SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #738 (4), Tuesday, January 22, 2002
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TITLE: Kremlin Moves To Shut Down TV6
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro and Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Monday may have been the last day of broadcasting for TV6 as the Press Ministry prepared to comply with a court order to pull the plug on Boris Berezovsky's television station immediately.
The threat of a shutdown came hours after TV6 journalists backed out of a temporary broadcasting deal cut with the ministry last week.
Press Minister Mikhail Lesin said earlier that he would fulfill the court order, brought to the ministry by bailiffs Monday afternoon, within two to three days.
It was not clear what programming, if any, would be on TV6 on Tuesday.
Several television companies are considering ministry offers to "come on air on a temporary basis and ensure [continued] broadcasting on this frequency," Lesin said on ORT television.
He did not identify the companies.
TV6 general director Yevgeny Kiselyov said TV6 will contest the court order. "Lawyers are already working on it," he said Monday night on TV6.
The order called for the Press Ministry to suspend TV6's license immediately, as required under a court ruling Jan. 11 liquidating the station.
Bailiffs handed over the order while TV6 Executive Director Pavel Korchagin was meeting with Lesin to tell him that TV6 journalists had decided to withdraw from an agreement they had made with the ministry to surrender the station's license voluntarily in order to form a new company - apparently without the backing of TV6 owner Berezovsky. That new company, OOO TV6, would then bid for the license in a spring tender.
Korchagin delivered a letter signed by Kiselyov that stated he had not had the right to offer up the license.
Kiselyov said Monday that he had been forced to give up the license under duress.
"We were told: this your last chance. Take it or we in the Press Ministry will take you off the air," Kiselyov said. "We trembled and lost our composure."
Lesin said there was no connection between the TV6 team's decision to back out of the deal and the appearance of the bailiffs.
He accused the LUKoil-Garant pension fund, the subsidiary of state-connected LUKoil that owns a 15-percent stake in TV6 and initiated the liquidation lawsuit, of pushing the court to send the bailiffs.
"They were not happy with the peace process," Lesin said.
TV6's Korchagin said he had no doubt that there was a connection between Monday's developments.
According to the bailiffs' orders, posted on the Ekho Moskvy Web site, the Press Ministry must suspend TV6's license until its owner, Berezovsky-controlled MNVK, establishes a commission to liquidate the channel. The commission would have six months to do so.
A TV6 general shareholders meeting Jan. 14 was supposed to set up such a commission, but the meeting did not take place because of a boycott by Berezovsky.
The bailiffs' orders also obligate MNVK to start the liquidation process and forbid it from removing any assets, including the license.
TV6 presenter Andrei Norkin said Monday that the staff had only agreed to give up the license under pressure from Lesin and presidential chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin. He said the two men gave the ultimatum of either complying or being immediately banned from TV6's airwaves.
However, "we had no right to give up the license because that is the right of the shareholders," Norkin said at a news conference at Ekho Moskvy.
Berezovsky, who owns 75 percent of TV6, had protested the surrender of the license.
"It is not part of the management's competence," Berezovsky said by telephone from London last week.
Berezovsky said on CNN on Friday that Kiselyov had flown to London for a day of discussions that week.
On Monday, Kiselyov accused Lesin of trying to dictate the terms of who would own the journalists' new company, OOO TV6.
He said Lesin had asked probing questions about the individuals named as OOO TV6 founders in a bid to find out if they were connected to Berezovsky or former NTV owner Vladimir Gusinsky.
"Sometimes questions have been raised about whether the name 'Kiselyov' should appear on the list," Kiselyov said at the Ekho Moskvy news conference.
He added that Lesin had urged him to include a representative of the presidential administration on the list of company founders.
Kiselyov also said that even though President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Lesin have all declared their support for the TV6 staff, the Kremlin still is masterminding the team's demise.
"I don't doubt that the decision was made at the very top," he said.
Kiselyov and his colleagues said their decision to hand over the license had been a bad move.
"What we did was a mistake," Kiselyov said.
"We are not cunning like those in the Kremlin," satirist Viktor Shenderovich told reporters. "We have other skills."
Kiselyov said the staff had mixed feelings about what to do next but they were united in remaining independent of the government.
Andrei Richter, director of the Center for Law and News Media, said the license handover could have been easily contested in court.
According to the letter of the law, Richter said, TV6 has to first be liquidated and then stop broadcasting.
After that, the Press Ministry has to hold a tender for its frequency.
"There is no such thing as a temporary license anywhere in the law," Richter said. "Until the winning bidder begins broadcasting, the screen has to be black just as it was 10 years ago when no TV6 existed."
A black screen, however, would inevitably lead to a negative response from viewers, he said. "A black screen is like a blank spot in the newspaper. It has an important psychological meaning. The Press Ministry evidently wants less noise in society. They could have shown, say, a flower against the backdrop of an unfurling Russian tricolor, but that's not what the public wants to see."
Lesin, however, said that he still hopes to find a way to avoid a black screen.
"I don't know yet how, but I hope we will find a way to fulfill our promise to television viewers, and the picture won't go dark," he said on NTV.
He reiterated that a tender for the frequency will be held in late March and TV6 journalists can bid along with other applicants.
TITLE: Mariinsky Theater Slated for Major Facelift
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Russian government intends to spend nearly $130 million on the reconstruction and expansion of the Mariinsky Theater, officials announced Friday during a visit to the city by Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi.
An architectural commission, which includes Mariinsky Theater Artistic Director Valery Gergiev, is currently studying two different development projects for the theater.
One project was submitted by the Los Angeles-based deconstructivist architect Eric Owen Moss, while the second is being proposed by a group of Russian architects headed by St. Petersburg's Oleg Romanov.
The cabinet is expected to endorse the commission's recommendation of one of the projects in the immediate future, and Gergiev is going to meet with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov in Mos cow to discuss the project.
Whichever plan is selected, the reconstruction work is scheduled to begin next year and to be completed in 2008. The work envisions the creation of a gran diose theatrical complex that will completely encompass Teatralnaya Plo shchad, including the Mariinsky itself and No vaya Gollandia, or New Holland, an island in the Moika River that houses an ensemble of eighteenth-century buildings.
According to sources close to the architectural commission, Gergiev prefers the bold ideas of Moss' design and considers Romanov's project too restrained and conservative. He also believes that Moss' fame in the West will help attract foreign investment to the project.
Moss's projects include the Jeff/Jeff Towers in Los Angeles, the Ten Towers in Culver City, California, and the harbor complex in Dusseldorf, Germany.
However, other members of the commission were less enthusiastic about the American project, arguing that Moss' neo-modern glass creations are not in keeping with the historical architecture of downtown St. Petersburg.
Moss' project envisions connecting the current theater by a covered bridge across the Kryukov Canal with a new structure that will house a second stage.
Opponents argue that existing laws prohibit the construction of radically modern buildings on the site of existing architectural monuments.
The problem of reconstructing the theater has been a priority for Gergiev for several years now. Western opera directors that execute projects at the theater have often complained the Mariinsky stage severely restricts the realization of their ideas.
"The technical parameters of our stage cannot be compared with the possibilities allowed by modern European and American theaters," Gergiev said. He noted that it takes three full days to prepare a presentation of Andrei Konchalovsky's production of Sergei Pro ko fiev's "War and Peace."
It is also hoped that the project will improve the hall's acoustics. In the Soviet period, the Mariinsky's orchestra pit was raised and moved closer to the audience. This not only detracted from the sound of the orchestra but also created problems for the singers on stage.
"Performers who are standing far back on the stage, or even toward the middle, can't hear the orchestra and must take their cues solely from the conductor's movements," said soloist Olga Borodina.
The Mariinsky will continue a full performance schedule during the reconstruction project. The new building will be completed in 2006, while the work on the existing theater will be completed in 2008.
The Mariinsky Theater was originally built in 1860 according to a project by Albert Kavos.
TITLE: Zyuganov Re-Elected To Lead Communists
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: The Communist Party re-elected Gennady Zyuganov as its leader Saturday, but cracks appeared in the ranks with some members suggesting selective cooperation with the Kremlin.
Zyuganov was backed by all but a handful of the 300 delegates at a special Congress, said Gennady Seleznyov, a Communist and the speaker of the State Duma.
But Zyuganov, beaten in the last two presidential elections by Boris Yelt sin and Vla di mir Putin, came under attack after his 80-minute address from some delegates who wanted a new strategy to boost their electoral chances.
Mikhail Mashkovtsev, governor of the far eastern region of Kamchatka, said Communists should consider cooperating with Putin on "key issues" as he was sure to be re-elected in 2004. An attractive, dynamic Communist candidate was needed for 2008, he said.
"Large sections of the population denounce the ills of capitalism, but have no intention of going back to socialism for the moment," he said in televised remarks.
"Our task, a long and difficult one, is to work on society's views for a return to a socialist form of development. You cannot achieve that merely by criticizing everything."
The Communist Party gave up its constitutional monopoly on power in 1990, a year before the collapse of Soviet rule. It has won about a quarter of the vote in recent parliamentary elections.
After an initial period of tacit backing for Putin when he took office in 2000, it is now firmly in opposition. Zyuganov accuses the president of leading the economy to ruin and yielding too much to the United States in foreign policy.
"Putin in essence is surrendering the whole geopolitical space of a 1,000-year-old state. At the beginning of last year, nobody would have dreamed in a nightmare that the United States would have military bases in central Asia," Zyuganov said before the congress started.
Zyuganov also criticized the government for keeping the economy dependent on oil exports and for utility-tariff hikes, which he said had "essentially devaluated those slight increases gained for the workers."
After the congress, called to bring party rules into line with a new law on political parties, Zyuganov dismissed any talk of a major rift.
"You only get unanimous votes in a cemetery. We all want the same thing," he told reporters.
He told the party that the current situation in Russia was "extremely serious and getting worse" and said it was "the essence of nature to make calls in favor of socialism."
Delegates at the closed-door congress heard greetings from Pu tin wishing them a "constructive and creative meeting" and saying Russia's problems needed "the unity of efforts of all positive forces in the country."
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Bomb Scare
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A bomb scare at the building housing the local self-government of the Primorsky District on Monday proved to be a false alarm, Interfax reported.
According to police sources, an anonymous caller at about 11:15 a.m. told police that a series of explosions would take place at the building on Ulitsa Savushkina.
Authorities evacuated the building and a thorough search revealed no explosives. By 2 p.m. normal work at the building had resumed, Interfax reported.
Vice Governor Robbed
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The dacha of Vice Governor Vladimir Derbin, who oversees the City Hall Labor and Social Policy Committee, was robbed last Thursday night, Interfax reported Monday.
The dacha is located in the Leningrad Oblast town of Beloostrov. According to police sources, the thieves stole a television, a video player, a vacuum cleaner and some automobile tires, Interfax reported.
A criminal investigation has been launched.
Mirilashvili Support
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) -Deputies from the Israeli Knesset appealed to President Vladimir Putin on Friday with a request that he ensure the observation of the rule of law in the case of St. Petersburg businessperson Mikhail Mirilashvili, Interfax reported.
The deputies asked Putin to secure Mirilashvili's released from jail on bail pending his trial, Interfax reported the letter as saying.
Mirilashvili has both Russian and Israeli citizenship and is vice president of the Russian Jewish Congress.
Mirliashvili's case was also discussed in the Legislative Assembly on Friday. State Duma Deputy Yuli Rybakov and the local coordinator of the Democratic Russia faction, Ruslan Linkov, argued that the actions of local prosecutors had led to a lowering "of the level of protection of human rights," Interfax reported.
Mirilashvili was arrested on Jan. 23, 2001. He faces two counts of murder and his currently awaiting trial.
TITLE: New Addition to Putin Biography Library
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The latest biography of President Vladimir Putin has hit the shelves, complete with resounding praise for the president and a family tree dating back to the era of Peter the Great. But its author told reporters Monday that he had come under no pressure from the Kremlin - either to write the book or to show his manuscripts - and was driven by his own inquisitive nature.
Journalist Oleg Blotsky, whose book "Vladimir Putin: A Life Story" was released last week, said the impetus for his project came in July 2000 during a visit to Berlin, when German acquaintances spent an evening grilling him on "Who is Mr. Putin?" - and he had nothing to tell them.
"That was the decisive moment. I began trying to find out the answer for myself," said Blotsky, who first earned press attention in February 2000 after Russian television aired a controversial videotape of mass graves in Chechnya, which a German reporter had bought from Blotsky and claimed as his own.
Blotsky, who approached Putin through his aide and top spokesperson on Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said the president had been reluctant to talk about himself, saying that everything about him was already public knowledge.
But Blotsky managed to convince him otherwise, in part by unearthing biographical details the president himself did not know: During the course of his background research, Blotsky discovered that Putin's father had not only been a Stakhanovite lathe operator at the Leningrad factory where he worked, but a renegade journalist, critical of the plant's management.
