SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #741 (7), Friday, February 1, 2002
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TITLE: 3-Day Visas Are Off to Shaky Start
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina and Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Anyone thinking of visiting Russia with a new fast-track visa next week should think again.
 
The much-trumpeted introduction of the three-day tourist visas on Friday will be delayed as multiple government agencies, tour operators and airlines scramble to get their act together.
 "On Feb. 1, I assure you, there won't be a single person who will get a visa," Alexei Utkin of the Foreign Ministry's consular department said by telephone Wednesday.
 The St. Petersburg Foreign Ministry department, however, said the first three tourists coming to the city from Sweden will get their 72-hour visas on Feb. 2 at Pulkovo International Airport.
 "They are from a Swedish tourism company that would like to monitor the situation in the city regarding possible tours to St. Petersburg," said Natalya Piletskaya, head of the Russkiye Prostory travel company, one of the 12 local companies authorized to handle applications for the short-term visas.
 So far, the players seem largely confused by the new procedure.
 "When we submitted the first applications [on Wednesday], Foreign Ministry officials did not understand what we wanted and told us they haven't heard about the new rules. The problem was solved after we talked to the head of the office," Piletskaya said.
 As recently as Jan. 22, both the Foreign Ministry and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry had assured reporters that the 3-day visa system would be up and running on Feb. 1.
 This will be the second time that the visas, originally slated to appear on Sept. 1 last year, has been postponed.
 Under the procedure approved by the cabinet on June 28, citizens of Schengen countries, plus Britain, Switzerland and Japan, would be able to order the 72-hour visas through selected tourism agencies at least two days in advance. They would then collect the visas on arrival at any of six entry points, including Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow and St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport.
 According to Piletskaya, the federal Foreign Ministry issued a quota, under which each company is allowed to process not more than 10 visa applications per day.
 However, the St. Petersburg branch said that it would process as many applications as the local tourism companies submit, Piletskaya said.
 The latest plan ran into trouble when representatives of eight of the 29 chosen tourist companies met with federal Foreign Ministry consular department officials Tuesday to discuss the final preparations for issuing the visas. Federal Security Service and Interior Ministry officials were also present at the meeting.
 The tourism agencies complained that airlines were refusing to carry passengers who did not already have visas when boarding their flights.
 Currently, visas act as a kind of guarantee to airlines that their passengers will be admitted into Russia, Utkin said. But, with tourists collecting visas on arrival, airlines would no longer have this guarantee.
 In cases of deportation, airlines have to pay out of their own pockets.
 Utkin absolved the Foreign Ministry of responsibility for the latest hitch. 
 "Tourists companies have to settle [their work] with air carriers," he said."
 In any case, the consular entry point at Sheremetyevo is not yet ready and the Federal Border Service has not yet allocated all the necessary checkpoints for the new visas, Utkin said.
 Yaroslav Tarasyuk, spokesperson for the Economic Development and Trade Ministry's tourism department, which was also responsible for implementing the new visas, said he was not aware of a delay in the introduction of the visas. 
 Tarasyuk said that once his ministry selected the tourist companies for the project, it was up to the Foreign Ministry's consular department to control the preparations. He said that his ministry was not responsible for monitoring the readiness of the tourist companies.
 "We don't have enough understanding of what passengers should do when they get to the airport - whether there will be signs, whether a consul will meet them or whether they will stand there feeling lost and wondering what to do," said a representative of one Moscow firm on condition of anonymity. "No one has answered these questions yet." 
 But Oleg Davtyan, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Foreign Ministry Department, said that at Pulkovo airport this wouldn't be a problem. 
 "The consular department was opened there in 1992. There's not going to be confusion of any kind because the tourists will be met by Tourism Committee representatives right after they leave their plane and will be accompanied to the consular department," Davtyan said on Thursday.
 In order to receive a visa under the new regulations, a tourist must present consular officials with his or her passport, proof of insurance, a voucher from the tourism operator that processed their application and one passport-type photograph.
 Tour operators polled Wednesday said that although they have received guidelines from the Foreign Ministry on administering the visas, they did not have a clear picture of how the visas will be processed on arrival.
 In St. Petersburg, 12 companies have been authorized to process such applications, including Fremad Russia Petersburg, Hotel Pulkovskaya, Kosmos Ltd., Neva, Grand Hotel Europe, Nika, Nordic Travel, Corinthia Nevskij Palace, Russkiye Prostory, Dyuim, Komintur and Taleon.
 "Our partners in Japan are not happy about the new system," said Lyubov Sofyan, head of Nordic Travel company.
 "After we looked through the information about the new regulations, we decided that the new system is not good for the average Japanese tourist and is not profitable for us," said Michiko Kimura, a representative of BHB Planning tourism operator based in Japan in his reply to the Nordic Travel.
 "The procedure is too difficult. If it was done for a term of a month or two, it would have been better. But here there are just too many documents and to much expense. Each time, we have to drive to the Foreign Ministry to bring them documents for each individual tourist and transfer the money in advance. But you know how our Sberbank works," Lyubov Sofyan said.
 Sofyan said that real cost of a 72-hour visa would not be $35, but about $50, including a tourism-operator service fee.
 "We should be careful about that because if we raise the price much higher, we would kill the idea right from the start," she said.
 Irina Volkova, marketing director with Moscow's Akademservis, also said that more information is needed, but that there was no need to be pessimistic.
 "I assume there will be a little delay, but this will not discredit the experiment," she said. 
 "This is a new system that did not exist before. Of course the sooner it happens, the better for both tourists and us. But if it starts on Feb.5 not Feb. 1 it's not vitally important."
 "The main thing is that this decision has been made," Volkova said. "It's best to introduce it later and ensure that, when tourists come to the country, everything will be clear for them."

TITLE: Village To Snub Its Famous Son
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Former President Boris Yeltsin will get one less birthday greeting Friday when he turns 71. The folks in Yeltsin's birthplace of Butka in the Urals will for the first time in decades not send a congratulatory telegram. 
 
"No, we won't send him anything this year. We don't have any money, and he doesn't seem to care anyway," Galina Filimonova, the deputy head of the local administration, said Thursday in a telephone interview.
 The villagers of Butka, some 250 kilometers southeast of Yekaterinburg, have never asked for much from their most famous son. But a snub from Yeltsin last year was just too much.
 Butka, which has 4,991 residents according to the latest census, conducted about a month ago, has had a love-hate relationship with Yeltsin for decades. 
 Locals, like many of their fellow citizens, are light in their praise of his accomplishments and heavy in their complaints that his reforms left them mired in poverty.
 At the same time, however, Butka quietly cherishes the memory that such an important man spent the first three years of his life there. 
 A tiny folk museum in a room at the village's only school has a corner dedicated to Yeltsin. The other exhibits include old peasant furniture, World War II memorabilia and a mammoth's tusk. A few of Yeltsin's distant cousins remain in Butka, but they live like everybody else, with no support from the once most powerful person in Russia.
 Many villagers remember that as head of the Sverdlovsk region's Communist Party Committee from 1975 to 1986, Yeltsin would occasionally fly in on a helicopter. Back then, he organized the construction of a new road to the village and built a 60-bed hospital and a bridge.
 But the further Yeltsin climbed up the power ladder, the less involved he became with Butka. Ties continued to weaken during his presidency, and they seem to have vanished since his abrupt resignation at the end of 1999.
 Villagers took the growing distance stoically. Last year, when Yeltsin celebrated his 70th birthday in a hospital bed, Butka sent as usual a congratulatory telegram, with little expectation of any reply in light of Yeltsin's sickness.
 "He turned 70, we just had to congratulate him," Filimonova said.
 But the villagers' patience expired last fall when they suffered what they deemed to be the biggest offense ever from Yeltsin.
 Butka was preparing to celebrate a birthday of its own - the village was to turn 325 on Nov. 1.
 "We drew up a big event that included theatrical performances depicting Butka's history, events for children and celebration festivities for the people," Filimonova said.
 "We also invited a number of guests of honor, those who lived in Butka and then became important and famous. Among the invited were Yeltsin and his wife," she said.
 The people of Butka never expected Yeltsin to show up.
 "But he did not even send any thank-you note or some kind of congratulatory message," Filimonova said a quiet fury her voice. 
 "It was also the 60th anniversary of the school opening last year. And there was nothing from him on that occasion either," she said. 
 Notably, Yeltsin never attended Butka's school - he moved while still a toddler and, in any case, the village's first school was built some time later.
 "But he himself has called it his native school in the past," Filimonova argued. 
 Indeed, the local museum has proof in a signed copy of Yeltsin's memoirs "Against the Grain."
 "To my native school in my native Butka on my native land," the inscription reads.
 "He could have just sent something to commemorate the anniversary," Filimonova said. "We are not chasing a fortune here. All we need is something we could save as memorabilia."
 Since Yeltsin's departure from the political arena, he has spent most of his time out of the spotlight.
 It was unclear Thursday what plans he had for his birthday. Yeltsin's aide, Vladimir Shevchenko, was unavailable for comment.
 Last year, Yeltsin welcomed a handful of guests, including his family members and President Vladimir Putin, to his hospital room. He had an equally low-key party at his Gorki-9 residence outside of Moscow the year before.
 Butka residents, while sticking to their pledge not to waste 100 rubles on another unrequited telegram, still appear to feel some warmth for Yeltsin.
 "Maybe our invitation and other telegrams were not reaching him?" Filimonova said, echoing the long-held Russian belief that a good tsar is always surrounded by vicious subordinates. 
 "Maybe you, through your newspaper, will tell him that we wish him many more years of life and wish for him to remember us," she said.

TITLE: Kremlin Pushing for All-Sports Channel
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With sports emerging as a new Kremlin priority, President Vladimir Putin has ordered the government to examine the feasibility of creating a national sports television channel.
 
The order, announced by Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko on Tuesday, is raising questions about whether TV6's airwaves might be taken over by a Kremlin-backed owner ready to promote a healthy lifestyle instead of the team of journalists who saw the plug pulled on their channel under a court order last week.
 In another twist, 7TV - a little-known, sports-oriented channel with apparent ties to the Interior Ministry and the Kremlin - said it was considering bidding in a Mar. 27 tender for TV6's frequency.
 Matviyenko said it was too early to spell out any details about the proposed sports channel - whether it might be put on TV6's frequency (which she doubted), whether an existing frequency such as 7TV's might be made national or whether a new channel might be set up.
 The idea to fill TV6's airtime with sports was first voiced this week by Leonid Tyagachyov, the head of Russia's National Olympic Committee and reportedly President Vladimir Putin's skiing coach.
 Tyagachyov added credence to his proposal Wednesday, signing an Olympic Committee sponsorship agreement with LUKoil. LUKoil was the TV6 minority shareholder whose bankruptcy lawsuit led to the shutdown of the station Jan. 22.
 "People are tired of politics, and when they saw sports on channel 6 they began to ask me: 'Have you already received TV6?'" Tyagachyov said, referring to the sports programming that has been broadcast on TV6's frequency since the shutdown.
 "Well, I haven't," he said. "But if this channel is offered to me, I wouldn't mind."
 7TV head Oleg Aksyonov said the channel would bid in the tender if it gets enough government support. 
 "We want to create a full-fledged sports channel," Aksyonov was quoted Wednesday by Kommersant as saying. "I don't see much sense in taking part in the tender without the support of the State Sports Committee and the Olympic Committee. Our channel will be private in its ownership but of importance to the state."
 Two sources at the Press Ministry said 7TV officials had dropped by Wednesday to find out how to apply for the tender. 7TV officials could not be reached for comment.
 Sports has become a hot topic for the Kremlin in recent days. The State Council, a consultative body comprised of regional governors, discussed on Wednesday a plan to promote sports and fitness across the country for the next three years. Putin attended the talks.
 Putin on Wednesday distanced himself from his national sports channel proposal, saying he was just looking for a way to get more sports coverage on existing television channels, Interfax reported.
 Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, who is overseeing the TV6 license tender, said on the sidelines of the State Council meeting that no one has placed a bid yet.
 "I rule out the possibility that a decision might be made without a contest," he was quoted by news agencies as saying.
 Matviyenko also said Wednesday that a sports channel has little chance of winning the TV6 tender. "The Press Ministry has a special position on that," she said, according to Interfax.
 7TV, with a weak transmitter on a UHF frequency in Moscow, is little known even in the capital. The company was spun off from another obscure television firm, Detsky Proyekt, which received several licenses in 1997 but failed to broadcast in all of the permitted regions. 
 Last December, 7TV came into being as a sports-oriented channel. Its main shareholder is medium-sized Krasbank.
 A source in the Press Ministry said Wednesday that 7TV has ties to the Spartak soccer club, which in turn has LUKoil as its general sponsor.

