SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #758 (24), Tuesday, April 2, 2002
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TITLE: Army Orders Clean Up of 'Cleansing'
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The commander of federal troops in Chechnya issued new rules for conducting the cleansing operations, ordering troops to identify themselves, be polite and provide a list of all the people they detain.
 
Lieutenant General Vladimir Moltenskoi's order, made public Friday, is a startling acknowledgment of how widespread the abuses have been in Chechnya and appears to be the first serious effort to stop them.
 "We are increasing the responsibility of all officials so people will not go missing without a trace," Moltenskoi was quoted by Interfax as saying. "There are facts showing that during special operations, perhaps through the fault of individual commanders, innocent or perhaps not so innocent people go missing."
 During the cleansing operations, troops sweep through a village looking for suspected rebels and, their critics say, taking revenge on the local population for their unsuccessful campaign to establish control over the republic. The troops have been accused of beating and torturing civilians, looting, extorting money for not detaining someone, and taking people away in vehicles whose license plates are smeared with dirt.
 Thousands of Chechen civilians have gone missing or been found dead after such operations, human-rights organizations say. The introduction to the new order, Order No. 80, which was provided to The St. Petersburg Times by the Memorial human-rights group, says that unlawful actions by the military "annihilate the efforts of commanders to enforce security, law and order and favorable conditions for restoring social and economic life; boost the anti-Russian mood; and give the leaders of the illegal armed formations opportunities to bring new members and supporters into their ranks."
 Human-rights activists and local Chechen administrators welcomed Moltenskoi's order, but were skeptical that it would be followed.
 "The potential of the order is big, but in Russia the strictness of orders has always been compensated for by their nonfulfillment," Memorial member Alexander Cherkasov said Friday by telephone. "Moltenskoi promised us in January that the ordeals with the cleansing operations would stop, but nothing changed."
 Under the new instructions, cleansing operations - including operations targeting a specific person, such as the one in which famous kidnapper Arbi Barayev was killed last year at his home in Yermolovka - are to take place only on Moltenskoi's personal orders.
 Representatives of the local administration, imams, local policemen, district military prosecutors, Federal Security Service officers and military commandants are to be "invited to the headquarters of the leader of the operation in the region."
 The troops, except in rare cases, are not to wear masks, and before entering a house they are required to give their name and rank. They are to "exercise tact, constraint and politeness" when dealing with civilians, the order says.
 All military vehicles are to have visible license plates. After an operation, a list of people detained is to be provided to the local administration, along with lists of arms, drugs, explosives, money or other property that has been confiscated.
 Sergei Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman on Chechnya, said the new order was "unprecedented" and gave a good picture of the "unpleasant facts" of how troops have carried out the cleansing operations, Interfax reported.
 Putin's special representative for human rights in Chechnya, Vladimir Kalamanov, told Interfax the order showed a real effort by the government to strengthen the rule of law in Chechnya. He said his office would distribute it throughout the republic.
 Memorial's Cherkasov linked the order to a meeting between Memorial activists and "representatives of the federal government" in Yastrzhembsky's office on March 22.
 "This order includes only the minimum of what we demanded," Cherkasov said. "Whether this order is the result of political will to stop the brutality in Chechnya, we will see soon."
 Shirvani Yasayev, head of the Urus-Martan district administration, said in a telephone interview Friday that a similar decree was issued by the Prosecutor General's Office last summer and "it did not change the situation much."
 Neither Yasayev nor Shamil Burayev, head of the Achkhoi-Martan district administration, where a cruel mopping-up operation last summer sent thousands of Assinovskaya and Sernovodsk residents fleeing to Ingushetia, had seen the order Friday.
 "From what you said about the order, it is very good," Burayev said by telephone. "But will it be fulfilled?"
 Diederik Lohman, director of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, said that a real mechanism must be put in place to hold the military responsible for its crimes. But Lohman said he could not see how control over the cleansing operations would be exercised. The order does not say that local civilian authorities and clergy can accompany the troops during the sweeps.
 Alexander Machevsky, a spokesperson for Yastrzhembsky's office, said holding troops responsible will not be a problem. "The population will have the right to complain," Machevsky said in a telephone interview. "And anyone who is found to have violated the order or the Criminal Code during the operations will be prosecuted.
 "We are going to make public to the troops the names of any soldiers and officers who commit such crimes. It will have a big disciplinary effect," he said.
 Yastrzhembsky said Friday that 33 service personnel, including four officers, have been convicted of various crimes against civilians in Chechnya, Interfax reported.
 Lohman said the numbers were "ridiculous."
 "Look, thousands of civilians were killed in Chechnya and thousands disappeared without a trace, and only about 30 have been punished?" he said.
 The military may have trouble convincing Chechen civilians that they can now trust the troops or that they should report troops who disobey Moltenskoi's order.
 "If no one physically controls the groups of soldiers when they are checking out houses, they will keep doing what they used to do - robbing, insulting us, killing and kidnapping," said Bedredi, 49, who recently fled to Moscow from Argun to escape the sweeps. "No one will complain to the people who collect at the headquarters of the commanders of the operation since we all know the fate of those who complain - people in masks come and kill you."

TITLE: Local Fools Observe Their Own Special Day
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg Institute for Roads, Bridges and Tunnels has submitted to the city administration a plan to build a 286-kilometer pedestrian-only ring road around the city, which would be aimed at diverting transit pedestrians from the regions away from the downtown area, the newspaper Smena reported on Monday.
 
According to the project's authors, the new road would significantly lower the volume of pedestrian traffic in the center of the city and reduce the amount that the city must spend on road repairs, the newspaper reported.
 The same edition of the paper reported that Zurab Tseretely, a Moscow-based sculptor who is known for the massive statue of Peter the Great that he erected in the capital, has won a municipal competition to design a new bridge in the center of the city. Smena said that the bridge would take the shape of an enormous Russian troika, with its wheels positioned on the Petrograd Side and the front hooves of the three horses placed on Vasilievsky Island.
 These reports were just some of the hijinks that local papers pulled to mark April Fool's Day on Monday.
 Other local figures also took advantage of the opportunity to make fun of themselves. On Monday morning, for instance, Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's press service announced that Yakovlev would take part in a race along the most dilapidated street in St. Petersburg. The crossing of Laboratorny Prospect and Prospect Marshala Blukhera in the Krasnogvardeisky District was chosen for the competition.
 "The race was the initiative of [the newspaper] Delovoi Peterburg, and we decided that we should support the idea," said Svetlana Ivanova, a spokesperson for the governor, on Monday.
 "At first we wanted to organize the race on Blagodatnaya Ulitsa or Prospect Metallistov, which were named the worst streets in the city according to a survey conducted by Delovoi Peterburg and the Ferum Club," said Sergei Gurenkov, the art director of the Ferum Club. "But the traffic police thought that it was a joke since we scheduled it for April 1."
 "But then they received a phone call from City Hall and started taking the event seriously. Things became much easier for us after that," Gurenkov said.
 When Yakovlev arrived at Laboratorny Prospect on Monday afternoon, he found the street literally in ruins, without any paving and pitted with huge holes and puddles. When he arrived, a tow truck was stuck in an enormous pothole.
 "You now have the opportunity to drive on this one street as fast as you want, and no one will punish you for it," Yakovlev said enthusiastically in his opening remarks. Yakovlev promised that all the streets named in the Delovoi Peterburg/Ferum Club survey would be repaired this summer.
 Other officials, though, preferred to pass on this holiday.
 "We are a serious organization," said Alexei Gutsailo, a spokesperson for Northwest District Governor General Viktor Cherkesov. "Nothing has happened yet, although the day is not over. Everyone is expecting something, but no one has time for [jokes]."
 There was little to report from the Legislative Assembly as well.
 "It is so quiet today that it seems almost suspicious," said Boris Vishnevsky, an assembly deputy from the Yabloko faction.
 Vishnevsky recalled a prank that he played back in 1996 on Vladimir Putin, who at that time was working on former Mayor Anatoly Sobchak's re-election campaign. City Hall had recently convinced the Legislative Assembly to move up the date of the election to May 19 in what was widely seen as a bid to prevent Sobchak's opponents from mounting effective campaigns.
 Vishnevsky said that he created a fake presidential decree moving the election back to the original June 16 date, and he brought it to Viktor Novosyolov, an assembly deputy with close ties to City Hall who was assassinated on Oct. 20, 1999. Novosyolov immediately telephoned Putin with the news, Vyshnevsky said.
 "Vova, you're an idiot!" Novosyolov said, according to Vishnevsky. 
 "Why is that?" Putin asked.
 "Because Boris Nikolayevich [Yeltsin] slammed back an extra glass [of vodka] and abolished the May 19th law. ... I told you beforehand that your trick wouldn't work," Novosyolov said. "You'd better start looking for a new job in case you lose the election."
 Vishnevsky said that Putin was furious and immediately began trying to figure out a way of breaking the news to Sobchak. Later that day, Vishnevsky called Novosyolov and told him about the prank.
 The presidential press service on Monday refused to comment on Putin's attitude toward April Fool's jokes.
 "The press-service duty officer cannot answer this question. You should send us an official inquiry, which would then be passed on to the responsible structures in order to find the answer," said a spokesperson who refused to identify himself and declined to say which are the "responsible structures" in charge of April Fool's pranks.

TITLE: Putin, Bush To Sign Two Arms Accords
AUTHOR: By Carolyn Skorneck
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - U.S. and Russian negotiators have made so much progress on offensive weapons and a new strategic framework that presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin may sign agreements on both at their Moscow summit in May, the U.S. State Department said.
 
"There are issues that remain to be discussed, as there always are in this sort of affair," John Bolton, undersecretary for arms control and international security, told reporters Friday at the Foreign Press Center.
 "But we're making good progress, and I think it accurately reflects the maturing and merging relationship that is both strong and deep and hopefully will culminate in being able to sign and release these documents in May," he said. "Their determination to move forward is quite evident."
 Among the issues still to be worked out are the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and a U.S. proposal for a new way to count warheads as the United States and Russia reduce their strategic arsenals to 1,700 to 2,200 each.
 "The nonproliferation question is a very high priority for us," Bolton said. He said the Bush administration is focusing on sales to Iran and other "countries of concern" that could lead to new nuclear-armed militaries.
 Although the United States suspects Russia of helping Iran develop nuclear weapons, Bolton indicated the two generally worry about many of the same countries. When U.S. and Russian officials spoke last fall about Bush's plan to forge ahead with missile defense, the United States said the two countries were not a danger to each other, but "we both faced threats from other states, from rogue states," Bolton said.
 "On the Russian side, their threat assessment ultimately was not that different than ours," he said. 
 "The countries we're concerned about are closer to Russia than they are to the United States," Bolton said.
 He said the United States hopes to work with Russia to develop defenses against the common threat, but that cannot happen until the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty expires June 13, six months after Bush announced the U.S. withdrawal from the pact.
 Calling the ABM Treaty a curiosity, Bolton said it "precludes the sharing of technology and research and development on missile defense from one country to another." So cooperation must wait until the treaty expires.
 Another matter under negotiation is how to count the 1,700 to 2,200 warheads that will remain after the two sides make the cutbacks their presidents have vowed to make. The United States wants to change the counting procedure so that the arms agreement will focus on weapons both sides worry about the most, he said.
 Their descriptive name is "operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads." That means warheads installed in intercontinental ballistic missiles or submarine-launched missiles or those near heavy bombers and heavy bomber bases - weapons that can be used immediately.
 Under START I, the arms-control agreement now in place, counting was based on warhead delivery systems, not the number of warheads.
 
 
q
 A Russian move to build a nuclear-power plant for "axis of evil" state North Korea after already constructing one in "co-axis" Iran could threaten Moscow's relations with the United States, a senior U.S. official said Friday.
 
"For the Russians to do this is a very, very bad sign and would add one more burden to the relationship on nonproliferation and one more important topic we've got to get straight with them," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
 Nuclear Power Minister Alexander Rumyantsev told a news conference in Moscow on Wednesday that Russia would complete a nuclear power plant in Iran despite U.S. opposition.
 And, in what would be an expansion of Russian nuclear activities, he said Moscow was also considering a tentative request from North Korea for a similar plant.

TITLE: U.S. Vets Recall Other Frontier
AUTHOR: By Seth Hettena
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN DIEGO - History has not been kind to the men who proved that humans could live and work at the bottom of the sea. In the 1960s, the Navy sent teams of divers to live for weeks on the ocean floor in three successive habitats known as SeaLab. It was a daring series of experiments, paralleling the nation's push to get a man on the moon. 
 
By most accounts, SeaLab ended in failure with the death of one of its participants. But in a little-known chapter now coming to light, the undersea work that began at SeaLab continued in secret and eventually helped yield major Cold War espionage successes. 
 "The world in general thinks the Navy failed," said Jack Tomsky, 82, the officer in charge of SeaLab's third and final mission. "But we didn't fail. We just took it to another level." 
 The dozens of SeaLab veterans, who met earlier this month in San Diego, hope their achievement will be recognized even as their ranks dwindle. 
 Although a military oath prevents SeaLab participants from describing much of their work, some details have been unclassified. Some emerged in "Blind Man's Bluff," a 1998 account of Cold War submarine espionage. 
 In 1971, a specially-designed submarine, the USS Halibut, reached the floor of the Soviet Sea of Okhotsk. Divers, using work pioneered at SeaLab, ventured into the depths and retrieved Soviet test missiles. They also installed a tap on a phone cable that gave U.S. intelligence officials an inside look at the Soviet Navy. 
 On the sea floor, the weight of sea water exerts huge forces, compressing air to a fraction of its normal volume and making oxygen toxic and nitrogen like a drug. The Navy developed a mix of mostly helium, which is not toxic, and small amounts of oxygen. 
 In 1964, SeaLab I was lowered off the coast of Bermuda to find out if life could be sustained on the helium-oxygen mix. An approaching tropical storm ended the experiment after only 11 days. 
 SeaLab II was more ambitious. The 17-by-3 1/2-meter habitat was lowered to a depth of 62 meters off the coast of San Diego the following year. A dolphin ferried supplies from the surface to the so-called aquanauts below. 
 "It's just like living on the surface except you can look out a window and see seaweed and fish instead of trees and birds," said Scott Carpenter, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts, who spent a record 30 days living and working in SeaLab II. 
 SeaLab III in 1969 was most ambitious and secret of the three missions, operating at a depth of 180 meters off San Clemente Island. Its purpose was to test a system that would allow divers to leave the submarine, walk on the sea floor and retrieve objects, said John Craven, a former Navy scientist who oversaw classified work at SeaLab. To that end, it succeeded, he said. 
 But diver Berry Cannon died because his equipment lacked the chemical needed to remove carbon dioxide. SeaLab effectively ended with his death. 
 The myth that SeaLab failed "turned out to be a perfect cover to establish a major program of submarine intelligence using that technology," Craven said. 
 SeaLab veterans hope the program will be remembered for its influence on today's divers helping to build the oil industry and in the exploration of shipwrecks. 
 Carpenter, 76, the second American to orbit the Earth, said he preferred his experience on the ocean floor to his time in space. 
 "In the overall scheme of things, it's the underdog in terms of funding and public interest," he said. "They're both very important explorations. One is much more glorious than the other. Both have tremendous potential."

