SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #732 (99), Friday, December 21, 2001
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TITLE: Music Festival Heats Up the Winter
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In the heyday of imperial Russia, the social season - with its grand balls, receptions, concerts and theater - occurred in the winter. During the stuffy summers, high society fled the heat and dust of the city for their country estates. Even the royal family left for the Summer Palace in Tsarskoye Selo.
A century later, that tradition has been completely reversed. June's white nights draw tourists by the thousands and the Stars of the White Nights Festival has become the city's premier cultural event. During the winter, on the other hand, social life comes virtually to a standstill during the New Year's holiday season.
But the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and its renowned director, Yury Te mir ka nov, aim to restore the glories of the past with the annual Arts Square Festival, the third rendition of which opens on Dec. 27 and runs through Jan. 5. Organizers ambitiously intend to create a winter cultural event comparable to Mariinsky Theater Artistic Director Va lery Gergiev's Stars of the White Nights Festival.
This year's festival - the most ambitious yet - coincides with the complete renovation of its namesake, Ploshchad Isskustv, which was completed last month. The downtown square, with the famous statue of poet Alexander Pushkin in the center, is lined with some of the city's finest cultural assets. Two of them - the Russian State Museum and the Shostakovich Philharmonic Hall - are at the heart of the Arts Square Festival.
"There is no square like it in the world, and we must use it to its full potential," said Temirkanov, who is responsible for the festival's musical program.
The festival opens with a Dec. 27 concert at the Shostakovich Hall, featuring Temirkanov conducting the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra in a program of Saint-Sans, Brahms and Schumann. The guest soloists will be violinist Gidon Kremer and Latvian cellist Marta Sudraba.
A much-anticipated highlight this year will be a Dec. 30 concert at which the internationally acclaimed Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes will perform the supremely challenging Rakh ma ninov Third Piano Concerto together with Temirkanov and the Philharmonic Orchestra. Andsnes will also offer a solo recital of works by Liszt, Schubert and Schumann on Jan. 2 at the Glinka Philharmonic.
"One of the festival's goals is to introduce Russian audiences not only to world celebrities like Andsnes, but also to the brightest young performers," said the Philharmonic's director Yury Schwartz kopf. "This year we invited the very talented German violinist Julia Fischer."
The acclaimed 18-year-old native of Munich make her Petersburg debut with the Philharmonic on Jan. 4.
This year's festival will be more diverse than any of its predecessors. Former Mariinsky Theater soloist Anastasia Volochkova, who is now more familiar in London than St. Petersburg, will perform fragments of ballets by Marius Petipa, Yury Grigorovich and Vla dimir Vasiliyev on Jan. 2. That event will also include the Russian premiere of a 12-minute piece called "Monotones," choreographed by Frederic Ashton.
The program will conclude with a concert by the Phi lar monic under the baton of Gennady Rozh dest ven sky featuring works by Beet ho ven, Ives and Sousa. Pianist Viktoria Postnikova will be the guest soloist.
Throughout the festival, the State Russian Museum will hold a special exhibition of works from its collection that were inspired by or are related to music. On Jan. 3, the museum will unveil its fabulous White Hall, the renovation of which has just been completed, with a chamber concert and reception.
The Arts Square Festival is also designed as a social occasion, with the highlight being the traditional Te mir ka nov New Year's Eve Ball, which this year will be held at the Yusupov Palace. Only 175 tickets will be sold this year, at $600 apiece, Schwartzkopf said.
Marc de Mauny, director of the festival, is also organizing the ball. De Mauny, who has previously staged balls at Cambridge University, says the emphasis of balls generally has changed considerably.
"Today's modern ball is more of a rave, rather than dancing," he said.
The design for the Temirkanov Ball this year is inspired by the late 19th-century/early 20th-century Symbolist art movement "Mir Iskusstva," or "The World of Art."
"We are creating a fairy-tale atmosphere, with even a magic forest appearing in the Yusupov Palace," de Mauny said. A gourmet dinner will be prepared by the chefs of the Noble Nest restaurant.
Appropriately, the ball will feature a variety of musical entertainment from Scottish pipers to the Gennady Goldshtein Saxophone Band to a solo concert by violinist Kremer.
Financially, the festival is also getting on a more solid footing after a shaky start in 1999. That year's debut festival brought in just 30 percent of what organizers anticipated.
Analyzing that year's "commercial disaster," Sergei Yevtushenko - a deputy director of the Philharmonic at the time and now the manager of the Hermitage Academy of Music, admitted that some concerts were overpriced. He also said that the fledgling event was overshadowed by millennium-related events that year.
However, neither the Philharmonia nor the event's commercial sponsors were disheartened by the first-year results. Most of the original sponsors continue to back the event, and new ones have been added. This year's festival has received generous backing from the Ford Motor Company, local oil giant KINEF, Sony, IPP, Coca-Cola and the Grand Hotel Europe.
Schwartzkopf is pleased with the international recognition that the young festival has already attracted, noting that many people have begun coming to St. Petersburg just for the event. The festival, he said, has already ceased to be a mere prestige-raising event for the Philharmonic and is already "helping to fill the coffers."
Although this year's festival is yet to begin, organizers are busy dreaming about and planning for the future. They hope to attract the participation of the Ethnographic Museum, the Mussorgsky Theater of Opera and Ballet, the Komissarzhevskaya Drama Theater and the Theater of Musical Comedy, all of which are located on or very near Ploshchad Isskustv.
Future festivals will also likely be longer, growing to encompass Russia's two Christmases and two New Year's holidays. According to Schwartzkopf, the Fourth Annual Arts Square Festival will be almost two weeks long and will feature an even more diverse program.
For concert information and tickets, call Philharmonic at 110-4257. For tickets to the Temirkanov Ball, call Marc de Mauny at 110-4064.
TITLE: Foreign Ministry: 3-Day Visas To Start Feb. 1
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After numerous false starts this summer, Russia's Foreign Ministry announced this week that new, simplified visa rules will be introduced in St. Petersburg and Moscow on Feb. 1. These rules will enable tourists planning to visit these cities for less than 72 hours to receive their visas directly at selected entry points.
Local Foreign Ministry officials said Wednesday that such tourists will be allowed to get three-day, single-entry visas at Pulkovo International Airport and Torfyanovka on the Russian-Finnish border. The service will not be offered initially on trains arriving in St. Petersburg from Finland.
"The tourists have to go to a local tourist company a few days before they plan to travel and have their names added to a list, which then would be passed on to Russian customs officials. Then they can get their visas right at the border," said Oleg Davtyan, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs' representative office in an interview Tuesday.
"It will cost from $30 to $35. ... We don't know many things yet, since we haven't received any official papers from Moscow. We expect to receive them by the end of this month," Da vyan said.
The three-day-visa system was approved by the cabinet on June 28 this year and stipulated that, in order to receive a visa at an entry point, tourists must apply to an authorized tour operator in their home country not less than 48 hours before traveling, fill out an application and pay a $25 fee.
Officials initially said that the new regulation would be introduced on July 1 and then later, by the end of the summer, but it was not because of still-unexplained bureaucratic delays.
Davtyan said the list of authorized travel companies would likely include those that work with local hotels such as Nevskij Palace, the Grand Hotel Europe and Pul kov skaya to book tourists there. He did not provide the names of any of companies, saying that the list has not yet been approved by federal authorities.
"It's a remarkable [development], but three days is not enough for the tourists, so this term should be extended," said Snezhana Zamalieva, the public-relations manager at the Grand Hotel Europe on Wednesday.
"I would like to believe this is one of a series of steps to promote St. Petersburg in the West and will expand the [tourist] season. People are often looking for a place to go just for the weekend, and it would be great if they came to St. Petersburg instead of going to Paris. This is a tremendous step," she said.
According to the Foreign Ministry, only tourists from so-called "transparent" countries will be covered by the new rules. These include the countries of the Schengen Agreement, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan and the United States.
The Foreign Ministry officials said that these visas could not be issued for passengers traveling by train from Helsinki since "consulate departments are located only on the highway."
Nadya Yermishina, head of the Incoming Tourism Department at the Swiss House travel company, said she had heard about the new rules, but added that no preparation had been done yet by the company's management "because the Foreign Ministry could not say anything exact until now."
"We plan to discuss it in January. ... We very much hope it will work," Yermishina said. "We have people from time to time who want to visit St. Petersburg for a short period, but Russian consulates abroad have very strict rules for issuing visas of this kind."
According to the City Hall Tourism Committee, short-term tourist visas for U.S. citizens currently cost about $50 if applied for a week in advance. That price rises to $450 for one-day service.
In addition to the Northwest District, the plan will make these visas available at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport Terminal 2 and at Bagrationovskoye and Mamonovo on the Polish border in the Kaliningrad Region.
"Last year, tourist numbers from [non-CIS countries] rose by 15 percent, and I expect the same to happen this year and next year," said Nathela Shengelina, head of the government's tourism department, in an interview this week.
She said 3,340,000 such tourists from these countries had visited Russia last year and 3,183,000 during the first nine months of this year. The department estimates the average tourist comes for an average of 6.5 days, spending $120 a day.
By comparison, the neighboring Baltic country of Estonia, with a population of just 1.5 million, attracted 3.3 million tourists in 2000, and Finland drew 3.7 million visitors.
Staff Writer Robin Munro contributed to this report from Moscow.
TITLE: Abandoned Children Haunt the City's Attics
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: "I want to work in a bank," says 11-year-old Grisha.
His friends Masha, 14 and Tanya, 12, stand nearby and nod approvingly. Tanya sniffs constantly from a bag of glue that she hides under her coat.
"He knows how to count well," Masha says. "He's good at counting the money he begs."