TITLE: Kasyanov Signs Off on 3-Year Drug Plan
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has signed off on a three-year plan to tackle the country's growing drug problem. But critics fear the new program, to be overseen by the Interior Ministry, will perpetuate repressive measures against addicts without duly promoting prevention and treatment programs.
 
Presenting the program to the State Duma late last year, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov called for a "total ban on illegal acts related to drugs" and tougher legislation to deal with the problem.
 "This is prompted by the drug situation that has arisen in our country over the past decade," Gryzlov said. "The development of legislation is lagging behind the rapidly deteriorating situation."
 During the presentation Gryzlov outlined the main points of the program, signed last week with a price tag of 1.66 billion rubles ($54 million).
 The minister called for regular, comprehensive medical exams for children and teenagers, "anti-narcotics propaganda" and tougher punishment for drug users and dealers. He also said the program would require new technologies for monitoring the drug market, as well as closer cooperation with local and international agencies. Gryzlov said more funding would be needed to set up prevention programs and to improve the work of law enforcement agencies.
 Drug abuse and drug-related crime have skyrocketed over the past 10 years. While there were 156,000 registered drug users in 1995, the number nearly tripled by 2000 to reach 450,000. But police and government officials agree these figures are a fraction of the real number of addicts, estimated to be 2 million to 3 million. Last year, Health Ministry statistics put the official number of drug users at 700,000, Oleg Zykov, a Duma expert on drug abuse, said Wednesday.
 Police data also reflect a rise in drug-related crime, with nearly a quarter of a million such crimes registered last year.
 But Zykov, who has reviewed the new program, warned that it focused too much on reducing supply and did not give adequate attention to prevention, treatment and harm reduction.
 "The drug trade is a market and if the state puts pressure on the supply, it will only lead to a price increase," said Zykov, who is also president of the Moscow-based charitable foundation No to Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. 
 One former drug addict, who quit after 10 years of abuse and now consults various "rehab" programs, believes lawmakers fail to understand that drug addiction is an illness rather than a crime.
 "I have lots of friends who were thrown in prison for being drug addicts and all of them returned to drugs after being released," said Olga, 26, who declined to give her last name.
 State detoxication programs are notoriously ineffective, and the nation's private rehabilitation centers tend to be concentrated in big cities and are too expensive for many families, she said.
 "Parents living in the regions can't afford to pay the usual $2,500 or so for their child's rehabilitation," she said.
 One of the most difficult problems to tackle will be the soaring popularity of hard drugs, especially heroin.
 Yevgeny Ochkovsky, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, said the increase is partially blamed on Russia's porous borders with central Asia, making the region the preferred route for drug traffickers from Afghanistan.
 According to data compiled by Ochkovsky's office, the share of heroin addicts among registered drug users rose from 0.004 percent in 1995 to 26 percent in 2000. Heroin accounted for 37 percent of police drug seizures in 2000, Ochkovsky said, and the figures are growing.
 According to the World Health Organization, the spread of intravenous drug use has led to alarmingly high rates of HIV, accounting for more than 90 percent of the country's new cases.
 Under the law, a person seized with one of 80 controlled substances may face up to three years in jail. If the amount is considered "not large scale," punishment may be restricted to a fine, community service or two weeks in jail.

TITLE: Russia Gives Restrained Response to Bush Speech
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Russia offered a muted response to U.S. President George W. Bush's declaration that Iraq, North Korea and Iran are an "axis of evil," with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Thursday renewing Moscow's call for Iraq to readmit UN inspectors.
 
Ivanov made no direct reference to Bush's State of the Union address delivered early Wednesday Moscow time. 
 Russia, which is owed billions of dollars by Iraq and wants to tap into its vast oil resources, is eager that United Nations weapons inspectors be allowed access to Iraqi sites. 
 Ivanov, speaking at a meeting with Moroccan Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaissa, said Iraq should allow the return of arms inspectors and in return the international community should drop sanctions, Interfax reported.
 Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, who flew in Wednesday after talks in China, left for Baghdad on Thursday without meeting with Ivanov as expected, news agencies said.
 Aziz's departure could be linked to "the Iraqi leadership's intention to hold consultations about accusations against Iraq" made in Bush's speech, Itar-Tass said.
 Besides Iraq, Russia has long been nurturing political and economic ties with Iran and North Korea.
 Several lawmakers fretted that Bush had been too harsh in his address and that Russia should prepare an appropriate response.
 Dmitry Rogozin, head of the State Duma's International Affairs Committee, said Bush had not used the usual phrases such as "rogue states" or "problem countries" to slam Iraq, North Korea and Iran. "Axis of evil" were the same words used to describe Germany and Japan during World War II, Rogozin was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 "The Americans truly believe that the area of military action must be expanded," he said on Ekho Moskvy radio. "Russia should think hard and undertake specific diplomatic and other measures."
 Mikhail Margelov, Rogozin's counterpart in the Federation Council, suggested Thursday that Bush's verbal attack on the three nations reflected "aggressive plans," Interfax reported.
 "It's not yet clear how far U.S. allies, for example Europe, are prepared to support his position," he said. 
 Russia got only one mention in the address. Bush mentioned that Russia, China and India were cooperating in the U.S. drive "for peace and prosperity."
 Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov said the "cynical" politicians had misunderstood Bush's address, taking some of its emotional content at face value.
 "They don't understand the idea of a lone leader in a difficult situation," he said.
 Andrei Ryabov, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said Bush had shown he was concerned about rooting out terror, not about rubbing Russia the wrong way.
 "After the successful operation in Afghanistan, Russia is not of great significance," Ryabov said.
 Viktor Supyan, deputy head of the U.S.A. and Canada Institute, said the speech gave Russian politicians no sign about whether ties with the United States were growing stronger or weaker.
 "Many, however, will not welcome the tone of the speech that suggests America has the right to take actions in this campaign - who will be tried, who will be forgiven - without consulting others," he said.

TITLE: Berezovsky Under Fire for Chechen Contacts
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Boris Berezovsky acknowledged in an interview Thursday that he gave $2 million to Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, but reiterated that both men were government officials at the time and the money was earmarked for reconstruction work. 
 
"If this is what I'm being accused of, I'll be happy to answer any questions," Berezovsky told the Gazeta newspaper. 
 Berezovsky and his business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili are under investigation by prosecutors and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, on suspicion of funding Chechen rebels and thereby helping "organize illegal armed formations." Both agencies have declined to give details about the case. 
 The Chechnya probe has been added to an earlier investigation into the embezzlement of millions of dollars from Aeroflot, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General's Office said. 
 In the Gazeta interview, Berezovsky, who maintains his innocence in both cases, said, "Aeroflot had been an organization for exporting money abroad to support the Communist Party and KGB." 
 He also said the arrest in 2000 of former Aeroflot executive Nikolai Glushkov was instigated by the FSB as punishment for his attempts to rid the airline's ranks of "hundreds of KGB employees." 
 Berezovsky, who lives in self-imposed exile in London, said he still maintains contacts with Chechen leaders. Berezovsky, who served as deputy chief of the Kremlin's Security Council from 1996 to 1998, has suggested the investigation into his ties with Chechen rebels and the closing of his TV6 television station are meant to keep him from producing a film implicating Russian intelligence agencies in the apartment blasts that killed some 300 people in 1999. He said "foreign" journalists are working on the film but declined to give details. 
 Berezovsky denied reports that he paid ransoms to Chechen kidnappers during his stint at the Security Council, saying the most he ever handed over was a watch presented to Salman Raduyev - now facing trial on terrorism charges - after the release of 22 officers from an elite police unit.

TITLE: Moscow Takes Over Helicopter Probe
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia - Federal prosecutors took over the investigation into a helicopter crash in Chechnya that killed 14 people, including two generals, officials said Wednesday. Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said his office will handle the probe instead of local prosecutors because of the seriousness of the accident, according to Interfax. 
 
Fridinsky said the crash of the Mi-8 helicopter Sunday was most likely caused by an explosion on board. "Other possibilities, such as an act of sabotage or terrorism, are not being fully discarded either," he said. 
 Meanwhile, the government's minister overseeing Chechnya, Vladimir Yelagin, said some $30 million in foreign aid from 15 countries could be channeled to the region this year for reconstruction efforts. Speaking after a meeting with British officials, he said much of the aid would be spent on education, psychological services for children and employment for young people, Interfax said. 
 On Wednesday, federal artillery pounded Chechnya's Nozhai-Yurt and Vedeno districts. Rebels fired on federal outposts 10 times over the past 24 hours, killing two service personnel and wounding five others, an official in the pro-Moscow Chechen administration said on condition of anonymity. 
 The military commandant in Grozny said Wednesday that six soldiers of the Grozny military prosecutor's office had been killed since Jan. 20.

TITLE: Capital Unveils Street-Children Plan
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Two weeks after President Vladimir Putin ordered his cabinet to tackle the problem of homeless and runaway children, government officials have slapped together a plan to get kids off the street with the help of a 24-hour hotline, new shelters and task forces at four separate ministries.
 