TITLE: Putin Calls on Caucasus Leaders To Try Dialogue
AUTHOR: By Mara Bellaby
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin acknowledged Saturday that tension is running high in the Caucasus region, but he called on Russia's neighbors there to step up efforts to settle disputes politically.
 
"Unconditional respect for the sovereignty of regional states and their choice of foreign and domestic policy," must be observed, Putin said during a meeting with the security chiefs of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. 
 Georgia has fought separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while Armenia and Azerbaijan battled over the enclave of Nagorny Karabakh, which is located inside Azerbaijan but is populated largely by ethnic Armenians.
 Putin said Russia was concerned about "possible military actions along the Georgian-Abkhaz border close to Russia's frontier." Tensions have risen in recent months between Russia and Georgia, particularly with the announcement that the United States planned to send troops to help train the Georgian military in anti-terrorist maneuvers.
 Putin also said that Armenia and Azerbaijan's continued failure to agree to a settlement to the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, which resulted in the deaths of 30,000 people, makes it difficult for Russia "to develop full-scale relations" with either country.
 "This is a complex but feasible process, requiring compromise," Putin said.
 Meanwhile, Putin called on Russia's three neighbors to work harder to combat terrorism.
 The security chiefs from the four countries, who met separately as part of a two-day summit before briefing Putin, resolved "to step up joint efforts in combating new challenges and threats."
 "This concerns first of all international terrorism, organized crime, the illegal arms trade, illegal migration and illegal drug-trafficking in the Caucasian region," they said in a joint statement.
 The next meeting of the security council chiefs will be held in Tbilisi, Georgia, in the fall.
 
 
q
 The U.S. State Department announced that a nine-year ban on the export or import of defense articles or services to Armenia and Azerbaijan has been lifted. 
 
"We believe there have been positive developments in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and it is in our foreign policy and national security interest to remove them from that proscribed list," spokesman Philip Reeker said Friday. 
 He said their removal will help deepen U.S. military cooperation with both countries and will contribute to peace and stability in the Caucasus.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Kokh Bows Out
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Amid legal wrangling and allegations of foul play, businessperson Alfred Kokh has withdrawn his bid for a seat in the Federation Council, Interfax reported last week.
 Kokh, the director of the Montes Auri investment company and the former head of Gazprom-Media, was elected Feb. 26 to represent Leningrad Oblast, where he has financial interests. The vote surprised analysts and politicians, especially since regional Governor Valery Serdyukov had nominated his own candidate for the post.
 Days after Kokh's election, two regional officials challenged the vote in court, citing procedural violations. Experts said the move reflected the Kremlin's displeasure over Kokh's bid for the seat.
 Kokh said this week that he had decided to give up the senatorial seat out of concern for the region's reputation and because "it is difficult to have a sense of negative public feeling toward oneself," Interfax quoted Serdyukov as saying Thursday.
 
 
Synagogue Defiled 
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Six teenagers believed to be skinheads vandalized a synagogue late Sunday in Kostroma, Interfax reported Monday.
 The report quoted Andrei Osherov, a member of the United Committee for the Protection of Jews, as saying the youths painted a black swastika on the synagogue wall and wrote derogatory remarks signed "Skins." Osherov said the group, aged about 15 or 16, ran away when a guard came outside after hearings noises.
 "The [Jewish] community plans to file a complaint to the Federal Security Service and the regional administration, who assured Kostroma's Jews just a week ago that the city's nationalist and extremist groups were under control," Osherov was quoted as saying.
 
 
Witness Protection
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Moscow city police are launching a U.S.-style witness-protection program, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported Friday.
 Financed from the city budget, the program will involve 30 police officers and operate only in Moscow and the Moscow Oblast.
 Russia has no federal law on witness protection. Over the past decade, the relevant bill had been approved by the State Duma three times but rejected by former President Boris Yeltsin.
 
 
Liberal Russia Congress
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Some 400 Liberal Russia members from 61 regions gathered Saturday for a congress to form a political party, izvestia.ru reported Sunday.
 Delegates adopted a party program compiled by the movement's sponsor Boris Berezovsky and voted to register as a party with the Justice Ministry, according to gazeta.ru. Berezovsky spoke to the congress via a video linkup from London. 
 Interfax said the program names a concentration of power in the hands of the presidential administration and a crackdown on the freedom of speech as two of the main threats to Russia's democracy.
 
 
Judge Confirmed
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The Federation Council confirmed on Friday the appointment of St. Petersburg University law professor Sergei Kazantsev as a judge of the Russian Constitutional Court, Interfax reported.
 Kazantsev, 47, was nominated for a seat in the 19-member court by President Vladimir Putin earlier in March.
 
 
Starovoitov Dead
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Vasily Starovoitov, the father of State Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova, who was gunned down in 1998, died in a London hospital Friday, Interfax reported. He was 82.
 Starovoitov, a decorated engineer and researcher, helped design Lunokhod, the Soviet moon research vehicle, Interfax said.
 His daughter Olga told Interfax that he would be buried in St. Petersburg near Starovoitova's grave. The killing of Starovoitova, who was shot by unidentified assailants, remains unsolved. 



TITLE: Ukraine Chooses Between Reform, Stability
AUTHOR: By Angela Charlton
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV - A pro-Western banker eager to transform stagnant Ukraine cautiously welcomed his strong showing in parliamentary elections, but the Communist Party and a pro-presidential party looked like formidable foes, according to results Monday.
 
Sunday's election came after a stormy campaign that international observers called biased toward federal and local authorities. Voters put President Leonid Kuchma's controversy-shadowed but stable status quo to the test in their France-sized country of 49 million. The close race reflected still-divided opinions about Ukraine's direction more than a decade after its independence from the Soviet Union.
 Based on almost 60 percent of the vote count, the reformist Our Ukraine party of ex-Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko had 21.77 percent, the Communist Party had 20.34 percent, and the pro-presidential party For a United Ukraine had 13.54 percent, according to the election commission.
 The opposition Socialist Party of ex-parliament speaker Oleksandr Moroz had 7.48 percent, the fiercely anti-Kuchma party of ex-Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had 6.51 percent, and the Social-Democratic Party (United) had 6.06 percent.
 Exit polls had indicated a weaker showing for the pro-presidential party and buoyed the opposition overnight. Kuchma praised the election results and insisted the vote was conducted democratically. 
 "Ukraine's choice ... comes down to simple values clear to everyone: independence, stability, prosperity," he said in a statement. 
 "I am for cooperation with all constructive powers that are ready to share responsibility for the country's future and are able to unite in a stable parliamentary majority," he said.
 Meanwhile, Yushchenko questioned the official results and accused the authorities of "cynical behavior," but expressed no doubt that his party would emerge the winner.
 Andreas Gross, vice president of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, slammed the authorities for pressuring election workers and said the campaign favored pro-presidential candidates. He said that could have affected the outcome, though it was unclear by how much. Another monitoring group, with observers from Europe and North America, cited numerous violations, including some people voting twice.
 Election Commission chairperson Mykhailo Riabets said there were minor voting irregularities that he insisted wouldn't affect the overall results.
 It remained unclear who would dominate the 450-seat Verkhovna Rada, since only half its members are chosen by proportional party lists. The other 225 are elected directly in single-mandate districts where pro-presidential candidates are expected to fare well.
 Much will depend on which of the diverse parties build coalitions. The Communists dominated the outgoing parliament and blocked many reforms. Their leader Petro Symonenko came in second in 1999 presidential elections, but their popularity has been eroding. Ukraine under Kuchma has lagged economically, wallowed in corruption controversies and frustrated foreign investors. 
 Kuchma's reputation suffered a blow after the killing in 2000 of outspoken journalist Heorhiy Gongadze. Kuchma has denied any involvement.
 Despite Kuchma's troubles, many Ukrainians fear his opponents will resurrect botched reform plans of the 1990s and they see the president as a guarantor of stability.

TITLE: A Thief or Persecuted Opposition Hero?
AUTHOR: By Angela Charlton
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine - Yulia Tymoshenko may be Ukraine's richest woman and the most-recognized candidate in the parliamentary elections. She has bold style advisers and bottomless reserves of steely charisma.
 
Yet the party she leads was barely able to scrape together enough of Sunday's vote to surmount the 4-percent hurdle it must clear to make it into the next legislature. 
 According to early projects on Monday, Tymoshenko's party garnered about 6.5 percent.
 Tymoshenko's troubles, analysts say, sprout from what ails Ukraine a decade after winning independence: corruption, political favoritism and a deepening chasm between rich and poor.
 Tymoshenko paints herself as a persecuted opposition hero. She says President Leonid Kuchma and his cronies pressured prosecutors to blacken her name and restricted her access to national television and key newspapers.
 Tymoshenko's foes, however, say she's among the country's most corrupt individuals, an unlikely dissident who collaborated with Kuchma when it served her ambitions.
 An economist from the industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk, the stylish 41-year-old was stumping relentlessly around Ukraine ahead of the vote, melding friendly charm with an iron drive to woo voters.
 "They're afraid of our victory," Tymoshenko said in her campaign bus after a rally last week in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, referring to the president's administration and a coterie of influential tycoons known as Ukraine's oligarchs.
 "It is mortally dangerous for their jobs, for their interests, for their wealth." Tymoshenko soared to fame in the 1990s as head of Ukraine's Unified Energy Systems, a conglomerate with close ties to then-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko and a juicy share of the natural gas market. She later became deputy prime minister, where she pushed through reforms of the energy sector that angered many influential tycoons.
 Western investors hailed the changes, but some economists said they merely redistributed the industry's riches in favor of Tymoshenko's allies. She was ousted from government in 2000 and turned fiercely against Kuchma.
 She pledges to hold government officials accountable for deals that fatten elites but leave the masses hungry. Yet she was once one of those hated elites.
 "Public opinion thinks she's a thief. She portrays herself as Joan of Arc, an opposition darling, but the people don't believe it," said Vladimir Malenkovich, director of Kiev's Institute for Humanitarian and Political Research.
 Tymoshenko says she is being persecuted for promoting a market economy.
 "People ask where I hide my billions. I have nothing to hide. Is it a crime to run a business effectively?" she said.
 A year ago, she was arrested on corruption charges dating back to her days as a gas magnate. The charges were dropped but the investigation continues.
 Her supporters include dissidents from disparate camps. She recently reached out to more traditional voters with an unusual ploy: a new hairstyle.
 Gone are her loose-hanging locks. In their place is a tightly woven braid swept over her head - a style obvious to any Ukrainian as that worn by nationalist folk hero Lesya Ukrainka.

TITLE: Veterinarians To Check Out U.S. Chicken
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Following a decision by Russian authorities to lift a ban on the import of U.S. chicken, a delegation of veterinary inspectors flew to the United States on Monday to inspect the quality of poultry exported to Russia and make sure a raft of veterinary-service demands are being met, the Agriculture Ministry said Monday.
 
"The American side has informed us that all demands have been fulfilled. We should check," said Yevgeny Nepoklonov, deputy head of the Agriculture Ministry's veterinary service and the head of the four-person Russian delegation, Interfax reported. The decision to lift the ban would be made depending on results of the visit, he said.
 The United States announced Sunday that it has agreed to adopt tougher controls on veterinary documents and take measures against companies that exported chicken containing salmonella.
 "We are really pleased to have defused the immediate crisis," U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow told a news briefing. "With the visit of [U.S.] President [George W.] Bush just two months away, we need to start working to expand our areas of cooperation now that this obstacle appears to have been removed."
 Russia imposed the ban on poultry March 10, citing concerns about sanitary conditions on U.S. farms and the use of antibiotics and feed additives. 
 After nine days of negotiations that started March 11, the veterinary service drew up a protocol with a list of demands to be met before Russia would lift the ban. Chief Veterinary Inspector Mikhail Kravchuk signed the protocol, which was then handed to a visiting U.S. delegation.
 The U.S. team, however, did not sign the document for more than a week. 
 The Russian side insisted the protocol be signed by Kravchuk's U.S. counterpart, while the U.S. delegation wanted the document signed by Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, said Vladimir Fisin, vice president of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences and head of the Russian Poultry Union.
 Although the United States has three chief veterinary inspectors, it was Vershbow who eventually signed the protocol.
 According to the protocol, "after the U.S. side fully complies with the actions ... the Russian veterinary service will lift the temporary ban on U.S. poultry meat exports by April 10, 2002."
 The protocol demands that the 14 U.S. poultry producers already found to have exported meat containing salmonella be barred from exporting to Russia. It also requires the United States to create a new certificate verified with a stamp and signed by a veterinary inspector. 
 Further discussion on antibiotic and other preservatives are to be held, the protocol says, after which a new bilateral agreement on poultry imports will be drawn up, replacing an older agreement signed in 1996.
 The new agreement could be signed within two months, Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said Monday.
 The agreement is to "contain additional control under use of antibiotics and other chemicals while feeding and growing poultry," Intefax quoted Gordeyev as saying. He added that feed used by U.S. farmers must be registered in Russia.
 Nepoklonov said the Russian delegation would also inspect two U.S. ports from which poultry is exported. He said that it has not yet been determined how long the delegation will stay in the United States.
 <i>- SPT, Reuters </i>

TITLE: Cabinet Releases a Three-Year Budget Plan
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Scrapping a decade-long practice of short-sighted, year-by-year budgeting, the government made a nod toward fiscal maturity Friday by starting to plan ahead to 2005.
 
