SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #743 (9), Friday, February 8, 2002
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TITLE: Sweeps Keep Fires in Their Place
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Alexander Zakharov stopped wearing clothes with buttons to work years ago. There is an old Russian superstition that by tearing off a chimney sweep's button, you can ensure a lifetime of happiness.
 
"After I lost about 10 buttons like that, I decided there should be some other way I could make people happy," Zak harov said with a smile. "If you want to be happy or rich, just touch my belt."
 One day last week, Zakharov peeled off his heavy jacket and stepped confidently out onto the slippery, snow-covered sloped roof of a five-story downtown building. Wearing dark blue overalls and a broad belt with a bright bronze buckle, he lowers a rope with a weight and brush attached into the first chimney.
 "My record is seven buckets of soot from one very dirty chimney," he smiles.
 Zakharov, 53, is one of about 100 local practitioners of this profession, which has been enjoying something of a renaissance in recent years.
 "We went through a period of stagnation in the 1960s," said Sergei Kur no sov, 44, another chimney sweep, who works together with Zakharov and about 20 colleagues in a company called Artel Trubochistov ("The Chimney sweeps' Guild").
 Kurnosov speaks ruefully of that time, when many city buildings were reconstructed and old stoves and fireplaces were removed as central, hot-water heating was added. City flues were switched over to venting gas rather than smoke.
 "It is frightening to think of how they broke up those beautiful old tile stoves, handmade by craftsmen," he said. "Today it costs thousands of dollars to make such a stove."
 However, changing times bring new tendencies. As the new rich began buying up and renovating downtown communal apartments in the early 1990s, interest in fireplaces and the humble chimneysweep picked up.
 "That's when the demand for our services shot up," Kurnosov said, adding that, by that time, city chimneys were in desperate need of cleaning and repair. Many, in fact, were beyond repair.
 Kurnosov warns that dealing with chimneys is not a matter for amateurs.
 "I know one family that installed a fireplace in their apartment and caused the death of their neighbor downstairs," Kur nosov said, "because they blocked the ventilation for their neighbor's gas water heater."
 Like most taxi drivers, every chimney sweep has a million stories.
 "You can never tell what you might find in a chimney," Kurnosov said. Over the years, he has found golden necklaces, drugs, wine and even a pistol. He knows one colleague who found several packets of pre-Revolutionary money.
 Zakharov was once called in to look for a diamond ring. "Apparently, a woman had an argument with her husband and, in a fit of temper, she threw the ring into a vent," he said. "However, after tempers cooled, they called me in."
 After sifting through two buckets of soot, Zakharov found the ring.
 "You never know what mission you'll be called in for," Kurnosov said.
 One time in the early 1980s, Kur no sov was called to check the chimney of a communal apartment. When he arrived, he found a poor, elderly woman who lived there and a well-dressed man who was driving a fancy car. 
 The man ordered Kurnosov to break into a ventilation shaft in the floor. After a few attempts, they found an antique box, which the man would not allow Kurnosov to open.
 "I later found out that the man was a member of an old Russian noble family that had hidden its treasure in their former apartment. The box contained 96 pre-Revolutionary gold coins," Kurno sov said.
 Other times, chimney sweeps are called in to help the police. "Once, I spent two months and searched 120 chimneys in order to find some things hidden by a criminal," said one chimney sweep, who asked not to be identified.
 The chimney sweeps occasionally have to work on the roofs at night, since places such as hospitals and restaurants often cannot shut down their cooking and heating equipment during the day.
 Zakharov says that he is not afraid of heights and doesn't worry about falling off a roof. "I've been doing this for 30 years," he said. "Like most of my colleagues, I used to be an athlete."
 Presently, there isn't any formal training program for the profession. However, Valery Lavrukhin, head of Artel Trubochistov and a former pole-vaulter, said that there are plans to organize a school now that demand for their services is so great.
 "There are several requirements for applicants. They can't be afraid of heights or addicted to alcohol. They should be able to sketch and communicate well, and should be in good shape," he said.
 For now, training is often passed on from generation to generation.
 "This occupation often forms dynasties," Kurnosov said, adding that his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all chimney sweeps.
 "I started when I was 21, right after I got out of the army," he said. "Now my son is 22 and he is working with me."

TITLE: Putin Pushes Jubilee Summit
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin proposed on Wed nesday that all the leaders of the European Union be invited to St. Petersburg for a grand summit next year, when the city celebrates its 300th birthday. 
 
As a sign of how seriously he takes the anniversary event, Putin summoned top cabinet ministers for a meeting of the committees planning St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary, as well as a smaller party marking the 1000th birthday of the city of Kazan on the Volga River. 
 "Both celebrations are events on a national scale. St Petersburg and Kazan both played important historical roles in the establishment of the Russian state," Putin told dignitaries at the meeting. 
 Russian news agencies quoted him later as saying he hoped to invite the heads of all European Union countries to St. Petersburg for the fete next May.
 The country is spending $387 million this year to fix the city up ahead of the anniversary, most of it on restoring local monuments and building the ring road to divert traffic from the historic center of the city, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Wednesday. Kazan will get about one-tenth as much. 
 Governor Vladimir Yakovlev pro mis ed Thursday that no city budget funds would be spent on the anniversary, but added that the allocated federal funding may not be adequate for the work.
 According to Yakovlev, construction of the 150-kilometer ring road will require more than the $1.2 billion set aside. Only 17 kilometers of the road have been opened to traffic so far.
 "No one knows exactly how much the ring road will cost," Yakovlev told a press conference. "Some [estimates] are that it could be two or three times as much as previously thought. This could happen because of price hikes and inflation. However, I don't think the increase will be this much, but the price will be higher than the original estimate," he said.
 Putin and Yakovlev agreed on Wednesday to set up a special commission to produce a new cost estimate for the project and to oversee a closed tender among construction companies.
 Yakovlev endorsed Putin's suggestion that European leaders be invited for the celebration and said that the summit could be held at the Konstantinov Palace, the new presidential complex in Strelna. The palace is currently undergoing a total renovation, the first part of which is scheduled to be completed by May 2003.
 Yakovlev said that Putin had instructed the Foreign Ministry to look into the matter. "This meeting will not overshadow the event itself," he said. "There are lots of [high-profile] events taking place in the city each year, including 2003, such as the International Banking Congress and the International Economics Forum."
 The governor also said that restoration of the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace in the suburb of Push kin would be completed in time for the fete. The original Amber Room was dismantled and removed during the German occupation of the town during World War II, and subsequently disappeared. The restoration project began in 1983.
 Yakovlev also promised that the disrupted metro line between the Lesnaya and Ploshchad Muzhestva stations will be re-opened in 2003. "Putin said that the celebration won't seem complete if the line isn't working," the governor said.
 He said that the federal government transfers as much as 800 million rubles (about $23 million) annually to develop the local metro system.
 However, Yakovlev and Putin failed to resolve other issues, including a City Hall effort to transfer certain downtown properties, currently controlled by the Defense Ministry, to city control.
 "There is a building near the Mariinsky Theater at 22 Ulitsa Rimskogo-Korsakova that [Mariinsky Artistic Director] Va lery Gergiev would like to see as a hotel for guests coming to performances," Yakov lev said, mentioning just one of the properties.
 
 <i>(SPT, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: Governor Creates Pardons Commission
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Governor Vladimir Yakovlev has created a Regional Pardons Commission in accordance with a decree issued Dec. 28 by President Vladimir Putin that devolved responsibility for pardons from the central government to the regions. 
 
The commission, which will consider pardon applications from local prisoners only, held its first session last week.
 The the new commission has 19 members, including Alexander Boitsov and Vadim Prokhorov, both law professors at St. Petersburg State University; Nikolai Skatov, director of the Institute for Russian Literature; writers Boris Nikolsky and Andrei Konstantinov; Father Bogdan Soiko of the Nikolo-Bogoyavlensky Cathedral; City Hall representatives Vyacheslav Tenishev and Vladimir Vasilyev; and Legislative Assembly Deputy Vladimir Yeryomenko. 
 &quot;There are about 18,000 potential applicants in St. Petersburg. Eight thousand of those are currently in jails and about 10,000 are on probation,&quot; said commision member Vasilyev, who is also deputy chairperson of the City Hall Media Committee.
 However, he added, there are no &quot;completed applications&quot; yet, so the next meeting, to be held Feb. 14, will deal with organizational questions only.
 &quot;Fortunately, we won't have to deal with life-sentence prisoners, because we don't have any in St. Petersburg. We just don't have jails for that kind of prisoner in this region,&quot; said Oleg Lyskov, another member of the regional commission.
 Prison officials are aware of the changes, but will not officially inform prisoners until the commission issues written instructions on how to apply and an explanation of which categories of prisoners are eligible. 
 &quot;We have had some inquires, and cases vary. One prisoner, for instance, is unhappy because he got a five-year sentence and another prisoner committed the same crime, but only got one year,&quot; said Vladimir Kalinichenko, a prison-system spokesperson, on Tuesday.
 &quot;Our job is to inform [prisoners] of decisions and fulfill them, but the commission must issue its regulations first,&quot; he added.
 According Vladimir Spitsnadel, head of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast prison system, 157 applications were sent to the federal pardons commission last year from the region. Only two prisoners - both of them women - were pardoned, Spitsnadel told Interfax.
 The Federal Pardons Commission, which was headed by writer Anatoly Pristavkin, included nationally known writers, activists and other cultural figures before it was disbanded at the end of last year. It was created by former President Boris Yeltsin in 1992 in order to make recommendations to the president on pardons. During its lifetime, more than 57,000 prisoners received pardons.
 However, since Putin became president, the number of pardons approved by the president has dropped dramatically. In 2001, the Federal Pardons Commission considered more than 10,000 applications, of which 2,500 were passed on to Putin. Just 18 were granted.
 According to the Dec. 28 decree, the regional commissions will make their recommendations to the regional governors. Applications that are approved by the governor will then be passed on to the president for final approval.
 &quot;The composition of the St. Petersburg commission looks pretty good, since there is no problem finding respected people in this city. What worries me is what things will be like in other regions,&quot; said Leonid Kesselman, a political analyst of the Sociology Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
 Yury Vdovin, an activist with the local human-rights group Citizen's Watch, expressed concern about the commission's independence. &quot;There are respected people such as Nikolsky, for instance, or Vasilyev, but I suspect that it won't be autonomous and independent,&quot; he said.

TITLE: The Proper Way To Install a Fireplace
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If you'd like to install a fireplace in your apartment, you should know that the 2000 Russian Construction Norms and Rules (or SNIP) say that heating stoves and fireplaces are allowed only in buildings of two or fewer floors.
 
