SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #776 (42), Tuesday, June 11, 2002
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TITLE: Putin Slams Anniversary Planning
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin slammed local officials at a meeting with representatives of city and regional governments over the weekend, criticizing them for mismanaging funds allocated for the construction and repair of city infrastructure and cultural monuments ahead of St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary next year.
 
The meeting, which took place on Saturday at St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's residence on Kamenny Island, and focused on social and economic problems in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, was attended by a number of federal and local officials, including Yakovlev and Northwest Region Presidential Representative Viktor Cherkesov.
 In his opening comments at the meeting, Putin singled out discrepancies between documents he had received from different government bodies, including state construction agency Gosstroi, the Trade and Economic Development Ministry and the St. Petersburg administration. The documents, he said, provide conflicting information concerning the list of architectural objects to be restored as well as the cost, date of completion and financial reports for the projects.
 "What is this? Money is allocated - millions. I agree it is not enough, but even what is allocated is not used effectively," he said at the meeting, part of which was televised.
 According to Putin, developers responsible for carrying out the work on 12 of the 21 sites listed in the city-center reconstruction project have yet to receive the proper documents.
 Putin was particularly displeased by the Mariinsky Theater restoration project. The Ministry of Culture has earmarked 20.6 million rubles ($665,000) for repair, of which 20 million rubles have not been used for the project, he said. He did not specify how the money was spent.
 "Everyone is complaining that the allocated funds are insufficient, but we can't even deal with what we're given," Putin said. The Russian National Library, the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Smolny Cathedral Concert and Exhibition Complex were among the other sites Putin named as being handled less than satisfactorily.
 While many of the projects were originally planned to be concluded in conjunction with the 300th-anniversary celebrations, Putin said that this might actually be part of the problem, and he urged local authorities to put a stronger focus on the city's restoration than on the organization of the festivities. He cited the construction of the Ring Road and the reconstruction of the Kirovskaya-Vyborgskaya metro line as priorities. The metro line has been closed between the Lesnaya and Ploshchad Muzhestva stations since December 1995, when part of the tunnel connecting them collapsed. He also mentioned reconstruction in the city's historical center, roads and communications infrastructure as needing attention.
 The comments simply added Putin's voice to those of a number of critics of the various facelift and reconstruction projects who have condemned the work as being sluggish and inefficient.
 "Most projects that were announced as part of the city's 300th-anniversary preparations have yet to be realized. All of these projects are simply badly organized," said Lev Savulkin, senior analyst at the Leontief Center for Socio-Economic Research. "Of course we would like to see St. Petersburg as a cultural city, as the northern capital, but, with the number of communal flats in the city and the poor conditions of the buildings, this is impossible. Four buildings have already collapsed this year."
 While there seems to be a fair bit of agreement that funds are not being used as effectively as they might be, who is to blame for the misuse is a thornier question, as the restoration projects are financed both by the local and the federal budgets.
 "I think Putin was criticizing the federal structures as much as the local administration, said Nikolai Petrov, scholar-in-residence at Moscow's Carnegie Endowment. "In my opinion, Cherkesov actually deserved Putin's criticism more than Yakovlev, because, as the presidential representative in the Northwest Region, Cherkesov is responsible for overseeing federal activities in the region, and most of the restoration projects are being funded by the federal budget."
 Cherkesov's spokesperson, Alexei Gutsailo, however, was quick in dismissing the idea that Putin's criticisms were aimed at the presidential representative, although he admitted that Putin's anger was founded.
 "I don't think Putin was criticizing Cherkesov at all, and I don't see why he should," Gutsailo said. "No one can really be blamed for this situation, and I don't think Putin is looking to accuse anyone in particular," Gutsailo said. "There are only 11 months left before the celebration, so this is not the time to try and find scapegoats. We have to work together to solve this situation."
 While Smolny's immediate reaction to Putin's comments was to agree that the criticism was justified, city-administration officials were putting a happy spin on the event by Monday.
 "The governor isn't taking Putin's comments as criticism. In fact he is very happy about the outcome and the fact that funds will be used more effectively from now on," said Yakovlev's spokesperson, Svetlana Ivanova.

TITLE: Police Take Rap for Failing To Stop Trouble
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - As Moscow cleaned up the mess left by rampaging soccer fans, the Moscow City Police took the heat Monday for failing to foresee and avert the riot, and opposition political parties voiced fears that the Kremlin may use the street violence as a pretext for curbing civil liberties.
 
The death toll rose to two when a police officer died of his injuries Monday afternoon, Interfax reported. A teenager was stabbed to death during Sunday evening's riot, which left 75 people injured, Moscow city authorities said. Of the 49 people hospitalized, 18 were city police officers.
 Two foreign citizens - an American of Indian descent and a Chinese man - were severely beaten in the lobby of the Tverskaya metro station, the Moscow City Prosecutor's Office said. Both were taken to the Sklifosovsky emergency hospital.
 The center of Moscow turned into a battleground when about 8,000 soccer fans, who had gathered to watch a World Cup match on a giant screen set up across the street from the State Duma, exploded in anger when it became clear that Russia would lose to Japan. Some fans began torching cars, smashing windows and fighting police and each other. In the end, 80 parked cars were destroyed and 227 shop windows and 45 glass advertisment stands were broken as the mob moved its way up Tverskaya Ulitsa.
 About 1,000 municipal workers were deployed Monday to repair the storefronts, and city officials were collecting complaints from the owners of damaged cars. Moscow City Hall promised to cover all expenses, although Deputy Mayor Valery Shantsev said anyone found guilty of causing the damage would have to reimburse the city.
 The city prosecutor's office said 113 people were arrested Sunday, and 15 of them are accused of setting cars on fire and breaking windows.
 "It is serious criminal offense punishable by eight years in prison," Deputy Interior Minister Vitaly Mozyakov said in televised remarks. "We will do everything to find as many participants of the disturbances as possible, and they will all be held criminally responsible."
 Although many, including Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, said they believed the violence was planned, both Mozyakov and a spokesperson for the city prosecutor's office said they had no information that the riot was organized or that extremist groups were involved.
 "We will check the identities of the detained individuals and their membership in extremist organizations," said prosecutor's office spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko. "As of now, we can't say that the riot was organized."
 But Sergei Fomchenkov, one of the leaders of the National Bolshevik Party, known for its own controversial and violent escapades, said it had all the signs of an organized action.
 "The fact that the rampage erupted and spread very rapidly indicates that it was organized," Fomchenkov said. "A dozen men with the means to set fire to cars and tools to smash windows is enough to trigger such a riot. And actions such as quickly setting fire to a car require specific knowledge."
 The television footage from Manezh Square showed young men brandishing blazing thermite signal flares that could be used to torch cars, he said.
 Fomchenkov said his party was not involved in Sunday's unrest and he doubted other radical political parties were involved either, because of the lack of political slogans. The fans mainly shouted, &quot;<i>Rossiya, Rossiya</i>.&quot;
 &quot;It could be radical fans or their skinhead friends, who could have been urged on by the Russian secret services,&quot; he said. &quot;I know for certain that the Federal Security Service has close ties to leaders of fan groups.&quot;
 Fomchenkov lamented that the riot will have a negative impact on the activity of radical parties, because it will allow the Kremlin to win public support for its law on extremism, which is now being pushed through the State Duma and will give the authorities more power to pounce upon the opposition.
 Alexander Ivanov-Sukharevsky, the head of the Russia's most radical ultra-rightist group, the National People's Party, expressed the same concern.
 &quot;The series of recent racially and ethnically motivated attacks in Russia may not be a pattern of conspiracy by the Kremlin, but it uses them as a pretext to consolidate people around the authorities and definitely will use this riot to extend its influence in the public consciousness,&quot; he said.
 The Kremlin bill, however, has all the support it needs already. It passed in its first reading last week with a vote of 271 to 141. The Communists unanimously voted against it.
 Sergei Mitrokhin, a lawmaker from the Yabloko faction who also opposed the bill, said he believes the riot will be used to curb civil liberties.
 &quot;The restoration of order will be done the traditional Russian way - by suppressing citizens' rights - and not by revising the work of the law enforcers,&quot; he said in an interview Monday. &quot;Everywhere in the world, the police monitor extremist groups through informers, while our police officers feebly ask people to share their video footage of the riot to help them identify the hooligans.&quot;
 Mitrokhin, who witnessed the fans' outrage, said that, when riot police officers arrived at the scene, the hooligans dispersed immediately.
 &quot;If they had come half an hour earlier, there would have been no riot at all,&quot; he said. &quot;And when I called on the police patrols that were hiding from the fans on the side streets to intervene, they told me it wasn't their task or that they had no order from their superiors.&quot;
 Throughout the day, one political leader after another blamed the Moscow city government and police for failing to foresee the violence or respond to it adequately. President Vladimir Putin, however, made no public comments on the riot Monday.
 Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Duma committee on international affairs, and presidential aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky accused City Hall of failing to predict the violent behavior of drunk teenagers and permitting the free trade of alcohol near the screening site, Interfax reported Monday.
 Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov said the riot showed the ineffectiveness of the Moscow police force, Interfax said.
 The ROMIR polling agency interviewed 500 Muscovites on Monday and 40 percent of them, the largest share, also put the blame on city police. The rest of the blame was shared among city authorities (17 percent), the fans (15 percent) and even the Russian soccer team (2 percent), presumably for losing.
 Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov flew to Moscow from St. Petersburg to meet Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin on Sunday night and he ordered an internal investigation into the police actions.
 On Monday morning, Pronin sent in his resignation to Gryzlov but the minister refused to accept it, Interfax reported. Instead, Gryzlov accepted the resignation of Pronin's deputy, Major General Vasily Chemisov, who was the officer in charge of the city Sunday.
 &quot;I believe this man has assessed his actions himself,&quot; Gryzlov was quoted as saying. He said that actions of other police officers will be investigated and they will be punished accordingly.
 The City Duma and the State Duma security committee will hold extraordinary meetings Tuesday, where lawmakers will look at the reasons behind the riot.
 &quot;The Web sites of the soccer fans are literally stuffed with information about similar actions being prepared in other Russian regions,&quot; said Yury Shchekochikhin, a member of the security committee, Interfax reported. &quot;I believe we will have two or three similar riots in Russian rural towns this summer.&quot;
 Whether Moscow authorities continue the public screening of the World Cup finals will be decided in the next two days, Shantsev told Interfax.
 &quot;It will not be an easy decision. If the next game is not transmitted, we will give this scum a chance to defeat us,&quot; he was quoted as saying.
 The Russian soccer team meets Belgium on Friday.

TITLE: Chinese Journalist Held Over Falun Gong Info
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A Chinese journalist who was in St. Petersburg to report for The Epoch Times, a U.S.-based newspaper, on the Shanghai Summit between President Vladimir Putin and leaders from China and the former Soviet Central Asian Republics was arrested on Friday for handing out leaflets in support of the Falun Gong movement in front of the Astoria Hotel, the Agency for Investigative Journalism reported on Monday.
 
Veni Vang was charged with petty hooliganism. She was found guilty the same day in the Admiralteisky District Federal Court, which sentenced her to five days in prison.
 &quot;If she was sent to China she would have been tortured and killed there,&quot; Bobbi Bani, a member of the Falun Gong movement from the United States and one of the 200 members of the movement who visited the city for the summit, said on Monday. &quot;I'm not a politician. This was just a case of staging a peaceful appeal to let people know what we practice.&quot;
 According to a friend of the journalist, who asked not to be identified, Vang was detained after handing the leaflets in the area close to Astoria hotel, where Chinese Prime Minister Jiang Zemin was staying at that time. He said Vang was detained while trying to check into the Angleterre Hotel and taken to a police station at 6 Zakharyevskaya Ulitsa.
 &quot;This was not linked to her journalistic activity,&quot; her friend said.
 While the charge was laid under Russian law and by Russian police, members of the group said that they believe the arrest was made at the behest of the staff of the visiting Chinese Prime Minister.
 &quot;The real motive for her detention was the fact that, in July of last year, during Jiang Zemin's visit to Malta, Vang openly criticized the policy of repression and killings of Falun Gong members in China. This time she was recognized by one of guards of the Chinese prime minister,&quot; a press release issued by Falun Gong members on Monday said.
 &quot;We can only assume that there was pressure on the Russian police from the Chinese authorities to 'temporarily isolate' a troublesome journalist,&quot; the release said.
 The Chinese consulate could not be reached for a comment on Monday.
 State Duma lawmaker Yuly Rybakov and representatives of the human-rights group Memorial, sent an information letter to Oleg Mironov, Russia's human-rights supervisor, saying that Vang had participated in a press conference dealing with the treatment of the Falun Gong in China, held in St. Petersburg on June 4.
 &quot;The press conference was about the persecution of Falun Gong members in China since 1999, of the repression, torture and killings that branded tens of millions of people as outlaws, depriving them of basic human rights and freedoms,&quot; the letter said.
 The letter also said that district administrations within the city have refused to allow the Falun Gong members to hold demonstrations in the city.
 &quot;They have always been refused the right to hold meetings. Russia has an agreement with China that the states would not support movements which are targeting power in the other's country,&quot; said Yury Vdovin, co-chairperson of the local human-rights group Citizens' Watch, in a telephone interview on Monday. &quot;But I don't think this really qualifies as such a movement.&quot;

TITLE: Kaliningrad Problem Hot Topic at Summit
AUTHOR: By Burt Herman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin told a gathering of leaders from countries bordering the Baltic Sea on Monday that Moscow would do &quot;whatever it takes&quot; to ensure the rights of its citizens in Kaliningrad are protected after the enclave's neighbors join the European Union.
 
