SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #759 (25), Friday, April 5, 2002
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TITLE: Power Shifts In the Duma
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma voted this week to reshuffle the chairpeople of nearly one-third of its committees, stripping the Communists of eight top posts and concentrating even greater power in the hands of centrist and liberal factions supportive of Kremlin policies.
Infuriated by the decision, the Communists immediately stepped down from the two minor committees they had been allowed to retain and announced that they would form a shadow cabinet to develop alternative state policies.
"The left-wing opposition is not planning to boycott the parliament, but it refuses to accept the crumbs of leadership ... that are brushed from the table by the Kremlin's lackey," Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov told reporters.
"The left wing is going into tough opposition against the policies of the aggressively obedient majority in the State Duma and is forming a shadow government."
The Communists also called on their comrade, Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, to relinquish his post in protest.
But Seleznyov - whom many within his party consider a traitor for being too middle-of-the-road - floundered, saying he would carefully weigh his options.
As the Duma's largest faction, the Communists had named the chairpeople of committees.
But under a resolution adopted Wednesday, which was proposed by the Kremlin-backed Unity faction and approved by a vote of 251-136, Zyuganov's group lost control of seven major committees, as well as the Duma's mandate commission, which has committee status.
After the vote, Communist deputies Nikolai Gubenko and Viktor Zorkaltsev stepped down, respectively, as head of the committee on culture and tourism and head of the committee on public organizations and religious groups - the two minor posts their faction had been allowed to keep.
In a show of solidarity, the Communists' allies from the Agro-Industrial Group rejected two chairmanships they had been offered - the committees on nationalities and on women's, family and youth affairs.
The Communists lost control of the committee on state-building, which went to the Fatherland-All Russia faction, or OVR, as did the committee on regional policy and the committee on agrarian issues, which was controlled by the Agro-Industrial Group. As a result, OVR came out the big winner with control of five committees instead of its earlier two.
The Union of Right Forces, or SPS, won control of two major committees - on economic policy and enterpreneurship and on labor and social policy - boosting its total from one to three.
Russia's Regions received control of the committee on industry, construction and advanced technologies, its only chairmanship, and the liberal opposition
The Yabloko faction was also a winner, gaining its first committee, on education and science.
Supporters of the reshuffle said the Duma's work would now become more effective because the Communists would no longer be able to stall bills that clash with their populist agenda. "The changes being implemented by President Vladimir Putin in the interests of the country's people are being sabotaged by certain political forces led by the Communist Party," said a statement issued by the United Russia party, which includes Unity and OVR.
Unity Deputy Oleg Kovalyov, who heads the Duma's procedures committee, said that the next personnel shake-up would affect the chamber's sprawling administrative structure, or apparat, and could begin as early as Thursday. The Kremlin has called the repartitioning an internal Duma affair.
Slamming Putin for his unwillingness to negotiate, Zyuganov even managed to find some kind words to say about Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, one of the Communists' most loathed enemies.
"Even when tipsy, Yeltsin had the courage to gather the leaders of different factions in critical moments and look for a solution together, rather than starting a new war," Zyuganov said in televised remarks. "[But Putin] keeps silent in his traditional manner."
Andrei Zakharov, vice president of the Foundation for the Development of Parliamentarianism in Russia, said the redistribution of power in the Duma amounted to a reversal of the January 2000 deal between the Communists and Unity, the chamber's second largest faction.
Under that agreement, the Communists got the speaker's post and 10 of the Duma's 29 committees, while Unity got seven top committee jobs.
No procedures for distributing the posts are spelled out in the Duma's regulations. The 2000 deal provoked fierce protests from the four minority factions, who boycotted Duma sessions for almost two weeks, but returned in the end having won no concessions.
"The Communists have been defeated with the same weapon they used in 2000," Zakharov said, adding that the redistribution of power will have a negative effect on the general disposition of the political forces in Russia.
"The situation is sad. It signals a real weakening of the parliament, which is already weak and will retain its secondary status," Zakharov said.
He also said the change is unlikely either to paralyze the Duma's work or to significantly ease the passage of Kremlin-backed bills, since the Communists had already abandoned some of their principles.
"The Communists, like no other political party, have demonstrated their ability to compromise," he said.
TITLE: At 112, This Woman's Seen It All
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: "Living a long life is not as easy as crossing a long field," is a favorite Russian expression of Maria Strelnikova, who, at the age of 112, is the oldest person in northwestern Russia.
As she speaks, she crosses herself, repeating the ritual every 10 minutes or so. But who has a better right to this saying than this woman who was born in 1890 and was already an adult when the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, saw her family dispossessed as kulaks under Stalin, lived through exile and enslavement in Nazi Germany and has outlived her husband and three of her seven children?
"My eyes just wore out," says the lame woman who is known to her family as Granny Masha and who lost her sight about five years ago. "But that's all right. There has been enough for them to see."
Asked about her life, Strelnikova begins talking about a burlap sack full of hens.
"They put the hens into the sack. The birds scratched the intruders despite the thick fabric. They cackled desperately," Strelnikova says thoughtfully. "Why did they have to take those hens away?"
After a bit more coaxing, it becomes clear that Strelnikova is recalling her family's experience of collectivization during the early 1930s. During this time, millions of rural Soviet citizens were dispossessed, ruining the country's agriculture and condemning millions to poverty, exile or starvation.
In the early part of the last century, Strelnikova's family owned a prosperous small farm in the Samara region in central Russia. They grew corn and kept five cows, three horses, 100 sheep, Strelnikova recalls in detail. The family also had some camels that they used for the plowing, since they were more hardy than oxen.
"Those were such good times," Strelnikova recalls. "We woke up early everyday and worked until sunset. Then we'd sit down at the family table and eat all together from one big bowl."
"And the baby camels were so cute when they tried to lick us with their tongues," she smiles.
By the time that the Revolution neared, Strelnikova has already married her husband Vasily and was living with his parents, his three brothers and their wives and innumerable children. They all lived together in log house of one large room, "with no inconveniences," as Strelnikova puts it.
The family business was small, but successful. They sold their corn and hired seasonal laborers.
According to Strelnikova, the impact of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution only really penetrated her forgotten village of Ukrainka in the early 1930s.
"We got to know that big changes were happening only when they closed the church," she recalls, with a tear running down her cheek. "Then they came and took away our cows and our corn."
The people who dispossessed the Strelnikovs were just their poorer neighbors in the village, people who never had cows or corn of their own and who suddenly acquired the new status of communists.
"They took away everything. One of them even tried to take my coat," Strelnikova says.
That summer day in 1930 or 1931 - Strelnikova is uncertain - was a turning point for the family. Officially denounced as kulaks, the family was split up and exiled around the country. Strelnikova's parents were sent to Siberia, where they died soon thereafter. Strelnikova and her husband and children were sent to a village in Tatarstan, where the lived in a former banya and worked on a newly organized collective farm.
In 1933, Strelnikova, her husband and their four children were able to move to the Leningrad region, where some relatives lived in the village of Popovka near Tosno. After a couple of years of hard times, Strelnikova and her husband were able to get documents and find find work at the Izhorskiye Zavody machine-building plant in Kolpino, about 30 kilometers south of Leningrad.
When the Soviet Union entered World War II, Strelnikova was already nearly 50 years old. Vasily Strelnikov and their son Nikolai both immediately joined the army. Her eldest daughter Valentina, then 18, was evacuated to Siberia with the enterprise at which she worked as a bookkeeper.
Strelnikova and the couple's younger children - 16-year-old Alexandra and 13-year-old Mikhail - remained in Tosno, where they were both captured by the Nazis in early 1942 and sent off to work as slaves in Germany.
Vasily Strelnikov never returned from the war, having been reported missing somewhere near Leningrad in 1941. Strelnikova and the rest of the children, however, survived these hard times and in 1945, Strelnikova and her children returned to the Soviet Union.
Today she shares an apartment with her 78-year-old daughter Alexandra in the city of Vyborg, 120 kilometers north of St. Petersburg. The apartment, which Alexandra received in 1971, is Maria's first real home since her family lost their Ukrainka farm. For all of those years, she either lived with relatives or in dormitories provided by factories.
Strelnikova sits upright on the edge of a bed in the tidy, one-room apartment, reliving the years. Somehow, despite all the hardship that life brought her, she says that she has never been desperate, never wavered in her faith in God and never demanded too much from life.
"My life has been both good and bad. Now it is only good," she says. "Now we always have bread - and white bread at that. God is not prohibited. What else do we need?"
"And it is all thanks to the tsar and his helpers," Strelnikova says.
At this, Alexandra interupts.
"She means Mikhail Gorbachev," she explains, "because he allowed us to attend church again." Strelnikova calls all the country's leaders "tsars."
"Once I tried to count how many of them I have lived through, but I got all confused," she says, adding that she likes President Vladimir Putin because he raised pensions and attends church.
Strelnikova's monthly pension is now about $70, which she sees as an enormous sum that allows her to purchase any luxury she could want. She is also eligible for payments from a German fund set up last year to compensate Nazi slave laborers, but she has not yet received anything.
Having been brought up in a devoutly religious family, Strelnikova has always remained firm in her faith. When the train in which she and her children were being taken to Germany was bombed, they were the only three people in her car to survive.
"It is all thanks to St. Nicholas," she says, crossing herself.
Strelnikova had reason to thank God again when she was able to locate her son Nikolai after the war. While he was away at the front, the family was relocated and they lost contact with him. One day after the war, however, a friend told Strelnikova that she had seen a man who looked like Nikolai working at the Leninigrad railway.
So Strelnikova searched the city railway stations and was able to find her son.
Asked the secret of her longevity, Strelnikova - who celebrated her birthday on March 14 - says that she doesn't drink alcohol or tea. She has also never taken a pill.
"Put all those pills in the swamp," she says in a rough-hewn manner that mixes literary Russian with rural dialect.
"When my mother was born," Alexandra explains, there was no tea in the villages. She just never got used to it."
"Boiled water with jam is good enough for me," Strelnikova adds.
Strelnikova also has a unique sense of time and an old-Russian understanding of the world. She doesn't know what years her children were born.
"God knows when they were born. They were born and that's good," she says.
In keeping with rural tradition, Strelnikova never took her children to doctors either. When they were sick, she just bundled them up and put them to sleep on top of the stove.
Three of her children died of scarlet fever or measles in childhood.
Now, Strelnikova has four surviving children, six grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren scattered across Russia and Ukraine.
Alexandra now takes care of Strelnikova together with her 80-year-old sister Valentina, who came to Vyborg from Ukraine to help.
Strelnikova worked her entire life, first at her family farm, then at the collective farm and later in factories. Only at the age of 80 did she give up her job as a cloakroom attendant at a local sanatorium.
Longevity runs in Strelnikova's family.
Her grandfather died at the age of 105 and her grandmother at 108. Alexandra and Valentina both look no more than 60.
For Strelnikova, the secret may be her undying optimism.
"I always hope for the best," she says.
