SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #799 (64), Friday, August 30, 2002
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TITLE: Visa Changes Force Finns To Cancel
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In a move that could cost St. Petersburg millions of dollars in tourism revenue, Russia's Foreign Ministry changed visa regulations for visitors arriving on cruise ships, prompting two Finnish cruise lines, Silja Line and Kristina Cruises, to cancel scheduled trips to Russia.
 
Prior to a ministry decision that took effect at noon on Tuesday, Finns and other foreigners arriving on cruise ships were not required to have Russian visas as long as their stay in port was less than 72 hours, a figure in line with international standards.
 The ministry's decision has changed the situation, drawing protests from the Finnish lines.
 "The situation is very unfortunate both for us and St. Petersburg, since our project would have brought substantial income to the city and to its sea services, including harbor charges, ships' pilots fees and income for travel agents and tour organizers," Tuomas Nylund, communications director for Silja Line, said in a telephone interview from Helsinki.
 The Opera, a ferry operated by Silja, had been scheduled to dock in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, carrying 500 passengers, who had already booked tickets. The ministry decision forced the line to change the point of destination to Riga, Latvia. Nylund said that 130 of the would-be passengers canceled their reservations.
 The number of prospective tourists the city could lose is substantial.
 On Wednesday, Kristina Cruises canceled 97 cruises that it had scheduled for the rest of this year between the Finnish port of Kotka and Vyborg, in Karelia, which was Finnish territory prior to WWII. Kristina Cruises will refund all moneys paid for the canceled cruises.
 For Silja Line, Wednesday's arrival was to be the first in a program of twice-weekly cruises to run between Helsinki and St. Petersburg on Wednesdays and Fridays over the last four months of this year. The company is not only out the revenues the cruises would have generated, but also the hundreds of thousands of euros it says it spent on an advertising campaign to promote the cruises.
 "If the results from the project were good, Silja Line was planning to increase the number of cruises to St. Petersburg next year, when the city is to celebrate its 300-year anniversary," Nylund said. "It's obvious that the interest in St. Petersburg is rising these days."
 Nylund said that Silja first received notification of the new regulations on Aug. 21, but the line had hoped that they would be able to come to an agreement with the Foreign Ministry.
 According to a statement from the city's International Affairs Committee, the request to require visas from cruise passengers from Finland initially came from the Russian Embassy in Finland. The Foreign Ministry backed the proposal.
 A statement issued by the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday stated that "Russian legislation and international practice do not qualify these cruises as eligible for visa-free entry."
 No explanation of the specifics of Russian legislation with respect to the question were provided. Officials contacted at the ministry on Thursday would not elaborate on the contents of the statement.
 However, the statement referred to the fact that "the definition of an international cruise in Finland's own laws requires a cruise vessel to stop in at least two international ports."
 According to Mikko Partanen, managing director of Kristina Cruises, the official notification they received from the Russian Foreign Ministry, described the new requirement as a matter of "reciprocity."
 But, said Igor Glukhov, the deputy head of the Inflot World Wide agency, which provides support for international cruises sailing to St. Petersburg, the statement made no sense, as Russian boats haven't run cruises to Finland recently.
 Partanen says that the decision follows in the line of other difficulties his line has had in sailing to Russia of late.
 "We had been providing cruises between Laapenranta and Vyborg since 1985 and never had this type of problem," he said.
 A month ago, however, the one-day cruises from Laapenranta, 10 kilometers from the Russian border, through the Saimaa Canal to Vyborg, were discontinued, after ministry officials began demanding visas. Kristina Cruises then changed the route, departing from Kotka to Vyborg, avoiding the canal and, for some reason, the Foreign Ministry's objections.
 "The Russian Foreign Ministry has made a rather strange decision," said Glukhov.
 Glukhov said that, according to an international convention signed in 1963 that established regulations governing visa requirements for ferry services, international tour cruises that spend less than 72 hours in a foreign port do not require visas. The Soviet Union signed the convention, though it limited the time a ship should spend in port without visas being required to 48 hours.
 Glukhov added that the ministry's decision also appears to make little sense, in that it concerns only cruise trips from Finland, while passengers sailing on other international cruise lines, including those operating out of other European countries and the United States, are still not required to have visas.
 "However, this decision may well put other international cruise lines on alert," Glukhov said. "We have already received calls from the United States and from other countries, where cruise companies are worrying about their future in Russia."
 According to Glukhov, the decision comes at a particularly bad time, as St. Petersburg was enjoying significant growth in cruise-related tourism. Only 60 such ships docked in the city's port in 1992, while the figure has already reached 200 this year.
 "We were expecting this number to reach about 300 next year, but I doubt that this will happen now," he said.
 "The decision will cause huge financial losses not only for Finland, but also for St. Petersburg and the entire Northwest region," Glukhov added.
 According to him, the cancellation of the Silja Line cruises alone will deprive St. Petersburg of about $15 million in revenues per year, based on average spending by each Finnish tourist of about $100 per day.
 Smolny has been stung by the decision and, in a statement issued Wednesday, said that it has addressed a complaint to both the Foreign Ministry and President Vladimir Putin.
 According to Alexander Prokhorenko, the head of St. Petersburg International Affairs Committee, the city wants to see the project, the cancellation of which he says will mean the loss of $40 million per year, continue.
 The ministry has offered to provide the visas to the Finnish lines for 25 euros per person, a figure that the companies say would significantly dampen interest in the trips.
 The price of Silja Line's cruises range from 240 to 1,000 euros, while the 25-euro charge would increase the cost of the Kristina Cruises packages, which cost from 30 to 50 euros, by as much as 80 percent.
 "First, the price is going to be too high for us and, second, visa registration groups of this side would take a significant amount of time," said Kristina Cruises' Partanen.
 Glukhov says that the ministry's decision is particularly baffling, given the support the program enjoys from other government organizations.
 "It's hard to explain the ministry's position, especially considering that both the St. Petersburg administration and the Russian Transport Ministry were helping to organize the project," he said.
 "The only explanation I can think of is that Russian Foreign Ministry was looking for another source of revenues," Glukhov said. "In the end, however, Russia seems to have lost much more than it could have gained from visas."

TITLE: Kursk Report Reveals Damning Deficiencies
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Kursk's crew had never been trained to use the kind of torpedo that exploded and sank the nuclear submarine, and leaks of torpedo propellant similar to the one that triggered the August 2000 disaster were a regular occurrence in the Northern Fleet, a published report Thursday on the official investigation revealed.
 
Details of the prosecutor general's probe into the catastrophe that killed the Kursk's entire 118-member crew filled four pages of the government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
 Prosecutors pointed at ample evidence of neglect of safety regulations in the cash-strapped navy, but concluded that none of the violations directly brought on the disaster.
 Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov closed the books on the catastrophe last month, saying no one was to blame for the accidental explosion. The blast was caused by highly volatile hydrogen peroxide seeping out of cracks in the torpedo and exploding upon contact with kerosene and metal. The weapons in the bow then exploded with the power of a mild earthquake.
 The torpedo that exploded on the Kursk was built in Kazakhstan in 1990 and was repaired from 1993 to 1994. Investigators have determined that some components had served from one to six years past their designated service life.
 They said no malfunction had been spotted in the Kursk's torpedoes before the submarine went on its fatal mission, but pointed to a lack of data about the condition of the torpedo's rubber gaskets, which needed frequent replacement.
 The prosecutors said a check of Northern Fleet arsenals in 2000 and 2001 revealed several cases in which bad gaskets led to hydrogen-peroxide leaks from torpedo tanks, the newspaper said. The inspection even found signs of corrosion on the surface of some weapons.
 The probe also revealed that the torpedo that exploded on the Kursk was checked and loaded on the submarine by navy staff who were not authorized for the job; that the Kursk crew had never used such torpedoes and lacked the proper training to handle them; and that the order allowing the crew to use them came from navy officers who lacked the authority to sign such documents.
 Retired Rear Admiral Yury Senatsky, the former chief of the Soviet navy's rescue service, said the official probe left him "burning with shame for the Russian navy."
 "We have proven our complete helplessness and misery," Senatsky said Thursday on Ekho Moskvy radio.
 When the Kursk sank, the navy's rescue efforts were also thwarted by sloppiness, irresponsibility and inadequate equipment. The Northern Fleet's flagship, the Peter the Great cruiser, was close to the disaster area, and its acoustics registered the blasts, which occurred during naval exercises.
 But the Northern Fleet chief, Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, who was leading the maneuvers on board the flagship, ignored the acoustics report and led the ship away from the area. He launched an all-out search for the Kursk nine hours after the explosions.
 The navy finally spotted the submarine on the seabed 31 hours after the catastrophe. Popov and about a dozen other admirals were fired last fall.
 Earlier this year, a top navy official said that 23 crew members who initially managed to survive the blasts and gathered in the stern might have stayed alive for three days. Ustinov has rejected that statement, saying that all the crew members died of carbon monoxide poisoning from fires and the rise in pressure within eight hours of the blasts - long before any help could arrive.
 It might have been possible to find the Kursk sooner if its emergency buoy hadn't been incapacitated by both manufacturing flaws and crew error that prevented it from rising to the surface.
 Russian submersibles spent a week in futile attempts to hook up to the Kursk's escape hatch, until the government finally invited foreign divers, who opened it within hours.
 The probe revealed that the navy crews who operated the submersibles hadn't been trained for such missions and lacked the supplies and spares to properly run their capsules.
 Senatsky said the Northern Fleet had numerous rescue ships and a specialized rescue submarine that would have been capable of reaching the Kursk within two hours - if the navy hadn't scrapped them and fired all its deep-sea divers for lack of funds several years ago.

TITLE: Putin Puts Forward New Visa Proposals
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin has addressed European Union leaders with a bold proposal to consider visa-free travel between Russia and the EU as a way to resolve the dispute over the Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, his office said Tuesday.
 
In a letter about the Kaliningrad dispute, Putin suggested the EU leaders "consider a new Russian integration initiative that envisages putting into practice the ambitious goal of a shift in the future to visa-free travel for citizens of Russia and the EU," Putin's press service said in a statement released to the media.
 Russia has pushed for a transport corridor that would allow visa-free travel between Kaliningrad and the rest of the country, but EU officials have rejected the idea, instead proposing eased visa procedures.
 Putin said the Kaliningrad issue would determine the future of Russia's relations with the EU and voiced hope that the parties would be able to reach an agreement before a Russia-EU summit in Copenhagen in November.
 There was no immediate public comment to the letter from EU national leaders, the EU executive commission in Brussels or officials in Denmark, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency.
 However, an EU diplomat in Brussels, who spoke on condition of anonymity, suggested that, in the long term, EU governments would welcome a move to visa-free travel if certain conditions are met, including controls to ensure criminals and illegal immigrants did not take advantage of the visa-free system.
 Putin was in the Far East on Tuesday and did not comment publicly on the issue.

TITLE: Anti-Shevardnadze Stance Is Backfiring on Kremlin
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Moscow and Tbilisi ratcheted up their angry rhetoric over the crime-infested Pankisi Gorge on Wednesday and Thursday, but the lawless border area is just a tactical battlefield along a much broader front where national interests collide.
 
In essence, Russia and Georgia are at loggerheads over a Cold War-style dilemma: Which world power will hold sway in the unstable but strategically important Caspian region - Russia or the United States?
 While Moscow is intent on retaining its grip on an area that boasts large energy resources and is emerging as a key transit route from Central Asia to Europe, Tbilisi has pinned its hopes of economic development and security on the West.
 Moscow has repeatedly called on Tbilisi to allow Russian troops into Pankisi Gorge to flush out Chechen rebels and foreign fighters believed to be holed up there. Such a deployment, which would have boosted Russia's military presence in the republic, has been flatly rejected by Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. Instead, this spring, Shevardnadze managed to bring in dozens of U.S. military instructors to help the ragtag Georgian forces hone their anti-terrorism skills.
 Last week, Shevardnadze ordered Interior Ministry troops into the gorge. But the operation has so far yielded no practical results, prompting President Vladimir Putin to accuse Georgia of putting on a show instead of making real efforts to combat Chechen militants.
 "The Taliban regime sheltered al-Qaida and it prepared criminal acts throughout the world, prepared and carried out the terrible terrorist act whose anniversary we will commemorate on Sept. 11," Putin said in televised remarks. "Is the situation in Georgia any better for us Russians? In what way?"
 The Kremlin focuses its rhetoric on the gorge as part of its general effort to portray Shevardnadze as incapable of controling the country, Pavel Bayev, a senior researcher at Norway's International Peace Research Institute, said by telephone from Oslo. The Kremlin is trying to undermine Shevardnadze, hoping he will either leave or be ousted, Bayev said Tuesday.
 The Russian leadership believes that whoever succeeds Shevardnadze, who won acclaim in the West during his stint as Soviet foreign minister in the late 1980s, would have less weight in both domestic and international politics and, thus, would be "easier to deal with," according to Bayev, who recently published a working paper on Pankisi.
 But Russia's radical anti-Shevardnadze stance has backfired, allowing the Georgian leader to boost his popularity. Public opinion has been largely in favor of the U.S. presence and Georgians have supported a firm stand against its bully of a neighbor. Earlier this week, parliament called on Shevardnadze to close down Russian military bases on Georgian soil immediately and to pull out of the Moscow-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States.
 However, experts argue that Georgia cannot afford to alienate Russia, which continues to be the most powerful player in the region.
 "Both sides remain short-sighted by failing to implement a long-term pragmatic approach," which would foster trade and much-needed stability in the region, said Levan Ramishvili, head of the Tbilisi-based Institute of Freedom.
 In trading accusations over the gorge, Shevardnadze and Putin have stuck to a zero-sum approach, Ramishvili said in a phone interview Wednesday.
 But Georgia stands to lose more, as Moscow has a far greater number of levers to compel Tbilisi to respect its interests - retaining a military presence in the south Caucasus, ensuring stability in the region and gaining a share in the extraction and transportation of oil and gas.
 Among these levers is tacit support for Georgia's breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Georgia's reliance on fossil fuel supplies coming from or via Russia. Also, Russia's sizeable Georgian diaspora transfers up to $1 billion a year to relatives in Georgia, according to Pikayev's estimates, while the country's reported GDP for 2000 was less than $3.5 billion.

