SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #746 (12), Tuesday, February 19, 2002
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Stunt Exposes Nuclear-Safety Risks
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In broad daylight, a State Duma deputy, two Greenpeace activists and three NTV camera operators sneaked into a supposedly high-security industrial complex in western Siberia and spent several hours near storage facilities containing 3,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. The six men took dozens of photographs, shot a video and returned to Moscow undisturbed.
 
"We entered through two-by-two-meter holes in the barbed wire and walked on well-trampled paths, probably made by local citizens," Sergei Mit rok hin, a liberal lawmaker in the Du ma's Yabloko faction, said of his break-in to the Krasnoyarsk Mining and Chemical Plant, which was shown in a special report by NTV broadcast Thursday night. "The guards drove past us several times, and we passed by their sentry boxes, but we pretended to be locals and nobody stopped us."
 In November, the Krasnoyarsk plant received 41 tons of spent nuclear fuel from the Kozlodui plant in Bulgaria under a controversial new law allowing the import of spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing and storage. 
 Advocates of the law, which was signed by President Vladimir Putin in July, argue that Russia could earn $20 billion over the next decade by importing some 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel.
 However, environmentalists have fought the law, saying that turning Russia into the world's leading nuclear-recycling facility would cause far greater ecological damage than the billions earned could repair. When the first consignment of spent nuclear fuel arrived in Russia from Bulgaria in November, Greenpeace activists de mon strated outside the Nuclear Power Ministry in gas masks and chemical-protection suits.
 At a news conference in Moscow on Friday, Mitrokhin said that his break-in to the Krasnoyarsk plant was designed to show that Russia isn't ready for the import of radioactive material. The country's system of nuclear safety is not just poor but "nonexistent," he said.
 Mitrokhin, a member of the presidential commission on controlling the import of spent nuclear fuel, said that, during a hearing on ecological safety in the Duma on Feb. 7, the Nuclear Power Ministry assured deputies that there were no security problems at its facilities. 
 But Mitrokhin said Friday that he could have easily climbed onto the roof of the Krasnoyarsk plant's storage building and got inside it.
 "I was shaken to see it," he said. "Anybody can come to a depository with extremely dangerous materials and do whatever he wishes near them. And the Nuclear Power Ministry plans to bring 20,000 tons of nuclear supplies from abroad here and leave it adrift."
 According to Mitrokhin, safety measures at most of Russia's 96 nuclear plants and research centers are not covered by the federal budget at all. The only exception is the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, which gets enough money to ensure reliable security, he said.
 As a member of the international coalition fighting terrorism, Russia must be more responsible for the safety of its nuclear facilities, Mitrokhin said, otherwise it will become "the weakest link of the coalition and a potential target for terrorists."
 Vladimir Chuprov, a Greenpeace nuclear expert, shared his fears.
 "Several dozen kilograms of regular explosives would be enough to trigger a new Chernobyl there," he said at Friday's news conference. 
 Chuprov said the plant's storage facilities contain 1 billion curies of radioactive waste. According to Russian health standards, if 10 curies are spread over one square kilometer of land, its population must be evacuated immediately, he said. The radioactive discharge from Chernobyl was about 50 million curies, according to Greenpeace.
 However, the management of the Krasnoyarsk plant insisted last week that security at its storage and transportation facilities remained unbreakable.
 "We employ several hundred guards, and one regiment of Interior Ministry troops is delegated to guard us," Vasily Zhidkov, the head of the plant, said in the NTV report. It was unclear whether Zhidkov was aware of Mit rokhin's break-in at the time.
 "If there was an accident during the transportation of spent nuclear fuel by train, we guarantee that it would not lead to radioactive discharge affecting the environment," Pavel Morozov, spokesperson for the plant, said in the report.
 Neither Zhidkov nor Morozov could be reached for comment about Mitrok hin's claims Friday.
 Mitrokhin said that he would send a video about the break-in to Putin. In addition, Greenpeace said it has sent letters about the security breaches at the plant to the Federal Security Service and to the Prosecutor General's Office.

TITLE: Government Rewriting the Stats
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government has quietly rewritten history, burying a statement several pages deep into one of its official Web sites that says the economy recovered from the 1998 financial crisis even faster than previously reported.
 
Economists were confounded Monday by the news that the the State Statistics Committee, or Goskomstat, the government's official numbers cruncher, had posted on its site (www.gks.ru) an annnouncement that the country's gross domestic product grew not by 3.5 percent in 1999 and 8.3 percent in 2000 - figures that have been used by officials, institutions and economists the world over - but by 5.4 percent and 9 percent, respectively.
 It is not clear when the announcement was posted and Goskomstat officials declined to answer faxed questions from The St. Petersburg Times on Monday, but news agencies quoted Deputy Chairperson Alexander Surinov as saying that the new figures were due to a reweighting of various industries and a recalculation of the impact of small and medium-sized enterprises on the economy.
 "We included new estimates on industry and made a new count of small businesses, which also influenced the GDP revisions," Surinov said. He did not elaborate, however, save to say that further changes to the key official figures would be made once information "on budget execution and some other data is approved and received."
 Economists were perplexed both by Goskomstat's revisions and Surinov's vague explanation for them. The 5.4-percent increase in economic growth in 1999 is of particular importance, since the government decided last year to replace 1995 as its base year for such calculations with 1999.
 A new GDP number for the new base year effectively alters the whole economic perspective in terms of trends, said Taras Kabushko, an economist with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
 The World Bank's chief economist for Russia, Chris tof Ruhl, said that he couldn't think of a country that has ever made major revisions to official GDP data this long after the fact. "Of course, in many countries minor revisions have taken place, but definitely not three years later, and not to such a large extent," he said, adding that Goskomstat should say exactly why the revisions took place.
 But, while Goskomstat officials have been known to fiddle with numbers in the past - former chairman Yury Yurkov and other top officials were arrested in June 1998 for allegedly manipulating companies' economic data to reduce their tax liabilities, and for selling classified corporate information - economists said they doubt that this is the case now.
 "It is unlikely that Goskomstat is playing any kind of political game," said Oleg Vyugin, chief economist at Troika Dialog.
 "If the results of last year or some current figures were to be changed then, yes," said Vyugin, a former deputy prime minister who was Russia's chief negotiator with the International Monetary Fund in 1998.
 Vyugin said that the revisions were likely triggered by the change of base years, which was done in response to the structural changes in various industries that followed the August 1998 financial meltdown.
 Since that decision was taken last June, Goskomstat has been revising official figures - first for industrial growth and then for aggregate indexes for the whole economy.
 Vyugin said that, while economic statistics in general are full of approximations, in Russia they are even more so. Basic factors such as production and consumption, for example, usually do not match, leaving considerable room for estimations, he said.
 Part of the problem stems from the size of the so-called gray economy, which operates largely out of the government's view.
 Economists estimate that the gray economy is roughly one-fifth the size of the real economy.
 Compounding the difficulties of measuring the economy, said Vyugin, is Russia's tendency to change too radically and too quickly to assemble accurate data.
 "I think that Goskomstat undervalued Russia's economic growth in the past and continues to do so because there is a gray sector of the economy, but nobody knows where is it heading."
 Vyugin also questioned the government's claim of higher tax collections, which also affect final GDP figures. Just because tax collections are up doesn't mean that "suddenly everyone started paying their taxes," he said, adding that there is still a significant number of companies still operating in the gray economy that isn't reflected in statistics.
 "In the insurance industry, for example, half of all premiums are salary schemes" that allow companies and employees to avoid paying taxes - and avoid being counted by Goskomstat, he said.
 In one of the more popular salary schemes, companies buy life insurance policies for their employees, who receive monthly annuities from the insurance company in lieu of salaries. Life insurance annuities are tax exempt as long as the term of the policy is for more than five years. Thus, the company avoids paying social taxes, and employees earn tax-free income.
 Yet Goskomstat remains the most reliable source, even if their data is not perfect, but "it would be nice if it explains the reason for the revisions - if not for the average person, then at least for professionals," Vyugin said.
 Goskomstat has not changed its preliminary estimate for 2001 GDP growth, which remains 5 pecent.

TITLE: Torpedo Likely Kursk Culprit
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Navy chief Vladimir Kuroyedov said Monday that the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine might have been caused by a practice torpedo with unstable fuel, and added that he had ordered the weapon taken off duty.
 
However, Admiral Kuroyedov stopped short of saying the Kursk's sinking during naval maneuvers in August 2000 was caused by a flaw in the torpedo.
 Ku ro ye dov said investigators were still considering a collision with another vessel or a World War II mine as possible reasons of the disaster, which killed all 118 men aboard and stunned the country. 
 Yet Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, who flanked Kuroyedov at a news conference in the northern port of Mur mansk to announce the results of months of examination of the wrecked Kursk, said investigators had found no evidence of another vessel's presence near the Kursk in the Barents Sea at the time, Interfax and Itar-Tass reported. 
 Russian officials have long said the explosion of a practice torpedo triggered the larger blast that roared through the massive vessel and destroyed it.
 But they have yet to determine what prompted the initial explosion, despite extensive investigation since the Kursk was raised to the surface last fall. 
 Immediately after the disaster, Russian navy admirals claimed that the explosions could have been triggered by a collision with a Western submarine shadowing the Kursk. 
 Both the United States and Britain, which had their submarines in the Barents Sea, have denied involvement, and most independent specialists dismissed the collision theory and pointed at a torpedo malfunction as the most plausible cause. 
 While stopping short of blaming the torpedo for the disaster, Kuroyedov admitted that the navy had "placed unfounded trust" in the weapon propelled by highly volatile hydrogen peroxide, which in case of a leak could have caused a powerful explosion of the kind the Kursk suffered. 
 "It's highly unstable and its contact with certain metals may cause unpredictable consequences," Kuroyedov said. 
 Kuroyedov mentioned a leak of hydrogen peroxide that caused the 1955 sinking of the British submarine HMS Sidon, in which 13 men died.
 The accident prompted Britain and other nations to stop using the chemical, but the Soviet and later Russian Navy has used such torpedoes since 1957. 
 Russian officials said the Kursk's practice torpedo had an experimental battery, but was otherwise standard.
 They denied the claim by some Kursk sailors' relatives and Russian media that the submarine crew had previously reported trouble with the torpedo to their superiors. 
 Ustinov told President Vladimir Putin last fall that investigation had revealed that the naval maneuvers during which the Kursk sank were poorly organized.
 Last December, Putin fired Northern Fleet chief Admiral Vyacheslav Popov and demoted other admirals, though naval officials insisted then that the changes weren't linked to the Kursk. 
 Ustinov said Monday that the probe had revealed "serious violations by both Northern Fleet chiefs and the Kursk crew." The Kursk had gone to sea with both its emergency antenna and buoy incapacitated. 
 The Kursk's fore section, which is thought to contain additional clues to the disaster, was sawed off and left on the sea bottom when the rest was lifted. The navy is planning to raise some of the bow's fragments in late May. 
 Investigators have retrieved remains of 94 of the Kursk's 118 crewmen, 91 of whom have been identified.
 Ustinov said remains of the Kursk skipper, Captain Gennady Lyachin, could be among fragments of bodies which haven't yet been identified.

TITLE: Moscow Dies by the Knife and Rope
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Muscovites are nine times more likely to be murdered than Londoners, but two times less likely to be killed than are residents of Washington, the murder capital of the world. The weapon of choice is a kitchen knife, followed by a length of rope or some other method of strangulation.
 
These are among the grim statistics gathered by various scientific and law enforcement agencies that rank Moscow as one of the most dangerous cities in Europe. The statistics highlight the extent to which murder, suicide and accident rates in the city have escalated over the past 15 years, largely due to enormous social upheaval and the disorganization of law enforcement and social-welfare authorities.
 Out of the 130,000 Muscovites who died last year, 15,457 died of unnatural causes - murder, suicide or accidents, the city's Bureau of Forensic Medicine said. About 1,700 of the deaths were murders, up 21 percent from 2000. The growth rate is about three times higher than the 7.3 percent increase for all of Russia last year.
 Although murder figures have dropped from the peaks reached during the days of wild capitalism in the mid-1990s, they represent a huge increase on those recorded in Soviet times, said Vladimir Zharov, head of the Bureau of Forensic Medicine.
 Zharov said the murder rate in Moscow began to climb in the late 1980s, when the country's economy started changing.
 "From the 1960s to the late 1980s, there were 200 to 300 murder cases a year in Moscow and almost all murders happened in drunken brawls," Zharov said. "But in 1989, there were already 688 murder cases and in 1992 - when the country had officially turned to the market economy and property redistribution had started - 1,795 Muscovites were killed."
 Zharov said the highest murder rate was recorded in 1994, when 2,863 people were killed in Moscow. Since then, the murder rate has dropped, reaching half the peak level in the late 1990s before climbing again last year, he said.
 The motives for murder have also changed since the late 1980s. With the advent of capitalism, business-related slayings have become much more commonplace, now accounting for almost 20 percent of all murders, Moscow police say. In Soviet times, they made up less than 1 percent of the total.
 However, the vast majority of murders are still caused by drunken and/or domestic arguments, which is reflected in the fact that the kitchen knife remains the weapon of choice in violent attacks, according to city police spokesperson Kirill Mazurin. Next comes the rope with a slipknot, followed by the hunting rifle, the pistol and other random objects such as bottles or forks.
 Police solve such drink-fuelled murders quickly, Mazurin said.
 "Very often when we arrive at the crime scene, the murderers are still there, intoxicated by alcohol or drugs," he said. "Even when the murder takes place in a drinking hole crawling with people day and night, the neighbors usually provide enough information about the victim's entourage to help us find the perpetrator."
 Mazurin said that most murders take place among the poorest segments of society and that females are killed as often as males.
 Such killings are usually caused by trivial arguments, law enforcement officials say.
 "A stabbing can be sparked off by an unfinished glass of vodka or by the wrong word or even glance," said deputy city prosecutor Yury Sinelshchikov.
 Moscow's murder statistics compare unfavorably with other major cities.
 New York, which has a similar population to Moscow's - almost 9 million - saw 643 murder cases in 2001 - not including the victims of the World Trade Center attacks, according to the New York Police Department's Web site. That was down from 671 murders in 2000.
 A recent survey by The Guardian newspaper in Britain showed that the murder rate in Moscow is 22 victims per 100,000, more than nine times London's rate of 2.36 victims per 100,000. London's murder rate was the lowest of the cities selected for the survey and Washington's the highest, totaling 50.82 people per 100,000.
 Law enforcement officials and criminologists believe Moscow's high murder statistics are caused to a great extent by the collapse of the district-police system. 
 In Soviet times, released prisoners had to report to district police officers every day. The officers also kept tabs on renowned drunkards, enabling them to avert potentially deadly situations. 
 But experts say a lack of funding and control has meant that the system no longer works effectively. District police officers now spend most of their time chasing unregistered migrants from the Caucasus and reacting to citizens complaining of less urgent problems such as vandalism and noisy neighbors, they say.
 Oleg Myasnikov, a criminologist at Moscow State University, believes that because homicidal attacks spring up so spontaneously among the poorest sections of society, the only way to lower murder rates is to establish constant preventive control over this potentially dangerous group - and that means rehabilitating the district-police system.
 "A drunk vagrant walking on the street must be detained by police, even if he has committed no criminal offense," he said. "This man is potentially dangerous to the public and the task of law enforcement officials is to avert a potential crime he may commit."
 Myasnikov admitted that such preventive measures would be given a hostile reception by human-rights groups, but said that the Soviet experience showed that it was worth it.
 In 1986, for example, only 14,848 people were murdered in the whole Soviet Union. In 1990, 16,122 Russian citizens were murdered and by 2000, this figure had almost doubled to 31,829. A little more than 34,000 murders were committed in Russia in 2001, according to Interior Ministry statistics.
 Myasnikov pointed to the example of New York under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to show how crime levels can be reduced. 
 In 1993, when Giuliani took control of the city, 1,927 New Yorkers were killed in violent crimes. In three years, this amount decreased by half, and by 2001, the murder rate was almost three times lower than in the early 1990s, Myasnikov said.
 Myasnikov believes that Giuliani's initiative of tougher police control over poor neighborhoods, populated mainly by ethnic minorities, was responsible for the drop in violent crime in the city.
 "Giuliani was widely criticized by human-rights activists for his cops being hard on colored youths," he said. "But the positive outcome of such a policy is obvious."
 As well as having a high murder rate, Moscow's suicide rate is roughly four times higher than in the United States and most Western European countries, with about 1,900 Muscovites committing suicide last year. 
 This figure is in line with the Bureau of Forensic Medicine's statistics through the 1990s, which show that the number of suicides in Moscow hovered near 2,000, reaching a peak level of 2,365 in 1993. 
 Suicide rates show a similar pattern to murder rates. In 1965, 17.1 people per 100,000 committed suicide in the Soviet Union, according to World Health Organization figures. By 1985, that figure had increased more than 30 percent to 24.6 people per 100,000.
 Zharov said most suicides last year were caused by failed relationships.
 "Most self-murderers are teenagers who couldn't overcome their problems - unrequited love the most frequent of them," he said.