"I think Putin regarded the work I had done with respect," he said, explaining why the president ultimately consented. Blotsky's publisher, Boris Lik hachyov, said the book - which begins with Putin's ancestors and childhood and ends with his service in the KGB - caught his eye thanks to its "new methodology" of research and its "conscientious, lively ... and literary" approach.
Likhachyov's publishing house, Mezhdunarodniye Otnoshenia, or International Relations, has already sold almost the entire 3,000-copy pilot print run, he said. The book's declared print run, to be completed in the near future, is 15,000 copies.
Blotsky said "A Life Story" is the first book of a planned trilogy based on 10 to 20 hours of interviews with the president, mostly at his home in Novoogaryovo, as well as with first lady Lyudmila Putina, other relatives and long-time friends. The author added that he is now working on the second book in the series, subtitled "The Road to Power."
Blotsky brushed away suggestions that he was trying to create a new cult of personality around Putin, who he said has read the book but not yet commented on it.
"When I started out, my knowledge of Putin was zero point zero ... but I came to respect him enormously because he is a self-made man," he said.
Blotsky added that the abundance of praise in the biography was not his intention, but merely reflected the common points of view of unrelated people - who speak of Putin's humility and candor, his assertiveness and diligence, his love for his family and friends.
But any biography is molded by its author. And "A Life Story," written in simple, often colloquial language, begins with a cryptic tear-jerker, which sets the tone for the rest of the book.
The scene is a rainy day at a cemetery outside St. Petersburg in May 2000, just two weeks after Putin's inauguration. A wind-tattered photograph of a woman, raindrops streaming down her cheeks "like endless tears," falls from the plain cement cross where it had been held by a black shoestring. A bereaved visitor, the woman's daughter-in-law, picks up the photo and weeps because she cannot afford a proper tombstone.
She decides her last resort is to appeal to Putin and, finally, the reader gets the connection: The deceased, Tamara Chizhova, was Putin's teacher from the first to fourth grade.
"Imagine what desperation Chi zho va's daughter-in-law had been driven to if she sent a letter to Moscow," the callous capital "blind to the tears of its citizens," writes Blotsky. "It is unclear whether Vladimir Putin read this letter, but ... right in time for Teacher's Day, a tombstone to the Leningrad teacher Tamara Pavlovna Chizhova, who spent her entire life teaching elementary school, had been erected."
In his introduction, Blotsky criticizes other Putin "experts" for being either superficial or one-sided, and says Western specialists on Russia try to use inapplicable criteria in their analyses, "constantly attempting to calculate the volume of water in meters."
His aim, he writes, is to recreate the historical and social context in which Putin was formed: a hard-working blue-collar family surviving in the postwar years when the cloak-and-dagger world of spying was glorified in prose and film.
This fascination is perhaps something Blotsky, 37, can relate to. As the son of a career officer, he spent his childhood living in a number of the Soviet Union's closed military settlements and was educated as a military interpreter, specializing in Dari, the Afghan dialect of the Farsi language.
During both wars in Chechnya, Blotsky worked in the republic as a reporter. At the beginning of 2000, he filmed Russian troops there dragging the bodies of Chechen rebels, some with tied hands and feet, to mass graves and sold the footage to Frank Hoefling, a correspondent with the Munich-based cable network N24. While military officials said the rebels had been killed in fighting, the German reporter - who claimed the tape as his own - said they were victims of torture. Hoefling was fired two days after the incident, and Blotsky said the German apologized to him.
Blotsky said Monday that he does not expect to profit from the Russian edition of the Putin biography, which was funded by the Baltic Construction Company, a large building firm controlled by a friend of Blotsky's. The proceeds, he said, would go to a special-care unit at Moscow's maternity hospital No. 15, which was chosen by his wife.
If the future does hold profits, Blotsky expects them to come from Western translations. His publisher, Lik ha chyov, announced that inquiries about translation rights had already been made by Bulgarian, Slovenian and Chinese colleagues.
TITLE: Soviet-Era Writer Set To Swap
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Moving Together, the pro-President Vladimir Pu tin youth organization, is kicking off a book-swap drive this week to encourage young readers to dump detective novels, romances and fantasy thrillers for heavier reading.
But instead of encouraging Russians to pick up the lengthy "War and Peace" or Pushkin's poetry, the group is plugging Boris Vasilyev, a Soviet-era writer and former Community Party member who wrote tomes about the Soviet victory in World War II.
Moving Together is inviting readers to exchange books by contemporary authors Viktor Pelevin and Vladimir Sorokin for a collection of Vasilyev's stories, which the movement paid 500,000 rubles ($16,666) to help publish.
"We will send the books collected in this way to their authors to make them think about what is going on with our literature and our culture," Moving Together head Vasily Yakemenko was quoted by Interfax as saying Friday.
Pelevin is a winner of the prestigious Russian Booker prize and has been hailed in the West as one of the most talented writers to emerge from post-Soviet Russia, while So rokin is well-known for his modernist works.
Moving Together, which has sponsored rallies in support of Putin, did not explain why they picked Vasilyev.
His book will also be distributed free to libraries, Yakemenko told Interfax.
The movement will accept returned books through Jan. 27 in 30 locations around Moscow, according to Interfax. Yakemenko said they also may consider expanding the number of authors whose books can be returned.
The group will also collect works by the father of socialism, Karl Marx, and turn them over to the German city once known as Karl-Marx-Stadt in former East Germany, now Chemnitz.
TITLE: President Meets Athletes for Pre-Olympic Pep Talk
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin met with members of Russia's Olympic team on Friday to wish them luck ahead of next month's Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Putin said that success at the Games was necessary to encourage an increasingly lethargic country to take up exercise again. Only 10 percent of Russians regularly participate in sports, according to government statistics.
"A further decline is not only impossible, it would also have a ruinous impact on the nation's health," Putin told about a dozen Olympians at the Planernaya sports complex.
The Russian athletes are expected to be strong medal contenders in Salt Lake City. At the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, Russia won nine golds, six silvers and three bronzes, putting it in third place in the overall medal standings behind Germany and Norway.
Russian Olympic officials are predicting similar success this time around. Leonid Tyagachev, president of the Russian Olympic Committee, said that seven to nine gold medals were the expectation for this year's games.
"You should strive only for victory, you should only win," Putin told the gathered members of the squad, which is expected to include approximately 170 athletes. "High achievements by athletes unite the country, fill the people with dignity and pride."
Putin said that winning an Olympic medal was an "outstanding achievement, signifying the peak of a person's life."
"It is a reason to feel proud for millions of people in our country," he said.
Putin, who has practiced judo since he was a boy, acknowledged that the country's sporting prowess has suffered since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
"The state should do a lot to create a base for the preparation of athletes, including those for its Olympic teams," said Putin, who was later presented with an Olympic team jersey from the Russian Ice Hockey Federation. The jersey bore Putin's name stitched across the shoulders and the No. 1 on the back.
"Nobody else will wear this number on our team. This is your personal number," commented Alexander Steblin, the chairperson of the Russian Ice Hockey Federation.
The games start on Feb. 8.
TITLE: Lubbers Presents His Plan on Chechnya
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The United Nations top official for refugees on Friday presented his blueprint for improving security inside Chechnya and making it possible for the tens of thousands of Chechens who have fled the republic to return home.
Ruud Lubbers, the UN high commissioner for refugees, also said that Aslan Maskhadov, the last elected president of Chechnya, should be involved in the search for peace.
Lubbers' recommendation met with sarcasm from Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin's chief spokesperson on Chechnya.
"First of all, I'd of course like to thank the UN high commissioner for his most particular opinion," Yastrzembsky said. "It is interesting for us to hear the view of those who visit Chechnya for a few hours and then form their opinions on what is happening there."
Lubbers visited Chechen refugee camps in Ingushetia last week, but did not go to Chechnya because federal authorities denied him permission, saying it was too dangerous. Even so, he said he was well aware of what was going on in the republic.
He said the best thing federal troops could do to improve security would be to stay in their barracks and stop sweeping villages for suspected rebels, which only creates resentment and provokes more violence. He also suggested reducing the number of roadblocks (Chechens complain of having to bribe troops manning the roadblocks and being harassed) and building up the Chechen police force.
Lubbers said allowing the UNHCR and other nongovernmental organizations to operate in Grozny also would enhance security. "It's important to assist Chechens in Chechnya, but it would also be important as a signal that it is secure enough to go there and a very important signal for Chechens in Ingushetia to go home," he said at a news conference.
In describing the situation of some of the 180,000 Chechen refugees in Ingushetia, he said it was "horrible" and "let's be frank, a bloody shame." Lubbers said many of them wanted to return to Chechnya, but were too frightened.
He urged the government to help Chechens get proper Russian identification papers so they can live and work legally. "If you don't give them sufficient papers, you risk that when the boys grow up they will go wrong," he said.
The most important thing, Lubbers said, was for the Chechens to unite around the desire to work to bring peace to their republic.
Maskhadov "is certainly not a terrorist" and should be involved in any resolution of the conflict, Lubbers said, though adding that "it must not be a one-person show."
Alexander Iskandryan, director of the independent Center for Caucasian Studies in Moscow, said Lubbers' suggestions were good, but too idealistic.
"Of course, the number of troops needs to be reduced," Iskandryan said in a telephone interview. "If it's not possible for them to get completely out of there, then it would be good if they could stay in their barracks.
"But this is hardly possible while fighting is still going on; they have to be about in order to counter the guerrillas."
He also questioned the ability of peaceful Chechens to play a role in the resolution of the conflict. "The struggle is between federal troops and armed Chechen fighters, but it is the peaceful citizens of Chechnya who suffer," Is kan d ryan said. " The peaceful citizens have no influence on the resolution of the conflict. They are objects of the conflict.
"To suggest that they could unite and somehow liquidate the fighters is nonsense; they are incapable of doing that. That's the job of the police, but they can't do it either."
Businessperson Shamil Beno, a former adviser to Kremlin-appointed Chechen administration head Akhmad Kadyrov and also a former foreign minister in the Chechen government under Dzho khar Dudayev's government, was more positive. The UN official was right to say that only Chechens are capable of solving the crisis, Beno said. "Chechens need to agree among themselves on elections and have their say at the polling booth who is right and who is wrong and who should lead the republic," he said. "And then the police will have some kind of authority that they can represent."
Beno was unsure whether the number of roadblocks should be reduced, but said each should have a local Chechen in attendance.
"The various arms of the Russian armed forces are undergoing reform and not one of them is capable of carrying out the tasks that the Chechen crisis demands they perform," he said. "Therefore, their tactic is to have masses of troops on the ground who act like a net that may catch some guerillas by chance."
TITLE: Chechen Friendly- Fire Trial Begins
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two of the three Interior Ministry officers accused of negligence in the friendly fire deaths of 22 OMON service personnel in Chechnya maintained their innocence at the opening of their closed-door trial Friday.
The third officer, Major Igor Tikhonov, did not appear at Moscow's Presnensky district court, sending notice that he was ill.
Tikhonov, Major General Boris Fadeyev and Colonel Mikhail Levchenko are accused of failing to follow procedures in arranging for the arrival of a group of OMON service personnel from Sergiyev Posad to Grozny on March 2, 2000.
The Sergiyev Posad soldiers came under fire from a fellow OMON unit from Podolsk that they had been sent to replace.
The Podolsk unit was informed only that a column of unidentified armed people in police uniforms was arriving in Grozny.
Twenty-two of the 98-strong Sergiyev Posad unit were killed and 31 injured in a bloody firefight that the military initially blamed on Chechen rebels. At least two members of the Podolsk unit were also killed.
The hearings are being conducted by Judge Bakar Magomadov and other officials from the Staropromyslovsky district court of Grozny.
Fadeyev and Levchenko, both former top officials in the Chechnya military command, insisted Friday that their actions had not been negligent.
"My client doesn't acknowledge any guilt," Fadeyev's lawyer Lilia Ababkova told reporters Friday, her client standing behind her silently.
Another of Fadeyev's lawyers, Nikolai Vedishchev, told Kommersant that on the day of the shootout in Grozny his client had been accompanying another police column to Gudermes, and he had not received notice from Moscow regional authorities about the unit from Sergiyev Posad.
Levchenko told the court that he had arrived in Chechnya just hours before the shootout and had not known the situation in the region at the time, according to one of the plaintiffs, Nikolai Grachyov.
Grachyov's son, Sergei, an officer of the Podolsk OMON, was killed in the shootout.
"What negligence are you talking about?" Levchenko told journalists during a break in the hearings. "I was doing my work then for 20 hours a day."
Tikhonov, who headed the Podolsk OMON unit, was charged with failure to provide the Sergiyev Posad OMON with air cover and armored vehicles to ensure their safe passage through Chechnya.
The court finished reading the indictments Friday and will start questioning the defendants Monday. If they are found guilty, the officers face up to five years in prison.
TITLE: 50 Detained in Dagestan Mine-Blast Case
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, Northern Caucasus - More than 50 people, including a former member of the Russian parliament, have been detained in connection with a mine blast that killed seven Russian service personnel near Chechnya.