&quot;They are Russian citizens whose rights and liberties are guaranteed by the constitution of this country,&quot; Putin said of the residents of the Kaliningrad region at a summit of the Council of the Baltic Sea States in St. Petersburg.
 The EU and Russia have been looking for solutions to problems foreseen when Poland and Lithuania join the EU as expected in 2004. Membership will force the two countries to toughen up border controls with Kaliningrad, an enclave the Soviet Union acquired from defeated Germany after World War II. An EU summit in Moscow last month failed to reach any agreement on the issue.
 Residents now are allowed visa-free travel to neighboring countries, but Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen stressed that the current system isn't perfect and suffers from long waits at the border. Denmark takes over the EU's rotating six-month presidency next month.
 Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov sought to allay the fears of Kaliningrad's neighbors, saying the rate of organized crime in the enclave was not higher than in the regions it borders.
 Putin bristled at the suggestion of special visa regimes for Kaliningrad residents, urging a system be implemented similar to the one established in the 1970s in divided Berlin, which allowed limited travel between the Allied-and Soviet-controlled sectors.
 &quot;Even then, at the peak of the Cold War, they did find solutions to these problems,&quot; said Putin, a former KGB agent who served in East Germany. &quot;Perhaps that's not the best solution possible, bringing us back to the time of a cold war of sorts. But what we're hearing today is worse than the Cold War of the 1970s.
 &quot;We'll never agree to a violation of the Russian Federation's sovereignty,&quot; he said. &quot;The visa regime should be unified for all citizens of the Russian Federation, no matter where they live.&quot;
 German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder urged the EU and the Kaliningrad border states to take into account Russia's concerns and its recent moves toward the West, such as its new agreement with NATO, which makes Moscow a limited partner in the alliance.
 He said a system of transit corridors as were used for travel to isolated West Berlin through East Germany might be feasible for air or rail traffic, but questioned how it could work for cars.
 The Baltic council includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia and Sweden, and also the European Commission. Russia now chairs the group.

TITLE: Coastal Town Has A Russian Flavor
AUTHOR: By Rebecca Cook
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KENDALL, Washington - Peaceful Valley, a hamlet located in the misty foothills of the northern Cascade Mountains, might have faded into oblivion years ago if the Russians hadn't started coming.
 
The 2000 census showed that only 0.9 percent of Americans - or some 2.5 million people - have Russian ancestry. And Peaceful Valley has a higher concentration of those with Russian ancestry than anywhere else in America. Nearly a quarter of the community's 2,579 residents reported that they have Russian ancestry.
 &quot;I feel comfortable here,&quot; said Nadia Lagutochkin, who teaches English as a second language at the town's elementary school, where posters in the hallways spell out approximations of common Russian phrases: &quot;ZDRAH-stvooee&quot; for &quot;hello.&quot;
 She is among the many Russian immigrants who settled in this former logging community during the 1990s, attracted by the availability of cheap housing and by strong churches.
 Like Lagutochkin, many of those who came are fundamentalist Christians whose status as refugees allowed them to bypass regular U.S. immigration quotas.
 At Kendall Elementary School, one-third of the 600 students speak Russian, according to principal Stephen Merz. An all-Russian Pentecostal Church rents the school's auditorium for Sunday services, which draw about 400 people.
 School bus driver Alex Tikhonov moved to the Peaceful Valley area seven years ago, drawn to the community by the church and the close-knit, rural atmosphere.
 &quot;I could see that it's hard to grow good kids in big areas like Seattle,&quot; said Tikhonov, who has six children. Here, a few hours north of Seattle, he can count on his neighbors to let him know if his children are getting into mischief.
 He was also able to afford land and a double-width mobile home, accomplishing his goal of becoming a homeowner.
 He said his fellow bus drivers, who nicknamed him &quot;Axle&quot; because he also worked as a mechanic, have made him feel welcome.
 Vacationers from Canada, the border of which is located less than 20 kilometers to the north, started the unincorporated Peaceful Valley community as a spot for summer homes in the 1970s. The decline in the timber industry sapped jobs from the area over the past two decades, but the infusion of young Russian families kept Peaceful Valley going.
 Peaceful Valley's Russians mostly work in blue-collar jobs in Bellingham, a 35-minute drive away, and shop in Bellingham or just across the Canadian border.

TITLE: Analyst: Yeltsin's Communist Death-Knell Was Premature
AUTHOR: By Gregory Feifer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Surfacing from retirement last weekend to make a rare televised appearance, former President Boris Yeltsin - looking healthier and thinner than he has in years - predicted the looming demise of the organization that had opposed his every move as president. The Communist Party, he said, is &quot;melting before our eyes.&quot;
 
By most accounts, the Party is indeed in self-destruct. It was stripped earlier this year of its influential committee chairmpersonships in the State Duma. Party members then ousted their highest-placed colleague, Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, who led a defection of a number of relative moderates.
 But even having finally suffered a long-predicted leadership split, the Communist Party will not disappear, analysts say.
 &quot;The Communist Party saw the split-off of about a third of its leadership,&quot; Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov said. &quot;But the party will not splinter. Yeltsin spoke too soon.&quot;
 The party now occupies a strange position in what critics call President Vladimir Putin's &quot;managed democracy.&quot; Sidelined from the corridors of power by moves by Kremlin-backed parties, the Communists retain a stable electorate of mostly elderly voters, with support from 20 percent of respondents in recent polls.
 The party landed the largest number of votes of any party - over 24 percent - in elections in 1999.
 &quot;What happened was that the political configuration of the State Duma changed,&quot; Seleznyov said Sunday on TVS television's Itogi program, speaking of the merger last year of two centrist parties to form the consolidated, pro-Putin, United Russia Party. Its deputies proceeded to undo a deal made in 2000 that gave the Communists 10 committee chairpersonships.
 &quot;Gennady Andreyevich [Zyuganov] should have seen that,&quot; Seleznyov said. &quot;He refused to sit down and negotiate the redivision of the seats.&quot;
 Deprived of eight of their seats, the party leadership moved to give up the last two and also commanded Seleznyov to step down from his Duma post. Seleznyov refused, as did cultural committee chief Nikolai Gubenko and women, families and youth committee chair Svetlana Goryacheva. All three were voted out of the party.
 Other moderates followed by renouncing their party membership, including some so-called &quot;red governors&quot; like Nizhny Novgorod's Gennady Khodyrev.
 Seleznyov now plans to form his own party. Announcing the news Sunday, he said his new party could be based on the Rossiya, or Russia, movement, an organization he began in 2000.
 Is this the beginning of an exodus from the Communist ranks?
 Communist voters seem relatively unflapped by recent events. According to a poll of 1,100 Party members and voters in 45 regions published Monday, only 9 percent of respondents said the defection had caused a crisis, while 37 percent said the move only strengthened the party and 26 percent thought it showed party members were not concerned about chasing after power.
 A Rossiya representative, meanwhile, said Monday that his organization plans to run in parliamentary elections scheduled for the end of next year in a single bloc with the Communists, Interfax reported.
 Vladimir Pribylovsky of the Panorama think tank said Seleznyov's new party would most likely attract voters who would otherwise vote for United Russia. &quot;The moderates will take with them younger voters who were coming into the [Communist] party,&quot; he said. &quot;But that's a small number and won't affect the party's overall results.&quot;
 Markov said some of the Communist electorate would go over to a future left-center coalition orchestrated by the Kremlin. &quot;That's how managed democracy works,&quot; he said. &quot;But the end result depends on how much financial, political, administrative and media resources are plugged into the new bloc.&quot;
 &quot;It's too early to talk about the end of the Communist Party,&quot; Pribylovsky said. &quot;The party thrives on poverty. There's a lot of that in Russia, and it will provide a large electorate for some time.&quot;

TITLE: Russia, U.S. Hold Law-Enforcement Talks
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Russian law-enforcement officials on Monday discussed ways to boost their agencies' cooperation in fighting terrorism and transnational crime, including what they called the growing Afghan drug trade.
 
Ashcroft thanked the Russians for their cooperation in the anti-terrorist campaign, saying Russia was a &quot;very important law-enforcement partner in the world community.&quot; However, he evaded a question on whether the U.S. government accepts the Russian government's contention that it is fighting international terrorists in Chechnya. Russian officials have blamed Islamic rebels for a series of bombings - including a 1999 string of apartment house explosions that killed some 300 people and a bomb blast last month in the Caspian Sea port of Kaspiisk that killed more than 40.
 U.S. officials have previously criticized Russian troops' abuse of civilians in the conflict.
 &quot;The United States government believes that terrorism is an international threat, and that it is manifested in a variety of places and ways around the world,&quot; Ashcroft said. &quot;We have sought to cooperate with our Russian friends to curtail funding of terrorism that would threaten the interests of Russia, just as we have asked individuals and countries around the world to support the United States by curtailing the availability of funds to terrorists that threaten not only the U.S. but our allies and friends.&quot;
 Ashcroft and Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov discussed the cases of three Russian nationals, all from mostly Muslim regions, who are among the alleged al-Qaida and Taliban fighters arrested in the campaign in Afghanistan and incarcerated at Guantanamo, Cuba.
 The U.S. attorney general said his government was prepared to cooperate &quot;in regard to other individuals who may or not be detained&quot; - raising the prospect of more Russian prisoners.
 The Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky as saying that his department had received a report that two more Russian nationals had been brought to Guantanamo.
 Ashcroft, Ustinov and, later, Russian Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov discussed improved law-enforcement cooperation against terrorism, organized crime, money laundering and trafficking in humans. Gryzlov said he and Ashcroft had also devoted much attention to the international drug trade.
 &quot;This theme is very important. We touched on the situation in Afghanistan, considering that the amount of drugs sold from Afghanistan has not lessened but instead increased,&quot; Gryzlov said.
 Afghanistan was once the source of 70 percent of the world's opium. The Taliban, after years of international pressure, successfully banned poppies in 2000, but farmers quickly planted them again as the U.S. bombing campaign helped push the Islamic militia from power late last year. The interim government, pressed by the international community, has placed a high priority on eliminating opium cultivation in Afghanistan. Interim leader Hamid Karzai told an Asian security summit in Kazakhstan last week that more than 66 tons of opium, with a street value of up to $8 billion, had been destroyed under the government's anti-drug program.

TITLE: Nazarbayev Aiming for Peace and Stability
AUTHOR: By Christopher Pala
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: ALMATY, Kazakhstan - Last week, as the leader of India stared past Pakistan's president and refused to meet with him, despite the entreaties of President Vladimir Putin, the summit all three were attending got little mention.
 
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, diplomats here agree, is alone among his Central Asian neighbors in devoting considerable energy to promoting peace and stability in Asia - and to carving for himself a place in history as Central Asia's first modern statesperson.
 Last week, the 62-year-old president was able to bring both goals a little closer - by creating the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, or CICA, whose goal is to defuse tensions in Asia just as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE, has done in Europe.
 Nazarbayev first called for the creation of CICA in 1992, in his maiden address to the UN General Assembly. Critics argued then that Asia was too heterogenous, compared to Europe or Latin America.
 &quot;A journey of a thousand steps starts with the first step,&quot; Nazarbayev replied. &quot;It is by no means necessary to move toward a unified Asian structure and collective security ... at once. It is sufficient to start leveling out the heterogeneity in one area - for instance, in the military-political or economic sphere - and then look for joint approaches in other fields.&quot;
 For 10 years, Western diplomats said, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry fought to overcome considerable skepticism. But last Tuesday it finally created CICA, a grouping of 15 countries - four of them nuclear-armed - plus Palestine, representing nearly half the world's population. The group includes the participants of the continent's two major conflicts - over the Middle East and Kashmir - and two countries that do not recognize each other, Iran and Israel.
 At the summit, China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan sent their leaders. Azerbaijan, Egypt, Israel, Iran, Mongolia, Palestine, Turkey and Uzbekistan sent lesser dignitaries.
 &quot;It's a unique forum, and it's the biggest in Asia,&quot; said Kairat Abusseitov, the jovial Kazakh deputy foreign minister who has been working on CICA for a decade.
 &quot;Sometimes things happen in diplomacy because one individual won't give up,&quot; said a Western diplomat. &quot;Hats off to Nazarbayev: He never lost faith in his project and he rode himself a winner.&quot;
 &quot;It was a diplomatic success,&quot; said a European ambassador, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. &quot;It was a spectacular thing to have Putin use this forum to try to arrange a meeting between [President Pervez] Musharraf and [Prime Minister Atal Bihari] Vajpayee.&quot;
 Diplomats said Putin brought the gathering attention Nazarbayev could not have dreamed of - but that also resulted in it being widely pronounced a failure because India refused to meet with Pakistan.
 In fact, the diplomats said, there were some positive side-effects: Vajpayee earned credit at home for resisting foreign meddling, Musharraf got to remind the world that India has refused for 50 years to allow a status referendum in Kashmir and Putin learned what it is to broker peace under the spotlight.
 &quot;Hearing all these people tell them [Musharraf and Vajpayee] that they'd better pull back couldn't have hurt,&quot; another diplomat added.

TITLE: Commission Proposes Dates For Duma, Presidential Polls
AUTHOR: By Gregory Feifer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Central Elections Commission has proposed dates for the next parliamentary and presidential elections, among a series of measures meant to bring election law into line with other federal laws.
 
CEC chief Alexander Veshnyakov said on Friday that the next State Duma election should happen on Dec. 14, 2003, according to legislation on parliamentary elections introduced to the Duma by President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. &quot;We spent a long time preparing the bill,&quot; he said. &quot;It significantly changes the laws that governed [parliamentary elections] in 1993, 1995 and 1999.&quot;
 A bill on presidential elections - which would set the next election on March 14, 2004 - will be sent to parliament in two weeks, Veshnyakov said.
 According to the initiatives, elections should be held the second Sunday of the month in which the mandates of the elected representatives expire.
 The legislation on Duma elections also proposes reducing the time candidates are allowed to campaign ahead of elections from five months to 110 days, or roughly 3 1/2 months.
 The legislation envisages maintaining the current proportional-voting system, in which half the Duma's 450 deputies are elected on party lists and the rest in single-mandate districts. But the bill proposes dividing party lists in half.
 The first, &quot;federal&quot; part would consist of priority candidates - essentially, anyone a party wants on its list. The second, &quot;regional&quot; half would have to be split into at least seven groups, each representing a different region. The measure would thereby guarantee a certain degree of regional representation among parties in the Duma.
 The CEC would have to post the information it gathers on parties and individual candidates on the Internet. &quot;That's part of ensuring public control over the elections,&quot; Veshnyakov said.
 The CEC penned the bill on Duma elections based on the recommendations of a presidential working group.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Pasta Blaze
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The press service for the city fire department said Monday that a fire at a local pasta-production facility, Makaroniya Fabrika, had been brought under control. The fire, at alocation on Moskovsky Prospect, had started at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Interfax reported.
 The report also said that the fire had caused 150 square meters of the building's roof to cave in and had destroyed 250 square meters of the shop floor.
 No one was killed or injured in the fire, Interfax reported.
 