TITLE: Extraditees Could Be Starovoitova Suspects
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two suspects allegedly linked to the assassination of State Duma Deputy Ga li na Starovoitova were extradited from the Czech Republic and delivered to St. Petersburg on Monday evening, according to the Prosecutor General's Office.
 
The Moscow daily newspaper Vremya Novostei reported Friday that the two men, Yury Biryuchenko and Viktor Kudryashov, are the main suspects in the Starovoitova case, quoting anonymous law enforcement sources. 
 Police on Monday, however, denied any connection with the assassination and refused to state why the two men had been brought to St. Petersburg.
 "[These suspects] have nothing to do with the assassination of State Du ma deputy Ga li na Starovoitova," said Vadim Rez nik, head of the St. Petersburg criminal police, at a briefing in Pul ko vo airport, according to Interfax.
 Other officials at the prosecutor's office and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, however, said Monday that any possible connections to the case would be investigated.
 Citing unnamed sources in the special services, Vremya Novostei wrote that investigators believe Biryuchenko and Kudryashov were the ones who hid in the dark staircase of Starovoitova's apartment building on the night of Nov. 20, 1998, and fired at close range at the deputy and her aide, Ruslan Linkov. Linkov suffered serious bullet wounds to the head, but survived the attack. 
 Biryuchenko, known by the nickname "Tankist," or "tank driver," is believed to have pulled the trigger, while Kudryashov, dressed as a woman, stood nearby to divert attention.
 Responding to the report, officials at the St. Petersburg branch of the FSB said that it was too early to say whether the two men were involved in the incident. Prosecutors also refused to confirm the report.
 "This version should not be ignored. It should be checked," said St. Petersburg Prosecutor Ivan Sydoruk in an interview on Friday.
 The Czech Justice Ministry said that the two suspects were detained in Prague by Interpol in December 1999. Interpol acted according to the Russian Prosecutor's Office inquiry sent earlier that year, which informed the Czech government that Biryuchenko and Kudryashov are linked to several contract murders committed in Russia, as well as illegal arms possession and kidnapping. 
 "The [Russian government's] inquiry did not specifically mention the Starovoitova case," said Iva Khaloupkova, a spokesperson for the Czech Justice Ministry in a telephone interview from Prague on Monday.
 "They have been held since then. They appealed their arrest and resisted extradition, appealing to the courts and then to the Constitutional Court," she said.
 Czech Justice ministry officials also said that Biryuchenko and Kudryashov applied for political asylum in the Czech Republic after their appeals were denied, but the authorities turned down their request.
 According to the St. Petersburg prosecutor's office, both men were allegedly members of an organized-crime group set up in 1994 by a former military officer and made up largely of former special-forces officers. The group allegedly numbered about 20 members and operated under the cover a private security firm called Falkon. 
 Law enforcement officials believe the gang was responsible for at least five contract killings of local businesspeople, four cases of extortion and three cases of kidnapping.
 While still serving as a tank driver in the army, Biryuchenko was twice charged with killing soldiers under his command. In the first case, he was acquitted of shooting a subordinate. Later, he was convicted of running over a soldier with a tank and given a suspended sentence.
 According to Yelena Ordynskaya, a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office, the head of the gang and one other member are currently being held in jail pending trial, while 13 other members have been released on their own recognizance. 
 Local FSB officials said Monday that they had nothing to do with the request to extradite Biryu chen ko and Kud rya shov and that any connection to the Starovoitova case "can only be conclusively resolved after they are brought to St. Petersburg and a series of investigative measures have been carried out," according to an FSB statement released Friday.
 Linkov, who now heads the St. Petersburg branch of the Democratic Russia political faction, was not encouraged by the extradition report.
 "There's no need to go to Riga or Prague [to find the culprits]," Linkov told Ekho Moskvy radio on Friday. 
 "It is enough to look at circles close to State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov or St. Petersburg Governor Vla dimir Yakovlev," he said, adding that the two politicians should have been interrogated early in the investigation, but there had not been the "political will" to do so. 
 "Shortly before this interview, I noticed some strange people following me all day. As a result, all night from Friday to Saturday I spent taking different taxis, visiting different friends of mine, trying to get rid of those people," Linkov said.
 "On Saturday, I called FSB investigators and asked them to provide guards, but do you know what they said? They said to call on Monday since they don't work on the weekend," Linkov said.
 
 <i>
Staff Writer Kevin O'Flynn contributed to this report. </i>

TITLE: A New Visa Office in St. Petersburg
TEXT: The Canadian Consulate General in <br> St. Petersburg is pleased to announce the opening of a Visa Section on February 25, 2002. This office will process applications for visitor visas, student authorizations and temporary work permits. People living in the Northwest Region of Russia <br> (St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, the Republics of Karelia and Komi, the Nenets Aunotomous Area and the Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Novgorod and Pskov oblasts) should now apply at the visa office of the Canadian Consulate General situated at <strong>32 Malodetskoselsky Prospect, <br> St. Petersburg.</strong> Those applying for permanent residence in Canada may bring their applications, which will be forwarded to the Canadian Embassy in Moscow for processing. 
 
 <i>The office will be open to the public <br> from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. <br> on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. </i>

TITLE: Army Tests Alternative Service
AUTHOR: By Sarah Karush
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NIZHNY NOVGOROD, Central Russia - Lieutenant General Lev Pavlov, a battle-hardened career soldier, says his own courage pales compared to that of 20 conscripts who have opted to serve as hospital orderlies rather than take up arms in the military. 
 
As chairperson of the military affairs committee of Nizhny Novgorod, about 400 kilometers east of Moscow, Pavlov commands a detachment of young pacifists on the front lines of a national debate over alternative civilian service - a right guaranteed by the Constitution but long ignored in practice. 
 That debate inched a step closer to resolution Thursday when the cabinet approved a draft law on alternative service. On Friday, however, the judicial board on civilian cases in the Nizhny Novgorod regional court annulled Mayor Yury Lebedev's resolution introducing alternative service.
 While politicians in Moscow argue over the form alternative service should take, officials in Nizhny Novgorod decided last fall not to wait for a federal law. The city's draft board allowed 20 young men to sign up for alternative service, and in January, Pavlov's soldiers donned hospital scrubs and began taking orders from nurses at the city's Hospital of Emergency Medical Care. 
 Prosecutors challenged the decision in court, saying Lebedev overstepped his authority in authorizing the move. In January, a district court rejected the prosecutors' arguments, and the prosecutors appealed, leading to Friday's decision. 
 Lawyers for the mayor said they would appeal the ruling and insisted it would not immediately affect the 20 men working in the hospital, according to Russian media.
 The conscripts do everything from pushing gurneys to emptying bed pans. They deliver lab samples and take out the trash, running up and down the stairs of the nine-story hospital with only one working elevator. They help feed and wash patients and deliver corpses to the morgue. 
 &quot;This is enormous physical labor,&quot; Pavlov said, adding that the daily contact with death would be too much for many young men. &quot;I personally would never have done it.&quot; 
 The 1993 Constitution gives conscientious objectors the right to choose alternative civilian service, a practice adopted long ago by other European countries that rely on conscription to staff their armies. 
 But the Russian military has resisted making alternative service a reality, fearing it would cause its ranks to dwindle. 
 Over the past decade, some courts have ruled in favor of conscientious objectors who insist on their right to alternative service. But in the absence of a civilian-service system, those who win such cases have simply not served at all. In other cases, local prosecutors have brought criminal charges against conscientious objectors. 
 The government's bill, which is expected to be passed by the State Duma, would end this legal limbo. Human-rights advocates, however, have criticized the bill as unfair because it would require young men opting for alternative service to serve four years, twice the time conscripts spend in the army. Those who agree to serve in civilian positions in military units would have to serve only three years, Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Mat vi yenko said Thursday. 
 She named the fire service, nursing homes and orphanages as possible places where alternative service could be done.
 Human-rights advocates say making alternative service twice as long as army service effectively turns it into a punishment. They say that the military need not worry about losing conscripts. 
 In fact, with a civilian-service system in place, those without firm pacifist beliefs would be less inclined to abuse the system, activists say. As it stands now, draftees could claim their right to alternative service without having to actually serve. 
 Of the 60 people who applied for alternative service, 20 of them withdrew their applications as soon as it became clear the experiment was going forward, Pavlov said. Those who stayed on - even after a visit to the morgue organized by the draft board - were truly committed to the idea, he said. 
 &quot;I could have just closed the door on the draft officials and hid, but I wanted to honestly stand up for my right to alternative service,&quot; said Yev geny Nagor nov, who at 26 was less than a year away from becoming ineligible for the draft. 
 Nagornov, who has a degree in history, spends much of his time in the hospital helping elderly patients into wheelchairs and wheeling them to the X-ray room and back again. The patients on his floor lavish praise on him and the other conscripts. 
 &quot;What would I have done without you?&quot; 81-year-old Natalya Solodov ni ko va asks Nagornov as he helps her retrieve her coat before checking out. 
 The alternative-service experiment has helped the hospital plug a gaping hole in its staff that has forced nurses to take on the work of orderlies. In recent years, few people have been willing to work for the 500 ruble ($16.60) monthly salary paid to orderlies. 
 The conscripts receive the 500 ruble salary, plus a stipend for food and transport. That totals about 1,500 rubles and is well worth the cost, Pav lov said. 
 &quot;We are using this to address the city's needs,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Report: U.S. Holding Russians
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: PARIS - Russia has &quot;preliminary information&quot; that some of its citizens are being held at a U.S. prison camp in Cuba in connection with the U.S.-led war on terrorism, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Friday.
 
He told a news conference after talks in Paris with French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine that Moscow was in touch with the U.S. about the matter.
 A total of 254 Afghan war detainees, including suspected Taliban fighters and members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, are held at the Guantanamo Bay base. U.S. Defense Department press officer Major Ben Owens refused to confirm or deny Ivanov's statement. &quot;We are not talking at all about the nationalities at Guantanamo,&quot; Owens said.
 Ivanov gave no further details, but the NTVRU.com web site quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov as saying last week that two Chechen guerrillas who had fought for the Taliban were now imprisoned in Guantanamo. &quot;We still have to make sure that these people are Russian citizens,&quot; Trubnikov said. 
 Izvestia, citing a source in the General Staff, said Saturday that the U.S. military had seized several dozen Taliban fighters carrying Russian passports. The source said that official and unofficial Russian intelligence networks in the United States, in other NATO states and in Cuba would try to determine how many Russians were shipped to Guantanamo.
 &quot;The U.S. special services ... refused to help us in this case,&quot; the source was reported saying on condition of anonymity.
 Izvestia cited an official in the Russian Embassy in Washington as saying the prisoners could also be Uzbeks or natives of other Central Asian countries.
 The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Foreign Ministry was not able to send a representative to Guantanamo.
 <i>(Reuters, SPT) </i>

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Juvenile Courts
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The State Duma gave preliminary approval Friday to draft legislation introducing a system of juvenile courts, Interfax reported.
 The bill, passed with a vote of 366 to 6, stipulates that cases involving even one minor must fall under the jurisdiction of the juvenile courts, the report said. 
 Communist Deputy Viktor Zorkaltsev, who presented the bill, said the current backlog in the courts has left unacceptably high numbers of underage prisoners in pre-trial detention facilities.
 
 
Gorbachev Warning
 

MOSCOW (AP) - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev warned Sunday that the United States is "forgetting its friends" and urged Washington to keep in mind the support Russia provided in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 
 "At that dramatic and difficult moment, President Vladimir Putin was one of the first leaders to hold out a friendly hand," Interfax quoted him as saying. 
 But following the anti-terrorist coalition's successes in Afghanistan, the United States has neglected this friendship, Gorbachev said. 
 