Beginning Friday, the Labor Ministry is to start operating a Moscow hotline for reporting cases of child abuse, neglect or homelessness, Deputy Labor Minister Galina Karelova told reporters Tuesday.
 "Any adult can call to say a child is being neglected or is freezing on the street, any child can call to say he has been a victim of violence," she said.
 With the unwieldiness and poor coordination of the country's child-welfare system, government officials hope the hotline will help authorities locate and take care of youngsters living in the streets - estimated to number at least one million nationwide.
 The hotline, to be staffed by ministry officials and social-work students, will operate for at least six months, during which the ministry hopes to "make arrangements" for the children, Karelova said. 
 While the kids' ultimate destination could be home, foster care or a permanent child welfare institution, the immediate steps to take will be up to the hotline operators. Most children, Karelova said, would be sent to one of the city's three existing shelters or one of six new shelters to be opened later this year.
 Under the plan, police officers would be responsible for bringing the children to the shelters and establishing their identities. Karelova did not say whether this would entail changing existing legislation, which does not allow police to detain street children unless they are suspected of a crime.
 The Interior Ministry has not issued any official statement on its role in the plan, but some officials reached Tuesday were less than enthusiastic about chasing runaways and suggested that other ministries were shirking responsibility.
 "Putting police in charge will not solve the problem of homeless kids. We won't be able to do more than catch them," said an official at the ministry's department for ensuring public order, speaking on condition of anonymity.
 Karelova said she would meet with Interior Ministry officials Thursday to discuss cooperation.
 "We understand the main burden of the problem is on the Interior Ministry at the moment but we are ready to assist," she said.
 Karelova also said that four task forces will be formed at the Interior, Labor, Education and Health ministries to handle different aspects of the problem.
 Earlier this month Putin scolded Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko for the government's failure to deal with homeless children and the "criminalization of teenagers." 
 Most street children are not orphans but have run away from parents who drink heavily, abuse them or have no money to feed them. Some 90 percent of Moscow's homeless children have flocked to the city from the regions or CIS countries.
 Child-welfare experts have warned against expanding and "bureaucratizing" the existing system, calling instead for streamlining and better trained social workers. 
 The number of the Labor Ministry's hotline is (095) 925-5385.

TITLE: Poles Get 1-Euro MiG-Fighter Bargain
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - An $0.86 deal between NATO allies could net Russia $20 million.
 
Poland on Tuesday agreed to buy 23 Soviet-built MiG-29 fighters from Germany - for one euro ($0.86).
 The price is a symbolic gesture by Germany, which inherited the MiGs after its reunification with East Germany, Polish defense ministry spokesperson Artur Weber said in a telephone interview from Warsaw.
 He said Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski had flown to Berlin to close the deal with officially his German counterpart Rudolf Scharping.
 The MiGs help Poland meet a NATO deadline on equipping its air force and, combined with the 22 MiG-29s it already has, give Poland the second-largest fleet of this type of craft outside the Commonwealth of Independent States, after India, analysts said.
 Piotr Butowski, a Warsaw-based independent defense analyst, said that the deal might also mean upgrade contracts for the manufacturer of the craft - Russian Aircraft Corp. MiG.
 Marat Kenzhetayev, an expert at Moscow's Center for Arms Control, said state-owned MiG could make as much as $20 million on upgrading the new additions to the Polish fleet.
 The military attache at the Polish Embassy, Major General Stanislav Vozniak, confirmed that Poland would need to modernize some of the jets, but not the whole fleet, as a few will be used for spare parts.
 Mikhail Pyadushkin, editor of Export Vooruzheniy (Arms Export) magazine, said the deal gives Russia probably its last chance to make money modernizing MiGs in eastern Europe.
 MiG signed a deal last year, estimated to be worth up to $40 million, to upgrade 14 or 16 MiG-29s owned by Hungary. And it is the favorite to win a Bulgarian tender to upgrade 21 jets, a deal estimated to be worth $45 million.
 MiG officials and analysts said, however, that one casualty of the German-Polish deal is likely to be MAPS, a joint venture between MiG, Russian arms export agency Rosoboronexport and Germany's DASA, which was set up in 1993 to repair and upgrade MiG-29s.
 "MAPS is no longer needed," said a MiG official who asked not to be identified. "We will definitely participate in modernizing their jets, either by cooperating directly with Poland or forming a joint venture of some sort."
 "Why would Poles pay Germans to modernize their MiGs? Russia and Poland will attempt to create a jooint venture," said Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy head of the Moscow-based think tank Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.
 Makiyenko speculated, however, that the symbolic price Poland paid for the jets could have been conditional on Poland awarding MAPS any modernization contracts.
 Butowski thought that was unlikely. "MAPS will cease to exist, there is no sense in continuing it," he said.
 MAPS head Volker Paltzo said by telephone from Germany that there had not been any official talks with the Polish side on the issue.
 When Poland joined NATO in 1999 it committed itself to having 160 up-to-date fighter aircraft, which meant that by 2007 it would have to buy 60 jets.
 "By getting 23 MiGs from Germany, "Poland filled a big hole at a small price," Butowski said. "Germany was planning to retire its fleet of MiG-29s anyway," he added.

TITLE: Gallup Staffers Leave To Join in New Firm
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The entire team at the St. Petersburg office of Gallup Media, the highest-profile public-opinion and market-research company in Russia, announced on Wednesday that they had left the organization to team up with the St. Petersburg Institute for Entrepreneurial Problems and Moscow-based Monitoring.ru to form a new research company.
 
Roman Mogilevsky, the director of the local Gallup Media office, said that the 20 research specialists working there had decided to leave as a result of a decision by the Taylor Nelson Sofres Group (TNS), the British research company that bought Gallup Media's parent company, the Marketing development Center (MDC) Helsinki Group, at the begining of January.
 In order to reduce spending and rationalize its operations, TNS announced a reorganization of its Russian business. TNS kept the St. Petersburg Gallup Media office, but made it a branch office of the new TNS Moscow Research Center (MITs).
 This reorganization moved many of the analysis tasks previouslyperformed by Mogilevsky and his group to Moscow, and essentially reduced them to being collectors of information. So they have decided to leave for a more interesting project.
 On Wednesday, Neither Mogilevsky, Andrei Milekhin, the general director of Monitoring.ru group norVladimir Romanovsky, the director of Institute for Entrepreneurs Problems, were able to provide details on the nature of the new organization, where its offices will be located or even what it will be called.
 "Gallup is a very good name," Mogilevsky said "But from what I know, TNS would never let us use that name or some kind of derivative."
 According to Romanovsky, if the new entity takes the form of a joint stock company, he will own the controlling bloc of shares, while the remainder will be divided between Milekhin, Mogilevsky and the former Gallup employees. Whatever the form of the new firm will have, Mogilevsky will be the president.
 Milekhin saidthat the formation of the new firm would benefit Monitoring.ru, a company that specializes in Internet research.
 "There is no doubt that the new company will bring us dividends in the future," Milekhin said. "By founding a new company, we get not a subsidiary research company, but a full-scale partner."
 The Institute for Entrepreneurial Problems is an organization that encompasses about 30 companies that provide auditing, consulting and other business-related services.
 TNS seems to be unfazed by the departure of the St. Petersburg office's staff.
 "The new company will not be a direct competitor for us," Vladimir Grodsky, the head of TNS-Gallup Media Russia told the business daily Vedomosti. "Our St. Petersburg office carried out significant direct-marketing activities, which were needed in conjunction with some international projects."
 Mogilevsky says that the group plans to continue the same type of research they did with Gallup, as well as initiating a number of new projects, including an analysis of mid-size and small companies and the establishment of the technology for quality-ratings assessments.
 "This kind of serious research is able to show tendencies as a dynamic process," Mogilevsky said. "If the new company is unable to carry out this type of research, then there's really no point in setting it up, as the niche for one-day static research has already been filled by small and energetic research firms."

TITLE: Critics Say VEB Deal Highlights Favoritism
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - German giant Deutsche Bank on Wednesday granted Vneshekonombank a one-year, $100-million loan - the largest to a Russian bank since the 1998 crisis.
 
But while the loan to Vneshekonombank, or VEB, is good for the sector as a whole, it highlights one of the chronic problems in the industry - the unfair advantage state-owned banks have over private banks, analysts said.
 VEB intends to lend the money to unspecified clients in the metals, oil, gas and chemical industries, according to the bank's press release.
 However, VEB, Russia's foreign debt agent, doesn't have a banking license from the Central Bank. It operates under a government decree that grants it special privileges, and by taking advantage of that status for commercial gain it is technically breaking the law, said Mikhail Matovnikov, deputy head of the Interfax Rating Agency, which monitors the banking system. 
 "I see a conflict of interests here, as the bank is now attracting loans for its commercial activities under de facto state guarantees," Matovnikov said. 
 "It would be more fair to take such loans after VEB starts to operate as a normal bank," he said, referring to the restructuring the bank is currently undergoing that will see it split into a private bank and a state agent.
 "VEB is taking advantage of its status and is an example of unfair competition - not only toward private banks, but also in respect to other state-owned banks," Matovnikov said.
 Andrei Ivanov, banking analyst with investment house Troika Dialog, said that until the bank is split into a commercial entity and a government agency for servicing debts, it will be considered a state bank and "all risks will be taken by the government."
 Even so, Matovnikov said, "The amount is impressive and the rate is very attractive for the post-crisis era."
 Deutsche issued the loan at a rate of LIBOR (London interbank offered rate, or what most creditworthy international banks charge each other) plus 2.5 percent. Currently one-year LIBOR is around 3 percent. The average annual lending rate charged by Russian banks is about 16 percent in dollar terms.
 Only a couple of banks have managed to attract money from abroad since August 1998, when the banking sector defaulted on billions of dollars worth of loans. 
 Alfa Bank secured a $20-million syndicated loan last year that was organized by Standard Bank of London. The one-year loan, provided by several European banks, had a rate of LIBOR plus 3.75 percent. Later in 2001, MDM Bank received a $10-million, 6-month loan, syndicated by Austrian Raiffeisenbank under LIBOR plus 4.125 percent.
 Deutsche Bank's head office in Frankfrurt declined to comment Wednesday. 
 VEB spokesperson Tatyana Golodets refused to elaborate on how the loan will be used, but stressed that it was not guaranteed by the state. She did say that the bank's restructuring was underway, although no timetable for its completion was available.
 Following the revamp, Vneshekonombank's commercial operations will have assets worth some $2 billion, which would make it Russia's third-largest bank, behind Sberbank and Vneshtorgbank.

TITLE: Smirnov Picks Local Distillery
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The local Ladoga holding company and Alfa-Eko, the firm which owns the trademark for Smirnov vodka, announced Wednesday that they were going to use two production lines at the Ladoga Distillery in St. Petersburg to start vodka production.
 