"Living a long life is not as easy as crossing a long field," she repeats again, crossing herself.
TITLE: Tver Sets Encouraging Example on AIDS
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: TVER, Central Russia - Boris says he was aware he was HIV-positive even before a test confirmed it. He remembers seeing someone else's blood in the syringe he was using to shoot up heroin.
"I just knew I was infected," he said at the Tver Aids Center last week.
Injecting drugs is the main source of HIV infections in Russia, and 10 years ago when Boris first started taking drugs there had been almost no cases in Russia.
"At that time we didn't know anything about HIV or AIDS," said Boris, who started using drugs when he was 16. "We thought that it might exist in the United States, but something like that couldn't possibly be here."
Boris says he was a slave to drugs, and his life did not change immediately after the HIV test in 1997.
"If anything, I injected even more drugs," he said.
However, he finally quit two years ago, and now he wants to rescue the young addicts in his hometown Tver from his fate.
Boris is one of a handful of activists in this city of 450,000, located 160 kilometers northwest of Moscow, fighting the spread of the deadly virus.
And they are seeing results - a welcome sign in a country where the United Nations says the epidemic is growing at one of the fastest rates in the world, with the number of HIV cases doubling each year. Of the country's 180,000 officially registered HIV infections, 100,000 occurred last year.
But Western activists are so encouraged by the Tver example that they are hoping to use it as a model in other regions.
Last year, the number of new cases in the city of Tver grew by 20 percent of the accumulated total, almost the same as in 2000, said Alexander Kolesnikov, head of the Tver AIDS Center, which provides tests and support for people living with HIV. In the surrounding districts, the number of new cases shot up by 60 percent.
Kolesnikov said 2,643 of the 1.7 million people in the Tver region are registered as HIV positive.
"The epidemic passed 500 people in 1997," he said. "At that time, 95 percent were infected through drug use. Today 30 percent of infections are from sexual contact, and 29 out of 35 districts have AIDS cases."
Across town, the nongovernmental organization Tvoi Vybor, or Your Choice, is fighting the same cause from a tiny office.
Founded four years ago, Tvoi Vybor runs a hotline and assists people who might be infected or who exhibit high-risk behavior. Among its seven salaried staff and five volunteers are young sociologists, psychologists and medical doctors.
"People feel better talking to an NGO than to officials," said Slava Smolensky, 25, a doctor who co-founded and coordinates the program. "Some people call us to ask if their identity will be kept secret if they go to the AIDS center for a test."
He confirmed that the center does indeed preserve confidentiality.
Tvoi Vybor targets young people; people who come into contact with young people such as parents, teachers, and doctors; prisoners, who have a high rate of drug addiction and HIV; and prostitutes who offer their bodies to truck drivers passing through the Tver region, he said.
Tvoi Vybor has received funding from Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, UNDEP, the Swedish International Development Agency and the Dutch Embassy.
Its latest sponsor is a Canadian-sponsored project funded by a three-year Canadian government grant of 2.1 million Canadian dollars ($1.3 million). The project is supporting the development of effective partnerships between the AIDS center, the health administration and NGOs - in Tver's case Tvoi Vybor.
"Tver was chosen because the local administration is spending some money on the fight, and the AIDS center and an NGO are all working well," said Vinay Saldanha, coordinator of the Canada AIDS Russia Project. "Not all regions have that."
In addition, Tver is typical of many central Russian regions facing the scourge of HIV. It has little money to deal with the epidemic, which is expanding rapidly.
"If our program can succeed in Tver it will be an example that can be applied to other regions," Saldanha said.
The Tver AIDS Center only has enough anti-viral drugs for a dozen patients. But with the rapid growth of the epidemic, more than 100 patients in Tver are now in need of the drugs, and hundreds more will need them in coming years.
"If money is not secured to pay for drugs for HIV-positive patients that need them now, the Russian health-care system will be overwhelmed by cases of AIDS," Saldanha said.
Perhaps nobody in Tver understands the need for funding more than Boris, who informally counsels teen addicts.
Neither prison or the army, nor a stay in an Orthodox monastery, cured Boris of his drug addiction. It was only after he completed a Christian-run therapy program in the Moscow regional town of Istra that he quit drugs. "God helped me," he said.
Like many people living with HIV in Russia, Boris's infection has not yet taken any visible toll on his health. He has not needed to start medical treatment.
Boris said there is still a stigma attached to the illness, and he has only revealed his condition to those closest to him. For that reason, he asked that his real name not be used.
"If Tver had a rehabilitation center for drug users, it would be a big step in the fight with HIV infection," he said in an interview at the AIDS center, which he visits for medical checkups every six months.
He said the waiting lists for rehabilitation programs are too long or the programs are too expensive. Many addicts would like to kick the habit, but they do not know how, he said.
"They need people who can tell them how, people like me who have experienced it themselves," Boris said. "I have something to share. I know how to stop using drugs."
TITLE: Report: Just 26 Percent Of Forests Unspoiled
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The romantic image of an endless expanse of unspoiled forest taiga stretching across Russia is no longer true, researchers warned at the presentation Wednesday of the first atlas of the country's forests.
Just 26 percent of Russia's forests remains entirely untouched by human development, according to Global Forest Watch, a nongovernmental network of environmental-action and research organizations that drew up "The Atlas of Russia's Intact Forest Landscapes."
"The idea that Russia is one large wilderness is a myth," said Alexei Yaroshenko of Greenpeace Russia, one of the contributors to the 180-page atlas.
The atlas uses information gathered from thousands of satellite images and hundreds of field trips to the remotest parts of the country to provide an overview of the country's remaining virgin forests. More than 100 maps of the country show the extent to which man-made disturbances have affected virgin forests.
"Without decisive action within the next few years, intact forest landscapes may disappear," a report that accompanies the atlas says.
A virgin forest is defined as an area not smaller than 50,000 hectares that is unaffected by human activities, is home to wildlife and usually supports a number of ecosystems.
The worst-affected forested areas are located in the more developed western and southern parts of Russia.
"Such [virgin] forests are practically extinct in European Russia," the report says.
Approximately 289 million hectares of virgin forest remain in the country, 26 percent of the total forested area, the report says. Just 9 percent of the forested area of European Russia remains intact. Fifty percent of the remaining virgin forest is confined to five regions in Siberia, it says.
The report points to man-made fires, logging and mining as typical examples of ways in which man impinges on virgin forests. Once disturbed by such activities, the forests cannot be repaired, experts say.
"Intactness cannot be artificially restored," Yaroshenko said. "Disturbances are virtually irreversible. Most of the world's forest is already destroyed or disturbed. Responsible land users should be extra careful before entering any of the remaining intact landscapes."
The authors of the atlas hope that it will be used by industrial and governmental bodies involved in forest use. They cited IKEA, which helped fund the atlas, and the Svetogorsk Paper Factory as profitable companies that have decided not to use timber from virgin forests.
"No one can now say they don't know where the forests are," said Lars Laestadius, another of the authors of the atlas and a member of the Institute of World Resources, a U.S. think tank. "Companies can't go in and destroy intact forests by mistake."
The report says that a reasonable strategy would be "to leave the intact forests alone for a certain amount of time while decisions are made on conservation and land use."
GFW's atlas is the first that it has published but it hopes to complete similar atlases for other parts of the world.
"Russia is a pioneer," Laestadius said. "Others will follow."
TITLE: Russia Counts Blessings in Ukraine Elections
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian observers agreed this week that there was at least one bit of good news for Moscow in the radically changed Ukrainian parliament: Viktor Yushchenko's pro-Western party will not have a majority.
His party did nonetheless win Sunday's elections for the Verkhovna Rada, and he has emerged as the only clear candidate so far for the presidential race in 2004. With vote-counting nearly complete, Yushchenko's Our Ukraine looks set to have 110 of the 450 seats in the fractured parliament, followed by President Leonid Kuchma-backed For United Ukraine with 102 seats. The Communist Party is expected to end up with 66.
The sternly anti-Kuchma Socialists of Oleksandr Moroz are looking at 24 seats and should not be confused with the loyal Social Democrats, or SDPU(o), of Viktor Medvedchuk, with 23 seats. Yulia Tymoshenko's radical opposition is likely to have 21 seats.
Half of the Verkhovna Rada seats are chosen by party lists, and the other 225 deputies are elected directly in single-mandate districts.
Reports of voting violations were rampant, but Ukraine's Central Election Commission chairperson insisted the irregularities did not affect the outcome, The Associated Press reported from Kiev.
The election commission said Yushchenko's party won 23.5 percent of the party-list vote, while Kuchma's party got only 12 percent, but its candidates dominated in the single-mandate voting. The Communists finished second in the party-list vote, with 20 percent, but showed poorly in the single-mandate districts.
"What is most important for me is that the right-wing bloc, which dreamed of gaining half of the seats, did not get it," Russian State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov said Tuesday.
The problem for Russia in Ukrainian politics is that Ukrainian liberals are largely anti-Russian nationalists and those advocating good relations with Russia largely come from the Communist domain or the unpopular president's nomenklatura.
As a result, the Kremlin supported three forces in the elections, Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov said: Presidential Chief of Staff Volodymir Lytvin's For United Ukraine, known by its acronym Za EDU, which means For Food in Russian and Ukrainian; the Communists; and Medvedchuk's Social Democrats. President Vladimir Putin, who is popular in Ukraine, met with Lytvin and Communist leader Petro Simonenko in the Kremlin during the campaign and with Medvedchuk during his visit last year to Kiev - giving them support "no money can buy," Markov said.
"Yushchenko has been trying throughout these months to establish ties with the Kremlin to meet with Putin, [Prime Minister Mikhail] Kasyanov or [presidential Chief of Staff Alexander] Voloshin, and we discussed beginning a dialogue with Yushchenko," Markov said. "But each time we thought: Why talk to other people's puppet? We don't believe that Yushchenko will be able to fulfill even one of his promises."
In the words of Markov and his colleague from the Kremlin-connected Efficient Policy Fund, Gleb Pavlovsky, who also played an active role in Ukraine's electoral campaign, Yushchenko's bloc was an "American project." Not of the White House or State Department, Markov said, but of "marginal" Russophobic lobbyists on Capitol Hill represented by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Senator Jesse Helms.
Liberal Russian politicians and analysts consider the Kremlin's approach to be mistaken.
"Our president is not a Communist and nonetheless we have ties with Ukrainian Communists - that is a strategic mistake," said Vadim Bondar, a State Duma deputy from the Union of Right Forces, who had just returned from observing the Ukrainian elections. Bondar said he met with Yushchenko's representatives and, despite "cultural arguments," he could easily find common language with his liberal Ukrainian counterparts.
Russia is likely to face problems in dealing with post-elections Ukraine, where Kuchma's authority will be seriously weakened, said Sergei Kolmakov, vice president of a think tank called Foundation for the Development of Parliamentarianism in Russia.
"Yushchenko became the most promising candidate of the upcoming presidential race," Kolmakov said. "But a strong opponent - someone who would argue for Ukraine's movement into Europe together with Russia - has not emerged yet."