 
Poetic Justice
 

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A monument to Azerbaijani poet Nizami was unveiled in St. Petersburg by President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Gaedar Aliev at a ceremony on Sunday, Interfax reported.
 In a speech at the ceremony, Putin described Nizami's art as something that belongs to the entire human race.
 'He never expressed ideas that were harmful to other nations," Interfax reported Putin as saying. "Nizami always found words that helped bring nations closer"
 Putin also quoted Nizami's verse: "The word was not created for poverty and brutality, but for freedom and happiness."
 
 
Nerve Gas Denial
 

MOSCOW (AP) - The head of Russia's radiation, chemical and biological defense troops denied Monday that Soviet troops could have left chemical weapons at an Uzbek base now being used by American troops. 
 U.S. military officials said Sunday that traces of nerve agents and mustard gas were found at the Khanabad air base. They said the contamination was thought to be from chemical weapons stored at Khanabad by the Soviet Union. 
 "It is out of the question that Soviet troops could have left any war gas in Uzbekistan," Colonel General Viktor Kholstov told the Interfax-Military News Agency. 
 "In accordance with international agreements, the troops have long been rid of poisonous substances. They are kept at special storage installations." 
 
 
More Rebel Attacks
 

VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia (AP) - At least eight Russian soldiers and Chechen police were killed and 13 wounded in rebel attacks and mine explosions over the previous 24 hours, an official said Monday. 
 Federal forces responded by pounding suspected rebel bases with airstrikes and artillery fire in five different districts, said the official, who serves in the Moscow-backed administration in Chechnya and spoke on condition of anonymity. 
 Federal troops also rounded up and detained some 90 people in so-called mopping-up operations, the official said. 
 
 
Yeltsin's English Class
 

MOSCOW (AP) - Former President Boris Yeltsin told state-owned RTR television on Sunday that he had started the English lessons to give him something to do in retirement. 
 "In order to exercise my brain, which isn't fully occupied now, I decided to start studying English at age 71," Yeltsin said. "It's not easy ... but I am persistent." 
 As in previous public appearances in recent years, Yeltsin appeared healthy and energetic in the RTR interview. 



TITLE: Locals Look Good in Software
AUTHOR: By Charles Hoedt
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Although India remains the world leader in the software-outsourcing industry, Russia is catching up rapidly, according to information-technology analysts attending the Second Software Outsourcing Summit in St. Petersburg last week. The three-day conference was held at the Pulkovskaya Hotel, attracting nearly 500 representatives from 200 software companies and IT associations from over 25 countries.
 
A key factor boosting Russia's attractiveness for software investment is the growing political tension in India, with U.S. companies nervous about the future of software deliveries from India in the event of war with neighboring Pakistan. 
 These concerns come at a time when the costs for Indian software outsourcing are rising dramatically. &quot;Every six months, I have to raise wages by 40 percent, in order not to lose my best-qualified personnel. It's impossible to carry on like that,&quot; said Michael Weldon, vice president of Xerox Global Software Operations. Xerox, a major international player on the documents-solution market, is now thinking of establishing an Offshore Software Center in Russia. 
 According to investment bank Brunswick Warburg, Russia will export an estimated $300 million in software this year, almost doubling last year's export total of between $170 million and $200 million. In 2005, it is predicted that the figure will reach $1 billion, though experts maintain that there will have to be major improvements for that target to be achieved.
 &quot;The main problem is your [Russian] marketing,&quot; Robert Williams, a senior IBM executive, said in a speech given at the summit. &quot;Even though you may have the best programmers in the world, if no one is aware of that, you won't sell a thing.&quot;
 Williams criticized the Russian government for not giving the offshore business enough support. &quot;In India, software companies receive the full support of the authorities,&quot; he said
 Russia has thousands of small software companies with an average of between 10 and 50 employees. Large companies, like Luxoft, with 300 employees, are a rarity. India has fewer companies, though they are larger in size and have larger marketing budgets. This year, India will export $8 billion in software.
 Most Russian companies can only afford to promote their products through the Internet. &quot;It's very difficult to make contacts with Western companies. That's why we are here,&quot; said Katya Martemyanova, chief marketing officer for Sitech, a Samara-based firm.
 Next year, the Outsource Summit will be held in the late summer or autumn, in order not to coincide with St. Petersburg's 300th-anniversary celebrations. This year's summit, however, was generally considered a success by participants, with the Pulkovskaya Hotel unable to accommodate all the guests at its Electron Standard Business Center.

TITLE: U.S. Market Status Only First Battle in Trade War
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - For Russia, graduating from the school of non-market economies is a bit like turning 18 in the United States: You become old enough to vote and go to war, but you still have years to wait before you can legally celebrate with a drink.
 
There is little doubt that last week's status upgrade by the U.S. Commerce Department is a positive development - President Vladimir Putin called it a &quot;powerful signal that the Russian economy is ready to be fully functional.&quot; But the political goodwill of the gesture is likely to be more valuable than any economic gains. Given the details of the decision, it may be too early to crack open the champagne just yet. Indeed, as companies with the most to gain by having freer access to America's market are quick to point out, the decision was a minor victory, a battle won amid a much larger war.
 &quot;Market-economy status is a political decision, it doesn't have any direct economic impact,&quot; said Alexei Goncharov, spokesperson for SUAL, the country's second-largest aluminum company, which has faced anti-dumping cases in the United States - the kind of thing market-economy status is supposed to help alleviate.
 &quot;Restrictions on individual products, like foil, will remain in place,&quot; he said.
 Even so, the decision is good PR.
 &quot;It will certainly have a positive effect on the perception of Russia, and that should have a positive effect on investment decisions,&quot; said Andrew Somers, President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. &quot;Russia has now joined the universe of 'acceptable' countries to invest in.&quot;
 For Russia, the real prize is entering the World Trade Organization on standard terms. The U.S. decision, coupled with the European Union's recent announcement that it would grant Russia market-economy status before the winter, is another step in the right direction.
 However, the Commerce Department appears to have left itself room to continue viewing Russia as a non-market country in certain instances. Even the steel producers who led the petition for the change in status are unlikely to see major gains in the near future.
 Russia is a market economy only with regard to anti-dumping cases filed after the effective date set by the Commerce Department of April 1, 2002. Non-market-economy methodology - applying prices and costs from a surrogate country to calculate whether Russia is exporting goods below cost - and higher tariff penalties will still be used for any anti-dumping cases filed before April.
 For future cases where the &quot;period of investigation&quot; extends before April 1, the Commerce Department will decide on a case-by-case basis whether to apply its non-market or market-economy rules, if there is sufficient information. In the 30-page report that contained the decision to grant Russia market-economy status, posted on its Web site, the Commerce Department said it &quot;retains its authority to disregard particular prices or costs when prices are not in the ordinary course of trade, costs are not in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, the costs do not reasonably reflect the costs associated with the production or sale of the merchandise, or other situations.&quot;
 &quot;This appears to leave a door open to continue to apply the [non-market economy] methodology if the Commerce Department deems a particular industry sector to be operating under non-market conditions on a case-by-case basis,&quot; said Lynn Fabrizio, a trade lawyer at the Moscow office of White &amp; Case.
 For cases that were decided before April 1, non-market rates will continue to apply until &quot;they are changed as a result of a review of a sufficient period of time after April 1, 2002.&quot; According to a Commerce Department official, the period is usually six months to one year.
 Russia's new status also opens it up to the threat of harsh countervailing duties, which can be applied to subsidized companies.
 Countervailing duties are unlikely to be assessed until an &quot;adequate&quot; amount of market information is available, which is expected to take about a year. After that, Russian companies will be extremely vulnerable if Russia doesn't sign an agreement with the United States narrowing how far investigations can look back to the post-privatization period. 
 Furthermore, until Russia accedes to the WTO or gains permanent most-favored-nation status from the United States, U.S. companies do not have to prove that Russian goods are causing injury to a relevant industry in a countervailing duty case. &quot;This can result in high damages or tariffs,&quot; Somers said.
 Another point of contention is that Congress has yet to revoke the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which links trade relations to emigration policy, or grant permanent MFN status. Without MFN, Russia could lose one of the main benefits of WTO membership - equal rights to dispute settlement options.
 &quot;Market economy status from the U.S. and the EU is just one - albeit important - factor in the [WTO] accession process,&quot; Fabrizio said. 
 &quot;We see [market-economy status] as one step on the path to WTO accession,&quot; SUAL's Goncharov said. &quot;Unfortunately, the revocation of Jackson-Vanik, which we're all waiting for, still hasn't happened. As soon as the U.S. Congress revokes the amendment, the next step will be discussing WTO accession terms.&quot;
 Revocation of the Jackson-Vanik amendment and WTO accession will still not guarantee Russia truly free trade. But Russia will be an equal trading partner with equal weapons to fight future trade wars.
 &quot;The United States has demonstrated repeatedly that neither market-economy status nor membership in the WTO precludes them from imposing sanctions on other countries,&quot; said Alexei Moiseyev, an economist at the Renaissance Capital brokerage.

TITLE: Kozlov Reveals Plans for Major Reform at CB
AUTHOR: By Igor Moiseyev
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: Speaking last week at the annual banking congress in St. Petersburg, Andrei Kozlov, first deputy chairperson of the Central Bank, told bankers that they have three years to modernize. 
 
In that time, Kozlov said, the Central Bank will perfect its bank-inspection facilities and develop a system for guaranteeing deposits. He also said that the banks themselves will have to move over to international accounting standards during the same period. 
 In general, bankers were happy with the goals that Kozlov set, though they remained doubtful about the Central Bank's ability to remove rotten banks from the system.
 When the State Duma appointed Kozlov first deputy chairperson and a member of the board of directors at the Central Bank two months ago, he promised to prepare a program for the reorganization of the banking sector in time for the yearly banking congress held in Petersburg last week. As a result, his speech was a key event in the schedule, although this year's congress attracted an unprecedented number of senior figures from the Central Bank, including Central Bank chairperson Sergei Ignatyev.
 As Kozlov himself warned, experts and financial analysts participating in the congress were unlikely to hear anything new, as the head of the banking inspection service had already made references to most of his plans in the preceding two months. 
 He said that his main tasks would be to develop and implement a high-quality system for diagnosing the health of banks, reorganize the inspection system, transfer to international financial accounting standards and introduce a system for the guaranteeing of deposits.
 &quot;We've only got three years,&quot; Kozlov said in conclusion, advising bankers to prepare themselves for the experience that those three would bring &quot;as soon as the congress is over.&quot;
 Kozlov's conviction inspired bankers and they welcomed the Central Bank's proposals, as well as the planned pace for their implementation. Although they believe that the Central Bank will take far longer than three years to carry out its intentions, the fact that senior bureaucrats have taken on these obligations will provide them with some serious stimulation. 
 &quot;Effectively, the reforms have already begun to be implemented,&quot; said the president of Bank Moscow, Andrei Borodin.
 The vice chairperson of Gazprombank, Gennady Mesheryakov, agreed with Kozlov's assertion that &quot;we have to foresee the future for banks, rather than going over their past mistakes.&quot; In the opinion of the vice chairperson of the board of directors of Uniastrumbank, Gaggik Gakoryan, an increase in inspections by the Central Bank &quot;may even help&quot; banks, as analysis of the situation in Russian banks &quot;is a little neglected.&quot; 
 Borodin hopes, however, that the Central Bank will consult with banks on the approach that will be taken to inspections in the future. 
 Despite the generally positive responsive to Kozlov's speech, bankers at the congress expressed serious doubts about the Central Bank's abilities to implement its proposals in the term given on other grounds. 
 Mesheryakov doubted that the Central Bank will be able to accurately determine the readiness of banks to enter the system for the guaranteeing of deposits in the nine months that the Central Bank has given itself. 
 Kozlov himself, however, resisted getting carried away by the positive assessment of his plans for the Central Bank to increase levels of control: &quot;The representatives of the best banks have come here [to the congress], so you can't really assume that their opinions are widely held in Russia,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Western Banks Chase Neglected Small-Business Sector
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In St. Petersburg's banking market, opportunities for small businesses and private individuals to receive credit are limited. Nevertheless, over the last year, a number of banks have announced plans focusing on work with the small-business sector, with foreign banks in St. Petersburg leading the way.
 
