SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #777 (43), Friday, June 14, 2002
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TITLE: Putin: Russia Must Assert Itself
AUTHOR: By Burt Herman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia must learn to assert its position in the world - especially in the economic sphere - even as it seeks reconciliation with old foes, President Vladimir Putin said at an event commemorating the Day of the Passage of the Declaration of State Sovereignty.
"For the first time in many decades - if not centuries - we are not in conflict, not in confrontation with either the whole world or individual countries," Putin told about 900 guests invited to the Kremlin on Wednesday for a luncheon marking the national holiday commonly known as "Independence Day."
"But we still have to learn to assert our positions and win in the heavy competition that reigns in the world, and first of all in world markets," Putin said. "We are building a democratic society and want to be active members of a multi-polar democratic world order."
Putin's strong emphasis on boosting the country's economy has borne fruit in the recent recognition by both the United States and the European Union of Russia's status as a market economy. However, Putin still has yet to realize his main goal: entry into the World Trade Organization.
During a summit last month, U.S. President George W. Bush supported Russia's entry to the WTO, but said that the rules should not be bent for Moscow's application.
Putin stressed Wednesday that Russia isn't demanding any "special way" in the international sphere, but that "it claims for itself a place in the world and an attitude toward it that corresponds to our rich history and creative potential of our people and the huge size of our great country."
The holiday Wednesday marks the 1990 passage of a sovereignty declaration by the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia - a symbolic move ahead of the dissolution of the Soviet Union that was seen as important signal of dissatisfaction with the central Soviet government.
Putin and the media refer to to the holiday simply as Russia Day. But the holiday is confusing for many Russians and often mistakenly referred to as Independence Day, and polls show that almost a third of those asked feel that the day has no significance.
In Moscow, authorities sought to boost awareness of the holiday by staging concerts in parks across the city, and Russian tricolor flags have been flown from streetlamps and buildings. In view of last weekend's soccer-related violence in the capital, police deployed more than 5,000 officers, and also placed Interior Ministry troops on reserve, Itar-Tass reported.
Part of the reason the holiday hasn't been more heartily embraced are the economic difficulties felt by many after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Putin acknowledged that the past years have been a "heavy test for the majority of people."
"The time is ripe to address these issues. The reforms we have struggled through must start bearing fruit at last, working for society and for the country's citizens," he said, while noting positive developments such as market institutions and democracy.
The guests at the Kremlin included former President Boris Yeltsin and Russian Patriarch Alexei II.
Yeltsin said, in an interview aired on state-owned RTR television on Wednesday, that he had no regrets about his role in the breakup of the Soviet Union, saying it was necessary for the preservation of Russia.
"Every year I am more and more convinced that this was our only ... chance to keep Russia whole," he said of the sovereignty declaration in 1990. "It put Russia on another, democratic, market-oriented path of development."
Yeltsin expressed disappointment that the holiday is regarded by most Russians as just a day off from work.
"This is the birthday of Russia," he said. "As the birthday girl, she should be treated kindly."
TITLE: Moscow To Press Ahead With Soccer Broadcasts
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Moscow city authorities have decided to go ahead with outdoor broadcasts of Russia's make-or-break World Cup match on Friday, but they banned alcohol sales near the big screens and promised to deploy a police force capable of preventing a repetition of the rampage after Russia's 1-0 loss to Japan.
At least 2,000 police officers and elite OMON troops will be deployed near the giant screens on Manezhnaya Ploshchad, Novy Arbat, Moskvoretskaya Naberezhnaya and Poklonnaya Gora, a city police spokesperson said Thursday.
Russia must beat Belgium to advance to the next round. The Belgian Embassy has asked for extra police protection on Friday, Interfax reported.
The area around Manezhnaya Ploshchad turned into a battlefield on Sunday, as some 8,000 fans, many of them inebriated, started fighting police and each other, smashing windows and setting cars ablaze. The riot claimed the lives of one teenager and one of the 120 police officers resisting the crowd.
City Hall, and especially city police ,came under heavy criticism for failing to cope with the crowd. Interior Ministry officials advised against another broadcast, but city officials said they had learned their lesson.
"We will not give in to hooligans and louts," Mayor Yury Luzhkov said Tuesday. "Showing soccer matches is one of the signs of contemporary civilized countries. The match will be broadcast on big screens in the city."
Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasilyev said Manezhnaya Ploshchad is not suitable for a live broadcast, because the area cannot be closed off and thus it will be difficult to manage the crowd. "There might be a need to do a search for vodka and glass bottles," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
The broadcast of the match will start at 10:20 a.m. and there will be no commercials an hour before or after the game or at halftime "in order not to provoke the fans," said Alexander Menchuk of the city department for street advertising, information and decoration.
Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin has said Sunday's riot was inspired by a commercial featuring a teenager smashing a car with a baseball bat.
No alcohol or soft drinks in glass bottles will be available for sale near the screens, Interfax reported, citing an official in the city's consumer market and services department. It was not clear how large an area the ban affects. The ban will be in force from 8 a.m. until fans disperse.
Police are holding 12 suspects in connection with Sunday's riot. Two have been charged with participating in a mass disturbance, two more were charged with hooliganism and four will face similar charges in the coming days, a statement issued by the city prosecutor's office said.
Also Thursday, City Duma deputies shared some details of a recent meeting with law-enforcement officials. Pronin told the deputies that he ordered his officers not to use force against the soccer fans, Yevgeny Bunimovich, a member of the City Duma, said at a news conference. "Pronin told us that his priority was to avoid casualties," Bunimovich said.
Moscow Chief Prosecutor Mikhail Avdyukov said phone conversations of some instigators of the riot had been intercepted ahead of time. "They invited each other to cause a disturbance, but prosecutors did not qualify it as organizing a riot," Bunimovich said.
Staff writer Nabi Abdullaev contributed to this report.
TITLE: Italians Wash Russian Laundry
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - More and more names have been linked to an Italian-led operation against money laundering by Russian organized-crime groups, which led to more than 50 arrests in Europe and Canada earlier this week, giving some indication of how sprawling a network investigators have hit upon.
"We got our hands on an international organization with a Russian base that has links to European organized crime and, in order to reinvest its money, used a complex money-laundering web," Reuters quoted Francesco Gratteri, head of the special police department that coordinates international operations, as saying after Monday's arrests.
"The profits of drug trafficking, arms trade and human trafficking are being reinvested in legal businesses in various countries," Gratteri said, adding that export-import companies, clothing, cosmetics and household goods businesses were used to front the activities, often with the help of forged bills and banking orders.
The trans-Atlantic sweep, code-named Operation Spiderweb, flowed out of the U.S. money-laundering investigation into the Bank of New York. Italian officials said some of the money had been funneled through accounts of the Benex Corp., which was also a focus of the U.S. investigation, and related accounts at BoNY.
About half of the detained suspects were Russian nationals. But while this week's leg of the operation involved investigators from Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany and the FBI, Russian officials seemed to be unaware of their colleagues' activities.
"There is no official information on this for now," Alexei Orlov, chief of the Interior Ministry's economic crimes department, told reporters Thursday. Orlov added that he had not heard of arrests being made "in such numbers."
This week's arrests were made at the request of prosecutors from Bologna, Italy. Switerzland's Tribune de Geneve newspaper reported Wednesday that the prosecutors had issued a list of 150 people suspected of ties to organized crime and money-laundering and called for 101 of them to be detained for questioning. Gratteri said Monday that more arrests were expected to follow, mostly in Europe.
During the crackdown, police conducted hundreds of searches across Europe, seized luxury properties, cars and goods to the tune of 100 million euros ($94.3 million) and ordered a freeze on 300 bank accounts used to recycle money from alleged illegal activities, news reports said. Two of the bank accounts alone held about four million euros, Reuters quoted police as saying.
Italian investigators said Wednesday that they had focused their investigation into Russian organized-crime activity near the Italian seaside resort Rimini, where Russian businesspeople became particularly active after the Soviet collapse, buying consumer goods for the Russian market, The New York Times reported.
Two companies at the heart of the probe are a Rimini marketing company called Prima, controlled by Russian émigré Oleg Berezovsky, and Paris-based Kama Trade, controlled by Berezovsky's brother Igor. The two men are not related to self-exiled businessperson Boris Berezovsky, his spokesperson Vladimir Voronkov said by telephone from London.
Igor Berezovsky was detained in the western French city of Rennes, according to The New York Times. France's Le Monde newspaper reported that local officials had been watching Kama Trade since 1996, when it was red-flagged by the French anti-laundering organization Tracfin. A preliminary investigation into Kama Trade's activities revealed that it worked with six companies specializing in the transport of raw materials, such as mineral resources or oil, all of which showed signs of "unorthodox" financial records, such as huge, inexplicable jumps in turnover.
The investigators said that another Russian detained in France,
Andreas Marissov, 38, an associate of the Berezovskys, is suspected of supplying funds and other support to rebel groups in Chechnya, The New York Times reported.
One of the most prominent names reported to be among the 101 people against whom Bologna prosecutors have issued arrest warrants is that of Gregory Loutschansky, head of the Vienna-based company Nordex. The Swissinfo information service, a unit of the Swiss Broadcasting Corp., reported Thursday that authorities believe Loutschansky to be a leading figure within the organized-crime network. Swissinfo also said that the 57-year-old emigre from Uzbekistan was previously sentenced to seven years behind bars in Lithuania for theft of state property.
The New York Times cited police as saying that a significant figure in the early stages of the investigation was Vladimir Vassarenko, 34, who had established himself in the early 1990s in Rimini, where he organized shopping tours for Russian businesspeople intent on buying Italian-made consumer goods for resale in Russia.
Along with a business associate, Simon Bakhchinyan, Vassarenko is suspected of having broadened his activities to include smuggling artworks and illegal immigrants, including young East European women going to work in the West as prostitutes, the newspaper said.
Of the detained, about 20 are being held in Italy, 12 in France and Monte Carlo, and the remainder in several other European countries and Canada, The New York Times said.
Italy's la Reppublica and other European newspapers noted that many of the Italians who were arrested had Russian wives. La Reppublica said that one of the detained was Gaudenzio Bagnollini, 50, a Rimini businesspeople thought to be the main contact of Russian mafia there, who worked together with his wife Liana Kharitonova, 32.
It was not clear exactly how much money had been laundered through the criminal network, but various reports cited investigators saying that the sum was in the billions of dollars.
Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov met Thursday with Interpol chief Ronald Noble to discuss money-laundering, ways to cut off financing of international terrorist organizations and closing the so-called "northern route" used by drug traffickers to ship heroin from Afghanistan. However, no mention was made of this week's Italian-led operation.
Russia has been trying desperately to shake off its reputation as an easy avenue for money-laundering. Last year, Russia was ranked 81st out of 91 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.
Earlier this year, a national financial intelligence unit known as the Financial Monitoring Committee was created in an effort to solve the problem. This month the committee was voted into the anti-money-laundering organization Egmont.
But the big test will come next week, when Russia hopes to be taken off the OECD's Financial Action Task Force blacklist of countries that do not have adequate legislation or law enforcement to combat money laundering.
TITLE: New Limbs Give Cause For Hope to Amputees
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: When Sergei Bolshakov tried on a new prosthetic leg on Thursday at St. Petersburg Albrecht Institute of Prosthetics (SPIP), it made him feel like playing soccer for the first time since he was seven, when he lost his left leg to a train.