The agreement, which was signed in November, coincided with a decison by Alfa-Eko to end its association with Rastor Distillery in the Moscow Oblast, which had been producing Smirnov previously.
 According to Mark Kotlyarenko, marketing director at the Alfa-Eko alcohol department, the switch occured because the Rastor distillery was not able to meet Alfa-Ekho's production needs.
 He said that Alfa-Eko had also had negotiations with the Moscow-based Kristall distillery for a new deal, but the companies "were not able to reach an agreement due to a number of reasons".
 With the signing of the contract, which runs through 2003, Ladoga, St. Petersburg becomes the main production base for Alfa-Eko.
 Ladoga invested $5 million of its own funds on upgrading the two lines so that they will be able to produce about 1 million liters of vodka per month. The Rastor facility had been turning out about 200,000 liters per month.
 The deal represents an extension of the cooperation between Ladoga and Alfa-Eko, as among Ladoga's subsidiaries are transportation and distribution companies in the northwest and central regions of Russia, and they have already worked in the retailing of Smirnov vodka.
 Ladoga already produces its own Ladoga, Samson and Nevsky Prospect vodka brands. It also produces the Moskovskaya and Stolichnaya vodka brands under a licensing agreement with Soyuzplodoimport and the Posolskaya brand under a similar license from the Kristall Distillery.
 According to Veniamin Grabar, the general director of Ladoga, the company already accounts for about 25 percent of all vodka sold in St. Petersburg ,and the new contract will increase that number to 35 percent.
 Tatiana Kuznetsova, an analyst at Moscow-based Business Analytics Europe agency, says that Ladoga's actual market share in St. Petersburg is about 17.7 percent, which is second to Liviz Distillery, with 43.1 percent.
 The Smirnov brand has about a 0.5 -percent share of the market.
 "We are going to increase our share of the St. Petersburg market by developing our products in the middle-price niche," Kotlyarenko said. "Smirnov vodka will cost from 70 to 80 rubles [$2.30 to $2.60 for a 500ml bottle]. That is a niche that is developing very quickly today."
 According to Kotlyarenko, the launch of the two lines at the Ladoga distillery is just the first stage in the strategy of the company.
 "The next step will be to find distilleries in the cities with more than 1 million residents in the Russian regions, which would be technically attractive for producing Smirnov vodka," he said after the Wednesday press conference. "There's no secret that local administrations are lobbying for their regional producers. We will help finance these local distilleries to modernize their equipment if necessary."
 Kotlyarenko declined comment on the names of potential regional companies, but said that there might be from 10 to 30 distilleries involved, depending on the existing level of technology at the facilities and the amount of investment necessary.
 "That agreement seems a natural one in the whole strategy of Ladoga," German Klimovsky, vice-president for marketing at Russian Wine and Vodka Company (RVVK), which produces vodka under the Flagman brand, said in telephone interview on Thursday. "They've always staked their bets on producing products under well-known brand names."
 "We're not worried about this at all," he added. "The more Smirnov vodka that appears, the less money investors will spend on developing the Smirnoff brand, and the fewer competitors we will have."
 The first Russian version of vodka produced under the Smirnov brand was produced in 1993 in Krymsk, located in southern Russia, by the Pyotr Smirnov Descendants Trade House, headed at that time by Boris Smirnov, himself a descendant of Pyotr. In August, 2000, Alfa-Eko took control of the trade house and brand, in a long story that led to a number of court cases.
 The Smirnov brand is not to be confused with Smirnoff Vodka, which is produced by U.S.-based Guiness-United Distillers and Vintners (UDV). The brand was purchased by UDV in 1939 from another of Pyotr Smirnov's descendants. In 1997, UDV signed a contract for Smirnoff Vodka production at St. Petersburg's Liviz Distillery.

TITLE: EBRD Investment Lets Pyatyorochka Think Big
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The country's largest supermarket chain, Pyatyorochka, announced Wednesday that it will double its 84 stores and more than triple sales over the next two years with the assistance of its new shareholder, the EBRD.
 
The discount chain, founded by two wholesale companies in St. Petersburg in 1999, will pay special attention to expansion in the lucrative Moscow market, company officials said.
 "The Moscow retail market is still very empty: There is no competition yet," Vladimir Posazhennikov, head of the chain's Moscow operations, said at a news conference. 
 "But it is getting more and more difficult to find retail space," he said.
 Pyatyorochka plans to increase the number of its Moscow outlets from 17 to 70, while adding 40 more stores to its existing 66 in St. Petersburg. 
 In addition, construction will be completed in St. Petersburg of a $7-million logistical and distribution center aimed at keeping Pyatyorochka's prices comparable to those at outdoor markets.
 A similar center may be built in Moscow by 2004, Posazhennikov said.
 Some $60 million will be invested in expansion this year. Officials would not say how much was earmarked for 2003.
 The chain expects its annual turnover in 2003 to jump to $700 million from $200 million last year.
 The expansion plans were drawn up after the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development snapped up a blocking stake in the retailer last month, company officials said. 
 They refused to disclose details about the deal or specify the exact size of the stake.
 Viktor Belyakov of the West Siberia Regional Venture Fund, one of five EBRD venture funds, would only say that "it was a multimillion-dollar deal" and that the EBRD had bought "a blocking but not a controlling stake."
 The ownership of Pyatyorochka is also unclear.
 Belyakov said the chain has three shareholders - the EBRD and two Dutch companies. He would not identify the companies.
 Russian media have suggested that the two Dutch companies are owned by Pyatyorochka's founders - the two now-defunct St. Petersburg wholesale companies. 
 The former owner of one of those companies, Sergei Lepkovich, is now the head of Pyatyorochka's St. Petersburg operations.
 Pyatyorochka has seen rapid growth since it opened its first 17 outlets in St. Petersburg in 1999. In 2000, the number of shops in its fold grew to 38, and it had a turnover of $75 million.
 Pyatyorochka moved into Moscow last year and opened 15 stores. In St. Petersburg, its chain has grown to 66 outlets.
 Two more stores were opened in Moscow earlier this month and a third was opened Thursday, Posazhennikov said.

TITLE: Troika Dialog To Open Local Office
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Troika Dialog, a Russian brokerage and investment company, is planning to open an office in St. Petersburg in a month's time, the company's press service said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
 
"The opening ceremony is scheduled to take place at the end of February or beginning of March, with from 10 to 20 people to be working there as staff," said Alexander Chernov, Troika Dialog public-relations manager. "There really aren't many specialists on the stock market in St. Petersburg."
 Troika Dialog began operations with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and is one of the biggest brokerage firms in Russia, working in all areas of the national stock market.
 The St. Petersburg office will be headed by Alexei Chernushevich, a former employee at the Moscow office who has also had wide experience working in the regions, the national Business News Agency reported on Thursday.
 "The goal of the new office is to provide our numerous clients in the region with the speediest and most convenient access to the company's services and products and to the advice that we offer, as well as to ensure the company's presence in key economic centers and in all the regions of the country," Chernov said.
 In addition to Moscow, Troika Dialog operates a number of offices in other regions, including Samara, Nizhni Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Rostov-on-Don. The company also has a representative office in New York.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: 10% of LUKoil Bought
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Market watchers suspect that international portfolio investor Capital Group has accumulated more than 10-percent of LUKoil, Vedemosti reported Thursday.
 Martial Chaillet, a Geneva-based asset manager with Capital Group, declined to confirm or deny the reports.
 "LUKoil is a good company with good prospects," Chaillet said. "But it's our policy not to comment on fund transactions."
 Capital Group also holds a stake in national power grid Unified Energy Systems and the scandal-ridden NTV television channel.
 At current prices, a 10 percent stake in LUKoil is worth about $1 billion.
 According to Renaissance Capital, 55 percent of LUKoil, Russia's largest company, was held in ADRs or GDRs in 2000. 
 
 
Loans for Farmers
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Russian farmers will be able to attract up to 10 billion rubles ($333 million) in three-year investment loans from commercial banks this year with interest repayments being subsidized by the government, Prime-Tass reported First Deputy Agriculture Minister Sergei Dankvert as saying Thursday. 
 Dankvert told the annual meeting of the Union of Russian Poultry Producers that the state budget had allocated 800 million rubles for subsidizing interest payments. 
 He said the government is expected to issue instructions on the loans in late February. The government will also continue to subsidize short-term loans in 2002. 
 
 
Vimpelcom Hits Rostov
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Vimpelcom-R, the regional subsidiary of Russia's second-largest cellular phone operator Vimpelcom, has launched a cellular- telecommunications GSM network in the city of Rostov-na-Donu in the Rostov Region, Prime-Tass reported the company as saying on Thursday. 
 The company has already opened 33 base stations in the Rostov region, including 20 stations in the city of Rostov-na-Donu, and eventually plans to operate a total of 70 GSM base stations the region, the company said in a press release. 



TITLE: Computer Merger Gets Nod From Regulators
AUTHOR: By Raf Casert
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium - European regulators on Thursday cleared the $23.6-billion merger of Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp., saying the planned marriage of rival U.S. computer makers does not raise competition concerns in Europe.
 
A U.S. review of the merger is still underway. The deal also faces the considerable hurdle of shareholder approval, with critics including the heirs of HP's legendary co-founders.
 Thursday's decision means the EU's antitrust office gives its blessing for the companies to move ahead and signals the EU will not launch a four-month investigation into how the deal may affect competition in Europe.
 "A careful analysis of the merger ... has shown that HP would not be in a position to increase prices and that consumers would continue to benefit from sufficient choice and innovation," an EU statement said.
 The merger plan forced the EU Commission into its biggest European antitrust decision since it blocked the $46 billion bid by General Electric Co. for Honeywell International Inc. last summer.
 The in-depth probe by the European Commission would have been especially problematic for HP as it tries to rein in rebellious shareholders who oppose the deal, observers said. Instead, early clearance in Europe could help HP win over some shareholders.
 Some analysts downplayed the importance of the European decision.
 "The probability was very high that they were going to approve it," said Charles Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Co. "It nudges up the probability of an ultimate win on part of HP in this battle with the family, but I don't think it changes it dramatically."
 Carly Fiorina, HP's chief executive, said the announcement is "an encouraging step in the continuing process of satisfying regulators worldwide that this deal will provide a real stimulus for competition."
 Compaq was equally pleased.
 "This is an important milestone, particularly given the significance of Europe to us," said Michael Capellas, Compaq chairperson and chief executive.
 Board member Walter Hewlett, the son of HP co-founder William Hewlett and the deal's most vocal critic, said the merger is a "bet-the-company move that is not appropriate for HP."
 In a statement, he noted few HP rivals raised objections during the EU's review of the deal.
 "We are not surprised," he said. "We believe Dell, Sun and IBM must be delighted at the prospect of a merger that would so greatly distract and damage two of their rivals."
 A source close to the talks, but speaking on condition of anonymity, said all sides were involved in tough negotiations until the last days, with Germany's Siemens pushing hard to have the European Commission extend the investigation.
 Fujitsu-Siemens Computers is among the top 10 manufacturers of servers in the world and was one of the few companies to argue against the merger.
 HP and Compaq together would only account for about 22 to 23 percent of the European market for personal computers, but would hold around 47 percent of the market for more powerful servers and disk storage units, according to market researchers Gartner-Dataquest.

TITLE: Here's the New NTV
AUTHOR: By Boris Jordan
TEXT: AMID the frenzy of hand-wringing that accompanied the regrettable closure of TV6 last week, one small piece of news was overlooked by the vast majority of those who report on events in this country. Alongside sometimes hysterical reporting that cast the closure of TV6 as the end of democracy as we know it, the fact that journalists at NTV had signed a charter guaranteeing their independence hardly registered on any news agenda at all.
 