Ivanov on bin Laden
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Friday he has not ruled out the possibility that Osama bin Laden could be hiding in the northern Caucasus, in an area reputed to be a gathering point for Chechen rebels, The Associated Press reported. 
 "We have other information that militants that we know that have fled Afghanistan ... that there were Chechens, Arab mercenaries who sought a place to flee to," Ivanov said. "Some are in Georgia in the Pankisi Gorge ..." 
 Ivanov's remarks came at a news conference in Paris with his French counterpart, Hubert Vedrine, in response to a general question about Chechnya. 
 In a statement released after talks between the two, France and Russia also called on Israel and the Palestinian Authority to cooperate to end 16 months of violence in the region and renew peace talks, Reuters reported.
 
 
Putin Praise
 

MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin on Friday praised the "internationalist warriors" who fought for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, marking 13 years since Soviet troops withdrew from a crippling decade-long occupation of the country. 
 "Together with you I bow my head in memory of your comrades," Putin said in a statement to participants in an anniversary ceremony. "The internationalist warriors - soldiers, generals, officers - fulfilled their military obligation honestly and until the end." 
 Veterans and family members of those killed in Afghanistan laid wreaths Friday at monuments and cemeteries in cities around the former Soviet Union. 
 
 
Duma Slams Trial
 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The State Duma on Friday branded the Hague war crimes tribunal a "political" court which had failed to charge NATO states for atrocities during the 1999 air war against Yugoslavia's then leader Slobodan Milosevic. 
 The Duma said the Hague tribunal was biased and urged President Vladimir Putin to ask the UN Security Council to place a time limit on its activities. 
 The statement, passed by 316 votes to six with two abstentions, came on the fourth day of Milosevic's trial in the The Hague. 



TITLE: Team Canada Brings $212M in Contracts
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The leaders of Russia and Canada swapped personalized jerseys Friday on the rink where the two countries played a historic Cold War hockey game, and then a new Team Canada - more than 300 visiting representatives of business, politics, culture and education - faced off with Russian partners to seal a flurry of deals.
 
After a bell rang at the Luzhniki sports hall where Canadian hockey pros pulled off a last-minute victory against the mighty Soviet team in the final game of their first-ever series 30 years ago, the two sides signed a total of 77 agreements, 25 of which were contracts worth $212 million in a wide range of fields, including engineering, oil and gas, metals and mining, agriculture, construction, education and even Canadian vodka imports.
 The event was hailed by both President Vladimir Putin and his counterpart, Jean Chretien, as the opening of a new economic partnership between two huge, resource-rich countries, both of which called &quot;disappointing&quot; their bilateral trade activity, which amount ed to just $650 million last year.
 &quot;Thirty years later, Canada and Russia are partners,&quot; Chretien said, following the signing ceremony that was attended by veterans from both sides of the 1972 &quot;Face-Off at the Summit&quot; series. The prime minister praised Russia for its economic growth and &quot;historic structural reforms&quot; that he said would lead to its recognition as a market economy.
 &quot;Frankly, I think that some of the Canadian businesspeople have underestimated the potential of Russia after 1998,&quot; he added.
 Putin applauded the &quot;maturity&quot; of the relationship, but said it would improve with the removal of &quot;Cold War stereotypes and fears of nonexistent threats.&quot;
 Putin said the value of the deals would be worth more than $1 billion, which Canadian officials called overly optimistic. More important than the final figure, Chretien said, was making contacts and changing misconceptions.
 &quot;The numbers don't mean that much. There are many ways of valuing a contract,&quot; said Michael Novak, president of SNC Lavalin, an engineering and design firm that signed a 280,000- Canadian-dollar ($175,000) contract with Moskva-City to design stations along the planned rapid-transit link between Sheremetyevo Airport and Leningradsky Station. &quot;It is the relationships [Team Canada] creates that give the opportunities that will pay off in the future.&quot;
 The long-term value of the ensuing projects and follow-on contracts, however, could reach into the billions.
 Canadian engineering design firm Hatch signed a C$400,000 ($250,000) contract with Russia's No. 2 aluminum producer, SUAL, to conduct a pre-feasibility study of a planned greenfield alumina refinery near SUAL's Sredne Timan bauxite mines in the Komi Republic. The two sides also signed a general-cooperation agreement relating to a new aluminum smelter. SUAL President Viktor Vekselberg said in an interview that the value of the project could reach $1.5 billion.
 Similarly, Gartner Lee, a Canadian waste-management firm, signed a memorandum of understanding with Mos cow City Hall on environmental cooperation for an undisclosed amount. Gartner Lee Vice President Ronald Portelli said the deal could potentially surpass a similar, multimillion-dollar project in Malaysia.
 There were other deals under discussion that were not represented at the signing ceremony, such as the joint development of a new locomotive by the Railways Ministry and transportation and avionics giant Bombardier.
 Other major contracts reflected the two countries' main sectors.
 The West Group, which has helped build gas stations in Ryazan, Tula and Kaluga, signed a C$38-million ($24-million) contract with TNK to construct a chain of more than 650 gas stations and a $4 million contract for software to integrate TNK's gas stations. RJZ Mining Corporation signed a C$24-million ($15-million) contract to provide oil and gas exploration and development management services and equipment to Volganeft.
 Ronald A. Chisolm signed a C$39- million ($24-million)contract to supply dairy and meat products to Sistema-Agro, and Conicor Consul International Group signed a C$25.5-million ($16-million) contract with Agropromyshlennaya Kompania to modernize 12 poultry farms.
 The ceremony contained some surprises, such as the Canadian entrepreneur who plans to import vodka to Russia. Gary Pollak, president of Canadian Iceberg Vodka, said the product, made from real icebergs, was aimed at the growing middle class in Russia, &quot;which is searching for something new.&quot;
 And Montreal-based Montrade Inc. was awarded a $3.5-million contract to supply patented artificial grass to the Luzhniki Corporation for the Olympic stadium and eight nearby soccer training fields.
 The two leaders took the opportunity not only to praise each other's country, but also to raise some of the problems and call on the business communities to pitch in to help.
 &quot;The experience of some Canadian investors has tarnished the Russian market in the eyes of many more,&quot; Chretien said.
 &quot;Both Russian government and business have an interest in identifying the real causes ... if we are to succeed in lifting our business relationships to another level.&quot;
 Putin called for Canada to open its markets to Russian steel. &quot;Both sides incur losses on a strategic level,&quot; he said.

TITLE: British Brewery Takes Part of Baltika
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW- No. 1 British brewer Scottish & Newcastle PLC clinched a $1.9-billion deal to acquire Finland's Hartwall on Thursday in a bold move to tap the fast-growing Russian beer market.
 
Hartwall, Finland's biggest beverage company, controls a 50-percent share of Baltic Beverages Holding, the owner of Russia's No. 1 brewer, St. Petersburg-based Baltika. 
 The takeover will put S&N behind Heineken as the second-largest brewer in Europe and give it three of the top 10 European brands - Baltika, Kronenburg and Foster's.
 &quot;We are creating a leading force across the whole of Europe from Siberia to the Atlantic,&quot; S&N chairperson Brian Stewart said in statement.
 S&N said the Russian market, which has seen double-digit growth annually for much of the past five years, was the driving factor behind the acquisition. In a move that illustrates the company's eagerness, S&N executives passed out bottles of Baltika No. 7 after announcing the deal at a news conference in London.
 &quot;We're delighted about having the Finnish market as well, but in terms of sheer numbers, the Russian side is the larger part,&quot; S&N's director for corporate affairs, Jeremy Blood, said by telephone from London.
 S&N's agreement comes just 14 days after Dutch brewer Heineken made its first foray into Russia by snapping up the Bravo International brewery in St. Petersburg in a deal worth some $400 million.
 Taking into account the technicalities of the all-paper S&N deal, its total value is comparable to the Bravo purchase, analysts said.
 &quot;If you're searching for growth, then its a fair price to pay,&quot; said Kim Iskyan of Renaissance Capital. &quot;It's a high price, but if you come relatively late to the game you have to pay up a bit like Heineken did.&quot;
 The question now is how S&N will get along with its partner in Baltic Beverage Holding - fierce European rival Carlsberg Breweries of Denmark, which controls the other 50 percent of BBH, said Alexei Krivoshapko, consumer-markets analyst at United Financial Group.
 No one was more surprised about the deal than Carlsberg itself.
 &quot;We were not informed,&quot; Carlesberg Breweries' public-affairs director Margretag Skov said by telephone from Copenhagen. &quot;We didn't know until Wednesday afternoon when we were told by S&N and Hartwall.&quot; 
 Skov, however, said he was upbeat about the takeover. 
 &quot;We believe that BBH will benefit from having two strong partners as their owners,&quot; he said. 
 Krivoshapko said: &quot;I had assumed that Carlsberg had right of first refusal to the Hartwall stake. For me it was a surprise. The fact that it has gone to a competitor is not a nice surprise for Carlesberg. Its not necessarily de-constructive, but its hard to call constructive.&quot; 
 Before the acquisition, Carlsberg and S&N were the world's seventh and eighth biggest brewers, respectively, in terms of volume. With Hartwell, S&N will swap places with Carlsberg.
 The takeover is being done through a share swap in which S&N is offering 3.152 ordinary shares for each Hartwell share. Based on last year's results, Hartwall will pay a dividend before the offering that will put Hartwall's total value at 2.05 billion euros ($1.8 billion), or 31 euros ($27) per share. Hartwall's net sales last year were 807.6 million euros ($702 milion), of which 489.2 million euros ($425 million) came from BBH. Its operating profit was 162.5 million euros ($142 million). 
 BBH has 14 breweries in the Baltics, Russia and Ukraine, with a total output of 2.384 billion liters last year. It leads the market in Russia and the Baltics and is the third-largest player in the Ukraine. 
 S&N controls Scottish Courage, Britian's leading brewer; Brasseries Kronenburg, France's leading brewer; as well as No. 2 Belgian brewer Alken Maes, Centralcer in Portugal and the S&N retail branch a pub and restaurant operator. The company's turnover for the year ending April 29, 2001, was 7.137 billion euros ($6.18 bilion). 
 S&N officials see considerable room for expansion in Russia, considering its average per capita consumption of beer is 43 liters compared to about 70 liters in Europe. 
 Blood said, however, that there are no plans as of now to brew its brands locally. It currently exports brands such as Kronenburg and Foster's in limited quantities to Russia. 
 &quot;Obviously, we see long-distance opportunities for cross-fertilization with Baltika in other markets in Europe, France and the U.K. and vice versa,&quot; Blood said. &quot;But really we value BBH for its local management - the local knowledge and brands. We're not going in to put in our own brands from day one.&quot;

TITLE: Foreign Investors' Appetite for Food Grows
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Full-year investment figures for 2001 won't be ready until next month, but one trend is already clear: Foreigners are flocking to the food and retail sectors like never before.
 
Nearly half of the $9.7 billion that foreigners invested in the country in the first nine months of 2000 was for products that are either eaten or worn by Russians, according to a report by the Economic Development and Trade Ministry obtained by The St. Petersburg Times.
 With most of the world's largest retailers either already here or planning to come, investment in retail, restaurants and catering was up 75 percent in the first three quarters of last year, more than triple the industry-wide average. Combined with an expected year-end figure of roughly $1.3 billion in food-production investment, foreigners - or, more precisely, foreign &quot;entities,&quot; since much of Russia's so-called foreign investment is actually a case of Russians repatriating their money through banking havens such as Switzerland and Cyprus - invested roughly seven times more in retail and food than they did in the once wildly popular oil-and-gas sector.
 &quot;There is a crying need for these services now,&quot; says Bruce Gardner. &quot;Food, retail and catering are very easy to start, to manage and to control - there is almost no risk except the real-estate risk,&quot; he says.
 Gardner should know. As a partner at one of Moscow's leading investment houses, he is paid to spot economic trends, and he's so convinced of this one that he has put his own money behind it. Together with a couple of French investors, Gardner, an American, is the part owner of a swank new French restaurant in the capital.
 According to Economic Development and Trade Ministry data, Cyprus, Britain and France were the top points of origin for investment into retail, restaurants and catering in January through September, collectively accounting for nearly $2 billion. The Netherlands and Germany topped the list for investment in the food industry.
 &quot;Russians are starting to get now what they were deprived of in the past,&quot; says Peter Westin, chief economist at Aton, a brokerage. &quot;Russians are eating out more,&quot; he says, adding that most of the investment is in Moscow and St. Petersburg, &quot;where spending power is very big and can well be compared with developed countries.&quot;
 One example cited by Westin is IKEA, which discovered the spending power of its customers in Moscow to be the same as that of its customers in Stockholm.
 By contrast, just $591 million was invested in Russia's mighty oil-and-gas industry from abroad through September of 2001, while ferrous metals attracted just $827 million. Westin explains this discrepancy as a simple matter of risk avoidance. &quot;Investments in core industries are still considered to be very risky, while food processing is less risky, more liquid and pays back more quickly,&quot; he says. &quot;Also, the required investments are considerably lower than in core sectors, like oil and gas and metals.&quot;
 While Germany and the United States are still the top investors in terms of total accumulated investment, with $5.9 billion and $5.5 billion, respectively, more and more Russian money is returning home. Cyprus and Switzerland, for example, are the leading countries of origin for foreign investment, putting $1.8 billion and $952 million into various sectors of the economy, respectively.
 &quot;Cyprus and Switzerland represent former Russian money, so they shouldn't actually be considered foreign investment,&quot; says Alexei Moiseyev, an economist with Renaissance Capital.
 The same could be said for other noted low-disclosure banking havens such as Belize, Panama and Barbados.
 Though analysts say that the return of Russian money is an encouraging sign, it also means that real foreign investment is declining, despite all the reform efforts of the government.
 &quot;We don't see any signal of foreign investment rising, which means that the overall trend is very disappointing,&quot; says Sergei Afontsev, an economist at the Russian-European Center for Research Policy. &quot;Foreign direct investment has been declining steadily since 1997, which means that the government's efforts are just not enough.&quot;
 &quot;In general, it is too early to say that Russia has become an attractive place for foreign investment,&quot; says Moiseyev.
 The old laundry list of needed improvements remains largely the same - law enforcement, bureaucracy, property rights, etc., experts say.
 &quot;The major problems arise when people deal with enforcing contracts protecting investors' rights,&quot; says Westin.
 Moiseyev says Russia can expect an inflow of foreign investment only when foreign companies are given a chance to export finished goods out of the country. &quot;Customs plays a key in this respect,&quot; he says. &quot;I doubt that customs procedures will ever be perfect in Russia, but at least they should become clear. WTO accession can serve as a stimulus for improvement in this direction.&quot;

TITLE: Greens Fighting Sakhalin Over Danger to Whales
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Environmental groups are turning to the courts to stop two major oil and gas projects in the Far East, claiming that they endanger the population of Western Pacific gray whales in the Sea of Okhotsk, a Russian Greenpeace official said Friday.
 