The accident occurred in 1995, when Bolshakov was on his way to go skating and tried to cross a railway ahead of the train, while still wearing his skates.
Sergei, now 14, lost the leg below his knee, and had to go through the yearly process of moving to a new prosthetic limb to match his growth. While he accepted that the prosthetic would always be part of his life, he never got over the loss of flexibility and motion it caused.
The new, high-tech prosthesis was made by an American company, Ohio Willow Wood Co., and arrived in St. Petersburg as a part of a program established by a $33,000 grant that the Civilian Research and Development Foundation, a U.S. government agency, recently gave to the Russian amputee clinic for prosthetic research on lower-limb injuries.
"This research will allow us to work on providing the most simple and cost-effective solutions for combining high-tech U.S. components with the high skill of Russian surgeons," said Mark Pitkin, a Ph.D. from Tafts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachussetts.
According to Pitkin, U.S.-produced lower-limb prosthetic devices are the most advanced technically, while Russian surgeons are more qualified in performing amputations, largely as a result of the large number of cases generated by the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
"Before this year, Russia was never on the list for American grants in this sphere, because this country never had a lack of orthopedic devices. However, as it turned out, Russia still needs to develop better technologies for prosthesis," Pitkin said.
But the U.S.-Russian Prosthetic Rehabilitation Bridge Program, which unites SPIP and Tuft University, was actually founded in 1998.
What's new is the funding, for the program has already been combining U.S. high-tech components with the skills of Russian surgeons and prosthetics experts to provide effective treatment for victims of land mines. The more than 20 prosthetic devices previously received by Russian patients - mostly veterans of the war in Afghanistan - were provided more on the basis of philanthropy on the part of American companies than on a mutually beneficial partnership.
"While we are interested in the new devices, our American colleagues are interested in our experience and our knowledge from working on these patients," said Konstantin Shcherbin, the vice-director of Albrecht Institute. "This program is in the form of an exchange,"
The project's grant will finance about 20 new 'Free Flow' prosthetic-leg devices for Russian patients, as well as paying for a group of Russian surgeons to travel to the U.S. to share their experience with their U.S. counterparts.
TITLE: Korea Drug-Pushers Busted
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIVOSTOK, Far East - Federal Security Service officials revealed Thursday that two North Korean agents were convicted and imprisoned in Russia in the 1990s for allegedly trying to sell a large amount of heroin to fund an upgrade of the North Korean Army.
The account of the 1994 sting operation appears in "Honor and Loyalty," a book edited by Rear Admiral Nikolai Sotskov, the chief of the Pacific Fleet branch of the FSB.
Copies of the book were distributed to the media Thursday.
In 1994, a North Korean construction worker, identified as Tsoi Jong Su, offered a Russian agent 2,000 kilograms of heroin for sale.
Tsoi and his aide, Kim In Sol, were arrested and sentenced to nine and eight years of prison respectively, said Natalia Stupnitskaya, a spokesperson for the security agency.
The agents were sent home after serving more than half of their terms, she said.
TITLE: Alternative-Sexuality Reps Stress Awareness
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While organizations representing Russia's gays, lesbians and bisexuals say that the level of social awareness about their issues is on the rise, questions about their legal status, the levels of social acceptance and integration still remain.
These were a few of the issues that were discussed last weekend at a meeting organized by St. Petersburg's Association HS - Gay-Straight Alliance at the conference room of the Yubileiny Stadium.
A number of local associations were represented at the event, as were European organizations.
Discussion at the event, officially titled "Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals: Legislation, Culture and Society", centered around the idea that, although the 1990s had seen a general climate of liberalization with regard to sexual practices, a large portion of the Russian population remains misinformed and, often, intolerant of alternative sexual orientations.
Until then-President Boris Yeltsin repealed Article 121 of the Criminal Code in May 1993, sodomy, referred to as muzhelozhstvo - a man lying with another man - was punishable by up to five years in prison.
In May of 2002, however, a group of lawmakers introduced an amendment aimed at recriminalizing sodomy, saying that they had begun a campaign to restore traditional morals in Russia. The draft law, although it was viewed by most State Duma deputies and analysts as a publicity stunt, sparked an outcry among human-rights groups and the homosexual community.
The local associations present at the meeting therefore described their main goal as making Russian society better informed about gay, lesbian and bisexual issues.
"Our aim is to spread information about homosexuality in order to fight ignorance and intolerance," said HS President Ignat Fialkovsky.
A number of participants at the forum said that this lack of comprehension still created barriers with their own families.
"The private sphere plays a very important role in Russia, therefore it is crucial to provide families with information about homosexuality," said Nadezhda Nartova, a psychologist who works with the St. Petersburg lesbian organization Labris. "Private life is also traditionally discussed at the work-place, so it is important that people have access to such information."
According to HS information, anywhere from 10 to 22 percent of Russians are homosexual, but information and statistics are scarce, and little research on homosexual issues has been done here.
"There has been, as far as I am aware, no research work done on lesbianism. At any rate, nothing has been published," Nartova said.
While sexual orientation occupies a place in most human-rights discussions in European societies, Russian-based branches of international human-right groups have yet to introduce sexual-minorities issues to their agenda. Part of the reason for this is the simple fact that the majority of these local organizations were established relatively recently.
"We have so many other problems in Russia that we have yet to really address gay and lesbian issues," said Yury Vdovin, co-chairperson of the St. Petersburg branch of Citizen's Watch.
The negative effects of the lack of information and social recognition is particularly strong with regard to lesbianism, which, for many, remains a shadowy notion.
"Many people in Russia still understand the word 'homosexuality' as being exclusively male homosexuality," said Fialkovsky. "Russian society is still very patriarchal and, as such, discriminates against women. Imagine how hard life can get for lesbians," he added.
A portion of the Russian population, men as well as women, are still unaware even of the existence of lesbianism.
"Some women can actually live three or four years without realizing that they are not the only lesbians on the planet," said Marina Balakina, the president of Labris, which is currently working on a Web site to foster more understanding and tolerance of lesbian lifestyles and culture. "They phone and are surprised to find out that there are other women who feel the same way."
For Balakina, however, the fact that lesbians are less visible than gays in Russia boils down to economics. Because the salary gap in Russia is so wide, in men's favor, homosexual men have more money to spend than women, one of the explanations for the existent of a fairly well-developed gay scene relative to that available to lesbians in St. Petersburg. Balakina says only around 10 percent of her lesbian acquaintances in the city have what could be considered solid incomes.
"The owners of gay clubs are not necessarily gay themselves. Gay culture is also a market," she said. She also said that homosexual women tend to focus more on family and home than homosexual men and, therefore, spend less time in bars and clubs.
Participants at the meeting said that the lack of attention that homosexual issues receive has translated into a lack of legislative attention to the questions as well. Sexual minorities, therefore, do not benefit from any of the legal status or protection - such as the right to marry and adopt or have children - that they enjoy in many Western countries.
"Unlike heterosexual couples, same-sex couples in Russia are granted neither legal status nor assistance in finding a flat, parental rights and child leave for the partner of a parent," said Nartova.
Pierre Noel, a member of the executive board of the Brussels branch of the International Lesbian and Gay Association and also a Russian translator and specialist, says certain characteristics of the Russian mindset also hinder the acceptance of sexual minorities.
"Russians are rather ignorant not just about homosexuality, but about sex in general," he said, referring to the absence of real public debate related to sex under the Soviet regime. "The return of religion in Russia, and the fact that the Orthodox Church is hostile to homosexuality, also fosters homophobia," he said.
TITLE: Kalugin Being Tried In Absentia
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Moscow court on Thursday opened the trial in absentia of Oleg Kalugin, an former KGB general now living in self-imposed exile in the United States, just weeks before such trials without defendants present will outlawed by new legislation.
Kalugin, who ran the KGB's foreign-counterintelligence department from 1973 to 1980, has refused to return to Russia for the trial, describing it as a farce and an act of revenge by his former colleagues. The new Criminal Procedural Code, which takes effect in July, does not allow for trials in absentia.
The Moscow City Court dismissed complaints on Thursday from Kalugin's lawyer, Yevgeny Baru, against trying his client in absentia, and adjourned the court hearings until Monday, Itar-Tass and Interfax reported.
Baru, who was appointed by the court to defend Kalugin, told TVS television that he asked the court to give him a chance to contact his client.
"If he needs a lawyer, I hope that he will say that," Baru said. "If not, I'll be unable to defend him."
The trial is closed to the public. Court officials said all information concerning the case is classified, and they refused to discuss any details.
Kalugin reportedly faces charges of high treason, based on his testimony against U.S. Army Reserve Colonel George Trofimoff, who was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and sentenced to life in prison last year.
Itar-Tass has reported that the charges also dealt with a book that Kalugin wrote, which allegedly helped U.S. security officials track down the former spy's sources.
Kalugin, who has lived in the United States since the mid-1990s, has openly criticized his former KGB colleagues, while at the same time parlaying his notoriety into a source of income.
He has worked as a consultant for different U.S. companies, created a high-tech, interactive spy game in partnership with the late William Colby, the former head of the CIA, and even conducted espionage tours around Washington with a former American spy.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Good News, Bad News
Legislative Assembly Speaker Sergei Tarasov said Thursday that he thought St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev was a good bet to occupy high office once his term expires, Interfax reported.
While Tarasov said that he couldn't say when he thought this might happen, he does believe that Yakovlev will remain as governor through the 300th anniversary, the news agency said.
Interfax also quoted Tarasov as saying that he agrees with comments made over the weekend by President Vladimir Putin that Yakovlev's administration had mishandled funds for projects. The Web site NEWSpb.ru quoted Tarasov as saying that there was no way that subway repair would be completed for the celebrations, and that the Ring Road project would not be finished until 2005 at the earliest.
Smolny had earlier said both would be finished for the 300th anniversary.
Chechnya Violence
VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia (AP) - Chechen rebels attacked a helicopter landing pad in southern Chechnya, killing one Russian soldier and wounding five more, an official in the Moscow-appointed Chechen administration said Thursday.
The attack in the town of Vedeno on Wednesday occurred before an Mi-8 helicopter was due to land with Russian television crews, the Interfax reported, citing the chief military commandant's office in Chechnya.
Eight soldiers were killed and 13 wounded in attacks over the previous 24 hours, the Chechen-administration official said, on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, federal forces killed 12 rebels during an operation to destroy a rebel base near the village of Tangi in the southwestern Urus-Martan region, Colonel Ilya Shabalkin, a spokesperson for Chechnya's Security Department, said Thursday, Interfax reported.
"Foreigners Go Home"
MOSCOW (AP) - Nationalist party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky marked the country's sovereignty holiday Wednesday by telling foreigners they don't belong in Russia.
"We must not keep uninvited guests. The Russian people have a right to be the master of their own country," he told a rally marking the holiday in the center of Moscow, Interfax reported.
"If you Asians and Africans are dying of hunger, Russia will take you, but we have the right to ask you to behave properly," Zhirinovsky, a prominent lawmaker, was quoted as saying. "You have seen how people live in a civilized country. Now go home, build more schools and hospitals and have one or two children, but no more."
Anti-Semitic Sign
MOSCOW (AP) - Explosives experts rushed to investigate what looked like a bomb attached to an anti-Semitic sign Wednesday, but determined it was a fake.
The sign on a Moscow highway carried the same epithet as a sign that caused an explosion last month when a passer-by attempted to remove it.
