SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #740 (6), Tuesday, January 29, 2002
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TITLE: Kremlin Monitoring Radio Liberty
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Kremlin's chief spokesperson on Chechnya said Monday that the government will closely follow Radio Liberty's coverage of the conflict and may revoke the U.S.-funded station's license to broadcast in Russia if it sees the programming as pro-separatist.
 
Sergei Yastrzhembsky's warning appeared to be Russia's answer to renewed Western criticism of the military campaign and particularly to the demands from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe last week to begin negotiations with Aslan Maskhadov's government.
 In an interview published Monday in Gazeta newspaper, Yastrzhembsky said that, given the history of Radio Liberty's "biased" coverage of the Chechnya war, the government was "wary" of its plans to begin broadcasting soon in Chechen and other languages of the North Caucasus.
 "We still remember Andrei Babitsky's reporting," Yastrzhembsky said in regard to the Radio Liberty reporter whose arrest by federal troops in Chechnya in early 2000 created a scandal. 
 "We think that he justified the Chechen gunmen's reprisals against Russian soldiers," Yastrzhembsky said.
 Andrei Sharyi, head of the Moscow bureau of Radio Liberty Russian service, dismissed Yastrzhembsky's accusations of a pro-separatist bias as "ungrounded" and said the editorial policy will not change.
 "The position of the Russian service on the Chechnya war has always been the same: calls for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, defense of human rights and [coverage of] humanitarian issues," Sharyi said Monday in telephone interview. "There will be no changes in our position." 
 The Kremlin spokesperson said the government will monitor Radio Liberty's broadcasts for content, tone, selection of newsmakers and frequency with which wanted men appear on the air. If the coverage incites religious or ethnic hostility or justifies terrorism, the station will be dealt with "according to the law," Yastrzhembsky said. The law, he noted, provides for an official warning from the Press Ministry and, if the warning is not heeded, withdrawal of the broadcast license.
 The U.S. Congress's decision in 2000 to begin Radio Liberty broadcasts in Chechen, Avar (one of many languages of Dagestan) and Circassian (one of two main languages in Karachayevo-Cherkessia) has irritated the Russian government since it was first made public last February. Press Minister Mikhail Lesin said then that the planned broadcasts were driven by political motives and would "create special national autonomy on the radio waves." 
 Radio Liberty's Russian service has distanced itself from the decision from the start. Sharyi reiterated Monday that the Russian service, which has had a license to broadcast in Russia since 1991, will have nothing to do with the North Caucasus service.
 Sonia Winter, a spokesperson for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty at its headquarters in Prague, said programs for the North Caucasus service will be produced in Prague. She said she did not know from where they would be transmitted. At least in the beginning, the broadcasts will be less than two hours a day in all three languages combined, Winter said. "There isn't really much to get excited about," she said.
 Winter said she had not read Yastrzhembsky's statement and therefore could not comment on it. Yet she stressed that RFE/RL will approach its North Caucasus service with its usual high standards. "We will strive to bring objectivity and comprehensiveness of information to our broadcasts," she said.
 RFE/RL is not free to choose the languages it broadcasts in. "We do not have the independence to decide because we are funded by the U.S. Congress 100 percent," Winter said.
 Winter said the North Caucasus service is set to begin in late February, not this week as Yastrzhembsky stated. She said the mix-up may have been caused by information that RFE/RL was launching its Afghan service on Wednesday. 
 RFE/RL broadcasts in 30 languages altogether. Since 1953, when the Russian service was launched, Radio Liberty has also broadcast in Tatar and Bashkir, Winter said. 
 Russian officials have suggested that the decision to broadcast in some North Caucasus languages and not others may further destabilize the region. Although Avar is the second most popular language in the region after Chechen, it is only one of several dominant languages in Dagestan, where there is an internal struggle for power, mainly between Avars and Dargins. Relations between Karachays and Circassians - the two ethnic groups in Karachayevo-Cherkessia - were tense during presidential elections in that republic in 1999. 
 When asked about possible repercussions for the Russian service, Winter said she hoped there would be none. "I'd hope we'd have amicable relations [with the Russian government]," she said, while adding that occasional conflicts with governments are nothing new. "If all governments liked what we said, we wouldn't be doing our job."
 Radio Liberty broadcasts in Russia on a medium-wave frequency on the basis of a special 1991 decree signed by then-President Boris Yeltsin. Its current license expires in 2005 and can only be revoked by presidential decree.
 In his question-and-answer interview published in Gazeta, Yastrzhembsky spoke at length about the change in the West's stance on Chechnya in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the willingness of some Western officials to acknowledge a connection between Chechen separatists and the al-Qaida terrorist network. 
 Yastrzhembsky said Russia will link Radio Liberty's policy to Russian-U.S. relations. "One should remember that Radio Liberty's budget is approved by Congress and its management is confirmed by the [U.S.] president," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "We hope that the people who do the broadcasts will remember this and will not create additional problems in Russian-U.S. relations."
 The questions in the Gazeta (www.gzt.ru) interview, almost all of them leading, sound as if they had been written in Yastrzhembsky's office. Every question is effectively the interrogative form of the official statement made by Yastrzhembsky. 
 A Radio Liberty official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the station considers Yastrzhembsky's statement to be a propagandistic counterattack to PACE's meetings with representatives of the Chechen rebels last week in Strasbourg, France. "It has nothing to do with journalism," the official said.
 PACE adopted a resolution last Thursday calling for a negotiated solution to the conflict and saying that the participation of Maskhadov or his representatives was the key to the success of any peace talks. Yastrzhembsky said the demand to begin negotiations with Maskhadov was "an attempt to blow the Chechnya issue out of proportion." Yet he and other Russian officials have praised the PACE resolution as balanced.
 Mikhail Margelov, chairperson of the Federation Council's foreign-relations committee, said Monday that PACE's attention to Chechnya "forces Europe to have a more adequate and objective evaluation of what is happening there."
 Yastrzhembsky approved of PACE's call for countries bordering Russia to take active measures against terrorists operating on their territories. "The resolution does not name concrete countries, but we know very well who is meant first of all," Interfax quoted Yastrzhembsky as saying Thursday. It was a clear reference to Georgia.

TITLE: Smokes for People Who Want To Quit
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: VORONEZH, Central Russia - Tobacco giant Philip Morris turned him down, and RJ Reynolds wrote a polite but declining letter. 
 
But Vyacheslav Zakharov, 50, didn't give up. 
 He believed that putting two bright red lines on a cigarette would give smokers the world's first cigarette allowing them to kick the habit.
 Late last year he finally found a benefactor in the unlikeliest of places - the Russian army. 
 Soldiers in the Northern Caucasus military district last month became the first recipients of packs of Prima Armeiskaya, or Army Prime.
 The waterproof, camouflage-colored packs are filled with foul-smelling, filterless cigarettes made to Zakharov's specifications.
 "For people who want to limit their smoking, they help. If he doesn't want to give up, they won't help," said Zakharov, a gray-haired academician who wrote his doctorate dissertation on how people get hooked on tobacco.
 Zakharov, a graduate in psychology from Moscow State University, said the idea for the cigarettes came to him in a dream 10 years ago.
 At the time, Zakharov was working at the regional health center in his hometown of Voronezh, located about 475 kilometers south of Moscow, and finding himself inundated with smokers eager give up the habit.
 Many of those coming to him were from the Usmanskoi Tobacco Factory just outside Voronezh - the company that now produces Prima Armeiskaya cigarettes.
 "I had a large number of people who wanted to give up smoking," Zakharov said. "I had to think how to help the most people at the same time."
 One night - no doubt after a long day of dealing with frantic smokers at work - the answer presented itself as he slept. Zakharov saw a cigarette whose wrapping had bright red lines dividing it into three parts - the area closest to the filter was the "risk zone," the middle was the "danger zone" and the part at the tip was the "least dangerous zone."
 While dragging on such a cigarette, the smoker sees the red lines before him a constant reminder about how dangerous the cigarette is becoming, Zakharov said. 
 He can then conscientiously choose to reduce his tobacco intake. As Zakharov sees it, the smoker will at first smoke only two-thirds of a cigarette, then cut down to one-third and finally quit.
 "It helps them control how much they smoke," Zakharov said, himself a lifelong nonsmoker who keeps packs of Prima Armeiskaya and cigarette prototypes proudly on display in his one-room apartment in Voronezh.
 He said he has conducted tests on more than 1,000 smokers and found that 46 percent were able to give up using this method along with counseling. 
 The success rate among those whose did not get counseling was 23 percent. He could not say if any of those who had quit had later taken up smoking again.
 Some may be skeptical that two red lines on a cigarette can push a hardened smoker to ditch the habit, but Zakharov insisted that the use of a cigarette to give up smoking is the best method.
 Nicotine chewing gum, he said, merely solves physical dependence on nicotine but not the psychological dependence on the actual act of inhaling and exhaling smoke. 
 "The smoker feels a physical discomfort with the absence of cigarettes," he said. 
 Zakharov patented his idea in 1995 and set out to find a producer. Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds declined his offers.
 Zakharov then turned to Usmanskoy to issue a limited-edition of the cigarette in 1995 under two brand names - Shans and Vyacheslav Zakharov.
 The cigarettes did not sell well, although collectors of rare cigarette packs still send letters to Zakharov in search of the rare issue.
 Zakharov, however, is not one to give up, and the inventor persevered. Over the next few years he began to drum up recognition for his idea. In 1998, he won a gold medal at the World Exhibition of Invention and Industrial Innovation in Brussels, and last year he took the gold medal at the International Salon of Innovation and Invention in Moscow.
 He got his break in November when the Defense Ministry picked his cigarettes, for an undisclosed sum, as the official smokes for the Northern Caucasus military district. 
 Every soldier in the district now receives a daily ration of a pack of 10 Prima Armeiskaya cigarettes. 
 "There's a ration of how many potatoes they get and how many cigarettes," said rear armed forces spokesperson Sergei Davydov.
 Davydov said Prima Armeiskaya was picked because the ministry deemed the brand as the most suitable for soldiers' needs - not only are the packs waterproof and in camouflage colors, but they are also small enough to easily fit in a soldier's pocket. 
 Furthermore, as cigarettes meant to help smokers smoke less, they comply with the spirit of an anti-smoking law signed by President Vladimir Putin in July.
 As yet there is no word from the soldiers on whether the cigarettes - which are not being offered for sale to the public - have helped reduce their nicotine cravings. The soldiers are to fill out a survey on the cigarettes at the end of this month, Davydov said.
 One fan who has gone on record is General Gennady Troshev, the commander of the Northern Caucasus troops. 
 "It's a new method for fighting hazing," Troshev told Noviye Izvestia.
 Those tempted to beat up younger soldiers for their cigarettes will now have to think twice before doing so, he said, without elaborating.
 Zakharov said he found the general's reasoning baffling. 
 The cigarettes are after all, he said, no different from other cigarettes except for the two bright red lines.