However, even if your building is taller, don't give up. There may be legal ways to make your dream come true.
 Such situations, though, demand serious preparations and the place to start is an application to the St. Petersburg State Fire Prevention Service, or SFPS.
 Denis Degtyeryov, an SFPS fire-control supervisor, said that fireplaces can be installed in taller buildings if they previously had fireplaces and after an SFPS inspection. However, fireplaces are banned in wooden-frame buildings or those with serious structural problems.
 &quot;The number of fires in old, downtown buildings has been going up. Therefore, the fire-safety standards are being applied more strictly,&quot; Degtyeryov said.
 Fireplaces can only be legally installed by companies licensed for such work by the SFPS. Generally, such companies will first send an inspector to check your chimney, the integrity of the building and your apartment's isolation from the neighbors.
 Valery Lavrukhin, head of the Artel Trubochistov chimney-sweeping firm, emphases the importance of a thorough inspection. Many St. Petersburg buildings, he said, have invisible cracks, most of which were caused by bombing during World War II.
 &quot;If you plan to install a fireplace, it's essential to consult a chimney sweep. Otherwise, you may put yourself and your neighbors in grave danger,&quot; Lav ruk hin said.
 If the inspection uncovers problems, that still may not be the end of your dream. Boris Yegorov, a fire-safety engineer from the company Gorod Masterov, said that specialists might be able to fireproof walls or install automatic fire-extinguishing systems. &quot;Such work is very expensive,&quot; he warned. &quot;And in some cases, it may not be possible at all.&quot;
 Yegorov also pointed out that fire safety demands that all fireplaces be inspected by a qualified chimney sweep at the beginning and the end of each heating season. He advised resisting the temptation to install a fireplace illegally.
 &quot;Doing it illegally can be very dangerous and create unpleasant consequences for you or your neighbors. In case of a fire, you and the firm that installed the fireplace could be held liable in court,&quot; Yegorov said.
 The SFPS said that in 2001, stoves and chimneys caused 120 fires in St. Petersburg and 703 in the Leningrad Oblast, mostly in dachas and cottages.
 &quot;Installing a fireplace increases the risk of a fire under any circumstances,&quot; Degtyeryov said. &quot;I'd advise fireplace lovers to install artificial, electric fireplaces instead.&quot;

TITLE: 2 Soldiers on a Rampage Kill 9
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A daylong bloody rampage in central Russia by two runaway paratroopers who killed at least nine people, four of them civilians, ended early Tuesday after both deserters were shot dead during a gunfight with police, law enforcement officials said.
 
Military prosecutors were investigating the conscripts' motives, with versions ranging from a drunken thirst for violence to a love affair gone sour.
 Almaz Shageyev and Mikhail Suk ho rukov, both 20, fled their elite unit north of the Volga River city of Ulya novsk early Monday armed with two Kalashnikov automatic rifles and 135 cartridges.
 The young men first killed the drivers of two Zhiguli sedans and drove the hijacked cars to neighboring Tatar stan, Yelena Kovtanyuk, a spokesperson for the republic's Interior Ministry, said by telephone from Kazan. She said both men were drunk when they left the base.
 Once in Shageyev's native Tatarstan, the deserters opened fire on traffic police who pursued them in a short-lived car chase, killing two officers and two civilians whose car had been commandeered by the police officers, Kovtanyuk said.
 Television news reports showed bloody patches of snow littered with spent cartridges near a small railroad station in Tatarstan's Buisky district, where the deserters clashed with police in their penultimate gunfight, killing three more officers.
 One of the paratroopers, Shageyev, was also killed. At least two officials said that a final shot at close range was fired by Sukhorukov, apparently to ensure his cohort was dead.
 After the shootout, Sukhorukov escaped and barricaded himself in a house in the nearby village of Cherki Grishino.
 RTR television showed the house's clearly distraught owner, Olga Mikhai lova, a pensioner, whom Sukhorukov chased from her home before holing up there.
 &quot;He said, 'Give me something to eat.' We fed him, gave him something to drink. We were sitting there, saying, 'For God's sake, don't touch us,'&quot; she said.
 Police discovered Sukhorukov at the house several hours later and a final gunfight ensued in which the deserter was killed. It was not clear, however, whether he was shot by police or committed suicide.
 &quot;One of them was eliminated right away, but we have doubts about the other - whether we shot him or he died from his own bullet,&quot; Tatarstan's Deputy Interior Minister Rafil Nogumanov told ORT television, which showed footage of blood-drenched sheets and blankets on a bed in the house.
 As of late Tuesday, two police officers were hospitalized, one in critical condition with head wounds, Kovtanyuk said, adding that a total of 600 police and military officers had taken part in the operation to capture the soldiers.
 Instances of desertion are common in the army, which is plagued by underfunding, corruption and hazing. A spokesman for the Defense Ministry said Tuesday that his agency does not have statistics on deserters. Calls to military prosecutors went unanswered.
 Valentina Melnikova of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers said her group estimated that as many as 40,000 conscripts per year flee their units.
 However, such cases were considered relatively rare among paratroopers, considered the army's most privileged units.
 Military officials said Shageyev and Sukhorukov's motives were unclear, as both men had only several months left to serve and did not appear to have been abused. But investigators suggested they have already discovered instances of negligence in their unit.
 Ulyanovsk regional police chief Valery Lukin said a number of factors were to blame for the violence: &quot;a lack of control over [the soldiers'] service, inadequate educational work and free access to the arms storage room,&quot; Interfax reported.
 Paratroopers chief Gennady Shpak seemed outraged by the debacle.
 &quot;They read a bunch of books, saw some movies and decided they were some kind of Rambo. They were physically fit guys ... and they decided to test themselves,&quot; he told RTR.
 Kovtanyuk said Shageyev had received a yearlong suspended sentence for theft in 1999 but was amnestied before being drafted in 2000.
 She also said one of the leads under consideration by investigators was a &quot;jilted lover&quot; theory. According to some fellow servicemen, Shageyev had received a letter from his girlfriend saying she was going to marry another man.
 
 <i>
Staff Writer Natalia Yefimova contributed to this report. </i>

TITLE: Struganov Says Witness In Bykov Trial Paid Off
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Krasnoyarsk businessman Vilor Stru ga nov took the stand Tuesday at the trial of metals magnate Anatoly Bykov, who is accused of plotting his murder, and testified that a key witness was offered millions of dollars to change his testimony.
 
The witness, Bykov's former driver and bodyguard Alexander Vasilenko, had told prosecutors that he was ordered by Bykov to kill Struganov in 2000. He later retracted his statements, saying Stru ganov had forced him to make them.
 &quot;I know Vasilenko was under strong pressure,&quot; Struganov told the Me shchan sky district court Tuesday, the second day of the high-profile trial, Interfax reported. &quot;He was offered a lot of money.&quot;
 Struganov, citing a conversation with Vasilenko, said the amount was $5 million to $6 million.
 Before Struganov took the stand, Bykov was given a chance to testify. As on Monday, he refused.
 Bykov, the former head of the Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant, was arrested in October 2000. A yearlong investigation followed, and the trial was delayed three times as Bykov's lawyers tried to get Vasilenko's retraction introduced as evidence. The court admitted the retraction - on videotapes and in a file of papers - on Monday.
 Struganov, who for his own part was recently charged with plotting two explosions in Krasnoyarsk, said Tuesday that State Duma Deputy Vladislav Demin, who helped bring the retraction to Moscow, was offered $1.5 million to obtain it, Interfax reported.
 Demin denied that allegation in court, Interfax said.
 Struganov also said that he, Bykov and several officials involved in the case should be subjected to lie detector tests.
 &quot;I agree to testify on a lie detector, and I suggest Bykov to do the same,&quot; he was quoted by Interfax as saying. &quot;Let him say whether he ordered the murder of Struganov, and let me say whether I planned the explosions I am being accused of.&quot;
 Bykov, who has maintained his innocence, did not respond to the offer.
 If convicted of attempted murder, he faces up to seven years in prison.
 The trial of Bykov, who was elected to the Krasnoyarsk regional legislature in December, won the attention of several State Duma lawmakers Tuesday.
 Vyacheslav Volodin, leader of the Fatherland-All Russia faction in the Duma, said Bykov's case was an example of how poor the country's legislation is, considering a man accused of a capital crime could still be elected to office, RosBusinessConsulting reported.
 Liberal lawmaker Sergei Yushenkov agreed.
 &quot;Such a situation is impossible in the West, where legislation bans people with reputations like Bykov's from taking office,&quot; RBC reported him as saying.

TITLE: Convicted Deputy Gives Up
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Embattled Legislative Assembly deputy Sergei Shevchenko, who was convicted of extortion last year, resigned his seat this week, saying that he was tired of &quot;media speculation&quot; surrounding his name.
 
&quot;[Local] political stability has begun collapsing because of me. I mean the well-known story linked to a [proposed] amendment to the City Charter,&quot; Shev chenko was quoted by Interfax as saying. &quot;I resigned in order to stop the campaign, which was unconscionably organized by some media in order to discredit the Legislative Assembly.&quot;
 Shevchenko, an independent deputy, was convicted last November of extorting $50,000 from Maksim Kusakhmetov, editor of the magazine Teleman. He was given a 7 1/2 year suspended sentence. 
 He is currently appealing the conviction.
 On Jan. 23, the Legislative Assembly adopted a controversial amendment to the City Charter that would have allowed deputies convicted of a crime but given a suspended sentence to continue serving in the chamber. 
 Many local politicians and analysts viewed this amendment as a bid to secure Shevchenko's position in the event that his appeal fails.
 Deputies from the Union of Right Forces argued, however, that the amendment was needed to secure deputies from &quot;the lawlessness of the Prosecutor's Office.&quot;
 Governor Vladimir Yakovlev vetoed the amendment and commented that President Vladimir Putin had spoken to him about the matter.
 &quot;The president expressed his opinion in a very negative way. The deputies will not vote against the veto now. Shevchenko understands now that he cannot be a lawmaker with such a [record],&quot; Yakovlev said at a press conference on Thursday.

TITLE: Army Continues Security Sweeps in Chechnya
AUTHOR: By Yuri Bagrov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia - Federal troops hunted for rebels suspected of hiding in two Chechen villages for a ninth straight day Wednesday, despite calls for an immediate end to the security sweeps amid accusations of human-rights violations by soldiers.
 
Federal troops also expanded the so-called mopping-up operations beyond Starye Atagi and Novye Atagi, south of Grozny, to include other Chechen villages and the republic's second-largest city, Gudermes. An official with the pro-Moscow Chechen administration said three men detained in Gudermes were found carrying guns, grenades and radical Islamic literature.
 A suspected rebel was also killed when troops attempted to detain him, the official said on condition of anonymity.
 About 300 Chechens who managed to evade the cordons around the villages of Starye Atagi and Novye Atagi protested Wednesday outside the Che chen prosecutor's office in Grozny. They demanded an immediate end to the sweeps and the release of all villagers detained by federal forces.
 Villagers have accused the troops of robbing houses, beating and arbitrarily detaining local men, stripping young women of their clothes and harassing residents. A special commission set up by Chechnya's pro-Moscow leader, Akh mad Kadyrov, began investigating the allegations Wednesday, according to Russian media reports.
 Such security sweeps, where federal forces conduct person-by-person searches, have long been criticized by Che chen residents and international human rights organizations. Moscow officials insist there are only isolated incidents of abuse, and maintain that the sweeps are necessary to keep order in the restive republic.
 &quot;We cannot guarantee there will be no unlawful actions at all,&quot; said Vla di mir Kalamanov, President Vladimir Pu tin's human-rights envoy to Chechnya, Itar-Tass reported. &quot;The purpose of mop-up operations is the struggle against terrorism. Militants hide in private homes, in many cases the homes of their relatives.&quot;
 But Kalamanov added that he had no information about any human-rights abuses in current operations.
 In fighting over the past 24 hours, military jets pounded the Nozhai-Yurtovsky district, not far from the border with Dagestan, while artillery shelled Vedensky, Nozhai-Yurtovsky and Kurchaloyevsky districts, the Chechen administration official said. Rebels fired on federal outposts 10 times, killing one soldier and wounding another four, the official said.
 In the Sary-Su village of the Shelkovskoi district - in Chechnya's northeastern flatlands, where federal forces have been able to maintain firmer control than in the mountainous south - a police station was shelled by grenade launchers, killing two officers, the official said. One rebel died in an ensuing gunfight.
 In Grozny, an army jeep was shelled in the center of the city, killing two troops and wounding another two. The car of the deputy chairperson of the Chechen government, Ali Alavdinov, was also destroyed early Wednesday by a remote-controlled mine. Alavdinov escaped without any injuries, but two of his bodyguards were seriously injured, the official said.

