SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #768 (34), Tuesday, May 14, 2002
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TITLE: Breath of Hope Despite Debilitating Illness
AUTHOR: By Katherine Ters
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Oleg Shulga and his mother Anna get up at around 10 a.m. Anna washes her 35-year-old son, shaves him, gives him his medicine, feeds him and then they get to work.
She props him into a sitting position and opens the book he's translating on his lap. Oleg looks down and Anna leans close while Oleg whispers the translation which his mother transcribes by hand.
Anna, 54, doesn't understand English, but if Oleg comes across something he doesn't understand, she opens their falling-apart dictionary at the right page and puts it under his eyes.
Oleg has been severely paralyzed for more than two years. He can't move any parts of his body and his chest muscles no longer work, which means that he's unable to breathe without a respirator.
Oleg also can't speak using his vocal chords. His respirator pumps air into his lungs through a hole in his throat. The hole blocks his trachea, which means that he can't move air over his vocal chords. Nevertheless, he has learned to make quiet, whisper-like sounds by drawing air in and out of his mouth.
Oleg's disease is related to the nervous system, but the specific nature of the disease and its cause have yet to be identified. His paralysis began setting in seven years ago, starting from his legs and feet. At the time, he was working as a doctor in a hospital in St. Petersburg. He had recently finished his Ph.D. in gastroenterology and continued to work until his paralysis made it impossible for him to get around the hospital.
Despite his illness, Oleg has been working, every day, with the help of his mother translating books on dentistry from English to Russian.
"I chose this field because it's one of the most dynamic fields of medicine and it uses the most modern techniques. It was an economic choice too. Dentists in this country are much better paid than doctors in Russia. They're the only ones who can afford to buy books like these."
"It's important for Oleg to be able to do his translations. It gives him purpose and, hopefully, it will give him a real source of income too," said Anna.
For the last six months, he has been working on translating "Aesthetics in Dentistry." He expects to finish it this summer.
While Oleg said his work gives him intellectual satisfaction, his primary goal for working had been to make enough money to buy a new respiratory machine. But that was only his goal until last month.
Oleg's life took a surprising turn at the beginning of April, when the Vesti television program of St. Petersburg's RTR station screened a short segment about his life and appealed for help.
Oleg says he was hesitant about being filmed. "I'm a shy person and I didn't like the idea of a TV crew in my apartment. I was really uneasy about the whole idea of it, but in the end I agreed, hoping that someone who saw the segment might be able to help me in some way," he said.
After the program aired, eight people called offering their assistance, financial and otherwise.
The result, a few weeks later, is that Oleg now has a new respiratory machine installed in his apartment. "I'm very grateful to these people," he said. "I didn't expect anything quite like this."
The firm Aspects Severo-Zapad bought Oleg a new respiratory machine, worth about 100,000 rubles ($3,200).
His old respirator, a 25-year-old French machine, was donated by the resuscitation department of an inner-city hospital, where Oleg once stayed for a year. The machine broke down regularly.
"There was a problem every other week and it was a constant source of terror for me," said his mother. "At night I used to lie right next to him, listening all the time for his breathing and the hum of the machine. The first time it stopped it was 3 a.m. I didn't know what to do, so I used this hand-operated pump and kept pumping air into his throat like this," she said demonstrating.
"I kept him alive till morning, and then I called Andrei Nefyodov, the head of the resuscitation department at the hospital where Oleg stayed. Nefyodov arranged for him to be brought to hospital. ... The new machine won't break down all the time, and it has an alarm if it stops. It means some peace of mind for us," she said.
Anna looks tired. She looks after Oleg on her own 24 hours a day, and the only time she's able to leave their small, one-room flat on Prospect Nauki, in the northeast of St. Petersburg, is when they have visitors and only if the visitors know what to do if his machine stops.
Her friends, her husband Alexei, 61, and daughter Alla, l7, live in her native town, Vinitsa in Ukraine.
Alexei is the manager of Vinitsa's public kindergartens. Both of Oleg's parents have health problems themselves, but Alexei is the only bread-winner, so he works in Vinitsa and comes to St. Petersburg when he can.
When Alexei comes to Petersburg, Anna goes to Vinitsa, to see their daughter.
"It's strange," said Anna, "but even when I'm in Vinitsa I know exactly how Oleg is. Since he was small I could always feel when something was wrong with him, with work, with his relationships, with his health. So even when I'm away, I feel sure that, if something happened, I'd feel it in my heart straight away."
Oleg doesn't show his unhappiness to visitors. He has a peaceful way about him and bright and thoughtful eyes.
He shares his mother's hope, "I believe I'll get better, and that's what keeps me going. This may not be life as I used to know it, but it is life - a second life, if you like. It's still valuable and it's still worthwhile."
By calling this a second life, Oleg is referring to an incident in 1999 when he stopped breathing.
"He was clinically dead for several minutes," said his doctor and close friend Dima Buzanov, "Fortunately, he was in hospital when it happened and they were able to resuscitate him in time."
"I met Oleg in our hospital," recalls Dima, "He was a special patient - he has a very serious disease, but such an optimistic soul and such strong determination to work."
"One of the biggest problems with Oleg's old respiratory machine was that if there was a power cut or blackout, it didn't have a battery to fall back on," said Dima.
"Let me tell you a story," he began. "In January this year, the electricity in Oleg's building was cut off for 24 hours. I saw a sign on the building about it and organized for him to be brought to hospital for the day. I had to carry him down five flights of stairs from his flat, while Anna used the hand pump to keep him breathing. Another friend drove us in his green Zhiguli to hospital. It was pretty traumatic, with Anna sitting there pumping air into his throat as we went along, but Oleg seemed okay and pretty happy to get out of the house."
"It was a good trip," said Oleg, "listening to music really loud in the Zhiguli."
Oleg's optimism is matched by his determination that he will find treatment for his condition.
"I want to find a person with this problem or a clinic that investigates or treats this problem. I think through the Internet I'd be able to do it," he said.
"Doctors and professors here in St. Petersburg haven't been able to help me, but I'm sure that somewhere in the world there's another person with the same disease.
The day after Oleg appeared on RTR, a St. Petersburg company called and said that it would try to buy him a computer and printer.
"It hasn't arrived yet, but we're still hopeful," he said.
"A computer would not only mean that we could type the translations, but on the Internet, I might be able to find someone who knows something about this disease."
"We need to find someone who knows something," said Anna. "I'm sure there are treatment centers or clinics in America or Europe that specialise in these kinds of diseases. Look at him. This is his life in this one-room flat. How can we find someone who knows something?"
Anna was touched by the offers of help they received. There were eight phone calls in all after the show, and they weren't all from large firms.
"Several callers were pensioners, one of whom had to be convinced that we didn't need the only money she had: 200 rubles ($6.40)," recalls Anna.
Another pensioner, Tamara, donated $150, and she offered to help with shopping or with sitting with Oleg.
"It's really important that Anna Vasilyevna feels like she has some support." said Dima. "Up till now, she's felt very alone, but the people who responded to the TV segment didn't just offer money, but they offered her help in different ways which has made her feel less isolated."
"One of the callers, Irina, said to me over the phone, 'I've got $45 to give you, but I've also got new stuff for the kitchen, which I don't need.'"
The following day, loaded with a big box, Irina and her husband delivered a huge box of kitchen utensils.
"I've never seen Anna Vasilyevna as happy as I did when she got those pots" said Dima.
Several people made private donations. One man, who only gave his first name, Volodya, called and asked if they still needed a respiratory machine. "I can buy anything you want." he said.
He met Dima at a local Medical Teknika Shop and bought 15,000-rubles ($480) worth of medical equipment.
"If you need anything else, call me, I can help you later too" he said.
Another Volodya, this time driving a green Toyota, met Dima at a tram stop near Tekhnologichesky Institut.
He just handed him 30,000 rubles ($960) on the street without asking any questions. When Dima asked why he was being so generous, Volodya replied, "I just have to do it."
"I don't know where these people came from, but I couldn't believe their generosity toward someone they didn't know." Oleg says. "I just want to say, thank you and thank you Volodya in the green Toyota."
Information which could help Oleg can be emailed to dima.buzanov@mail.ru.
TITLE: Investigation Accuses Warlord
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Investigators pointed the finger at a Chechen warlord of Dagestani origin as being the mastermind behind the explosion that ripped through a Victory Day parade in Dagestan, killing 42 people.
Dagestani Interior Minister Adilgirei Magomedtagirov said he had evidence that Rappani Khalilov, whom local police suspect of plotting a number of blasts in Dagestan over the past eight months, was behind the Thursday bombing and promised to personally make sure that he was brought to justice.
"As interior minister I swear that he will be either cauhgt or eliminated," Magomedtagirov told reporters in the regional capital, Makhachkala, Interfax reported. "No federal task force will take part. This operation will be carried out by the Dagestani Interior Ministry with the permission of the Russian interior minister." He said Khalilov is believed to be hiding in Chechnya's northern Nozhayurt region.
Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov told a separate news conference in Makhachkala on Sunday that investigators have identified the individuals who plotted and carried out the attack.
"We have a sufficient amount of information ... but I cannot disclose at this time what we know," Kolesnikov was quoted by news agencies as saying.
An antipersonnel land mine with the force of 3 kilograms of dynamite tore through a festive crowd attending the traditional Victory Day parade at 9:50 a.m. Thursday in the town of Kaspiisk. The bomb, planted in shrubs near the sidewalk and filled with scraps of steel wire, detonated as a military brass band marched past.
Excerpts from an amateur video taken by a Kaspiisk resident and broadcast on television shows the military band playing a triumphant tune before abruptly being engulfed in billowing black smoke. Screams break out. As the smoke clears, soldiers in camouflage and civilians are seen sprawled around a deep crater in the street, blood pouring from their wounds.
Twenty-two people, including six children, were pronounced dead at the site, and about 110 more were hospitalized. As of Sunday, 20 more had died of their injuries. The dead include 21 soldiers stationed in Kaspiisk, mostly musicians marching in the parade, and 13 children who had run in front of the band.
Unlike after other smaller bombings in the North Caucasus in recent months, President Vladimir Putin said he would personally take charge of the investigation into the attack. The blast occurred minutes before he addressed World War II veterans at a Victory Day rally in Moscow.
Putin appointed Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev to head the team of investigators with orders to report directly to the president.
The country was left in a state of shock and grief. Mind-numbing news coverage of the explosion overshadowed the usually jubilant reports about Victory Day, which commemorates the Allies' defeat of Nazi Germany.
Unlike after similar attacks in the region, the authorities did not immediately accuse Chechen rebels of being behind the bombing.
Viktor Kazantsev, Putin's envoy to the Southern Federal District, urged Russians in televised remarks not to jump to the conclusion that there was a Chechen angle.
Chechen rebels denied any involvement. "The Chechens and those who sympathize with the Chechens in their struggle have nothing in common with such actions because it would mean playing into the hands of our enemies," Akhmed Zakayev, a spokesperson for rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, said in a statement posted on the rebels' Web site Chechenpress.com on Friday.
Three suspects - ethnic Dagestanis and followers of Wahhabism, an austere brand of Islam - were detained in St. Petersburg on Saturday and flown to Makhachkala, Dagestani police said.
They were cleared Sunday of Thursday's attack but remained in custody on suspicion of carrying out other bombings in Dagestan.
TITLE: Death of Vice Governor Adds to Ongoing Feuds
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: City Hall deepened the tone of animosity in the ongoing feud with the Northwest Regional Prosecutor's office last week, insinuating that pressure from the prosecutor's office had hastened the death of former St. Petersburg Vice Governor Valery Malyshev.
Malyshe, who last year was charged by the regional prosecutor with corruption and abuse of office, died of a stroke last Tuesday morning at the age of 52.
"Not even a healthy person could have survived the kind of pressure that [Malyshev] experienced from law-enforcement agencies in the last two years," St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev said at a briefing later on Tuesday.
The Northwest Region Prosecutor's Office refuted the accusation. "We have not received any claims from Malyshev's defense council about any unnaceptable methods that [the prosecutors] have used in the course of the investigation." said Vladimir Goltser, a spokesperson for the office, in a telephone interview on Monday.
According to an Interfax report on Tuesday, the Northwestern Prosecutor's Office has said that charges against Malyshev could be dropped.
"At the same time, the hearing could take place, following an initiative by [Malyshev's] relatives to exonerate [him]," an anonymous source at the office was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Malyshev was originally charged in July last year with "taking a particularly large bribe." The Russian Criminal Code allows more serious charges to be filed in cases where the amount of the alleged bribe is more than 90,000 rubles ($2,800).
Although the Northwest Prosecutor's Office has repeatedly refused to reveal details of the charges, the media at the time linked the indictment to an interest-free loan that Malyshev allegedly received from Exi-Bank, which has sponsored a number of sporting events in the city. As chairperson of the city's Sports, Transport and Communications Committee, Malyshev oversaw preparations for, among other events, the city's bid to host the summer Olympic Games in 2004.