Bondar and Kolmakov predicted that, with the elections over, the pro-Russian versus pro-Western dilemma in Ukrainian politics will subside and Moscow and Yushchenko will begin moving closer to each other.
Markov said that, as in the State Duma after the 1999 elections, the pro-president faction in the Rada will likely hold the key to many important decisions. "It may form a bloc with the Communists on foreign policy issues and with nationalists on economic reform," he said.
One aspect of Ukrainian elections that several Moscow analysts agreed is dangerous for both Ukraine and Russia is an increased geographical polarization of the vote: western regions voted predominantly for nationalist-liberals; the east and south for the Communists and the "party of power"; and the center for the Communists and liberals.
Leonid Smirnyagin of the Moscow Carnegie Center said expectations that Ukraine's political coming-of-age, Yushchenko's bid as an all-national politician and Putin's pro-Western policies could bridge the gap did not hold up.
"In geographical-political terms, the country is falling apart," Smirnyagin said. "Our relations are poisoned with ignorance. Sticking to the Communists as the main advocates of a good Ukrainian-Russian relationship means painting it in the archaic terms of the Russian-Belarussian Union."
Smirnyagin said many of his colleagues spent the last few months working as campaign strategists in Ukraine but, like others interviewed Tuesday, said they were not agents of some consolidated Russian policy. "It's just money, money, excellent conditions for work and an excellent opportunity to gather data for our profession," he said.
Markov agreed that public-relations strategists work "only for the sake of money." But he hinted that some funding did come from Russian sources. "It's another aspect that they received money in different ways. Most of it came from the Ukrainian blocs themselves."
Opinions differed on the role of the big Russian companies that have been increasing their presence in Ukraine. Kolmakov said that neither LUKoil, Russian Aluminum, nor TNK was noticed associating with any political party. But Markov said that LUKoil supported Yushchenko, and other Russian companies backed other candidates without any coordination.
"Russian Aluminum, LUKoil and Alfa sent their people onto Yushchenko's list," Igor Bunin of the Center for Political Technologies was quoted as saying in an interview shortly before the elections. "They are acting in a more pragmatic and less ideological way than the [Russian] presidential administration and those PR strategists who were hired for this."
Markov nonetheless remained hopeful that Yushchenko is not a certain presidential favorite.
"He will become president only if others sit around doing nothing," Markov said. "Ukrainian presidents are made not in the west, but in the [more populated] east and south."
Bondar, who acknowledged a large role played by Americans in the Ukrainian elections, said that Russia and the United States could try to coordinate their policies.
"A candidate supported by both Russia and America could have a very good chance in the presidential elections," he said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: House in Order
MOSCOW (SPT) - In nearly two years since its change in leadership, the presidential property department has been busy getting its house in order - paying off billions of rubles in debts, consolidating its holdings and developing major new real-estate projects, department head Vladimir Kozhin said.
Since Kozhin, who belongs to President Vladimir Putin's team of St. Petersburg economic liberals, took over the property department, it has paid off 4.4 billion ($141.3 million) rubles in debt left over from Kozhin's predecessor, Pavel Borodin. Another 600 million rubles in debt remains, Prime-Tass quoted Kozhin as saying Wednesday. It was unclear how the debts had been incurred.
Kozhin also spoke of major real estate developments now under way. He said $25 million had already been spent on the reconstruction of the dilapidated Konstantinovsky Palace outside St. Petersburg, Interfax reported. The building is to be turned into a presidential residence and conference center called the State Palace of Congresses. The system of fountains, canals and bridges has been restored, Kozhin said, and most of the work is to be completed by May 2003.
MK Reporter Found
MOSCOW (AP) - The body of a journalist, who reported on crime and local politics in western Russia, was found on the banks of a lake near his home, more than three months after he disappeared, his employers said Wednesday.
Sergei Kalinovsky, 27, was the senior editor of the Smolensk edition of Moskovsky Komsomolets. He also had a popular television program about crime news on channel TV-30.
Kalinovsky disappeared Dec. 14 after telling his father that he was "going to an important meeting and would return late," wrote Moskovsky Komsomolets. His body was found Monday by fishermen at a lake outside of Smolensk.
Chernobyl Problems
KIEV (AP) - The United Nations' top humanitarian official urged Ukraine's government to help implement a new UN strategy for aiding victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
Kenzo Oshima, UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, is visiting Russia, Ukraine and Belarus to promote a new approach to aiding Chernobyl victims that concentrates on economic development rather than emergency aid.
A UN report released earlier this year proposes shifting the focus of Chernobyl assistance from humanitarian and technical measures to sustainable socio-economic development for the region's residents and for more than 200,000 people who took part in cleanup efforts.
Radio Liberty Flap
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Foreign Ministry summoned a senior U.S. diplomat on Tuesday, saying U.S.-funded Radio Liberty's plans to broadcast to Chechnya amounted to propaganda and endangered improving relations. Radio Liberty said it would broadcast to Chechnya from Wednesday in local languages.
A Foreign Ministry statement said the U.S. diplomat had been handed a note expressing concern. "The Russian side stressed that launching specific propaganda broadcasts in the region, including Chechnya ... could seriously complicate efforts by [Russian] authorities to stabilize the situation in the area," the statement said. "This move is incompatible with the common fight against terrorism."
TITLE: New Code Just the First Step of Many
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Far from being a corporate-governance backwater, Russia last year became a regional leader, an EBRD official declared Thursday as the Federal Securities Commission presented the country's first federal corporate-governance code.
The code, which is purely recommendatory, contains 10 sections addressing issues such as corporate behavior, forms of disclosure, internal financial controls, dividends and the formation and functions of the board of directors and board members' obligations and responsibilities.
"The code is one step, not the last step," FSC chairperson Igor Kostikov told a crowd of auditors, analysts and executives at a news conference.
The next step will involve implementation - encouraging companies to adopt codes and, more important, practice good behavior toward their shareholders, he said.
"The main task is to implement the code," said Alexander Ikonnikov, head of the Investor Protection Agency, which has been instrumental in electing outside directors to the boards of blue-chip companies. "The private sector, as well as the government, has a very large role to play here so that companies understand it is essential, and investors themselves encourage companies to follow good standards."
Kostikov said the market, not the government, should - and eventually will - punish violators. "Someday we'll get to the point where it is impossible not to be open," he said. "No official sanctions were envisaged and none could be."
For months, the FSC has been pushing the markets to encourage companies to adopt the code by including compliance in their listing requirements and by monitoring companies' adherence to the underlying principles. FSC commissioner Alexei Sharonov said the FSC is developing monitoring guidelines that should be ready by May.
Alexei Zverev, chief coordinator for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's work on the code, said the push has already helped make Russia a leader in corporate governance in this part of the world.
"In 2001, according to the data and answers, the quality of corporate governance in Russia significantly improved and Russia is in the top four" among central and eastern European countries and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Zverev said, citing a recent survey of top local and international lawyers on the effectiveness and extensiveness of corporate governance.
Russia surpassed Poland, the Czech Republic and other countries frequently praised for their post-Communist transformation. However, he stressed, Russia still has a long road ahead before matching Western European levels.
With Thursday's publication of the code, many companies will rush to adopt corporate-governance charters of their own, Troika Dialog said in a research note.
Only four companies currently have corporate governance charters - Sibneft, Yukos, Lenenergo and Unified Energy Systems. Gazprom has developed a draft code that will be presented at a board meeting later this month.
Having a code is not always enough, however, as Sibneft showed last fall in a scandalous insider sale that allowed its core shareholders to reap healthy profits off a dividend payment.
Another problem that remains to be tackled is the aggressive behavior many companies show when in company takeovers, said some businesspeople in attendance at the presentation Thursday.
Dmitry Ushakov, president of Interros' agriculture company Roskhleboproduct, expressed hope that the code would be further developed to serve as the basis for dispute resolution in takeover battles.
"Many Russian companies have begun to behave in a more civilized manner toward their own subsidiaries. But with regard to the other companies, well, the situation in general hasn't improved much," said Kaha Bendukidze, CEO of United Heavy Machinery, or OMZ.
OMZ has one of the better track records in Russia, according to Troika Dialog, although it has no formal corporate-governance charter. The company, however, already follows certain recommended practices in transparency and disclosure, with several years of U.S. GAAP audited financial statements, and plans to elect three to four independent directors to its seven-member board in 2002, up from two in 2001.
TITLE: Putin Offers World Bank Cooperation
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Despite Russia's policy of refusing to accept big loans from international financial institutions, President Vladimir Putin on Thursday pledged to continue cooperation with the World Bank on financial management and other policy issues.
"Relations between Russia and the World Bank have a good history ... and despite the fact that today we refuse taking big loans, we are quite interested in continuing joint work," Putin said after a meeting with World Bank President James Wolfensohn.
Under Putin, Russia has stopped accepting big loans from international lenders and sought to slash its foreign debt to lenders like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, paying off between $13 billion and $15 billion last year, according to the latest government estimate.
The government says it was able to do this because of three successive years of economic growth, fueled by high world prices for oil, Russia's top commodity. Although growth slowed last fall, officials pledged to keep the economy growing by stimulating domestic demand.
"We are very impressed by the various reform measures and management measures which have been taken in this country, and we want to be friends even if we cannot lend you money," Wolfensohn said.
Putin said Russia would still work with the World Bank on specific projects.
"Currently we are considering joint projects with the bank in the sphere of financial management and environmental protection, which are very important for us," Putin said.
The World Bank's loans for various projects in Russia will total from $300 million to $500 million annually for the next three years, Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko told reporters after the talks.
One project envisages a $22 million to $23 million World Bank loan to help make the Baikal Paper Mill environmentally safe, Khristenko said. He said that the loan would finance building of a closed-water circulation system that would end dumping toxic waste into the lake, the world's largest reservoir of fresh water.
Russia inherited massive debt from the Soviet Union and racked up a large number of new debts itself, becoming one of the International Monetary Fund's biggest borrowers in the 1990s. The World Bank alone has loaned Russia about $10 billion since 1992, Putin said.
Russia defaulted on international loan payments during the 1998 financial meltdown, but the budget situation has improved to the point that Putin declared Russia would not be accepting new loans and would try to make payments on existing debts ahead of schedule.
Russia's overall foreign debt stands at between $132 billion and $134 billion, according to government estimates.
TITLE: Immigration Service Denies 'Anti-Foreigner' Allegations
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The recently formed Federal Migration Service said Tuesday that it has nothing against the hundreds of thousands of foreigners who work in the Russian capital, it just wants to make sure they pay their taxes.
"The police are not going to set traps for immigrants on the border because Russia is short of manpower by 3 million to 6 million people," said service head Colonel General Andrei Chernenko, who is also deputy interior minister. "Our main task is to move them from the shadow economy to taxable business.
"Let migrants work, and let their employers pay for them," he said. "We are in a market economy after all."