A group of 14 public organizations sued the Natural Resources Ministry and two companies leading the projects off Sakhalin Island - Sakhalin Energy, 55-percent owned by Royal Dutch/Shell, and ExxonMobil.
 &quot;We want to stop something that would hurt the whales in the future,&quot; said Olga Yakovleva, the attorney representing the 14 environmental groups in the lawsuit.
 The companies have done nothing harmful yet, she said, but according to the law on the environment and the civil code, activities that could in the future be harmful to endangered species, such as the Okhotsk-Korean population of gray whales, can be restricted.
 The lawsuit is expected to be heard by a Moscow court April 9.
 Russian Greenpeace director Ivan Blokov said the lawsuit had been filed because of violations in carrying out a survey on the possible impact on the environment from drilling work. He said environmentalists had not been given access to all the survey materials.
 The two projects, Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2, worth an estimated $22.2 billion, also involve Japan's Mitsui and Mitsubishi, India's ONGC and two subsidiaries of state-owned Rosneft.
 The Sahkalin-1 project is to develop fields with reserves of 140 million tons of oil and 408 billion cubic meters of gas. Sakalin-2 is meant to tap reserves of almost three times as much oil and 420 billion cubic meters of gas.
 Environmentalists claim the extraction of oil and gas in the Okhotsk Sea will affect the gray whales' feeding area, which could lead to their extinction or reduce their population. Fewer than 100 of the whales are estimated to live in the sea, according to environmentalists.
 A spokesperson for Sakhalin Energy, Ivan Chernikovsky, said that his company had not officially been notified of the lawsuit, but he denied that the two companies' activities in the Okhotsk Sea endangered the whales.
 Chernikovsky said Sakhalin Energy strictly observed all environmental laws and had monitored gray whales in the extraction area for several years. He said they were aware of the problem of the gray whales and over the past few years have spent $1.5 million on projects to protect the endangered species.
 &quot;We've got more people tracking these whales than doing seismic tests [for reserves] on the shelf,&quot; said an Exxon official, who declined to be identified.
 Last September, Russian environmentalists forced ExxonMobil to stop seismic tests off Sakhalin on the grounds that the tests had pushed gray whales from their feeding ground.
 Sergei Metnev, an analyst with Renaissance Capital, said the two sides will have to come to a compromise because shutting down the project would cause an international scandal.
 &quot;Maybe the operator companies will have to make some kind of investment into the claimants' environmental programs,&quot; he said.
 <i>(AP, Vedomosti) </i>

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Delta Stake Sold
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - NorthWest Telecom said Friday it was selling its 43.1 percent stake in Russia's oldest mobile provider, St. Petersburg-based Delta Telecom. 
 NorthWest's board of directors on Friday decided to sell the stake in Delta Telecom - 24.1 percent of its common shares and 100 percent of its preferreds - to the offshore TELCO Overseas Ltd. for $2.9 million. 
 U.S.-based MCT Corp. owns 31.9 percent in Delta, while Telecominvest has 25 percent. 
 NorthWest, formerly known as Petersburg Telephone Network (PTS), also has a 25 percent stake in Telecominvest, which owns 45 percent in Northwest GSM, the country's No. 3 mobile operator. 
 
 
Wage Arrears Grow
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Wage arrears rose 9.6 percent month on month in January to 32.829 billion rubles ($1.06 billion) as of Feb. 1, Prime-Tass reported the State Statistics Committee as saying Monday.
 Wage arrears from the federal and regional budgets accounted for 12.3 percent of total wage arrears, rising 10.8 percent month on month in January to 4.025 billion rubles ($130 million).
 Private companies' wage arrears rose 9.5 percent to 28.804 billion rubles ($932 million), the committee said.
 
 
$300M LUKoil Credit
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - No. 1 oil major LUKoil has attracted a $300 million credit from foreign syndicate including ING Bank NV and Raiffeisen Zentralbank Osterreich AG, Interfax reported ING Bank as saying Monday.
 The credit is being granted for 4 1/2 years and is guaranteed by oil-export revenue, the bank said in a press release. Oil exports are carried out through the LUKoil Petroleum Ltd trading company. The loan will be used to replenish working capital.
 Repayment of the credit will begin in monthly payments one year after it is received.
 A number of other banks have been invited to participate in the syndicated credit, the press release said.
 According to preliminary estimates, LUKoil's net profit to generally accepted accounting principles in 2001 fell 22 percent year on year to $2.586 billion.
 
 
Binge Settlement
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A French court ruled Monday that an electrician's death in a drinking binge with Russian colleagues ought to be considered a workplace accident, Agence France Presse reported the victim's widow's lawyer as saying Monday. 
 The 44-year-old Frenchman died of alcohol poisoning in 1999 while drinking vodka on a building site in Nalchik. 
 On Monday, the court ruled that the man had been obliged by his job to attend the party and thus was not solely to blame for his subsequent inebriation, said the lawyer, Gerard Welzer. 
 The electrician's widow had taken her social security fund to court after it refused to pay her the pension she would have been due if her husband had died because of the conditions of his work. The fund dropped its objections two weeks ago, the lawyer said. 



TITLE: House of Cards: The Anatomy of Enron's Fall
TEXT: One year ago, Enron was riding high as one of America's most successful corporations - on the outside. Beneath the surface lay a series of byzantine partnerships and financial strategies that would eventually collapse and bring the once-proud energy-trading giant to its knees. </i><strong>Kurt Eichenwald </strong><i>and </i><strong>Diana B. Henriques </strong><i>of The New York Times report on the last 11 months of the company and its spectacular downfall. </i>

Kenneth Lay strode onto a ballroom stage at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, Texas, walking between two giant screens that displayed his projected image. Before him, bright light from the ballroom's chandeliers spilled across scores of round tables where executives from the Enron Corp. waited to hear the words of Lay, their longtime chairperson and chief executive. This meeting of hundreds of Enron executives in the first week of January 2001 was a time of revelry, a chance to celebrate a year when business seemed good - even better than good. At night, according to executives who attended, champagne and liquor flowed from the open bar, while fistfuls of free cigars were available for the taking. Executives could belly up to temporary gambling tables for high-stakes games of poker.
 
As waiters wearing bolo ties scurried about, the executives listened eagerly to Lay's descriptions of Enron's recent year of success - and the new successes that were within reach. Already, Enron was near the top of the Fortune 500, a multibillion-dollar behemoth that had moved beyond its roots in the natural-gas business to blaze new trails in Internet commerce. For 2001, Lay said, the company would take on a new mission, one that would define everything it did in the months to come: Enron would become &quot;the world's greatest company.&quot; The words replaced his image on one of the screens.
 But it was not to be. For, unknown to almost everyone there, Enron was secretly falling apart. Even as the celebrations unfolded, accountants and trading experts at the company's Houston headquarters were desperately working to contain a financial disaster, one that threatened - and ultimately would destroy - everything Enron had become. A handful of executives were struggling to sound the alarm, but with Enron's confidence in its destiny, the warnings went unheeded.
 &quot;We were so sure of what we were doing and where we were going,&quot; one executive who attended the San Antonio meeting said. &quot;We didn't know we were living on borrowed time.&quot;
 Investigators picking through the wreckage of Enron, seeking to understand what caused its collapse in December, have explored its byzantine partnerships and financial strategies. From these details, a clearer picture has begun to emerge about what happened inside the thick walls of Enron during its last 11 months. It is two completely different tales - the public image, polished by its most senior officers, of an innovative powerhouse on the verge of reshaping the world, and the hidden truth of a company plagued by secrets, whose executives were struggling to hold it together. It was like a gleaming ocean liner seemingly powering forward, its passengers dining in luxury, while, below the waterline, its sweaty crew frantically bails against the force of an in-rushing sea.
 By the final days, the sea had won. Attempts by Enron executives to seek a rescue from their powerful friends in Washington and last-ditch efforts to save the company through a merger had ended in failure. When the company finally sought bankruptcy protection, it marked the biggest, fastest corporate collapse in American history.
 With the speed in which they travelled from confidence to collapse, executives who once thought they could see their futures clearly and who believed in their employer found their faith fundamentally shaken. &quot;Given the events at Enron, given the short time period in which it happened, given the economic disaster, it fundamentally challenges everything I think about the way companies work,&quot; said Allan Sommer, former vice president for corporate systems at Enron. &quot;If Enron was able to hide this the way they did, why couldn't other companies do it, too?&quot;
 
 
High Power on Parade
 
As rain soaked the streets of Washington on Jan. 20, 2001, the motorcade of President George W. Bush moved past the reviewing stand, near where he had just taken the oath of office. Nearby, in the exclusive &quot;Pioneers&quot; box on the parade route, Ken Lay watched the festivities. He was there amid an elite group of about 200 men and women who had each raised $100,000 for the campaign. Nearby, other Enron executives watched the parade from the elegant Willard hotel and office complex, two blocks from the White House, where the company's law firm, Vinson & Elkins, has its Washington office.
 
It had been a weekend to savor. Enron and its top two executives had kicked in $300,000 for the inauguration, and the company was one of the few to donate $50,000 for the Texas State Society's 2001 Black Tie and Boots Inaugural Ball, where Bush and the first lady stopped by to salute their Texan friends, including Lay.
 The day after the inauguration, Lay attended a private luncheon at the White House, where he was able to spend a few minutes with the new president, a luncheon guest said. That night, Enron hosted a private dinner for several members of congress. Lay did not attend, but his second in command, Jeffrey Skilling, did.
 Enron's sharp elbows had already been noticed in Washington. Curtis Hebert Jr., then chairperson of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, had gotten a call from Lay early in the year. As Hebert recalled the incident, Lay said that Enron would continue to support him in his new job if he dropped his reservations about electricity deregulation. Hebert said he refused. In an interview earlier this year, Lay remembered the events differently, saying that Hebert sought Enron's support at the White House. Either way, the message was clear: Enron, a generous contributor to the Bush campaign, would use its White House access to advance its interests.
 Its power base in Houston seemed secure. Its stock price was hovering around $80 a share - not its high, but not far from it. And on Feb. 5, scores of special bonus checks were cut for Enron executives, who would collect tens of millions of dollars because of the company's strong reported profits.
 The mood that same day was far less jubilant in the nearby offices of Arthur Andersen, Enron's outside accounting firm. There, David Duncan and Tho mas Bauer - two of the firm's lead accountants on the Enron account - joined a group of six colleagues in a conference room for a meeting. Six more Andersen executives were patched in by speakerphone.
 For a significant amount of time, according to notes of the meeting, the Andersen accountants debated a critical point: What should they do about two partnerships - called LJM1 and LJM2 - that had been set up 18 months earlier by Enron's chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow?
 Since mid-1999, Enron had engaged in a score of transactions with the Fastow partnerships. It sold the LJM1 partnership a stake in a Brazilian power project and later purchased it back. It sold the same partnership a stake in any future gains on one of its technology investments, a complex arrangement that allowed it to report a paper profit on the deal.
 On its face, this arrangement partly reflected a common financing technique: decreasing the company's risk by moving its holdings into separate partnerships that could be sold to outside investors more willing to assume those risks. And Enron's board, which had approved Fastow's dual role in 1999, had ordered that top management - Richard Causey, the chief accounting officer; Richard Buy, the chief risk officer; and Skilling - carefully monitor these deals.
 Later, the board's special investigators concluded that these partnerships had been twisted at Enron into a tool for making the company seem far more profitable that it really was.
 If those allegations are true, there is no sign from the notes of the Feb. 5 meeting at Andersen's Houston office that anyone there knew it. Still, the accountants seemed uncomfortable with the LJM arrangement. To solve that, they drew up a &quot;to do&quot; list, which included suggesting that a special committee of the Enron board be set up to review the fairness of the LJM deals. They also decided to make sure with Enron that LJM met accounting tests that allowed it to be treated as a separate entity, rather than as a subsidiary whose financial results would have to be shown on Enron's books.
 The opportunity to cross to-do's off the list came just one week later, Feb. 12. That day, the Enron board's audit and compliance committee held a meeting and both Duncan and Bauer from Andersen attended. At one point, all Enron executives were excused from the room, and the Andersen accountants were asked by directors if they had any concerns they wished to express, documents show.
 Subsequent testimony by board members suggests the accountants raised nothing from their to-do list. &quot;There is no evidence of any discussion by either Andersen representative about the problems or concerns they apparently had discussed internally just one week earlier,&quot; said the special committee report released earlier this month.
 That same day, though, Enron's board approved a big decision: Skilling, long the second in command at Enron, would be taking over as chief executive. Lay would remain as chairperson.
 In stepping aside, Lay left to Skilling the delicate task of explaining Enron to its critics. By the time Skilling was named chief executive, the company had become a lightning rod for political outrage over the electric power crisis in California, where there were brownouts and price spikes. Enron's traders bought and sold electric power, and California utility officials were accusing it and other national power companies of manipulating that esoteric market to reap windfall profits at consumers' expense.
 In late March, a television crew from &quot;Frontline,&quot; a news magazine, visited Enron's sleek office towers in Houston as they prepared a documentary on the power crisis. Skilling responded to the company's critics on camera. &quot;We are doing the right thing,&quot; he said during an interview in a fishbowl room at the edge of Enron's busy trading floor, where traders were buying kilowatt-hours in one part of the country to sell at higher prices elsewhere. &quot;We are looking to create open, competitive, fair markets. And in open, competitive, fair markets, prices are lower and customers get better service.&quot;
 He added: &quot;We are the good guys. We are on the side of the angels.&quot;
 After the interview, as Skilling led the film crew out onto the trading floor, he was asked what his top priority would be as chief executive. His answer came fast: &quot;To get the stock price up,&quot; he said.
 Few people outside Enron knew how important that single goal was.
 
 
Seeking a Quick Fix
 
What made Enron's stock price so important was the fact that some of the company's most important deals with the partnerships run by Fastow - deals that allowed Enron to keep hundreds of millions of dollars of potential losses off its books - were financed, in effect, with Enron stock. Those transactions could fall apart if the price fell too far.
 