According to Yakovlev, Malyshev had been admitted to the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy hospital with suspected hepatitis about two weeks before he died.
"It all happened very quickly. [Malyshev] fell ill about a month ago, but the liver treatment was going quite well. At one point he was admitted with suspected cancer, but [the cancer] was not confirmed. And then he died of a stroke," said City Hall spokesperson Alexander Afanasyev in a telephone interview on Monday. "I can say that [the Northwest Prosecutor's Office] helped by removing any possibility for [Malyshev] to defend himself," he added.
The office of Viktor Cherkesov, President Vladimir Putin's representative for the Northwest Region, expressed its condolences to Malyshev's relatives and friends. An official statement released on Wednesday also warned against politicizing a personal tragedy.
"Emotional statements that distort the real cause of [Malyshev's] death are regretable," the statement read. "We treat actions of this kind as immoral and insulting to the memory of the deceased and to the feelings of those who were close to him. People who had sincere feelings for [Malyshev] should not look to make political capital out of his death."
Malyshev was often a controversial figure. During his first stint as vice governor, he served as Yakovlev's envoy to the city's Legislative Assembly, and, in the fall of 1999, led the governor's drive to have the gubernatorial election shifted to coincide with elections to the State Duma. That move, which was largely seen as a bid to secure Yakovlev's re-election, was later overturned by Russia's Supreme Court.
The speaker of the city's Legislative Assembly, Sergei Tarasov, called Malyshev "one of the brightest and most charismatic politicians in St. Petersburg."
In an interview with Interfax on Tuesday, Tarasov said that, because of this, "he was more in the firing line than anybody else. It is dangerous to be a politician."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Literary Bent
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - U.S. President George W. Bush has started reading works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in preparation for his upcoming summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported on Monday.
Russian foreign Minster Igor Ivanov said that during his meeting with at the beginning of May, the U.S. president told him that he was reading Dostoyevsky "to be able to understand better the St. Petersburg atmosphere," Interfax reported
"It is very pleasant to hear that a politician, despite the fact that he has many other problems, finds time to take part in our culture," Interfax quoted Ivanov as saying. "This just proves again the great potential of Russian culture."
Ivanov Denial
MOSCOW (AP) - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Sunday denied a report that Russia is preparing to resume nuclear testing on an Arctic archipelago.
The New York Times reported that an analysis by the U.S. Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee indicated that Moscow is preparing to resume testing at the Novaya Zemlya testing area. The newspaper said information on the report was presented in classified briefings for selected congressmen.
"Unfortunately, such statements periodically arise at various U.S. Congress sessions without any basis," Ivanov said during a talk show appearance on ORT television.
"We express our incomprehension and ask the U.S. administration to clarify why some officials can make such statements if we really want to achieve new strategic relations based on mutual trust and respect," he said.
Priest Killer Jailed
MOSCOW (AP) - A Siberian court on Monday sentenced a man to 17 years in prison for the murder of a Roman Catholic priest, news agencies reported.
Jan Franzkevich, a 76-year-old priest from Poland, was found bludgeoned to death on Easter Sunday last year in an apartment next to a chapel in the Yenisei district of the Krasnoyarsk region.
Itar-Tass reported that the motive appeared to be robbery as investigators found 10,000 rubles ($330) and several religious articles missing.
Alexei Kornilov, a 38-year-old Russian, was convicted of Franzkevich's death and sentenced in Krasnoyarsk District Court to serve the 17-year term in a maximum-security prison, Itar-Tass and Interfax reported.
Ministry to Comply
MOSCOW (SPT) - The Labor and Social Development Ministry promised Monday to comply with an order by the European Court of Human Rights to pay a Chernobyl clean-up worker 3,000 euros ($2,743) in additional damages after stalling on his health bill.
Last week the court recognized Anatoly Burdov's right to compensation after a Russian court in 1997 awarded him about $4,000 for his damaged health, plus an equal sum in the form of a penalty. At the time, the Russian government failed to pay him, saying it had no money.
According to a press release issued by the ministry Monday, the government paid 124,116 rubles ($4,000) to Burdov in 2001. The compensation for additional damages will be transferred to his bank account shortly after the written decision of the European court arrives at the ministry, the press release said.
TITLE: All Captured on Camera: The Last Shots of the Perm OMON
TEXT: On March 29, 2000, an OMON detachment serving in Chechnya was ambushed by rebel forces, who killed 42 of the 49 soldiers in the column. Now, photos and video footage seen by The St. Petersburg Times shed light on the human tragedy that lies behind the statistics. By Nabi Abdullaev.
BEREZNIKI, Perm Region - When he left for his first mission in Chechnya in February 2000, Sergei Udachin, a 37-year-old OMON officer, took along a cheap Kodak camera.
Before he was killed near the village of Dzhanei-Vedeno in one of the most painful episodes of the military campaign in Chechnya, Udachin had used up about half a roll of film.
He had someone take snapshots of him and his comrades: around a table celebrating a birthday, posing on their bunks in a Chechen kindergarten, standing with their weapons outside their Vedeno headquarters.
The rest of the roll was shot by a Chechen rebel who picked the camera off of Udachin's body. He used it to document troops the rebels had killed and taken prisoner in their attack.
Udachin's family and fellow OMON officers in Berezniki, a polluted industrial town in the north Urals, were to see the photographs only two years later. They said the camaraderie between the men, so visible in the early photographs, was what led them to Chechnya and what still keeps the town's OMON officers going back in spite of the horrors of the war.
Surrounded by birch woods, Berezniki continues to nurse its wounds from March 29, 2000, when 23 of its 101 OMON officers were killed in the attack near Dzhanei-Vedeno.
The rebels, commanded by Abu-Quteiba, a warlord of Arab origin, also killed 19 others: three OMON officers and nine regular police officers from Perm city, six army conscripts and one police officer from Vedeno.
Only seven men from a column of 49 survived to tell the tale. The rebels killed 31 men on the spot, and one wounded OMON officer was later found dead under a nearby bridge. The rebels took 10 men prisoner, later offering to trade them for Colonel Yury Budanov, who was in military custody on charges of murdering a young Chechen woman. The offer was turned down, and the mutilated bodies of the prisoners were either found near the battle site or bought from locals.
"That day a column led by Mayor Valentin Simonov left from Vedeno, where we were based, to the village of Tsentoroi to conduct a mopping-up operation there," recalled Colonel Sergei Gaba, the head of the Perm city OMON, who commanded the 100-member combined team of the Perm region's Interior Ministry forces on its 18th mission to Chechnya.
"It was around 9 a.m. when, part way into the trip, one truck's radiator overheated and the column came to a halt," said Gaba, 40, a stocky man with a crew cut. "The commander then decided to search a sheepfold that stood nearby."
Gaba has a video taken by another OMON officer in the ill-fated column with a desire to record the team's mission. The video, which Gaba played in his Perm office last month, shows how the battle that day began.
On the video, a moustached Simonov cautiously enters the hut, made of plywood and shingles. Suddenly, the door is shut and the camera operator, OMON officer Sergei Sobyanin, shouts: "Dmitrich [Simonov's patronymic], what's there?"
Simonov's voice is audible from inside the hut: "Drop the guns and we will not fight with you." He is interrupted by a burst of fire. Sobyanin drops the camera into the grass and for several minutes only the din of shooting and obscenities in Russian are heard.
"Usually, an attack on a column lasts no more than 15 minutes - after which there is nothing left of the column," Gaba said after turning off the video. "Perm officers fought for six hours." Only after six hours, at 4 p.m., did he lose radio contact with his men, he said.
Fifteen minutes after the fighting began, Gaba, who had stayed in Vedeno that morning, left with another column to come to their assistance, but it never made it.
"As the road entered a gorge, the rebels set fire to the first of our six trucks and attempted to blow up the last one to block any escape," recalled Gaba, who was in the last truck and was shell-shocked. "We had to retreat."
Gaba said he believes that if the first column had passed by the sheepfold there would have been no attack. But once the fighting started, rebels who were hiding in nearby forests joined in and encircled the column.
"According to our later intelligence reports, the rebels had planned to capture Vedeno - an ancient capital of Ichkeria [Chechnya] and the hometown of rebel leader Shamil Basayev," Gaba said. "Having drawn the fire on themselves, OMON officers, at the cost of their own lives, averted hundreds of deaths in Vedeno, as federal troops and aviation were moved there and the rebel gangs were dispersed."
Gaba's squad, together with army troops, managed to get to the battlefield only on the afternoon of March 31, two days after the fighting.
"It was a frightful sight, something so unreal that I still cannot grasp it fully. Two days before I had seen these dead men, most of them in their twenties, alive and cheerful," Gaba said. Many of the bodies had ears, fingers and noses cut off, he said.
Collecting the bodies took two days because officers had to go through a special procedure to avoid booby-traps set by the rebels under the corpses.
"When the first booby-trap went off behind my back and pieces of human flesh hit my back, I thought 'Oh my God, is another one of my men being killed?' But it was a corpse torn by a mine," Gaba recalled. From then on, they tied a rope to each body and dragged it for several meters to make sure it was not mined, he said. His men also recovered the dropped video camera.
The day after the firefight, six survivors who managed to break through rebel positions met up with federal troops. The next day, a Berezniki OMON officer was picked up by the military in the woods with bullet wounds tohis legs. He survived, but lost one leg.
The worst fate awaited the captured officers. The rebels tied their wrists and ankles and cut their throats, Gaba said.
"I repeatedly warned my men: Facing captivity, spare the last bullet or hand-grenade for yourself because if you are seized, your death will be more terrible - OMON officers cannot expect any mercy from rebels," the commander said bitterly. "The only explanation for what happened, which I can accept, is that, in the heat of the battle, the servicemen had spent all their ammunition or were shell-shocked when seized."
Eight of the prisoners are shown in one frame on the roll of film, which was offered to The St. Petersburg Times in late April by a man who identified himself as Maxim Borov and who said that he had bought it in Chechnya for $1,000.
The eight captive men, some with bandages and apparently wounded, are loaded up with several assault rifles with the cartridge clips detached. They appear to have been made to stop for the photograph while being marched through the woods. OMON officers recognized four of their fellow officers among them. The others were three regular police officers from Perm and one military conscript.
Gaba does not believe they lived long. The first body was recovered about a week after the firefight.
"A police officer from Perm, Alexander Kistanov, was brought to us first, by the locals, on April 6. His neck was cut from behind," Gaba said, tapping at one of the men in the photograph of the captives. "I have never seen anything like this, but the Chechens told me it was a kind of execution used by the Arabs."
Late on April 30, Easter Day, he was told at a checkpoint about a fresh burial place not far from the village of Dargo. Eight bodies were found.
"It was raining heavily and getting dark when we began digging them out. Yes, these were our men, decapitated and their wrists tied with rope," Gaba said. "They had been dead long before, and the rebels placing their ultimatum to exchange them for Budanov were apparently bluffing." Up until the bodies of the captives were found, the rebels continued to offer to trade the officers for Budanov.
All the bodies of those who had been killed in the firefight had been recovered by then, but Gaba's men searched for several more days before retrieving the body of the 10th captive.
On the roll of film, which had 24 frames, the first 14 photographs were shot by Udachin, although some did not come out. The 15th frame was of two dead officers, shot in daylight. The 16th and 17th frames were missing, perhaps because they showed Chechens who took part in the attack. The next two frames were of the captives, followed by two blank frames. The final three frames showed dead bodies, photographed at night with a flash.
Last June, a Dagestani court found four men guilty of participating in the attack on the Perm OMON column and handed down sentences ranging from 14 to 21 years in prison. All four were Dagestanis and followers of Wahhabism, a stern brand of Islam preached by the most irreconcilable of the rebels resisting federal control in Chechnya.
Alexander Garres, 25, was among the seven survivors. Half a year ago, when his daughter was born, he left the Berezniki OMON and joined the guard service of the local police force.
"I don't want to talk about that fight because too many opinions are circulating about why I stayed alive when the others were killed," he said bluntly at the very beginning of an interview. His hands, face and upper chest, visible through his unbuttoned shirt, are covered with little reddish scars.
His uneasiness melted as he scrutinized the group portrait of himself with his late comrades and friends. Garres, wearing a striped shirt, is visible in profile behind Udachin, who is holding up a glass.
"The picture was shot on March 19, 10 days before we went to Tsentoroi. That day our convoy returned from Mozdok with provisions, and the boys brought some alcohol," Garres said. "It was somebody's birthday and we celebrated it in our quarters in the Vedeno kindergarten."
It was his second mission to Chechnya, and he made three more after that one. "Going to Chechnya is like an addiction," he said. "It is pure adrenaline in your veins and even now I want to be there with the boys," he said.