A remote-controlled mine was set off Friday as a truck carrying Russian troops passed by in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, a Russian republic bordering Chechnya, police said. It was one of the worst episodes of spillover violence in the two-year Chechen war.
Four service personnel died on the scene and three died in the hospital. Another three remain hospitalized, Russian news reports said.
More than 50 people have been detained on suspicion of being involved, the Dagestani Interior Ministry told the Interfax news agency on Sunday. None have been officially charged.
Among those detained was Nadirshakh Khachilayev, a former member of the Russian parliament, Interfax said.
A pistol, two shotguns and a bulletproof vest were seized from Khachilayev's home during a search, the report said. Police also found extremist literature, two videotapes showing rebels torturing Russian servicemen and two devices believed to be remote-controlled detonators, the officials told Interfax.
In 1998, the State Duma, or parliament, lifted immunity for Khachilayev, who was accused of fomenting unrest in his home region of Dagestan.
Chechnya-based rebels raided villages in Dagestan in August 1999. Those attacks, along with apartment-house bombings in Russian cities that killed more than 300, prompted Moscow to send troops back to Chechnya
In Chechnya, five Russian soldiers were killed and nine were wounded over the weekend, the military commandant's office in the Chechen capital Grozny told Interfax on Sunday. The report said the soldiers were killed in four separate rebel attacks on Russian positions and three mine blasts.
TITLE: Sibur Execs Charged With Asset Stripping
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Prosecutor General's Office filed charges against two top Sibur executives Friday night, the first indictments in an investigation into the Gazprom subsidiary for the alleged theft of state assets.
Prosecutors charged Sibur President Yakov Goldovsky and Vice President Yevgeny Koshchits with abuse of authority. If found guilty, they face up to five years in prison.
Both men had already been in custody for 10 days, after a criminal case was opened Jan. 7. By law, they could only be held 10 days without charges being filed.
A prosecutor's office spokesperson said there was no word on whether Sibur chairperson Vyacheslav Sheremet, who is also Gazprom's first deputy CEO, would be charged. Sheremet was initially detained with Goldovsky and Koshchits but promptly released on condition he not leave Moscow for a week.
It was unclear whether Sheremet was still in Moscow.
Prosecutors said Goldovsky and Koshchits would remain in custody while their investigation continues.
The case against the Sibur managers was opened after federal prosecutors received documents from Gazprom, 38 percent of which is owned by the government, suggesting that asset-stripping had taken place. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, at President Vladimir Putin's urging, is on a drive to recover any assets that may have been funneled out of Gazprom during the 1990s.
While Goldovsky, Koshchits and Sheremet have long been suspected of illegally selling company assets, the three were hauled in only after the Surgut gas refinery plant was sold to oil major Surgutneftegaz for 2.6 billion rubles ($86 million).
While the actual sale was approved by Gazprom management, Gazprom had no claim to the money from the sale because Sibur has zero equity in Sibur-Tyumen, the official seller. On paper, Sibur-Tyumen is owned by vehicles controlled by Goldovsky and his adssociates.
Vedomosti reported that Gazprom officials turned to prosecutors after they learned that money from the sale went toward a share-emission purchase that may dilute Gazprom's controlling stake.
In parallel, Gazprom is intensifying its efforts to collect a debt of $827 million owed by Sibur. Last December, Gazprom announced that it would use this debt as an asset to participate in the share issue registered with the Federal Securities Commission on Aug. 31. If Gazprom decides not to participate, it will see its ownership in Sibur shrink from 51 percent to 4 percent.
Gazprom's board of directors threatened to bankrupt Sibur last year if it did not make good on its debt. At first Sibur officials were skeptical, but as soon as Gazprom and prosecutors turned up the heat, Sibur managers offered up stakes in Sibur-Tyumen, the Tomsk petrochemical factory, Stirol and other firms as collateral for the debt, Vedomosti reported. These assets are owned by firms controlled by Sibur management, not the petrochemical holding itself.
Despite its financial plight, Sibur is the glue holding Russia's petrochemical industry together, and with annual revenues of more than a billion dollars, its operations are of vital national interest, said Alexander Filipenko, governor of the Khanty-Mansiisk autonomous region.
"The criminal case against Sibur will most likely affect the activities of individual companies that make up the petrochemical production chain," Filipenko said at a news conference in St. Petersburg on Friday. "Of course, it's necessary to figure out what's right and wrong. Just don't break the production process."
The Sibur holding groups 17 plants producing propane, butane, polypropylene and other petrochemicals, as well as rubber tires.
Although Gazprom disenfranchised three Sibur executives and froze any transactions that involve Sibur subsidiaries, its fight for control of Sibur is far from over. Gazprom has until July 25 to buy up its proportion of additional shares. The gas giant's board of directors began the process last spring and, by law, is helpless to stop it. If Gazprom doesn't buy in by July 25, other Sibur shareholders - most of which are Sibur managers - will have the option of buying those shares.
TITLE: City Yard Lands $1.4 Bln Deal
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In a surprise decision, St. Petersburg-based Baltiisky Zavod on Saturday was named the winner of a $1.4-billion tender to deliver two Sovremenny-class destroyers to China.
The shipbuilder beat out two other bidders in the tender, Severnaya Verf, also in St. Petersburg, which had been tipped to win, and Kaliningrad's Yantar plant.
The tender was unexpectedly called by a government commission Jan. 4.
"The commission has decided," Baltiisky Zavod head Oleg Shulyakovsky said Sunday, confirming his company's win.
"We are ready to build warships of any class, including destroyers; therefore, I don't see any problems here," he said.
Baltiisky Zavod is currently completing a $1-billion contract to build three Talwar-class frigates for India. However, that contract will not interfere with the Chinese deal, which is to be completed in 2005, Shulyakovsky said.
Th state-owned Rosoboronexport arms-export agency announced the $1.4- billion deal with China on Jan. 3. At the time, it was widely thought that the contract would go straight to Severnaya Verf, which had built two Project 956 destroyers delivered to China in 2000.
But the next day the government invited the three shipbuilders to participate in a tender.
Russian media reports linked the decision to call the tender to a complaint by Vladimir Pekhtin, head of the Unity faction in the State Duma, that Severnaya Verf owed the government millions of dollars for the Project 956 destroyers for China. The state handed the $610 million contract to Severnaya Verf in 1997, and the Defense Ministry told the shipbuilder to complete two partially assembled ships for the Chinese.
Pekhtin said Severnaya Verf owed $300 million to the government, since the state had financed the ships' initial construction. The ships were 30-percent and 70-percent completed when Severnaya Verf took them.
Severnaya Verf's parent company, the New Programs and Concepts Holding, says it has worked out a state-approved reimbursement plan under which it owes 180 million rubles ($58 million).
On Sunday, New Programs and Concepts spokesperson Valery Pogrebenkov refused to comment about the tender ahead of an official government announcement, saying only that Severnaya Verf had been preparing for the $1.4 billion contract for a year and invested into it. He would not say by how much.
TITLE: FEC Officials Cry Foul As Unification On Hold
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government is making a big mistake by shackling what should be an independent regulator of natural monopolies, the deputy chairperson of the Federal Energy Commission warned Monday.
Vyacheslav Ovchenkov said the government, by pushing the State Duma to amend tariff-regulation law that would strip the FEC - Russia's supposedly independent regulator - of its authority, is making it just another government department, defeating a key purpose of its existence.
"The amendments, which effectively have been approved by the cabinet ... raze the FEC's independence to the level of a government department," Ovchenkov said at an Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development presentation on efficiency and competition in infrastructure sectors.
"This decision is a mistake," he said.
The amendments are part of a plan to transform the FEC, which regulates the country's railways, natural-gas and power tariffs, into a unified tariff organ.
"We interpret independence not as absolute independence from all government bodies, but when we come up against what is happening now, when tariffs are in fact set at the government level, this is another picture," Ovchenkov said.
Last week Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov repealed an FEC decision to raise railway tariffs by 14 percent as of Monday, and set a 35-percent cap on all natural-monopoly tariff hikes this year.
Although formally the cabinet can only recommend which tariffs to increase and by how much, in practice its word is the law, said Kakha Kiknavelidze, analyst at Troika Dialog.
"The FEC's power is widening in terms of industry coverage. However, the government's involvement in these decisions is also increasing," said Kiknavelidze. "The government appears to be quite concerned with its macroeconomic benchmarks."
The ideal role of an independent regulator is to make neutral, transparent decisions on issues such as tariffs, free from short-term political pressures and business interests. Russia lags significantly in shaking free from government intervention, said Nikolai Malyshev of the OECD's Center for Cooperation with Non-Members.
Independently set tariffs are also an important factor in increasing the investment attractiveness the sectors, according to the OECD report.
Russia is set to become the first OECD non-member country to undergo a two-year review relating to reforms in the country's railways, gas, power and telecommunications sectors, said Joe Phillips, head of the OECD's competition-law and policy division Monday.
"The decision has been made on a political level," and an agreement should be set by spring, said a presidential administration official.
TITLE: Sides Near Agreement in Nuclear-Fuel Spat
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A standoff between the Nuclear Power Ministry and a private U.S. company over Russian uranium supplies used to produce some 10 percent of America's electricity looks set to be resolved before deliveries are interrupted.
The deliveries, part of the so-called "Megatons to Megawatts" program created in 1993 to purchase 500 tons of highly enriched uranium stripped from dismantled Soviet warheads, was put in doubt after the U.S. firm USEC Inc. demanded a 15-percent reduction from 2001 prices after the previous contract expired Dec. 31, the Los Angeles Times reported last week.
Dmitry Kovchegin, an expert with the Center for Policy Studies in Russia, said the deal is "too important to fail for both sides, so an agreement should be reached."
Fuel created from Russian uranium is used to run up to 50 percent of U.S. nuclear-power stations, the equivalent of 10 percent of all electricity consumed in the United States, said Kovchegin.
Since 1995, the deal has been worth some $500 million yearly, a major source of cash for the Nuclear Power Ministry.
"The uranium deal is the only thing that stands between anarchy and stability in the Russian nuclear-weapons complex," the Los Angeles Times cited Thomas Neff, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist who first proposed the program in 1991, as saying. The Nuclear Power Ministry is responsible for safeguarding nuclear material at production and research facilities.
The Russian side said an agreement is likely to be reached before the next shipment - usually about 3 metric tons of blended-down, bomb-grade uranium - is due to set sail in March. "We are still negotiating, and I am sure that the deal will be signed," said Nikolai Shingaryov, the head of the Nuclear Power Ministry's department for information policy.
Shingaryov also said the ministry will be working only with USEC and will not divert sales to any other buyers as long as USEC remains the official U.S. government agent for Russian uranium.
Kovchegin said speculation that Russia might be willing to unilaterally bypass current agreements are unfounded.
"The nuclear-fuel market is not the oil or gas market. It is strictly regulated and all deals have to be guaranteed by the International Atomic Energy Agency," he said. "Any deals on the side would simply bring more harm to Russia then any possible benefits."
Behind the current stall could also be Russia's desire to achieve greater access to the North American market to sell low-enriched uranium, which is not a part of the Megatons for Megawatts program. Russia's access to the U.S. market was blocked following accusations of dumping after an earlier windfall from sales of natural mildly enriched uranium in the early 1990s. Russia could be trying to tie in the USEC deal to the trade limitations imposed by the U.S. government, a source close to Nuclear Power Ministry said. Ministry officials declined to comment.
USEC spokesperson Charles Yulish said that USEC is not related to the anti-dumping measures and thus is not a part of any possible negotiations on that matter. "[Both sides] have a mutual interest in continuing this important program, and after eight years of a successful business and working relationship, we are confident that the parties will reach agreement on new long-term financial terms for the Megatons to Megawatts contract," Yulish said by telephone. He also pointed out that the deal's importance is growing in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and the ensuing global terrorist threat.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: CPI Seen at 2.3%
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Consumer- price growth will quicken month on month to 2.3 percent in January from 1.6 percent in December, Interfax quoted First Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Ulyukayev as saying Monday.
"Like in 2001, there will be a burst in inflation in January, but it will be a smaller burst [than last year]," Ulyu ka yev told reporters
Inflation is one of Russia's most difficult economic problems. The country has to print rubles to cover an inflow of oil dollars and raise tariffs as it restructures industries.
The government had to revise its 2001 CPI forecast from 12 percent to 17 percent. But CPI came in at 18.6 percent, down from 20.3 percent in 2000.
This year's budget targets inflation of 12 percent.
Transneft Income Rises
MOSCOW (SPT) - State pipeline monopoly Transneft in 2001 posted net income of 22.48 billion rubles ($735 million), a year-on-year increase of 160 percent.
Revenues in 2001 increased 150 percent and totaled 69.44 billion rubles according to Russian accounting standards, Transneft said in a press release Monday. The company paid 21.18 billion rubles in regional and federal taxes.
Last year, Transneft pumped 341.6 million tons of crude, 172.2 million tons of which were exported.
Transneft is now preparing to construct the Baltic Pipeline System's second stage to begin in the middle of the year. The second stage will increase the pipeline's throughput from 12 million tons to 18 million tons a year.
