SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #757 (23), Friday, March 29, 2002
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TITLE: Putin Unveils 'Revolutionary' Tax Plan
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Taking a break from the slopes, President Vladimir Putin announced tax breaks for small business Thursday that he called as revolutionary as the country's envied 13-percent flat income tax.
Putin, who is on a weeklong skiing vacation in Eastern Siberia, said small businesses with up to 20 staff and annual turnover not higher than 10 million rubles (about $320,000) will have the option of paying a 20-percent tax on profits or 8-percent tax on revenues as of the start of 2003. Small businesses will no longer have to pay a number of taxes - value-added tax, sales tax, property tax, income tax and social tax.
"I believe that all these proposals may undoubtedly be described as revolutionary, no less important than the introduction of the 13-percent flat income-tax rate for individuals," Putin said in televised remarks on the sidelines of a meeting with leading Russian scientists.
The president said he has instructed the government to submit the relevant legislation to the State Duma by April 10, leaving plenty of leeway for it to be approved for implementation on Jan. 1.
Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov said the initiative is likely to sail through the Duma, Interfax reported.
Tax changes have to be approved before the government begins work on the 2003 budget in the summer.
Under Putin's proposal, the tax that a firm chooses to pay will be collected quarterly, rather than monthly, and payments will be made only on the cash that has already arrived, not on the current accrual basis.
Another fundamental change is that a firm will be able to immediately depreciate its assets rather than following a government-imposed schedule. The proposed changes would simplify taxes for small business to the point that companies would be able to cut costs by no longer maintaining full-scale accounting operations, analysts said.
The announced tax breaks took even Deputy Duma Speaker Irina Khakamada, an outspoken advocate for small business, by surprise.
"It is in fact more liberal than the liberals' proposals," Khakamada, who is also co-leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces party, said in a telephone interview.
"The initiative is great, but the devil is in the details that have yet to be analyzed," she said.
Among her immediate concerns, she said, was the fact that the removal of the social tax would effectively deprive employees of benefits like paid maternity leave and health insurance.
"It is all left at the employee's own risk," she said, adding that making the social tax a component of the new small-business tax could solve the problem.
She also expressed disappointment with the criteria used to describe a small enterprise, saying an upper limit of 50 staff and $1 million per year in revenues would be better.
"Setting such low limits instead of boosting the number of legal employees could lead businesses to refuse to legally hire any staff above the set limit," she said.
However, Putin's proposed legislation could see considerable change. Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref has asked several economic experts, including Khakamada, to submit comments on the draft. Further revisions could be made once the legislation is debated in the Duma.
Government figures suggest that small and medium-sized businesses account for 11 percent of gross domestic product. But the government also acknowledges that this number does not include the some 4 million entrepreneurs it estimates work in the shadow economy.
The tax breaks appear to be an attempt to bring small businesses out of the shadows, said Alexei Moiseyev, an economist with the Renaissance Capital brokerage.
"As it currently stands, there are four main problems facing small businesses in Russia - a high degree of bureaucracy and corruption, a relatively high tax burden, the fragmentation of the labor market and a lack of ability to secure financing," Moiseyev said.
Putin has already set about fighting bureaucracy and corruption, and his announcement Thursday shows the tax burden "has firmly appeared on the government radar screen, and that action is being taken to redress the situation," he said.
While praising the initiative, Moiseyev warned the new system could tempt entrepreneurs to break up medium-size companies into smaller ones in order to optimize taxes.
TITLE: Kiselyov's Journalists Headed Back to TV6
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - At the end of the day, it was an anticlimax. Putting behind weeks of dramatic behind-the-scenes negotiations and a full day of laughter, handshakes and kisses by journalists, businesspeople and politicians, Press Minister Mikhail Lesin came out to a crowd of reporters Wednesday evening to announce the long-anticipated decision.
Yevgeny Kiselyov's team of journalists will return in May to what was once Boris Berezovsky's Channel 6. But they will come back with new political and financial support from a reportedly Kremlin-backed consortium of big businesspeople and a duo of gerontocratic lobbyists, former Prime Minster Yevgeny Primakov, head of the Russian Chamber of Commerce, and Arkady Volsky, chief of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP.
Lesin said that after a complicated discussion, the members of the tender commission voted unanimously for the noncommercial partnership Media-Socium, which includes the former TV6 team. Eight of the commission's nine members attended Wednesday. Communications Minister Leonid Reiman was absent.
"We have to make public television in the literal sense of the word - without any pressure from the government, without any pressure from the oligarchs, without any pressure from anywhere," Primakov said on RTR television.
No matter how predetermined the outcome seemed from the outside, the commission members said they exercised as much objectivity as possible. The 13 bidders for the frequency were visibly nervous as they waited in the Press Ministry's corridors for hours.
"It's been a long time since I felt like I was at a Science of Communism exam," said Oleg Kiselyov, the former head of the Metalloinvest holding, who will run the winning television company as Shestoi Telekanal's CEO.
During the 45 minutes the Media-Socium bidders spent behind closed doors - longer than any other bidder - members of the tender commission asked about guarantees of the journalists' independence, the station's planned break-even date, what would be offered for children's programming, and whether Media-Socium could fire the former TV6 team and hire other producers, Oleg Kiselyov said.
The bidders replied that under Media-Socium's charter, all major decisions must be made by a consensus of the partners, who include Yevgeny Kiselyov, and Oleg Kiselyov cannot be replaced as CEO for the full five-year duration of the license.
Yevgeny Kiselyov gave a rare interview to NTV, the station he had led before it was taken over by Gazprom last year. He and his partners chatted with the first runner-up, an alliance of former TV6 Executive Director Pavel Korchagin, anchor Andrei Norkin and the U.S.-backed investment fund TPG-Aurora.
Former President Mikhail Gorbachev - who entered a bid with Sergei Medvedev, former spokesperson for his nemesis, Boris Yeltsin, and the head of ORT's "Man and the Law" show Alexei Pimanov - said he had told the commission: "People are concerned that everything is predetermined. If that were the case, if we were here for decorum only, I would be very saddened."
He said he had felt compelled to enter the tender by "the moral right and moral responsibility for the freedom of speech, for glasnost, which is heard less and less these days."
When Gorbachev arrived at the Press Ministry on Wednesday morning, he ran into Deputy State Duma Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky and a group of his LDPR members protesting against the former TV6 team. "Put the sixth channel into clean hands," read one protester's poster.
As if playing along with a Zhirinovsky farce, the former Soviet president grabbed the microphone out of Zhirinovsky's hands and declared LDPR was the party believed to be accepting payments for decisions, not the commission members. Zhirinovsky had accused commission members of taking a million dollars each.
Prominent anchor Alexander Gurnov, who entered a bid with the ATV production company and is known for his sense of humor, reminded his rivals in the ministry's corridor that Wednesday was International Theater Day.
Such were the many dry jokes that proliferated in the crowd, apparently made to hide the nervousness of waiting for the winner to be announced.
Contrary to the ministry's original plans, only representatives of the presidential envoys to the federal districts were allowed to sit in as one bidding team after another made their presentations. A group of Duma deputies was turned away because the Duma Council had not confirmed their credentials.
"The commission members consider themselves the gods of the media world and are not admitting anyone, including the people's elected representatives," Communist Deputy Alexander Kravets said. "We have the right to suspect that not everything is on the up and up here, and maybe this will prompt the Duma to finally change licensing regulations."
Behind doors guarded by two police officers, presentations to the tender commission diverted at times from the television business. Stanislav Kucher - a political reporter who entered a bid with the LUKoil-backed TV-VI team - said that part of his group's 14 minutes was taken up by a "poetry duel" with Vsevolod Vilchek, a prominent media sociologist and commission member. The group's slogan "Trust Your Sixth Sense" inspired Vilchek to recite several verses from early 20th-century poet Nikolai Gumilyov, and Kucher had to respond likewise.
Jokes aside, the Lesin-chaired commission had some serious choices to make.
"We all came with an open mind to listen to every presentation, and the choice was not predetermined at all," said commission member Manana Aslamazyan, who runs Internews, a respected nongovernment group that trains regional television reporters.
Among the runners-up, she singled out the TPG-Aurora team for building the most transparent business structure behind its proposal.
Yet she voted for Media-Socium, despite many doubts. "We decided the return [of Yevgeny Kiselyov's team] to the airwaves outweighs the doubts that some commission members had regarding the current structure they belong to," Aslamazyan said after the results were announced.
"We may appear to be the Kremlin's puppets, but I thought that the interests of the viewers are more important than my personal reputation."
Throughout the day in the corridors, the bidders kept repeating that no matter whether they won or lost, they would get drunk that night. Dozens of former TV6 journalists crowded into the nearby apartment of reporter Konstantin Tochilin, waiting for the decision. When the long-predicted winner was finally announced and Yevgeny Kiselyov was asked about his plans, his answer was also predictable: "Now we can go and have a drink."
TITLE: Anti-Terror Meeting Breaks New Ground
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Nearly 800 delegates from more than 50 countries discussed ways of combating international terrorism in a conference at the Tavrichesky Palace this week.
The conference kicked off on March 25 with an unprecedented one-day meeting of representatives of the national security services of 39 countries.
"This is a completely new page in the history of world special services' collaboration," said Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, according to Interfax. Representatives of the CIA, the FBI and Britain's MI5, as well as those of secret services from countries like China, Greece and Germany, attended the event.
On March 26, the palace hosted parliamentarians from more than 50 countries for the International Forum on Combating Terrorism, which was sponsored by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and its counterpart organization within the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The purpose of the forum was to generate the broadest possible political support for the fight against terrorism. Delegates spent most of the event discussing matters such as cutting off financing to terrorists, poverty as a root cause of international terrorism and the need to create a globally recognized legislative basis for the fight against terror.
Walter Schwimmer, secretary general of the Council of Europe, opened the forum by noting that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, had brought about profound changes in the area of international cooperation.
"Agreements have been entered into between countries that had no previous record of partnership in the military or law-enforcement spheres," Schwimmer told the forum.
"These terrorists have extensive networks all over the world. They have shown a remarkable ability to organize, to work unnoticed for months and possibly years on a project. There is growing evidence that they are trying to acquire ... non-conventional means of destruction - biological and nuclear weapons, cyber-weapons," Schwimmer said.
Patrushev said that the present situation in Chechnya was one cause of the expansion of international terrorism. He said that groups of terrorists that formed in Chechnya were now moving to other regions of the world.
The issue of Chechnya was something of a sore point at the forum, as Russian delegates expressed the hope that the West would better understand Russia's actions there in the light of its experience with terrorism. They called on the West not to use "double standards" in appraising terrorism in different regions.
However, at the forum's concluding press conference, PACE Chairperson Peter Schieder said that "the situation in the Chechen Republic is a question of terrorism, but not only of terrorism," referring to human-rights violations by the Russian military that PACE delegations have uncovered in the region.
"The fight against terrorism should be carried out [while maintaining] human rights. Otherwise, we will fail in this fight," Schieder told the forum.
The forum ended on Thursday with participants signing a joint declaration that condemns terrorism in all its forms. The declaration stresses the need for closer international cooperation on the global, regional and bilateral levels. It also says that any use of force must be consistent with international law and carried out with the consent of the United Nations Security Council.
Delegates from PACE and the European Parliament repeated their position that suspected terrorists should not be extradited to countries - such as the United States - that continue to apply the death penalty.
The declaration also calls on all countries that have not yet done so to sign and ratify the United Nations International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. Although 132 countries have signed the convention, only 24 have ratified it. Neither Russia nor the United States has yet done so.
TITLE: Kommunalka Blaze Leaves One Dead
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An elderly woman died Thursday morning when a fire broke out in a communal apartment in a residential building in the Petrogradsky District of the city.
"The victim was a 94-year-old woman who was trapped by the fire at the end of the corridor in an eight-room communal apartment," said Yevgeny Golovin, head of the First Municipal Fire Unit, in an interview on Thursday.
Officials have not yet determined the cause of the blaze, but some residents of the building, located at 23 Bolshaya Monetnaya Ulitsa, blamed alcoholics.
"This apartment was like a hangout for drunks. They had been drinking constantly and went for a bottle of vodka at 8 a.m. Who else could it be?" said Natalya Belova, one of those evacuated from the apartment.
"Well, it could have been just electric wires, which are in such a bad condition that they could cause a fire any moment," said Anatoly Mironin, who moved into the apartment just three days ago.
According to fire fighters, the fire started at about 10 a.m. in the fourth-floor apartment and quickly spread to the fifth and sixth floors of the building.
