SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #766 (32), Tuesday, April 30, 2002
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TITLE: Lebed Killed in Sunday Crash
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Investigators on Monday found the flight recorders from the Mi-8 helicopter that plunged into a snowy Siberian hillside, killing Krasnoyarsk Governor Alexander Lebed and seven others, emergency officials said.
Thick fog concealing a frost-covered power line was likely at fault for Sunday's crash, Russian news reports said. The helicopter, carrying 20 people, went down near the town of Abakan in the Krasnoyarsk region, apparently after hitting the power line.
Lebed, a 52-year-old former army general who helped defeat the 1991 hard-line Soviet coup and came in third in the 1996 presidential elections, was one of the country's most prominent politicians in the 1990s.
President Vladimir Putin held a moment of silence in honor of Lebed at a meeting in Moscow on Monday, calling the governor a "comrade" and "one of Russia's most striking politicians."
The helicopter's flight voice recorder was in good condition and investigators were studying it Monday for clues, Emergency Situations Ministry spokesperson Viktor Beltsov said.
The data recorder was in worse shape and was to be sent to Moscow for study, he said.
Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, who visited the site Monday as the head of the government's investigative commission, ruled out technical problems as a cause of the crash.
"I can say with absolute confidence that the helicopter was in good technical condition," he said in remarks shown on NTV television.
The surviving 12 passengers were in regional hospitals on Monday.
"There was the impression that the trees were just under our wheels. Then the nose cracked and we went down. That's all I remember," Stanislav Smirnov, a camera-operator for local Channel 7 television, said from a hospital bed on NTV.
Three journalists and the region's deputy governor were among those killed. The helicopter was taking Lebed to the opening of a new downhill ski trail.
On Monday, Lebed's brother Alexei called the accident an "absurd chance occurrence" and said on Ekho Moskvy radio that he did not want to "artificially heighten tensions" with speculations of foul play.
However, the late governor's forthright manner and tough-guy tactics had earned him many enemies in the region and beyond, prompting a number of politicians and experts to speak of possible sabotage.
Former Kursk Governor Alexander Rutskoi, also a retired general, called for a thorough investigation, while State Duma Deputy Alexei Arbatov said that if the crash had not been caused by poor visibility or technical malfunction, suspicions of "malicious intent" inevitably came to mind.
"Lebed had long been at the epicenter of a battle between various groups and interests in Krasnoyarsk, among them economic, administrative, criminal and political," Arbatov told ORT television.
"And if the cause of the accident was something other [than the current version], one can suspect malicious intent was behind it," he added.
In remarks reported by NTVRU.com, Arbatov also said that Lebed's death could very well destabilize the Krasnoyarsk region, which was hit with grave financial hardships this year and has been in the grip of political turmoil throughout the governor's term, which began in 1998.
The acting governor, for the time being, will be Lebed's first deputy, Nikolai Ashlapov, who spoke Sunday at a joint press conference with Krasnoyarsk Legislative Assembly Speaker Alexander Uss.
According to Gurevich, the two officials said that "all the region's services, its economy and all its vital facilities are in working order, and there is no panic or paralysis."
Thousands of people came to a concert hall in Krasnoyarsk where his coffin was on display to pay their respects, Russian news reports said. His body was to be moved to Moscow on Tuesday.
Lebed will be buried at Moscow's elite Novodevichy Cemetery, which is reserved for top politicians and most- beloved cultural figures. No date for the funeral was announced.
Lebed was widely admired by Russians for his patriotism and for his straightforward remarks.
He won a top medal in the Soviet war in Afghanistan and helped face down the hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, though he scorned many democratic ideals.
After his 1996 presidential bid, Lebed served as the head of then-President Boris Yeltsin's security council and was credited with brokering an end to Moscow's 1994 to 1996 war in Chechnya. He was elected governor of Krasnoyarsk in 1998.
- AP, SPT
TITLE: Governor, General and Presidential Hopeful
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - General Alexander Lebed, a military hero and one-time serious presidential contender, managed to trespass the nation's blurred political boundaries by bluntly providing ready answers to a country looking for its path in a post-Soviet era.
Yet the character traits that ultimately cost him any hope of the Kremlin were just an extension of the virtues that made him so popular. Lebed was the first politician to tap into the public's need for a non-Communist patriot ready to restore order to a country in chaos after a liberal revolution.
Lebed was admired as an honest anti-establishment figure who loved his country and wanted to lead it differently than the compromised elite - both liberal and Communist. But he was unable to navigate his way through the intrigue-ridden world of politics and time after time had to rely on a tactical group of backers, without ever building up a stable team or strategy of his own.
"Lebed dramatically burst into Russian history and tragically left it," said Dmitry Rogozin, head of the State Duma's foreign-relations committee and Lebed's one-time ally in the 1995 Duma elections. When their political paths parted, he declared Lebed a traitor.
"He was a very complicated, but outstanding man," Rogozin said.
Lebed was born April 20, 1950, to a humble working family in the Cossack capital of Novocherkassk. He entered the famed Ryazan College of Airborne Troops in 1969, where he made a name for himself as a crack paratrooper. As a battalion commander, he fought in Afghanistan before graduating with distinction in 1985 from the military's elite Frunze Academy. From then on, as a commander of the Tula Paratroop Division, he took part in supressing bloody protests - first in Baku and then in Tbilisi - that proved to mark the collapse of the Soviet empire.
During the August 1991 coup attempt against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Lebed was in charge of the troops deployed around the Supreme Soviet building, the stronghold of Boris Yeltsin. Lebed's neutrality later won him credit for preventing bloodshed at the White House.
Soon afterward, he was appointed commander of the 14th Army Corps in Moldavia's breakaway Russian-speaking Transdnestr region. There, his early attack on Moldovan forces was believed to have prevented greater fighting with separatists, and he was championed as a savior of the beleaguered Russians in the region. His status grew to one close to a national hero when he then began to expose corruption in both the Transdnestr leadership and the military brass in Moscow.