TITLE: Fast-Track Visas Set, But Details Yet Vague
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Foreign tourists from some Western countries visiting St. Petersburg for 72 hours or less will be able to purchase visas at the border as of Feb. 1, the Foreign Ministry confirmed this week.
 
Under the long-awaited plan, such visas will cost $35 and will be available at Pulkovo International Airport and at the Torfanovka checkpoint on the Russian-Finnish border. The visas will not be available on the popular Helsinki-St. Petersburg trains, which are not able to provide consular services.
 Only tourists from the United Kingdom, Japan and the countries of the Schengen Agreement will be eligible for the program. Although the Foreign Ministry had earlier said that U.S. citizens would be eligible, the United States was not included in the final list.
 In addition to St. Petersburg, the three-day visas will be available at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow and at several border checkpoints in the Kaliningrad region.
 "These tourists will have to submit their application at least 48 hours before entering the country to a tourist company located abroad that is a partner of [an approved] Russian operator," said Oleg Davtyan, spokesperson for the St. Petersburg office of the Foreign Ministry, on Monday. "They are then passed to us, the Foreign Ministry department and then will go on to the border point."
 The new rules will be in effect for one year, Foreign Ministry officials said, "to accumulate experience to then see what should be changed."
 Davtyan said that consular facilities have already been set up at Pulkovo and Torfanovka and that they are ready to being issuing visas.
 "We start accepting applications on Tuesday," he said.
 Officials at Pulkovo, however, declined to comment on the new visas.
 Davtyan said that the City Hall Tourism Committee is responsible for determining which companies will be eligible to handle visa applications.
 That list has already been submitted to the Federal Tourist Committee and consists of 12 local companies, said Vladimir Kovalyov, a representative of the Tourism Committee.
 Kovalyov declined to name any of the companies, however, saying that "they don't know exactly what to say yet."
 He also refused to explain how the system would work.
 "If I started explaining it to you, we would totally confuse one another," he said. "It is necessary to sit down for quite a while and look through it. Everybody has their own claims, including the Foreign Ministry, the tourist companies and the border officials."
 According to information released by the Foreign Ministry and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, authorized companies must have at least three years' experience on the international market, have served at least 1,000 clients in the last year and have no tax debts or outstanding issues with the Foreign Ministry, the Federal Security Service, border officials or the police.
 According to Interfax, 29 companies have been approved for the program nationally, including Neva in St. Petersburg.
 Lyudmila Kulikova, who works in Neva's international department, said that tourists who would like to receive visas at the border should apply to Neva's partners abroad, but she refused to name any of them, saying the information "is a commercial secret."
 Local hotel operators say that the new regulation will only help develop local tourism significantly if the term for such visas were extended to at least five days. The three-day plan is inadequate because in most cases, airline flight schedules would mean that visitors would only have one full day in the city.

TITLE: Slew of TV6 Hopefuls Lining Up For Tender
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: With two months to go before the tender for new broadcasting rights on the former TV6, two top contenders dropped out of the race Monday, while everyone from TV6 majority shareholder Boris Berezovsky to the head of Russia's Olympic Committee weighed in with plans for the station and its journalists.
 
STS, a national entertainment network controlled by a U.S. company, said in a press release that it will not take part in the tender. After TV6 was cut off early last week, 11 of its regional affilates began broadcasting STS content, according to an Interfax report.
 All the regional stations are scrambling to fill giant gaps in their broadcast schedules created when the authorities unexpectedly switched TV6 off the air at midnight on Jan. 22. These stations - all 156 of them - have contract agreements to buy programming from the national network. Smaller stations, which have limited resources of their own, rely heavily on such arrangements. 
 In a more surprising move, VID - a private production company that has long talked publically about wanting to launch its own broadcasting arm - also pulled out of the race. Interfax reported that VID General Director Larisa Sinelshchikova declined to elaborate on the decision.
 Last week, the head of the VGTRK state-owned television and radio conglomerate, Oleg Dobrodeyev, said no state channels would take part in the tender.
 In the meantime, LUKoil - which controlled 15 percent of TV6 and won the station's liquidation in court - said Monday it was looking for partners to bid for the frequency.
 "LUKoil is now looking for partners," Interfax quoted LUKoil spokesperson Dmitry Dolgov as saying. "We are talking about both financial and creative components." Last month, LUKoil Vice President Leonid Fedun said his company was ready to bid for the frequency with the TV6 journalists but without Berezovsky.
 In an apparent attempt to keep the TV6 team together in the face of mounting salary arrears and joblessness, Berezovsky announced Monday that he would give a $1.2 million grant to the journalists through his New York-based International Foundation for Civil Liberties. Berezovsky suggested the money be used to pay TV6 staff who have not been paid since November. "I know there are 1,200 journalists left without salaries, therefore I decided to allocate $1,000 per person," Berezovsky said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
 Russian sports officials also weighed in with their take on the station's fate Monday. Following a meeting with President Vladimir Putin, the chairperson of the Russian Olympic Committee, Leonid Tyagachyov, said the president had "in principle" supported the idea of creating a national sports channel. All-sports programming has been broadcast on TV6's frequency in Moscow and some other regions since last week on the basis of temporary permission from the Press Ministry.
 "Of course the Olympic Committee does not have such resources," Tyagachyov said on NTV television. "But with the help of the state, we could bid for TV6. Why shouldn't this channel belong to sports?"

TITLE: Helicopter Crash Kills Senior Officials
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: A military helicopter exploded and crashed in Chechnya on Sunday, killing 14 people, including a deputy interior minister.
 
Conflicting reports emerged about the cause of the crash, with some officials blaming it on a surface-to-air missile fired by separatists, and others saying it appeared to have been an accident.
 The Mi-8 helicopter of the Interior Ministry came down late Sunday morning near the village of Shelkovskaya, northwest of Grozny, killing everyone on board, including Deputy Interior Minister General Mikhail Rudchenko, who was responsible for security in the Southern Federal District; Major General Nikolai Goridov, deputy commander-in-chief of the interior forces; and three colonels, government officials said.
 The senior officers, along with bodyguards and other troops, were on a flight from the military base at Kankhala in Chechnya when the helicopter crashed shortly before landing.
 "Eyewitnesses said they saw smoke first, then the helicopter caught fire and fell down," Nikolai Britvin, a deputy presidential representative in the region, was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying.
 State-controlled RTR television reported the crash was unlikely a result of a terrorist attack.
 "It happened in an open plain, where there is no place to carry out a terrorist attack from," Imran Vagalov, a Southern Federal District official, told RTR.
 Other officials said it was too early to say if the explosion had been caused by rebel fire from the ground.
 "The exact reason for the explosion of the helicopter has not yet been established," said Major General Sergei Babkin, head of the Federal Security Service in Chechnya, Interfax reported.
 An official in the federal forces' Mozdok headquarters said an investigation had been opened and no further information was available.
 The crash is the second in just over four months to kill senior officers in Chechnya. In September, two generals were among 13 people killed when their helicopter went down after taking off from Grozny. Moscow blamed the crash on a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile, although some Grozny residents who saw that crash said that it looked like a technical malfunction rather than a missile attack.
 Sunday's incident sounded another somber note for Russian policy in the North Caucasus region, where federal forces have been fighting to put down a separatist insurgency since the early 1990s.
 The United States and other Western governments have urged President Vladimir Putin to reach a political settlement.
 But a contact between the Kremlin and a rebel representative last November at a Moscow airport failed to produce any concrete results.
 Though Russian forces say they control virtually all the territory of Chechnya, rebels in the mainly Muslim region kill troops almost daily in shootings and bomb attacks and have assassinated scores of pro-Moscow Chechen officials.
 Rudchenko was Russia's top police official for Chechnya and one of the highest-ranking officials to have been killed there.
 