In the overwhelming majority of cases, banks in St. Petersburg continue not to offer start-up loans for businesses. According to analysts, Russian small businesses are rarely worth the volume of work that banks face in dealing with them.
 &quot;If a big bank gives a loan, it prefers to give $100,000 to one borrower, rather than $10,000 to ten smaller clients,&quot; one source in a St. Petersburg bank commented, on condition of anonymity. &quot;It involves too much financial analysis of those ten firms. Medium-sized banks often announce small-business loan programs, but they don't always end up running them, and the smaller banks rarely have the resources to run programs of that kind.&quot;
 At present, there are less than ten Western banks in St. Petersburg with 100-percent-foreign capital - Raiffeisenbank Austria, Dresdner Bank, ABN-AMRO Bank, Credit Lyonnais Bank, CitiBank, KMB-Bank and International Moscow Bank (MMB).
 According to a study on Western banks in Russia, carried out by the Moscow-based International Consumers Confederation and published in March, the western banks can be divided into three types. 
 The first group includes banks working with private clients. In St. Petersburg, foreign banks working with private clients are limited to Raiffeisenbank, MMB and KMB-Bank. According to the research, KMB-Bank is leading in terms of offering the best financial deal to private individuals and in the transparency of its operations. 
 The second group, which includes MMB and Raiffeisenbank, work with private clients, but do not see them as being their main target group. 
 The third group offers no services directed at private clients, specializing instead in providing financial services to large corporate clients. Banks of this kind include BNP-Dresdner Bank, Credit Lyonnais Bank, CitiBank and ABN-AMRO Bank.
 According to analysts, foreign banks have more stability than their Russian counterparts and depositors have a greater degree of trust in them. 
 &quot;All the Western banks in St. Petersburg are subsidiaries of very large, respected foreign banks, with huge amounts of capital behind them,&quot; Irma Koldobenkova, the general manager of the MMB's St. Petersburg branch says. &quot;It would be absolutely wrong to try to claim that any of them were set up as pocket banks for corporate clients.&quot; 
 MMB joined the ranks of St. Petersburg's foreign banks catering to small business by virtue of its merger with the Moscow-based branch of Austria-Kreditanschtalt Bank, announced in October 2001.
 According to Koldobenkova, prior to the merger, the bank specialized in working with major corporate clients in the telecommunications, wood-processing and foodstuffs sectors.
 &quot;Austrian Kreditanschtalt specialized in working with small and medium-sized businesses and private clients,&quot; Koldobenkova says. &quot;When Kreditanschtalt bank in Austria was purchased by [MMB's] shareholders, it merged its Russian subsidiary with MMB and gave the merged bank a new direction for development.&quot;
 According to Koldobenkova, MMB now provides financial services to a broad range of clients. She was not able to specify the share of small-business and private clients in the structure of the bank's services, though she said that the bank had plans to develop relations with small businesses in the retail, construction and food-production sectors.
 &quot;For the time being, foreign banks get more respect from clients, as they have strong shareholders abroad who can provide financial and management help,&quot; she said. &quot;The 1998 crisis is a good example: all the foreign banks suffered great losses, but the parent companies topped up their capital and, as a result, not one of them left the Russian market.&quot;
 According to Victor Ozhegov, the St. Petersburg branch manager of KMB-Bank, the foreign banks have invested too much money simply to pack their bags and leave in the event of there being another crisis. 
 &quot;Nobody has any guarantees that a new financial crisis won't happen. But the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), for example, which has a 35-percent share in KMB-Bank, invested $800 million in a program providing loans to small businesses in Russia. It just doesn't have the opportunity to take its money back and quit.&quot;
 At present, about 80 percent of KMB-Bank's funds are used in providing loans to small business. It offers several types of credit program - up to $1,000, up to $10,000, up to $100,000 and up to $500,000, for terms from ranging two to three years. MMB offers loans with terms of up to one year. 
 Raiffeisen bank has also shown an interest in minor market-players, as well as in major corporations. 
 
&quot;We have concrete plans and are budgeting to develop the small and medium-size business market,&quot; said Michel Perhirin, the chairperson of the managing board of Raiffeisenbank Austria. 
 
&quot;We are definitely not concentrating on cooperating with large groups alone - we are more than interested in becoming partners with any organization that shows good prospects for development,&quot; said Perhirin
 The share of foreign capital in St. Petersburg's banks is currently about 14 percent of the total banking capital in the city. This figure, however, includes a number of companies based in Cyprus, Ireland, Britain, the Virgin Islands and other offshore zones that own controlling stakes in such banks as Viking Bank, Petro-Aero-Bank, Russia Bank, the St. Petersburg Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Telecombank.

TITLE: Noble Touch at Deutsche Bank
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Alexis Rodzianko first came to Russia to run United City Bank in 1995, but his aristocratic family has a long and illustrious history here that earned his great-grandfather a place on Lenin's hit list.
 
&quot;The first people with this surname were in Ukraine in the middle of the 17th century,&quot; says Rodzianko, now a managing director at Deutsche Bank Moscow. &quot;They were landowners and served the tsars in various capacities, marrying into the Russian nobility.&quot;
 Rodzianko's paternal great-grandfather, Mikhail, was the last speaker of the pre-Revolutionary Duma and the Bolsheviks sought to eliminate him and his family because of their noble background and political leanings.
 After the 1917 Revolution and the beginning of the civil war, Mikhail Rodzianko took up arms against the Bolsheviks and Red Army, moving from St. Petersburg to the south to join the White Army as adviser to famed tsarist general Anatoly Denikin.
 Rodzianko's grandparents, meanwhile, kept a low profile on the family's Ukrainian estate.
 &quot;Once, they were on the same [train] platform as the Red Army men who had [Lenin's hit] list, but they walked by each other,&quot; Rodzianko says. &quot;They went into the city to look for them and then they left.&quot;
 A rumor spread that Rodzianko's grandparents had, in fact, been killed. After the search was called off, the family joined Mikhail and fled the country in March 1920, when the British army evacuated the remnants of Denikin's forces from the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk.
 Around the same time, Rodzianko's maternal grandfather, a judge, was branded an enemy of the people after throwing a political trial out of court due to lack of evidence. Eventually, his brother-in-law used connections at the Red Cross to smuggle him and his family into Estonia.
 Both families moved to Germany, where Rodzianko's parents met. They emigrated to the United States in 1949 and Rodzianko grew up in New York.
 After graduating in 1973 from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where he majored in Russian language and literature, Rodzianko found work as an interpreter.
 He reached the peak of his interpreting career four years later at the age of 26, at the SALT II disarmament talks between U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
 After he applied for the job, Rodzianko underwent an &quot;intense&quot; security screening, he says. Friends, relatives and classmates were grilled by the Federal Bureau for Investigation, while Rodzianko himself was under constant surveillance.
 &quot;I'd meet people all of a sudden. I'd be traveling somewhere with a delegation in Tennessee, and someone would come up and show me a badge and say, 'Can we have a cup of coffee?' and they would talk to me about my views on arms trading and weird stuff like that,&quot; Rodzianko recalls.
 After being hired, he spent a year in Geneva, where the negotiations were held. While he calls the experience one of the growing periods of his life, Rodzianko had no intention of staying in the profession.
 &quot;Being an interpreter was not something I particularly cared for,&quot; he says. &quot;You really cannot contribute your own thoughts - indeed, your owns thoughts were unwelcome and actually dangerous to your professional career.&quot;
 The option of climbing the diplomatic ladder did not attract Rodzianko either. &quot;I'd seen the frustration. There were some very bright people in the foreign service in the U.S. yet it was the lawyer who knew someone or the head of a company who had retired and become an ambassador that had the best jobs,&quot; Rodzianko says. &quot;All these super-bright people around them were fighting over who gets to put the comma where.&quot;
 It was in business and finance that Rodzianko found what he calls &quot;the passion and emotional turbulence&quot; of the Dostoevsky novels he had studied at Dartmouth.
 After a brief stint with auditing and consulting major Arthur Andersen, Rodzianko received an offer from Manufacturers Hanover bank, which tempted him with its East European banking operations.
 Manufacturers Hanover was deeply involved in the 1982 LDC crisis, which occurred when a number of countries, primarily in Latin America - faced with high interest rates and low commodities prices - defaulted on hundreds of billions of dollars in commercial bank loans.
 After leaving Manufacturers Hanover in 1995, Rodzianko took up the post of CEO at United City Bank in Moscow, where he put together its international brokerage. The bank had no revenues when Rodzianko started, but in 1998, United City was sold to Flemmings for $30 million.
 Rodzianko was chosen in November 2001 to run Deutsche Bank Moscow's corporate finance and relationship -management divisions.
 The bank has been involved in a number of major projects since Rodzianko came on board. Deutsche Bank is advising No. 1 Russian oil producer LUKoil in its efforts to acquire a 23-percent stake in Greece's Hellenic Petroleum along with Greece's Latsis Group. The bank provided a $150-million-direct-unsecured credit to Gazprom and a $100-million facility to Vneshekonombank, and also successfully brought Gazprombank and Magnitogorsk Metals Plant to the Eurobond market.
 &quot;I would like to think I am contributing to our successes,&quot; Rodzianko says.

TITLE: Carrying Cash Going Out of Style with Locals
AUTHOR: By Boris Fyodorov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: The total number of plastic cards issued in St. Petersburg and operating along international payment lines is set to pass 2 million this year. 
 Though bankers may be pleased by the huge rise in numbers, they're even happier about the way their clients are using the cards: customers are keeping their money in their accounts longer and using their cards more often to pay directly for goods and services. The banks are trying to build on their successes by developing the card infrastructure. 
 
According to the St. Petersburg Association of Commercial Banks (ACB), by April 1, local credit institutions had issued 1.7 million bank cards carrying the logos of international payment systems. At least 85 percent of those cards were issued within the framework of wage-payment systems, with firms increasingly moving away from handling their payrolls in cash.
 Over 90 percent of cards issued comes from the four market-leaders - Northwest Sberbank, Prom Stroy Bank, Baltiisky Bank and Petrovsky Narodny Bank. Other active issuers of cards have been MENATEP-SPB, St. Peterburg Bank, Inkasbank and the local branches of Alfa-Bank, Impeksbank and UralSib.
 Despite the rapid growth in the sector, bankers are convinced that the potential growth in the plastic-card market is far from being exhausted. 
 &quot;It's too early for any talk of saturation,&quot; said Andrei Ivanov, head of the payment-systems department at PNB. &quot;Generally, salary-payment projects have only covered the larger clients. Smaller clients are next in line.&quot; 
 &quot;Nowhere near all of the enterprises in St. Petersburg have moved over to plastic,&quot; says Igor Grigoryev, vice president of Baltiisky Bank and the person in charge of the bank's card issuing. &quot;In addition, there's a lot of room for issuing cards in other spheres. We've got plans for schoolchildren, for example, as well as family cards where, as well as the head of the family having a card, additional cards will be issued for close relatives.&quot;
 As the international payment systems fight for this rapidly developing market, Visa has become increasingly popular at the city's banks, winning out over current leader Europay. Last year, Europay lost 6 percent of its market share. 
 &quot;According to our statistics, over the year [from April to April], the issuing of Visa cards rose 60 percent, while Europay only went up by 23 percent. And Europay's growth, for the most part, came thanks to Northwest Sberbank,&quot; said Sergei Zhivotov, head of the ACB. Sberbank, apart from being the country's largest bank is also Europay's main partner in Russia. In Zhivotov's opinion, without Sberbank's support, Europay would be in a much worse position. Baltiisky and Petrovsky, meanwhile, have switched the bulk of their attentions from Europay to Visa.
 &quot;Europay hasn't really done any aggressive marketing in 2001, or in the first two quarters of 2002. Visa is being much more active and imaginative in its approach, although it used to be the other way round,&quot; says Andrei Ivanov from PNB.
 The head of Europay's branch office in Russia, Andrei Korolyov, explains the changes in market share by saying that Europay wishes to balance its card profile. &quot;Europay was the first on the market,&quot; he says. &quot;The bulk of issuing done by banks involved cards from our payment system. So the current changes are only to be expected.&quot;
 Though Korolyov has plans to revitalize Europay's promotion campaign in order to win new customers, he points out that the organization is now focussing on quality over quantity. &quot;In the near future, the number of cards issued by banks won't be as important as the quality of the clients they're issued to and the profitability of the card business as a whole,&quot; he says.
 Bankers are quick to accept his point, and maintain that there is a general development pattern in the use of banking cards in Russia. 
 The average recipient of a new plastic card in Russia will make just one transaction a month, emptying the account on the same day that his or her wages are paid. As the client gets used to the new service, the number of monthly transactions gradually increases. The next evolutionary step is to make direct payments for goods and services with the aid of the card. It is in this sphere that St. Petersburgers are making their greatest advances.
 According to ACB statistics, the total volume of retail purchases made by card in St. Petersburg rose by almost 60 percent in 2002, reaching a total of 640 million rubles. By April 1, Petersburg's retailers had installed almost 3,100 payment terminals at their outlets. 
 &quot;The tendency for our customers to switch from cash dispensers to terminals in retail outlets is clear,&quot; says Alexander Kazansky from Baltiisky Bank. 
 &quot;The card issuing forces the infrastructure to develop and the development of the infrastructure allows cards to be used more often,&quot; says Andrei Ivanov from PNB.

TITLE: Russian Bank's Fall Offers Investors a Cautionary Tale
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - It looked like Investment Banking Corporation was the West's fair-haired poster child of fiscal responsibility in the often rough-and-tumble world of Russian banking.
 