Police and security agents cordoned off the area after being tipped off by a driver who saw the red sign with black letters reading "Death to Yids."
Using a robot and a sniffer dog, the explosives team examined and dismantled a package attached to the sign. There was no bomb inside.
TITLE: Moscow's Retailers To Set Up Shop in Regions
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Interest in quality real estate space is growing in Russian cities with a population of more than 1 million, but incomes will have to rise before regional capitals enjoy the boom that Moscow and St. Petersburg are experiencing.
Natalia Oreshina, head of retail at Stiles & Riabokobylko, the Moscow office of Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker, said the capital's retailers are eyeing the regions' potential for when the Moscow market becomes saturated.
"The big retailers in Moscow such as IKEA, Ramstore and Sedmoi Kontinent all have plans to go to the regions," she said. "They will have to expand outside Moscow to expand their sales."
The retailers, who have watched sales blossom after professionally run shopping centers sprang up in the capital, are planning to make their moves in the next year or so. And the regional administrations and business leaders are eager to welcome the investment that the commercial real estate market in their cities would represent, she said.
IKEA Russia chief Lennart Dahlgren confirmed that the furniture retailer intends to move into the regions, with the first opening possible as soon as 2005.
"We have chosen to have a closer look at the cities with more than 1 million inhabitants," he said in a telephone interview. "We want to talk to city authorities about good sites for IKEA stores."
The 13 regional cities with a population of more than 1 million are Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Omsk, Chelyabinsk, Kazan, Perm, Ufa, Rostov-na-Donu, Volgograd, Krasnoyarsk and Saratov.
"We want to open our first building in St. Petersburg in 2004 and 2005 and, after that, we could start in any of those cities that we are looking at," he said.
Which city is first and when the first store opens will depend upon the degree of cooperation of the city authorities, Dahlgren said.
Asked if incomes might be too low in the regions, he said IKEA aims to provide goods for the mass market.
"We have a mission to go to all major cities in Russia," he said. "We have to be early in the market, and we've decided to be all over Russia. If our stores in Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod or Samara don't make a profit in the first years, it will come."
Vyacheslav Ivanov, head of franchising for Rosinter Restaurants, which operates a number of eateries including Patio Pizza, American Bar & Grill and the Rostik's fried chicken fast-food chain, said Rosinter is considering opening outlets in Ufa, Samara, Kazan and Yekaterinburg this year.
"These are cities that are [net] contributors to the federal budget and enjoy a higher standard of living than most," he said.
"A middle class is forming in these cities, just like in Moscow," he added. "These are people who travel often and in Moscow they have seen the sort of services, shops and restaurants here."
Rosinter opened three restaurants in Novosibirsk three years ago and is operating one in Omsk under a partnership. Although some 40 of the chain's 47 restaurants are in Moscow, in the next five to 10 years the majority of outlets could be in the regions, Ivanov said.
But not only Moscow is looking into the hinterland for opportunities.
Uralbusinessconsulting reported last week that St. Petersburg-based discount retailer Pyatyorochka is conducting talks on building a shopping center in Yekaterinburg. And Spar supermarkets last month entered Nizhny Novgorod under a franchise from Spar International, the world's largest retail food chain.
Stiles & Riabokobylko's Oreshina has analyzed the markets in Yekaterinburg, Rostov-na-Donu and Novosibirsk, which are the capitals of the Urals, Southern and Siberian federal districts respectively. Those cities' real-estate markets are similar to Moscow's a decade ago.
Other cities in line to develop are Nizhny Novgorod, the capital of the Volga federal district, Sochi, Kaliningrad, Samara, Chelyabinsk and other cities with populations of more than 1 million, she said.
Top retail space fetches only $500 to $600 per square meter per year, well below Moscow's equivalents, which earn up to $3,000 per square meter, she said.
While class-A Moscow office space brings in $500 per square meter per year, in regional cities, rental rates for top space are only about $250 per square meter per year. There is little incentive for the rentals to rise, because there is a huge supply of low-quality space at cheap prices, she added.
Most of the regional capitals have two or three prestigious GUM and TsUM stores in prime locations, but these cannot compare with modern shopping outlets. Many consumers buy their goods from small stalls in trading houses called yarmakas.
"In Rostov, I saw makeup sold next to videos and construction materials," said Elizabeth Drozdetskaya, valuation consultant with Stiles & Riabokobylko.
Incomes of between 5,000 rubles ($150) and 10,000 rubles per month are considered middle class in those cities, where the average monthly income is perhaps 2,000 rubles - meaning that a garment costing 1,000 rubles is considered expensive, Oreshina said.
Nevertheless, the top 20 to 25 percent of the cities' populations have incomes that retailers could target. In Rostov-na-Donu, the wealthiest of the cities Oreshina visited, new apartments at $1,500 per square meter, a price comparable with those in Moscow, were being snapped up.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Crude Exports Up 25%
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian crude exports soared 25 percent year-on-year in January to April, customs data showed Tuesday, confirming once again that the world's second-largest oil exporter has abandoned its deal with OPEC to curb supplies.
CIS customs data showed that crude-oil exports to Western and Central Europe rose between January and April to 2.84 million barrels per day, from 2.66 million bpd in the same period of 2001. In addition, CIS deliveries jumped in the first four months of 2002 to 662,000 bpd from 158,000 bpd in January-April 2001.
Total crude exports inside and outside the CIS rose 25 percent to 3.51 million barrels per day from 2.81 million bpd between January and April 2001.
Iraq's Oil Favorite
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Iraq has again favored Russian oil companies in signing oil-export contracts, despite an April threat to reduce trade with Russian interests if Moscow supported a revision to United Nations sanctions on Baghdad.
Russian firms have been granted the largest share of Iraqi oil-export contracts awarded in the first week of the new six-month phase of the UN oil-for-food program, diplomatic sources said on Wednesday.
Four Russian companies have signed deals approved for 10.5 million barrels of Iraqi crude, the figures showed. Iraq also continued its practice of signing oil contracts with little-known oil firms, such as the following Russian companies: CJSC Interstate Oil Co. Souyzneftegaz (3 million barrels of Basrah Light and 2 million barrels of Kirkuk) and Rosneftegzexport (2 million barrels Basrah Light and 500,000 barrels Kirkuk).
TITLE: Death of the 'Dapper Don' the End of an Era
AUTHOR: By Jerry Capeci and Gene Mustain
TEXT: JOHN Gotti was a lousy crime boss. But he played a great gangster. As the head of the Gambino crime family, he did just about everything wrong. But in the role of mobster, he was almost perfect - perfect in the sense that he lived up to everyone's expectations of what a gangster is, particularly a man of the Mafia.
Our expectations are formed mainly by gangster movies and the screenwriter's need to create memorable, maybe even likable, villains. Gotti seemed right off the big screen. He looked like a gangster. He talked like one. He did things we imagine gangsters do.
But Gotti's attraction to the limelight was a disaster, job-wise. He was supposed to be the leader of a secret society, yet he enjoyed his notoriety too much. He made himself a target. He taunted the authorities in ways that ensured that they would try to bring him down. They finally succeeded in 1992, when he lost a case based heavily on his own tape-recorded words, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Because of him, almost all of the Gambino crime family's 21 crew leaders became targets and also went to prison. Because of him, the family's influence in industries and unions was sharply diminished. Because of him, the family - once led by ruthless and wily men who operated in the shadows - ended up being led by men in over their heads, first by Gotti's son John Jr. and then, after Junior went to prison, by Gotti's older brother Peter. Yet Gotti is remembered as the biggest gangster of the second half of the 20th century.
We journalists are no doubt partly responsible. He was a great story. The 1985 murder of his predecessor, Paul Castellano, was a case in point: A Mafia boss is gunned down on a Midtown street as Christmas shoppers dive for cover. A couple of days later, the suspect, Gotti, arrives exquisitely groomed for an unrelated court appearance and slyly says that he is only the boss of his wife and children at home.
He's acting, playing gangster. He loves it, and so do we. We begin looking for his back story. We discover tragedy. In 1980 a neighbor of Gotti's drives his car into the bicycle of Gotti's 12-year-old son, killing him. A few months later, outside the neighbor's place of employment, burly men are seen shoving him into a van. The man is never seen again. Gotti plays dumb when the police come, but of course we know he took his revenge. He did exactly what we imagine a gangster would do.
In 1986, the victim in a minor assault case against Gotti suffers amnesia on the stand. Gotti winks and walks. Then, in 1987, he becomes the only Mafia boss to survive a series of racketeering cases against the New York families. In their cases, all the other bosses - a doddering, coat-over-the-head lot compared with the youthful Gotti - are found guilty. Most get 100-year sentences. Gotti gets to be on the cover of Time.
A year later the first book about him comes out. He likes the photograph on the cover so much he hangs a copy on his clubhouse wall, right by the table he uses for meetings. The photo shows him outside a courthouse. He's got his gangster suit on, and he's staring directly into the camera, smirking. With one hand he's smoothing his double-breasted jacket, but he could be reaching for a gun.
In 1990, he wins another big case in Manhattan. Outside court, he is cheered and whisked away, a star at his latest premiere. He invites a few reporters into his clubhouse to observe the celebration. That is what we see, the performance he puts on. But behind the scenes, he has already written the ending to his story, at least the part about his brief time at the top.
In an apartment above his clubhouse, in the presence of FBI listening devices, he spoke for hours about his job, his men and his murders. To talk so carelessly at such length in such a place was bad management. Two years later, based on his words, a jury in Brooklyn dropped the curtain.
Here at the end, try as we do to resist, it is hard not to see a bit of pathos in his role. He was the villain. He was going to lose. John Gotti knew this best of all, but he kept on playing.
Jerry Capeci, director of communications at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Gene Mustain, who teaches journalism at the University of Hong Kong, are co-authors of "Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti" and "Gotti: Rise and Fall." They contributed this comment to The New York Times. By Clyde Haberman
NOW that the Dapper Don is dead, the Russians may have to step up to the plate. They haven't exactly been pulling their weight when it comes to providing identifiable characters for a mobster-hungry public. Neither have the Chinese or the Colombians, for that matter.
Not to offend anyone, but these and other immigrant groups are letting us down. While contributing their share to New York's crime statistics, they have, with appallingly few exceptions, failed to provide brand-name figures worthy of big tabloid headlines, let alone the Hollywood treatment.
In this regard, earlier immigrants took their responsibilities more seriously. They understood the social compact. In return for being allowed to chase the American Dream, a pursuit conducted overwhelmingly with integrity and diligence, they had to reach into their ranks and offer up a few iconic no-goodniks worthy of fear, respect and perhaps a dash of envy.
No one lived up to their obligations better than the largest groups to land on these shores early in the last century: the Italians and the Jews. They did not merely produce criminals. That's no great trick. They gave us memorable gangsters, men worthy of books and screenplays, the kind who knew that every self-respecting gent should come with a gun, a scowl, a moll and, if possible, a middle name wrapped in parentheses by the tabloids.
So Italians had the likes of Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Carlo Gambino and Thomas "Three Finger Brown" Luchese. Al "Scarface" Capone was a cottage industry. Among Jews, there were Meyer Lansky, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Arthur "Dutch Schultz" Flegenheimer and Abe "Kid Twist" Reles. Arnold Rothstein's gambling ventures gave new meaning to the ancient description of Jews as the People of the Book.
Let's face it, more recent arrivals have simply not held their own.