TITLE: Russia Welcomes U.S. Pledge
AUTHOR: By Gregory Feifer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Moscow's top arms negotiator on Wednesday applauded a U.S. pledge to sign a legally binding agreement on nuclear-arms cuts. But experts were skeptical that a serious deal could be prepared in time for U.S. President George W. Bush's planned visit to Mos cow in May.
 
Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States would meet Russia's demands for a written commitment to slash arsenals to between 1,500 and 2,200 warheads, down from the current 6,000 each side is permitted under the START I treaty.
 &quot;We do expect that as we codify this framework, it will be something that will be legally binding, and we are examining different ways in which this can happen,&quot; Powell said, adding that the form of the agreement - whether a treaty approved by Congress or a less formal document - was still being worked out.
 Moscow welcomed the move.
 Top arms negotiator and first deputy head of the General Staff, Colonel General Yury Baluyevsky, said a deal could be reached ahead of Bush's visit in May.
 &quot;Under these conditions, we will be able to prepare an agreement that would satisfy both sides and would be accepted by the world community,&quot; Interfax quoted Baluyevsky as saying. Baluyevsky headed a team of experts who discussed the arms cuts with U.S. officials in Washington last month.
 Ivanov also hailed Powell's statements, saying in televised comments, &quot;We think this [an agreement] would be important for Russian-American relations and for the international situation in general.&quot; He said negotiations were already under way.
 But analysts were doubtful that a deal would be drawn up any time soon.
 &quot;Even if there's a political agreement for a treaty - such as there was for the START II treaty - it would still take many months for a group of experts to do all the paperwork,&quot; said independent defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer.
 &quot;Those who worked on the START I and START II treaties say it takes at least a year to hammer out the details,&quot; he added. &quot;And the small print is the most important part. Arms-agreement treaties are full of appendices pertaining to each type of weapon, each warhead and delivery system. The verification process also has to be agreed on. That takes a lot of working out.&quot;
 &quot;Perhaps it is possible for some agreement to be worked out - but it won't be 100-percent finished,&quot; Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov said.
 Bush and President Vladimir Putin agreed in principle to reduce their countries' nuclear stockpiles during Putin's visit to Bush's Texas ranch last November. Putin pressed for a formal agreement, but the White House has until now insisted on an informal deal.
 Andrei Ryabov of the Moscow Carnegie Center said it was too early to tell whether Powell's statements signaled a real policy change.
 &quot;I think conclusions can be drawn only after ... some concrete proposals have been made and after there has been a real discussion of those proposals,&quot; he said.
 Felgenhauer agreed: &quot;The question is how much Powell's words are an expression of his personal view, as opposed to that of [Vice President] Dick Cheney, [National Security Adviser] Condoleeza Rice or [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld,&quot; he said.
 Powell is well-known as a moderate who opposes the more hard-line positions of other cabinet members. &quot;Perhaps it's a reflection of disagreements in Washington,&quot; Felgenhauer said. &quot;Maybe Powell is opening a new front in an ongoing feud.&quot;
 Meanwhile, Russian officials, including Baluyevsky, pointed to a number of ongoing disagreements between Mos cow and Washington. One of the main sticking points is the Pentagon's plan to store decommissioned warheads instead of destroying them - a move that would allow the United States to rebuild an arsenal quickly. Moscow says stockpiling weapons would make a deal pointless.
 Prior to Powell's statements, a series of unilateral U.S. moves drew fire from Moscow and relations between the two countries seemed to be heading toward rockier shores, following a major warming that came after the Sept. 11 attacks.
 In December, the White House announced Washington would withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the Kremlin called a cornerstone of global security. The treaty banned the creation of a national missile-defense system - a project the Bush administration is currently developing, also against Russia's wishes. At the same time, Washington stepped up its criticism of Russia's war in Chechnya - which had been muted at the start of the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, when Russian cooperation was crucial.
 In controversial statements last week, Bush called Iraq, Iran and North Korea an &quot;axis of evil.&quot; Moscow has relatively good relations with all three countries.
 In response, during a meeting in Rome with NATO leaders on Monday, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov criticized Washington for applying double standards in its war on terrorism.
 Powell's announcement Tuesday seems to have changed the direction of the rhetoric.
 &quot;One would like to hope that this is the first symptom of a warming [in U.S.-Russian relations] after the cooling off that was felt previously,&quot; Ryabov said.
 He said Powell's remarks may have been a reaction to Prime Minister Mik ha il Kasyanov's visit to Washington earlier this week. The expectation had been that the talks would be limited to economic projects, Ryabov said, but they went beyond that to encompass talks on policy and U.S.-Russian relations.
 Meanwhile, Markov said Powell's statement is directed not so much toward Russia as to other countries.
 &quot;It's a real concession that shows America's readiness to more or less play by the rules,&quot; he said. &quot;It assuages concerns about American unilateralism. The world was very concerned about Bush's desire for only an informal arms-control agreement.&quot;
 Powell said Tuesday that an agreement could take one of several forms, including an executive agreement between Bush and Putin, a full-blown treaty and a presidential proclamation. Only a treaty would include formalized verification of reductions.
 While it was doubtful that a full-blown treaty could be drawn up by May, &quot;it might be possible to sign a charter,&quot; Felgenhauer said.
 &quot;It would also be possible to issue a declaration and call it a legal document,&quot; he added. &quot;But even legality doesn't stop one party from withdrawing, as the U.S. did with the ABM Treaty.&quot;
 Markov said there was no doubt that Foreign Minister Ivanov's warm reception of Powell's words reflected the official Russian position. &quot;He's a predictable official who doesn't make statements that conflict with the general view,&quot; he said.
 But the analysts agreed that it is too early to say where relations will go from here. &quot;It's wait-and-see,&quot; Felgenhauer said. &quot;If Russia wants to show the Americans to be bad and deceptive, it has every opportunity to do so. But if Putin is serious about promoting friendship, he will have to show it - including by doing things that are unpopular with the military.&quot;

TITLE: Japan Renews Attempts To Reclaim Kuril Islands
AUTHOR: By Mari Yamaguchi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOKYO - Japan's prime minister vowed Thursday to push Russia to return four disputed islands, a decades-long dispute preventing a peace treaty formally ending World War II.
 
&quot;We must make it clear that the four islands belong to us,&quot; Junichiro Koizu mi told an annual government-organized rally. &quot;But we shouldn't be impatient. We should continue our negotiations patiently.&quot;
 Hundreds of people, including Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, gathered to renew demands that Russia hand back the islands, which Moscow calls the Kurils and Tokyo the Northern Territories. The islands were seized by the Soviet Union in the closing days of World War II, a move Japan claims was illegal.
 The Japanese government in 1981 selected Feb. 7 as Northern Territories Day to boost public awareness of the campaign. The day is the anniversary of a friendship treaty between Japan and Russia in 1855 that designated the islands as Japanese.
 Outside the hall where the rally was held, ultra-rightists waving national flags and banners shouted &quot;Return the Northern Islands!&quot; Riot police stopped a group of them, who tried to force their way in.
 The Russian government made no immediate comment, but a lawmaker criticized Koizumi's pledge. &quot;Japan has greater resources than Russia, and they want to use our hardships to ignite the situation around the islands and force us to give up the territory as cheaply as possible,&quot; said Nikolai Kolomitsev, a Communist in Russia's lower house.
 On the Russian island of Sakhalin, north of Japan, protesters gathered to demand the disputed islands remain in Russian hands. They insisted that Kuril residents would never agree to Japanese control, Ekho Moskvy reported.
 Tokyo and Moscow set up diplomatic relations in 1956, but the territorial dispute has prevented them from signing a peace treaty. Ties have improved in recent years and Russian and Japanese leaders are holding regular meetings.
 The islands - part of a chain that extends from Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido to Russia's eastern Kam chatka Peninsula - are surrounded by prime fishing waters. About 17,000 residents, nearly all Russians, live on them.

TITLE: Klebanov Eyeing Arms Bonanza in India
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov led a trade delegation to New Delhi on Tuesday to talk economics and negotiate arms deals with senior officials of the Russian defense industry's second-biggest client.
 
The four-day trade mission is being closely watched at home as tensions between India and Pakistan are running high over the disputed territory of Kashmir, spurring New Delhi to seek new weapons, which Russia is only too happy to supply.
 Klebanov met with Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes on Wed nes day to discuss military and technical cooperation.
 His trip follows Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov's weekend visit to discuss deepening defense ties, and includes the head of jet fighter company Sukhoi and other top officials from the military-industrial complex.
 &quot;I have brought proposals for a new strategic partnership for a joint venture with equal financial stakes in combined research, development and production of high-tech weapons,&quot; the Hindustan Times quoted Klebanov as saying on arrival in New Delhi. He added that Russia and India should venture into the development and production of fifth-generation fighters, as well as civilian aircraft.
 Pradipto Kumar Bandyopadhyay, a spokesperson for the Indian Defense Ministry, said Tuesday by phone from New Delhi that the long-awaited delivery of the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier was also on the agenda. &quot;Various aspects of military and technical cooperation, including the possibility of creating joint ventures and joint production with a technological transfer, will be discussed,&quot; he said, adding that an arms procurement protocol will be signed Friday.
 Klebanov said earlier that the agreement to retrofit and deliver the Admiral Gorshkov would likely be signed by April 1.
 First negotiated in 1997, the deal for the Admiral Gorshkov, which has been repeatedly postponed, will bring Russia an estimated $1.5 billion - $600 million to modernize the carrier and $900 million for a batch of MiG-29K naval fighters and weapons.
 India's wish list also includes the purchase of the S-300V air-defense complex and the lease of four Tu-22M3 backfire bombers and two Amur-class submarines, analysts said.
 Second only to China in procuring Russian military products, New Delhi has cooperated with Moscow in military and technical matters for decades ,and in the last few years has agreed to buy more than $10 billion in arms. President Vladimir Putin reinforced the relationship on a visit to India in October 2000 by creating a bilateral commission on military and technical cooperation.
 Work is under way at St. Petersburg's Baltiisky Shipyard to make good on a $1-billion contract to deliver three Krivak-class frigates by 2003. Next month, India, under an agreement penned in 1996, is expected to begin receiving the first of 40 Su-30 jet fighters.
 At the end of 2000, Russia landed a $3.3-billion deal granting India a license to produce 140 Su-30MKIs. Early last year. India contracted to pay some $800 million to deliver and assemble 310 T-90C battle tanks, the first of which were delivered last year. And the Nizhny Novgorod-based Sokol plant has been upgrading India's fleet of MiG-21s.
 But it is the joint development of new-generation hardware that both sides are most interested in.
 Last June, Klebanov said India would participate in the development of Russia's fifth-generation fighter, which is expected to be ready for test flights by 2006 and to enter mass production by 2010.
 India is also looking into the possibility of jointly producing a new military transport aircraft, the Il-214, in cooperation with the Irkutsk Aviation Production Association and the Ilyushin Aviation Complex. According to Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy head of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, an independent defense think tank, India is an ideal partner that bears no political or military risks, unlike China. He said the development of the PJ-10 anti-ship cruise missile by the Indian-Russian venture BrahMos was an example of the deepening cooperation between the countries.
 Klebanov has said the $1.5-billion development of the next-generation fighter will be partly financed through jet makers' export revenues. Sukhoi has recently been the prime supplier of jets to India and has struck a good relationship with New Delhi, giving it an advantage over rival MiG in the tender to develop the jet, Makiyenko said.
 Sukhoi chief Mikhail Pogosyan has said that, to make the project viable, at least 500 units need to be sold. The two most likely clients, however, are India and China. And if India participates in its development, China would likely shop elsewhere, according to one defense-industry executive who asked not to be identified.

