SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #802 (67), Tuesday, September 10, 2002
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TITLE: City Lawmakers Facing Fight Ahead
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Both deputies and political analysts are predicting a stormy session ahead as lawmakers return to the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday following their summer recess. The fixing of a date for upcoming elections to the assembly - tentatively set for Dec. 8 - and the campaign that follows are sure to create some fireworks, with the lingering question of Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's own desire for another term adding more intrigue to the mix over the next four months.
"The political climate is going to be that of a battle," Mikhail Amosov, Yabloko faction leader at the Legislative Assembly, said in an interview late last week.
The question of the date for the upcoming vote has already been the center of a controversy for a number of months, as lawmakers have been unable to come to an agreement. Wednesday's session is the assembly's last chance to arrive at a date itself. If they are unable to reach a decision, the task of choosing the date passes automatically to the City Election Commission.
While a number of deputies would like to see the elections held later than the date presently being proposed, Yakovlev was quoted by Interfax on Friday as saying that he was against a postponement, but added that "even if this does happen, it is nothing tragic for the city."
Some lawmakers and politicians, however, disagree.
The term of office for the members of the current Legislative Assembly ends on Jan. 6. Analysts say that the shifting of the decision for the date to the City Election Commission would delay the process, moving the date to late January at the earliest, and possibly as late as April, leaving the city without a legislative body up to that time.
"Some powers now in the domain of the deputies would then be transferred to certain organs over which the St. Petersburg administration has a strong influence," Mikhail Brodsky, the leader of the Union of Right Forces (SPS) in the Legislative Assembly, said at a press conference on Friday. "The legislative elections could then take place whenever the administration finds it convenient."
SPS has been the most vocal of the factions opposed to moving back the date, and launched a four-day campaign on Saturday called "Elections by the Law."
Stanislav Eremeyev, the head of the St. Petersburg SPS Political Council, summed up the party's position at a press conference introducing the campaign on Friday.
"The city charter stipulates that the term of office for Legislative Assembly deputies is four years. Attempts at changing this term set a dangerous precedent," Eremeyev said. "If we allow the laws to be changed on the basis of temporary balances of interest, then it becomes difficult to talk about a state based on the rule of law."
SPS is also calling for a roll-call vote on the question in the assembly.
"We have to know exactly who in the Legislative Assembly favors derailing the elections," Brodsky said.
Through Tuesday, SPS was organizing near metro stations, where urns were provided for city residents to drop ballots supporting the faction's position on the question.
The aim of the campaign, organizers say, is not only to garner support for the party's position vis-a-vis the elections, but also to gain feedback on public opinion before the first parliamentary session following the summer recess.
According to lawmakers, however, public opinion will play a different role in determining what takes place in the assembly this fall.
"The elections will disturb the functioning of the Legislative Assembly, because the lawmakers will be focusing on getting reelected," said Brodsky.
Whether the City Election Commission is ultimately charged with deciding on a date for the vote or not, the Yakovlev administration will likely play a significant role in the campaigning ahead.
Yakovlev has announced that he wishes to run for a third term as governor, but he will need to usher through changes to the city charter - which currently limits governors to two terms - before he can run a third time. To do so, he needs the support of two thirds of the Legislative Assembly, a total analysts say he is, at present at least, unlikely to get.
"Smolny will probably try to influence the Legislative Assembly by helping lawmakers who will support Yakovlev," said Lev Savulkin, the senior analyst at the Leontief Center for Socio-Economic Research in St. Petersburg. "I don't think that the elections will change the make-up of the Legislative Assembly significantly, though."
Legislative Assembly Vice Speaker Vadim Tyulpanov says that, regardless of when it is held, the upcoming campaign is likely to be as aggressive as that in 1998.
"I think this political season will be full of surprises and that anything can be expected. Smear campaigns are likely to be common practice, and have actually already begun," he said. " The Internet had made it much easier than before to organize smear campaigns."
A number of factions are going into the session trumpeting legislative agendas., but analysts say that it is doubtful that these have a chance of serious consideration.
"The elections will be the deputies' first priority," Amasov said. "Projects will only be able to be realized after the elections are over."