Indeed, Enron's contracts with some of these partnerships had provisions called triggers that required Enron's stock price to stay above certain specific levels. If it did not, and if Enron's own credit rating fell, Enron faced a variety of consequences, all of them damaging to its reported profits.
 When Enron's stock was trading as high as $90, the stock prices attached to these triggers - $57.78 a share in one case, $47 a share in another, $28 in a third - no doubt seemed absurdly low. But as Enron's share price hovered around $70 a share in early March, the risk that these trigger provisions would be activated grew. Enron's deals with a quartet of Fastow partnerships known as the Raptors - deals that were keeping roughly $504 million in red ink off Enron's books - were especially worrisome.
 For months, Enron's accountants had been struggling to keep the Raptors afloat. Like many of the Fastow partnerships, they were financed, directly or indirectly, with Enron stock. They had been formed to assume the risks of future losses on Enron's portfolio of volatile technology stocks so that Enron could erase those risks from its own financial statements.
 But under accounting rules, Enron could keep those losses off its books if the Raptors remained financially healthy enough to fulfill their obligations. As the NASDAQ boom in technology stocks fizzled, the losses that the Raptors had promised to cover were ballooning. At the same time, Enron's stock was falling in value, reducing the Raptors' ability to cover those losses. The Raptor structure was in peril, and if it failed, Enron would have had to accept that $504-million write-off.
 As the March deadline for financial reporting approached, and as Enron's stock continued a slide that brought it below $60 a share, the company's financial experts struggled to find a way to make the Raptors strong enough to meet the accounting tests that allowed Enron to avoid reporting the huge losses. According to the board committee's report, Enron employees said Skilling was &quot;intensely interested&quot; in the Raptor credit problems and called resolving them &quot;one of the company's highest priorities.&quot; Skilling disputes that account, insisting that he was only vaguely aware of the credit problems.
 Finally, on March 26, just days before the end of the first quarter, the accountants found a way to refinance the Raptors, using a series of complex and fragile transactions that were still vulnerable to further declines in Enron's stock price. The accountants and financial officers celebrated their ingenuity, according to the board report. But they had merely put off the inevitable.
 But while this frantic rescue effort was under way, Enron executives put the final touches on a separate deal that allowed some of them to get millions. The same day the Raptor deal was completed, Enron did another deal, this one with a supposedly unrelated partnership named Chewco.
 Chewco owned a stake in yet a third Enron-linked partnership, called JEDI, and wanted to sell that stake to Enron. Enron agreed to buy it for $35 million. What few inside Enron - and almost no one outside Enron - knew was that Chewco was actually controlled by Michael Kopper, a managing director on Fastow's staff. After all the debts and fees were settled, Kopper and his domestic partner, William Dodson, had gotten about $10 million from their Chewco investment, according to the board's report.
 Two weeks later, on April 17, Enron presented its first-quarter results to investors, and the company's executives were positively giddy. With the huge Raptor losses shuffled away, Enron reported $425 million in earnings, another banner quarter.
 That day, the company set up a conference call with Wall Street analysts. As they waited on hold for the executives to come on the line, the analysts listened to faint music. Suddenly, an operator broke in, announcing the arrival of Enron's top brass.
 &quot;I hope you all heard that music that was on,&quot; Skilling announced, according to a tape recording of the conversation. &quot;We're all dancing here. It's pretty good stuff.&quot;
 For about 15 minutes, Skilling laid out the details of Enron's performance. Nothing was said by any of the Enron executives about the Raptors, the single most important transaction in the quarter.
 &quot;So in conclusion, first-quarter results were great,&quot; Skilling said. &quot;We are very optimistic about our new businesses and are confident that our record of growth is sustainable for many years to come.&quot;
 The executives then opened the call for questions and Richard Grubman from Highfields Capital Management was called on to speak. He questioned why Enron did not release its balance sheet, listing its assets and liabilities, at the same time it reported its profits.
 Skilling said that was not Enron's policy, but Grubman pressed the issue.
 &quot;You're the only financial institution that can't produce a balance sheet or a cash-flow statement with their earnings,&quot; Grubman said, at last.
 Skilling paused. &quot;Well, thank you very much,&quot; he said. &quot;We appreciate it.&quot;
 Then Skilling turned to his colleagues in Houston, and muttered a vulgarity. The group in Houston laughed; some of the analysts on the line, who had heard everything, were stunned.
 
 
Questions of Conflicts
 
For Jordan Mintz, the 20th floor of Enron's Houston headquarters was a study in dysfunctionality.
 
After 18 years as a tax attorney, Mintz had been delighted in October 2000, when he had been moved to that floor to work as a lawyer with Fastow's finance division. After two days of orientation, Mintz set to work, finding files upon files of documents detailing the transactions of the Fastow partnerships.
 What he saw troubled him. Fastow was negotiating deals on behalf of the partnerships across the table from his own subordinates, who were representing Enron. Approval sheets for those deals had not been signed by Skilling, the chief operating officer, even though they all had a line for his signature. The whole situation seemed fraught with peril.
 Mintz sought out Causey, the chief accounting officer, and Buy, the chief risk officer. He told them he wanted to approach Skilling, now the chief executive, about the unsigned approval sheets and also to make sure that he was still comfortable with Fastow's built-in conflicts.
 Causey was blunt in his advice. &quot;I wouldn't stick my neck out,&quot; he said, according to Mintz's congressional testimony.
 Eventually, the three men agreed that Mintz should send a memo to Skilling, diplomatically raising his concerns. So, on May 22, Mintz wrote a confidential memo to the Enron chief executive saying he wanted to bring over the unsigned paperwork for Enron's deals with Fastow's partnerships so that Skilling could sign them.
 &quot;To that end, I will arrange to get on your schedule to assist you in this regard,&quot; Mintz wrote. &quot;Alternatively, I can send such approval sheets to you as a package and you can sign them at your convenience.
 Skilling never responded, according to Mintz's testimony.
 Increasingly worried, Mintz decided he needed an independent review of the partnership arrangements. So without informing his superiors, he retained, on behalf of the company, an outside law firm - Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson from Washington - to take a look.
 In June, he got his answer. The Fried, Frank lawyers raised some questions about the candor of the company's previous public descriptions of the arrangements and made some preliminary recommendations about how to handle such disclosures in the future if Fastow decided to sell his stake to Kopper, as he had indicated he might do. Comforted somewhat, Mintz hoped the sale to Kopper, which went through in July, would make life a bit less difficult.
 To the world outside the Enron tower, of course, the company seemed as powerful and fascinating as ever.
 On June 12, Skilling was featured as the final speaker at the Strategic Directions technology conference in Las Vegas, where he planned to share his vision of how Enron was creating a robust trading market in cyberspace. Skilling bounded onto the stage, tieless and in a sports coat. The Internet, he told the crowd, had barely begun to show its usefulness to business. U.S. industry would be transformed by its prowess, and the future of Enron would be found there, he said.
 After a lengthy speech, Skilling asked for questions from the assembled crowd. One of the last questioners asked Skilling for his thoughts about the power crisis in California, and what the state should have done differently to avoid its problems.
 &quot;Oh, I can't help myself,&quot; Skilling said, according to the tape. &quot;You know what the difference is between the state of California and the Titanic?&quot;
 The crowd laughed appreciatively.
 &quot;I know I'm going to regret this,&quot; Skilling said, almost to himself.
 He looked back at the audience. &quot;At least when the Titanic went down, the lights were on,&quot; he said.
 State officials reacted in outrage when they heard of Skilling's jest, and the bad relations between California and Enron worsened. Nine days later, Skilling traveled to California, where a protester hit him in the face with a cream pie.
 But that public pratfall was minor compared to the damage being inflicted on Enron's stock. By mid-June, its stock price had fallen below $50 a share, alarmingly close to those &quot;trigger&quot; prices that had once seemed so ludicrously remote. One trigger - at $47 - was embedded in the Raptor partnerships, which had been propped up so painstakingly in the spring. On Monday, July 23, Enron's stock closed at $46.66. It would never rise above $47 again.
 As the stock price fell, the Fastow partnerships that had insulated Enron from losses for years came under increasing pressure, pressure that would ultimately send Enron into a death spiral.
 By then, the world inside Enron would seem very different. On Aug. 14, stunning the market, Skilling announced he was resigning after just six months as chief executive, citing undisclosed personal reasons. He left assuring investors that the finances of Enron had never been better.
 
 
More Warnings
 
&quot;Has Enron become a risky place to work? For those of us who didn't get rich over the last few years, can we afford to stay?&quot;
 
The words almost leapt off the one-page, unsigned letter to Ken Lay. After Skilling's resignation, Lay had returned as chief executive and had been meeting with employees, encouraging them to write about their concerns anonymously.
 But this letter was not some mundane complaint. The writer described in detail problems with Enron's partnerships, problems that the letter claimed would cause huge financial upheavals at the company in as little as a year. &quot;I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals,&quot; the letter's author wrote. &quot;Skilling is resigning for 'personal reasons,' but I think he wasn't having fun, looked down the road and knew this stuff was unfixable and would rather abandon ship now than resign in shame in two years.&quot;
 Lay took a copy of the letter to Enron general counsel James Derrick Jr., who agreed it needed to be investigated. They decided to assign the task to Vinson & Elkins - which had helped prepare some of the legal documents for some of the partnerships. Enron wanted answers fast, and told the outside lawyers not to spend time examining the accounting treatment recommended by Arthur Andersen - although that was the heart of the letter's warnings.
 The letter writer soon identified herself as Sherron Watkins, an accountant who had been laid off the previous spring, after eight years, and who had then been rehired in June to work for Fastow. Watkins and Lay made an appointment to talk Aug. 22. Two days earlier, Watkins shared her worries with James Hecker, an Andersen accountant she knew. &quot;Sherron told me that she was concerned about the propriety of accounting for certain related-party transactions,&quot; Hecker wrote in a memo to the file the next day.
 After Lay met with Watkins, Vinson & Elkins began its investigation. Lawyers from the firm interviewed Fastow, Duncan from Andersen, and other people involved in the transactions.
 But even as the lawyers were poking through Fastow's department, his conflicted role in the partnerships continued to create friction. Kopper, who had sold his Chewco assets to Enron so profitably months before, was insisting that Enron cover the $2.6-million tax liability from the sale, according to the board committee report.
 Fastow checked with Derrick, Enron's general counsel, and was told &quot;unequivocally&quot; that there was no basis for it to be made, according to the board's report. Nevertheless, Enron's treasury department received orders to cut the check. On Sept. 18, the $2.6 million was sent to Chewco.
 &quot;There is credible evidence that Fastow authorized the payment to Chewco,&quot; the committee's report says, adding that the payment - done against the explicit instructions of Enron's general counsel - was &quot;one of the most serious issues we identified in connection with the Chewco buyout.&quot;
 Three days later, on Sept. 21, the Vinson & Elkins lawyers investigating Sherron Watkins' warnings reported their findings to Lay and Derrick. There was no reason for concern, the lawyers reported. Everything in Fastow's operation seemed to be on the level. They promised a written report in a matter of weeks.
 By then, it would be too late.
 
 
The Deals Unravel
 
By late September, Enron was essentially doomed, although it would be weeks before that reality sank in.
 
As most of the country focused on the initial horror and the anguished aftermath of the September terrorist attacks, Lay was trying to reassure his own shaken work force, already stunned by Skilling's abrupt departure and their stock's continuing decline. In e-mail messages and conversations, he assured employees that Enron was strong and that its stock - for many, the bedrock of their retirement plans - would rebound.
 But that optimistic prospect had actually evaporated, sometime during those weeks, when auditors from Andersen discovered a mistake they had made, more than a year earlier, in Enron's books. The way they accounted for the Enron shares that had been used to finance the Raptor partnerships had incorrectly added $1 billion to the assets on Enron's balance sheet. Correcting the mistake would reduce those assets by $1 billion.
 By this point, Lay and his advisers had also decided to dismantle the Raptor arrangements. That meant that the investment losses kept at bay for so long would have to be reported to shareholders. It also meant that an additional $200 million would have to be trimmed from Enron's assets.
 On Oct. 15, Vinson & Elkins delivered its report saying no further investigation into the partnerships was necessary. The next day, Enron announced it was deducting $1 billion from its third-quarter earnings, producing its first quarterly loss.
 
 <i>
Jeff Gerth, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Richard W. Stevenson and Don Van Natta Jr. contributed to this article. </i>

TITLE: Who Are the Real Figure-Skating Champions?
TEXT: In response to &quot;Scandal Casts Cloud Over Olympics,&quot; Feb. 15.
 </i>

 <i>
Editor,
 </i>This evening, I watched television from a lounge in an airport in Edmonton, Canada, the hometown of [figure skater] Jamie Sale.
 
I watched her and David Pelletier receive their gold medals, alongside Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. My happiness for my country's athletes was eclipsed only by my pride in your athletes' graciousness. 
 Later I flew home to Vancouver. There I met with friends and family. We compared notes. We all expressed the same thoughts, noting the poignancy of both flags raising in unison.
 <i>Charles Grahn 
 Vancouver, Canada
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>For those who criticize the potential financial gain our skaters may receive, I say &quot;welcome to a free-market economy.&quot; Yes, money is always an issue (as opposed to Russia, where I'm sure money and politics never play a role). The simple fact is on that night, at that moment Jamie Sale and David Pelletier were better. Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze were inspiring and wonderful. They were however, not the best.
 
The grace with which all these athletes faced a controversy not of their making should be a lesson to us all. Neither Sale, Pelletier, Berezhnaya, Sikharulidze, nor the Russian or Canadian people have any apologies to make. The ISU and the IOC however, have houses to clean. 
 I hope that, in the future, no athlete will be subject to this kind of spectacle because of corruption over which they have no control. 
 I applaud the Russian figure skaters and the Russian people for the class and sportsmanship they have displayed throughout this unfortunate incident. I wanted to write to let you know how impressed and inspired I have been by Russia's figure-skating champions. 
 While I believe that Sale and Pelletier deserved to win, I admire the grace with which Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze handled themselves throughout this controversy. I am Canadian, and I love Russia. This has nothing to do with international relations and everything to do with corruption in sports. 
 <i>Liane Tackaberry,
 Kingston, Canada
 </i><strong>
It's the Judges
 </strong><i>
Editor,
 </i>It seems many Russians feel as though Canadian pairs figure skaters [Jamie] Sale and [David] Pelletier received duplicate gold medals only because of North American media attention. However, I think the media have neglected to shed appropriate light on the true reason for this incident: the corrupt judging of the French figure-skating judge. Many suggest that the Canadian pair should have simply accepted the decision of the judges, but is this because they believe that cheating is O.K. and should be accepted in an Olympic sport? 
 