At the end of the day, he was dismissed after openly defying an order from Defense Minister Pavel Grachev to withdraw the 14th Army. Nonetheless, he came to Moscow in 1995 as a victor and embarked on a career as a politician.
First, he ran for the Duma and, although his moderate nationalist Congress of Russian Communities did not overcome the 5-percent barrier, got elected for the Tula region.
His tough and witty proclamations of justice, public order and national dignity - all spoken in a rumbling bass - contrasted vividly with the mannerisms of other politicians and earned him wide popularity.
"He was not afraid to speak the truth and - in 98 percent of cases - he was right. He would say what we thought but were afraid to say," said Alexei Kiselyov, a retired high-ranking U.S. Marine officer of Russian origin. He befriended Lebed in Transdnestr and had since acted as an unofficial adviser.
"He had a natural wit and loved Russia," Kiselyov said by telephone from California.
Lebed's career peaked in 1996 when, under the slogan "Truth and Order," he mounted a bid for the presidency on a platform of patriotism, anti-corruption pathos and liberal economics. With help from Boris Berezovsky and other Yeltsin campaigners, Lebed came in third.
Yeltsin appointed him Security Council secretary with vague powers to deal with Chechnya in exchange for his support in a run-off vote against Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.
One of the most dramatic moments in Lebed's career was his talks that summer with Chechen rebel leaders, which ended with the signing of the Khasavyurt peace agreement on Aug. 31, 1996. Under the accord, the Russian army withdrew and the issue of Chechnya's independence was postponed for five years.
"I've spent more than enough time fighting," Lebed told rebel Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov at their first meeting.
The pride of a soldier was an important underpinning of Lebed's politics, and his moral authority among the military allowed him to bear the brunt of the humiliating defeat.
History has yet to give a final verdict on the Khasavyurt agreement and Lebed's role. Although widely welcomed at the time, it has been blamed recently for the kidnappings and terrorism that later broke out and eventually led to the second Chechnya war.
During his four short months on the Security Council, Lebed defied the rules of the game by publicly demanding that Yeltsin fire either him or Interior Minister Anatoly Kulikov, whom he blamed for excessive bloodshed in Chechnya. He repeatedly hinted that Yeltsin was too sick and unable to govern the country.
His office was in a constant power struggle with then-Presidential Chief of Staff Anatoly Chubais, Viktor Chernomyrdin's cabinet and the power ministries. Lebed charged ahead with the brazenness of a general who often ignored his aides, pushing his own ideal of a Russian leader.
In October, Yeltsin fired Lebed for "inadmissable mistakes that harmed Russia" and creating a "pre-electoral atmosphere" in the Kremlin.
He then tried and failed to build a coalition around his Russian National-Republican Party. But in 1998 he found another way to possible get back into the Kremlin - He beat the Kremlin-backed incumbent to win gubernatorial elections in the country's largest region, Krasnoyarsk.
In fact, Krasnoyarsk aluminum boss Anatoly Bykov, who had to a large degree secured Lebed's victory by rendering his support, had hoped that Lebed would soon leave the region to return to Moscow, said Nikolai Petrov, a political scientist who follows regional politics.
But Lebed, seeing that Yeltsin was shaking up the government, realized that he would have to stay in Krasnoyarsk for a while and began to establish his control over the region's cash flows.
A series of disputes with the local elite broke out. Bykov and Lebed had a public brawl.
"A fight to death began, which has not ended until now," Petrov said in a telephone interview from Minnesota, where he teaches at a college. "He remained a military commander and had many conflicts, including many stupid ones."
As in Moscow, Lebed changed his entourage many times and had few loyal friends. Earlier this year, he fired his entire staff and declared an open competition to fill the vacancies in the governor's office. Nikolai Ashlapov, who took over as interim governor Sunday, was picked by Lebed just three months ago.
Since the federal government redistributed the flow of tax money between the regions and Moscow, the Krasnoyarsk budget has suffered holes that further threatened Lebed's clout. He began to fight for the tax money generated by the Norilsk Nickel metals giant, which led to a conflict with the Taimyr autonomous region where Norilsk Nickel is registered.
By the end of the month, Lebed and Taimyr Governor Alexander Khloponin were to report to Putin with their proposals on redefining the relationship between the regions.
Lebed had proposed merging Taimyr and another semi-autonomous region, Yevenkia, into a single Krasnoyarsk region.
"In regional politics, real influence often does not coincide with nominal authority, and much depends on who sits where in meetings and what is being offered to whom," Petrov said. "Lebed has never been good at that."
Yet Lebed has secured his place in Russian history as a bright and independent-minded general who has never been anybody's puppet.
"Lebed was demanded by society when we had a weak, undetermined and unpredictable president," Petrov said. "Some of his traits were continued in [Prime Minister Yevgeny] Primakov. And Putin is also a continuation of Lebed. But if Lebed is an army variant of Yeltsin's antipode, Putin is a KGB variant."
Lebed is survived by his wife, Inna, three children and five grandchildren.
TITLE: RTR Broadcasts Khattab Tape
AUTHOR: By Eric Engleman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - RTR state television aired footage Friday of the body of a man strongly resembling one of Chechnya's two top rebel leaders, Omar Ibn al Khattab, whom the Federal Security Service (FSB) claims to have killed in a special operation.
The man, with long, black hair hanging to his shoulders and a thick black beard, was shown in both a poorly-lit interior, where his mouth gaped open, and laid out outdoors, dressed in a gray T-shirt with a knit black skullcap and a white ribbon tied around his chin to keep his mouth closed. His right hand had beenwrapped in a gray bandage, with a thicker black cover. RTR said his hand had been mangled in a grenade blast in Tajikistan.
RTR said disparagingly that Khattab had not gone down in battle, but that the FSB had taken advantage of internal disputes among rebels. No wounds were visible on the man, whom RTR referred to as "the black Arab."