TITLE: Air Carriers Report Big Numbers For 2001
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian air traffic soared last year despite a global slump, but airlines are facing a tough haul to match that growth in 2002 in the face of looming European restrictions and a shattered aviation manufacturing sector, aviation officials said Wednesday.
 
Airlines saw growth across the board in passengers, cargo and revenues, Deputy Transport Minister Alexander Neradko, who oversees the aviation sector, told a meeting summing up 2001 results for the sector.
 &quot;The number of passengers carried grew 14.5 percent last year to 25 million,&quot; Neradko said.
 Cargo numbers jumped 12 percent to 612,000 tons, and revenues grew 8.6 percent to 101 billion rubles ($3.5 billion), he said. Profits rose to 8.3 billion rubles.
 The biggest Russian international carrier, Aeroflot, although hit by Sept. 11 fallout, saw an increase of 14 percent to 5.8 million passengers.
 No. 2 Sibir's traffic soared more than 200 percent to almost 2 million passengers. Sibir last year began merging with Vnukovo Airlines.
 Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, aviation adviser to President Valdimir Putin, told the meeting that the numbers signaled a new era for aviation.
 &quot;This is the start of the rebirth of Russia's aviation sector,&quot; he said.
 However, growth may be capped as Europe shuts its skies on April 1 to aircraft that do not comply with noise requirements. The Transport Ministry estimates that 70 percent of Russian jets do not comply, and airlines will have to cancel as many as 11,000 flights, grounding 3 million passengers.
 A meeting between Russian and European transport officials failed to reach an extension for Russian aircraft, meaning that Il-62, Tu-134 and Il-86 passenger jets and Il-76 cargo planes will be banned from Europe. After that meeting, Russian transport officials threatened to limit access to Russian airspace.
 Neradko said Tuesday that negotiations are continuing in the hope of easing the EU restriction.
 Aeroflot CEO Valery Okulov said the government should stop crying over spilled milk and instead start preparing for further environmental restrictions that will be imposed in 2006.
 He said steps needed to be taken to open up the market to foreign-made jets.
 &quot;We have to turn to the government to permit the import of such aircraft until planes are made locally,&quot; Oku lov said.
 Last year, domestic manufacturers delivered only six airplanes. Two leasing companies selected by the government last year have yet to deliver the long-awaited Il-96-300s and Tu-204s to their airline clients.
 &quot;These [leasing] programs will not provide, though, for a mass construction of new airplanes in 2002,&quot; Neradko said.
 The overall number of carriers dropped from 296 in 2000 to 267 last year, Neradko said. Thirty-six of those airlines had their licenses revoked for poor safety standards.
 With the majority of passengers handled by 10 airlines, more than 100 carriers operate with fewer than five aircraft.

TITLE: New Service Will Pay for Cell-Phone Subscribers
AUTHOR: By Leonid Konik
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Cellular-phone users can now put their handsets to good use, making money receiving advertisements in the form of short-messaging services.
 
North-West GSM began offering the service last week. After signing up, a subscriber receives three to 10 SMS advertisements a day - and North-West pays each subscriber 2.4 cents per advertisement.
 A subscriber could make a maximum of $7 per month - or enough to cover fully monthly subscriber fees for direct numbers, the company said. Clients using federal numbers can earn $2. If the telephone is off, outside the coverage area or the memory is full when the message is sent, the SMS will not be received and the subscriber will not get paid.
 North-West GSM, however, is not looking to transform its clients into advertisers.
 &quot;We are hoping that telephones will be bought for communication - not for sending SMS messages,&quot; said Konstantin Sukhin, marketing director with North-West GSM. &quot;Otherwise, it's the same as buying a video recorder and not watching any films.&quot;
 Even the most active users of the SMS service will not be able to cover their phone bills in full, the company said.
 Over the first three days after the new service was announced, more than 3,000 people signed up. But the company will begin sending the advertisements only after 10,000 subscribers have signed up for the service, said Vyacheslav Balabayev, manager of the Kor poratsiya Mega-Trade advertising agency, which is responsible for finding clients for North-West GSM and writing the ads.
 Balabayev refused to name the companies that had signed up as advertisers, but he said negotiations were being held with a number of possible clients.
 Advertising via SMS is widespread in the West, but had not before been offered as a commercial service in Russia.
 One payphone operator has offered a similar service.
 In May 2001, St. Petersburg's Metrokom launched a scheme whereby customers could talk for free for one minute after listening to a 30-second advertisement.
 The introduction of North-West GSM's latest service comes on the heels of Moscow-based Mobile TeleSystems' arrival in the St. Petersburg market late last year. No. 2 operator Vimpelcom is still absent, although it has said publically that it will seek a license here.
 According to cellular giant Ericsson, most cellular subscribers agree to receive SMS advertising only if the operator offers a free service in exchange - for example, sending SMS messages.
 Some 100 billion SMS messages were sent worldwide in 2001, according to Britain's Mobile Data Association, which said that 25 percent were spam.
 In Russia, between 12.5 million and 20 million messages are sent each month, according to the Sotovik.ru Web site.
 In July 2001, Coca-Cola Corp. used SMS to promote its new fruit drink, Qoo, on the Singapore market. The company sent cartoon SMS messages to 500 teenage cellular subscribers to advertise the product. The recipients then forwarded the message to their friends. The message eventually found its way to more than 500 million handsets.

TITLE: Ministry Moves Ahead With Production of Second Stoly
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Vodka lovers could soon be seeing double - to the ire of the Soyuzplodimport alcohol company.
 
In the latest battle in a war between Soyuzplodimport, or SPI, and the Agriculture Ministry for the rights to 43 vodka labels, including the world-famous Stolichnaya, a company registered by the ministry to manage its vodka interests unveiled its first batch of Stolichnaya at the Prodexpo foodstuffs exhibition in Moscow this week.
 The bottles are identical to those produced under license to SPI - except for the fine print on the label, which reads: &quot;Produced under license of the Agriculture Ministry of Russia.&quot;
 SPI said it is planning to file three suits: one against the Agriculture Ministry, another against the head of the similarly named Soyuzplodoimport - the company registered by the ministry that organized production of the vodka - and yet another against OstAlko, which produced the vodka.
 The vodka display &quot;ignored Russian legislation&quot; and demonstrated the &quot;arbitrariness and lawlessness that have become the style of the Agriculture Ministry and its structures on the alcohol market,&quot; SPI said in a press release.
 Stolichnaya accounted for the majority of SPI's exports last year, the company said. Exports made up 80 percent of the 25 million liters of vodka that SPI sold in 2001. The company declined to give financial figures.
 The vodka war heated up last October, when state trademark agency Rospatent turned over the 43 previously state-owned trademarks to the Agriculture Ministry
 Twenty-six of the trademarks, including Stolichnaya, have since been reregistered with SPI. Furthermore, a court in Dagestan ruled Wednesday that the registration of the other 17 to the ministry was illegal, SPI said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Alrosa's Best Friend
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Brillianty ALROSA, a subsidiary of the ALROSA holding, reported sales of $130.7 million in diamonds in 2001, Alexander Novosyolov, the general director of the company, announced Wednesday, according to Interfax.
 The figure represents a 46-percent jump over 2002 sales of $89 million, Novosyolov said
 He added that the total value of the ALROSA group's diamond sales for 2001 was about $300 million with about 90 percent of production being exported, Interfax reported.
 He also said that Brillianty ALROSA's orders for 2002 already total $150 million.
 
 
Milking the Market
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Local dairy-product giant Petmol announced after-tax profits for 2001 of over 25 million rubles (about $817,000) against the 13.9-million-ruble figure (about $488,000 by the exchange rate by the beginning of 2001) for 2001, Interfax reported Thursday.
 According to Irina Kostygova, Petmol's economic director, the profits came on total revenues of 1.68 billion rubles (about $54.9 million).
 She also said that total production in 2001 Petmol rose to 122,700 tons from 114,300 tons in 2000.
 Petmol is the largest dairy-product company in the Northwest Region, producing about 100 brands, and currently holding about 50 percent of St. Petersburg dairy-product market.
 
 
Leaving Some Out
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Russian Agency for Guidance Systems (RASU), says that it will file a list of companies it wants exempted from privatization with the federal government by Feb. 15, General Director Vladimir Simonov said at a meeting of the heads of radio-electronic enterprises of northwest Russia on Thursday, Interfax reported.
 The agency, which comprises 258 state enterprises and 506 joint-stock companies - 244 of which have some degree of state investment - unites under one umbrella a wide range of producers, many of which turn out weapons systems and other military hardware.
 "Only strategically important companies will be included on the list filed with the government," Interfax quoted him as saying.
 The number of companies exempted from privatization will not total more than 10 percent of all RASU organizations.
 

 Pumping Price
 

PRIMORSK, Leningrad Oblast (SPT) - Oil major Transneft has proposed a tariff of $2.79 per ton for loading oil onto tankers at the new oil terminal opened in December, Interfax reported Thursday.
 According to Alexander Pospelov, the general director of the Primorsk Port, a subsidiary of Transneft, the tariff charged for loading of oil at the port of Ventspils, Latvia, is over $4 per ton. 
 The Primorsk facility is at the Western end of the Baltic Pipeline System (BTS), which was built to transport oil for export from the Timano-Pechorskoye and Western-Siberian oil fields. The first part of the project was opened on Dec. 27, and is able to carry 12 million tons of oil per year, and was built at a cost of over $500 million. The second phase will raise capacity to 18 million tons per year, at a further cost of $228 million.
 
 
Utility Billing
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Local power utility Lenenergo has applied to the regional energy commissions of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast for a rise in tariffs for electricity and heat of about 20 percent beginning March 1, Andrei Likhachev, the general director of Lenenergo said Wednesday according to an Interfax report.
 The exact level of the tariffs will be set by the regional commissions. 



TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Ducking Questions
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Lawmakers said Thursday a picture was emerging of falsified earnings and self-enrichment by company officers that preceded a Dec. 2 bankruptcy filing, the biggest in U.S. history.
 "A simple story of old-fashioned theft," said Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana representative who chairs the full House Energy and Commerce Committee, at the opening of what promised to be a day-long hearing into Enron's fall.
 The U.S. Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into Enron's demise and the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking at possible violations of securities laws.
 Unlike some of his colleagues, former Enron President and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling was expected to testify, setting the stage for a battle with lawmakers who say company insiders gave him early warning of business troubles.
 But former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, the man accused of amassing millions for himself while running outside partnerships with the company that were instrumental in its demise, declined to testify.
 Also exercising Fifth Amendment rights to silence were Fastow protege and former Enron executive Mi chael Kopper, as well as Enron chief accounting officer Richard Causey and Enron chief risk officer Richard Buy, who are currently negotiating severance packages.
 Former Enron Chairperson Kenneth Lay backed out of testifying to Congress earlier this week. Lay was then subpoenaed by two committees to appear next week.
 
 
The Enron Charade
 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some current and former Enron Corp. employees say they were asked to pose as busy electricity and natural-gas sales representatives one day in 1998 so the unit could impress visiting Wall Street analysts, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
 Enron rushed 75 employees of Enron Energy Services, including secretaries and actual sales reps, to an empty trading floor and told them to act as if they were trying to sell energy contracts to businesses over the phone, the employees told the Journal.
 The 10-minute stunt involved taking the stairs to avoid being seen, placing personal items on the empty desks to make them look lived-in and feigning typing, the Journal reported.
 Analysts were led around by then-Chairperson and Chief Executive Kenneth Lay, and the trading floor appeared busy with actual work, said the Journal, citing an analyst who recalled the visit to the Houston headquarters.
 The employees were told that their help was needed to impress analysts so that the company would receive a good rating, the Journal reported.
 An Enron spokesperson told the Journal that some employees were told to go to the floor, but it was only a handful, not 75, and they were not asked to pose as traders or sales reps.
 