Regardless of which pair truly skated better, the marks of the French judge had to be discounted because she admitted to having been pressured to vote for the Russians. With her marks discounted, the Canadian and Russian pairs would have been tied. Therefore, no injustice has been served to [Elena] Berezhnaya and [Anton] Sikharulidze, who kept their gold medals despite the corrupt judging that may have contributed to awarding them. 
 Even if the International Olympic Committee did only make this decision because of media pressure, at least they probably made the right decision, if only to make the statement that they would not allow cheating at the Olympics Games. 
 Hopefully your newspaper will be forthright in the future about the real reason for the decision to award the Canadians the gold, so that the people who read it will understand.
 <i>Jennifer Wiley
 Canada
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>The Russians should count themselves lucky that the Canadian Olympic delegation offered the IOC and ISU a face-saving way out of this mess with the double gold medals. Given the evidence - presented in writing by seven witnesses who heard the French judge say that she was pressured by her Olympic association to vote for the Russian skaters - it should be apparent that the Russian pairs entrants should have their gold medals stripped. 
 
Had Canada pressed its case more firmly in a court of arbitration later in the week, that is exactly what would have happened. 
 The vote of the French judge should have been suspended and, under the ISU's own rules, the vote of the alternate Czech judge should have decided the event. That would have resulted in Canadian gold. Instead of finding ways to wail about how they were robbed, the Russians should instead wonder how legitimate their 40 years of Olympic pairs figure-skating dominance really was. 
 <i>Rick Charlton
 Okotoks, Canada
 </i>
 <strong>
Standing Ovation
 </strong><i>
Editor,
 </i>I am a Canadian who is a casual fan of figure skating, but like millions of people around the world I got caught up in the recent figure-skating controversy. Just a few days ago, I watched a report filed from Russia telling how the people there felt about what was happening. I found it disturbing that so many Russian people were upset. I heard that the Canadian skaters should just accept defeat. I heard a Russian journalist say the Russian skaters won an a &quot;fair fight.&quot; I heard a Russian official say that the Russians have always been discriminated against (if that were true, I don't think Russians would have won the pairs figure skating in the Olympics for so many years in a row).
 
What I did not hear from the Russian perspective was how a French judge admitted to cheating on the scoring and was sent home from Salt Lake City. I did not hear how we should work hard now to clean up these corrupt judges while public pressure is on.
 Please let it be clear that the main concern from most Canadians' perspective was and is how to get the corruption out of figure skating. It wasn't about our skaters getting the gold as much as it was about fighting to get corruption out of the sport while we had the world's eyes on the governing body for international skating. There is no more suitable time to fight for this goal.
 I understand that the Russian people are proud. We are proud too. I think we could all take a lesson from the way the Russian skaters handled this scandal - with dignity and class. All of Russia should be very proud of them, just as we are proud of our skaters. The next time [Elena] Berezhnaya and [Anton] Sikharulidze perform in Canada, I'm sure the audience will give them a standing ovation for the way the handled themselves.
 <i>Scott Pearson
 Hamilton, Canada
 </i>
 <strong>
True Champions
 </strong><i>
Editor,
 </i>After scanning through your coverage on line, I was impressed with your professionalism. It struck me that, perhaps, this would be a good place to plant a small seed for thought. After watching coverage of the Russian reaction to the skating scandal, I was at first angry at being accused of being a country of sore losers. For all the faults that Canadians have, I assure you that is not one of them. Then I wondered why so very few in Russia are willing to admit, at the very least, that something was amiss in the judging.
 
People (the French judge as an example) do not shame themselves on an international stage if they have done nothing wrong. Whether or not the massive and powerful American media is against them or not. Had the roles been reversed, I have no doubt that the Russian public would have felt angered and cheated.
 Canadians are known the world over for being slightly passive and apathetic at times. We will not, however, accept being cheated. Perhaps Russia should focus on that issue a little more, rather than hiding behind that old iron curtain of denial and propaganda when it suits them. 
 No one, Canadian or not, is trying to take away from the Russian pair or their supporters. There is real sympathy for them actually. Like all skaters, they have been unfairly caught up in the ugly political mess that exists in the sport. With the Russian domination in pairs Olympic figure skating over the past 40 years, where exactly does the Russian public and media get the idea that they are being discriminated against by anyone? Canadians love true champions no matter where they come from. That is especially true, of course, if they happen to be Canadian. But if an athlete, pair of athletes or team of athletes triumphs with the true characteristics of champions, it simply does not matter which country they represent.
 I think, perhaps, in the furor of denial and this whole &quot;world is against us, led by the big, bad, and ugly American media smear campaign&quot; attitude, some of the Russian media and people have forgotten what being a true champion is about and, more importantly, what the Olympics are supposed to represent. 
 This scandal is not about being sore losers or accepting defeat &quot;graciously.&quot; It is about a childhood dream that was squashed by an agenda fought along political lines that do not belong in sport. Unchecked and left to fester, this would only affect future athletes somewhere down the line. Perhaps the next time it will be a Russian athlete who has his or her childhood dream torn away.
 <i>Carmen Johnston
 Calgary, Canada
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>I am an American and I have taken great interest in the Olympics. I have watched all that there is to be seen on this so-called figure-skating scandal. I think Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze were the clear winners, because their program was a more difficult one than the Canadians. I enjoyed their performance much more. 
 
It seems to me that the Canadian pair was trying to be very careful instead of entertaining the audience, and they were clearly out of timing several times with each other. Sikharulidze did have a little problem with one landing, but was remarkably still in time with Berezhnaya. 
 Berezhnaya presented herself with considerable charm and beauty, and I extend my apologies to the Russian people on behalf of America. I hope that these skaters will stay and enjoy their time here. It would be a shame if they returned to their home with bad feelings of the time they have spent here. 
 <i>Greg Carder
 Ohio, United States
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>I've got to write to tell someone just what my thoughts are on this gold-medal thing. First off, the Canadians skated perfectly, but then again who couldn't skate perfectly with such a bland, boring, dull-as-dirt routine? It was boring! There was nothing breathtaking or glorious about that four minutes of drivel.
 
The Russian pair made some excellent moves and was just a joy to watch. They were breathtaking all the way. So there was one step off - big deal.
 The Canadian skaters did not deserve the gold, and they should have been glad to get the silver. The pair from China was as good, if not better, than the Canadians.
 <i>Jo Norris
 Cheyenne, Wyoming
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze are wonderful skaters. They make Russia proud. With their composure after the judging controversy, they have made the world proud.
 
Congratulation to these two fine young adults.
 <i>Jeff Leo
 Doylestown, Pennsylvania
 </i>
 <strong>
Classlessness?
 </strong>

 <i>Editor,
 </i>The whining in the Russian media and the total classlessness shown by the statements made of the Russian Olympic Committee and Russian political leaders (maybe this is what Marx meant by a classless society?) about the awarding of gold medals to Canadian figure skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier is definitely mind-boggling. Any unbiased observer realizes that Sale and Pelletier won that event.
 
The Russian skaters were busy falling over themselves in the final short program. I thought that with the collapse of Communism, Russia would cease to be the corrupt and morally degenerate country that it was when it was the Soviet Union
 <i>Christopher Milner
 Sherwood Park, Canada
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>Contrary to what many Russians may believe, many of us Americans know that the Russian figuring-skating pair was cheated out of truly being No. 1 because of the continual whining by the Canadians. It is utterly ridiculous to award the Canadian pair a gold medal. They may be the best in the world, but they were not the best on the ice that day in Salt Lake City. The Russians were. 
 
If I was one of the Canadians who were given gold medals, I would be ashamed. It truly is a fiasco. 
 <i>Randy Willis 
 Texas, United States
 </i>
 <strong>
Bravo, Floyd
 </strong><i>
In response to Global Eye, a column by Chris Floyd.
 
 Editor,
 </i>First, I love all of these columns. I've researched much of what is contained in the columns regarding the Carlyle Group, its subsidiaries, partnerships (foreign and domestic - much like Enron's shell game), its officers, its mergers and acquisitions. No wonder President George W. Bush is so adamant about pushing to make the repeal of the estate tax permanent! 
 
He may actually succeed in legally converting America's financial resources into his own &quot;personal&quot; net worth, as Floyd astutely stated, via inheritance. 
 With the theft of the election, Bush is now emboldened, with the help of the &quot;liberal&quot; media, to destroy our form of government, plunder its resources and to silence dissenters by accusing them of siding with the terrorists, thereby declaring them a threat to our national security. And yet the polls (if they can be believed) show that the majority of Americans agree with him. They can't believe that they could be manipulated by the &quot;propaganda&quot; spewed out by this administration.
 Thank you for Floyd's confirmation of our sanity!
 <i>Patricia Martin
 North Hills, California </i>

TITLE: Are Ethics Optional in the Business World?
AUTHOR: By Michael Hill
TEXT: EVERY spring, Stephen Loeb takes a group of business students on a field trip. It's not to the New York Stock Exchange or some other lofty aerie of American capitalism. It is to a federal correctional facility in Cumberland, Maryland, or Allenwood, Pennsylvania.
 
The trip is part of a noncredit course on ethics required of all full-time students working on master's degrees in business administration at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business. At the low-security prison camps, they hear from a few prisoners, white-collar criminals who have made the types of mistakes that have been in the headlines in the past few weeks with stories about outrageous accounting at Enron and allegations of huge fraud at Allfirst.
 Students also get a tour of the higher security facility where life is lived behind walls and barbed wire, and every minute is accounted for to the omnipresent authorities.
 The visit has an effect on the students that is palpable. The men who speak to them once wore three-piece suits and fashionable suspenders; now they are in prison garb. Their lives are controlled by guards and schedules, but a few years before, they might have been students working on MBAs.
 As a student, it's easy to think that cutting corners, pushing the envelope, maybe stepping over the line a time or two, is part of the world you are about to enter. These things happen. Big-time business is not a garden party.
 The prisoners tell them how tempting it is, once you've stepped across the line, to go there again and again and again, until you find yourself permanently encamped on the wrong side.
 Loeb, an accounting professor who came up with the course, is proud of it.
 &quot;Business ethics as a discipline tends to take a secondary role because it doesn't make you money,&quot; he says. &quot;But ultimately the people who are ethical are the ones who prosper, in part because they stay out of trouble.&quot;
 Despite the explosion of recent ethical troubles in American business, economic historian Louis Galambos does not think the country's financial institutions are in a new moral slump.
 &quot;It has always happened, and is always happening, I think in the past even more so than today,&quot; says Galambos, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. &quot;Although I do think that the increasing complexity of financial transactions, the complexity of the instruments that can be used in financial transactions, probably changed the environment for this, in that it may have created more opportunities than in the recent past.
 &quot;I don't know if globalization of economic affairs has increased the opportunity, but I do know that increased complexity makes it more difficult to control.&quot;
 Galambos says sudden growth often creates opportunities for such misdeeds, much as the tremendous increase in population in American cities in the late 19th century gave rise to political machines, such as New York's Tammany Hall, that saw opportunities for profit in a situation that had expanded beyond the boundaries of previous control mechanisms.
 &quot;You are almost always going to have problems of control and corruption when institutions grow very fast,&quot; he says. &quot;In corporations, it is the same thing. You had a wave of change in the banking industry. It stopped being a give them 3 percent interest and leave at 3:00 and go out to the golf course business and changed into something much more competitive and complex.&quot;
 In such cases, Galambos says, the regulatory controls might not be able to keep up with change.
 But Galambos sees no breakdown in American business values. &quot;If anything, it seems to me we have a higher set of values than we used to,&quot; he says.
 Fred Guy, trained in philosophy, was not sure what sort of standards he would find when he came to the University of Baltimore a decade ago to direct the Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics, which does programs for businesses and students.
 &quot;I've worked with a lot of corporations,&quot; he says. &quot;I think for the most part they realize it is in their best interest certainly to appear ethical and, in fact, to be ethical. They've got clients to make happy. They can't afford the bad exposure.&quot;
 Guy says ethics start at the top.
 &quot;It all depends on the leadership,&quot; he says. &quot;Any place you go, you are going to have your bad apples. But the smarter ones in business know that in the long run it pays to be ethical. You are going to get these kinds of rogues who take off with the money, but it's shortsighted stuff, people who don't want to pay attention to the repercussion of their acts, the quick-fix mentality. The better ones know that their reputation is important.
 &quot;Don't get me wrong, these are not choirboys, they are very competitive people, but they realize there is a certain line and not to go over it,&quot; Guy says. &quot;Otherwise, there will be a lot of people breathing down their throats, their clients and customers and competitors, especially with the immediate publicity you now get with these things. So most of these businesses certainly try to be ethical, if for no other reason, so as not to get caught. In general, I'm pretty impressed with the businesses I work with.&quot;
 Guy finds students are eager to discuss ethical issues. With an average age of 30 in the University of Baltimore's business school, many have encountered such situations at work.
 &quot;They bring a lot of experience to the table that they share,&quot; Guy says of students who tell of being asked to lie, of being forced to leave jobs rather than do things they find unethical. &quot;They seem very glad to have the opportunity to express themselves.&quot;
 Loeb says such programs in business schools are crucial. &quot;I think it is so important that we educate our business leaders in this area,&quot; he says.
 Guy agrees.
 &quot;It makes students aware that these things do count so that when they go out in the real world, they don't have to get sucked into the culture of doing anything to get and keep a job,&quot; he says. &quot;They learn that ethics are O.K.&quot;
 Galambos says famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith, in a book about the stock market crash of 1929, might have pointed out the reason these acts are being discovered.
 &quot;Galbraith said that, theoretically there was some figure that he called the 'bezzle' which is the total amount of money being embezzled in the economy at any point of time,&quot; Galambos says. &quot;His take on it was that it went way up in times of prosperity, but when things get tougher, then we start to look at our money a little closer.&quot;
 
 <i>Michael Hill is a writer with the op-ed section of the Baltimore Sun, to which he contributed this comment. </i>

TITLE: Fewer Bribes, But They're More Expensive
TEXT: THERE has been a lot of talk lately about how Russia is finally coming to grips with its notorious corruption problem. People are saying that officials are now taking fewer bribes and that they are even afraid of prosecution.
 