TITLE: Disasters Are All Just Part of a Day's Work
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg's front line of defense against a host of disasters that strike this beautiful, but impoverished city, with its crumbling infrastructure, is its emergency rescue service.
But the service's work is not only coping with large-scale catastrophes.
They are the ones called to help when elderly people or children get locked in apartments alone, when a careless cat can't climb down from a high tree, or to to extract homeless people who get stuck in ventilation shafts.
"[Homeless people] often fall into ventilation shafts; that can be a big problem," said Yury Demyanov, head of one of four rescue-service shifts.
Homeless people often make themselves at home in attics. When ventilation shafts are accessible, the homeless are wont to use them as toilets. Sometimes they fall in.
"We can't simply lift them out because of the bends in the shafts," Demyanov said.
"So, when people tell us that someone is calling for help from inside the ventilation system ... we tell them we'll have to break through the wall in their bathroom or toilet to free the unlucky person."
One rescuer says that when he was taking a homeless woman out of a ventilation shaft, she vomited right in his face. Only God saved him from whatever she was be infected with, he says. However, her lice did spread to the team, who spent a day getting rid of the insects.
The 30-person strong St. Petersburg Emergency Rescue Service was established in April 2000.
When being selected for the work, each member had to pass a thorough psychological test. Those favored are men with a so-called "opposite reaction to stress" - those who in an emergency concentrate rather than panic, and are able to make correct decisions quickly.
Besides having general rescue skills, every member of the team is a specialist. Thus, Demyanov used to work as a firefighter; Nikolai Mamayev is a mountain climber; Stanislav Khopyorsky is a professional driver.
Before 2000, St. Petersburg had only the Northwest Emergency Service, which was obliged to provide rescue works in all of the Northwest Region of Russia.
"The need for our service definitely increased in Russia recently," said Sergei Sysoyev, deputy head of the St. Petersburg Emergency Rescue Service.
"It has to do with the increasing number of catastrophes caused by our worn-out infrastructure," Sysoyev said. "Most Russian equipment, machines and construction are getting old, but the country still doesn't have sufficient finances to replace or restore it."
It was a rescue team that first arrived at Dvinskaya Ulitsa, where a huge crack in the apartment building threatened the collapse of the nine-story structure on June 3.
It took the rescuers and firefighters half an hour to evacuate the residents. Almost right after the rescue workers evacuated the last elderly woman trapped in the building, the structure collapsed.
The rescue service was also the last to leave the ruins at Dvinskaya, after clearing the wreckage for four days later.
"We worked in shifts for four hours, and nobody went home during those four days," Demyanov said.
Rescuers have an entire collection of both scary and funny stories.
Once a neighbor of an old woman called the rescue team after she had heard cries for help from the babushka, who lived in the apartment above her. The old woman hammered her ceiling, but didn't open the door.
"So, we had to climb into the apartment through the window," Demyanov said.
When a rescuer climbed in, the desperate babushka moaned "Oh, Archangel!"
The old woman was fine, but she was on crutches and had been locked inside from the outside by her daughter, who visited her mother only once in three days to bring her food.
"So, in her isolation, the babushka got bored and scared the neighbor with her cries,' Demyanov said.
Then there was the day when officials at a St. Petersburg mental asylum called the team, when a stray cat climbed a tree and kept meowing loudly.
"They said the cat's sounds agitated the most impulsive patients. So we gave them a hand and took the cat from the tree," rescuer Leonid Binkovsky said.
The type of work that rescue fighters have to deal with gives rise to a certain cynicism or black humor.
"My favorite drowned men wear jeans fastened with a good quality belt," Mamayev said.
Recovering the corpses of drowned people is part of the rescuers' work. When the corpses have been in the water for a long time they have often started to decompose, and if they have no clothes on them, they are hard to rescue.
Demyanov said rescuers often see members of the public make the mistake of trying to help people in serious car crashes.
"If a person is trapped in the car, and has his neck or spine injured, strangers who try to pull him out of the car may kill him or make his injuries even more severe," Demyanov said. "Instead of moving the injured person, they should try to support them. That's why, before we extract a road-crash victim, we first take the vehicle apart around," he said.
The rescuers said that, on average, they receive three to five calls a day; in most cases they can provide help.
However, they complained that their service has only 15 percent of the equipment they need.