 
Pre-Warning Warning
 

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - The European Commission sees no grounds to withdraw a recommendation that Germany receive an early warning because its budget deficit is moving close to an agreed EU limit, a Commission spokesman said on Thursday.
 If endorsed by EU finance ministers next week, the unprecedented budget warning would cause an embarassment for Germany, which faces general elections in September.
 "We have no intention of withdrawing ... our proposal," European Commission spokesperson Gerassimos Thomas told reporters.
 He was responding to reports from Berlin that the German Finance Ministry was confident EU finance ministers would not issue a formal warning at their monthly Ecofin meeting in Brussels next Tuesday.
 
 
Steel Resolve
 

PARIS (Reuters) - The European Union wants the United States to impose a levy on all steel sold in the United States in order to help rescue the struggling U.S. steel industry and avert a trade war, a high-ranking EU official said on Thursday.
 Speaking at the start of a two-day meeting of the world's largest steel makers, Peter Carl, who heads the European Commission's trade department, said the proposal was part of a three-point EU plan aimed at helping the global steel industry reduce overcapacity.
 He said the levy would be more far-reaching than that imposed in the EU several years ago, and that proceeds from the levy would go to offset huge pension costs faced by U.S. steel companies. 



TITLE: Will Our Ethical Evolution Ever Catch Up?
AUTHOR: By Paul Ehrlich
TEXT: IN the wake of the horrors of Sept. 11, it is well to remind ourselves that people evolved, culturally and genetically, as small-group animals. For millions of years, human groups consisted of a few dozen individuals, mostly close relatives with the same skin color and other obvious physical characteristics. Each adult individual possessed essentially the entire culture of the group: its store of nongenetic information housed in the brains and simple artifacts of the group's members. And that group had a uniform set of ethics: rules for governing the conduct of members and making moral judgments of right and wrong. 
 
In 10,000 years, an evolutionary eye-blink, humanity has been transformed from an extremely clever great ape living in groups of six to 600 individuals, to the very same ape dominating Earth, living in a global group of 6 billion. And those billions are tied together by instant electronic communication and high-speed transport systems. That transformation is an example of extraordinarily rapid cultural evolution (changes in humanity's store of nongenetic information) in the area of technology. But, sadly, cultural evolution in the area of ethics didn't keep pace.
 Consider a few of the ethical issues raised for Americans by the terrorist atrocities. Some of us have long been concerned with the basic causes of terrorism. Anne Ehrlich and I wrote 15 years ago: &quot;Its roots in poverty, despair, greed, racism, religious prejudice and unfulfilled economic and political ambitions are hardly novel. ... Population growth, differential population growth and dashed expectations are... watering the roots of terrorism as they have never been watered before.&quot;
 Were we right? Has the large size of the U.S. population and its profligate consumption played some role in creating the conditions that led to Sept. 11? Has it been ethical for one country to consume a vastly disproportionate share of Earth's resources? Were Americans in the past century obliged to consider how designing their nation and lives around automobiles would affect people in the Middle East? Do they have an obligation now? What about the massive destruction of tropical forests and indigenous societies caused by America's related thirst for rubber, or for that matter, its high consumption of beef, coffee or sugar?
 Becoming a large-group animal has raised new kinds of ethical questions. Ethics in our ancestral small groups dealt almost exclusively with in-group members; out-group individuals were seldom considered worthy of ethical treatment. Today people have ethical concerns about the direct treatment of people in other groups, as evidenced by attempts to avoid &quot;collateral damage&quot; in the bombing campaigns in Afghanistan.
 But a more vexing question is, what should be our ethical position today about indirect impacts - such as those generated through purchasing hamburgers or an espresso - on poor people in other countries? How much might our devotion to gas-guzzling SUVs have contributed to the deaths of innocent fellow citizens slaughtered in New York and outside Washington by aligning us with repressive regimes sitting on vast oil reserves? Indeed, how do the ethics of individual citizens relate to the actions of their own country's government? Are individuals who are unaware of subtle ethical issues (or out-voted in democracies or intimidated in dictatorships) devoid of responsibility for actions taken in their names? When ethical views differ among citizens or groups, how are people to decide who is right?
 The few young al-Qaida members who killed thousands of Americans doubtless thought they were acting ethically because they believed that policies and actions of the U.S. government had caused the deaths and misery of many innocents. And retrospection suggests that even decisions of democratic governments, such as terror bombings aimed at German and Japanese civilians in World War II, were hardly ethical.
 These questions may seem hypothetical now, but consider some current ethical dilemmas. Should Americans change their views on the death penalty so Spain will extradite its terrorist prisoners? Was the treatment of women by the Taliban one legitimate reason to intervene militarily in Afghanistan? To what degree are short-term American policies in the past and today threatening the quality of life, or even the very lives, of our grandchildren? Is it our duty to bequeath our descendants functioning societies and sound life-support systems? Or can we simply assume that technological progress will solve future problems regardless of today's behavior? Can an ethical American couple have more than two children, when their additional consumption may well help reduce the options of their grandchildren or great-grandchildren? Can we make truly ethical decisions if we are ill-informed or required to make judgments under conditions of great uncertainty?
 The questions are myriad; the answers barely explored in public. The lack of leadership from Washington on such ethical issues is disturbing. Blind patriotism is not a substitute for careful consideration of our actions. If the people killed, injured or psychologically damaged by the terrorist attacks are not to have suffered in vain, we need to do much more than hunt down some of the individuals responsible. Americans need to think hard about the ethical issues brought to the fore by Sept. 11.
 The world is increasingly divided between a very rich globalizing minority and a diverse majority that ranges from the reasonably well-off to the desperately poor, the latter often in countries riven by ethnic, religious or economic strife. In such a world, what are the &quot;right&quot; things for a lone superpower to do? We all need to consider how to reinvent ourselves as a large-group animal, with ethics that will enable human beings to cooperate in solving the horrendous environmental and social problems confronting our species. As individuals and countries, we will not always behave ethically, but it's important to try to reach some agreement on what such behavior should be. Some level of ethical consensus was obviously an important part of the &quot;glue&quot; that kept our small groups functional. Now we need to work toward some form of global ethical super glue.
 We have the tools to communicate with each other about moral decisions, modern analogues of the campfire consultations that established norms when a few dozen people constituted a society. And we have forums that can serve as partial models. In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, the world's governments, climate scientists, corporations and nongovernmental organizations concerned with global warming debate the issues of costs and remedies in open meetings, and provide society with the results of their deliberations. If the media covered the deliberations more closely, the panel might be a model mechanism for helping to democratically guide the cultural evolution of one area of ethics.
 Based on the best possible scientific scenarios, the Panel on Climate Change has generated an ethical debate over allocating the responsibility for avoiding climatic disaster, forming a basis for the also-open negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol. If the World Trade Organization deliberations had followed this model of openness and participation, its troubled progress, not to mention the outcomes, might have been very different.
 In a Panglossian dream, one could imagine many such forums that, unlike today's more limited ones, would garner substantial media attention. Panels could be constituted on valuing human and biological diversity, on when a human individual deserving of rights comes into existence, on the circumstances in which state violence might be justified, on our reproductive and consumption behavior and its consequences for people today and for future generations, and so on. Such panels could catalyze widespread debate and improve solutions to global problems, as the Panel on Climate Change has done.
 We are not going to create a utopia. But we could do a much better job of consciously, democratically, and with mutual respect, guiding the cultural evolution of ethics. It will take more than smart bombs and special forces to secure our future, it will take smart charismatic leaders with special concern for the evolving moral values of society. If we are successful, our descendants will bless us for it.
 
 <i>Paul Ehrlich is professor of population studies at Stanford University. He contributed this comment to Newsday. </i>

TITLE: The TV6 Tender Should Be Postponed
TEXT: SINCE the arbitration court delivered its final verdict on the liquidation of TV6, the behavior of the parties to the conflict (and the coverage of it) has seemed totally schizophrenic. Any nonsense has acquired a ring of truth to it and, even worse, could easily become reality, while doubts start to cloud things which otherwise seemed self-evident.
 
Let us recall some recent events. The TV6 editorial team abandoned Boris Berezovsky and then returned to him. A channel was taken off the air literally mid-sentence. The president, prime minister and press minister publicly proclaimed their sympathies for the TV6 editorial team, and then a little later the president, supported by a deputy prime minister, enunciated the idea of creating a national sports channel. Rumors circulate, are denied and then sally forth again concerning all sorts of exotic participants in the forthcoming tender for the license previously held by TV6 - including the Orthodox Church. There is also talk of some oligarch fund in support of &quot;TV6 without Berezovsky.&quot;
 My biggest fear is that given these circumstances, irrespective of the outcome, the tender will not be considered entirely legitimate.
 Put yourself in the position of the management of a &quot;normal&quot; television company wishing to take part in the tender on March 27, and seeing that no less a person than President Vladimir Putin himself has publicly supported two different contenders.
 And what should the members of the tender commission make of it all? The &quot;dependents&quot; (i.e. civil servants) will feverishly attempt to divine the constantly changing mood and inclination of the powers-that-be. The &quot;independents&quot; will above all be gripped by a desire to defend the &quot;innocent victims,&quot; and God forbid that there be even the slightest whiff of collaboration with the authorities.
 Yet this is a professional tender to choose the best possible broadcaster based on the quality of the business plan and concept for development of the channel submitted.
 So what next? If TV6 wins, it is not hard to predict that interpretations will range from &quot;the authorities have once again given the license to their favorites&quot; to &quot;the administration has yielded to pressure from the West.&quot; If TV6 loses, then it will be &quot;further encroachment on the freedom of the press.&quot; And if some third party puts forward such a perfect bid that the commission members forgetting all else happily vote for it, quite simply, no one will believe that some dirty deal was not struck. Both the commission and the company in question would instantly be branded as collaborators.
 Although, maybe one should just say, &quot;To hell with legitimacy.&quot; A few weeks after the tender decision, passions would cool and just about any channel broadcasting on the TV6 frequency would be able to find an audience.
 The root problem is that our national television, whether state-owned or private, was created hastily on the basis of informal agreements and opaque schemes. The people involved have changed, agreements have been broken, but neither the state nor the television companies can defend their interests by appealing to the law.
 The result is an ongoing and unending national television squabble, with tens of millions of television viewers dragged into it, doing untold damage to the international prestige of this country.
 The best solution, in my opinion, would be to declare a moratorium on the TV6 tender, however unpleasant that may be for all concerned. The president should then declare as a top state priority the establishment of a broadcasting regulatory framework, and invite Russian and foreign experts - not just from the media world - to work on it.
 If Russia wishes to become a normal democratic country, it will have to do this sooner or later. If we start right now, we will save ourselves the headache of having to deal with the consequences of acts of foolishness that have yet to be committed.
 
 <i>Alexei Pankin is the editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals (www.internews.ru/sreda). </i>

TITLE: Here's the Alternative to Davos
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - The World Social Forum in Porto Alegre was conceived as an alternative to the Davos World Economic Forum. While Davos has become a symbol of the globalization of markets, Porto Alegre was intended as a symbol both of resistance to this and of progressive social reform. Those who demonstrated against the events of the global elite in Seattle, Prague and Quebec came here to have an event of their own.
 