New Gazprom Plant
MOSCOW (SPT) - Gas monopoly Gazprom this year will begin construction of a chemical plant in western Siberia where polyethylene output will be directed to China.
Gazprom has already acquired $1 billion worth of equipment, and another $350 million is required to complete the project. Production at the plant, located in Novy Urengoi, is expected to be launched within three years.
"Additional proceeds from petrochemical operations are expected to stabilize the company's cash flow, which is currently too dependent on volatile oil and product markets," the Troika Dialog brokerage said Monday in a research note.
Spain Invests in Factory
St. Petersburg (SPT) - Spain is ready to invest $110 million in the construction of a hydrogen peroxide plant in the Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported Monday.
Casado Martinez, the president of Spanish holding company Imasa, held talks with Leningrad Oblast Governor Valery Serdyukov on Thursday, the regional government said.
The plant will be located in the Vsevolozhsk district.
The two-year project may be implemented as part of a Russian- Spanish agreement on investment in the Russian economy.
$560M in Mobile Sales
MOSCOW (SPT) - Mobile-telephone sales in Russia were worth some $560 million in 2001, according to the International Data Corp.
The IDC said in a report Monday that nine out of 10 handsets sold in Russia operated on the GSM standard and sales of phones in this standard doubled in 2001.
Sales growth will slow in 2002, IDC said, but will grow rapidly until 2006 due to expansion of new regional GSM networks.
Germany's Siemens last year moved into the No. 1 spot in handset sales in Russia, pushing aside Finland's Nokia.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Utility To Appeal
BERLIN (AP) - Utility giant E.On AG will appeal to the German government to back its plan to acquire the country's dominant gas company and support its drive to become a force in the global power industry.
E.On, Europe's No. 2 electricity company, said Saturday that the German Cartel Office had blocked its takeover of a unit of Britain's BP PLC - a key move in a complex plan to buy a $5.3-billion majority stake in Ruhrgas AG.
Regulators are concerned about how the deal would strengthen the position of E.On in the German power market.
Board Backs Workers
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. presidential board said on Sunday mechanics at United Airlines deserved a pay raise, though the panel sympathized with the carrier's claim it could not afford wage hikes because its survival was at stake.
The Presidential Emergency Board recommendation to the White House extended executive intervention in the long-standing contract dispute for another 30 days, meaning the union cannot strike before then.
Five days of contract talks that ended on Saturday night in Washington produced little, if any, progress.
Safe-Sex Pamphlets
SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) - Workplace-safety authorities in an Australian state on Monday launched occupational health-and-safety guidelines for the sex industry.
No, the list was not topped by sexually transmitted diseases.
Rather, poorly lit stairways, rickety bed frames, dirty sex aids and repetitive movement injuries are among the chief dangers brothel workers face in New South Wales.
Pamphlets published by WorkCover New South Wales, the state work safety authority, focus on cleanliness and workplace equipment, as well as touching on special dangers, such as slipping on a wet bathroom floor, or wrist strains from massages.
Venezuela Tax Dodge
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - About 50 banks and 1,000 businesses evaded almost $800 million in taxes last year, the head of the Seniat tax authority said Sunday.
A government investigation revealed that 50 banks did not pay income taxes in 2001, Trino Alcides told state news agency Venpres. Some took advantage of loopholes in tax laws, but others, he said, simply didn't pay.
Shutting Down Shop
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (AP) - Wachovia Corp. plans to close 200 of its 2,700 branches as part of its merger with First Union, according to documents filed with federal regulators.
The Charlotte-based bank had said earlier that it expected to shut 325 bank locations as it consolidated First Union and Wachovia operations following their merger last year.
TITLE: Omsk Is Looking Past Sibneft To Bring Home Region's Bacon
TEXT: During the Soviet era, the lion's share of economic activity in the Omsk region was in defense production. Today oil major Sibneft dominates the economic landscape, but as staff writer Robin Munro reports in the second article of a four-part series on regional investment, the region is trying to diversify.
LUZINO, Omsk Region - Can a former giant Soviet enterprise in a remote corner of western Siberia make competitive products that meet international standards?
One might think this is as likely as pigs flying.
But top breeding pigs have been flown from Britain and Canada to Omsky Bacon, the agricultural holding based in the Luzino district on the outskirts of Omsk, the capital of the Omsk region. It tops the Agro-300 list of the country's largest and most efficient agricultural producers.
Unlike most agricultural enterprises across Russia, which are rundown and smelly, the air is clean around the enterprise's Luzino headquarters. Inside a processing factory, the staff wear clean white uniforms and visitors have to change clothes to enter. Its products meet International Standards Organization benchmarks.
But what makes the plant proud is its profitability.
"The most significant thing about this company is that it has shown that agriculture in Russia and working the land can be profitable," spokesperson Dmitry Tipikin said in an interview.
Omsky reported a profit of 257 million rubles (about $9 million) in 2000, a jump of 76 percent over 1999, with production growing by 28 percent to 41,500 tons of pork. Initial sales estimates were up 33 percent, to $120 million, in 2001.
Omsky Bacon credits its success to effective management, solid investment and the introduction of new ideas and technologies from abroad. British pig-industry specialists, Turkish builders, German and Austrian meat-processing and packing machines and U.S. equipment to optimize fodder mixes for rapid growth have all played a role in the booming enterprise.
However, Omsky Bacon is not a typical enterprise in the Omsk region, which occupies a 139,700-square-kilometer area - a little larger than Greece - about 2,500 kilometers east of Moscow.
Fifty-two percent of the large and medium-size enterprises in the region recorded losses in the first eight months of 2001, according to the State Statistics Committee. These enterprises are tangled in a web of debt amounting to 45 billion rubles ($1.5 billion). They are, in turn, owed 42 billion rubles by their own debtors.
Part of the reason may be that Omsk is struggling like many other regions to overcome a not-so-pristine track record with investors as it courts this same group.
Moscow-based financial ratings service EA-Ratings, an affiliate of Standard & Poor's, has for the past year-and-a-half rated the regional administration as S2, indicating it has defaulted on its bonds and is considered a risky borrower.
EA-Rating analyst Boris Kopeikin said the grading was based on public information and "reflected a default on bonds issued by the region and the existence of arbitration court decisions in favor of the bondholders."
Some foreign businesses, such as U.S. timber firm AMI Forest Industries, may have a bone to pick with Omsk after seeing investment plans go sour.
The Idaho-based company bought two containers of pine timber, valued at between $13,000 and $15,000 each, and exported them to the United States as it tested the region's waters in 1994. Fifty-two percent of Omsk is covered with forests.
However, the company's partnership with a regional sawmill went bad and was over in a matter of months, Mel Alvord, then an AMI manager, said in a telephone interview from Omaha, Nebraska.
"The people that were cutting the wood for us weren't able to produce at the level that we needed, nor were they able to produce the quality that we needed," Alvord said. "We were there very early and perhaps too early."
Governor Leonid Polezhayev, who has headed the region with an iron fist since 1991, has taken steps to make investors more satisfied with Omsk, notably by pushing more than 50 laws through the regional legislative assembly that, among other things, offer regional guarantees and legal certainty. And he wants to hold tenders among foreign companies for milling Omsk forests, Expert magazine reported in November.
Polezhayev's measures appear to be paying off. About 305 enterprises are currently registered as having some foreign investment, the region's Foreign Economic Relations Committee said.
The main foreign investors include Belgium's Sun-Interbrew, Slovakia's Matador, Germany's Friess and Luxembourg's Millicom, all of whom praise the regional administration for providing political stability to make doing business a little bit easier.
Brewer Sun-Interbrew, which has a controlling stake in the Rosar Brewery at Luzino, said it was attracted to Omsk by both its political stability and unified approach to investment. It also said the region offered a favorable location for supplying Siberia and the Far East, and that it had been able to negotiate discounts with oil major Sibneft.
Since buying a stake in the Rosar Brewery in 1998, Sun-Interbrew has invested about $75 million to bring it in line with European quality standards, the company said in written replies to questions.
Rosar's production and sales have experienced rapid growth, leading the company to look into further projects in the region, Sun-Interbrew said.
"The local administration is in the process of working on a joint project for the benefit of the citizens of Omsk City and the region - the growing of brewing barley in the Omsk region ... and assistance to the enterprise in the supply by rail of all necessary resources," the company said.
Gennady Fridman, general manager of Omsk-based Sibirskaya Sotovaya Svyaz, a cellular-phone operator, also cited the political stability of the region as attractive. Luxembourg-based investor Millicom has invested about $10 million in the operator since 1995. Millicom's 12 Russian operators were recently taken over by Sweden's Tele2 holding.
Fridman said in a telephone interview that Sibirskaya Sotovaya Svyaz, which was the first in Russia to launch a digital D-AMPS service, has 24,000 subscribers, about the same amount that aggressively expanding Mobile TeleSystems has in the region.
A GSM service should be launched this year, Fridman said.
Another foreign investor, Volvo, came knocking thanks to a warm personal relationship between the governor and the Swedish automaker's deputy head.
"The reason why Omsk was chosen goes back to personal reasons, as is often the case in Russia," said Karel Gei nart, chief representative of the Vol vo Bus Corp. in Russia.
"The very good relationship between Omsk Governor Polezhayev and the vice CEO of Volvo, Lennart Jeansson led, to strong political support for a local assembly project," Geinart said, declining to elaborate on the relationship.
The project has Russian workers assembling imported Volvo bus chassis. Volvo's Russian partner, Siberian Scandinavian Bus Co., or SSBC, footed all investment costs; found and refurbished a factory; invested in tools and equipment and recruited and trained its staff, Geinart said.
About 40 buses will be assembled this year and there are plans for 75 to 100 buses next year, he said.
"We want to make this a hub of production for the whole of Russia," he said. "The Omsk venture has capacity for 200 to 250 buses a year. If we get to that level and orders really start to pour in, then we might look at another site."
The city of Omsk is the fourth-most industrially developed city in Russia after Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, according to the region's Committee on Foreign Economic Relations. Nevertheless, the State Statistics Committee reckons that the region ranks a mere 38th in terms of industrial production.
The reason is partly a legacy of World War II, when dozens of enterprises were evacuated beyond the Ural Mountains and the range of Hitler's war machine. The defense industry continued to develop in the city after the war, but has gone through a painful transition after the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an end to lucrative state orders.
More than 70 percent of the region's industrial machinery is still concentrated in the defense sector, according to the American Chamber of Commerce, and the city of Omsk has a major defense trade fair each year.
The Transmash Production Association, which makes the T-80 battle tank, has kept afloat only on export orders and has dabbled in tractor production and combine assembly in order to make ends meet, the American Chamber of Commerce said.
In aerospace, Omsk's leaders are the Baranov Engine Building Production Association, which makes engines for Sukhoi aircraft and transmissions for Moskvich cars, and Polyot, which makes rockets and aircraft.
Omsk's largest trading partner is Kazakhstan, which borders the region to the south and provides coal to run the region's heating and power stations. Other leading trading partners are Finland, Belarus and the Netherlands.
The region's exports have shot up since 1991, when just 4 percent of its production went overseas. In 2000, goods valued at $881.9 million, accounting for 23 percent of the region's production, went abroad, the Foreign Economic Relations Committee said.
Many exports are shipped by the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which runs through the capital. Air transport may become a bigger player after the city completes a renovation that is currently under way at its international airport.
Power, however, is a problem. Regional power utility Omskenergo's stations produce little power in summer when heat is not needed and it has to buy about 30 percent of its electricity from other regions, according to Interfax.
It is partly to address such problems that the Geneva-based European Foundation for the Sustainable Development of Regions, or Fedre, organized a forum on energy that took place in Omsk on June 17 and 18.
Expert magazine rates the region's investment potential as below average and the region itself as a moderate risk. In November, the magazine put Omsk in 53rd place in terms of investment risk, higher than last year's 64th place. Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow are in first and second place, respectively, on the 89-region list.
Such reports do not rattle German investor Peter Friess, who started a joint venture with region company Polyot in 1997 to build plastic window frames, insulated windows, aluminum facades and steel doors.
His initial investment of 600,000 Deutsche marks, today worth about $275,000, led to a thriving company called Polyot-Friess that rang up sales of 3 million marks last year, Friess said in a speech to businesspeople in Frankfurt in November. Last year's sales were 40 percent higher than in 1999.
Friess quoted German Ambassador to Russia Ernst-Joerg von Studnitz as describing Polyot-Friess as an example of "pioneering spirit, flexibility and organizational competence" in a region whose leadership took a professional approach to economic questions.
The 70 Russian staff at Polyot-Friess are highly motivated and reliable, Friess said. They work on two 12-hour shifts around the clock to keep up with demand, he said, adding that he was looking into expansion plans.
Despite the merits some investors have found in Omsk, the strong role the regional administration plays in the local economy and its close ties to No. 6 oil firm Sibneft, which dominates regional investment, have not impressed everyone.