TITLE: Lack of Laws Helping Sex Trade To Flourish
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The number of Russian women smuggled out of the country for sexual exploitation abroad has skyrocketed in recent years, but police are virtually powerless to prevent it, Interior Ministry officials said at a news conference Tuesday.
 
The officials said the ministry had made little progress in fighting the problem because, under Russian law, neither prostitution nor trading in women for the purposes of prostitution is classed as a criminal offense.
 "There is not even a legal definition for the trade of human beings - no distinction between who is an offender and who is a victim," said Yevgeny Sadkov, the Interior Ministry's chief lawyer, during the conference, which was held to discuss the ministry's efforts to curb trafficking in people.
 Viktor Plekhanov, deputy head of the Interior Ministry's organized-crime directorate, said that, while he was aware of an escalation in people trafficking, he was unable to provide any concrete statistics, describing it as a "latent phenomenon."
 To charge trafficker, Russian police have so far been forced to use articles of the Criminal Code dealing with such crimes as illegal deprivation of freedom, illegal crossing of the border and illegal business activities, Sadkov said.
 Earlier this month, however, President Vladimir Putin ordered ministries to come up with a legal solution to the problem, he said.
 The Interior Ministry has already drawn up a set of amendments to the Criminal Code which would make trafficking in people a criminal offense, Sadkov said. The amendments have already been examined by experts at the Justice Ministry and will be presented in a bill to the State Duma this fall, he added.
 Igor Martynov, also of the Interior Ministry, said Tuesday that in some ongoing cases isolated criminal groups have trafficked as many as 100 women. 
 Juliette Engel, director of international relations for the Angel Coalition, a nongovernmental organization that fights trafficking, claimed Tuesday that as many as 50,000 Russian women are forced into sex slavery abroad annually.
 Traffickers' methods have remained unchanged since the early 1990s. Russian women are invited to apply for well-paid jobs overseas as nannies, dancers or waitresses through recruitment or tourist agencies. On arrival in the foreign country, pimps take away the women's passports and force them to work as prostitutes.
 Martynov claimed that the majority of trafficked women knew perfectly well what kind of work was expected of them abroad. He added that the role of a deceived victim of trafficking was very convenient for stirring the pity of foreign police and escaping charges of illegal prostitution.
 Engel angrily rebutted Martynov's comments. 
 "It is convenient for Russian police to depict the victims as guilty - then they don't have to do anything," she said in a telephone interview.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Battling TB
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Governor Vladimir Yakovlev has given the city administration's healthcare committee the task of developing a program to fight against tuberculosis within the next two weeks.
 The governor's press service told Interfax on Thursday that Yakovlev had said at a meeting in Smolny that he would allocate additional funds from the city budget in order to stamp out the illness. The meeting was attended by the city's chief epidemologist, oncologist and cardiologist, as well as the heads of academic-medical institutes.
 According to the reports of the State Health Inspection Committee, in the first seven months of 2002, 865 new cases of tuberculosis were registered in the city, 10 percent lower than the same figure for 2001. Of those cases, 43 involved children under 14 years of age, though the same figure for 2001 was 65.
 
 
<b>Mystery TNT
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Two 50-kilogram bags of TNT explosives were found on Thursday on the St. Petersburg-Sortaval road, in the Priozersky Region of the Leningrad Oblast, Interfax reported.
 The bags were found in the tree line not far from the road, and the explosives were still contained in their factory packaging, the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Chief Administration of the Interior Ministry reported.
 
 
<b>Fathers Christmas
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - This year, the New Year will be seen in on Dec. 31 by both Ded Moroz ("Father Frost") - the Slavic version of Father Christmas - and Father Christmas himself, Governor Vladimir Yakovlev told Interfax on Thursday.
 Yakovlev said that both Slavic and the European traditions would be used to see in a year of celebrations of the city's 300th anniversary.
 Yakovlev also said that there were plans to open a "branch office" for Ded Moroz in St. Petersburg, which would be a present from the Vologodsk Oblast, where his main residence is located in the village of Veliky Ustyug. 



TITLE: Putin Backs Coal Against Gas
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin turned his attention to coal on Thursday, promising miners in Siberia that he intends to boost the ailing industry by creating a competitive domestic fuel market by gradually raising natural-gas prices.
 
&quot;There is no other country in the world [like Russia] - everywhere else coal is cheaper [than gas],&quot; Putin said in televised remarks from the Kemerovo mining center of Mezhdurechensk.
 &quot;And if we have coal that is cheaper than gas, it will be in demand, it will be consumed, there won't be problems related to oversupply,&quot; he said.
 Later, however, Putin made it clear that Russia would not be bullied by the World Trade Organization into quickly abandoning gas subsidies to win membership, telling a special session of the State Council that gas prices would be raised &quot;very carefully and gradually.&quot;
 Gas monopoly Gazprom sells its gas domestically for 20 percent of the price it offers in Europe.
 &quot;Low prices on gas are our natural advantage,&quot; Putin said, adding that he considers pressure to raise them &quot;unfair.&quot;
 The coal industry, once a pillar of the economy, deteriorated rapidly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Once subsidies dried up, it was unable to compete with artificially low gas prices, which the government maintained to check inflation.
 In 1993 the government, with the help of the World Bank, began a massive restructuring program that resulted in the closure of scores of loss-making mines and the privatization of two-thirds of the those that were left.
 The World Bank has provided Russia, which has nearly a third of the world's coal deposits, with more than $1.3 billion in restructuring loans for the coal industry since 1993, but the government has thus far failed to complete many aspects of the original plan.
 The government has also failed to fund, as it pledged to do in order to receive the loans, social and ecological programs related to the elimination of loss-making enterprises. Vadim Voronin, deputy director of the World Bank's Moscow office, said that the government has yet to provide some 26 billion rubles ($860 million) of what was promised.
 With restructuring, the industry has shown signs of recovery.
 Since 1993, productivity has doubled to 1,517 tons a year per miner, while the number of people employed in the sector has more than halved, to 328,000 from 878,000.
 Earlier this year, the government said that it would gradually free up more gas for export and replace it with coal domestically - a move popular in towns, like Mezhdurechensk, that have been plagued by social crises throughout the past decade.
 The project, however, is likely to take years and has been met with vocal opposition from major domestic consumers and environmentalists.
 National power grid Unified Energy Systems says that it is twice as expensive for it to use coal rather than gas.
 Furthermore, it would cost nearly $1 billion to refit 27 power stations, currently gas-fueled, to burn coal, including introducing environmental safeguards, UES said in a statement on Thursday.
 It would cost even more to develop the transport infrastructure needed for coal deliveries, UES said.
 And the public health costs would be incalculable, according to Sergei Bobylyov, deputy head of the department of Environment Economics at Moscow State University. Even a gradual rise in coal use will lead to an additional 10,000 deaths and illnesses from pollution every year by 2010, he said.
 Greater coal use would also revive the problem of acid rain - a direct result of burning coal, according to Yevgeny Shvarts, conservation director at World Wildlife Fund Russia.
 According to Voronin of the World Bank, in the long-term, Russia can and should increase the share of coal on domestic fuel market.
 &quot;Ecological issues must eventually become a part of production costs. There are some safe methods for using coal in the world,&quot; Voronin said.

TITLE: Corruption Case May Be Key to Deputy's Murder
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Chelyabinsk regional prosecutors who investigated the corruption allegations against lawmaker Vladimir Golovlyov called the sums embezzled and the number of people involved &quot;unprecedented,&quot; and said that they believe Golovlyov's death in an apparent contract hit last week was linked to the case.
 
The investigation, which concerns Golovlyov's work as a regional privatization chief between 1991 and 1992, &quot;unearthed such a thick layer of crimes and such a large amount of embezzled [funds] that this, and the way these ill-gotten gains were laundered, was the main cause behind the killing,&quot; a spokesperson from the Chelyabinsk regional prosecutor's office said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
 Golovlyov, a State Duma deputy and member of the opposition Liberal Russia movement, was gunned down last Wednesday as he was walking his dog near his home in northern Moscow. He was buried Saturday.
 Speculation about the motives has abounded. Prosecutors investigating the murder say they are following a number of leads, including Golovlyov's political activities and his work in Chelyabinsk. Liberal Russia has called the killing retribution for its opposition to the Kremlin. Golovlyov's aide and some fellow deputies, meanwhile, have suggested their colleague knew too much about the dubious practices of high-ranking federal officials and had threatened to dish the dirt.
 The Chelyabinsk prosecutor's spokesperson said the corruption probe, opened in 1996, pointed to the embezzlement of some 3 billion redenominated rubles - estimated to be worth $500 million to $600 million - through privatization schemes involving shares of major regional enterprises, including the Magnitogorsk metallurgical complex.
 The money, he said, was parked in bank accounts in Cyprus, Germany, Britain, the United States and the Virgin Islands, and has led to a separate money-laundering case involving international cooperation.
 In addition to the shares of large local companies, the embezzlement charges against Golovlyov also involved machinations with the notorious privatization vouchers given out to Russian citizens in the early 1990s.
 The prosecutor's spokesperson, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that staff from all of the region's law-enforcement agencies had lost their vouchers in &quot;Golovlyov's&quot; investment funds. &quot;But that is not why we opened this case,&quot; he added.
 Golovlyov's name became widely known last fall, after he announced his defection from the Union of Right Forces to join Liberal Russia, which is funded in part by tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a one-time Kremlin insider who has become one of President Vladimir Putin's most virulent critics.
 Shortly thereafter, the Prosecutor General's Office convinced the Duma to lift Golovlyov's immunity from prosecution partially so that he could be questioned in the Chelyabinsk embezzlement case. Golovlyov and five former subordinates were charged. The prosecutor's office said that it was planning to ask the Duma when it returned from its summer break to allow Golovlyov to be brought to trial.
 The Chelyabinsk spokesperson said Golovlyov's personal wealth was estimated at a minimum of $100 million, and some of his property has been seized, including three houses in the prestigious Odintsovo district outside Moscow. The spokesperson also said that prosecutors believed Golovlyov had taken a 12-million ruble ($493,000) bribe and had used ill-gotten gains to fund election campaigns in the 1999 Duma race.
 Golovlyov's lawyer, Boris Zolotukhin, condemned the statements as unethical.
 &quot;Article 49 of the Constitution establishes that no one can be pronounced guilty without a court verdict,&quot; Zolotukhin told the Web site Grani.ru. &quot;I defended Golovlyov's interests, I know the case materials ... and I know that there isn't a word there about Golovlyov's personal wealth being valued at $100 million.&quot;
 Early this month, Golovlyov had finished reading the 100-odd volumes of case material, inching open the door for the case to be sent to court.
 According to his aide, Golovlyovgave investigators incriminating evidence against dozens of high-profile government officials involved in various machinations and even claimed that he had made a videotape with the evidence. Unsubstantiated press reports have said that the officials include Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko, who occupied several posts in Chelyabinsk in the early 1990s, former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and early 1990s privatization chief Anatoly Chubais. 
 &quot;[Golovlyov] believed that the investigators' initial demand that he give evidence against such well-known people was a sort of test to see how much he knew,&quot; Golovlyov's aide, Andrei Sidelnikov, told the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper last week, without giving names. &quot;And when [Golovlyov] started talking, the investigators simply got frightened by the information he had.&quot;
 Sidelnikov said that Golovlyov had informed him of the existence of the videotape but that he had not seen it. &quot;He said that if anything should happen to him, the people who have the videotape would reveal it,&quot; Sidelnikov was quoted as saying.
 The Chelyabinsk prosecutor's spokesperson said that he had heard nothing of the tape and had no details on whether the officials mentioned in the press would be questioned. But he said Golovlyov was &quot;unquestionably a smart man&quot; and did not name any names during questioning.
 Press reports said that the tape had been made in London, where Berezovsky now lives in self-imposed exile. Berezovsky has been known to use video materials in his anti-Kremlin campaign in the past. Last March, he presented a film suggesting that the Federal Security Service had been involved in the deadly 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and two other cities, and in a foiled bombing attempt in Ryazan. The presentation provided no conclusive evidence.
 After Golovlyov's death, Liberal Russia co-chairperson Sergei Yushenkov described the murder as being political, citing the many problems the movement has run into. Detectives investigating the killing spent at least two days searching the group's offices and confiscating evidence.

TITLE: Moscow Food Giant Scoops Local Dairy
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: One of the largest dairy producers in Russia, Wimm-Bill-Dann Products, has bought the St. Petersburg dairy firm Roska for $11.7 million, Yevgeny Chvertkin, first vice president at Wimm-Bill-Dann, announced at a press conference on Tuesday. 
 
The Roska factory, built in 1987, currently has an output of 27 million tons of dairy products and 40 million tons of processed milk per year, although the maximum production capacity at the plant is 165 tons of dairy products and 500 tons of processed milk per year. Leading Roska dairy brands include Roska and Kolibri.
 WBD intends to treble Roska's production output by investing tens of millions of dollars, Chvertkin said at the press conference. &quot;We are also going to install new production lines in order to start producing WBD brands. We'll carry out research on the local market to see which brands will do best,&quot; the press service of the company said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. 
 WBD's most popular brands include dairy products Domik V Derevne (&quot;House in the Country&quot;), Milaya Mila (&quot;Sweet Mila&quot;) and Chudo (&quot;Miracle&quot;). WBD also produces popular fruit juices, such as J7 and children's foodstuffs.
 WBD has already made several attempts to enter the St. Petersburg market as a dairy producer. In 2000, the company attempted to buy Roska shares, and there were failed attempts to acquire the Piskarevsky Milk Plant, in 2001, and Petmol, another major dairy plant, in the beginning of 2002. 
 In 2000, WBD promised that it would build a milk plant from scratch in the Leningrad Oblast. Though the company has not yet officially dropped these plans, some experts believe that, having acquired Roska, it is unlikely to proceed with the building of its own plant in the region.
 WBD intends to increase its market share in St. Petersburg, which is currently 4 percent, the company's press service said. A source at one local dairy-good producer, however, said that WBD may face serious difficulties - despite lower transportation costs, untreated milk in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast costs 20 percent more than in Moscow.
 Until 2000, Roska's major shareholders were Petmol and Sberbank. They planned to create a large dairy-product holding, but Petmol unexpectedly sold its 47.47-percent stake to the Kolibri concern, which already owned 4 percent of Roska. Later, Sberbank also sold its shares to Kolibri. A year ago, Kolibri, Roska and several agricultural and food companies merged to form the Roska corporation.
 According to Wimm-Bill-Dann, the company's current market share in St. Petersburg is 4 percent, with Petmol taking 50 percent and the Piskarevsky Milk Plant taking 30 percent.
 In early 2002, the company set a precedent by becoming the first Russian foodstuffs conglomerate to place ADRs on the New York Stock Exchange, receiving $207 million for a 25-percent stake in the company.