The Petrogradsky District fire department was unable to respond because its brigade had been sent earlier in the day to fight a fire in the Kalininsky District. That fire, which broke out around 7 a.m., was located in an office building owned by the Leningrad Optical-Mechanical Corporation (LOMO).
As a result, the Bolshaya Monetnaya fire was put out by fire units from the Central and Frunsensky districts, which reached the scene nearly 40 minutes after the alarm was raised because of heavy traffic.
"It was easy to put out. We just drowned the flat in water, and that's it," said Golovin.
The fire at the LOMO office building, which is leased to a medical-equipment company called Azimut Plus company was more difficult. Fire fighters had to evacuate 10 people from offices windows using fire ladders. One woman was hospitalized.
The blaze destroyed an estimated 600 square meters of office space, according to local media reports.
TITLE: Supreme Court Overturns Defense Ministry Order Ruling
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In a setback for human-rights activists, the Presidium of the Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned an earlier ruling that invalidated part of a secret Defense Ministry document used to prosecute high-profile espionage suspects such as environmentalist Alexander Nikitin, military journalist Grigory Pasko and arms analyst Igor Sutyagin.
But the Presidium said the court should take another look at the document, Order No. 055, which gives a list of data that the Defense Ministry considers to be state secrets.
"The judges didn't tell us that we were not right. They just returned us to the starting point," Nikitin said.
The Supreme Court ruled last September that 10 of the document's 650 articles should be annulled, and said the decision would apply retroactively to 1996, when the order was issued. The Defense Ministry appealed the ruling, and its appeal was denied in November.
The chief military prosecutor later filed his own appeal, saying the 10 articles should be annulled only as of November. Thus the use of the secret decree against Nikitin, Pasko, Sutyagin and others would stand.
To complicate the case further, the military arm of the Supreme Court ruled in February to invalidate the entire order. This ruling has not gone into effect, and it is unclear how it will be affected by Wednesday's decision. In any event, the Supreme Court will hear an appeal of the February ruling on April 2.
Yury Shmidt, Nikitin's lawyer and a human rights activist, urged the 11-member Presidium to let the September decision stand.
"It is a practice of the Supreme Court to invalidate legal documents as of their date of issue," he said. "A computer search in the court's database showed that in not a single case was a document invalidated only as of the court decision."
Nikitin, whose appeal led to the September ruling, said that what he and his supporters are demanding is a clear legal playing field.
"As an ecologist exploring nuclear issues, at any moment I can once again run into a fact that this order considers a state secret," said Nikitin, who now heads the St. Petersburg-based Human Rights Ecological Center.
Russia has a federal law on state secrets, but its categories of classified information are very general and it allows ministries and other federal agencies to draw up their own lists of secret data.
Nikitin, a former navy officer, was arrested in 1996 and spent more than 11 months in prison, charged with treason for writing a report for the Norwegian environmental group Bellona that divulged information about the navy's dumping of nuclear waste into the North Sea. He was acquitted in 1999. To a considerable extent, the case against him was based on Order No. 055.
In annulling the 10 articles in September, the court said the order was not issued solely for the Defense Ministry's internal use and thus should have been registered with the Justice Ministry and made public.
But the ministry's representative, Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Rusanov, told the Presidium on Wednesday that the court made a mistake.
"This order is just a list of information, it is not a law and it is dedicated for internal use," he said.
But Rusanov conceded that the order should not have been used by prosecutors from a different agency - for instance, the Federal Security Service, which filed charges against Nikitin, Pasko and Sutyagin - or against civilians.
He warned that if the court, after its review, upholds the September ruling, then the Defense Ministry would issue a new order that would be equally strong. If the court continues to consider such orders to apply to other agencies, the ministry would register the new order and then it could indeed be used to prosecute civilians as well as members of the military, Rusanov said.
Shmidt criticized the decision Wednesday to send the order back for a new review.
"The court couldn't satisfy the illiterate protest of the military prosecutor and decided to drag out the case to give the Defense Ministry time to register the order or for other surprises," he said.
The Presidium deliberated for less than 15 minutes before its decision was read out by the chairperson of the Supreme Court, Vyacheslav Lebedev. He gave no explanation.
Pasko's lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, said he could not comment on the decision until the Presidium released its written statement.
Rusanov was not so reticent.
"I am very, very satisfied," he said as he left the courthouse.
Order No. 055 was also the basis of the case against Pasko, who was charged with treason in 1997 for giving Japanese journalists information about the dumping of nuclear materials by the Pacific Fleet. He was acquitted of treason in 1999 but convicted of the lesser charge of abuse of office. Last year, after he appealed the decision, Pasko was sentenced on treason charges and is serving a four-year term in Vladivostok.
TITLE: Country Marks 2 Years of Putin in Power
AUTHOR: By Gregory Feifer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin's term hit its halfway mark this week, with politicians and pundits weighing in on the ups and downs of the unusually popular president's first two years in office.
No one questions the obvious: Putin's second year has ended with warmer relations with the United States, a greater focus on domestic economic reform and a continuing concentration of political power in the Kremlin's hands. But interpretations and assessments of these policies vary widely.
Andrei Ryabov of the Moscow Carnegie Center believes Putin's main achievement has been the gradual move toward "formalizing" political decision-making - transferring it from informal groups of advisers and businesspeople to formal institutions, such as the presidential administration and the federal legislature.
"That's positive for Russia's future even if today the form of those actions seems undemocratic," Ryabov said.
Vyacheslav Volodin, head of the State Duma's pro-Kremlin Fatherland-All Russia faction, lauded the moves to centralize power. The president's main achievement has been to stop Russia from disintegrating into "separate principalities and separate republics," Interfax quoted him as saying Tuesday.
Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov agreed. He said that "Putin's chief goal has been to strengthen state institutions, which was his main promise to the electorate," and he has done so.
But critics argue that, in trying to boost his own authority, Putin has trampled on democratic institutions and individual liberties.
The Kremlin has pushed through an overhaul of the judicial system that failed to curtail the powers of prosecutors - often criticized for a lack of impartiality and independence - and played a key role in silencing the country's two privately owned national television stations, which had been controlled by businesspeople critical of the Kremlin.
Putin has also done little to end the bloody conflict in Chechnya, which has raged for 2 1/2 years, claiming thousands of lives, soldiers' and civilians' alike.
Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the liberal Yabloko party and one of Putin's most consistent critics, lamented the Kremlin's monopoly on power, adding that the cabinet now fulfills technical functions and "chiefly represents the interests of monopolies and big business connected to the authorities," Interfax said.
Ryabov acknowledged that redefining the role of the existing political and economic elites would be Putin's greatest challenge in the years ahead.
"Either he undertakes real modernization, in which he transforms his relations with the old elites, or the old clans will force their logic on him, in return for a promise to make sure he's re-elected," Ryabov said. "That's just what happened to Boris Yeltsin in 1996."
Shortly after rising to power, Putin promised that the influential oligarchs would be kept "equally distant" from the Kremlin. Indeed, a number of legal cases and police raids were launched against major businesses suspected of withholding taxes or other violations.
Nontheless, Putin's main failure has been his inability to rein in the oligarchs, Ryabov said. "Their economic power is growing and they will use their influence to facilitate reforms that benefit only them."
"Under Yeltsin, the country was ungovernable," Vyacheslav Nikonov, head of the Politika think tank, said Monday. "The oligarchs opened any door in the Kremlin with their left foot."
Putin's goal was to rein them in, he added, "but Putin's goal has not been realized." Nonetheless, Putin's second year in office was marked by important liberalizing economic reforms, most prominently a flat 13-percent income tax, loudly applauded by the West.
But economists agree that the economy rebounded from its 1998 economic crisis mainly due to high oil prices and a ruble devaluation, and a growing number of experts have criticized the government for failing to push through fundamental structural reforms, saying a new crisis looms ahead.
Meanwhile, Putin's approval rating remains high. Alexander Oslon, a Kremlin-connected pollster, said Monday that a survey by his Public Opinion Foundation found that 61 percent of 1,500 respondents from around the country said Putin's term has been marked by more achievements than failures, compared to 13 percent who thought the opposite.
TITLE: FSB To Proceed With Trials of Kalugin, Litvinenko
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Two former Soviet intelligence officers who fled to the West will likely be tried in absentia if they do not return to Russia, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday, citing Supreme Court sources.
The report came on the same day that one of the former officers, Oleg Kalugin, had been ordered to appear for questioning by the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet KGB.
Kalugin, who did not appear, faces charges of high treason, the FSB's press service said. Interfax cited court sources as saying that trials in absentia of Kalugin and of Alexander Litvinenko, who faces an array of charges, would likely begin before July, when a new criminal code is to take effect which does not provide for such trials.
Kalugin ran the KGB's counterintelligence department from 1973 to 1980 and now lives in the United States. Russian news agencies, quoting intelligence officials, have said it is based on Kalugin's testimony against retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel George Trofimoff, who was convicted last year of spying for the Soviet Union.
The ITAR-Tass news agency also reported that Russian officials want to question Kalugin about information that he might have revealed in order to receive permission to permanently reside in the United States.
Litvinenko, a former FSB officer who fled to Britain in 2000 and was recently granted asylum there, faces charges including abuse of office and forgery, according to Interfax. Litvinenko fell out with his former colleagues at the FSB in 1998 after accusing them of ordering kidnappings, extortion and contract murders, including a plot to kill business tycoon Boris Berezovsky.
Kalugin, who has lived in the U.S. since the mid-1990s, has openly criticized his former KGB colleagues, while at the same time parlaying his notoriety into a source of income.
A Russian Embassy consular official in Washington hand-delivered a subpoena Monday to Kalugin. The document demanded that Kalugin appear for questioning "as a defendant" at the Moscow office of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, on Thursday.
Under Russian law, the subpoena said, "should you fail to appear without adequate explanation, your appearance may be compelled by force."
"I have an official summons from Moscow that was delivered by the consular official of the Russian Embassy that says that I am required to come to Moscow on March 28 for interrogation as a defendant, but no reason given," Kalugin said in a telephone interview.
Yevgeny Khorishko, a Russian Embassy spokesperson in Washington, said he was not familiar with the charges.
"He is being accused, but we don't know of what," Khorishko said.
The real reason for the summons, Kalugin said, was revenge by former KGB officers trying to undermine him for his vocal criticism of the intelligence service.
Kalugin, now 67, served for 12 years as a Soviet spy in Washington before returning home to run the KGB's foreign-intelligence program. He was forced out of the spy service in 1990 for criticizing it publicly. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev restored Kalugin's rank and honors in 1991.
President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB agent, shortly after his election publicly called Kalugin a traitor, and Kalugin responded by calling Putin a war criminal, Kalugin said.
"After that exchange ... it's simply unwise to go to Moscow under any circumstances," Kalugin said with a laugh.
However, he said he was concerned for the welfare of his daughter and grandson who still live in Moscow.
FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev confirmed Wednesday that criminal proceedings would continue against Kalugin all the same, Itar-Tass reported.
"Inasmuch as he violated state secrecy, he caused colossal damage to our country," Patrushev said.
Itar-Tass quoted Boris Labusov, a spokesperson for the Foreign Intelligence Service, as saying: "If [Kalugin] considers himself innocent, then he should come and prove it."
(LAT, Reuters, AP)
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Seleznyov May Stay On
MOSCOW (SPT) -State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov will likely keep his job, but may instead lose one of his deputies, Interfax reported a well-informed source in the leadership of parliament's pro-government centrist bloc as saying Thursday.
The two main centrist factions, pro-Kremlin Unity and Fatherland-All Russia - backed up by the liberal Union of Right Forces - last week initiated a move to dismiss Communist Party member Seleznyov.
The deputies said they were chiefly unhappy with the work of the chamber's administrative structure, headed by Seleznyov-appointed Nikolai Troshkin.
Interfax quoted the unnamed source as saying Troshkin would lose his job instead of Seleznyov.
New Security Threats
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia is preparing now so it will be ready to respond to any new national-security threats posed by the United States' proposed missile-defense system, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Wednesday.
"There is no missile-defense system as such, and therefore it is very difficult to speak of a response to what does not exist," Ivanov said, Itar-Tass reported, during a tour of a rocket division outside Moscow. "But this does not mean that we do not think about this or do not take certain technical and research measures."
He said that the military "will do everything to come up with a proper response" to any threats to its national security posed by the system. But he repeated President Vladimir Putin's stance that Russia has nothing to fear for years to come.