Forty Berezniki OMON officers - including four of the town's six Vedeno survivors - and seven regular police officers from the town were sent on their 24th mission to Chechnya in March 2002. Two weeks ago, four of them were flown home dead - their truck had hit a mine near Shali.
Even after such painful experiences and losing many friends, Perm and Berezniki OMON officers - who, unlike those in the military, can say "no" at any time - keep doing their three-month stints in Chechnya and long for them during the safe rest periods at home.
Behind the bravado and their frequent use of the resonant term "adrenaline," what seems to drive the OMON officers is their camaraderie.
Leonid Shcherbakov, a burly sergeant from the Perm OMON, has done six missions in Chechnya. "The worst thing I have ever seen in my life was the sight of my friend blown to pieces by a mine in Grozny," said Shcherbakov, who has a finger-wide pink-and-violet scar across his forehead. "I go there because I might have a chance to save someone else among my friends."
"It is a very strange sense of consistency that we all feel in Chechnya," recalled another Perm OMON officer, Alexei Korchevoi. "When we are there we don't even need to talk to each other. Everybody suddenly understands everything and does what he is expected by all to do."
Commanders have similar feelings. "Despite my family's displeasure, I long for Chechnya," Gaba said. "Not that I want to shoot a bit or need additional adrenaline - I can get it all here in Perm. I long for the human relations that develop there between OMON officers."
Gaba said the officers do not risk their lives for material benefit. For serving in Chechnya, they earn about $300 a month, he said.
They also are not motivated by a desire to do their civic duty. "Here we used to believe that we were safeguarding the constitutional order in Chechnya, but there what we are often occupied with is figuring out how to help the whole team return home safe and sound," Gaba said.
Andrei Korobeinikov, the head of the Berezniki OMON squad, said this is because of the way the war is being waged.
"Sometimes we are just thrown into an open field and get no clear orders for weeks, and all we do is guard ourselves," he said bitterly. "In other instances, OMON, who are trained to deal with special situations - prisoners' riots, release of hostages, the rounding up of dangerous criminals - are deployed like regular troops in the woods and fields."
For those who go to Chechnya, their brothers-in-arms often become dearer to them than their real families.
"The OMON is a disease," Gaba said. "When families begin pressing my officers to quit, more often than not they opt for the OMON and divorce."
There is nothing unnatural in this, said Nina Safonova, a psychologist with the Perm OMON squad.
"The boys trust their lives to their mates in Chechnya and their psyches are tuned for maximum closeness, like that which only the rare family can boast of," she said. "They are family. How can you betray your family?"
In August 1999, in a rare case of a breakdown in the combat brotherhood, 12 officers from the squad left their fellow officers in western Dagestan - which had been seized by Islamic insurgents led by Shamil Basayev and Khattab - and returned to Perm.
"They found themselves in a vacuum here, nobody wanted to talk to them," recalled Safonova. "Most of them then begged me to help them return to Dagestan, but I couldn't. In half a year they all had left the OMON."
Nine OMON officers left the Berezniki squad after the Vedeno tragedy, but even they are not allowed to forget Chechnya.
"They come to the cemetery, where our deceased are buried, and meet their parents, who ask them whether they want to return to Chechnya and take revenge on the Chechens," said Berezniki OMON chief Korobeinikov.
Sergei Prokopov, the Berezniki OMON officer who survived but lost one leg, asked the regional Interior authorities to bend the rules and allow him to remain in the OMON. They agreed, and he now serves as an aide to the duty officer. In the group photo from Vedeno, he is seated behind the man holding the guitar.
The town of Berezniki is mainly an assemblage of crumbling five-story concrete apartment buildings, whose inhabitants work at a giant potassium extracting plant UralKalii. The nearest university is located in Perm, some 200 kilometers away, and there are only two vocational schools in the town with a population of 300,000. Although former President Boris Yeltsin graduated from secondary school in Berezniki, young men today have few opportunities, and service in the police and OMON apparently provides them with a sense of purpose.
"Our wives want to hang themselves, incapable of accepting our devotion to the service," said a police officer in Berezniki, who asked not to be identified and said he had made six missions to Chechnya and Dagestan. "We don't care. Our fellow officers are those that are relevant."
Udachin, the owner of the camera, had joined the OMON a month before being sent to Chechnya.
"I cried for several days after Sergei told me that he was going to Chechnya, but he didn't listen to me," recalled Nina Udachina, his widow. "But he said he was not any better or worse than his fellows who were sent to Chechnya.
"I didn't know what had happened to him until his aunt called us from Moscow on April 1 to say that she had seen his name on NTV on a list of the deceased OMON officers," Udachina said in a flat voice. "I told her it was a bad joke for April Fool's Day, but then I felt it was the truth."
In addition to his wife, Udachin is survived by a 14-year-old daughter.
The wife of Valery Muntyan - who is holding the guitar in the group photo - said she knew as soon as she heard about the tragedy near Dzhanei-Vedeno.
"On March 29, in the late-night news broadcast on NTV, they reported about the column having been rounded up," Yulia Muntyan said, her frail hands embracing her shoulders. "I needed no confirmation about Valera; I knew he had died from that very same moment."
It was his second mission. Leaving on his first one, he told his wife that he had to go because the others were going, she said.
"The second time I protested fiercely, I even went to the hospital with Shurka, our son, but Valera went to Chechnya anyway," she said.
A day before his death, Muntyan wrote a letter to his family, which was received two days after his funeral on April 4. It came in a self-made envelope sealed on all sides with scotch tape.
"Hello, my gnomes," Yulia Muntyan said in re-reading it, her eyes watery with tears. "I am fine. It is a very beautiful place and there are no signs of rebels. ... Remember, Yulcha, Shurka, I love you very, very much. Forgive me for forgetting to tell you this."
"He was my best friend and I taught him how to play the guitar on that mission," said Garres, looking at the photo. "He couldn't play at all and tortured us through the nights with his strum-thrum."
Next to Muntyan in the picture, smiling in the lower left corner, is Mikhail Lomakin, who also was killed in the attack. He is survived by a wife and a daughter. It was his second mission to Chechnya.
"I cried and kept telling him: once you have managed to return home alive, don't enter the river for a second time," recalled his mother, Tatyana Lomakina. "He went anyway, saying he couldn't break away from his friends.
"I was so hurt by him going to Chechnya for a second time that I didn't go to see him off, and now I feel so bad because of it."
Lomakina, 48, who worked as a street cleaner for many years, lives in a rundown neighborhood, the furniture in her apartment heavily worn. New apartments and financial compensation - 250,000 rubles ($8,000) for each family member - went only to the wives and children of the deceased. Their parents were entitled only to a small pension of some 1,500 rubles ($50) per month.
"His daughter kept asking us where her father is, but she has stopped doing it," Lomakina said. "She now knows where her papa's house is [in the cemetery]."
To the bitter displeasure of the relatives of the OMON officers killed in Chechnya, Berezniki citizens call the corner of the town cemetery where local servicemen are buried the Chechen cemetery.
Paved with gray concrete tiles and brightly lit by the sun, the memorial looks well cared for - fresh flowers lay beneath gray marble shoulder-high obelisks and the aisles between them are swept clean. The memorial is fenced on three sides and a vast, clear field lies behind it, a clear reminder that the death toll is far from being complete. Two fresh graves of those who died in Shali recently began a new row of tombs.
Marat Shaikhraziyev, a 35-year-old lieutenant captured by the rebels on March 29, 2000, was buried next to a long wooden table placed near the memorial.
Shaikhraziyev - second from the right in the photograph of the captive officers - was the last of the captives whose body was found.
"An official from the Dargo village administration came to me at the beginning of May and said that the local citizens were ready to sell us Marat's body for $1,000," Gaba recalled. "We were ready to go with him when our reconnaissance officer told us that the rebels had prepared an ambush for us at the place where the exchange should take place.
"I told the Chechen official that he was luring us out to be killed and that if he didn't want problems from us he would deliver Marat to Vedeno himself."
Two days later, on Victory Day on May 9, the man brought Shaikrasiyev's corpse to Vedeno in an open truck.
"When I climbed into it and recognized Marat in what was left of him, I felt enormous relief as if a load had been lifted from my head," Gaba. "I knew that I had to bring back home all my officers, dead or alive."
TITLE: Dagestan Dam Provides New Hope
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: CHIRKEI, Dagestan - "Come, look at this man-made beauty!" exclaimed Abakar Abakarov, the jovial director of the Chirkei Hydroelectric Plant, inviting visitors to the edge of the observation platform. "Mankind has never invented anything more reliable than an arch."
The view was indeed breathtaking. At 232 meters, Chirkei is the world's third-highest arch dam, holding an artificial lake on the Sulak River in Dagestan's mountains. The double- curvature structure allows the dam to be relatively thin - from 6 meters at the crest to 30 meters at the bottom. Just as an arch rests on a foundation, the dam rests on cliffs on either side of the river.
The pride of the economically depressed Caucasus republic, the Chirkei power plant, with four 275-megawatt generators, stands as a tribute to the Soviet Union's economic might and a beacon of hope for a better future.
A special unit of heavily armed Interior Ministry soldiers, who guard all roads and high points around the station, is a testimony to the region's instability.
But the worst years for the station appear to be over, Abakarov said. He looks forward to the restructuring of the energy industry that may allow the station to benefit from selling the electricity directly to customers and not through Dagenergo, one of Unified Energy System's 72 regional subsidiaries.
The massive scale of the construction, which was completed in 1976, is viewed today by Dagestanis with a big dollop of nostalgia.
"We had people from all over the Soviet Union building this treasure," said Abakarov, who has worked at the plant for 28 years.
"The turbines were made in Kharkov, the transformers are from Zaporozhye, the generators are from Sverdlovsk and the plugs are from Leningrad," he said.
The dam's engineers had previously worked on a hydro dam in Krasnoyarsk. And an 800-meter tunnel leading down to the bottom of the gorge where the powerhouse stands is still marked with the "M" logo of Moscow metro builders.
Although planned as a key component of the North Caucasus energy system, the Chirkei plant, like the republic's energy sector, has suffered from the isolation brought about by the Chechnya wars. When metals theft and combat left the transmission lines in Chechnya in tatters, Chirkei could not send all of the power generated in the reservoir.
The station has had to dispose of hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of water that would have otherwise produced electricity.
"You cannot accumulate electricity in batteries," Abakarov said. "Only the reservoir is the accumulator."
Last year, the Chirkei plant began to work at full strength when new transmission lines were built. Today, it is one of the most successful industrial facilities in the unemployment-ridden republic. Its average monthly salary of 5,000 rubles ($160) is looked upon with envy.
But Abakarov plans to go further. He is unhappy with the present arrangement in which the plant cannot sell electricity directly to customers. Instead, the plant functions as a subdivision of Dagenergo.
UES head Anatoly Chubais made a believer out of Abakarov when he came to Dagestan in October to hold a conference of regional-subsidiary bosses and inspect the construction of the Irganai plant, a separate power station on the same river.
Abakarov embraced Chubais' plans to reform the UES monopoly by breaking up regional energos into generation and distribution companies. The reform aims to liberalize the energy market by 2004.
"After meeting Chubais, I changed my attitude toward him 180 degrees," Abakarov said.
"He goes along the same path as the entire civilized world. As an energy producer, I like what he is proposing. I would like to be selling energy directly to customers."
For the time being, however, one of his main concerns is the behavior of the Interior Ministry soldiers guarding the station.
He is perfectly happy with the present 78-officer unit from Khabarovsk in the Far East that, he said, shares Dagestan's frontier spirit and respects local traditions.
"They are from Russia's outpost in the east, and we are in the south. They are the same patriots as we are," Abakarov said.
But that was not the case with the previous unit from Smolensk, which he pledged to block from ever taking another three-month shift.
The talkative director had to be pressed to elaborate. He balked, but then said: "It's unacceptable to walk around in front of women here in nothing but underwear."
TITLE: Nestle Takeover Reports Denied
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: Russian food and drink group Wimm-Bill-Dann on Monday denied reports that Switzerland-based Nestle is poised to bid for a controlling stake in the group.
Wimm-Bill-Dann, which made its name in Russia with a popular brand of fruit juice, became just the fourth Russian company to list on the New York Stock Exchange with a public offering earlier this year.
A Wimm-Bill-Dann spokesperson said the company is in a blackout period until Aug 8 following the flotation, meaning major shareholders are restricted in their dealings until then.
The spokesperson said no one had raised the subject of a Nestle bid, despite a report in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper this weekend that such plans were in the works.
Wimm-Bill-Dann's debut on the NYSE was seen as something of a test of foreign investor confidence in Russia. Investors fled the country in panic after a 1998 financial collapse, but now many investors are cautiously looking eastward again.
TITLE: Slavneft Names New President
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Slavneft shareholders Monday put a former Sibneft manager - currently under federal investigation - in the president's chair of the state-controlled oil major.