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told the cabinet that it needs to continue to wean the economy off its dependence on high oil and commodity prices by boosting the manufacturing sector, developing small and medium-sized businesses and keeping domestic demand strong.
 &quot;The influence of external economic factors has halved, and we need to ensure that this tendency continues in this and the following years,&quot; Kasyanov said, according to the government information department.
 External factors fueled 16 percent of the economy's growth in 2001, compared to 31 percent in 2000, as export revenues and the population's increasing income fed internal demand, according to an economic forecast for 2003 to 20005 that Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref presented at the meeting.
 The report, posted on the government's Web site (www.government.ru), envisages growth arising from investment in nonexport sectors and the growth of productivity. It also paints a rosy picture of the fight against illegal capital flight, predicting a drop of 40 percent by 2005.
 Nonetheless, the main variable in the Economic Development and Trade Ministry's report remains oil prices. In the report's &quot;conservative&quot; scenario, Urals oil will average $18.5 per barrel and the economy will show annual growth of 3.5 percent to 4 percent from 2003 to 2005. The &quot;optimistic&quot; scenario sees oil prices of $21 to $23 per barrel and gross domestic product growth of 4 percent to 4.5 percent.
 Gref warned that if oil prices fall to $16.5 per barrel, GDP growth could be a mere 2.6 percent in 2003.
 Both scenarios predict that by 2005 the government could slow the inflation rate to 8 percent to 10 percent, from the 2002 budget forecast of 12 percent to 14 percent - but only by carefully coordinating monetary, budget, tariff, tax, currency, structural and social policies, including wage increases and housing reform.
 The report estimates the maximum increase in overall power rates, including gas, to be 15 to 18 percent per year, with gas prices to be hiked 25 percent per year. It also recommends railway tariffs be raised at a rate of 1 to 2 percent less than the inflation rate.
 Analysts said rebalancing tariffs is vital for both investment and future economic growth.
 &quot;The government has to fix the price structure. Raw materials are still much more profitable than other types of business, which is why investment goes there,&quot; said Oleg Vyugin, chief economist at Troika Dialog. &quot;If we want to see investment in the processing sector, then we have to follow proper policies.&quot;
 Kasyanov, however, said a number of projections were too vague to provide a reliable forecast. &quot;Not all indicators necessary for determining economic development scenarios to 2005 are clearly outlined,&quot; he said.
 The Economic Development and Trade Ministry, together with the Finance Ministry and the Labor Ministry, has until Friday to refine its forecasts and flesh out the assumptions underlying potential tariff increases and the knock-on effect in the economy, as well as the forecasts for investment growth, external-debt payments and reform costs and the effect of increased labor productivity on unemployment.
 The ministries were also told to look into ways to support exports.
 Among potential pitfalls over the next three years, Gref's ministry identified increasing imports, which are crowding out domestic goods; growing production costs; and companies' falling profitability.
 Consolidated profits dropped from 107.2 billion rubles ($3.79 billion) in January 2001 to 90 billion rubles ($2.9 billion) in January 2002, according to Renaissance Capital.
 The report contains few recommendations for checking real ruble appreciation, which has been a key factor in lowering companies' cost competitiveness. It notes that large external-debt payments in 2003 could temporarily help slow real ruble appreciation, but that high oil prices would drive real appreciation. The Economy Development and Trade Ministry put the minimum necessary budget expenditures on reforms and debt payments at 12 percent of GDP and the maximum at 13 percent.
 Another problem facing the economy is a continuing slowdown in investment activity, the cabinet was told. In 2001, investment in the export-oriented commodities sectors grew 18.2 percent, but investment in vital non-export sectors dropped 8 percent.
 According to Gref's ministry, the main driver of growth will be the transformation of government and corporate savings into investment. Savings grew to 35 percent of GDP in 2001, according to the ministry.
 The &quot;conservative&quot; scenario predicts average investment growth of 6.5 percent in 2003 to 2005, the other scenario of 7 to 7.5 percent.
 Economists called the forecasts realistic but said economic and social reforms were essential to sustain longer-term growth. The ministry's forecast assumes the government will continue to forge ahead.
 &quot;Growth has a good chance of accelerating in a couple of years when structural reforms kick in,&quot; said Alexei Moiseyev, an economist at Renaissance Capital. &quot;For that to happen, they need to carry out some of the reforms they've discussed but haven't done much about yet, most importantly banking reform. Otherwise growth will stagnate.&quot;
 The cabinet meeting came a day after President Vladimir Putin, who has been pushing the government to find ways of kicking the economy into higher gear, spoke strongly in favor of helping small and medium-sized businesses.
 &quot;The two cheapest sources of growth are foreign direct investment and small-business development,&quot; Vyugin said. &quot;The government now understands the problem. We are seeing the first steps in small businesses, and we may see steps in terms of FDI.&quot;
 &quot;Diversifying the economy - both across industries, away from oil, and across firms, toward startups - is the single most important ingredient for future sustainable economic growth in Russia, and on that front Russia is still lacking,&quot; said Christof Ruhl, chief economist at the World Bank in Moscow.

TITLE: City Hosting Energy Forum
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Executives from major energy companies, representatives from the federal and local governmets and leading academics will converge as the Tavrichesky Palace plays host to a conference exploring issues in the Russian energy sector.
 
The Fuel and Energy Complex: Regional Aspects forum, which runs from Tuesday to Friday, will address a range of topics in an industry that is the largest source of the country's total exports and of federal-budget revenues. According to information provided by the organizers of the forum, the energy sector accounts for 45 percent of Russia's foreign-currency earnings and more than 30 percent of federal- budget revenues.
 &quot;It's obvious that this sector is of enormous importance and has a major influence on Russia's economy,&quot; said Yelena Rytova, the head of the forum's organizing committee. &quot;The sector determines the entire economic strategy for the country. Sometimes this strategy needs to be altered and improved, so this is the point of the forum.&quot;
 The first day of the forum will feature addresses from officials associated with the sector. Government representatives making presentations will include federal Energy Minister Igor Yusufov, First Deputy Natural Resources Minister Vitaly Karaganov and Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Bulat Nigmatulin. Also speaking will be oil-industry representatives, including Vadim Somov, vice president of No. 3 oil major Surgutneftegaz and general director of Kirishinefteorgsintez, a refining company, and Mikhail Gutseriev, president of No. 8 oil producer Slavneft.
 A number of round-table sessons will then be held on Wednesday and Thursday, dealing with themes including the present condition of and prospects for the oil-and-gas industry in the CIS, perspectives for the development of Russian oil-refining capacity, perspectives for increasing the use of natural gas as a fuel for automobiles and the retail fuel market in the Northwest Region.
 The fuel-market theme will be one of interest, as the sector produces annual revenues of about $350 million and the market remains terribly underserved. St. Petersburg has one filling station for every 4,000, compared to figures for European countries ranging from one station per 900 cars to one for every 2,500.
 Another important round table at the forum will deal with investment in the sector. According to information provided by the organizers, Russia's petroleum industry will need an influx of $850 billion over the next 20 years in order to maintain its present budgetary and foreign-currency contributions. The need for foreign investment will likely be a central theme, as total investment in the oil industry for 2001 totaled only $12 billion, with 90 percent of this money coming from the firms themselves.
 &quot;There are a number of big questions that need to be discussed, such as setting up production and the licensing and development of new resource areas,&quot; Rytova said. &quot;Another serious problem is the modernization of existing refineries so that they are able to refine the oil they receive into quality gasoline. There really isn't any existing plan that sets out how to do this, so that will be a main point of discussion as well.&quot;
 But, while the organizers of the forum emphasize the necessity to discuss these issues, some analysts downplay the importance of the event.
 &quot;Prices on the world market are rising due to events in the Middle East and oil output in Russia grew in January and February, so the forum will largely be a chance for the participants to report their success,&quot; said Lev Sovulkhin, the senior economic analyst at the Leontief Center for Socio-Economic Research. &quot;It's a good opportunity for them to meet and talk about life, but there's not a lot of impetus to use the forum to coordinate policy given the stable situation right now.&quot;

TITLE: KMB First in Survey By Consumer Group
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Lingering memories of pyramid schemes and the 1998 financial crisis have made a lot of people exclude banks as places to put their money, preferring instead to keep it under their mattresses. But as the economy continues to grow, bringing wages along with it, there may not be enough mattress space to keep the public's growing cache of dollars.
 
So where should Russians keep their savings? In any developed country, the answer is obvious: a bank. But for Russians, it's not so simple.
 &quot;After the collapse of SBS-Agro, MOST-Bank and Inkombank, which had huge retail networks ... we don't recommend Russian consumers put their money in local banks,&quot; said Dmitry Yanin, the executive vice president of the independent consumer-rights group Konfop, which recently completed a ranking of foreign banks offering retail services in Russia.
 Konfop, which operates in six CIS states and is a member of Consumers International, a federation of consumer-advocacy groups, sent a representative to nine fully foreign-owned banks to open a savings account.
 The depositor did not know the nationality or the specialization of the banks and was unaware of their position on the market, Konfop said.
 The banks were rated according to three main criteria: economic attractiveness, including interest rates and minimal deposit requirements; transparency and helpfulness of staff; and other factors like the availability of information and its presence on the Internet.
 The highest score was given to KMB-Bank, which since 1998 has been the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's main channel for lending to small and medium-sized enterprises.
 Turkey's GarantiBank and Finansbank, neither of which operate St. Petersburg branches, took second and third place respectively, while Austria's Raiffeisenbank placed fourth of the nine banks listed.
 &quot;We were not surprised that our bank was No. 1 for depositors in terms of economic attractiveness,&quot; said a KMB-Bank representative. &quot;At the same time, it was a pleasant surprise for us to find out that we also had a high score for retail service because don't consider that a priority.&quot;
 KMB began working with retail customers only recently but is looking to increase its activity. The bank has attracted roughly 1,000 new depositors in the last few months, KMB said, bringing its total number of retail customers to more than 8,000.
 The major advantages of KMB and GarantiBank, Konfop said, were their low minimum-deposit requirements: KMB-Bank requires a minimum deposit of $100 or 100 euros, while GarantiBank's is $1,000. The lack of a minimum-balance requirement and high interest rates were contributing factors, Konfop said.
 Konfop cited high minimum deposits ($5,000 or the euro equivalent), strict requirements for opening a deposit (tax declaration) and low interest rates as drawbacks for Raiffeisenbank, a leader in retailer services among foreign banks, with more than $153 million in deposits at five branches in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg.
 Raiffeisenbank sets its interest rates in accordance with the London Interbank Offer rate, or LIBOR, said the bank's board chairperson Michel Perhirin.
 The bank pays 3 percent on dollar deposits ranging from $5,000 to $49,000 or 2 percent for the same amounts in euros - some of the lowest rates on the entire retail market.
 KMB-Bank, on the other hand, is offering 5 percent in interest for dollar deposits of the same size and 4.5 percent for euros, while GarantiBank is offering 4 percent and 3.25 percent, respectively.

TITLE: Mig-Yak To Split Contract for Trainers
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In a compromise decision, the air force said over the weekend that it has selected both the Yak-130 and the MiG-AT as its new trainer jets.
 
The manufacturers of both jets have been involved in an almost decade-long tender to replace the air force's aging fleet of Czech-made L-29 and L-39 trainers.
 Interfax-Military News reported in mid-March that the tender commission had opted for the Yak-130. Analysts said at the time that rejection by the air force would shatter any ambitions to export the MiG-AT.
 Air Force spokesperson Alexander Drobyshevsky said by telephone Sunday that a decision has been made under which the air force will fly both trainers. He said the Yak-130 was recognized as both a trainer and combat jet for the air force, while the MiG-AT will be used purely as a trainer jet.
 &quot;These are two different jets and we need both of them,&quot; he said. The air force, however, has no plans to get any new jets before 2005 and will continue to use the existing Czech trainers until then. Drobyshevsky would not say how many such jets the air force will take after 2005.
 Yak-130 designer Konstantin Popovich had claimed in mid-March that the air force would require 120 trainer jets. The air force has already placed an order with the Sokol production plant in Nizhny Novgorod for 10 Yak-130s, Nizhny Novgorodskiye Novosti agency reported Friday.
 Yakovlev is also eyeing foreign markets and is in talks to sell its jets to Slovakia with Slovakian-made DB-2 engines.
 MiG also has international ambitions. Igor Amosov, executive secretary for the Russian-French MiG-AT coordination council, said in a recent interview that MiG hopes to sell around 400 jets worldwide by 2010.
 With the profit to be shared by MiG and its French partners, Thales Avionics and engine-maker Snecma, MiG alone expects to garner $3 billion.
 Faced with fierce competition on the international market from a few foreign-made trainers, MiG believes that, as a joint project with French-built Larzac engines and Thales avionics, it stands a decent chance of selling abroad.
 &quot;As the main competitors in the advanced trainer class, such as the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company's Mako, the Italian M-346, and the U.S.-South Korean A-50/T-50 trainers, won't enter the market until 2007, MiG-AT will be the only modern, advanced trainer available,&quot; Amosov said.
 At home MiG hopes to deliver at least 300 trainers.

TITLE: Central Bank Needs Serious Downsizing
TEXT: IN Russia, the term &quot;independence&quot; is understood as the right to act with impunity and &quot;control&quot; as state intervention. These peculiarities of our national perception of reality were in full evidence during the recent skirmish over the independence of the Central Bank, which ultimately led to Viktor Gerashchenko's departure.
 
The government wanted to monitor the Central Bank's expenditures. The bank, in turn, argued that if the proposed National Banking Council were to know exactly how much it spends on paper clips, this would spell the end of its independence.
 It should be noted that the Central Bank is the only organization in this country that still lives under communism. It prints all the money it spends.
 And life is good under communism. The Central Bank employs between 80,000 and 90,000 people, making it the largest national bank in terms of staff in the world. The chairperson earned twice as much as his U.S. colleague, Federal Reserve Chairperson Alan Greenspan (at least during the November 1995 to September 1998 tenure of Sergei Dubinin). The bank spends up to $700 million each year on computer equipment and a number of its expenditures are kept entirely off the books.
 Russia's monetary base amounts to 900 billion rubles ($28.9 billion). The Central Bank spends 60 billion rubles ($1.9 billion) per year, and yet bank officials are perplexed by the falling value of the ruble. The pathological professional integrity of Sergei Ignatyev, who as first deputy finance minister was buying his cigarettes wholesale to save money, could help bolster the exchange rate - but only if he sacks half of his staff.
 Another dispute has arisen over Vneshtorgbank. The Central Bank wanted to keep it under its wing, while the government wanted the bank for itself - and for free. The Central Bank's control of Sberbank and Vneshtorgbank means that Russia has, in effect, a three-tier banking system. Where most countries have a central bank and then commercial banks, Russia has the Central Bank, commercial banks and Sberbank.
 Everyone puts their money into Sberbank because they know that, should push comes to shove, the Central Bank will simply print more rubles in order to pay out to its depositors. Sberbank and Vneshtorgbank have both failed as commercial banks. By extending loans to Gazprom to the tune of $1.5 billion over the last two months, both banks have demonstrated that the state is using them to launder government credits. It's clear that the Central Bank should not continue to own either Sberbank or Vneshtorgbank. They choke the banking system, as burdocks in the garden choke the radishes. But it is also clear that if ownership of these burdocks is handed over to the government, those same radishes will be wiped out.
 No one has yet to suggest breaking up the Central Bank monopoly by separating its functions of supervising the banking sector from those of defending the ruble exchange rate, for example. True, most of the central banks around the world do combine these functions, but what is permissible in a civilized country can turn out to be very dangerous in a corrupt country like Russia.
 As you may recall, the Central Bank received $3.8 billion from the IMF in August 1998. The money was earmarked to prop up the ruble, but was instead immediately dispensed to various banks in the form of stabilization loans. Those banks then transferred the loan money overseas, the ruble collapsed, and our foreign debt rose accordingly.
 The Central Bank is a gigantic monopoly. Control of that monopoly was the central issue in the recent dispute between the Central Bank and the Kremlin. But the monopoly doesn't so much need to be controlled as it needs to be broken up.
 