It was among the first banks to have its books audited to international accounting standards, and it assisted the EU's Tacis on a project to introduce international accounting standards to the Russian banking system.
 It was the first Russian bank to be assigned a corporate governance rating by Standard &amp; Poor's.
 And it boasted two prominent Americans on its board of directors, a former U.S. Eximbank vice president and a former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia.
 But all that did nothing to save the country's 52nd largest bank from collapsing in the biggest banking bankruptcy since the 1998 financial crisis.
 The path that led to IBC's abrupt demise serves as a cautionary tale that the banking sector remains fragile and that investors need to continue to look beyond the window-dressing to determine a Russian company's true worth.
 The Central Bank revoked IBC's license on April 30, a week to the day after it slapped external management on the bank. Central Bank chief Sergei Ignatyev acknowledged on April 23 that IBC's state of affairs had caught the Central Bank off-guard.
 IBC was founded in 1994 by a handful of private investors, for the most part to service the needs of Russia's seventh-largest oil company, Rosneft. The relationship helped IBC become the country's No. 52 bank as of Jan. 1, 2002, with more than 6 billion rubles ($200 million) in assets.
 But what was the key to its success in the beginning, was also the factor that led to its collapse.
 The bank started to experience problems at the end of last year when Rosneft took its assets and decided against buying a controlling stake in IBC.
 A decision in December by the State Customs Committee to stop sending payments through the bank only added to IBC's difficulties.
 &quot;This case is just another example of the trend that big corporations don't need pocket banks any longer,&quot; said Mikhail Matovnikov, deputy director of the Interfax Rating Agency.
 Recognizing that its dependence on Rosneft was its weak point, IBC had been trying to branch out. For example, it was an active member of the DeltaCredit lending program, run by the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund.
 DeltaCredit officials declined to comment about the bank's failure for this story. Previously, they have said that they had transferred all $5 million in outstanding mortgage and car loans from IBC to its own books in mid-March.
 The bank's CEO, Anton Melnikov, formerly at Rossiisky Kredit, one of the largest Russian banks before the 1998 crisis, resigned two weeks before IBC lost its license. Those who know him describe him as a Western-style manager who did his best to promote the bank both at home and abroad.
 To the Westerner, IBC was developing as a well-managed bank that cared a great deal about its image. It took pride in pointing out that PricewaterhouseCoopers had been auditing its books to IAS for four years and that it was the first bank to be assigned a corporate-governance rating by Standard &amp; Poor's, in March 2001.
 The agency downgraded the rating in April, shortly before the Central Bank stepped in.
 &quot;The lower score was driven largely by a lower assessment of the company's transparency and information disclosure, particularly its relative lack of transparency during the current public scrutiny of its financial position,&quot; said Standard &amp; Poor's corporate-governance analyst Yulia Kochetygova.
 &quot;The company has not publicly addressed questions regarding its liquidity and solvency,&quot; she said.
 The presence of two reputable foreigners on its board also did not improve IBC's transparency, although it did help the bank win new partners in the West.
 The board members were Scott Blacklin, former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, and Thomas Moran, former U.S. Eximbank vice president for the NIS and Central Europe.
 Their connections helped IBC become, on Jan. 16, a Russian bank participating in Eximbank's Russia lending program, three short months before the bankruptcy. Blacklin declined to comment, and Moran could not be reached for comment.
 Richard Hainsworth, banking analyst with Renaissance Capital, said IBC had belonged to a group of banks with a better reputation abroad than in Russia. &quot;They had very good PR like, for example, Alfa Bank and Probiznesbank,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Opening Eyes to Russia's Investment Gamble
AUTHOR: By Ruben Vardanyan
TEXT: WESTERNERS frequently comment that Russians oscillate between extremes. They say the Russian character mirrors the country's dramatic changes in seasons and climate. Few can disagree that the moods of Russian people can change in a flash from exuberance to depression.
 
Perhaps Westerners have now taken on this very Russian character trait that they find so different from their own. What else can explain today's infectious optimism in the West about the Russian economy? Has it really been so long since the markets and pundits in New York and London were calling Russia economically irrelevant, or worse?
 Make no mistake, Russia is far better off today than in 1998, or even one year ago. Once crippled by government default and ruble devaluation, the feel-good factor is back. Thanks to prudent economic and fiscal policies, Russia has joined China as a Cinderella story on the world economic stage.
 But does Russia's progress justify the unqualified exuberance of Western investors and politicians recently witnessed at the widely attended Russian Economic Forum in London and the World Russian Forum in Washington? Rational exuberance may be fitting. On the other hand, what Alfa Bank President Pyotr Aven has aptly termed unbridled euphoria will lead to false expectations, lost investment and serious damage to Russia's reputation.
 Tax, pension and land reforms, together with serious attention to corporate governance, are laying the foundations for sustainable economic growth. But fundamental problems persist - the dysfunctional banking system, gargantuan government bureaucracy and a demographic crisis of alarming proportions. As President Vladimir Putin recently pointed out in his state of the nation address, while the Russian economy is growing faster than most others around the globe, that growth is neither stable enough nor robust enough to compete effectively in the world economy.
 Of course, many in the business and financial community have deliberately and justifiably talked up Russia's prospects to persuade the outside world it is a place worthy of investment. Amid global economic slowdown and sluggish performance in both the United States and Western Europe, Russia's growth rates, 5.3 percent in 2001 and probably 4 percent this year, make Russia look like an attractive bet.
 I, too, am one of the most forceful advocates of new foreign and domestic investment in Russia. But investment decisions must be based on facts, prudence and an objective view of the economic risks and opportunities.
 Well-run companies understand that it is essential to manage expectations of the markets and to deliver performance in line with their own predictions. Overperformance can destabilize share prices as much as underperformance. Markets are interested in whether companies can sustain growth over the long-term. Russia must, and will, be judged by these same criteria.
 Increased political stability, the adoption of progressive economic and tax legislation, a raft of plans to reform the civil service, the natural monopolies and the banking sector, and the country's eager pursuit of WTO membership are all highly encouraging. Putin has stabilized relations with Western countries, evidenced by the decision to ally Russia with the United States in the war against terrorism and the extraordinary upgrading of Russia's relations with NATO.
 But facts are facts, and we must face up to them. Real exchange-rate appreciation has eroded the effects of devaluation in 1998, and increased quantities of imports are returning to the Russian market. For the economy to grow, industry must increase labor productivity and efficiency levels - factors that have been Russia's Achilles' heel for centuries.
 The backbone of any successful modern economy is small and medium-sized enterprises. Their number is growing, but they are still painfully under-represented. Small businesses need relief from the stranglehold of state bureaucracy as proposed by Putin, as well as access to finance and credit from the domestic banking system.
 We also have to face the fact that foreign investment is a highly competitive process. Russia has no right to assume that foreign investment will happen simply because of the country's huge market potential and low tax rates. For major multinational manufacturers, Russia is just one of many markets.
 On the plus side, more Russian capital is being repatriated from abroad, a sure sign of increased business confidence. The recent publication of a corporate-governance code is a significant step forward in establishing a modern business culture in Russia and in attracting and protecting investors.
 However, the economy as a whole remains far too reliant on oil and gas exports, which represent about 40 percent of total exports and 15 percent of gross domestic product. Their proportion has diminished, but the country's overall economic performance and foreign debt repayment schedule is hostage to high commodity prices. Russia exports little other than raw materials, weapons and vodka.
 Growing numbers of the Russian business elite share my determination to be able to conduct business in Russia according to international norms. While we see the obstacles on the horizon, we also see that Russia has no choice but to make a quantum leap toward full integration into the global economy.
 A year and a half ago, there was talk in the United States about the possibility of a vacuum in the heart of Eurasia, &quot;a world without Russia.&quot; Today, with the growth of the economy, the turning point of Sept. 11 and the recent Russia-U.S. summit, the situation has again radically changed.
 Russia is unquestionably moving in the right direction, and we can justifiably feel confident and optimistic about the future. But despite the country's significant progress, we must recognize that we are only a small way down the road of economic transformation. We cannot afford to be economical with the truth - otherwise, these achievements will be for naught.
 If Russia can build an infrastructure for lasting economic growth, the country will be better prepared to withstand the sudden and extreme changes in the perceptions of this great country held by Russians and foreigners alike.
 
 <i>
Ruben Vardanyan is general director of the Rosgosstrakh insurance company and CEO of the Troika Group of Companies. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Europe Is a Better Option for Russia
TEXT: In response to &quot;Euro Skeptic,&quot; Letters, June 4.
 
 Dear Editor
 </i>I'm visiting St. Petersburg for the first time in my life, for business reasons, and I'm glad to see a very beautiful town and proud to know that some of the most beautiful palaces were built by Italian architects.
 
Europe's relationships with Russia and the Russian people have deep roots in the past, unlike this new-born passion between the Bush and Putin administrations.
 And our relationship will be even deeper in the future, since cultural links are strong and we have more values in common than anyone from the United States can realize.
 Even during the Cold War, when U.S. public opinion of about Russians was that they were just a bunch of communists, we continued building links and mutual understanding with the Russian people.
 No one in Europe is interested in in considering Russia &quot;a flock of Euro-sheep.&quot; Russia was - and is - one of the main actors in European history, and will continue to play a vital role for Europe. We will continue to speak and to meet with its people, since we have much more to share - like our architecture - than the United States has ever had - prejudice ... and McDonald's!!
 <i>D. Palella
 Bologna, Italy
 </i>
 <strong>
What's the Cure?
 </strong><i>
In response to &quot;Global Eye: The Foggy Dew,&quot; June 4.
 
 Dear Editor,
 </i>Thank you for the article about the gassing of the Kurds and the involvement of King George I (American Revolution, Round 2, anyone?).
 
 I think it is imperative that we be proactive and anticipate that King Geroge II will try to reinstitute the military draft (i.e., involuntary servitude on behalf of corporate globalism).
 We need to anticipate this and create a climate of opinion where it would be politically impossible.
 How? By being prepared to demand impeachment and public ridicule of anyone who tries to put that one over on us again. But we have to begin now.
 I see the system we have as neo-feudalism, with the bulk of us playing the role of serfs.
 The antidote is rapid growth of cooperatives - voluntary cooperation in pursuit of sustainable lives in harmony with nature.
 Nuff for now.
 <i>Jon Olsen
 Jefferson, Maine
 </i>
 <strong>
War Words
 </strong><i>
In response to &quot;Chechnya Isn't a War Made for the Courts,&quot; June 7.
 
 Dear Editor,</i>
 Everyone realizes that no war can be entirely clean, but Latynina neglects to realize that the an &quot;enemy is an enemy&quot; mind-set, devoid of the need for compassion or adherence to the law is ludicrous. It is this that that lead to the escalation of atrocities.
 
The reason that Colonel Budanov's punishment is necessary is not just to make up for past crimes, but to decrease the chance of them happening in the future. The fewer crimes committed by the Russian Army today, the less likely that they will be on the receiving end of those crimes tomorrow.
 And this is just the start of the problem with Latynina's argument. Think about what that way of thinking would mean in hotspots like Palestine or Kashmir.
 And don't forget that Russia is a member of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights and, if it doesn't maintain its commitment to that organization, then it calls into question everything else of which Russia is a member.
 Finally, as an American ex-sailor, I would like to apologize for our military having its stuff together - we usually use a different term - to the point that we can stand off and &quot;gun down the Taliban from a safe distance&quot; without soiling our uniforms. We should listen to you and spend that time out raping and murdering our enemies. Just like your buddy Colonel Budanov.
 <i>Martin Wright
 Moscow
 </i>
 <i>
Dear Editor,
 </i>I have been a surprised reader of yours for the past few months, and quite pleased with your new-found liberty. I think Russia and the U.S. should be close friends, and stand united against countries/cultures that wish to live in the 14th century.
 
Do not confuse freedom of speech, however, with the right to say something stupid. In Yulia Latynina's recent article, &quot;Chechnya Isn't a War Made for the Courts,&quot; there was a passage that was grossley in error: &quot;It's pretty clear that the top brass doesn't consider what Budanov did to be a crime for the simple reason that everyone does it. Everyone does it because this is war. Not the powdered-wig war of the 19th century with its turning and flanking maneuvers executed by orderly columns of soldiers. Not the air war in Afghanistan, where Americans gun down the Taliban from a safe distance without soiling their uniforms.&quot;
 I see a lingering disbelief in the basic goodness of America. Unlike Russia, which has been strangled by one despot or another for over two hundred years, America's soldiers are more successful in combat - compare the U.S. and Soviet experience in Afganistan - and behave better, because our society actually believes in our form of government, and, for the most part, actually supports the conflict in which they are engaged.
 Episodes of American soldiers acting as Budanov did are amazingly rare, considering the number of Americans involved in armed conflicts.
 Not <i>everyone </i>does it!
 I also find Latynina's statements about American troops in Afganistan to be ill informed and ignorant. The Soviet Army got its tail whipped in Afganistan because the troops did not believe in their government or the conflict. This is not the case with the American troops, and is a major reason why they are sucessful.
 Additionally, Latynina should read up on her history. The military campaigns of the 18th and 19th centuries (Note: wigs were out of fashion in the military of the 1800s) were not neat, clean events featuring maneuvering troops.
 Cannon and rifles maimed and killed thousands, and the victorious army had its way with the locals.
 You cannot justify Budanov with bad &quot;facts.&quot; No matter the circumstances, his behavior is unacceptable. That is what being civilized means. War is killing. It need not be savaging.
 <i>Bob Longhorn
 Texas</i>
 <i>
Dear Editor,
 </i>Personally, I have very little compassion for those Chechens who have chosen to remain in Chechnya. Any remotely innocent, or at least impartial, Chechens have fled from Chechnya to Dagestan, Ingushetia, Georgia, and even to the United States! Russia has not impeded the flow of refugees out of Chechnya, and has even allowed the Council of Europe to monitor their refugee camps. Those that have decided to stay have made their allegiances clear. There is no reason to stay in a war zone when the borders are open, unless you are a combatant.
 