The federal migration service was created by presidential decree Feb. 23 as an arm of the Interior Ministry, which also oversees the police. Its functions replace part of the work of the Nationalities and Migration Ministry, which President Vladimir Putin dissolved in October 2001.
Chernenko said at a news conference that plans are steaming ahead to introduce special immigration forms and a database to track visitors from abroad and lamented that the law is too soft on illegal workers.
About 6 million non-Russians are working in the country, and they would contribute $6 billion to $8 billion per year to the federal budget if they all paid taxes, he said.
"Rather than focusing on the immigrants themselves, legislators must target their employers and force them to carry the responsibility for their employees," he said. "The penalties for violating rules on employing immigrants are miserable compared to the benefits employers receive by skimping on social dues for their workers."
For example, Chernenko said, there are 250,000 foreigners from trans-Caucasus countries such as Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan working in Moscow, but very few of them are registered taxpayers.
"We find thousands of illegal migrants when we raid markets, but the market directors who permit them to work on their territories can only be punished with a fine of 20 minimum wages, maximum," he said. The fine amounts to 4,000 rubles, or $130.
"The punishment must be made tougher," he said. "In America, for example, an employer could be sentenced to 10 years behind bars for such an infraction."
Under the law, a company hiring foreigners must obtain permission from the federal migration service and check with the authorities in their city that no properly qualified Russian national is interested in the job.
TITLE: Cabinet Agrees to Tax Raise
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The cabinet, which is racing to meet a Kremlin-imposed deadline to submit legislation supporting small business to parliament, agreed on Thursday to raise the cap on small businesses that qualify for simplified taxation to 15 million rubles in annual revenues.
The revenue cap, which should eventually amount to about $500,000 once the bill becomes law, is the highest in Europe and aims to quadruple the share that small businesses account for in the gross domestic product, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said.
President Vladimir Putin has ordered the cabinet to send the legislation to the State Duma by Wednesday. Last week, he suggested simplified taxation should be applied to companies with up to 20 employees and annual gross revenues of up to 10 million rubles ($320,000).
Gref noted Thursday that the cabinet had tentatively approved an allowance of an additional 5 million rubles in yearly revenues, meaning that regular taxation would only kick in after revenues hit 15 million rubles.
TITLE: De Tomaso, UAZ Ink $19M Car-Plant Deal
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - An Italian carmaker is gearing up to build Russian sports-utility vehicles at a 22-million-euro ($19.4-million) plant in Calabria, Italy, part of broader economic cooperation between the countries laid out during Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's visit this week.
The Ulyanovsk Auto Plant (UAZ) and Italy's De Tomaso signed a cooperation protocol on Wednesday under which the Italian company will start building UAZ Simbir off-road vehicles this summer. They said production will eventually grow to 20,000 cars per year and the vehicles will be sold in western Europe.
De Tomaso forecasts revenues of up to 500 million euros ($439 million) a year when the factory reaches full capacity. Marco Bereti, a De Tomaso official, said the UAZ vehicles could be sold using the dealership networks of partners such as Fiat.
The UAZ Simbir is the first Russian car to pass tough European regulations for automobiles, Bereti said at a news conference following the signing. "It passed all 30 certification tests, including crash tests," he said.
UAZ General Director Eduard Shpakovsky said the car's quality had to be raised to reach European standards. "It's a complicated process, working with our Russian parts suppliers to get rubber and plastic parts to standard," he said.
Vadim Shvetsov, UAZ board chairperson, said that the Simbir would be geared toward the low end of the European market for off-road vehicles. "We're not competitive as far as comfort and options, but price-wise our niche in the market is growing," he said. "The 650,000 SUVs that were sold in western Europe last year make up only 4 percent of total automobile sales."
The Simbir will cost 16,000 euros ($14,000) in Europe, while in Russia it costs from $8,000 to $10,000.
UAZ also said it was planning to assemble cars in Vietnam starting this summer.
Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref were present at the signing of the protocol Wednesday, the final day of Berlusconi's visit.
President Vladimir Putin held discussions with the Italian prime minister in the Kremlin on trade, defense, cooperation with NATO, of which Italy is a member, and the crisis in the Middle East.
Putin said after the meeting that their positions coincide on many issues and that "this will help create a unified economic, legislative and cultural European zone," Interfax reported.
"We have the same goals: to create a homogenous zone of stability and security and to attain high economic results in the interests of the people," Putin said. "If we pool our resources, we can attain this goal."
Berlusconi said that he was sure Russia would be able to find a new, closer partnership with NATO, as it desires, and he supported Russia's entry to the World Trade Organization, saying, "We are ready to support this process."
Putin called Italy a privileged trade partner for Russia, Interfax reported.
Berlusconi responded: "It is a great honor for us to be considered a privileged partner to Russia ... .We want to remain as such because we deeply believe in Russia's perspectives and possibilities."
Italy is Russia's No. 2 foreign-trade partner, with trade growing to $9.3 billion in 2001 from $5.5 billion in 1999, Interfax reported.
Putin and Berlusconi had met Tuesday at the presidential residence in Sochi on the Black Sea coast to discuss Russia's bid to enter the WTO.
The two leaders also discussed Russia's relations with the European Union, increasing trade, cooperation in the aerospace industry and investment in Russia's high-tech sector.
TITLE: Svyazinvest Privatization Draws Flak
AUTHOR: By Larisa Naumenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In a move described as premature by analysts and Svyaninvest management alike, the government Thursday approved partial privatization of the telecommunications holding and seven other state-owned telecom companies.
Along with its 25 percent minus 2 shares in Svyazinvest, the government plans to sell stakes of between 5 percent and 22.06 percent in regional telephone operators later this year.
In 1997, the government sold 25 percent plus 1 share of Svyazinvest to Mustcom consortium, which is at least 53 percent owned by Soros Fund Management.
Svyazinvest management, however, questions the planned sale of another stake this year. The holding is undergoing reorganization, with 76 regional operators being consolidated into seven super-regional telecom companies.
"The current capitalization of Svyazinvest is not very high," said Svyazinvest spokesperson Oleg Mikhailov. "We think it would be expedient to get back to the question [of privatization] after the legal reorganization of Svyazinvest is done."
Analysts agree the stake in Svyazinvest would be a better deal once consolidation is completed, as capitalization is expected to be at least double its current size, which is estimated at between $2.6 billion and $3.3 billion.
"That the sale of the stake is planned doesn't necessarily mean the stake will be sold," said Andrei Braginsky, a telecoms analyst at Renaissance Capital.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Banking on a Buyer
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The president of the International Bank of St. Petersburg, Sergei Bazhanov, announced Tuesday that the bank was in negotiations with a foreign firm to sell 20 percent of its stock, Inerfax reported.
Bazhanov told a press conference that the bank had been looking for a "financial institute recognized at the global level" and that the negotiations could be wrapped up as early as this summer.
Interfax reported that the bank is planning a stock emmission with a nominal value of 2.5 million rubles ($80,280) in conjunction with the sale, which it says will raise the bank's working capital by $10 million.
The bank declared pre-tax profits of 106.8 million rubles ($3.43 million) in 2001 and lists its working capital as 1.1 billion rubles ($35.3 million), Interfax reported.
Driven Down
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - According to figures from the St. Petersburg Oil Club, fuel prices at the city's gas stations fell by 12.1 percent last year, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The largest drop in retail prices was 21.02 percent for 76-octane, while prices for diesel fuel fell by 12.8 percent and 95-octane by 8 percent, the news agency reported.
Two More Years
MOSCOW (SPT) - Anatoly Chubais said Thursday he will resign as head of power monopoly Unified Energy Systems in the spring of 2004 after reform of the company is completed, Interfax reported.
He said his job was to prepare UES for the liberalization of the electricity market.
"The spring of 2004 is the expected time for completion of this program and therefore the completion of Anatoly Chubais' work with RAO UES," Interfax quoted Chubais as saying.
Russia is restructuring its electricity sector to make it more competitive by splitting the vertically integrated UES and its local supply and distribution companies into new companies along business lines.
Oil Curbs Kept
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow is planning to stick to its policy of reducing crude exports through to the end of June, despite the recent sharp rise in world oil prices, Energy Minister Igor Yusufov said Thursday.
"We do not at the moment have any convincing arguments that current prices are stable. We are, of course, monitoring oil prices, but I see no reason to take hasty decisions," Yusufov said.
Russia, the world's second-largest oil exporter, said in March it would extend a 150,000-barrel-per-day export cut offered to OPEC in the first quarter of 2002, through the next three months of the year.
Diamond Deal
HELSINKI, Finland (Reuters) - Finnish engineering group Metso said Thursday it will supply Alrosa, the world's No. 2 o diamond producer, with equipment worth 57 million euros ($50.26 million) to mine a diamond deposit in Russia.
Metso said most of the equipment, including machinery to separate diamonds from rocks, will be delivered to the site in summer 2002 and start-up is scheduled for autumn 2003.
The Finnish company will supply the equipment to the Nyurbinskaya diamond deposit in Yakutia, the diamond-rich Siberian territory.
TITLE: Asian Andersens Jumping Ship
AUTHOR: By Regan Morris
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SINGAPORE - The affiliates of Andersen Worldwide in Singapore and Thailand have struck separate agreements to merge with accounting rivals in the wake of the indictment of Andersen's U.S. arm for destruction of documents related to the collapse of energy trader Enron Corp.
Andersen Singapore and Ernst & Young said Wednesday they have agreed to merge their operations in the southeast Asian city-state.
"My partners and I are very excited about the prospect of joining with Ernst & Young and look forward to working with them to create a new leading position in professional-services providers in Singapore," said Ste ven Lim, managing partner of Andersen Singapore.
The proposed merger is subject to a satisfactory review of Andersen's legal position and financial records and approval of the merger by regulatory authorities and board members from each company - expected in the coming weeks.
Separately, the Thai units of Andersen Worldwide and KPMG International said Wednesday they have reached a preliminary agreement to merge their operations in the country.
Kaisri Nithikarnphitha, country managing director of Andersen Thailand, said in a statement that the agreement was reached last month and should be finalized by June, pending review of the companies' legal and financial position.
If the deal goes through, the merg ed entity should be launched in October, Kaisri said.
Andersen affiliates around the world have been seeking mergers with other major accounting firms since Andersen's U.S. arm was indicted on obstruction-of-justice charges for shredding documents related to its work for Houston-based Enron.
Andersen Worldwide had hoped to merge its non-U.S. operations en masse with those of KPMG, but conceded defeat Tuesday in that effort as its lucrative Spanish affiliate Andersen Espana agreed on a separate deal with rival Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.
"In view of the decisions by certain individual firms to pursue different directions, it is clear that a deal embracing all of the non-U.S. firms is not achievable," Andersen Worldwide and KPMG said in a joint statement.
At a news conference in Singapore, Ernst & Young managing partner Fang Ai Lian said his firm and Andersen Singapore had "good vibes" and "great chemistry."
Fang and Andersen's Lim said they were confident there would be no regulatory hurdles or dissent from any board members.