 <i>
Yulia Latynina is a journalist with ORT. </i>

TITLE: Russia's Black-and-White Transition
AUTHOR: By Poul Funder Larsen
TEXT: ANDERS &Aring;slund, the Swedish economist who helped shape economic reform in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, has a quality rarely exhibited in macroeconomics: passion. One believes &Aring;slund when, in the acknowledgments of his new book <strong>Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc, </strong>he explains the roots of his fascination with eastern Europe in general and Russia in particular: &quot;In Sweden everything seemed gray, while Russia displayed the full spectrum from black to white.&quot;
 
It is both the strength and weakness of &quot;Building Capitalism,&quot; a 500-plus-page analysis of the economic and social transformation of the former Soviet bloc, that &Aring;slund holds strong views on what is &quot;black&quot; and &quot;white&quot; in the Russian and eastern European transition toward capitalism.
 The strength is in &Aring;slund's genuine commitment to his subject as an academic economist, but also as an eminent practitioner in his role as adviser to Boris Yeltsin, Ukraine's Leonid Kuchma and Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan. Do not expect any inside gossip. This book focuses on policies rather than personalities. Aslund is clearly a man with a mission of promoting liberal economic reform, making the book a fundamentally good read despite the complex issues he addresses.
 One of &Aring;slund's key points in &quot;Building Capitalism&quot; is that &quot;the more radical and comprehensive the initial reform has been, the greater the economic success.&quot; He points to countries like Estonia, Hungary and Poland as examples. On the other side, there are states like Ukraine and, to some extent, Russia, where reforms have stalled as a new class of &quot;rent-seekers&quot; moved into the post-communist void. The rent-seekers are extracting huge profits by a variety of means (price and export controls, financial machinations, asset stripping), creating societies where all-pervasive state control has been abolished but no genuine free market created.
 Arguably the most controversial aspect of &Aring;slund's book is his view on the consequences of reforms on the region's economic and social life. &Aring;slund sees the criticism leveled against radical reformers - that liberalization led to a collapse in output, created widespread social misery and increased corruption - as unjust. On the contrary, he argues, it was half-baked compromises, rather than the much-maligned shock therapy, that caused most of Russia's transitional problems. &quot;A maximum of discontinuity without violence is desirable to take society out of the old situation and avoid the costly, partially reformed state. A severe shock is needed at the level of both society and individual,&quot; he writes.
 Less convincing is &Aring;slund's discussion of how transition has changed the social situation for people in the region. He asserts that &quot;social hardship has been greatly exaggerated, though poverty has increased with growing income inequality.&quot; Indeed, the social impoverishment suffered by large swathes of the population in the former Soviet Union is a factor that has been given too little attention by reformers with their sights set on systemic change at maximum speed.
 
 <i>
&quot;Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc,&quot; by Anders &Aring;slund. Published by Cambridge University Press. 550 pages. $27.00
 

 
Poul Funder Larsen is a Copenhagen-based journalist who covered economic reform in Russia in the 1990s. </i>

TITLE: Reform of Postal Service Means Fewer Players, More Agreement
AUTHOR: By Larisa Naumenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Post offices have had to rent out space to food stores and barber shops to make ends meet as fewer and fewer people send letters. But that could all change under a Communications Ministry plan to jump-start the postal service by merging the country's 93 floundering regional postal departments into a single company called Russian Post.
 
If residents of the Nizhegorodskaya Oblast, the region that surrounds and includes the city of Nizhny Novgorod, want to repair their shoes or refrigerators, have their hair cut or buy some salami, there's a place they can go that offers all these services on the spot - the local post office.
 Nikolai Kuzhov, head of the federal postal service's Nizhegorodskaya Oblast department, said that many of the post offices in the region have started offering an array of additional services because they are unable to cover their costs by performing the more traditional service of processing letters and packages or arranging money transfers.
 The desperate measures taken by the Nizhegorodskaya Oblast post offices to survive reflect the dismal state of Russia's postal system, where underfunding and poor infrastructure have meant that letters often take weeks or months to arrive at their destinations.
 Because the service is so poor, Russians are sending fewer and fewer letters, forcing post offices to look elsewhere for revenue.
 In a bid to overhaul the failing system, the Communications Ministry has come up with a plan to reform the federal postal service that was approved at a government meeting last month.
 In a written report, which was released after the meeting, the Communications Ministry blamed Russia's woeful postal service on fragmentation and a lack of coordination between regional departments within the postal network.
 As part of the reform, the ministry wants to create a single postal operator called Russian Post that could eventually be turned into a joint-stock company.
 &quot;As a result of unfair internal competition, failures to make internal payments, bringing profitable businesses into the gray-market financing sector or merging them with related organizations, the federal postal system posts annual losses and unnecessary expenditures of about 3 billion rubles [$96 million],&quot; said Deputy Communications Minister Alexander Kiselyov.
 Kiselyov said that this figure is 40 times higher than the annual subsidy allocated for the postal service in the federal budget.
 The Communications Ministry report said that 300,000 people are currently employed at the country's 40,000 post offices, which are run by 93 regional departments.
 
 
Network and Quality
 
The report said the regional departments do not follow a unified development strategy in their operations, but work according to their own needs and according to the different economic situations in their respective regions.
 
The report also criticized the complicated system of mutual payments between the regional postal departments, which it described as nontransparent.
 Anton Shchegolikhin, the first deputy head of the postal-service department at the Communications Ministry, said the ministry's plan was to &quot;reorganize management of the national postal network and then activate the resources of the entire network by bringing some of them out of the gray market through unified management.&quot;
 &quot;The federal postal service offers a network, but no quality,&quot; he said. &quot;Alternative operators offer quality, but no network. With the current organization and [low] tariffs, it's hard to talk about the quality of the postal service.&quot;
 The postal service's current price to send a letter within Russia is 3 rubles ($0.10). It charges 8 rubles for letters to CIS countries and 14 rubles to send letters abroad.
 Despite the low charges for sending letters, customers are deserting the postal service in increasing numbers.
 Kiselyov said that, from 1990 to 2000, the volume of all traditional services provided by the Russian postal system, except for the delivery of pensions, decreased steadily.
 Mail delivery has fallen by 13.3 percent year on year, money transfers by 13.6 percent, delivery of newspapers and magazines by 21 percent and delivery of packages by 22.1 percent per year, he said.
 Over the same period, the amount of pensions delivered has increased by 2.1 percent annually, mainly due to the growing number of pensioners across the country, Kiselyov said.
 Kiselyov added that in terms of the volume of mail sent, Russia now lags behind less-developed countries like Brazil and Malaysia.
 Russians currently send an average of 30 pieces of mail a year, Kiselyov said. According to 1997 Universal Postal Union statistics, the global average of letters sent per person per year is 71. Americans send the most letters at 703 per person, followed by the Norwegians with 547 and the Swedes with 493.
 In developing countries, the figures vary from 0.01 letters per person to 33 letters per person.
 The low volume of mail that passes through the Russian postal system reflects the poor quality in service compared to other countries.
 The Communications Ministry report said that across Russia, 77.5 percent of mail is delivered in up to 20 days, while within Moscow and St. Petersburg 80 percent of mail delivered in up to three days - the same period it takes to deliver 80 percent of mail between European Union countries. Within EU countries, 95 percent of mail is delivered in one day, the report said.
 The reforms outlined in the report are already under way, although some details have yet to be worked out, said Sergei Grigorenko, a spokesperson for the Communications Ministry. The reforms will take three to four years to implement, the ministry said.
 
Making Money
 
According to the ministry report, a unified postal operator called Russian Post will be created this year. The new operator, which is to be created over a period of a year and a half, is to oversee a federal transportation and sorting network, a regional delivery network and international and express postal services.
 
As part of the reforms, Russia will be divided into a yet to be decided number of postal districts, each of which will be run by representatives of Russian Post.
 The districts will be formed according to the intensity of mail exchange among the regions. As a result, they may not coincide with the boundaries of the seven federal districts.
 The report said that, once the restructuring phase is completed, the ministry will look into the possibility of turning Russian Post into a joint-stock company in which the state would maintain a controlling stake.
 Communications Minister Leonid Reiman said last month that the composition of the joint-stock company has not yet been discussed.
 But Reiman said that some parts of the reform plan are already being realized in the form of new technologies and business projects that are being organized and new services that are being introduced.
 As an example, he said that last year 1,500 public Internet-access points were installed in post offices across the country, 500 of them in the rural areas, Interfax reported.
 Kiselyov said that, once centralized, the postal system could increase its investment in business and technological development to $115 million per year as a result of savings made possible by increased efficiency.
 The current level of investment in this area is $10 million to $15 million per year, he said.
 To update the technology used in the postal system would require $1 billion in investment over the next three to five years, the Communications Ministry report said. It said that in 2000, just $10 million was invested in the postal service.
 Postal-service revenues in 2000 totaled 16.3 billion rubles ($524 million) and net profit margin fell to 3.9 percent from 4.4 percent in 1998, the report said.
 Per-capita revenues are just 1 percent of those for European postal operators, it added.
 
 
Post Ready for Action
 
The plans for reform have been welcomed by officials working within the postal system.
 
&quot;This is a very important and extremely necessary change. The current situation of a great degree of fragmentation within the postal system demands reform,&quot; said Igor Syrtsov, the general director at Mezhdunarodny Pochtamt, the country's international postal operator.
 &quot;Among the negative consequences of this fragmentation are the facts that the internal competition has developed within the postal system, and the nontransparent system of internal payments that prevents the postal system from operating effectively and developing into a postal business.&quot;
 Syrtsov said the plan makes sense, as postal operators in many countries operate as joint-stock companies. In some of them, the state owns controlling stakes, while in the most advanced postal systems, such as that in the Netherlands, the state owns less than 50 percent of the stock, he said.
 Syrtsov said the reforms &quot;will help optimize many processes and introduce unified financial, technological and marketing policies.&quot;
 &quot;Today it's hard to find two post offices that look alike,&quot; he added.
 Kuzhov of the Nizhegorodskaya Oblast postal department agreed.
 &quot;To work the way we are working today, without any idea of where we are heading, is difficult,&quot; he said. &quot;There is no question that we need reform.&quot;
 Kuzhov said it takes 24 hours to deliver mail from anywhere in the 74,800-square-kilometer oblast to Nizhny Novgorod, and 48 hours between two cities or villages outside the regional center.
 Vitaly Starkov, the first deputy head of the federal postal service department in the Chelyabinskaya Oblast, considers his regional postal system advanced. Post offices have automatic processing equipment and access to the Internet, he said.
 But Starkov said it still takes two to three days to deliver mail within the Oblast, which has an area of 87,900 square kilometers - one-sixth the size of France.
 &quot;Everybody understands that we need restructuring,&quot; Starkov said.
 
 
Alternative Gains
 
Russia's two leading international express delivery companies are also positive about the reform plan.
 
Tikhon Yevdokimov, commercial director for DHL in Russia and the CIS, said that the new structure of the federal postal service will help DHL to cooperate with the service and would make it possible to consider a long-term partnership program. DHL has agreements with postal services in 44 countries worldwide, he said.
 &quot;As soon as we have the decision-making center in Moscow, we will be ready to talk about countrywide cooperation programs,&quot; Yegdokimov said. &quot;In this case, the federal postal service could offer express delivery through DHL. Both operators would win in this situation.&quot;
 Last year, 10 Moscow post offices started offering services through DHL. This year DHL plans to offer its services at a further 10 post offices in the city.
 Maria Korbut, a spokesperson for TNT Russia, also hopes that the reforms will lead to increased cooperation with the postal service.
 &quot;If the postal provider becomes stronger - and I hope that the reforms will lead to this - we can only win,&quot; she said.
 Korbut said that TNT has agreements with postal services in 20 countries across the world and already started working with Russia's postal service earlier this year.
 &quot;With a unification of the strategies of both partners, we are able to make joint decisions faster and more effectively,&quot; she said, adding that TNT currently has to arrange all agreements with each of the 93 postal departments across the country individually.
 
 
Delivering Paychecks
 
Ordinary postal workers were more concerned about how the reforms would impact their salaries, which are low even by Russian standards.
 
Yelena Budilenkova, the deputy head of a post office on Bashilovskaya Ulitsa in Moscow, who has worked in the postal service for 10 years, said that she has difficulty finding new staff. A notice on the door advertising a vacancy for a telegram deliverer with a monthly salary of 1,900 rubles ($61) has been there for a year, she said.
 &quot;Even if young people come here to work, they soon leave. They don't want to work for such a small salary,&quot; Budilenkova said.
 Kuzhov said that the average monthly salary in the Nizhegorodskaya Oblast postal service is 2,000 rubles ($64) - far below the average salary nationwide of 3,798 rubles ($122) reported by the State Statistics Committee in February. Starkov said the average monthly salary for Chelyabinskaya Oblast postal workers is 2,300 rubles ($74).
 Valentina Chikonkova, one of six operators at the Bashilovskaya Ulitsa post office in Moscow, is paid a bit more - 2,460 rubles a month - but still thinks it's too little for what she does.
 When she started working as a post-office operator six years ago, Chikonkova processed about 10 letters a day.
 Now she processes manually up to 600 letters a day on the busiest days. These are so-called <i>zakazniye</i>, or registered letters, which cost 4 rubles 30 kopeks ($0.14) for a 20-gram letter.
 To process letters manually, Chikonkova must weigh it, fill out a receipt by hand, stick a stamp on the envelope, put a bar-code on the envelope and on the receipt, stamp the envelope and put the letter in the corresponding box.
 The process usually takes about five minutes per letter, although it is a bit faster if there is a pack of letters.
 As well as a salary hike, Chikonkova hopes that the reforms will lead to new equipment being installed that would allow her to process letters more quickly and easily.
 Budilenkova, Chikonkova's boss, said that, although the number of packages and money transfers has decreased over the past decade, the volume of business mail has soared, meaning that her staff is working harder than ever.
 Ordinary customers were less in evidence, however. In half an hour on a weekday morning last week, just five people came into the post office.
 One of them was Lyudmila Tumenbayeva, a 60-year-old pensioner who moved to Moscow from the Orenburgskaya Oblast two years ago and now corresponds with her two daughters.
 Tumenbayeva had no complaints about postal service, although a package that she sent to one of her daughters in early February took more than a month to arrive.

TITLE: Airship Industry Floats to Revival
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - It may have come too late for an entry in Sigmund Freud's &quot;The Interpretation of Dreams,&quot; but when the first of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's airships, the LZ 1, rose from the hangars of Friedrichshafen, Germany, on July 2, 1900 - eight months after Freud's seminal work was published - it floated into public consciousness worldwide.
 