TITLE: New Chief Elected at Shipping Company
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new board of directors and a new acting general director were elected by an extraordinary shareholders meeting of the Northwest Shipping Co. on Saturday.
 
Northwest Shipping Co., which owns 17 companies involved in the transportation of cargo and passengers in the Northwest Region, as well as the construction and repair of vessels, has an annual income of $100 million. In 2002, a holding company, New Programs and Conceptions (NPAC), acquired a 54.86-percent controlling stake in the company. Minority shareholders include the State Property Ministry with a 25-percent stake in the company.
 Over the preceding two weeks, it had been widely reported in the local media that Northwest Shipping Co. was intending to sell its passenger-transportation holdings, including the River Port passenger terminal, a hotel and passenger liners, for $17 million. Andrei Guskov, a member of the company's board of directors with a 2.1-percent stake in the company, protested against such a move, however. Guskov had been deputy director for economics and finance at the company until the spring of this year, when he had a disagreement with the management over strategic development issues. Guskov is also a general director of Soti, a company specializing in crisis management and securities operations which holds a 4-percent stake in the North-West Shipping Company.
 The extraordinary shareholders meeting was called for by NPAC, which intended to change the board of directors. It maintained that this was necessary as some of the board's members, including Guskov, have now left the Northwest Shipping Co. Guskov, however, was elected general director at the meeting, with NPAC only receiving four of the nine places on the board. 
 The deciding vote at the meeting was held by the Property Ministry, which holds a 25.5-percent stake. In a surprise move, the ministry's votes were given to Soti and associated minority shareholders. 
 According to Galina Overchinka, spokesperson for the Northwest Shipping Co., speaking in a telephone interview on Tuesday, the state's position was based on the fact that the Property Ministry was also opposed to the sale of the company's passenger-transport holdings. 
 Vasily Shapiro, the state representative at the meeting, said that the Property Ministry would be calling for another shareholders meeting with another round of elections for members of the board of directors. 
 Valery Pogrebnikov, a spokesperson for NPAC, said in a telephone interview on Monday that the holding would be supporting this move.
 Pogrebenkov said that the outcome of the extraordinary shareholders meeting &quot;was not a surprise for us. It was a possible outcome that we had expected. The further development of events at Northwest Shipping Co. will depend on the way that this new board of directors manages the company, which is to say, the way in which the board will reach agreements.&quot;
 Straight after the meeting, Guskov officially announced that he would be reviewing an order placed by North-west Shipping Co. for the construction of two vessels at Severnaya Verf, a shipping company in which NPAC owns a controlling stake.

TITLE: Deal Said To Be Close in Power Struggle at Kristall Vodka
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In what appears to be a swift victory for the state, a deal was struck in the small hours of Wednesday morning between embattled general director of the Kristall distillery, Alexander Timofeyev, and the government-backed candidate, Alexander Romanov, a source said.
 
The deal comes after a series of takeover attempts by Romanov over the past week.
 Timofeyev is expected to appoint Romanov acting general director in his place, the source said, adding that the entire management team would be replaced, including the financial director, commercial director, sales director and head of personnel.
 Romanov would neither deny nor confirm his impending appointment when contacted by telephone Wednesday evening.
 Kristall spokesperson Olga Frolova said Kristall had no comment.
 The eleventh-hour deal appears to have brought an end to a dispute that had escalated over the past week and looked likely to go on for months.
 The battle for Russia's biggest distillery began Aug. 16, when the Butyrsky intermunicipal court unexpectedly froze all of Kristall's settlement accounts. The injunctions freezing the accounts had been issued on the basis of what Romanov said was a board decision Aug. 12 appointing him in place of Timofeyev.
 Timofeyev and other board members declared the decision a fake. A hastily convened board meeting Aug. 19 overruled the disputed decision and reappointed Timofeyev.
 Romanov's appearance has been linked to changes in the management of state vodka holding Rosspirtprom, which controls 51 percent of Kristall.
 At the end of July, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov sacked Rosspirtprom general director Sergei Zivenko and replaced him with Pyotr Myasoyedov, a major general in the Tax Police.
 Industry watchers have said that the swathe of court injunctions and board decisions were a fast-track means for Myasoyedov to gain control over the distillery without having to wait the 45 days it takes to hold an extraordinary shareholders meeting to replace Timofeyev.
 The source said it was not Romanov or Myasoyedov's persistence that carried the day. &quot;Powers more influential than Rosspirtprom&quot; had been involved, the source said.

TITLE: Russia Improves Corruption Ranking
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia is seen as slightly less corrupt than last year, but is still in the bottom third of a ranking conducted by the Berlin-based Transparency International corruption watchdog and released Wednesday.
 
Russia tied with Tanzania, India, Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire and Honduras for 71st place out of 102 countries included in the annual Corruption Perceptions Index.
 Finland took first place in the ranking as the least corrupt country, and Bangladesh was last.
 Russia was 79th out of 91 countries last year, having been ranked 82nd out of 99 in 2000 and 82nd out of 90 in 1999.
 Countries are ranked on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 indicating the lowest level of corruption.
 The ranking was conducted by nine corporate and noncorporate organizations - including the World Bank, Columbia University, the Economist Intelligence Unit and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
 The organizations conducted between three and 15 surveys in which they interviewed entrepreneurs, analysts and locals in each country.
 Russia scored 2.7, while Finland received 9.7 points and Bangladesh had 1.2.
 Russia was judged as less corrupt than most other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States also surveyed. But Belarus and Uzbekistan scored higher.
 Russia had one of the largest deviations between highest and lowest scores in the surveys, said Yury Baturin, head of Transparency International in Russia.
 The country was assigned scores as low as 1.5 and as high as 5.
 &quot;Five is the lowest for Germany, which means that what is considered the best in Russia is the worst in Germany,&quot; he said.
 Germany was ranked 18th with 7.3 points.
 &quot;But I believe that one should really look at the lowest range because that is where the problems are,&quot; Baturin said.
 A score of 1.5 would put Russia before Bangladesh and after notoriously corrupt Nigeria.
 Baturin said that 12 surveys were carried out in Russia, the maximum for non-African nations.
 Belarus managed to take 36th place, but that rating was awarded based on the minimum of three surveys, he said.

TITLE: A Relationship in Need of Some Kind of Spark
AUTHOR: By Ariel Cohen
TEXT: ALL of a sudden, it looks like Sept. 11 never happened. After the announcement of a 10-year, $40-billion cooperation deal with Iraq, the sale of five nuclear reactors to Iran and the recent visit of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, some people in Washington are beginning to think that Russia is returning to its position as patron saint of the &quot;axis of evil.&quot; But not so fast.
 
It is true that powerful interests in Russia would like to distance their country from the Soviet-era &quot;principal adversary&quot; - the United States. These forces include the military-industrial complex, anxious to maintain markets in China, India, Iran and, eventually, Saddam Hussein's Iraq. They also include Soviet-era elites still running the Defense and Foreign ministries, people like former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who fail to realize that, in the new century, Russia has new enemies - enemies that do not include &quot;American imperialists.&quot;
 The window of opportunity for the United States to develop a closer relationship with Moscow has not closed - at least not yet. But there are warning signs that the United States' inability to deliver the goods for President Vladimir Putin - combined with the anti-Americanism of many of Russia's ministers and bureaucrats - could derail the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
 In the 21st century, alliances are as much about geoeconomics as geopolitics. Will the U.S. State Department take into account Russia's economic interests without compromising U.S. defense concerns? Will Russia understand that it cannot dance at Iranian and Iraqi weddings while flirting with the United States?
 The Russian-Iraqi agreement, which has been in the works for two years, was announced as the clouds over Baghdad are getting darker and the life expectancy of Hussien's regime is getting shorter. The Iraqi leader, realizing that he is about to be sunk by a U.S. attack, is grasping at straws in the hope of finding shelter and support through his former patron.
 But the Iraqi-Russian economic pact is a fantasy, a figment of the bureaucratic imagination in Moscow and Baghdad. The pact was lobbied and rammed through the Russian bureaucracy by the country's biggest oil company, LUKoil, which is eying Iraq's giant West Qurna field.
 LUKoil, which is owned by Azeri billionaire Vagit Alekperov, has signed agreements with Hussein's regime in Baghdad and is hoping to preserve its strategic investment in Iraq. But lobbying for ties with Saddam today could backfire against its interests in postwar Iraq tomorrow.
 Slavneft and Tatneft are other companies deeply into Iraqi oil and active on Hussein's behalf in Moscow. Until recently, Slavneft, which has a Belarussian connection straight to President Alexander Lukashenko's office, also had close ties with the fiercely anti-American, ultra-nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky. State Duma and government sources in Moscow have repeatedly alleged that Zhirinovsky and his Liberal Democratic Party (which, in reality, is neither liberal nor democratic) is supported by Hussein's purse.
 Pavel Felgenhauer, the well-known Russian defense analyst, told the BBC on Monday that it is not clear which Russian foreign policy is served by the recently announced agreement with Iraq: that of President Putin or that of LUKoil. &quot;We have several foreign policies,&quot; Felgenhauer said.
 Other Moscow-based analysts, who requested anonymity, said LUKoil had bought the Russian Foreign Ministry &quot;lock, stock and barrel.&quot; Some took pride in the fact that private interests now influence Russian foreign policy, just as in any other state. &quot;It is safer that companies influence our decision making,&quot; one observer said. &quot;In the past it was all done behind the closed doors of the Politburo.&quot;
 The problem of articulating Russian foreign and defense policy is not a new one, but it worries Putin's advisers in Moscow and Russia-watchers in Washington. Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, an appointee of Primakov, reflects the anti-American and pro-Arab opinions of Soviet-era diplomats. Ivanov is not trusted by Putin's inner circle, but he has not been replaced because Putin is delaying a purge of the Foreign Ministry.
 The Defense Ministry is now under the control of Putin's confidant, former KGB General Sergei Ivanov. Ivanov is Russia's first &quot;civilian&quot; defense minister, but defense reforms have been slow in coming. When U.S. President George W. Bush and Putin seemed to hit it off, the bureaucrats were less than thrilled.
 It will be unfortunate if Putin's foreign policy is hijacked by greedy oil executives, corrupt Duma factions and the Soviet-era anti-American elite - for one thing because their figures simply don't add up. If Russian-Iraqi trade now stands at about $1 billion a year, it would need to quadruple in order to meet $40 billion during the 10-year cooperation period. This is not about to happen.
 However, the gazillion-dollar figure may be a signal to Washington that Russia wants to be compensated if Hussein is removed. At the recent Group of Eight summit in Canada, Putin told Bush that Moscow would shed no tears over Hussein's removal - as long as Iraq repays its $7 billion of Soviet-era debt. Adjusted for inflation, Iraq's debt now amounts to about $12 billion. Furthermore, if Russia loses the oil concessions that have been signed off by Hussein, and if oil prices go down as Iraq starts to pump more oil to pay for postwar reconstruction, Moscow will lose some of its oil-export revenues - perhaps as much as $4 billion a year.
 With Iran, the story is different. The huge Iranian nuclear contract was lobbied for by the Nuclear Power Ministry, a Soviet-style monolith that is trying to keep a host of factories with tens of thousands of jobs afloat.
 The Nuclear Power Ministry's bureaucrats are not exactly Yankee fans. True, in the long term, an Iran with nuclear weapons on Russia's borders would make it a difficult neighbor: Tehran could stir up unrest in the Muslim areas of the Caucasus and Central Asia. But it is short-term greed - and millions of dollars in bribes - that is keeping the Iranian contract on track, despite the United States' loud protests.
 Finally, the take on North Korea in Moscow is that the former satellite is finally coming to its economic senses, and could provide a lucrative opportunity for Russian companies. The Russians believe that the country's Dear Leader, Kim Sung-il, presides over a North Korean version of perestroika, which could bring elements of a market economy and foreign investment to Pyongyang. Russia does not want to lose out to China, Japan, South Korea - or to the United States - when the last business frontier opens up.
 So is the honeymoon over for the United States and Russia? The message from Putin's policy advisers is that they are still willing to negotiate to address U.S. security concerns. As Washington contemplates what to do next in its war on terrorism, the Kremlin and the White House should seriously explore this opportunity to forge a strategic relationship. While Moscow needs to understand that it can't entertain Iran and Iraq and still be considered a legitimate partner in the anti-terrorism effort, the Bush administration should give Russia's economic interests a fair hearing.
 One hopes that the chilly U.S.-Russian summer will not turn into a frosty fall.
 
 <i>Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington and the author of &quot;Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis.&quot; He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: An Uneasy Alliance Hangs in the Balance
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: ALMOST a year ago, Russia and the United States joined forces to fight terrorism. Moscow helped to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan; in return, Washington tacitly gave its new Russian friends a free hand in the Caucasus after it was established that al-Qaida terrorists had links with Chechen rebels.
 
