - was slain on Nov. 23, just days before Zinni arrived for his truce mission.
Since the fighting erupted in Sep tem ber 2000, Israel has repeatedly complained that Arafat has done nothing to stop militants who have killed more than 230 Israelis in bombings and shootings. More than 780 people have been killed on the Palestinian side.
TITLE: Kasparov and Kramnik Draw Second Match in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Robert Huntington
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Chess grandmasters Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik finished the second game of the Botvinnik Memorial Tournament in another draw on Sunday, but this game was a seesaw struggle that lasted 72 moves.
In the first game of the tournament, played Saturday, both players agreed to a draw after only 17 moves.
This time the match lasted seven hours, although the result was the same. Kasparov playing white, seemed to have the edge through the middlegame, but Kasparov admitted afterward that something went wrong on his 24th move.
After that move, both players slid into time trouble and had only about a minute and a half for the last ten moves. "It was a game full of mistakes on both sides," Kasparov said.
Kramnik added that it was "good compensation" for yesterday's short draw.
Both players contrasted their seven-hour struggle at a traditional time control to the faster time control being used at the rival FIDE world championships across town. That tournament aims at limiting games to four hours.
Originally, Kasparov and Kramnik were to have been joined by former world champion Anatoly Karpov. The three had issued a joint letter harshly critical of FIDE in April.
But last month, Karpov abruptly withdrew from their event and announced that he would instead play in the FIDE championship. He was eliminated in the first round.
After Karpov's withdrawal, the players wanted to go ahead with their plans, but Kramnik was unwilling to play anything that looked like a world championship match since he is obliged to defend his title next October against the winner of a July qualifying tournament.
Kasparov and Kramnik agreed to play 20 games at various time controls, 4 regular games, 6 rapid games and 10 blitz games. The purse is $500,000.
The third game at regular time control is scheduled for Tuesday.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Fedorov Might Yet Play
EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey (AP) - Detroit Red Wings center Sergei Fedorov will play for the Russian hockey team in the Olympics if he is healthy.
New Jersey Devils assistant coach Viacheslav Fetisov, who is also the general manager of the Russian team, said Saturday that he had talked to Fedorov recently and the Red Wings star seemed to be preparing for the Olympics.
"We spoke yesterday before practice and he said he is getting ready," Fetisov said. "He said the only problem he's got right now is some injuries, but if he thinks he's going to be healthy enough, he's going to play."
Fetisov has convinced Red Wings center Igor Larionov to play for Russia.
"It has been a long time since Russia won the Olympics," Larionov said. "Slava asked me, and I took some time to think about it, and I couldn't refuse Slava."
Fetisov, Fedorov and Larionov were Red Wings' teammates from 1995 to 1998, combining to win two Stanley Cups.
Sadyrin Dies at 59
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Russia soccer coach Pavel Sadyrin died Saturday, aged 59, after losing a long battle with cancer.
"He died in a Moscow hospital after a long illness," a spokesperson for Russian premier division side CSKA Moscow, told reporters.
Sadyrin, who led Russia from 1992 and into the 1994 World Cup finals, quit as CSKA coach after falling ill earlier this year.
Sadyrin led CSKA to the Soviet league and Cup double in 1991, the last time the army side won any silverware. He also guided Zenit St. Petersburg to its first and only Soviet title in 1984. Sadyrin led CSKA to a club record 19-game unbeaten streak earlier this year, despite battling cancer for some time.
Smoltz Stays
ATLANTA, Georgia (Reuters) - John Smoltz, who reinvented himself as a stopper this past season, has decided to remain with the Atlanta Braves, the National League club said Sunday.
After being wooed by a number of teams including World Series participants Arizona and New York, the 34-year-old righthander agreed to a three-year pact worth a reported $30 million to remain with the NL East champions.
The deal keeps Smoltz, who switched to the bullpen to save wear and tear on his elbow after surgery, with the only team he has played for on the major league level.
"John Smoltz has been an important part of the success of this organization over the last decade," Braves General Manager John Schuerholz said. "We are glad to have him remain a part of our organization."
... But Davies Is Gone
SOUTH BEND, Indiana - Notre Dame fired its head football coach Bob Davie on Sunday, one day after the tradition-rich Fighting Irish finished a 5-6 season with a victory over Purdue.
Davie ended up with a 35-25 overall record in five seasons at Notre Dame - the third-worst winning percentage in the program's remarkable history.
Davie guided the team to a 9-3 mark last season and was rewarded with a five-year contract extension, but he failed to meet the high expectations at a university that has won a record eight national titles.
"Those expectations are the product not only of our history and tradition and national following, but also of our institution-wide commitment to excellence in everything that we do," Athletic Director Kevin White read to a news conference from a prepared statement.