For several decades to come the airship - or dirigible, from the French <i>ballon dirigeable</i>, literally &quot;steerable balloon&quot; - was to represent the pinnacle of humanity's achievements in aviation.
 They docked at the spire of the Empire State Building, clocking millions of hours' air time carrying passengers across the Atlantic in luxurious cabins complete with restaurants, grand pianos and even smoking rooms.
 The Zeppelin Company was the first to realize the commercial potential of the airship, but it was France's Henri Giffard who actually made the first successful flight in Paris in 1852. His was a simple craft, lifted by hydrogen and driven by a three-horsepower steam engine.
 The Hindenburg, propelled by four 1,100-horsepower diesel engines and with a gas capacity of more than 200,000 cubic meters, is still, at 245 meters long, the largest aircraft ever to have flown. It could carry more than 100 tons of cargo.
 Today, it is exactly this forgotten freight-moving potential that airship companies around the world, such as Germany's CargoLifter, Britain's Advanced Technologies Group and, in Russia, RosAeroSystems, hope to exploit.
 &quot;They are the new form of an old means of transport. Airships are experiencing a second birth, both on the local market and in the West,&quot; said Sergei Bendin, public-relations director at RosAeroSystems, which is seeking an investor for its ambitious range of airships that, until the day they receive a healthy injection of cash, remain on the drawing board.
 A world apart from the melodies of the baby grand piano and clink of expensive cutlery in the zeppelins of yesteryear, airships in resource-rich, modern-day Russia would transport equipment, lumber and other heavy loads over the country's arctic expanses.
 While representatives of major local raw-materials companies are skeptical, dirigible designers have figures to show the vessels are more fuel-efficient than airplanes and helicopters and have the potential to carry far greater loads.
 &quot;If it can be proven to work, there's certainly a market for it in the oil industry and the timber industry,&quot; said Paul Duffy, an independent Moscow-based aviation analyst.
 In 1937, it was the Hindenburg's fate that ended the airship movement. The flagship of the Zeppelin Company went down in flames as it came in to dock over Lakehurst, New Jersey, with the loss of 36 lives. The full horror of the disaster was captured on newsreel and coincided with a series of accidents that struck the industry around the globe in the 1930s.
 Built to link the far-flung corners of the empire, Britain's luxury R-101 caught fire and crashed over France while on its way to Karachi, then in India, in October 1930. Among the 48 dead were Britain's secretary of state for aviation.
 The worst airship disaster in history came on April 4, 1933, when the U.S. Navy's Akron airship crashed into the Atlantic during a storm. Only three of the 76-person crew survived.
 And the Soviet Union's comparatively young airship industry did not escape unscathed either. In 1938, the SSRV-6 - the Soviet Union's largest airship and the pride of Dirizhablstroi, its airship-construction center - ran into a mountain on the Kola Peninsula in heavy fog, simply because the mountain had been omitted from the map. More than 20 people perished.
 But Gennady Verba, chairperson of RosAeroSystems, is quick to explode a few misconceptions.
 Dangerous? Unmaneuverable? Antiquated? Not these days, he says.
 In place of the highly flammable hydrogen that raised the zeppelins of old, today's airships get their lift from helium, a nonflammable gas with a lifting power 85 percent that of hydrogen. The &quot;envelope,&quot; or balloon that contains the gas, is made of puncture-resistant composite fabrics. State-of-the-art satellite navigational systems mean mountains and fog should present no surprises.
 
 <strong>
LENIN'S ENVY
 </strong>Established in 1931 and located in the Moscow Oblast town of Dolgoprudny, Dirizhablstroi represented the fruits of a drive to launch dirigible-building - initiated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party and founded on a promise been made by Lenin in Switzerland during World War I.
 
Legend has it that, at a Bolshevik meeting, he proposed that propaganda leaflets be dropped over the Russian front line, urging soldiers to turn their guns against Tsarist rule. When it was pointed out that the only long-range craft capable of this were the Germans' zeppelins, Lenin is said to have resignedly agreed.
 &quot;You wait,&quot; he added as a parting shot. &quot;We too will have dirigibles!&quot;
 And so the movement was born.
 Another powerful impetus for the creation of Dirizhablstroi came from the public interest generated when the Zeppelin company's LZ-127 touched down in Moscow in September, 1930.
 &quot;All Moscow came out to gaze at this wonderful machine,&quot; wrote Nadezhda Alliluyeva in a letter to her husband, Josef Stalin, who was in the south at the time.
 After World War II, amid aggressive lobbying from airplane manufacturers and with Stalin's interest waning, Dirizhablstroi was partly reprofiled to building aerostats. Later, its facilities were taken over by military enterprises.
 
 <strong>
READY FOR PRODUCTION
 </strong>While orders for cargo-bearing airships are still a long way off, RosAeroSystems - which was established 10 years ago, has a U.S. office and employs more than 60 people - has other products in the pipeline.
 
A Chinese order for an unmanned Puma Au-21 tethered aerostat surveillance system, to be used to battle drug trafficking and piracy along the country's borders, has been supplied and is already up and running. Verba did not reveal the financial specifics of the deal.
 But aerostats are not the only &quot;lighter-than-air&quot; product made by RosAeroSystems. The company has a number of airships on the drawing board. According to Verba, all that is needed to build the PD-300 model, which could be used for tourism or patrolling purposes and seat five or six people, is an investor.
 &quot;We are ready for production,&quot; Verba said.
 Expert magazine recently published a comparison of the widely used Mi-8 cargo helicopter with RosAeroSystems' next model up from the PD-300, the MD-900. The MD-900 is designed to carry replaceable modules in its gondola - the &quot;body&quot; of the airship normally slung under the envelope - which include a cargo module for up to two tons, a tourism module and even a residential module for up to 20 people.
 The Mi-8 and the MD-900 are comparable in terms of their load capacity.
 While the MD-900 lags in terms of cruising speed - about 130 kilometers per hour compared to the Mi-8's 250 kilometers per hour - RosAeroSystems said its airship would have a range of 4,000 kilometers, four times that of the Mi-8. What's more, the MD-900 would use one tenth of the fuel than used by the Mi-8, Expert reported.
 But to build RosAeroSystems' DZ-N1 Rigid Cargo Airship, capable of carrying up to 180 tons, colossal financing would be required, Verba said. And not just for building a working prototype. An entire infrastructure of hangars and servicing facilities would need to be created. Simply attracting investment funds would require financing strategies that are beyond Verba's company at this stage, he admitted.
 Private investors say they would only consider buying the finished product, while state financing is hard to come by, with the exception of relatively simple aerostat projects.
 One representative of a major natural-resource-extraction company, who did not wish to be identified, said that at least $1 billion would be needed for a serious project in this area to get off the ground.
 Other representatives of companies that would make logical airship clients were alternatively dismissive and cautious in providing comment.
 A Norilsk Nickel representative said that, for his company to even begin to consider airships, exhaustive economic indicators would need to be provided.
 &quot;In order to invest, we need to see what the economic effect will be, what the result will be,&quot; he said.
 A spokesperson for Severstal-Trans was surprised to learn that airship and aerostat companies even existed in Russia. &quot;We haven't really thought that far,&quot; she said. &quot;It's a very exotic option.&quot;
 But Verba said that a workable airship project would cost about one-tenth of the $5 billion spent on the 20-year Ruslan cargo-aircraft development project. Not only that, it would also take half the time, he said.
 One advantage over the foreign competition, he said, is the availability of comparatively inexpensive facilities for testing prototypes. Since government funding for military and space projects dried up with the Soviet Union, the owners of these premises are struggling for survival. There is no such opportunity in the West, Verba said.
 &quot;You can't just come along to a company like Boeing and say 'move your jumbos over, they're in my way - I'm going to build an airship,'&quot; he said.
 RosAeroSystems is a regular participant at the Moscow Air Show. At present, most of the company's income is from orders for simple advertising blimps. Bendin said that this is natural, and while orders do come from overseas, RosAeroSystems is primarily targeting local companies. But when clients are offered a product of this kind, care is taken to show its alternative uses, with the appropriate modifications, he said.
 Internationally, there is plenty of action on the airship market.
 According to a report published in Aerospace America, about 30 airships of various makes were operating in 10 countries around the world in 2001. Zeppelin AG, the descendant of the great Zeppelin Company, operates three NT 07 airships for tourism purposes. The trials of Advanced Technologies Group's 412-meter SkyKitten airship, a prototype for much larger craft - including the SkyCat 1000, which is designed to carry a mind-boggling 1,000 tons of cargo - were a success.
 A special mine-seeking airship manufactured by the American Blimp Company and supported by the United Nations was used successfully in Kosovo, while Japan has been experimenting with high-altitude airships to be positioned in the stratosphere for use in the telecoms sector.
 Germany's CargoLifter company sold a CL 75 Air Crane to Canada's Heavy Lift, Inc. for almost $10 million just this month, company spokesperson Silke Rosser confirmed in a telephone interview from Germany.
 While not strictly an airship - the 61-meter diameter, balloon-like device, which can lift 75 tons of cargo, must be towed - the deal sets a positive precedent for the lighter-than-air industry.
 The Air Crane is to be deployed commercially in December this year, transporting oil-field equipment over ice roads in Canada's Arctic and in Alaska.
 Verba's predictions for the future are conservative but hopeful.
 &quot;I hope that the next 10 years will give a start to this kind of technology,&quot; he said. &quot;But by that I don't just mean sitting here and drawing a airship. I mean the creation of a major enterprise and organization that will design and build them.&quot;

TITLE: Fast Visas? Must Be Some Kind of Joke
TEXT: In response to &quot;New Faster Visas Off to Slow Start&quot; on March 12.
 
 Editor,
 </i>I visited St. Petersburg recently, and I arrived from Switzerland with a visa at the airport waiting for me. But the story you wrote and my story are both very symptomatic of the slow start of these &quot;faster&quot; visas.
 
A few months ago I read in the Swiss news that beginning Feb. 1 it would be possible to get visas at the Moscow Airport (nothing was mentioned about St. Petersburg).When I knew my flight schedule, I called the Russia Embassy and they told me that I need a confirmed hotel reservation or an invitation. 
 Then I called the hotel, and they gave me a number, but on the bottom of the form was a notice that this was <i>not </i>a visa and that I needed to go to the embassy. Then I called the embassy again, but it was closed for International Women's Day. I was told to call back three days later, but by then I was already traveling.
 Completely by coincidence, I found a specialized travel office that wanted to help me get a fast-track visa, but I had to delay my trip to do so because the paperwork needed to be submitted 48 hours in advance. I did all this and, finally, received confirmation that my papers were waiting at the St. Petersburg airport.
 However, when I went to board my plane, the airline did not want to let me on board because they could not confirm that I would be given a visa. They pulled out and showed me their latest guidelines, dated March 2002. However, after a half an hour on the phone to the airport in St. Petersburg, they finally got the information they needed and let me on the plane.
 I am sure that the tourism authorities in Moscow and St. Petersburg have not promoted this system properly and that is why no one knows about this change for the better and why it is not functioning properly.
 <i>A. Teuscher
 Zurich, Switzerland
 </i>
 <strong>
First-Half Marks
 </strong><i>
In response to &quot;Country Marks 2 Years of Putin in Power&quot; on March 29.
 </i>

 <i>
Editor,
 </i>President Vladimir Putin cannot win, for he cannot please everyone. He cannot please those who think he is too authoritarian (by trampling on democratic institutions and civil liberties) at the same time as pleasing those who think he is not authoritarian enough (by not reining in the influence of the oligarchs).
 
After 1991, Russia has been placed in the position of having to defend itself against both centrifugal forces that would decentralize and break up the country and centripetal forces that would centralize authority at the expense of individual liberties. This situation has retarded the pace of reform, especially economic and judicial reform, but it is not an insurmountable problem.
 Moreover, Russia seems poised to emerge from this period as a stronger, more robust country. In fact, under the circumstances, Putin seems to have navigated between the Scylla of authoritarianism and the Charybdis of decentralization relatively well, and his position that stability and order must precede systematic, legitimate change is a logical one and a rational response to the problems of the early 1990s, which were caused, in part, by attempting change without a completely stable center. 
 Indeed, as any business manager knows, attempts at rapid, systematic change amid a chaotic and highly decentralized operating system only invites anarchy.
 The larger problem with this type of debate, however, is that it obscures a more fundamental problem of 21st-century Russia in general and of Putin's term in particular. In the new century, Russia wants to insist that it is still an important global actor, much as it was for most of the previous century, and demands that the West take its interests into account when undertaking any significant global political action.
 To be sure, sometimes the West - or the United States - acts unilaterally, as with the recently announced steel tariffs. However, for the most part, when Russia has spoken, the West has listened. The problem is that the West may not continue to listen to Russia as closely as it does now if Russia does not do more to justify Western faith in its return to international power.
 According to an old maxim, &quot;with great power comes great responsibility;&quot; however, so far Russia has shown a reluctance to embrace one important aspect of that responsibility, human rights. A prime example of Russia's failure to meet its international responsibilities is taking place in Geneva, where the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, of which Russia is a member, began its annual meeting on March 18. Last year, the UNCHR passed a resolution mandating that UN rapporteurs should be sent to Chechnya, yet Putin refused to allow their entry.
 This year Putin seems content that the UNCHR will not even go that far in its statements, issuing instead a simple statement approved in advance by Moscow. Furthermore, Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, announced on March 18 that she will not seek another term after her current one expires in September. The Russian government has shed few tears at her announcement, because Robinson has been an outspoken critic of Russia's human-rights record in Chechnya.
 If Russia truly wants to take its place again as a global leader, it cannot continue to sidestep questions about its human rights record. In other words, it cannot allow itself to be placed in the same category as China or Cuba, two other UNCHR members who have also successfully evaded close scrutiny of their spotty human-rights records. If Russia wants to remain an international player with regard to global issues, it must accept its responsibility to protect and maintain human rights, both domestically and abroad.
 To conclude, people should look more closely at Russia's international legal and political obligations - especially regarding human rights - instead of continuously debating Putin's capacity for twisting in the winds of domestic politics.
 Otherwise, the international respect accorded Russia and its status will inevitably decrease, regardless of how centralized Putin's government is.
 <i>James McHenry
 Vanderbilt University
 Graduate School
 Nashville, Tennessee
 </i>
 <strong>
Old Borders
 </strong><i>
In response to &quot;Russia and EU: Two Actors in Search of a Policy,&quot; a comment by Peter Pomeranzev on March 26.
 </i>

 <i>
Editor,
 </i>This interesting article, especially the parts about the Kaliningrad/Koeningsburg enclave, contains a mysterious mistake that casts a doubt on Pomeranzev's knowledge on geography and history. 
 
By writing &quot;the first wave of EU enlargement, expected around 2005, should bring the two borders into direct contact with one another,&quot; he entirely ignores the Republic of Finland, an EU member since 1995, with which the Russian Federation shares a very long land border. 
 Not only is Finland a member of the European Union, it is the only country in northern Europe that uses the euro and, most of all, it has a large population that harbors claims against Russia for returning occupied land to them, to Finnish companies and the Finnish government.
 In 1939, Joseph Stalin, allied with the Nazi Germany and divided Europe into &quot;spheres of influence.&quot; The Red-Fascist Soviet Union was &quot;given&quot; Finland, the Baltic States, part of Poland and Bessarabia illegally, against all signed agreements and international law. All other territories have since been returned to their owners - except the 43,491 square kilometers of Finnish territory.
 There exists - although it is often forgotten - a border agreement that signed by Soviet and Finnish delegates in 1920 that states that the 1920 border has been agreed upon for &quot;all time.&quot; That &quot;all time,&quot; apparently, meant just 19 years to the Soviet Union. 
 In order to receive international acceptance as a law-abiding country within the European framework, Russia should withdraw from this Finnish territory, and thus bring the lucrative euro zone and European Union territory even nearer to the important cities of St Petersburg, Petrozavodsk and Murmansk. This would certainly make Russian intergation into the European economic system easier. 
 <i>Markus Lehtipuu
 Helsinki, Finland
 </i><strong>
Another Take
 </strong><i>
Editor,
 </i>Pomeranzev's article about the EU-Russia dialogue on Kaliningrad was correct to call attention to the implications of the EU's enlargement for the Kaliningrad region. At the same time, it contains a number of misleading and inaccurate statements to which I wish to react on behalf of the European Commission.
 