Even though they work with population groups that are likely to be infected, the rescuers have had no vaccinations against hepatitis, or even rubber gloves.
"We don't have breathing equipment, wetsuits for underwater work, or a big rescue crane," Sysoyev said.
"What is even worse, we have only one emergency vehicle. First of all, one car is not enough for this big a city. Second, it will wear out quickly."
The St. Petersburg Emergency Rescue team belongs to the city's Civil Defense and Emergency Situations department. While the Northwest Region emergency service is financed from the federal budget, the St. Petersburg team receives paltry sums from the city budget.
"It seems the city administration doesn't quite realize that St. Petersburg needs a very strong emergency service, because the city's older buildings and infrastructure are getting worse by the day," Sysoyev said.
The city needs at least five rescue teams located in different parts of the city or, at the very least, one more brigade on the other bank of the Neva, he said. When the bridges are open, their rescue team is unable to get there from its base on the southern bank.
"In an emergency, speed is the most important thing," Sysoyev said. "But sometimes it takes us about 40 minutes to get to the spot because of the distance and traffic jams."
Traffic jams, however, don't seem too slow the rescuers' arrival much.
Driver Khopyorsky switches on the alarm, and drives against opposing traffic. Private autos hurredly get out of the way.
"Our 'enemies' are the drivers of old, Russian-made autos," Khopyorsky said. "It seems they don't care about the condition of their cars anymore, and may not give way. The most helpful are the drivers of posh, foreign-make cars," he said.
The rescuers put on their combi suits and helmets right inside the Gazel van as it makes its way to the emergency.
"We work here mostly because we like this line of work. It's not for the money," Binkovsky said. The rescuer's wages are just $130 a month.
TITLE: Pankisi Agreement Remaining Elusive
AUTHOR: By Aida Sultanova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAKU, Azerbaijan - Georgian and Russian officials have sent conflicting messages about how Georgia's Pankisi Gorge could be cleared of terrorists, with little agreement on the thorny issue on Monday.
On Friday, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said that he reached an agreement with Georgian officials to conduct joint operations in the gorge.
But Eduard Gendzekhadze of the Georgian Interior Ministry said Saturday that all operations in the gorge will be conducted by Georgian forces alone and that the new agreement did not change anything. "Joint military operations are not being planned," he said.
Moscow says Chechen rebles use Pankisi as a base and a supply line. Russian officials have scorned the Georgian efforts as a sham.
Under growing pressure to restore order in the gorge, Georgian units entered the region last month, but Russian officials have continued to push Tbilisi to let the Russian military also conduct raids.
Georgia has repeatedly refused, but on Friday, Gryzlov, attending a summit in Baku, suggested that he had discussed with Georgian officials the possibility of joint, investigative operations in Pankisi.
Both sides have since given conflicting interpretations of their discussions, which came amid an agreement reached by all members of the Commonwealth of Independent States to take preventive and investigative measures against terrorists. It was negotiated during a meeting of interior ministers from the CIS.
Gryzlov noted that the countries also agreed to "reveal and prevent possible acts of terror against other countries" in the CIS.
Georgian Interior Minister Koba Narchemashvili said cooperation would be limited to searching for specific suspects. "There can be no talk of large-scale actions by Russian forces. We can bring order ourselves," he said.
Russia has long accused Georgia of sheltering Chechen rebels. The Kremlin has criticized Georgia's recent security operation as inadequate and complained that alleged militants are simply being encouraged to head back into Russia.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, speaking in Moscow on Saturday, called it "a theater show." "They should be given excellent marks for the scenery, production and artistic skills, but its efficiency was zero," Ivanov said.
Georgian officials have countered that it was Russia's war in Chechnya that pushed the rebels into Pankisi.
TITLE: Duma Back to Work After Summer Break
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The corridors of the State Duma - and the ritzy coffeeshops on nearby Kamergersky Pereulok - teemed with lawmakers and their staffers Monday, as parliament's lower house got back to work after its summer recess, preparing to tackle more than 500 bills before the new year.
The list of legislation, to be finalized at the Duma's opening plenary session Wednesday, covers reforms of everything from the country's power grid to its language policy.