 <i>(AP, Reuters, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Civilians March To Protest Army Mopping-Up Tactics
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: About 500 people demonstrated in the Chechen capital on Sunday to protest against mopping-up operations where people are detained and interrogated about possible links to rebels. 
 
They also demanded that talks be started on a peaceful settlement of the war in Chechnya. 
 Federal soldiers observed the rally in Grozny, which lasted about two hours, but made no attempt to disperse the demonstrators. 
 The latest mopping-up operation was reported in the Urus-Martan district. Federal forces swept through villages in the district and detained more than 70 people on Sunday, an official in the Moscow-backed Chechen administration said on Saturday on condition of anonymity.
 Meanwhile, in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, where Chechen refugees live in giant tent camps, three children aged 1 to 4 died in a tent fire on Saturday, according to a report on NTV television. 
 All residents of the Bart tent camp near the town of Karabulak were to be given fire extinguishers Sunday, Interfax said.
 The respected international assistance organization Medecins Sans Frontieres, known in English as Doctors Without Borders, criticized the camps on Friday, calling the cramped housing and overall living conditions &quot;intolerable.&quot; 
 Thousands of Chechens are in the midst of their third winter in the muddy, crowded camps, still too fearful to return home.
 
 <i>(AP, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Uzbeks Vote on Longer Presidential Term
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - Uzbek President Islam Karimov, casting a vote on a referendum to extend the presidential term by two years, said Sunday its approval would strengthen democracy in Uzbekistan. 
 
The referendum was approved in December by the Uzbek parliament, which is made up of Karimov loyalists. It asks voters two questions: whether to extend the five-year presidential term to seven years, and whether to introduce a bicameral parliament. 
 &quot;At a certain stage of historic change in your country, you need a strong will and a certain figure,&quot; Karimov said at the polling station. &quot;And you have to use some authoritarian methods at times.&quot; 
 &quot;Nobody should press us into moving too quickly,&quot; he said. &quot;We must take [from the West] only what suits us, keeping in mind thousands of years of history and our national mentality.&quot;
 By late afternoon Sunday, election officials said about 83 percent of the country's 13.2 million voters had cast ballots in the referendum, which has been condemned by human-rights groups and boycotted by U.S. observers. 
 The American protest, based on previous Uzbek elections criticized as neither free nor fair, comes despite this central Asian nation's strong support for the U.S.-led military operation in neighboring Afghanistan. 
 Karimov, rejecting criticism from some Russian lawmakers for having American troops based in a former Soviet republic, defended the presence of the U.S. troops, but said they would not be there on a long-term basis. 
 &quot;We are only talking about the anti-terrorist operation,&quot; he said, saying that he welcomed support from &quot;sober-minded and wise-minded Russian politicians&quot; who believed the American presence was preferable to the religious expansion of fanatics in Central Asia. 
 Karimov long used fears of Islamic revolution being imported to Uzbekistan to justify firm measures against opponents. 
 General Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander of the military campaign in Afghanistan, said on Thursday during a visit to Uzbekistan that his troops were also targeting the Taliban-allied Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which Karimov has accused of guerrilla attacks aimed at assassinating him.
 &quot;We will continue our efforts to destroy the remnants of this organization,&quot; Franks said.
 But highlighting a dilemma in dealing with countries whose human-rights records it has long criticized, Washington on Wednesday questioned the fairness of the referendum. 
 &quot;Unfortunately, past Uzbek elections were neither free nor fair and did not offer Uzbekistan's voters a true choice,&quot; State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said. &quot;We are concerned that a referendum extending the term of an incumbent elected under such conditions will not be consistent with international standards.&quot;
 The chairperson of the Uzbek electoral commission, Adurauf Akhadov, said Friday that even if the referendum passes, it might not apply to Karimov's current term, which expires in 2005. 
 Karimov said he was seeking a longer term for future presidents, not just himself. &quot;This has to do with the future of the republic, not with any particular person,&quot; he said. 
 Despite the crackdowns under the current regime, many voters Sunday hailed Karimov as a source of stability. 
 &quot;I have just voted to extend President Karimov's term in office by two years,&quot; retired school teacher Klara Shakarova said after voting at a station in central Tashkent. &quot;Just look at the map of the world. We must be the only country living in peace. Many thanks to our leader for this.&quot;
 Karimov, 63, became Uzbekistan's Communist Party chief in 1989 and was elected president shortly before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1995, parliament extended his five-year term through 2000. Karimov was re-elected in 2000, winning over 90 percent of the vote, according to official results. 
 Human Rights Watch in Moscow said the timing of the referendum was not a coincidence. &quot;Karimov is testing the international community to see what he can get away with now that he is viewed as a critical partner in the war,&quot; the human-rights monitoring group said in a statement Friday. 
 Preliminary results have not yet been announced.
 <i>(AP, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: Foundation To Step Up Nazi Slave Payments
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Russian foundation in charge of supervising payments to former Nazi slave workers intends to boost the number of payouts from about 1,000 survivors to 20,000 survivors a month, officials said Friday.
 
The Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation Foundation, which is distributing about $370 million from a $4.4-billion fund created by the German government and German industry, has paid only 8,700 survivors since the money became available in June. The first payments were made in September.
 Almost 60 years after the end of World War II, about 500,000 people applied for compensation from the Russian foundation before the application period expired Dec. 31.
 &quot;Only a very small number of people have received payments,&quot; said Michael Jansen, head of the German Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future Foundation. &quot;Our goal is that the claimants get the money as soon as reliably as possible.&quot;
 With that goal in mind, payments will be accelerated to allow 200,000 survivors to receive the first tranche of their entitlement this year, he said Friday at a news conference. He added that he hoped remaining claimants would receive their first payout next year.
 &quot;We will have to work very hard every day and we will have to maintain a high output to reach the goal,&quot; Jansen said.
 Russian foundation head Natalya Malysheva said that no applications had been ready when she took over in the middle of last year and that it had taken some months to put the foundation's house in order. 
 The main bottleneck in the payout process had been the slow rate of approval by the Russian foundation's experts, Jansen said. The German foundation had assisted its partner to shift into more suitable premises and to streamline its processing of applications, he added. 
 The Russian foundation's experts check the applications before sending them to German foundation experts, who subject them to random checks before giving their stamp of approval. 
 &quot;We have a duty to see that the money really gets to those for whom it is intended,&quot; said Guenther Saathoff, who is overseeing the checks. &quot;At the same time we don't want to refuse people who are entitled just because they don't have sufficient documents.&quot; 
 &quot;Every check costs a lot of money that does not go to the victims, which is unfortunate, but we must do it to maintain trust,&quot; he said.
 &quot;No irregularities or false applications have been identified so far,&quot; Malysheva said. &quot;Any problems that have arisen relate to what payment category victims fall into.&quot; 
 The final number of applicants in each category will not be known before the middle of the year, and only once this is known, will it be possible to say how much people in each category will receive, Malysheva said. Her foundation is responsible for claimants in central Asia, the Caucasus region, Latvia and Lithuania.
 Under the German law governing the payouts all former concentration camp victims are to receive about $7,000. About 7,000 people fall into this category. 
 In total, 220,000 applicants appear to be entitled to compensation under the law, while 280,000 more fall into categories that could be compensated if the law is given a broad interpretation, the Russian foundation said in a statement.

TITLE: Soviet Veteran Recalls Shock Of Auschwitz
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: A former Soviet Army commander who participated in the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz said Sunday that he is still haunted by what he saw that day.
 