The Russians, sad to say, have been a keen disappointment. You keep reading how their mobsters are fearsome, how they can be brutal, how they have taken over entire New York neighborhoods from the old Mafia of Sicilian origin. That may be so. But seriously, can you name a single Russian gangster? Can you imagine, at this point, anyone proposing a television series called "The Sopranoffs"? The answers to those questions have to be nyet and nyet.
The Mafia's two best-known figures - the only recognizable ones left, really - have been out of commission for a while. One is now dead, John J. Gotti. The Dapper Don, they called him. That is the kind of label newspapers slap on killers who wear $2,000 suits. It's catchy. It almost makes you forget that a killer in a $2,000 suit is still a killer.
The other guy is Vincent Gigante, an old man in prison who has tried in vain to convince the courts that he is nothing more than a crazy coot in a bathrobe, at most the Capo di Tutti Frutti.
In some circles, these two and their brethren might be deemed pathetic characters. Yet a logic-bending romanticism has become attached to them.
Not surprisingly, Italian-American groups are tired of the endless parade of on-screen Guidos and goombahs, as if the children and grandchildren of the immigrant generation amount to no more than that.
It could hardly have pleased them to see the extraordinary attention that Gotti's death received Tuesday on television and in the press. His obituary in The New York Times was much longer than the one in 1989 for another Italian-American, A. Bartlett Giamatti, who was only a Renaissance scholar, a Yale University president and a baseball commissioner.
Well, for better or worse, Gotti is gone. But the American appetite for glorified mobsters does not seem sated. It may be time for Russian gangsters, probably more than other immigrant groups of recent vintage, to do their patriotic duty.
They could start by giving themselves a name. No self-respecting organized criminal should be without one. How about "Nashe Delo"? In Russian, it means "Our Thing." You might know it better by its Italian equivalent, Cosa Nostra.
Clyde Haberman is a columnist with the New York Times, to which he contributed this comment.
TITLE: Moscow Riots Help Russia To Join the Club
AUTHOR: By Boris Kagarlitsky
TEXT: WE owe ourselves a pat on the back - Russia has finally become a "normal" European country. First, the United States officially recognizes Russia as a market economy. And then, Russian football fans organize a pogrom in the center of Moscow that would have made their English colleagues proud.
And it all happened at just the right time, as the State Duma is discussing a bill on extremism. Communist Party deputies have found common cause with Union of Right Forces deputies in their misgivings that it is a "panacea" that, if used correctly, would make it possible to prohibit any political activity that the authorities do not see fit to sanction.
When the bill first appeared, rumors did the rounds that serious disturbances were now unavoidable. On May 28 on Pushkin Square, the OMON beat up about 150 anti-globalists who weren't even putting up any resistance, just lying on the ground trying to cover their heads. This, however, clearly did not qualify as a major disturbance - something larger was needed and indeed happened.
It requires either extraordinary carelessness or malicious intent to first gather a drunken crowd in the center of Moscow and then send the police home to watch the soccer. In fact, most likely it was a mixture of the two, as is usually the case in this country.
Russia's defeat does not explain a great deal. First, it was pretty obvious well before the match that we would lose. And second, the outcome would have been little different even if Russia, by some miracle, had won: The drunken crowd buoyed by victory would have undertaken to smash everything in their path.
With remarkable alacrity, television crews set about seeking out the skinheads and other right-wing extremists among the football fans. No doubt there were some, but even if there had not been, the result would have been little different.
It's a strange country where over the course of a decade the authorities can carry out all manner of economic experiments without risk of running into major trouble. The housing reforms, which will be ruinous for most citizens, have not encountered major resistance - even "riots" in Voronezh against the reforms passed off remarkably peacefully. The World Cup, on the other hand, proved capable of turning Moscow's center into a battlefield.
Of course, it has little to do with sporting passions. Anger in society builds up. In England, soccer hooligans did not just appear out of thin air - a glance at British social history of the past few decades is sufficient to understand the roots of this problem.
For several weeks now, politicians and the mass media have been explaining that sports are a source of national pride. However, the desire to unite the nation using soccer slogans clashed with the desire to use "soccer-related disturbances" as a pretext for the passage of legislation limiting political freedoms.
Perhaps the ideological ambiguity of the situation can explain the police's confused and feeble response. The soccer fans on Manezh Square looked like patriots. Thus, they were together, so to speak, with the authorities (unlike the anti-globalization demonstrators). And why concentrate serious police strength against one's own, after all?
Events, however, demonstrated just how naive bureaucrats have been. Among the victims were representatives of the very same television channel that had been doing so much to propagandize "soccer patriotism"; the State Duma; and expensive shops, who had been doing their best to demonstrate the benefits of the new economic order.
On Manezh Square on Sunday, crowds gathered under the Russian tricolor. This was perhaps the first time since the early 1990s that people had gone out onto the streets spontaneously and in large numbers under the Russian flag. (Previously it was only the Communists who managed to get crowds out onto the streets and under communist banners.) And they just had to head straight for Moscow's main drag to smash shop windows and restaurants.
The political scientist Alexander Tarasov noted that this was not the first time this has happened. In 1914, in Okhotny Ryad, under the very same tricolor flags, crowds smashed up German shops and restaurants, jubilant at the commencement of World War I.
Three years later, tricolors were out of fashion, replaced by Bolshevik red flags.
Boris Kagarlitsky is a Moscow-based sociologist.
TITLE: new music from the old world
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The traditional eastern-European Jewish music known as klezmer is remarkably prominent in today's Russian music scene. It resonates in songs by bands such as the popular ska-punk group Leningrad, and in the gangster songs, or blatnaya muzyka, so beloved in certain sections of Russian society.
This week, however, the sixth annual St. Petersburg KlezFest seminar and music festival is focusing on teaching and demonstrating the music's more traditional, refined aspects.
Michael Alpert, a musician and music teacher from New York who has been a pioneering figure in the klezmer renaissance for over 25 years, explained some of the reasons for the current prevalence of klezmer music in a telephone interview this week.
"In Odessa and other big cities of the former Russian Empire - for instance Warsaw - there were a great number of Jews, and they were represented in all the strata of the city's life," he said. "This is why there has been such a great influence of Jewish music."
Alpert, internationally known for his performances and recordings with groups such as Brave Old World, Khevrisa and Kapelye, was due to play at KlezFest, but had to withdraw on Thursday, due to illness.
The term "klezmer" - which means musician in Yiddish - was coined to describe the traditional instrumental music of the Yiddish-speaking people of eastern Europe, whose origins can be traced back to the Middle Ages. Klezmer music grew out of the shtetls, or small villages, of Russia and eastern Europe, and provided toe-tapping music for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other festivities. Early klezmer bands consisted of two to four klezmorim - members - but, by the turn of the century, bands had grown to include between six and 12 players.
Around that time, klezmer was introduced in the U.S., where it became hybridized with jazz and other popular-music styles. By the 1950s, however the genre was in decline - largely due to the Nazi destruction of Jewish communities in Europe and the cultural assimilation of Jews in America. But a new generation of klezmer performers revived the genre in the 1980s, when it became remarkably popular as part of the world-music scene.
"First of all, I think that Jewish music is a very rich and particularly sophisticated musical language," said Alpert. "Much of it was developed by professional musicians and singers. Instrumental klezmer music is analogous to the music of the gypsies - in other words, you had people who, for centuries, were involved in making music professionally - not only as a spare-time thing."
"That [created] a high degree of musical sophistication and a very broad and diverse repertoire of music," he added.
KlezFest, which is being promoted by St. Petersburg's Jewish Community Center, is Russia's sixth annual klezmer seminar, and features a series of workshops in klezmer musicianship led by some of the genre's leading international figures. The festival culminates in a free concert on June 20 and a gala event on June 23.
Teachers and lecturers taking part include two more leading figures of the New York klezmer movement, Zalmen Mlotek and Adrienne Cooper, as well as London-based clarinetist Merlin Shepherd. As well as leading the seminars, all of them will give public performances.
KlezFest's free shows start at 7 p.m. on Thursday at the Hesed Avraam Welfare Center, 45 Bolshoi Sampsoniyevsky Pr. The KlezFest Gala will start at 7 p.m. on June 23 at Dom Aktyorov, 86 Nevsky Pr. Admission will be between 50 and 100 rubles. For more information, call the Jewish Association of St. Petersburg at 113-3889.
TITLE: novikov leaves pioneering legacy
AUTHOR: by Sami Hyrskylahti
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Two contrasting crowds dominated St. Petersburg's cultural scene on Sunday, May 26. The larger, more raucous crowd filled most of the streets of the city center to celebrate the city's 299th anniversary. At the same time, a large, more subdued gathering of Russia's cultural elite assembled at the Smolenskoye Cemetery on Vasilievsky Island to bury and pay its final respects to St. Petersburg artist Timur Novikov - probably the only person who could have brought them all together.
Novikov died of pneumonia on May 23, aged 43, but had been ill for the previous five years, after contracting tic-borne encephalitis in 1997. The encephalitis had a profound effect on Novikov, including robbing him of his sight. Whereas, before falling ill, he was recognizable as a youthful, sporting dandy who bicycled around the city, by the time he died he had become a bearded old man, who needed guidance from his friends when walking.
However, Novikov refused to be deflected from his artistic interests by his illness. Even after going blind, he continued to produce art, to write and to arrange exhibitions. He was also, up until he died, one of the most frequent attendees at exhibition openings and other cultural events in the city,
Novikov's unique world in the artistic world of the late Soviet Union and the Russia that emerged from its ashes becomes evident from a sample list of some of the projects in which he participated: Sergei Kuryokhin's underground group "Pop-Mekhanika;" Sergei Solovyov's cult, Soviet youth film, "ASSA;" and Kino, the Soviet Union's most popular rock group.
Largely self-taught, Novikov's brainchild was the "New Artists" group, which he founded in 1982, and whose name later became the inspiration for "New Composers," the Soviet Union's first electronic-music group. Novikov's musical influence came to the fore again in the early 1990s, when he organized the new Russia's first-ever rave parties.
Novikov was also, in the late 1980s, among the first of the new generation of Soviet artists to make a breakthrough in the West, as well as at home, becoming friends with such international stars as pop-artist Andy Warhol, the multi-media artist Keith Haring, and the minimalist composer John Cage.
Later, however, Novikov turned against what he saw as the commercialization of Western art, and founded "The New Academy of Fine Arts" - housed at the Free Arts Foundation at Pushkinskaya 10 - which aimed to manifest St. Petersburg as the last fortress of a classical artistic tradition. Although he was criticized for this - some even going as far as to accuse him of a sort of cultural fascism - Novikov's "neo-Academism" won many followers, both in Russia and abroad.
"Timur was an ambassador for Russia, someone who cleaned the face of Russia," according to St. Petersburg artist Sergei Bugayev, who exhibits his work under the pseudonym "Afrika."
"For an artist, Timur was unusually kind, and easily made friends with almost everybody," says Bugayev. "I think that, if you go to the Chelsea Hotel in New York and ask if they still remember Timur, many people will say yes."
Bugayev, a friend and colleague of Novikov's since 1982, sees Novikov as a key artistic figure: "Timur was the first person to exhibit contemporary art at the [State] Russian Museum. He was also a key person in uniting St. Petersburg and Moscow artists, who have always kind of battled with each other."