At the extraordinary shareholders meeting, votes representing 89 percent of all shares, including the Property Ministry's 55 percent stake, were cast for Yury Sukhanov. The Belarus government threw its 11 percent of the vote behind acting President Anatoly Baranovsky.
In choosing Sukhanov, the government is striving for a clean and transparent privatization later this year, said Energy Minister Igor Yusufov, who made a surprise appearance at a press conference following the meeting. The 20 percent of Slavneft held by the Federal Property Fund is expected to be sold in October or November for between $300 and 350 million.
Shareholders also officially removed Slavneft President Mikhail Gutseriyev from his post. Gutseriyev has been on vacation since April 30.
"As the primary shareholder, the government has the right to make these kind of personnel decisions without explanation to ensure that the company operates more efficiently," Yusufov said.
The controversy surrounding this shareholders meeting is nothing new for Slavneft, a company that has been plagued by turbulence since its inception in August 1994. And pressure is set to build in the run-up to the company's privatization.
Slavneft presidents have had little luck in the past. Founding President Anatoly Kuzmin was gunned down. Later, company president Anatoly Fomin was unceremoniously ousted after a criminal investigation was opened. The investigation yielded no results.
Market watchers said they were surprised Monday's meeting went ahead despite the recent actions of the Interior Ministry's economic-crime department, which opened a criminal investigation into the conduct of Slavneft executives Sukhanov and Dmitry Perevalov.
A State Audit Chamber report examining Slavneft's activities from 1999 to 2000 claims the oil company used illegal transfer-pricing schemes, whereby subsidiary Slavneft-Belgia sold oil at below market prices through a chain of organizations leading to a Sibneft affiliate, which, in turn, sold the oil at world-market prices.
Department spokesperson Valery Gribakin said the Interior Ministry was acting on the Audit Chamber report as well as a letter sent by a group of State Duma deputies.
The investigation uncovered "instances of abuse of power by Sukhanov and Perevalov," resulting in "great material damage to the state as the main shareholder of the company," Interfax cited law-enforcement officials as commenting.
Slavneft Vice President Andrei Shtorkh said the investigation did not affect the government's stance and will not keep Sukhanov from carrying out his managerial duties.
"In Russia, just as in other countries of the civilized world, a person is presumed innocent unless proven guilty," Shtorkh said. "Our shareholders were working from this assumption."
Shareholders were kept guessing until the last minute as to whether the meeting would take place. On April 29, an Ufa court ruled that preparations for the meeting and the actual meeting were illegal. On May 8, a Volgograd judge annulled the Ufa ruling.
While the meeting may have taken place legally, it is unlikely that Sukhanov - a man chosen by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov - will stay in power for long, said one market observer, who declined to be identified. And Sukhanov's alleged loyalty to Sibneft shouldn't give the No. 6 oil major much leverage in the well-publicized privatization.
In addition to Sibneft, LUKoil, Tyumen Oil Co. and Yukos are all eager to participate in the auction. TNK already controls 12.58 percent of Slavneft through affiliates.
It has been reported that Rosneft president Sergei Bogdanchikov wants to merge both state-owned entities into one oil company, and may be the force behind the investigation.
Baranovsky, a former Rosneft vice president, received support for his campaign to become Slavneft president from Bogdanchikov and Sergei Pugachev, a member of the Federation Council and founder of Mezhprombank.
TITLE: 'Made in China:' Will This Be the Economic Future of Japan?
TEXT: China is developing into a country of high tech and low wages, while Japan is in danger of losing its last great competitive advantage over its resurgent neighbor. As James Brooke of The New York Times reports, some see Japan's future in China's shadow.
IN recent decades, Japanese companies invested to make China the "factory to the world." In recent months, Japan's blue-chip manufacturers announced investments to make China the "design laboratory to the world."
In a cascade of announcements this spring, blue-chip Japanese manufacturing companies said they were planning research and development units in China.
Spurring the moves are the low wages of Chinese engineers, a growing Chinese market for computer chips and the hope that China's entry into the World Trade Organization will bring protection for patents.
The crumbling of an informal wall that long kept assembly in China and research in Japan may spell the end of the latter's last great competitive advantage over its low-wage neighbor. And it is yet another step in China's rise, one that means both new opportunities and wrenching change for Japan, which has lately been coasting on wealth built up in earlier, high-growth decades.
Today's young Japanese have grown up in affluence, taking for granted high wages and their country's status as the world's second-largest economy.
But older Japanese returning from visiting Chinese factories and laboratories report that the hard-working, self-sacrificing Chinese workers remind them of the Japanese workers of the 1960's.
As more and more Japanese manufacturing migrates to China, the research-and-development activity is gradually following, to be close to production.
"China is quickly becoming a country of low wage and high tech," Yotaro Kobayashi, chairperson of Fuji Xerox, warned recently, echoing the spreading insecurities here. "They are going to prove to be extremely competitive with Japanese companies."
China, with an economy only one-quarter the size of Japan's, has a long way to go. But the thousands of computer engineers graduating annually from Chinese universities are enough to keep wages at one third of the level in Japan, a country facing a shortage of engineers. With the number of 18-year-olds decreasing, colleges across Japan are closing because of a shortage of students.
Many of the biggest recent investments involve some of Japan's biggest technology names. This month, the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company opened a research-and-development laboratory in Suzhou, China, for household appliances. By 2005, this lab and a Matsushita cell-phone lab that opened in Beijing last year will employ 1,750 Chinese engineers.
Last month, the Nomura Research Institute, a leading Japanese systems integrator, began outsourcing software projects to China in an effort that will employ 1,000 Chinese software engineers by 2005. The Toshiba Corporation is planning a tenfold increase in the number of engineers at its new chip-development center in Shanghai, to 1,000 by 2004.
"We intend to enlarge the research-and-development function in China," Yukio Shohtoku, managing director of Matsushita Electric, said the day after the lab opened. The complex, in Jiangsu province, 320 kilometers northwest of Shanghai, will concentrate on developing air-conditioners, lights, refrigerators and washing machines.
His company, he added, does "as much software development outside Japan as possible" because it does not have enough engineers and the cost of engineering is high in Japan.
Following the Pack
Japanese companies are not pioneers in China. By the end of 2000, 29 multinationals, including Lucent Technologies, Microsoft and IBM of the United States, Alcatel of France and Nokia of Finland, had opened research-and-development units in China.
Typical of Japan's investment frenzy this spring, Yomiuri, a daily newspaper in Tokyo, recently ran a banner headline, "Toshiba Plans I.T. Plant in China," over an article that cited company sources as saying the electronics concern planned to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a huge information-technology production-and-research complex outside Shanghai.
A Toshiba spokesperson, Hiroyuki Izuo, immediately denied the report. But, given the wealth of detail and Japan's tradition of news leaks, many business analysts believe that Toshiba is preparing a major project.
Japan Inc.'s new scramble to show individual competitiveness looks a lot like Japan's old herd instinct. Hitachi, Sony, Pioneer, Fujitsu and NEC are just some of the other blue-chip companies that have announced plans recently for research and development units in China.
Two weeks after the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation opened an elevator-research unit in Shanghai in February, a major rival, the Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems Corporation, opened a research unit, also in Shanghai.
And two weeks after plans were announced for the Honda Motorcycle Research and Development China Company in January, the Yamaha Motor Company announced that it would open a research-and-development unit in or near Shanghai in 2003.
About 80 percent of the 11 million motorcycles made in China last year were copies of Japanese models, according to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.
With China now in the WTO, Japanese manufacturers hope that it will crack down on sales of "Yamehas" and "Suzakis."
Much of the new Japanese push into China is in semiconductor design and production, long an area of Japanese strength.
The heavy investment this year comes after the worst year, by far, for the global chip market, but a year in which chip demand in China grew by about 30 percent. It is expected to grow by another 30 percent there this year.
Fueling this chip demand, China is now the world's largest market for cellular phones, and by 2006 is expected to surpass Japan as the No. 2 market for PC's, after the United States. In 30 years, China's population is expected to grow to 13 times that of Japan, from 10 times greater today.
Chinese chip demand is expected to quadruple by 2010, to a $48 billion market, Richard Chang, president of the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, said in a speech in Japan.
His company, 38-percent owned by Royal Philips Electronics, the Dutch giant, is part of a series of Chinese chip makers whose executives have visited here in recent weeks to drum up investment.
A surge is also expected in the number of high-tech workers. At an information technology conference here last month, Liu Jiren, chairperson of the Neusoft Group, China's largest software company, told Japanese investors that, in five years, Chinese universities "will produce 5 to 10 times as many engineers as now."
Over all, Japan will be short 300,000 high-technology workers within three years, a Japanese government study warned recently. Despite this shortage, hundreds of Japanese managers and engineers, many forced into early retirement, now work in China, usually for lower pay.
The flow of investment, both human and financial, is changing the nature of China's exports to Japan.
Ever since Japan and China established diplomatic ties in 1972, the two largest Asian economies were seen as complementary.
"There is a clear division of labor between the two countries, with China specializing in labor-intensive products and processes, while Japan concentrates in high-tech products," C. H. Kwan, a senior fellow at the Japanese government's Research Institute of Economy Trade and Industry, wrote in a report six months ago. "China's exports look like Japan's imports and vice versa."
Turning the Tables
In this relationship, China has sold goods like towels, coal and spring onions to Japan, and Japan has sold laptops, digital cameras and DVD players to China.
Now China produces and exports all these goods. The high-technology portion of China's exports has more than tripled, to 18.5 percent last year from 5 percent in 1985. But the goods produced by Japanese companies have largely been designed in Japan.
The Japanese have long prided themselves on quality production, relegating Chinese-made goods to discount shops.
Now, Japanese manufacturers and consumers say they do not see much qualitative difference between "Made in Japan" and "Made in China."
In a recent survey of 81 Japanese companies operating in China, 62 percent of managers said they saw no difference in the quality of products made in Japan from those made in China.
Fifteen percent said the Chinese products were of better quality, according to the poll, which was commissioned by The Nikkei Business Daily, Japan's leading business newspaper, and Japan Management Association Consultants, a private industry group.
These tectonic shifts are rattling the increasingly insecure Japanese. In the 1990's, China's economy grew seven times as fast as Japan's. Such statistics help populist politicians fan the flames as they play on Japanese fears of this emerging - and ambitious - economic giant next door.
Last year, Japan reduced its foreign aid to China by 25 percent, to $1.2 billion, the biggest cut since aid started in 1979.
The cut was not big enough for Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo's populist governor, who warned voters last month that Japan "has been providing H-bomb-producing China with hundreds of billions of yen every year from your tax money."
According to the Kyodo News agency, Ichiro Ozawa, a conservative opposition leader, warned recently that if China "gets too inflated, Japanese people will get hysterical."
"It would be so easy for us to produce nuclear warheads," he continued.
But with Japan rivaling the United States as China's biggest economic partner, such hostile talk has prompted a series of "China is not a threat" statements.
"The growth of the Chinese economy will not be a threat for Japan," Li Peng, chairperson of China's Parliament, told Japanese investors in Japan last month in one such sally.
"The size of the Chinese economy is still small compared with that of Japan."
Full economic cooperation with China will continue, Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, vowed last month in a speech at an Asian economic conference in China.
"Some see the economic development of China as a threat," Koizumi said. "I do not. I believe that its dynamic economic development presents challenges as well as opportunities for Japan.
"I see the advancement of Japan-China economic relations not as a hollowing out of Japanese industry but as an opportunity to nurture new industries in Japan and to develop their activities in the Chinese market," added the prime minister, an advocate of free-market changes at home.
In an exercise in raising morale, Koizumi recently visited two Japanese high-technology companies in Tokyo and said: "I feel Japan's potential is high. Japanese people should be more confident."
Many businesspeople in Japan think that China's growth will provide jobs for the Japanese in new ways.
For example, a consortium of companies in the Japan Railway group is talking with China about selling technology and materials to build a Japanese-style shinkansen bullet-train system in China.
But, looking 25 years ahead, when China's economy is expected to surpass Japan's, some Japanese say they will have to adjust to playing a secondary role to their huge neighbor.
"Over the last 4,000 years of history, Japan has been a peripheral country to China, with the exception of this one last century," said Kenichi Ohmae, author of "China Impact," published in Japan last month. "In the future, Japan will be to China what Canada is to the United States, what Austria is to Germany, what Ireland is to Britain."
'There Is No Border'
Despite the move of higher-technology manufacturing and research to China, for the near term at least Japan will retain an edge in animation, video games and the most advanced consumer electronics, Ohmae predicted. The Nintendo Company, for instance, produces 70 percent of its GameBoy Advance units in China and plans to start producing GameCube video-game consoles there this summer. But, like most Japanese multinationals, Nintendo keeps most of its research and design in Japan.