But now the alliance with Russia seems to be at breaking point. On Saturday, White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer publicly accused Russian officials of lying that their warplanes did not bomb Georgia last Friday. Fleischer also accused Russia of escalating tensions in the region and called for an urgent political settlement to the conflict in Chechnya.
 It is reported that Russian bombers attacked Georgia with heavy-fuel, or vacuum, bombs under cover of darkness at 5:20 a.m., killing one and wounding seven civilians. The powerful blasts were registered by international border monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who said they watched the warplanes cross into Georgia from Russia.
 The United States has its own means of monitoring Russian military activities in the Caucasus - in the same manner as Russia always closely follows U.S. military activity in the Middle East and the Balkans. U.S. spy satellites would surely have registered the powerful flash of a fuel bomb exploding in the dark. U.S. radar at bases in Turkey and surveillance planes observing the no-fly zone in Northern Iraq could also have recorded the Russian bombers flying over the main ridge of the Caucasus Mountains to attack Pankisi Gorge to the south.
 What's clear is that the White House had additional facts at hand when it publicly called Russian officials liars - including President Vladimir Putin's close friend and political ally, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. But why was this particular instance of deceit taken up so doggedly by Washington?
 Russian warplanes have bombed Georgia many times in the past, and the Russian military has often meddled in the internal strife that has ravaged this post-Soviet republic during the past decade. Russia also reportedly bombed Georgian territory at the beginning of this month, and OSCE monitors registered the strike. The Russian military denied any involvement and the White House did not intervene publicly.
 Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze is an old friend of the United States, but his regime is ineffective and corrupt. If the problems between Moscow and Washington were confined only to the Caucasus - the conflict in Chechnya and the spillover of hostilities into Georgia - it is possible the White House would not have issued such a stern public rebuke.
 Putin is no doubt a much more valuable ally than old Shevy. If Putin had continued to act as an American ally, Washington would surely have done its best to resolve the Pankisi problem in private, as between friends. The reason the incident went public and got ugly is that, in Washington, Putin's Russia is not seen as an ally anymore.
 Over the last year, as relations improved, Washington increased pressure on Moscow to stop nuclear-technology transfers to Iran, to cut back sales of new, sophisticated weapons to Iran, China and other questionable states that might use them against U.S. forces or those of its allies. But instead of heeding these warnings, Moscow stepped up activities that many in Washington believe to be anti-American.
 In recent weeks - and despite U.S. protests - Moscow has confirmed that it will finalize and put into operation a nuclear power reactor in Iran at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. Last month, it signed a deal to build five more. Moscow has announced its intention to sign a long-term, $40 billion cooperation deal with Iraq. It has also signed new arms deals with China and Iran, pledging to sell new jets and sophisticated anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles that could be used against U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf and near Taiwan. And to add insult to injury, Putin once again publicly embraced the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il during Kim's recent trip to the Russian Far East.
 There are influential groups of people both in Moscow and Washington who never trusted the other side despite all the recent protestations of a new friendship. The present major crisis was obviously promoted by them from behind the scenes. If Putin does not intervene firmly when he returns to Moscow from the Far East, the bureaucracies and lobbying groups will have their way and attempts to bring Russia into the West will fail once again.
 
 <i>Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst. </i>

TITLE: i'm not only in it for the money
TEXT: Sergei Shnurov, the notoriously foul-mouthed leader of St. Petersburg's popular ska-punk band Leningrad, put the band on hold in February - when it was at the height of its popularity, after its album &quot;Piraty XXI Veka&quot; (&quot;Pirates of the 21st Century&quot;) and a sell-out show at the Yubileiny Sports Palace.
 
Since then, Shnurov has had a cameo role in Ivan Dykhovichny's post-modernist epic film, &quot;Kopeika,&quot; written a few soundtracks, been on the jury of the National Bestseller literary awards, and been taking part in poetry readings. Despite Shnurov's claims that Leningrad is on sabbatical, the band has continued to play occasional shows - it was a highlight at Nashestviye, Russia's biggest rock festival, and has toured Western Europe.
 At the modest, paint-soaked Neva Studio on Nab. Reki Fontanki on Monday, Shnurov spoke to Staff Writer </i><strong>Sergey Chernov</strong>.<i>
 </i>
 
q:<i>I've heard that, for your concert on Sept. 7, you are gathering folk musicians.
 </i>a: Where did you hear that? Well, yes, I am.
 q:<i>Is this supposed to be part of the concert?
 </i>a:The concert will build up from a small line-up to a large one. Gradually - literally with every song - musicians will be added. At the end, there will be a lot of people on stage - it's not entirely clear how many. But don't tell anybody.
 
It's great - there will be <i>domry</i> [traditional Russian string instruments similar to mandolins] and balalaikas. There will be someone playing the saw.
 
q: <i>Has this concert come about spontaneously?
 </i>a:No. It was planned long ago, but we simply had no time to rehearse. The idea of incorporating strange instruments has been around for about two years.
 q:<i>Why is the concert billed as just &quot;Sergei Shnurov,&quot; and not &quot;Leningrad&quot;?
 </i>a:Just so that there will be fewer people there.
 q:<i>Nashestviye advertised Leningrad's appearance as an exception that had been made specially for the festival, but Leningrad does still play occasionally ...
 </i>a:That wasn't true, it was a trick by Nashestviye - an advertising trick. We've played in Germany, in Budapest, and some other places. We've played in Vladivostok.
 q:<i>What about the trick of shutting down Leningrad? Is it gradually being opened again?
 </i>a:Well, Leningrad doesn't play in St. Petersburg, and doesn't play much in Moscow.
 q:<i>But Leningrad headlined the local Podogrev festival in July ...
 </i>a:Podogrev was a benefit festival [for a trombonist with local ska band Spitfire]. It wasn't a normal concert. They needed to get more people to come, that's all. So we don't play in these two cities much. What Leningrad does now is &quot;paid tourism&quot; - we play where it is interesting for us to go. Just to relax.
 q:<i>100,000 people sang along to your songs at Nashestviye. Was that a sort of climax for the band?
 </i>a:Well, yes. Actually, it was a horrible sight. I hate crowds generally. Leningrad is not really meant for open-air gigs anyway.
 q:<i>Why not?
 </i>a:It should be more intimate. It's scary when they shout things like &quot;f**k,&quot; &quot;kill&quot; and &quot;stab.&quot;
 q:<i>[Nashestviye promoter] Mikhail Kozyrev said that there are always problems with the police when Leningrad plays, because your songs can be labeled as &quot;public disorder.&quot;
 </i>a:There was nothing of the sort this year. There were some problems at the Krylya festival [in Moscow] last year.
 q:<i>What kind of problems? What can they do about it - arrest you on stage, like Jim Morrison?
 </i>a:No, it's not like that in Russia. The police here act covertly, the same way that bandits act. There were some excesses - some [police] colonels wanted something from us. But it didn't come to anything.
 q:<i>You are famous for provocative behavior. When you said, in a live television interview, that you would &quot;cut your pr**k&quot; on stage at Nashestviye, it was no surprise, but where do you draw the line? Will you come up with something even stronger in the future?
 </i>a:Actually, that wasn't to be expected. It was obvious that I was going to do something, but hardly that I would say that. There's always a way to develop.
 
On the other hand, you can do nothing, and it will already be strong. There are plenty of ways - the most important thing is combinatory thinking.
 
q:<i>Do you rehearse here, in the studio?
 </i>a:No, we rehearsed at Moloko for the first time ever today, and I like it a lot. We're recording here.
 q:<i>What's happening with recording? Your last album was released in February.
 </i>a:It's too early to think about recording now. I'd like the hysteria about Leningrad to subside a bit, so that we won't get those 100,000-strong crowds.
 q:<i>Local musicians are saying about the upcoming concert that you just make money while you have the chance.
 </i>a:Actually, if I wanted to make money, I'd play solo. This is just interesting for me. I'm fooling around.
 
As for money, you can make it by playing at an oligarch's party - you don't need to play at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture, that's for sure. And we could make much more at Yubileiny, I think, by playing as Leningrad.
 Ways of making money are obvious. The &quot;local musicians&quot; who are saying this probably just can't see them.
 
q:<i>You said in one interview that you are not interested in popular acts because you like the underground scene. But, now, your songs are being sung in the Moscow subway.
 </i>a:That's dreadful. I don't like that - it's not right. Because we have fans that we have had for ages. Real fans, who know us for more than a year and know more than the songs &quot;WWW&quot; or &quot;Mne By V Nebo&quot; (&quot;I Wish I Were In Heaven&quot;) [the band's biggest commercial hits].
 
In reality, if I was one of those [real] fans, it would alienate me. The fact that those songs are sung by drunken youths would alienate me, definitely.
 
q:<i>But you have the title &quot;Mne By V Nebo&quot; on the posters [for next week's concert] ...
 </i>a:Well, I don't print the posters. Because I spend most of my time in Moscow, the whole advertising campaign is run by other people. I can't regulate the whole process, because I'm actually [out of the city].
 q:<i>You once said that the most important thing for you is to &quot;write a lot of good songs,&quot; but not many new songs have been heard recently.
 </i>a:There will be 12 new ones at the concert. The thing is that I'm just reluctant to reveal many songs. I just hope that genuine people - not people who listen to Nashe Radio - will come to the concert.
 q:<i>What are you doing now, film-wise?
 </i>a:I am finishing the [soundtrack for] &quot;Bumer,&quot; made by the Pilgrim film studio. It should be a very good film - I saw the first edit, it looks very good.
 q:<i>Have you seen yourself in &quot;Kopeika&quot;?
 </i>a:Yes. It's OK. I had a laugh. It's just a cameo - it's clear that I was there just for the sake of it.
 q:<i>What's happening with &quot;4,&quot; the film written by Vladimir Sorokin in which you should be starring?
 </i>a:&quot;4&quot; will be continued in fall and will be edited by spring, most likely. It's turned out to be a festival film - it won't be screened in theaters, of course.
 
I've also written a song for the film &quot;Koktebel,&quot; which starts filming around Sept. 20.
 
q:<i>What do you think of the accusations made against Sorokin? He has been sued for issuing pornography by a member of [pro-President Vladimir Putin youth movement] Idushchiye Vmeste [&quot;Marching Together&quot;].
 </i>a:It's really hideous, but I think that what is happening to [the imprisoned writer and leader of the extreme nationalist National-Bolshevik Party Eduard] Limonov is much worse.
 
I talked to Sorokin about it. He says that certain people in the structures of power are just testing the water to see how society will react to such things.
 
q:<i>But Limonov, in his 2000 book &quot;Kniga Myortvykh&quot; [&quot;Book of the Dead&quot;], wrote that he was writing it with the aim of making money for buying assault rifles. [Limonov was arrested on charges of trying to purchase a large consignment of assault rifles in April 2001. He was accused of terrorism and of creating an illegal armed group.]
 </i>a:Somehow, I think that Limonov is too sane a person ... . I think that the case has been fabricated, for some reason.
 q:<i>But [Limonov] said ...
 </i>a:Saying is one thing, but doing it as another. Anyway, because Limonov is an artist, all his political parties, as I see it, are a kind of artistic gesture, whatever is written about them. A kind of performance.
 q:<i>So you don't think that there is any danger for Sorokin?
 </i>a:Well, when I spoke with him, he said that the only negative aspect of the situation is that journalists are distracting him from his work. And there's a broad social resonance - he literally can't ride the subway anymore. It's bad, of course, but book sales are rising.
 q:<i>You have also been involved in literature, being on the jury for the National Bestseller awards. Why did you do this?
 </i>a:I don't know. I was asked, and I agreed - I was interested. I think I made the whole thing more intriguing.
 q:<i>The critic Mikhail Trofimenkov voted for [extreme nationalist writer and editor] Alexander Prokhanov, while you chose the young, apolitical Irina Denezhkina. Weren't you tempted to vote for Prokhanov, as a kind of radical?
 </i>a:I disliked [Prokhanov's] style. As an aesthete ... to be honest, I didn't read the book to the end. The sentences were very cumbersome, full of gerunds. Nothing is simple: If it rains, it rains &quot;like when and where,&quot; it resembles something. It never simply rains. Let's just say that it's not my style.
 
Anyway, [Prokhanov's novel] was already a bestseller by the time of the vote.
 
q:<i>Did you really like Denezhkina?
 </i>a:Yes, I did. She's uneven, to be honest, but I don't think that [the exposure] will spoil her. It's good that she didn't win but came so close. At 20 years old, that's wonderful.
 q:<i>You've been appearing in Ivan Dykhovichy's television series-cum-reality show &quot;Dengi&quot; [&quot;Money&quot;], which has been criticized by many. Are you interested in it?
 </i>a:No, but the concept could become very interesting - it could be a very trendy project. But then again ... sometimes things don't work out. I don't worry about that. Dykhovichny isn't satisfied himself.
 
A lot of people have quit the series, but I keep appearing anyway. [Dykhovichny] calls me and I go to the taping. Work has to be done, whether things work out or not.
 
q:<i>You appeared on a television talk show aimed at homemakers. Why?
 </i>a:It was called &quot;Printsip Domino&quot; [&quot;Domino Principle&quot;], I think. The subject was the police, and I felt it was my obligation to say that I don't like the police.
 q:<i>Why not?
 </i>a:There are weak people in the police ... There are punishment battalions [where soldiers were sent as punishment] and blocking battalions [battalions used by the Red Army to shoot Soviet soldiers trying to retreat]. The police is a blocking battalion, while the punishment battalion is probably the bandits.
 
In that case, I'm for the bandits - there's romanticism, heroism, whatever, about them. But there is only corruption about the police, no romanticism. Such monstrous cynicism, and it's backed by the state. Actually, it's organized crime - crime organized by the state.
 
q:<i>Do you still think that there is nothing happening on St. Petersburg's music scene?
 </i>a:I haven't heard any new names. There are no new discoveries.
 q:<i>There are no new names in Moscow either, are there?
 </i>a:It's just awful in Moscow. But the problem is that any band that emerges is dying to get to Moscow. They don't go to St. Petersburg.
 