Population Still Falling
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's population is expected to shrink by 30 percent to 101.9 million people by the end of 2050, the State Statistics Committee reported Wednesday.
The committee also worked out best-case and worst-case scenarios. Under the best-case scenario, the population will only decrease to 122.6 million by 2050, but under the worst-case scenario, it would fall almost 47 percent to 77.2 million, Interfax reported.
The prediction of 101.9 million by 2050 is considered the most probable outcome, the committee said.
Powell, Ivanov to Meet
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will meet with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in Spain early next month to push forward nuclear arms-reduction plans for the coming U.S.-Russia summit.
Power Plant for Iran
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia will complete construction of a nuclear-power plant in Iran despite U.S. complaints and is looking at North Korea's tentative request for a similar plant, Nuclear Power Minister Alexander Rumyantsev said Wednesday.
"Iran has signed all required international agreements and undertaken full obligations on transparency and checks ... and unfailingly fulfilled them," Rumyantsev said at a news conference.
The United States has long urged Russia to abandon a 1995 contract with Iran to complete a nuclear reactor at Bushehr worth about $800 million, saying the project could help Iran build a nuclear bomb. But Russia says the reactor could only be used for civilian purposes and will be supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Rumyantsev also said his ministry was looking at a tentative request from North Korea for the construction of a nuclear power plant.
TITLE: Russia Strikes Deal on Noise Ban
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With just four days left before the European Union imposes a ban on noisy Russian airplanes, Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko said Wednesday that he had won a nine-month reprieve on flights to Greece, Belgium, Holland and the Scandinavian countries.
"I have received a full pledge from the leadership of the European Commission that we can relieve the situation for this year," Khristenko said on RTR television Wednesday night.
Khristenko was speaking during 11th-hour negotiations in Brussels.
Details about the concessions were not immediately available.
Earlier Wednesday, European Commission spokesperson Gilles Gantelet said the talks were focusing on a provision in EU law that exempts charter flights from the noise ban, which comes into force April 1. That provision allows noncompliant aircraft to fly to secondary EU airports, and permission for such flights has to be granted by individual EU member states, he said.
Charter flights to destinations such as Spain, Italy and Greece make up the bulk of air travel to Europe. Noncompliant aircraft include the Il-86, Tu-134 and Tu-154B passenger planes and Il-76 cargo planes. The only compliant aircraft are the Tu-204 and Tu-214 medium-range liners and the long-haul Il-96-300, of which Russian airlines fly only 19.
Regular flights by airlines such as Aeroflot and Transaero are operated on mostly Western-built aircraft that meet the noise requirements.
In Moscow, Russian transportation officials said that some headway had been made in negotiations with Europe but refused to be more specific.
Deputy Transportation Minister Pavel Rozhkov is due back from Brussels on Thursday and is expected to announce results of the negotiations then.
A senior EU official close to negotiations said that consultations have to be made with the member states after Tuesday's meeting with Russian officials.
Meanwhile, Russia is holding at least three European carriers on tenterhooks over their summer schedules. KLM, SAS and Finnair have been warned that some flights to Russia will be restricted unless a solution to the ban is found.
SAS spokesperson Anna Gillstrom said by telephone from Stockholm that the airline received a telex from the State Civil Aviation Service's head of international relations, Vitaly Pavlyuk, on March 12 stating that flights from Stockholm to St. Petersburg will be cut from seven to five and from Copenhagen to St. Petersburg from five to four as of March 31.
Gillstrom said that SAS sent a protest through the Swedish government to Pavlyuk but has yet to receive a reply. She said tickets had already been sold on the flights that might be cancelled. KLM and Finnair received similar letters. Pavlyuk was unavailable for comment.
Germany's Lufthansa is waiting for the State Civil Aviation Service to approve its summer schedule but has not received a warning letter. Ulrich Ruger, the airline's regional director for Russia and the CIS, said Lufthansa has applied for seven additional weekly flights from Munich and Frankfurt to Moscow and seven more weekly flights between Frankfurt and St. Petersburg.
TITLE: U.S. Grant to Itera Group Put on Hold
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A U.S. government grant of $868,000 to the Itera Group has been put on hold amid vitriolic criticism from Russia's investment community.
The grant, from an agency whose purpose is to advance U.S. business interests abroad, was earmarked to finance a feasibility study for developing gas condensate fields in Western Siberia for Achimneftegaz, a joint venture between Itera and the gas monopoly Gazprom.
"Questions have been raised about ownership and the rights to explore the gas field," said Leocadia Zak, the general counsel for the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, which signed off on the grant in February at Itera's request. "We have indicated that we want to gather more information."
During the 1990s, Gazprom gave away assets worth millions of dollars, and Itera - which began as a gas trader working in the Commonwealth of Independent States - was one of the lucky recipients. It is widely believed that former Gazprom managers have ties or ownership in Itera. With the blessing of President Vladimir Putin, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller has been fighting to reclaim those assets since last year.
The Achimovsk field is estimated to hold 350 billion cubic meters of gas and 117 million tons of gas condensate. Even on a global scale, these reserves are huge, surpassing those of Brazil's Petrobras and U.S.-based Chevron, according to the Troika Dialog brokerage. The problem, however, is that the Florida-registered Itera got its 49 percent of the field for $265,270, while its share was valued at about $500 million.
With the grant, the U.S. government was undermining Miller's efforts to bring valuable fields back into Gazprom's fold and instill a sense of corporate governance within the company, said William Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, a minority shareholder in Gazprom.
Last week, Browder visited with officials from the Treasury Department, State Department and National Security Council in Washington and lobbied for the grant's cancellation. Phone calls from those officials were made to the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.
The grant is on hold while the agency looks into Browder's complaints, Zak said. "I can't say how long this additional due diligence will last," Zak said. "Additional information usually raises additional questions."
Both Itera and BSI Industries, the U.S. company to receive the grant, have been notified, Zak said.
BSI Industries President Vladimir Gokun said he was confident that the deal would eventually go through.
"These rumors about Gazprom and Itera have been checked out numerous times in numerous audits," said Gokun, a Russian immigrant who earlier worked at the Soviet Oil and Gas Construction Ministry. "Very qualified people work for Itera. I know that these kind of people wouldn't work for a company that engaged in theft."
Some critics claim that this grant is a last-gasp attempt for Itera, which has experienced financial troubles since Miller cut it off from Gazprom's largesse.
In response, Gokun said that such criticism exhibited an "amateur's approach" to the issue. Itera doesn't need the money. All it wants is the sign of acceptance such a grant confers, he said.
Gokun believes that the scandal is an effort on the part of German and Italian gas-service companies to keep U.S. companies out of Russia's gas industry.
Although U.S. companies are not as active as their European counterparts, that reason is no excuse for the United States to finance a company with an unclear ownership structure, said James Fenkner, Troika Dialog's chief equity strategist.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Hotel for Sale
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The city administration announced Wednesday that it intends to privatize the Pribaltiiskaya Hotel on Vasilievsky Island, Interfax reported.
A privatization plan should be ready by the middle of April, the news agency reported, citing sources in the administration. The three-star Pribaltiiskaya was built in 1978 and is wholly owned by the city administration.
To the Private Sector
MOSCOW (SPT) - The head of the State Duma's influential banking committee, Alexander Shokhin, announced that he is resigning from his post to join leading investment bank Renaissance Capital. As of Monday, Shokhin will take over as chairman of Renaissance Capital's supervisory board and become a partner.
A member of the pro-Kremlin People's Deputy faction, Shokhin has spent the past 15 years in politics, serving as a Duma deputy with stints as labor minister, economics minister and deputy prime minister in the early 1990s. He was also the shortest-lived deputy prime minister under former President Boris Yeltsin, resigning after one week in 1998 in protest against Mikhail Zadornov's appointment as finance minister.
Chicken Impasse
CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. officials are working to resolve Russia's ban on U.S. poultry imports, despite recent talks in Moscow that ended without agreement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said Tuesday.
A U.S. delegation left Moscow late last week after two weeks of talks aimed at ending the Russian ban of U.S. poultry imports that began March 10.
"That doesn't mean that we've let down our guard or quit working on it," Veneman said during a visit to the Chicago Board of Trade.
No 'Pocket' Banks
MOSCOW (Vedomosti) - The Anti-Monopoly Ministry is looking to bar shareholders who own a 25 percent or more stake in a bank from opening a deposit there as part of an effort to get rid of "pocket banks."
Deputy Anti-Monopoly Minister Andrei Kashevarov said Tuesday that new norms were needed to make the sector more competitive and offer consumers a better selection of banks.
Many of Russia's top 30 banks are controlled by major industrial enterprises. Kashevarov said the ministry intends to make the necessary changes to the Civil Code and the law on banks and banking activities.
Sawyer Loses Case
MOSCOW (MT) - After an exhausting 20-month legal battle over its $8.2 million investment at the Gus-Khrustalny quartz plant in the Vladimir region, No. 1 U.S. quartz producer, Sawyer, lost its case Tuesday in an arbitration court in Nizhny Novgorod.
In 1997, Sawyer formed a joint venture with the unprofitable local Quartz Glass Plant and, having leased one of its workshops for 25 years, poured in millions of dollars to update its facilities, pay its debts and train staff.
On July 4, 2001, a regional court invalidated the lease, just after Sawyer had paid off all the plant's debts.
Tuesday's ruling said Sawyer has to abandon the renovated facilities and pay 8 million rubles ($257,000) to the new owner, Very Pure Quartz Glass.
TITLE: Ignatyev Pushing for More Saving
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Central Bank's new chief has pledged to introduce banking reforms that would encourage more Russians to invest their savings in the country's stagnant banking sector.
Sergei Ignatyev also told RTR television on Sunday that he didn't favor a completely independent Central Bank.
"We will not insist on an absolutely independent Central Bank," Ignatyev said, adding that the bank should, however, be independent in its "operational work."
The State Duma voted Wednesday to confirm Ignatyev, an economist expected to jump-start long-delayed banking reforms. Ignatyev replaces Viktor Gerashchenko, who had clashed with Putin's cabinet over control of the currency market and resisted a government-initiated bill that would sharply curb the Central Bank's powers.
Gerashchenko's sacking reflected Putin's commitment to pushing through badly needed economic reform to boost long-term growth. The economy grew nearly 20 percent over the past three years, but much of the growth was linked to high world prices for oil.
Ignatyev said that currently Russia only guarantees deposits in two banks, but the government would move to extend those numbers to some of the nation's more than 1,300 private banks. He said details were still being worked out, but warned that the government would never be able to guarantee 100 percent of people's deposits.
Ignatyev also said he had no plans to change the bank's ruble exchange policy, and also supports previous predictions about inflation, expected to be held between 12 percent to 14 percent this year.
TITLE: Is Putin Casting About for New Policies for the Economy?
AUTHOR: By Matt Bivens
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The day the Central Bank chief resigned, President Vladimir Putin spent four hours privately consulting with economists who are leading critics of his government's economic policies - and agreeing with some of what they said.
"He said that he's disappointed with his team because they have no new economic ideas, and new ideas are needed," said Nikolai Petrakov, director of the Market Economy Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and one of the four economists who met the president on March 15.
With only a stenographer present, Putin listened carefully and took his own copious notes, Petrakov said Wednesday. "He's unhappy. He twice underlined his frustration with a lack of new ideas. It seemed to me that he is looking for some options, for some corrections to economic policy."
Among other things, Petrakov said, Putin expressed exasperation with drafts written by advisers for his annual state-of-the-nation address to parliament; concern that he was getting intentionally skewed economic intelligence from those same advisers; coolness to the idea of joining the World Trade Organization soon; and doubt that so-called natural monopolies like railroads or electricity grids can be made more effective by being broken up.
Petrakov considers himself a free-market advocate, but the other three economists who met with the president two weeks ago are more left-leaning: Communist State Duma deputies Yury Maslyukov, a former deputy prime minister, and Sergei Glazyev; and Dmitry Lvov, who heads an Academy of Sciences economics department.
The meeting came the same day Viktor Gerashchenko unexpectedly announced that he was leaving the Central Bank ahead of schedule, and soon after the government surprised many by inviting long-time critic Mikhail Delyagin in as an official economic-policy adviser. Petrakov said the timing with the fall of Gerashchenko was coincidental, and that his only conclusion from all of this activity was that the president is casting about in frustration for new answers.