The fact that, as we expect from 2004 onward, Kaliningrad will be bordering two new EU member states fundamentally makes no difference to that. The sole immediate consequence is the integration of those new member states into the EU's visa policy.
 The author is not right suggesting that up to now the EU has had no policy for Kaliningrad and that up to now there have been no concrete steps taken. 
 Let me point out that, since 1991, the EU's Tacis program has committed 40 million euros to projects directly linked to Kaliningrad in fields such as economic development, social policy, education and training, public health and justice and home affairs. Kaliningrad will be a priority for future Tacis funding. 
 In this context, let me refer to another inaccuracy in the article. The EU has committed about 2.4 billion euros to Russia through the Tacis program since 1991 - about 200 million euros per year, double the 100 million euros cited erroneously in the article.
 Reflecting the importance we attach to the issue, the European Commission published a comprehensive policy paper on Kaliningrad in 2001 that was endorsed by EU member states and that has formed the framework for our dialogue with Russia. Action by the EU is complemented by policies and funding from individual member states, including Germany, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. 
 Finally, I should note the efforts made by the two candidate countries concerned, Poland and Lithuania - partly with the assistance of the EU's Phare program - to promote economic and infrastructural development in the border regions with Kaliningrad.
 The author's claim that Poland's and Lithuania's accession to the EU and these countries' inclusion in the EU's visa policy will plunge Kaliningrad back into a Cold War-like world of schism and divisions is alarmist and misleading. Let me first say that the European Commission and the European Union as a whole fully recognize that Poland's and Lithuania's alignment with the EU rule on visa requirements for Russia raises practical issues for citizens transiting to and from Kaliningrad. For that reason, the EU is very carefully examining the issue and the flexibility that might be possible within the framework of the EU's existing legislation. 
 That legislation was developed to build up a secure external border so as to allow for the removal of internal borders and to allow freedom of movement within the EU. To ask the EU to create a wholesale exemption from or derogation of this legislation for Kaliningrad is not realistic. One should also not lose sight of the advantages that the Schengen visas offer Russian citizens already: namely, the right to travel, with one visa, in the entire Schengen area. 
 True, to make the provision of visas as easy as possible the EU's current and future member states need to make investments in the border-crossing infrastructure and in consulates, and indeed they are doing so. But looking at the tremendous increase in Russian travelers to the EU over the past few years despite the existence of visa requirements, I am not at all convinced by the argument that EU visas create a new iron curtain across the European continent.
 In the view of the European Commission, the destiny of Kaliningrad will not be determined by the visa question alone but by a sustained policy of socioeconomic regeneration and development in the region. The EU will continue to contribute to that through financial assistance to Kaliningrad and its neighboring regions and through the policy for the &quot;EU Northern Dimension.&quot; Our goal is simple: to make EU enlargement a success for the whole of Europe, including Russia, and to ensure that Kaliningrad is able to prosper in this favorable environment.
 <i>Richard Wright,
 Head of Delegation,
 Delegation of the European Commission in Russia
 </i>
 <strong>
Healthy Choice?
 </strong><i>
In response to &quot;Why U.S. Chicken Bugs the Russians,&quot; an article by Alla Startseva on March 22.
 
 Editor,
 </i>Antibiotic resistance is not the only health hazard associated with U.S. poultry. Pathogens like salmonella and campylobacter can cause serious illness and even death whether or not they have become antibiotic resistant. Approximately 30 percent of U.S. chicken is contaminated with salmonella, which can cause nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, fever, chills, weakness and exhaustion.
 
Approximately 62 percent of U.S. chicken is contaminated with campylobacter, which can cause diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain and fever.
 In the United States, these two pathogens alone are responsible for 75 percent of the deaths and 80 percent of the illnesses due to food poisoning associated with meat consumption. However, it's important to remember that all industrial poultry-production operations, regardless of where they are, produce similarly dangerous products. Pathogens like salmonella and campylobacter thrive and spread easily in the overcrowded facilities used to house the birds as they grow.
 But the health hazards of chicken go beyond food poisoning and antibiotic resistance. Contrary to popular misconceptions, chicken flesh is not a healthy source of protein. Skinless roasted dark meat from chicken legs is 32 percent fat. This saturated fat permeates the meat; it cannot be cut away. Saturated fat is associated with heart disease and obesity. Obesity is related to diabetes and certain musculoskeletal disorders.
 The ban on U.S. poultry imports offers the citizens of Russia the opportunity to improve their diets by replacing chicken with healthy vegetarian sources of protein. Legumes, nuts, seeds, and soy all offer protein without the health risks associated with chicken and other meat.
 <i>Pattrice Le-Muire Jones
 Princess Anne, Maryland </i>

TITLE: Sassy Cyber-Chick Puts the City on the Map
AUTHOR: By Ana Uzelac
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Your parents would surely disapprove of this girl. She's a foul-mouthed, dope-smoking idler with a skirt that's much too short and far too few teeth in her mouth. She has no job, no respect for authority and sports a cackle so piercing that it's painful to the unaccustomed ear.
 
And yet Masyanya, for that is her name, is the talk of the northern capital. Locals have begun speaking Masyanya-speak. Children write her fan mail. Internet cafes are filled with people glued to computer screens watching her latest adventures, bending in spasms of uncontrolled laughter. And at the end of every working day, the city's white-collar workers feverishly log on to the net for a glimpse into her life.
 &quot;The busiest time on the site is between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.,&quot; says Oleg Kuvayev, Masyanya's 35-year-old creator, laughing heartily. &quot;That's when the bosses all leave the office and their employees are left alone with their computers and Internet access.&quot;
 The girl everybody in town wants to hang out with is a cartoon character with an elliptic face, bulging eyes, one lone tooth and a few thin strands of hair gathered into two ponytails. Her barrel-shaped body barely fits into the tight red shirt and blue mini-skirt she constantly wears; her arms and legs are little more than two pairs of thin black lines.
 And now Masyanya is receiving national attention to match her local noteriety. Last Friday, the site - mult.ru - took five of 22 prizes at the prestigious National Internet Awards, including the Grand Prix. The site also took the categories &quot;Breakthrough of the Year,&quot; &quot;The Web Chooses You,&quot; The Prize of the Press&quot; and &quot;Online Arts.&quot;
 Masyanya, by now dubbed &quot;the Russian answer to Beavis and Butthead&quot; was born just last October, when Kuvayev was still working as a web designer for a Russian game site. &quot;In the beginning she was just a joke I made for myself and my friends at work,&quot; he laughed recently over a cup of coffee in a trendy St. Petersburg cafe. &quot;A kind of anarchic cyberpunk character that was supposed to stay underground.&quot;
 But as the word of Masyanya spread all over the net, the servers that were hosting her home site, mult.ru, started bulking under the weight of surfers eager to catch up with her.
 &quot;For a while I was releasing new cartoons every Monday morning. It usually took less than 15 minutes for the site to crash,&quot; Kuvayev says. The number of hits per day went into the thousands and then climbed rapidly to reach a staggering 30,000, pushing mult.ru to 16th place on the list of the most-visited sites of the Russian Internet.
 When the cartoon started taking more and more of Kuvayev's time, his bosses suggested the anarchic cyberpunk lady was incompatible with office work. &quot;So I left,&quot; Kuvayev smiles mischievously. &quot;Now, instead of a nice comfortable job with a nice salary and a stable future, I have Masyanya and the sea of troubles that comes with her.&quot;
 What else can one expect from a girl who lives in a decrepit apartment in a dreary city suburb and earns her money by singing stale rock-ballads in the <i>elektrichka </i>so badly that people pay her to leave? Or addresses her boss with a list of choice expletives after having smoked one joint too many? Or orders a selection of soft and hard drugs for her birthday party, but refuses to add beer to the list? &quot;Oh no, no beer,&quot; she declines in her characteristic squeaky voice. &quot;People will get drunk, turn the place into a pigsty. I'm a decent girl.&quot;
 A simple, urban girl from the dawn of the 21st century, Masyanya is blessed with a set of traits that anyone who has spent some time in this country is bound to recognize: a bit of impulsiveness, a handful of irresponsibility, a pinch of laziness and a healthy dose of <i>dushevnost</i>, or soulfulness. Add some good music and local color and this recipe for success is complete.
 &quot;Every episode is one way or another taken from real life,&quot; Kuvayev says. &quot;Not literally, of course, but it always has something to do with the situations in which I or my friends have found ourselves. You pick up one detail, blow it up and build a cartoon around it. Very simple.&quot;
 For the time being, Masyanya is an exclusive Internet dweller, born in a simple two-room flat in a Vasilievsky Island neighborhood.
 All it takes to make the cyberpunk is a computer, a microphone with a simple sound system and a double bed where Kuvayev crashes every dawn after having worked through the night on the cartoon. Kuvayev both draws Masyanya and provides her trademark squeaky voice. But these days he mostly talks to the journalists, he complains.
 &quot;Since Masyanya was 'discovered' all I do during the day is meet people, talk to them and answer their e-mails,&quot; he says. &quot;Serves me right. I always said that interactivity is the crucial feature of the Net. Now I'm paying for my words. I'm nothing but interactive these days. The only time I have left for work is at night.&quot;
 Kuvayev's newfound fame brought other trappings as well - dozens of phone calls from radio stations asking for Masyanya to host their music shows, clubs offering to throw Masyanya theme parties, people asking where they can buy Masyanya t-shirts or coffee mugs.
 And, to the dismay of its creator, it seems that adults are not the only people to fall for Masyanya. &quot;It turned out kids love her, and it's not at all a site for children,&quot; says Kuvayev. &quot;I mean, there is some foul language, and stuff like that.&quot;
 Now a new warning for children appears on the site telling them they've come to the wrong place and directing them to one of the rare children's Web sites on the Russian Internet. &quot;Not that it helps,&quot; Kuvayev, himself a father of an 8-year old, smiles helplessly.
 The most difficult part of Kuvayev's fame, he says, is dealing with the numerous businesspeople - mainly from Moscow - who started knocking on his door as soon as Masyanya was a success. As the creator says, they followed the smell of money.
 &quot;I had to give myself a crash-course on doing business just so I wouldn't get tricked [into making bad deals],&quot; he says. &quot;And I drank far too much beer at the time. Our businessmen prefer beer, I discovered.&quot;
 What he learned is &quot;if you want to be able to live off your own art, you have to give someone a percentage,&quot; he says. &quot;So I hired two friends from Moscow - sharp, slick guys - to deal with other Moscow slick guys like themselves. Now we have a company called 'OOO Masyanya.'&quot;
 The most visible results the company's work - apart from the advertisements that have started popping up when downloading cartoons - are the negotiations currently underway with MTV Russia to air a series of Masyanya cartoons. But before she can appear on MTV, the tough Piter girl will have to become &quot;softer,&quot; Kuvayev says, sighing heavily. &quot;I'll have to take out some of the sharp angles. There's lots of stuff on the site that could never run on television,&quot; he says.
 &quot;But I'm not ready to change her too much,&quot; adds Kuvayev. &quot;Masyanya's charm is in her sharp angles. That's the stuff she's made of.&quot;

TITLE: Is There a Conspiracy Behind These Theories?
AUTHOR: By Gale Holland
TEXT: IT'S an article of faith among some Muslims that Israel and/or the international Jewish/Zionist cabal were behind the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Tales of &quot;4,000 Jewish workers&quot; who stayed home Sept. 11 and of Israeli spies videotaping the twin towers collapsing, were quickly debunked. Still, the stories persist. Most of us chalk them up to anti-Semitism, denial or ignorance, and go on our way.
 
But what about <i>our </i>Sept. 11 fantasies? 9/11 - our shorthand for the attacks, the war, the anthrax scare, rolling terror alerts, the whole scary mess - has spawned a plethora of tall tales, and some of these are as kooky as the suddenly ill 4,000 Jewish workers.
 The stories started soon after the attacks. By now, you probably know that the photo of the man on the World Trade Center observation deck with a jet pointed at his back is a fake. But did you hear that Osama bin Laden penned a memo to his cavemates, warning them to lay off his &quot;Cheez-It&quot; stash? Or that a New Yorker found bodies, still strapped in their airplane seats, inside her lower Manhattan apartment?
 If these stories sound like urban legends, they are. But other storylines contain just enough truth to keep them in rotation. A year ago, who would have believed that terrorist &quot;sleeper cells&quot; would turn commercial jetliners into bombs, obliterating national landmarks and 3,000 lives in a single coordinated assault? Faced with the inexplicable, we seem to take comfort in irrational pseudo-explanations.
 Take one of the latest stories making the rounds. This account has it that U.S. knowledge of terrorist mastermind bin Laden's murderous intentions goes all the way back to Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and the 1987 Iran-Contra congressional hearings. North is said to have told a U.S. Senate committee that bin Laden threatened to kill him and his family, prompting him to spend $60,000 on a home-security system. Then-Senator Al Gore is supposed to have grilled North on his story during the Senate hearings on the scandal.
 Except it was actually terrorist Abu Nidal that North was worried about, according to the Urban Legends Web site (www.snopes2.com). The security system cost $16,000, not $60,000. And Gore was not one of North's interrogators. So much for details.
 One clue to the shakiness of the story might have been that North was convicted of obstruction of Congress, destruction of evidence and of accepting an illegal gratuity in Iran-Contra, although the judgments were later overturned. And consider the motive. The political right has every reason to blame Democrats, and excuse Republicans, for failing to abort an act of terrorism that, after all, occurred on the GOP's watch.
 But the right is not alone in pushing 9/11 lore that suits its political agenda. A story that has entranced some on the left revolves around the sudden departure of bin Laden's U.S.-based relatives after 9/11. Reputedly, President George W. Bush bundled the relatives onto planes two days after the attacks, when the rest of the country was still barred from the skies and before they could be interrogated by the FBI, in exchange for some favor from the Saudis.
 Two Saudi flights did leave the United States, but Bush had nothing to do with the departures, according to the Urban Legends Web site. The flights, one chartered by the bin Laden family and the other by the Saudi government, occurred one week after the attacks, when the no-flight rule had been lifted. The Saudis say bin Laden's relatives were questioned before they left, according to the site.
 Another peculiarly American rumor with obvious antecedents is that bin Laden is alive and well and living in the United States. Like Elvis, Osama keeps popping up all over, although he seems to especially like Utah, where he is typically seen tucking into a Big Mac and fries at McDonald's, or window-shopping at the local mall, according to the Urban Legends site.
 A big hit on the e-mail circuit is the &quot;Saucy Jack&quot; letter. Jack is a U.S. Marine Corps special operations intelligence officer who writes his friend, &quot;Bizarre,&quot; a profane account of his Afghan tour. The letter includes this account of the Afghan people: &quot;These guys, all of 'em, are Huns. Actual, living Huns. ... They have no respect for anything, not for their families or for each other or for themselves. They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force their 5-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts. ...&quot;
 The letter's battlefield details, celebration of U.S. prowess and demonization of the enemy play well in these days of severe Pentagon reporting restrictions, when we're starved for a soldier's-eye view of the front. But there's a problem with the letter:
 In it, Jack discloses his precise location and mission. Military censors? The letter's author is unknown, but it certainly looks like a hoax. Its aim seems to be to discourage scrutiny of military operations, particularly from CNN and &quot;that awful, sneering, pompous [CNN anchor] Aaron Brown.&quot;
 In the misty climes where the far left meets the far right, conspiracy theories have begun to dominate the 9/11 rumor mill. The basic premise is that President Bush/ the CIA/Big Oil either planned the attacks or let them happen to secure a U.S. oil pipeline/take over the Middle East/launch a one-world government.
 Some of the conspiracists, such as former LAPD narcotics investigator Michael Ruppert (www.copvcia.com), offer a timeline of suspicious-sounding, if unsubstantiated, 9/11 factoids and &quot;let&quot; the reader decide. Claiming that the CIA met with bin Laden in July 2001 and allowed him to walk away, Ruppert asks, &quot;If the CIA and the government weren't involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, what were they doing?&quot;
 Other theorists, including private investigator Joe Vialls, lob more specific, but equally unsubstantiated, allegations. Vialls, on his Web site (http://geocities.com/mknemesis/homerun.html) claims that the jetliners used in the Sept. 11 attacks were &quot;hijacked electronically&quot; from the ground. Vialls doesn't identify the culprits, but apparently the plot involves a secret U.S. military software program developed by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and &quot;the multinationals.&quot; The media can be considered unindicted co-conspirators.
 &quot;Many readers might by now be indignant; convinced this is incorrect or misleading information because of 'those telephone calls from the hijacked aircraft,'&quot; Vialls' Web site says. &quot;Which telephone calls exactly? There are no records of any such calls, and the emotional claptrap the media fed you in the aftermath of the attack was in all cases third-person.&quot;
 Shadowy government agencies with Maxwell Smartish-sounding acronyms are big with these conspiracy theorists. So are credentials that appear to mean something but don't. Vialls, for example, is described on his Web site as a &quot;former member of the Society of Licensed Aeronautical Engineers &amp; Technologists, London.&quot;
 What Vialls and his ilk really represent is the conspiracy lobby, a tiny but persistent subgroup spawned by the John F. Kennedy assassination and nurtured through the CIA/assassination-plot scandals of the following decades. They see conspiracies everywhere. A link on Vialls' site refers to convicted Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, one of the most thoroughly investigated crime figures on record, as a &quot;patsy.&quot;
 Yet, their 9/11 scenarios have won them new followers. Ruppert has appeared on a Canadian cable television show, and a West Coast lecture series is under way. David Corn, The Nation magazine's Washington editor, received so many e-mails from readers alerting him to dastardly U.S./CIA 9/11 plots that he decided to debunk them in print. Now, he's sorry he did.
 &quot;I was besieged by people accusing me of being a CIA disinformation agent,&quot; says Corn, referring to the responses to his story. &quot;In hindsight, it's just not worth it. People who believe in conspiracies of this nature often can't be argued against. Because they assume if you argue against them, you're part of the conspiracy.&quot;
 Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes fiction is just fiction. Getting at the truth is tough; accepting it can be harder still. Paranoia is a lot easier. Sept. 11 may have robbed us of our sense of normalcy, but we can't let it unseat our reason.
 