There was a time [in the late 1980s] when [Nautilus Pompilius' Slava] Butusov came to St. Petersburg, [DDT's Yury] Shevchuk came, whoever ... . Now, it's different. I think Moscow spoils them.
 Moscow is a money-minded city - success is the most important thing there. Here, one can be unsuccessful, but great. Those things don't go together there.
 
q:<i>Have you found a niche in Moscow, or do you dislike it there?
 </i>a:I don't like it. I can't say that I don't have a niche there - I have lots of friends, great people, there. But a city is not just people, it's a certain atmosphere, and I don't like it.
 q:<i>You're playing at the [local upmarket venue] Astoria Club in October, which is an unusual venue for you. Do you have any reservations?
 </i>a:This one is strictly for the money. I'm not worried. When the art director of a club calls you endlessly for a year, which is easier - to keep having to listen to him or to play? ... I think it's easier to play.
 q:<i>You said that you're not happy with your current popularity. What can you do about it?
 </i>a:I'll have to wait.
 q:<i>You have said that you could write ten bad songs and play them at every concert so that this popularity would decrease ...
 </i>a:No, it would be unpleasant for me. I could do it, but why, if it's unpleasant? Why torture myself?
 q:<i>So you have a strategy?
 </i>a:I've met with our new record label, and postponed our next album indefinitely, although this is bad, from a commercial point of view. Because it's clear that, at the moment, people will buy anything. Even if I wrote ten bad songs, they would buy them anyway.
 
 <i>Sergei Shnurov plays at the Lensoviet Palace of Culture at 7 p.m. on Sept. 7. Links: www.leningrad.spb.ru </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: For the first time in three years, <strong>Morrissey </strong>will tour Europe in September, and chances are higher than ever that the former vocalist and lyricist of 1980s English gloom-merchants The Smiths will play in Russia at last.
 
Although Morrissey's two London concerts in September are already sold out, how the Russian public will react remains a mystery. A highly unscientific survey conducted by this paper this week found that local record-shop assisstants, on hearing the word &quot;Morrissey,&quot; head - somewhat alarmingly - straight for discs by Alanis Morrissette, of all people.
 Meanwhile, all kinds of strange characters are getting ready to pour into the city.
 U.S. singer and guitarist <strong>Tav Falco </strong>will come with his band, Panther Burns, to play Red Club on Sept. 21.
 According to www.allmusic.com, Falco has created &quot;some of the rawest, sloppiest, wildest, and most amateurish rock &amp; roll of the 1980s and '90s.&quot; His range was once described as &quot;exotic tango, scorching rock'n'roll (in a few languages), bluesy balladry and torchy cabaret styles.&quot;
 <strong>Tito and Tarantula,</strong> the tex-mex band that become famous due to its contributions to the soundtracks for Robert Rodriguez's &quot;Desperado&quot; (1995) and, especially, &quot;From Dusk Till Dawn&quot; (1996), will play two concerts, at Hollywood Nites on Sept. 26 and at the Gorky Palace of Culture on Sept. 27. (The dates given on the band's site, www.titoandtarantula.com, are wrong.) Local promoters added that, before coming to St. Petersburg, Tito and Tarantula will play a whole week of gigs in Moscow.
 <strong>Damo Suzuki, </strong>the voice behind the legendary kraut-rock band Can for three years in the early 1970s, is also on his way. Suzuki, who was born in Japan, joined the band in 1970, but quit in 1973 to join the Jehovah's Witnesses. In the last few years, he has been gigging with his flexible outfit, Damo Suzuki's Network. The concert will take place on Oct. 19. The venue is yet to be decided.
 The most pompous, and expensive, show scheduled thus far for this autumn promises to be U.S. minimalist composer <strong>Philip Glass, </strong>who will play the Mariinsky Theater, no less, on Nov. 18. Glass - who is also popular with high-brow rock fans - and his band will accompany the screening of the 1983 film &quot;Koyaanisqatsi,&quot; for which he wrote the soundtrack. Tickets, it is rumored, will not be available for under $100.
 On a smaller scale, this week's events include a <strong>reggae festival, </strong>at the unlikely location of PORT club on Friday. Despite reggae's popularity worldwide, Russia is far from becoming a breeding ground for the music. However, Bob Marley and co. do inspire some local musicians, and this is what the event hopes to demonstrate.
 The earliest exponent of Carribean stylings in Russia was - predictably - Boris Grebenshchikov of Akvarium, who was penning reggae numbers in the early 1980s. (It was also Grebenshchikov who memorably described Russia as a &quot;non-rhythmic country&quot; in one of his songs.) Although BG will not be appearing at PORT club, some of Russia's best known reggae and dub bands, including Moscow's Jah Division and St. Petersburg's Caribace, will take part.
 A healthy alternative, though, is Vyborg punk band P.T.V.P., formerly known as Posledniye Tanki V Parizhe (&quot;Last Tanks in Paris),&quot; at the underground-bunker club Front the very same night.
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: it's an artist's life at the stray dog
AUTHOR: by Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Although open for just three years, from 1912 to 1915, Brodyachaya Sobaka<i>, </i>or &quot;The Stray Dog&quot;, managed to build itself a secure reputation among St. Petersburg's multitude of literary landmarks, right up there with Pushkin's Bronze Horseman, the Nevsky Prospect of Gogol's short story and the apartment on what is now called Nab. Kanala Griboyedova where Raskolnikov axed an aged loan-shark in Dostoevsky's &quot;Crime and Punishment.&quot;
 
For the ace faces of Russia's literary Silver Age, this was the place to be seen, the essential destination for every self-respecting intelligentsia socialite and the place to casually let slip your finest bon mots in high-brow conversation. On a good night, one could find the poets Lev Gumilyov, Osip Mandelshtam, Konstantin Balmont and Velimir Khlebnikov here knocking them back, and Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Kuzmin even featured the nightspot in their poetry.
 The new Brodyachaya Sobaka, which opened earlier this year and is located in the same cellar on the corner of Ploshchad Iskusstv as the old one, aims to recreate the atmosphere and literary traditions of the original and hosts cabaret and musical performances, lectures and poetry readings.
 The walls are adorned with contemporary paintings (of dubious quality) and there are four rooms featuring a gallery, a cabaret stage, a cafe-bar and the actual restaurant itself, as well as tables out on Ploshchad Iskusstv.
 The walls of one corridor feature the signatures of VIP guests that have recently visited the restaurant, such as conductor Yury Temirkanov and the artist Mikhail Shemyakin, although the &quot;A. Akhmatova&quot; turns out to be a relative of the poet.
 With a program of cultural events and performances already up and running, intellectual appetites will no doubt be satisfied, but were the futurists, acmeists and symbolists that once gathered here simply attracted by the chance of catching sight of the poet Anna Akhmatova or the theater director Meyerhold or by the excellent cuisine? 
 The menu leads with three main courses taken from Brodyachaya Sobaka's 1912 menu: <i>kulebyaki </i>(fish pie), <i>bifshteks </i>(ground-beef patties) and <i>sobachi bitki </i>(pork and veal rissoles). The second surprise comes with the very reasonable prices, unexpected for a restaurant located at one of the premiere addresses in the city, just a stone's throw away from the Mussorgsky Theater, both halls of the Philharmonic and the Grand Hotel Europe.
 There's a large selection of dishes of Russian and European cuisine, all very reasonably priced, with cold and hot starters ranging from 55 to 170 rubles ($1.75 to $3.75), while main courses run from 70 to 300 ($2.20 to $9.50).
 I opted for the solyanka (90 rubles, $2.85), a rich and filling meaty soup which had that perfect lemony tang, the acid test for a true solyanka. My dining companion tried the roast eggplant (130 rubles, $4.10), which came with mushrooms, red peppers, onions, a cheese sauce and, somewhat unexpectedly, fish.
 He gave it the thumbs up, though he complained, as he always does, that there was too much dill on the dish (i.e., there was dill there at all). We accompanied the starters with some &quot;cottage bread&quot; (40 rubles, $1.25) which was wonderfully fresh, buttery and somewhat reminiscent of brioche.
 For my main, I tried the 1912 menu's <i>sobachi bitki, </i>which translates roughly as &quot;dog rissoles.&quot; (120 rubles, $3.80) These came in a light cheese sauce and were a delight.
 Typically, my dining companion went for one of the most expensive items on the menu, the sturgeon, baked with mushrooms, crab meat and onion (280 rubles, $8.85), washing it down, also typically, with a beer, this one a Sibirskaya Korona (45 rubles, $1.45).
 The sturgeon came covered in a mouthwatering layer of golden-brown fried slices of potato. Initial fears that the fish was too stringy and slightly overcooked proved unfounded. At the risk of being accused of gluttony, we also took a side order of <i>zrazy</i> (potato rissoles) with smetana (70 rubles, $2.20), which were vast and freshly prepared.
 We rounded off with an espresso (25 rubles, $0.80) and a cappuccino (30 rubles, $0.95), the latter coming with a dash of real cinnamon on top, something of a rarity in St. Petersburg, and shared a deliciously moist <i>medovik, </i>or honey cake (35 rubles, $1.10). 
 The food, then, was excellent, as was the service. For a restaurant eager to plug its artistic and cultural heritage, however, Brodyachaya Sobaka is a slightly perplexing proposition. The muzak soundtrack, playing far too loudly in the background as one samples the delicacies from the kitchen, sounds as though it has been borrowed from a lift for philistines.
 Elsewhere, the decor ranges from kitsch to plain tacky and, in some places, unfinished, with bits of scotch tape holding the art-house sink together in the bathroom and numerous other quirks throughout the venue's four rooms.
 Bearing in mind the restaurant's excellent location, prices and cuisine, however, it would be unfair to find fault with these minor details.
 

 <i>
Brodyachaya Sobaka. 5 Ploshchad Isskustv. Open daily, 11:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Menu in Russian and English. Credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, with alcohol: 989 rubles ($31.30). </i>

TITLE: traveling to the amber kingdom
AUTHOR: by Tatiana Andreeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Kaliningrad. Not a name that would be recongnized among the world's great destinations for travellers: A backward, isolated enclave of Russia, best known for its domination of the world market in fossilized tree sap; Full of grey, Soviet apartment blocks, due to the fact that under 10 percent of its old buildings having survived World War II. Right?
 
Not entirely.
 While Kaliningrad may not currently enjoy the same level of popularity for tourists as other Baltic cities, such as Tallinn or Riga, a few days in the former Prussian capital can be as refreshing as a week in a more recognizable destination.
 For centuries, the town that is today known as Kaliningrad was called Koenigsberg, after the hill on which the Teutonic Knights founded a fortress in 1255. However, the area had been settled long before the knights arrived. Slavic and Baltic peoples had been living in the area, with a shore rich in amber and fertile valleys, for centuries. Amber was already the main trade staple, and the area was linked to the ports on the Adriatic Sea by the ancient trading corridor known as the Amber Route.
 In the 13th century, the Teutonic Knights, returning from the Crusades in the Middle East, came to the region, looking for somewhere to settle. Although their conquest of the area was cruel, the liberal economic policies and town-management practices that they brought kick-started a new era of prosperity and development in the region. The knights founded a fortress on the hill that they called Koenigsberg (&quot;King's Mountain&quot;), on the site of a destroyed village. For centuries, the fortress served mainly as the political headquarters of the region's governors.
 Trading activity was concentrated in nearby, autonomous towns, such as Altstadt, Kneiphof and Lebenicht, which were active members of the Hanseatic League, the loose association of towns along the North and Baltic seas that flourished in the Middle Ages. From an early history of domination by various neighboring powers, Koenigsberg eventually established itself as the most important political - and military - power in what would become Germany.
 However, it is unlikely that Prussia - the state that formed around Koenigsberg - would have become better known than any one of medieval Europe's tiny princedoms were it not for its university. Known today as Kaliningrad State University, the institution was founded on Aug. 17, 1544, by Albrecht Gogentzollern, then duke of Koenigsberg, and was named Albertus Universitaet - or, more familiarly, Albertina - in his honor. Albertina produced many famous names - with the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant the best known of them - and made Koenigsberg one of northern Europe's most important scientific and spiritual centers. 
 Koenigsberg entered the 20th century as an intellectual, liberal city, with all the trappings of civilization, such as horse-drawn trams and a zoo. However, the last two years of World War II brought drastic changes. British air raids in 1944 nearly flattened the city, and the Soviet Red Army destroyed most of what was left between April 6 and April 9, 1945. After the war, Koenigsberg was annexed by the Soviet Union; most of its German population was sent to Siberia (the final 25,000 were deported to Germany in 1947 and 1948) and replaced by Russians; the ruined buildings replaced with new ones, although, unsually, not all the new buildings were in typical Soviet styles; and the city was renamed Kaliningrad, after Mikhail Kalinin, one of Lenin's sidekicks, who later became head of state under Stalin.
 Despite all these changes, however, the &quot;Sun City,&quot; as it is also known&quot; has managed to retain some of its old, distinctive atmosphere through 45 years of Soviet and 10 years of Russian rule. It is this atmosphere that still makes Kaliningrad very different from most other Russian cities.
 The magic of the old Koenigsberg is immediately obvious on disembarking from an airplane on a sunny day in late summer, full of a light smell of the sea and circling, romantic seagulls. The city seems full of four and five-story buildings, with roses and ivy climbing up them and painted in shades of blue, pink and yellow. Green spaces can be found on most streets, and a trendy crowd, shopping in stylish boutiques and sipping drinks all night in outdoor cafes adds further to the impression of an almost Mediterranean resort. It seems odd to be addressed in Russian by a shop assistant or server in a restaurant or cafe - somehow, Russian seems out of place in such an environment.
 Despite the destruction wreaked by World War II, there are still some historic places to explore. One of these &quot;must sees&quot; is the Dom, or cathedral, on Kneiphof Island, in the enter of town, which dates back to the early 14th century. The cathedral is also an attraction for philosophers, who can pay homage at Kant's tomb, located on the building's outer north side.
 The Dom was seriously damaged during the war, so its current walls are composed more of modern bricks than of the originals. However, the reconstruction has been undertaken with such great care and accuracy that it is possible to imagine that it is still an authentic masterpiece. The only hint of historical inconsistency is the huge sculpture park into which the rest of the island has been turned. 
 Next on the &quot;must-see&quot; list is the Museum of Amber. The Kaliningrad region processes 90 percent of the world's amber, and has been famous for the &quot;Sun Stone&quot; since ancient times. It was believed that amber - pine resin that has become fossilized and hardened due to oxidization, micro-organism action and other processes - had supernatural powers, and the region fed this desire for the stone and created artistic masterpieces from it. For example, the famous Amber Room, which was stolen by the Germans from the Catherine Palace at Pushkin, and has still not been recovered, was made in workshops in Koenigsberg in the early 18th century.
 The Museum of Amber tells the whole story of the amber industry and amber art, from antiquity up to modern times. On top of this, the museum is housed in the red-brick, neo-Roman Dohna Tower - part of a ring of fortifications around Koenigsberg - by Verkhny Prud lake, which creates an impressive ensemble.
 Unfortunately, the original Koenigsberg fortress, which gave the city its former name, no longer exists. Its ruins survived after the wall until the 1970s, when they were summarily demolished by the Soviets. Today, &quot;King's Mountain&quot; is a big hill in the city center called Tsentralnaya Ploshchad, and is marked with an abandoned, tall, grey cubic building that must drive Feng Shui aficionados mad with its unhappy corners and empty feel. Recently, local politicians have talked about building a replica of the original fortress - they would do well just to demolish the concrete monstrosity that has replaced it. 