The most pressing of the bills, and one of the most hotly debated, promises to be the 2003 budget, a 5-kilogram document that has pitted the Kremlin, eager to promote economic growth and tighten the fiscal belt, against lawmakers clamoring for increased spending ahead of next year's parliamentary elections.
"The budget will not get passed calmly," Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska was quoted by Interfax as saying. The first reading of the budget bill - one of more than 100 identified as "top priority" - has been slated tentatively for Sept. 25.
Another bitter battle will be fought out over the volatile issue of overhauling Russia's electricity market, which the government is trying to liberalize to attract investment and upgrade decrepit infrastructure. The complicated reform - which aims to split up power monopoly Unified Energy Systems and threatens to lead to unpopular price hikes - was supposed to be considered during this year's spring session but was shelved and handed over to a conciliation commission made up of legislators and government officials.
The head of the commission, Senator Mikhail Odintsov, speculated that the tortuous debate between the "conceptual" first reading this fall and the critical second reading could stretch on for two to three months.
Deputy Pavel Krasheninnikov, the chairperson of the Duma's legislative committee, said the biggest bone of contention would be the proposed transfer of some of the power system's "control functions" from the federal government to the regions.
"It is this paramount issue that will incite the main debates when the [reform] package is considered in the first reading," Krasheninnikov told Interfax on Monday.
Regional interests will also be at the center of debate late this month, when the Duma is set to consider a major reorganization of local self-government. The bill, now being finalized by a working group under Dmitry Kozak, the deputy head of the presidential administration who spearheaded the Kremlin's judicial reform, will lay the groundwork for a thornier struggle down the road: a redistribution of budget funds, taxes and other revenues among federal, regional and municipal coffers.
The deputies, who spent part of Monday learning to use a freshly installed voting system, will also plow ahead with amendments to the tax and customs codes, as well as pension and railways reform. The Kremlin and cabinet are expected to submit, respectively, the fourth part of Civil Code, which focuses on intellectual property rights, and a draft Housing Code.
For temporary relief from such grandiose legislation, lawmakers will have some lighter fare on their plates this season, including two bills on the Russian language - one banning the official use of alphabets other than Cyrillic and another threatening to punish the tongue-tied and foul-mouthed.
Throughout the session, the specter of next year's parliamentary elections and the presidential race in 2004 promises to hover over the Duma. The chamber will debate, in a second reading, the bill on Duma elections, which received preliminary approval at the close of the spring session.
While some deputies tried to downplay the session's "pre-election twist," Vyacheslav Volodin of the pro-Kremlin centrists, warned that it could hurt the Duma's work.
"We understand that next year is an election year," Volodin told RTR television. "But if we fall into populism and pass decisions that are impossible to bring to life, then the budget will come tumbling down and so will the [country's] stability."
TITLE: Smoke Gone, but Oblast Fires Rage On
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While the weather conditions over the week-end cleared St. Petersburg of the heavy haze that hung over the city late last week, the fires that contributed to it are gaining ground in the Leningrad Oblast, leaving authorities worried about both security and finances.
In a meeting held in the Leningrad Oblast administration building on Suvorovsky Prospect Monday, the lack of sufficient funds and equipment to fight the fires formed a recurrent complaint on the part of the heads of the oblast's various districts.
The cost of extinguishing the blazes, which have spread to a total area of over 2,500 hectares, is to be covered by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Leningrad Oblast government, with some funds also coming from the municipal education budget.
Oblast district representatives at the meeting were vocal in their complaints about the financial strain the fires were creating.
"We only have two fire trucks, one of them in bad condition, and we don't want to have to take responsibility in borrowing another district's vehicles," one district representative shouted out. "If you want to put out these fires, then give us money. Nothing can be done otherwise."
Leningrad Oblast Vice Governor Ivan Grigoriev has asked the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to change the financial situation in the future, saying the money allocated to the oblast was insufficient to deal with the fires that affect the region every summer.
Oleg Lebed, head of the Leningrad Oblast and St. Petersburg branch of the ministry, says 10 million rubles ($316,000) have already been allocated to fight this summer's blazes in the oblast.
Despite a small dispute over whence the smoke covering the city last week actually originated - in the oblast or in the city - that caused a little controversy last week, the two were working together over the weekend, after Smolny provided fire-fighting vehicles on Friday, in answer to a request from the oblast administration.