"I found him to be open-minded in his views," Petrakov said of Putin, adding that the president could be talked around from an initial position of disagreement to agreement. As an example, Petrakov said Putin initially praised restructuring the natural monopolies, but soon was changing tack - and even drawing a complicated diagram to illustrate why a particular suggested reform would not create more healthy competition.
As to the WTO, Petrakov said the president saw joining it as inevitable, but something certainly not to be forced or rushed. When the economists pointed out that his government ministers often say Russia is indeed in a hurry, Petrakov said the president retorted, "That's a lie," and cited it as an example of how he can't always trust his team.
"See how they misinterpret [my words]?" Petrakov quoted the president as saying. Instead, Petrakov said the president drew comparisons with China's approach, saying China had 2,000 experts studying WTO membership for 15 years, while Russia has just 150 experts on the case and is falling over itself to sign up.
Petrakov, 65 and a former adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev, was one of the many economists with a hand in the unimplemented "500 Days" plan to bring market economics to Russia in 500 days.
He said the March 15 meeting was supposed to be secret. "They said, 'No info for the press,'" he said.
But he nevertheless revealed details of the meeting on Wednesday to a small Kennan Institute-sponsored conference in Washington because the cat was already out of the bag: Communist chieftain Gennady Zyuganov can be found crowing about the meeting in the 28th paragraph of an article in Monday's Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which Petrakov said he read on the plane over from Moscow.
Zyuganov tells Nezavisimaya Gazeta that it's significant Putin still does not have a state-of-the-nation address this late in March, the month the president traditionally offers one, and then adds that it's "no accident" Putin has been meeting economists such as Glazyev, Petrakov and Maslyukov.
It's hard to judge the significance of such a meeting. Former Finance Minister and Yabloko member Mikhail Zadornov, also in Washington for the conference, saw little earth-shattering in it.
"It's meeting after meeting with Mr. Putin," Zadornov said. "I know that Zyuganov specifically asked [Putin to organize] this meeting with the economists, it's one of many."
Grinning, Zadornov added, "It's the normal way for Mr. Putin: He listens very carefully, he smiles, but nobody knows about the consequences." That said, Zadornov added that he also thought Putin was unhappy with economic policy.
"He's searching [for something new]," Zadornov agreed.
TITLE: EU Noise Ban Means Big Changes for Sector
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: "If we look truth in the eye, we have to acknowledge that our level of demand for aircraft does not correspond with the level of industry's capability."
- Transportation Minister Sergei Frank at the annual Transportation Ministry meeting Feb. 27.
MOSCOW - With a looming deadline to comply with new noise regulations about to put European skies off-limits for 70 percent of Russia's aircraft, the government is stepping up efforts to coax Europe into concessions.
It is not clear what the government could have up its sleeve to resolve the standoff. Earlier talk of retaliation by limiting incoming flights of some European carriers has crashed against Europe's resistance.
Earlier this month, Germany said it would allow landings of noncompliant craft in emergency situations, but only at the start of the summer season. A resolute "no" has come from Italy, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland.
WARNING CAME EARLY
The European noise regulations coming into effect next month, which ban aircraft with noise levels above 89 decibels, were adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organization in October 1991.
Ten years were deemed enough for countries to bring their fleets into compliance, but Russia's tumultuous economic transition has left the aviation industry reeling from neglect.
Since 1995, when aircraft purchases from state budget funds stopped, only 29 commercial aircraft have been delivered by domestic industry, of which six were delivered last year, while 22 foreign commercial jets have been delivered, compared with the hundreds of aircraft delivered each year in the Soviet heyday.
Russia's 267 airlines have largely been operating Soviet-era jets, with most unable to renew their fleets. Just a handful can afford to buy newer-generation Russian craft or lease foreign jets.
Only last fall did the government get into negotiations to seek an exemption for domestic airlines.
CARDS TO PLAY WITH
According to the State Civil Aviation Service, Russia has more than 6,000 aircraft, including 1,998 mid- and long-range passenger and cargo airplanes, 46 foreign jets and 1,954 helicopters. Two-thirds of the long- and mid-range airplanes will not be admitted to Europe as of next month, the Transportation Ministry has said. They include the workhorses Tu-134, Tu-154B, Il-62, Il-86 and the cargo Il-76. Of those, 241 can be upgraded.
The 180-strong fleet of Tu-154Ms could be upgraded using noise-suppressing panels, also known as hush kits, for $150,000 each. Upgrading an Il-62 would cost $260,000.
The Tu-134 is not even considered for upgrading, as it is to be phased out soon anyway. The upgrade of Il-86s and Il-76s involves installing new engines and can cost up to $13 million per aircraft - prohibitive to most airlines.
Russian airlines boast just six Tu-204s, two Tu-214s and 11 Il-96-300s that comply with the new regulations.
On international routes, the new and compliant Russian-made craft account for just over 9 percent of business, and foreign-made jets account for 28 percent. Craft that can be modified to comply account for another 27 percent, while totally noncompliant aircraft comprise 36 percent.
By 2010 Russian airlines should have 12 Il-96-300s, 16 Tu-204s, 30 Tu-214s and 30 Tu-334s, a short-range 100-seater that is yet to be certified.
Meanwhile, the government's steps to kick-start domestic aircraft leasing programs have been slow-paced. While it has awarded support to two leasing companies - the Ilyushin Finance Co., which is due to supply long-range Il-96-300s made in Voronezh to Aeroflot, and the Finance Leasing Co., which is working on medium-range Tu-214s in Kazan for far eastern carrier Dalavia - it has yet to put financial investment into them in exchange for stakes.
Leasing is the only solution for airlines unable to fully finance the purchase of a single aircraft, with the Il-96-300 selling for at least $30 million, a new Tu-204 retailing for $22 million and the Tu-214 for $26 million.
EUROPEAN STANDARDS
Last autumn, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United Nations' aviation arm, recommended a seven-year, stage-by-stage withdrawal of noncompliant aircraft already in use. The European Union, however, remained adamant on the ban. Now, according to the European Commission, Russia is free to negotiate temporary exemptions for certain airports with individual EU member states.
At the Transportation Ministry's annual meeting Feb. 27, Khristenko said that a resolution to the looming problem should have been found well in advance, without resorting to political lobbying.
"Today the maximum we can do is to find a worthy response, which now lies in the sphere of big politics," Khristenko said, without elaborating.
THE PRICE TO PAY
According to preliminary estimates, the ban could force the nation's carriers to cancel as many as 11,000 flights per year, with passenger numbers cut by 3 million, including 1.5 million tourists.
The Russian Association of Tourist Agencies has said destinations such as Spain, on which the 350-seater Il-86 is used, could seriously suffer.
The Moscow Association of Tourist Agencies said the flow of Russian tourists to Spain could halve if it joins the ban, while 40 percent less were expected to go to Greece and Italy. Ticket prices are expected to jump by at least $40.
"We will feel the lack of Tu-154Ms straight away, they will be very quickly snapped up by the companies," said RATA spokesperson Irina Tyurina.
There is likely to be an excess of Il-86s and Tu-154Bs flying to destinations such as Turkey, Bulgaria, Croatia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Tunisia, with price dumping expected to follow. Tyurina said a redistribution of tourist flows toward these destinations is the likely outcome.
The Tu-154Ms will be in higher demand - but as the number of passengers carried by the Il-86 is roughly double that of the Tu-154, problems with airport slots are expected to arise. Of the 105 Il-86s built, some 40 remain in service today. While 14 charter flights were carried on Il-86s on a Saturday from Moscow last summer, 30 such flights would be needed if the craft were to be replaced by Tu-154s. More flights are to shift from popular weekends to weekdays, and, as regular flights will be carried out during the day, charter flights are to move to the late hours.
Also, the summer tourist season is to shrink, as the Tu-134 - used at its beginning and the end of the season due to lower passenger numbers - will be edged out of the market.
But Russia is not the only party set to lose. According to RATA estimates, the EU's 15 member states together are likely to lose a total of $1 billion per year, including $52.5 million in consular fees, $472 million in hotel revenues and some $300 million in other services.
The cargo market's situation is even more grim. Russia's 180 noncompliant Il-76 cargo planes account for 17 percent of the world's large-cargo air shipments, and the Il-76's tariffs are 40 percent lower than those of its Western peers.
"If we go this way we have a good chance of destroying the system of cargo shipment by air," said Ilyushin's general designer, Genrikh Novozhilov.
Moscow-based independent aviation analyst Paul Duffy said the Il-76 could be made compliant by installing hush kits that muffle the noise, bringing it down to a level where a carefully operated aircraft would fall just inside the permitted noise level.
But, according to Duffy, Ilyushin has not proposed this solution. Had it done so, Europe would have accepted the Il-76 for operations between now and the start of 2006 and would also have exempted it until 2014.
If the Il-76 is banned, some of the loads will need to go by surface. If Russian aircraft lose the European market, their place will be taken by other aircraft, and it will be almost impossible to get back into the market when they do meet the requirements. Of the new cargo plane models that could replace the Il-76, the Il-96T still needs a lot of work before it enters operation, and the Il-96-400 will remain an unbuilt concept until that program receives more money, Duffy said.
"Practically no one has looked into the problem of upgrading airplanes since the late 1980s," Novozhilov said.
He welcomed the government activity in terms of meetings and discussions devoted to civil aviation last year, but said he wished financial support was in place. This year's budget allocated more than 2 billion rubles ($64.5 million) to civil-aviation programs. In comparison, the Il-96-300 retails for $30 million.
READY TO FLY?
Last year, Russian airlines flew 25 million passengers. Among the best prepared to meet the new standards are Russia's flagship carrier Aeroflot, No. 2 Sibir, No. 4 Krasair and No. 10 KavMinVodyavia, which together carry a hefty proportion of total passenger numbers.
Aeroflot has spent some $11 million to modernize its Russian fleet. With more than 100 planes, it uses Boeings and Airbuses on European routes and is therefore unaffected by the noise restrictions. It also has a fleet of Tu-154Ms upgraded to the new requirements.
Sibir spokesperson Mikhail Koshman said its two Tu-204s and six Tu-154Ms will fully cover flights to the German destinations of Hanover, Frankfurt, and Munich, and that the airline is planning to begin flights to Berlin from Moscow.
Krasair spokesperson Svetlana Volodina said she sees no problem for her company. Krasair operates two Tu-204s and has plans to receive a third Tu-204 this year, and has been looking at leasing Tu-214s and Boeing 737s. It is also upgrading its Tu-154Ms, Volodina said.
Transaero, which flies to Germany, France and Britain, operates a fleet of solely foreign aircraft.
Meanwhile St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Airlines, which had been using its Tu-134s on German routes, is scrambling to comply with new noise restrictions. The airline said Thursday it will use Tu-154s on flights to Berlin, Hamburg and Dusseldorf, and is looking to increase frequency. Pulkovo acquired four Tu-154Ms to meet the April 1 regulations.
Pulkovo deputy head Sergei Belov said phasing out the Tu-134s and replacing them with Tu-154s will cost the airline an additional $2.5 million per year.
LOOKING AHEAD
Airline representatives say the government and the industry should start preparing for further restrictions that are to come into effect in 2006.
Tupolev is planning ahead, hoping to get its Tu-334 certified by 2004. Work is under way to increase the Tu-214's range to as much as 9,800 kilometers. The Tu-234, seating 120 to 160 passengers, is also under development. At least 35 to 45 Tu-204s will have to be built by 2006 to cover international flights. Tu-204-120s powered with a foreign engine, the Rolls-Royce RB211-535E4, are already being marketed abroad. So far, they alone are compliant with 2006 restrictions - and there are hopes they could rival Boeings and Airbuses.
Egyptian Sirocco Aerospace International, which was organized to promote the craft abroad and has exclusive rights, has pumped $170 million into the project since 1996 and expects to invest $280 million more over the next two years. Four have been flying with Air Cairo, and just two weeks ago the first such plane entered service with TNT, with a second to be delivered in May.
Another five have been contracted by two Chinese airlines. Sirocco is now working on the European certification for the airplane and, when that is in hand, more doors will open for the plane worldwide.
"The only program that is showing any signs of life is the Sirocco program of Tu-204-120. That is the only program receiving any investment and even this program is not an easy one," Duffy said. "If Russia misses this opportunity, the sector will be dead."
TITLE: Democracy Demands a Genuine Parliament
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Ryzhkov
TEXT: RUSSIA'S experience with democracy has been fairly brief. All told, it has had a little more than two decades, from 1906 to 1917 and from 1989 to the present day. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the fate of democracy and the fate of the parliament in this country have largely been one and the same.