"We will certainly hear the resonance of Timur's work for a long time," says Bugayev. "But I don't think that there is anyone to replace him."
Timur Novikov's exhibition, "Flying and Sailing," is at Gallery D137. An exhibition, "In Memory of Timur Novikov," is at the Marble Palace of the State Russian Museum. See Exhibits for details. Links: www.pushkinskaja-10.spb.ru
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Rammstein's Moscow concert, scheduled for June 19, has been cancelled as a result of the riots in the city following the national soccer team's 1-0 World Cup loss to Japan last Sunday, the band's promoters TCI said this week.
Instead of the show, the Germans, who enjoy an ambiguous political reputation, will appear live on a local radio station to chat about "fascism, extremism and totalitarianism in contemporary civilized society," according to TCI's press release.
The release continues: "This decision was taken not to expose civilized Rammstein fans, having come to a concert by their favorite group, to the risk of possible provocations from the radicals, who organized the June 9, 2002 mass disturbances. [Such disturbances] are also not improbable at a Rammstein show, in the opinion of the chief of [the Moscow police's] international-affairs department."
The cancellation of the Moscow show makes the band's St. Petersburg promoters even happier. "It increases the significance of the St. Petersburg show, which will be the only one in Russia," said a spokesperson for the company, Hobbott.ru, adding that tickets for the Moscow show will probably be exchanged for Petersburg tickets.
The St. Petersburg Times failed to to get a clear answer as to whether the aforementioned "radicals" could come to the city as well. Rammstein will play at Petrovsky Stadium on Monday. Tickets cost between 500 and 1,500 rubles ($16.13 to $48.39).
However, Rammstein seems to have one more problem. On short notice, the band had to cancel its European concerts on June 7, 8 and 10 due to keyboard player Flake Lorenz's "acute case of food poisoning," according to the band's official Web site.
Health problems also led to cancellation of the concert by Ozzy Osborne, who was due to play St. Petersburg's Ice Palace on June 15.
The seven dates of the European leg of the Ozzfest 2002 tour have been canceled, to allow guitarist Zakk Wylde to return home early to recuperate from mental and physical exhaustion, www.ozzy.com explains. "Ozzfest 2002 has been a particularly grueling tour for Wylde, as he does double duty opening the show with his band, Black Label Society, and then closing it as Osbourne's guitarist. Wylde has worked non-stop for over a year recording and touring with Osbourne and recording his own record, '1919 Eternal,' with his band Black Label Society."
However, fans may seek consolation in watching the reality show "The Osbournes," which since mid-May is aired on MTV Russia at 11 p.m. on Wednesdays.
Out of the blue, Tuxedomoon has reappeared on the city's music scene. Posters went up last weekend advertizing the band's concert at the Cappella next Thursday.
The reformed U.S. theatrical trio, which calls itself the "most European of American bands," blends saxophone solos, drum-machine beats and haunting voices, actually belongs to the past, though it has a number of local fans who grew up in the early 1990s. However, this number was not enough to fill the Estrada Theater when the band first came to the city in November 2000.
Finally, the summer's open-air events starts this weekend with Sergei Shnurov's Leningrad Subbotnik. Ironically, the festival was conceived as an alternative to the city's famous open-air raves and beer festivals. Check Gigs for details.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: pepe's spices up a lunchtime
AUTHOR: by Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Our first-choice venue this week - which shall remain nameless as we want to be served there next time we go - was closed. (Serves us right for not checking.) So, on a whim, we flagged down a car to take us to Senor Pepe's Cantina, an established Tex-Mex joint by Apraksin Dvor that used to be a favorite of The St. Petersburg Times but has, for some reason, faded from our map.
As we discovered, this is our loss. I had a - vague - memory of Senor Pepe's as being expensive with none-too-good service. Whether this was then the case or not, it certainly isn't now.
Senor Pepe's has a menu that is larger than average, and it took us a while to plough through it. As well as the standard entrees, main courses and so on, it also boasts a lunchtime menu, a business-lunch menu, a whole range of combination meals, and, somewhat bizzarely, a Lenten menu, although I was under the impression that Lent had finished a month ago.
An impressive feature of the menu is the quality of its English translations. Too often, one finds menus that have translations that are, at best, patchy, and often downright bizarre. Senor Pepe's, however, is excellent, although sometimes tending towards U.S. diner-type descriptions, of the "Take a large burrito and pile it high with shredded beef ... " variety.
My first dining companion was the least hungry of the three of us, and also announced that she wasn't really very fond of spicy food. Therefore, she decided to go for a Chilli Reilleno (120 rubles, $3.87) - which was advertised as being a mild chilli - and a small Baltika No. 7 (45 rubles, $1.45). She also split a half-portion of Nachos Supreme ($3.55) with the third member of our trio.
The Chilli Reilleno was the least successful of the dishes we ordered, and didn't really have much to recommend it. While it was indeed mild - even by Russian standards - the rest of the dish was basically a bit bland, and it was hard to distinguish what was inside. This situation was not helped by the heaviness of the melted-cheese topping.
I couldn't decide between about half a dozen vegetarian options - what a luxury! - and went for a half-portion of plain nachos (95 rubles, $3.06), the quesadillas (110 rubles, $3.55) and a large Baltika (50 rubles, $1.61).
I was worried that the two dishes would not be enough, but was more than reassured when I saw the size of the half-portion of nachos, which consisted of a generous heap of tortilla chips, with refried beans - a rare treat - cheese, jalapeno peppers and fresh tomato chunks that all went down very easily. The heat of the peppers was muted by the other ingredients, but provided a nice occasional kick to the combination. The quesadillas - basically flour tortillas stuffed with cheese and jalapenos - were also fine, although it became a little tedious toward the end, especially as the melted cheese solidified.
Meanwhile, my other companion decided to see how much he could get through, and, in addition to splitting the Nachos Supreme, plumped for the chicken soup with tortilla (90 rubles, $2.90), a Super Burrito (250 rubles, $8.06), and coke (25 rubles, $0.81)
Like my nachos, the supreme version were great, and my dining companions were also impressed with the refried beans - which we all agreed is one thing that distinguish Senor Pepe's from other Tex-Mex places in the city - and the properly shredded and melted cheese.
The soup, however, was a disappointment, as he was fairly sure that the vegetables - peas, carrots and corn - were frozen, although having tortilla strips was a neat idea. The Super Burrito, as its name suggests, was huge, and came with an unusual, chicken-based sauce. Although the jalapeno peppers were noticeable, the dish was not actually all that spicy, which was very agreeable.
All things considered, Senor Pepe's provided us a very reasonable lunch, and was certainly better than I had remembered it. For a fraction over $25, the three of us ate well, and the service was attentive throughout, which is really all that one can ask for.
Senor Pepe's Cantina. 3 Ulitsa Lomo no sova. Tel.: 310-2230. Open daily, noon to midnight. Friday, Saturday, noon to 2 a.m. Menu in Russian and English. Credit cards accepted. Lunch for three with a small amount of alcohol: 790 rubles ($25.49)
TITLE: manezh hosts an art master class
AUTHOR: by Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The "intellectual spirit of contemporary art" is once again reigning at the Manezh exhibition hall, in the form of the "Master Class" festival.
Started 10 years ago as a local festival, "Master Class" has now expanded into a huge event, including not only traditional works of art, such as paintings, drawings and sculptures, but also musical and theatrical performances, fashion shows and master-classes in ceramics and glass blowing. While exhibitions happen throughout the city's art galleries and performances take place in its concert halls, the Manezh remains the kernel of the event.
"Today, art does not exist in a vacuum," says Latif Kazbekov, a member of the Masters' Council, the festival's representative committee, which consists of twelve respected local artists. "We believe in a combination of arts that create the city's cultural scene."
As a result of this, the festival has, over its history, invited various prominent artistic figures to maintain the event's high standards: Top operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti presented some of his lithographs at the 1994 festival, while, in 1999, the soprano Yelena Obraztsova and the film-director Nikita Mikhalkov were distinguished guests.
This year's exhibition in the Manezh offers a variety of different interpretations of contemporary art: a mixture of pretentious literary allusions - for example, to Patrick Suskind's "Perfume, the Story of a Murderer" - a blend of pop-art with Eastern motifs, nostalgic and never-out-of-fashion black-and-white photographs, a few city themes and, of course, a few naked bodies.
It is also evident that the festival has been touched by officialdom, and has certain political overtones that are hard to escape. The festival's aims are stated - though not particularly clearly - in its press-release: "the festival is aimed to develop inter-cultural connections, diminish ethnic stereotypes as well as study in depth trends in contemporary art."
It comes as a pleasant surprise, then, to find that the official, political dimension of the event is an exhibition of political caricatures by Jewish artist Yakov Farkas, who exhibits under the name Zeyev.
According to Sofya Kotzer, the director of St. Petersburg's Israeli Cultural Center, "The exhibition is devoted to the restoration of international relations between Israel and Russia." Kotzer said that this aim was also behind a recent tour by "Gabima," a Jewish theater company, to Moscow.
The Manezh exhibition includes the flags of both Russia and Israel - a highly unusual sight on the premises of an exhibition - and the works presented are hilariously funny, obviously created with high artistic confidence, and often touching burning issues.
Zeyev's works illustrate the 50-year history of relations between Israel, Russia and other countries. For example, his "Arafat's Pigeon," is a depiction of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat exhaling a dove - a traditional symbol of peace, only this dove is made out of pistols. As Kotzer says, "A sense of humor is a Jewish character trait that has always helped us to survive."
The Manezh exhibition takes place on two floors. While many of the artists taking part in the festival present their work downstairs, the second floor has been turned into a huge workshop, more of an art-tusovka, or gathering, than a master class. Many of the artists prefer this way of working.
"Artists have to work in quite an unusual way," says Valery Luka, a St. Petersburg alternative painter who has held several successful exhibition at the Free Artists Foundation at Pushkinskaya 10. "Creating a work of art in such a short space of time is hard to take seriously. It is a game."
"Sometimes, my game is to use a minimum of paint provided for free during the festival and save some for further work in my workshop. Sometimes I try to use up all the paint during 'Master Class,'" explains Luka. "This year, I am going with 'trash aesthetics' - using stuff that I found around the hall," he says, indicating a painted floor-cloth and a piece of an torn cardboard box on his canvas.
Artists taking part in the festival have to create two pieces, one large and one small, based on a given theme. The smaller piece goes to the festival's sponsors, while the larger piece becomes a part of the collection of the Master Class Foundation, which organizes the festival.
"The foundation promotes our works by showing them at other exhibitions, sellling them at auction and so on," says local artist Vladimir Fomichev. "It has a huge, valuable collection that it displays in a catalog after the festival."
Some of the festival's newer participants are also trying to ensure selection in future runnings of "Master Class."
"We get a great number of applications," says Kazbekov. "More and more young artists are striving to take part, lured by the huge promotional opportunities, as well as the prospect of working together with venerable artists."
In this way, everyone plays a part in the festival, be it intellectual, foolish, in tune with other artists or not. As Luka notes, "Despite the undeniable professionalism of the majority of artists, artistic choice is quite random. The basis for the event is more friendly socializing than creative or aesthetic unity."
"Master Class" runs through June 18. See listings for details.
TITLE: the story of a painting
AUTHOR: by Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: There was much ado during U.S. President George W. Bush's recent visit to Russia about the new, close relationship between the United States and Russia.