The video was produced by rebels, RTR said, theorizing that they wanted to use it to make an accounting before their foreign backers, and it portrayed preparations for Khattab's burial on the night of March 19.
Even after the footage was shown, the fate of Khattab continued to spark debate.
"I will believe in the death of that person only after seeing the body myself," Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of the Mos cow-backed administration in Chechnya, said Saturday, Interfax reported.
Kadyrov said the body had not been formally identified, and warned that a number of Chechen warlords, including Khattab, had been known to fake their deaths to escape the attention of the FSB. Chechen rebels have said Khattab is still alive.
An FSB spokesperson announced on Thursday that Khattab had been killed in late March in Chechnya's mountainous southern region.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Friday backed the FSB claim.
The Jordanian-born Khattab emerged as a key rebel leader in Chechnya after Russian troops pulled out from their first military campaign in 1996.
Ilya Shabalkin, an FSB spokesperson in Chechnya, expressed confidence that Khattab's death would cut off foreign financing to Chechen rebel groups and speed their disintegration.
Russian officials say Khattab helped funnel money from Islamic militants to the Chechen rebels, and U.S. officials say Khattab and the other main Chechen warlord, Shamil Basayev, have ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
On Saturday, the FSB said it captured Lema Saiyev, an alleged member of the Basayev-led group that carried out a notorious hostage raid on the southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk seven years ago. A court has already sentenced 10 alleged members of the group to prison terms of 11 to 15 years. Basayev himself remains at large.
At least 100 people were killed in clashes when Basayev and the other gunmen took 1,000 civilians hostage at a hospital and later used some of them as human shields to escape back into Chechnya.
q
Additional troops were deployed in Grozny in advance of May Day on May 1 after rebels threatened to carry out several terrorist attacks in the city during the holidays.
Federal forces have occupied key positions on the approaches to Grozny and had taken control of vital offices after receiving information that several attacks were planned for the holidays, Itar-Tass reported.
The report, citing the military commandant's office, said as many as 1,000 rebel gunmen may have infiltrated into the city in recent days.
During the previous 24 hours, four soldiers were killed and five were wounded in 14 attacks on positions and checkpoints in Chechnya, an official in the Kremlin-backed Chechen administration said Sunday.
Military aircraft attacked suspected rebel hideouts in the mountains in the Vedeno and Nozhai-Yurt districts on Saturday and Sunday, the official said, and artillery attacks were launched in Vedeno, Nozhai-Yurt and Kurchaloi.
TITLE: Police Officer Dies After Run-In With Deputy
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A State Duma official attacked a Moscow police officer who failed to give way to his car, and the officer died Sunday night in the hospital, Interfax reported Monday.
However, supporters of Yury Volkodav, 33, an adviser to the Duma electoral- law commission, said the officer, Lieutenant Alexei Levkovich, 23, slipped and fell after drunkenly harassing Volkodav.
Interfax, citing unidentified police sources, said Volkodav got out of his Ford and struck Levkovich in the face Saturday night after he was forced to wait as Levkovich slowly walked across a pedestrian crossing.
Levkovich fell and hit his head on the sidewalk, fracturing his skull, the report said. He was delivered to the Botkin hospital in a coma. A Botkin official said by telephone that he died of brain injuries Sunday.
Volkodav was detained by police on the spot and remained in custody as of Monday afternoon, Interfax said. It was unclear whether charges had been brought against him.
Interfax said he had been heavily intoxicated Saturday night. The police refused to confirm the Interfax account.
Volkodav's boss, electoral-law-commission head Alexander Saly, offered a different version of the incident.
"Volkodav was driving to his garage when a group of drunken men blocked his way and ignored his demands to let him pass," Saly, a deputy with the Agro-Industrial faction, said. "Then, after reluctantly letting him pass, one of the men approached Volkodav after he came to a halt in his garage and tried to hit him over the head with an empty bottle. The man bumped into Volkodav's arm, slipped on the sidewalk and fell, hitting his head against the pavement."
Volkodav's job on the committee was to monitor regional elections and to submit proposals for amendments in electoral legislation, Saly said, highly praising Volkodav's professionalism.
Saly said he has a police document saying that Volkodav was sober. "When the accident took place, he offered three times to take him to a hospital, but Levkovich's friends and parents - who live nearby and came to his garage shortly after the accident - refused and waited for the ambulance," Saly said.
TITLE: Two Schools of Thought For the Russians of Latvia
AUTHOR: By Steven Johnson
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: RIGA, Latvia - At first glance, the 20 teenagers who fidget at their desks waiting for 10th-grade biology class to begin are typical high school students.
Dressed in T-shirts and baggy jeans, the guys crack jokes while the girls titter and giggle. Everyone erupts into raucous laughter when the short, animated boy in the front row - obviously the class clown - shouts out something especially amusing.
But when the teacher comes in, it's down to business. Since this is one of the many minority schools for native Russian-speakers in Riga, their teacher launches into the day's lecture in Russian. But open before the students are notebooks full of vocabulary words - in Latvian.
At night, they take home Latvian-language textbooks to help them do their homework. But the next day, they may ask questions about difficult concepts - and receive answers - in Russian.
What's going on here is part of an experiment being conducted across Latvia to introduce bilingual education for the country's tens of thousands of children who attend Russian-language schools.
The goal is to dismantle the two-tiered system of Latvian-language and Russian-language schools that has endured since Soviet days, by making Latvian the sole language of instruction for grades 10 through 12 and establishing a permanent system of bilingual education in Russian grade schools.
"It can be hard, but it's not impossible," said Vitaly, 16, the class clown of 10th grade biology. "Learning everything in Russian would be easier, yes, but I need to speak Latvian to get a good job someday."
The bilingual atmosphere of the school is noticeable everywhere. In the vestibule, a couplet from revered Latvian poet Aleksandrs Caks - in Latvian - is displayed prominently on the wall near the maroon-and-white Latvian flag. But between classes, the hallways throb with students speaking Russian.