It signals the movement's coming-of-age, and it grew out of a need to go beyond protest and criticism to offer a vision of a better world - a vision that should be inspiring and at the same time practical.
 The choice of host city is far from accidental. For years Porto Alegre has been ruled by the Workers' Party of Brazil (PT), notably by representatives of its left wing. The result has been the development of a model of municipal governance famous for its &quot;participatory budget system.&quot;
 Representatives of different neighborhoods, including impoverished working class <i>favelas, </i>develop their own budget proposals which initially have to face criticism not from financial experts but from the people living in other neighborhoods who are competing for the same money. Consensus-building in these conditions becomes an important feature of daily life. Usually it only takes a few minutes for the city council to vote on the final budget once it has passed the discussion phase in the districts.
 The first Porto Alegre Forum in 2001 brought together about 10,000 people. This year, it is estimated that 60,000 delegates and guests are in attendance.
 Ministers, members of parliament, mayors, and trade union officials have flocked to Porto Alegre along with the leaders of popular movements, intellectuals and activists typically seen at the anti-globalization rallies of the past two years. The PT is expected to win the next presidential election in Brazil and leading social democrats from around the world are using the opportunity to take a closer look at the party which will probably soon be ruling the largest country in Latin America.
 It is no surprise that the radical wing of the movement immediately called the Porto Alegre Forum a reformist event. Bringing together different groups, it has had to work out a minimum, non-revolutionary consensus agenda.
 The Porto Alegre Forum needs to prove that the left is making a comeback internationally, following the catastrophic decline of the 1990s. The forum is proof of its growing size and public influence, but social change cannot be effected by enthusiasm alone. Concrete ideas and programs are needed.
 The year 2001 was dominated by declarations about &quot;another world being possible.&quot; This year, following the crash in Argentina and with the global recession a fact of life, one can expect the Forum to go somewhat further.
 The key issue this year is capital controls. When the IMF and the World Bank were first established, their task was to protect nations against the anarchy of global markets. But times change and the institutions designed to promote regulation have become tools of financial deregulation.
 Following the 1998 ruble crash and Argentinian disaster, many people - even in the business community - now think that deregulation and privatization have gone too far. However, it is not possible to simply return to the good old days. The mechanisms for regulation have been dismantled over the past decade and the welfare state eroded. They now need to be reinvented rather than restored - indeed, radically reinvented.
 Development priorities must not be formulated by financial elites or by government bureaucracies. Porto Alegre represents the rise of global civil society that is seeking to make its voice heard.
 Despite the differences and disagreements between radicals and moderates, they need each other. What unites the Porto Alegre crowd is not just the slogan &quot;another world is possible.&quot; It is also a general feeling that the existing world is unacceptable.
 The economic dogmas of the 1990s are being questioned globally and new ideas are needed. Another world is not necessarily going to be a better place, but this very much depends on us.
 The capacity of today's popular movements to change things will be tested in the near future. However, it is thanks to the popular mobilizations of the past that we now have parliaments, electoral rights and political democracy. This offers hope that economic democracy is also a possibility.
 
 <i>Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist. </i>

TITLE: Why Won't We Admit That the War Is Over?
AUTHOR: By Bruce Ackerman
TEXT: WE have won the war in Afghanistan, but President George W. Bush refuses to declare victory. Why he won't is not a mystery. Congress has not authorized a global war against all rogue states, and once the president recognizes that the Afghan war is over, his larger ambitions lack adequate legal foundation.
 
By calling something a war, the commander in chief might get the House of Representatives and Senate to defer to him in the way it does when a real war is going on. War talk is particularly tempting just after a real war, if only a small one, has ended. It allows presidents to maintain extraordinary wartime powers and to wrap their wartime popularity around programs that are linked to real war only metaphorically.
 But mindless talk of war only prevents clear thinking about the problem of terrorism, confusing the domestic and international aspects of our situation. For all we know, the next terrorist attack will come from a band of American extremists, as in Oklahoma City and maybe in the case of anthrax. 
 More than four months after Sept. 11, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft refuses to disclose the names of all of the more than 1,100 suspected terrorists he has swept into detention. Are U.S. citizens to be subject to such secret detention? Bush has asserted his power as commander in chief to short-circuit the civilian courts and try foreign terrorists by military tribunals. Will he attempt a similar power play if the next battle against terrorism turns out to be on the home front? 
 In his State of the Union address, Bush explicitly targeted Iran, Iraq and North Korea as potential enemies. But Congress has not given him carte blanche to extend the Afghan war to these other targets. Its joint resolution falls far short of the classic declaration of war. It simply allows him &quot;to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11.&quot;
 Because the resolution restricts itself to Sept. 11, the administration has tried to find evidence of rogue states' involvement in these particular attacks. But this effort has been unsuccessful. The State of the Union declaration looks like a trial balloon. If Bush's continuing war talk is accepted at face value, perhaps the public will allow him to begin a new war against Iraq or Iran without returning for another authorization from Congress.
 We confront serious foreign-policy choices. But once again, the fog of war talk is obscuring them. 
 
 <i>Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale, is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, Calif. He contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times. </i>

TITLE: the highlight of the season
AUTHOR: by Gulyara Sadykh-zade
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Last Friday's concert at the Shostakovich Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic will certainly go down as this year's &quot;event of the season.&quot;
 
And not just because American Murray Periah - one of the most outstanding contemporary pianists - was playing, but also because the program was constructed with what was, for the Philharmonic, a rare sense of integrity, even though the pieces were stylistically diverse. Classicism and neoclassicism, post-impressionism and modern &quot;naive art&quot; were combined with a historically persuasive logic.
 &quot;Ergo&quot; by Giya Kancheli, Georgia's most famous living composer, opened the concert. The piece was commissioned by Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra and was premiered by them Feb. 1, 2000, under the baton of Kurt Masur. Friday's performance was the work's Russian debut. 
 Constructed as a series of thematically clear episodes, &quot;Ergo&quot; as a whole is an easily accessible piece, comprising energetic sound-painting, melancholia and references to Tchaikovsky, to Soviet variety shows and to the immortal music from the film &quot;Kin-dza-dza.&quot; It is not an accident that Kancheli's music is finding success with a wide popular audience.
 The audience's attention soon developed into impatient anticipation as everyone awaited Periah, whose visit to Russia is little short of a miracle. One of the most authoritative and well-paid pianists in the world, he agreed to play in Petersburg for one-fifth his usual fee. 
 Periah played Beethoven's First Piano Concerto with a profoundly intense understanding of the composer's work and an intellectual focus, exposing the deepest metaphysical layers of the music. In an age of total artistic showmanship, playing like this is almost unique. 
 For an informed listener, watching a pianist construct the architecture of this concerto with consideration and concentration - observing every <i>rallentando </i>and every pause with surgical precision and calculating the relations of <i>tempi </i>at every turn - is in itself an enlightening aesthetic experience. Such listeners were in attendance on Friday, as the concert attracted many professionals. 
 The audience's reaction to the performance was appropriate to the occasion, and the roar of delight at the end visibly overwhelmed the pianist. Periah seemed somewhat embarrassed, even a little perplexed, by the ovation.
 It was a shame, though, that the orchestral accompaniment - from the world-renowned St. Petersburg Philharmonic - was not up to the same standard. Russian musicians have partially lost the habits of playing the &quot;Vienna classics&quot; - such as Beethoven and Schubert - and this was apparent in the imprecise accentuation and uneven tone. The violins were especially grating, sounding screechy and simply muddled, unforgivable in a performance of Beethoven, where scrupulous accuracy is called for.
 However, it should come as no great surprise that the orchestra - used to the dense Romantic textures of Tchaikovsky and to heavy, colorful vibrato - loses control, balance and distinct articulation when it makes any attempt to lighten its sound. This was also the case in its presentation of Prokofiev's Classical Symphony, although the orchestra's tone corrected itself substantially in the final movement.
 The orchestra fully liberated itself from these shackles toward the end of the second half. Ottorino Respighi's &quot;The Pines of Rome&quot; was demonstrated in all its best qualities - the skillful, impressionistic sounds, the expressiveness in the woodwind solo, the hair-raisingly powerful <i>tutti </i>passages. Temirkanov gave the music real poetic and romantic beauty, full of feeling and life, bringing the concert to an genuinely satisfying conclusion.

TITLE: conquering the united kingdom
AUTHOR: by Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: LONDON - What tireless troupers the dancers of the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater are! 
 
Returning to the United Kingdom for the fourth straight year, this company - founded in 1994 by the young 34-year-old impresario Konstantin Tachkin - is now in the final month of its 16-week tour covering 18 cities in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is the company's longest road trip to date, kicking off at the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton in mid-November and drawing to a close at London's Wimbledon Theatre toward the end of the month.
 The repertoire of the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater consists solely of the 19th-century classics as staged by Marius Petipa, and for this tour they have brought Tchaikovsky's &quot;Swan Lake,&quot; &quot;The Nutcracker&quot; and - most importantly - a new production of &quot;Sleeping Beauty,&quot; which premiered in St. Petersburg in November. 
 This production of &quot;Sleeping Beauty&quot; was first seen in the United Kingdom in late November in High Wycombe. It was favorably reviewed by John Percival in The Independent and by David Dougill in The Sunday Times.
 &quot;Irina Kolesnikova was an Aurora of detailed accomplishment; and the elegantly mannered Yuri Gloukhikh is a Prince Florimund with the boyish appeal of Prince William,&quot; Dougill wrote.
 I saw this production on Jan. 13 at a nearly sold-out performance at London's cavernous Royal Albert Hall. Simon Pastukh's impressively colorful sets and Galina Solovyova's glittering costumes fully evoked the classical grandeur of the Sun King's court. 
 The choreography is mainly based on the Mariinsky Ballet's version by Konstantin Sergeyev, but has some unexpected innovations. The major surprise is that Princess Aurora is pricked by a rose instead of by a spindle when fulfilling Carabosse's curse, and hence the famous Rose Adagio, earlier in the ballet, has to be danced with carnations. 
 As pleasing as this production is, the Mariinsky's current, sumptuous staging based on a faithful recreation of the original 1890 production, is plainly the definitive version of this classic.
 The company's staging of &quot;The Nutcracker,&quot; based on the 1934 Mariinsky production by Vasily Vainonen, is particularly interesting. Vainonen's original was seen only once in Britain, when the Mariinsky brought it for several weeks to the London Coliseum in 1996.
 The St. Petersburg Ballet Theater's production has some additional choreography in the snowflakes scene by its ballet mistress Svetlana Efremova. She introduced a solo for the Snow Queen set to music from Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana. 
 In addition, there is a beautiful new pas de deux for Clara and the Nutcracker Prince in this scene, ending memorably with Clara floating on a veil dragged across the stage by the Prince.
 The troupe's dancers are mostly recruited from the Vaganova Academy, which means that the standards of the corps de ballet are very high. The company boasts an excellent classical dancer in its 22-year-old principal Yury Glukhikh, who was a revelation for me. Tall and handsome, he has a pleasing long, thin line; high elevation in his jumps; and a noble bearing that reminds me of a young Vladimir Malakhov. 
 Glukhikh's acting as Prince Siegfried in &quot;Swan Lake&quot; demonstrated a touching naturalistic style, and his Nutcracker Prince was beautifully and seemingly effortlessly danced. His Prince Florimund in &quot;Sleeping Beauty&quot; was truly classical, a lesson in purity and harmony. This dancer is destined for a great future, and I look forward to seeing him in George Balanchine's &quot;Apollo.&quot;
 Among the women, Anastasia Kolegova danced gorgeously in the Snow Queen solo in &quot;The Nutcracker,&quot; and Irina Novikova was a bright Princess Florine in &quot;Sleeping Beauty.&quot; 
 Nineteen-year-old Kiev-trained Alexander Zhembrovsky is another male principal worthy of note. He dances powerfully and on a grand scale. His interpretation of the Nutcracker Prince was certainly stylish.
 Finally, the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater Orchestra, under the baton of Alexander Kantorov, provided splendid, capable accompaniment to each performance by this engaging young company.
 