The average resident earns just a fraction of his Muscovite counterpart. In August, average personal income was 1,837 rubles, compared to 11,370 rubles in Moscow, according to the State Statistics Committee.
Political dissatisfaction was reflected in the strong support Communist candidates got in the 1999 State Duma elections, according to Dmitry Gu te nyov, journalist for the Omskaya Prav da newspaper. The city of Omsk had one of highest red votes in the country, he said.
Other journalists told of a power struggle between Po le zha yev and his former deputy, Valery Ros chup kin, in mayoral elections held in 1998. The result was machinations by Po le zhayev's administration that muzzled broadcaster STV-3 and silenced all dissenting voices in the city, the journalists said.
"There are no local radio or television programs where people offer their opinions on different matters, and local channels concentrate on what the governor is doing," said Ma rat Isangazin, editor of the Vash Oreol newspaper.
Many residents feel that true power in the region belongs to Sibneft, with its coffers packed with petrodollars, rather than the regional administration.
The Omsk region is nominally a leading recipient of foreign investment - in 2000 it received $792 million, or about 8.6 percent of all foreign investment in Russia. But much of that investment was related the activities of Sibneft, which is registered in the region and whose shareholders own, among other companies, Omsky Bacon.
About $700 million of the $792 million went for long-term loans taken by Sibneft and its shareholders and, as such, the money was not necessarily spent in the region, said Alexander Andreyev, deputy chairperson of the Foreign Economic Relations Committee.
Sibneft spokesperson Nick Halliwell said regional dominance was a common feature of the Russian oil industry.
"In each region, it is typical for one oil company to be the dominant player," he said. "This is a legacy of the Soviet economic system and the privatization process that privatized the regional distribution companies as single units without breaking them up except in Mos cow and St. Petersburg, where there is substantially greater competition."
Sibneft owns the Omsk refinery, the nation's largest and most-modern oil refinery, and invested $50 million in it last year alone. It plans to introduce a $67-million catalytic-reforming unit at the refinery by 2004.
Sibneft retail arm Omsknefteprodukt has 109 wholly-owned gas stations in the region and sells its products through another 69 stations, Halliwell said, adding that Sibneft has 80 percent of the region's retail market. It employs 7,500 people at the refinery, 2,000 work for Omsknefteprodukt and another 260 Sibneft staff are employed in the region.
The oil firm pays about 40 percent of the region's taxes, Halliwell said. He did not name the sum, but Interfax reported that the 2001 budget revenues were 5.191 billion rubles ($180 million).
Sibneft is drawing up expansion plans in the region as well that include further development of the Krapivinskoye oil field to the north. "That should result in a significant increase in the tax-take at the regional level," Halliwell said.
Production began at the oil field last year.
Sibneft plans to invest $250 million in the next three years and $1 billion in the next seven years exploiting the region's oil reserves.
TITLE: 2001 Events Show Year Was Far From Lost
AUTHOR: By Peter Westin
TEXT: IN a comment by Mikhail Delyagin published a week ago in The St. Petersburg Times, the past year was described as another "lost year for reforms," in which the economic boom ran out of steam due to "the unwillingness of the authorities to tackle key structural problems."
This could not be farther from the truth. The nature of structural and institutional reforms - which involve a high degree of learning - is that they cannot be achieved overnight, and proof of implementation is not necessarily visible in the short run.
Nevertheless, last year's record speaks for itself. The government took initial steps to reform the natural monopolies and made major improvements to political and economic institutions. Russia now has one of the most favorable tax regimes in the world, with income tax at a flat 13 percent and profit tax at 24 percent. The recently adopted Land Code demonstrates the authorities' commitment to strengthening and securing private-property rights, and should also go some way in assisting development of credit markets, as land can now be used as collateral.
Furthermore, efforts were made to stimulate entrepreneurship by reducing the number of licenses required and introducing a "one-stop shop" for the creation of new businesses.
In short, in the past two years the current administration has probably implemented more reforms than Boris Yeltsin managed in his nine years in power.
Last year, GDP grew by roughly 5.2 percent after staggering growth of 8.3 percent in 2000, and 5.4 percent in 1999. The economy also showed itself to be highly resilient to external shocks. Most macroeconomic forecasts made for Russia at the beginning of 2001 had to be revised upward as the economy outperformed expectations.
Delyagin's piece also makes reference to the fact that in 2000 Russia received an additional $25 billion and in 2001 an additional $32 billion purely as a result of favorable conditions on world markets, and concludes that if the policies initiated by the government of Yevgeny Primakov had been continued, GDP would have grown by 15 percent in 2000 and 2001. It is true that the Primakov government behaved commendably in tightening fiscal policy and continuing fiscal reform. However, little was done to improve institutions and implement structural reforms, and to achieve 15 percent GDP growth a shock-therapy approach would have been needed that would have been politically impossible. During Primakov's term, the economy was benefiting mainly from the positive effects of the 1998 ruble devaluation.
Favorable external economic conditions did boost capital inflow in 2000 and 2001. But should Russia apologize for this? If you find $100 lying on the street, should you just leave it there? In the past two years, the country has used the available resources more efficiently than in previous years. Companies in the natural- resource sectors, as well as the machinery and equipment sector, made significant investments. And estimates suggest that capital flight in dollar terms has stabilized. So what can we expect for 2002? This year GDP is likely to grow by 3.5 percent. Although this is lower than last year's 5.2 percent, this should not be considered a failure.
Continued work on reforming natural monopolies and institutional improvements, as well as implementation of legislation passed last year, will decide the country's fate. Russia will definitely face a lower world oil price this year and thus will be a hostage, so to speak, of the economic policy it pursues.
The so-called oligarchs and their influence will also be a decisive factor this year. These powerful individuals' influence has diminished in comparison with the Yeltsin era. However, advancing structural reforms will involve treading on the toes of some of these business moguls. Furthermore, as the oil price falls the politically powerful oil companies are likely to seek favors from the authorities.
The macroeconomic fundamentals should remain strong in 2002, and there are signs that the economy is gradually becoming more diversified
As the Russian stock market is still considered by most investors to be dominated by oil and the oil sector, positive reform dynamics will be a key factor. The current momentum in economic reform seems to be driven by a genuine understanding in government of what needs to be done.
How long will it last? That is up to the country's policy and decision makers. The window of opportunity is wide open.
Peter Westin is senior economist at Aton Capital and author of "The Wild East: Negotiating the Russian Financial Frontier." He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Gazprom Followed Goldovsky's Example
TEXT: IN Russia, we plant potatoes in May, and in winter we plant our oligarchs - behind bars, that is.
The new year has seen a number of arrests. Perhaps the one most symptomatic of underlying trends is that of Sibur President Yakov Goldovsky.
Goldovsky got his entree to Gazprom through his work with Roskontrakt - an organization that took over many of the functions of the Soviet supply agency Gossnab. By swapping CIS countries' debts for gas Roskontrakt had inherited from Gossnab, Goldovsky not only made himself trusted in Gazprom, where outsiders are pathologically feared, but also managed to use Gazprom to create his own petrochemicals empire, Sibur. The lynchpin in this empire is the Surgut gas refinery, which sits on the main pipelines for gas condensate, so the person who controls the Surgut plant is in a very strong bargaining position.
However, the director of the plant, Alexander Ryazanov, wouldn't give it up. Ryazanov was arrested, and one night Goldovsky paid a visit to his cell and gently chided him for his intractability.
Ryazanov was one of the uncrowned kings of Surgut. The ease with which he was put behind bars made such an impression on him that he not only handed the plant over to Goldovsky, but for about 1 1/2 years barely showed his face in public. Until last year, that is, when Alexei Miller appointed him as his deputy at Gazprom.
Sibur is the first harlot that Miller has tried to return to the fold. But then, all of a sudden, it transpired that there was no Sibur. Poor Gazprom found itself unexpectedly in the role of a wealthy sugardaddy who has bought diamonds for his lover, only to see her run off with another man. Miller evidently was unable to return the diamonds by legal means, so he decided to cut this particular Gordian knot using familiar methods - with the assistance of the prosecutor general.
The police decided to ask Goldovsky in person how he would go about returning the assets. Any major fortune in Russia is acquired by no-less dubious methods than those employed by Goldovsky. And every major oligarch has enemies whom he has ruthlessly crushed: Oleg Deripaska has Mikhail Zhivilo, Lev Chernoi and Anatoly Bykov; Yukos has Yevgeny Rybin, etc.
The issue, however, is somewhat different. Sibur is not simply a bunch of stolen enterprises as the chekists view it. It is a vast corporation that was built exclusively on the back of Goldovsky's business acumen. Had there been no Goldovsky, there would be no Sibur, nor would half the enterprises that comprise Sibur exist either.
By employing the same methods as Goldovsky, Gazprom's management has shown itself to be his equal in unscrupulousness and brutality. But Goldovsky, apart from lacking scruples, is a talented strategist and manager. Whether Miller is his equal in this respect is doubtful.
Yulia Latynina is a journalist with ORT.
TITLE: With the New Land Code, the Time To Buy Land Is Now
AUTHOR: By Maxim Popov
TEXT: CONTRARY to what many people think, the new Land Code adopted in October has not brought about private ownership of land in Russia. The concept of private title to land has already existed for a number of years. A large number of companies and individuals had owned land long before the adoption of the new Land Code, and many of them had acquired the land on the secondary market.
What new, then, has the Land Code brought?
The Land Code has unequivocally provided for the ability to purchase land under newly constructed (as opposed to privatized) buildings. Previously, only a few regions (St. Petersburg included) had read into the old privatization legislation of 1992 to 1994 the right of owners of the newly constructed buildings to buy the land under them. In most of Russia's regions (Leningrad Oblast, for example), the authorities had been selling land only to the owners of privatized enterprises, while denying such a right to new investors.
The provisions of the law "On the Introduction of the Land Code" elaborate the price of land beneath buildings. The price is determined based on the land-tax rate and the population of the municipality in which the land is located.
The law sets upper and lower prices depending on the population, within which the regional authorities may establish their price. The upper price limit for high-population municipalities is 30 annual land-tax rates, while the minimum limit for the less-populated regions is three annual land-tax rates.
Where regional authorities do not establish a price, the respective lower limit applies.
The Russian government is authorized to establish coefficients ranging from 0.7 to 1.3 applicable to the price of the land. Until the respective government regulation is adopted, no coefficient applies.
The procedures for actually buying land are not determined yet in most regions. In practice, the former procedures for sale to privatized enterprises apply.
The procedure of privatization of land under the Land Code involves establishing a cadastre (or land-registry) lay-out of the plot. Obtaining a cadastre lay-out can take a significant amount of time - as much as six months at the state cadastre organizations. However, specialized private companies can significantly expedite the cadastre procedure so that it can take as little as one week.
Many companies should now consider whether to purchase the land under their enterprises, which they have been leasing from the state up to this point.
The pros of land purchase are as follows:
. Purchasing is a one-time expense. You are not subject to fluctuations in rents, which are determined exclusively by the state and can be changed at any time. While the rent amount in many cases is nominal at present, this will not necessarily be the case in the future.
. Land ownership allows additional leverage through the freedom to mortgage the land and the buildings constructed thereon without the consent of the landlord, which would otherwise be required in most cases.
. On disposal of the enterprise, a company owning its land obtains a return of its investment by selling the land, as opposed to rent, which is a cost that can't be recovered.
. With Russia's economic development looking positive for the future, land is liable to appreciate over time, so the company may obtain not only the return of, but also a premium onn its land investment.
. A final factor is the fact that the land prices set by the law "On Introduction of the Land Code" are very modest as compared to those of other developed countries.
Other business considerations aside, now is a good time to buy land in Russia: Land taxes are low, the lower prices set out in the code apply since most regional authorities have yet to set their own prices, and the government has not yet adopted the adjustment coefficients, which will likely be raised when they do get around to doing this.
Now is a good time to consider this opportunity.
Maxim Popov is a senior lawyer with Andersen Legal specializing in real estate transactions. He contributed this piece to the St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Little Cheburashka Teaches Some Big Lessons
TEXT: In response to "Who Owns Little Che bu rashka?" on Jan. 15.
Editor,
Let us call a spade a spade. (1) Eduard Uspensky, the great Russian patriot who has managed to get himself a U.S. green card, was allowed by Rospatent to patent as his own an image created by the artist Leonid Shvartsman. This "patent" will not hold up in countries governed by rule of law any more than the patent Rospatent once gave to Russians for inventing glass.
(2) In 1992, our company entered into a long-term agreement with the Rent Enterprise Soyuzmultfilm Studio. At that time, three-quarters of the films made during the USSR were in the public domain. They were in deplorable physical condition. The separate dialogue tracks had mysteriously disappeared. Piracy was rampant.
(3) We demonstrated, in partnership with Mikhail Baryshnikov and others in Hollywood, that using Western marketing methods, there was a niche market for the old Soviet animation. This involved an enormous investment, not only in rights but also in restoration and adding the celebrity voices of Kathleen Tur ner, Jessica Lange, Catherine De ne uve, Bill Murray and two dozen others.