&quot;What struck me first were the boxes with children's shoes, eyeglass frames, human hair,&quot; said General Vasily Petrenko, 90, during a Holocaust Day memorial event in Moscow.
 The event, held at the Federation of Peace and Accord, commemorated the Jan. 27, 1945 liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army. An estimated 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, died at the Nazi death camp in then German-occupied Poland.
 &quot;Auschwitz is the climax of human degradation, of human baseness,&quot; said Alla Gerber of the Holocaust Foundation.
 Leonid Nevzlin, president of the Russian Jewish Congress and a member of the Federation Council, called on young Jews to be &quot;more educated, active and intelligent&quot; to ensure that the lessons of Nazi terror are never forgotten.
 The memorial event was attended by the ambassadors from Israel and Germany, Russia's chief rabbi, Adolf Shayevich, and representatives of various Jewish organizations, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Debt-Sale Deal Has Czechs Up in Arms
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The more details that emerge from the secretive and complex scheme that reduced Russia's debt to the Czech Republic by $2.5 billion last month, the more mysterious it gets.
 
On Monday, a Russian non-profit organization that can't be located joined the known list of players in the deal - the governments of both countries, United Energy Systems, Gazprom, Rosenergoatom and a shady Czech company called Falkon Capital.
 The non-profit organization, the Center for Support of Energy Reforms, apparently acted as a shell company through which UES funneled $775 million of the $1.35 billion in budget money it received for buying the $2.5 billion Soviet-era debt off Falkon, which bought it off the Czech government for just $550 million.
 The existence of the center was first reported Monday by Vedomosti, which attributed the information to unnamed &quot;top managers&quot; at UES. Calls to the power monopoly's press service went unanswered Monday, and no contact details for the center could be located either by The St. Petersburg Times or its sister-paper, Vedomosti.
 &quot;This center was probably created by UES just for this particular deal,&quot; said Vitaly Zarkhin, an energy analyst with Alfa Bank.
 The highly unorthodox transaction by which Russia seems to have paid an obscure Czech company to redeem its debt at a steep discount has caused a scandal in Prague and prompted lawmakers there to demand an inquiry into press reports that Falkon has ties to intelligence agencies.
 Why would Prague sell a $2.5 billion debt for $550 million without even conducting a tender?
 &quot;It could be part of the election campaign,&quot; said Jan Kovalik, an investigative reporter for the Prague-based journal Respekt, referring to national elections scheduled for summer.
 He said in an e-mail interview that the $550 million Falkon paid is nearly 3 percent of the entire national budget and &quot;such a gain could win voters' sympathy.&quot;
 &quot;But nobody knows the true answer to why was it was sold so cheaply,&quot; Kovalik said, adding that the Czech government's position is that Russia demanded Falkon broker the deal or Russia would not pay at all.
 Falkon is a kind of central European Enron, buying and selling electricity and debt, and has worked with UES for several years.
 &quot;We would not go for this partnership if it did not prove to be a reliable one,&quot; UES spokesperson Andrei Yegorov said last week.
 Indeed, analysts said the big winner is UES, which was paid $1.35 billion by the Russian government for the deal, which basically has two components:
 In the first component, UES borrowed cash from a Russian bank to pay Falkon. (Vedomosti reported that bank was Sberbank, but Sberbank declined to comment Monday.)
 Both the Czech side and the Russian side cite a confidentiality agreement as their reason for not being able to disclose exact figures, but a conference call by top UES managers last week shed some light on the deal, allowing analysts to deduce the rest.
 Troika Dialog said that UES borrowed $700 million and transferred it to Falkon's accounts, along with a further guarantee to supply $30 million worth of electricity over the next year or so.
 In the second component, the Russian government gives UES $1.35 billion for buying up its $2.5-billion debt. UES then uses that money to offset its liabilities to Gazprom, Rosenergoatom and the Tax Ministry.
 Troika Dialog describes the deal as follows:
 
. UES settled $65 million of its own tax debts to the government.
 . UES loaned $340 million to Gazprom and $170 to Rosenergoatom, which is run by the Nuclear Ministry.
 . UES loaned its subsidiaries $775 million so they could settle their debts to Gazprom ($605 million) and Rosenergoatom ($170 million). Sixty-five of UES's 73 subsidiaries participated in these transactions.
 
Gazprom and Rosenergoatom then used the loans from UES, plus the payments that they received from the UES subsidiaries to settle their own tax obligations, which is where the previously unknown Center for Support of Energy Reforms comes in. Instead of loaning money directly to its subsidiaries, UES &quot;passed&quot; it to them through the center. According to Vedomosti, UES also paid its debts to Gazprom and Rosenergoatom in this way.
 Now, apparently, regional energy companies owe $775 million to a company that no one can find.
 Alfa Bank's Zarkhin said that UES probably funneled the cash through the center to expedite the process.
 &quot;Look, this deal could involve transfers of assets between UES and its subsidiaries, so it includes vested interests,&quot; Zarkhin said. &quot;Such deals need the approval of the board of directors. With the center, which I think was created by UES because it is not its commercial subsidiary, things are easier.&quot;
 The deal also allows UES to gain more control over its subsidiaries at a time when the entire sector is going through a massive restructuring that many investors fear may lead to massive asset transferring.
 Zarkhin said that some of the subsidiaries would now have to settle their debts to UES with assets because they cannot generate enough profits to pay cash. &quot;And a key question, when it comes up to the payback period, will become the cost of these assets,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Caspian Oil Deal Draws Closer
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Azeri President Heidar Aliyev said Saturday that his talks with President Vladimir Putin helped forge a partnership that would allow the two countries to reach a long-stalled deal on dividing sectors of the resource-rich Caspian Sea.
 
&quot;We agreed to begin work on drawing a median line between Russia and Azerbaijan,&quot; Aliyev said at a news conference.
 Use of Caspian resources, including what are believed to be the world's third-largest oil deposits, was defined by treaties between Iran and the Soviet Union. After the 1991 Soviet collapse, five littoral countries laid conflicting claims to its riches.
 Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan say the seabed should be divided into national sectors while the water should be available for common use - a strategy that would leave Iran with the smallest sector. Iran wants to divide the seabed equally, and Turkmenistan appears to favor a compromise between the two proposals.
 Russia and Azerbaijan both have signed bilateral deals with Kazakhstan to draw a line between their respective sectors of the Caspian. Once Russia and Azerbaijan reach such an agreement, &quot;use of the Caspian mineral resources will be fully solved between our three countries,&quot; Aliyev said.
 &quot;We must continue work to reach agreement among all the Caspian states,&quot; Aliyev said. &quot;I think that we will be able to achieve that, but it's difficult to say how long it would take.&quot;
 A twice-canceled Caspian summit is planned for later this year in Turkmenistan.
 Despite similar approaches to the Caspian settlement, Russia and Azerbaijan have been unable to reach a deal because of disputes in other areas. &quot;Relations between our two countries haven't always been smooth in the past decade,&quot; Aliyev said.
 In the past, Azerbaijan has accused Russia of siding with Armenia in the 14-year conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. At a meeting earlier Saturday, Aliyev told Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov that Moscow could play a &quot;decisive&quot; role in settling the conflict.

TITLE: Power Utility Says Cuts No Threat to Space Base
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Kamchatenergo cut off electricity at a key installation of the Russian Space Forces on Saturday, forcing the base to resort to emergency backup systems, news reports said.
 
Kamchatenergo, the local power provider on the Kamchatka Peninsula, cut off electricity to a military space center that monitors orbiting satellites because it had not paid its utility bill, both Interfax and Itar-Tass reported.
 But Andrei Trapeznikov of the national electricity monopoly Unified Energy Systems, told Russia's NTV Saturday night that none of the bases' key systems were ever at risk. He said only military dormitories and other supply buildings on the base were affected.
 Earlier Saturday, the Space Forces warned in a statement, quoted by Interfax, that &quot;shutting off the facility impacted its operation and could have led to the loss of spacecraft costing hundreds of millions of rubles.&quot;
 The military base said switching off its electricity was &quot;a direct violation of the Russian presidential decree of 1995 and government decree of 1998,&quot; according to Interfax. The decrees specified facilities of national security which could not be subjected to power cuts.

TITLE: Vneshtorgbank Head Says Split-Up Plan Set
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin has approved a two-stage plan to split ownership of Vneshtorgbank, the country's second-largest bank, between the government, the Central Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Vneshtorgbank chairperson Yury Ponomaryov said Friday.
 