The companies, which have about 1,000 employees each, said the combined firm will take Ernst & Young's name. If successful, the Singapore merger would form the wealthy city-state's largest accounting and advisory firm.
When asked if there would be layoffs, executives from both firms said they did not yet know.
Dozens of Andersen affiliates in Asia, Latin America and Europe look set to follow Singapore's lead and work toward a merger with Ernst & Young, Andersen's managing partner for Asia John Prasetio said on Tuesday.
Andersen is also talking with Ernst & Young in Indonesia, Vietnam and other Asian countries, Prasetio said.
Australian Andersen affiliates have ditched talks with KPMG citing a potential conflict of interest. Andersen's Hong Kong and Chinese affiliates say they are planning to merge with PricewaterhouseCoopers, while Andersen units in Russia and New Zealand said they are planning to merge with Ernst & Young.
TITLE: Two Views of the Situation on the West Bank
AUTHOR: By Raphael Cohen-Almagor
TEXT: HAIFA, Israel - I have a lot of critical things to say about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, but not now. Now, since Sharon has declared Yasser Arafat "the enemy" and sent troops to occupy Arafat's compound on the West Bank, we Israelis must be unified.
We are fed up. Enough is enough.
The suicide bombing that killed at least 22 civilians and injured scores of others who had gathered at a hotel for Passover, one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar, broke every code of decency and humanity. Now it's war - a limited war, but war. We have a right to self-protection. We can't be sitting ducks. It's time to go deeper into the territories, to do radical surgery, not just a cosmetic facelift.
I say this without reservation, albeit with some regret. I have been active on the peace camp for many years. I supported talks with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) during the 1980s, when Israeli law specifically banned such talks. Since the 1980s, I have supported the splitting of Jerusalem, suggesting that one part would remain in our hands, the other would become Palestinian. Back then, that was just short of heresy here in Israel.
I still support a two-state solution and believe in the Palestinian right to independence and self-determination. I did not support Sharon, architect of the war in Lebanon, when he ran for prime minister, and his election caused me anxiety. Recently, even as the violence was escalating, I signed a petition calling upon the Israeli government to withdraw to the 1967 borders.
Now Arafat, our former negotiating partner, is penned in his darkened office, where he is appealing for help. History has its strange ways, but I am still hoping that after some twists and turns, a just solution for both Israel and Palestine can be found. I hope within a certain time that we'll be able to negotiate again.
But not now. Now is the time for force. Unfortunately. Maybe if Sharon had taken other measures, the situation might not have escalated to the point that it did. Now, however, the pressing question is how much blood both nations, Israeli and Palestinian, will have to shed before reaching such a solution. And the answer, I fear, is: more.
Friends and colleagues from different parts of the world, who participate in an electronic political forum that I run on the Internet, have been e-mailing me, asking questions: How do I feel regarding current events? How do I cope with the situation?
Well, I feel terrible. It is most distressing and frightening. We are trying to keep our heads above the stormy waters. People are in constant fear. I cope by working long hours on my research in the fields of political theory and ethics. My research is my refuge away from the distressing reality.
Since the signing of the Oslo accords in September 1993, terror has become part of our lives. The constant Palestinian hostilities have made even the most dovish people in Israel believe that we should try a more radical option. We can no longer bear this horrible situation, the loss of lives, the fears and anxieties.
The Palestinians are serious in their determination to win independence. It is time to show that we are also serious about our will to live safely.
People ask me what I think about the Saudi initiative, the offer of "normal relations" in return for Israel's withdrawal to pre-1967 borders and "fair" settlement for Palestinian refugees. Frankly, not much. I think the offer is mostly a public-relations effort in response to the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks were Saudis.
That's why I support my government's decision last week to open a new phase of operations on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A large-scale military operation is under way, aiming to destroy the terror network that is trying to eliminate the Jewish state. I hope that this operation will reap positive results.
Only after the eradication of the web of terror will we be able to build bridges between the two nations, Israeli and Palestinian. Then we could take up various possibilities, such as the Gaza First plan, which I have long promoted as a way to immediately give Palestinians at least part of their state and real responsibility.
But not now.
Raphael Cohen-Almagor is chairperson of information and library studies at the University of Haifa. He contributed this comment to The Washington Post.
By Gershom Gorenberg
JERUSALEM - The terrorist simply walked in. No fence protects the Israeli settlement of Elon Moreh, perched on a hilltop above the Palestinian city of Nablus in the West Bank. The community of red-roofed houses is open to the surrounding countryside by choice. Last Thursday, the killer needed nothing but the darkness of early evening to enter the settlement and murder four members of a family before being killed himself.
As horror follows horror, singling out the Elon Moreh attack might seem arbitrary. Radio reports from the latest restaurant bombing alternate with bulletins from the battles in Ramallah, where Israel's army is besieging Yasser Arafat.
When I switch the radio off, I hear the roar of Air Force planes over my Jerusalem neighborhood and the snare-drumming of machine-gun fire from the south, where the army has moved into the Palestinian town of Beit Jalla.
On Friday, a muffled boom, distant and deep, rattled our window panes. A bomb, I guessed correctly, somewhere in the city. Later we'd learn that an 18-year-old Palestinian woman had blown herself up at a supermarket, killing two Israeli bystanders. I'd heard them die from my kitchen.
I was sickened but no longer surprised. My children were playing in the living room. In a family strategy session, my wife and I had canceled a trip to the zoo for fear of suicide bombers. Yet when I demand of myself to step past fear and to make sense of events, the attack on Elon Moreh still stands out.
Elon Moreh serves as a symbol of Israeli miscalculations. Pointing out those mistakes in no way justifies the brutality of Palestinian attacks against civilians or reduces the urgent need for international pressure on the Palestinians to end the terror. Neither, though, does Palestinian brutality exempt Israelis from reconsidering the country's direction.
Start with the decision of Elon Moreh's settlers not to build a fence around their community. As reported, that was an ideological choice: A fence, residents reasoned, would turn the settlement into a "ghetto." It would cut them off from the land around them, when Elon Moreh's purpose was to establish a claim to the entirety of the Land of Israel.
For similar reasons, no fence marks the boundary between sovereign Israel and the occupied West Bank. Successive Israeli governments have done their best to erase that border. Even today, when it is clear that a sophisticated border fence could reduce the chance of a suicide bomber reaching Israeli cities, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government refrains from erecting one, for fear of conceding Israel's claim to the land the lies beyond the fence.
Elon Moreh isn't just one settlement out of many. Established in 1975, it was the tipping point in Jewish settlement of the West Bank. Until then, then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had sought to keep Israeli settlements out of heavily populated Arab parts of the occupied territories, so they could be traded for peace. With Elon Moreh's creation, at the climax of a long public campaign against Rabin's first government, the way was open for scattering Israeli communities between Palestinian towns and villages across the West Bank. The work that peace negotiators would later face was rendered immeasurably more difficult.
Both Elon Moreh's location and its lack of a fence reflect the hubris of power, the belief that Israeli military strength is sufficient to persuade Palestinians to accept a permanently subservient position under Israeli rule. It's no accident that Sharon, then a novice politician, was an ally of Elon Moreh's original settlers - or that West Bank settlers are the most vocal advocates today of reconquering Palestinian land, erasing the Palestinian Authority and crushing the current rebellion by force.
Palestinian nationalism and Palestinian terror, insist settlers and their allies, can be defeated by military means alone, and the prime minister appears to agree. That "strategy" has obvious emotional appeal as newspapers fill with photos of our dead. Yet the lesson of recent weeks is that each successive Israeli offensive has been followed by more Palestinian terror attacks, not fewer. The photos of Palestinian prisoners lined up in Ramallah share space with ambulance workers evacuating terror victims.
All Israel has become Elon Moreh. We are paying for unfenced borders, unlimited settlement and hubris - and the price is too high. Israel must defend itself against terror. Yet to do so wisely, it must return to a path of restraint and of dividing the land - by negotiation if possible, by unilateral action if necessary. Those who truly care about its welfare will urge it to do so.
Gershom Gorenberg is the author of the forthcoming "The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount." He contributed this comment to The Washington Post.
TITLE: Will We Keep Getting It Wrong Forever?
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Several months ago, Judyth Twigg, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, briefed a dozen members of the U.S. Congress on the state of Russian public health. Twigg says she mentioned a few positive trends in what was otherwise overwhelmingly a litany of doom. Yet after she finished, Twigg says, a member of the house thanked her publicly for "a positive presentation that focuses on the good things happening in Russia."
Twigg says: "She just didn't hear the majority of what I was saying!"
Tales of being seen yet not heard were plentiful at a two-day conference here, sponsored by the Kennan Institute, about misadventures in Russia-watching and Kremlinology - a topic that could fill a small library.
There was the U.S. State Department official who insisted Boris Yeltsin never slurred his words: It was just his regional accent. There was the memo alleging Russian corruption that then U.S. Vice President Al Gore returned to the CIA along with a dismissive "barnyard epithet."
Or there was aid worker Fred Cuny's struggle to get the State Department's help with brokering a cease-fire in the carpet bombing of Grozny, just for a few days, to evacuate thousands of civilians. When Cuny flew to Washington in March 1995 to make his case, high-level officials in President Bill Clinton's administration expressed shock at his account of the carnage - as if it wasn't leading CNN every night - even as Secretary of State Warren Christopher opined, "It's best in such matters to leave it to the judgment of President Yeltsin. ... I'm sure he thought through what he was doing before he did it, and it's best we let him run such things."
But buying the Potemkin village was not, as it sometimes seemed, an exclusively Clinton administration failing. Much of the conference dwelled upon how wrong the U.S. intelligence community was about Soviet staying power and military might. Conference participants spoke of a tension between diplomatic defense attaches - on the ground getting Russian mud on their boots - and "threat inflators" back in Washington writing the Pentagon budgets.
Mark Medish, a former U.S. deputy assistant treasury secretary, suggested a similar bureaucratic arc was in play when writing aid budgets for the Yeltsin team. "Our [administration's] advertising about what was happening in Russia tended to be boosterish," Medish said. "To get appropriations out of Congress, we had to tell a big story about the transitions that were possible. We led the markets."
But are Washington politics the only reason Americans so often misread Russia? No, says James Schlesinger - a former director of central intelligence and former U.S. defense secretary, among other things. Invited to give the final speech, Schlesinger could have championed any of a number of explanations for why Americans get it wrong: from an emotional need to see other people a certain way, to a failure to foster, or respect, in-country experience.
Instead, Schlesinger drily noted "the infinite power of the human mind to resist the introduction of knowledge."
He did not offer a forceful view on current Russian affairs. But he did say Americans were still probably getting it wrong. "Will we do better? I wish I could be optimistic, but I do not think so. We are missing the forest for the trees again."
In a slow and grave voice, he concluded: "The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history."
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The St. Petersburg Times, is a Washington-based fellow of The Nation Institute (www.thenation.com).
TITLE: Building a New Age of Serfdom
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: THE scene was St. Petersburg over 200 years ago. Empress Catherine II, who fancied herself an expert in economic matters, penned a memorandum on metals exports and sent it to the Berg-Kollegiya, the governing body for Russia's mining and metals industry that functioned intermittently from 1719 to 1807.