One of the masterpieces that Bush saw on his visit to the State Hermitage Museum with President Vladimir Putin - Titian's Venus With a Mirror - echoes this new order. The painting went on display on May 24 as part of the Hermitage's long-running series "The World's Masterpieces at the Hermitage." It is on loan to the Hermitage from the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., where it has hung for 81 years
Titian finished Venus With a Mirror in 1555. It was one of his favorite works, and he refused to sell it. However, after his death, in 1576, Titian's son, Pomponio, sold his father's house - along with its art - to Christoforo Barbarigo.
In his turn, Barbarigo impressed upon his family and descendents not to let the painting be sold, and it remained in the family palace for 300 years. In 1850, however, Count Niccolo Antonio Barbarigo, faced with the end of the family line, decided to sell the collection, and Tsar Nicholas I snapped it up for the Hermitage.
Titian's painting hung in the Hermitage until 1931, when the hard-up Soviet government began to sell some of its treasures for hard currency, and U.S. banker Andrew Mellon bought it for the Washington gallery.
This decision is still regretted at the Hermitage. "I don't think that it was the best, or only, way to get the country out of its financial crisis," says Nina Lavrova, a technical worker at the museum.
The Washington National Gallery is not complaining, though. "We have about 20 works of art by Titian at our museum, [but] 'Venus With a Mirror' is one of the most valuable," says museum spokesperson Jay Krueger.
The painting is to be returned to Washington early next year. For the moment, though, Hermitage Director Piotrovsky is glad to see it back.
"We are very grateful to our American partners for giving us the opportunity to see the painting in the Hermitage again," he said.
TITLE: design in starck relief
AUTHOR: by Natella Kochetkova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In the current atmosphere of reconstruction that has undeniably overtaken St. Petersburg, the new exhibition of creations by world-renowned French designer Philippe Starck that opened at the State Russian Museum's Marble Palace last week is right to the point, as Starck has proven to be a master of transforming everyday items into something extraordinary.
Starck was born in Paris on Jan. 18, 1949. As a youngster, he had already taken enthusiastically to draughting, a trait that he probably inherited from his father, who worked as an aircraft designer. Starck attended the Ecole Nissim de Camondo in Paris, and set up his first company - producing inflatable objects - in 1968. Since then, he has done interior design for cafes and companies, and has designed numerous collections and individual items of furniture for firms in France, Italy, Spain, Japan and Switzerland.
Starck has also worked as an industrial designer, and has been responsible for creating a wide range of items for different firms, including luggage for Louis Vuitton, mineral-water bottles for Glacier, kitchen appliances for Fluocaril, and other objects, ranging for vehicles to computers to spectacle frames.
The Marble Palace exhibition, however, is the first time that Starck's work has been exhibited in St. Petersburg. The exhibition consists of 72 items - ranging from toothbrushes to models of factories - all of which are accompanied by the designer's comments. The comments evoke a world of different emotions, and make it seem as though Starck himself is acting as a guide through the exhibition.
The thought that has gone into the presentation of the exhibits is impressive. Each item is laid out on a flesh-colored t-shirt in an individual cage, and is lit by a single lamp. The first impression on entering the hall is that every case is a world in miniature, and helps to reinforce Starck's habit of taking everyday objects and bringing them to life.
Starck has consistently expressed challenging and provocative ideas: He believes that all things possess not only a soul but - more importantly - gender; he once expressed the belief that Christopher Columbus had not discovered America, since the continent was not named after him; and he proclaims that design serves love and friendship, and that, because of this, things should be amiable, poetic and useful - all at the same time. His thoughts are fully exposed at and brilliantly illustrated by the Marble Palace exhibition.
Starck designs things to try to make people's lives easier, in ways that might seem silly or trivial to other people. For example, "Costes Chair" is a special chair with only three legs, designed for use in cafes. The idea is that, by omitting one leg, the likelihood of a waiter stumbling over the chair is reduced.
As well as being practical, his objects are often symbolic. The design of a cheese-grater called "Mr. Menu," for example, serves to remind its users of the origin of the product that they are using.
"Architecture greatly influences personality," according to Starck. "That is why it would be better if we constructed beautiful factories where [the workers] have to spend half their day." His design for the "Vitry" recycling plant reflects this belief, and seems as though it really would be a gladdening place to work.
Starck is also concerned about the environment. For example, he has a deep dislike of smokers who throw cigarette butts everywhere and pollute the air. To reinforce his somewhat perverse argument, he designed an ashtray for passive smokers - on the grounds that heavy smokers just don't need them.
However, Starck is mainly famous for his chair designs, and some of these are on display at the exhibition. He tries to minimize to amount of timber used - in order to preserve the world's forests - and, thereby, the price. Here, too, though, he can be contrary. "Bo Boolo" is a bench made from a tree-trunk. As Starck says, "Let's give people timber if they want. It is better to cut down trees then branches."
"Design captured me," Starck once said. This provides a fitting way to describe the exhibition, which proves that even adults have the right to a vivid, fairy-tale imagination.
"Vanity Case" runs through July at the Marble Palace. Links: www.philippe-starck.com
TITLE: coming through loud and clear
AUTHOR: by Kirill Galetski
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Over the years, the "Message to Man" film festival - which this year kicks off on Saturday - has proved to be one of Russia's best film festivals, with its consistently intriguing and variegated mix of documentaries, shorts and animations from around the world. Many of the films at the festival are rarely screened and can not be seen anywhere else in Russia.
While the festival definitely leans toward a professional film audience - it also runs two competitions to encourage emerging talent, with cash prizes of up to $5,000 - it features enough variation to attract a more casual viewer as well.
For the third year in a row, the festival is showcasing a series of first-rate musical documentaries, which have been the festival's biggest draws in the past. This year's offerings feature two excellent films that had their world premieres at the Berlin Film Festival in February: Wim Wenders' "Viel Passiert: Der BAP Film" and Mika Kaurasmaki's "Moro No Brasil."
In 2000, Message to Man provided the only opportunity in St. Petersburg to see Wenders' 1999 worldwide hit about aging Cuban musicians, "The Buena Vista Social Club," on a movie-theater screen. This year, Wenders returns with his documentary about BAP, a 20-year-old rock band from Cologne, Germany, whose frontman, Wolfgang Nidecken, sings in the Cologne regional dialect. Although BAP is little-known outside of Germany, at home it enjoys wide popularity, and its signature number, "Verdammt Lang Her," sees a number of renditions in the film. The film's inadvertant road-movie feel has to do as much with BAP's touring as with Wenders trademark esthetics. Part of the film was shot in the well-worn Lichtburg cinema in Essen, and features some slightly fictionalized elements, in the form of actors Marie Baumer and Joachim Krol, as a cigarette-seller and a projectionist, who observe the band.
Like Wenders, maverick Finnish film-maker Kaurasmaki - the older brother of the recent Cannes Film Festival favorite Aki Kaurasmaki - has a penchant for road movies. In fact, the two are acquainted, and Kaurasmaki has, in a way, followed in Wenders' footsteps by making "Moro no Brasil," ("The Sound of Brazil"), which is a 4000-kilometer musical odyssey through Bazil, chronicling the lives of the unsung heroes of Brazilian music. The film is part of an informal series of music documentaries, financed by the French television channel Arte, that began with "Buena Vista Social Club," and also includes Emir Kustrica's "Super 8 Stories," which was shown at last year's festival. One interesting element of "Moro no Brasil" is how Kaurasmaki, who has been living in Brazil for more than a decade, shows us just how uniquely and strongly Brazilian people's lives are intertwined with music - more so than in Western countries. For Brazilians, music is not merely a form of entertainment, but is a way of life - one that, in some cases, is the key to survival. Kaurasmaki, who will be in town on Sunday to begin production of his latest film - a St. Petersburg-to-Berlin road movie tentatively titled "Natasha" - will present "Moro no Brasil" in person.
Other special programs include a retrospective of work from Lardux Films, a French experimental film studio that works exclusively on short subjects; and the seventh edition of Europe in Shorts, European short films from eight countries, organized through the European Film Festival Coordination Center in Brussels, Belgium, and the International Film School Festival in Poitiers, France. The Belgian organization will also lend support to a round-table discussion of the problems of Russia's virtual exclusion from Europe's film-festival support network. On the domestic front, a retrospective in honor of the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Higher Courses for Screenwriters and Directors will look at the best work by Russian student filmmakers over the last forty years.
Victor Semenyuk, the festival's director of programming, and his assistant, Stanislav Yeliseyev, found choosing this year's films to be particularly difficult, and both remarked on the general downturn in the quality of submissions, citing a worldwide trend of preoccupation with political correctness as part of the problem.
"We have a sneaking suspicion that, if you were to try to censor a lot of these films, there'd really be nothing left to cut out," commented Semenyuk. "The self-censorship is so great that it sacrifices artistic integrity for fear of offending someone. On the larger scale, it seems that even Hollywood has been affected. A lot of people thought that the Sept. 11 terrorists took their cues from Hollywood blockbusters, and so now there's a backlash against depicting such disastrous calamities."
"The conformity is so obvious," added Yeliseyev. "They're placing integration into the [socio-political] mainstream first, and creativity second, thus making many of the films artistically toothless."
Semenyuk wants to hold an informal discussion of these issues within the framework of the festival, and will invite the jury, festival participants, journalists and others to participate.
"Message to Man" runs from June 15 through June 22. See Screens for details, or call 230-22-00, 235-18-88. Links: www.message-to-man.spb.ru
TITLE: digging up the roots of the rus
AUTHOR: by Sam Thorne
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Known as the mother of all Russian cities, Kiev looks suitably impressive astride wooded hills and ridges above the Dnepr River.
A gleaming array of golden churches and monasteries reflects the city's glory years from the 10th to the 12th centuries when it was the capital and spiritual heart of Kievskaya Rus, the first great Eastern Slavic civilization, while steep, cobbled streets and faded mansions evoke its later prosperity as one of the main trading hubs between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.
But Kiev offers more than a dose of nostalgia, for there is an up-and-coming, cosmopolitan feel to the place, too. Strolling along its shady boulevards or sitting in one of the busy, city-center cafes, a first-time visitors might imagine themselves in the heart of Mediterranean Europe when the sun is shining and the locals are out for an evening walk.
The modern heart of Kiev is the lively Maiden Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, which was the focus of celebrations to mark the 10-year anniversary of Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union last August.
Encircled by hulking Stalinist blocks, the square is not a thing of beauty, despite efforts to revamp it for the anniversary. Its east side is now presided over by a tall marble column topped by a golden statue of a woman holding an olive branch, which was finished last summer and named "Glory to Ukraine." In line with the square's patriotic theme, the ugly hotel overlooking it was made to change its name from the Moskva to the Ukraina. (The old Ukraina is now the Premier Palace.) And plans are also afoot to build an underground mall that the city government hopes will eclipse Moscow's unattractive Okhotny Ryad.
From Independence Square, Vulitsa Kreshchatyk, Kiev's main street, curves up a valley toward the glass-roofed Bessarabsky market, in the southwest. On weekends, the street is closed to traffic, and people gather among the cafes and stalls that are laid out beneath its lines of shaggy chestnut trees and inscrutable 1930s office blocks.
On a hill above Kreshchatyk stands Kiev's oldest church, St. Sofia's Cathedral, which was founded in 1031 by Prince Yaroslav the Wise to celebrate his father Volodymyr's conversion to Christianity.