The supervisory board of Vneshtorgbank, or VTB, on Friday morning approved a possible new share issue worth up to $300 million, set for this spring at the earliest, Ponomaryov said. The new shares would be offered to the EBRD or to two other international financial organizations that have expressed an interest, he said.
 The EBRD has said that it would not comment on the size of the stake it plans to buy or the amount it is willing to pay until the plan was approved by Putin and negotiations had started.
 &quot;The EBRD is now looking forward to working with the Russian government, the Central Bank and the management of Vneshtorgbank in putting together this deal along the lines which have been discussed,&quot; read a statement from Kurt Geiger, director of the EBRD's financial institutions team.
 In the first stage of restructuring, the government will be offered a 40-percent block of VTB's existing shares.
 &quot;It is not clear how the government will pay the Central Bank for the stake,&quot; Ponomaryov said. &quot;The government needs to determine a means for financing, a formula for regulating property relations, that doesn't use budget money. But that is the subject of government and Central Bank negotiations, which have not started yet.&quot;
 &quot;The government, represented by the State Property Fund, just does not have enough money to buy Vneshtorgbank from the Central Bank,&quot; said Mikhail Matovnikov, deputy director general of Interfax Rating Agency. &quot;In this case, the Central Bank's interests are clear: It wants to sell the Vneshtorgbank stake to someone who is ready to pay for it.&quot;
 The plan marks a compromise by the government, which last week demanded the Central Bank fully divest itself of its 99.9 percent share in VTB before any sale to the EBRD. The bank-reform plan signed by Central Bank head Viktor Gerashchenko and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov had set a target date of Jan. 1, 2003, for Central Bank divestiture.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Baltic Beer Buy
 

HELSINKI, Finland (Reuters) - Finnish beverages maker Hartwall said Monday that its Baltic Beverage Holdings arm would buy a-70 percent stake in a regional Russian brewer, strengthening its position in the country's growing beer market. 
 Hartwall said in a statement that BBH, owned 50-50 with Danish Carlsberg, would take its stake in the Voronezh Brewery in southern Russia through a directed share issue. No financial details were given. 
 "The acquisition further strengthens BBH's position in the principal population centers in Russia and improves the logistic structure," Hartwall said, adding that its market share in Russia was seen rising to 32 percent with the buy. 
 It said once the deal received approval from authorities, it would make $17 million in modernization investments at the brewery, which has an annual capacity of 73 million liters.
 
 
Japan Truck Plant
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Top truck maker KamAZ has hired two Japanese companies to build a 18.5 billion yen ($137.8 million) engine plant, Dow Jones reported a Japanese newspaper as saying Monday.
 Kanematsu Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. will build the plant in the first deal under Japan's economic assistance project to Russia since the 1998 economic crisis, according to Sankei Shimbun. 
 The report did not say where the plant will be built, but it did say it would be capable of turning out 80,000 engines a year to European Union emission standards.
 
 
Chechen Oil Tender
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - State oil company Rosneft has won a license to develop 21 of 22 oil fields in Chechnya that were offered in a tender, Prime-Tass reported the Natural Resources Ministry as saying Monday.
 Rosneft, Transnafta and Grozny-based Grozneftegaz, which is 51-percent controlled by Rosneft, bid in the tender, which was held in October. 
 Transnafta submitted feasibility proposals for only 10 fields, while Rosneft and Grozneftegaz proposals included 21 fields. 
 The ministry said Rosneft was the only bidder that confirmed the availability of its funds for the oil field development and presented economically established production and environment programs.
 Data on the oil fields' reserves was not provided.
 
 
5 Sea Launches
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Boeing-led international Sea Launch venture will make five commercial launches from its Pacific launch pad in 2002, Interfax reported company president, James Master, as saying Monday.
 The Sea Launch consortium uses a converted oil rig in the south Pacific as its launch pad, taking advantage of the earth's relatively high rotation speed at the equator to launch loads of up to five tons.
 Master said the first launch this year would be in the second quarter, but gave no exact date, Sea Launch plans about 17 commercial launches in 2003.
 Boeing holds 40 percent of Sea Launch and English-Norwegian engineering group Kvaerner 20 percent, Russia's Energiya rocket builder holds a 25-percent stake and Ukraine's Yuzhnoe rocket designer has 15 percent. 



TITLE: Cheney: Enron Questions to Land in Court
AUTHOR: By Marcy Gordon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney says the presidential administration's refusal to identify business executives who met with him and his aides concerning energy policy probably will end up in court.
 
Amid the Enron Corp. scandal, Cheney on Sunday defended President George W. Bush's right to withhold the information, prompting accusations by some Democrats of White House stonewalling.
 The head of the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, said he will decide this week whether to sue to force the White House to turn over documents on the meetings last year with representatives of energy companies. They included the now-collapsed Enron, a Houston-based concern with deep ties to Bush.
 On television talk shows, Cheney acknowledged that the dispute &quot;probably will get resolved in court.&quot; Last week, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer had left open the possibility of a compromise.
 The White House said recently that representatives of Enron, an energy trader that was ranked as the seventh-largest U.S. corporation, met six times on energy issues last year with Cheney or his aides.
 Thousands of employees and big and small investors nationwide lost fortunes in Enron's plunging stock as the company spiraled into the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Dec. 2.
 The Justice Department is pursuing a criminal investigation of Enron and its longtime auditor, the accounting firm Arthur Andersen. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been investigating since Oct. 31. Eleven congressional panels have also opened inquiries.
 Asked whether anything in the energy plan was included specifically for Enron or at its urging, Cheney replied: &quot;I can't say. I'm sure they supported many parts of it. ... I can't say a particular proposal came from them.&quot;
 Cheney also defended the conduct of Army Secretary Thomas White, a former vice chairperson of Enron's energy-services division, which reportedly was one of the units used to conceal the company's huge losses. Enron overstated its total profits by more than $580 million since 1997.
 White has &quot;always conducted himself in an ethically fine manner,&quot; Cheney said. &quot;There's no evidence to indicate anybody did anything wrong in the administration.&quot;
 Democratic leaders said the White House is making a serious mistake, and they predicted Enron would be a looming issue in this year's congressional election campaigns.
 &quot;The American people have a right to know what the facts are,&quot; said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. &quot;I think the administration needs to open up, to be willing to be forthcoming with all the information regarding these circumstances.&quot;
 Cheney insisted that providing the list of industry executives would harm his ability to receive advice in the future.
 &quot;Now that would be unprecedented ... in the sense that it would make it virtually impossible for me to have confidential conversations with anybody,&quot; he said on &quot;Fox News Sunday.&quot;
 In the Fox interview he asked, &quot;Can you imagine [Franklin Roosevelt] or Teddy Roosevelt, in the midst of a grave national crisis, dealing with the problems we're having to deal with now, ... trading away a very important fundamental principle of the presidency?&quot;

TITLE: $13Bln Deal Creates New Oil Giant
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CALGARY, Canada - PanCanadian Energy Corp. is merging with Alberta Energy Co. in a more than $13-billion all-stock deal that will create one of the world's biggest independent oil-and-gas companies.
 
The new company, EnCana Corp., would overtake Houston-based Ana dar ko Petroleum Corp. as the world's biggest oil-and-gas exploration and production company.
 The merger also includes the assumption of more than $3 billion in debt.
 &quot;We have decided to come together as equals from positions of strength so that we can achieve a stronger future in this highly competitive marketplace,&quot; said David O'Brien, PanCanadian chairperson and chief executive officer, on Sunday.
 O'Brien will chair EnCana's board and Gwyn Morgan, AEC president and chief executive, will be president and chief executive officer of the new company.
 EnCana's board of directors will consist of an equal number of directors from each company.
 The merger is subject to shareholder and regulator approvals, but is expected to be complete by April. PanCanadian shareholders will own approximately 54 percent and AEC shareholders will own approximately 46 percent of EnCana.
 PanCanadian Energy had been seen as a potential takeover target for an American or European energy company because it was widely held and was one of the biggest cash generators in the Canadian oil patch.
 Alberta Energy is one of the dominant players in western Canada, where it is a major natural-gas producer. It also has significant oil-sands interests, with a part-ownership in Syncrude.
 The combined company will have a reserve base of 7.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.3 billion barrels of oil and liquids. Its daily production targets include 2.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas and 255,000 barrels of oil and liquids. By 2005 it is projecting 1.1 million barrels of oil equivalent.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Beer Co. Bonding
 

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) - Miller Brewing Co. is reportedly discussing a merger with a pair of United Kingdom-based breweries and could announce a deal as early as March.
 The new company would combine Miller, Edinburgh-based Scottish & Newcastle PLC and London-based South African Breweries PLC, overtaking Anheuser-Busch to become the world's largest brewer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in Sunday's editions.
 

 Enron Suicide
 

HOUSTON (AP) - A former Enron Corp. vice chairperson, who died of a gunshot wound to the head, committed suicide, a coroner confirmed Saturday.
 J. Clifford Baxter, 43, resigned in May and was found dead on Friday in a Mercedes-Benz parked not far from his home in the affluent Houston suburb of Sugar Land.
 Police found a suicide note and a .38-caliber revolver at his side. The contents of the note were not disclosed.
 A justice of the peace initially ruled the death a suicide but ordered an autopsy because of the intense interest in the case.
 
 
Warning Unlikely
 

BERLIN (Reuters) - The European Commission will propose on Wednesday that Germany be warned over its rising budget deficit but the move could be blocked by European Union finance ministers, Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Monday.
 Citing unnamed diplomats in Brussels, Handelsblatt said that France, Spain and Britain opposed warning Berlin, making it unlikely the Commission could garner enough votes in the EU's Council of Ministers to have its proposal approved.
 EU finance ministers will meet to consider the Commission's proposal on Feb. 12.
 