In fact, NTV's charter represents an important milestone in the building of independent media in Russia. It is the first time a television channel in this country has produced a binding document outlining the relationship between journalists, management and shareholders in order to guarantee the editorial independence of those journalists. It is a document that sets in stone my commitment to protect the newsroom from any outside influence, political or financial, a commitment that I made when I was first appointed last April.
 Today, almost a year after I was appointed chief executive officer at NTV, I believe that most foreign correspondents that watch our channel have now accepted, albeit sometimes grudgingly, that NTV has continued to report the news in an objective and timely manner, independent of the Kremlin. But not all journalists have accepted this. In the outpouring of editorial analysis concerning the TV6 story that has dominated the pages of so much of the world's press and not least of The St. Petersburg Times, the comparison between developments at NTV and TV6 has been an easy one to make but all too often unfair. When the European edition of The Wall Street Journal commented that "you can bet that NTV's editorial policy will tip-toe around Kremlin sensitive spots such as Chechnya," it thought it was firing a well-aimed bullet at me and my management team. In fact, it insulted the professionalism of our newsroom and the integrity of the correspondents who only last month were arrested in Chechnya and had their equipment destroyed by the Russian military.
 TV6 owner Boris Berezovsky and founder of NTV Vladimir Gusinsky naturally present something of a dilemma for most foreign correspondents. Most Russia watchers have coalesced around the charming but patently absurd view that "they were no angels but democracy is worse off without them," and would have us believe they had both been muzzled somehow. Yet the opposite is true. When Berezovsky claimed he could prove that the Federal Security Service blew up several apartment blocks in 1999 - a claim he has failed to substantiate - he led the news on NTV. From self-imposed exile he continues to attack the Kremlin and predict the imminent fall of President Putin. In fact, he does it live ... on NTV.
 Messrs Berezovsky and Gusinsky were the first to realize the true potential of television in Russia, the power to elect presidents. They boasted they were more powerful than the state and spent hundreds of millions of dollars (of taxpayer's money) on supporting media empires that they used shamelessly to further their political ambitions. They enjoyed freedom of speech without responsibility to shareholders, to their staff or to any independent agency capable of filtering the quality of the material they broadcast. And having wielded their channels so frequently to the benefit of the incumbent of the Kremlin - without a whisper of complaint from the many correspondents who watched this happen on a daily basis - it was inevitable that the tentacles of the state would find their way into the world of television.
 That is why I remain concerned at the closure of TV6 and wish every success to the journalists who worked at the channel in their application for the license to broadcast. The media market will be all the stronger and more vibrant for their presence.
 For much of the past year I have been working to restructure NTV in order that it might be sold to an investor or group of investors. The true guarantee of independence for any business is for that business to turn a profit.
 Media analysts are wont to describe these as dark days in the struggle for free media. Instead, I believe this is a moment of opportunity. Gazprom has committed itself to the sale of NTV and the government has offered the TV6 license for tender. Thus, it is quite possible that in short order two channels will enjoy the right to call themselves independent, two newsrooms will compete in breaking stories that accurately reflect the society we live in.
 It is too early to mourn the demise of a fledgling fourth estate that is capable and willing to criticize and report objectively on the manner in which this country is governed. The road toward democracy in Russia has not been an easy one, but freedom of speech, or glasnost as it was described when I first arrived here, was quickly established as a founding tenet of that democracy. Even if it does not always taste nice, it is not something that this government, or any other, will easily put back in the box.
 
 <i>Boris Jordan, CEO of NTV, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: How Many Bureaucrats Does It Take?
TEXT: WHAT, when you get right down to it, is the point of the new three-day-visas-at-the-border scheme that the Foreign Ministry and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry are so comically trying to implement?
 
Is it to increase revenues from business and tourist travel to Moscow, St. Petersburg and select other regions? Is it to demonstrate that Russia is a more open, accessible country, one that is reaching out to the world? Is it to make it easier, simpler and cheaper to visit Russia? 
 Perhaps. But most of the people tripping over themselves like Keystone Kops trying to get the system in place seem to think not. They seem to be under the impression that the point of the exercise is to show just how complicated, confused and inane Russia's bureaucracy can be. They seem determined to show the world that Russia is incapable of taking even a simple step that is so patently and obviously in its own best interests. They seemed to determined to embarrass us so thoroughly that even we, among the staunchest advocates of the plan, begin to wish we'd never heard of the idea.
 From the beginning, the Foreign Ministry and the ironically titled Economic Development and Trade Ministry have been inexplicably determined to sabotage this project. The 72-hour limitation is just one glaring example of this attitude. If the point of the visas is to stimulate business travel, to encourage organizations to hold congresses and conferences in the two capitals and to allow tourists to attend cultural events such as the Arts Square Festival or the Mariinsky Theater's March ballet festival, then the 72-hour restriction is just a mockery. 
 Even a very organized traveler would be lucky to get in a single meeting or attend even one concert before turning around to get the first flight out of town. And that's assuming that such visitors won't have to spend more than 20 or so of their golden 72 hours standing in line waiting to get their visas at the airport, an assumption that is far from assured.
 Maybe there is still hope something can come of this project despite the incompetence of the authorities. Reports are that the first such visas in St. Petersburg will be issued to a group of Swedish travel agents coming to town to look into the possibility of organizing tours to St. Petersburg. 
 We can only hope that they bring their imaginations and sense of humor with them. It would be nice if they could see us as we'd like to be seen, rather than as the so-called Economic Development and Trade Ministry would present us.

TITLE: Kompromat Has Lost All Of Its Cachet
TEXT: THE Federal Security Service has alleged that Boris Berezovsky financed the Chechen rebels. Boris Abramovich, in turn, claims that he has evidence of the FSB's involvement in organizing the apartment block bombings in Moscow.
 
Just imagine if the political opposition in the United States were to accuse the FBI of complicity in the events of Sept. 11. What a scandal there would be. 
 In this country, however, kompromat has been totally devalued. In February, the case against Anatoly Bykov, the former owner of Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant, or KrAZ, will go to court. He is accused of having ordered the killing of his former comrade-in-arms, Pavel Struganov. There is a tape that contains a conversation between Bykov and the supposed hit-man, Alexander Vasilenko; there is the testimony of Vasilenko himself; and there is one more tape recorded in Cyprus with the participation of close friends of Bykov's, in which Vasilenko retracts his previous statements.
 Is anyone really interested in the facts of the case? Did he order the hit or not? What's really of interest is how it will affect Russian Aluminum, which seized KrAZ from Bykov. Because Bykov at large means big problems for RusAl and, in particular, for his long-standing enemy Oleg Deripaska.
 It is said that five years ago, Bykov, then KrAZ board chairman, had a great opportunity to get rid of Deripaska, who was then general director of the Sayansk aluminum plant. It was shortly after the rift between Deripaska and Sayansk crime boss Vladimir Tatarenkov. Tatarenkov helped TransWorld Group to buy up SaAZ shares and, apparently, there was an agreement that Tatarenkov would receive $2 million for services rendered. But TWG refused to pay up. Instead, TWG manager Deripaska went to the local RUOP and told them he wanted to join the fight against organized crime.
 Tatarenkov did not take kindly to this and, as a result, dispatched some hitmen with grenade throwers to camp out in the mountains above a narrow road where Deripaska was passing. However, he got the rather stupid idea into his head of asking Bykov to pay for the hit. Bykov was loath to give any money, believing that Tatarenkov was entirely capable of resolving his own problems at his own expense, and the whole thing was canceled.
 No one seems too concerned whether Tolya Bykov ordered a hit on Struganov, who is known as Pasha Tsvetomuzyka. If Bykov stays in the slammer, it means that RusAl and the Family are still in the ascendant. If he is freed, it means that the new Petersburgers have seized the initiative.
 Kompromat doesn't have an impact on society because it does not have any influence on the authorities. The chekists have reportedly confiscated from Vyacheslav Aminov - an adviser to Alexander Voloshin - a whole video library with tapes of a person resembling the head of the presidential administration having a good time with underage girls. They might just as well have confiscated a video collection of children's cartoons.
 If Voloshin is dumped, it won't be because of the video library. In fact, the opposite is more likely: The more pressure on the president to remove someone, the more that person will seem to be important and irreplaceable.
 Facts in this country have been conclusively killed off. All that's left now are informal &quot;understandings.&quot;
 
 <i>Yulia Latynina is a journalist with ORT. </i>

TITLE: We Don't Need Such a Church
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: THE children were in a state of excitement. The teachers at their kindergarten had just told them that the next day a priest would pay them a visit and they would get to kiss the cross. For the children, it was a bit of fun - something akin to Ded Moroz's New Year's visit.
 
I, however, did not share the children's enthusiasm. I don't have anything against religious education as such, but it should to be done with parental consent.
 Having called the director of the kindergarten, I discovered that parental consent was required but only for kissing the cross, i.e. all the children were to listen to the priest, and then part of the group would be dispatched to kiss the cross and the rest would sit and watch.
 But why should the children have to listen to the priest's sermon at all? After all, the church is supposed to be separate from the state.
 The director countered that children ought to have some knowlege of religion. The argument makes sense, but why only an Orthodox priest? Why not, in that case, invite a mullah, a rabbi, a shaman even? We live in an Orthodox country, was the firm answer I was given, and that was the end of the discussion.
 The idea that we live in an &quot;Orthodox country&quot; has been repeated so many times that it is lodged in our consciousness. Few stop to consider that it fundamentally contradicts the constitution.
 Indeed, the Orthodox Church has, with the authorities' nod, effectively conferred upon itself the right to make official pronouncements regarding the &quot;spiritual tutelage of the nation.&quot;
 In 1993, during the standoff between President Boris Yeltsn and the Supreme Soviet, the patriarch promised to put a curse on anyone who intiated bloodshed. Yeltsin bombarded the Supreme Soviet but this in no way cast a shadow on his relations with the patriarch. When Yeltsin transferred his presidential powers to Vladimir Putin, he asked the patriarch to give his blessing.
 The church hierarchy also blessed the army when it was sent down to Chechnya and couldn't find a single word of censure regarding human-rights violations that were being perpetrated there. Individual priests did protest but they were dissident voices, so to speak.
 Within the Orthodox Church there is not a single faction that is critical of the status quo. In the Catholic Church, for example, different political views are represented, from the progressive liberals of the Communione e Liberazione, to the far-left Liberation Theologians. The Orthodox hierarchy over the centuries has developed an organization that allows it to effectively silence critical thinking within. And it is little interested in the democratization of society.
 On holidays, state officials line up at the altar en masse and awkwardly cross themselves, although to all appearances they have absolutely no intention of actually atoning for their sins.
 Bandits exhibit even greater religious fervor and their donations have become an important source of income for many church communities. However, I have yet to hear of a case where religious zeal made a bandit turn to the straight and narrow.
 The church does not seem to remonstrate with its criminal parishioners or refuse money from dubious sources. Thus, criminals acquire a reputation for being good citizens and the church gets the funds that are needed for rebuilding churches that fell into disrepair during Soviet rule.
 Money earned by numerous commercial companies set up under the aegis of the church may also have been spent to this end. In the 1990s, all sorts of tax and customs breaks were granted, as a result of which businesspeople linked to the Orthodox Church became leaders in importing tobacco and alcohol into the country.
 At the end of the 1990s, this topic cropped up in the press on a number of occasions but failed to provoke controversy, either in the upper echelons of the church or among the flock. This says more about how people view the Orthodox Church than any opinion surveys.
 In countries where society is deeply religious and the church enjoys genuine authority, any reports of corruption in church circles elicits shocked reactions.
 Here, on the contrary, such reports elicit little interest at all. When the Orthodox Church criticized the television show &quot;Za Steklom,&quot; it had absolutely no impact on the program's rating. Believers do not have much need of the church in order to find the true path to God.
 The authorities, on the other hand, do need the church in order to resolve their own problems of an entirely earthly nature.
 
 <i>Boris Kagarlitsky is a sociologist based in Moscow. </i>

TITLE: TV6 Shutdown a Bad Omen for Democracy
TEXT: WITH all the hullaballoo surrounding the closure of TV6, the Jan. 15 deadline for determining details of the sale of Gazprom-Media's stake in NTV passed relatively unnoticed. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said on Jan. 17 that the deadline was being postponed - but only by two weeks. That's Thursday.
 