<strong>How to get there.</strong> Flights leave daily from Pulkovo-1 airport at 8:35 a.m., 11:10 a.m. and 6:55 p.m. A one-way ticket costs about 2,500 rubles ($79). Getting there by train from Vitebsky Vokzal takes longer - about 28 hours - and is complicated by the fact that Russian citizens need to obtain a transit visa to go through any of the Baltic countries. Tickets cost 1,325 rubles ($42). Trains usually run on even-numbered days, but check in advance.
 <strong>Where to stay. </strong>The Kaliningrad Hotel is a good, although unspectacular, option both in terms of location (right in the center) and prices (a bed in a double room starts from $17). It is located at 81 Leninsky Pr. Tel.: 8-0112-46-9449.
 <strong>Where to eat. </strong>Kaliningard is positively stuffed with cafes and restaurants. One option, a three-minute walk from the Kaliningrad Hotel, is Podvorye, at 16 Leninsky Pr., which has tasty cuisine in cosy surroundings.

TITLE: new ford film angers russians
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: NEW YORK - When Harrison Ford stars, the audience expects a hero. The president will kick butt through every corner of his plane and vanquish the terrorists. That fugitive doctor will foil his pursuers and prove he didn't kill his wife. Indiana Jones will conquer the snakes and outwit the Nazis.
 
But &quot;K-19: The Widowmaker&quot; is different. Set aboard a Russian nuclear submarine on the verge of a meltdown, it's a true story from the Cold War that's driven by an unusual Ford role.
 On June 4, 1961, Captain Nikolai Zateyev - played by Ford - and his crew were aboard a Soviet submarine that suffered a lethal nuclear mishap: A pipe burst, flooding part of the vessel with radioactive coolant.
 To head off a bigger disaster that would sink the ship and contaminate the North Atlantic, the sailors had no choice but to enter the deadly reactor room to make repairs.
 Even more unusual, perhaps, is the fact that K-19 is the first full-length Hollywood venture for the National Geographic Society.
 On the surface, this looks like the most curious marriage since Julia Roberts walked down the aisle with Lyle Lovett.
 &quot;It's certainly the boldest step we've taken&quot; from the Society's traditional, magazine-based roots, said C. Richard Allen, who heads National Geographic Ventures, the Society's profitmaking - and taxpaying - subsidiary. &quot;We had to think long and hard about it.&quot;
 While some &quot;dramatic liberties&quot; necessarily were taken, says Allen, &quot;the filmmakers had all resources of the Society&quot; to ensure accuracy - a factor that persuaded Ford to play the lead.
 What constitutes dramatic liberties?
 &quot;Well, this is not a documentary,&quot; says Christine Whitaker, president of production for National Geographic Feature Films. &quot;There is no way to adhere to the minute-by-minute experience ... of 120 men in that submarine in two hours and 15 minutes of movie time.&quot;
 But, she says, the Society and several knowledgeable Russians who have seen the film - including the film's distributor in Moscow - consider it a &quot;very accurate portrayal of the Soviet Navy ... exceptionally sympathetic to the plight of the Soviet people under communism.&quot;
 &quot;We are very proud of this film,&quot; she said.
 Those involved in the real-life events, however, remain skeptical. For 30 years, the survivors were sworn to secrecy by the Soviet regime and, when filmmakers began showing interest after the fall of communism, they were ready to tell their tale. But, when a draft script circulated in Russia last year, they were shocked.
 Sailors were depicted drinking, cursing, stealing and brawling. Some appeared unable to handle their jobs. Tension erupted into disputes between the officers. The survivors and their families concluded they were being ridiculed.
 Submariners wrote to the filmmakers, complaining that the script &quot;recalls the worst examples of myths and feature characters of the Cold War era,&quot; and adding, &quot;This is a desecration of the memory of the real defenders of our Homeland who died in that tragedy.&quot;
 Ford went to St. Petersburg and Moscow to meet with the Russian submariners.
 &quot;They had access to a copy of the script that I had no intention of approving and so I was much in sympathy with their reservations,&quot; he says. &quot;It was clear that they had an expectation not easily served. This was a critical moment in all of their lives, and they had the expectation that we were going to tell the story as they understood it.&quot;
 In revising the script, Ford said, editorial comment was avoided and observations about some cultural behaviors were deleted. &quot;To comment on the Soviet system or character would have been a mistake,&quot; Ford says. &quot;There is no American jingoism involved in this. The film is very stringent and observes the Russian point of view.&quot;
 Despite these reassurances, the submariners and their relatives half a world away haven't seen the film and remain convinced it will distort history.
 The movie is not about Captain Zateyev, his daughter, Irina Zateyeva, said recently. &quot;This film is about Harrison Ford.&quot;
 Meanwhile, what Ford likes best about the movie is that it is not quite clear what to make of the Russian captain he plays. It is not even clear that he will do what Harrison Ford always does - get out alive.
 &quot;The character is not immediately sympathetic or easy,&quot; Ford says. &quot;It is not a movie star role with all the usual supports. So it was a different kind of challenge.&quot;
 Ford's films, including the &quot;Star Wars,&quot; Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan movies, have made $5 billion at the box office. Six are among the 50 top-grossing films of all time. He is consistently picked as one of Hollywood's top stars.
 &quot;I enjoy the work,&quot; says Ford, dressed in casual black from shirt collar to his hiking boots. &quot;I enjoy the problem of sitting down and figuring out what to do and how to do it, what is the best expression in the moment of the character and to give that individual expression, emotion and tension.&quot;
 That's how he approached &quot;K-19.&quot;
 &quot;I had an emotional reaction to the dilemma of the crew, as well as the captain, the box he found himself in. I understood the obligations he felt to one of the theories of military command. Not necessarily that I identified with, but I identified and understood,&quot; says Ford. &quot;Telling a story from a Russian perspective interested me as an exercise in discipline.
 &quot;It is a pretty complicated dramatic construction,&quot; says Ford, who served as executive producer.
 The captain is not the American hero who frequently populates Ford's canon of three dozen films. It's not even clear he's a Russian hero.
 Then there's the problem of accents. The idea of Russians speaking accented English is strange to start with, and an accent can be distracting if it's not perfect.
 But Ford wanted to do the Russian accent; it's part of working against type, he says.
 &quot;The twist here is normally you use an accent when you are speaking a second language, as a sort of dramatic device. We are speaking English, but we are Russians speaking with a Russian accent so that you know we are Russian.&quot;
 Ford's normal stride is a glide. In this movie he moves slowly and clumsily, with a broader girth and jowls. He watched Russian film footage from the early 1960s - the incident &quot;K-19&quot; portrays occurred in 1961 - to catch that lumbering gait, and stopped working out. Hefty, but not exactly Khrushchev.
 For his next projects, Ford is considering a biography of Fred Cuny, the maverick relief worker killed in Chechnya, and an adaptation of Lawrence Block's &quot;A Walk Among the Tombstones,&quot; about an alcoholic private eye. He's even considering a cop drama about the rap music business.
 Mostly he's looking for layered roles. He says he wants to play complicated motivation, not just people driven to violent action.
 &quot;I never was in sympathy with films that depended on violence as their central value, pumping up the volume and the energy to an impossible stage and expect that that would serve the story,&quot; he says. &quot;I am sick to death of revenge as motivation for characters. I was never able to embrace that.&quot;
 But Ford doesn't try to force that idea on others. In fact, he says: &quot;The only piece of advice that I ever offer young actors is not to imitate anyone else's success. I am only willing to say that because that is the advice I have followed.&quot;
 &quot;It makes you figure out your own way of doing things,&quot; he says. &quot;You arrive with an understanding of your own experience, rather than trying to replicate somebody else's success.&quot;

TITLE: furst puts the glamor first
AUTHOR: by Janet Maslin
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: There is a kind of man who meets a woman on an ocean voyage and winds up having a shipboard romance. Then there is the man to whom this happens: a barefoot woman in a sable coat, a diplomat's wife, arrives at his cabin after a flirtation at dinner. &quot;So, no surprise, a few minutes after midnight: three taps, pearlescent fingernail on iron door and, when it opened, an eloquent Bonsoir.&quot;
 
The latter is Alan Furst's kind of man.
 Furst, the author of last year's &quot;Kingdom of Shadows&quot; and a string of alluring earlier espionage novels in a similar vein, seems to arrive effortlessly at such assurance. He glides gracefully into an urbane pre-World War II Europe and describes that milieu with superb precision. The wry, sexy melancholy of his observations would be seductive enough in its own right - he is the Leonard Cohen of the spy genre - even without the sharp political acuity that accompanies it. Of tensions between Stalin and Hitler, Furst's latest protagonist resignedly observes, &quot;Two gangsters, one neighborhood, they fight.&quot;
 One thing about Furst's diffident not-quite-heroes: they don't stay detached forever. In &quot;Blood of Victory,&quot; as in his earlier books, someone who had not planned to save the world finds himself gradually persuaded to try. In this case he is I. A. Serebin - &quot;minor Russian writer, emgre&quot; by his own description - who is inexorably drawn into action.
 The process by which this happens is neatly analyzed by Marie-Galante, his lover, she of the pearlescent fingertips.
 &quot;First you say you'll pretend to do what they want, then you do what they want, then you're one of them,&quot; she says. &quot;Oldest story in the world: if you don't stand up to evil it eats you first and kills you later, but not soon enough.&quot;
 &quot;Blood of Victory&quot; begins atmospherically, as Furst's books always do. It's 1940: &quot;The beau monde of emigre Istanbul. Like a giant broom, the war had swept them all to the far edge of Europe.&quot; It is to Istanbul and to this company that Serebin is drawn for the sake of Tamara, an ailing former sweetheart, since he is deeply devoted to women: &quot;In this life, he thought, there is only one thing worth waking up for in the morning, and it isn't getting out of bed and facing the world.&quot;
 In Istanbul, staying at the Hotel Beyoglu near Taksim Square and visiting Tamara in Istiklal Caddesi - because Furst loves beautiful, exotic words - Serebin picks up intimations of the coming crisis. Among these: concern about the capture of Isaak Babel, the writer to whom Furst pays homage here through Serebin's work as an editor at a literary magazine.
 Serebin, who has been living in Paris, is also executive secretary of the International Russian Union, and this organization draws him into intrigue. An explosion at the group's office has a powerful effect on him, since someone has deliberately summoned him just before the bomb goes off, intentionally saving his life.
 Serebin begins to explore the delicate possibility of anti-Nazi activity. But he does this elliptically and indirectly, in much the same way that Furst tells his story. &quot;Obliquity - the base element of a police state, learn it or die,&quot; Serebin thinks during one such conversation. Nothing about &quot;Blood of Victory&quot; is underscored or oversimplified, not even its title, which refers to the Romanian oil supply Serebin and comrades eventually try to sabotage. The phrase is borrowed from a French politician, one of many small details attesting to the prodigious historical research woven fascinatingly throughout Furst's storytelling.
 Serebin becomes connected with the Hungarian Janos Polanyi, a former count who has figured in Furst's earlier work. (&quot;Can one be a former count?&quot; Serebin asks. Polanyi replies, &quot;Oh, one can be anything.&quot;) And he is sent to solicit help from a wealthy Russian arms dealer, a new baron with far-reaching connections and questionable loyalties.
 The plot to disrupt Romanian oil transport along the Danube has its basis in real events and underscores Furst's view of espionage as inherently linked to business interests, governed by similar tactics and expediencies. &quot;Delay, temporize, misunderstand, deny, pull your hair out, declare bankruptcy, then run like hell,&quot; one powerful figure tells Serebin. &quot;After all, what makes you think that what works in business won't work in war?&quot;
 &quot;Blood of Victory,&quot; with its intermittent glimpses of wartime violence and the climactic confrontation toward which it builds, has a more linear plot than &quot;Kingdom of Shadows&quot; did. But this book, too, is more concerned with nuances than action, and with an envelopingly murky vision of political realities.
 &quot;Fascism famously stomped around in jackboots, but sometimes it wore carpet slippers, padding about softly on the edges of one's life,&quot; Serebin thinks, &quot;and in a way that was worse.&quot; Surely it is also more subtle. And it suits the ultimate wisdom that is at the heart of Furst's vision. As he puts it in a three-word sigh of acknowledgment: &quot;So the world.&quot;
 Paperback editions of Furst's books are conveniently accompanied by questions to be raised by book groups - fortunate book groups - that read his work. For instance:
 &quot;How can you account for the fact that the settings seem authentic even though you probably have no firsthand knowledge of the times and places he writes about?&quot;
 &quot;What becomes of Furst's heroes? Will they survive the war? Does Furst know what becomes of them? Would it be better if they were somewhere safe and sound, to live out the war in comfort?&quot;
 &quot;Furst is often praised for his minor characters, which have been described as 'sketched out in a few strokes.' Do you have a favorite in this book?&quot;
 &quot;Furst's novels have been described as 'historical novels,' and as 'spy novels.' He calls them 'historical spy novels.' Some critics have insisted that they are, simply, novels. If you owned a bookstore, in what section would you display his books?&quot;
 Never mind answers. Those questions themselves define what is most inviting about these novels. And as for where they belong in bookstores, that's easy. Up front.