"The city has given 10 vehicles, and we are ready to provide anything the oblast asks for," said Vladimir Anikeyev, the press secretary of Vice Governor Anna Markova, who is also responsible for the coordinating headquarters for emergency situations.
Participants at Monday's meeting also stressed that safety measures for the public should be an area of focus, as peat fires are particularly dangerous. The fires burn 5 to 7 meters under ground level and can flare up unexpectedly or trap passers-by if the ground gives way.
Grigoriev suggested making announcements in train stations and schools to remind people of the danger associated with entering the forests. The oblast authorities declared the forests off bounds on Aug., 23.
While the fires in the oblast rage on, Anikeyev says that there is no danger in wooded areas within the territory of St. Petersburg as all of the fires that had been burning there have been put out.
While the smoke levels in the city at the end of last week raised some concerns over possible associated health risks, medical officials in the city said that the concerns were largely unwarranted.
"The concentration of carbon dioxide in the smoke did not reach dangerous levels," said Kirill Fridman, deputy chief physician at the Sanitary-Epidemiologic service.
Vyacheslav Zuyev, chief physician at St. Petersburg's International Clinic, agrees that the concentration levels were not high enough to be harmful, although he adds that some people in some categories are more at risk than others.
Both Fridman and Zuyev, however, said that there was no indication of an increase in the number of respiratory-related cases over the weekend.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Kursk Secrets Preserved
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The destruction of the bow of the sunken submarine Kursk was necessary in order to preserve secrets of its design, Interfax quoted Deputy Duma Speaker Valery Dorogin as saying Monday.
"In modern submarines, everything is secret - from the weaponry to the noise-muffling rubber [coating], all that covers the external part of the submarine," Dorogin, who is a vice admiral, was quoted as saying.
On Sunday the bow of the ill-fated, nuclear-powered submarine was blown up. All 118 crew members died after two blasts in the submarine on Aug. 12, 2000.
Fire Cost $320 Million
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The cost of forest fires in Russia this year may exceed 10 billion rubles (about $320 million), Interfax reported Monday.
Citing the State Foresty Service of the Natural Resources Ministry, the news agency reported that the fires were most numerous in the Moscow and Leningrad oblasts, while blazes are serious in the Novgorodskaya and Yaroslavlskaya oblasts
The report said 32,000 forest fires had been recorded this year and that they covered more than 1 million hectares, or three times the area struck by flames in the same period last year.
Gorbachev Clinic
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev will take part Tuesday in laying the foundation stone of an Institute of Child Hematology and Transplants in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported Monday.
The institute is to be named after Gorbachev's late wife, Raisa, the report said.
The institute is to be built on the basis of charitable donations and a competitive tender will be held this month to select a developer, it added.
Pulkovo Asks for Cash
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - State-owned airport company Pulkovo has asked for 190 million rubles ($6 million) to prepare the airport for St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary next year, Interfax reported Monday.
The airport is ready to receive the heads of state who will attend a Group of 8 meeting timed to coincide with the anniversary, the report said.
It intends to create two news zones for official delegations at Pulkovo-1 and to upgrade business zones at Pulkovo-2 for their visit. The airport company also intends to upgrade the infrastructure and renew the facade of Pulkovo-1.
Krasnoyarsk Runoff
KRASNOYARSK, Western Siberia (NYT) - Candidates backed by two powerful Russian business groups won the first round in an election on Sunday to replace Alexander Lebed as governor of Krasnoyarsk.
Alexander Uss, 54, the leader of the local parliament who is backed by Russian Aluminum, and Alexander Khloponin, 37, the former head of Norilsk Nickel and the governor of Taimyr, will face off in two weeks to determine the winner.
With most of the votes counted, Uss took 27.64 percent of the total and Khloponin 25.22 percent, Interfax reported Monday.
Sergei Glazyev, an economist from the Communist Party who worked on early blueprints for the post-Soviet economy, was third with 21.44 percent.
TITLE: UN Poised To Resume Chechnya Operations
AUTHOR: By Sarah Karush
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The United Nations said Monday that it was resuming its humanitarian programs in Chechnya on Monday after a six-week suspension that it had announced to protest the kidnapping of a Russian aid worker.