Today it might seem strange that the empress sent her proposals to a ministry, and not the other way around. But those were the days of enlightened absolutism. The contemporary reader will probably be even more surprised to learn that the Berg-Kollegiya rejected her idea.
Russia in the mid-18th century was one of the largest suppliers of metals to the world market. Its main client was Britain, which bought up nearly all of Russia's ferrous metals exports. But the English paid little, arousing Catherine's displeasure.
To change the situation she proposed a search for new markets in southern Europe. But the Berg-Kollegiya concluded that selling metals in Italy or Spain would prove unprofitable. The demand there was limited, and the buyers unaccustomed to dealing with Russia. The agency proposed instead to increase exports to England.
Foundries in those days relied on serf labor. This made Russian producers extremely competitive, not to mention that anti-dumping laws had yet to be thought up. To this day, international free-trade regulations are directed for the most part against state subsidies and "excessive" social benefits for workers, not against slave labor.
However, it never occurred to Catherine or her opponents that in addition to the export market, Russia had a domestic market. Rather than increasing exports or the prices demanded of foreign buyers, they could have helped to increase domestic demand. But for that they would have had to think more about the interests of the Russian people and less about markets.
The recent debate about steel and chickens is very reminiscent of that 200-year-old dispute. The United States has curtailed imports of cheap steel from Russia, which, in turn, charged that U.S. chickens were hazardous and banned imports, although the government later opened a loophole by drawing up a list of good and bad suppliers. Those on the good list are allowed to ship chicken legs to Russia if they can prove that they don't feed their birds poisonous substances.
Our metals producers, meanwhile, are pushing for protectionist measures against competitors in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. And they're using the same arguments that the United States used against Russia. The pitifully low wages paid to Russian workers do not constitute dumping, they contend, and, according to the letter of international trade law, they're right. Yet they maintain that Ukrainian producers, who pay their workers even less, are guilty of dumping. The Russian metals industry has even demanded that export duties be scrapped, thus shifting some of their losses onto the state.
No one thinks for a moment about how the Russian economy needs a huge injection of metals. The equipment in our factories is worn out, and the buildings themselves are decrepit. Low wages allow for only one way out: exports.
Russia is far from the United States' main competitor in steel production. Before the introduction of new tariffs, Germany and France were exporting far more. It turns out that you can be competitive even when you pay high wages, your equipment isn't worked until it falls to pieces and you pay your taxes.
Examples like this are everywhere. Employees of Finnair make much better money than their colleagues at Aeroflot. They are union members with the right to strike. Scandinavian taxes are far higher than in Russia, and they get paid. Yet a flight to New York on a Finnish airliner costs no more, and sometimes less, than on a Russian plane. Why?
Many in Russia point to the magical abilities of "foreign managers." Unfortunately, when they come to work in this country, many of these managers start to steal, cook the books and dodge taxes just like the natives.
When Russian companies secure tax cuts, they ensure that the government will have even less to spend on social programs. The policy of squeezing the last drop of blood from workers and equipment leads to a vicious circle of poverty and inefficiency. There is no domestic demand, so production volumes are low. And that means that any production is, in fact, quite expensive. We're saving money on salaries. Catherine the Great had it easier: she had serfdom.
Of course, that led to the Pugachyov rebellion.
Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist.
TITLE: It's Time for a Purge of Government Web Sites
TEXT: WHITE House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has directed all federal agencies to purge Web sites of information useful to terrorists. Hmm. Seems logical. Maybe even obvious. But then nothing is safely obvious when confronting bureaucracies and the kind of mindlessness that can infect groups of humans, even accountants, when they inhabit an office and start filing things.
Here's why Card issued his memo: As late as February, according to the White House, at least four government Web sites carried detailed instructions on making explosives, building a germ factory, spreading contaminants and poisoning vast water supplies.
Read that last sentence again.
Now, let's ponder together: This means that despite a September effort to remove sensitive information like pipeline routes, for five months after Sept. 11 federal Web sites disseminated instructions on developing weapons of mass destruction to anyone with a PC. What planet are those Web masters from?
It's conceivable, theoretically, that government is suddenly so concerned with openness (except when the vice president meets with energy companies) that it simply dumped everything into millions of little electronic coves. And then plumb forgot about the bomb-making and plague-spreading recipes. We've all found forgotten things in a dresser drawer, though rarely with national-security implications.
But never mind Sept. 11. What are we doing spreading such information to any civilian at any time? Even if this information is available elsewhere on the Web. Wasn't one Timothy McVeigh sufficient? The United States is not up against the Grenada police force this time.
Fanatical al-Qaida operatives planned for years, even translating U.S. military training manuals. Does anyone think www.al-Qaida.org posts "Osama's Guide to Secure Caves" or "Tips to Combat Terrorists"?
So here, just to be clear, are some other items we probably don't want on federal Web sites. Nuclear ICBM launch codes. Where the last smallpox germs are stored, and who has the key. Map to the vice president's secret hideaway. How to build Special Forces radio scanners. Which U.S. ports have the weakest security. How to sink supertankers in harbor mouths. The precise movements of all missile subs. Shift-change procedures at nuclear-power plants and the home phones of all security guards behind on mortgage payments. A countdown clock to the moment that U.S. fighters will stop patrolling over major cities.
Meanwhile, maybe Chief of Staff Card should send another memo, reminding federal agencies to clean out Web sites regularly, even without major terrorism acts, just as pretty much every homeowner cleans his garage some spring day like this.
This comment originally appeared as an editorial in the Los Angeles Times.
TITLE: akunin sheds some light
AUTHOR: By Alice Jones
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Boris Akunin has been described as one of the most mysterious authors writing in Russia today. This aura of mystery is conjured up not only by his intrigue-filled detective stories set in the murky depths of the 19th century, but also by the more mundane fact that Boris Akunin is not his real name.
Last Saturday, however, Akunin - who was born Grigory Chkhartishvili -made a rare appearance in Petersburg to talk about his works and future projects, giving journalists and fans a chance to see the man behind the myth.
The question-and-answer session, held at the Quo Vadis Internet cafe on Nevsky Prospect, was the first in a planned series of events being organized by Internet shopping site Ozon that will provide the opportunity to meet important figures in Russian cultural circles. Vyacheslav Kuritsyn, the site's director, said that the goal of the project is to strengthen cultural links throughout Russia and to set up "a constant critical dialogue between the public and leading artists."
Boris Akunin is best known for the Erast Petrovich Fandorin series of detective novels, set for the most part in 19th-century Moscow. Another set of novels, about the investigations of the nun Pelegiya, has also been a success, with "Pelegiya i chyorny monakh" ("Pelegeya and the Black Monk") being nominated for the 2001 Russian Booker Prize.
Akunin says he sees himself very much as a "professional writer," and he has very little spare time outside his work. Indeed, the Fandorin empire seems to be expanding rapidly. Following the recent success of the televised version of the first novel in the series, "Azazel," discussions are under way with ORT to film the second book, "Turetsky gambit" ("Turkish Gambit"). Translations of the Fandorin series into several languages are also ongoing.
In addition to this, Akunin and acclaimed Dutch director Paul Verhoeven - whose numerous credits include "Robocop" and "Total Recall" - are finalizing details for a full-length feature film. Akunin has suggested filming in St. Petersburg, which he says captures the atmosphere of 19th-century life "better than any other European city ... with all its flaking paintwork."
Amid these plans to go global, Akunin maintains a close relationship with his favorite hero. A portrait of Fandorin hangs on the wall in his study at home, and Akunin always turns to him when writing, as though to seek Fandorin's approval for the direction and manipulation of his character.
Akunin says that Fandorin's appeal lies in his closed and "nobly restrained" character. Far from being a typical Russian literary hero, Fandorin's personality has contrasting cultural roots - Akunin describes him as a mixture of "a British gentleman and a Japanese Samurai."
Complex characterization seems to be Akunin's main concern in his writing. In the same vein as Pushkin or Tolstoy, Akunin says that "you can't make a character do what he doesn't want to do," and states that he has to know everything there is to know about his creations. In particular, he says, finding correct names is crucial.
Although he lives and works in Moscow, thriving off its "nervous cultural energy" and setting most of his books in the city, Akunin also feels the "mystical energy" of St Petersburg very strongly. "It is not just myths about Moscow that interest me in my work, but the myths of Russia as a whole," he explains.
According to Akunin, the three essential qualities for a good detective novel are that it is "interesting, frightening and amusing." A mysteriously simple but successful blend that, together with the plans for the future, should ensure that Erast Petrovich, Pelagiya and all of Akunin's other creations continue to live on in the public ``imagination.
TITLE: peaches the porn pop provider
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Controversial Canadian techno-punk artist Peaches is on her way to Russia, and she's bringing her sex-soaked act with her.
Peaches - a cult figure in Berlin, where she is based - is relatively unknown, but slowly gaining prominence, in the United States and her native Canada. With song titles such as "Fuck the Pain Away," "Diddle My Skittle" and "Suck and Let Go," Peaches sings almost exclusively about sex, chirping explicit lyrics against a background of tinny, frenetic rhythms provided by an Roland MC-505 Groovebox.
"Sex is one of the five basic needs for a human. Most every song deals with sex or love," Peaches wrote from Toronto in an e-mail interview last week. She was visiting her hometown after an appearance at March 17's "All Tomorrow's Parties" music festival in Los Angeles.
Despite her racy subject matter, Peaches bears little resemblance to the prototypical sex symbol. In fact, despite the skintight, pink hotpants she often sports, the short-haired 35-year-old tends to favor the folk singer she was in a previous incarnation.
Once employed as a schoolteacher, Peaches - whose real name is Merrill Nisker - hasn't always performed what her local promoters call "porn rap." Indeed, Peaches' beginnings were a far cry from her current act: She got her start as a folk singer in a band called Mermaid Hotel.
"Actually, I started playing folk because I knew a few songs on acoustic guitar," she wrote. "I played them in a club with a friend of mine who also played acoustic guitar, and the club liked it so much they gave us girls a weekly gig."
Although Peaches played at the club for a year, learning "how to be a performer and a musician," she soon became tired of folk music and moved on to performing with a group of avant-garde jazz musicians. But her avant-garde jazz period was short-lived.
"Although it was a great challenge to work this way, it was a little too challenging not connecting to an audience. ..." she wrote. "Then I met Gonzo, Mocky and Sticky and we made a band that would be punk and improvisational and sexy!!!! This is where I first became Peaches, and then when everyone moved away, I tried to continue this punk attitude while using electronics." Incidentally, that first "sexy, improvisational" band was called The Shit.
So, with a nom de plume she took from a song by soul singer Nina Simone, and a band that consisted of just a music synthesizer and herself, the new, solo Peaches moved to Germany two years ago. It was there that she finally found the audience that had eluded her in her native land. Her debut album, "The Teaches of Peaches," was released on Berlin-based underground label Kitty-Yo last September.
