SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #762 (28), Tuesday, April 16, 2002
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Investor Takes Aim at Auditor
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - An outspoken Western investor seeking to replace PricewaterhouseCoopers as the auditor of Gazprom said Monday that he has filed lawsuits asking that PwC's audits of the gas giant be declared "false and misleading." 
 
William Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, a minority Gazprom shareholder, said he also has asked the Finance Ministry to suspend PwC's auditing license in Russia. 
 PwC called the allegations "completely unfounded" and said it would fight them in court. 
 "Our work met all applicable legal and professional standards and we shall be defending the claims vigorously," PwC said in a statement. "The Hermitage Fund press material misrepresents the nature of our work and our findings, and we will seek redress in court, which is the proper place for litigation." 
 The lawsuits zero in on PwC's audit of Gazprom's relationship with Itera, a Florida-registered natural gas trader, and on PwC's audit of Gazprom's 2000 financial statements. 
 The investment community has harshly criticized PwC for allegedly overlooking - or completely ignoring - business practices at Gazprom that have pushed down the gas monopoly's value. Last year, minority shareholders led by Gazprom board member Boris Fyodorov offered to pay for an independent audit to be conducted by rival firm Deloitte & Touche. Gazprom management - headed at the time by CEO Rem Vyakhirev - refused to approve the audit. 
 Momentum grew after the U.S. Justice Department implicated Big Five auditor Andersen in the Enron scandal.
 Gazprom then decided to hold a tender to choose an auditor for its annual financial results for the first time in its history. PricewaterhouseCoopers is on the list, and Gazprom has no intention of pulling it off because of the lawsuit, a Gazprom spokesperson said. 
 The winning auditor is expected to be announced in the beginning of May. 
 Browder said auditors working in Russia must be held accountable. 
 "Russian audit firms have been operating with impunity in the past because there have not been any consequences," Browder said. "They've been using their good name to put their stamp of approval on bad business practices. We need to create a consequence for the auditors." 
 If Hermitage succeeds in getting the Moscow Arbitration Court to rule that PwC's audit conclusions were false, the door could be opened to award hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to investors, said Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer representing Rilend, the Hermitage investment vehicle named as plaintiff in the lawsuits.
 Dobrovinsky is widely thought to be Russia's most expensive lawyer, and he claims never to have lost a lawsuit. Most recently, he advised the Federal Property Fund on the privatization of Eastern Oil Co. As a result, oil major Yukos returned disputed assets to Eastern Oil. 
 "The sky is the limit," Dobrovinsky said when asked about the amount of damages that could be awarded. He added that Monday's lawsuits against the auditing firm are the first of their kind. 
 Hermitage is basing its case on Russia's federal law on audit activities, which was passed in 2001. According to the law, a false audit report is a "report that clearly contradicts the contents of the documents submitted to the auditor's scrutiny and considered by the auditor during the audit." 
 Under the lawsuit concerning the Gazprom-Itera audit, Hermitage claims that PwC covered up Itera's rise as a competitor to Gazprom. Although PwC referred to the results of a State Audit Chamber audit conducted last year in its own investigation, it findings contradict those of the chamber. 
 In a similar fashion, the lawsuit points out that Itera failed to repay a $251-million debt to Gazprom in 2000 and that Gazprom overpaid for Turkmenistan gas bought from Itera. This last point is also addressed in the second lawsuit concerning the annual financial audit. 
 Dobrovinsky said that PwC was aware that Gazprom had violated Russian joint-stock company regulations but had failed to notify shareholders as required by law. 
 In its appeal to the Finance Ministry, Hermitage alleges that Gazprom repeatedly broke the law throughout the 1990s, when a large number of commercial transactions that personally affected Gazprom management or their families weren't scrutinized by disinterested board members. 
 Despite their possible repercussions, the lawsuits are unlikely to turn the auditing industry on its head, said Andrei Kapustin, head of the Russian auditing firm Rusaudit Group. 
 "There were stronger cases against auditors when banks failed or when assets disappeared from [Gazprom subsidiary] Sibur," Kapustin said. "Those auditing mistake were very real, and even they didn't end up in court."

TITLE: Tax Code Threatens the Disabled
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Yelena Radchenko, 36, suffered almost total hearing loss at the age of three after taking a strong course of penicillin that was prescribed by her doctor when she had pneumonia.
 
Now, together with 100 other deaf people, Radchenko works at Palmira, a private company run by the All-Russian Organization for the Deaf, or VOG, that produces a wide range of goods from plastic bags to electronic parts to T-shirts in five workshops on Mendeleyevskaya Ulitsa on the north side of the city.
 "I like working here because I work with people who have the same problem I have. Therefore we understand one another better," Radchenko said last week as she nimbly assembled the components of a Palmira surge protector.
 Before coming to Palmira in 1991, Radchenko, who graduated from a construction college, worked at a local design institute.
 "It was all right, although I felt uncomfortable when my colleagues were discussing things, and I couldn't follow the conversation, " she said.
 "Plus I couldn't really go on the business trips that the job demanded because of my difficulties communicating."
 Now she is glad to be working at Palmira, earning about $80 a month to supplement her $30 monthly disability payments.
 However, Palmira and other companies devoted to employing the handicapped now find themselves under threat after the adoption of the new federal Tax Code, which came into effect on Jan. 1 and abolished most of the tax breaks that such companies previously enjoyed.
 Under the old Tax Code, companies where at least half of the employees are handicapped were exempt from the 24-percent profit tax and from pension and insurance taxes as well as some others. 
 The new Tax Code was amended to combat widespread abuses of these privileges by companies throughout Russia that had fraudulently acquired tax-exempt status - either by claiming non-handicapped workers as disabled or by hiring handicapped workers and then not giving them any genuine work to do.
 But the more than 250 companies nationally owned by societies dedicated to protecting the rights of the disabled are now suffering under the changes.
 The All-Russian Society for the Blind, or VOS, operates 174 companies nationwide employing 90 percent of all the working blind people in the country.
 VOG operates 74 such companies. The All-Russian Society for the Handicapped (VOI) runs about 3,000 enterprises employing around 32,000 disabled people.
 Most of those enterprises are fairly small, although there are some large ones in Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk and other regional cities, said Lev Libman, the development director of the VOI head office in Moscow.
 "The money that we saved on taxes used to go to provide social support for our employees," said Palmira's General Director Vladimir Ovchinnikov.
 Ovchinnikov notes that in Soviet times, the state provided apartments, sanatoriums and other special facilities for the handicapped. Although these privileges were largely curtailed after the perestroika period, such companies were still able to provide some material support and medical assistance to their employees.
 "In addition, organizing a workplace for the disabled takes more resources and the productivity of the disabled is lower than that of healthy workers," Ovchinnikov said. "Therefore, we can't really compete directly with other firms without benefits."
 As a result, when Palmira began paying the 24-percent profit tax and the 14-percent pension tax as of Jan. 1, its bottom line shifted into the red.
 "We haven't had to lay anyone off," Ovchinnikov said, "but we may have to if the situation doesn't change."
 VOS enterprises face the same problem. The seven VOS companies in St. Petersburg saw their first-quarter tax burden increase to 37 million rubles (about $1.2 million), compared to 8 million rubles ($267,000) last year.
 "It is disgraceful to impose such taxes on genuine organizations for the handicapped," said Yevgeny Samarin, head of the St. Petersburg branch of VOS.
 In addition, the societies face additional burdens as tax-dodging companies that previously provided at least some income for handicapped employees now fire them. 
 The three societies appealed to the State Duma last year, requesting a continuation of the exemptions for the companies that they run, noting that they are the oldest societies for the disabled in the entire country. However, the Duma voted down the exemptions.
 "If the Duma doesn't change this decision, the [new Tax Code] could lead to the bankruptcy of companies employing the handicapped," Samarin said. 
 VOS enterprises in St. Petersburg employ 1,700 blind people, while nationally the society employs 23,000. 
 In St. Petersburg, 16.5 percent of the profit tax is earmarked for the city budget. However, the Tax Code also permits the regions to exempt "specific categories of taxpayers" from up to 4 percent of this tax.
 Earlier this year, the Legislative Assembly voted to exempt local disabled-society companies from that 4 percent. 
 However, Governor Vladimir Yakovlev vetoed this resolution.
 On April 3, however, the assembly passed the same resolution a second time. Natalya Yevdokimova, head of the Legislative Assembly's Social Affairs Commission, believes that the governor will not veto the bill a second time.
 However, the governor has not yet issued a statement on the matter, Yevdokimova said.
 Yevdokimova also stated that on Feb. 21, she and a colleague introduced a bill in the assembly that would mandate employment quotas for the handicapped for any company employing more than 30 people. Companies failing to meet the quotas would instead make payments into a special fund to be used to establish and modernize workplaces for the disabled.
 Although the Legislative Assembly passed the bill, Yakovlev vetoed it as well.
 Meanwhile, Ovchinnkov sees another way out of the impasse: a dramatic increase in state purchasing orders from such companies. In fact, there already is a law mandating that 5 percent of state purchases be made from such firms, but the law is rarely followed.
 "In reality, companies for the disabled regularly lose in [state] tenders. We always take 'honorable mention,'" Novosyolova said.
 "I'm surprised that the government still doesn't understand that by organizing workplaces for the disabled, we are taking a huge burden from the state's shoulders," she added. 
 "When disabled people work, they are not just making money to support themselves, but they are undergoing physical and psychological therapy. They are busy and they don't suffer as much from loneliness, pain and other problems."
 Anatoly Pastukhov, head of the tenders department of the St. Petersburg Industrial Policy Committee, said that lack of state orders "is something that not only disabled-society enterprises, but all companies can complain about."
 He also pointed out that his department merely oversees the process of distributing state orders, and can only recommend that agencies consider disabled-society companies.
 "The clients make the final of which contractor to use," Pastukhov said, adding that it is true that agencies rarely award tenders to the disabled-society firms.
 "If clients don't place orders with these enterprises, it means that their products are not in high demand. It means that enterprises for the disabled should be more active, change their business, and not just sit and wait," he said. "It's a fact that they got a little too relaxed enjoying the privileges that the Soviet system offered them. It's a different system now. It's capitalism."
 Prior to 1954, Soviet societies for the disabled received direct state subsidies. However, that year the subsidies were curtailed and tax breaks granted instead.
 That system, and the law on mandatory state orders, worked well. VOS and VOG particularly thrived, receiving orders from state-controlled enterprises and building up an infrastructure for the handicapped. VOG managed to construct a network of 528 culture centers for the deaf across the Soviet Union, Novosyolova said.
 She added that the societies are once again appealing to the Duma for relief and are seeking a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
 In St. Petersburg, there are 12,500 registered blind people, 13,000 registered deaf people and about 28,000 people with other disabilities. The city has seven local VOS companies, two VOG companies and one VOI organization. 
 In addition, some local firms, such as Baltiisky Zavod and Kirovsky Zavod, have policies to hire the handicapped. However, in general their ability to compete on the job market is limited. Samarin said that just 5,000 blind people work at non-VOS enterprises in the entire country.
 "The mentality of our society toward the disabled is still inadequate. You notice it particularly in offices, where such people are often not welcomed," said Leonid Fionin, head of VOI's St. Petersburg branch.
 "I'm really afraid of losing this job," said 53-year-old Nina Starinova, a machine operator at Palmira who lives alone and supports herself on her wages and her disability allowance. 
 "It is important for me both because of the money I earn and the communication with others it provides," she said. "This is my second home."