Not content to write about China's high-technology boom, Ohmae, former chairperson in Japan of McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, is investing in back-room data-processing and telephone-information call centers in Dalien, China. Both operations take advantage of the linguistic links of China and Japan and new fiber-optic telephone and high-speed data connections. "Half a million Japanese-speaking Chinese live in northeastern China," Ohmae said, referring to an area with long investment ties to Japan. "The costs are one-tenth that of Japan.
"There is no border," he added, spinning a future of ever closer economic integration. "Part of the business goes to China. Part remains in Japan. I don't see a clear, industry-by-industry separation of China and Japan."
TITLE: American Condolences Debunk Russophobia
TEXT: Editor,
I want to say that this American is plenty mad about the deadly blast in Kaspiisk, and we Americans are with you in this struggle against Muslim extremists.
It was disgraceful to blow up innocent people in the middle of World War II victory celebration. It obviously was timed in order to inflict the maximum loss of life, and I grieve with you.
All civilized countries are in this together. You can count on our prayers and support.
David Laczkowski
Levittown, Pennsylvania
Editor,
I want to express my sincere sympathy to the people of Russia, and families of those in Dagestan who were murdered.
You are good, strong people who cannot be brought down by terrorists who want to murder you and your children. Stand strong and know that many Americans offer support and condolences.
Heather Tomlinson
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Editor,
I would like to offer my sincere condolences to the family members of all those whose lives were horifically taken in the Kaspiisk terror attacks. I want Russia to know that many in America support fully your own war on terror.
Jeremy Crum
Denver, Colorado
A Bush Policy
In response to "Global Eye," April 30.
Editor,
Chris Floyd's excellent article - as a few previous ones I have read - very clearly demonstrates the rather appalling world of international political games and the hypocritical banners under which they are played.
This is merely to encourage Floyd to persevere in his clear and well-argued articles, thus giving us the chance to be better informed and so that we do not let ourselves be taken in by the entirely false stories put out by certain governments that will remain nameless!!!
And to the whole of The St. Petersburg Times, keep up the excellent work!
Adrian Kessler
Switzerland
Editor,
Your Global Eye article of April 30 was certainly eye-opening and most powerfully written. It provides an all-too sobering account of our U.S. foreign-policy dynamic.
Needless to say, politics and the power plays it engenders have always been this way, irrespective of the nation in question. It's the nature of the beast, as you so rightly point out.
I am convinced, however, that the best way forward is to build a truly viable UN through a reformed charter that restricts the power of the veto and bans unilateral strong-arming.
Future articles that help move the world this way would certainly be most appreciated.
Frankly, I know of no other way to render sterile those who plant the seeds of war and bring about profound human suffering.
John Pietrzyk
Union City, California
Editor,
Excellent work again, Mr. Floyd. I was hoping you would touch on the Venezuelan Bushy Boy thug criminal involvement. I didn't realize the gangster methods Bushy Boy was pursuing with everything else.
Bill Moyer points out much of it on his weekly PBS show NOW. Of course, very few people watch it. They are too busy worrying about their own selfish little existences.
What do you think of the self-appointed U.S. politburo gangsters doing all their business in Crawford, Texas?
Also, Karen Hughes recently resigned from Bushy Boy's team, citing family reasons. There has got to be more to the story than this.
Why does all this important business of the United States seem to be taking place at Crawford, Texas, in private as opposed to the White House? Obviously because little Bushy Boy junior is hiding behind the real regent godfather gangster King George I. These thugs are destroying everything that is decent in the world!
Dale Wooley
Bend, Oregon
Is It Russophobia?
In response to "Russophobia Still Rampant," April 26.
Editor,
Having operated a company that did business in Eastern Russia, specifically on the Kamchatka peninsula, I read Russiaphobia with interest. We operated a fly-fishing camp on the peninsula and I saw the phobia from both sides.
Not only is Russiaphobia absolutely ingrained in the U.S. psyche, but it is not getting better anytime soon.
I continue to be involved in selling destination travel to Eastern Russia. The typical question is "how safe am I?" People worryabout everything from the entry process to the helicopters. Nothing is certain in the mind of U.S. citizens.
Many of the prejudices were created by the negative experiences of the early travelers to the CIS, including poor service, bad safety records, and a lack of maintenance on transportation equipment. The North American fanaticism with personal safety is a stumbling block when it comes to travel and business. This safety issue is so ingrained that other cultures will be, and are, forced to comply with our desires if they want to do business with us.
We are not going to change, so you as a culture must.
This safety ideal also pertains to the investment culture in the U.S. We want our money to work for us and be secure.
Cultural differences seem to raise their heads often. I do not think that Russians understand marketing, promotion or negotiations. My Russian partner negotiated with threats and conjecture.
Negotiations are supposed to be win-win. Well, after being involved for the last six years with many different Russian companies, I have yet to see fair negotiations. It is very disheartening as we seem to take one step forward and two steps back.
The offshoot of Russiaphobia in Kamchatka is that this wonderful wilderness may be lost for future generations. For every problem in the eco-tourism industry the natural-resources-exploitation industry licks their chops and spreads their dark wings over what may be some of the last pristine territory left anywhere on the planet.
Will Blair
Redding, California
Editor,
Commenting on Sergei Yastrzhembsky's article in The St. Petersburg Times, "Russophobia Still Rampant", thinking Americans do recognize the evolution of a to-be-free-enterprise-based economic system in modern day Russia.
While I myself am a retired Cold War warrior and a former international banker, one still thinking and still interested in world affairs and a better tomorrow for us all on this tired old globe cannot help but recognize many positive facets of today's better Russia. The fact that the Duma operates, has different factions, and a growing number of entrepreneurs compete in several businesses is revolutionary in the best sense of the word.
True, there are some tired old Cold War veterans, and a few still on active military duty of an aged condition, who in both the United States and, I dare conjecture, in Russia, cling to past stereotypes and such. But such leftover Russians and Americans do not control the steering of today's Russia's ship of state, nor do they control the direction of modern-day America here.
The unfortunate but very necessary war on terrorism has added much positive momentum for closer economic, political, and, yes, military ties between the U.S. and Russia. The "three Stans," likewise are benefiting economically from U.S. military use of borrowed facilities for various antiterrorist logistical purposes. The Stans economic benefits are, likewise, good for Russia as infrastructure buildup of water, rail, and road systems opens better avenues of commerce both north into Russia and south toward Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even into India, and China.
In a brief rebuttal conclusion, I believe that Sergei Yastrzhembsky sells most mainstream Americans short to think that we today maintain the very negative stereotypes he enumerates in his article. Even the United States has "gangs" and "gangsterism" to deal with daily. No one is immune from the evil side of human endeavors, but good things far outweigh the spotty evil things we all have to cope with daily in common societies.
George L. Singleton
Colonel, USAF, Retired
Birmingham, Alabama
Editor,
Sergei Yastrzhembsky's article on Russophobia appears to be right on the mark. It is apparent to me that there is a double standard for Russia vis-a-vis the West, particularly the United States. If the United States acts in its own self-interest it is considered the most natural thing in the world, but let Russia do this and very quickly rhetoric similar to the Cold War comes out.
It is a sad, but true, fact that most citizens of the United States have little knowledge of Russia and seem to have little interest in learning about her. I must admit that I was in the same situation until recently, when I began to investigate what was going on in Russia and to challenge my old stereotypes. One thing is very clear: The Russia I now see is nothing like the Russia I thought I saw just a short six months ago.
You have clearly made progress on democratic institutions. Unlike the West, which, in some instances, has had several hundred years to learn democracy. You have had only approximately 10 years. In addition, you have been working on getting your economic house in order. The flat-tax implementation seems a good start, plus the recommendations on improving the situation for small business development in Russia. In addition, President Putin's desire to reform the land situation to allow individuals to purchase land seems a step in the right direction.
You obviously have some institutions that require further reform in Russia but, considering the considerable pain the country has gone through in the last 11 years, I would say you have done well. You have begun to recover from the incredible difficulty of the economic crisis in 1998. Unfortunately, I think some of the advice you received from the West may have hurt you initially and caused needless pain to your citizens.
But there is not much to do about that now. What must happen and appears to be happening is that Russia continues to develop a democratic system that is Russian in character with some of the overall values and institutions of democracies worldwide. In addition, you are clearly focused on developing a civil society. The more this spreads and develops outside the urban areas to the rest of the country the better. The sooner the better as well.
I have read so much in the past six months that I have decided to come see for myself. I will be coming to Russia for the first time. I arrive in Moscow on May 1 at Sheremetyevo. I am genuinely looking forward to the trip. I want to see it with my own eyes.
John Moor
San Antonio, Texas
A Good Sign
In response to "Anti-Extremism Bill Is Only the Begining," May 7.
Editor,
I would like to compliment The St. Petersburg Times on the excellent commentary it published by Vladimir Kovalyev entitled "Anti-Extremism Bill Is Only the Beginning," which calls for the Putin regime to make real its verbiage about ending xenophobia in Russia.
Since your newspaper obviously profits from more English-speaking foreigners coming to visit and live in Piter, it takes real courage and journalistic integrity to publish an article like this one - the natural result of which would be to discourage foreign interest in Piter and Russia generally.
Even more courage is displayed by the journalist himself, since he will no doubt come in for much personal abuse from misguided Russians who, like the taxi driver he mentions, want to "beat the s**t out of foreigners" (even the Swiss!) and would consider him a collaborator.
Time and again in Russia, those who really loved the country - from Pushkin through Dostoevsky to Solzhenitsin - have spoken out seeking to reform Russia's ills before the nation was driven to destruction. Time and again, those whose love for Russia is no more than skin deep have shouted down those other voices, driving many even into their early graves and driving the nation to the brink of ruin and international humiliation.
It is a testament to the power of true Russian patriotism that such voices can, even now, still be raised - no matter how futile a gesture it might seem to be. It is proof that all hope is not lost for Russia.
Bravo!
Lenard Leeds
Atlanta, GA
Bashing the Law
In response to "Deputies Want To Outlaw Homosexuality," April 26.
Dear Editor,
As the president of the human-rights gay NGO here I support the main ideas of Kevin O'Flynn's article, published in the last issue of your newspaper on April 26, 2002.
After the pathological "idea" of lawmakers Raikov, Rogozin and others was publicly made known, we characterized it as a gender facism in our e-mail message to President Vladimir Putin.
It was emphasized as well that, as the authors of this provocation belong to the pro-government People's Deputy faction, their activity spreads a shadow to the President's efforts of establishing Russia as a democratic state.
Further we expressed our constant electoral support of his activity.
I am absolutely sure that the idea of recriminalizing homosexuality has no future in this country, being an example of black public relations, and that Rogozin must leave his post as the representative to the Council of Europe.
The legal position of Russian gays and lesbians is one of the best in the world: only rape is punished, the penalty is the same for homosexuals and heterosexuals and the age of consent is 14.
It is the result of our many years of struggle for this legislation.
Alexander Kukharsky, PhD.
St. Petersburg
TITLE: Give Putin More Credit
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Frolov
TEXT: PREDICTING how long President Vladimir Putin will be able to sustain his pro-Western foreign policy without getting much in return has become the latest growth industry among political pundits on both sides of the Atlantic.
The cliche argument is that Putin courageously stands alone among the hostile foreign-policy and military elite, which deeply resents his latest rapprochement with the United States, his support for certain U.S. policies and his quiet acquiescence in Russia's failure to secure its traditional interests on the ABM Treaty, NATO expansion and the U.S. military presence in Central Asia and the North Caucasus.
The argument, then, runs that the only way for Putin to sustain his pro-Western course is if he is swiftly rewarded with symbolic deliverables from the West; otherwise domestic opposition to his policies will gel and Putin will share in the fate of his predecessors Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
As the U.S. and Russian leaders prepare for their summit meeting in Moscow in two weeks' time, the race is on to predict what "carrots" U.S. President George W. Bush needs to bring with him to make Putin's pro-Western course more palatable domestically and to help him look better in the eyes of his compatriots.
This is really old thinking on the part of the West that should be offensive to Putin and to any self-respecting Russian. It betrays a perfunctory and highly stereotyped analysis of Russian politics, and it also exposes the cynically condescending way that many in the West tend to view Russia.
Few seem to be aware that the empty talk about the "right carrots for Putin" is doing more political damage to the Russian leader than the absence of those rewards per se.
It sounds extremely patronizing and creates the perception of a secret cabal to sell out Russia's interests for some personal political gain. Moreover, it portrays Putin before the Russian public as being in the pocket of the West and creates an incentive for the Kremlin to distance itself from pro-Western policies in case the political baggage becomes too heavy.
Putin has been consistent in saying that his push to create a new cooperative agenda for Russia's relations with the West, particularly after Sept. 11, has nothing to do with expectations of a possible political and economic payoff. He has steadfastly refused "to haggle over price."