Visitors enter the cathedral complex through its famous pale blue and white bell tower, built in four wedding-cake tiers that taper upward to a golden cupola. The cathedral itself has a pleasant exterior, but its star attractions are the beautiful frescoes, icons and mosaics located inside, some of which date back to the 11th century. In the central dome, a gold-painted mosaic of Christ stares down, casting a warm glow onto the central apse when caught by the sunlight.
To the northeast of St. Sofia's, a broad, paved prospect leads to the dazzling golden domes and lilac walls of St. Michael's Monastery. Founded early in the 12th century, St. Michael's was recently rebuilt after being torn down by the communists in 1936 to make way for a duplicate of the huge, neoclassical Ministry of Foreign Affairs building next door. Stalin reportedly intended to construct four of these buildings to stand at the corners of a giant square that would have been created by razing all the buildings between St. Michael's and St. Sofia's. Fortunately, his plan was never fully realized.
Behind St. Michael's, the ground drops away abruptly to the Dnepr. From the crest of the ridge, a funicular train runs down through leafy parkland to Podil, a pleasant old merchant district of quiet streets and cafes tucked into an area of flat land beside the river.
The best approach to Podil, however, is not on the train, but on foot northwest along the ridge toward the green, baroque domes of St. Andrew's Cathedral, towering over the top end of Kiev's loveliest street, Andriyevsky Uzviz.
Winding steeply down a narrow gully, Andriyevsky Uzviz is Kiev at its most old-fashioned, surfaced with rough cobblestones and lined with crumbling, stuccoed houses, wooden cafes and a thriving craft market. The street was also the childhood home of writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who described it vividly in his civil-war novel "The White Guard." The Bulgakov house, about halfway down the slope, was recently turned into an atmospheric little museum, full of family furniture and other artifacts, such as Bulgakov's medical equipment.
Once in Podil, don't miss the fascinating, if disturbing, Chernobyl Museum, housed in a former fire tower at 1 Provulok Zhoreviy, off Vulitsa Spaska. The museum's photographs and videos emphasize the impact of the 1986 nuclear disaster on individual lives, while betraying the staggering incompetence of the officials responsible for dealing with its consequences. One tragi-comic video clip shows teams of workers taking turns dashing into Chernobyl's gutted fourth reactor and shoveling into a pit as much radioactive waste as they can manage in 60 seconds.
Despite the fact that Chernobyl is just 100 kilometers upstream of Kiev, the banks of the Dnepr are crowded with bathers during the hot summers here. Hydropark, a low-lying, wooded island across the river from Podil, is one of the most popular spots to cool off, with white sandy beaches and great views of the old town.
If the threat of radioactive silt discourages some travelers from swimming in the Dnepr, a cruiseboat trip along the river might fit the bill instead. Many of Kiev's best-known sights are visible from the river, from Soviet-era monstrosities such as the Rainbow Arch (a metal parabola celebrating the unification of Russia and Ukraine in 1654) and the huge Defense of the Motherland Monument (a 72-meter-tall titanium clone of the Statue of Liberty that is less affectionately known as Tin Tits) to the unforgettable Pechersk Lavra, or Caves Monastery, about four kilometers downriver from Podil.
Founded in 1051, the monastery features a stunning concentration of gold-domed churches, a museum of Scythian gold and a 96-meter-tall belfry offering wonderful views over the city. There is also an intriguing museum of microminiature creations by Russian artist Nikolai Siadristy, including a chess set placed on the head of a nail and a flea shod with golden shoes. But what makes the monastery so unique are its caves, which burrow deep into the hills below the complex and under the Dnepr. In medieval times, the caves were home to the foremost monks and chroniclers of Kievskaya Rus and the early Russian Orthodox Church; later, they were used as hideouts by Ukrainian partisans during World War II.
Inside the cramped, candle-lit catacombs, tiny chapels and niches have been hollowed out of the walls to house the glass-topped coffins of mummified monks, whose desiccated hands protrude from ceremonial robes. The monks' scowling successors stand by to ensure that visitors behave with due decorum before the remains.
TITLE: Loya Jirga Names Candidates
AUTHOR: By Colleen Barry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KABUL - Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, widely praised for his reconciliation efforts during six months in power, was formally nominated on Thursday as a candidate for Afghan head of state by a grand council meeting held to choose a transitional government.
Karzai's candidacy was backed by a former mujahedin fighter, Mohammed Asef Mohsoni, who submitted a list with 150 names required to confirm the nomination. Also nominated were Masooda Jalal, an employee of the World Food program; Glam Fareq Majidi and Mir Mohammed Mahfoz Nadai.
No details were immediately available about Majidi and Nadai. Jalal addressed the delegates, calling herself a simple Afghan woman not involved in any armed group. Jalal's candidacy reflects the demands of women for a voice in public affairs after years of silence.
The vote for head of state was pushed back by at least a day after delegates argued on Wednesday over the presence of warlords at the council, or Loya Jirga. The head of the Loya Jirga organizing commission, Ismail Qasim Yar, an ethnic Hazara, won the position. Seema Samar, the current interim minister of women's affairs, was chosen as his top deputy.
After the election, delegates were to start on the mechanics of how the transitional government will be set up, including the number of cabinet ministers.
Many delegates believe that the United States and other powerbrokers have cut deals - including the withdrawals by the former monarch, Mohammad Zaher Shah, and ex-president Burhanuddin Rabbani from contention for the top spot - that were circumventing the Loya Jirga process.
"Everything seems to have been decided. But we don't need anyone to decide for us,'' delegate Asella Wardak said Wednesday. "We have had enough of foreign interference in our country.''
Some delegates questioned the participation of warlords and former commanders, once hailed as heroes but now reviled for having plunged the country into more war after they drove out the Soviets in 1989.
Former guerrilla commanders rose to defend those who they said had waged a holy war against the Soviets.
"We should distinguish between mujahedin [holy warriors] and a gunman,'' said former guerrilla leader Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, whose Ittehad-e-Islami party was notorious for attacking Hazara Shiite Muslims after the Soviets left. "These people defeated the Russians. This Loya Jirga is a result of their actions.''
Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah denied speculation of U.S. interference to ensure balanced ethnic composition of the new government.
The ex-king's decision to withdraw, announced by the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan three hours before, "should not be considered imposing pressure,'' Abdullah said.
However, Michael Pohly, an observer from Germany, said Zaher Shah had been forced to exclude himself, and warned that sidelining the former monarch could backfire if other ethnic Pashtuns don't feel represented by the next administration.
Though Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, the interim administration is dominated by ethnic Tajiks, whose Northern Alliance forces moved into Kabul after the Taliban fled U.S.-led bombing.
"We told them they are playing with war,'' said Pohly, emphasizing that 900 delegates had come out in support of a role for the ex-king on Monday night.
Despite delays at the meeting, Abdullah said he expected the council to finish choosing a new government by Sunday, as originally scheduled
TITLE: Political Crisis Seizes Yugoslav Parliament
AUTHOR: By Dusan Stojanovic
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BELGRADE - The party of Yugoslavia's president withdrew on Thursday from the parliament of the country's main republic, declaring the body invalid and creating the worst political crisis in this country since Slobodan Milosevic's ouster in 2000.
All 45 deputies of Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia walked out in protest of a decision by the rest of Serbia's governing coalition to replace 21 of them and give some of their seats to members of rival parties.
The move deepened a struggle between Kostunica and his key rival in Yugoslav politics, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. The two men were allies in overthrowing Milosevic but have been feuding since. Djindjic favors close relations with the West, while Kostunica takes a more nationalist position.
Kostunica's party signaled it would call street protests and strikes against Djindjic's government. Some protests are being organized by allies of Milosevic who retain seats in the parliament.
Serbia and its smaller neighbor, Montenegro, make up what is left of Yugoslavia, which started unraveling along ethnic lines in the early 1990s. The country already faces deep economic and social problems.
The deputy chief of Kostunica's party, Dragan Marsicanin, called the coalition's decision to replace his party members in parliament "a coup carried out without weapons" and said that "a totalitarian regime now rules in Serbia." He said that with the walkout, the Serbian parliament "no longer exists."
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Americans Arrested
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (NYT) - Several men believed to be American citizens have been taken into custody here during the past few weeks on suspicion of being linked to al-Qaida, senior Pakistani officials said on Thursday.
They said that they believe that the men form a disjointed network of disaffected Westerners who converted to Islam and have been drawn to militant causes, fighting alongside al-Qaida, the Taliban or guerrillas in Kashmir, the mostly Muslim region claimed by both Pakistan and India.
Pakistani officials say they have picked up about 400 suspected members of al-Qaida and the Taliban in sweeps around the country since December. About 300, they say, have been turned over to American authorities.
They also said they suspected that some of the men recently detained and believed to be Americans may have studied under Mufti Muhammad Iltimas, a radical Islamic cleric who runs a madrasa in Bannu, a village near the border with Afghanistan.
The Army of Muhammad has been outlawed in Pakistan and declared a terrorist organization by the United States. One of its members, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, is charged in the kidnapping and murder of the American journalist Daniel Pearl.
Maoist Rebels Attack
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) - About 300 Maoist rebels attacked an army camp in western Nepal, killing at least five soldiers before they were driven back, a Nepalese defense official said, on the condition of anonimity, on Thursday.
The attack on the camp in Salyan district, about 322 kilometers west of Katmandu, occurred Wednesday night, the official said.
Initial reports from the area said that at least five soldiers were killed before troops at the camp repulsed the attackers, the official said. The government was waiting for details on rebel casualties, he said.
Fighting in a six-year insurgency by Maoist rebels has intensified in recent months, with the army joining police in a campaign to root out rebel fighters from strongholds in remote mountainous areas near India's northeastern border.
Hundreds of people have been killed in battles since November, bringing to 3,500 the number of lives claimed since the rebels began fighting in 1996 to abolish Nepal's constitutional monarchy. The rebels draw their inspiration from Chinese revolutionary Mao Tse-tung.
S. Korea's GNP Sweeps
SEOUL (Reuters) - Exit polls showed that South Korea's conservative opposition Grand National Party (GNP) swept most key local government elections on Thursday, in a crucial test of the public mood ahead of December's presidential election.
In an election that faced stiff competition for voter attention from the World Cup soccer finals being co-hosted with Japan, a record low turnout of 43.9 percent hurt the ruling Millennium Democratic Party (MDP) of President Kim Dae-jung.
The GNP, which attacked ruling-camp scandals, captured at least five and probably six of nine provincial governorships, exit polls on South Korean television channels showed. The party won mayoral races in six of seven major cities, including the capital Seoul, the country's second city Pusan and the major port of Inchon, the exit polls showed.
The exit polls showed the MDP winning only in its traditional power base in southwestern South Korea.
South Korea's 34.7 million voters will choose a successor to President Kim on December 19. Kim, 77, is not up for re-election because the constitution bars him from seeking a second term when his five-year tenure ends next February.
Analysts had expected the ruling party to lose ground in the local vote to the opposition -who called the poll ''judgement day'' on scandals involving the president's aides and one of his sons.
Kim's youngest son, Kim Hong-gul, has been forced to watch the World Cup finals from a Seoul jail cell, awaiting trial on influence-peddling and tax- evasion charges.
TITLE: Black Course Proving Tough For World's Best
AUTHOR: By Paul Newberry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FARMINGDALE, New York - Sergio Garcia shot a 2-under-par 68 to grab the lead at the U.S. Open, but most of the early starters struggled to crack par on the long layout at Bethpage State Park.