TITLE: Lack of Funds Pulls Plug on Observatory
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While space research organizations celebrated Cosmonauts Day on Friday, scientists at Russia's oldest observatory were not in a festive spirit. Much of the 163-year-old Pulkovskaya Observatory on the outskirts of the city near the airport spent the day in darkness after its power was cut off over unpaid electricity bills.
 
"Our main office is like Mount Ararat during the Great Flood," the observatory's deputy director Ivan Kanayev said. The main office is one of the few areas still receiving power.
 "Everybody brought their computers over here to at least be able to do some work," Kanayev said.
 Pulkovskaya Observatory, once a flagship of Russian and Soviet astrometrics, is funded from the federal budget through the Russian Academy of Sciences. But as the blackout shows, Kanayev said, those funds are far from adequate.
 Local power supplier Lenenergo said it was forced to pull the plug after the observatory racked up bills of 820,000 rubles ($26,500) over six months. 
 "We are responsible for the production and distribution of electricity, as well as money collection," said Andrei Trapeznikov, spokesperson for Lenenergo's parent company Unified Energy Systems. "The government orders us to collect payments in full. And with all due respect to the observatory, we are not responsible for its problems obtaining federal funding."
 Kanayev said the matter is unlikely to be resolved any time soon because the Academy of Sciences has earmarked a scant 200,000 rubles ($6,450) for electricity bills in the second quarter.
 The Pulkovskaya Observatory is far from the first state-funded organization to fall victim of a clampdown on power debtors. 
 At the beginning of the year, electricity was cut to several Space Forces units in the Far East after the Defense Ministry failed to transfer funds to pay electricity bills. Last month, the State Center for Applied Microbiology in the Moscow Oblast - an institute with a huge collection of deadly viruses including anthrax - was warned that its power would be cut over its $1.4-million debt.
 Trapeznikov said the Pulkovskaya Observatory received a number of warnings before the power was cut. 
 "But their last payment, which was received by Lenenergo on March 15, amounted to 1,200 rubles [$38], and the debt is more than 800,000 rubles," he said.
 When the final warning arrived in early April, observatory directors asked that the main office, the housing complex and boiler room be spared. The plea was granted.
 However, Lenenergo's leniency is small consolation for the astronomers, who have not had use of much of their equipment since the electricity went off April 5.
 "Observations must take place during specific times," Kanayev said. "Some objects are only visible for a short period of time. Being unable to look for a month means that we are losing a year's worth of work. 
 "And I just wonder how silly it will look in our 30 years of consecutive reports when we will have to say that data is missing this year because we did not have electricity," he said.
 The observatory, established in 1839, was a pet project of Tsar Nicholas I, who funded the construction and equipment purchase from his personal fortune. Over the next hundred years, the observatory became a world leader in tracking objects relatively close to Earth, Kanayev said. Pulkovskaya astronomers conducted the first proper observation of the first satellite Sputnik in 1957, he said. 
 Among the observatory's recent achievements is a program that combines optical and radio observation in a bid to spot objects as small as one centimeter in diameter at a distance of 40,000 kilometers from the Earth, Kanayev said.
 The second part of this experiment, due to be held in a month or so, is threatened by the power outage, he said. Threatened as well is the observatory's standing in the scientific community.
 It remains unclear how the observatory's electricity debt would be resolved.
 The State Duma's Education and Science Committee lodged a complaint with the government on Monday. 
 The committee's deputy head Oleg Smolin blamed the government and UES head Anatoly Chubais for the blackout. 
 "This is not social capitalism or simply capitalism. It is bandit capitalism, just like Chubais himself called it," Smolin said, adding that science will remain in a critical state as long as the government continues to spend just 0.3 percent of gross domestic product to finance it.
 "In developed countries, it has long been known that expenditures simply cannot be lower than 2 percent of GDP," he said.

TITLE: New Body To Counter Broadcasts
AUTHOR: By Sergei Venyavsky
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROSTOV-ON-DON, Southern Russia - Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov announced last week the formation of a new "counter-propaganda" agency to broadcast into Chechnya, aimed at counteracting U.S.-funded Radio Liberty. 
 
Gryzlov said on Friday that the new agency would be based in Rostov-on-Don, according to Alexei Polyansky, spokesperson for the Interior Ministry office there. The action is being taken in direct response to Radio Liberty broadcasts, which officials have accused of misinterpreting the situation in Chechnya. 
 "There is an active propaganda war right now," Polyansky said. 
 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty launched its North Caucasus service earlier this month, broadcasting for two hours a day in the regional languages Chechen, Avar and Circassian, as well as Russian. Russian officials have argued the broadcasts could help advance the rebel cause. 
 The State Duma is to debate a resolution seeking the suspension of Radio Liberty's license in Russia this week. 
 Sergei Stepashin, head of the State Audit Chamber, spoke out Friday in support of pulling the license. As Russian authorities have repeatedly done since the Sept. 11 attacks, Stepashin compared the 30-month-old war in Chechnya to the U.S.-led anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan. But the deputy chairperson of the Duma committee debating the motion , Konstantin Kosachyov, said the reports can't be described as interference in Russia's internal affairs. 
 He added that "we must not protect our positions and interests via bans and jamming, but through federal troops' transparent and legal actions in Chechnya."

TITLE: Holiday Sheds Light on Soviet Space Secrets
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian media marked the anniversary of Yury Gagarin's pioneering space flight on April 12 with reports unveiling details of the once-secretive Soviet space program, while space officials and cosmonauts gathered to celebrate Cosmonauts Day. 
 
President Vladimir Putin also congratulated the U.S.-Russian crew of the International Space Station on the event and parts of the conversation were shown on national television. 
 Gagarin's 108-minute single orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961 - weeks ahead of a 15-minute suborbital flight by U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard - remains a source of pride, according to a poll of 2,000 Russians conducted by the respected ROMIR research agency. 
 The poll showed 45 percent of respondents said Russia remains a great space power, while 34 percent said the nation was losing its position and another 13 percent said it had already lost it. The rest were undecided. 
 Gagarin's triumphant flight followed another Soviet first - the launch of a satellite into orbit in 1957. The daily Izvestia dryly observed Friday that the two missions might not have come off if Sergei Korolyov, the father of the Soviet space program, hadn't narrowly escaped execution during the Stalinist purges. 
 A recently discovered secret police list of 74 people to be executed for alleged anti-Soviet activities was approved by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in September 1938. But a military court replaced the death penalty for Korolyov, a young aircraft designer at the time, with a 10-year prison sentence, Izvestia said. 
 Korolyov started out copying German rockets that fell into Soviet hands at the end of World War II and developed more powerful boosters capable of flying in space.
 When Gagarin landed in a field near a military garrison in the Volga River city of Saratov, the first person to see him was a soldier who asked for his documents, fearing he was an American spy, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported Friday. 
 Gagarin died in the 1968 crash of a training jet he was piloting on a routine flight. On Friday, space officials laid flowers at his grave and also paid tribute to four cosmonauts who died in Soviet space disasters in 1967 and 1971.

TITLE: Russia Nears NATO Agreement
AUTHOR: By Paul Ames
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium - Russia and NATO are on the verge of a "quantum leap" toward a closer relationship that will see the former foes work hand-in-hand to tackle terrorism, the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and other security threats, the alliance's secretary general said Monday 
 
"We are very close to agreement," Lord George Robertson told reporters after a meeting with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. "The spirit of cooperation is alive and well. ... We are all hoping it will take a quantum leap forward." 
 Robertson said President Vladimir Putin would likely join NATO leaders at a May 28 summit meeting in Rome to formalize the new NATO-Russia council after Ivanov and his NATO counterparts wrap up the agreement at a meeting May 14 and 15 in Reykjavik, Iceland. 
 The drive to strengthen ties is in recognition of Russia's cooperation with the West in the fight against terrorism since Sept. 11. Officials from both sides have been negotiating since December to work out details. 
 Under the planned arrangements, the new council would include Russia sitting alongside representatives from the 19 NATO members to formulate joint policy on an agreed range of issues. 
 "The 20 countries will sit around the table as equals," Robertson said. 
 He said the issues tackled by the new body would include the fight against terrorism and controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Other issues suggested for possible inclusion include peacekeeping, arms control and missile-defense arrangements. 
 Allied officials have stressed the new mechanism will not give Moscow a right of veto over NATO actions, nor undermine the alliance's core mutual defense role that states that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all of them. 
 Speaking alongside Robertson, Ivanov said many details of the new deal still needed to be fixed, but he expected an agreement at the Reykjavik meeting. 
 "There is still much work to be done," he said, adding that the decision to call a summit to approve the arrangements underlined the significance both sides attached to the deal. 
 Ivanov said Moscow remained opposed to NATO's plans to take on new members from central and eastern Europe later this year.

TITLE: Embassies Threatened by 'Skinhead Group' E-Mail
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A group claiming to represent Russian skinheads has sent threatening electronic-mail messages to foreign embassies in Moscow, warning that foreigners should leave the country or face attacks. 
 