There are three major reasons for this.
First, Putin appears to genuinely believe that realigning Russia with the West is the right thing to do given the current geopolitical realities. He, correctly, keeps saying that such a policy is inherently in Russia's interests as the only environment providing the necessary external conditions for Russia's economic and social resuscitation and eventual rebirth as a great power.
Having spent the first year in office trying to implement the "Primakov doctrine" - aimed at building a multipolar world as a constraint on U.S. dominance - Putin was perceptive and flexible enough to see how untenable and dangerous this policy was. It was not lost on him that collecting North Korean and Cuban endorsements for the ABM Treaty was not greatly advancing Russia's cause.
Positioning Russia as a trusted friend of the West would give Moscow much more leverage on Western and U.S. policy. Putin's choice was a very careful, pragmatic calculation, not an emotional impulse prompted by events of Sept. 11. Where Gorbachev and Yeltsin's rapprochement with the West was a high-stakes gamble, Putin's move is a well-thought-out strategy. And one does not expect to be rewarded for doing something that is so squarely in one's interests and that one has been planning for a long time.
Second, Putin's foreign-policy instincts were shaped during Gorbachev's Perestroika. He seems to be acutely aware that no measure of foreign-policy success and international prestige can sustain a presidency if your economic policy is a dismal failure in the eyes of your own people. Putin is a strong believer in the "It's the economy, stupid" approach.
Lastly, Putin saw Gorbachev and Yeltsin taken to pieces politically for humiliatingly seeking "Western rewards" for what many in Russia saw as unilateral concessions. Bartering weapons cuts for food aid, trade credits and IMF loans created such a disastrous perception of Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's foreign policy among the Russian public that it became a major domestic political liability and facilitated the alliance of their vocal opponents.
Putin learned the lesson well. He is deliberately keeping expectations low and has begun - although somewhat late - to publicly make a political case for his pro-Western foreign policy. He is not standing alone and has a viable political base in the growing Russian entrepreneurial class, hungry for acceptance in the West. His low-key tactics make the policy sustainable, and dominating the entire political scene in Russia obviously helps.
Putin is right not to beg the West for petty rewards. He is after something more important and priceless - reputation and respect.
His objective is to turn Russia into an internationally respected country on its own merits, primarily through deep internal restructuring and responsible international behavior. He wants Russians to respect themselves for their economic achievements and see their country genuinely admired internationally. Like his friend, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, he may be carefully positioning Russia as a "pivotal force for good" in the 21st century.
Vladimir Frolov is an advisor to the chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the State Duma. He commented this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. The views expressed are those of the author.
TITLE: City's Image Thrown Into The Garbage
TEXT: THE sight of Palace Square after the Victory Day fireworks display was a sad ending to what had been a good day, and a clear comment on this city's need for about 5,000 more garbage cans.
Sure, the empty bottles, cans and wrappers covering the square and the grounds around the Hermitage can be blamed on the atmosphere of revelry and a degree of drunkenness. Others will say that it's just standard behavior and that nothing will stop people from littering here.
This doesn't make sense.
It's more reasonable to argue that people litter here because they are simply so accustomed to the fact that there is rarely anywhere to throw their garbage.
This reply debunks the argument that, regardless of the number of garbage cans that might have been on hand to serve the crowds at the fireworks, everybody would just throw their garbage on the ground anyway.
It's been a pleasant sign to watch the number of garbage cans grow, albeit slowly, in the city over the last year. They have even begun to appear in and around some of the subway stations.
Even more heartening is the fact that so many of them are usually stuffed to the brim with garbage. This, instead of showing that people just won't use them, would more realistically indicate that people are using them as much as they can. So why not give them more of a chance?
Next year the city will celebrate its 300th birthday and the talk is of big bucks that will be poured into making sure that the party comes off in style.
How much of that money would it take to significantly increase the number of garbage cans here?
The expenditures on the anniversary celebrations are justified on the basis of the manner in which they will raise the city's profile and bring positive economic effects in the following years. But won't cleaner streets also raise this profile? Doesn't the fact that the cans will outlast the celebration itself count as a benefit in the following years?
It may sound like a stupid, nitpicking idea, but it would have to make a big difference. If people get a chance to see the imporvement it makes when even half of the garbage now thrown on the street ends up in garbage cans, they themselves will likely put pressure on the remaining litterers to follow suit.
If throwing garbage around like was done on Palace Square on Victory Day can snowball, why is it unreasonable to believe that, given the opportunity, throwing the same garbage in cans couldn't snowball in just the same way?
TITLE: Petersburgers Missing Out on Ferry Business
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
TEXT: WHEN I was about 10 years old, I liked to walk on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, which was just a few hundred meters from my apartment, and see the newly constructed passenger-port building, with a big electronic schedule of arrivals and departures on the wall.
I remember the schedule was full of the names of different European cities: Stockholm, Rostock, Riga.
It's hard to imagine now, as the big board has been blank for years. There are no regular boats arriving in the city any more. The customs offices are empty and the area around the port is occupied mostly by companies that have nothing to do with sea travel.
The other night I took a Silja Line ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm, on my way to Aland Islands. That night I took in something which can only be described as a drinker's heaven on the sea.
On my way to the islands I realized that St. Petersburg is missing out on a lifestyle that people who live on the Baltic Sea have taken for granted for years.
People from Helsinki and Stockholm leave their own cities in the evening and arrive in the other city early the next morning.
During the night, the ferries turn into big party places, lost in the night sea and full of people dancing, drinking and listening to music - in other words, having fun.
I am sure that most St. Petersburg residents - aside from those involved every winter in the drifting ice-fishermen extavaganza - have no idea how entertaining it is to spend the night hours at sea having fun in this way.
A lot of people take day trips to Helsinki on shopping buses, bringing back laundry detergent, pillows, blankets, ironing boards and other goods, while smuggling cigarettes and alcohol into Finland to pick up an extra 10 euros to cover some of their trip.
I'm sure a good segment of the population would be happier being with the Finns and Swedes on the ferries.
St. Petersburg shares the same great location as these cities - it also has easy access to the Baltic - and could easily set up overnight ferries sailing to Helsinki and back.
There is the question of how happy Helsinki residents will be at the arrival of some of these visitors after drinking all night. Unfortunately, I have few doubts that St. Petersburg law-enforcement officers will welcome those coming from Helsinki in their own special way, as they are far too often happy to come upon foreigners when the visitors are drunk.
But a few thousand additional Scandinavians would not only raise the income of local law-enforcement officers. City Hall maintains that the average foreign tourist visiting St. Petersburg spends about $300 a day, not counting what may have been left in local police stations.
So it just makes sense that the ferry business should be developed, especially if the city is serious about becoming a bigger part of European culture.
As for possible problems with police, I suggest that the tourists make sure to stay on the boat and sleep long enough to have sobered up before coming on shore. If they do, everything will be fine.
TITLE: Time Running Out for 'Reds'
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: MARCHING through Russia's streets and squares in the rituals of early May was a return to business as usual for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The party lost the lobbying muscle needed to raise money when it lost control of the State Duma's many committees. After all, no one in Russia gives money to politicians for merely political reasons -specific requests are always involved. The Communist Party's functionaries are obviously concerned about their financial future. But after the recent changing of the guard in the Duma, the party faces a much more serious problem.
The Communist Party leadership has announced that it will now adopt a policy of uncompromising opposition. But the Communists have been in the opposition since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov understands full well that he has to do something to express the party's outrage and to show the Kremlin that it's ready to fight. But fight with whom, and what for?
In the run-up to the May holidays, the Communist leadership came up with what they considered a brilliant strategy: to call for the government to step down.
Where was the brilliance in this decision? Everyone in the corridors of power knows that President Vladimir Putin has fallen out with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. It was clear from the start that Putin appointed Kasyanov with the intention of replacing him with a member of the St. Petersburg team at the first opportunity. But here's the problem: In two years the "Northern Alliance" hasn't managed to find a single politician in its ranks who could be entrusted with the nation's second-highest post. The president will only tolerate a total nonentity as his sidekick, because that's the only way he can stand out. There is no one among the government's faceless functionaries and disciplined employees who could be trusted with any measure of independence without running the risk that the government would immediately fall apart. And so Putin lives with Kasyanov.
The prime minister, for his part, has made himself at home in the White House. Like any decent Russian bureaucrat, Kasyanov has surrounded himself with his own people, gradually squeezing out those government officials who got their jobs via Kremlin connections.
In this context, one can appreciate the refinement of Zyuganov's maneuver. He wants to express his displeasure with the president. But, when the time to act comes, he offers the president his services in the Kremlin's intrigues against the prime minister. This sort of "opposition" is really no less than firm loyalty.
At the same time, Zyuganov, out of old bureaucratic habit, has gotten a little ahead of events. His offer will be appreciated, but probably not accepted. Rumors of Kasyanov's ouster have dogged his government from the day it was formed, and this could continue for a long while yet. Before he gets rid of the prime minister, Putin will at least have to come up with a replacement and an excuse to sack him. At this point he has neither. And for that reason Zyuganov can't really do anything to help.
The Kremlin will probably take Zyuganov's ploy as a sign of weakness and put the screws on the Communist Party. It has two ways of doing so: cozying up to the governors, and falsifying election results. It has been made clear to "red" governors that the Kremlin will overlook ideology if they can prove that they will put the president above their party. And regional Communist leaders will simply not be allowed to prevail at the polls.
The main resource left to the Communist Party after its drubbing in the Duma is its ability to win regional elections and then divvy up government jobs and finances in the "red" regions. If the party is deprived of this possibility it will lose the support of many owners of mid-sized provincial businesses, and also lose its appeal for beginning careerists. And Zyuganov's political program relies on these very people above all.
The main groups that make up the Communist Party are not the best of friends to begin with. You have the anti-Semites from the St. Petersburg organization, Alexander Kuvayev, the radical leader of Moscow's Communists, the wary social democrat Yury Maslyukov, and Gennady Seleznyov, the grandee who serves as speaker of the Duma. With every passing day all of them have less reason to remain within a single party.
If it becomes obvious that the Communist Party is doomed, its various constituencies will simply go their own way. But if Kremlin leaders believe that such a dissolution would spell the end of the Communist movement in Russia, they are mistaken. The lion's share of current Communist Party voters will cotinue to consider themselves Communists, with Zyuganov or without him.
Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist.
TITLE: Football's Image Being Dragged Through Dirt
AUTHOR: By Chloe Arnold
TEXT: BAKU, Azerbaijan - Corruption, bribery, favoritism, election-fixing: For once these aren't criticisms of the Azeri government but, instead, of the country's soccer federation.
Disagreements among soccer officials have been simmering since Azerbaijan joined FIFA, the world soccer authority, in 1994. But this month they boiled over when 10 of the 12 first division clubs pulled out of the league and FIFA threatened to suspend Azerbaijan from competing in international competitions.
The Association of Football Federations of Azerbaijan (AFFA) says that it is being forced into a corner by the top clubs, which have boycotted competitions and demanded the resignation of AFFA's president. The clubs, meanwhile, say that AFFA regularly fixes matches, breaks FIFA regulations, and favors one of the teams in the league above all the others.
Last week, more than 300 angry protesters took to the streets outside AFFA's headquarters, calling for its president, Fuad Musayev, who they say is a crook, to resign.
"Musayev has been running AFFA exactly as he likes for the past five years," said Mazaher Suleimanzade, press secretary of first-division club Neftchi FC. "He even engineered his own election. He's ignored our calls for him to step down, so we're going to form our own league."
Suleimanzade said that match-fixing by AFFA is commonplace. "Earlier this month, AFFA's pet team, Shafa, was playing Khazar University. The score was 0-0, but the referee extended play and awarded Shafa a penalty in the 97th minute. This isn't soccer, it's a farce."
AFFA admits it is close to Shafa - a team set up for young players that the federation hopes will be ready to compete for Azerbaijan in the next Olympic Games. AFFA's general secretary, Chingiz Ismailov, also happens to be the president of the Shafa club. "Everyone knows that Shafa was set up to cultivate soccer among young people, but now the other clubs are turning this against us, pulling out of competitions," Ismailov said. "Well, you can't just go around forming alternative leagues. That's against the rules."
The president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, has written to AFFA, saying that he will send a fact-finding team to Azerbaijan later this year. For some, this may not be enough. Valery Gadzhiyev, a coach who played for the Soviet Olympic side during the 1960s and whose fondest memory is of meeting English soccer legend Sir Bobby Charlton, says that he despairs for the future of soccer in Azerbaijan.
"Soccer's become a dirty word and a dirty business here," he said. "Everyone bickers with everyone else; everyone wants to be in charge. But, in the end, it's soccer that's suffering and no one seems to remember that."
Chloe Arnold is a freelance journalist based in Baku, Azerbaijan.