After winning independence from Moscow in 1991, the parliament enshrined Latvian as the sole official language for this country of 2.4 million people. The aim was to rehabilitate the language after half a century of Soviet rule, when Russian dominated all spheres of life and, linguists say, Latvian was relegated to the brink of extinction.
The change put a severe strain on the country's Russian-speaking minority, which comprises some 35 percent of the population. Many moved to Latvia after World War II, and, by 1991, most spoke no Latvian or spoke it badly.
It has also strained ties with Moscow, which accuses Riga of discriminating against ethnic Russians.
Today, the best jobs require Latvian proficiency, and public higher education is offered only in Latvian.
"For years, one could live in this country and get along without knowing a word of Latvian," said Evija Papule, coordinator of the Education Ministry's school integration policy. "Our objective is, eventually, to reverse that."
Officials see education as crucial to realizing their goal. A law passed in 1995 proscribed a gradual shift toward Latvian by requiring schools to introduce more bilingual courses each year. It also set up a special training program funded by the government, the United Nations Development Program and several donor countries that trains Russian-language teachers in Latvian and then teaches them how to train their colleagues. Since 1996, it has received some 4 million lats ($6.5 million).
By 2004, all Russian-language high schools must offer full Latvian instruction for compulsory subjects such as history, math and biology. Russian literature and grammar courses will remain in Russian.
At Riga's public school No. 13, where Vitaly goes, grades 1 through 4 receive Russian-language instruction. Bilingualism starts in grade 5, and by grade 9, some subjects are taught in Latvian and others are mixed.
Karina Shneiderova, a 16-year-old sophomore, says the system makes sense. "Not everyone likes it, that's true, but I can say that everyone in my classes can keep up and can speak Latvian," she says in confident English, her foreign language requirement.
"For the younger generation, it's really no problem. Languages come easy to them, and they don't have grudges from the past," said school director Ludmila Krutikova. "It's usually parents who have problems."
Many parents fear it weakens Russian students' grasp of their own language and culture by effecting a kind of Soviet-style indoctrination in reverse - combating the decades-long policy of "Russification" with "Latvianization."
Igor Pimenov, chairperson of Support for Russian Schools, a parents' union fighting to retain access to education for Russians in their mother tongue, said few people dispute the wisdom of learning Latvian.
Indeed, Latvia's 2000 census figures show that some 59 percent of Russian speakers claim knowledge of Latvian, up from just 22 percent at the beginning of the 1990s.
"What they object to is enforced assimilation of students. That's what this is, and it's been planned by politicians for many years," Pimenov said.
Russian parents worry that mixing languages dailiy in the classroom will leave their children with poor Russian-language skills.
"Nobody knows what the results of this experiment will be, but we are conducting it on the whole nation," said Tatyana Liguta, a Russian professor at Latvia University in Riga. "Parents don't have time to teach their kids Russian grammar. That is the job of the school."
Russian speakers also criticize the state's schedule, saying the overhaul has been rushed without giving Russian teachers enough time to train properly.
Alexander Zamuruyev, a 38-year-old interpreter who sends his two children to a Russian-language school in Riga, said he cringes when he reads the Latvian comments scrawled across his 13-year-old daughter's homework.
"The teachers make terrible grammar mistakes. They're not Latvian, and they haven't learned it properly. How are they going to teach my kids?"
Nearby Estonia, which like Latvia endured an influx of Russian-speaking immigrants during Soviet rule, recently admitted it had been too ambitious with its education-reform plans when it pushed back a deadline for teaching all subjects in Estonian from 2007 to 2010.
Pimenov is asking for a similar delay to discuss alternative plans. He has enlisted the help of opposition lawmakers in Latvia's parliament, who have made changing the education law a priority.
"I doubt the majority of people would object to allowing some form of Russian-language education to continue," said opposition leader Boris Tsilevich, a Russian-speaking deputy. "The state has been stubborn toward minorities, but we want to convince people that this is a multicultural country and it should respect our identity."
TITLE: Russia, U.S. Nearer Arms Deal
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Monday that his government had set out new ideas that could advance talks toward a nuclear-arms-reduction agreement by the May summit between U.S. President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin.
Ivanov and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to provide details of the ideas or the two hours of talks they held at Sheremetyevo Airport.
However, Ivanov said that the U.S. side had already responded to the proposals, which were sent to Washington last week, and that his talks with Rumsfeld had helped ease some differences over the agreement.
"My personal belief is that today we have made some progress," Iva nov said.
"We're making progress, and the meetings will continue later this week in Washington," Rumsfeld said, referring to meetings scheduled between U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.
Bush has said he is prepared to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads from the current 6,000. Putin has said Moscow would be willing to go down to 1,500 warheads.
But the talks have snagged on Mos cow's objection to the Pentagon's decision to store nuclear warheads it takes out of service, rather than destroy them.
A senior U.S. defense official traveling with Rumsfeld said en route to Moscow that Washington would not give up its plan to store some warheads, which it has portrayed as a hedge against unexpected shifts in the international-security environment.
"It's a fact of life" that the Russians must accept, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Ivanov has previously indicated some flexibility on the issue, and he hinted Monday that the Russian side accepted the U.S. argument that the security picture could change radically in the future.
"We're not just thinking mechanically about the number of warheads, or delivery systems, but we are also trying to forecast the situation in the world and our own relationship in five, seven, nine years," Ivanov said. "For this, of course, it is vitally important for both the United States and our side to know the geopolitical atmosphere that might emerge in five, seven or 10 years."
Itar-Tass quoted an unnamed diplomatic source as saying that overall, the U.S.-Russian strategic talks were "intensive and serious, but pretty difficult."
The source said the two sides disagree mainly about how to link the issues of the planned U.S. anti-ballistic missile shield, which Bush has vowed to pursue over Russian objections, and the strategic arms cuts, Itar-Tass reported.