(4) Our reward for successfully introducing Russian culture to millions of children and adults all over the world was a decision by certain forces in Goskino and the Ministry of Culture to try to retroactively cancel our contract in order to benefit from our investment and hard work.
(5) There is no difference between what they are trying to do to us and what they tried to do to the investors in Lo monosov, Sidanko, Aerostar an many others.
(6) Fortunately - in full accordance with the 1990 USSR-U.S. bilateral, which was then and is still the only trade agreement in force between our countries, our contract with Soyuzmultfilm is governed by California law.
(7) In August 2001, after a one-year intensive study of applicable Soviet/ Russian copyright and financial laws, the Eastern District U.S. Federal Court issued a 108-page summary-judgment decision in favor of Films by Jove and against the Unitary Soyuzmultfilm and its partner Joseph Berov. Berov is a notorious Brighton Beach video pirate and convicted felon (he pleaded guilty to importing Soviet women into the U.S. for the purpose of slavery), who was arrested in December 2000 during a massive FBI raid for pirating American studios and the U.S. recording industry. He is now out on $1-million bail and awaiting trial.
(8) According to the federal-court decision, the Unitary is a new company created in 1999 and not a successor to the copyrights of the old state enterprise Soyuzmultfilm, which ceased to exist in 1989, when transformed into a rent enterprise in accordance with the same procedures followed by tens of thousands of other state enterprises.
(9) In accordance with the 1964 Civil Code, copyrights to the films created by the studio during the Soviet period passed by operation of law to its successor the Rent Enterprise Soyuzmultfilm, with whom Films by Jove signed in 1992.
(10) I guess no one told the Culture Ministry that when President Putin recently visited the United States, he met with President George W. Bush, members of the U.S. cabinet and key congressional leaders, and promised - in order to get skeptical American investors to take a new look at Russia - the rule of law, an independent judiciary and no government interference with third-party contracts.
(11) Although the studio is contractually responsible for paying any third-party participations and although it is not at all clear, according to Soviet law, that the studio would have to pay anything to the creators, in homage to the creators of Che bu rashka, we offered to pay them something from our own part of the profit. Instead of being thanked, we are raked over the coals by Uspensky, who wants it all for himself.
Joan Borsten
President
Films by Jove, Los Angeles, California
It's Not Easy
In response to "Consulates Move To Rein In Police," Dec. 28.
Editor,
I am a police officer in Kansas City, Missouri. I have been involved in law enforcement for about 11 years. In 1995 I attended a law enforcement class at the state academy in Hutchenson, Kansas. Prior to my class, a group of officers from Russia attended law enforcement training in Kansas, one of whom was Major Vladimir Zharinov.
Zharinov was well received in our academy and noted for his good sense of humor. I have since heard that he was killed in the line of duty in St. Petersburg on Dec. 18, 1994. His name appears on a memorial for fallen officers at the Kansas State Academy.
He, along with the other Russian officers who attended the Kansas State Aca demy, were given the basic tools of the trade. Each were trained in "reasonable suspicion," "probable cause," reasons for a "patdown" and "search and seizure." The basic rules of civil rights and how not to violate them were explained.
In the United States, a civil-rights violation would strip an officer of his/her certification and most likely mean prison time. I understand that Russia is somewhat new to the concept of freedom and civil rights. In time, the problems will be worked out.
The work of a police officer in any part of the world in not easy. To say the least, it's demanding and mentally taxing. I wish the best for your city and its officers, and I hope that your city doesn't lose another officer to violent crime.
Officer K.J. Russell
Kansas City, Kansas
Wake up Russia!
Editor,
Do not allow my government to lead you (and the rest of the world) down a disastrous and bloody road. It is clear that our so-called war on terrorism is futile, expensive and punitive. Instead of trying to kill or punish terrorists, we could and should do what is necessary to prevent terrorism. And I believe that we all know what will stop terrorism: removing the impetus for those acts.
My government has long assumed an imperial role in the world. This must stop. Because my country has power, we do not have to use it for our own ends and to the detriment of others. We must all recognize that the so-called terrorists have a grievance. No group of people will risk or sacrifice their lives for very long without a reason. And we have not been listening.
In a nutshell: Our so-called war on terrorism is an exercise in futility, for there is no practical way to stamp out terrorism. People who live where red ants are a problem have learned that you cannot eradicate them. Kill the queen in one mound and another mound will spring up. So it is and will be with terrorists.
The only way we can prevent terrorist attacks like the most recent ones is to take away the reasons for these attacks, i.e. remove U.S. military forces from Saudi Arabia and do our utmost to bring peace to the Middle East.
Wake up Russia! Wake up America!
Michael Klim Culjak.
Okeechobee, Florida
Oh, Really?
In response to "The Failure of Brute Force," a comment by Robert Bruce Ware, Jan. 15.
Editor,
The author smugly asserts that "in a little more than two years, Russia has sunk steadily deeper into a Chechen quagmire. In a little more than two months, the United States has achieved most of its goals in Afghanistan."
Oh, really? Let's try to consider both of these conflicts in light of two objectives: military campaigns to defeat terrorist networks, and long-term goals of peace and reconstruction of these societies.
Judged purely by the goal of counter-terrorism, the Russian campaign in Chechnya is successful. It put a firm stop to incursions of militant and terrorist bands into Dagestan and Stav ro pol, as well as to apartment bombings throughout Russia. Large-scale fighting largely ended in the spring of 2000 with the capture of Komsomolskoye. After that, Chechen rebels were able to stage only small-scale raids and car bombings. Among the handful of the most notorious and violent warlords, Ra du yev is in jail, Barayev is dead and Ge la yev gave up in Chechnya and moved to stir mischief in Georgia and Abkhazia instead. In 1999, Basayev and Khattab were giving Osama-like interviews and speeches almost weekly in which they bragged of "liberating the whole Caucasus and bringing the war to Russia," and of soon "victoriously marching straight to Moscow." These days hardly anybody has heard from them in many months.
As for the long-term goals of bringing stability and economic and social reconstruction to Chechnya - yes, it remains far off and, even in the best circumstances, will take many years.
Now let's apply the same criteria to the current American campaign. The quick folding of the Taliban indeed exceeded even optimistic expectations and can rightfully be judged very successful. One can name at least three crucial factors in this success: 1) accurate and effective American bombing; 2) a massive shipment of Russian arms to the Northern Alliance after the beginning of the war, which facilitated the alliance's surprising initial assault in early November that left the Taliban in disarray; and 3) cutting off Pakistani military support to the Taliban, that country being the main force propping up the regime from 1994 to 2001. It is not clear yet which of these factors was the most important.
The perspective for the long-term stability and reconstruction of Afghanistan, however, is not encouraging, and most likely much further away than in Chechnya. Today Afghanistan is largely back to the warlord rule of the early 1990s. It is no surprise that almost all reporters who stayed in the last weeks of the Taliban's rule have been withdrawn from Afgha ni stan today (some were killed) because of growing lawlessness and banditry. So far, there has been no large-scale fighting between factions, but the possibility of it greatly increases with the post-Taliban division of power and spoils. For an absolute majority of Afghans, even those welcoming the end of Taliban oppression, the war only added to hardship and misery, with no end in sight.
Ware writes that U.S. bombing was "targeted to avoid civilian casualties and was accompanied by food drops." Civilian casualties are, fortunately, not as numerous as they could have been in a bombing campaign but still ran in thousands. Although the bombs were much more accurate than those in the Russian arsenal, in many cases the United States used force even more indiscriminately than the Russians have in Chechnya. Indeed, U.S. and anti-Taliban forces didn't hesitate for a second to demolish a historical medieval fort in Mazar-i-Sharif and kill several hundred mostly unarmed prisoners of war, even though, at most, only a few dozen of them actively participated in the uprising.
When a credible story broke out a week ago that U.S. bombs obliterated a village and killed more than a hundred civilians, American media lost interest the next day after half-hearted Penta gon denials.
Food drops? Everybody familiar with the situation there says they had near-zero effectiveness. Moreover, after Rum s feld admitted to deliberately bombing food-storage sites in Kabul to prevent their "ransacking by the Taliban," the whole subject of "drops" and food aid in general looks silly and hypocritical.
Contrary to the author's claims, I don't recall a single statement by President Vladimir Putin or other Russian officials that have "vilified Chechens as a people." Putin was always careful to distinguish between "bandits and terrorists" and ordinary Chechens or other peoples from the Caucasus. In fact, Ware would have difficulty finding in the mainstream Russian media a statement similar to a call by a prominent U.S. columnist to "... invade, kill their leaders, convert them to Christianity," speaking of all Islamic countries.
There are, no doubt, lessons to be drawn from the campaign in Afg ha ni stan. However, the confluence of various factors is different there from those in other places. Just because today's bombs are more accurate, it would be wrong to assume that tactics used in Afg hanistan are directly applicable to Chech nya or potentially could have made all the difference in some recent conflicts, from Somalia in 1993 to Israel's unsuccessful campaign in south Lebanon.
Kirill Pankratov
Boston, Massachusetts
Do the Math
In response to "Looking Back on Yet Another Wasted Year," a comment by Mikhail Delyagin on Jan. 15.
Editor,
Reading this article I found myself wondering what planet Delyagin lives on. His misrepresentation of the economic situation in Russia is simply bizarre.
Take his claim that there has been no growth in Russia's economy since September. Delyagin seems to have some telepathic ability that tells him this. Other economic analysts, not blessed with this ability, tell a completely different story.
For example, according to the December issue of Russian Economic Trends: "The news is still good. The Russian economy continues to show steady growth."
The real story in 2001 is that Russia's three-year boom continued, flatly contradicting the forecasts of doomsayers like Delyagin. With economic growth above 5 percent, Russia now has one of the most dynamic economies in Europe. If Delyagin knew what was happening in individual sectors and companies, he would see just how deep the recovery is. Foreign companies in Russia, for instance, are typically reporting sales growth of 30 percent in 2001 and a return on their investments of 20 percent. These are better results than anywhere else in the world, and way above anybody's forecasts.
Particularly strange is his lambasting of "the liberal economic course" for failing to rein in bureaucracy and protect property rights - as if liberals haven't been banging on about these very issues for years. Most bizarre of all, though, is the central claim of the article, which is that 2001 was a wasted year for reform. He somehow overlooks the new Land Code, the new Tax Code, the new Labor Code, the new pensions system, the new corporate governance code, the new laws on auditing, bankruptcy, customs, the judiciary, etc.
All this is in stark contrast to the do-nothing Primakov government, when Delyagin was economic adviser to the prime minister. Curiously, Delyagin refers to the "policies" of the Primakov government. I wonder what he meant.
Jason Bush
Moscow
TITLE: All Talk of an Alliance Is Definitely Premature
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Frolov
TEXT: IT cannot be seriously disputed that, since the tragic events of Sept. 11 and President Vla di mir Putin's statement two weeks later, the tone of the U.S.-Russia relationship has considerably improved. Both countries seem to have finally found at least one common objective: fighting international terrorism. Moscow has all but renounced a zero-sum approach vis-a-vis the states of the former Soviet Union. Washington has decided to "feel Russia's pain" regarding Chechnya. And pundits in both capitals have been bubbling with excitement over the pending U.S.-Russian strategic alliance.
Such talk is at best premature. A U.S.-Russian alliance, although conceivable and even desirable, is not in the cards, at least for now. The giddy feeling among pundits is reminiscent of what Federal Reserve Chairperson Alan Greenspan once aptly described as "irrational exuberance" (he was referring to the U.S. equity markets, of course). It turned out to be bad for investors and it could be equally damaging for the long-term prospects of a stable and cooperative U.S.-Russian relationship.
This irrational exuberance is dangerous for two reasons.
It creates unrealistic expectations both on the part of policy-makers and of the public as to the closeness and depth of the relationship that can possibly be attained, as well as with regard to the specific political and economic benefits to be gained. When those heightened expectations do not materialize, the relationship will come crashing down in an orgy of mutual recriminations and disappointment. We have been down that road before at least twice. Another boom and bust cycle is the last thing the U.S.-Russian relationship needs.
The irrational exuberance also has the unfortunate effect of lulling the political leadership into complacency. It quickly creates a false sense of success and allows drift to set in. More importantly, it obscures the need for building durable political support behind substantive policy changes, which are essential for transforming the relationship from one of political expediency to a long-term alliance of shared interests and values.
It is precisely the political support for such a policy goal that has been somewhat ambiguous in Moscow and almost completely lacking in Washington. When it comes to attracting votes, George W. Bush's White House and most members of Congress will find NATO enlargement to include the Baltic states a much more rewarding issue than redrawing the relationship with Russia.
A year into his presidency, Bush has yet to lay out a compelling vision for U.S. policy toward Russia.
He has said repeatedly that he wants to move beyond the Cold War toward some new strategic framework based on mutual trust. However, his failure or reluctance to spell out the legal arrangements for such an overarching framework suggests that he views it as little more than another one of his "faith-based initiatives."