 
Cuts Exceeded
 

LONDON (Reuters) - The 10 OPEC countries subject to oil supply quotas slashed output by 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in January to 22.25 million bpd, according to the latest estimate by consultancy Petrologistics, a client of the company said.
 The estimate implies that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, excluding sanctions-bound Iraq, pumped 550,000 bpd above its new agreed ceiling of 21.70 million bpd.
 
 
Turkey Committed
 

ANKARA, Turkey (Reuters) - Economy Minister Kemal Dervis said on Monday that Turkey would "do what was required" ahead of a Feb. 4 IMF meeting set to approve a $12-billion loan to press through a banking law vetoed in part by the president.
 "We have one week. ...We'll do what is required in the coming days," Dervis told reporters in Ankara before markets opened.
 The law, designed to strengthen a banking system at the focus of two financial crises and release financial support for struggling industry, is seen as key to IMF backing.

TITLE: Just Two Out of Three Is Not Good Enough
AUTHOR: By Michael McFaul
TEXT: TEN years ago, President Boris Yeltsin and his newly minted government launched a set of revolutionary changes comparable in scale and scope with the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution. Like these earlier social revolutions, Yeltsin and his band of revolutionaries sought to transform the fundamental organization of the polity and economy within Russia. Their aim was to destroy the Soviet command economy and replace it with a market economy. They also aspired to crush Soviet dictatorship and replace it with a democratic polity. Unlike their counterparts in France in 1789 or Russia in 1917, Russia's anti-communist revolutionaries added an additional task - the dissolution of the Soviet empire. In some respects then, the agenda of change introduced a decade ago in Russia was even more far reaching than that which the Jacobins or Bolsheviks sought to achieve.
 
A decade ago, few predicted that &quot;the reformers&quot; (they were really revolutionaries, but the label has a very negative connotation in both Russian and the West) would be successful in implementing their agenda of triple transformation. At the time, Russia's elite and society were deeply divided on every issue of this agenda. As demonstrated by the overwhelming majority who voted in favor of preserving the union in the March 1991 referendum, Soviet dissolution was very unpopular. The growing resistance to Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and his reforms in the Russian Congress underscored the weak support for market reforms. If many post-communist countries debated what sort of market reforms to pursue after the fall of communism, Russia debated whether to pursue market reforms at all. In 1992, the one set of changes that appeared to be most successful was democratic reforms. Yeltsin and his allies believed that the political struggle was over and the democratic side had won. In January 1992, therefore, the focus had to be on the other two agenda items - confirming Russia's new borders and creating new market institutions.
 A decade later, one has to be impressed with the scale of change already achieved. Well into the 1990s, it remained unclear (1) if boundaries between new states would become permanent and peaceful, (2) if capitalism would ever take hold or (3) if democracy would ever be consolidated. Amazingly, only a decade after this revolution began, two out of three of these transformations have been completed. Ironically, however, democracy - the one change that seemed most secure in 1992 - is most threatened in 2002.
 The Soviet empire is gone and will never be reconstituted. Belarus may join Russia again, but the coercive subjugation of states and peoples adjacent to Russia's borders appears very unlikely. Though thousands of lives have been lost as a result of this empire's dissolution, Russian decolonization has been relatively peaceful compared to the collapse of other empires.
 The Soviet command economy is also extinct and will never rise from the dead. Russia today has a market economy. This market system is severely flawed. But the fundamental institutions of the Russian economy today look more like other capitalist economies around the world and less like the command economy practiced by the Soviet ancien regime. In addition, even former counterrevolutionaries such as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation now endorse the basic tenets of capitalism.
 Third, the autocratic institutions of the Soviet ancien regime have also collapsed. Yet, it is still too early to declare that democratic institutions will permanently replace the old order. Post-communist Russia most certainly has experimented with democratic practices. That every major political leader in post-communist Russia has come to power through the ballot box is a real accomplishment for a country rich in centuries of autocratic rule. That the constitution adopted in 1993 has remained the highest law in the land is also a good sign. In addition, every serious poll conducted in Russia in the past five years shows that a solid majority of Russian citizens support democratic ideas and practices. Yet, compared to the deep roots of Russian independence and Russian capitalism, Russian democracy remains the unfinished agenda item of the revolution launched a decade ago.
 Early in the Putin era, Russia's revolutionaries and their supporters in the West remained hopeful that the new Russian president would move to consolidate the fragile achievements of the revolution from the previous decade. Like all revolutions in their later stages, consolidation would require greater state power, more order and even a return of some old practices (i.e. Thermidor). Supporters of the revolution remained optimistic that Putin was too smart, too young and too Western to become the Bonaparte or Stalin of their revolution.
 He has disappointed. Though still too early to make final judgments, the accumulation of anti-democratic acts has become too great to ignore.
 Perhaps the emasculation of the Federation Council and the brutal methods used in Chechnya could be overlooked or justified.
 Revolutionaries interested in the triple transition - decolonization, capitalism and democracy - could even make rational arguments for why NTV (that is the real NTV) had to go. Vladimir Gusinsky is no Andrei Sakharov. Yet, no one originally dedicated to the revolutionary mission of a decade ago can make an honest argument in defense of TV6's closure. Boris Berezovsky, the majority stakeholder in TV6, has done a lot of damage to the advance of Russia's capitalist and democratic revolution, but the process by which TV6 was shut down has done even more damage. Even my colleagues who work for and support Putin privately express dismay. They defend the president only half-heartedly by saying he was not involved. But his non-involvement is exactly the problem.
 A leader dedicated to furthering democratic practices would speak out about this case and not pretend that the rule of law had suddenly appeared overnight in Russia.
 Two out of three is not bad. That Russia is a not an empire and is a market economy are solid achievements for a decade's work. But two out of three is not good enough. If Putin does eventually erect a new dictatorship, then the two other achievements of the revolution could become less secure. In dictatorships, the military is the most important constituent. In Russia, the military is the most pro-imperial interest group in the country. In contemporary dictatorships, capitalism rarely thrives. China is the exception; Angola or Saudi Arabia the rule. A Russian state strong enough to take away TV6's license can also seize Boeing's assets.
 Russia's revolutionaries from a decade ago (and their supporters in the West) need to re-dedicate themselves to completing their revolutionary agenda before it's too late. Especially those liberals in the Kremlin and the government must begin to question whether their continued support for Putin serves the aims of all parts of the old revolutionary agenda. To ignore the democratic component is to abandon the original ideals of a decade ago.
 
 <i>Michael McFaul is an associate professor of political science and Hoover fellow at Stanford University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His latest book is &quot;Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.&quot; He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Petersburg's New Image-Maker
TEXT: IN recent weeks, I've started to get the impression that Muscovites genuinely hate Petersburgers. Of course, there has always been that traditional rivalry between the two cities, accompanied by certain animosities, but I never really paid it that much attention before. But what I've seen lately is something pretty new.
 
I was listening the other day to Ekho Moskvy, where they were discussing the TV6 crisis. In particular, they were talking about the decision to replace TV6 with NTV's satellite sports channel.
 &quot;It was done by those who came to our city on the Red Arrow,&quot; someone blurted out, referring to the nightly train between Moscow and St. Petersburg. &quot;It's their fault.&quot;
 When I heard this, I genuinely felt ashamed. I remember how my home town was once held up as the most liberal city in Russia, a reputation in which I took real pride.
 &quot;For the second time, St. Petersburg has played a dirty trick on the country,&quot; said Vadim Nesvizhsky, a friend of mine who used to work for the newspaper Segodnya, a Media-MOST publication that was closed down with the rest of oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky's holdings. &quot;The first time was in 1917 and this is the second time. [President Vladimir] Putin started destroying democracy after he liquidated all the challengers for power, turning the country back to pre-Yeltsin, even pre-Gorbachev times.&quot;
 Nesvizhsky is not a journalist anymore. He went into business because he didn't want to &quot;participate in a competition to see who could be the first to jump up and praise the government&quot; (I admit that I had to doctor this quote so that it could appear in a family newspaper).
 I heard Putin say in an interview with some foreign journalists recently that he didn't even know that Segodnya had been closed down. 
 I believe him. About as much as I believe that he wasn't able to find Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov in June 2000 when Putin was on a state visit to Germany and Gusinsky was first arrested. &quot;I couldn't reach [Ustinov] by phone,&quot; Putin famously said at the time.
 Pretty funny. Sounds like the old joke about the KGB investigator who is interrogating a foreigner. When he doesn't get as much information as he wants, he &quot;accidentally&quot; spills a cup of scalding tea in the man's lap, saying, &quot;Oops. Sorry.&quot;
 I should say that I was never a big fan of TV6. I was not among the 21.7 percent of local viewers who preferred this channel over the others. I don't like Russian television in general, so the only thing I watch is the news.
 But I did notice some disturbing things in the way the other channels covered the demise of TV6. I noticed how RTR edited TV6 General Director Yevgeny Kiselyov's comments to make the situation seem much less dire. I noticed that some aspects of the case that would be displeasing to the authorities weren't mentioned at all on NTV. 
 Why do I have the feeling the Ekho Moskvy is next in line for a &quot;business dispute&quot;?
 Here's another joke. The telephone rings and a voice over the line says, &quot;Hello, I'm calling from St. Petersburg...&quot; The person answering the phone says, &quot;Hey, wait a sec! Don't scare me right off the bat!&quot;
 So much for Petersburg's liberal image. Thanks a bunch, Mr. President. You've turned out to be a hell of an image-maker.

TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: Enron the Great, &quot;the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth,&quot; has fallen. The vast wake of its collapse has covered the White House with stinking pitch and occasioned much excited comment among the punditry. Unfortunately, most of these editorial exhalations have veered between tortured defenses of the Dear Leader and gleeful gibes of the most unnuanced sort: e.g., &quot;How is George Bush just like Bill Clinton? They'd both do anything for a Lay.&quot;
 
Here at the Global Eye, of course, we eschew the bitter prose of partisanship and the low tone of sniggering frivolity. As always, we seek to elevate the level of public discourse, to give, as it were, a choral voice to what Lincoln called &quot;the better angels of our nature.&quot; Toward that end, we have today invited a very special guest commentator on the Enron scandal: James, the brother of Jesus.
 Rebbe James has no little experience with the troublesome nexus between government and powerful special interests. He spent several decades as the undisputed head of his brother's religious organization, an extremist variant within Judaism that espoused radical asceticism and stressed charitable works over theological posturing. Resisting both the modernizing pressures of the Western infidels occupying his country and the relentless ambitions of the devious Roman collaborator, Saul of Tarsus, James held the group together until he was executed in a political plot engineered by Roman functionaries and local intriguers. His brother's organization was eliminated a few years later when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and proscribed all local sects except the collaborationists: a few Jewish splinter groups - and the followers of Saul.
 James' central role was later suppressed by the Saultines, who were now almost exclusively Gentile, and overwhelmingly anti-Semitic. They had bigger fish to fry: seizing the wealth and power of the Roman Empire. This Christian coalition - which operated according to Saul's conspiratorial dictum of being &quot;all things to all men,&quot; then lowering the boom once you're in control - condemned the remaining loyalists to Jesus' family as heretics, and relegated James to the back pages of their anthology of folk myth and theological posturing, The New Testament. The rest, as they say, is history - and a pretty sordid tale it's been, too.
 But as they also say, you can't keep a good man down. So, through the miracle of modern publishing, we are pleased to welcome Rebbe James back to the &quot;marketplace of ideas,&quot; to give us his views on the Bush-Enron debacle, and its deeper implications for global business culture - especially the vexing question of labor relations. Take it away, James!
 &quot;Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
 &quot;Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat at your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
 &quot;Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
 &quot;Hearken, my beloved brethren: hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs to the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?&quot;
 Wonder if we will see testimony of this caliber on Capitol Hill anytime soon? Or will the Enron-spattered Democrats let the Enron-encrusted Republicans wriggle free, out of mutual self-interest for the profitable status quo?
 As for the president, and his transparent lies about his relationship to Enron's influence-peddling chairperson, Kenneth Lay, we'll let the venerable Rebbe have the last word:
 &quot;If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.&quot;
 
 
Shadow Warriors
 
Meanwhile, the latest Saultine Emperor has set his own private army loose in Afghanistan. Yes, the pale riders of the CIA are back in the saddle again, operating under &quot;greatly relaxed rules of engagement&quot; as they do Bush's covert bidding, the Boston Globe reports.
 
Bush is building a &quot;shadow military organization&quot; within the CIA, top US officials say - proudly. Like the &quot;unlawful combatants&quot; of Al-Qaida, these troops wear no uniforms, are not bound by the rules of war like honorable soldiers under their country's flag, engage in terrorist actions as well as combat, and answer to no one but their divinely-inspired leader.
 Do these Osamic echoes trouble the self-proclaimed defenders of democracy and civilization? Not a whit. ''If we didn't think it was appropriate, we wouldn't be doing it,&quot; said a senior Bush official. &quot;If the commander-in-chief didn't think it appropriate, we wouldn't be doing it. If it ain't broke, why fix it?&quot;
 Why indeed? After all, a similar set-up worked wonders back in Vietnam, where the CIA's Phoenix Program murdered anywhere from 20,000 (the CIA's own admission) to 70,000 people. But hell, they were just a bunch of commies, right? Or suspected commies. Or suspected commie sympathizers. Or their families. Or whatever. As one Phoenix vet told Congress: &quot;Quite often it was a matter of expediency just to eliminate a person in the field rather than deal with the paperwork.&quot;
 Now those happy days are here again. ''We are doing things I never believed we would do - and I mean killing people!&quot; enthused one of Bush's new Praetorians.
 Rebbe James? Any comments?
 &quot;The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.&quot;
 Heretic! Appeaser! Send this nut to Guantanamo Bay!

TITLE: U.S. Moves Against Taliban Fighters in Kandahar Hospital
AUTHOR: By Ellen Knickmeyer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - U.S. special forces battled al-Qaida gunmen Monday at a hospital where several fighters had been holed up for nearly two months and had threatened to kill anyone who tried to capture them.
 
The Americans moved into the walled Mir Wais Hospital compound at about 3 a.m., supported by helicopters.
 &quot;Early in the morning, the American soldiers came,&quot; said Najabullah, an Afghan commander, briefing Kandahar government officials. &quot;The Arabs saw them, and they started fighting.&quot;
 Two loud explosions and gunfire rocked the compound as the raid was launched. Najabullah said that the besieged men had hurled grenades. A much larger explosion was heard more than five hours later, and Najabullah said a fire had broken out. Fire trucks were allowed inside.
 There was no immediate word of casualties, and it was unclear if any of the al-Qaida fighters, at least some of whom are believed to be Arabs, had been captured.
 Journalists were kept away from the hospital by roadblocks of concertina wire and armed U.S. and Afghan troops.
 At last count, there were believed to be about five or six gunmen still in the hospital, from an original 10 or so. Wounded and ill, they were left behind and trapped by the quick collapse of Taliban rule as Afg hanistan fell to U.S.-led coalition forces.
 They barricaded themselves in five or six rooms of the internal medicine ward and demanded that hospital staff treat and feed them. They threatened to blow themselves and the hospital up if any attempt was made to capture them and refused to allow any non-Muslims near them.
 Hospital officials ordered food and water cut off two weeks ago in an attempt to starve them out. There were conflicting reports whether staff had carried the order out, but the men were believed to have already stockpiled food and water.
 Medical staff had long expressed fears that they would wreak enormous violence if any attempt was made to take them, or if they saw a foreigner.
 On Jan. 8, one fighter leaped out of a second-story window in an escape attempt, then blew himself up with a grenade as Afghan security personnel surrounded him. Two other al-Qaida men were reported to have successfully escaped earlier, but it has never been confirmed.
 In December, two of the gunmen were captured when soldiers used the only doctor the men trusted to trick them. He called them into another room, guaranteeing they would be safe. 
 They were apparently promised safe passage to neighboring Pakistan. When they separated themselves from their comrades, they were overpowered and captured.
 The captured men were handed over to U.S. forces, who have set up a military base at the Kandahar airport. They were both Chinese, presumably militant Uighurs demanding independence for their Muslim-dominated northwestern province of China.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Dalai Lama Admitted
 

BOMBAY, India (AP) - Looking weak but still smiling, the Dalai Lama was admitted into a Bom bay hospital on Sun day after doctors detected a lump in his stomach.
 Wearing his red Buddhist robe, the supreme leader of Tibetan Buddhists walked into Lilawati Hospital with the help of aides.
 "The Dalai Lama is cheerful and talking to his associates," Prakash Mhatre, a director at Lilawati Hospital, said later.
 Mhatre said doctors were taking X-rays and conducting ultrasound and blood tests. He said test results were expected Monday.
 The Dalai Lama, 66, had undergone a medical checkup at the same hospital in early December. "He was found to be completely normal then," Mhatre said.
 
 
Reshuffle Delayed
 

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Kim Dae-jung plans to reshuffle his government this week, but a planned cabinet meeting at which ministers were to have resigned en masse has been postponed, the presidential Blue House said on Monday.
 It was not immediately clear how many ministers would be reappointed in the changes, which Kim has been under pressure to make because of a spate of political scandals and a presidential election due later this year.
 The Blue House initially said the 20-strong cabinet would quit on Tuesday to pave the way for Kim to name new ministers before next week. Later, administration officials said Kim would first meet political and social leaders ahead of the reshuffle.
 "Even if the whole cabinet does not tender its resignation, the reshuffle will be carried out," a Blue House official said.
 Local media reports and political analysts have said six or seven key ministers could be replaced in a swap-out that would form a largely technocrat and politically neutral government.
 Kim wants to give fresh impetus to ties with North Korea which have been icy for months but have shown some signs of a slight thaw.
 