Now, let's get a few things clear. Russia is not in Chechnya because of oil. Russia already has so much oil that it presently does not have even have the capability to extract or refine as much of it as it wants.
 Chechnya is only a few hundred kilometers from Moscow and is not far from Iran. For this reason, and no other, Russia cannot allow Chechnya to go the way of Georgia and leave the federation. Chechnya is not Georgia. Georgia is a Christian country and under the Tsars voluntarily allowed Russian troops onto its soil! Conversely, it took the Russian Tsars 57 years of violent brutal war to conquer Muslim Chechnya.
 Russia did so to protect its southern borders from the Persians - Iran - not because Chechnya was some resource-rich jewel. When Napoleon attacked Russia, Russian troops were fighting in Chechnya. When Pugachyov's rebellion took place in Siberia - under Catherine the Great - Russian troops were still fighting in Chechnya. Russia's many wars against the Persians and the Turks would have been far worse if Chechnya was allowed its &quot;independence.&quot;
 One thing people in the West never consider when they think about independence movements like the one in Chechnya is how these countries will survive and function once they are independent.
 Assume that - somehow - Chechnya achieved its independence tomorrow. How would the country function? How would it survive economically?
 Chechnya does not possess the technical capability to retrieve its oil or, for that matter, to refine it. The Chechens were, and are, dependent on Russian industry. Where would the oil go once its been drilled? The logical answer is Russia, and then Europe!
 During Soviet times, all Chechen industry was subsidized by Moscow. Chechen agriculture was dependent on Russian demand. Chechen factories were dependent on Russian demand, technical knowledge, parts and raw material! Who would buy Chechen food today? The answer is Russia.
 Today Chechnya is devastated and virtually no industry exists. Who will rebuild it?
 The Chechen leaders are fundamentalist Muslims. They hate the West as much as they hate Russia. They will turn to Iran and build bombs, not houses! Chechnya would become another Afghanistan, except the Chechens possess better weapons than do their Taliban counterparts. The Taliban had no Igla missiles. The Chechens do - and have used them well!
 Yes, many times Russian troops have sold weapons to their Chechen enemies, but so did U.S. troops in Vietnam. The Kremlin has not been good to the Chechens, but the Chechens were never good to the Kremlin.
 What amazed me when I studied Chechnya is how much the Chechens are feared throughout the Caucasus. They are not hated as much as they are feared! Political correctness be damned. The Chechens were an aggressive nation and only brutal repression on the part of the Russian's changed that.
 During the first &quot;modern&quot; Chechen war, the first Russian troops entering Chechnya did not expect to meet the kind of fierce resistance that they met. They entered the country with practically no air support and were easy pickings for Chechen snipers and mines.
 They were not there to commit war crimes or to brutally oppress anyone. They were there to protect the Russian minority in the region, which was being harrassed and attacked by Chechen bands. The situation quickly escalated into all out war.
 We all know how the first war ended. Checnya became &quot;semi-autonomous,&quot; and Russian troops left in defeat. One can argue that Chechnya was always &quot;semi-autonomous,&quot; even under Soviet rule. Moscow's laws weren't always Chechnya's laws!
 Anyway, Yeltsin and his cronies didn't care if the Chechens had four wives, adapted Islamic law, or shot each other. As long as they didn't make trouble, stopped killing Russians, and paid at least some taxes, they could do whatever they liked.
 Unfortunately the Chechens liked killing Russians and, in 1998 and 1999, things heated up again.
 This time Russia took to the air. The air force actually used smart weapons and selective bombing to destroy rebel positions. Chechnya is not Afganistan, it is worse. Once the main visible targets were destroyed, the rebels took to the mountains and the forests. Finding caves in a mountainous desert is easy compared to finding caves in a heavily wooded mountainous country.
 The Russians, never great friends to the Chechens, have fought brutally, but they face a enemy not unlike the Vietcong. You don't know who is a peaceful farmer or who is a Chechen rebel, so you shoot at anything that moves! We did so in Vietnam, the Russian are doing it in Chechnya.
 At the same time Russia is feeding Chechen refugees and rebuilding what they can. Let's face facts: With 1.26 million soldiers at arms, Russia could exterminate the Chechens virtually overnight, if that was the real objective.
 Russia's military is also not as badly equipped as many think. It has perhaps the ability to equip some 100,000 soldiers with the latest weapons and Russia purchases approximately 25 new fighter planes every year. Plus, in 1999 Ukraine payed its electricity debt to Russia with 10 modern Tu-160 bombers.
 <i>Michael Brudoley
 New York
 </i>
 <strong>
All the Same
 </strong><i>
In response to &quot;Putin Calls for Closer Links to China,&quot; June 7.
 
 Dear Editor,
 </i>I am a senior student in Xiamen University in Fujian, China.
 
Intending to get news about Chinese President Jiang Zemin's tour in Russia, I turned to Russian online media for related stories. This is not because there is no other way to get information here. On the contrary, lots of media is available.
 As a matter of fact, I chose The St, Petersburg Times because of its influence in Russia and the world at large.
 I did find a related news article in your Web page. But to my surprise, and even disappointment, the article was a wire story from the Associated Press, not a Russian news agency, such as Tass.
 To be honest, it disappointed my original expectation of hearing Russian coverage of this news event. The New York Times also ran this same article in brief. It is disappoiting to see media in different countries covering an event in the same manner.
 <i>Lin Jian-yang
 Fujian, China
 </i>
 <strong>
Part and Parcel
 </strong><i>
In response to &quot;Three Shot as Rioting Hits Belfast,&quot; June 4.
 
 Dear Editor,
 </i>Many thanks for relieving the boredom of my Pulkovo flight to Gatwick, but your Belfast story left me wondering, with its curious reference to the &quot;British-ruled province&quot; of Northern Ireland (which, as you surely know, has long been an integral part - just as have England, Scotland and Wales individually - of the United Kingdom).
 
Do you similarly write about the &quot;American-ruled state&quot; of California, the &quot;French-ruled <i>department</i>&quot; of Dordogne, or even the &quot;Russian-ruled city&quot; of Nizhny Novgorod?
 Somehow, I doubt it.
 <i>Al Cotcher
 Bath, England </i>

TITLE: Why Is Putin Continuing To Trust Kuchma?
AUTHOR: By Taras Kuzio
TEXT: UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT Leonid Kuchma arrived in St. Petersburg on Sunday for a summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
 
An important item on the already-crowded agenda was recent moves by both countries toward closer ties with NATO.
 Russia and NATO have upgraded their relations with the establishment of a NATO-Russia Council, and Ukraine made an announcement on the day that U.S. President George W. Bush arrived in Moscow that it had decided to join the list of countries wishing to become members of NATO.
 This latest meeting is set to continue the discussions held at their May 17 summit in the Crimea and Sochi.
 The Sochi-Crimea summit touched on the vexed question of gas supplies and Ukraine's role as a transit country - issues that have bedeviled relations between the two countries for the last decade.
 The biggest surprise to come out of that summit was that Kuchma agreed to make Ukraine an associate member of the Eurasian Economic Community - the CIS alternative to the European Union.
 Kuchma had already promised to do this at a March summit in Odessa between Putin, Kuchma and Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin.
 But, in April, the Ukrainian foreign minister and the secretary of state for foreign affairs both ruled it out as incompatible with the country's declared strategic goal of integration with the EU.
 Kuchma has clearly now overruled them because he needs Putin's personal support. Highly placed sources in Kiev believe that Kuchma consented to this as a quid pro quo to Putin not opposing Ukraine's move to join NATO.
 However, Russia should be asking itself whether all these summit meetings actually produce any concrete results.
 And, if not, can Kuchma be regarded as a reliable partner, let alone an ally?
 A year ago during the &quot;Kuchmagate&quot; crisis that rocked Ukraine - after a presidential guard released tapes he had made in Kuchma's office that provided evidence of numerous wrongdoings - Deputy State Duma Speaker Vladimir Lukin warned that Russia should be cautious when dealing with Kuchma.
 He asserted that, while Russia was interested in a long-term partnership with Ukraine, Kuchma was only interested in a short-term relationship in order to shore up his power, particularly in times of crisis.
 Lukin hit the nail on the head when he said that Kuchma's attitude toward Russia has a tendency to improve as his position inside Ukraine deteriorates and vice versa.
 Putin must be proud of having cemented the &quot;turn to the East&quot; forced upon the Ukrainian president during the &quot;Kuchmagate&quot; scandal. But does this make Kuchma's turn away from Europe and toward Eurasia any more genuine this time?
 It is worth recalling that Kuchma was first elected in July 1994 on a platform of closer ties with Russia, which he quickly dropped in favor of integration with &quot;trans-Atlantic and European structures.&quot;
 Russia has three problems in dealing with Kuchma and his allies in the pro-presidential United Ukraine parliamentary faction.
 First, Kuchma's origins are in the high-ranking nomenklatura of the pre-August 1991 Communist Party of Ukraine and his operating style and mannerisms are steeped in Soviet political culture.
 Ukraine's first president and high-ranking member of the Social Democratic Party Leonid Kravchuk recently complained in the Kiev daily newspaper Den - which is controlled by Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Yevhen Marchuk - that Ukraine has lacked any domestic or foreign policy direction. Policies are simply adjusted to suit the president's tactical agenda and therefore are constantly in flux. Ukraine's &quot;multi-vector&quot; foreign policy is merely a cover for the lack of any coherent policy whatsoever.
 Kuchma can never become a Ukrainian version of Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko because Lukashenko, unlike Kuchma, actually believes in pan-Eastern Slavism and Soviet revivalism. In Ukraine, such ideologically driven policies exist on the left or right, but not in the pro-presidential center occupied by United Ukraine.
 A foreign policy that is hostage to Kuchma's personal isolation in the West cannot be regarded as a foreign policy that is driven either by ideological considerations or medium to long-term goals.
 Second, Kuchma trusts nobody, apart from Volodymyr Lytvyn, former head of the presidential administration and leader of United Ukraine, who was, not long ago, elected speaker of the parliament by somewhat dubious means. Lytvyn is the only colleague of Kuchma's to have remained by his side since 1994.
 Kravchuk's critical remarks and the radical proposals for an overhaul of Ukraine's political system introduced into the newly elected parliament by former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine show there is growing discontent among Ukraine's political and business elite with the Kuchma presidency for its conservatism, lack of direction and neo-Soviet authoritarianism.
 Third, Kuchma is a lame-duck president with only two years left of his last term in office. Putin would be well advised not to put all his eggs in Kuchma's and United Ukraine's basket.
 According to national opinion polls, Yushchenko is Ukraine's most popular politician and the current favorite to win the 2004 presidential election.
 Russian officials, including Ambassador to Ukraine Viktor Chernomyrdin, have expressed negative views regarding Yushchenko's pro-Western orientation and his &quot;anti-Russian&quot; Our Ukraine bloc. Yushchenko is, however, not &quot;anti-Russian&quot; and has, in fact, taken the Rukh party toward a more pragmatic position.
 Our Ukraine's election manifesto did not call for Ukraine's withdrawal from the CIS. In addition, it is worth recalling that Yushchenko's governmen,t in 2000-01, was the first to deal with energy arrears, halt the theft of Russian gas, and reduce corruption in the energy sector.
 If Russia believes it has a reliable partner in Kuchma it is very much mistaken. His record in office shows that he lacks any ideologically based program - either oriented toward the West or Russia and the CIS.
 His chief concern has always been to adapt domestic and foreign policies to his own benefit and that of his corrupt allies.
 The optimism expressed by Putin, after the Crimea-Sochi summit, that relations between Russia and Ukraine are improving, is in very serious danger of being thwarted as a result of Kuchma's complete inability to adhere to his commitments.
 
 <i>Taras Kuzio is a resident fellow at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto, and joint editor of &quot;Ukrainian Foreign and Security Policy.&quot; </i>

TITLE: Laugh, and the World Laughs With You
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
TEXT: IF you really feel like leaving, nobody can make you stay. I'm sorry, but I've felt like getting out of here for a while now. So that's what I'm doing.
 
I've already heard the question &quot;why?&quot; hundreds of times over the last little while, and the other day, when I heard it again, I just pointed out our office window at the hundreds of cars that, in the process of trying, themselves, to get out of the city, had turned St. Isaac's Square into one big parking lot. Actually, half of the streets in the city center are like this for half of the day because the powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to do construction work on thoroughfares like Vosnesensky Prospect during rush hour.
 I remember that, a couple of years ago, I used to laugh at things like this. What else could you do, but laugh and hope that people's attitudes to stupidity of this sort would lead to change?
 It didn't, and right now I'm just about out of hope. (&quot;Hope is the last to die&quot; is a common saying in Russian, as well as in English.)
 The problem is that the same people who are creating half of the problems here are the same people that are asking everyone else to be patient. It's a vicious circle.
 I just can't laugh at it anymore, so I'm getting out - at least for a while - to try to see if I can get that ability back. I have to get away from the never-ending examples of illogical decisions with which I am constantly faced.
 I have to go a while without seeing metro stations where half of the doors are closed at rush hour because - get this - &quot;Too many people want to enter.&quot; That's a good one. The term is <i>Vkhod Ogranichen</i>, or &quot;entrance limited,&quot; in Russian. Priceless.
 I guess I should be able to laugh at it. Where else am I going to find such shining examples of superior stupidity?
 I guess I should be able to laugh at the slapstick hilarity of manhole covers, hammers and irons falling on people from apartment buildings; or Olympic swimming champions drowning in ponds at children's camps during the summer; or at people being electrocuted while trying to steal high-voltage wires and sell the non-ferrous metals; or at the two people who tried to steal a section of gas pipe in an apartment building a few years ago. The two thieves' bodies couldn't be identified, as the explosion they had caused had splattered them all over the surrounding walls.
 If it was a cartoon world, I guess that this would be funny. Maybe I've just lost my sense of humor.
 So I'm going to Denver, Colorado.
 What should I expect from Denver?
 Here is one answer:
 &quot;Mayor [Wellington] Webb's vision for Denver has focused on the four cornerstones he believes supports a successful American city; parks and open space; public safety; economic development and children.&quot;
 Hilarious.
 &quot;Under his leadership, [Webb] has developed more park land than any previous Denver Mayor, increasing the amount of open space in Denver by 50 percent including the [16-kilometer] restoration of the South Platte River.&quot;
 Isn't that funny?
 &quot;Denver has seen a record 40-percent decrease in crime since 1991 and Denver's economic turnaround is considered a national model. Since 1991, unemployment has dipped to below 2 percent while Denver's historic boom-and-bust economy has been transformed into an economy sustained by high-tech and telecommunications industries.&quot;
 All of these side-splitting one-liners come from the mayor's official Web site.
 I've got to get to a place where people are able to summon this level of comedic genius. So I'm out of here.
 I'm going to write for a newspaper there for six months, although I will try to send semi-regular columns back about my adventures, so keep an eye out.
 Don't get me wrong. I will miss this place terribly. Most of all, I will miss the friends I'm leaving behind, some of whom I'm afraid I might not see again. I will miss the letters from readers who reacted to the things I had written. I'll miss regularly writing this column and hearing the reactions from my friends.
 But, lately, I've been missing my laugh a bit more, so I'm going to go look for it.
 And I won't look back over my shoulder at the airport.
 It's bad luck.

TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: While the lumbering giants of the American media make their clumsy bows of obeisance to the presidential paymaster filling their corporate goodie bags with tax-cut candy and merger massage oil, a few snippets of unsalted truth about the real world continue to spill from the croker sacks of the lean and hungry provincial papers.
 