"I believe they [German and European audiences] are more open and not as worried about fitting into a narrow image," wrote Peaches, who was once quoted as saying that "you can't become anything in Canada unless you leave Canada."
Now, Peaches is getting some of that long-awaited attention in her home country as well as western Europe and the United States.
"It's exciting to me, because I am not changing and they are now coming to me!" she wrote.
Nevertheless, after prolonged listening, Peaches' work eventually begins to resemble self-parody. She, however, appears to be serious.
"People take my work all different ways," she wrote. "Some may find it very direct and honest, some may just see the character. To me, that is seriously ironic."
And, although the word "feminist" occasionally appears in articles about her, Peaches - whose texts include her boasting about her sexy rump and her competence in the sack - argues that it is wrongly bestowed.
"I do not call myself a feminist - I am trying to exercise my macho side," she wrote.
Peaches' live act - which incorporates just her voice, the Roland MC-505 and occasionally some revealing clothing - is deliberately lo-fi.
But, although Peaches appears to have no reservations about her music being perceived as low-quality, as well as low-tech, is one person enough to deliver a full-fledged stage performance?
Peaches claims it is. As she wrote, "I give so much and create such an illusion that you will hardly notice that it is just one person."
Peaches performs at Red Club this Saturday at 11 p.m. Links: www.peachesrocks.com
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: It seems that NME Russia, a version of the respected British music newspaper adapted for Russia, has started to influence the pirate market for the first time since it was launched in September.
Record piraters, who mainly specialize in classic rock, art rock and pop, have sniffed the interest in newer music and pirated a trio of NME's favorites, The Strokes' "Is This It" (with the U.K. cover, censored in the U.S.), White Stripes' "White Blood Cells," and Andrew WK's "I Get Wet," - all of which the Russian media have largely ignored.
On the jazz front, famed Czech composer, conductor, band leader and pianist Milan Svoboda comes to St. Petersburg to appear at LDM on Friday.
The founder of the Prague Big Band in 1974, he will perform with his smaller outfit, the Milan Svoboda Quartet. Formed in 1979, it specializes in what is described on his Web site as "modern mainstream, combining jazz with elements of contemporary serious music, rock and folklore [sic] elements, and very often grouping individual themes into larger musical units in the style of a suite." See www.milansvoboda.com for more information.
As part of the "Austrian Days" festival, Austrian rock music, a rarity in Russia, is also represented this week in the form of Hardblader, a popular folk-rock band that sings in dialect and performs blues yodeling (sic), among other things. See Gigs listings for details.
Kolibri will be premiering its long-awaited new album, "Lyubov i yeyo konechnosti" (Love and Its Extremities) at Par.spb on Friday. The concert will showcase the new album, plus older hits and a couple of totally new numbers.
The all-female trio - Yelena Yudanova, Inna Volkova and Irina Sharovatova - used to sing to prerecorded backing tapes, but now performs live with two musicians, Oleg Emirov and Andrei Gradovich, the latter being the former guitarist of Jugendstil. The band will take the stage at 12:30 a.m., according to its site, www.kolibri.spb.ru.
If you like Balkan folk along the lines of Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra, don't miss former soundtrack composer Goran Bregovic and his Weddings and Funerals Orchestra at 7 p.m. on Sunday at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory.
Also of note for fans of obscure folk music, Djivan Gasparyan, the world's most renowned exponent of the duduk, an Armenian oboe-like instrument, is playing at the Conservatory this Wednesday at 7 p.m.
As announced last week, Indian "mystico-ecstatic" band Maharaja will present a set called "Sufi Desert Trance Music by Elegant Gypsy Wizards From Rajasthan" at Red Club on April 25.
Formerly known as Musafir, Maharaja brings together leading musicians from the desert tribes of Rajasthan, India's "Land of the Kings."
Rajasthan, whence come some of the richest and most diverse traditions in Indian art and culture, sits between Gujurat to the south, the Arawalli mountains to the East, and by the Sindh, Pakistan to the West.
One more loss on the local club scene: While Zoopark marked its closing with a big farewell show last Sunday, art-blues club Gandharva, much talked-about when it opened in late January, has disappeared without any notice and been replaced by a strip joint.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: za stsenoi gets standing ovation
AUTHOR: by Robert Coalson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Writing positive restaurant reviews is much harder than writing negative ones. It is easy to carp and make jokes about bad service and sub-standard food, but there are only so many ways to say "delicious." However, for readers who are too busy to get beyond the first paragraph of this review, let me say that the cuisine at Za Stsenoi, the official restaurant of the Mariinsky Theater, is toothful, toothsome, gustful, lickerish and ambrosial.
In other words, it's really good.
Za Stsenoi, or "Backstage," is another of the wonderfully understated and relaxing local restaurants crafted by designer Andrei Dmitriev, a man with a truly supernatural gift for creating ambiance out of little more than the color beige. Dmitriev's sparse design is complimented by a small selection of Mariinsky props and memorabilia, and the walls feature expressions of appreciation from luminaries such as Mariinsky Artistic Director Valery Gergiev, tenor Placido Domingo and artist Mikhail Shemyakin. According to the restaurant's brochure, the legendary Russian singer Fyodor Shalyapin used the mirror that now hangs in the main hall.
But, appropriately, the show really starts with the menu, which is a work of art on its own. In all categories, from cold starters to entrees to desserts, Za Stsenoi has a wealth of tempting options that is far beyond what this space can encompass. It also offers in each category some affordable and still intriguing options, meaning that it is possible to stage a three-act meal here for a perfectly reasonable price. Be careful, though, not to fill up on the lovely sesame-seed rolls and squash butter while you make your selections.
My dining companion and I decided to start off with an overture of carpaccio of venison (210 rubles, $6.77), which was served with thinly sliced mushrooms, fresh parmesan cheese and a fascinating sauce of horseradish and cedar nuts. At this point, we already knew that we were in for a rare dining experience.
We sipped our wine as the efficient wait staff brought our hot starters. We went for eggplant stuffed with chicken and sesame seeds (150 rubles, $4.84) and meatballs with herbs in a spicy sauce (120 rubles, $3.87). Both of these dishes were excellent, although clearly overshadowed by the other dishes we ordered. I found myself ever-so-slightly regretting that we hadn't sampled the "Epigram," a dish of fried sea scallops, tiger prawns and squid going for 350 rubles ($11.29). Next time, I suppose.
What came next, though, can only be described as the finest soup in St. Petersburg. Sadko, in the Grand Hotel Europe, used to serve a wonderful Mexican tortilla soup, but it was removed from the menu a couple of years ago and is now just a fading memory. That memory faded further when I tucked into Za Stsenoi's pumpkin soup with fried pumpkin seeds for 80 rubles ($2.58). This was a thick, creamy and delicately seasoned soup that transformed the humble pumpkin into the highlight of an extraordinary meal. How appropriate, I thought, considering that the Mariinsky's latest premiere was Sergei Prokoviev's "Cinderella."
With a flourish of flashing cloches, the waiters then unveiled our mains, both of which were beautifully and dramatically presented. I went for the French pigeon stuffed with souffle for 460 rubles ($14.83). This was a perfectly roasted bird (which might be more appetizingly referred to as a dove), served on a delicate sauce that was also based on cedar nuts. (In general, Za Stsenoi makes wonderful use of seeds and nuts. Other dishes feature pistachios, cashews, walnuts and so on.)
My dining companion followed the waiter's advice and veered away from the roast duck marinated in honey with sesame seeds and rose-hip sauce (300 rubles, $9.68), settling on the "Opera" fillet of veal, which was a tender piece of veal, topped with goose-liver pate and served on brown gravy. This Opera lived up to advance billing and my dining companion pronounced herself completely satisfied.
For her, however, the best was yet to come. When we asked for the dessert menu, the waiter drew our attention back to the soup section and pointed out a cold, sweet gooseberry soup with kiwi fruit (60 rubles, $1.94). This fabulous combination sent my companion into paroxysms of glee that were truly a pleasure to observe as I sipped my cappuccino (70 rubles $2.26).
The evening ended, then, with us donning our coats and heading off into the night, arguing heatedly over which of the pumpkin soup or the gooseberry soup is really the best soup in the city. We'll probably have to go back a few times to be sure.
Za Stsenoi, 18/10 Teatralnaya Ploshchad. Tel.: 327-0684. Open daily from 12 p.m. to 2 a.m. Menu in Russian and English. Dinner for two with wine: 2,640 rubles ($85.16). Credit cards accepted.
TITLE: Angolans Sign Cease-Fire Pledge To End Civil War
AUTHOR: By Casimiro Siona
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LUANDA, Angola - Angola's government and the UNITA rebel group signed a cease-fire agreement on Thursday as a first step toward ending the country's protracted civil war.
Rebel and government leaders signed the pact in a ceremony at the parliament in Luanda, as white flags flew outside. The government declared Friday a national holiday to celebrate the agreement.
The deal includes a pledge by the two sides to abide by the terms of a 1994 peace accord that collapsed almost four years ago, the government said.
The sides are to hold further talks on issues relating to the peace process. Three previous peace deals - signed in 1975, 1991 and 1994 - all unraveled.
The resumption of peace talks followed the army's kiliing on Feb. 22 of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, who had commanded the group's struggle for power for more than 30 years.
The civil war, which began after the southwest African country's 1975 independence from Portugal, is believed to have killed over 500,000 people. Roughly 4 million people - about a third of the population - have been driven from their homes by the fighting and most of them are dependent on foreign aid.
The full terms of the cease-fire have not been published. However, the government says it includes the demobilization of about 50,000 UNITA soldiers, as well as their families, which is scheduled to begin on Monday.
The UN is to monitor the demobilization at 27 regional centers.
The government says it will take between four and nine months to integrate the rebels into society.
The cease-fire was negotiated during two weeks of talks in Luena, a city in eastern Angola. Only state media were given access to the talks.
The government army captured or killed dozens of UNITA's senior officers early this year before tracking down Savimbi in a remote part of eastern Angola.
UNITA's secretary-general Paulo Lukamba Gato heads a committee of rebel military commanders who have assumed the group's interim leadership.
President Jose Eduardo dos Santos says he wants to organize national elections as soon as possible.
The government financed its war effort through the sale of offshore oil resources.
Angola is sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producer after Nigeria and is one of the world's foremost oil-exploration areas.
UNITA - a Portuguese acronym that stands for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola - sold diamonds on the black market to buy weapons
TITLE: Hundreds Arrested in Kabul After Coup Plot Uncovered
AUTHOR: By Paul Haven
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL, Afghanistan - Hundreds of people linked to a hard-line Islamic group have been arrested in Kabul in connection with an apparent plot to overthrow the government of interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, Afghan officials said on Thursday.
The plot, the most serious threat yet to Karzai's fledgling administration, included plans to set off bombs throughout the capital, said General Din Muhammad Jurat, the director general for security at the Interior Ministry.