One of the paradoxes in this whole affair has been that TV6, owned by the hostile Boris Berezovsky, in its last six months was notably less hard-hitting in its news coverage than NTV in its Gazprom-Media-controlled incarnation.
 Perhaps this is no great surprise. TV6 was on best behavior for fear of provoking further retribution from the authorities, while NTV feels it has to prove its independence at every turn in order to disarm the many cynics who predicted NTV post-takeover would rapidly become a Kremlin cheerleader.
 However, this masks the underlying fragility of the situation and the effective monopoly-control of national television that the Kremlin currently - and hopefully temporarily - enjoys.
 A best-case scenario for immediate development of the media market is outlined by Boris Jordan. But what about considering a somewhat less rosy scenario? And why not start with Jordan's own position?
 For all the admirable work being done at NTV, until the channel is finally auctioned, he is merely a Gazprom-hired manager who can be removed at the stroke of a pen if the powers-that-be so wish. After the sale, NTV's CEO will be at the mercy of the new owner, and the likelihood of it being an oligarch with close ties to the Putin administration - such as Sergei Pugachyov - is at least as great as of it going to some &quot;independent&quot; commercially-motivated consortium.
 Much the same applies to the March tender for TV6's license. Maybe it will be awarded to the &quot;old&quot; editorial team. But the ownership question will still remain. The administration seems to have pretty firm ideas about who is persona non grata in the world of television ownership, so what's to say that its ideas about who is persona grata are not equally firm.
 That's not to say that we should expect a crackdown on critical coverage imminently. But fast-forward two years to the next round of State Duma and presidential elections, and the situation may look very different.
 Instead of just ORT and RTR bludgeoning the electorate with cynical smear campaigns and unstinting promotion of the incumbent, it could well be the same across all four of the national channels (replete with Sergei Dorenko clones).
 For the sanity of the country, if not for the development of democracy, let's hope not.

TITLE: here today, gone tomorrow
AUTHOR: by Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Although the urban beach in front of the Peter and Paul Fortress is best known as the city's premier location for sand and sun, this week it is home to something completely different, the International Ice-Sculpting Festival.
 
Sixteen teams made up of 48 artists from countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Poland and France, as well as from cities across Russia, will be competing for top honors at this year's festival, which is being held in St. Petersburg for the first time.
 On a frosty, wind-swept Wednesday afternoon, the artists broke out their chain saws and tore into the huge blocks of ice, determined to &quot;build ice images of the world's cities.&quot;
 &quot;We're planning to make the leaning tower of Pisa, four meters high,&quot; said 33-year-old Urs Koller, a professional sculptor from Switzerland who normally works in wood and stone.
 &quot;I'm really interested to find out how it will look in ice and whether we can manage to copy the tower's incline,&quot; he added.
 With temperature hovering around -10 degrees Celsius, many of the artists - regardless of where they come from - were wearing Russian <i>valenki, </i>or traditional felt boots. Although their appearance is not very stylish, there is no denying their warmth.
 &quot;We work for eight or nine hours [at a time] and need to stay warm,&quot; Koller said. &quot;Although when we are lifting the blocks or carving the ice, we sometimes even get hot.&quot;
 Each team consists of three members and they have three days to fashion their creations from 40, 120-kilogram blocks of ice cut from local lakes.
 &quot;On Saturday, a jury of local dignitaries headed by Legislative Assembly Speaker Sergei Tarasov, will select the winners.
 Uwe Burkle, a 37-year-old member of the German team, said that although the ice that is made at special factories for such events in Europe is of higher quality, the natural, Russian ice is more beautiful, with a luminous transparency and a bluish tint.
 Although the teams were only getting down to work on Wednesday and Thursday, a small crowd of locals gathered to watch the birth of their creations. They admired the magnificent ice sphinx created by professional ice sculptors from Yakutia.
 Children and adults alike played gleefully on the ice slopes at the base of the sculpture.
 &quot;The site will look most impressive in the dark, since every sculpture will have multicolored illumination from underneath,&quot; Viktoria Vishenkova, a member of the festival's organizing committee said.
 Burkle said that his team likes to do some of its work at night because the ice takes on better qualities at that time. Although he generally works in bronze or stone, Burkle is philosophical about the transience of his frozen creations.
 &quot;They come and go,&quot; he says. &quot;Just like winter itself.&quot;
 &quot;Ice, snow and sand are the three substances that provide a unique chance to build something really big [that lasts] for a very short time,&quot; he added. &quot;This quality fascinates me.&quot;
 Although some teams are open about what their sculptures will be, others keep their plans closely guarded. &quot;First we work, then we speak,&quot; said Valery Petrenko, 35, of the Ukrainian team.
 
 <i>
Ice sculptures can be viewed from 10 a.m to 10 p.m. daily until Feb. 28, weather permitting. Sculptures will be illuminated after 6 p.m. Tickets cost 30 rubles for children and 50 rubles for adults during the week; 50 rubles for children and 70 rubles for adults on the weekend. Winners will be announced on Saturday at about 5 p.m. </i>

TITLE: embodiment of heavenly blues
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Last Friday, a new light appeared on the city's club scene with the opening of the blues club Gandharva. Created by Sergei Nekrasov, who first ran Art Club and later Club O.K. in the mid-1990s, Gandharva is intended as &quot;an art club for musicians, artists and actors.&quot;
 
The unusual and difficult-to-pronounce name comes from Hindu mythology and means &quot;celestial musicians,&quot; the heavenly creatures that are occasionally embodied on earth as great musicians and artists.
 Nekrasov has been a blues fan for years and has recently been doing a lot to promote this music locally. Last summer, he promoted the Delta Blues open-air blues festival and now he is busy putting together the lineup for this year's rendition of the festival.
 Gandharva's opening night included two sets by the Liapin's Blues trio, followed by a blues-rock jam session that ran late into the night. 
 Liapin's Blues is the latest band of former Akvarium guitarist Alexander Lyapin, who has been involved in several solo projects since even before the 1980s Akvarium lineup officially disbanded in 1991. Lyapin had a reputation as a loud electric guitarist who would often disrupt Akvarium performances to indulge in lengthy solos. He was sometimes referred to as &quot;Russia's Jimi Hendrix,&quot; a reputation he encouraged by sometimes playing the guitar with his teeth as his late idol did. Lyapin also called one of his bands Opyty Alexandra Lyapina (Alexander Lyapin's Experiences), an obvious reference to the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
 Now, a decade later, he appeared in a much quieter, more meditative mode at the Gandharva opening, sounding and even looking something like the latter-day Eric Clapton than to the 1960s psychedelic guitar god. In fact, he covered Clapton's &quot;Cocaine&quot; and &quot;Wonderful Tonight&quot; during Friday's show, in addition to playing other blues covers and some of his own compositions.
 Unlike nearby student-friendly underground rock clubs like Moloko, Gandharva is oriented toward more mature audiences, and there were few people under 30 at the opening last Friday.
 Blues is not the whole story at Gandharva, which bills itself as an &quot;art-blues club.&quot; The opening also featured a small exhibition of works by the one-time underground artist Oleg Kotelnikov. Although Kotelnikov is better known for his primitivist paintings, this exhibit presented a series of fairly traditional black-and-white photographs that he took in Japan. The short-term exhibition was called &quot;One Country, Four Capitals.&quot;
 Gandharva consists of a concert hall with about a dozen tables, a small exhibition hall that the club is planning also to use for screening music-related and art-house films in the future and a bar. Although future plans call for the place to function during the day as a caf&eacute;, there were only drinks on hand for the opening, with beer going for 35 rubles and a shot of Flagman Vodka setting you back 30.
 &quot;I didn't want [Gandharva] to be just a watering hole with a concert hall, which is the normal idea of a club,&quot; says Nekrasov, who added that the new club is planning to host blues and rock concerts.
 &quot;I'd like to revive the Art Club and host exhibitions, dramatic performances, film screenings and more. The only thing is that it will take some time.&quot;
 One of the next events on the club's schedule is Gromit's Birthday Party on Feb. 12. The event will be an anglophile party celebrating the animated dog from Nick Park's films about Wallace and Gromit.
 
 <i>
Gandharva is located at 12 Mytninskaya Ulitsa, M: Ploshchad Vosstaniya. Tel. 321-9481. www.nevadelta.spb.ru. Entrance costs 100 rubles. </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: The next week holds a couple of great treats for local jazz lovers, with two major concerts taking place.
 
First, <strong>Gary Burton,</strong><i> </i>the world's premier jazz vibraphonist, will play a concert with pianist Makoto Ozone at the Shostakovich Philarmonic on Feb. 7.
 Born in 1943 and raised in Indiana, Burton taught himself to play the vibraphone and, at the age of 17, made his recording debut in Nashville, Tennessee, with guitarists Hank Garland and Chet Atkins. 
 Two years later, Burton left his studies at the Berklee College of Music to join George Shearing and then Stan Getz, with whom he worked from 1964 to 1966.
 By the time he left Getz to form his own quartet in 1967, Burton had also recorded three albums for RCA. 
 Drawing from both rock music and jazz, Burton's first quartet attracted large audiences on both sides of the jazz-rock spectrum. Such albums as &quot;Duster&quot; and &quot;Lofty Fake Anagram&quot; established Burton and his band as the founders of the jazz fusion phenomenon. He also played with and influenced the young Pat Metheny and John Scolfield before they broke through as stars of fusion.
 In 1983, Burton toured the Soviet Union with Chick Corea, with whom he has worked since the 1970s.
 In addition to his concerts and recordings, Burton works as a vice president of the Berklee College of Music in Boston.
 Burton has performed with pianist Ozone since 1984, when he joined Burton's band at the age of 21.
 Tickets cost between 350 and 1,000 rubles.
 Hard-bop trumpeter <strong>Valery Ponomarev, </strong>who will give a show at the Jazz Philharmonic Hall on Sunday, is the seminal musician who helped Russian jazz players overcome their inferiority complex and gain renown in the highly competitive world of American jazz.
 Having emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1973, Ponomarev managed to impress his idol Art Blakey with his playing, and within three months of arriving in New York, he sat in with Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
 Three years later, in 1976, he officially joined the Messengers, replacing Bill Hardman and beginning a four-year association, during which he would record nine albums and tour the world.
 Ponomarev has since freelanced, usually leading his own quintets and recording extensively. Since 1996, he has toured his native Russia annually with the likes of Benny Golson, Curtis Fuller and Jimmy Cobb.
 &quot;Listening to Valery Ponomarev on a blindfold-test basis, you could not possibly distinguish him from one of the more inspired and authentic of America's great black trumpeters in the driving, hard-bop jazz genre that is his chosen idiom,&quot; wrote Leonard Feather in the Los Angeles Times.
 Ponomarev played in St. Petersburg with Benny Golson in 1997. This time he will perform with local musicians including David Goloshchokin and Vladimir Lytkin.
 Tickets cost 200 rubles.
 Nothing especially exciting on the rock-and-roll front is expected next week. The rock festival Living Culture 2, to be held at Friday and Zoopark, lists dozens of acts, but none seem very inspiring.
 However, as usual, there are club events that could turn out to be nice. Look for the NB symbols in the Gigs section.
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: another reason to head north
AUTHOR: by Robert Coalson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: There are myriad reasons to visit Helsinki - business, pleasure, shopping or the infernal visa-renewal trip. Personally, I have long thought that one of the perks of living in St. Petersburg was the easy accessibility of this friendly neighbor, a city that I most likely would never have discovered otherwise. In the winter, Helsinki has an austere, mysterious beauty and, in the summer, a zest for life and pleasure that Petersburg should imitate.
 