Although Grisha has never spent the night out on the streets, he is well on his way to joining Masha and Tanya in this lifestyle. A child of alcoholic parents, the illiterate Grisha spends his days with them, begging for money near metro stations or hanging out in abandoned attics sniffing glue and paint.
"Masha is my sister, my friend, my mother," Grisha says, hugging the girl who stands a head taller than him.
The trio stands in dark attic littered with trash - broken bottles, empty syringes, old rags and wires - and covered with graffiti.
"We used to sleep here, together with about 30 other kids," Masha says. "Before the people who live here called the police and they chased us out."
She points out the central-heating ducts that the children huddled around to stay warm.
Many of these children inevitably become involved in drugs, alcohol, petty crime and prostitution.
"I started sniffing glue when I was six," Tanya says. "Some boys got me started."
"These kids are so young and inexperienced," said Lyudmila Velichko, head of the Youth Professional Orientation Center, which provides counseling for girls like Tanya and Masha. "They usually think that what they are doing isn't really prostitution but just an occasional way earning some money for food or drugs. They think of prostitutes as well-off professionals with nice clothes."
Some 70 years ago, in the wake of the Revolution and the Civil War, the Soviet Union faced a crisis of abandoned and forgotten children who lived in the streets. Now, after the upheavals of the last decade, this horrendous problem has reemerged nationally. And St. Petersburg is certainly no exception.
Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko, who oversees social issues, recently cited the figure of one million neglected children throughout Russia. According to research conducted last year by the sociology department of St. Petersburg State University, there are approximately 16,000 such children locally.
"Neither the authorities nor society realize the scale of the problem, nor do they know what should be done about it," said Aleksei Bukharov, who heads the St. Petersburg office of the International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC), a branch of the International Labor Organization that works with street children.
"When these children grow up, they will repay the society that so heartlessly abandoned them," Kemerovo Governor Aman Tuleyev told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda after attending a conference on the subject in Moscow last month.
DEARTH OF SOLUTIONS
Very few of these children are orphans. Like Grisha, both Masha and Tanya have abusive, alcoholic parents who neither look after them nor provide for them.
The city has shelters for such children, but it lacks the authority to make them stay there.
"I've been in the shelters several times," Masha says. "But I ran away because I couldn't stay there all the time. I want to see my friends and even my mother, who is after all still my mother." She adds quickly that her mother is in the process of being deprived of her parental rights.
Nonetheless, Masha says that she wants to change her life, to quit sniffing glue and "to graduate to something like being a salesperson." She dreams of a nice home and good food.
"No wonder Masha is confused," said Svetlana Yegorycheva, deputy director of the local NGO Children's Defense Fund. "Children who have tried street 'freedom' become addicted to it. Besides, they are so young and poorly educated that we can hardly expect them to take responsibility for their futures themselves."
Yegorycheva said that perhaps the most important thing that needs to be done is the passage of a law on state guardianship, that would give the authorities the power to keep these children in shelters and compel them to attend school.
The next step would be to improve the shelters themselves.
"These institutions must have excellent, reliable tutors who are properly paid," Yegorycheva said. She notes that this approach helped solve the problem in the 1920s and a similar system is currently used in Sweden.
Natalia Yevdokimova, chairperson of the Social Affairs Commission of the Legislative Assembly, sees the solution in the establishment of a system of foster care. She points out that experience shows that children raised in orphanages are unprepared for life in society.
However, the city has never budgeted sufficient funds to pay for even the few families that are willing to take in such children. Currently, these families receive just 450 rubles ($15) per month.
"They are promising to start paying them 1,200 rubles a month beginning next year," Yegorycheva said.
EARLY INTERVENTION
Alexei Bukharov of the IPEC says that his organization stresses the importance of identifying and working with children like Grisha, who are on the verge of entering life on the streets.
Once children become caught up in illegal activities such as drugs, prostitution or slavery, it is much more difficult to reach them, Bukharov said. By then, they have already fallen prey to pimps and other victimizers, fear of whom prevents them from seeking or accepting help.
One of the programs that the IPEC has set up locally is a family program at three institutions for teenagers. Under this program, social workers with the Children's Defense Fund meet twice a week with such children and their families. Child psychologists provide family training in a relaxed atmosphere, helping them overcome their dysfunctions through singing, reading together and open discussion of family problems.
The social workers also maintain contact with the schools that the children attend, keeping track of their attendance and performance.
The IPEC has also created a program of psychological counseling for teenage girls on the verge of street life. The specialists working on the program refuse to discuss it in detail.
"Doing so might frighten the girls and distance them from us," said one social worker.
However, the program helps the girls cope with difficult life situations, develops their communications skills and encourages them to stand up for themselves by boosting their self-esteem. Girls attend counseling sessions twice a week and also participate in twice-weekly arts-and-crafts lessons, where they learn painting, sewing and leather crafts.
"The best way to distract a child or teenager from improper activities is to keep them busy with something useful and interesting. This occupies their time and gives them an opportunity to communicate constructively with adults," said Velichko of the Youth Professional Orientation Center.
She says that when the Soviet Union collapsed, youth organizations like the Young Pioneers and the Komsomol also virtually died out, and few substitutes have been created to occupy young people after school. Traditionally free, state-subsidized activities like music or crafts lessons are now offered less frequently and generally only on a paid basis. Even many children whose parents would like to send them to such programs cannot afford them, to say nothing of those whose parents have virtually abandoned them.
As a result, many thousands of children are left to wander city streets, looking aimlessly for something to do.
"Of course, we know that we can't help all the problem children of the city," said Bukharkov. "But by doing at least some of this work, we want to show that there is a model for preventing children from succumbing to life on the street."
"I'm glad that my school sent me to these courses," said 15-year-old Katya, who has been attending the program since this summer. "Since I couldn't spend the summer outside the city, I really had nothing to do."
"I like to paint," she said, turning back to her work.
TITLE: New Rule Requires Declaring Cash
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Travelers beware. Those carrying more than $1,500 in undeclared cash into the country could see it confiscated under a new customs rule.
The Federal Customs Committee registered a decree this week requiring both Russian citizens and foreigners to declare amounts of foreign currency in excess of $1,500 upon arrival as of Jan. 16.
Under the existing rules, declaring cash upon arrival is considered voluntary for both foreigners and Russians, the customs committee said.
However, foreigners who want to take foreign currency out of the country must either have a declaration stamped on arrival or get a special bank receipt. The rules on taking cash out will not change under the latest decree.
The customs committee is still working on a system of fines or penalties, but officials said that they should be set by the time the new decree takes effect.
It is most likely, however, that the illegally undeclared amounts will simply be confiscated "for the benefit of the government," said customs committee spokesperson Irina Skibinskaya.
Under the new decree, no limits will be imposed on the amounts of foreign currency that can be carried in, and no questions will be asked about the origin - as long as the cash is declared, Skibinskaya said.
The customs committee said the new decree aims to keep closer tabs on how much cash is coming in and to fight illegal capital inflow, although customs currently has no authority to share such information.
But the decree is unlikely to prevent illegal gains from crossing the border. "It will provide officials with more information, but it is unlikely to affect illegal cash flows," said Natalya Or lo va, an economist at Alfa Bank.
It is more likely to cause numerous hassles for unwary travelers.
"We are very concerned about it," said James Warlick, the U.S. consul in Moscow. "We have strongly encouraged the Russian government to make the process transparent so people know the rules when stepping off the plane."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Deck the Streets
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - More than 250,000 New Year's trees will be delivered to St. Petersburg from Leningrad Oblast this holiday season, Interfax reported Thursday.
The largest tree, 25-meters high, will be erected on Palace Square. However, the administration of the city's Central District said that the focus of holiday activity this year would be Ploshchad Isskustv, where a "no less pretty" 20-meter tree will be placed.
In part, the change of venue was prompted by an incident last New Year's eve when a stray firework sparked a fire on the arch of the General Staff Building, Interfax reported. As a result of that fire, a bronze sculpture on the building was seriously damaged.
Rybakov Quits SPS
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - State Duma Deputy Yuly Rybakov, representing the city's 206th District, announced Wednesday that he is leaving the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, faction.
Rybakov stated that he had "become completely disenchanted with the capabilities of the party, which has been drifting increasingly toward the 'party of power,'" according to Interfax.
He added that he did not think that the SPS was fulfilling its primary function, which he defined as "taking concrete measures to defend human rights."
Rybakov stated that he did not believe that his leaving the faction would affect his obligations or responsibilities to his constituents.
Explosive Dispute
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A former local police officer who had served at least one tour of duty in Chechnya was killed in the city Tuesday when a grenade exploded in his house on Ulitsa Aviakonstruktorov, Interfax reported.
Law enforcement officials declined to identify the man, but stated that he had been using the grenade to threaten his wife during a domestic dispute when it exploded, according to the news agency.
Cherkesov's Man
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The chairperson of the Federal Customs Committee, Mikhail Vanin, announced Thursday that he had appointed Vla di mir Vyunov as head of the Northwest Customs District, Interfax reported.
Prior to the appointment, Vyunov served as first deputy to Northwest District Governor General Viktor Cher ke sov, according to Interfax. He replaces Vla dimir Shamakhov, who was dismissed in October following a corruption investigation.
Fixing Santa's Digs
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Vo log da Region Governor Yevgeny Pozgalev stated that 300 million rubles ($10 million) will be invested in a project called "Veliky Ustyug: Ded Moroz's Home," Interfax reported Thursday.
Speaking at a Moscow press conference, Pozgalev added that an additional 20 million rubles ($667,000) would be contributed to the project from the federal budget in 2002.
The money will be used to create an amusement infrastructure in the town, including the reconstruction of the local train station and airport. He added that Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Mat vi yenko, Press Minister Mikhail Lesin and Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi, among others, had agreed to serve on the project's oversight board.