TITLE: a small town with a big history
AUTHOR: by Anastasia Izmailova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Next year, as everyone with any connection to St. Petersburg well knows, the city will celebrate its 300th anniversary.
 
However, a much less well-known town, Lodeinoye Polye in the Leningrad Oblast - which was founded just before St. Petersburg - can lay claim to two of the former imperial capital's titles: the home of the Baltic Fleet and the &quot;Window on the West.&quot;
 Lodeinoye Polye, which celebrates its 300th anniversary on Sept. 14, lies about 220 kilometers northeast of St. Petersburg.
 Its name is a reminder of its former glory days and the former occupation of its inhabitants - <i>lodeinoye </i>is derived from the Russian word <i>lodya, </i>the name of a particular type of small trading boat.
 During the Northern War with Sweden, Peter the Great saw a need to create a powerful Russian fleet in order to guarantee Russia a future exit into the Baltic Sea - which turned out to be St. Petersburg. To achieve this end, Peter began to look for secure places to set up a shipyard.
 The picturesque settlement of Lodeinoye Polye fitted the bill admirably: Not only was it defensible, on the left bank of the river Svir, but its inhabitants had been engaged in boat-building since ancient times, and there were a number of skilled builders there. In addition, there was a plentiful supply of wood from the surrounding forest.
 In 1702, therefore, Peter founded the Olenetskaya Shipyard at Lodeinoye Polye.
 At first, the yard produced only small, river-going vessels. However, Peter also needed to build larger ships, in order to secure his control over Lake Ladoga and the Neva River and, in February 1703, the shipyard was expanded especially to fulfil this purpose.
 The shipyard expanded rapidly in the few months after its foundation, to include many industrial structures and a house for Peter, who was a frequent visitor and even, on occasion, worked there personally, disguising himself as a foreman by the name of Peter Mikhailov.
 The Baltic Fleet's first boat - the 28-gun frigate Shtandart - was launched on the Svir on Aug. 22 1703. Between this date and 1725, more than 118 ships were built at Lodeinoye Polye.
 The majority of these made up the first squadron of the fleet, which played a significant role in the course of the Northern War - which lasted until 1721 - and in Russia's eventual victory.
 Lodeinoye Polye continued to expand and, in 1785, Catherine the Great granted it the status of a town, a coat of arms and its official name.
 With the rise of St. Petersburg as a maritime center, however, Lodeinoye Polye's importance faded, and the shipyard eventually closed in 1830. In its lifetime, it produced more than 400 ships of various types. Not all of these were made for the military: between 1807 and 1809, the Diana made the first sea voyage from Kronshtadt to Kamchatka; and, in 1820, the ships Mirny and Vostok were employed in the round-the-world expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev - one of the most important voyages in the discovery of the Antarctic.
 Today, the only reminder of Lodeinoye Polye's ship-building history is a monument to Peter the Great, on the site where his house used to stand.
 After the closure of the shipyard, Lodeinoye Polye became a center of the lumber trade, and this still provides a basic source of income for the town.
 However, Lodeinoye Polye had another important historical role to play. During World War II, the Russians fortified the left bank of the Svir as protection against the invading Nazis. In the summer of 1941, some 3,000 inhabitants of Lodeinoye Polye and the surrounding villages worked round the clock to build dug-outs, dig trenches and anti-tank ditches and string out barb wire.
 In September 1941, the Germans began to pound the town from the right bank of the river, in an attempt to close the second ring in the blockade of Leningrad.
 The inhabitants of Lodeinoye Polye were remarkably resourceful during this time to protect their town. For example, two ferries were put into service on the Svir. One of these was a decoy, run especially to distract the Germans. This second boat was even kitted out with life-size figures, made to look like soldiers, and therefore draw the fire away from the &quot;real&quot; ferry, which still runs today.
 Lodeinoye Polye resisted the Nazis for 1,005 days - longer than the much better-known siege of Leningrad, which lasted 893 days. If it had not held out, it is likely that the Germans would have stood a much better chance of taking the city on the Neva.
 In 1944 - even before the end of the war - the government of the U.S.S.R. decided to lay out a park in memory of the heroism of the inhabitants of the area and to mark their victory over the Germans. Today, the Park Svirskoi Pobedy (&quot;Svirskaya Victory Park&quot;) is home to memorial tables and monuments, and even preserves some of the trenches from during the war.
 Two memorials in particular are worth a look. The first is a rare surviving example of the Order of Stalin, which was awarded to the heroes of the victory on the Svir and is attached to a monument. The second marks the spot where a &quot;letter to the future&quot; is buried. In 2044, to mark the 100th anniversary of the victory on the river Svire, the letter will be dug up and read out.
 The park also houses a museum that, despite its small size, includes a number of exhibits that document the history of Lodeinoye Polye from its earliest times.
 The real pearl of the area, however, is the Alexander Svirsky Monastery, which is located in the village of Svirskaya Sloboda, about 30 minutes drive from Lodeinoye Polye.
 The monastery was founded in 1484 by a monk from Valaam, Alexander, after whom it is named. In 1641, 150 years after Alexander's death, it was decided to re-inter his remains. When the grave was opened, however, Alexander's body was found undecayed. The body lay at the monastery until the beginning of the 20th century, when it vanished under mysterious circumstances.
 After a long search, involving many specialists, the body was eventually returned to the monastery, and now lies preserved, like Lenin in Moscow. Not surprisingly, Alexander is the main attraction for many visitors to the monastery - it is said that miracles have been performed at his resting place.
 As well as Alexander, the monastery has preserved murals and frescos dating from the 15th century, making it a cultural as well as a spiritual treasure. 

<strong>How to get there. </strong>Trains leave Moskovsky Vokzal at 12:30 a.m. and 5:50 p.m., and take about four hours. A one-way <i>platskartny </i>ticket costs 120 rubles ($3.80), while a <i>kupeiny </i>berth costs 215 rubles ($6.80).
 
Alternatively, get a bus from the bus station on Nab. Ovodnogo Kanala. The journey takes about 3 1/2 hours and a one-way ticket costs 170 rubles ($5.40).
 <strong>
Where to eat. </strong>Being a small place, Lodeinoye Polye does not offer much out of the ordinary. Traditional Russian places to try include Svir, at 3 Ul. Lenina, and Aragvi, at 55 Volodarskaya Ul.
 <strong>Places to stay. </strong>The Inema hotel complex, about 25 kilometers from Lodeinoye Polye in the direction of Alants, has semi-lux rooms for 430 rubles ($13.60) per night, or standard rooms for 320 ($10.10). All rooms are doubles. Food is not included, but the hotel does have a cafe attached.
 
No rooms have hot water, and use of the showers costs 20 rubles ($0.60). The hotel does, however, have a shower, which can be hired for up to eight people at a cost of 150 rubles ($4.75).
 Alternatively, the Diana tour agency will arrange trips for groups, including transport, sightseeing and accommodation, if necessary. Call (264) 26455 for details.

TITLE: Four Dead in Israeli Shelling in Gaza Strip
AUTHOR: By Ibrahim Barzak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli tank shells slammed into a Bedouin encampment in Gaza on Thursday, killing four members of a Palestinian family and wounding four others, Palestinian witnesses said.
 
The killing of the four - a 50-year-old woman, two of her sons and another relative - signaled that a plan for gradually restoring calm in the Gaza Strip, as a precursor to a broader cease-fire, was unraveling.
 Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer ordered an investigation of the Gaza shooting. In a statement, he expressed &quot;sorrow over the event in which innocent Palestinians were killed ... by fire from the Israeli defense forces.&quot;
 On Wednesday, Israel canceled security talks, after Israeli troops spotted a suspected illegal-arms shipment off Gaza.
 Since then, tanks have been cutting off a main road in Gaza, and Israeli gunboats have been patrolling the coastline. Residents heard gunfire from the sea and land early Thursday.
 The Israeli daily Haaretz reported Thursday that the military has prepared a contingency plan for dismantling virtually all Jewish settlements in Gaza and several in the West Bank. 
 The plan was prepared several months ago as part of a proposal that would have Israel agreeing to provisional Palestinian statehood in exchange for a delay in talks on a final peace deal.
 In response to the Gaza shelling, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat accused Israel of trying to sabotage cease-fire efforts. &quot;This is an unforgivable crime that is aimed to delay peace efforts,&quot; he said.
 An Israeli military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that suspicious figures approached an army outpost in the area, and soldiers fired at them, hitting them. The source said that the incident took place late at night, in an area forbidden for Palestinian movement, not in a built-up area.
 The Bedouin encampment is located about a mile south of the Jewish settlement of Netzarim. The Bedouin are among the Arabs living in Gaza for generations, who were joined by hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled or were driven out of the newly-created state of Israel during the war of 1948 to 1949. All are considered Palestinians.
 Monir al-Hajeen, 45, a relative of the victims, said that, shortly before midnight Wednesday, tanks drove toward the encampment, firing shells. One of the shacks was hit by five shells, al-Hajeen said. He said that some of those killed and wounded had been sleeping, while others had been sitting under a fig tree.
 The victims were brought to Gaza City's Shifa Hospital early Thursday.

TITLE: U.S. Claims North Korea Is trading in Bioweapons
AUTHOR: By Sang-Hun Choe
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea is the world's foremost vendor of missile technology and has &quot;one of the most robust offensive bioweapons programs on earth,&quot; the United State's top arms negotiator said Thursday, echoing U.S. President George W. Bush's warnings about the communist state.
 
U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton called North Korea &quot;an evil regime that is armed to the teeth, including with weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.&quot;
 &quot;President Bush's use of the term 'axis of evil' to describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea was more than a rhetorical flourish - it was factually correct,&quot; Bolton said, in a speech to a group of South Korean officials and scholars.
 &quot;There is a hard connection between these regimes - an axis along which flow dangerous weapons and dangerous technology,&quot; he said.
 The chief U.S. arms-control negotiator was in Seoul for a three-day visit that included talks with South Korean officials on the communist North's arms proliferation. He discussed the same topic with Japanese officials in Tokyo earlier this week.
 His comments come at a sensitive time, as the two Koreas try to revive stalled reconciliation after months of tension. South Korea wants Washington to open a dialogue with Pyongyang about the arms issue.
 Bolton stressed that such overtures will depend on whether the North will stop developing and exporting missile technology to &quot;notable rogue-state clients such as Syria, Libya and Iran.&quot;
 He said that North Korea is &quot;the world's foremost peddler of ballistic-missile-related equipment, components, materials, and technical expertise.&quot;
 Bolton also warned that a 1994 deal to provide North Korea with two power-generating nuclear reactors will be &quot;in serious doubt&quot; unless North Korea quickly allows UN inspections of its suspected nuclear-weapons program.
 Despite its denial, the Central Intelligence Agency suspects that the North may have stockpiled enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs before freezing its nuclear program in 1994.
 Bolton also said that there is &quot;little doubt&quot; that North Korea has an active chemical-weapons program.
 As Bolton spoke, economic officials of North Korea and South Korea were meeting in Seoul to discuss a host of pending issues, including a cross-border railway. 
 The talks were part of an agreement that was reached during cabinet-level negotiations held in Seoul earlier this month.
 The revived inter-Korean dialogue has coincided with North Korea's moves to reach out to the rest of the world.
 In July, North Korea agreed to accept a visit by a special U.S. envoy. It held normalization talks with Japan earlier this week.
 Some analysts in Seoul were critical of Bolton's speech.
 &quot;Bolton's speech casts gloom over President Kim Dae-jung's policy of engaging the North,&quot; said, Kim Tae-woo, a research fellow at the government-funded Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. &quot;It signals that a rough path is ahead in relations between Washington and Pyongyang.&quot;

TITLE: Iraq Maintains That Negotiations May Avert War With U.S
AUTHOR: By Samar Kassabli
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DAMASCUS, Syria - Negotiations can still avert a possible U.S. attack on Iraq, Iraq's vice president said as his country pressed ahead with its diplomatic campaign and the United States got more advice to proceed with caution.
 
The official Syrian Arab News Agency quoted Taha Yassin Ramadan as saying late Wednesday that talks with the United Nations over the return of arms inspectors to the country were not deadlocked.
 &quot;There's still room for diplomatic solutions to avert a war with the United States,&quot; Ramadan said, during a brief visit to the northern Syrian city of Homs. Iraq, he added, was ready for dialogue, not surrender.
 The United States accuses Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of rebuilding facilities to produce weapons of mass destruction and wants him removed from power.
 UN inspectors charged with confirming the dismantling of Iraq's mass-destruction weapons have been barred from Iraq since 1998.
 Three rounds of talks between the United Nations and Iraq this year failed to persuade Baghdad to readmit the inspectors. Baghdad often accuses the inspectors of being spies working for the United States and Israel.
 Iraq said it wants to continue talks on the inspectors' return - but with conditions that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has rejected.
 UN Security Council sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait cannot be lifted until the inspectors certify that Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical-weapons programs have been dismantled, along with the long-range missiles to deliver them.
 Ramadan is on a three-day visit to Syria as part of what appears to be an Iraqi diplomatic offensive to rally opposition against a possible U.S. attack. Iraq's neighbors have warned that such an attack could destabilize the region.
 Ramadan was expected to visit Lebanon next. Other senior Iraqi officials are visiting China, a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto powers.
 The British Foreign Office issued a statement Thursday saying it would discuss with its allies, including the United States, the possibility of setting a deadline for Hussein to allow in UN weapons inspectors. It did not say what should be done if the Iraqi leader ignored such a deadline.
 Britain, the United States' staunchest ally, has repeatedly said it is too early to decide whether to participate in a possible U.S.-led attack on Iraq. But it has agreed with Washington that something must be done about Iraq's alleged development of weapons of mass destruction.
 Washington is getting advice to move cautiously from many of its allies.
 Ugur Ziyal, undersecretary in the Turkish ministry of foreign affairs, suggested in Washington on Wednesday that instead of military force, the United States apply what he called &quot;therapy&quot; to Iraq - such as tightening trade sanctions. Saudi Arabia has suggested relying on the United Nations to persuade Iraq to permit inspections.
 Australian Defense Minister Robert Hill said his government would want to see evidence, such as U.S. satellite photos, that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or links to terror groups before agreeing to join a U.S. attack on the country.
 Syria would side with Iraq in the event of a U.S. attack, but would not help militarily, the state-run Tishrin newspaper said in an editorial Thursday. Syria has forged close ties with Iraq in recent years after decades of intense enmity.