Officials in the embassies of the United States, Japan, India, the Philippines, Italy and Sweden confirmed Friday that they had received the English-language messages, and many more foreign missions were reported to have been recipients as well. 
 On Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy issued a warning to U.S. citizens to "exercise caution and to avoid large gatherings and areas frequented by 'skinhead' groups." U.S. Consul General James Warlick said the warning had been prompted by the e-mail threat, as well as the upcoming anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday on April 20 and several recent skinhead attacks. 
 Two U.S. citizens were assaulted last month in the southern city of Krasnodar, and Americans were harassed this month in Moscow, including at such major tourist sites as Red Square and the Arbat pedestrian mall. 
 "Our advice is to be vigilant and prudent," Warlick said, adding that the embassy had expressed its concern to the Foreign Ministry and the Moscow police. 
 A spokesperson for the Moscow police said the force would take steps to prevent extremist acts in the run-up to Hitler's birthday, Interfax reported.
 Citing police sources, Interfax also reported that police would beef up protection of diplomatic missions and public places including the Moscow metro, railway stations, airports and shopping malls.
 Russia has a small but occasionally violent far-right nationalist movement, whose members normally target dark-skinned people. 
 The message sent to the embassies was addressed "to the ambassador" and signed by "Ivan," the president of what was called the Skinhead Group of Russia, embassy officials said. A contact member on the message turned out to be the number of another extremist organization, Russian National Unity, which claimed to have no connection with the threatening e-mail. 
 "You are hereby warned now: We are not responsible for any killings of your citizens or your diplomats," the message said, according to Warlick. 
 The consuls from former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan also sent a letter last week to Vladimir Kotenev, the director of the consular department of the Foreign Ministry. They said they had received numerous complaints from citizens of their countries about harassment and attacks by skinheads, particularly on Moscow's subway system, at outdoor markets, and discos.

TITLE: Yeltsin Seeks Elixir of Life in Caucasus Mountain Springs
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Boris Yeltsin, once reviled as a power-hungry tyrant, says these days he is looking for only one thing - a fountain of youth. 
 
Yeltsin, who underwent quintuple heart bypass surgery and suffered bouts of illness during his second term as president, is vacationing with his wife, Naina, in and around the North Caucasus town of Mineralnye Vody. 
 Asked by a reporter Sunday if he was visiting the region's mountain springs and spas for treatment, Yeltsin replied proudly, "I have nothing to cure. I'm fine, but it's for prevention and getting younger. I need to start thinking about getting younger. After all I'm already 71." 
 Yeltsin, who was known during his presidency to have a fondness for drinking, has rarely been seen in public since his abruptly resignation Dec. 31, 1999. He celebrated his 70th birthday in a hospital, where he was recovering from the flu. Later in the year he vacationed in China, where he reportedly sought traditional Chinese medical treatments. 
 Naina Yeltsin recently told the press that her husband has been taking better care of his health since his retirement. 
 If Boris Yeltsin's radiant features were any indication Sunday, retirement is treating him well. RTR showed him walking around Pyatigorsk, chatting it up with the locals and enjoying the region's mineral water, Nazran. 
 "Narzan is an excellent water, tasty and healthy," he said. 
 Naina Yeltsin showed up her husband, an avid fisherman, by catching a trout in the springs. The couple appeared to be enjoying the vacation despite spells of bad weather, including snowfall. 
 "Do you know what was he doing when big wet snowflakes were falling?" Naina Yeltsin asked the RTR reporter. 
 It turned out that Boris Yeltsin stayed outdoors reading a magazine while the snowflakes landed on the pages. 
 "I am from Urals, I am used to the snow," Yeltsin roared, adding, however, that it would be nice when spring finally arrives and flowers start to bloom.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Abkhazia Accusations
 

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - Georgian and Russian officials traded accusations Monday about the presence of both countries' troops in the disputed Georgian region of Abkhazia, heightening tensions between the two neighbors. 
 Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze accused Russia of trying to destabilize his already volatile country by ferrying about 80 Russian service personnel into the Kodori Gorge region of Abkhazia without prior agreement from Georgian authorities. 
 Meanwhile, Major General Alexander Yevteyev, who commands the Russian-led peacekeeping mission in the region, said Monday that Georgian military units were found in the upper regions of the gorge last weekend, in violation of a United Nations-brokered protocol that called for Georgian troops to withdraw by April 10. 
 
 
13 Barred From Norilsk
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Thirteen CIS citizens were barred from the closed northern Siberian city of Norilsk on Thursday and put on a plane back home, Interfax reported quoting a source in the city's administration.
 The 13 people were taken home at the expense of the air carrier, which had sold them the plane tickets despite the fact that they did not have special permission to visit the city, Interfax said.
 A government resolution reinstating Norilsk on the list of areas where foreigners can travel only with special permission was signed on Oct. 30 and came into effect Nov. 25. 
 
 
Russian Police 'Better'
 

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's police are more professional and better at solving murders than their U.S. counterparts, the interior minister claimed Sunday, despite Russians' widespread distrust of police and a rash of high-profile killings that remain unsolved. 
 "The professionalism of the Russian police is significantly higher" than that of the United States, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said on state-run RTR television. 
 He claimed that Russian police had solved 82 percent of all murders last year, while the U.S. police force had solved less than half. 
 Gryzlov said 12 million crimes were reported in the United States last year compared to 3 million in Russia, though Russia's population is more than half the size of the U.S. population. He noted that many crimes such as car theft are not as widely reported in Russia. 
 
 
Regional Elections
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - The two incumbents looked poised to win gubernatorial elections held in Penzenskaya and Lipetskaya oblasts Sunday.
 In Lipetskaya Oblast, Governor Oleg Korolyov swept more than 73 percent of the vote, easily outscoring his closest rival, Lipetsk city Mayor Igor Polosin, who polled 5 percent, Interfax reported Monday. Voter turnout was near to 43 percent, surpassing the 25 percent level required by local election law, Interfax said.
 In Penzenskaya Oblast, Governor Vasily Bochkaryov garnered 45 percent of the vote with Communist leader Viktor Ilyukhin not far behind on 41 percent, RIA-Novosti said Monday. Voter turnout was 53 percent, easily above the 25 percent required, RIA-Novosti reported.
 
 
Prisoners Quizzed
 

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian investigators gained valuable information about how international terrorist networks are aiding Chechen rebels by questioning three Russian citizens held by U.S. authorities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an official said Friday. 
 Igor Tkachev, an investigator with the Prosecutor General's Office, told Izvestia newspaper that his team learned more about Afghan residents who fought for the rebels in Chechnya, and also about how a militant group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, has been funneling arms and money to the Chechen rebels. 
 Tkachev led the four-person team that traveled last month to Guantanamo to question the three Russian citizens, who are among the hundreds of alleged al-Qaida and Taliban fighters now being held at the U.S. naval base. 



TITLE: Russia, Belarus Push Ahead on Unification
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko met last week to push forward the bid to unify their two countries, signing a raft of economic agreements, presenting the Russia-Belarus Union's first awards and announcing a contest to write an anthem for the union.
 
The Supreme State Council, which consists of both presidents and other top officials, said after the meeting on Friday that Russia and Belarus will now conduct a unified trade and customs policy toward third countries, international organizations and corporations, and a coordinated policy on issues over entry into the World Trade Organization.
 The council also said that as a first step toward unifying business conditions, Belarussian companies will be allowed to take advantage of Russia's low domestic gas and transportation tariffs, a move that will make their goods more competitive in Russia.
 "We have implemented many of the plans that are needed to equalize economic conditions in Russia and Belarus and laid out concrete ways to implement those steps," Lukashenko said, according to Interfax.
 However, Putin told the council that Russia and Belarus still have a long way to go in harmonizing their laws and bringing their economies closer together before they can form a complete union. 
 "Building the union is difficult and lengthy, because it affects all spheres of life of our countries," Putin said. 
 The council approved a 2002 budget of 3.3 billion rubles (about $105 million), or 1 billion rubles more than last year, Interfax reported. Russia is to contribute the lion's share of the budget - 1.67 billion rubles - Belarus will provide 900,000 rubles. The rest is to come from reimbursed loans.
 Fifty-seven percent of the budget is to be spent on industrial programs, 24.7 percent on security, military and technical cooperation programs and 10.2 percent on educational, culture, social politics, health and mass media programs.
 Meanwhile, the council decided to draw up a draft of a constitution for the union by the end of the year and hold a competition for an anthem for the union. Officials said that the date for the contest would be later this year and that 500,000 rubles would be awarded to the winning entry.
 The council also handed out the union's first awards, recognizing Belarussian playwright Alexei Dudarev, Belarussian writer Ivan Shamyakin and Russian actor Alexei Petrenko.
 Critics, who have called the effort a waste of money and time.
 "It is the political initiative of two frightened post-imperial politicians," said Pavel Daneiko, a former head of the Belarussian Central Bank. "The Russian is afraid of being by himself, and the Belarussian is terrified of being left in global isolation. ... The result was that they found each other in the sea of hostility and stuck together.
 "The way it is, such a union will benefit neither Belarus nor Russia," said Daneiko, who now heads the advisory council of the Belarus Privatization and Management Institute. "Normal processes of economic integration can only be implemented in one way - with the European Union. We must develop together with Europe and the rest of the Western world."

TITLE: 'Black Square' Withdrawn From Sale
AUTHOR: By Sam Thorne
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Putting a dampener on months of anticipation in the Russian art world, the Culture Ministry whisked a famous painting of a plain black square from under the noses of potential bidders at an auction over the weekend, saying it was too precious to sell.
 