Masters champion Tiger Woods, hoping to become the first player to win the first two majors of the year since Jack Nicklaus 30 years ago, teed off late and mis-hit his first shot - his right hand flying off the club on his follow-through. He still managed a tap-in par.
Among those who had finished, Dudley Hart, K.J. Choi and Jeff Maggert all shot 69. Ben Crane was the only other player below par, standing one under through five holes.
"And the conditions are nearly perfect," Garcia said. "You can see how tough this course is."
The tournament began on a gray, damp day at Bethpage, with only a slight breeze. Showers that moved in the previous day softened the greens a bit but also cut down on the roll in the fairway, lengthening the Long Island course that stretches 6,493 meters - the longest in Open history.
Those who made mistakes paid a heavy price. Davis Love III drove into the tall grass alongside the 16th fairway and needed two shots to punch out, winding up with a double bogey. He finished with a 71 after getting as low as three under.
Justin Leonard took a triple bogey at No. 12 when he tried to chip onto the green and barely moved the ball 2 meters from the thick rough. After finally reaching the green, he threw up his arms in relief.
"There's not going to be a lot of good scores out there," Garcia said. "The course is playing really hard."
Leonard shot 33 on the front, including an eagle on the par-5 fourth hole. In heavy rough on a sidehill lie, with the ball above his feet, he knocked his third shot went straight into the cup from about 60 meters.
That seemed like a distant memory when he staggered to the final hole at four over.
Garcia got his day rolling by chipping in for birdie at No. 5. He also sank a 6-meter birdie putt at 12, then protected his score with a nice up-and-down from a deep bunker alongside the 16th green.
Hart had a triple-bogey 7 at No. 5 - his 14th hole of the day - but finished with three straight birdies for a one-under-par 69. His final shot was a 9-meter putt at 9.
"My roller-coaster month continues," said Hart, whose wife gave birth to triplets in December, adding special meaning to this Father's Day weekend. "I'll have a bunch of good holes, then something crazy will happen."
At the fifth hole, Hart failed to carry a fairway bunker and wound up under the lip. He blasted out into the rough and had to lay up, then found the sand again in front of the green.
"I made what seemed like a nice, easy 7," he said. "I told myself not to get discouraged. I hit a bad tee shot and walked away with 7."
Still, there's no doubt this is a championship layout. A sign on the first tee lets the public know what to expect: "Warning: The Black Course is an extremely difficult course which is recommended only for highly skilled golfers."
TITLE: Sampras' Slump Continues as Hewitt, Henman March On
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HALLE, Germany - Pete Sampras' hopes of another Wimbledon crown suffered a big blow on Thursday, when Germany's Nicolas Kiefer scored a straight-sets victory over the former world No. 1 at the Gerry Weber Open.
Kiefer needed just 66 minutes to win 6-3, 6-4 against Sampras, who is mired in the deepest slump of his career.
Sampras lost for the fourth time in his last five matches and now hasn't won a tournament for two years since the 2000 Wimbledon, a streak of 29 tournaments. He has slipped to 13th in the rankings.
"It would have been nice to go in there with a little more under my belt for my confidence," Sampras said of Wimbledon. "But I still believe I can do it."
Kiefer, a former top-10 player facing his own slump, needed four chances to break Sampras' serve in the second set, then finally did, on a double fault by the seven-time Wimbledon winner.
After that, Kiefer - who won the event in 1997 - rolled to a 4-0 lead, before Sampras staged his comeback, fighting off two match points at 2-5 before losing.
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At London, top-seeded Lleyton Hewitt dropped only three games as he beat Belgium's Olivier Rachus Thursday to breeze into quarterfinals of the Queen's Club grass-court tournament.
Britain's Tim Henman also advanced easily while American Todd Martin also moved on and will face Hewitt.
Hewitt, the two-time defending champion, won 6-2, 6-1.
Henman needed just 51 minutes to down American wild card Robby Gi nep ri 6-1, 6-2. Ginepri, 19, had upset Swiss veteran Marc Rosset in the second round.
Henman dominated the match with his serve, getting 85 percent of his first serves into play. Ginepri won only eight points in the first set as Henman conceded just one point on serve.
Hewitt next faces Martin, who posted a 7-5, 6-3 victory over No. 8 Xavier Malisse of Belgium.
TITLE: Lakers Sweep Nets To Finish Three-Peat
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey - With Shaquille O'Neal unstoppable yet again, the Los Angeles Lakers won their third straight NBA title on Wednesday night, by beating New Jersey, 113-107, for a four-game sweep of the Nets.
O'Neal had 34 points and 10 rebounds and earned his third consecutive MVP award, while Kobe Bryant led a terrific supporting cast, as the Lakers won their 14th title and ended the Nets' greatest season in the NBA.
O'Neal gave credit to Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who won his ninth title and is tied for the most NBA championships. Jackson also passed Pat Riley for the most playoff victories with 156 and won his 24th straight postseason series.
"He gave us a plan when we first met him. He promised us if we stuck to the plan that everything would work out," said O'Neal. "I'm just glad that [he signed up], because it was something that I needed in my life. I was sort of a great player who didn't have any championships. Since I met Phil, I have three."
Bryant finished with 25 points and eight assists as Los Angeles set an NBA record with a 30-5 playoff record over the past two seasons.
The game and series belonged to O'Neal, who set a record for a four-game series with 145 points. O'Neal scored 36, 40 and 35 points in the first three games, finishing the series by going 12-for-20 from the field with four assists and two blocks.
The Nets played gallantly, trying to salvage respect in a mismatched series. But the Lakers had too much of everything - 11 three-pointers, big nights from their two superstars and double-figure contributions from Derek Fisher, Devean George and Robert Horry.
New Jersey all but conceded defeat with 0:00.44 left, subbing for Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin despite trailing by only six points. Both got a rousing ovation. The Lakers' Mitch Richmond, a 14-year veteran, then hit the final shot of the game - his only one of the series.
Martin questioned whether the Nets had enough heart. "It's just a game to some people," he said. "I live and die for this game. Some people, they just approach it, 'Oh, well.' That's their attitude. I talked all season, tried to motivate people. Did that to the point where I was tired of talking, you know?"
The Nets abandoned the full-court pressure they had used, without much success, in the first three games and went to a 2-3 zone whenever O'Neal was in the game. But the Lakers kept moving the ball and finding the open player, and the Nets failed to make the clutch shots.
Martin had the highest-scoring quarter of anyone in the series, getting 17 in the first 12 minutes. A bank shot high off the glass gave the Nets a 34-23 lead with less than a minute left in the first quarter.
Scott chose to rest Martin and Kidd at the same time to start the second quarter, and by the time both returned the Lakers had tied it 41-41.
Three-pointers by George and Horry put the Lakers up 55-49, and a three by Fisher made it 58-52. But the Nets closed the half with a 5-0 run to trail by one.
Rick Fox had eight points in the first six minutes of the third quarter, and the Lakers increased their lead to eight late in the period. If it seemed the Nets were set to fade, they had different ideas.
New Jersey closed the quarter with a 4-0 run, then got a three-pointer from Kidd, a three-point play from Lucious Harris and a foul shot from Martin to lead 87-84 with 10:05 to go.
New Jersey got within five on a dunk by Martin with 2:18 left, but Fisher made a corner jumper and O'Neal - after missing his two previous shots badly - hit a turnaround from the lane with 1:24 left for a 108-99 lead.
TITLE: Italy Scrapes Into Second Round
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: YOKOHAMA, Japan - A goal by Alessandro del Piero five minutes from fulltime on Thursday saved Italy from joining France and Argentina on the list of top teams going home early from the World Cup.
Italy's 1-1 tie with Mexico saw both teams progress to the second round. In the other Group G game, Croatia, which finished third four years ago, could provide no surprises this time and headed home after losing to Ecuador, 1-0.
In the day's other games, Brazil moved into the second round with a 5-2 rout of Costa Rica at Suwon, South Korea, with Ronaldo and Rivaldo keeping up their goal-a-game pace. Turkey also advanced, after beating China, 3-0.
"If I had dreamed of anything in this game it would be this,'' said del Piero. "Had we won, we would have been more tranquil, but the aim was to qualify and we made it.''
Mexican striker Jared Borgetti scored the opening goal in the 34th minute, sending the Italians into a panic as they saw their World Cup hopes fading - until del Piero's first World Cup goal.
Borgetti's goal was masterful. Cuahtemoc Blanco floated a pass through to Borgetti, who turned his back to the goal and skimmed the ball off his head into the opposite corner of the net over the stunned Italian goalie, Gianluigi Buffon.
The Italians thought they had gone ahead in the 13th minute, but Filippo Inzaghi, inserted into Italy's starting lineup for this match, was flagged for being offside after scoring. In the 63rd minute, Italy had another goal ruled out when Vincenzo Montella was called offside.
Italy captain Paolo Maldini broke the record for the most 90-minute appearances in World Cup finals games. Maldini played his 22nd consecutive World Cup match, breaking Uwe Seeler's record of 21 games set in the 1960s and 1970s for West Germany.
Should Italy reach the last four, and should Maldini feature in all games, including either the final or the third-place play off, he would also break the record for World Cup finals appearances set by Germany's Lothar Matthaus, who played in 25 games.
In winning its first World Cup game, Ecuador ensured Croatia could not catch Italy or Mexico. Ecuador still finished last in the group, with three points.
"Everyone in Ecuador should celebrate, because it's a great joy. We won our first World Cup game," said goalscorer Edison Mendez. "We played poorly in the first game, but we recovered and won a match.''
Mendez drilled a right-footed shot from close range in the 48th minute. He knocked in Agustin Delgado's header off Ulises de la Cruz' pinpoint cross from near the left corner flag.
Turkey, in its first World Cup in 48 years, got goals by Hakan Sas and Bulent Korkmaz in the first nine minutes. Umit Davala, whose passes led to the first two goals, scored in the 85th minute.
"We played very well today, we controlled the match and had plenty of chances," coach Senol Gunes said. "We were under pressure in our first two games. We're very glad everything went to the plan and we've advanced."
Sas got his second goal of the tournament with a 20-meter shot, off a pass from Umit Davala, and Korkmaz scored when he outjumped Li Xiaopeng for a looping header that goalkeeper Jiang Jin got a hand on.
Brazil joined Spain in going through the first round without a loss. "This is important to give us confidence in the final round of 16,'" Rivaldo said, after scoring once. "We have tradition, a team that won the world championship four times, but we have our feet on the ground."
In Seoul, Brazil showed it can still play the "beautiful game." The prettiest goal came from Edmilson in the 39th minute, when he took a long pass, flipped in the air and sent the ball home with a scissor-kick, putting his team ahead 3-0.
Earlier, Ronaldo seemed to get one, but Costa Rica defender Luis Marin beat him to the ball in the 10th minute, only to have it squirt off his foot into the net. Ronaldo scored on his own three minutes later, after beating two defenders.
Costa Rica rallied, on goals by Paulo Wanchope in the 39th minute and Ronald Gomez in the 56th. But Rivaldo scored in the 62nd minute and Junior followed to complete the romp.
"We are not the favorites. We are just a good team at a good level," Brazilian coach Luiz Felipe Scolari said. "I tell my players to remain humble, working hard. We haven't really won anything yet. We have reached the second round, but now comes the most difficult part."
(Reuters, AP)