Bush has shown no inclination to articulate the desirability of a long-term U.S.-Russian alliance as something that is strongly in the national security interests of the United States. He thus has little incentive to recalibrate certain U.S. policies to make this objective easier to achieve and to build political support in Congress and among the American public for such a policy goal. In fact, he may be about to squander the political opening created by Putin's reaction to Sept. 11 by pursuing an unimaginative policy that almost looks like it was borrowed from his father's playbook: "status quo plus."
In the run-up to the Crawford summit and after it, the Bush administration's policy toward Russia has been heavy on symbolism and light on substance. The most noticeable movement has occurred in areas of relatively minor importance to the White House that do not require it to wage costly political battles (e.g. Jackson-Vanik, WTO accession and Chechnya). In more sensitive areas, like strategic-arms control, the administration has stuck to its guns.
The unilateral strategic-arms reductions announced by Bush are largely disappointing. Although they break the symbolic 2,000 level (albeit by an accounting gimmick), the remaining U.S. strategic-forces structure maintains an extensive capability for a large-scale nuclear attack on Russia. This will perpetuate the inherently adversarial nuclear-deterrence relationship between the two countries. (Was this not something that the Bush administration initially sought to portray as a relic of the Cold War?) And the prospects for codifying the irreversibility of these reductions appear slim.
By unilaterally withdrawing from the 1972 ABM Treaty at precisely the moment Putin was signaling greater flexibility, Bush showed that for him building a constructive relationship with Russia takes second place to pandering to a zealous political constituency within the Republican Party for whom trashing the ABM Treaty was never a policy but a religion.
When President Bill Clinton visited Europe in June 2000, he challenged the Europeans to open NATO and the European Union to Russian membership. A year later in Warsaw, Bush stopped well short of that. The proposed new format for the Russia-NATO relationship - "NATO at 20" - is not very likely (due to some vocal opposition in the United States) to dispense with the principle of NATO first reaching agreement at 19. This puts in doubt the administration's commitment to making the new arrangement work. More importantly, it does nothing to address the core security issue between Russia and NATO - their remaining adversarial military posture, supported by such relics of the Cold War as the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.
For his part, Putin has not articulated a specific policy objective of forming a long-term political alliance with the United States. If he has indeed made the strategic turnaround in Russian foreign policy toward the West, the Russian public is yet to be informed of this momentous decision and its implications.
While his recent actions have been unusually cooperative, the overall strategic objectives of Putin's policy toward the United States have been left deliberately ambiguous. Just like Bush, Putin has not made a compelling case to the Russian public and to the Russian political class in favor of a lasting alliance-type relationship with the United States that would transcend the narrow agenda of the war on terrorism. Accordingly, he has yet to begin building a broad-based political coalition to support such an objective.
To succeed in his overtures to the West, Putin will have to offer a substantially redefined and modernized concept of Russia's national interests to make them much more congruent with Western interests in general. Such redefinition is absolutely essential if Putin is serious about pursuing meaningful cooperation with NATO on issues like nonproliferation and security in the Balkans. He will also have to further broaden Russia's foreign-policy agenda to make it less self-centered and parochial and to engage the West - or at least Europe - on such issues as promoting democracy, human rights and humanitarian intervention. Like his friend British Prime Minister Tony Blair, he needs to turn Russian foreign policy into "a pivotal force for good."
It may be, of course, that the creative ambiguity of Putin's policy toward the United States reflects a limited tactical agenda of more effectively constraining U.S. unilateralism through a policy of cooperation rather than a policy of denial. However, as the case of the ABM Treaty shows, with the Bush administration that kind of strategy could very easily turn into a spectacular failure. The successful war in Afghanistan is more likely to exacerbate the unilateralist bent in U.S. foreign policy than diminish it.
The war against terror is too narrow a basis for a U.S.-Russian alliance to emerge and endure. We cannot even agree completely on a definition of terrorism, and Russia's practical contribution to the U.S. anti-terror campaign is likely to diminish substantially beyond the Afghan theater. Already, now Moscow is painfully learning that its cooperation on Afghanistan does not give it any special rights with Washington, nor does it make Russia the most important relationship in the world for the United States. At best, the anti-terror coalition provides a useful framework for a new pattern of serious U.S.-Russian cooperation to take hold.
The practical policy objective now is not building an alliance, which will require further internal evolution in both countries, but to construct a workable legal framework for maintaining the current cooperative momentum and reducing the corrosive effects of differences that will inevitably crop up further down the road.
As one former U.S. diplomat elegantly put it in a recent analytical paper: "It is not the end of history in U.S.-Russian relations. Yet."
Vladimir Frolov, an adviser to the chairperson of the State Duma foreign affairs committee, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. The views expressed are those of the author.
TITLE: Who Is Ukraine's Greatest Balalaika Player?
TEXT: RUSSIAN officials can be very bad with abbreviations. And I don't mean those long acronyms that sprouted up in 1917 containing the first few letters of seemingly 100 incomprehensible words. Somehow, even today I'll bet there are at least 100 million people on the face of the Earth who can tell you what LenBetonSpetsStroiMontazh and GiproMyasoMolAgroProm mean. For Russian-speakers, such gibberish isn't even funny anymore.
But the little abbreviations continue to mess with people's minds. What would you, dear reader, think would be the result if I asked an official from the Russian Foreign Ministry what the abbreviation "U.K." stands for? A pretty stupid question, eh?
Nonetheless, last week a friend of mine from foggy Albion sent the Foreign Ministry an official form requesting an invitation for a visa to allow him to come and work at this august newspaper. No doubt on hyper-alert following the tragedy of Sept. 11 (why no one here became hyper-alert after the Moscow apartment bombings, I can't say), the official dealing with my friend's document was suspicious from the start. After all, why would an English-language newspaper want to import an editor all the way from England when there are so many Russians here who already "speak the English perfectly good."
The official tried long and hard to find something suspicious in my friend's documents before finally alertly noticing that his passport had been issued in Ukraine! A-ha! There it was in black and white. Place of issue: Liverpool, U.K. Uk rai ne. Get it?
No doubt the official thought that my friend had received his British passport in the same little town on the Black Sea coast where that famous Ukrainian folk band, the Beatles, got their start all those years ago. Obviously being a well-educated man, he no doubt even realized that this was the same port city from which Gulliver began his famous 18th-century journey "into several Remote Nations of the World." Maybe even England.
Admittedly, average people sometimes get confused about such things. Over the holidays, I was sitting in a bar in Prague listening to a woman from Seattle tell me about her trip to "Paris." I thought that I might lose consciousness from a fit of laughter when she said: "It was a bit dangerous there because cars in France drive on the other side of the road from the United States."
Trying to be polite, I asked timidly whether she might not have actually been in London, but she said she was "pretty sure" it was Paris.
"I've got to go get another beer," I said as I made my escape. I decided not to ask her what language they speak in "France."
About a decade ago, I was in a village near Voronezh, chatting with a local herdsman who was putting a roof on his nearly finished new hut.
"Are you sure that Germany exists?" he asked me unexpectedly.
"What do you mean?" I said, thinking that this must be some profound philosophical question that had welled up from the very depths of the narod.
"Well, they are always showing this Germany on television and it always looks so clean and nice. But it looks to me like some sort of set. My friend told me that you had been there, so I wanted to know: Does it really exist?" he said.
He wasn't joking. He wasn't crazy or on drugs. Just an ordinary guy from a small village whose big adventure in 20 years of life was a trip he once took to the small town located precisely 30 kilometers from his nearly finished hut.
But neither this American woman nor the herdsman work in the Foreign Ministry. One would think that officials there would know what the map of the world looks like. One would think that they would know the difference between Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
Or maybe it is just part of a clever plot to send unsuspecting tourists to Ukraine on package tours to see the house where John Lennon was born.
TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: The bloviations of public hypocrisy are a never-ceasing wonder to behold. The art of mouthing sanctimonious twaddle while peddling murderous hardball on the side requires a degree of moral dislocation - an almost total divorce of word from deed, of image from reality - rarely seen outside madhouses, government offices, televised pulpits and certain caves in remote Afghanistan.
And these days there are no more adept practitioners of this dark art than those mighty Twin Towers now holding up the values of Western Civilization - U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
As we all know, the snack-challenged American prez can scarce ope his upper orifice without intoning noisome pieties about his own "good heart," his love of God and his humble struggle to walk each day in the footsteps of Jesus. Of course, we also know that he is responsible for more state-sanctioned executions than anyone else in modern American history; that he has given himself the power to assassinate anyone on Earth, anywhere, anytime - even without those dandy new tribunal powers he awarded himself last year - and that, through his connections to the Carlyle Group, that shadowy broker of backroom deals and bristling ordnance, his family and cronies will personally profit from every war and rumor of war he can stir up throughout the world. A sanctimonious death-dealing hypocrite, in other words, on a par with that other heaver of holy upchuck, Osama bin Laden.
Bush churns out moral idiocy so fast it's hard to keep up, but last week brought us a particularly glaring example. The U.S. military is now amassing captured members of al-Qaeda at its peculiar military base in Cuba. (We almost said alleged members of al-Qaeda before we remembered the First Rule of Bush Jurisprudence: Everyone is guilty until proven innocent - and sometimes even then.) The captives - having first been forcibly shaved in an act of deliberate religious humiliation - are now being caged and chained and subjected to, er, "intense interrogation."
This treatment is a violation of the Geneva Convention, of course, but Bush has decreed that these men are "unlawful combatants," not prisoners-of-war - despite all his soaring rhetoric about the September attacks being "an act of war" and so on. Therefore, in the chilling words of Pretzie's squinty henchman, Donald Rumsfeld, these human beings "have no rights." And because they are technically on foreign soil, they cannot avail themselves of the protections of the U.S. legal system. (Those not yet shredded by the Great Pretzel and John Ashcroft, that is.)
Thus the captives can be trussed up, tortured and killed at the pleasure of Jesus' favorite little sunbeam, Pretzie. However, the Pentagon has forbidden the national press to show pictures of the prisoners as they disembark in their wretched state. And what is the justification for this ham-handed censorship? It's simple, say the brass: Such media intrusions on the captives' privacy would be a violation of - you guessed it - the Geneva Convention.
Force Feeders
That kind of virtuoso performance is hard to beat, but eager apprentice Blair gave the Master a run for his money last week. Blair made a lightning trip to India and Pakistan, where - as the representative of the former colonial power whose policy of deliberately fomenting ethnic conflict played such a huge role in making the subcontinent the tense and dangerous morass it is today - he preached peace to the stirred-up locals, urging them to solve their seething conflict over Kashmir.
Violence is not the answer to disputes about terrorist attacks and religious extremism, the gentle PM declared. Instead, both sides should emulate his own shining example. For Britain, Blair said, has now found its new purpose in the post-colonial world: to be a "calming influence" and a vital "force for good" around the globe.
Bold words. Brave words. And - obviously - a load of old bollocks.
As soon as Blair set foot back in Blighty - having first stopped off in Afghanistan to visit the British troops stationed there as part of the West's violent response to terrorist attacks and religious extremism - his government announced a push for a major foreign-policy initiative. Peddling arms to India.
Blair's minions are putting the squeeze on India to accept a $1.4-billion deal with arms merchant BAE Systems for 60 new jet fighters. This will no doubt have a very "calming influence" on the balance of power as the subcontinent teeters on the brink of nuclear war - the same kind of calming influence gasoline has on fire.
Of course, if Blair can get those billion warbucks into BAE's coffers, Master Georgie will be very pleased. For one of BAE's business partners is - God, this is almost too easy! - our old friends the Carlyle Group. Faithful readers know that Daddy Bush - the former peddler of poison gas to Iraq - has long been feeding at the Carlyle trough, working his contacts with Saudi royalty, the bin Laden family, Asian dictators, South American junta honchos and other respectable characters to cement sweetheart deals for the Reagan-Bush retreads who skim the cream off Carlyle's $13-billion nest egg.
Thus some of the blood money Blair hopes to gouge for BAE will eventually trickle down to Bush's pocket, after Pa joins the Choir Invisible - a pretty hefty chunk, in fact, considering how Georgie sliced inheritance taxes last year.
Pretty clever, huh? And you thought he was too stupid to feed himself. Listen, Bush may not know how to operate a pretzel, but when it comes to lining elitist pockets with loot, that boy don't miss a trick.
TITLE: U.S. Under Increasing Fire On Treatment of Prisoners
AUTHOR: By Beth Gardiner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Photos published Sunday showing al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects on their knees and wearing blacked-out goggles, contributed to mounting concerns in Britain about treatment of the prisoners held by the United States in Cuba. Meanwhile, 34 more detainees from Afghanistan arrived at the U.S. base on Sunday, bringing the total number to 144. Marines in yellow rubber gloves led the prisoners, who were handcuffed and shackled at the ankles, from a cargo plane to a waiting school bus.
U.S. treatment of al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay has posed a serious foreign-policy challenge for Prime Minister Tony Blair since he put Britain shoulder-to-shoulder with Washington in the war against terrorism.