He said most of those arrested were members of Hezb-e-Islami, a hard-line Islamic group headed by former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
"They wanted to launch a coup d'etat against the government," said Mohammed Naseer, the security director at the Kabul governor's office. He said the plotters also wanted to disrupt the loya jirga, a political gathering planned for June to select a new Afghan government.
About 350 people had been arrested, most in the past three days, Naseer said.
International Security Assistance Force peacekeepers were not involved in the operations, but were tipped off of the raids in advance so they could stay clear of the area, said Lieutenant Colonel Neal Peckham, a force spokesperson.
Peckham said weapons had been found and that those arrested also included Pakistani members of another militant group, the Jamiat-e-Islami, the main supporter of Hekmatyar in Pakistan.
Some 600 people were rounded up in the raids, and 250 released, said another Western official in Kabul, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Ten were being held on suspicion of serious offenses, including terrorism, the official said.
The roundups could heighten tensions between Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, and the northern alliance, which is dominated by ethnic Tajiks and which controls the interior and other key ministries.
Hekmatyar's following is largely Pashtun.
Afghan police on Monday raided the home of Hekmatyar's one-time aide, Wahidullah Sabaun, but there was some confusion on Thursday over his whereabouts.
Jurat and Naseer said Sabaun was among those arrested in the sweep, but Peckham said the man was still at large.
Sabaun was once the military chief of Hezb-e-Islami and served as Afghanistan's defense minister in 1995, when Hekmatyar became prime minister.
When the Taliban took over the country in 1996, Sabaun allied himself with the Northern Alliance.
Hekmatyar has been a vocal opponent of Karzai and of U.S. presence on Afghan soil, but last month his deputy, Jumma Khan Hamdard, said the party was ready to cooperate with the interim administration.
Ruthless power struggles among Hekmatyar's forces and northern alliance factions devastated much of Kabul during the early 1990s in which, according to the International Red Cross, 50,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
Hekmatyar fled to Iran after the Taliban took the capital in 1996, although the Iranian government recently closed his offices in Tehran and his whereabouts is unknown.
Naseer said the men arrested "were linked to both al-Qaida and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar," but he refused to elaborate.
Jurat said the interim administration had documents and strong evidence that linked Hekmatyar to the plot, but made no mention of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
TITLE: Zenit Wins, Makes Cup Semifinals
AUTHOR: By Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A goal by Alexander Kerzhakov five minutes into golden-goal extra time saw Zenit past Krylya Sovyetov Samara into the semifinals of the Russian Cup on Wednesday at Petrovsky Stadium.
About 15,000 fans turned out on a bright, cold evening to witness a dreadful match, illuminated only by two shots against the bar, one for each team.
Although Zenit dominated possession in the first half, the Samara side created the best chances, only to be thwarted by the bar and some fine defending from Zenit sweeper Sarkis Ovsepyan. At 13 minutes, Denis Kovba latched onto a quickly taken short corner, and let fly from the top right corner of the area, only to see it come back off the bar, with Zenit goalie Slava Malafeyev beaten. Somehow, Marcio Gaucho failed to put in the rebound and Zenit survived.
Two minutes later, Igonin slipped in midfield, and Gaucho broke clear with only Ovsepyan to beat. The Zenit player, however, out-thought his opponent, made the tackle and cleared to safety.
Krylya Sovyetov's best chance came just after the half-hour. Anton Bobyor skipped a tackle and Vladislav Radimov drilled in a cross from the right, but again Gaucho somehow failed to connect.
The second half was no better, with neither side able to create much. Zenit's best chance came after 70 minutes. Ugarov, who had a good second half, combined with Konstantin Konoployov on the right, Konoplyov charged into the area, and unleashed a rocket which cannoned back off the angle to safety.
This is the first season that golden-goal extra time has been used to decide Russian Cup matches, and Zenit will probably be very grateful. After Krylya Sovyetov squandered a free kick in the D, Zenit put together the only decent move of the game.
Maxim Astafyev, coming back on at the halfway line after receiving treatment, happened to be in the right place at the right time after a pinball-esque exchange in Zenit's half. Astafyev didn't hesitate, flew up the right flank, crossed to the near post where substitute Predrag Randjelovic helped it on past Polyakov. Kerzhakov, arriving a second ahead of the defense, had a simple tap-in at the far post, and sent the faithful home happy.
Zenit will face Saturn-REN TV Ramenskoe - which beat Dinamo Moscow 3-0 away on Wednesday - in the semi-final on April 24.
TITLE: Bonds Starts Season With Power Display
AUTHOR: By John Nadel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - Barry Bonds is leaving his teammates speechless. And even he seems lost for words these days.
After joining Hall of Famer Eddie Mathews as the only players in history to open a season with a pair of two-homer games, Bonds was asked if the accomplishment meant anything.
He hesitated, perhaps uncertain as to how to respond, before laughing and saying it didn't. And then he did his best to play down the feat.
"I just try to see it and hit it," he said. "I'm strong enough to hit it out of the ballpark. I'm just trying to stay consistent and hit it."
Bonds homered in the first and fourth innings Wednesday night as the San Francisco Giants pounded the Los Angeles Dodgers 12-0. A day earlier, he connected in the second and seventh innings in a 9-2 victory.
"He's on a pace for 324," teammate J.T. Snow said. "Really, nothing else need be said."
Mathews homered twice in each of the first two games for the Milwaukee Braves in 1958.
Bonds, who set records by hitting 73 homers and drawing 177 walks last year, has five hits in six at-bats, five runs scored and nine RBIs.
He has reached base eight straight times after popping out in his first at-bat. And that's in only two games.
"It's fun when you're winning," he said. "We're all hitting the ball pretty good, it's not just me."
That's true - the Giants have outhit the Dodgers 27-9 and outscored them 21-2 in a pair of one-sided victories.
"Pitching kind of sparks you more than when you hit a home run," Bonds said. "Pitching and defense, those are the keys."
Livan Hernandez and Russ Ortiz have pitched outstanding games, and the Giants have played errorless ball, but Bonds has been the center of attention.
Tsuyoshi Shinjo walked and Rich Aurilia singled before Bonds hit a 1-2 pitch from Hideo Nomo (0-1) an estimated 113 meters to give the Giants a 3-0 lead before an out had been recorded.
Bonds tagged a 1-0 pitch an estimated 140 meters into the right-field seats to make it 5-0. Benito Santiago hit a three-run homer and Ortiz a two-run shot later in the fourth.
Bonds was walked intentionally by Nomo in the second, and Mulholland walked Bonds on four pitches in the fifth before he left the game along with several other regulars from both teams.
Ortiz (1-0) allowed three hits while walking one and striking out two. He retired the final 10 batters he faced before Jason Christiansen relieved to begin the eighth.
Nomo lasted only three innings, allowing six hits and four runs while walking six and striking out three. He threw 88 pitches, 44 for strikes.
Mulholland gave up seven hits and eight runs - seven earned - in two innings.
"I'd rather lose this way than 2-1 in 12 innings," Dodgers catcher Paul Lo Duca said. "You're 0-2, so be it. We've got to have a short-term memory. We'vegot to swing the bats a little better."
TITLE: Kings Pulling Away as Playoffs Loom
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SACRAMENTO, California - The Sacramento Kings are putting some distance between themselves and the Los Angeles Lakers as both teams work their way through their final Eastern Conference road trips.
Chris Webber had 28 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and two blocks as the Kings beat the Detroit Pistons 107-86 on Wednesday night. Sacramento maintained the best record in the NBA (55-19) by winning its sixth straight and ninth in 10 games. The Kings also set a franchise record with their sixth consecutive road victory.
Sacramento's victory, combined with the Lakers 94-92 loss at New Jersey, gave the Kings a 2 1/2 -game lead in the Pacific Division. The Kings have just six games remaining, while the Lakers have seven.
In other games, Toronto defeated Chicago 117-104; San Antonio edged Seattle 90-88; Utah beat the Los Angeles Clippers 99-87; Charlotte defeated Miami 97-90; Philadelphia outlasted Phoenix 89-83 in overtime; Milwaukee downed Washington 106-90; and Minnesota beat Memphis 92-81.
The fans in Detroit booed and berated Webber - in part because he didn't sign with the Pistons as a free agent last summer - and that only seemed to motivate him more. Mike Bibby and Vlade Divac complemented Webber's night with 15 points each.
The Central Division-leading Pistons had won nine of 11. Corliss Williamson scored 13, Jerry Stackhouse had 12, and Ben Wallace added 12 points, 11 rebounds and two blocks.
Nets 94, Lakers 92. At East Rutherford, New Jersey, the Nets scored 16 of the game's final 22 points after blowing an early 19-point lead and falling behind by eight midway through the fourth.
Kerry Kittles scored 19, Kenyon Martin had 18, Todd MacCulloch 17, Richard Jefferson 13 and Jason Kidd had 13 points, 11 assists and six rebounds.
New Jersey opened a three-game lead over Detroit in the Eastern Conference and extended the longest home winning streak in franchise history to 12 games.
The Lakers played without Sha quille O'Neal, a last-minute scratch because of a sprained right wrist. Kobe Bryant scored 33 points and almost tied the game just before the final buzzer, bursting in from the 3-point line but missing a tip-in of an intentionally missed free throw by Rick Fox.
TITLE: U.S. Dominates on Opening Day of Worlds
AUTHOR: By Jim Heintz
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A weary Klete Keller won his first world-level gold medal Wednesday, capturing the 200-meter freestyle at the short-course World Swimming Championships. He then helped his American team win the 400-meter freestyle relay.
Keller arrived from the United States a day before the championships. He took a nap after Wednesday's heats. "I could barely get up," said Keller, an Olympic silver and bronze medalist in the 800-meter freestyle relay and 400-meter medley.
Yana Klochkova of Ukraine added to her array of top titles in the 400-meter medley.
China set the only world record on opening day. The team of Yang Yu, Tang Jingzhii, Zhu Yingven and Xu Yanvei won the 800-meter women's freestyle relay in 7:46.30. The United States were second and Australia was third.
Keller was joined by Scott Tucker, Peter Marshall and Jason Lezak in the victory over Sweden and Russia.
Keller trailed Brazil's Gustavo Borges for the first 100 meters, but in the next 50 he made up more than a second and pulled ahead to win in 1:44.36. Borges finished second and Canada's Mark Johnston was third.
"That's always been my style to take it easy in the first part, then go really hard," Keller said. He said he didn't think he had a chance at gold until learning early in the day that ailing Australian star Grant Hackett pulled out.
Klochkova, a double gold medal winner at Sydney in the medley and the defending world champion in the short-course 400 meters, finished in 4:30.63. She was nearly three seconds off the world record she set in January.
Silver medalist Alenka Kejzar of Slovenia was five seconds behind, so far that Klochkova almost appeared alone in the pool in the final stretch. Georgina Bardach of Argentina took the bronze.
In the night's other final, Petria Thomas of Australia won the 200-meter butterfly. Thomas' time of 2:07.76 put her ahead of Yang Yu of China and Mary De Scenza of the United States.