The "Black Square" by Kazimir Malevich, one of the leading avant-garde artists of the last century, was meant to be the star attraction of a sell-off of bankrupted Inkombank's extensive art collection at the Gelos auction house on Saturday. 
 But as preparations mounted for the auction, where the painting was expected to sell for millions of dollars, the Culture Ministry declared the work a state cultural treasure and ordered it removed from the auction list, according to a ministry statement released Saturday. 
 "The ministry decided to keep this [painting] for the state," ministry official Anatoly Vilkov said, The Associated Press reported. 
 The painting remains at the State Hermitage Museum, where it had been sent for valuation before the auction, Gelos was quoted by AP as saying. 
 The Culture Ministry's intervention was not entirely unexpected. 
 Since Inkombank went bankrupt after the 1998 financial crisis, the ministry has kept a close eye on the bank's art collection.
 At one stage, the committee of creditors that was set up to oversee the sale of Inkombank's property suggested giving the "Black Square" to the state as a way of writing off $20 million of debt, according to Oleg Stetsyura, economic adviser at Gelos.
 But this was against Russian bankruptcy law, which dictates that the art collection must be sold at auction, so the idea never got off the ground, Stetsyura said.
 In its statement, the Culture Ministry said it has the right of first purchase of the painting, though it was unclear how much it would have to pay or what it planned to do with it. 
 Stetsyura could not be reached for comment Sunday.
 In an Ekho Moskvy radio interview Saturday, Alexander Yesin, the external manager of Inkombank who oversees its art collection, said he did not exclude the possibility of handing over the "Black Square" to a state museum.
 "I would be glad if the painting was owned by the state as it is national property," he told Interfax. "It wouldn't be desirable for the 'Black Square' to end up in a private collection."
 Yesin added that talks will now be held between the Culture Ministry, the external management of Inkombank and the committee of creditors to work out what is to be done with the painting, Interfax said.
 Nine years ago, a young man walked into a branch of Inkombank in Samara looking for a $30,000 loan to develop his business. As collateral, he brought with him a 53.5-by-53.5-centimeter canvas on which was painted a simple black square on a white background.
 "The appearance of the Samara square was completely unexpected," said Andrei Serebyanov, director of the Russky Avangard publishing house. "But it was a wonderful surprise."
 Serebyanov said that the tests involved studying the canvas and paint used and comparing the writing on the back of the picture - which reads "Suprematism, 2nd Square 1913, K Malevich" - with other samples of Malevich's handwriting.
 Experts from the Tretyakov Gallery concluded that the painting was genuine, although the date on the back was misleading. Malevich often predated his later works to before 1915, and most experts believe that the Samara square was painted sometime in the 1920s.
 "I think there is no doubt that it is genuine though," Serebyanov said.
 Since his death in 1935, Malevich has built up a huge international reputation and is now the most expensive Russian artist in the West, Stetsyura said.
 Last spring, a Malevich painting titled "Suprematist Composition" sold for $17.8 million at the Phillips auction house in New York, and Stetsyura speculated that the more famous "Black Square" would fetch an even higher price if it were auctioned in the West. 
 "It's impossible to say exactly how much it would go for, but I think it would be about $50 million," he said. "In Russia, the price will, of course, be lower."
 The painting cannot be auctioned in the West because Russian law prevents culturally important works of art from leaving the country. 
 Born in Kiev in 1878, Malevich was strongly influenced by Cubism and Futurism in his early works. But some time around 1913 he began to develop a new style that discarded references to figures and actual objects in favor of colored plain geometric shapes on a white background. Malevich became concerned exclusively with form and emphasized the purity of shapes, particularly the square.
 When he fell ill with cancer 20 years later, Malevich decorated his own coffin with a black square.
 The young man in Samara was married to Malevich's great-niece, who inherited the "Black Square" via her mother and grandmother, who was given it by her sister Natalya, Malevich's widow.

TITLE: Alfa and Ministry Team Up To Grab Bank
AUTHOR: By Svetlana Petrova
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - Alfa Bank has purchased some 20 percent in Konversbank in its efforts to wrest control of the bank from the MDM Group on behalf of the Nuclear Power Ministry.
 
The ministry-affiliated company TVEL sold an 18.35-percent stake in Konversbank to Alfa Bank for $12 million in an agreement dated March 27, an Alfa Bank official said last week, adding that Alfa is to buy shares from "entities affiliated to the seller" amounting to no more than a 20-percent stake.
 Alfa Bank said that an advance payment of $6 million was transferred to TVEL. Alfa had owned one share in Konversbank, an Alfa Bank official said.
 TVEL spokesperson Anna Sukhobok confirmed the sale and the advance payment. "We will receive the outstanding amount when the corresponding note regarding the change of ownership is entered in the shareholder register," she said.
 The total price of the stake was not clear.
 MDM Group, whose structures control some 43 percent to 44 percent of Konversbank, said that Alfa previously had been hiding its interest in Konversbank.
 "It is now clear who is the originator of the scandalous situation that has arisen around Konversbank," said a bank official who declined to be identified. "If one year ago Alfa Bank worked incognito, then now its commercial interest in controlling the financial flows of the atomic energy sector is clear to all." 
 Andrei Melnichenko, a co-owner of MDM Bank, headed Konversbank up until the end of 2000 with the backing of the Nuclear Power Ministry and had plans to merge the two banks.
 MDM's plans came to a halt in spring 2001, but MDM structures bought a blocking stake in Konversbank and eventually received 62 percent after an additional share issue. Nuclear Power Ministry officials tried to regain control over Konversbank with the help of Alfa Bank.
 At the start of this year, the Central Bank annulled the results of the additional share issue and threatened to introduce temporary management if Konversbank's management was not changed.
 Melnichenko retired, and the new head of the bank, Sergei Medvedev, refused to carry out the Central Bank's order due to a lack of court injunctions. Ministry officials and MDM Group negotiated for a settlement.
 The negotiations broke off, however, and TVEL convinced other shareholders that Konversbank should be liquidated, citing a government decision to end state companies' participation in banks. The state holds 30 percent of Konversbank.
 "In the near future, [Alfa Bank will] appeal to the Central Bank, requesting that a temporary administration be introduced at Konversbank to maintain the integrity of its assets, which since the start of 2002 have fallen by half," the Alfa Bank official said.
 The formal reason for the appeal is the failure to perform the Central Bank instruction regarding the change of ownership, the Alfa Bank official said.
 "We bought the Konversbank shares to conduct its liquidation in the interest of shareholders and primarily in the interest of the Nuclear Power Ministry," the Alfa Bank official said.

TITLE: Deal Inked To Set Up Center for Air Repairs
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The operator of Domodedovo Airport and Boeing Co. signed a protocol Monday to set up a national aircraft-maintenance center, the first of its kind in Russia.
 
Named Russia Technique, the center will be built at Domodedovo's technical maintenance center, which has the largest aircraft hangar in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The airport operator, East Line Group, is financing the project, while Boeing will provide the expertise.
 "This project is one of the real steps ... to organize the servicing of not only Western airplanes in Russia, but also Russian aircraft," Sergei Kravchenko, Boeing's vice president for Russia and the CIS, said at a news conference.
 Russian carriers have long been unable to service their aircraft domestically, with facilities providing the full range of maintenance and services practically nonexistent here.
 The hangar will be reconstructed over 2 1/2 years at a cost of $40 million, East Line Chairperson Dmitry Kamenshchik said, but the center will begin working within six to eight months.
 Boeing will help bring clients to the maintenance center, but the aircraft builder will not have a share of Russia Technique. Kravchenko refused to say how much Boeing is investing.
 The other ambition of Boeing and East Line is use Russia Technique to convert old passenger craft into cargo planes, a fast-developing business that yields high revenues. 
 "I don't see why Russia could not have a share of this market," Kravchenko said.
 Paul Duffy, an independent Moscow-based aviation analyst, hailed the efforts of Boeing and East Line.
 "The concept of total support is not as prevalent here as it is in the West. Boeing will make sure that this concept is brought on board," Duffy said. Provided that the new center meets quality requirements and offers lower prices, it will attract not only local customers, but Western airlines as well, he said.
 Domestic airlines Aeroflot, Transaero, Sibir and KrasAir said they were ready to consider doing business with Russia Technique when the center is up and running.
 "Russia needs at least three to five such centers, but we don't have a single one," KrasAir marketing director Andrei Yegorov said.
 The project is the latest in Boeing's investment in the Russian aerospace industry, which has amounted to $1.3 billion over the past decade.
 Kravchenko said many Western airlines are seeking to bring down maintenance costs and are working with centers in southeast Asia. However, "Instead of flying to Singapore, they could stop on the way," he said.
 East Line is already in talks with a number of European airlines to service their craft at Domodedovo, Kamenschik said, but he refused to elaborate.
 Boeing and East Line promise quality on par with Western service centers, but at lower prices. Service centers in the West cost about $50 per hour, Kamenshchik said, but prices at Russia Technique will be much lower.

TITLE: Poultry Shipments in Doubt Despite Lifting of Import Ban
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The five-week ban on U.S. poultry was partially lifted Monday, but the resumption of imports remained up in the air after the Agriculture Ministry cancelled all import permits.
 
The ministry said the permits for Russian trading companies that import U.S. poultry had been cancelled due to the introduction of a new veterinary certificate for the meat and stricter requirements.
 "Due to the resumption of imports of U.S. poultry from April 15, 2002, and a number of changes in the control system, the State Veterinary Service of the Russian Federation is annulling earlier issued permits to Russian importers on the import of these products," the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
 The ministry did not say how long it would take to process the paperwork for new permits or how soon trading companies could obtain them.
 Importers feared the red tape could take months.
 "This is death," a top manager at one importer said on condition of anonymity. "It used to be a very demanding procedure, and the time needed to get permission has always depended on the mood of the veterinary inspectors.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Chamber Cries Foul
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - LUKoil is under fire from the Audit Chamber, which claims that two of the No. 1 oil major's petrochemical subsidiaries have failed to pay some 2.9 billion rubles ($100 million) in excise duties in 2000 and 2001.
 Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez and LUKoil-Permnefteorgsintez avoided the payments by renting out equipment used to produce substances that are subject to excise duties, Interfax reported Monday, citing a source in the Audit Chamber.
 The Audit Chamber plans to send the results of its investigation to the Tax Ministry and Tax Police.
 LUKoil denied the accusations, saying that neither of the companies to which the equipment was rented is affiliated with the oil major.
 Furthermore, Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez, renamed LUKoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez in February, only became a part of LUKoil at the end of 2001, thus making LUKoil not responsible for any previous violations, Interfax reported the company as saying.
 
 
Steel Withdrawal
 

MOSCOW (SPT) - Russia may pull out from the 1999 steel trade agreement with the United States, Interfax reported an Economic Development and Trade Ministry spokesperson as saying Monday.
 The issue will be raised by Economic Trade and Development Minister German Gref during his visit to the United States, the spokesperson said.
 Gref will also discuss recognition of Russia as a market economy, Interfax reported.
 
 
Severstal Tariff Losses
 

MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - Major steel producer Severstal's losses, resulting from U.S. plans to introduce a retroactive tariff on cold-rolled steel supplied after Jan. 26, may amount to $12.5 million, the company said Monday.
 The retroactive tariff could amount to up to 100 percent of customs value on all cold-rolled steel products delivered after Jan. 26, Severstal executive director Anatoly Kruchinin said.
 
 
Skoda's Russian Plans
 

MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - Czech automobile manufacturer Skoda plans to finance the construction of a car-assembly plant in Russia to produce its Fabia and Octavia models, Zdenek Filla, a member of the Czech Union of Industrialists, said Monday.
 Filla is a member of the delegation of Czech businesspeople accompanying Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman during his visit to Russia.
 The location is expected to be announced after Zeman and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov sign an agreement on the plant's construction, Filla said.
 Zeman arrived in Russia on Monday and is expected to complete his visit on Wednesday. 
 Filla said the plant would first assemble cars entirely from assembly kits provided by Skoda, but later could start purchasing some components from Russian producers, if they meet price and quality requirements.
 