 
Explosions in Lagos
 

LAGOS (Reuters) - Many people, mostly children, were missing and thousands homeless after multiple bomb explosions at a Nigerian military armory, triggered by an accidental fire in Lagos on Sunday, police said.
 Witnesses said hundreds of soldiers and their families hurriedly evacuated the Ikeja army cantonment in Nigeria's biggest city Lagos and were milling in the open overnight.
 "Many people have reported missing children, and there are children looking for their parents," Lagos Police Commissioner Mike Okiro said early on Monday.
 "I have reports from the field that many people in the Ikeja area have taken refuge at police stations," Okiro said.
 He said he had no information on casualties.
 The army, which moved quickly to dispel speculation about a military takeover of power in the coup-prone country, has made no mention of any deaths or injuries.
 A senior officer said earlier that he feared there would many casualties given the location of the armory near a crowded barracks and a residential area.
 Explosions continued to rock the city sporadically late into the night, fueling an inferno raging in the barracks since the first blast late on Sunday afternoon.
 
 
 Test Success
 

WASHINGTON (AP) - An interceptor rocket launched from a U.S. Navy ship smashed into a dummy missile high over the Pacific on Friday night in the latest test in the Pentagon's plans to shield America from long-range missiles.
 The interceptor's "kinetic warhead" slammed into the dummy missile and destroyed more than 500 kilometers northwest of Hawaii, a Pentagon spokesperson said. The Pentagon had delayed the test for four hours on Friday evening to let a military medical evacuation ship cross the test area to land at the base at Pearl Harbor.
 The missile exercise was the latest in a series of tests the Pentagon is conducting to develop several ways to shoot down long-range missiles fired at the United States. 
 U.S. President George W. Bush announced last year he was pulling the United States out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which bans such anti-missile systems.
 Critics say the missile-defense program is too expensive and unrealistic, arguing that the few countries with the technology to threaten the United States could find ways to defeat missile defenses.
 
 
Price of Embargo 
 

HAVANA (AP) - With pressure building to open up U.S.-Cuba trade, a leading anti-embargo group on Monday reported that U.S. farmers lose an estimated $1.24 billion annually because of sanctions against this communist country.
 A study commissioned by the Washington-based Cuba Policy Foundation estimated that America is missing out on up to $3.6 billion more in related economic activity because of the 40-year-old U.S. embargo.
 "Isolation has not led to reform and it's costing farmers and drug companies that want to do business," said Sally Grooms Cowal, foundation president and the former U.S. diplomat who housed Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez during the last part of his stay in America.
 "This study should encourage Congress to take some steps if only to help out American farmers," Cowal said by telephone on Sunday.
 
 
Iranian Overture
 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian President Mohammad Khatami warned "foreigners" against interfering with Iraq's territorial integrity, state-run Teh ran television reported on Sunday.
 Khatami did not elaborate, but the comment was an apparent reference to the threat of U.S.-led forces attacking Iraq - Washington's longtime foe - as part of the war against terrorism.
 Khatami's comments were made following talks with visiting Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri.
 Iran and Iraq, which share a 1,270-kilometer border, host rebels fighting each other's government. A war from 1980 to 1988 between the two Muslim nations killed or wounded more than 1 million people before a U.N.-brokered cease-fire ended the bloodshed.
 On Sunday, Sabri and Khatami called for a resumption of peaceful relations. Sabri said the time has come for both countries to forget the past and work for permanent peace and cooperation.
 Sabri's four-day visit, which ends Monday, comes on the heels of Iran's recent release of 697 Iraqi soldiers. Iraq said it had released to Iran 50 Iranian prisoners. 



TITLE: Unheralded Swede Wins Weird Open
AUTHOR: By Phil Brown
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MELBOURNE, Australia - Maybe this was fitting. In a tournament that set records for early exits by top stars, Thomas Johansson wound up as one unlikely Grand Slam champion.
 
The 26-year-old Swede was supposed to be a bit player at the Australian Open. Instead, he walks away with the title.
 Johansson, seeded 16th, beat the more established Marat Safin of Russia 3-6, 6-4, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4) Sunday in a final lasting nearly 3 hours.
 &quot;These two weeks have been the best two weeks of my life,&quot; he said. &quot;Today was just a dream come true. It was unbelievable. I don't have the words to say how happy I am.&quot;
 How unexpected was Johansson's triumph?
 
. In 24 previous Grand Slam tournaments, he never had advanced beyond the quarterfinals (1998, 2000 U.S. Opens).
 . He came into the Australian Open with a total of six career titles since turning pro in 1994.
 
The women offered far fewer surprises, with defending champion and No. 1 Jennifer Capriati meeting Martina Hingis in the final for the second straight year.
 Capriati rebounded from being down 0-4 in the second set, saved a record four match points, and then saw Hingis wilt in the 35-degree Celsius heat of the final set. Capriati won 4-6, 7-6 (7), 6-2 Saturday.
 She has now won three of the last five Grand Slams tournaments. Hingis, meanwhile, has lost three straight Australian finals after winning three titles in a row. She has not won a major since the 1999 Australian Open.
 Safin rebounded from an early break in the fourth set but then quickly fell behind 5-0 in the tiebreaker. One of Johansson's best backhands left Safin sprawling at 4-0.
 From 1-6, Safin saved three match points. The Russian then drew Johansson in to the net with a drop shot but lobbed long to end the match.
 Safin said he did not feel comfortable on the court.
 &quot;He was overpowering me from the baseline, backhand to backhand,&quot; Safin said, &quot;which is very unusual for me.&quot;

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Correct Change Please
 

LONDON (Reuters) - Arsenal has vowed to hold its own inquiry into a missile-throwing incident during its fourth-round FA Cup match against Liverpool on Sunday, and said the perpetrator would be banned from their grounds for life.
 Arsenal beat the defending champions 1-0 in a hard-fought encounter marred by red cards for two home-side players and Liverpool's Jamie Carragher, who was sent off after tossing a coin thrown at him back into the crowd.
 "The club believe this is an isolated incident, as our supporters are usually very well behaved," said an Arsenal statement.
 "However, we are carrying out a full investigation into the matter, as this kind of behavior is wholly unacceptable and needs to be eradicated from the game.
 "When the perpetrator is positively identified, he or she will be banned from Arsenal for life."
 
 
Leaders Bounced
 

ADELAIDE, Australia (Reuters) - Left-arm spinner Nicky Boje took four wickets as South Africa defeated triangular-series leader New Zealand by 93 runs on Sunday.
 In a dramatic reversal of form for both teams, South Africa hit 253 for five from their 50 overs before dismissing the New Zealanders for 160 in 45.2 overs.
 Jonty Rhodes (55) and wicketkeeper Mark Boucher, who scored a dazzling 57 not out from 32 balls to win the player-of-the-match award, shared a fifth-wicket partnership for South Africa of 86 from 45 balls.
 As a result of their efforts, 111 runs were scored from the last 10 overs.
 
 
Hanging Them Up
 

LONDON (Reuters) - Panama's Roberto Duran, who won world titles in four different weight classes, has finally decided to retire, at the age of 50, after failing to recover from injuries sustained in a car crash in Argentina in October.
 "I can't return to fight anymore because this [recovery] is going to take a lot more time," Duran told the newspaper El Panama America on Sunday.
 The Panamanian was injured in the car accident along with his son, also named Roberto, and two journalists, who were passengers in the same vehicle.
 He suffered fractured ribs and a collapsed lung and underwent emergency surgery.
 Apart from 1985, Duran has fought at least once every year since 1967, finishing with a 104-16 career record.
 In his last fight in July last year, he lost a unanimous decision to 39-year-old Hector Camacho in Denver, Colorado.
 
 
Record-Wave Pool
 

BERLIN (Reuters) - Six world records were set in the final World Cup meeting on the weekend after Britain's Zoe Baker and Germany's Thomas Rup prath broke two short-course records on Sunday.
 Finishing the $780,000, nine-event World Cup series with a bang, Baker set a new short-course record in the 50-meter breaststroke of 30.31 seconds to collect $4,000, beating the mark of 30.43 seconds set by Sweden's Emma Igelstrom last week.
 Rupprath set a new mark in the 50-meter butterfly, breaking the record of 50.26 he set in December with a time of 50.10.
 In the fast Berlin Europasportpark pool, where the European championships will be held this summer, Ame rican Ed Moses set his fifth record in just over a week on Saturday while winning the 200-meter breaststroke in 2:03.17.