TITLE: Arafat Tours West Bank Towns
AUTHOR: By Greg Myre
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BETHLEHEM, West Bank - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat toured the West Bank for the first time in six months on Monday, testing the recent lifting of Israel's travel ban, while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party overwhelmingly affirmed its opposition to Palestinian statehood in a tumultuous convention.
A vote taken early Monday at the Likud convention was a major political defeat for Sharon, who had asked the party to avoid a decision that could tie his hands in future negotiations with the Palestinians. Sharon was booed as he left the convention center.
Arafat responded angrily to the vote. "This is the destruction of the Oslo accords, which they have signed," Arafat said, referring to the interim peace agreements he reached with Israel in the mid-1990s.
On Monday morning, Arafat left the West Bank town of Ramallah aboard a Jordanian Air Force helicopter. It marked the first time in six months that he was able to leave Ramallah.
In December, his helicopters were destroyed in Israeli air strikes that effectively grounded him. Israel lifted the travel ban on Arafat as part of a U.S.-brokered deal that ended a 34-day Israeli siege on the Palestinian leader's headquarters on May 2.
The stops on Arafat's West Bank tour included Bethlehem, the battle-scarred Jenin refugee camp and the city of Nablus - the three hardest-hit areas in Israel's six-week military offensive against Palestinian militias in the West Bank.
In Bethlehem, Arafat visited the Church of the Nativity, where more than 200 Palestinians, including wanted gunmen, police and civilians, had been holed up for 39 days before Israel lifted its siege under a deal that sent 13 milita fighters into exile. Arafat has been widely criticized at home for agreeing to the deportations.
On Sunday, worshippers returned to the church for the first services since the beginning of the siege on April 2. The smell of incense filled the air as different Christian denominations held prayer services.
Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, and envoy from the Vatican and the Latin Patriarch of the Holy Land. Michel Sabbah, led hundreds of Catholics from Bethlehem and surrounding towns in prayers, urging Israelis and Palestinians to work for peace.
"The manger of Jesus Christ has suffered for long. We pray to God to help us reach the real roots of peace, which are in the heart of every human being," Etchegaray said in his sermon.
"The results we reached must induce us to seek peace through justice and dialogue and not through violence," he added.
Eight Palestinians, most of them gunmen, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers who besieged the fourth-century Byzantine church.
A Palestinian flag fluttered above the church and Manger Square was decorated with placards denouncing Israeli occupation. "Christ's manger will always be a symbol of peace and security despite the repression of the occupation," one placard read.
Many worshippers appeared overcome as they inspected the church interior, which had been turned into an untidy barracks during the siege.
Clergy from the Franciscan, Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations that share custody of the church and often bicker over its upkeep came together to sweep the shrine clean of food scraps and other rubbish.
At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II said he was relieved that the siege had ended and that religious services had resumed. He urged mutual trust between Israelis and Palestinians.
At the Likud convention in Tel Aviv, meanwhile, Sharon demanded an end to Palestinian terror attacks and wide-ranging reforms in the Palestinian Authority as a condition for renewing peace talks.
"The Palestinian Authority must carry out internal reforms in every way - on security, the economy, the legal system and within society," Sharon said.
"Only afterward, when we see how the Palestinians are building their society and self-government, after we are convinced that their faces are turned toward peace, then we can move toward discussions on the exact nature of our relations," he said. "Only then can we sign a final peace agreement."
Sharon has said Palestinian statehood was inevitable, but has proposed stringent restrictions on such an entity.
However, the prime minister's position was rejected by his party which approved a resolution presented by Sharon's main rival, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to rule out the creation of a Palestinian state.
Sharon had hoped to avoid such a formal statement, fearing it would limit his maneuverability at a time when Saudi Arabia is promoting a peace initiative and U.S. President George W. Bush has spoken out in favor of a Palestinian state. Cabinet minister Tsipi Livni of Likud said the decision would hurt Israel's image. "We, who really acted as a state seeking peace, are presenting a position that could put us outside the picture in any negotiations," Livni said.
Hanan Crystal, an Israeli political commentator, said Sharon was losing power in the party, but was gaining popularity among voters for refusing to back down. A majority of Israelis have accepted the idea of eventual Palestinian statehood.
"The strong man, the real leader of the Likud, is Benjamin Netanyahu," Crystal said on Israel Radio. "[Sharon] was willing to suffer a tactical loss ... but to continue to be characterized as a sovereign, pragmatic diplomat who continues to stand behind what he says. This will help him among the wider public."
In Washington, a senior Bush-administration official declined to comment on the Likud resolution, but said that Bush remains committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Also on Monday, Israeli soldiers shot dead an armed Palestinian after he hurled a hand grenade at guards at the entrance to an army base in the West Bank, the army said.
In the Gaza Strip on Sunday, a Palestinian worker shot and killed his Israeli employer at a Jewish settlement. The attacker was apprehended at a roadblock. Later, Israeli forces destroyed the Palestinian's house in a neighborhood near the settlement, residents said. The military had no comment.
TITLE: Nepal Appeals for Help Against Rebels
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: KATHMANDU - Nepal, which has supplied regiments of fierce Gurkha soldiers to Britain, was looking to British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday for military aid in crushing a deadly revolt by Maoists.
Nepal's prime minister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, was due to meet Blair in London to request help in putting down the six-year uprising aimed at toppling the constitutional monarchy and installing a one-party communist republic in the Himalayan kingdom.
Ahead of his meeting with Blair, Deuba told the BBC that military help was needed to end the conflict before progress could be made in improving healthcare and education as well as improving living standards in the kingdom - one of the world's 10 poorest countries.
"There could be many kinds of support, including weapons, logistics training to our security forces," he replied, when asked about what type of military aid he would seek from Blair.
Nepali army officers have said they need everything from boots and bullets to helicopters to win the battle.
"The army is not able to build up offensive capacity as we would want to because we need aid, including material resources," one senior army official said.
Although the Nepali rebels draw their inspiration from the late Chinese revolutionary leader Mao-tse Tung. China has denied any links with the rebels, declared terrorists by Nepal's government.
Deuba met U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington last week and won a pledge of $20 million to help Nepal end the conflict, which has claimed more than 4,000 lives.
India, which at one time had more than 100,000 Gurkhas serving in its army, also promised to support Nepal in flushing out the rebels.
On Monday, India's army chief flew to Nepal to show his country's support. General Sunderajan Padmanabhan was received by Nepal's army chief, Prajwalla Sumshere Rana.
The Indian government gave Nepal two helicopters earlier this year to help its army in operations against the rebels, which began after the rebels broke a cease-fire and resumed attacks on Nepalese security forces.
Monday's Nepali newspapers quoted China's ambassador to Nepal, Wu Chong wong, as saying that Beijing supports Nepal's efforts to end the rebellion.
"We support the present efforts of the government and we shall extend our support as per our capacity," the Space Times newspaper quoted Wu as saying.
The Nepali Army said it was regrouping on Sunday to launch strikes against the rebels in their west Nepal stronghold of Rolpa, after two battles in the last few weeks killed up to 650 people. But, as of Monday, no new offensive had been launched, officials said.
There has been no independent verification of the casualty numbers. The Red Cross said a team was due to visit Rolpa on Monday to prepare a report. Human-rights groups, such as Amnesty International, say both rebels and government forces have killed or kidnapped civilians, tortured prisoners and destroyed property.
Nepali newspapers last week said the rebels had announced a unilateral month-long cease-fire to start this Wednesday, but the reports were denied by a senior rebel leader.
Deuba rejected the truce, saying the rebels could not be trusted and demanded they lay down their arms before peace talks could resume. Army officials also suggested a cease-fire could be a ploy to allow Maoists to regather their strength. The Maoists are believed to control about a quarter of Nepal.
The conflict has had a devastating impact on the economy of Nepal, a country where the average income is about $0.60 a day.
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: Britain Investigates Another Rail Crash
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: LONDON - Safety officials have been investigating whether vandalism or poor maintenance caused a rail crash that killed seven people and injured more than 70 in Britain last Friday.
As grieving relatives visited the crash site at Potters Bar station and prayers were said in local churches, the government insisted the tragedy was a freak incident that didn't affect the rest of Britain's rail network.
Rail authorities believe Friday's accident at the suburban station, about 20 kilometers north of London, was caused when the train passed over a faulty set of points - a switching mechanism that diverts trains onto different tracks.
British Transport Secretary Stephen Byers said on Sunday that extensive safety checks had not found similar difficulties elsewhere on the rail network.
"The Health and Safety Executive and Railways Inspectorate are saying that they think this is unique. They have tested something like 400 points up and down the country," Byers told the BBC.
Byers said further investigation was needed before "we will be able to find out whether or not it was mismanagement, whether it was the fault of an individual worker not carrying out their job properly [or] whether it was a deliberate act of vandalism."
The accident, the sixth fatal crash on Britain's railways since 1997, has sapped public confidence in the country's rail network and prompted calls for a public inquiry. The crash brought the death toll on Britain's railways since 1997 to 60.
The accident has also reopened debate about the structure of Britain's railways, which were broken up into many companies by privatization in the 1990s.
Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, said the accident showed that railway maintenance should be conducted "in-house" rather than contracted to outside firms.
"The time has come to recognize that this is no way to run the railways," he said.
However, John Armitt, chief executive of rail-infrastructure overseer Railtrack, said there was no evidence to suggest poor maintenance had been responsible for the crash.
"We have as much confidence today as we have had in previous weeks about the condition of our points throughout the network," Armitt told the BBC.
However, it was also reported that, well before the crash, Armitt had been "deeply concerned" about the working practices of Railtrack's maintenance sub-contractors. Armitt told The Times newspaper on Wednesday that contracts with rail maintenance companies such as Jarvis were too short to encourage investment in sufficient numbers of qualified staff and modern equipment.
"There's always a tendency, particularly in construction-related industries, to take a short cut and try and do a job more quickly," he was quoted as saying.
"By encouraging contractors to employ direct labor rather than relying on an agency to send them along at the last minute, the likelihood of [accidents] is reduced," he said.
Armitt said he planned to offer contracts that were 50 percent longer than the current four years to provide companies with more incentive to train staff properly and reduce their dependence of staff hired from recruitment agencies.
Rail authorities believe that nuts securing one set of points became detached, causing the points to move as the train passed over them. Investigators were conducting tests on Sunday to establish why the nuts became detached.
Jarvis Plc., the company responsible for maintaining the stretch of track, said the points had passed safety inspections the day before the crash.
The Mirror newspaper quoted rail union bosses as saying that workers had raised repeated concerns about track problems in the area only a few miles away from Hatfield, the scene of another fatal derailment in 2000, which was caused by a broken rail.
Crow said workers have complained of metal fatigue, and "wet-bedding," where flooding washes away the tracks ballast foundations, making it more likely for bolts to vibrate and come loose, the paper said. Nobody from Jarvis could immediately be reached for comment.
(AP, Reuters)
TITLE: Second-Round Series Nearing Conclusion
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - The second round of the NBA playoffs is almost over. All that's needed to determine the final four is one more victory apiece from the Lakers, Kings, Celtics and Nets.
Los Angeles, Boston and New Jersey took 3-1 leads in their conference semifinals Sunday.
Sacramento went ahead 3-1 a day earlier with an impressive comeback in a 115-113 victory over Dallas in overtime.
Kobe Bryant took over down the stretch again for the Lakers, who rallied from a 10-point deficit in the final five minutes to defeat San Antonio 87-85.
It was the only close game of the day. Earlier, Jason Kidd outplayed Baron Davis down the stretch again as the Nets defeated Charlotte 89-79, and Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce were too much of a one-two combination as the Celtics downed the Detroit Pistons 90-79.
L.A. Lakers 87, San Antonio 85. At San Antonio, Kobe Bryant scored 12 of his 28 points in the final period, including a pair of key three-pointers and a go-ahead putback with 0:05 remaining.
"I've dreamed of these situations countless times as a kid, and I still dream of them today," he said.
San Antonio did not make a field goal after Bruce Bowen hit a three-pointer with 6:56 left.
Tim Duncan made two free throws with 6:15 left, but the Spurs managed a grand total of one point over the remainder of the game.
The Spurs ended the game ineptly when Terry Porter fell after receiving an inbounds pass with 0:03.2 left, then got the ball to Duncan for an airball from 6 1/2 meters.
"We had five or six shots that were either ill-advised or not shot with confidence," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said.
Shaquille O'Neal added 22 points and 11 rebounds, and Robert Horry contributed 13 points. The Lakers have won a record 11-straight playoff games on the road, and this victory gave them a 3-1 advantage in the best-of-seven series.
New Jersey 89, Charlotte 79. At Charlotte, Jason Kidd's right eye was swollen, bruised and bandaged, but he scored 24 points and made eight free throws in the fourth quarter.