 <i>
Kevin Ng contributes to the American magazines &quot;Ballet Review&quot; and &quot;Dance Magazine.&quot; </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Marc Almond </strong>- who last month made another of his sporadic visits to the city to add vocal tracks to what will be his &quot;Russian&quot; album - has posted photos taken during his stay in Moscow and St. Petersburg to his official site: Theater of Marc Almond. The extravagant singer can be seen with Alla Bayanova, Sergei Penkin and a choir of sailors. The news section reports Almond's future televised concert with Penkin - &quot;to be seen by up to 50,000,000 people.&quot; See www.marcalmond.co.uk for more info.
 
The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. The art-blues club <strong>Gandharva</strong>, which opened late last month, has abruptly changed its policy. Now its owners have decided to hold all-night disco parties in order to return what they spent setting up the venue. The place is now closed for further redesign and will reopen on Feb. 14.
 Sergei &quot;Steve&quot; Nekrasov has resigned from his position of Gandharva's art director and claims that he will continue to promote blues concerts there, but only twice a week (on Fridays and Saturdays) instead of daily. The only exception will be Valentine's Day blues concert next Thursday.
 The other dreams of &quot;exhibitions, dramatic performances, film screenings and more&quot; have gone down the drain. Thus, Gromit's Birthday Party, which had been scheduled for Feb. 12, has been cancelled. See Gigs for next week's blues concerts.
 The local alternative favorite <strong>Tequilajazzz,</strong><i> </i>now busy recording their new album, will play their traditional winter concert at Moloko on Friday. Diehard fans will be thrilled to know the band has installed a Web camera at the Dobrolet Studio, which posts snapshots of the recording sessions every 10 minutes to Tequila's site at www.tequilajazzz.spb.ru. Recording will continue until mid-February with the album expected to come out on Moscow's FeeLee label in April.
 In addition to Tequilajazzz, the club scene offers a few interesting concerts this weekend. The elaborate art-rock band <strong>Vermicelli Orchestra </strong>will play at Faculty on Friday, while the &quot;alternative-pop&quot; band <strong>Pep-See</strong> will appear there Saturday. 
 Pep-See's last album, &quot;The Tantsy,&quot; containing some fairly amusing tracks, is available in local record shops.
 Saturday will also see the up-and-coming urban-folk act La Minor at Red Club and the folk-punk, all-girl band Babslei at Front. 
 Babslei, whose debut CD, &quot;Yeldyrina Sloboda,&quot; was rejected by almost every radio station as being &quot;non-format&quot; (and whose notorious video featuring local alternative stars was rejected by MTV Russia), will also play at Moloko and Faculty on Feb. 14 and Feb. 15.
 Also watch out for <strong>Chirvontsy, </strong>the band featuring Leningrad's brass section, which reappeared after months of uncertainty. Fronted by actor Fyodor Lavrov, the band will play at Fish Fabrique on Feb. 9.
 Finally, now is the time to buy tickets for <strong>Leningrad </strong>and <strong>Akvarium, </strong>who will both play at the Yubileiny Sports Palace later this month. What is being promoted as &quot;Leningrad's Last Concert&quot; will be the band's first stadium show, and the Feb. 16 event will feature an extended, 20-piece line-up. 
 Hot from a U.S. tour, Akvarium will play the stadium on Feb. 22. Both Leningrad and Akvarium will be promoting new albums, which, for both bands, are their first in some time.
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: Magrib keeps the standard high
AUTHOR: by Robert Coalson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: For months last fall, I watched in eager anticipation as Magrib came into being in a prime location on Nevsky Prospect right between the Corinthia Nevskij Palace and the Radisson hotels. At first, a vast, dirty basement was cleared and then, tantalizingly slowly, a beautifully decorated central Asian place emerged out of nothing.
 
The result was Magrib, a combination caf&eacute;, restaurant and night club that clearly - in the opinion of my dining companion, who is in a position to know - spared no expense on its <i>remont. </i>Unfortunately, the camera-shy manager seems to think that this is a commercial secret, so you'll have to take my word for it.
 Magrib's location exercised its power on me this weekend, as I just happened to be passing by and decided that it was about time this newspaper stopped in. Since we were, to put it mildly, casually dressed, my companion and I decided to stick to the caf&eacute; on this occasion and to come back to the restaurant some time in the near future.
 Perhaps it is Magrib's shiny newness - it still smells slightly like a new car - or maybe it is just the exotic elegance of its hand-painted vaulted ceilings, but one's first impression is that this place is way too fancy to be called a caf&eacute;. However, the friendly, English-speaking (!) staff immediately put us at ease, ushering us through the four different halls with a casual &quot;You can take your coats with you.&quot; Within a few seconds, we were relaxing in oriental splendor on couches in a soothingly orange room, almost feeling as if we were sheltering from oppressive desert heat rather than just two steps from the busiest street in a cold, northern city.
 The Magrib caf&eacute; offers a fair selection of salads, hot starters and central Asian entrees such as shashlyk and lyulya kebab. It also boasts about 20 types of cakes and sweets (for 30 to 100 rubles, or $1 to $3.33) produced on site, making it a colorful alternative for those looking for coffee and a snack. It certainly has a lot more atmosphere than most of those coffee places that are popping up all over town.
 We went for a selection of starters ,including a vegetable salad with sheep's-milk cheese, tsatsivi and lobio, each for 60 rubles ($2). All of these were satisfactory, but not extraordinary, and presented in portions that were fair value for money.
 The place only began to shine when it was time for the main courses, all of which were excellent. We went for the sturgeon shashlyk, the most expensive item on the menu at 220 rubles ($7.33). This was a generous portion of flavorful sturgeon, grilled over an open flame and seasoned with delicacy. 
 Of course we could not pass up the lamb kebab at 140 rubles ($4.66). The highlight here again was the subtle use of seasoning that teased out the flavor of the meat rather than taking over the dish itself. The flat-bread was noticeably light and fresh.
 We were also tempted by the dolma (90 rubles, or $3), which was a disappointment. The grape leaves seemed to have left their tanginess on the vine, although the whole creation was so thoroughly drowned in smetana that it probably wouldn't have mattered much anyway. Next time, we're asking for the smetana on the side.
 Magrib also scored high marks for the delicious, whole-grain rolls it served, making the place one of the very few restaurants in town that pays proper attention to this important detail. We didn't order any of Magrib's soups, but I imagine that the rolls would go well with them.
 Mostly because we were loath to leave the relaxing surroundings, we topped off the experience by lingering over a cappuccino (60 rubles, or $2) and baklava (a bargain at 30 rubles, or $1). If the latter is any indication, Magrib's baked goods certainly deserve more attention.
 Although the city already boasts at least three other first-rate central-Asian restaurants, there is certainly room here for Magrib. The competition can only help keep standards up all around.
 
 <i>
Magrib. 84 Nevsky Prospect. 275-1255. Caf&eacute; open daily around the clock. Dinner for two with beer, 1,230 rubles ($41). Menu in English and Russian. Credit cards accepted. </i>

TITLE: brit lit hits russia's reading habitat
AUTHOR: by Alice Jones
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Russian literature boasts an impressive list of great writers from Pushkin to Pasternak, but does Russia have an equivalent for &quot;Bridget Jones' Diary&quot;?
 
This question will be just below the surface as two of Britain's hottest young authors come to St. Petersburg between Feb. 8 and Feb. 14 for the Contemporary British Fiction Festival, a joint project of the British Council and the local publishing house Red Fish. During the event, Mike Gayle and Marian Keyes, the newly crowned king and queen of fiction for the 20-something generation, will give readings and hold creative-writing master classes.
 Red Fish is a one-person labor of love by Grigory Ogibin. Last year, Ogibin brought out his own translation of Irvine Welsh's &quot;Ecstasy&quot; to critical acclaim, and he has now turned to the wealth of contemporary British commercial fiction based on the lives and loves of young professionals at the turn of the millennium.
 Ogibin's most recent project, a translation of Gayle's latest novel &quot;Turning Thirty,&quot; will be published in March. The book tells the tale of &quot;people who used to be twenty and are now ... well, not so twenty.&quot; More specifically, it is about Matt who, having recently come out of a long-term relationship, returns to his family home to lick his wounds, there rediscovering his old school friends.
 While Gayle's fiction caters to commitment-shy males, Keyes is a seasoned purveyor of &quot;chick lit&quot; - the wildly popular genre that sprang up most recently around Helen Fielding's &quot;Bridget Jones' Diary.&quot;
 Keyes' first novel, &quot;Watermelon,&quot; has a curiously similar plot to &quot;Turning Thirty,&quot; although it is written from a woman's perspective. We follow Claire as she returns to the bosom of her family when her husband leaves her the day after their baby is born.
 Both Gayle and Keyes explore the timeless concerns of everyday existence - relationships, marriage, the end of youth and breaking family ties. But their popularity stems from the fact that they write much more than just entertaining novels. Gayle's characters are drawn with wit, sarcasm and an underlying current of poignancy, while Keyes' works include a generous admixture of darker themes such as addiction, depression and rejection - all packaged with an inimitable Irish sense of humor.
 Although the British appetite for such material has been clearly demonstrated, the reaction of the Russian reading public remains to be seen. Ogibin's venture is the first foray for this particular brand of contemporary fiction on the local market.
 Such novels are intimately intertwined with the here-and-now of life in Britain and naturally include a complex web of cultural references: Russian readers will have to know the difference between Selfridges and Sainsburys.
 Anastasia Boudanoque, arts coordinator at the British Council, emphasizes that the event is an &quot;experiment.&quot; She describes the subject matter and style of these books as &quot;like a long article from a lifestyle magazine&quot; and admits that St. Petersburg's 30-somethings may deem them &quot;too insignificant.&quot; She also describes the genre as a &quot;social phenomenon.&quot;
 While previous British Council events have been rather staid readings and book signings, this time the emphasis is on taking a fresh, young, cool approach. Keyes will do a reading at the nightclub Par.spb, immediately followed by a club night featuring an English DJ. Gayle will do his reading at the Manilov nightclub.
 Further, two creative-writing workshops are intended to encourage young writers to engage literature, with students picking up tips on how to write an &quot;unputdownable&quot; bestseller.
 
 <i>
The Contemporary British Fiction Festival runs from Feb. 8 to Feb. 14. Mike Gayle will read on Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. at Manilov (5, 7th Krasnoarmeyskaya Ulitsa). Marian Keyes will read on Feb. 14 at 7 p.m. at Par.spb (5B, Alexandrovsky Park). For details, see www.britishcouncil.ru/ spb/contact/spnews. </i>

TITLE: Britain Proposes To Test Immigrants' English
AUTHOR: By Beth Gardiner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - The British government put forward proposals Thursday, requiring immigrants to demonstrate a working knowledge of English and an understanding of British institutions as conditions to become citizens.
 