The pleasures of Helsinki are many, from the huge English-language section at the Stockmann's bookstore to the friendly (!) service at the consular department of the Russian embassy, but the one dearest to my heart is the Raffaello Caf&eacute;. I wouldn't dream of spending even one day in the Finnish capital without a meal at this beautiful downtown bar and restaurant.
 Raffaello's d&eacute;cor - an artful and soothing combination of Art Nouveau curves and Renaissance pastels - magnetically pulls passers-by in from the street. A huge, slate fireplace dominates the dining room, surrounded by candlelit tables like a mother duck with a brood of ducklings. An elegantly casual wine-and-dinner crowd fills the place from opening to closing, so it is reckless in the extreme to show up for dinner without a reservation.
 In addition to its regular menu, Raffaello cooks up varying seasonal dishes that reward the regular patron. The current winter menu features such tempting titles as &quot;focaccia bread stuffed with chicken&quot; for 9.30 euros ($7.99) and &quot;grilled chicken and potato gnocchi in blue cheese sauce&quot; for 12.80 euros ($11).
 The regular menu features a nice balance of pasta, meat and vegetarian dishes, all obviously crafted with love and attention. There is something delightful in pondering choices such as &quot;lamb cutlets with mushroom potatoes and red-wine-and-coriander sauce&quot; for 19.95 euros ($16.38) or &quot;tomato and mushroom pot with ciapatta bread&quot; for 9.60 euros ($7.98). We drained our first glasses of wine while indulging our fantasies.
 In the end, we passed on our traditional favorite of pepper steak - highly recommended - for 17.50 euros ($15.05) and opted to broaden our horizons. 
 Although it should be clear by now that Raffaello leans toward Italian cuisine, I felt a certain professional obligation to explore the small selection of Finnish fare. I started with a half portion of the salmon soup for 6.15 euros ($5.29). To be honest, this is the only dish I've ever had there that came with even a twinge of disappointment. It was a thin, white broth with huge chunks of potato and salmon and otherwise very little in the way of flavor. Given Finnish winters, I expected something that would stick to the ribs.
 My dining companion started with a &quot;salad of sesame marinated chicken, deep-fried artichokes, mushroom toast and herb-garlic sour cream,&quot; half portion for 6.90 euros ($5.93). Somehow this startling pallet of flavors combined into something that could be nominated for the title of &quot;the perfect salad.&quot;
 My main course, though, more than made up for the momentary letdown of my soup. I boldly opted for the &quot;fillet of reindeer with mushroom potatoes, dark-onion sauce and lingonberry compote&quot; for 22.20 euros ($19.09). Lingonberry, or mountain cranberry, may be better known to some by the Russian name <i>brusnika.</i>
 Although I must admit that this was my first flirtation with reindeer and so I may lack the context to properly evaluate it, I have to say that this novice found it delicious. It was comparable in texture to an excellent prime rib, but leaner and richer. I usually find game-type dishes to be tough, but this farm-raised reindeer was as tender as any beef. 
 But the highlight was the lingonberry compote, which was seasoned with cloves, cinnamon and red wine, making it virtually identical to mulled wine in flavor. It was fabulous with the meat and nearly as good by itself. I wish I'd asked for the recipe.
 My dining companion made a more conservative choice, opting for the grilled beef fillet with fruit salad. She got a generous portion of first-rate beef that left her speechless and went perfectly with the Chilean rose.
 Having a bit of time left before we had to catch the bus back to St. Petersburg, we unwound with cappuccino and a light desert called &quot;passion fruit bavarois with chocolate sauce&quot; for 6.20 euros ($5.33). 
 A perfect end to a nearly perfect meal.
 
 <i>
Raffaello Caf&eacute;, 46 Aleksanterinkatu, Helsinki. Tel. 09-6844-0718. Open daily from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Dinner for two with house wine, 71.84 euros ($61.78). Menu in English and Finnish. Credit cards accepted. Reservations strongly recommended. </i>

TITLE: At Least 600 Dead in Weapons-Depot Blast
AUTHOR: By Glenn McKenzie
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LAGOS, Nigeria - Writhing in grief and singing mournful hymns, residents of Lagos buried loved ones Wednesday after explosions at an army munitions depot left at least 600 dead. The Red Cross said 1,000 others were still missing.
 
Nigerian Red Cross spokesperson Patrick Bawa said 400 children had been reunited with their families. &quot;We are still hoping to find those still missing,&quot; he said, stressing it was too early to say the death toll could rise.
 Other residents of this crime and poverty-plagued West African metropolis spent a third day trekking to hospitals, police stations and morgues in search of missing loved ones.
 The Defense Ministry has promised to move the depot from the crowded northern Ikeja neighborhood to avoid another tragedy, but an army spokesperson said Wednesday he was not aware of the plan.
 The explosions, which began Sunday night and continued into the early hours of the morning Monday, propelled shells and flaming debris for kilometers around.
 Days later, the full scope of the tragedy remained unclear.
 President Olusegun Obasanjo said Tuesday that more than 600 bodies had been recovered - many of them women and children who accidentally ran into a canal and drowned while fleeing in the darkness. But some local media estimated between 700 and 2,000 were killed.
 Dozens of bodies continued to arrived at city morgues after Obasanjo's announcement, but officials did not have an updated death toll Thursday.
 Tragedy is nothing new in this pollution-choked city of 12 million, where most people live in crowded neighborhoods of tin shacks plagued by violent crime, disease and poverty - despite the country's oil wealth.
 But Nigeria's newspapers and radio stations were calling Sunday's explosions one of the city's worst-ever disasters.
 At the Matoni cemetery in Ikeja, James Ozagha borrowed $12 from neighbors to pay the fees to bury his 15-year-old son, Justice. The 48-year-old unemployed laborer found the child lying dead on the grass next to the Oke Afa canal a day earlier.
 &quot;We struggle to eat on normal days,&quot; Ozagha said. &quot;The government should compensate us after this disaster. This is too much to bear.&quot;
 In the same cemetery, the Onyemara family sang hymns as they buried their main breadwinner, Precious, a 30-year-old office worker who was also among the hundreds who drowned in the canal.
 The songs were punctuated by sobs from the victim's aunt, Stella Maris, who collapsed to the ground when the plain wooden coffin was placed gently in the earth.
 Outside the Ishola government mortuary, families covered their noses with handkerchiefs as more bodies arrived Wednesday.
 Obasanjo canceled a planned visit Wednesday to a world economic forum in New York because of the disaster.
 He said the government was setting up a relief fund for victims worth $2.5 million. Two-thirds of the money was being donated by the government, and the rest was being contributed by Nigeria's state oil company.
 The money will be used to identify the casualties, reunite families and compensate their losses, he said in an address to lawmakers in the capital, Abuja.
 Meanwhile, Red Cross workers were already handing out food to survivors outside a damaged primary school in the Ikeja military barracks.
 Defense Minister Yakubu Danjuma promised Tuesday to move the depot, saying it had been built decades ago when few people lived in the northern Ikeja neighborhood.
 Since then, it had been &quot;swallowed up by the metropolis,&quot; he said, according to radio and television reports.
 Many families blame the military for storing weapons, including rockets and heavy artillery shells, at a base surrounded by crowded slums and working-class neighborhoods.
 Others say lives could have been saved if authorities had built more bridges over a 8-kilometer section of the canal where there is only one crossing.
 Lagos state Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other politicians have accused the army of negligence and called for a public investigation. Nigeria's two houses of parliament have announced separate inquiries into the blasts.

TITLE: Sharon: Israel Should Have Killed Arafat
AUTHOR: By Laurie Copans
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - Israel should have killed Yasser Arafat 20 years ago, while he was under Israeli siege in Beirut, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview published Thursday.
 
Sharon said he was &quot;sorry we didn't liquidate him,&quot; but added that Arafat could yet become a partner for peace if he cracked down on Palestinian militants.
 In the Gaza Strip, two militants detonated a roadside bomb and opened fire on a truck carrying Thai farm hands to Jewish settlements. Soldiers escorting the truck returned fire, killing the assailants, the army said. The truck was damaged, but the workers were not injured. The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility.
 Also Thursday, a 17-year-old Palestinian wounded last week by Israeli Army fire died of his injuries, doctors said. The teen-ager was shot while throwing stones at tanks near Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
 Overnight, Israeli soldiers arrested two Hamas members in a Palestinian-controlled area of Ramallah and near the West Bank town of Tulkarem, the Israeli military said. Israel accuses the Palestinian Authority of doing little to prevent attacks on Israelis by Palestinian militants, and says Israeli troops have to step in to track down militants.
 The militant Islamic Jihad group said Wednesday it would carry out more attacks against Israelis. The group took responsibility for a bombing earlier in the day that wounded two officers from Israel's Shin Bet security service and killed the Palestinian attacker, a former informer for Israel.
 &quot;We will continue with our jihad and operations, more strikes in the Zionist depth are coming, God willing,&quot; the group said in a statement. Islamic Jihad and Hamas have carried out dozens of bombings and suicide attacks during the current conflict, which started in September 2000.
 In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak said after a meeting Wednesday with Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer that his country must maintain contacts with Israel since the Israelis and Palestinians are no longer talking to one another. &quot;The Palestinians are under siege and the [Israelis] are in trouble,&quot; Mubarak said. &quot;We agreed to remain in contact until a solution is found.&quot;
 Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qureia was to travel to Washington for a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday.
 The Palestinians said they were going to Washington to clarify their position, as the U.S. administration grows less sympathetic to their cause.
 Their mission will precede Sharon's trip to Washington to meet U.S. President George W. Bush on Feb. 7, his fourth visit to the White House. Arafat has yet to receive an invitation.
 Arafat remains virtually trapped in Ramallah, with Israeli tanks parked about 70 yards from his compound.
 Sharon told the Maariv daily that Israel should have killed Arafat during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Sharon was defense minister at the time, and led the push to drive Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization out of Lebanon.
 &quot;In Lebanon, there was an agreement not to liquidate Yasser Arafat,&quot; Sharon told Maariv. &quot;In principle, I'm sorry that we didn't liquidate him.&quot;
 In recent speeches, Sharon has said Arafat was Israel's bitter enemy and accused him of leading a &quot;gang of terrorists.&quot;
 Looking past the conflict, Sharon said Israel will enter peace talks with Arafat in the future, if he stamps out terror. &quot;If Arafat will take all the steps that we are demanding from him, for me he will return to be a partner in negotiations,&quot; Sharon said.

TITLE: Search Goes On for Kidnapped Reporter
AUTHOR: By Zahid Hussain
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - An e-mail sent Thursday purportedly by the kidnappers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl extended the deadline for killing him by one day.
 