Last week, it was the Savannah Morning News unearthing an attempted terrorist bombing by a U.S. soldier in the gaterous moral swamp of Jeb Bush's Florida. This week, it's the Ithaca Journal in upstate New York, bringing news of Big Brother Georgie's old-fashioned approach to warfare: Ordering soldiers to kill women and children.
 This revelation - entirely unremarked by the larded lords of the Fourth Estate - came in a homely profile of young Army Private Matt Guckenheimer, just returned to the bosom of his family after a tour of service in Afghanistan. While recounting some of his experiences during the much ballyhooed &quot;Operation Anaconda,&quot; Guckenheimer artlessly spilled what was surely meant to be a secret order from his superiors.
 &quot;We were told there were no friendly forces,&quot; Guckenheimer said. &quot;If there was anybody there, they were the enemy. We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them.&quot;
 Let that sink in for a moment: American soldiers were told to kill women and children. &quot;Specifically.&quot; To kill a child. To put a bullet in the brain of, let's say, a two-year old girl. To hold the barrel of a rifle to her tiny temple and pull the trigger. To watch as the tender plate of her skull, the delicate bones of her face, her large bright inquisitive eyes were all obliterated in a burst of red mist. &quot;We were told specifically to kill them.&quot; &quot;Women and children.&quot; &quot;To kill them.&quot;
 So that's the kind of warfare being waged by those notorious two cowards, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. When their own generation was on the firing line, in Vietnam, both men ardently supported the war - but disdained to fight in it. For his part, Cheney was too busy with his long, bootlicking rise to power: &quot;I had other priorities,&quot; he has loftily proclaimed.
 Meanwhile, Bush's daddy got his drink-addled little boy a cushy stateside berth in the Texas National Guard - but even then, Junior couldn't stick it. He bugged out for an entire year of his duty - desertion in wartime, a capital offense, if you're not rich and well-connected. Fortunately, his service records for that period were &quot;scrubbed&quot; by General Daniel James, former head of the Texas National Guard, who is now head of the entire country's Air National Guard - courtesy of his appointment by a grateful George W. Bush.
 Now these two armchair warriors, Bush and Cheney, ensconced safely behind the greatest phalanx of personal protection ever seen in history, are sending out a new generation of young people to kill and die. Like their predecessors in the Vietnam War, they are twisting the faith and idealism of patriotic young soldiers and turning them into instruments of murder.
 And for what? Certainly not to &quot;bring the perpetrators of Sept. 11 to justice,&quot; the ostensible purpose of the war. Those perpetrators are still roaming free - and are even more dangerous than ever, according to Cheney himself. No, the main reason why Private Guckenheimer and his comrades are being ordered to murder women and children could be found last week in a headline buried in yet another obscure province of the American Empire - a brief business story from the BBC:
 &quot;Afghan Pipeline Given Go-Ahead.&quot;
 
Murder Inc.
 
And there is more of this to come; much, much more. For, even as Private Guckenheimer was making his quiet revelations, the commander-in-chief was loudly proclaiming a brand-new military doctrine for the United States:
 
Sneak attacks - like Pearl Harbor, like Sept. 11.
 Speaking at West Point military academy, Bush first praised the soldiers in Afghanistan &quot;who have fought on my orders.&quot; (&quot;We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them.&quot;) He then announced that, henceforth, the United States will &quot;impose preemptive, unilateral military force when and where it chooses,&quot; the Washington Post reports.
 For the first time in its history, the United States is now openly committed to offensive military aggression against any perceived threat designated by its leaders, the unelected White House occupant told the cadets. Bush said that &quot;60 or more nations&quot; presently lie under this dread edict - and all are potential targets of his &quot;kill the women and children&quot; orders.
 What's more, Bush said this new military bellicosity will be accompanied by aggressive diplomacy aimed at forcing other nations to adopt American values - that is, the Enron-style &quot;crony capitalism&quot; foisted on the United States by a corrupt elite and their political bagmen. Bush called this pustulant system - now suppurating before our eyes, as corporation after corporation, including Cheney's own Halliburton, is caught cooking its books - &quot;the single surviving model of human progress.&quot;
 So there you have it. Just like bin Laden - another unelected leader who claims divine sanction for his actions - Bush will send his forces to strike without warning at anyone he believes is an enemy. Just like bin Laden, Bush considers innocent women and children to be legitimate targets of his holy wrath. And, just like bin Laden, he seeks to impose his own limited, barbaric world view on other countries, for his own power and profit.
 What quadrant of hell is hot enough for such men?

TITLE: India Moves To Lessen Tension
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: NEW DELHI - In a move to reduce tensions with Pakistan, India took what it called a &quot;significant step&quot; on Monday by announcing that restrictions on flights to and from Pakistan will be lifted soon.
 
&quot;I don't think that it's modest,&quot; said India's spokeswoman for the Ministry of External Affairs, Nirupama Rao. &quot;You're talking of lifting restrictions on overflights.
 &quot;That's not a small step. I believe it is a significant step.&quot;
 She added: &quot;It means that flights between Delhi and Karachi and Lahore can be restored as soon as possible.&quot;
 Direct flights between the two countries, which still have about a million troops ranged along their 2,500-kilometer border, were halted on Jan. 1.
 The troops are likely to stay in place along the border for months, as the process of resolving the crisis has just begun.
 Nuclear-armed enemies India and Pakistan may have toned down their hostile rhetoric ahead of a visit this week by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, intended to pull them back from the brink of war.
 &quot;I think the chance of war is minimal,'' Pakistan President Pervez Mu shar raf told a Malaysian newspaper in an interview on Sunday.
 Musharraf said that the long dispute with India over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir was an obstacle to peace, but &quot;the threat of war in the last four or five days has diminished.''
 Rumsfeld is to visit Pakistan and India in the next few days to press specific proposals for a way out of the crisis.
 His progress across the globe, via Europe and the Gulf, has been at a leisurely pace that appears designed to give time for tempers to cool in New Delhi and Islamabad. He met U.S. troops and Kuwaiti officials in Kuwait on Sunday.
 An Indian government statement on Saturday welcomed a pledge by Mu sharraf to U.S. envoy Richard Armitage to stop Muslim militants based in Pakistan infiltrating into Indian Kashmir.
 &quot;This is a step forward,'' the statement said.
 India and Pakistan have massed around one million troops along their border since an attack last December on the Indian parliament, that Indiablamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri militants, and they have cut diplomatic staff in both capitals.
 At least 14 people were reported killed on the weekend in the latest mortar and artillery exchanges across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
 Pakistan said it had shot down an unmanned Indian spy plane that entered its airspace on Saturday, while Indian police said they had detained a leading hard-line Indian Kashmiri separatist on suspicion of &quot;funding terrorist organizations.''
 Police seized Syed Ali Shah Geelani in an overnight raid on his house in Srinagar, summer capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
 Geelani, 73, is former head of the All Parties Hurriyat [Freedom] Conference, an alliance of separatist groups in the state, where a revolt against Indian rule has raged for more than a dozen years.
 Hurriyat denounced Geelani's detention as a move to &quot;derail the ongoing peace process'' between India and Pakistan and called a general strike for Tuesday in protest. It added that the separatist chief was in poor health.
 Armitage said after his talks in Islamabad and New Delhi that while the crisis was not over, tensions had eased.
 &quot;But I think you can say that the tensions are down measurably,'' he said, adding he expected India to respond to Pakistan's pledge on incursions with actions of its own. The easing of flight restrictions by India on Monday ballasts Armitage's assertions that India will continue making concessions in the wake of the summit.
 &quot;I understand they are talking about some diplomatic actions which could include the return of some people to diplomatic postings in Islamabad, and some ratcheting down of some sort of military tension,'' Armitage said. He did not elaborate.
 A Pakistani Information Minister, Nisar Memon, said Armitage's comments showed the ice with India was breaking. &quot;Now India has been informed by our friends in terms of actions and it has reacted [positively] this time,'' he said.
 Memon's office said that Musharraf would go ahead on Monday with a 48-hour visit to the United Arab Emirates and to Saudi Arabia.
 Musharraf said in his interview with Malaysia's New Sunday Times that India had to address the issue of the territory's future through talks with Pakistan.
 &quot;The response that I'm expecting is de-escalation followed by initiation of a dialogue on Kashmir,'' Musharraf said.
 Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has said what he calls &quot;cross-border terrorism'' must end before talks can start. India also insists that it must have verifiable evidence that incursions across the Line of Control have ceased.
 
 <i>(NYT, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: First-Round French Vote Favors Mainstream Right
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - French President Jacques Chirac's mainstream right appeared poised to seize control of parliament after a first round of elections held on Sunday hurt his leftist opponents, and could keep the extreme right out of parliament, despite Jean-Marie le Pen's resurgence.
 
With all votes counted except overseas ballots, the mainstream right won 43.4 percent of the vote in the race for France's 577-seat National Assembly. The mainstream left, which has controlled parliament for five years, had 36.1 percent, the Interior Ministry said.
 Seven weeks after le Pen stunned the nation by beating out then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in a first-round presidential vote and qualifying for the run-off, his anti-immigration party scored about 11.3 percent Sunday - down from nearly 15 percent in a 1997 parliamentary contest.
 Le Pen, whose National Front could end up without any seats, said France had &quot;just handed itself over to Jacques Chirac.''
 A record number of voters stayed home, meaning the picture could change after the definitive vote next Sunday, especially if leftists mobilize. Leaders across the political spectrum urged people to vote on June 16, and conservatives were cautious about celebrating.
 A parliamentary majority for the mainstream right would end five years of unwieldy 'cohabitation' in which Chirac has shared power with his leftist rivals, who control the legislature - a situation that has often left the government paralyzed amid partisan bickering.
 Chirac - who won a new five-year term by crushing le Pen in the runoff last month - was forced to appoint Jospin, a Socialist, as prime minister after the left won 1997 legislative elections.
 If he wins a conservative majority in the elections, Chirac will be free to pursue the law-and-order agenda he campaigned on.
 According to the Interior Ministry, the Socialists had 24.1 percent of the vote Sunday, while Chirac's Union for the Presidential Majority, had 33.3 percent. Far-right parties had 12.7 percent and the extreme left had 2.8 percent.
 According to three polling agencies, the mainstream right was projected to have 380 to 446 seats in the new parliament and the Socialist-led left 127 to 192 seats, with no more than two seats - and possibly none at all - for the extreme right.
 In the outgoing parliament, leftists hold 314 seats and rightists 258, while five deputies are unaligned. The extreme right has no seats, but le Pen's National Front typically won about 15 percent of the vote in past national elections.
 In a sign that the far right is losing support in the wake of le Pen's strong showing in the first round of the presidential vote, about 30 races next Sunday will be three-way struggles among left, right and extreme right candidates - far fewer than expected. Five years ago, there were 76 such races.
 The mainstream left Socialists have been floundering since Jospin's surprise defeat at le Pen's hands. Jospin, who had been widely expected to challenge Chirac in the run-off, withdrew from politics after his embarrassing loss, depriving the party of its most influential leader.
 Of more than 40 candidates who won outright Sunday, avoiding the second round by receiving a majority of votes, only two were Socialists. 
 A major loser was the Communist Party, the Socialists' partner in the last government, which scored just 4.9 percent of seats.
 Turnout among France's 41 million voters was about 65 percent, according to the Interior Ministry - a record low for the first round of a legislative race under the Fifth Republic, established in 1958.

TITLE: Costa, Serena Williams Take French Titles
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: PARIS - Albert Costa beat fellow-Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero, 6-1, 6-0, 4-6, 6-3, on Sunday in the French Open final for his first major championship.
 
On Saturday, Serena Williams eclipsed older sister Venus 7-5 6-3 to win the women's final.
 Costa and Ferrero traded the first two games before rain halted play for 25 minutes. When they returned, Costa couldn't miss, and Ferrero was awful, looking nothing like the player who beat Andre Agassi and Marat Safin to reach his first major final.
 With Ferrero out of synch - he complained later about ankle, abdomen and leg injuries - Costa pounced, stepping in from the baseline to whip strokes at severe angles that sent his opponent nearly into the courtside geraniums to retrieve balls.
 Costa ran off 11 straight games, dropping just 16 points in the process, to claim the first two sets in all of 46 minutes. At that juncture, Costa had 13 errors to Ferrero's 26, and 13 winners to Ferrero's five.
 Costa was strong from the baseline, won the point on 81 percent of his trips to the net, and caught Ferrero off-guard with seven drop shots.
 The 11th-seeded Ferrero, who lost to champion Gustavo Kuerten in the semifinals the past two years, was so out of sorts against Costa that he went to the wrong side of the court to start the third set.
 As the match ended on Ferrero's fifth double fault, Costa dropped to a knee, then fell on his back with arms and legs spread, covering himself with clay.
 Relishing the moment, he went into the guest box to kiss his crying parents and his fiancee, Cristina - their wedding is on Friday - and lifted his one-year-old twin daughters over his head. 
 Costa credits the birth of his daughters with getting him going.
 &quot;Before, tennis was 100 percent of my life, and now it is not. Now I have other things,&quot; he said. &quot;Now I have my two little babies that I love a lot. Sometimes when I lose a match, I think, 'OK, I'm going home. I'm going to see my little babies.'&quot;
 The poor standard of the Williams' match and the number of needless errors had both sisters shrieking with frustration throughout the lacklustre contest, but the Williams clan were all smiles after Serena clinched victory to add the French title to her 1999 U.S. Open triumph.
 &quot;I feel special,&quot; Serena, dressed in a spangly black dress and tiara, beamed afterwards. &quot;It has been a while since I won a grand slam.
 &quot;And I think it is great that I won against Venus because it means that we both came away from here with the maximum amount of money and the maximum amount of points.
 &quot;It's really exciting, very exciting and a lot of fun. Obviously I am very, very happy. Especially to have won another grand slam - I didn't want to be a one-hit wonder so I just had to win again.&quot;
 The 20-year-old now boasts one U.S. and one French Open title while Venus has a pair of U.S. and Wimbledon crowns.
 The post match celebrations were elaborate - at one point Venus collected her mother Oracene's camera and joined the press photographers snapping away at her sister - but the match itself was a dour affair and one best forgotten.
 From the very start, it was almost incomprehensible to think the numbers one and two in the world were playing on Center Court.
 The practice session the pair had shared three hours before the start had contained higher calibre tennis as, with the trophy at stake, the pair exchanged staggeringly poor groundstrokes and swapped double-faults on a regular basis.
 Both players only managed to get, on average, just half of their first serves into court.
 Venus made a staggering 55 unforced errors while Serena clubbed even more out of court - 59 in all.
 Neither player displayed any kind of killer instinct, unwilling to punish each other on the Roland Garros clay.
 The intensity and savagery of their earlier rounds was missing. The sun unexpectedly came out, but the sisters simply failed to sparkle.
 &quot;I must say, I did think 'oh my gosh, my dad would be very upset with the way we are playing ... lots of mistakes',&quot; Serena said afterwards.
 