According to Pozgalev, the project to "properly renovate Ded Moroz's home" will not only increase tourism to the region, but will also create an infrastructure for providing recreation for underprivileged children, Interfax reported.
Pozgalev said that about 5,000 people will visit Veliky Ustyug this winter.
TITLE: Hermitage Site of Historic Film
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An unprecedented event will take place Sunday within the walls of the State Hermitage Museum. For the second time in its illustrious life, the former tsarist Winter Palace is preparing for a revolution - one that may well shake the world of art.
The revolution's main ideologist is film director Alexander Sokurov, whose plans on Sunday to shoot a 90-minute movie in a single, non-stop take without subsequent editing. A completely uncut steadicam film will then be released for 35-mm theatrical distribution.
The $2.5-million project is being produced by Hermitage Bridge Studio and Egoli Tossel Film AG. About 900 actors and extras will appear in the film, and 13,000 costumes - many of them embroidered with real gold - have been produced for the spectacle.
The film, to be called "The Russian Ark" will use the Hermitage to juxtapose art from various epochs. Sokurov's idea is to breathe life into what is now a mere display. If he has his way, a cultural repository will become a living organism.
The plot of the film evolves as French aristocrat Marquis de Custine - played by local actor Sergei Dreiden - travels through the palace, conversing with its inhabitants from the beginning of the 18th century through to the present day. The historical de Custine wrote a famously scandalous book about his travels to Russia and, particularly, St. Petersburg in the early 19th century.
"The film doesn't have a plot as such. It is a colorful roundabout," said actor Leonid Mozgovoi, who will play a spy who watches de Custine throughout his journey in the Hermitage.
Among the personalities the two encounter will be Peter the Great - who in reality died before the Winter Palace was built - Catherine the Great and ... the current director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky. Piotrovsky will be one of only a few characters in the film playing themselves.
According to Meurer, the movie will be shot on a hard disk and later transferred to film. Some of the equipment was produced for especially for this project. The greatest challenge will be for camera operator Tilman Buttner, who will have to wield the 35-kilogram steadicam without stumbling.
"Shooting at the museum is risky," Piotrovsky said. "The interiors could be damaged, so normally I would protest. But I simply cannot resist Sokurov's talent."
All people working on the project admit being incredibly nervous on the eve of shooting. They understand that everything must go perfectly the first time. Despite the pressure, though, they sound optimistic.
"We are doing something that has never been done before," Meurer said. "But Sokurov is both a professional and a realist. So far, there haven't been any problems."
TITLE: Putin Heads to Britain To Talk NATO, ABM
AUTHOR: By Megan Twohey
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Almost a week after the United States notified Russia it was scrapping the 1972 ABM Treaty, President Vladimir Putin is winging his way to Britain for a visit with the man who may be his biggest ally for drawing Moscow closer to NATO, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Putin, accompanied by his wife, Lyudmila, touches down in London for a two-day visit Friday that is being billed as mostly private. Putin enjoys close personal relations with the British prime minister, who was the first foreign leader to visit Russian after Putin became acting president at the beginning of last year.
But during the official segment of the trip, Putin will meet with Blair for discussions that are expected to focus on closer Russia-NATO ties and the fight against terrorism.
The meeting could be part of a bid by Russia to get concessions from the West in return for biting the bullet over the landmark 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. U.S. President George W. Bush told Putin on Dec. 13 that he will withdraw from the agreement to build a national missile defense shield.
"Putin is hoping that his flexibility will allow him to get other important things, like a closer relationship with NATO," said Fio na Hill, fellow at the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution in Washington.
Putin has repeatedly said in recent weeks that Russia is ready to move as close to NATO as the alliance allows.
And Blair is certainly the man to talk to about NATO. The British prime minister sent a letter to Putin in October proposing that Russia be treated as an equal with the 19 NATO member states in talks about certain issues. Other NATO members have given the idea a lukewarm reception, but talks have begun to iron out a new type of relationship.
Putin's reaction to Bush's announcement about scrapping the ABM Treaty took some by surprise. Throughout much of the year, Moscow had issued warnings about what it would do if the treaty was abandoned. Among them was a threat to pull out of other international treaties.
After the announcement, however, Putin took the line that the treaty wasn't that important anyway.
"As is well known, Russia and the United States, unlike other nuclear powers, have for a long time possessed an effective means to overcome missile defenses," Putin said in televised remarks late last week. "Therefore, I fully believe that the decision taken by the president of the United States does not pose a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation."
Then, instead of dwelling on the U.S. decision, Putin appeared to quickly shift his focus to what Russia could accomplish with NATO.
In an interview this week with the Financial Times, Putin stressed that Russia's relationship with NATO was more important than missile defense.
"If relations between Russia and the West, Russia and NATO and Russia and the U.S. continue to develop in the spirit of partnership and even of alliance, then no harm will be done," he said.
Earlier this month, NATO ministers agreed to aim for a NATO-Russia council that could identify opportunities for consultation, cooperation, joint decisions and joint actions by their next meeting in Iceland in May.
The security benefits of such an alliance clearly surpass those of the ABM Treaty and help explain why Russia is not bitterly complaining about the U.S. withdrawal.
"It's difficult to see how Russia could sit at the NATO table and argue with the most important member over the most important issue, missile defense," said Christopher Langton, a research fellow for Russia and the CIS at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
For now, it looks like Russia and the United States are working together to get what they each want - Bush with no ABM Treaty and Putin with closer ties with NATO, experts said.
However, should those areas of cooperation crumble, previous plans for retaliation could surface, they said. Washington has already backed away from the support it initially gave the Blair plan.
"If the U.S.-Russian relationship becomes adversarial in one area, like Central Asia or NATO, then it could effect the way Russia deals with the U.S. withdrawal from ABM," Langton said. "Everything is wrapped up in one. You can't have an adversarial relationship on the one hand and a friendly one on the other when you're talking about security."
For the time being, however, Putin and Bush are concentrating on trimming their respective strategic arsenals - now standing at 6,000 to 7,000 warheads each - to 1,500 to 2,200.
Such cuts are much more important to Russia than the ABM Treaty, experts said. The country cannot afford to sustain its current levels of nuclear arms. Moreover, even with the reduced arsenal, Russia would be able to overcome American missile defenses.
On Monday, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld agreed to move ahead with fresh arms talks in the new year.
Whether Russia receives a treaty on the cuts as it is demanding depends on whether advocates in the U.S. State Department are able to overcome opposition from the Pentagon.
If no treaty is reached, Russia may sidestep the START II treaty in order to free itself for a ban on the deployment of missiles with multiple nuclear warheads, experts said.
Doing so could be practical for economic reasons. If the Russian armed forces placed three warheads on its current missiles, they would avoid the costly task of having to buy more.
Such a sidestep could also serve political purposes, said Alexander Savelyev, head of the strategic studies department at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow.
"Equipping missiles with three warheads can solve Putin's problem of pressure from the right wing and preserve Russia's status as a great military power," Savelyev said.
TITLE: Official: U.S. Continues To Spy on Russia
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Despite the warming of Russia's relations with the West, U.S. and other Western intelligence services are still keen to steal Russia's military secrets, a senior Russian counterintelligence official said in an interview published Wednesday.
"If leaders of other countries shake hands with [President] Vladimir Vla di mi rovich Putin, that doesn't mean that intelligence services have laid down their weapons," said General Valery Falunin, who is in charge of the military counterintelligence in the Moscow Region. "They are working, and working quite actively."
Asked by the daily Moskovsky Kom somolets who are his service's top adversaries, Falunin said: "The traditional set: the secret services of the United States and other NATO member states, plus neighboring countries."
Falunin's interview contrasted with the statements of his patron, Nikolai Patrushev, the chief of the Federal Security Service, the main successor of the KGB, which includes military counterintelligence.
Speaking at a meeting with Russian media editors Tuesday, Patrushev made no mention of U.S. spy activities - a significant omission apparently reflecting the improved relationship with Washington. Patrushev only mentioned the U.S. security services in a positive context - pointing at increased cooperation of Russian intelligence "first of all with the American CIA and FBI" in the effort to hunt down terrorists.
But Falunin focused mostly on alleged U.S. espionage efforts. He referred to one case that he described as an attempt by U.S. military intelligence to obtain documents relating to state-of-the-art Russian military hardware.
"The Americans were acting in an extremely blatant way, practically in the open," Falunin said. "They apparently believed that military counterintelligence was paralyzed and were quite surprised when they saw it wasn't."
In connection with the case, a Russian court last month sentenced a Russian citizen to 15 years in prison for espionage. The convict was identified only by his last name, Kalugin. Two other Russian citizens, identified only as the Ivanov brothers, were sentenced to 11/2-year sentences for divulging state secrets.
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According to a new book on one of the most damaging espionage cases in U.S. history, the FBI was warned 11 years ago that agent Robert Hanssen might be spying for the Russians, but the bureau failed to investigate for nearly a decade.
In "The Bureau and the Mole," Washington Post reporter David Vise writes that Hanssen's brother-in-law, Mark Wauck, also an FBI agent, discovered in 1990 that Hanssen "was hiding thousands of dollars in cash" in his house. Wauch reported his suspicions to his superiors, but the FBI did nothing.
Hanssen pled guilty to 15 counts of spying in July and is scheduled to be sentenced to life in prison Jan. 11.
TITLE: Central Bank's Steps Still Hard To Predict
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - What is the Central Bank doing with the government's dollars?
Paying off foreign debt? Defending the ruble? Shifting cash to other accounts?