The game may have been the last for the Hornets in Charlotte. The team is relocating to New Orleans next season, and the 13,864 fans - more than 6,000 short of capacity - gave the players a standing ovation as the game wound down. The fans crowded the tunnel, applauding the players as the Hornets ran to the locker room.
"I'm confident we can still win the series," said guard Baron Davis, who led the Hornets with 20 points but went just 9-for-17 on free throws.
Kerry Kittles had 20 points and Keith Van Horn added 16 for the Nets, who have never been to the conference finals since joining the NBA.
Boston 90, Detroit 79. At Boston, Walker had 22 of his 30 points in the first half and Paul Pierce had 23 of his 25 in the second half. Pierce also had a career-high 17 rebounds.
The Celtics took control by scoring 12 consecutive points to start the third quarter - more than they had in the entire third period in Game 3 when the teams combined for a record-low 130 points.
With legends Bill Russell, Red Auerbach and Bob Cousy watching, Boston took a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.
Winners of an NBA record 16 titles, the Celtics have never blown a 3-1 lead in the playoffs.
Jerry Stackhouse hit a 3-pointer to pull the Pistons within seven points with 4:46 left. But the Celtics went on a 7-1 run, with Walker getting four points and Pierce three, to make it 85-72 with 2:40 left.
Sacramento 115, Dallas 113. At Dallas on Saturday, Mike Bibby scored the overtime-forcing and game-winning baskets after Bobby Jackson had put Sacramento in position to make the comeback.
Jackson scored 15 of his 26 points in the fourth quarter, and Bibby scored on a drive with 0:12.2 left in overtime.
Jackson filled in for injured All-Star Peja Stojakovic, who didn't play after severely spraining his right ankle in Game 3 on Thursday.
Dirk Nowitzki, who had 31 points and 12 rebounds after being held in check the first three games of the series, drove hard into the lane but missed a potential game-tying shot with 0:2.5 left.
TITLE: Mogilny's Foresight Lights up Ugly Game
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OTTAWA - Alexander Mogilny saw it coming.
A day after saying he had an inkling he'd score a big goal, Mogilny provided the game-winner in Sunday's 4-3 victory over the Ottawa Senators, forcing a decisive Game 7 in the Eastern Conference semifinal series.
It was a remarkable performance for a banged-up and weary Maple Leafs team. Toronto is not only missing six regulars, including captain Mats Sundin with a broken wrist, but also hasn't had more than one day off between games in over three weeks.
Gary Roberts continued his prolific postseason production, with two goals and an assist and Bryan McCabe also scored for Toronto. Marian Hossa, Daniel Alfredsson and Todd White scored for the Senators, who squandered a 2-0 lead.
Mogilny ended a five-game goal drought a day after he told reporters, "I've got a feeling it's coming. I've just got a feeling that something good will happen soon."
It did. From deep in the Ottawa end, Radek Bonk's pass through the middle hit off of teammate Martin Havlat's skate. Toronto's Travis Green got to the loose puck, and slipped a pass to Mo gil ny, who was alone behind the defenders.
Turning toward the net, Mogilny snapped a shot that beat goaltender Patrick Lalime on the stick side to break a 3-3 tie 4:28 of the third period.
The Maple Leafs had been thoroughly outplayed - outscored 2-0 and outshot 8-1 - through the first 12 minutes when Richard Persson hit Tie Domi from behind, sending the Toronto forward face-first into the boards. With Domi cut over the left eye, Persson was issued a five-minute major penalty and ejected from the game.
The Maple Leafs capitalized, with McCabe and Roberts scoring power-play goals 4:19 apart to tie the game. Roberts then put the Leafs up 13:09 into the second period, before White tied it on a great individual effort in the waning seconds of the period.
Carolina 5, Montreal 1. The Carolina Hurricanes are one victory from the Eastern Conference finals after taking a 3-2 series lead, and it doesn't seem to matter that two of their top scorers are slumping.
For that, the Hurricanes can thank the B-B-C line of Rod Brind'Amour, Bates Battaglia and rookie Erik Cole. The trio has seven of Carolina's 13 goals in the series, including Brind'Amour's game-winner in Game 5. The line's performance has compensated for the disappearance of Jeff O'Neill and Sami Kapanen against Montreal.
Martin Gelinas, Brind'Amour and Ron Francis scored early in each period for Carolina, and Arturs Irbe returned to play brilliantly in net.
"The breaks just went our way," said Battaglia, who scored one of Carolina's three third-period goals.
"We've been doing the same things every night. We're just trying to get in there and work hard and hopefully good things come from it."
San Jose 5, Colorado 3. Despite trailing the best closing team in the NHL, the San Jose Sharks didn't change a thing in the third period.
Mike Ricci and Teemu Selanne scored in a 3:05 span of the third period as San Jose, which is seeking its first-ever conference final spot, rallied to beat Colorado on Saturday to take a 3-2 series lead.
Colorado led 3-2 after the two teams combined for five goals in a 5:58 span of the second period, but Ricci tied it 5:59 into the third with his fourth goal of the playoffs.
Colorado goalie Patrick Roy stopped a redirected shot by Scott Thornton, but the puck bounced right to Ricci, who punched in the rebound from just outside the crease.
Selanne made it 4-3 at 9:04, beating Roy stickside from the top of the right circle.
It was Selanne's fifth goal of the series after he went five games without one against Phoenix.
Owen Nolan added an empty-net goal with 0:02.5 left.
Detroit 4, St. Louis 0. Brendan Shanahan had two goals and two assists and Dominik Hasek made 16 saves for his third shutout of the playoffs as the Red Wings eliminated St. Louis with a 4-0 victory Saturday in Game 5 of their second round series.
Jiri Fischer and Tomas Holmstrom scored second-period goals and Brendan Shanahan sealed the victory with a goal with 3:03 left and then an empty-netter with 0:41.5 left. Shanahan, who assisted on the second-period goals, has 103 postseason points.
St. Louis played for nearly eight minutes before getting a shot on Hasek, and it took nearly 11 minutes in the second to get their second shot of the period.
Detroit broke the scoreless tie at 4:42 of the second on Fischer's wrist shot from above the left circle.
The Red Wings went ahead 2-0 midway through the period when Holmstrom redirected Shanahan's shot. Hasek's shutout was his second of the series and the ninth of his career.
TITLE: Slovaks Down Russia for First World Title
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BRATISLAVA, Slovakia - Tens of thousands of jubilant Slovaks packed the streets of Bratislava on Sunday to welcome home the country's ice-hockey team, after its triumph in the world championships.
The capital city's main square was transformed into a sea of red, white and blue national flags as raucous fans hailed the players after Saturday's 4-3 win over Russia in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The team sprayed champagne from a stage while fire fighters hosed down the crowd to keep them cool in the sweltering heat.
The crowd singled out Slovak captain Miroslav Satan for special praise, chanting: "Satan is God." Satan's last name is pronounced Shataan.
Satan told the crowd: "Everybody has this dream in his heart, but I didn't think this would happen so soon. It's a dream come true for all of us. I'm so happy, and we'll remember this for the rest of our lives."
The country of 5.4 million, formerly one half of Czechoslovakia until the state split in 1993, has been glued to its television screens for the past week as they watched their team win eight of nine games, downing more heavily favored Canada and Sweden on the way to the final.
The win over the Russians was sealed with two minutes to go when winger Peter Bondra struck the winning goal.
Tens of thousands of supporters lined the roads from Bratislava's airport to the main square where police said around 25,000 more fans waited for hours to see their heroes.
Fans said the victory hailed the end of an era in which Slovakia played second fiddle to the Czechs, who won the previous three championships. They also said that the victory would lift the entire mood of a country that has struggled for over a decade of to rebuild itself following the end of communist rule.
"This will give the entire nation new power. When you look at the people here, you know that they can forget about their usual problems at least for a little while," said Ondrej Rohr bock, a 31-year-old architect in the crowd.
"This is like a dream, sometimes you go to bed as a kid and think about it," said Bondra, who had two goals on the night. "And with minutes left you get the gamer - it's a dream come true."
In contrast, the loss was a bitter pill for the Russians, who had reached their first final in nine years and were looking for their first title since 1993. Slovakia had the psychological edge entering the final, having already defeated Russia 6-4 in the qualifying round.
L.A. Kings' defenseman Lubomir Vis novsky scored just 22 seconds into the game, ambushing Russian goalie Maxim Sokolov with a sizzling shot from the left point. The puck bounced out of the net so fast that a replay was needed before the goal was allowed, sending the 11,591-strong crowd that included Slovakian President Rudolf Schuster into a frenzy.
Bondra made it 2-0 for the Slovaks during a powerplay at 12:10, when, sitting in the middle of the slot, he one-timed a pass from the Buffalo Sabres' Satan, behind the net.
Russia finally got on the board when Maxim Sushinski slammed a loose puck under Nashville Predators goalie Jan Lasak's outstretched right leg from the right face-off circle.
Satan made it 3-1 for Slovakia at 6:59, when his shot from just outside the crease ricocheted off the post and into the net on Maxim Sokolov's stick side as the stunned goalkeeper fell to the ice, trying to swipe the puck out behind him.
Russia pulled back to within one, when Alexander Prokopiyev in front of the crease took a pass from Sushinski and put it through Lasak's five-hole.
With Russian heavy pressure making it look like an eternal powerplay, Sushinski scored his second to even the score 3-3, slipping the puck between Lasak's pads during a goalmouth scramble.
But Bondra gave the Slovaks the win, picking up a long, perfect cross pass from L.A. Kings' Zigmund Palffy, and flicking a wrister from the left face-off circle.
Slovakia's progression to the summit marks the end of a long climb. It reached the final in 2000 in St. Petersburg - its first ever A-pool world championship - but lost to the more experienced and more powerful Czechs.
This time around, however, the Slovakians undeniably had the strongest offense of the tournament, billing players such as Satan, Bondra, Palffy and Jozef Stumpel of the Boston Bruins.
"We saw the Russians in Russia with a dream team and sometimes that doesn't work," Slovakia's GM Peter Stastny said, referring to Russia's humiliating 11th place finish on home ice in 2000. "But there was a special camaraderie about this team, special connections, special chemistry."
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: Zenit Dreams Dashed at Final Hurdle as CSKA Ends 11-Year Cup Wait
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - CSKA Moscow ended an 11-year wait for a domestic trophy when it beat Zenit 2-0 in the Russian Cup final on Sunday.
The victory was doubly sweet for CSKA, as it secured the army side a place in the UEFA Cup. Zenit was already guaranteed a place in Europe next season after finishing third in the Russian Premier Division in 2001.
But the win was marred by Mos cow fans going on a rampage through the center of the city following the match. Between 100 and 200 CSKA supporters, considered some of the most violent in the country, beat up bystanders and destroyed kiosks, Interfax reported. The agency also quoted police as saying that they had made 18 arrests.
Earlier, local media reported that several thousand CSKA fans celebrated their team's win by jumping in the fountains in Manezh Square, just a short walk from the Kremlin.
On the pitch, fullback Andrei Solomatin fired CSKA in front with a 31st-minute strike after a pass from fellow Russian international Sergei Semak caught Zenit fullback Valery Tsvetkov out of position.
Midfielder Igor Yanovsky doubled the lead eight minutes after the interval when he knocked in a rebound from close range following a Rolan Gusev corner.
CSKA, which lost a controversial final 3-2 to city rival Lokomotiv two years ago, won a league and cup double in 1991 for its last success in domestic competition.
"In my view, our team was just a bit hungrier for a victory in this match as it would guarantee it a UEFA Cup spot," CSKA coach Valery Gazzayev said about Sunday's victory.
"I think overall we played a better game and the result was justified. We had some nervous moments in the first half, but after we scored the second goal, the outcome was beyond doubt," he said.
Zenit assistant coach Mikhail Bi ryu kov disagreed. "It was an even game and, but for some dubious officiating in the first half, we would have been in the game until the end," he said. "And I think our team wanted to win just as badly as [CSKA]."
The defeat was especially bitter for Zenit head coach Yuri Morozov, who turns 68 on Monday. It was Morozov's first game back after spending three weeks in hospital with heart trouble.
Zenit, which beat Dinamo Moscow 3-1 in the 1999 final, started the match in aggressive fashion, forcing CSKA keeper Veniamin Mandrykin to make several good saves.
The St. Petersburg side looked to have won a penalty after 27 minutes, when Maxim Astafyev was sent tumbling in the box by Denis Yevsikov.
To the amazement of the visiting side, however, referee Yury Chebotaryov booked Astafyev for diving.
The army side took control three minutes later to the delight of the majority in the 45,000-crowd at Luzhniki Olympic stadium.
Some 15,000 Zenit fans, who made a 14-hour bus journey from St Petersburg to cheer for their team, left the stadium disappointed. ORT television reported that 40,000 fans from St. Petersburg had applied for tickets to the game.
(Reuters, SPT)