 <i>(AP, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: Age, Experience Give Detroit Winning Edge
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DETROIT - Igor Larionov scored his second goal of the game 14:47 into the third extra period as the weary Red Wings, the NHL's oldest team, outlasted the Hurricanes 3-2 on Saturday night.
 
Larionov and the Wings were looking to push the Hurricanes to the brink of elimination when the teams met in Game 4 at the Raleigh Sports and Entertainment Arena on Monday.
 Larionov's goal came after Detroit tied the game on Brett Hull's deflection of Nicklas Lidstrom's shot with 1:14 left in regulation.
 Jeff O'Neill had given Carolina the lead 7:34 into the third with his seventh goal of the playoffs and sixth in 10 games.
 &quot;We may be old, but I was telling Igor that I'd rather be old and smart than young and dumb,&quot; said Hull, whose goal was the 99th he has scored in the playoffs during his career.
 &quot;Youth and enthusiasm can only take you only so far.&quot;
 Larionov's game-winner, scored on the backhand off an odd-man rush, may have dealt a blow to the psyche of the young and inexperienced Hurricanes side.
 &quot;It's a tough loss, you can't hide it,&quot; Carolina coach Paul Maurice said after the game. &quot;We're not going to go in waving pompoms and say it's all right.&quot;
 While Detroit still needs two more wins to capture the Stanley Cup, Game 3 was crucial for both teams, particularly when it went to multiple overtimes.
 For the older Red Wings, falling behind in the series after playing nearly an hour of overtime might have been very difficult to recover from.
 Instead, the Red Wings have regained home-ice advantage, and the momentum, in the series after the Hurricanes came home encouraged following a split of the first two games at Joe Louis Arena.
 Dominik Hasek gave the Wings even more reason to be confident, as he finished with 41 saves, including 22 in overtime and holding Carolina scoreless for longer than a regulation game.
 The Hurricanes also couldn't have asked for much more from their goaltender, as Arturs Irbe made 50 saves and robbed Steve Yzerman late in the second OT with a diving stop.
 &quot;We went into their building and won the first game in overtime and they came in ours and did the same thing,&quot; Carolina forward Bates Battaglia said. &quot;They bounced back and we'll bounce back.&quot;
 Some of the Red Wings, however, sounded like they already had the critical victory they needed to win the series, and Detroit has history on its side.
 The team winning Game 3 of a 1-1 series has gone on to win the Stanley Cup 20 of 23 times. Pittsburgh in 1991 was the last team to rally from such a deficit to win the cup.
 &quot;I feel bad for the Hurricanes,&quot; Hull said. &quot;All that stuff that was said about them before the series? They're a great team, and they're imbedded in the system their coach wants them to play,&quot; he said
 &quot;You get a team that plays that way and is determined, it's such a tough system to crack. They're a tough, tough opponent,&quot; he added.

TITLE: Inamoto Raises His Game To Sink Russia
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: YOKOHAMA, Japan - Junichi Inamoto couldn't have come up with a better time or place to improve his performance, scoring the only goal as Japan beat Russia 1-0 on Sunday.
 
Japan now has four points in two matches, while Russia has three. Belgium is third with two point and Tunisia is last with one, following Monday's 1-1 tie between the countries.
 Atsushi Yanagisawa made a perfect one-touch pass to Inamoto near the front of the goal in the 51st minute. The midfielder then chipped a right-footed shot over the head of Russian goaltender Ruslan Nigmatullin.
 &quot;Sure, I'm happy to score again,&quot; said Inamoto. &quot;But team results are more important than individual ones.&quot;
 Inamoto scored Japan's second goal in their 2-2 tie with Belgium in Saitama last Tuesday. He scored again late in that match, but it was ruled offside.
 A near-capacity crowd of 66,108 erupted when Inamoto scored and stayed on its feet for the rest of the match.
 &quot;The crowd really pumped us up,&quot; said Inamoto. &quot;It's a privilege to play in front of such a crowd and they give us a lot of confidence.&quot;
 Russia had an excellent chance to tie Japan in the 58th minute. But Vladimir Beschastnykh, who came on as a substitute a minute earlier, sent a shot from close range into the side netting.
 &quot;The individual skills are the problem. We have to score when we have the opportunities like we had,&quot; Russian assistant coach Mikhail Gershkovich said after the game. 
 Hidetoshi Nakata nearly made it 2-0 for Japan in the 71st on a long shot that sailed over the reach of the jumping Nigmatullin and bounced off the crossbar.
 Inamoto's performance didn't save his place at English club Arsenal. Inamoto was released on a free transfer by the English champion on Monday, a spokesperson said.
 In the final group matches Friday, Japan takes on Tunisia while Belgium plays Russia. Both Japan and Russia need just a draw to guarantee a second-round place.
 <strong>
Belgium 1, Tunisia 1. </strong>The Tunisians placed a dent in Belgium's World Cup hopes Monday, holding it to a tie as Raouf Bouzaiene's 17th-minute free kick negated Marc Wilmots' opening goal.
 
Bouzaiene curled in a free kick from 20 meters with a sweet left-footed effort that flew over the wall and evaded Gaert de Vlieger's dive before hitting the left corner of the net.
 Belgium had gone ahead four minutes earlier when captain Wilmots fired home his second goal of the tournament. After a header down by Branko Strupar came to the front of the net, Wilmots sent it home with his right foot.
 Belgium now must beat Russia in its last group match on Friday. Tunisia could advance if it beats Japan by two goals in its first-round finale.
 
 <strong>
Portugal 4, Poland 0. </strong>Pauleta scored the second hat-trick of this year's World Cup, as Portugal stayed alive in the tournament by eliminating Poland on Monday night.
 
In the first half, Pauleta put in a low shot in the 14th minute, beating Poland goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek. The keeper got a touch on the ball, but couldn't keep it out of the net after Joao Pinto provided the cross.
 The second goal came in the 65th minute as Luis Figo, the FIFA player of the year, sent in a cross for the sliding Pauleta. The forward made it three in the 77th minute, beating Poland defender Tomasz Waldoch and shooting the ball off Dudek's foot. He nearly added another in the 75th, but after beating Dudek he shot into the side of the net.
 Rui Costa made it 4-0 in the 87th minute. He should have added a fifth in the 90th, but his soft shot was stopped on the line.
 
 <strong>
U.S. 1, South Korea 1. </strong>Clint Mathis scored a 24th-minute goal in his return to the lineup, and Brad Friedel made several brilliant saves, including the stop on a penalty kick.
 
But South Korea tied it in the 78th minute when second-half substitute Ahn Jung-hwan outjumped defender Jeff Agoos to head in a pass from Lee Eul-yong.
 South Korea, sky high after its 2-0 opening-game upset of Poland, dominated most of the game, and had a chance to win it in the 89th minute. Choi Soo-yong, with an open net, chipped the ball over the crossbar.
 Mathis, who didn't play in the opener, took a pass from John O'Brien, who had run the ball up from midfield, trapped it with his right foot and kicked it with his left, slotting it past goalkeeper Lee Woon-jae from 11 meters.
 Friedel made the first penalty stop of this year's tournament in the 40th minute. Agoos was called for dumping Hwang Sun-hong in the penalty area, when U.S. defender Eddie Pope tumbled into the players.
 Friedel dived to his right and parried Lee Eul-yong's penalty kick away. The rebound went wide.
 <strong>
Costa Rica 1, Turkey 1. </strong>Costa Rica got a late tying goal off a goalmouth scramble on Sunday, keeping the North and Central American and Caribbean region undefeated in the World Cup.
 
Winston Parks slammed Steven Bryce's cross into the top of the net from 6 meters in the 86th minute Sunday night for a 1-1 tie against Turkey, putting the Ticos in good position for a second-round berth.
 Parks had a chance to score again in injury time, dribbling around the goalkeeper on a rush upfield, but he missed the open net with a shot that sailed on him.
 Costa Rica closes Thursday against Brazil and can be overtaken only if it loses, Turkey beats China and the Turks make up a three-goal difference. 
 Turkey went ahead when Hasan Sas played a long ball to Emre Belozoglu, who trapped it. His first shot was blocked by Gilberto Martinez, but he took the rebound, spun around Walter Centeno and beat goalkeeper Erick Lonnis to the short side.
 There was a scuffle in front of the benches in the 90th minute, when Belozoglu pushed Costa Rican team physician Dr. Willy Galvez, who was standing near the sideline. Belozoglu was given a yellow card.
 
 <strong>
Mexico 2, Ecuador 1. </strong>Jared Borgetti and Gerardo Torrado scored as Mexico rallied to beat Ecuador on Sunday.
 
Agustin Delgado scored Ecuador's first goal in the tournament in the fifth minute, heading home a cross from Ulises de la Cruz.
 Borgetti tied the match in the 28th minute, cutting to the goal and one-touching Ramon Morales' pass. The shot sent goalkeeper Jose Cevallos sprawling.
 The Mexicans continued pressing in the second half, looking for Cuauhtemoc Blanco and Torrado.
 Torrado scored in the 57th, putting home a soft pass from Joahan Rodriguez from just outside the box.
 Mexico coach Javier Aguirre celebrated the victory, but cautioned the stiffest test was yet to come.
 &quot;We haven't won anything yet,&quot; he said. &quot;We're off to a good start, but next comes Italy.&quot;

TITLE: Game 3 Win Keeps Lakers On Course for Clean Sweep
AUTHOR: By Chris Sheridan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey - Robert Horry hit another clutch three-pointer to put Los Angeles ahead for good, Kobe Bryant had his first brilliant offensive game of the series and Shaquille O'Neal scored 35 points Sunday night, as the Lakers beat the Nets 106-103 in Game 3 of the NBA Finals to move within one victory of their third-straight championship.
 
This was the closest and most entertaining game of the Finals, and in the end the Lakers showed the stuff champions are made of.
 When it came time for clutch baskets, big blocked shots and key free throws, the two-time defending champs had enough of each to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series No team has ever recovered from such a deficit to win an NBA playoff series.
 Kidd was outstanding again, leading the Nets on a 19-5 run that gave them their biggest lead of the series - 86-80 early in the fourth.
 But it was Bryant who made the bigger plays down the stretch - none more important than his three-meter jumper over Kidd with 0:19.1 left for a 104-100 lead. Bryant was double-teamed on the shot, and Kidd even got a hand on the ball before Bryant broke free, turned to his left and hit the bucket.
 Kidd knocked down a three-pointer with 0:05.2 to cut it to 104-103, and the Nets fouled Rick Fox with 0:03.5 left. He made both, and Kidd was off-target after dribbling upcourt and launching a 9-meter shot just before the buzzer.
 Bryant had 36 points, shooting 14-for-23 and scoring a dozen points in the fourth quarter.
 &quot;I wanted it. I wanted it, it's game time. I wasn't going to let them take it from me,&quot; Bryant said. &quot;We're battle-tested. That's what I kept telling the fellas in timeouts.&quot;
 O'Neal was 12-for-19 from the field with 11 rebounds, Derek Fisher scored 12 points while going 3-for-3 from three-point range and Horry and Fox came through at the end.
 Lakers coach Phil Jackson tied Pat Riley for the most career playoff victories - 155. It took Jackson only 209 games to tie the mark, a winning percentage of .741 compared to Riley's.608.
 Kidd had 30 points and Kenyon Martin scored 26 for the Nets, who knew that their best chance for keeping their title hopes alive rested on them winning this game.
 &quot;If we can lock this one in, it makes for a very small chance that they could win it,&quot; Jackson said beforehand.
 Los Angeles led 52-46 at halftime and had its advantage back into double digits after Bryant hit a three-pointer with 8:17 left in the third. The Lakers had little difficulty maintaining that margin for the next few minutes, with Bryant putting several nifty moves on Kerry Kittles leading to a short jumper for a 73-63 lead.
 That's when Kidd began taking over, scoring seven points over the next 1:13, then hit a jumper with 0:51 left, before feeding Jefferson for a dunk. Martin scored on a drive with 0:01.8 left, tying the game at 78-all.
 Kidd opened the fourth quarter with a jumper, then pulled off his sweetest move of the night - starting and stopping and darting through four defenders for a floater. Jefferson followed with a fast-break layup off a pass from Kidd to put the Nets up 86-80, completing the 19-5 run.
 The Nets maintained the lead - they were up as much as 94-87 - until Horry hit a three-pointer off a pass from O'Neal with 3:03 left.
 Kidd fired up a quick three-point attempt that missed, and Bryant knocked down a 7-meter shot with 0:01 on the shot clock for a 100-96 lead with 2:17 remaining.
 Kidd answered with a jumper, but O'Neal banked in a 3-meter shot from a tough angle to restore a four-point lead, 102-98 with 0:58 left.
 Bryant missed two from the line with 0:42 left - it might have been his only negative moment of the night - and Keith Van Horn hit a corner jumper to cut it to 104-102.
 That's when Bryant hit the crucial basket - one that was so tough to make and so deflating for New Jersey that it may just have won the series for the Lakers.