 <i>Gale Holland is a freelance writer. She contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times. </i>

TITLE: Take a Look Into the Cyber-Mirror
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
TEXT: THERE is a Russian proverb that translates roughly as &quot;Don't blame the mirror if your mug is crooked.&quot; Literary types might recall that Nikolai Gogol used it as the epigraph for his play &quot;The Government Inspector.&quot;
 
But there is always some one, or something, to blame, and this month it happened again, when a local newspaper suggested that no less a personage than Governor General Viktor Cherkesov himself was the inspiration for an episode of Web-based cartoon Masyanya that described St. Petersburg's dirt problem in graphic terms. Furthermore, the paper suggested that the cartoon, on the popular site mult.ru, had in mind to discredit St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev.
 So what's all the fuss about? How could a cyber-chick damage the image of St. Petersburg's head honcho in such a violent way?
 In the cartoon, Masyanya stands in for a tourist-guide friend who needs the toilet, boards a bus at Gostinny Dvor, and adresses her audience in language that Gogol himself might well have sympathised with.
 She says, &quot;Allow me to welcome you to this pearl of world culture. You will see with your own eyes a delightful and destroyed architectural ensemble. You will have the opportunity to walk through parks and gardens covered in dog poo, which will freeze your heart. We shall take a stroll down magnificent avenues filled with down-and-outs, alcoholics and beggars, and wander through St. Petersburg's famous courtyards, now pissed all over and full up to the roof with shit. You will never forget our trip along the city's rivers and canals, now filled with condoms fallen from the rooftops. You can visit museums that are still looked after by old ladies who earn 100 rubles [per month]. And then you shall behold a reflection of the Peter and Paul Fortress in the waters of the river Neva, painted with a rainbow like the colours of an oil slick.&quot;
 Yes indeed, this is not the sort of present that Yakovlev wants as the city comes up to its 300th birthday, and would definitely ruin his attempts to raise the city's international standing. But does Cherkesov have anything to do with it?
 It is true that current popular wisdom in the city's political circles maintains that there is a strong mutual enmity between Cherkesov and Yakovlev. But, although Cherkesov can be nailed for many of his past actions, I don't think he would be quite stupid enough to underline facts which are obvious to most people born in St. Petersburg or resident here for a while.
 Include me in that, because I live in the so-called historical heart of St. Petersburg, in a very pleasant, fairly large flat - with a collapsed ceiling in one room that doesn't seem to bother community services at all, but never mind - and I see Masyanya's yards on my way home, her gardens through my windows, and her canals, which I would love were I shortsighted and had lost my specs.
 By the way, Masyanya missed a trick about the canals, which contain not only condoms, but even whole dead cows drifting through the city in full view. I'm not making this up.
 Last Thursday, the police reported that some units were busy trying to catch a cow corpse that had been reported by the inhabitants of 62 Nab. Kanala Griboyedova. Looking at the currents of the various waterways, I concluded that the cow got there from somewhere east of the city, and had drifted all the way past Letny Sad, Mikhailovsky Sad, under Nevsky Prospect and past Kazan Cathedral. Not bad for a cow, I thought. Many tourists would settle for less.
 The whole cartoon shenanigans surprised me, but I think that Yakovlev must have visited mult.ru last week and it somehow dented his pride. At his Thursday meeting with the St. Petersburg's cleaning officials, he said the city should be spick and span in 10 days. He ordered fences to be painted with anniversary-related pictures, and more rubbish bins for the streets. &quot;Even cultured people are bound to drop cigarette butts on the pavement if they can't find any bins,&quot; he said
 Yakovlev has also said that he will personally supervise the clean-up operation. I bet he'll be tired next weekend.

TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: Here's an interesting thought experiment. Let's say that federal investigators raid several Muslim charities suspected of financial links to al-Qaida. Let's say that one of these suspect groups has funneled big money to a Republican Party organization. Let's say this Republican organization shares an office with the man known as &quot;the field marshal of the American Right,&quot; one of the most influential advisors to the President of the United States.
 
That would be big news, right? There'd be wall-to-wall coverage in the U.S. media, right? It would be plastered all over the &quot;liberal press,&quot; right?
 Wrong. Although last week's raids on American-based Islamic charities did garner a mention or two in the stateside media, you had to go all the way to Britain's Guardian to learn of the connection to President George W. Bush's hard-right guru, Grover Norquist.
 The little-known Norquist is actually one of the most powerful men in America today. He is chairman of the &quot;Wednesday Meetings,&quot; a weekly gathering of the Right's top players, including the National Rifle Association, the Christian Coalition, the Heritage Foundation - and the White House. Also on hand each week are media figures, various tycoons and corporate lobbyists
 What's the purpose of these confabs? One of the regulars, conservative pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, explains: &quot;The meeting functions as the weekly checklist so that everybody knows what's up, what to do,&quot; she told The Nation. In other words, it's where the unelected Norquist - and the unelected Bush - issue marching orders in their elitist war against the American people.
 Norquist's main focus is gutting government services to all the suckers out there sacking groceries and pumping gas. &quot;My goal,&quot; he says proudly, is getting government &quot;down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.&quot; (Always excepting the military, of course.) But he's also carried on a profitable sideline in terrorist coddling.
 Grover worked with Ollie North's terrorist operation in Central America and later became a registered lobbyist for the late and unlamented Angolan terrorist murderer, Jonas Savimbi. He was also to be found on those far-flung Afghan fields where Saudi worthies like Osama bin Laden joined the CIA in supporting the warlords' <i>jihad </i>against the Soviet-backed regime.
 Grover drew on these connections in setting up the &quot;Islamic Institute&quot; to entice Muslims into the Republican fold. His Christian Coalition buddies liked the cut of conservative Islam's patriarchal jib - making common fundamentalist cause against the Enlightenment's &quot;decadent&quot; secular values - while Norquist's corporate allies liked the long green of the Institute's wealthy backers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.
 It was all running smoothly until a few renegade feds - forgetting Bush's pre-Sept. 11 injunctions against probing the Saudi-bin Laden terror connections too closely, and ignoring the Leader's post-attack fudging of his royal friends' global championing of Islamic extremism - picked on Grover's pals last week. (Maybe he should invite the agents to next Wednesday's meeting.)
 Fortunately, although the lives of the charities' innocent volunteers and workers will doubtless be ruined, the &quot;field marshal&quot; escaped unharmed, which is the most important thing. Although floating in funny money, his &quot;Institute&quot; was ignored by the probe, while his powerful connections kept his name out of the American press. So Grover is free to keep &quot;drowning&quot; the baby of American democracy in the rancid bathwater of his master.
 Won't somebody pull the plug?
 
American Taliban
 
The Taliban came out of nowhere, led by a one-eyed rustic who managed for a time to impose a Cro-Magnon religious dictatorship on an entire land. Their regime has been shattered, their country ravaged, they've been outlawed and marked for death - yet still they fight on. Where did these young Afghan fighters learn their fierce fundamentalism, their unbending zeal to kill all those who stray from the narrow path of righteousness?
 
Why, from Uncle Sam, where else!
 It began during the Reagan-Bush days, when Grover, Osama and the CIA were paying other people to kill and die for them in the great Cold War game in Afghanistan. While pumping in bullets and baksheesh, the U.S. also supplied textbooks so the holy warriors could educate their young while doing the Lord's (and Washington's) work on the battlefield, the Washington Post reports.
 But Messrs. Reagan and Bush weren't interested in simply teaching Afghan children how to read and write. What they wanted was a generation of hardened killers who would feast on foreign blood. So the two Christian statesmen seized on <i>jihad</i> as the best way to manipulate oppressed and undereducated Muslim masses.
 Thus American taxpayers paid millions for texts promoting the most violent distortions of Islam, illustrating the lessons with images of noble terrorists killing foreign infidels. Indeed, the Reagan-Bush texts were so imbued with hard-core religious hate that the Taliban went on using them after seizing power.
 The most apt of their pupils are now applying these lessons against the American soldiers put in harm's way by George &quot;AWOL&quot; Bush and Dick &quot;Gunshy&quot; Cheney. Meanwhile, Bush is &quot;scrubbing&quot; the texts of violence for use in his new Afghan client regime. He's leaving in the religious instruction on how to be a good Muslim fundamentalist, however - even though this violates U.S. laws against promoting religion overseas.
 But what's a little thing like law, when grand strategy is at work? After all, the best way to keep a nation on the leash is to make sure its people stay mired in blinkered, uninformed, unquestioning obedience to their fundamentalist masters, right?
 Just look how well it's working in America.

TITLE: Britain Mourns Queen Mother
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: LONDON - Britons mourned their favorite centenarian and began preparations for a week of funereal pomp and pageantry after Queen Elizabeth II's mother died peacefully in her sleep Saturday at the age of 101.
 
The death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, known fondly as the &quot;Queen Mum,&quot; is the second loss for the 75-year-old queen during national celebrations marking the golden jubilee of her reign. Just seven weeks ago, the queen's younger sister and closest companion, Princess Margaret, died at the age of 71.
 The Queen Mother had been in frail condition for weeks after suffering from a cough and chest infection at Christmas, Buckingham Palace said. She attended Margaret's funeral in February against her doctor's advice. Since then, she had spent most of her time in bed at Royal Lodge at Windsor Castle, west of London. She was so ill that she couldn't even go to the racetrack - the first spring in memory that she had missed her favorite pastime.
 Saturday morning, a spokesperson said, her condition deteriorated. At 3:15 p.m. local time, she died in her sleep, with her daughter at her bedside.
 The rest of the royal family headed to Windsor for what was expected to be a week of formal ceremonies and private farewells. Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne and the grandchild who was closest to the Queen Mother, cut short a ski vacation in Klosters, Switzerland, with his sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. Charles issued a brief statement saying he was &quot;completely devastated by the news.&quot;
 The first word of the country's loss came when officials at Buckingham Palace posted a brief notice on the gate. Flags at the castle flew at half-staff and the bells of the nearby St. John the Baptist Church tolled to mark the Queen Mother's death. Britain's main television and radio stations interrupted regular programs with news of the death.
 Prime Minister Tony Blair said the Queen Mother had been a symbol of Britain's &quot;decency and courage.&quot;
 &quot;During her long and extraordinary life, her grace, her sense of duty and her remarkable zest for life made her loved and admired by people of all ages and backgrounds, revered within our borders and beyond,&quot; Blair said. &quot;But I think what was most extraordinary was her profound sense of duty and service.&quot;
 The Queen Mother's friend, Reverend George Carey, the archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual leader of the world's Anglican-Episcopalian church, said, &quot;Her unfailing dignity, devotion to duty and charm have been a precious part of our national life for as long as most of us can remember. Whilst older people will remember best the courage which she and [husband] King George VI showed during the war, every generation has taken her to their hearts.&quot;
 The Queen Mother will be buried at Windsor Castle beside her beloved husband George, who died 50 years ago, after a ceremonial funeral on April 9, Buck ingham Palace announced on Sunday.
 Parliament is being recalled on Wednesday so members can pay their respects.
 Flags on public buildings across the country will be flown at half staff until the day of the funeral, Downing Street said.
 
 <i>(WP, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: Five Die as Taiwan Is Shaken By Two Days of Earthquakes
AUTHOR: By Annie Huang
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TAIPEI, Taiwan - Two aftershocks shook eastern Taiwan and triggered landslides Monday, a day after a powerful earthquake sent two cranes crashing down from the 60th floor of a building under construction, killing five workers.
 