The photos, released by the U.S. Defense Department before the arrival of the latest detainees, showed the men with masks over their mouths and noses, hats, and mittens on their hands.
After prominent display in many British newspapers - and one tabloid accusation of torture - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he had told British representatives at Guantanamo to ask American officials for an explanation.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington later that he had "no doubt" that the detainees were being treated humanely. U.S. military spokesperson Robert Nelson, at Guantanamo Bay on Sunday, said the pictures were taken shortly after the prisoners arrived from the flight from Afghanistan on a C-141 cargo plane.
"It gets pretty cold on a C-141, hence the hat and mittens, for comfort," Nelson said. The taped-over goggles were a security measure to prevent prisoners seeing during the processing procedure and medical screenings after arrival, he added. The Mail on Sunday had put one of the photos on page one under the headline "Tortured," and wrote "First pictures show use of sensory deprivation to soften suspects for interrogation."
Human-rights groups and some British politicians have criticized treatment of the prisoners. Blair has sought to balance defending U.S. authorities with insisting the prisoners' human rights be guaranteed. He has called the prisoners "very dangerous people," but insisted they be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention.
The new prisoners who arrived Sunday wore the same blacked-out goggles, as well as bright orange jumpsuits, blue denim jackets, knit caps and turquoise surgical masks.
The new arrivals were driven to Camp X-Ray, where officials said they would be processed and given a basic physical exam and chest X-ray and have blood drawn for tests. They also are given a sheet of paper to inform a relative or friend of their whereabouts.
The U.S. government calls the prisoners "unlawful combatants" or "detainees" rather than prisoners of war with assigned legal rights under the Geneva Convention, but insists they are being treated humanely.
A group of British parliamentarians asked on Saturday to meet the U.S. ambassador to express their concerns about the treatment of the prisoners.
Ann Clwyd, chairperson of Parliament's Human Rights Committee, said members wanted assurances from Ambassador William Farish that the detainees were considered prisoners of war.
"It's time we had a clear statement," she said. "We fought the war shoulder-to-shoulder, now it seems that we are being frozen out of the aftermath."
In Washington, responding to a question about European criticism of the detainees' treatment, Rumsfeld said, "There's no doubt in my mind that it is humane and appropriate and consistent with the Geneva Convention for the most part."
"They are getting excellent medical care, they're receiving culturally appropriate meals three times a day, they're being allowed to practice their religion, which is not something that they encouraged on the part of others. They are clothed cleanly and they are dry and safe," he said.
TITLE: Steelers Roll Over Ravens To Advance
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania - The Baltimore Ravens looked nothing like Super Bowl champions, and Pittsburgh is looking more like the Super Steelers of the 1970s.
It was a performance that would have made the Steel Curtain proud. The Steelers held the Ravens to three first downs in three quarters, harassed Elvis Grbac into numerous mistakes and advanced to the AFC championship game with a 27-10 rout Sunday.
The top-seeded Steelers, cheered on by a raucous, towel-twirling crowd that also resembled its 1970s predecessors, will play the New England Patriots in the AFC championship game Sunday.
Ravens owner Art Modell couldn't make it to Pittsburgh because of airplane problems, and for a while it didn't look like his team made it either, as the Ravens fell behind 20-0.
The Steelers learned just before kickoff that star Jerome Bettis, out for seven weeks with a groin injury, wouldn't play because of a bad reaction to a pregame painkilling shot. But they didn't miss him, just as they didn't in a 26-21 win at Baltimore last month, as backup Amos Zereoue scored on a pair of 1-yard runs.
Grbac (18-of-37, 153 yards), unlike Trent Dilfer a season ago, simply could not get the Ravens offense going. He threw three interceptions, two by Brent Alexander.
Kordell Stewart also threw an early interception, but his passing set up both of Zereoue's scoring runs, and he connected with Plaxico Burress on a 32-yard scoring pass in the fourth quarter - Burress' third TD catch in three games against Baltimore.
Even the longest punt-return touchdown in NFL playoff history - Jermaine Lewis' 88-yarder in the third quarter - couldn't provide a lift to a somnolent Baltimore offense. It couldn't run or pass, and was outgained 297-150. The Steelers also had a 2-to-1 edge in possession time.
Rams 45, Packers 17. Marshall Faulk and Torry Holt got touchdowns, as did seldom-used fullback James Hodgins. But they, and league MVP Kurt War ner, were overshadowed, however, by Aeneas Williams, Tommy Polley and the rest of the vastly improved St. Louis defense.
All-Pro cornerback Williams led the way by returning two interceptions for touchdowns, an NFL playoff record, in a 45-17 rout of the Green Bay Packers in Sunday's second game. The overwhelming ball-hawking display against Brett Favre, along with the Rams' usual offensive theatrics, lifted St. Louis into its second NFC championship game in three years.
Next Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles come to the Dome at America's Center, and they'd better be more careful with the ball than the Packers were.
Williams, long recognized as one of the NFL's premier coverage men, finally is with a team worthy of his skills. He spent 10 years with the Cardinals, playing in just two postseason games. But he now has five interceptions in the playoffs, including Sunday's TD runbacks of 29 and 32 yards - plus a fumble recovery when he stripped Antonio Freeman of the ball.
And the Rams won with a rebuilt unit that forced Favre into the most interceptions of his career, six, and the most in a playoff game since 1955. The three interception-return TDs tied an NFL postseason record set in 1940 in Chicago's 73-0 victory over Washington.
Patriots 16, Raiders 13. A snowstorm and an apparent fumble didn't stop Tom Brady and the New England Patriots from adding an amazing victory to their magical season.
Helped by a controversial video replay that overruled the fumble call with 1:43 left, the Patriots beat the Oakland Raiders 16-13 Saturday night in overtime after trailing 13-3 going into the fourth quarter.
Adam Vinatieri, whose 45-yard field goal tied the game with 27 seconds left in regulation time, sent the Patriots into the AFC championship game with a 23-yard field goal with 8:25 gone in overtime.
The Patriots appeared finished when Greg Biekert recovered the apparent fumble. When the call was overturned, an incensed Oakland coach Jon Gruden ran toward Coleman.
Coleman ruled Brady's arm was moving forward and the play was an incompletion. Brady apparently was pulling the ball back in when hit by a blitzing Charles Woodson. The decision left the Patriots with the ball at the Oakland 42.
Five plays later, Vinatieri lined the tying 45-yard field goal through the snowflakes and the uprights.
The Raiders never got the ball in overtime as Brady, the second-year sensation, drove them from the New England 34 to a fourth-and-3 at the Oakland 27. He then connected with David Patten for a 6-yard gain. Antowain Smith then ran five times for 16 yards.
Vinatieri ran onto the field to wild cheers from snow-covered fans, then connected for the winning kick as flash cameras flickered throughout Foxboro Stadium.
Eagles 33, Bears 19. Donovan McNabb was too elusive, too shifty, too good for the Chicago Bears to contain.
McNabb maneuvered the Philadelphia Eagles into the NFC championship game, throwing for two touchdowns in Saturday's other game and running for a third to spark a 33-19 victory.
David Akers kicked four field goals, and Philadelphia's rugged defense bottled up a Chicago offense that had been crippled when quarterback Jim Miller was knocked out of the game in the second quarter because of a separated shoulder.
McNabb, who once played in a prep championship at Soldier Field, completed 26 of 40 passes for 262 yards and rushed for 37 more in the last game at the venerable lakefront stadium before it undergoes a major renovation.
"He buys a lot of time,'' Bears coach Dick Jauron said of McNabb. "If his receivers are not open initially, he can buy time with his legs and his athleticism."
The Bears, with Shane Matthews filling in for Miller, managed only one offensive touchdown. Their defense got them a third-quarter lead when Jerry Azumah grabbed a deflected pass and raced for a 39-yard touchdownto put the Bears up 14-13.
Matthews, who led overtime wins over San Francisco and Cleveland this season, hadn't played since Nov. 4.
The Eagles suffered a loss when defensive back Troy Vincent was forced out of the game with a groin pull. His status for next week was not immediately known.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Cupboard to Court
LONDON (Reuters) - Russian model Angela Ermakova, who had a daughter by Boris Becker, returned to London's High Court on Monday for a brief private hearing in a legal battle with the German tennis ace.
German media said the hearing centered on continued wrangling with the three-time Wimbledon champion over a court order that he pay for a house for Ermakova and her daughter, Anna.
After less than 60 seconds before one of Britain's top family-law judges, Ermakova left court ,leaving legal sources to suggest a deal had been done by the two sides that would remove the need for a full court appearance.
In July, Becker agreed an undisclosed settlement - which British media put at nearly $3 million - to provide for the child conceived in 1999 during a brief encounter in the laundry cupboard of an upscale London restaurant.
"It wasn't even an affair," said Becker, who had originally denied his paternity. "It was an act that lasted five seconds."
They're Not Amused
MELBOURNE, Australia (Reuters) - Two of the biggest names in women's tennis have returned serve at claims by former world No. 1 Marcelo Rios that their game is a joke.
Martina Hingis and Venus Wil li ams rejected Ri os's suggestion that there was no real depth in the women's game, with Hingis going so far as to challenge the Chilean to a match.
"I think it's just an attitude some people have towards women and women's tennis," Hingis said.
"[But] I think if he played with me one time he'd change his mind."
Williams, who once agreed to a practice session with Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov after he had publicly criticised the women's game, said the only difference between the top men and women was that the women played their best every time they went on the court.
"We don't slack at any time and we don't just bring our best game to the slams, we bring it to every event," Williams said. Rios created a stir on Sa turday when he reopened the old issue of the depth of talent in women's tennis, saying it was a joke that some of the womens'matches lasted only 40 minutes.
No Lion's Roar
SIKASSO, Mali (Reuters) - Ca me roon and Senegal both began their 2002 Af ri can Nations Cup campaigns with wins on Sunday, but fellow World Cup finalist South Africa was held to a goal-less draw by modest Burkina Faso.
A superb long-range shot by Patrick Mboma, completely out of the blue in an otherwise tedious match, gave defending-champion Cameroon a 1-0 win over the Democratic Republic of Congo in their Group C game in Sikasso.
Senegal confirmed its superiority over Egypt when Lamine Diatta scrambled in a goal from a corner just seven minutes from time to give it a 1-0 win as Sunday's three games produced a meagre two goals between them.
But South Africa, which was a semifinalist in Nigeria and Ghana two years ago and runner-up in Burkina Faso in 1998, could do no better than its 0-0 stalemate with the rank outsiders in Group B.
Cameroon, with a team filled with players based at big-name European clubs, is widely favored to repeat its title-winning display of two years ago and go on to do well in the World Cup in Japan and South Korea.
But the Indomitable Lions, the only African country to have reached the World Cup quarter-finals, looked vulnerable in defense and disjointed in attack as their strikers were caught offside six times in the first half alone.
That's Not Cricket!
CALCUTTA, India (Reuters) - England has sent a letter of complaint to ICC match referee Denis Lindsay about the standard of umpiring during Saturday's one-day international against India, the BBC reported on Sunday.
India won the match in Calcutta, the first in a six-game series, by 22 runs, but England was upset over the leg-before-wicket decision made against opener Marcus Trescothick, which they viewed as the key factor in their defeat.
"We've put a letter into the match referee stating our concerns over the officials last night," coach Duncan Fletcher was quoted as saying. "We felt the standard of umpiring was not up to international standard."
England seemed to be well on course for victory when the left-handed Trescothick, on 121, was given out lbw to a delivery from fast bowler Javagal Srinath which pitched well outside leg stump.
Trescothick's departure triggered an England lower-order collapse as the tourists' last four wickets crashed for just 28 runs in six overs.
Rocket Woman
MELBOURNE, Australia (Reuters) - Venus Williams hammered a serve timed at a sizzling 197 kilometers per hour during her 6-0, 6-3 destruction of 13th seed Magdalena Maleeva to stretch her lead at the top of the women's speed servers list.
But not only is she some way ahead of second-place Uzbek Iroda Tu lya ganova's 182-kilometer-per-hour effort, but her powerful delivery would also see her onto the men's list.
She has some way to go to match Greg Rusedski's scorching 222-kilometer-per-hour effort, but is ahead of Tim Henman's best effort of 193 kilometers per hour and world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt's best of just 190 kilometers an hour.
Quarter-finalist Stefan Koubek has managed just 182 kilometers per hour so far.
Once and Again
LONDON (Reuters) - Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson will meet twice in 2002 as a result of a clause in the fighters' world-heavyweight title-fight contract, the BBC reported on Sunday.
The first clash, scheduled for Apr. 6 is due to be confirmed on Tuesday, with the second likely to happen in October, the BBC said.
"It makes sense for a re-match from a business and sporting sense," fight agent Jerome Anderson told BBC Radio. "It is fair to say this will be the biggest fight income of all time. The figures will be high."
"The venue has yet to be agreed on, but obviously it will be in America."
Briton Lewis holds the WBC, IBF and IBO world titles, while American Tyson is the No. 1 WBC contender.