Just as it was almost a century ago, the State Duma is constantly in the thick of the political battle. It would be hard to characterize the achievements of the pre-Revolutionary Dumas as particularly great. Indeed, only one of them served out its full term, two were quickly dissolved, and the fourth was engulfed in the flames of the Revolution. Weak and poorly organized, these parliaments tended to oscillate between reckless opposition to the imperial authorities and equally unthinking acquiescence in their wishes. The stubborn reluctance of Tsar Nicholas II to share power with parliament, together with parliament's inability to work constructively with the tsarist authorities, was the undoing both of the autocracy and of democracy.
Compared with a century ago, the experience of the past decade has been considerably more successful. Despite all the difficulties, the parliament is much more firm on its feet and has achieved a great deal more in its relations with the executive branch.
One could even say that its legislative successes have been outstanding. In the past decade it has passed a huge body of legislation - more than 3,000 federal laws - regulating the main areas of public life.
Of course, some serious gaps remain, such as regulation of agricultural land sale. Moreover, the quality of many laws leaves much to be desired, and a considerable number of amendments are in order. However, it cannot be denied that a legislative base has been formed, and in this respect a contribution of historical importance has been made.
Interestingly, the passage of this new body of legislation proceeded irrespective of the political composition of the parliament. The three Dumas of the post-Soviet period have differed significantly: The first (from 1993 to 1995) was a motley and unstable collection of political forces in which no one had a clear majority; the second Duma (from 1995 to 1999) was dominated by the Communist Party and made an attempt to impeach President Boris Yeltsin; and the third (1999 to the present) has finally given the Kremlin a stable majority.
However, despite changing political complexions, a reliable system emerged whereby only those laws that found consensus among the executive branch (the president and his government), the Duma majority, and the regional elite (the Federation Council) became law. Of course, deputies introduce hundreds of their own bills, but only those that have these three "keys" have a chance of becoming law.
Nevertheless, the fate of the parliamentary system is far from clear. The Duma has succeeded in consolidating its monopoly over legislative activities (in the early and mid-1990s federal laws had serious competition from presidential decrees). However, as before it remains de facto removed from the two other fundamentally important functions of the legislative branch: participation in government and parliamentary oversight of the executive branch.
As was the case a century ago, the parliament finds itself in a paradoxical position in which even a party that wins a convincing election victory does not play any role in the formation of the government. The executive branch remains a hundred times stronger than the parliament and parliamentary parties, and this has serious consequences.
First, if opposition parties have a majority in the Duma, then things tend to break down. A government that does not have political support in the Duma is forced to maneuver endlessly, losing time and energy, and cannot follow any kind of consistent course. Second, if a "non-party" government enjoys a majority in the Duma - as is currently the case - this results in complete lack of oversight of the executive. It becomes possible to pass virtually any law in short order.
However, the danger is that the quality of laws suffers and policy becomes bogged down in bitter and unprincipled turf battles between ministries and departments that effectively usurp the role of parties and public politicians. In addition, such a state of affairs inevitably provides fertile ground for corruption.
Policy-making by the bureaucracy, with the weak and indirect involvement of the parliament, turns into a messy compromise between ministries and departments, devoid of any coherence. Furthermore, the executive branch is unaccountable to society, because there is no political force willing to take responsibility for the political course and holding millions of anonymous bureaucrats responsible for the results of their work is simply not possible.
There continues to be a poor separation of political and administrative functions. A minister is part-politician, determining the state's line in his particular field, and part-administrator, involved in ongoing turf wars with rival departments and agencies. Moreover, nine times out of 10 it is not political but departmental interests that get the upper hand. In the absence of clear political leadership, the bureaucracy only permits those reforms that preserve its rights and privileges.
That is how things were at the beginning of the 20th century and that is how they are now. During the democratic "revolution" of the early 1990s, the bureaucracy ceded - with some reservations - control of the legislative function. However, it has retained firmly in its grasp the right to govern without accountability or transparency. Society is too weakened and disorganized to insist on its participation through the parliament in the formation of the government and, through this and parliamentary oversight, to place the bureaucracy under its control.
Matters are further aggravated by the lack of real freedom of speech and the weakness of the judiciary. President Vladimir Putin's arrival in the Kremlin was marked by a further shift in the balance of power in favor of the executive. With a majority in the Duma and a loyal Federation Council (after its reform), the presidential administration and government have thoroughly subordinated the federal assembly to their will. In this respect, the third Duma is similar to the third pre-revolutionary Duma, which was sarcastically referred to as the "lackey Duma."
Of course, the ambitious program of Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref - or rather what is left of it after numerous opponents from numerous departments had their say - can easily be passed by both chambers of the parliament. The problem is that Gref was only able to save a rather small portion of his original program and has got stuck in the boggy swamp of bureaucratic inertia and sabotage. Duma parties, meanwhile, look on passively.
Putin's plan to modernize the country by means of a strengthened and disciplined bureaucracy is unrealizable. In fact, it is a contradiction in terms. In the context of a weakened parliament, marginalized opposition, limited freedom of speech and weak and manipulable courts, modernization is not possible. Attempts to do so have already come up against the problems of corruption and the sabotage of those progressive laws that have been adopted.
True modernization can only be achieved when society and the parliament, its main advocate, start to play a decisive role in policy-making and in governing the country. For this to happen, the government needs to be formed by the party or parties that win a parliamentary majority at elections.
Ministers should be political figures, and in government there should be a clear separation between political and administrative functions (this should be the essence of the so-called administrative reform and not raising officials' salaries).
Parliament needs to establish strict oversight of the executive. Unfortunately, the Audit Chamber has, of late, on the contrary, been losing its parliamentary roots and drifting under the wing of the presidential administration.
The optimal model for Russia could well be that of France's Fifth Republic, in which the majority in the National Assembly forms the government, and the president is responsible mainly for defense, security and foreign-policy issues. In any case, without strengthening the role of the parliament it will be almost impossible to resolve many of this country's chronic problems and to establish a stable and durable democratic system.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent State Duma deputy, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: How Many Have Died So Far?
TEXT: WASHINGTON - I wonder how many thousands of Russians have been killed by nuclear testing? I have a ballpark figure for how many Americans have been killed: 11,000.
And amid talk of a return to nuclear testing in Nevada and Novaya Zemlya - and of "mini-nukes," to be used as conventional weapons - I wonder why no one mentions the fact that detonating nuclear weapons causes cancer.
A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates fallout has caused 33,000 cases of cancers - from breast cancer to leukemia - of which 11,000 were lethal (www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/fallout/).
And it's not just Semipalatinsk anymore: The CDC study suggests the definition of "down winder" - someone living uncomfortably close to a nuclear-test site - needs revision.
"Hot spots due to testing in Nevada occurred as far away as New York and Maine," says Arjun Makhijani, president of the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. "Hot spots from U.S. Pacific-area testing and also Soviet testing, were scattered across the United States - from California, Oregon and Washington in the west to New Hampshire, Vermont and North Carolina in the east."
The CDC's study was completed in August but only published in dribs and drabs over the last few weeks. It was a long time in the making. Robert Alvarez, a Clinton-era Energy Department official, recalls hearing in 1997 of a "suppressed" study of fallout by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and asking for a briefing.
"They were showing me these color-coded [fallout] maps of the United States. And I'm looking at this and it's really grotesque stuff, because I know what the numbers mean," Alvarez says. "And I look down at the bottom of the page and it's dated September 1992 - and here I am it's 1997."
That NCI study looked at one kind of cancer - thyroid cancer - and concluded that nuclear-test fallout caused somewhere from 11,300 to 212,000 incidences among Americans. When the NCI's findings were finally published in 1997, Congress was shocked (shocked!) and demanded a follow-up. CDC complied.
Its report to Congress emphasizes its study's conservative approach. But caveats aside, the estimate of 33,000 cases of cancer among Americans seems restrained - if only because it covers just 11 years, between 1951 and 1962, and the 48 contiguous U.S. states. That omits: all Chinese atmospheric tests, which were conducted from 1964 to 1980; French atmospheric tests from 1963 to 1974; pre-1951 tests in the Marshall Islands and in the Soviet Union; and the original three 1945 atomic blasts - in New Mexico, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
CDC's study also ignores fallout on Hawaii from Pacific tests and on Alaska from Soviet tests on the Arctic Circle island of Novaya Zemlya. And, since it is U.S.-specific, it says nothing of fallout's toll on the rest of the world. Alvarez says 19 atmospheric tests in that 11-year period released Chernobyl-scale radiation levels.
So 19 Chernobyls ... 33,000 American cancer cases ... and 11,000 American dead.
Nuclear-weapons powers "owe the world a real accounting of what they did to its health," says Makhijani. "It is high time for the United Nations to create a Global Truth Commission that would examine, in detail comparable to the U.S government studies, the harm inflicted upon the people of the world by nuclear-weapons production and testing."
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The St. Petersburg Times, is a Washington-based fellow of The Nation Institute (www.thenation.com).
TITLE: Paradoxes at the Central Bank
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: ON March 20, the State Duma accepted the resignation of Central Bank head Viktor Gerashchenko. This act not only marked the departure of a man who has played a dominant role in the banking sector for most of the past decade, it also means the departure of the last openly Keynesian central banker in Europe - maybe even the world.
Gerashchenko has always been a hate figure for the neo-liberals who have already made him resign twice before. The first time was while the Soviet Union was still in place and he was seen as an obstacle to economic liberalization. Once the "traditionalist" head of what was then called the State Bank of the Soviet Union was forced out, hyperinflation followed.
Gerashchenko was called back to the Central Bank in 1992, but soon was declared an enemy of reform. His opponents saw him as an inflation-loving central banker.
In fact, no central banker loves inflation - Gerashchenko simply retained the strange and unpopular idea that people are more important than money. Thus, each time there was a choice between lowering inflation and attending to social needs, he preferred to do the latter.
In 1994, he was removed once again and replaced by a monetarist team, which led the country to default and devaluation in 1998. Gerashchenko was then brought back, and proceeded to stabilize the currency and create the conditions for a massive payment of wage arrears that had accumulated during the period of neo-liberal management.
That is why Gerashchenko was dubbed "Hercules." Indeed, for many years his job was to clean the Augean Stables of the mess left by neo-liberal economic policies.
Now, however, Hercules has himself been purged.
The irony of the situation is that a few days before Gerashchenko's removal, the government for the first time appointed a Keynesian economist, Mikhail Delyagin, as adviser to the prime minister. The appointment is strange, to say the least, if we take into account the complexion of the government and its policies. Over the past two years Delyagin has been one of the government's most principled critics, so for him to be given such a job something obviously must be wrong - either with the government or with Delyagin.
The appointment could be viewed as an acknowledgement by the regime that its course is leading nowhere. In such circumstances, however, the logical step would not be a change of advisers, but for the government to resign.
The most plausible explanation is that different groups in the president's entourage have been pursuing divergent lines. While the St. Petersburg liberals have been systematically seizing key positions in Moscow, Mikhail Kasyanov has been trying to dissociate himself from liberal extremes. His moves can be characterized as an attempt to pursue a new course without changing the old one. And while Gerashchenko was at the helm of the Central Bank, the prime minister had in him an ally and counterbalance to the St. Petersburg group.
Irrespective of how relations between the Central Bank and the government now develop, there will have to be some corrections made to economic policy. Exporters are complaining of protectionism by Western governments, but Russia can do nothing to oppose this apart from responding in kind with its own protectionist measures - which will not solve the problem.
The choice we are faced with is either to raise the population's standard of living and re-orient industry to the domestic market, or devalue the ruble, thereby reducing living standards once again and increasing exporters' profits.
Undoubtedly, Delyagin will support the former course, and the Petersburg liberals, in coalition with exporters, will support the latter. However in the final analysis it is the Central Bank's decision. The new head, Sergei Ignatyev, has promised not to change the course set by his predecessor. And indeed, the ruble exchange rate has not undergone major change in the week or so since Gerashchenko's departure. The Central Bank is in good shape and foreign debts continue to be serviced in full. However, this fiscal well-being can last only as long as the economy continues to grow.
The early months of this year have demonstrated the futility of trying to beat inflation. Gerashchenko was one of the few who, in the words of Charles de Gaulle, understood that sometimes you should learn to live with problems rather than fighting them.
Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist.