Monday's quakes measured 4.8 and 4.5 in magnitude and were centered at sea about nine kilometers off Ilan, a coastal town 144 kilometers southeast of Taipei, the capital, the Central Weather Bureau said. No injuries were reported in the landslides, police said.
 They were among more than 100 aftershocks registered following Sunday's quake, which the bureau said had a magnitude of 6.8. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated it at 7.1.
 Two crane operators and three other construction workers were killed when Sunday's quake dislodged two cranes from the top of the unfinished Taipei Financial Center, which will be Taiwan's tallest building when completed at 101 stories high.
 The cranes brought steel beams and chunks of cement down as they fell, and debris injured about 10 people and smashed several cars.
 Sunday's quake injured a total of about 220 people across the island. An 8-year-old boy was in a coma after being hit in the head by a falling rock in the eastern coastal city of Hualien, but most other injuries were minor, the Disaster Control Center reported.
 Authorities inspected the Taipei Financial Center site Monday and said the earthquake may have loosened the screws binding the cranes to a temporary steel structure. Lo Rong-chien, chief prosecutor of the Taipei District Court, said authorities will determine whether the cranes fell because of negligence or violation of safety codes.
 Labor Council Chairperson Chen Chu said construction at the site will be halted pending a safety inspection. The government may have to further tighten quake-resistance standards at building sites, she said.
 Two leading chipmakers reported slight damage from the quake. Semiconductor production is delicate and can easily be disrupted by ground movement.
 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said it lost about half a day's silicon wafer production, and United Microelectronics Corp. said some of its equipment was slightly affected.
 A magnitude-7.6 earthquake in September 1999 killed 2,378 people and destroyed more than 40,000 homes in Taiwan. Smaller tremors frequently shake the island, but most cause little or no damage.

TITLE: Bombings, Speech Raise the Stakes
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: JERUSALEM - Calling Palestinian President Yasser Arafat &quot;the enemy of the entire free world,&quot; Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared Israel on Sunday to be in a war for its survival, and vowed to smash Palestinian militants in an uncompromising offensive as he addressed a country rattled by five suicide bombings in five days, including back-to-back attacks Sunday that killed 15 Israelis.
 
Marking a widening of the operation in the West Bank, Israeli tanks entered Bethlehem 5:30 a.m. local time Monday, stopping 500 meters from the Church of the Nativity, which marks the traditional birthplace of Jesus, witnesses said, adding that troops also moved into the village of Al Kahder, southwest of Bethlehem.
 Earlier, about 60 Israeli tanks, along with bulldozers, moved into Qalqiliya late Sunday, said the Palestinian governor, Mustafa Malki. The Israeli forces quickly took control of town, in the northern part of the West Bank next to the line with Israel. The military said troops were searching for suspects and weapons and intended to &quot;destroy the terrorist infrastructure&quot; in the town.
 A suicide bombing in Haifa on Sunday blew the roof off arestaurant, which was operated by a family of Israeli Arabs. Twisted piles of metal covered the floor. &quot;Even the moderately injured were on fire,&quot; said a witness, Shimon Sabag, who helped administer first aid. Several Israeli Arabs were among the 14 dead, the police said, and officials were still trying to identify some remains late Sunday night.
 Haifa is one of the few areas where Israeli Jews and Arabs live in relative harmony, and some survivors said they had believed that they were safe because no bomber would risk killing Arabs. The Islamic group Hamas took responsibility for the attack, calling the victims &quot;the thieves of our homeland&quot; and the act a retaliation for Israeli invasions of Ramallah, Bethlehem and other towns. Less than two hours later, another suicide bomber struck. He killed himself and wounded at least four others in the settlement of Efrat, in the West Bank south of Bethlehem.
 At least 44 Israeli civilians have died in Palestinian attacks since Wednesday night, when a suicide bomber killed himself and 22 other people who were gathered for a Passover Seder in Netanya.
 Late Sunday, witnesses and Palestinian officials said Israeli soldiers opened fire on and killed five Palestinian police officers when they tried to surrender in Ramallah. &quot;We put our weapons at the main entrance and started to walk out when the Israelis fired on us,&quot; said a police officer at the building who would only give his name as Omar. He said 17 police remained in the building and the standoff continued.
 In a statement, the Israeli military said &quot;wanted men&quot; were in the building and one of them, wearing an explosives belt, opened fire on them. The soldiers chased him and shot him dead, the statement said.
 The military statement also said that Israeli soldiers entered Ramallah Hospital to look for suspects, but &quot;categorically denies false Palestinian claims of a mass murder and massacre at the hospital.&quot; The military spokesperson's office said soldiers searched the hospital for suspects &quot;while safeguarding the dignity of those within.&quot;
 Sharon has made similarly bellicose statements about Arafat in the past, but his terse remarks on Sunday night seemed intended to prepare Israel and the world for a major new assault on the West Bank, and possibly for a raid into Arafat's office itself.
 &quot;The state of Israel is in a war, a war against terrorism,&quot; he said. &quot;This is a war over our home.&quot;
 Palestinian officials called Sharon's statement a declaration of war. Nabil Abur deineh, a close aide to Arafat who has stayed at his side in Ramallah, said Sharon was trying &quot;to boost the collapsed morale of his people.
 &quot;The Israelis should understand that the Palestinian people will be steadfast and will not surrender, and that they are confident that victory is coming,&quot; he said.
 Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank leader of Arafat's Fatah faction, said the recent attacks demonstrated that, &quot;If your tanks are able to impose siege on President Yasser Arafat, our heroes succeeded in storming the Israeli cities.&quot;
 At a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Islamic nations denounced Israel's crackdown in the Palestinian territories as state terrorism on Monday and accused the Jewish state of dragging the Middle East toward all-out war. Foreign Ministers from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) urged the UN to give Palestinians international protection.
 &quot;The conference considered this assault a violation of all international norms and laws and culmination of state terrorism as practised by Israel,&quot; the ministers said in a statement issued shortly after the start of the three-day meeting.
 &quot;Israel's terrorist actions and aggressive practices, posing a threat to international peace and security, and dragging the region toward an all-out war necessitate immediate action by the United Nations Security Council,&quot; the statement added.
 <i>(NYT, AP, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: Players Are All Fired Up And Ready To Play Ball
AUTHOR: By Ben Walker
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - After more than a month of spring training, Rafael Pal mei ro is all set to play ball for keeps. &quot;Everybody's optimistic, but this year is extra special,&quot; the Texas first baseman said. &quot;We really have some good players and we have a quality team.&quot;
 
Same goes for Luis Gonzalez. &quot;The last time we took the field for real, when we walked off we were world champions,&quot; the Arizona star said. &quot;All the guys are anxious and eager.&quot;
 And so, after an acrimonious winter filled with talk about contraction and more labor trouble, baseball can finally focus on what it does best - play ball.
 On Monday, it revved up with opening day at 10 ballparks. Randy Johnson and the Diamondbacks raised the World Series banner before they played the San Diego Padres at Bank One Ballpark.
 Pedro Martinez pitched at Fenway Park and Roger Clemens started at Camden Yards in his drive toward 300 career victories.
 Sammy Sosa and Ken Griffey Jr., both within range of 500 career home runs, faced each other as the final year begins at Cinergy Field. The Minnesota Twins, after escaping offseason elimination, played at Kansas City.
 Cal Ripken, Mark McGwire and Tony Gwynn are all gone. Yet new stars on the way - are Florida pitcher Josh Beckett and Texas third baseman Hank Blalock really as good as the scouts say?
 Patriotic tributes and reminders about Sept. 11 were present. American flags appeared on players' jackets, &quot;God Bless America&quot; continued to be sung during the seventh-inning stretch and there was a minute of silence at 9:11 p.m. during each team's first home night game.
 That is, if the games last that long. Baseball has once again tried to institute speed-up rules - pitchers must throw the ball within 12 seconds of the batter stepping in the box if no one is on base.
 Among those in charge of enforcing the regulations is Joe West, one of the five umpires rehired after 22 of them lost their jobs 2 1/2 years ago in a failed resignation plan.
 At Arizona, fans are still celebrating after Gonzalez's bottom-of-the-ninth single beat the New York Yankees in Game 7 last November. But Johnson, the winning pitcher that night, is already looking ahead.
 &quot;I've put all that behind me,&quot; the Big Unit said. &quot;How is that going to make me better out there against the San Diego Padres?&quot;
 The NL Cy Young Award winner did not have to face Padres slugger Ryan Klesko. He started serving a suspension for a pair of brawls with Anaheim in spring training.
 The Yankees will unveil a juiced-up lineup that now includes Jason Giambi when they visit Baltimore. Cle mens began his bid for 300 career victories - he needs 20 - while Scott Erickson started for the Orioles for the first time since elbow surgery in August 2000.
 Clemens is coming off a 20-3 season and his record sixth Cy Young Award. He was starting for a team that, for the first time in four years, is not the World Series champion.
 There are other changes, too. While adding Giambi, Robin Ventura, Rondell White, David Wells and others, the Yankees lost Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius and Chuck Knoblauch.
 The Yankees began the year with the majors' highest payroll at about $125 million, dwarfing Tampa Bay's total of around $34 million.
 &quot;It doesn't feel any different,&quot; Cle mens said. &quot;We came up short, but the goals are still the same.&quot;
 Pedro Martinez, hoping his shoulder is ready for the whole season, was new manager Grady Little's easy pick to pitch for the Boston Red Sox against Toronto. Blue Jays starter Chris Carpenter, who grew up in New Hampshire, was thrilled about opening at Fenway Park.
 &quot;It's going to be outstanding, it's probably going to be the best and biggest game of my life,&quot; said Carpenter, an avid Red Sox fan as a boy. &quot;I'm excited for it and I can't wait for it to happen.&quot;
 A lot of fans are enthused about watching Sosa and a healthy Griffey hit home runs this year. Slammin' Sammy needs 50 to reach No. 500 while Junior is only 40 away.
 Barry Bonds, whose record-breaking 73 gave him 567 overall, and the San Francisco Giants open Tuesday at Dodger Stadium.
 The revamped Mets, with Roberto Alomar, Mo Vaughn, Jeromy Burnitz and Roger Cedeno, was home to play Pittsburgh on Monday. The St. Louis Cardinals, minus Big Mac, got a visit from Colorado.
 Texas, with a fearsome lineup now that Juan Gonzalez has returned, hoped newcomer Chan Ho Park can give it a good start at Oakland. AL MVP Ichiro Suzuki and the Seattle Mariners, coming off a record-tying 116-win season, were at Safeco Field for a visit from the Chicago White Sox.
 The Mariners and A's are planning to return to the playoffs. This early, even the lowly Orioles are raising their expectations.
 &quot;It's kind of nice to be the underdog,&quot; Erickson said. &quot;I think everybody here wants to go out there and show them that we're a pretty good team.&quot;

TITLE: UConn Caps a Perfect Season
AUTHOR: By Chuck Schoffner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SAN ANTONIO - Not even an imperfect game could keep Connecticut from a perfect season.
 
Surviving an uncharacteristic rash of turnovers and poor outside shooting with strong inside play, the Huskies beat Oklahoma 82-70 on Sunday night for their third national championship.
 The frontcourt trio of Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams led the Huskies (39-0) to an overwhelming rebounding advantage - and on this night, they sure needed it.
 Connecticut won by big margins all season by wearing down opponents. Oklahoma (32-4) refused to let that happen.
 Trailing by 16 early in the second half, Oklahoma got to within six with a little more than two minutes left. Things like that did not happen to the Huskies this season, but they responded as if it were an everyday occurrence.
 Diana Taurasi converted a key three-point play and player of the year Sue Bird wrapped it up with six straight free throws. With 18 seconds left, Bird was able to dribble out the clock and the Huskies had their title.
 Cash was the strongest presence with 20 points and 13 rebounds. Jones had 19 points, nine rebounds and five blocks. Williams finished with 12 points and nine rebounds. Cash was selected the outstanding player in the Final Four.
 But don't forget the guards. Bird had 14 points and four assists and made all eight of her free throws. Taurasi added 13 points and got the honor of heaving the ball into the stands when it was over.
 Oklahoma showed its resiliency by making it a game after a poor start. All-American Stacey Dales led the Sooners with 18 points. Rosalind Ross scored 17 and LaNeishea Caufield had 14.
 But the Sooners could not overcome their 39-percent shooting and Connecticut's 44-25 rebounding advantage.

TITLE: Zenit Grabs First Road Win On Late Katulsky Free Kick
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: A goal with two minutes left gave Zenit its first road win of the season, as it beat Rostselmash Rostov-na-Donu 2-1 in the southern city.
 
Alexander Kerzhakov opened the scoring for the visitor at 19 minutes. A blunder in midfield by Rostselmash's Andrei Karpovich was siezed on by Yevgeny Tarasov, and Kerzhakov athletically scissors-kicked his cross back across into the net past a helpless Ilya Bliznyuk in the home side's goal.
 Zenit seemed to be cruising, until, at 86 minutes, Rostselmash gained a free kick on the left. Mikhail Osinov's low, hard cross took a deflection off Zenit's Armenia international Sarkis Ovsepyan and deflected in to level the scores.
 At 89 minutes, Zenit was awarded a controversial free kick from 25 meters out. After the home side's protests died down, Alexei Katulsky stepped up and banged a sweetly struck shot into the top corner to bag all three points.
 Elsewhere, league-leader CSKA Moscow got its fifth straight victory with a hard-fought 1-0 at home over Alania Vladikavkaz. Bosnian midfielder Elver Rahimic blasted a curving shot from the edge of the penalty box into the top corner midway through the second half to give the army side its fifth win in the first five games of the new season. 
 Second-placed Lokomotiv Moscow kept pace with the leader by beating Sokol Saratov 2-0 at home. Nigerian striker James Obiorah put Lokomotiv ahead with a perfectly timed volley after a pass from Dmitry Loskov at 59 minutes, and Narvik Sirkhayev sealed the win following a clear breakaway with three minutes remaining. 
 A second-half double by Yevgeny Losev gave Premier League newcomer Shinnik Yaroslavl a come-from-behind 2-1 victory over Dinamo Moscow, which suffered its third straight defeat.
 On Sunday, defending champion Spartak Moscow needed an injury-time goal from youth prospect Dmitry Sychyov to grab a 3-3 away draw at Anzhi Makhachkala. Anzhi opening the scoring before Spartak took a 2-1 halftime lead. Anzhi came out stronger after the break, and looked to have sealed the points when it went up 3-2 at 84 minutes on a goal by Alexei Savelyov, until Sychyov popped up two minutes into injury time to steal a point for Spartak.
 
 <i>(SPT, Reuters)
 
 
(For other results, see Scorecard) </i>

TITLE: Cambridge Suffers Boat-Race Blues
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Oxford won the 148th Boat Race on Saturday, defeating Cambridge in a come-from-behind victory in one of the closest duels in recent history. 
 
It was only Oxford's second victory in the last 10 races on the 6.8-kilometer stretch of the Thames. Oxford finished in 16:54 with Cambridge across in 16:56 - a three-quarter length advantage. 
 Oxford, trailing by a half length after three quarters of the race, pulled away down the stretch, although Cambridge had the inside advantage on the bend near the finish. 
 Oxford, which got the better start, won with a more inexperienced crew on the twisting race through west London. Cambridge, which won the toss, chose to start on the outside bend at the beginning, hoping to take advantage at the end, but the plan failed. 
 Cambridge still leads the series 77-70, with one draw, in a race that was first run in 1829.