Nobody seems to know for sure, and the Central Bank offered a vague explanation as to why on Thursday. After reaching an all-time high of $38.8 billion on Oct. 26, reserves have fallen $2.6 billion, mostly in the last two weeks, in the largest fall since the dicey days before the 1998 default and devaluation.
On Thursday, the day the Central Bank makes its weekly announcement of reserve levels as of the end of the previous week, it pleasantly surprised the market with news that reserves were up $100 million.
It also said the overall drop since Oct. 26 was a result of falling oil prices and external-debt payments along with traditional year-end factors.
But that didn't satisfy the State Duma, which sent a special request to Central Bank Chairperson Viktor Ge ra shchenko asking him to provide daily reserve data, amounts and dates of debt payments and the size of daily interventions on the currency market.
Lawmakers may have to wait for an answer. According to a source close to the Central Bank, Gerashchenko has been on vacation for the last week and will probably stay at his dacha until early January, adding to the confusion.
"What we see now is a result of the inconsistent and destabilizing policy of the Central Bank," said Alexei Moiseyev, an economist with investment bank Renaissance Capital. "The Central Bank continues to surprise the market."
The drop in reserves was accompanied by a sharp drop in the ruble, which has lost 3 percent of its value in the last two weeks, hitting 30.25 to the dollar at the unified session of eight exchanges Thursday and slightly off Monday's all-time low of 30.30.
Some currency traders said the Central Bank has been spending as much as $100 million a day recently to prop up the ruble, but most analysts think the number is much lower and cannot explain the overall decline in reserves.
"We are confident that the decline ... was not solely related to intervention aimed at supporting the ruble," Troika Dialog wrote in a report this week.
"I doubt the Central Bank spent considerable money to support the ruble [in the last few weeks], it was hardly more than $300 million," said Troika's chief economist Oleg Vyugin.
Troika offered a different explanation. Vyugin wrote in a research note that market sources said the Central Bank, for some unexplained reason, deposited $750 million in Vneshtorgbank at the beginning of the month.
"Whatever the aim of this transaction was, this amount has to be subtracted from currency reserves," Vyugin said.
At NIKoil, the view was different. The investment house's chief strategist, Eric Kraus, said the "drop appears to have been due ... to some sort of accountancy operation, either prepayment of debt, transfer to a paying account or restatement."
Alfa Bank analyst Natalya Orlova went even further, saying that the Central Bank used reserves for an early repayment of $2.7 billion to the International Monetary Fund and bought back $1 billion to $2 billion worth of MinFin-4 treasury bonds.
The IMF confirmed Thursday that the Central Bank had paid $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter, most of which was paid ahead of schedule, but declined to comment on Alfa's conclusion.
Whatever the real reason for the shrinking reserves, most analysts agree on two things: The bank should not try to defend the ruble, and at least some transparency of the Central Bank's operations would be welcome.
TITLE: Industrialists Union Adds Big Names
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Gazprom chief Alexei Mil ler and former Prime Minister Yev ge ny Primakov have joined the inner circle of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP, a move that further boosts the economic and political clout of the country's most powerful business lobby.
RSPP chief Arkady Volsky said Thursday that the addition of Miller means that union members, who run nearly every major financial-industrial group in the country, now control 60 percent of the country's economy.
"[The RSPP] reflects the new reality in Russia," Volsky told reporters at a news conference devoted to the group's accomplishments in 2001 and strategy for 2002.
"Organizations belonging to the management board of the RSPP produce 50 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Including Gazpom head Alexei Miller increased this number by about 8 to 10 percent," he said.
Interros boss Vladimir Potanin said having Primakov, who is currently the chairperson of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, on the RSPP's administrative board "increases the authority of the RSPP.
President Vladimir Putin approved a resolution to include RSPP members in all public commissions formed under his government's patronage, Volsky said. "Thirteen commissions have already taken our proposals into account and the others are reviewing them." he added.
"[The RSPP] should and can actively influence the country's economic processes," Volsky said.
Having survived, and won, many battles to get business-oriented legislation passed, the RSPP will replace several of nine working groups with new priorities, said RSPP Vice President Igor Yurgens.
The RSPP will form new groups to focus on Gazprom's restructuring, agriculture and social issues, he said. The Gazprom working group will be headed by Boris Titov, chairperson of major chemical holding Interkhimprom.
Work on key issues, the most problematic of which is accession to the World Trade Organization, will remain priorities. The agricultural working group, to be headed by AFK Sistema Chairperson Vladimir Yevtushenkov, is also likely to focus on the effects of WTO membership on the economy.
Summing up the year, RSPP members said their greatest successes were organizing 12 congresses attended by over 2,500 representatives of businesses across the country and pushing through rafts of legislation.
"[The RSPP] is a force to be reckoned with," said Yevgeny Gavrilenkov, deputy director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis think tank.
"Take banking reform, for example," he said. "The first publicly discussed proposal came from the RSPP, whereas in government circles the issue had long ago faded. It stimulated the action at the Central Bank and in the government."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: RTS Closing Strong
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian shares set a new 2001 closing high on Thursday with the country's No. 2 oil firm, YUKOS, as the standard bearer.
Traders said they expected to see fresh growth in the new year. The RTS index closed 1.81 percent higher at 247.240 on a volume of $26 million.
The Reuters index of the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX), dominated by local investors, ended up 0.99 percent at 1,192.66 on trade of 3.1 billion roubles ($110 million).
What's in a Name?
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) -St. Petersburg ground-line telephone-service provider Petersburg Telephone Network (PTS) has changed its name to Northwest Telecom, Interfax reported on Wednesday.
According to the company's press-service, the decision was made at a shareholders' meeting Nov. 28 in line with plans to use PTS as the base for the creation of a unified telecommunications company which would operate throughtout the northwest region.
The company is to be fully set up by the end of 2002, and according to its press service, Northwest Telecom will open eight new representative offices in the region next fall.
PTS also plans to issue 262,896,773 common shares and 87,646,542 preferred shares with a nominal value of 1 ruble. This will increase the company's charter capital by almost 60 percent, to over 900 million rubles ($30 million).
The biggest shareholders of the company are Svyazinvest with 41.02 percent of all shares, Brunswick Warburg Nominees with 18.14 percent and Bank Credit Swiss First Boston with 10.5 percent of shares.
Homecoming Party
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - President Vladimir Putin will visit the northwest region next week to participate in opening of new ports located on the Gulf of Finland, Interfax reported on Thursday.
Leningrad Oblast Governor Valery Serdyukov was quoted by the news agency as saying he had had "a private conversation" with Putin earlier this week, in which the president confirmed he will participate in the opening of a coal terminal in Ust Luga port and the first line of a new oil terminal at Primorsk.
Serdyukov said that Putin tentatively plans to be in the region from Dec. 25 to Dec. 28, but added that exact dates will not be determined until later.
The Primorsk facility is part of the Baltic Pipeline System and is scheduled to allow for the export of 12 million tons of oil annually when it is completed.
The Ust Luga facility will be able to handle a volume of 1 million tons of cargo per year initially, with that figure increasing to 8 million tons in 2003 and up to 35 million tons when the project has been completed.
Money for Sale
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian Central Bank said on Thursday it had sold $50 million at a minimum rate of 32.50 rubles per dollar at an auction aimed at helping foreigners to repatriate rubles frozen after GKO treasury bill restructuring.
Total demand at the auction, which took place on Dec. 18, was $96.14 million, a Central Bank official said. The amount on offer was $50 million.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Ukraine Passes Budget
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine's parliament on Thursday gave its final approval to the 2002 budget, meeting one of the key conditions to unlocking fresh loans from the International Monetary Fund and ending months of bitter political debate.
The bill, which targets a deficit of 1.7 percent of gross domestic product and is the first to adhere to IMF standards, was backed by 250 deputies in the 450-seat chamber. A total of 114 deputies voted against in the third and final reading.
But the final approval was won only after spending and revenue figures were raised by 930 million hryvnias ($175 million) although the budget deficit target remained unchanged.
Bush Plan D.O.A.
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle proclaimed a House-passed package of tax cuts and unemployment aid dead on Thursday, saying the Republican-written plan will not make it through the Senate in this session.
President George W. Bush had urged the Senate to act, instructing Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to telephone Daschle and plead the administration's case. But even Bush sounded a note of resignation during an afternoon appearance.
"We thought we made pretty good progress yesterday," the president said at Washington community center hours after the pre-dawn House vote.
"Unfortunately, that particular piece of legislation was declared dead before it even got to the Senate floor, even though I'm confident if it was ever voted on it would pass," Bush said.
Czechs Get Plant
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (Reuters) - The Czech Republic edged out neighbours Poland and Hungary to land a 1.5 billion euro ($1.35-billion) greenfield car factory to be built by Toyota Motor Corp and PSA Peugeot Citroen.
The investment will further raise the profile of the Czech Republic as the region's leader in investment inflows, and further orient the economy toward the automobile industry.
The Czech state investment agency CzechInvest said in a statement that the automakers chose a site in the town of Kolin, 60kilometers east of Prague, to build a plant that will produce an annual 300,000 small cars for the European market.
"Our biggest competitor and the initial clear favorite to win this investment was Poland, where Toyota already produces transmissions," said CzechInvest Chief Executive Martin Jahn.
Oil Inches Up
LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices ticked higher on Thursday after OPEC member country Venezuela said a deal between the cartel and its non-OPEC rivals on output cuts was now all but completed.
"We think so. We think that it is practically done," Venezuelan Energy Minister Alvaro Silva told reporters in Caracas.
London Brent blend rose $0.23 to $19.70 a barrel and U.S. light crude added $0.10 to $19.90.
OPEC ministers meet on Dec. 28 in Cairo to decide whether to implement new curbs from Jan. 1.