 
Poultry Output Up
 

MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - Poultry producers are expected to increase their output by 120,000 to 150,000 tons this year, or 14 percent to17 percent more than the 860,000 tons produced in 2001, Union of Poultry Producers president Nikolai Averyanov said Monday.
 In January to March, Russian farms produced 230,800 tons of poultry, or 12.6 percent up year on year, he said.
 However, the domestic output is insufficient to meet domestic demand, whose annual level amounts to about two million tons. Russia has been making large poultry imports, which exceeded 1.3 million tons last year. The imports were primarily from the United States.
 The ban on U.S. poultry, which was imposed in early March, also helped the development of the sector. 



TITLE: The 'Goodfellas' of the Post-Soviet Transition
AUTHOR: By Jonas Bernstein
TEXT: TWO oligarchs have loudly and famously gone into exile, but several others remain on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, and one has even succeeded in changing his image from the quintessence of shadiness to a poster boy for Russian corporate rectitude. 
 
It all goes to show, first of all, that President Vladimir Putin's vow to eliminate the oligarchs as a class was, to say the least, overly ambitious, and second, that David Hoffman's new book, <strong>The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia</strong>, remains, to say the least, timely.
 Hoffman was The Washington Post's Moscow bureau chief from 1995 to 2001, and he and his researchers interviewed many key players in the &quot;New Russia,&quot; plus others with stories to tell. This trawling yielded some golden nuggets, like the comments of a local journalist in Tolyatti, Russia's Detroit, who describes how officials at the state's violence-ridden AvtoVAZ car factory used to indicate the size of the bribes they wanted &quot;in centimeters of a stack of dollars.&quot; 
 Life imitates &quot;Goodfellas.&quot;
 But the main strength of Hoffman's book - its copious reporting - is also its main weakness in that the author failed to maintain a certain critical distance from a number of his interviewees.
 Some, but not all. Indeed, Hoffman maintained that distance with Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, someone he clearly views as insufficiently &quot;reformist&quot; and somewhat retrograde, and this made the section discussing Luzhkov far and away the best part of the book.
 The author, however, loses his balance when it comes to those more commonly viewed as &quot;oligarchs,&quot; including Alexander Smolensky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Potanin, along with their political facilitators, above all privatization mastermind Anatoly Chubais. Hoffman sees them much the way the wife of the Henry Hill character in &quot;Goodfellas&quot; saw her husband and his fellow gangsters - as &quot;enterprising&quot; guys who may have &quot;cut a few corners,&quot; but who were out there hustling while others &quot;were sitting on their asses waiting for handouts.&quot; 
 That Hoffman admires the tycoons is obvious from his frequent use of words like &quot;guts&quot; and &quot;savvy&quot; to describe their early forays into business during the waning years of the Soviet Union.
 But did it really take guts and savvy to do what they did? 
 &quot;Throughout his career, Smolensky waged a bitter war with the state,&quot; Hoffman claims, adding that while the authorities were &quot;forever curious&quot; about what was going inside his Stolichny Bank, Smolensky &quot;stubbornly refused&quot; to let them come in and find out.
 The state's security services, the author asserts, tried for years &quot;to show that criminals were among Smolensky's customers&quot; but never arrested the banker. Smolensky's enemy-of-the-state image is certainly one that the oligarch himself has cultivated, but this is just one side of the story. For a polar opposite version of Smolensky's relationship with the authorities - specifically, the special services - in the late 1980s, one might turn to veteran crime reporter Larisa Kislinskaya's cover story in the February 2002 issue of the weekly newspaper &quot;Sovershenno Sekretno.&quot;
 Hoffman even tries to turn Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who now heads the Yukos oil giant, into a kind of Horatio Alger hero, allowing him to play down the role of the Komsomol - the Communist Youth League - in his early career.
 Khodorkovsky does admit that in the late 1980s he used contacts at the State Committee on Science and Technology to clear up problems with the police involving his business activities. Hoffman, however, fails to even mention that the State Committee on Science and Technology at that time worked in tandem with the KGB as part of the Soviet effort to steal Western technology.
 Nor does Hoffman make clear that many businesses involved in foreign trade during perestroika - including the Komsomol-sponsored Centers for Scientific-Technical Creativity of Youth - were also closely linked to Soviet intelligence. Nor does he ask how anyone could possibly have imported personel computers from the West for sale in the Soviet Union or sent money to Cyprus or the Isle of Man without the special services' knowledge and acquiescence, if not participation. 
 The fledgling oligarchs may have been many things, but self-made men they were not.
 Hoffman's treatment of loans-for-shares, the rigged privatization auctions that were held by the government in 1995, adds little to what was reported by some media at the time the auctions were taking place (Hoffman did not cover them in the Post). It does, however, include an ex post facto rationalization for loans-for-shares by its architects. 
 Potanin, the author tells us, convinced Chubais, who was then deputy prime minister in charge of the privatization program, that loans-for-shares would &quot;correct&quot; the compromise that Chubais had made during the earlier voucher privatization program, a compromise that allowed the &quot;red directors&quot; to retain control of their factories.
 In other words, as Hoffman explains, Chubais decided the best way to make up for having given the Soviet-era tycoons something for nothing was to hand over the remaining industrial crown jewels - oil companies, metals works, etc. - to an even tinier coterie of New Russian tycoons, also for free. Hoffman not only fails to challenge this rationalization, but he somehow manages to conclude from it that Chubais was &quot;dreaming of building a Western-style model of capitalism, with underlying principles of competition and openness and a separation of business and the state.&quot;
 The case is less than compelling. But this does not mean &quot;The Oligarchs&quot; is not worth reading. Read it back-to-back with &quot;The Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy,&quot; by Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, and you'll see how Russia's &quot;transition&quot; remains in the eye of the beholder.
 
 <i>
&quot;The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia,&quot; by David Hoffman, 567 pages, Public Affairs, $30.
 </i>

 <i>
Jonas Bernstein is a senior analyst with the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. </i>

TITLE: Can Russia and Europe Restore the Balance?
AUTHOR: By Martti Ahtisaari
TEXT: IF one had hoped that the terrorist attacks against the United States would usher in a new era of strategic cooperation and collaboration in international affairs, the period since Sept. 11 must seem like a historic missed opportunity. Six months after Europeans and Russians rallied behind U.S. President George W. Bush's anti-terrorism campaign, Europeans feel the Atlantic gap is widening as Washington increasingly opts to go it alone. Russians are concerned that their new partnership with the United States is one-sided, while Americans worry that others do not adequately support the war on international terrorism.
 
Indeed, there is a growing number of global issues over which the European Union, Russia and the United States have found themselves at odds, including: the Kyoto Protocol, NATO enlargement, the International Criminal Court, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and trade issues. Together with the growing divergence in opinion over the means, if not the ends, of the United States' war against terror, these trends signal an alarming cleavage across the Atlantic.
 However, the forces and interests that unite the United States, the EU and Russia far outweigh the problems that divide us. The United States and the EU are bound by shared economic and security interests and common values. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advance of democratic and market principles in Russia, it, too, has become an integral member of the Euro-Atlantic community. The EU is Russia's largest trading partner, while Germany and the United States are its largest outside investors. Europe increasingly needs access to Russian energy, and we all have immediate security concerns about radical Islam on Russia's periphery.
 Together, the United States, the EU and Russia comprise well over half a billion well-educated, motivated citizens. Although Russia's per-capita GDP is lower than the others', continued economic reforms bring the prospect of above-average growth in the coming decade. The economic potential of these three international actors is unparalleled, as are their military reach and capabilities.
 Today, Russia is split between those who want to be part of the global community and those whose vested interests are best served by isolation, opaqueness in policy and stagnant reform at home. President Vladimir Putin faces many skeptics of his strategic shift toward the West. The skeptics look with alarm at recent dynamics in Russia's relationship with the West, including the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the stationing of U.S. troops in central Asia and Georgia, and NATO's enlargement to Russia's borders. They ask themselves, &quot;What does Russia get in return?&quot; 
 Now is the time to answer their question and embrace reforms in Russia and its integration with the West with a new sense of strategic purpose. The terrorist attacks in the United States accentuated with tragic clarity that the threats we face are increasingly common to us all. 
 As a result, governments and societies must come together in collaborative ways to address challenges that do not lend themselves to unilateral or bilateral approaches. Given the vast economic, technological and military resources controlled by the United States, the EU and Russia, a strong strategic partnership between these three powers is fundamentally important to the development of a secure and stable international order. 
 Today's leaders have a truly historic chance to reshape international affairs by forging a stronger trilateral relationship that will enhance security and prosperity in the 21st century. Internal challenges and political constraints in the United States, Russia and the EU mean that success will not come overnight. Nevertheless, the time is right to begin the realignment; bold leadership now can make a positive difference even in the short term. Merely beginning a constructive debate on the issues serves a useful purpose. 
 The following suggestions are offered in the spirit of such a debate.
 . Pursue a comprehensive security dialogue. The Euroatlantic community should come together to define current and emergent threats and assess its ability to defend against them. An open, inclusive discussion of experts and political leaders about the means to better meet the challenges posed by proliferation, ethnic strife, terrorism, infectious diseases, organized and cross-border crime, and environmental degradation is essential.
 . Engage Russia and China with the G-7. Russia is not yet adequately integrated into global economic structures. Now that Russia's WTO membership is in sight, the world's leading economies should invite Russia to join the G-8 as a full member as well as engaging new WTO member China.
 . Enhance cooperation between Russia and the EU. As Russia's reforms continue, the EU will have to grapple with the impact of increased trade and investment between the EU and Russia. There are many issues on the international agenda. Focusing on the truly strategic and consequential challenges where the three powers have common interests will promote international stability, security and prosperity.
 . Terrorism. The only real solution in the fight against terrorism is a multilateral one. More dialogue is needed between the coalition partners in order to agree on the goals and the means of achieving them and also to preserve the unity built during the past months. The international community needs to have a long-term strategy to deal with terrorism that places emphasis on promoting long-term preventative measures.
 . Regional Security. Regional hot spots ranging from the Middle East, to central Asia and the Caucasus, and to the Balkans, impinge on the security interests of us all. Sustainable solutions must account for the broad security goals of regional and international actors alike.
 . Globalization. The EU, the United States and Russia are well positioned to help bridge the North-South as well as the East-West divide. Promoting means to increase the positive, and lessen the negative, effects of globalization will also enhance the security of the Euroatlantic community.
 . Common economic interests. Despite many contentious issues, the transatlantic relationship remains one of the key pillars of the world economy. North America and Europe together form the world's closest trading and investment relationship, and measures to further deepen and broaden it should be taken. Accelerating the integration of Russia into global economic structures by supporting its pursuit of WTO membership should be a top priority for the United States and the EU.
 To conclude, the United States, the EU and Russian leaders must recognize that policy reforms at home are necessary to achieve the full benefits of trilateral collaboration. Russia should accelerate economic and political reforms in ways consistent with established Euroatlantic norms. The EU should work to revitalize its economy as well as find an essential role in security affairs. And the United States must do more to promote true multilateral consensus on the strategic questions of the day.
 Progress along these lines will make a profound difference in world affairs.
 