Moscow wants to link the two in the nuclear-arms agreement, while Washington wants the link to be addressed only in a second agreement being drafted for the summit, the declaration on the new U.S.-Russian strategic relationship.
In their talks Monday, the two defense chiefs also reviewed progress in the war on terrorism and efforts to stem the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
TITLE: Documents: Britain Feared Catastrophic Soviet Attack
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - The 1950s government of Winston Churchill feared that a Soviet Union nuclear attack would wipe out a third of Britain's population and threaten the country's survival, according to once-secret documents unsealed late last week.
The government report, released by the Public Records Office after the requisite four decades of secrecy, warned that any Soviet attack using hydrogen bombs would be "total war in a sense not hitherto conceived."
The entire nation would be in the front line," it said.
The report was commissioned in December 1954 by defense officials in Churchill's government worried about how to protect Britons from a possible thermonuclear attack.
The report, by a committee headed by Sir William Strath, estimated that the Soviet Union could unleash a number of 10-megaton bombs on Britain, each containing the equivalent of 10 million tons of TNT.
By comparison, the American atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, less than a decade before contained the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT.
"If no preparations of any kind had been made in advance, a successful attack on the main centers of population in this country with 10 hydrogen bombs would, we estimate, kill about 12 million people and seriously injure or disable 4 million others - a total of about 16 million," Strath's report said. "Casualties on such a scale would be intolerable; they would mean the loss of nearly one-third of the population."
In addition, Strath said, "a further 13 million people - many of them suffering from radiation sickness, would be pinned down in their houses or shelters for at least a week."
Strath said in the event of an attack, the military may have to be put in charge of law and order in parts of the country.
"In some parts of the country, particularly if several bombs fell in the same area, there might be complete chaos for a time and civil control would collapse," the report said. "In such circumstances, the military commander would have to be prepared to take over from the civil authority responsibility for the maintenance of law and order and for the administration of governments.
The government responded to the report by implementing a "Home Defense" plan estimated to initially cost the equivalent of $920 million today. Some $555 million of that was for stockpiling food, shelter, fuel, transportation and medical supplies.
TITLE: State To Buy "Black Square" For $1 Million
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government said Friday that it will buy a famous painting of a plain black square by avant-garde artist Kasimir Malevich for $1 million, ending weeks of speculation about the painting's fate.
Creditors for bankrupt Inkombank had intended to sell the "Black Square" painting at auction, but at the last minute the Culture Ministry declared it a state cultural monument and ordered it removed from the auction list.
After two weeks of negotiations, the creditors agreed to sell the work to the state for $1 million. Vladimir Potanin, head of the Interros industrial group, will donate the money to the government to help it acquire the painting, the Culture Ministry said.
The painting will be displayed at the State Hermitage Museum, officials said.
"Black Square," painted in 1913, is one of four known versions of Malevich's trademark Suprematist square - the other three of which are held by Russian museums.
It was believed destroyed, until Inkombank acquired it in the 1990s. The bank went bust during Russia's 1998 financial crisis.
TITLE: Thousands Remember Chernobyl Victims
AUTHOR: By Tim Vickery
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SLAVUTYCH, Ukraine - Clutching flickering candles and bunches of spring flowers, survivors of the world's worst nuclear disaster held a solemn memorial meeting in the small hours Friday in the town that thousands of Chernobyl workers still call home.
Hundreds of residents of Slavutych joined similar crowds at churches, cemeteries and squares across the former Soviet Union in remembrance of the suffering when the No. 4 reactor at Chernobyl exploded at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, spewing radiation across Europe. People in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were the most immediately affected.
While remorse for the past was foremost in people's minds Friday, many Ukrainians who live in the radiation-contaminated areas around the now-shuttered Chernobyl plant are focusing more on their poverty than on their fragile health.
"People talk about Chernobyl less and less every year. Economic problems are much more pressing," said Igor Pashinsky, chief psychologist at the Center for Social and Psychological Rehabilitation in Korosten, some 100 kilometers west of Chernobyl, where all 65,000 residents are Chernobyl victims.
Officials acknowledge that survival often takes priority over health concerns for the estimated 3.3 million Ukrainians, including 1.5 million children, affected by the accident.
"Parents try however they can to make money to survive," said Valery Bekh, head sociologist at the Korosten center. "Often kids with two parents live like orphans because their parents are gone all the time."
Birth rates in Ukraine have dropped by 50 percent since 1986, while almost twice as many people are dying.
"It's very hard to say how many cases are directly related to Chernobyl because inadequate nutrition weakens the immune system," said Alexander Tiplitsky, chief doctor at the Norodychi hospital in a mandatory resettlement zone, 60 kilometers west of Chernobyl. "I might see a sick child and say, 'It's radiation,' but then I go to his house and see it's starvation."
However, doctors and public health officials are unequivocal in linking the sharp rise in thyroid cancer - especially among children - to Chernobyl. More than 2,100 people who were under 18 at the time of the accident have undergone thyroid treatment since 1986 and doctors say the number could spike to 10,000 cases in the next two years.
Tens of thousands of people disabled by Chernobyl-related illnesses suffer from inadequate health care and 25,000 evacuated families still await housing, according to Emergency Situations Minister Vasyl Durdynets.
Of the 160,000 Chernobyl victims who did get resettled, many have returned to evacuated lands because economic conditions were as bad or worse in their new homes.
Hana Yavchenko, 67, was evacuated from Parishchiv, a village just a stone's throw from Chernobyl, but returned after local officials promised compensation. She and her husband grow their own vegetables and fruits, because semiweekly government deliveries of radiation-free food are not enough.
"Is the food clean? Who knows?" she said dejectedly. "What else do we have?"
According to United Nations officials, 450 to 600 people live in the exclusion zone and as many as 200,000 people live in "severely contaminated areas."