The group, which controls two-thirds of world exports, agreed in November to reduce output by 1.5 million barrels a day subject to a commitment by non-OPEC producers to cut supply by 500,000 bpd.
TITLE: Yakovlev Under Fire
AUTHOR: By Gordon Hahn
TEXT: IT appears that Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's hold over Russia's northern capital is coming under increasing attack from the Kremlin. The relationship between Yakovlev and President Vladimir Putin has been rocky since the former's 1996 betrayal of their boss and Putin's self-declared mentor, former Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. The relationship between the two seemed destined for open conflict when then acting President Putin actively pursued an alternative candidate to run against Yakovlev in 2000.
When Sobchak died in February 2000, during the Russian presidential campaign, Putin blamed Smolny's kompromat campaign against Sobchak for his death and made a point of comforting the late mayor's wife during the funeral. The expected showdown at a meeting after the funeral - the opening of which aired on television around the country - revealed a somber, testy Putin confronting Yakovlev across a table in Smolny.
Whatever occurred at this meeting and afterwards, an uneasy truce or, more precisely, a pattern of clandestine conflict set in between these two competing patrons of Petersburg.
Now, the subterranean conflict between Putin and Yakovlev may be boiling to the surface again. St. Petersburg, in particular officials close to the governor, has been under increasing scrutiny on the part of federal authorities. In March, the city was one of only four of the Northwest Federal District's 11 regions to be singled out by Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Zurbrin as presenting "serious difficulties" by ignoring demands from prosecutors to change local laws that contradict federal legislation.
In August, Zurbrin protested Yakovlev's decree on the creation of the city-owned St. Petersburg Electricity Network. Under federal pressure, the Legislative Assembly was forced to bring the city's law on state service and civil servants into compliance with federal law.
During the summer, Zurbrin launched an investigation of Yakovlev's long-time close ally, Vice Governor Valery Malyshev, reportedly looking into allegations that Malyshev had abused his position by taking bribes from local banks. In late October, prosecutors compelled Yakovlev to suspend Malyshev pending the results of the inquiry.
In September, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, a former Petersburger who ran Putin's local presidential campaign in 2000 and headed the pro-Putin Unity faction's deputies' group in the State Duma, returned to his native city and leveled stinging charges over the city's failure to rein in organized crime.
In early October, a Customs Committee inspection commission sent to St. Petersburg dismissed Vladimir Shamakhov, chief of the Northwest Customs District, and Alexander Puchkov, chief of the Baltic Customs District. On Thursday this week, the Customs Committee appointed the deputy of Putin's representative in the Northwest District to replace Shamakhov.
This month, Alexander Potekhin, another acting vice governor who is close to Yakovlev and was in charge of media and public relations at Smolny, was charged by prosecutors with conducting business while in office. Although he maintains his innocence, Potekhin resigned soon after.
Shortly thereafter, Sergei Mironov, former St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly deputy speaker and now the chamber's representative in the Federation Council, was elected the council's speaker, making him the third most-powerful figure in Russia.
In a city split between Putinites loyal to the legacy of Sobchak and those who betrayed him and supported Yakovlev in his 1996 campaign against his former boss, Mironov joined decidedly with the former. Mironov has long been an opponent of Yakovlev. He was deputy head of Putin's presidential campaign in Petersburg. He is respected in the city by both centrists and democrats. Mironov heads the party Volya Peterburga, which is part of a loose, emerging anti-Yakovlev coalition in the city that includes Yabloko, the Union of Right Forces and the now-united Unity and Fatherland factions.
The ascendance of Mironov to this high office appears to have been masterminded by the Kremlin. Georgy Goreglyad, chairperson of the council's majority Federation group of senators, acknowledged that Mironov's nomination had been discussed with the presidential administration. This is probably an understatement, as the idea most likely originated with the presidential team.
The plan to put an end to Yakovlev's reign could evolve something like this. First, Mironov will gain greater gravitas: his political weight and stature will be promoted with his arrival on the national stage in Moscow. One Federation Council official openly said the administration intends to promote Mironov's stature.
Mironov could then be put up as a pro-Putin candidate for the Petersburg governorship. He would run against Yakovlev, if the latter can arrange a way around his present term limit. One maneuver rumored to be in the works in Smolny is the unification of the city of St. Petersburg with surrounding Leningrad Oblast. Yakovlev, it could then be argued, is running for a new post for which the term limit applied to his Petersburg governorship does not apply.
Putin has had several face-to-face meetings with Leningrad Oblast Governor Valery Serdyukov, pointedly bypassing Yakovlev. In November, the head of the presidential administration, Alexander Voloshin, also made a suspiciously unpublicized visit to Serdyukov, who has since been careful to oppose Yakovlev's scheme. On Nov. 22, the Web site Polit.ru reported that Putin had nixed such a merger, putting a damper on Yakovlev's plan.
In the likely scenario that Yakovlev cannot run, he will certainly try to arrange the election of hand-picked successor who could be expected to help secret away Smolny's dirty laundry and to appoint Yakovlev his representative to the Federation Council, where the former governor would enjoy parliamentary immunity from prosecution. The most likely candidate for this task is Vice Governor Yury Antonov.
It is unlikely just a coincidence that Mironov's first move upon becoming Federation Council speaker was to propose a changeover to the popular election of senators within the next few years - that is, just in time for Yakovlev's demise.
Gordon Hahn has taught Russian domestic and foreign policy at several U.S. universities and is the author of "Russia's Revolution From Above, 1985-1999: Reform, Transition, and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime." He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Why Bad Boris Should Lose His TV6 Stake
TEXT: I DEVOTED the half of last week not taken up by holidays to discussing the fate of the Russian mass media with foreign colleagues. Of course, we were talking predominantly about the fate of TV6, the television channel controlled by Boris Berezovsky that provided refuge for part of the NTV team when that company passed from Vladimir Gusinsky's control to Gazprom. TV6 is now undergoing liquidation in accordance with an arbitration-court ruling.
"Why can't Putin tolerate even one critical channel?" my foreign colleagues wanted to know. I found myself assuming the role of devil's advocate.
Let me begin, I told them, with the fact that today TV6 is far from being the most critical Russian television channel. For example, Sunday's news and analysis program "Vremena" with Vladimir Pozner on the de facto state-controlled ORT, Saturday's "Post scriptum" with Aleksei Pushkov on TV Tsentr, controlled by Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, and "Se godnya" and "Namedni," programs on Gaz prom-controlled NTV, are more critical of government policies than TV6.
TV6's problem - as was the case previously with NTV - lies not so much in the editorial policy as in its owner, Boris Berezovsky. Both Berezovsky and Gusinsky used the media empires they had amassed to establish themselves as gatekeepers, extracting tolls for entry to places which, by right, should have been open for free passage.
One just has to recall the information wars of 1997, unleashed by Berezovsky and Gusinsky against Vladimir Potanin's Unexim bank that at the time enjoyed Anatoly Chu bais' favor. The government of young reformers, with whom Boris Yeltsin publicly swore he would work until 2000, was swept away in a matter of months by the torrent of kompromat, or compromising material, rained down on it by Be rezovsky's ORT and Gu sin sky's NTV.
Decide for yourselves whether the media playing such a role is compatible with liberal economic principles, of which Putin seems to be a genuine adherent. The editorial policy of Berezovsky's ORT, Gusinsky's NTV and now Berezovsky's TV6 was and remains largely an instrument for conducting business. Business is completely dependent on politics, and it basically boils down to finding ways to access budget funds - either by providing services to the authorities or to forces that aspire to take power and are prepared to pay handsomely for propaganda.
They cannot operate in any other environment.
In 1999, when Berezovsky used ORT to unleash a war against NTV, this was one element of an intrigue to squeeze Gusinsky's people out of President Boris Yeltsin's close entourage and thus to boot Gusinsky's snout out of the budget trough (after the 1998 financial crisis there was considerably less in the trough to go around).
Gusinsky's response was to push heavily and promote, through his media outlets, Luzhkov and former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, and in the process he irreversibly burned their bridges with Yeltsin. The nascent opposition, however, was swept away by the onslaught of Berezovsky's ORT, and Gusinsky found himself completely without access to the trough, which was the main reason for the demise of Media-MOST.
Today's TV6 (in Berezovsky's hands) is neutral or even loyal to the authorities. However, everyone understands that it is a time bomb that Berezovsky will detonate at any time. Last week, two schemes were unveiled: one to separate TV6's creative team from the channel's owner, Berezovsky, and the other to provide an alternative outlet for the creative team to continue making television.
For simplicity, I will call them the Lukoil plan - Lukoil is the minority shareholder in TV6 and initiated its liquidation - and the plan of Press Minister Mikhail Lesin. Both Lukoil and Lesin up to now brought far fewer problems to the NTV/TV6 team than Berezovsky has. TV6's general director, Yevgeny Kiselyov, however, has rejected these plans. Apparently he prefers to maintain ties with his chief tormentor.
Alexei Pankin is editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals (www.internews.ru/sreda).
TITLE: Yes, We Do Need All of Our Children
TEXT: AS the well-heeled were streaming out of the packed concert of Mos cow violinist Vladimir Spivakov at the Philharmonic Hall on Wednesday, they were greeted by a distressing and all too common sight. A small throng of street children - shivering in threadbare coats - gathered around on the square outside the hall, begging for spare change.
Some music-lovers reached into the pockets of their fur coats and came up with a little money - just as likely to be used to buy glue for sniffing as for food - while others ignored the outstretched hands and hurried to their cars. In the end, the concert crowd dispersed into the snowy evening - and only the children remained on Arts Square.