TITLE: Germans Say Sept. 11 Was Scheduled for 2000
AUTHOR: By Melissa Eddy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KARLSRUHE, Germany - German authorities have evidence that the Hamburg al-Qaida cell that included three of the Sept. 11 suicide pilots was planning an attack on the World Trade Center as early as April or May 2000, the country's federal prosecutor said Thursday.
 
Announcing charges against Mounir El Motassadeq, the only person apprehended in Germany in connection with the attacks, federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm said that the Hamburg hijackers were planning an attack on the United States in October 1999 and had chosen their target six months later.
 Nehm said hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi told a librarian that there would be an attack on the World Trade Center.
 &quot;There will be thousands of dead. You will all think of me,&quot; al-Shehhi told the librarian, according to Nehm.
 El Motassadeq, a 28-year-old Moroccan citizen arrested in Hamburg two months after the attacks, was charged Wednesday with more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization.
 The Hamburg cell included hijackers Mohamed Atta, al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah. Authorities believe Atta and al-Shehhi piloted the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, while Jarrah piloted the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
 In laying out the charges against El Motassadeq, Nehm gave a detailed account of how the Hamburg cell was formed and how the hijackers trained for their suicide mission, including attending camps in Afghanistan, flight schools in the United States, and meetings across Europe.
 &quot;All of the members of this cell shared the same religious convictions, an Islamic lifestyle, a feeling of being out of place in unfamiliar cultural surroundings that they weren't used to,&quot; Nehm said. &quot;At the center of this stood the hatred of world Jewry and the United States.&quot;
 El Motassadeq was responsible for supporting the suicide pilots, including paying for flight schools, Nehm said.
 Others in support roles included Ramsi Binalshibh, Said Bahaji, and Zakariya Essabar, for whom German authorities have issued international arrest warrants.
 &quot;The accused was just as involved in preparing the attacks up until the end as the others who remained in Hamburg,&quot; Nehm said. &quot;He was aware of the commitment to mount a terror attack against the targets chosen by the cell and he supported the planning and preparation for these attacks through multiple activities.&quot;
 El Motassadeq was an electrical engineering student at Hamburg's Technical University from 1995 until his arrest - the same school where Atta, 33, and al-Shehhi, 23, studied before leaving Germany last year for the United States.
 El Motassadeq's name appeared on a U.S. list of 370 individuals and organizations with suspected links to the Sept. 11 attacks that Finnish financial authorities made public in October. When contacted then by The Associated Press, El Motassadeq angrily denied involvement.

TITLE: Mussina Shutout Paces Yankees Over Sox
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Strike or no strike, it looks as if Mike Mussina and the New York Yankees have put away the Boston Red Sox again. Mussina pitched a three-hitter and Bernie Williams hit a three-run homer Wednesday night as New York beat Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox 7-0 to move a step closer to a fifth consecutive AL East title.
 
&quot;There's no question it's going to take a big chunk of their heart away from them,&quot; Yankees manager Joe Torre said after Boston lost its final game before the strike deadline.
 &quot;I'm sure a lot of people, when they left the ballpark, were wondering if there's going to be baseball.&quot;
 Mussina improved to 4-1 with a 2.70 ERA in five starts against the Red Sox this season, including 3-0 in three outings at Fenway Park. He is 10-5 career in Boston with a 2.94 ERA.
 The win gave New York a season-high nine-game lead in the AL East.
 &quot;It's a relief to know I can still pitch, because sometimes I wondered if I could,&quot; said Mussina, who had lost three of his last five starts. &quot;It's nice to put one of these out there, especially in Boston.&quot;
 New York (83-48) beat the Red Sox for the fourth straight time, shutting them out 13-0 in the two-game series to move a season-high 35 games above.500.
 Mussina (16-7), who came within one strike of a perfect game at Fenway last September before finishing with a one-hitter, struck out nine and walked one for his first shutout this season.
 Martinez (17-4) gave up four runs - three earned - on five hits and a season-high four walks in 6 1-3 innings. He struck out nine and left trailing 2-0 after a season-high 127 pitches.
 Boston remained 3 1/2 games behind Anaheim in the wild-card race.
 &quot;It's tough, but we've still got some things we can get accomplished,&quot; manager Grady Little said. &quot;Now we'll probably have to do a little more scoreboard watching than we usually do.&quot;
 Williams hit a three-run shot off Alan Embree to extend his hitting streak to 19 games - the longest for the Yankees since he hit in 21 straight in 1993.Williams is batting .471 (40-for-85) during the streak.
 
 <strong>
Los Angeles 1, Arizona 0. </strong>Odalis Perez did two things he never did before. The Los Angeles left-hander hit his first major league homer and held the Diamondbacks scoreless Wednesday night, garnering his first career win against Arizona.
 
&quot;It was a great feeling,&quot; Perez said &quot;When I got back to the dugout, the guys just stayed quiet and didn't say anything. So I said a bad word to them, and then they got up and congratulated me.&quot;
 The Dodgers, who lead the NL with 13 shutouts, won for the 11th time in 14 games to maintain a 2 1/2-game lead over San Francisco in the NL wild-card race.
 The last pitcher to homer in a 1-0 game was also a Dodger - Bob Welch did it June 17, 1983, against Cincinnati. Both homers came at Dodger Stadium.
 Perez, an All-Star this season, became the fourth Dodgers pitcher to go deep this season, joining Kevin Brown, Andy Ashby and Omar Daal.
 &quot;Some of the guys were mad at me because Omar had a home run, Ashby had a home run and Kevin Brown had a home run,&quot; Perez said. &quot;I hit home runs in batting practice almost all the time. Now I've got one, so I feel proud of myself.&quot;
 Perez, who allowed five hits over eight innings, had been 0-4 against the Diamondbacks.
 Eric Gagne set the team record for saves, striking out pinch-hitter Erubiel Durazo with runners at first and second for No. 45. Gagne, converted into areliever in spring training, broke the record set by Todd Worrell in 1996.

TITLE: Last-Minute Talks Aim To Prevent MLB Strike
AUTHOR: By Ronald Blum
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - With little time left to avert a baseball strike, negotiators resumed talks Thursday as players, owners and fans around the country awaited word on whether the season would come to a stop. After five bargaining sessions on Wednesday, the sides remained apart on levels for a luxury tax and revenue sharing, leaving the sport on track for its ninth work stoppage since 1972.
 
Many players expressed hope for a deal before Friday's scheduled walkout, but negotiators were still struggling for a breakthrough.
 &quot;The same issues are unresolved,&quot; commissioner Bud Selig said late Wednesday night. &quot;It's been very constructive. Both sides are reaching out, but I can't tell you we're any closer. Only time will tell.&quot;
 After recessing talks just past midnight, union lawyers walked three blocks through heavy rain just 10 hours later, returning to the commissioner's office.
 Selig, who presided over the strike of 1994 to 1995 that led to the first cancellation of the World Series in 90 years, did not participate in the negotiating sessions, which mostly were brief.
 &quot;The length of the meeting doesn't always indicate whether it was a good meeting or not,&quot; said union lawyer Steve Fehr, the brother of union head Donald Fehr.
 &quot;I still think we're going to get something done,&quot; said Atlanta pitcher Tom Glavine, the NL player representative. &quot;I just think we're all too close on too much of this to let it fall apart.&quot;
 Owners want to slow spending by high-payroll teams with a luxury tax and in their last formal proposal, wanted to increase the amount of locally generated revenue that teams share from 20 percent to 36 percent. Players were at 33.3 percent and want to phase in the increase.
 While negotiators didn't disclose details, management increased its proposed threshold for the luxury tax by $5 million to $112 million and the union dropped by $5 million to $120 million, Boston player representative Johnny Damon said. The sides were still discussing all the proposed rates and thresholds, and the union didn't want a tax in the final year.
 The sides also discussed contract language that dealt with the owners' desire to fold two franchises, one general manager said on condition of anonymity. The union opposes contraction.
 &quot;Things generally go to the last second,&quot; Selig said, &quot;but you do get into dangerous ground when you don't have a deal done late in the day, late at night.&quot;
 Since the union set the strike date on Aug. 16, fans have expressed anger. A sign in the right-field bleachers at Chicago's Comiskey Park on Wednesday read: &quot;On Strike/Who Cares/Go Bears.&quot;
 &quot;We see the signs, and you hear comments from time to time about strike-related stuff. Sometimes those things are harsh,&quot; the Brewers' Mark Loretta said. &quot;It's so hard to try to explain to people what the issues are when you're talking about those kinds of dollars and this kind of industry, and the fans are in the middle of it.&quot;
 Oakland's Barry Zito, his team fighting for a playoff berth, wanted to know what would happen to the schedule if there was a brief stoppage, such as the two-day August strike in 1985. He said union officials told him any missed games would be made up if a strike is short.
 &quot;It could be a situation where we could play into October again in the regular season,&quot; said Zito, referring to last year, when the season was extended a week because of the Sept. 11 attacks.
 Detroit pitcher Jose Lima said fans blamed the players.
 &quot;I told one guy who was yelling at me out by the bullpen, 'Hey, man, nobody wants to go on strike,&quot;' Lima said. &quot;Another guy was yelling, 'You greedy so-and-sos.' The fans don't understand everything. What I am worried about is some guy doing something stupid to a player in all of this.&quot;

TITLE: Haas Keeps Cool To Win After Umpire Gets Shirty
AUTHOR: By Howard Fendrich
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Little was ordinary about the start of the U.S. Open for third-seeded Tommy Haas, from being ordered to change out of a sleeveless shirt to three straight double faults in the fifth set.
 
On a day that past champions Pete Sampras and Serena Williams won, while one-hit wonders Jelena Dokic and David Nalbandian lost - all in straight sets - Haas and his foil, David Sanchez, produced enough theater for a round's worth of matches.
 Haas pulled out a 7-6 (7-1), 3-6, 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 victory Wednesday that was a struggle for a player usually most comfortable on hard courts. If he can deal with the right arm pain that's been hounding him, Haas could be a title threat.
 Just how close did the 61st-ranked Sanchez come to pulling off the upset? He actually won more points: 156 to 155.
 But their encounter will be remembered most for a prematch talking-to Haas received that put him in sartorial territory previously occupied by Anne White (remember the skintight nylon leotard at Wimbledon in 1985?) and Andre Agassi (remember the denim shorts and Day-Glo bicycle tights?).
 Haas showed up for Wednesday's first-round match wearing a white muscle shirt, that revealed his shoulders.
 It wasn't nearly as provocative as the zip-down, stop-at-the-thighs black Lycra outfit Williams is wearing. Or, for that matter, Anna Kournikova's midriff-revealing getup. Nonetheless, it caught the attention of chair umpire Norm Chryst. He alerted tournament referee Brian Earley, who turned on the TV, looked at Haas, and ruled the shirt had to go.
 Earley cited Article III, Section C of the Grand Slam rulebook: &quot;Every player shall dress and present himself for play in a professional manner. Clean and customarily acceptable tennis attire shall be worn as determined by each respective Grand Slam.&quot;
 &quot;I was given the job of making a determination on the spot. I decided it wasn't 'customarily acceptable,'&quot; Earley said. &quot;It's a gut reaction.&quot;
 Haas - who said sleeves annoy him - had polo shirts with him and wore those for the 3-hour, 23-minute match.
 Sanchez isn't exactly the caliber of player who should present problems for Haas. He has a 14-20 match record in 2002, and never has been past the quarterfinals at a tour-level event since turning pro in 1997.
 Yet Sanchez moved out to a 3-0 lead in the fifth set. In doing so, he probably expended too much of what was a dwindling supply of energy. That was evident when he didn't bend low enough to get to Haas' forehand and whiffed on a shot, setting up a service break.
 Haas seemingly took control by going up 6-5 in the final set, converting his fifth break point of the 11th game when Sanchez's shot caught the net tape and flew out. After the game, both players' cramping legs were massaged by trainers.
 Haas then served for the match and quickly earned two match points at 40-15.
 He double faulted to 40-30, walked to the other half of the baseline and double faulted to deuce, then double faulted to break point.
 An overhead erased the break point, and Haas eventually held it together long enough to win.
 &quot;I was lucky to get through that,&quot; Haas said.
 Sampras might have been relieved to make it to the second round, an indication (as is his No. 17 seeding) of how far he's fallen.
 Here's how aware everyone is of the 13-time Grand Slam tournament champion's recent woes: Elton John's &quot;I'm Still Standing&quot; blared over the speakers as a form of encouragement when Sampras warmed up before his 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 win over Albert Portas.
 &quot;You hear rumbling here and there. You can't let it faze you,&quot; Sampras said, referring to retirement talk. &quot;I'm going to stop on my own terms, not when someone else thinks I should stop.&quot;
 Williams also breezed, beating Dinara Safina - 2000 Open champion Marat Safin's 16-year-old sister - 6-0, 6-1 to reach the third round.
 No. 5 Dokic, a Wimbledon semifinalist two years ago who never that far at a major again, put up little resistance and lost 6-3, 6-2 to Yelena Bovina. No. 16 Nalbandian, who had never won more than two matches at a Grand Slam event until making the Wimbledon final, was eliminated by Sargis Sargsian 6-1, 6-4, 6-4.
 Lindsay Davenport, the 1998 Open champion, was leading her night match against Petra Mandula 6-4, 2-2, when it was postponed until Thursday because of rain. No. 25 James Blake's match against Nikolay Davydenko didn't get started.
 Rain delayed the start of play on Thursday.