Officials at the Chernobyl plant said last week that the cracks and gaps in the concrete-and-steel shell that covers the damaged reactor total more than 1,000 square meters.
High radiation levels after the accident meant that the shelter had to be built at a separate location and fitted over the reactor. "That's why the job could not be perfect," said Alexander Usayev of the Emergency Situations Ministry.
Western nations helped pay for work in the late 1990s to shore up the shaky structure, and Usayev said state-of-the-art systems continually monitor reactor activity and automatically suppress potential accidents.
However, he did not rule out the possibility that because nuclear fuel remains in the reactor, rain entering through the cracks could trigger a reaction.
Elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, hundreds of officials and victims' relatives gathered at Moscow's Mitino cemetery to honor Chernobyl firefighters who died of radiation-related diseases. Five thousand opposition demonstrators marched through the Belarussian capital, Minsk, for a candlelight commemoration of the 16th anniversary of the disaster.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Pilot Killed in Crash
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A military plane crashed in Chechnya on Monday, killing the pilot, an air force spokesperson said. The Su-25 ground-attack plane, flying a combat mission, smashed to the ground in Chechnya's Vedeno region, south of Grozny.
"We have found the pilot's body," the spokesperson said. He added that an investigation was being carried out at the crash site and that the aircraft's black boxes had been found.
Interfax quoted an official at the general staff headquarters in the North Caucasus as saying there were two possible reasons for the crash - that the plane was shot down by a ground missile, or that it crashed into the mountains. He added that a definitive version would only be made public when a thorough investigation had been carried out.
Tourists Found
VLADIVOSTOK, Far East (AP) - Rescuers on Monday found the bodies of two Japanese tourists who went missing while climbing a volcano in Russia's Far East, authorities said.
Two Japanese tourists, a Russian guide and an interpreter, had together climbed 400 meters up the Alaid volcano on Atlasova Island, part of a chain that runs south from the Kamchatka peninsula to Japan.
The tourists and the guide then went further but didn't return at the scheduled time, a duty officer with the regional Emergency Situations Department said. The interpreter reported them missing and a search was launched Monday.
Itar-Tass reported that the tourists had apparently slipped off the rock from an altitude of 1,800 meters. The report identified them as Satoshi Shimazaki, 28, from Tokyo, and Tomoki Sugawara, 29, from Niigata. The guide survived but suffered an injury, the duty officer said.
Iraq Arms Talks
MOSCOW (AP) - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Monday urged a political solution to Iraq's standoff with the United Nations as he met with his Iraqi counterpart and prepared to host the chief U.N. weapons inspector.
"It is necessary to find a solution that will get the Iraqi problem out of deadlock," Ivanov said at the start of talks in Moscow with Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, according to Itar-Tass.
Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov expressed support for the return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq, in hopes that would lead to the lifting of sanctions.
Later Monday, Ivanov was to meet with chief UN. weapons inspector Hans Blix for discussions on resuming inspections. The meetings come ahead of high-level talks between Sabri and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in early May, which Blix is also expected to attend.
Tbilisi Calls for Aid
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - President Eduard Shevardnadze appealed Monday for foreign aid to help Georgia's capital rebuild after an earthquake last week that killed six and left hundreds homeless.
Thursday's quake in Tbilisi sent tens of thousands of people fleeing their homes in fear, severed electricity and phone service and damaged more than 100 buildings beyond repair.
Shevardnadze, in an interview with state radio, said he was circulating an appeal to the world community for aid. He did not say how much money would be needed. "Everything will be done to preserve historical buildings and to ensure that Tbilisi retains its color," he said.
In addition to the six killed, dozens of people were hospitalized with injuries and heart trouble prompted by the quake.
TITLE: Russian Energy Leaders Call For Closer Links With U.S.
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian energy leaders are calling for closer cooperation with the United States ahead of the first-ever meeting of energy ministers of the G8, which opens in Detroit on Wednesday.
In a meeting last week with visiting U.S. Undersecretary of Energy Robert Card, Energy Minister Igor Yusufov and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller urged the United States to consider Russia as a ready, stable and reliable supplier of both oil and natural gas to the West.
Yusufov will raise the issue of Russia's status vis-a-vis its trade partners during the May 1 to May 3 meeting of energy ministers from the seven leading industrialized countries plus Russia, Reuters reported.
He also plans talks with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.
Yusufov intends to promote the export of Russian oil to the United States, the Energy Ministry said.
While Russia sends some refined oil products across the Atlantic, the United States is not a crude buyer, because transportation costs make Russian crude more expensive compared to that exported from the Middle East.
However, Card said last week that the U.S. is seeking to boost oil imports from Russia if it can offer a "reasonable price."
President Vladimir Putin has said Russia is ready to guarantee long-term delivery of energy supplies to Europe - already heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas - provided the country was an equal partner.
According to figures released Friday by Gazprom export arm Gazexport, Russian natural-gas exports to Western Europe increased by 3.5 percent to 24 billion cubic meters in the first quarter of 2002 compared to the same time period last year.
Russia exports 130 billion cubic meters of gas a year to Europe, or one third of European gas imports, and ships 150 million tons of oil abroad, roughly 20 percent of European needs.
"In the West, there is no alternative to Russian 'blue' fuel," Miller said after the meeting with Card. "Also, the most important issue right now for Western energy security isn't the amount of supplies - it's the guarantee of stability in gas purchases and price stability."
Card and Miller agreed that long-term contracts are key in ensuring stable supplies for Europe and continued investment in Russia's gas sector, the company said in a press release. Despite Gazprom's vocal opposition, these long-term contracts are set to be dismantled by 2006 when the liberalization of Europe's gas market begins to accelerate.
The world oil spot markets have been spooked by continuing unrest in the Middle East, as well as Saudi Arabia's reluctance to fill the supply gap left by Iraq, which suspended crude shipments April 8 to protest Israel's incursion into Palestinian areas.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Energy-Reform Bills
MOSCOW (AP) - The government has sent its long-awaited draft bills on reform of the electricity sector to the State Duma, the government press office said Monday.