TITLE: Military Tribunal Rules Are Little Reassurance
TEXT: WHEN U.S. President George W. Bush last fall ordered the Defense Department to arrange for military commissions to try suspected terrorists, the potential scope of his order was dangerously sweeping. While there was a plausible case for military tribunals, Bush's proposed order covered far more than the narrow range of cases involving high-ranking terrorist suspects for which the tribunals might be necessary.
The order would, for example, have permitted convictions and executions based on a standard looser than proof beyond a reasonable doubt and without a need for unanimity among the judges. It promised no real check on the use of secret evidence, and it was unclear who might find themselves on trial before these tribunals.
Now the Defense Department has issued detailed rules implementing the president's order. In important respects, the refinements constitute a significant improvement. Under the tribunal rules, conviction will require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and death sentences will require unanimity among the commissioners. Defendants will have a right to counsel of their choice. And while secret evidence may be used, a lawyer for the accused - if not the defendant himself - will be able to see and challenge all evidence used against him.
The rules are still a far cry from civilian justice. Evidence will be admitted under more permissive standards than a trial court would allow hearsay, for example, will be okay. And the commissions will be allowed to take steps to protect witnesses and judges that could impair the openness of trials.
Moreover, the review of convictions will be by a military panel, not by a court.
One consequence of the rules as designed may be that relatively few detainees will be tried before special military tribunals at all. This, in turn, raises the question of the disposition of those who won't be tried. The Pentagon has said that some detainees will be released, and some will be repatriated, but it means to detain some indefinitely. The Pentagon, in fact, is making no promises that it will even release those acquitted by the tribunals. The detainees, officials argue, are being held as illegal combatants in a continuing conflict, and, whether or not they are guilty of crimes, officials contend, long-established international law permits detention until hostilities end.
The trouble is that the war on terrorism is unlikely to end in the foreseeable future. And, unlike in a conventional state-to-state conflict, Americans might not know when hostilities finally have come to a halt. Detaining a class of people forever without charge or trial is unacceptable and contrary to American values.
This comment originally appeared as an editorial in The Washington Post.
TITLE: zoopark lets out its final roar
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Zoopark, arguably the most unusually located local club, announced this week that it is closing down. Based in the Leningrad Zoo's lecture hall, the club will hold its last three music shows Friday through Sunday, and then close its doors forever.
Zoopark's roots go back to January 1996, although the club has gone through many incarnations over the years. For a brief period in the fall of 1996, it hosted a post-modernist "animal-lovers' club," organized by then Art Director Alexander Donskikh, who is also the lead singer for the pub band Zoo-park.
However, for most of its history, Zoopark functioned as a concert hall, hosting three to six rock and folk concerts each week. In all, the venue held over 1,000 shows, according the Zoopark manager Vyacheslav Kovalyov.
Zoopark, however, was never as innovative or influential as the now-defunct pioneering alternative TaMtAm club, which spawned many of the most popular bands currently on the local scene. Nonetheless, the club in the zoo is associated with several groups, including the "Brit-pop" Torba-Na-Kruche, which packed the house last Sunday.
"[Zoopark] was a little trampoline for young and talented bands, who tested their musicianship at the club and then went on to become great," said Kovalyov, mentioning such acts as Nochniye Snaipery and the Bashakov Band.
Zoopark's peculiarities included concerts by singer-songwriters - or "bards" as they are known in Russia - whose shows were mixed in among the rock concerts.
"There is no contradiction between [these genres]," said Kovalyov, himself a singer-songwriter, this week. "There is a contradiction between the orthodoxies of both genres, but advanced musicians feel no contradiction. The main thing is talent and ambitions, in the good sense."
According to Kovalyov, Zoopark was a continuation of the pre-1917 traditions of the local zoo, which once hosted two theaters and held performances by brass bands, actors, elocutionists and other entertainers.
"The program is, of course, purely image-producing. What profit can a 100-seat venue make?" Kovalyov said.
"It's profitable, but its profit is inconsequential for the zoo. The zoo is a massive enterprise that eats tens of thousands of budget dollars each year. A zoo is a whim for a big city."
The Leningrad Zoo's former director, Ivan Korneyev, who was supportive of the project, was dismissed in December after months of conflict with the city administration, which accused him of mismanagement. Korneyev, however, argued that Governor Vladimir Yakovlev wanted to take the zoo's downtown territory under his control for development.
"The zoo was the center of a political scandal last summer, which affected our work," said Kovalyov. "The closing of Zoopark is its culmination."
However, the zoo's new director, Olga Chesnova, claims that the closing has nothing to do with the scandal.
"[The club] does not disturb [the zoo's management]," she said by telephone Wednesday. "[It is being closed] because there will be repairs at the lecture hall."
"It's true that the hall needs repairs," said Kovalyov about the 1950s-era venue, which has no toilets inside.
"But if that was the only reason, then it would have been possible to work until the end of the season in early June, as we usually do. Nothing happens [at the club] during the summer, so you are free to carry out repairs."
Although Kovalyov still holds out some hope that the club may be reopened at the same location sometime in the future, he also says that he is considering reopening it somewhere else.
"Everybody is telling me that the aesthetics and concert policies of Zoopark should be maintained," he said. "Even at some other location, this should continue."
Zoopark will certainly be missed by local music scene.
"Zoopark was a unique place," said frequent visitor Andrei Burlaka, the editor of the electronic publication www.rock-n-roll.ru.
"First, it was not really a club, but a small concert hall, which provided the opportunity to hold experimental and synthetic events that would be impossible at big concert halls and rock clubs.
"Second, [Zoopark] evolved a certain creative aura over its five years, and musicians really mixed with one another, which led to all kinds of collaborations," Burlaka concluded.
Link: http://zoomusic.spb.ru. See Gigs for concert details.
TITLE: traveling players come to town
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Theater troupes from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will be arriving in St. Petersburg next week to take part in the festival "Encounters in Russia," an annual festival organized by local venue Baltiisky Dom.
Since its inception four years ago, the festival has tried to bring together the cream of Russian-language dramatic talent from all over the former Soviet Union. This year's event runs April 5 through April 13 and features 12 productions by 10 companies.
"Encounters in Russia" kicks off on April 5 with "A Real Man at the Beginning of a New Millenium," a mixture of intellectual drama and modern choreography performed by Kiev's National Academic Russian Drama Theater. The production is based on the play "Fernando Crapp Has Sent Me This Letter" by German husband-and-wife team Tankred Dorst and Ursula Ehler, which is itself based on "A Real Man" by Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno.
The hugely popular Tashkent, Uzbekistan-based Ilkhom troupe, run by respected director Mark Weil, brings no fewer than three productions to this year's festival: "An Emancipated Romance," loosely based on Pushkin's "Yevgeny Onegin," on April 10; Berthold Brecht's play "A Bourgeois Marriage," on April 11; and Carlo Gozzi's comic play "The Happy Paupers," on April 12.
Lidia Bogova, the festival coordinator, suggests that the Estonian State Russian Drama Theater's prodcution of Oleg Shishkin's play "Karenina-2" will be of particular interest.
The production "gained much attention and critical acclaim in Tallinn, where it premiered," Bogova says, adding that "the staging, which is very experimental, will not appeal to a wide audience, but those interested in seeing something fresh and original will not be disappointed."
"Karenina-2" is based on the theory that Anna Karenina did not die after throwing herself under a train at the end of Tolstoy's novel, but rather survived, horribly crippled. In the play, Anna's husband Alexei takes his estranged wife back into the family home as part of what he sees as his Christian duty.
Although the festival program consists mostly of stage dramas, there is also one puppet show, when Belarus' Grodno Regional Puppet Theater will present its "Tragedy About Macbeth" on April 7. Director Oleg Zhugzhd offers an unusual interpretation of the production's genre, describing it as the "infernal reminiscences of one monarch's reign." In the production, the story of Shakespeare's Macbeth is presented as the product of the whimsical games of three witches.
The festival is not just about the productions. A spectular exhibition of work by German set-designer Gottfried Pilz, who was responsible for the minimalist, compelling sets for the Mariinsky Theater's productions of Wagner's "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walkure" - the second of which he also directed - opened Tuesday at Gallery D137, 90-92 Nevsky Prospect. On display are his sketches for the sets of Jorg Holler's opera "The Master and Margarita," which premiered in Cologne in 1991.
As usual, "Encounters in Russia" is aimed at theater professionals as much as at regular theater goers, with a seminar on contemporary drama being included in the program.
Sergei Shub, the director of Baltiisky Dom, says that this year continues the festival's tradition of organizing "meditative practices" for Russian theater and music students from the former Soviet Union. This year, the Lithuanian State Conservatory's Russian students will be in town to explore the local theater scene, by visiting venues, the city's theater library and Museum of Theatrical and Musical Arts.
"Russian courses in national universities in former Soviet republics have recently began to grow in numbers," Shub says. "We see it as a very encouraging trend, and these visits are our way of showing our support."
Encounters in Russia runs April 5 through April 13 at Baltiisky Dom, 4 Alexandrovsky Park. M: Gorkovskaya. Tel.: 232-35-39 for more information.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: As planned, the new club Orlandina will open on Friday, although Alexei Khvostenko, who wrote the song that the club is named for, will not appear at the opening. According to club management, the emigre poet and painter who has been living in Paris since 1977, was duly invited but cannot enter Russia at the moment because of visa problems.
The club is in the same building that the Pereval club occupied from November 1995 to June 1997. However, the interiors will not bear the slightest resemblance to Pereval's military-style. The place has been completely renovated and redesigned by the artist Nikolai Kopeikin, who works with the art-rock band NOM-Zhir.
While the owners of most local clubs prefer to stay in the shadows for various reasons, Orlandina's ownership has become a widely known open secret. The club belongs to the owners of the popular Caravan and Rock Podval record shops, as well as the Caravan Records label.
Orlandina is at 36a Ulitsa Mira (between the Gorkovskaya and Petrogradskaya metro stations). It doesn't have a phone yet, but interested parties can call Caravan at 110-6536 for information.
Orlandina's opening will feature ex-Kolibri Natasha Pivovarova and her pop-grunge band SOUS, as well as Nastya Poleva's band Nastya. The club, whose ambitious plans include nightly concerts, will normally charge 50 rubles on weekdays and 100 rubles on weekends.
Local promoters Sound Lab have moved some of the upcoming concerts they are organizing to the Conservatory's theater, which, some believe, has a more prestigious ambiance than the Soviet-style Lensoviet Palace of Culture, where the events were to have been held.
This means that Goran Bregovic's Weddings and Funerals Orchestra, Djivan Gasparyan with his band and guests and Diamanda Galas will all appear at the Conservatory, which hosted John Cale in April 1999. These acts will perform on April 7, 10 and 21, respectively. Tickets are available for 480 to 1,500 rubles for Bregovich, 280 to 1,400 for Gasparyan and 280 to 1,200 for Galas from the usual outlets and from Sound Lab's Web site at http://l-sd.net.
However, these events face some serious competition this month. Fans with a yen for techno-punk with sexually explicit lyrics and red PVC outfits won't want to miss Peaches at Red Club on April 6.
Moreover, Ritchie Blackmore, who invented all the guitar solos that Russia's beloved Deep Purple are famed for, has sold out all the "cheap," 500-ruble tickets to his show, but there are still some more expensive seats available for his April 16 gig at the Shostakovich Philharmonic Hall. (Note that tickets for his Helsinki date on April 18 are already sold out.)
And German-rock lovers are anticipating the Scorpions, who will be at the Ice Palace on April 20.
Finally, we shouldn't neglect to mention the Zemfira-headlined Fuzz Awards concert on April 18 and the SKIF 6 festival from April 25 to 28, which will feature such prominent acts as Germany's Peter Brotzman and America's Eugene Chadbourne.
Those who can't afford to go to everything should save their ticket money by skipping the Last Hero concert, which is being promoted out of Moscow and will feature a slate of mediocre pop-rock acts (only Multfilmy is of any note).
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: krokodil snaps up lunch crowd
AUTHOR: By Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of the frustrating things about living in St. Petersburg is that one tends to see one's friends, both Russian and foreign, depart for pastures new - often Moscow or back home - and this usually happens just as you are getting to know them properly. I suspect that it has something to do with money.
It was a great pleasure, then, to be able to undertake this edition's The Dish in the company of Curtis, a former luminary of these pages, no less, now working in Prague, who flew in specially to help me write this. Also it was his birthday or something. Our esteemed political correspondent, Vova, leeched onto our little party as well.
Things in journalism being what they are, we hadn't yet fixed a place to go when Curtis showed up in the office. As it was a nice day, we decided to walk up toward the river and see what we could find. On the way, we remembered Krokodil, where none of us had been for ages, on Galernaya Ulitsa, and so we dropped in.