 <i>Martti Ahtisaari, president of Finland from 1994 to 2000, is co-chairperson of the EastWest Institute's board of directors. The comment is reprinted from an EastWest Institute policy brief. </i>

TITLE: Business and Politics as Usual in Ingushetia
TEXT: THE April 7 presidential vote in Ingushetia was marred by the latest in a long line of election scandals. Khamzat Gutseriyev - brother of Slavneft president Mikhail Gutseriyev and member of the most power clan in the republic - for whose benefit the elections were essentially organized, was cut from the race at the last minute thanks to the machinations of Viktor Kazantsev, Vladimir Putin's plenipotentiary representative in the Southern Federal District.
 
Despite Kazantsev's backing, his deputy, FSB General Murat Zyazikov, got only 19 percent of the vote, making him a longshot to win in the second round.
 What happens next is anyone's guess. The defeat of Kremlin-backed candidates in Kursk and Primorye was just more proof of the incompetence of the so-called <i>kompetentniye organy, </i>or security organs. But in the Caucasus, Kazantsev's ham-handed actions could turn Ingushetia into another Chechnya.
 I'm not saying that Ingushetia should be run by the Gutseriyev clan. Mikhail Gutseriyev is, in my view, a rather odious figure. He is the former head of the BIN free economic zone in Ingushetia, created in an attempt to buy off the Ingush and drive a wedge between them and the Chechens. 
 In fact the tax haven became a major financial pipeline for the rebels. When you get right down to it, the free economic zone was the tribute paid by the crumbling Russian empire to the restive Ingush. As the manager of that tribute, Gutseriyev was known as the co-owner of Ingushetia even under former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev. 
 The appointment of Gutseriyev to the top post in a state oil company is surely unprecedented in Russian history - even leaving out all the unexplained, and probably bogus, rumors that his appointment was helped along by a $20 million bribe paid to Tatyana Dyachenko via Vladimir Rushailo. The closest parallels are probably to Baghdad in the Middle Ages, when powerless caliphs occasionally had no choice but to appoint leaders of the local Arab mafia to run the city's security.
 Everyone knew a year ago that the Gutseriyev clan would take part in the elections; just about the only people for whom it came as a surprise were the president's men in the Southern Federal District. They finally caught on when they found out that bags of money marked with BIN bank's stamp were being unloaded from airplanes. 
 Only then did they get in gear and, belatedly, request the removal of Gutseriyev as head of Slavneft.
 But they were outgunned by the Gutseriyevs' wealth and influence. This explains the incredibly idiotic story of the rooftop shootout at Kazantsev's headquarters. I'm ready to believe almost anything about Gutseriyev: that Slavneft's profits are split four ways between him, Roman Abramovich, the former Interior Ministry leadership and a friendly criminal organization; that his role as an intermediary in hostage situations in Chechnya was not always disinterested. 
 But I can't believe the story about the shootout on the roof. People like Gutseriyev don't shoot up places they can buy before breakfast, and for a sum no larger than they spend on purchasing ties each year. There's no question that the president's men are stuck in a mess not of their own making. Ingushetia used to be a small, pernicious pustule. Now, with the help of BIN bank and Slavneft, it has grown into a cancerous tumor.
 The problem is that little gray office mice can't take on the tigers from Slavneft. Kazantsev's incompetence has forced Russia close to the brink of a second civil war, this time in Ingushetia. The system of ruling Russia by pitting clans against one another seems to have broken down. This time the battle of two clans - &quot;the family&quot; and the chekists - could lead to the collapse of Russia.
 
 <i>Yulia Latynina is a journalist for ORT. </i>

TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: <b>Springtime for W</b>
 Death and destruction in the Holy Land. War in the mountains of Aghanistan. Christian armies massing for the doomsday assault on ancient Babylon (now known as Iraq). Anthrax killers still roaming the land. The masterminds of Sept. 11 still free to plot new strikes. Unemployment on the rise. Historic bankruptcies wiping out billions of dollars in pensions. Budget plunging deep into the red. Government teetering on the edge of financial default. Roads, schools, hospitals crumbling as coffers dry up, bled by tax cuts doled out to the rich. Millions going hungry. Millions going under. Millions working longer, earning less. Families cracking from the strain.
 
That's how things stand with the American Empire in this spring of 2002. A pretty full plate, you might think; more than enough for a government to keep busy with. But instead, what do we find preoccupying the minatory minions in King George's court? What is the most powerful regime in the history of the world spending its precious time and resources upon during this dark passage in the nation's life?
 Why, the banquet behavior of a newspaper columnist, what else!
 Yes, it appears that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, the Princeton economist who has long savaged the Bush administration's pretzel logic on matters monetary, was not sufficiently enthusiastic when the Dear Leader and his warrior chieftains appeared at Washington's annual &quot;Gridiron Dinner&quot; last month - and his offense has been duly noted at the highest reaches of government.
 So says the Cybernetic News Service this week, and they ought to know: the hard-right propaganda funnel heard from both a &quot;Senior White House official&quot; and a &quot;Senior Pentagon official&quot; lambasting Krugman for the heinous crime of - brace yourself - <i>failing to applaud when the President appeared!</i>
 What's more, the outraged officials charged that Krugman disdained to rise the rest of the assembled journalists and politicos gave the Dear Leader a standing ovation. Finally, and most treasonously, they said the evildoer did not even clap when the generals of God's avenging army flashed their brass on the podium.
 &quot;To show that kind of disrespect just floors me,&quot; said the &quot;high&quot; Pentagon source. &quot;An awful lot of people are still talking about that.&quot; (Or did he mean &quot;a lot of awful people&quot; are still talking about it? Anyway, tongues are a-wagging over the back fences in the Pentagon, apparently.)
 Krugman denied denying the Archons their proper tribute. &quot;I doubt that's accurate,&quot; he said of the accusations. But the Cybernauts - ever on the lookout for that tell-tale semen stain or wobbly word that might bring down a foe of God's Own Party - were quick to pounce on this reponse, noting that Krugman did not <i>&quot;explicitly </i>deny&quot; the charges: ergo, he is guilty as charged.
 Poor chump, he didn't realize that you must now scrupulously remember and publicly account for every twitch and mutter that might possibly be contrued as an affront to the majesty of the Leader and his Praetorians - especially if you're one of the few mainstream media figures to speak plainly about the lies said Leader is shoveling down the throats of his captive people.
 So look for more mud to be heaped on Krugman in days to come - whispered calumnies, anonymous leaks, income tax audits, the whole Nixonian <i>schmeer </i>- until he recants publicly with a heartfelt &quot;Ode to the Leader&quot; - or else takes up residence at Guantanamo Bay.
 
 
Thinking Cap
 
But really now, who wouldn't want to bend the knee to an all-wise ruler like the Oval Appointee, who brought his own very special touch to the roiling rivers of blood flowing through the Holy Land this week? Hearken ye to this pearl of great price, recorded by the New York Times.
 
It happened during the down-home &quot;summit&quot; between the Dear Leader and his provincial dogsbody, Tony &quot;Yippity-Yappity&quot; Blair. Bush, more accustomed to the fuzzy balls of cotton wool normally tossed at him by the groveling American press, got stroppy when the less-supine British hacks kept pressing him on the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, asking him to look beyond the brutal stupidities of those murderous old geezers, Sharon and Arafat, and encompass a broader range of voices and viewpoints on the conflict.
 &quot;Look, my job isn't to try to nuance,&quot; Bush sputtered crossly. &quot;My job is to tell people what I think!&quot;
 Well, no nuance is good nuance, they say. And certainly, Mr. Deep Thinker betrayed no hint of nuance in his &quot;plan&quot; to halt the Middle East violence. (Halt it until he launches <i>more </i>Middle East violence against Iraq, that is.) As the body count mounted, Thinker boldly told the warring parties that &quot;enough is enough,&quot; and demanded that Israel immediately withdraw its troops from the West Bank. To underscore the importance of his initiative, he dispatched Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region.
 Once the headlines and sound bites had duly registered the Deep One's firm command of the situation, however, the &quot;urgency&quot; suddenly disappeared. When the cameras were off, Bush let it be known that &quot;immediately&quot; didn't really mean <i>immediately </i>immediately, but just, you know, sometime or other. 
 And Powell took a most leisurely approach to his &quot;urgent&quot; mission, ambling his way through Morocco, Spain, Egypt and Jordan before landing in Israel at week's end.
 Of course, this delay only gave the murderous old geezers a chance to pile up even more bodies in the interim - but hey, let's not bother with silly <i>nuances </i>like that.

TITLE: Powell Pushes Syria, Lebanon
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BEIRUT - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called, on Monday, for Lebanon and Syria to rein in Hezbollah guerrillas whose recent border attacks against Israel he said threatened to escalate into a regional conflict. 
 