Although St. Petersburg is, of course, far from being an affluent city, it does suffer from something of a split personality. On the one hand, it is making tremendous strides toward recapturing some of its previous glory. The summertime White Nights Festival and winter's Arts Square Festival not only demonstrate the best the city has to offer, but also pay tribute to humanity's finest aspirations.
On the other hand, there are the neglected street children, abandoned by their own parents and growing up in a misery that no one should ever know. On Page 4 of today's issue, The St. Petersburg Times presents a glimpse of that misery and introduces some of the people who are grappling with this problem. Such people, however, are few. As one activist put it: "Neither the authorities nor society realize the scale of the problem; nor do they know what should be done about it."
According to the only research available locally, the scale of the problem in St. Petersburg is about 16,000 children. Living in attics and basements. Doing drugs. Begging on the streets. Committing petty crimes. Falling victim to pimps. Growing up cynical, illiterate and angry.
Obviously, it is a problem that does not admit of easy solutions. It is organically tied to the problems of the children's parents -despair, economic dislocation, alcoholism. It is tied to the poor state of city schools and the nearly complete lack of sensible after-school programs for children and teenagers.
On city streets not far from the Philharmonic Hall, the administration has begun putting up posters promoting the young generation. "We are all different," runs the slogan over the smiling faces of local teens, "But our country needs us all."
That's not the picture that one gets reading our report today. The children we spoke to certainly don't have the impression that the country, the city or even their own parents need them.
TITLE: How Labor Learned To Lobby
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: THE second reading of a bill in the State Duma rarely causes any sensations. Thus, few would have expected that the second reading of the Labor Code would be a major event. Nor were mass protests expected. In the depths of winter, street demonstrations do not hold much appeal; people are already getting ready for the New Year's public holidays and, moreover, the economic situation in the country is not sufficiently bad to provoke major gatherings.
However, protest measures undertaken by the union of air-traffic controllers on the eve of the Duma vote have turned into an important and high-profile event.
According to Russian law, air-traffic controllers cannot go on strike. For precisely this reason, the union opted for a hunger strike - essentially a delayed-action strike. Air-traffic controllers are examined daily by doctors, and the moment a doctor decides a controller's physical condition does not permit him to fulfill his duties, he is sent off for treatment.
He is then replaced by another employee who also starts to starve himself. The union probably does not intend to push things to the limit, but everyone understands full well that this could potentially lead to the paralysis of most of the country's airports.
The labor movement in Russia has progressed considerably in recent years. Workers have become aware of the importance of legislation, and some trade unions have learned not only how to get people out for rallies and demonstrations but also how to act in an effective and timely fashion.
While the air-traffic controllers were on their hunger strike, it unexpectedly came to light that the text of the bill could be altered significantly in the course of discussing amendments.
This summer, the government's version of the bill was not only approved by a Duma majority but also received the support of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR)- successor to Soviet trade unions. The crux of the deal was very simple: The FNPR would give its consent to limiting the rights of hired employees, and in return the law would effectively consolidate its monopoly position.
In terms of membership, old trade unions outnumber the new unions that emerged in the 1990s. However, active people - if they belong to a union - by and large are members of the alternative unions, and it is these people who cause problems for employers and the government. These troublemakers were the main target of the deal between the FNPR and the government.
It looked like the old Soviet system was returning, with official unions becoming de facto an appendage of the adminstration and alternative unions being banned. The only real difference is that the new draft labor laws provide for a much lower level of social protection - in fact, almost none.
The deal between the government and FNPR caught opponents of the bill off balance last summer. However, this fall alternative unions started a lobbying campaign in the Duma, arguing that an FNPR monopoly flies in the face of basic democratic principles. They found support among SPS and Yabloko deputies and - paradoxical as it may seem - from the Communist Party as well.
The reason is that not much love is lost over the FNPR. Liberals see in it the continuation of the odious Soviet regime, while the Communist Party sees the FNPR leaders as traitors who turned their backs on their own party.
The government, which needed FNPR support for the first reading, is not now prepared to sacrifice its relations with the parliamentary factions. Furthermore, independent deputies from the regions feel growing social tension and are trying to prove that they are sympathetic to workers' needs.
Irrespective of the outcome of the vote on the Labor Code, the current conflict is proof that the social situation in the country has changed. Economic growth tends to favor the development of the labor movement, and in this regard the last three years have borne fruit.
Today, the FNPR is in profound crisis, and the alternative trade unions, which have learned to combine protest rallies, lobbying and political measures, are growing in effectiveness.
The government doesn't yet fully comprehend that these unions could become a very serious adversary in the near future. In the spring, a new hike in utility payments is expected. The country is experiencing the consequences of a world economic crisis that has resulted in falling oil and gas prices. Taken together, these factors betoken the very real possibility of a politically "hot" spring and summer.
Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist.
TITLE: Azerbaijan Struggles To Escape the Dark Ages
AUTHOR: By Chloe Arnold
TEXT: BAKU, Azerbaijan - When Sahnaz Matlabqizi left the offices of the Yeni Musavat newspaper a couple of weeks ago, she had a feeling she was being followed. She hurried back to her flat in a miserable suburb of Baku, hoping to get inside before anything happened.
She was too late. Before she could get her key into the door, a man had grabbed her from behind.
"He held a copy of our newspaper up to my face and slashed it with a knife," she told reporters the following day. "He told me that it would be my face next time if we didn't print the articles they wanted."
Then he punched her repeatedly in the head. Musavat's deputy editor, Qabil Abbasoglu, says he has no doubt at all who ordered the attack.
"It took place just after President [Heydar] Aliyev's brother made a speech slamming the opposition press in Azerbaijan," he told me. "It can't be a coincidence that one of my staff was beaten up a couple of days later."
Compared to most former Soviet republics, Azerbaijan has a relatively free press. Musavat regularly criticizes the government, keeping a check on some of the more outrageous policies the president introduces.
I was recently in Uzbekistan, which has no free press at all. Human-rights groups say there are as many as 8,000 political prisoners, but you won't read about that in any of the papers there.
"Please don't compare Azerbaijan to Uzbekistan," Abbasoglu said. "Of course their freedom of speech record is much worse than ours - they're living in the Dark Ages. But that doesn't mean our way is acceptable."
In recent months there's been a clampdown on the independent press in Azerbaijan. Opposition newspapers are closed down every other week for criticizing the authorities, and half a dozen editors have been sent to prison.
Of course, the leadership of Azerbaijan needs to tread carefully. As a member of the Council of Europe, it doesn't look good to be shutting down newspapers and incarcerating their editors. So their latest ruse is to close down the newsstands that sell these papers. They claim newspaper sellers near busy roads are subjected to high levels of pollution and could be putting their health at risk. The fact that these same people swim at Shykhovo beach, where tons of untreated sewage are pumped daily into the sea, is, presumably, another matter entirely.
For now, Abbasoglu has advised his female staff not to come to work for their own safety. "It's probably only a matter of time before none of us will be able to come to work," he told me. "We're just waiting for the day the authorities tell us we're to be closed down, too."
Chloe Arnold is a freelance journalist based in Baku, Azerbaijan. She contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: grymov's sincere 'collector'
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Yury Grymov's controversial second film, "The Collector," which was briefly premiered at the Aurora cinema this autumn, was released on video and DVD last week.
Born in the provincial city of Gorky (now, Nizhny Novgorod) in 1965, Grymov has conquered Moscow since 1988 as one of the most prolific and successful directors of television commercials and, later, pop-music videos. After nearly 300 commercials and videos, Grymov now seems obsessed with the idea of producing some art-house films and acquiring a reputation as a serious filmmaker.
His first full-length effort was 1998's "Mu-Mu," based on Ivan Turgenev's 1852 novella "Mumu," a story that was an integral element of the Soviet school curriculum because of its ugly depiction of serfdom. In the story, a cruel serf-owner forces her deaf-mute servant Gerasim to drown his beloved puppy.
The film was largely regarded as a failure in Russia by both audiences and critics, although it picked up several awards at Western festivals. Part of the problem was with Grymov's choice of material, since Turgenev's story has inevitably become the subject of all sorts of schoolyard-type humor, indecent poems and songs. It is hard for local audiences to take this plot seriously. The film, presumably unintentionally, aggravated this reaction further with its kitschy glamorization of the "real" Russian peasant and - in what was probably the main point of the film - by hinting at a sexual tension between serf and master.
For his second film, Grymov seems to be mining his post-school years. Although "The Collector" is based on the eponymous novella by Levan Varazi (who is also credited as co-scriptwriter), it refers to the novels of English writer John Fowles - not only "The Collector," but "Magus" as well - who was an important writer for the Russian intelligentsia in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Visually, "The Collector" draws both from Grymov's experience with videos and from the great directors that, presumably, he admired as a student. However, the echoes of Andrei Tarkovsky and Louis Bunuel ultimately just make the film seem dated.
The film is set almost entirely in the surreal house of the title character, played by Aleksei Petrenko. The house is filled with myriad items and creatures, including live porcupines and a prominently displayed collection of dildos. Grymov claims that all the items in the film - with the exception of the dildos - came from actual private collections.
"The Collector" is also populated by a collection of people (three young men, a middle-aged woman who is the collector's assistant, her teenage daughter and the collector's own femme-fatale daughter, who keeps the action moving) who struggle throughout the film to escape.
Petrenko had his heyday in the late 1980s and is best known for playing Rasputin in "Agony." His co-star - Irina Mazurkevich, who plays the collector's assistant - has performed in a few St. Petersburg theaters and a number of popular Soviet-era films. Neither Petrenko nor Mazurkevich bring very impressive performances to "The Collector," though, and the other, lesser-known actors come with even less.