The reform plan, aimed at attracting private investment, includes a provision for handing over control of the high-voltage grid to the government, while generating and marketing units are to be privatized. State control over electricity prices is to be abolished.
Unified Energy Systems chief Anatoly Chubais developed the preliminary stages of the reform plan. The electricity monopoly is saddled with debt, including that incurred by state-run factories and local governments that cannot or do not pay for electricity.
$96 Million in Bonds
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Unified Energy Systems will place 3 billion rubles ($96 million) of three-year bonds on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange in mid-June, chief financial officer Dmitry Zhurba said Monday.
"The aim of the issue is to diversify our credit portfolio," Zhurba said.
The bonds will carry a 15-percent semiannual coupon. Trust and Investment Bank will underwrite the issue.
Used-Car Clog
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Traffic choked border crossings from Poland into Kaliningrad on Monday as importers rushed to beat the May 1 introduction of a tax increase on foreign cars.
The wait for customs clearance was about 38 hours at the Bezledy crossing, about 300 kilometers north of Warsaw, said a border-guard spokesperson.
To support the domestic auto industry, the government announced in March that it would raise import duties on foreign cars by 10 percent to 35 percent and impose an extra duty on used models. Used cars from Europe, especially Germany, have been popular in Russia and Eastern Europe because of their relatively low prices and good condition.
Poland imposed extra duties on used cars in March, causing similar backups at the German-Polish border as importers rushed to beat the deadline.
GKO Plans
MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - The Finance Ministry plans to auction 5 billion rubles ($160 million) worth of government GKO bonds in May, the deputy head of the ministry's domestic debt managing department said Monday.
The GKO's maturity is expected to be six months, Alexander Chumachenko said. He declined to say how many issues would be offered.
Chumachenko confirmed the ministry's plans to auction longer OFZ bonds worth 10 billion rubles ($317 million) next month. He did not provide any details of the planned issue.
RTS Firms Slightly
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The RTS index edged up 0.1 percent at 391.85 on turnover of just $13.2 million ahead of the May 1 to May 5, May Day and Orthodox Easter holidays.
Moscow heating and power utility Mosenergo led the gainers to close 2.53-percent higher at $0.0445, despite late news that it expects a first-quarter net profit of 706 million rubles ($22.58 million) compared to 2.8 billion rubles in the same period of 2001.
TITLE: Sukhoi Wins Jet-Fighter Tender
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After a number of delays, the government on Friday chose Sukhoi to develop the country's $1.5 billion next-generation fighter project, but it remains unclear who will finance the project.
Rivals MiG and Yakovlev also will contribute to the fifth-generation jet, while Sukhoi will lead the research and development, said Industry, Science and Technology Minister Ilya Klebanov after a government meeting to discuss the country's nine-year defense program.
Sukhoi is expected to produce a draft design for the new jet by 2003 and present it to the government, Interfax quoted Klebanov as saying.
The government had said the new fighter would test fly in 2006 and hit mass production in 2010, eventually replacing the fleet of Su-27 and MiG-29 fourth-generation fighters.
"We are glad that a decision has been made at last," Sukhoi spokesperson Yury Chervakov said by telephone Saturday. "Further foot-dragging could have jeopardized the industry."
Sukhoi General Director Mikhail Pogosyan said that the new jet will sell for between $35 million and $40 million and that 500 will be built for domestic use.
The government sees development of the fifth-generation fighter not only as a response to similar projects in Europe and the U.S., but also as a chance for the industry to tap its scientific potential.
Both MiG and Sukhoi began developing next-generation fighters in the1980s, but their Project 1.44 and Su-37 have only been used as flying laboratories for testing new technologies and were never turned into full-fledged programs.
"This [fifth-generation fighter] program will be of a scale we haven't had for the past 25 years," Chervakov said.
The air force - which in the past decade has not received a single new jet, opting instead to modernize its existing fleet - sent out technical requirements for the new fighter to the companies last summer, with the winner of the tender expected to be chosen by the end of last year. But the final decision was postponed to the first quarter of 2002.
It was delayed again after a meeting in March, when new appointed air force chief Vladimir Mikhailov decided to look at the program in more detail.
Meanwhile, both industry players and experts question the need for a new fighter.
The state lacks the resources to finance the program and it is unclear who will pay for its development. Klebanov has said the jet could be financed from the winning company's own export revenues, but industry players bristle at the idea.
"It will lead to an absurd situation where producers finance research and procurement in the interests of the state when it's the other way round in the rest of the world," one defense industry source said. "The legal mechanism of taking away export money from companies has not been worked out, and the government will have to change the legal system for the industry as a whole, not just this particular contract. Companies will not be happy."
"If we make a jet of the next generation, we have to understand where we get the money from and who will buy it and what tasks it will resolve," Vladimir Barkosvky, MiG's first deputy chief designer, said before the result was announced. The company was not available for comment over the weekend.
Industry players and experts say the air force doesn't need a next-generation fighter and that today's fleet could last at least another decade if avionics and navigation systems are upgraded.
However, the project would help sustain and develop research in the defense industry, said Konstantin Makiyenko, deputy head of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.
TITLE: Aeroflot To Add More Seats on Board
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Aeroflot will add two seats to its board of directors and replace Arthur Andersen as its auditor, a company official said Monday.
Aeroflot's current board voted Saturday to recommend that shareholders agree to boost the number of directors from nine to 11 at the company's annual meeting May 25, Deputy General Director and Executive Secretary of the Board Anatoly Brylov told reporters Monday.
Brylov said the decision was made in line with the new charter of the company, also approved Saturday, which gives the board more power over the airline's operations.
Brylov said additional directors would allow minority shareholders to be more involved in the decision-making process of the company.
"We are the only large company with such a modest board," he said. "The idea was first floated a year ago and is being realized now that we have 18 candidates for the board."