Powell made the call after meeting Lebanese President Emile Lahoud in Beirut during a one-day side trip from Jerusalem, where he has so far been stymied in his efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians. 
 His arrival in the Lebanese capital was greeted with chants of &quot;Death to America, death to Israel&quot; by thousands of students who urged the United States to stop supporting the Jewish state. 
 &quot;There is a very real danger of the situation along the border widening the conflict in the region,&quot; said Powell.
 Powell ventured past Israeli tanks on Sunday to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's bullet-pocked headquarters in Ramallah in the West Bank for a meeting with the Palestinian leader and later held more talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. 
 Once again, Powell came away without an Israeli commitment to comply with U.S. President George W. Bush's call for an immediate end to its crushing 17-day-old West Bank offensive. 
 Sharon said, however, that Powell had accepted his idea for a U.S.-hosted regional peace conference, a proposal that would face numerous obstacles, despite Arafat's statement that he would go along with it if Bush backed it. 
 Powell's talks with Arafat failed to yield agreement on a cease-fire that the Palestinians say must start with an Israeli withdrawal. Israel says it will only pull out once it uproots the &quot;terror infrastructure&quot; in the West Bank. 
 With no concrete gains to show for his first three days of peacemaking efforts, Powell appeared to be getting bogged down in the same intractable differences that wrecked earlier U.S. and international peace missions in the Middle East.
 In a sign of growing Muslim anger over Israel's assault on the West Bank, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called for Islamic states to show their solidarity with the Palestinians by declaring a one-month oil embargo against Israel's main allies. 
 Powell told a news conference in Lebanon: &quot;It is essential for all those committed to peace to act immediately to stop actions across the border.&quot; 
 &quot;This is the purpose of my trip to Beirut and to Damascus later in the afternoon.&quot; 
 Powell was due to visit Syria, the main powerbroker in Lebanon, later on Monday, before returning to Israel for fresh talks with both sides. 
 The Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group has stepped up attacks on Israeli posts in recent weeks, and Israel has threatened wider retaliation if they continue. 
 Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Powell would probably meet Arafat again on Tuesday. 
 Also Monday, Israeli forces captured Marwan Barghouti, a close aide of Arafat's and a known leader of the current uprising, Israeli and Palestinian officials said. 
 Barghouti, 41, was arrested at the house of a member of Arafat's Fatah group in Ramallah, said Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian West Bank security chief.
 Barghouti, sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to Arafat, has been on Israel's wanted list for allegedly masterminding terror attacks. He is a top militant leader in Arafat's Fatah movement and an outspoken advocate of continued attacks on Israelis.
 On Monday, the West Bank cities of Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus and Bethlehem remained under Israeli military curfew, along with several refugee camps and villages. 
 In Bethlehem, a standoff between Israeli troops who have besieged the Church of the Nativity and dozens of Palestinian gunmen who took refuge there after Israeli troops invaded the town entered its 14th day. 
 Israeli military sources said soldiers discovered bomb workshops near the church and were blowing them up. A Reuters television crew reported explosions and flashes emanating from Manger Square in the city center just after midnight local time.
 Palestinian residents in villages south of Bethlehem said Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian man and woman in two separate incidents early Monday. 
 The Israeli Army said two armed Palestinians were killed by soldiers when they tried to infiltrate into the Kfar Darom Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip to carry out an attack. 
 
 <i>(Reuters, AP) </i>

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Afghan Tremors
 

KABUL (Reuters) - Earthquakes rattled Afghanistan, and two people were killed in the northern district of Nahrin where hundreds of people have died in a series of tremors over the last three weeks, local residents said on Monday. 
 They said a quake on Sunday afternoon killed two men and injured five people in the Nahrin-district village of Mohammad Dad. 
 Pakistani seismologists said the Sunday quake measured 5.3 on the Richter scale, only a little less intense than the series of shallow quakes which killed some 1,000 people in Nahrin district late last month. 
 
 
Suspect on Tape
 

DUBAI, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Al-Jazeera television broadcast on Monday what it said was the videotaped will of one of the suspected Sept. 11 hijackers, in which he vowed to kill Americans and die a martyr. 
 "It is high time that we killed Americans in their home," said the man it identified as Ahmed Alghamdi.
 An official at al-Jazeera said the full tape would be aired on Thursday. He said the videotaped message was recorded in the Afghan city of Kandahar six months before the Sept. 11 attacks, according to information on the film. 
 "The footage is considered to be the first evidence linking bin Laden and his al-Qaida network to the attacks on New York and Washington," al-Jazeera said in a statement. 
 
 
Deadly Jellyfish 
 

TOWNSVILLE, Australia (Reuters) - An American tourist stung by a jellyfish while snorkeling off Australia's northeast coast has died. Robert King, 44, from Columbus, Ohio, died on Friday afternoon in Townsville Hospital.
 Tests revealed the jellyfish to be a previously unknown species likely related to the deadly box jellyfish that infests Australia's northern coastal waters each summer.
 King is believed to have developed irukandji syndrome from the sting, causing a rapid rise in blood pressure and a cerebral hemorrhage.
 King's death came less than three months after British tourist Richard Jordan also died from irukandji syndrome after he was stung. 



TITLE: Chavez Returns to Presidency After Failed Military Coup
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: CARACAS, Venezuela - Fiery Venezuelan populist Hugo Chavez returned to the presidency in a conciliatory mood on Sunday after a failed military coup, while hundreds of his supporters celebrated by looting shops and attacking an opposition-dominated town hall. 
 
&quot;Let's put our house in order,&quot; said Chavez, in a clearly happy, rambling pre-dawn monologue to reporters as he reinstalled himself in the presidential palace after two days of captivity at the hands of military-coup chiefs. 
 He called for his supporters to calm down after a turbulent Saturday in which there were mass street protests by his mainly poor supporters.
 Guillermo Garroz, director of the Civil Protection Agency, said 46 people were killed in the capital, most of them shot on Saturday by security forces loyal to the interim government. 
 The Roman Catholic Church said security forces killed 23 people in riots on Saturday night. 
 Pedro Carmona took over the country's top job with military backing for less than two days, after generals arrested Chavez early on Friday. They said Chavez was responsible for gunmen killing at least 11 people at a massive anti-Chavez demonstration on Thursday. 
 Venezuela's Roman Catholic Church slammed the security forces for brutality in trying to put down pro-Chavez protests, many of which deteriorated into looting expeditions. 
 Chavez's Vice President Diosdado Cabello said many of the populist's opponents had fled abroad in the previous few hours. The government also said it would investigate major private television stations, which they accused of complicity in the coup. 
 Wealthy parts of Caracas were very quiet, as the better-off stayed at home. Several dissident executives at state-owned oil company PDVSA, who had spearheaded last week's massive anti-Chavez protests, said they had gone into hiding. 
 Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena, a Chavez opponent, said that gunmen attacked his city hall building on Saturday night with machine gun fire.
 Dozens of looters were still dragging away the few remaining goods of shops on a street in the middle-class eastern neighborhood of La Florida on Sunday. 
 Venezuela's state-owned oil monopoly PDVSA said on Sunday that production, refining and exports should be back to normal levels by Wednesday.
 &quot;Shipments have been resumed normally over the past days and several refinery units are coming gradually back to full capacity,&quot; said a spokesperson for Petroleos de Venezuela.
 Chavez's fierce denunciations of corruption and the wealthy infuriate the rich and delight the poor. 
 Chavez won a landslide election victory in 1998, but his failure to reduce corruption or poverty had cut his approval rating to about 30 percent in the most recent opinion polls. 
 <i>(Reuters, AP) </i>

TITLE: Blazers Sink Lakers In Second OT
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PORTLAND, Oregon - Bonzi Wells scored 33 points, including a dunk that followed a steal from Kobe Bryant to break a 115-all tie in the second overtime, as the Portland Blazers beat the L.A. Lakers 128-120 Sunday night.
 
Rasheed Wallace added 25 points and 13 rebounds, and Damon Stouda mire had 18 points and 12 assists for the Blazers, who had lost six of nine games and appeared to be riding on cruise control as the sixth-seeded team in the Western Conference.
 It was a three-ring circus of a game, one of the most entertaining of the season. It was filled with physical play, bad calls and even toy dolls hurled onto the court.
 Above it all stood Wells and his dramatic jump shots. He scored 18 points and hit all four of his 3-pointers in the fourth quarter as the Blazers rallied from 13 points down. In the first overtime, when Portland trailed by eight with 2:06 left, Wells grabbed an offensive rebound and laid the ball in to put the Blazers up 115-113. A questionable foul let the Lakers tie it with 0.8 seconds left.
 Portland jumped to a quick lead in the second extra period. After Wells' tiebreaking steal and dunk, he hit two free throws before Steve Kerr sealed the win with a 3-pointer that made it 122-115 with 2:27 left.
 The game was halted briefly in the second quarter when fans pelted the court with plush red-haired Bill Walton dolls, protesting the ejection of Pippen with 2:20 left in the period. Pippen was called for a defensive 3-second violation, but he apparently thought it was a foul, and flung the ball deep into the crowd.
 
 <strong>
Philadelphia 95, Orlando 89. </strong>Despite missing three injured starters, including Allen Iverson, Philadelphia clinched a postseason berth by beating Orlando on Sunday, behind Eric Snow's 22 points and Dikembe Mutombo's 18 points and 12 rebounds.
 
The 76ers are now tied with Orlando for fourth place in the Eastern Conference.
 &quot;This is about as satisfying a win as we've had,&quot; 76ers coach Larry Brown said. &quot;Plus, we played as a team, which was the best part.&quot;
 
 <i>
(For other results, see Scorecard) </i>

TITLE: Khannouchi Breaks World Record
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - In perhaps the greatest overall display of marathon running in history, Khalid Khannouchi of Morocco broke his own world record Sunday for the London Ma ra thon, overtaking long-distance track star Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Tergat in the last 3 kilometers.
 
Khannouchi covered the 42 kilometers in 2:5:38 - 4 seconds better than his previous mark, set three years ago in Chicago. When he crossed the finish line, he knelt and prayed.
 Tergat was second in 2:05:48 - the third-best time ever - with Gebrselassie next in 2:06:35 - No. 6 all-time - in his elite marathon debut. Two-time London winner Abdelkader El Mouaziz was fourth.
 Paula Radcliffe of Britain, in her first race at the distance, won the women's division with the second-best time in history.
 Radcliffe finished in 2:18:56, just nine seconds outside the world mark set last year in Chi cago by Kenya's Ca the rine Ndereba.
 Svetlana Zakharova was next in 2:22:31, followed two seconds later by fellow Russian Lyudmila Petrova. Defending champion Derartu Tulu was ninth.
 Radcliffe, a two-time half-marathon world champion, said she didn't know what her time was until the final 800 meters. &quot;The clock on the lead vehicle was broken,&quot; she said. &quot;I was stupid. I had my watch running but I didn't think I was going to close that much.&quot;

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: New Role for Fetisov
 

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Southern Russia (SPT) - Former ice-hockey star Vyacheslav Fetisov, the Soviet Union's most famous defenseman, is set to be appointed as head of Goskomsport, the State Sports Committee, Interfax reported on Friday.
 The report quoted Russia's Olympic Committee chairperson, Leonid Tyaga chyov, as saying that Fetisov would take up his new post after he has "solved his family problems."
 The announcement came at a conference being held to discuss the development of sports in Russia in preparation for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.
 