Last December, the head of a local company that received a grant from City Hall told me in a private conversation that he hadn't paid a single kopeck for his victory.
 &quot;What are you talking about?&quot; he said with unfeigned surprise. &quot;Don't you know how the Audit Chamber works now? They fear it like fire.&quot;
 Nonetheless, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov said in his recent annual report that the results of the anti-corruption drive are poor and that it is possible &quot;to count on one's fingers&quot; the number of officials charged with bribery.
 But still the talk continues. An American businessperson I know told me that &quot;it looks like&quot; officials are taking fewer bribes in the wake of President Vladimir Putin's statements against corruption.
 &quot;They still take bribes, but they don't do it openly anymore. You can't just give money like you used to. Instead, you have to do it secretly,&quot; he said. &quot;This doesn't mean that Russia will become like Finland immediately, but it does seem like things are moving in the right direction.&quot;
 Now, I'm no businessperson, but I still can't help but think that my friend is engaging in a bit of wishful thinking. Other businesspeople that I know have told me that in some regards corruption has become worse, especially in areas now controlled by the so-called allies of the president.
 &quot;I would distinguish between those [officials] who belong to the old team and those from the circle of people who have been brought to power by the new president. Those new ones have lost all sense of decency whatsoever,&quot; one Russian businessperson told me.
 &quot;It's true that the so-called old officials are more careful now, but the new ones are taking up the slack. They know that they won't be punished, so they act without restraint,&quot; he added.
 He even gave an example of &quot;bribe inflation.&quot; He said that it costs $100,000 to resolve an ownership dispute at a medium-sized enterprise in the region.
 &quot;If it was $20,000, it would have been fine, but $100,000 is just too much. It was cheaper to negotiate with our opponents. It took longer, but it was cheaper,&quot; he said.
 Even City Hall officials admit that bribe-taking is a problem and will continue to be one.
 &quot;You can only see big things from a distance,&quot; said Alexander Afanasiev, Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's spokesperson, taking a philosophical approach. &quot;You can't examine bribe-taking just in the context of the current political situation.&quot;
 &quot;The government has existed for a long time with this social illness, which is impossible to combat. It existed before Putin and, with Putin, it looks the same,&quot; he said.
 O.K., if you want to take that attitude, let's look at the Chinese experience. If anyone can take a longer view of state corruption than the Russians, it is the Chinese, right?
 I read recently that in Beijing alone, over 1,000 officials have been charged with corruption in the last three years. And $48 million has been returned to state coffers.
 Meanwhile, Ustinov reports that the Russian budget loses as much as $15 billion annually because of official corruption. 
 According to the Higher Economics School in Moscow, bribe-taking amounts to 4 percent of the country's GDP, a figure that is comparable to the economy's growth over the last year.
 And still, you can count the number of officials charged with bribery on your fingers.

TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: U.S. President George W. Bush's teleprompter reading of his word-massagers' &quot;Axis of Evil&quot; speech last week certainly was a ring-tailed wonder. While those supine sentinels of truth, the American media, strained their tiny little brains to find apt comparisons for Bush's rhetorical greatness - some likened him to Churchill, others to Teddy Roosevelt; one even thought Bush surpassed Julius Caesar - the rest of the world sat slackjawed in amazement at the farrago of undiluted leavings issuing from the Oval orifice.
 
Those with even the slightest acquaintance with history were scratching their heads at Bush's yoking of Iran, Iraq and North Korea in an unholy pact to destroy America. Surely there must be some mistake, they said. Surely there'd been a squiggle on the screen, and Bush had simply misread the lines that had been written for him. Perhaps he meant to say &quot;taxis of evil,&quot; referring to the devilish problems of urban transport in America's cities. Or maybe even &quot;Texas boll weevil,&quot; naming a threat to the American &quot;heartland&quot; much more real and immediate than the imaginary gizmos of his chosen dastards.
 Surely, those who use reason reasoned, Bush knows that Iran and Iraq are deadly enemies, having engaged in mutual slaughter of more than a million of their people in the last two decades, and that an &quot;Axis&quot; containing those two countries is about as likely as a Bush-Gore ticket in 2004. Surely, said the reasoners, Bush knows that North Korea's bizarre and broken-down Stalinist hellhole poses no threat to the United States - which can track Pyongyang's every military move and destroy any missile before it leaves the factory, much less reaches the launching pad. If North Korea <i>had</i> any missiles that could reach the United States, that is. Which they don't, of course.
 Finally, said the sane, surely Bush knows that comparing the threat posed by these three paltering pariah states to the awesome destructive power unleashed upon the world by the <i>real </i>Axis in World War II is a shameful, whore-like exploitation of the suffering and sacrifices borne by those who confronted those mighty forces.
 How then to account for Bush's insanely inflated rhetoric? He may be a moral idiot - like his equally gaseous <i>semblable, </i>bin Laden - but our George is no fool. When he tells outright lies - like the &quot;100,000 al-Qaida agents&quot; out there in the shadows; a figure his own intelligence services say is off by, oh, 90,000 or more - and revises history with the zeal of a David Irving, there is method in his madness. And as usual with the unelected one, the answer is brutally simple: follow the money. Particularly the money going into his own pocket.
 Bush used the speech to stoke the fears of the American public - legitimate fears, based on the terror attacks that occurred on his watch, while he took his afternoon naps, played footsie with &quot;Kenny Boy&quot; Lay, and called off investigators probing connections between his rich Saudi pals and the bin Laden network. Capitalizing on the fruits of his own dereliction - the automatic popularity accorded a leader in time of confusion and war - he pushed the panic button last week to justify his record-breaking $379-billion military budget.
 No one begrudges more defense spending in the face of the very credible terrorist threat, of course. But most of the money that Bush wants has nothing to do with building the new kind of smaller, flexible military forces needed to combat criminal gangs like al-Qaida. Instead, Bush is shoveling billions into cumbersome heavy weapons designed to fight the Soviet Army on the plains of central Europe.
 Take, for example, the aptly-named Crusader - a 42-ton mobile cannon that might do well against a Red Army division marching on Bonn, but is useless against, say, a dozen lightly-armed agents infiltrating a nuclear plant or a lone operator sabotaging an airliner. Even the military doesn't really want the thing. But the Crusader will get more than $4 <i>billion </i>in taxpayer money over the next five years.
 Why? Because it's being built by the Carlyle Group, the shadowy investment firm run by long-time Bush Family operators - including, of course, Daddy Bush himself, who serves as roving shill for the company and takes a juicy cut of the profits. Thus, some of that Crusader coin will add to the growing mountain of government moolah that is little Georgie's inheritance.
 The same goes for the saber-rattling at Korea. Bush needs a fresh war scare there to pressure the South Koreans into buying a new fleet of Boeing fighter jets. He's heading to Seoul next week to put the arm on President Kim Dae-jung, whose peace moves threaten to put a crimp in the country's defense spending. This would not only harm Bush's backers at Boeing, but also - yes - Daddy's piggy bank. Just two weeks before Bush's speech, Carlyle opened its first Korean office, with plans to pour millions into hi-tech communications - a rich field for military procurement.
 Why mince words? Bush is a war profiteer on a vast, historic scale, a man with only one animating principle: the aggrandizement of his own pampered self and his elitist clique. This greed compromises every action taken by his regime - because they all result in profits for his gang. Another example: Bush puts U.S. bases in central Asia; Dick Cheney's Halliburton gets the construction contracts; Daddy's Carlyle Group supplies the weaponry; Dub's buds in the oil bidness get protection for their new pipelines.
 Thus, every strategic decision is turned to private profit, muddying the waters of America's moral purpose - and risking more disaster for its people.

TITLE: Communist Rebels Kill Over 130 in Nepal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KATMANDU, Nepal - Communist rebels killed at least 130 police-officesr, soldiers and civilians in unprecedented attacks in northwestern Nepal on Sunday, undermining pros pects for peace in this poor Himalayan kingdom still recovering from the shock of a massacre at the royal palace last year.
 
The attacks on government offices and an airport were the deadliest since the rebels began fighting to topple the constitutional monarchy in 1996 from remote mountain areas in this land of exquisite beauty but violent politics.
 The rebels, who draw their inspiration from Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Tse-tung, had abandoned peace talks and ended a cease-fire in November, saying negotiations had produced no results. The government declared a state of emergency three days later.
 Early Sunday, the rebels set fire to buildings and fired at police in the town of Mangalsen, the administrative center of the Achham district, killing 49 police officers, the Interior Security Ministry said in a statement. Mangalsen is about 600 kilometers northwest of the capital, Katmandu.
 The guerrillas then attacked a small airport in the nearby town of Sanphebaga, killing another 27 police officers standing guard, a Home Ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
 Forty-eight Royal Nepalese Army soldiers stationed in Mangalsen were also killed, Defense Ministry spokes person Bhola Silwal said in a separate news release.
 Others killed in the attacks included the district's chief administrator, Mohan Singh Khadka, a central intelligence bureau official and his wife, a postal worker and a civilian.
 The rebels - a 3,000- to 4,000-strong force accustomed to using knives and ageing muskets - on Sunday used modern weapons looted from the military during a previous attack.
 Bad weather and the mountainous terrain delayed the arrival of police reinforcements, an official news release said.
 It said there could be major casualties on the rebel side as well. Fighters were seen taking away bodies of other guerrillas, officials said. State-run Radio Nepal said the army had sealed off the entire area and security forces had fanned out in a massive search for the rebels.
 The guerrillas recently attacked Lukla, the main entry point for the Mount Everest trek, and other popular tourist destinations in the Solu Khumbu Valley, the advisory said.
 Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deu ba met his cabinet in an emergency meeting late Sunday as he prepared to seek the extension of the state of emergency and Parliament's clearance to continue using the army against the rebels. Nepal's constitution sets the army's role as exclusively fighting foreign foes. Deuba was likely to get the support of the two-thirds of the lawmakers needed for the extension.
 The new attacks dimmed hopes of an end to the six-year insurgency, which has sapped the resources of this South Asian kingdom - one of the poorest countries in the world.
 Then the latest wave of guerrilla attacks began.
 The army says it has killed nearly 500 guerrillas and arrested another 1,400 since the state of emergency was declared in November. Officials say more than 300 soldiers and officers also have died.
 The rebels have called a general strike on Friday and Saturday to commemorate the sixth anniversary of their insurgency campaign. They are led by a commander known as Prachanda - &quot;fierce&quot; in Nepali - but whose real name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal.
 The violence has even reached the capital, where earlier this month suspected rebels set off two bombs in government tax offices, wounding at least 10 people.

TITLE: UN Investigator Meets Suu Kyi, Visits Myanmar Prisons
AUTHOR: By Aye Aye Win
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YANGON, Myanmar - A UN human rights investigator met opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday after lengthy interviews with political prisoners in Yangon's main prison.
 
A car carrying Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the UN rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, entered Suu Kyi's lakeside compound in the capital during the afternoon, a witness said, speaking on condition of anonymity. No details of the meeting were available.
 Pinheiro arrived in Myanmar a week ago for a 10-day visit to assess civil and political rights in the military state.
 Suu Kyi leads the National League for Democracy Party that swept the 1990 general elections but was barred by the ruling military from taking power. Hundreds of NLD members have since been jailed.
 Suu Kyi herself has been under house arrest since September 2000 for trying to travel outside Yangon for a political meeting. Since then, she has received visits from a number of senior international diplomats.
 On Sunday, the UN official spent nine hours interviewing four detainees at Yangon's main Insein Prison.
 &quot;I am trying to demonstrate to the authorities that the release of political prisoners is a very important gesture for the progress of national reconciliation in Myanmar,&quot; Pinheiro told The Associated Press by telephone in Yangon afterward.
 He spoke to three detained NLD members and a retired university professor in his seventies, Salai Tun Than, who was arrested on Nov. 29 for staging a solo protest in front of Yangon's City Hall. Salai Tun Than was reportedly demanding political reform.
 Pinheiro said all four prisoners were in good health. He said he would report on the interviews in a speech to the UN Commission for Human Rights on April 4. This is his third trip to Myanmar since his appointment last February.
 According to a report Pinheiro made to the UN General Assembly in November, there are an estimated 1,500 to 1,600 political prisoners in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Police Find Rockets
 

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) - Police found four rockets Monday aimed at part of Karachi International Airport used by the U.S.-led coalition in Afgha ni stan, officials said.
 Waqar Mulan, an airport security official, said the Chinese-made rockets were equipped with homemade launchers and a timing device for automatic firing. He said a passer-by discovered the rockets and summoned police, adding that the city's bomb squad defused them.
 The rockets were aimed at the airport's Terminal One, which is used as a transport and supply hub for the U.S.-led coalition in support of operations in Afghanistan. They were found about half a mile from the terminal in the city's Gulistan-e-Jahaur neighborhood, which has been a center of violence between rival Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Police said the rockets were similar to one fired Saturday at the home of a Shiite Muslim, in which one person was injured.
 Karachi is a center of Muslim extremist movements that have vowed to oppose President Pervez Musharraf's crackdown on Islamic radicals and his support of the war against terrorism.
 Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl was kidnapped here Jan. 23 and his whereabouts remain unknown. A prominent Islamic radical, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, was arrested in the kidnapping and has admitted his involvement. 
 
Britain Invades Spain?
 

GIBRALTAR (Reuters) - British troops invaded Spain on Sunday - but beat a hasty retreat when bemused locals informed them their seaborne landing exercise had strayed off course onto a Spanish beach near Gibraltar.
 Officials said on Monday that about 20 Royal Marines had spent a few minutes on Spanish soil, some distance from their intended training target on the British colony, the subject of a 300-year dispute between London and Madrid.
 Spain moved quickly to avoid further blushes for Britain, dismissing the incident as a genuine mistake. The two European Union and NATO allies - once great foes - are negotiating to resolve their tussle over Gibraltar, which British marines seized from Spain in 1704.
 "Two landing craft from HMS Ocean accidentally entered Spanish territorial waters and in bad weather one landing craft landed on the beach a few yards over the Spanish side of the border," a British Ministry of Defense spokesperson said.
 "About 20 Royal Marines disembarked for about five minutes and then the error was recognized and they all withdrew," he said, adding that it was the first time he had heard of such an error taking place during one of the frequent landing exercises. "Clearly that is the end of the matter but obviously it is a situation we would rather not have taken place." 



TITLE: Americans Hold Russia to Tie
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah - Unlike 1980, this wasn't a must-win Olympic hockey game for either the United States or Russia, so maybe it was fitting that neither team could. 
 
Brett Hull scored off his own rebound with 4 1/2 minutes left and the United States - outshot and outskated most of the night by super-fast Russia - managed a 2-2 tie Saturday in their first Olympic matchup in America since the Miracle on Ice. 
 Sergei Fedorov and Valeri Bure scored power-play goals as Russia put a seemingly safe 2-1 lead into the hands of goalie Nikolai Khabibulin in the third period, but the man known as the Bulin Wall gave up the tying score amid intense U.S. pressure. 
 &quot;I thought it was great hockey by both teams,&quot; said coach Herb Brooks, back behind the U.S. bench for the first time since America's historic 1980 Olympic upset of the seemingly unbeatable Soviet Union. 
 With the United States throwing 15 shots at Russia in the final period - Russia led 20-10 in shots after the first two periods - Hull, one of the highest-scoring Americans ever in the NHL, finally got the tying goal. 
 Hull took Phil Housley's cross-ice pass in the left circle and, after fanning on his first attempt, swept the puck back onto his stick and fired it past Khabibulin at 15:30 of the third. 
 Mike Richter, the most experienced and successful U.S. goalie in international play, was equally strong. He didn't allow an equal-strength goal while making 33 saves against nearly nonstop pressure, after the United States dominated the first five minutes. 
 