Krokodil's interior can best be described as relaxing. Dimly and comfortably lit, with enough natural light during the day to give it an airy feel, the main room has some neat touches, such as the crocodile-shaped light-fixtures and a stuffed lizard on top of the piano. The furniture is of the varnished-pine variety, with wicker-backed chairs rounding out an elegant simplicity.
Since it was lunch time and we had been out the previous night, we decided to be largely abstemious, although I did order a Sokol beer at 40 rubles ($1.28). Other than that, we went for two large, half-liter colas, at 30 rubles ($0.96), a peach juice and a mineral water, both of which cost 20 rubles ($0.64).
Navigating the menu took a while, as there was a fair amount to choose from. Although the section labelled main courses is not huge, the pasta dishes are also large enough to be considered mains, and there are a lot of hot and cold starters to choose from.
We decided to split the Cheese Platter (80 rubles, $2.57) as a starter, only to discover that the shy Vova doesn't like cheese. Which is his loss, because Curtis and I polished off a very decent selection good-sized morsels, from the ubiquitous feta to brie - proper brie! - and some hard cheeses as well.
Vova also passed on the salads and went straight to the mains, plumping for Moreno Pasta (130 rubles, $4.17), which turned out to be, to use Curtis' felicitous phrase, "a big-ass plate" of green tagliatele - proper green tagliatele! - with seafood in a white-wine sauce - a proper white-wine sauce! - plus side-salad. As you might be able to tell from all these interjections, I was rather excited by all these exotics, and I made a mental note to ask about Krokodil's suppliers, but promptly forgot.
Anyway, Curtis and I had salads, both of which were excellent. Curtis had the Italian (70 rubles, $2.25), which contained macaroni, vegetables and so on, and excited him so much that he spilled part of it on his pants. They even did it without the olives, as he had requested.
My tuna salad (80 rubles, $2.57) also had beans, julienne strips of cucumber, plus other green bits and came with a mild mustard sauce, which really added something.
For mains, Curtis went for the chicken in cream sauce with fruit at 120 rubles ($3.85), with a side order of Idaho potatoes. The chicken, unfortunately, was smothered by the sauce, which also killed the taste of the fruit, and the whole concoction ended up somewhat bland. However, the potatoes, which were chunky wedges, got a thumbs-up.
I went for the Cream-Trout (180 rubles, $5.78), which was a tender fish steak with a slightly piquant, cream-based sauce, and it hit the spot nicely. The chateau potatoes that I ordered alongside it were disappointing - small balls, too dry and too much green stuff, all served on a large plate that made the portion look stingy, although in actual fact it was not.
The service was generally pretty snappy (sorry), although our server made Curtis and me wait for our salads so that she could bring Vova's pasta at the same time. Curtis then disappeared to catch up with more old friends, and Vova and I left for the office, reflecting on what was generally a very pleasant lunchtime.
Krokodil, 18 Galernaya Ul., Tel.: 314-9437. Open 12 p.m. to 12 a.m. Lunch for three with one beer: 885 rubles ($28.41). Credit cards accepted.
TITLE: no woe, only wit in new bio
AUTHOR: by Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: When in 1829 an infuriated mob in Tehran murdered the Russian dramatist and diplomat Alexander Griboyedov, along with most of his country's embassy, the shah sent Nicholas I one of his largest diamonds as an apology. The 89-carat stone, known as the Shah Nadir, can still be admired in the Kremlin Armory's diamond collection.
Today, when such incidents prompt little more than bland expressions of regret, the Shah Nadir has reminded many an ambassador that diplomacy is no longer what it used to be. Like a fine diamond, the subject of "Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran" is brilliant and multifaceted, and as Laurence Kelly shows in this first English biography of Griboyedov, both his life and death make for an extraordinary tale.
Probably born in Moscow around 1795 (the date and place are not certain), Griboyedov was a man on the run. He first had to flee St. Petersburg, then Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi) because of two embarrassing duels, before becoming a major player in the Great Game for domination of central Asia, writing a play that enraged Russia's censors and finally being murdered by the Tehran mob.
Griboyedov came from a family of the minor nobility. He was steeped in the ideas of the Enlightenment, and despite the excesses of the French Revolution, he had also begun to question his own country's institutions. He was at the same time an ardent Russian patriot, fiercely interested in Russia's defeats and victories in the Napoleonic campaigns.
Griboyedov responded to Tsar Alexander I's appeal for volunteers, obtaining a commission as a cornet in the newly formed Moscow Hussars. Within months, he was offered the more interesting post of private secretary to General Alexander Kologrivov, the head of the Irkutsk Hussars. By this time, he had been recognized as a young man clever with a pen, and this was to be the first of his several posts as private secretary to decision makers.
By the end of l8l5, the war was won . For a young man of Griboyedov's background, without sufficient means to survive independently, the civil service was the only course left. He left Moscow for St. Petersburg, which offered wider social and intellectual horizons. He hoped eventually to join the Foreign Ministry but first wanted to try his chances at a literary career. During his two years in St. Petersburg, Griboyedov became a significant figure on the literary scene. In the summer of l817, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and studied Arabic and Persian. In November he was involved in a duel and had to leave. He was posted to Persia and thus began his involvement in the Great Game.
Kelly skillfully describes Griboyedov's diplomatic career in Georgia, Armenia and Persia, where he carried out Russia's imperial policies and was a leading player in defining the tsar's relations with the Persians and the British in the region. In l827, Griboyedov drafted the Treaty of Turkmanchai, which concluded the Russo-Persian war and was as important to the region as the Congress of Vienna was to Europe. Unlike the Congress of Vienna, however, it established borders that still hold today.
Meanwhile, Griboyedov was sending his friends brilliant letters relating his travels and adventures in the Caucasus and writing criticism, poetry and the various drafts of his verse comedy "Gore ot uma," translated as "Woe From Wit" or "The Misfortune of Being Clever," it is a masterpiece of Russian theater. Kelly shows how the people and events of Griboyedov's life were reflected in his play.
"Woe From Wit" has been taken as a manifesto of the Decembrists. Because of censors, Griboyedov's play couldn't be published and didn't receive a stage performance until l83l, two years after his death. On Aug. 28, l828, Griboyedov, by then Russian Minister Plenipotentiary to Persia, married the beautiful 16-year-old Georgian princess, Nina Chavchavadze, in Tiflis. Three weeks later, Griboyedov, Nina and his embassy left for Tabriz. Upon arrival, he formally handed over the ratified copy of the Treaty of Turkmanchai with the tsar's signature.
In early December, Griboyedov left for Tehran for a purely ceremonial visit. Because of the icy roads and snowstorms he left his pregnant wife behind. He reached Tehran on Dec. 30. His arrival was marred by two ominous coincidences involving an unpropitious astrological sign and the annual re-enactment of a Shiite mystery play. This, combined with various other incidents involving the mission's servants and the townspeople, excited a latent fanaticism on the streets and bazaars of Tehran. A mob, urged on by the mullahs, attacked the embassy and killed all the Europeans of the mission with the exception of one they didn't find. Griboyedov's mutilated body was found and eventually returned to Georgia where he is buried on a hillside above Tiflis.
While Russian historians have accused Britain of masterminding the massacre in revenge for humiliations inflicted on them in Persia by the Treaty of Turkmanchai, Kelly cites correspondence between the Duke of Wellington, then British prime minister, and Lord Ellenborough, president of the Board of Control (which was in charge of India), and draws on the diplomatic and political archives of several countries to prove that this theory does not hold water.
In Laurence Kelly - a diplomat's son, writer and fine linguist who has lived and traveled in Russia and the Caucasus for half a century - Griboyedov has found the biographer he deserves. This groundbreaking book has resulted from extensive research in Britain, Russia and the Caucasus as well as in British, Russian and Persian source materials and British, French and Ottoman political archives. It contains three maps and a wealth of illustrations, most of them in color. The three appendices, the admirable notes on the text and the bibliography will provide a treasure trove for future historians and literary scholars on this subject and period.
"Diplomacy and Murder in Tehran: Alexander Griboyedov and Imperial Russia's Mission to the Shah of Persia," by Laurence Kelly. Published by I.B. Tauris, 315 pages. $35.
Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky is a freelance writer and lecturer living in London.
TITLE: Hotel Bombing Shakes Mideast Peace Attempts
AUTHOR: By Karin Laub
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - Israel said on Thursday that it would exercise its right to self defense, but stopped short of formally abandoning U.S.-backed truce efforts following a Palestinian suicide bombing in a hotel banquet hall.
The bombing killed 20 diners and wounded more than 130 during a festive Passover Seder, the ritual meal ushering in the weeklong Jewish holiday. It was one of the deadliest Palestinian attacks in the current round of fighting.
Several cabinet ministers called for retaliation, including ousting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, toppling his government and reconquering large parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Despite the bloodshed, U.S. envoy An thony Zinni was to remain in the region for now, U.S. Embassy officials said. Zinni had aborted two previous visits because of spiraling violence.
The Palestinian Authority said it "strongly condemned" Wednesday night's bombing at the hotel in the Mediterranean resort of Netanya, carried out by a member of the Islamic militant Hamas group.
Arafat met with his security chiefs and ordered the arrests of key militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militia linked to his Fatah movement. Nasser Awais, leader of the Al Aqsa militia in the West Bank, said he had no plans to surrender to Palestinian police.
However, the militias have become increasingly powerful in recent months, and many of their leaders were in hiding on Thursday. Local security officials said they received lists of suspects to be arrested, but that no efforts had been made yet to find the wanted men.
Israel said Arafat has done nothing to prevent terror attacks, and held him responsible for what government spokesperson Gideon Meir called a "Passover massacre."
In Wednesday's attack, 25-year-old Abdel Baset Odeh, a Hamas member, walked into the Park Hotel in Netanya at about 7:15 p.m. local time, just as about 250 guests dressed in their holiday best were sitting down in the banquet hall for the Passover Seder.
Odeh knew the area well. Before he became wanted by Israel, he had worked in several Netanya hotels, Palestinian security officials said.
Odeh got past an armed security guard posted in the lobby, walked into the banquet hall and detonated explosives strapped to his body that were packed with nails and ball bearings.
The blast blew out windows and walls, overturned tables and cut electricity, plunging the hotel into darkness.
"In the first few seconds, I couldn't comprehend it ... when you see the people, the blood, the screams," said Maxim Alkayef, manager of the dining hall.
History teacher Nechama Donenhirsch, 52, said that as she and her family fled the hall, they saw a girl, about 10 to 12 years old, lying dead on the ground, her eyes wide open as if in surprise.
Some of the wounded staggered out of the darkened lobby, while others were carried out on stretchers, including a young boy who had an oxygen mask pressed to his face.
Alkayef said many of the guests were elderly, and that several tourists were in the hall.
In all, 20 guests and the bomber were killed, but by Thursday morning, only about half the victims had been identified. Eighty-one people remained hospitalized, including 23 who were in serious condition.
Arieh Mekel, a Foreign Ministry official, would not say what action Israel would take. "Our basic policy has not changed," Mekel said. "We want peace. We want a cease-fire, but we certainly have a right to self-defense. We certainly will not sit back and wait for the next suicide bomber."
TITLE: UN To Extend Afghan Peacekeeping Role
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS - The Security Council intends to extend the mandate of the international peacekeeping force in Kabul past June 20, Norway's ambassador said Wednesday.
Afghanistan 's interim leader Hamid Karzai had asked the council in January to extend the 4,500-member force beyond the Afghan capital, to which it is restricted by a council resolution.
But Norwegian Ambassador Ole Peter Kolby, whose country holds the presidency of the 15-member council this month, said on Wednesday that the council members only expressed their intention to extend the time frame of the mandate past June 20.
On Dec. 20 the council authorized the British-led international force to provide security for six months, restricting it to Kabul.
U.S. Deputy Ambassador James Cunningham told the 15-member council on Tuesday that the United States would support extending the mandate through December. But he said the United States opposes any geographical expansion of the International Security Assistance Force.
In Geneva on Wednesday, the UN human-rights representative for Afghanistan called on the international community to deploy peacekeepers across the country.
"The first priority is security," Kamal Hossain said. "Never will so much have been at stake on a modest request for 10,000 to 20,000 people. "It would be a failure to respond to a very legitimate need." Afghan authorities are trying to build a new national army and police force with the help of the international community.