 
Figo Made Ambassador
 

LISBON, Portugal (AP) - Luis Figo, the FIFA player of the year, was appointed as Portuguese ambassador for UNICEF on Monday. His duties include fund-raising and promotional campaigns for the United Nations children's agency.
 The Real Madrid midfielder, who is due to play for Portugal in a friendly game against Brazil on Wednesday, said he wanted to "create hope for children who see no chance of a brighter future." He said he would focus on the plight of children affected by war and hunger.
 Figo has two young daughters.
 
 
Tigers Tamed Again
 

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Pinch-hitter David Ortiz broke an 0-for-16 slump with a tiebreaking, bases-loaded triple in an eight-run eighth inning, and the Detroit Tigers lost their 11th straight game, 13-7, Sunday to the Minnesota Twins.
 Craig Paquette homered twice, had four hits and made a nice defensive play at third to help the Tigers go ahead 7-5 - their first eighth-inning lead since April 3 against Tampa Bay, when they lost 2-1 in 12 innings.
 A.J. Pierzynski singled off Jose Paniagua leading off in the eighth, Matt Anderson (0-1) relieved and pinch-hitter Bobby Kielty tied the game by homering on the third pitch.
 Jacque Jones and Cristian Guzman followed with singles, Doug Mientkiewicz walked and Ortiz tripled to right for a 10-7 lead.
 Torii Hunter added an RBI single off Juan Acevedo, who later walked Kielty with the bases loaded and gave up Jones' sacrifice fly.
 Detroit, which replaced manager Phil Garner with Luis Pujols after six games, is off to its worst start since going 0-13 in 1920 and the worst in the major leagues since the 1997 Chicago Cubs began 0-14. The Tigers start a series at home against Tampa Bay on Tuesday. 



TITLE: Zenit Beaten in Samara, Lokomotiv Grabs First
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Zenit's disappointing start to the season continued with a 1-0 away defeat at the hands of Krylya Sovyetov Samara on Saturday.
 
Zenit, which had beaten the Samara side just 10 days previously at the quarterfinal stage of the Russian Cup, was sunk by a 12th-minute strike by Krylya Sovyetov's Brazilian striker Rogerio Marcio Gaucho after a buildup involving defender Yevgeny Bushmanov and Gaucho's strike partner Robertas Poshkus.
 Elsewhere at the weekend, CSKA Moscow lost its first game of the season, 3-2 away to Saturn-REN TV Ramenskoye, meaning that city rival Lokomotiv, which maintained the league's only unbeaten record by beating fellow Muscovites Dinamo 3-0, takes over at the top of the standings with 19 points.
 Another Moscow derby saw Spartak beat Torpedo 2-1 on goals by Yegor Titov and Eduard Tsikhmeistruk to stay in third place.
 CSKA, which has now conceded six goals in its last two games, thought it had secured at least a point when Pyotr Bystrov tied the game at 2-2. Saturn-REN TV striker Andrei Movsesyan, however, had other ideas, and popped up in the very last minute to steal all the points for the home side.
 Lokomotiv, which is now 6-1-0, had a comfortable win over Dinamo. Nigerian forward James Obiora opened the scoring after nine minutes, and striker Ruslan Pimenov added a goal in each half. The results will have given cause for concern at Zenit, which next plays at home on Sunday, April 20, against Lokomotiv.
 Also on Saturday, Tamerlan Sikoyev gained the dubious honor of scoring the quickest own goal in the history of the Russian League.
 The Alaniya Vladikavkaz defender put through his own net inside the first minute of his side's match away at Rotor Volgograd.
 Although Dzhambulat Bazayev equalized at 35 minutes, Rotor still claimed all three points thanks to captain Valery Yesipov's 82nd-minute winner.

TITLE: Tiger Burns Bright for Third Masters Title
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: AUGUSTA, Georgia - Defending champion Tiger Woods won his third U.S. Masters title on Sunday, firing a one-under-par 71 in the final round to finish with a 12-under-par on 276, three shots clear of South Africa's Retief Goosen.
 
Woods, joint leader after three rounds with U.S. Open champion Goosen, could afford to drop two shots over his last eight holes as the expected last-day challenge from his rivals failed to materialize.
 The 26-year-old collected four birdies, three of them coming on his first six holes, to clinch his sixth major title in his last 10 starts.
 &quot;I was surprised [that my closest challengers fell back on the last day] but I still had to be very focused and committed on every shot,&quot; Woods said after winning the 66th U.S. Masters on a 6,550-meter layout playing to its full length on the final day.
 &quot;This one is special, but somehow it seemed harder. I wasn't hitting the ball as precisely as I wanted and I just stayed away from trouble. ... I made a couple of good putts when I needed them and I was able to outlast the guys today.&quot;
 Goosen didn't make a birdie until the 15th hole, but moved into second when everyone else fell apart. The South African closed with a 74 and finished at 279.
 &quot;I was asking one of the officials, do I get the green pants for finishing second?&quot; Goosen said.
 Phil Mickelson, who picked up his fourth shot of the round at the long 15th, carded a 71 for third place at eight-under 280 and two-time Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal returned a matching 71 for fourth spot another shot back.
 2000 winner Vijay Singh was in second after dropping his third shot of the day at the 400-meter 14th.
 But the tall Fijian then twice found the water in front of the green at the par-five 15th on his way to a quadruple-bogey nine, and crashed down the leader board into seventh place at five-under 283 after carding a 76.
 Two-time U.S. Open champion Ernie Els, who began the day at seven under, effectively ended his own Masters challenge at the par-five 13th.
 There he ran up a triple-bogey eight after twice finding water to slip to six under for the tournament,ending up with a 73 for a share of fifth place.
 &quot;I tried,&quot; Els said. &quot;We all tried.&quot;
 Woods picked up shots at the long second and the par-four third before three-putting at the 390-meter fifth for his first bogey of the day, after pulling his tee shot under trees.
 At the short 160-meter sixth, he hit a seven iron over the flag and through the green, but coolly chipped the ball back into the hole for his third birdie, returning to 13 under for the tournament.
 Out in 34, he dropped another shot at the par-four 11th, where he pushed his approach right of the green and was unable to get up and down to save par.
 But he hit an easy wedge approach to within half a meter of the flag at the par-five 15th to card birdie number four and, despite missing a two-meter putt for par at the 17th, he parred the last to seal his third green jacket.
 
 <i>(Reuters, AP) </i>

TITLE: NHL Sorts Out Playoff Match Ups
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - It took until the last day of the regular season to secure nine of the NHL's 16 playoff spots.
 
In the Eastern Conference, the New York Islanders beat the Philadelphia Flyers in Sunday's finale to clinch fifth place and set up a first-round series with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the fourth seed in the East.
 New York's victory pushed New Jersey down to sixth. The Devils will play No. 3 Carolina in the first round. In other East pairings, top-seeded Boston plays eighth-seeded Montreal, and No. 2 Philadelphia will take on No. 7 Ottawa.
 The West was almost completely wide open entering play Sunday, with all but No. 1 Detroit in limbo. The Red Wings' opponent wasn't set until Phoenix beat Nashville in the last game of the day to move into the sixth spot. It meant Vancouver settled in as the eighth seed and will meet Detroit.
 No. 2 Colorado will play No. 7 Los Angeles, and No. 3 San Jose squares off against No. 6 Phoenix. Fourth-seeded St. Louis will take on fifth-seeded Chicago.
 <strong>
N.Y. Islanders 3, Philadelphia 1. </strong>In the final game of the regular season for the New York Islanders, a loss would have meant facing Carolina in the playoffs, a win meant playing the Toronto Maple Leafs.
 
Dave Scatchard scored early in the third period to break a tie, helping New York secure the win over the Phi la delp hia Flyers on Sunday.
 &quot;It's a good chance for a lot of guys to get exposure,&quot; Islanders goalie Chris Osgood said of opening the postseason in Canada.
 &quot;Everything up there is hockey, hockey, hockey, hockey.&quot;
 After the game, some of the players admitted they wanted to start in Toronto, rather than finish sixth and get a first-round matchup with the Carolina Hurricanes.
 &quot;In Toronto, hockey is life,&quot; Scatchard said. &quot;I think it will be a lot more fun than playing Carolina, where they play a trap and play to a half-full rink. I hate to say that, but it's the truth.&quot;
 Carolina has just 91 points - good for seventh place - but own the No. 3 seed because it is the Southeast Division champion.
 Philadelphia took a 1-0 lead 93 seconds into the contest when Ruslan Fedotenko shot wide on Osgood. The puck bounced straight out off the back boards right to Fedotenko, and he beat Osgood to the right post.
 Islanders coach Peter Laviolette was so disgusted by the effort, he started the first five minutes of the second period by playing only eight skaters, benching the other 11. That sparked the team, and the Islanders tied the game at 8:22 when Roman Hamrlik sneaked in from the left point, took Claude Lapointe's slap-pass and beat goalie Brian Boucher with a redirection.
 Scatchard's power-play goal 50 seconds into the third period was the game-winner. Boucher stopped Adrian Aucoin's slap shot and then Oleg Kvasha's poke attempt. But Scatchard picked up the loose puck and managed to nudge it past Boucher.
 <strong>
Colorado 2, Dallas 2. </strong>Steven Reinprecht scored with 2:59 left in regulation as the Colorado Avalanche secured the second playoff spot in the Western Conference with a tie against the Dallas Stars on Sunday.
 
Brenden Morrow put Dallas up 2-1 with 9:14 left on a shot that nearly bounced off his head. Morrow had to duck on a high shot by Sergei Zubov from near the blue line, and the puck caromed off his elbow past Roy.
 &quot;It was coming on my face, and I moved so it hit me in the elbow and went down,&quot; said Morrow, who finished with 17 goals this season. &quot;I think I read the 'Official NHL Puck' on the side as it was coming at me, so I got out of the way.&quot;
 Reinprecht tied it on a breakaway, splitting two defenders after a long feed from Mike Keane. Dallas goalie Marty Turco tried to poke the puck free on a fake to the left by Reinprecht, but it slid under his stick. Reinprecht slid to the right and put the puck into an open net for his 19th of the season.
 Turco stopped 27 shots in his second straight start, including a spectacular diving stop on a shot by Joe Sakic midway through the third period and two tough chances in overtime.
 
 <i>
(For other results, see Scorecard) </i>