 <strong>
Sweden 2, Czech Republic 1. </strong>The Czech Republic hockey team knows it's in trouble or doing something very wrong when star goalie Dominik Hasek disgustedly slams his stick on the ice. The Czechs heard so much pounding Sunday, Hasek probably wore out a stick or two. 
 
Tommy Salo outdueled Hasek in a matchup of gold-medal goalies and Sweden beat the defending Olympic champion Czechs 2-1 for its second consecutive impressive victory. 
 Mats Sundin scored his third goal in two games and Kim Johnsson had a power play goal as Sweden - following up on its unexpectedly easy 5-2 win Friday over Canada - opened up a 2-0 lead, then weathered two strong final periods by the Czechs. Salo made 37 saves, all but seven after the first period, as the Czechs came at him in waves. 
 The victory all but assured Sweden and its innovative &quot;torpedo&quot; system of winning its four-team pool, with the United States likely to win the other pool. With a win against Germany on Monday, Sweden probably will play Belarus in the quarterfinals. 
 
 <strong>
Canada 3, Germany 2. </strong>The noise heard coming from the north on Sunday was hockey-mad Canadians hitting the panic button as Canada struggled to its first win of the Olympic tournament, a lackluster 3-2 victory over Germany.
 
Humbled 5-2 by Sweden in its tournament opener on Friday, Canada's victory over a team that boasts just two NHL players will do little to inspire confidence that the country can end an Olympic gold-medal drought that stretches 50 years.
 &quot;We can't worry about what the people back home are thinking,&quot; said Colorado Avalanche center Joe Sakic, who scored Canada's first goal. &quot;We hung on for a 3-2 win and we know we have to get better and we will.&quot;
 With Sweden (2-0) sitting atop the group, Canada on Monday was scheduled to meet the Czechs - the defending Olympic champions - in a contest that will likely decide second place.
 Second spot in the group is coveted since that team is likely to line up against Finland in the quarterfinals, and avoid either Russia or the United States.
 <i>
 (Reuters, AP) </i>

TITLE: Suns Don't Shine for New Boss
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHOENIX - Frank Johnson's debut as coach of the Phoenix Suns started with a splash, then fizzled.
 
Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki sparked a 21-point run in the first half as the Dallas Mavericks beat the Suns 105-92 Sunday night in Johnson's first game as an NBA coach.
 &quot;I was thinking about throwing it in, resigning after the second quarter,&quot; Johnson said with a laugh. The second quarter was the only period in which the Mavericks outscored the Suns, winning it 35-11. That was when Dallas went to a zone defense, and that was enough.
 &quot;What hurt us was our second unit,&quot; Johnson said. &quot;When I had the first unit in there, we were able to get some good stops and push the ball in an up-tempo game.
 &quot;On the defensive end, we held them to two layups in the first quarter. In the second quarter, they got eight or nine layups. Our defense let us down.&quot;
 Johnson, a former Suns' assistant and player, replaced Scott Skiles earlier in the day.
 Skiles said he and Suns management agreed it was in the best interest of the team if they part ways.
 Nowitzki finished with 20 points, Michael Finley scored 19, Nash had 18 and reserve Johnny Newman 17.
 Shawn Marion led the Suns with 27 points, and Tony Delk had 26.
 Johnson's first move paid immediate dividends. Johnson sat Stephon Marbury, the team's leading scorer, and gave Delk his first start of the season. Johnson would not comment on Marbury after the game.
 
 <strong>
SuperSonics 126, Kings 116. </strong>The Seattle Supersonics showed that the Sacramento Kings aren't invincible at home.
 
Gary Payton scored 31 points and Rashard Lewis added 26 as the Supersonics ended the Kings' 20-game home winning streak Sunday with a 126-116 victory.
 For three quarters, the Sonics simply rolled over the Kings, whose only previous home loss was on Dec. 2 against Dallas, 120-114 in overtime. The Kings own the NBA's best home record at 27-2, and were chasing the 1985-86 Boston Celtics' NBA mark of 40-1 at home.
 &quot;I guess we don't have to worry about 40-1 anymore,&quot; Kings coach Rick Adelman said.
 Rallying from a 25-point, third-quarter deficit, Sacramento cut the lead to 120-116 on a dunk by Chris Webber with 1:21 left. But Payton responded with a running one-hander off the glass, a layup and two free throws.
 Payton also had 13 assists for the game.
 &quot;He's the man. That's why he's an All-Star,&quot; Kings guard Bobby Jackson said. &quot;He played well at the end. He took over the game.&quot;
 
 <strong>
Trail Blazers 111, Lakers 105. </strong>When Ruben Patterson plays against the Los Angeles Lakers, it's personal. On Sunday, he held former teammate Kobe Bryant to four points when on the floor with him.
 
Bonzi Wells had 27 points and 10 rebounds and Rasheed Wallace added 25 points to help the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Lakers 111-105 on Sunday.
 Patterson, who missed the first game between the two teams this season while serving a suspension, had 22 points and eight rebounds.
 &quot;I take this personally,&quot; said Patterson. &quot;It goes back to my rookie year with them. He started everything. Every time we play the Lakers it's personal with me.&quot;
 Said Bryant: &quot;He's a good defensive player. If we bump into each other in the gym, we'll play and I'll demolish him. Five-on-five is another story. It's different with five-on-five.&quot;
 Bryant scored 28 points, but was held scoreless in the third quarter, missing all seven shots he took.
 The Lakers, playing without the injured Shaquille O'Neal, had their five-game road winning streak snapped.
 Rick Fox had a season-high 18 points and Robert Horry added 22 points and eight rebounds for Los Angeles.
 
 <i>
(For other results, see Scorecard) </i>

TITLE: Enqvist Takes Marseille, Seles Gets 1st This Year
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MARSEILLE, France -Thomas Enqvist came from behind to beat Nicolas Escude 6-7, 6-3, 6-1 Sunday to win his third Open 13 title. 
 
&quot;I love this court,&quot; said Enqvist, who also won the tournament in 1997 and 1998. &quot;I think I played a great match.&quot; 
 Escude served 19 aces to Enqvist's 12 and led 3-2 after winning the first set. But Enqvist won 10 of the next 11 games, sealing the victory and picking up the winner's check worth $61,500. 
 &quot;[Nicolas] was serving great, in the first two sets at least,&quot; Enqvist said. &quot;Once I started to read his serve, the match turned in my favor.&quot;
 Enqvist has 19 career titles and is 3-0 against Escude, who only has two career titles. 
 &quot;It's a big disappointment,&quot; Escude said. &quot;The final is the one match you should not lose.
 &quot;I felt my serve let me down in the second and third sets. That made the difference.&quot; 
 Also Sunday, Monica Seles beat Tamarine Tanasugarn 7-6, 6-3 to win the Qatar Open. 
 Seles got her first victory of the year following a loss to Martina Hingis in the final of the Pan Pacific Open and semifinal defeats at the Australia Open and Gaz de France. 
 &quot;It was a very tough match, and I just hung in there,&quot; Seles said. 
 Seles was broken in the first game of the match, then immediately broke back and won the tiebreaker with a backhand down the line that caught Tanasugarn off-balance. 
 Seles broke Tanasugarn in the opening game of the second set, then was broken in the second game before rebounding to break Tanasuran in the seventh and ninth games.
 In Antwerp, Venus Williams outlasted Justine Henin to win the final of the Diamond Games tournament on Sunday, 6-3, 5-7, 6-3. 
 &quot;For me and my family, this is a dream come true,&quot; said Williams, who had a tougher-than-expected match against Henin. 
 Williams, who didn't lose a set until the final, started the match with a 175-kph ace on her first serve. 
 Henin answered with closely played balls to the net, setting the stage for an evenly matched final. 
 &quot;She was putting me on the run, putting me in compromising positions,&quot; Williams said.
 &quot;She definately could have won that match.&quot; 
 While unable to serve at the speed of her opponent, Henin managed two early aces to delight the home crowd of 12,000 at the Antwerp Sportpaleis. 
 &quot;With the support of the public ... I was able to turn things around in the second set, now I'm a bit disappointed,&quot; Henin said. &quot;I'll try to do better next year.&quot; 
 Williams has won two events this season, the first also came in a final against Henin at the Gold Coast tournament in Australia.
 Williams is 4-1 lifetime against Henin, including a three-set win in last year's Wimbledon final. 
 Williams promised to return to the Diamond Games event the next two years, to vie for the gold, diamond-encrusted racket worth about $870,000, which she can get by winning the tournament three times in five years. 
 
 
q
 Defending champion Gustavo Kuer ten makes his much-anticipated return to the ATP circuit at the Buenos Aires Open this week.
 
The Brazilian has played just one match this season - a five-set loss to Julien Boutter in the first round of the Australian Open last month.
 Restricted by a nagging hip injury during his loss in Melbourne, Kuerten has been recuperating ahead of his return to his favored South American clay courts.
 The former world No. 1 and three-times Roland Garros champion began a remarkable clay-court winning streak this time last year, which included titles in consecutive weeks in Buenos Aires and Acapulco, a victory at the Monte Carlo Masters and a runner-up finish at the Rome Masters.
 He opens up against Agustin Calleri of Argentina in the first round.

TITLE: IOC Gives Canadian Pair Gold
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: SALT LAKE CITY - Just as they had hoped, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier got to hear &quot;O Canada&quot; on Sunday and see their country's flag rise above the rink where they skated an Olympic gold-medal performance six days ago.
 
But the medals platform was more crowded than usual, as joining the Canadian champions were St. Petersburg pair Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sik ha ru lidze, who had already collected a gold in the same event on Feb. 11.
 Despite a judging controversy that shadowed the first week of the Winter Games, the two couples were all smiles as they emerged onto the purple-carpeted surface of the Salt Lake Ice Center.
 As a capacity crowd roared approval and flash cameras flickered around the arena, Sale and Berezhnaya walked side by side to the platform, followed closely by Pelletier and Sikharulidze.
 In their countries' respective warm-up outfits, they looked more relaxed than at any time since the controversy erupted.
 The Russians already wore their gold medals on blue ribbons around their necks. The Canadians got theirs from Ottavio Cinquanta, president of the International Skating Union (ISU), who has been embroiled in questions over how a French skating judge was pressured to vote for the Russian pair.
 It had the potential to be awkward - medals ordinarily won by one couple shared between two. But Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze accepted their co-champions gracefully, a gift Sale and Pelletier acknowledged.
 &quot;Anton and Elena were involved in this against their will, and so were we,&quot; Sale said.
 &quot;Just to appreciate the sportsmanship about the entire thing, we thought it was nice to give them a little something from us.&quot;
 Questions in the case are likely to continue even after Monday, when the ISU council was set to meet behind closed doors to discuss the &quot;Skategate&quot; scandal.
 No decision is to be announced until Feb. 26, when the Winter Games will be safely over, but public opinion has hastened developments before in this case, and might again.
 At issue is exactly whether, and if so how, pressure was applied to French skating judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne, who cast the deciding vote for Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze.
 Le Gougne has been suspended, but the larger debate is over a sport where judging can be highly subjective and vulnerable to charges of corruption.
 Cinquanta said he would put forward a radical plan to overhaul the judging system: &quot;My project is to totally innovate the change in the system of judging, not to evaluate the judge.&quot;
 Meanwhile, the head of the Russian Olympic committee blamed &quot;an extensive campaign&quot; by the American media for the pairs skating controversy and raised questions about U.S. wrestler Rulon Gardner's upset of a Russian superstar in Sydney.
 Leonid Tyagachyov also said that &quot;no protests will follow&quot; from his committee over the IOC's decision. &quot;We respect the decisions of the IOC and the international sports federations, and specifically this decision,&quot; Tyagachyov said in a statement.
 Tyagachyov expressed &quot;doubts in regard to the legitimacy&quot; of changing results after events are finished. Specifically, Tyagachyov pointed to Gardner's gold-medal victory over Karelin in the 286-pound class of Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2000 Games, perhaps the greatest upset in Olympic wrestling history.
 The loss was Karelin's first in 13 years.
 While it had &quot;the full moral right&quot; to protest the decision that cost Alexander Karelin a fourth gold medal, Tyagachyov said, the Russian Olympic panel refrained &quot;in order not to sow discord in the Olympic family and to not create a dangerous precedent.&quot;
 The U.S. Olympic Committee declined to comment.
 <i>
 (Reuters, AP) </i>

TITLE: Burton Takes Bizarre 'Great American Race'
AUTHOR: By Keith Parsons
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DAYTONA BEACH, Florida - There were no side-by-side sprints to the checkered flag and no passes for the lead on the final lap, yet the finish of Sunday's Daytona 500 will be remembered as one of the most bizarre in the 44-year history of &quot;The Great American Race.&quot;
 
Ward Burton took advantage of Sterling Marlin's blunder for his first victory at Daytona International Speedway. It also was the first win for Dodge at NASCAR's most famous track since July 1977, when Richard Petty beat Darrell Waltrip.
 &quot;This was sort of like a soap opera,&quot; NASCAR Vice President Jim Hunter said. &quot;It was like every 30 minutes, we went from one episode to the next. The story line of the race changed about every 40 or 50 laps.&quot;
 Elliott Sadler finished second, about a car length behind the winner, and Geoffrey Bodine was a surprising third. Bodine, the 1986 winner, has been out of the sport for most of the past two seasons and was competing as part of a four-race deal with car owner James Finch. Kurt Busch and defending race-winner Michael Waltrip rounded out the top five.
 The race-turning red flag came out after a five-car tangle on a restart at lap 194. While those cars were bouncing off each other and spinning through the infield, leader Jeff Gordon cut across the track to try to block a move by Marlin.
 When Marlin didn't yield his position, Gordon lost control of his Chevrolet and spun through the grass. He had little damage to his car, but Marlin's right-front fender was rubbing against the tire.
 Marlin beat Burton back to the caution and parked his Dodge out front when the cars stopped on the backstretch under a red flag.
 Unsure of how badly his car was damaged, Marlin climbed out of his car and surveyed the damage. He briefly tugged at the fender to pull it away from the tire before an official jumped out of the pace car and made him stop.