Probably the best achievement of the film is its soundtrack, which is well thought-out indeed. Anchored around music by Sergei Prokofiev and the trendy Finnish acid-jazz combo Rinneradio, it also features a few authentic Soviet songs from the 1970s, one of which serves as the background during a drug-induced hallucination in which some of the characters appear in the makeup of the American rock band KISS.
Grymov is clearly dissatisfied with his fame (or is it notoriety?) as a pop-video director. After all, he bears direct responsibility for recent efforts from pop singers Alsou and Vitas. "I listen to alternative rock and classical music," Grymov is quick to point out in a quotation on his Web site. "But I respect pop singers because people like them."
On a late-night talk show last month, the director was even more candid, saying: "Unlike films, pop videos are not sincere. They are business." Despite this lack of sincerity, Grymov posted his latest video - featuring the odious lip-syncher Valery Leontiev - on his Web site.
Although Grymov's efforts to be serious and "sincere" with "The Collector" distinguish the film from such popular cynical spoofs as Ivan Okhlobystin's "$8 1/2" and "Down House," the film remains deeply rooted in the past. In the end, he seems to be compensating for his Soviet years by trying to gather together as much once-banned surreal imagery, strong language and explicitly sexual material as possible. It may be good therapy for him, but it isn't really satisfying for the rest of us.
"The Collector" is available in stores on video and DVD. Check out Yury Grymov's Web site at www.grymov.ru.
TITLE: the prodigal balanchine returns
AUTHOR: by Gulara Sadykh-zade
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: As the year draws to a close, the Mariinsky Theater - which has been pretty quiet since the season began - has begun showing signs of life. First, the theater revived the grandiose 1954, "Stalin-era" version of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Prince Igor" as staged by Yevgeny Sokovnin. Next, the company produced George Balanchine's early ballet "The Prodigal Son," based on music by Sergei Prokoviev.
The St. Petersburg rendition of the 1929 Balanchine-Prokoviev "The Prodigal Son" was created with the permission and assistance of the U.S.-based Balanchine Foundation, with the staging executed by Karin von Aroldingen and Paul Boyce, both of whom danced for Balanchine with the New York City Ballet. The Mariinsky's repertoire already includes Balanchine's "Apollo Musagetes, "Serenade," "Theme With Variations," "D-Major Symphony" and "Jewels."
Balanchine's style developed on the basis of several compositional principles, including plotlessness; abstraction; presentation stripped of material distractions; the aspiration of pure spirituality; expression through the aesthetic exploration of the lines and forms of the human body; and the refined ornamentation and rich monotony of minimalism.
However, these qualities appeared fully only later in the ballet master's career. In "The Prodigal Son," the choreographer was still just feeling his way. Outwardly, the ballet is created on an abundance of attributes borrowed from Sergei Diaghilev: spectacle, exoticism and expressiveness, all serving a clear and simple plot from the Bible.
However, during the central orgy scene, the music itself pushes the choreographer to original approaches. The horde of drunken revelers takes on the appearance of a mechanized, multi-headed monster with arms like flippers and hands like oars. As the scene reaches its climax, these flippers pulverize the protagonist's body and spirit into dust.
The puppet-like movements - the clockwork-like precision of the dancers' movements - summon an irrational horror in the spectator, inasmuch as they clearly lie beyond the realm of the human world. The surreal nature of these false friends and tempters finds its ultimate expression in the robbery scene. The horrific, apelike figures on semi-evolved legs with pale, shaven heads and dark, hollow eye sockets quickly run across the stage in pairs, spinning and colliding in senseless confusion.
In the Mariinsky production, Farukh Ruzimatov danced the Prodigal Son. Yulya Makhalina danced the role of the alluring Siren with classical perfection.
The sets were recreated from Fauvist artist Georges Rouault's original sketches and evoke the tents of the ancient Jews, broken up by sharp and penetrating black outlines. Otherwise, the oriental backdrop for two of the production's three scenes consisted only of a greyish-yellow desert coloring and a few distant minarets. The sparse scenery and minimal props focus attention on the seething emotional storms summoned by both the orchestra and the dancing.
The ballet culminates with a nearly precise citation from Rembrant's "The Prodigal Son," which hangs in the Hermitage. The rebellious runaway has been broken by the cruel world and crawls on his knees to his wise and respected father, who waits with outstretched hands.
In all, the production makes one wonder whether, after half a century, the native city of Georgy Melitonovich Balanchivadze - the city in which he grew up, where he studied at the conservatory and where he first appeared on stage - might soon become known as "the home of Balanchine."
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Since there have already been several new album presentations this month, local bands seem to have run out of such offerings and are now returning to their normal club shows.
However, there are still some alternatives to Moscow exports Krematory (LDM on Friday), Zapreshchyonniye Barabanshchiki (Red Club on Saturday) and BI-2 (Oktyabrsky on Sunday), with performances by the St. Petersburg Ska Jazz Review, Babslei and Kirpichi, who are all playing on Saturday.
The St. Petersburg Ska Jazz Review, a nine-piece band formed by members of Spitfire and Markscheider Kunst, will play its rare, full-length show at Faculty on Saturday. The band's mostly instrumental repertoire is based on jazz standards and classic Jamaican numbers, performed in such styles as ska, rock steady and reggae.
Saturday's concert will feature jazz evergreens by Sonny Rollins, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Lee Morgan, as well as Jamaican 1960s classics such as "Shanty Town" and "Wet Dream."
The band made its official stage debut at the SKIF 6 festival at LDM in April, although in reality they had already played club gigs, albeit in different, smaller lineups. Since then the St. Petersburg Ska Jazz Review has played a few shows locally and in Germany.
"It's difficult to call Spitfire a purely ska group. We have elements of everything, mostly rock and punk, while Markscheider Kunst blends Cumbia, Latin and African music," says the band's co-founder, drummer Denis Kuptsov. "Because both bands had something to do with ska, we decided to play it in a purer form, in a slightly jazzy style."
The show will be followed by an all-night party with DJs spinning reggae and ragamuffin vinyls. The band is planning to start working on its CD debut in February.
On the same night at Front, the all-girl folk-punk band Babslei will play some of its new material, which has not yet been performed live. Of the three new songs to be showcased, only "Zhinka" (Wife) has a title. The band will also perform its special New Year's song, which was recorded for a New Year's compilation that was never released.
According to Babslei's Katya Fyodorova, the band's debut album "Yeldyrina Sloboda," released in November, was dismissed by the all-important, Russian rock-oriented Nashe Radio, as its head Mikhail Kozyrev did not like the voice on the record, describing it as "squeaky."
Although the bunker club Front can dish out great underground atmosphere, the sound quality leaves much to be desired and, for that reason, fans may prefer the band's Dec. 29 show at Moloko.
If you miss these shows, however, Babslei can be caught at Fish Fabrique on Dec. 30, when they will play a special, costumed New Year's show and screen their notorious video, which was recently rejected by MTV Russia. Based on the song "Ispanskaya" (Spanish), the video draws on the Soviet film classic "The Dawns Here Are Quiet" and features Leningrad's Sergei Shnurov, Tequilajazzz's Zhe nya Fyodorov, Nordfolks' Andrei Figa and Spitfire's Andrei "Ded" Kurayev.
Finally, Kirpichi, a band that mixes alternative guitar-based music with hip-hop, will play Poligon on Saturday.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: where kitsch is served right
AUTHOR: by Thomas Rymer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In most cases, saying that the food was the least memorable part of a dining experience would not be particularly flattering. There are rare occasions, however, when a restaurant manages to put everything together in such a way that food really does take a back seat, and all you can do is sit back and admire the show. Shestoi Ugol (Sixth Corner) is a happy example.
Taking its name from the five-cornered intersection formed by the junction of Zagorodny Prospekt, Raz yez zhaya Ulitsa and Ulitsa Rubenshteina, the feel of Shestoi Ugol can only be described as "kitschy." For those familiar - and likely fed up - with the Western, Marilyn- and Bogey-idolizing form of pop iconography, the restaurant's Russian spin on the phenomena provides a nice break. Think of a place where Lenin and Brezhnev are substituted for those old standards, and you've already got a bit of the idea.
The restaurant's layout is also something to marvel at. Eschewing the linear, cookie-cutter approach to arranging tables, Shestoy Ugol has appropriately angled off its dining room in such a way to create perfect spots for anywhere from two to 20 people.
What's especially pleasing is the way that the room has been broken up, with two raised areas, one table in the form of a boat - ominously named "Titanic II" - as well as a couple of large, round tables surrounded by dividing walls painted to look like the outside of a cottage, complete with little windows to peer out from.
It's a lot of fun just looking around the place and noticing all the little touches that went into a restaurant of which some interior designer somewhere must be very proud: my dinner companion and I spent almost an hour upon arriving doing just that.
Our gaping was interrupted by the beginning of the floorshow, which takes place in an open area in the center of the room. Including belly dancers, a ballroom-dancing couple and a pair of singers who perform in army uniforms before switching into drag (an amusing juxtaposition), the show is alternately riveting and funny. The raised sections and the little windows ensure that just about everybody gets a good view.
After the festivities, we decided that we would try a little something more from the menu than my Botchkaryov (40 rubles, or $1.33) and my dining companion's double Bailey's on the rocks for 80 rubles ($2.67).
Like everything at Shestoi Ugol, the menu is a bit out of the ordinary. Instead of giving the dishes names, they have just given them descriptions, which are each about 30 words long. Fortunately our server, who was dressed as Soviet-era airline attendant, didn't make us read the whole thing.
The menu has the standard salads, starters, beef, chicken, pork and fish sections, and thoughtfully includes a two-page diagram of a side of beef in the center for those who like to have an idea what their meat once was. The prices are reasonable, with most entrees in the neighborhood of 150 to 250 rubles ($5 to $8).