The government, which owns 51 percent of the company, has five representatives on the current board and has put forward nine candidates for the May 25 meeting. The other candidates include Aeroflot general director Valery Okulov and his deputy Alexander Zurabov, who were nominated by the airline's employees.
Carroll Trading SA has put forward seven candidates - Prospekt brokerage General Director Mikhail Vinchel, Profit House Managing Director Alexander Nemtsov, and five officials from the recently formed holding company Millhouse Capital U.K. Ltd. Carroll, together with Ninegan, another offshore company, bought up 26 percent of the company last year. Both firms are linked to Chukotka Governor Roman Abramovich, co-owner of Sibneft and Russian Aluminum, whose assets, including Aeroflot shares, are managed by Millhouse.
Aeroflot's board also voted to terminate the company's contract with troubled Arthur Andersen, appointing rival Deloitte&Touche in its place.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Sweden Steel Doubts
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Sweden became the first EU state openly to say on Monday that it and other members of the bloc had doubts whether plans for sanctions against the United States in a row over steel were realistic, but said no final stance had been taken.
Sweden's ambassador to the European Union also said the two sides should avoid an escalation in trade tensions over the new U.S. steel duties.
The EU has threatened to retaliate by June 18 with 100 percent tariffs on U.S. exports valued at about $335 million annually if Washington does not provide compensation for the steel-import duties by lowering tariffs on other products.
"We are skeptical ... when it comes to the idea of retaliatory measures toward the United States," Sweden's EU Ambassador Gunnar Lund said. "There are other countries who share our skepticism, but we are the most skeptical," he added, without naming the EU states.
Trade officials added that Sweden had not yet decided its position on an early retaliation against the U.S. and was awaiting the results of talks between U.S. trade officials and the European Commission, the EU's executive arm.
Andersen To Merge
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - The German affiliate of embattled accounting firm Arthur Andersen announced Monday it has agreed to merge with competitor Ernst & Young Germany.
A statement quoting heads of both companies in Germany described the deal as a merger of equals, but said the new company would be called Ernst & Young. Terms were not disclosed.
Andersen affiliates in more than a dozen countries have cut deals to join competing firms as the firm's U.S. partnership has been hit by a wave of client defections while defending itself from a criminal obstruction charge stemming from the shredding of Enron documents.
The deal for the German partnership "clarifies the situation for the clients and employees of Andersen in Ger many after the uncertainties that arose in relation to Andersen in the United States," said Christopher Gross, country managing partner of Andersen Germany.
The merger in Germany would create a combined company with 7,000 workers. Executives hope to complete the deal by July 1, pending approval by European Union competition authorities.
TITLE: Putin's Progress: Two Takes on the Reforms
AUTHOR: By Masha Lipman
TEXT: HALFWAY through his four-year term, President Vladimir Putin is unhappy with the pace of Russia's progress. Economic growth has fallen off, and the gap between Russia and developed countries is getting larger instead of smaller. In the past couple of weeks, Putin has made this point repeatedly, and he included it in his yearly state of the nation address. What he has not emphasized is the degree to which his own policies and practices have contributed to the problem.
While Putin's progressive vision is not fully shared by the country or the elite, his popularity remains high and there is basically no political opposition in the country. The pace of reform, however, is painfully slow.
This year, as in his 2001 address, Putin focused on the inefficiency of the government as the main cause of the problem. He called the system of administration "unwieldy, awkward and inefficient."
Russia's governmental bureaucracy is indeed badly organized and lacking in initiative and commitment. As Putin put it, precious few "know the art of government administration." Yet it was Putin who staffed his government structures with numerous mediocrities, people with no record of achievement and no vision of the task that had suddenly befallen them. Their only "merits" were their loyalty and their St. Petersburg origins.
Putin condemns corruption and rightly attributes it to the restriction of economic freedoms. He talks about hordes of "controllers" and "inspectors" who use their power to extort bribes and make it difficult "to do civilized business" in Russia.
Yet it was Putin who inspired the use of the prosecutor's office for intimidation rather than regular prosecution, both to destroy his political enemies - mainly media tycoons Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky - and control unruly governors and businesspeople who had become too independent. He has endowed the prosecutor's office with political - rather than legal - authority. By entrusting law enforcers with "special missions" he encourages corruption and hampers development of the rule of law. The prosecutor's office eagerly turns its enormous power to its own benefit, and the whole army of lower-rank enforcers follows suit.
Ironically, in his address, Putin criticized his administration for being "nontransparent," closed to the public, a "black box." This is odd coming from a president whose KGB past is all too evident in the atmosphere of full secrecy in today's Kremlin. Putin's advent put an end to the practice of public press briefings in the Kremlin.
All of Putin's moves were originally intended to make the state stronger and more cohesive, to remove political obstacles and create the kind of stability that would facilitate an economic breakthrough. But the campaign of intimidation, subjugation and taming - of big business, the Duma, the governors and the press - while it may have increased government control, has done so mainly through commanding a sort of outward compliance and subservience, rather than through true cohesion based on a common cause. Underneath the seeming stability are conflicting interest groups that silently impede or even sabotage reform whenever it threatens to encroach upon them. This is why land reform is only now beginning, why military reform has barely moved, and why the restructuring of Gazprom has not even started.
The yearning for stability has had another undesired effect. By sending the message to the country that the government is in control, by bringing back the music of the old Soviet national anthem and the general atmosphere of political reconciliation, Putin is fostering in his country the sense, if not the essence, of late Soviet times. The long decades of communist oppression had established the idea that nothing depends on the individual, and so all effort is meaningless. Putin may pride himself on his sky-high popularity, but he must also take the blame for lulling his country further into passivity and inaction. And without active public involvement, no reform course will ever succeed. Government bureaucracy - efficient or inefficient - cannot do it alone.
Masha Lipman, deputy editor of Yezhenedelny Zhurnal, contributed this comment to The Washington Post.