Home Secretary David Blunkett unveiled the proposed rules, which the government said will make the immigration system more efficient and help integrate immigrants into British society.
 But the idea of language and citizenship tests has drawn protests from ethnic-minority leaders, who have accused Blunkett of patronizing immigrants.
 &quot;I believe it is fundamentally important that people living in the U.K. on a permanent basis should be able to take a full and active role in our society,&quot; Blunkett said.
 &quot;To encourage this we will ask that applicants for naturalization demonstrate a certain standard of language,&quot; he added.
 Blunkett said the rule would be applied with a &quot;light touch&quot; and would be linked to learning about British laws, values and institutions.
 Under the rules, new citizens would have to swear a new &quot;citizenship pledge&quot; committing them to &quot;respect the rights and freedoms of the United Kingdom&quot; and &quot;uphold its democratic values.&quot;
 Spouses of Britons who move into the country will have to remain married for two years, instead of the current one year, to prove their marriage was genuine.
 Blunkett's statements in the past that immigrants must make more effort to adopt the language and cultural norms of Britain have already drawn fire from ethnic minorities.
 In December, Mohammed Sarwar, a lawmaker from the governing Labor Party, accused Blunkett of &quot;patronizing&quot; Britain's ethnic communities
 Blunkett also has been accused of attempting to build a &quot;fortress Britain&quot; with moves to clamp down on illegal immigration. On Thursday, he said the government would introduce a maximum 14-year prison sentence for trafficking in people, tighten border controls and crack down on illegal employment.
 &quot;To welcome others who need our protection or have a contribution to make to our society we must be secure within a shared sense of belonging and identity,&quot; Blunkett said. &quot;It is a two-way street, requiring commitment and action from both the host community and asylum seekers and long-term migrants alike.&quot;
 Blunkett said the government would speed up the process of approving or rejecting asylum applications, and that it wants the acquisition of citizenship to be more than simply getting a passport by mail.
 &quot;We want to put on ceremonies, not American-style waving of the flag, but enjoyment, perhaps a large number of people coming together to celebrate that with a registrar or chief executive of the local authority,&quot; he told BBC radio.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Fergie Blames the Wife
 

LONDON (Reuters) - Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson says his change of heart about retiring at the end of the season was a consequence of discussions with his family over Christmas. 
 "It was really [wife] Cathy's idea," Ferguson told The Scotsman newspaper. "If she hadn't come up with it and the boys [their three sons] hadn't given full support, I would not have considered a change of mind. But I do have to confess that maybe it was an idea I was hoping deep down she would come up with."
 The club announced on Tuesday that they were in negotiations to extend his contract, probably for two or three years, but Ferguson, 60, said that he would try to modify the job in the future. 
 He recently said that he thought the club should have a two-tier management system on the continental model and added on Wednesday: "I'll tailor it a little differently, reduce the workload a bit."
 
 
Williams, Seles Win
 

PARIS (AP) - Venus Williams and Monica Seles won easily at the Gaz de France on Wednesday, while Anna Kournikova lost once again.
 Williams, ranked second in the world, had six aces in a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Meilen Tu in a second-round match. Seles, ranked 10th, needed only 55 minutes in a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Barbara Schett, 20th in the WTA rankings. Seles was coming off a loss to Martina Hingis in the Toray Pan Pacific tournament in Japan on Sunday.
 Eighth-ranked Amelie Mauresmo defeated Kournikova 6-3, 7-5, to leave Kournikova still seeking her first tournament victory. 
 
 
Marseille in Trouble
 

MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) - French club Olympique Marseille is again under legal scrutiny over alleged transfer fraud, French media reported on Wednesday.
 French daily Le Parisien published a leaked accountant's report showing that the former European champions, punished in a match-rigging scandal in 1994, had lost more than 42 million euros ($36.65 million) between 1996 and 2000.
 The report, compiled by accountant Jean-Paul Darneau and requested by magistrates investigating the club's finances, also reveals a number of unaccounted-for bills and expenses.
 Meanwhile, French daily newspaper Le Monde said 32 transfers were being investigated by the magistrates, who suspect illegal payments to agents and players.
 Marseille's General Director Etienne Ceccaldi, appointed in September by club President Robert Louis-Dreyfus to restore order, warned against confusion between past finances and his current running of the club.
 "[I am here] to avoid faults. But I cannot judge the past," he said.
 
 
Airline Publicity
 

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's flag carrier, Korean Air, added to the quest to spread World Cup fever on Thursday when it unveiled two aircraft covered with huge stylized pictures of a soccer player doing an overhead kick.
 Korean Air plans to add World Cup emblems and pictures to three more of its planes this month.
 South Korean President Kim Dae-jung has urged the government to do more to popularize the World Cup finals, which are being co-hosted with Japan.
 The airline said last month it would increase flights to and from Europe during the tournament, which kicks off on May 31 and ends on June 30.
 
Astros Blast Enron
 

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The Houston Astros said Enron Corp. will not play ball with a plan to take the disgraced company's name off their stadium, and filed a motion in bankruptcy court on Tuesday to have a judge make the call.
 The baseball team said the name "Enron Field" hurt its image because of its association with the company's "alleged bad business practices and bankruptcy."
 Enron, once the country's largest energy trader but now a corporate pariah, agreed in 1999 to pay $100 million to put its name on the stadium, then still under construction, for 30 years.
 The company's former chairperson, Ken Lay, threw out the ceremonial first pitch when Enron Field opened in 2000.
 
 
MLB Steps Down
 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Major League Baseball is abandoning a plan to eliminate two teams for this coming season, but remains committed to contraction for 2003, commissioner Bud Selig said on Tuesday.
 Baseball's owners, decrying the economic state of the game, have tried to fold the money-losing Minnesota Twins along with the Montreal Expos, but have met a series of legal roadblocks and opposition from the Players' Association.
 The owners had voted in November to contract the league to 28 teams from 30 before April's opening day so that shared revenues from television contracts and stadium receipts would be divided among fewer franchises.
 The final blow to the plan came on Monday, when the Minnesota Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal of an injunction that forces the Twins to fulfil their Metrodome lease in 2002.
 
 
Henry Out
 

LONDON (Reuters) - Wales coach Graham Henry has resigned by mutual consent with the Welsh Rugby Union, the governing body has announced in a statement. 
 The move comes just three days after Wales was thrashed 54-10 by Ireland at Lansdowne Road in Dublin.
 "The Welsh Rugby Union general committee regrets to have to announce that, after a meeting between the Wales national coach Graham Henry and senior officers of the Union, it has been agreed by both parties that Graham will leave his position this week," the statement said.
 The New Zealander, who took over as Wales coach in August 1998, had been under increasing pressure since Sunday's defeat. 
 
 
Russian Sets Record
 

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Russia's Svetlana Feofanova set a world indoor pole vault record of 4.72 meters at a meet in Stockholm on Wednesday.
 The Russian beat the previous record of 4.71, which she established in Stuttgart on Sunday, with former record holder Stacy Dragila of the United States well behind in second place.
 The American cleared 4.47 before failing at 4.57. China's Gao Shuying and Russia's Yelena Belyakova shared third at 4.37.
 "Technically, I was not as good as in Stuttgart," Feofanova said afterwards. "I wasn't as relaxed and didn't feel fresh in my legs. The conditions were unusual, and it took time to adapt.
 "The runway was not entirely stable and I wasn't quite myself in it. I don't think Stacy was able to adapt to the runway either." 



TITLE: Lakers Back to Losing Habits
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - For the Chicago Bulls, it was the closest thing to a playoff game they'll see this season. For the two-time defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers, it was another embarrassing loss to an inferior team. 
 
Marcus Fizer scored 15 of his 21 points in the second half, and Kevin Ollie matched his career-high with 15 points Wednesday night as the lowly Bulls beat the Lakers 97-89. 
 Shaquille O'Neal sat out the Lakers' final game before the All-Star break to rest his aching feet, and he was badly missed, but what also appeared to be badly missed was effort from the home team. 
 &quot;Nobody seemed like they were ready to play,&quot; Chicago's Brad Miller said. &quot;Mark Madsen came in with a lot of energy, and Kobe Bryant played hard. Everybody else seemed lackadaisical, like they were looking forward to the break. We came out and played hard.&quot; 
 Bryant scored 38 points and Slava Medvedenko added 11 for the Lakers, who had nobody else in double figures. Samaki Walker had eight points and a season-high 14 rebounds before fouling out with 1:14 to play. 
 The Lakers never led after the Bulls scored the final six points of the second quarter for a 43-40 halftime lead. 
 Bryant's lay up with 7:30 to play tied the game at 72, but the Bulls scored the next nine points - five by Fizer - for an 81-72 lead with 5:24 left. 
 The Lakers scored the next eight points to draw within one, but that's as close as they would get. Ollie went 9-for-10 from the foul line in the final 19 seconds to keep the Bulls safely ahead. 
 <strong>

 SuperSonics 90, Suns 79. </strong>Gary Payton tied a season low with 11 points Wednesday night, but Brent Barry and Vin Baker brought the Seattle SuperSonics back for the victory over the Phoenix Suns. 
 
&quot;That's great,&quot; Payton said. &quot;It gets their confidence up, and if they can keep their confidence up like that, it's going to be great for our team.&quot;
 Payton, who leads Seattle with 22.9 points per game, shot 5-for-12 from the field and played just four minutes in the fourth quarter. 
 The Sonics trailed by as many as 11 late in the second quarter, but they held Phoenix to a season-low 27 points in the second half.
 Seattle used a driving lay up by Earl Watson and a 3-pointer by Barry with 10:18 left to take the lead for good at 70-67.

TITLE: Hawks Return to Form, Buts Coyotes Still Down
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHOENIX, Arizona - The Chicago Blackhawks are starting to find their scoring touch again. The Phoenix Coyotes are searching for the momentum they lost during the All-Star break. 
 
Tony Amonte scored twice, and Chi cago snapped a two-game losing streak with a 5-2 victory over Phoenix on Wednesday night.
 The Blackhawks had lost three of four and scored just five goals during that stretch. 
 &quot;We're going to have to keep going the same way defensively and the goals are going to come,&quot; Chicago goalie Jocelyn Thibault said. 
 Jaroslav Spacek gave the Blackhawks a 3-2 lead when he fired the puck past All-Star goalie Sean Burke, who was partially screened by Ryan VandenBussche. 
 Even though Chicago ranks 29th in the NHL in penalty killing, Phoenix could not convert on four power-play opportunities. 
 &quot;The last couple of weeks our penalty killing is much better than it was earlier in the year,&quot; Thibault said.
 &quot;Recently, we have been very good defensively.&quot; 
 Amonte's 19th and 20th goals of the season chased Coyotes goalie Robert Esche just 5:15 into the game. 
 &quot;I didn't like the way our team was playing up to that point, and Robert had a number of quality chances besides those two,&quot; Phoenix coach Bob Francis said.
 &quot;You just try to change the complexion of the game. You try to make everybody accountable.&quot;
 It worked for a while. Soon after Burke came on, Phoenix tied it on goals by Andrei Nazarov and Daniel Briere.
 But Spacek put Chicago back in front, and Steve Sullivan scored on a rebound with 11:02 left to make it 4-2. Mark Bell added an empty-netter.
 
 <strong>
Red Wings 3, Rangers 1. </strong>Brent Gilch rist doesn't get a lot of chances to play in the Detroit Red Wings' star-studded line up.
 
The gritty forward knows he has to make the most of his opportunities, and he did exactly that on Wednesday night.
 Gilchrist scored his first goal in more than 15 months as Detroit won to extended its home unbeaten streak to 13 games. 
 &quot;It's a tough situation,&quot; said Gilch rist, who has played in just 18 of 56 games.
 &quot;You have to produce to get opportunities, but you also have to get opportunities to produce.
 &quot;I just try to do my best when I do get a chance.&quot; 
 Gilchrist and Kris Draper scored after the Rangers failed to get the puck out of their zone, and Sergei Fedorov sealed the win with a goal in the final minute. 
 Petr Nedved's power-play goal at 7:09 of the third period ended Dominik Hasek's hopes for his 60th career shutout. He made 26 saves.
 Mike Richter had 32 saves, and, if not for his solid play, the Rangers would again have been routed by the Red Wings.
 Draper scored on a goal-mouth scramble late in the first period, and Gilchrist gave Detroit a 2-0 lead with his first goal since Oct. 25, 2000.