The unsigned e-mail was received by Pakistani and Western media.
 &quot;We will give you one more day,&quot; the message said. &quot;If America will not meet our demands we will kill Daniel. Then this cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan.&quot;
 The unsigned message said that unless the kidnappers' demands are met, &quot;the Amrikans [sic] will get what they deserve.&quot;
 The e-mail said the Pearl abduction was not the end and threatened a &quot;real war on Amrikans,&quot; who it said will &quot;get the taste of death and destructions what we got&quot; in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
 A similar e-mail sent Wednesday had said Pearl, the Journal's South Asian bureau chief who disappeared Jan. 23 in Karachi, would be executed after 24 hours and demanded all American journalists leave Pakistan within three days or become targets.
 The Wall Street Journal and Pearl's pregnant wife appealed to his kidnappers to spare his life. &quot;Killing Danny will achieve nothing for you,&quot; Journal managing editor Paul Steiger wrote in a return message to Wednesday's e-mail. &quot;His murder would be condemned by the entire world, and your group would be viewed as murderers without serious political objectives.&quot;
 Instead, Steiger urged the kidnappers to release Pearl with a &quot;detailed list of the issues and grievances that are important to you&quot; so that he &quot;can articulate them to others.&quot;
 Pearl was trying to arrange an interview with a Muslim cleric, Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, when he disappeared. Pakistani police arrested Gilani on Wednesday and carried out raids in several cities, but said they don't know where Pearl is being held.
 The heretofore unknown National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty sent e-mails last weekend demanding that Pakistanis held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, be returned here for trial.
 The e-mail included pictures of Pearl with a pistol pointed to his head.
 Wednesday's e-mail alleged that Pearl was working for the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad. &quot;Therefore, we will execute him within 24 hours unless Amreeka [sic] fulfills our demands,&quot; the message said.
 It accused U.S. journalists of working for intelligence agencies and warned that any American journalists still in the country after three days &quot;will be targeted.&quot; 
 The latest e-mail gave no reason why the deadline for Pearl's killing had been extended, and no time was given for the start of the countdown.
 In an interview with CNN, Pearl's wife, Marianne, appealed to the kidnappers to open a dialogue with her about winning her husband's freedom.
 &quot;This is completely wrong, to hold us. It's just creating more misery and that's it. Nothing can come out of there,&quot; she said.
 She said she had not slept in six days, but was not desperate and was keeping up hope.
 Pearl disappeared after leaving for an appointment at a Karachi restaurant with a contact whom he hoped could arrange an interview with Gilani, head of the small militant Islamic group Tanzimul Fuqra.

TITLE: Soccer Team Says It Is Tired of Its Dirty Name
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: VORONEZH, Central Russia - What is a Russian soccer team to do when it thinks its name sounds like an English expletive? Change it, of course.
 
That's what happened with first division soccer side Fakel Voronezh, whose name - pronounced very loosely like &quot;F-k all&quot; in English - has brought embarrassment to the team on their rare trips abroad.
 Thus, team management has decided, much to the anger of the club's fans, to drop the &quot;Fakel&quot; and go with F.C. Voronezh.
 &quot;F-k, Fakel,&quot; said the club's acting president Eduard Sayenko, bluntly comparing the two words.
 Entry to European soccer competitions - should the club by some miracle ever qualify - could have been a problem with the former name, Sayenko said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
 The club's general director, Alexander Donder, said the name has caused him grief while the team was on tour.
 &quot;When we went to the U.S. in 1995 we had problems,&quot; Donder told Sovietsky Sport.
 He said that he found he couldn't explain what Fakel, which means torch in Russian, was to one young female reporter. 
 &quot;I tried to show with my hands what a fakel was - she got embarrassed and went red,&quot; he said.
 Named Fakel in honor of a local arms factory in 1977, the club has eked out a fairly comfortable, if not particularly successful, existence, bouncing up and down between the top two soccer divisions with - according to fans - little ridicule from its name.
 The players' lack of success has meant that Fakel has had very few chances to meet teams from English-speaking countries. 
 But the team has built up a reputation in Russia, Western Europe and Japan, said former Fakel and Spartak Moscow striker Vladimir Proskurin, who now heads the Voronezh Football Association and opposes the name change.
 &quot;It doesn't sound very good in English,&quot; he conceded. &quot;But it is a useless decision.&quot;
 Most fans agree. Unofficial club Web sites and local newspapers are full of talk of boycotts and protests when the season starts in March.
 One critic asked, if Fakel had to change its name because it sounded profane in English, why weren't clubs with names that sound indecent in Russian changing theirs?
 &quot;It would be curious to know how the heads of Spanish clubs Osasuna or Real Sociedad would react if they knew what the names of their team were similar to in Russian,&quot; columnist Denis Tselykh wrote recently in Sovietsky Sport. &quot;And how red would the representatives of the humble Argentine side Gimnasia de Jujuy be if someone could open their eyes to what their name means?&quot;
 For many native English speakers, there would seem to be an obvious difference between the pronunciation of Fakel and the expletive in question. One explanation for the confusion over the word Fakel could be that when the English expletive is transliterated into Russian, the &quot;u&quot; is replaced by the letter &quot;a&quot; as there is no closer analogy in the Russian alphabet. Indeed at soccer matches, fans of the lewder type nearly always shout <i>&quot;Fak Yuo!&quot; </i>rather than using the more correct, if still as rude, pronunciation.
 F.C. Voronezh representatives say that avoidance of possible embarrassment is just one of the reasons for changing the club's name. After being relegated from the premier league at the end of last season, the club got new management who wanted to break ties with the old.
 &quot;It hasn't got any connection to Fakel anymore,&quot; said club president Sayenko, explaining that the factory has not financed the club for 10 years.
 Another reason, which many suspicious fans say is the only reason for the change, is that by taking on a new name the club is trying to shirk its responsibilities of paying old debts.
 Sayenko acknowledged the club was attempting to distance itself from the debts. He would not reveal the amount.
 It is not the first name change for the club. After being founded in 1953, the team was called Voronezh and Trud before becoming Fakel.
 The club is not ready to open a dialog with fans over the latest name change.
 &quot;The fans always complain about something,&quot; Sayenko said.
 Perhaps if the club was not in such a perilous state, the fans' disapproval would not be so harsh. But, as well as the name change, fans have seen most of the team's best players leave in recent months.
 A mere four players from last year's side are left on contract. The fact that Sayenko's previous experience was with the local women's team has not endeared him to fans either.

TITLE: Brady Will Start for Patriots in Super Bowl
AUTHOR: By Jimmy Golen
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana - New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick wanted to make sure Tom Brady is healthy.
 
Belichick chose Brady to start at quarterback Sunday in the Super Bowl against the St. Louis Rams, passing on Drew Bledsoe for the poised former backup who won Bledsoe's job - and each of the Patriots' last eight games.
 &quot;Tom Brady demonstrated in practice that he is fit to play,&quot; Belichick said Wednesday after Brady showed no lingering problems from an ankle injury that knocked him out of the AFC title game. &quot;He will be our starting quarterback on Sunday.&quot;
 The decision means Bledsoe may have played his last game for the team that made him the first overall pick in 1993 and gave him a 10-year, $103-million contract last summer that remains the richest in NFL history.
 Neither quarterback was available for comment after being informed of the decision by Belichick.
 Belichick chose Brady with the 199th overall pick of the 2000 draft. The Patriots carried him on the roster all of last season as a rare fourth quarterback, but by this summer, Brady had vaulted over Michael Bishop and Damon Huard to be Bledsoe's primary backup.
 When Bledsoe was injured in Week 2 - keeping him out of practice for seven weeks - Brady filled in so well that Belichick stayed with him even after Bledsoe was ready to return.
 Brady was the AFC's third-rated passer while leading the Patriots to an 11-5 record in the regular season. They were 5-11 last season and started this season 0-2. Brady started the only meeting between the two Super Bowl teams this season, a 24-17 win for the Rams in New England on Nov. 18
 New England won six consecutive games to win the division title and then beat the Oakland Raiders 16-13 in a snowy overtime to earn a spot in the conference-title game.
 But when Brady sprained his left ankle in the conference championship last Sunday, Bledsoe came on in relief, leading New England to a 24-17 win over Pittsburgh and creating a quarterback controversy on the game's biggest stage.
 Before announcing his choice, Belichick took one last look at a videotape to make sure Brady was moving OK. When he was sure Brady's ankle wasn't a problem, he saw no reason to make a change.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: More Tyson Charges
 

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Las Vegas police said Wednesday that they will ask prosecutors later this week to charge boxer Mike Tyson with sexual assault and were investigating allegations by a second woman that the former heavyweight champion raped her at his Las Vegas home.
 Las Vegas Metropolitan Policellieutenant Jeff Carlson, head of the department's sexual-assault detail, said his detectives would present their case against Tyson to prosecutors on Friday and would ask for a felony warrant against the 35-year-old boxer.
 That case stems from allegations by an unnamed local woman that Tyson raped her at his Las Vegas home in September.
 Carlson said detectives had also opened an investigation into allegations by a second woman that Tyson raped her in November 2000 when she was visiting the desert gambling city.
 
 
England Stays Alive
 

NEW DELHI, India (Reuters) - Left-arm spinner Ashley Giles took a career-best five for 57 to help England to a thrilling two-run win over India in the fifth one-day international on Thursday that kept it afloat in the six-game series.
 The 28-year-old Warwickshire bowler led a superb comeback by triggering an Indian batting slump as England restricted the hosts to 269 for eight in their allotted 50 overs.
 Chasing 272 for a 4-1, series-clinching victory, all-rounder Ajit Agarkar hit 36 not out from only 24 deliveries to set up a tight finish and India went into the last over needing nine runs to win.
 But England's leading paceman Darren Gough kept his cool to concede only six and the visitors will now attempt to square the series in Sunday's final game in Bombay.
 Giles took his five wickets in a six-over spell during which he conceded 25 runs, having gone for 32 runs in his first four.
 
 
U.S. in Gold Final
 

PASADENA, California (Reuters) - The United States won a penalty shoot-out against defending champion Canada on Wednesday to reach the CONCACAF Gold Cup final, where they will meet Costa Rica on Saturday.
 The match ended goalless after extra-time but the U.S. won 4-2 on penalties when two of Canada's spot-kicks were saved by Tottenham goalkeeper Kasey Keller, while the U.S. scored from all four of its attempts.
 The U.S. dominated the game from the start but were denied by some desperate defending and an outstanding performance from Canadian goalkeeper Lars Hirschfeld.
 But in the shoot-out it was Keller, who plays for Spurs in the English premier league, who became the hero as he saved shots from Kevin McKenna and Tam Nsaliwa. The U.S. scored all four of their penalties to go through 4-2.
 
 
Saudis Come Back
 

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - World Cup finalist Saudi Arabia scored three goals in the last 12 minutes to clinch the Gulf Cup on Wednesday after Qatar looked to be heading for an upset win.
 Two goals in the space of six minutes sparked a Saudi rally which completely unsettled Qatar, which otherwise had enjoyed an amazing run of success in the six-countyr tournament, winning its previous four games.
 Abdullah Jomaan al-Dosary converted a penalty kick in the 78th minute to restore parity for the hosts, after Ahmed Khalifa Hashim put Qatar in the lead in the 26th minute.
 Saleh al-Mohammedi made it 2-1 in the 84th minute while Talal al-Meshal sealed the win in injury time.