We started out sharing an order of wings for 100 rubles ($3.33) and an order of ribs for 130 rubles ($4.33), which were both very tender and come in fairly generous portions, although the "barbecue sauce" was the usual St. Petersburg lightly seasoned ketchup.
My dining companion's beef-and-chicken stir-fry (140 rubles, or $4.67) redressed this problem. The dish had a nice snap to it, without being too spicy, and the fresh peppers and onions mixed in, as well as the rice, were done perfectly.
I opted to go the meat-and-potatoes route, picking a steak for 200 rubles ($6.67) which, to my surprise and great delight, actually came rare - just as I had ordered it.
By the time we had made our way through what was entirely enjoyable food, we sat and talked a while longer, before realizing that it was after 1 a.m. Almost five hours had passed and we had hardly noticed, which is about as good a recommendation for a restaurant that I can think of.
Shestoi Ugol, 3 Ul. Razyezhaya, 315-8873. Open daily 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Floor show Tuesdays through Sundays starting at 8 p.m. Dinner for two with alcohol, 1320 rubles ($44). English-language menu available. Credit cards accepted.
TITLE: Riots Turn Fatal As Argentina Boils Over
AUTHOR: By Tony Smith
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Sixteen people have been killed and more than 150 others injured in more than two days of anti-government unrest in Argentina, officials said Thursday.
Major political leaders were reportedly negotiating behind-the-scenes in an effort to repair President Fernando De la Rua's fraying coalition government and defuse the mushrooming political crisis.
De la Rua declared a state of siege on Wednesday, but protests continued Thursday. Truncheon-wielding police on horseback scattered hundreds of demonstrators outside De la Rua's office in downtown Buenos Aires.
Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo handed in his resignation late Wednesday, throwing De la Rua's government into further turmoil.
Authorities said that at least eight people were killed in and around the capital and at least eight others in outlying provinces. The casualties included a 15-year-old boy reportedly shot during disturbances in western Santa Fe province.
Others among the dead included people reportedly shot by merchants defending their stores with weapons.
In the Buenos Aires suburb of Quilmes, a 23-year-old man was shot and killed during a supermarket raid by looters before dawn. In southern Rio Negro province, a 46-year-old woman was shot during confrontations between local police and supermarket raiders.
Unrest continued for a second day across this vast South American country of 36 million people as looters pillaged supermarkets and shops.
More supermarket attacks were reported in the north-central province of Tucuman. There were even reports of vandals ransacking family homes in the northeastern province of Corrientes. North of Buenos Aires on the Panamerican Highway that crosses the country, there were reports of supermarket lootings and attacks on country estates.
Popular anger boiled over as a result of four years of bitter recession that has dragged the country to the brink of economic collapse and a possible default on its $132-billion public debt. Unemployment has spiraled to near record levels of over 18 percent and industrial production has plummeted.
The government has enacted eight austerity plans and is seeking even further cuts in public spending.
In the capital, some 300 demonstrators taunted riot police and shouted anti-government slogans Thursday, demanding the president step down: "Go! Go!" they shouted as riot police and mounted cavalry officers charged.
Others called for De la Rua to come out on the balcony of the ornate government palace and face the people with chants of "Come out! Come out!" But the shutters remained firmly closed, the palace surrounded by iron barricades and scores of riot police.
"I'm not leaving here! They've already kicked me out 10 times but I will come back," said Alicia Fernanez, a 51-year-old jobless woman who was beating a metal saucepan noisily. "This is terrible. Where's our democracy gone?"
TITLE: Rift Emerges Over Kabul Peacekeepers
AUTHOR: By Kathy Gannon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan - Barely 24 hours before the first British peacekeepers deploy in the Afghan capital, the incoming defense minister said Thursday the international troops may not use force, indicating deep differences with the United Nations over their mission and size.
Interim Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim that the multinational force will be largely symbolic - in comments that also pointed to divisions within Afghanistan's new administration just before it is to be inaugurated over the weekend.
As the United Nations prepared for the installation of the post-Taliban administration, American special forces and Afghan tribal fighters were going cave-to-cave in northeastern Afgha ni stan hunting for traces of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network.
American soldiers were seen in the mountains of Tora Bora going through documents and other materials, apparently recovered from caves in the area, which was an al-Qaida bastion until it was abandoned on Monday after weeks of fighting.
The whereabouts of bin Laden - who some had placed at Tora Bora - was unknown. After the assault by tribal fighters backed by U.S. bombardment, al-Qaida fighters fled Tora Bora, many crossing the nearby border into Pakistan.
Pakistani forces on Wednesday were pursuing the last five of 48 al-Qaida fighters from Tora Bora who broke free of their Pakistani guards Wednesday after they were arrested crossing the border.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Border Crossing
GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) - An outbreak of the deadly ebola virus has spread from the central African nation of Gabon to neighboring Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
Fifteen people have died in Gabon since ebola was first reported earlier this month. Eleven cases have now been detected in Republic of Congo, the UN health agency said in a statement.
Health authorities had feared the disease would spread as the Gabon outbreak was just a few miles from the border of Republic of Congo.
At least one woman believed to be infected with Ebola fled Gabon and was located in the village of Mbomo, Republic of Congo, health authorities said Wednesday. The woman's baby had died and she was reported to be in a serious condition.
Ferry Limps Home
HELSINKI (Reuters) -A ferry with more than 800 passengers and crew stranded on board for 20 hours was finally towed to port after running aground early on Thursday in heavy weather in an archipelago in the Baltic Sea.
Early reports spoke of initial panic among some passengers and a leak in the ferry's double hull, but a coastguard official said the situation was under control and no one was injured.
Operators of the Viking Line ship Isabella, traveling from Finland's west coast city of Turku to Stockholm, decided not to evacuate the 818 passengers and crew, and instead ordered the vessel to be towed to the nearby Aland Islands' Langnas harbor.
Rubble Rescue
PRETORIA (Reuters) - South African rescue workers rushed to dig out scores of people, many of them children, trapped on Thursday after part of a busy shopping center collapsed.
Police said 50 people, including an eight-month-old baby, had been rescued from the rubble at the Kolonnade Shopping Center in Pretoria.
"Two people are still trapped under the rubble," police spokesperson Piletji Sebola said.
Ambulances and helicopters rushed the injured, some of them in neck braces, to nearby hospitals. Police said they had no confirmed deaths.
The building was packed with Christmas shoppers when the roof over an ice-rink inside the mall collapsed. Police said it was not clear how the accident occurred at the shopping mall north of Pretoria.
Emancipation Acts
ZURICH, Switzerland (Reuters) - More than 14,550 slaves in Sudan have been freed in the past six months as international peace initiatives in the country make progress, a Swiss-based human-rights group said on Thursday.
In a statement, Christian Solidarity International called the mass liberation a breakthrough in its six-year campaign to abolish abductions and enslavement of blacks from the south that it blames on the Islamic government and allied militias.
Arab chiefs in Kordofan, northern Sudan, arranged the release of slaves held in their chieftainships and handed them over to Arab-Dinka peace committees.
The Zurich-based CSI said that to date, it has helped free more than 78,000 slaves, mainly by paying networks of Arab "retrievers'' 50,000 Sudanese pounds per slave - the price of two goats. The six-year total includes the latest group.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Cup on Hold
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - The second leg of the South American Copa Mercosur final was postponed on Wednesday after 16 people died in Argentina's worst civil unrest for more than a decade.
The South American Football Confederation (CSF) said the match between Argentina's San Lorenzo and Flamengo's Brazil would instead be played on Friday afternoon.
The game had been due to go ahead in the Nuevo Gasometro Stadium in a Buenos Aires suburb.
"The match will be played at 3:00 on Friday," said Eduardo de Luca, general secretary of the CSF.
Last week's first leg in Rio de Janeiro ended in a goalless draw.
Argentina's embattled government declared a state of siege on Wednesday to control unrest as at least 16 people died in widespread looting and rioting triggered by austerity measures and rising poverty.
India Trails
BANGALORE, India (Reuters) - Paceman Andrew Flintoff took three wickets to hand England the initiative after Indian leg-spinner Anil Kumble claimed his 300th test wicket on the second day of the third and final test on Thursday.
The 24-year-old fast bowler left India struggling at 99 for three, still 237 behind England, who were all out for 336 in their first innings after gutsy batting by their lower order.
Sachin Tendulkar, unbeaten on 50, and Rahul Dravid (one) were together when play was ended 11 overs early due to bad light. India lead the series 1-0.
Kumble grabbed the limelight in the afternoon by becoming the second Indian to claim 300 test scalps. Paceman Kapil Dev's 434 is the second biggest haul in test cricket.
Safin Keeps Coach
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian player Marat Safin and his Swedish coach Mats Wilander have agreed to continue working together for the first part of next year at least. "I have just spoken with Marat, and he said they had agreed to stay together at least through the Australian Open," Russian tennis chief Shamil Tarpishchev said Thursday.
This year Safin was a shadow of the player that in 2000 won seven titles - the most on the ATP Tour - including a shock straight-sets victory over Pete Sampras in the U.S. Open final.
But Safin said that the cool-headed Swede, winner of eight Grand Slam titles, has a positive influence on his temperamental nature. "It helps to keep me under control," he said.
Alou Inks Deal
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Chi ca go Cubs signed free-agent outfielder Moises Alou on Wednesday to a three-year contract worth an estimated $27 million.
The 35-year-old Alou steps in following the departure of free agent left-fielder Rondell White, who signed a two-year, $10 million contract on Monday with the New York Yankees.
Alou will join an outfield that includes fellow-Dominican slugger Sammy Sosa.
A four-time All-Star, Alou spent the last four years with the Houston Astros. He was third in the National League in batting last season at .331 with 27 homers and 108 RBI in 136 games.