But meanwhile, Afghans are living in a "vacuum" as authorities are finding it difficult to keep the peace between rival warlords and to control crime, Hossain said. "There is a formal international responsibility to see that these people are not suffering from violations of human rights," he said.
But France also said on Tuesday that the main countries contributing troops to the force are against sending it outside the Afghan capital.
Hossain, who is from Bangladesh, earlier reported to the 53-country UN Human-Rights Commission that more is needed to be done to bring to account perpetrators of human-rights abuses during the long conflict in Afghanistan.
TITLE: Italians Protest Terror, Labor Reform
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROME - More than 100,000 people in Rome and other Italian cities turned out for peaceful protests on Wednesday against domestic terrorism and labor reforms that would make it easier to fire people.
The two issues are linked because of the murder last week of a government adviser helping conservative Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government draft changes to the labor laws.
Police said at least 100,000 people demonstrated in Rome. Rallies in other cities drew smaller crowds. It was the second terrorism-labor protest in five days.
The proposed labor reforms, which would end the virtual lifetime job security millions of Italian enjoy, have split the country.
Italy's main labor confederations have called an eight-hour general strike in April.
Unions hope the rallies will defuse suggestions from some Berlusconi's allies that opposition to labor reform somehow played a role the death of economist Marco Biagi, a government consultant.
The slaying was claimed by the Red Brigades, a leftist group that terrorized Italy with assassinations in the 1970s and 1980s.
TITLE: Polish Bishop Quits After Homosexual Allegations
AUTHOR: By Andrzej Stylinski
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WARSAW, Poland - An archbishop in Pope John Paul II's homeland announced his resignation Thursday following a Vatican probe and newspaper allegations that he made homosexual advances on young clerics.
Juliusz Paetz, the Archbishop of Poznan, has dismissed the accusations in the biggest scandal to shake the church in this mainly Roman Catholic country. On Thursday, he again said he was innocent but was stepping down for the "good of the church" in the western Polish city.
"The Poznan church needs unity and peace," Paetz, 67, said at the end of a Mass in which priests renew their vows. "Bearing in mind the good of the beloved Poznan church, I submitted a request to the Holy Father to relieve me of my duties and the Holy Father accepted my request." Paetz said he had fallen victim to misinterpretation of his "kindness and spontaneity."
Shortly after his announcement in Poznan Cathedral, the Vatican confirmed, without further comment, that the pope accepted the resignation. It named as his successor Monsignor Stanislaw Gadecki, 52, an auxiliary bishop in the nearby town of Gniezno.
Poland's Roman Catholic Church said in late February that the Vatican was looking into the allegations in Poland's Rzeczpospolita newspaper, which cited unidentified priests as saying that the archbishop had been accused by numerous priests and clerics of sexual harassment.
Paetz is the highest-ranking prelate to be brought down in a spate of resignations connected to sexual misconduct, and the highest since Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer was forced to give up all his duties in 1998 following allegations he molested young boys.
The resignation comes a week after John Paul broke his silence on sex-abuse cases rocking the Roman Catholic Church, including in the United States. He said the "grave scandal" was casting a "dark shadow of suspicion" over all priests.
John Paul spoke on it again in his homily Thursday, inviting prayers for "our brothers who didn't meet their commitments that came with priestly ordination or who are going through a period of difficulty and crisis."
While thanking God for the gift of the priesthood, John Paul said, "we cannot help but confess our infidelities."
Paetz has said the allegations are part of a campaign to defame him.
"I deny all the information published by the media and I assure you that it is a misinterpretation of my words and behavior," Paetz said in a March 17 letter read in Poznan churches.
"The biggest criminals have a right to anonymity unless a court decides otherwise. I was deprived of that. Mass media have already judged me and sentenced me," he said.
Paetz worked at the Vatican from 1967 to 1976 in the Bishops Synod Secretariat. He was nominated bishop in 1982 and archbishop in 1996 by the pope.
TITLE: World Facing a 'Demographic Revolution'
AUTHOR: By Gerald Nadler
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS - The number of people over 60 years of age will quadruple during the next half century in a worldwide "demographic revolution" that will strain pension and health care systems, UN officials and experts on aging said Wednesday.
By 2050, one in five people worldwide, or 2 billion, will be over 60, said officials preparing for a Madrid, Spain, world conference on aging next month. Currently, one in 10 people is over 60.
"The pervasive implications of the aging of the world population [constitute] a profound demographic revolution, whose impact has been compared to that of globalization," said Nitin Desai, UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs. Within the next 50 years, people older than 60 will outnumber people younger than 15, Desai said.
"In the 20th century, we gained over 30 years of life. That's greater than was attained in the previous 5,000 years of human history," said Dr. Robert Butler, president of the International Longe vity Center-USA. Within the next 20 years, Butler said, 70 percent of over-60s will live in the developing world.
Today, he said, 1.6 million people are in nursing homes in the United States. Eighty percent of them are women. Women outlive men in all countries except two - Pakistan and Bangladesh, Butler said.
Economically, the consequences of people living longer are profound, Butler said. "We could have 70 million baby boomers - with all that talent and experience - sitting and collecting Social Security and using Medicare for up to three decades in retirement without being a vital part of the economic activity," he said.
The aging of the population also imposes distinctive medical demands, since diagnosing diseases in older people requires special skills, he said.
"It is unconscionable that any health-care system would fail to have well-trained physicians, nurses, social workers, allied health professionals that are not fully equipped to understand the very distinctive differences with respect to health in older people," he said.
Better nutrition and medications for high blood pressure account for the greater numbers living past 65, he said.
TITLE: U.S. Airman Jailed for Okinawa Rape
AUTHOR: By Komako Akai
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NAHA, Japan - A U.S. airman was given nearly three years in a Japanese prison Thursday for raping a woman on the southern island of Okinawa, an area simmering with tension over the thousands of U.S. troops based there.
Air Force Staff Sergeant Timothy Woodland went on trial last September after being charged with raping a 20-year-old Japanese woman in a parking lot outside an Okinawa nightclub on June 29.
The incident attracted intense media coverage in Japan, where a series of military-related crimes over the years on Okinawa has heightened tensions with residents. It also raised pressure on Japan's government to revise an agreement with Washington that lets U.S. authorities hold military personnel suspected of crimes until formally charged by prosecutors. U.S. officials refused to hand Woodland over to police for four days after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Prosecutors had demanded a three-year prison sentence for Woodland, who was tried at the District Court in Naha, Okinawa's capital city. But Woodland was sentenced on Thursday to two years and eight months in a prison near Tokyo.
Court official Takashi Hamada said a sentence lighter than that sought by prosecutors is not unusual in Japan for a case involving a first offender.
The airman pleaded innocent to the charge, which normally carries a prison sentence of two to 15 years, saying that he had consensual sex with the woman.
Annette Eddie-Callagain, one of Woodland's lawyers, said she would advise him to appeal the decision. "As far as the defense team is concerned, we are shocked because we were totally expecting a not guilty verdict," she said.
The incident stoked resentment against U.S. troops in Okinawa, which still has painful memories of the 1995 rape of a local schoolgirl by three American servicemen, a crime which sparked huge protests. Okinawa, about 1,600 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, is home to almost half of the approximately 50,000 American troops stationed in Japan.
His home town and the name of the woman have not been released. The victim, who testified by video linkup so she would not have to face Woodland in court, testified that she resisted his advances and added that she hoped he would be sent to prison so she would "never have to see him again."
TITLE: Senators Sweep Past Islanders
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Martin Havlat scored twice as the Senators improved their impressive record against the New York Islanders with a 4-1 win on Wednesday night.
Ottawa, which snapped a four-game losing streak, is 10-0-3 in Nassau Coliseum since 1996 and has lost just one game in the last 26 overall against the Islanders.
"I don't know what it is," Ottawa coach Jacques Martin said. "This year is a little different with the team they have. The Islanders are much better than they've been the past few years."
The Senators were also helped by the schedule: The Islanders have a dreadful record - 0-11-1 - in the first game they play after facing the cross-town New York Rangers. The Islanders beat the Rangers 4-2 in a draining and exciting contest Monday.
Both the Senators and Islanders are likely to make the playoffs. Ottawa moved within two points of idle Toronto for fourth place in the Eastern Conference. The Islanders are tied with New Jersey for sixth.
Havlat scored twice - his first goals since Jan. 22 - and Marian Hossa and Benoit Brunet also scored for Ottawa. Hossa scored his just 17 seconds into the game.
"We took control and played like we wanted to play," said Ottawa goalie Patrick Lalime, who stopped 27 shots. "Everybody was doing his job. We stuck together and paid a price to win."
Mariusz Czerkawski scored for the Islanders, who are slowly moving in on their first playoff berth in eight years. The pace isn't quick enough for New York coach Peter Laviolette.
"From the time the puck dropped, as a group, we weren't ready to play," Laviolette said. "It wouldn't matter who we were playing or who we were chasing. This has to be disturbing for everyone."
Devils 4, Penguins 3. Bobby Holik and Patrik Elias scored less than a minute apart in a three-goal, third-period comeback that gave New Jersey the win in Pittsburgh. The loss cost the Penguins a chance to move within four points of the Eastern Conference's last playoff spot.
Holik scored his first goal in the first period and Stephane Richer also scored for New Jersey, 7-1-0-1 in its last nine games. Randy Robitaille, Aleksey Morozov and Jeff Toms scored for Pittsburgh.
TITLE: Portland Learns Its Lessons, Snaps Spurs Winning Streak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Two days after squandering a 25-point lead in the fourth quarter and losing to Memphis, the Trail Blazers limited Tim Duncan to 10 second-half points and beat San Antonio 98-93 Wednesday night, ending the Spurs' 13-game winning streak.
"It was really just a reality check for us, to let us know we're not invincible," Bonzi Wells said of the loss to the Grizzlies. The Spurs, who had the longest winning streak in the NBA this season, learned the same lesson.
Wells scored 24 points, and Blazers Shawn Kemp, Ruben Patterson and Dale Davis teamed in the second half to limit Duncan, who scored 24 points in the first half, including 17 in the first period.
Duncan had 34 points and 11 rebounds for his 57th double-double of the season, and David Robinson added 14 points and 11 rebounds.
Portland's defense limited San Antonio to just 38 percent shooting in the fourth quarter. The Spurs committed nine turnovers and were outscored 25-6 in second-chance points. Davis added 19 points for the Blazers, who were without leading scorer Rasheed Wallace, who left in the first quarter with a sore lower back.
San Antonio slipped to fourth in the Western Conference playoff race, a half-game behind Dallas and two games behind West-leading Sacramento.
"We gave up more than 20 second-chance points and 23 points off turnovers," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "It's a miracle that we were even in the game."
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Putin Practise
MOSCOW (SPT) - President Vladimir Putin took time out from his eastern Siberian vacation Wednesday to plug his physical-fitness drive at a children's skiing competition.
"I wish you to carry this love for sports all through your life," Putin, wearing a black and brown ski suit, told the young athletes at the opening of the competition in Baikalsk. "Sports as a loyal and good friend will give you back its love and faithfulness as well as support you in all your life trials. It will always help you."
"The main thing sports will do - and will do inconspicuously and with tact - is build up your personality," Putin said in televised remarks. "And it will teach you to win. I wish you all the best."
Putin, flanked by Olympic Committee Chairperson Leonid Tyagachyov, said young skiers from across the country had been invited to take part in the Sibiryachok, or young resident of Siberia, competition during this week's spring break from school. It is the fifth consecutive year the competition has been held, RTR reported.
Over the past two months, Putin has been pushing for Russians to exercise more, saying sports would increase the country's low life-expectancy levels.
English Soccer Worries
LONDON (Reuters) - The English Football League's row with cash-strapped ITV Digital could ultimately harm the English national team, league Chairperson Keith Harris warned on Wednesday.
As the pay-TV broadcaster called in the administrators, the league said the company's failure to honor the final two years of its Pound315-million ($448-million), contract threatened the future of everyone in the game.
"These clubs not only pay players' wages, they also invest in youth and in doing that they are doing several things," Harris told reporters.
"You get good football teams by investing for a long period in youth. That is what happened in France and look at the result. It has been fantastically successful."
ITV Digital has said it cannot pay the remaining Pound178.5 million ($255 million) of an original three-year Pound315-million ($448 million) deal. The league blames the company's owners Carlton Communications and Granada and said in a statement: "If ITV Digital defaults, the League has made it perfectly clear that it will use all available channels to pursue ITV Digital, Carlton Communications and Granada for the remaining rights fees, damages and costs."