The United Nations halted its relief operations in Chechnya on July 29, following the kidnapping of Nina Davidovich, the head of Druzhba, a Russian nongovernmental organization that works with the UN.
"Starting today, we have resumed our operations in full," said Viktoria Zotikova, a spokesperson for the UN office for humanitarian affairs in Moscow. "Talking with people in the North Caucasus, we saw that the needs now are so great that we must resume work."
During the suspension, the United Nations continued its program to provide clean water to residents of Grozny because it was considered too vital to suspend. However, food aid and health care and education programs were halted.
Zotikova said UN officials had held consultations with the Russian government on security issues and reevaluated and improved its own security efforts. She said the United Nations was reiterating its call for the immediate release of Davidovich and Arjan Erkel, a Dutch employee of the aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres who was kidnapped last month in Dagestan.
Following Erkel's kidnapping, MSF also suspended its operations in the North Caucasus region around Chechnya - work that was aimed primarily at assisting refugees from the Chechen conflict.
Zotikova said the UN still had no information on Davidovich's fate.
Meanwhile, General Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the General Staff, was in Chechnya to inspect troops, hear reports from commanders there and meet with civilian officials, the Interfax-Military News Agency reported.
Kvashnin's visit began Sunday and was connected to the recent increase in rebel attacks, the agency said, citing an unnamed source in the military's headquarters in Chechnya.
The Aug. 19 downing of a huge military helicopter by rebels spotlighted the military's continued vulnerability in Chechnya. The military has said 119 out of 147 on board died.
On Monday, forensic experts in the southern Russian city of Rostov-na-Donu said they identified the body of a soldier who was not on the flight roster. Russian media had reported that there were as many as 152 people on board the Mi-26 helicopter.
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The bodies of seven Chechen residents who disappeared were found in a common grave, Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said Sunday.
All of the bodies were identified as Chechen residents and all had been missing for several months, he said. They were found in a grave near Goragorsk, 55 kilometers northwest of Grozny.
"A criminal investigation on charges of kidnapping is being conducted by the Chechen Prosecutor's Office," Fridinsky was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Four of the bodies were identified as members of the same family, the Kariyevs, relatives said. They said that these family members, whose ages ranged from 15 to 50, had been detained May 15 in the village of Pobedinskoye and that the bodies bore signs of torture.
TITLE: Would-Be Tourist Kicked Out
AUTHOR: By Marcia Dunn
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida - Pop star Lance Bass' dreams of going into space have officially gone "pop!"
The Russian Space Agency notified NASA on Monday that the 'N Sync singer won't fly to the international space station next month.
Bass had hoped to rocket away from Kazakhstan on Oct. 28, boosted by corporate sponsors and a seven-part television documentary. But TV producers failed to raise the estimated $20-million fare, and Russian space officials last week kicked Bass off the upcoming crew.
Bass' supporters contended the decision was not final and that negotiations were continuing, but Monday's letter to NASA formalized the matter.
"The letter speaks for itself," said NASA spokesperson Debra Rahn. "They've officially withdrawn Mr. Bass from the flight."
The letter from Russia's director of human space flight was dated Friday and faxed Monday to Frederick Gregory, NASA's deputy administrator and chairperson of the board that was reviewing Bass' bid to fly to space. NASA promptly forwarded copies of the letter to the other space agencies involved in the station program, namely those of Canada, Europe and Japan.
Rahn said Russia's Mikhail Sinelshchikov thanked Gregory and other space station officials for reviewing Bass' proposal to fly to the orbiting outpost. But he noted that the Russian Space Agency could wait no longer for the contractual obligations to be met.
The singer's publicist, Jill Fritzo, was not immediately available for comment.
At 23, Bass would have been the youngest person ever in space.
TITLE: Nine Dead, Rushailo Hurt In Car Crash
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - A car crash on Russia's remote Kamchatka peninsula on Monday killed five people and injured nine, including a top security official, in a dramatic demonstration of the chaotic state of Russia's road traffic.
Vladimir Rushailo, head of the Security Council, which oversees security issues, was among the injured, as was Mikhail Mashkovtsev, governor of the Pacific region, an Emergencies Ministry spokesman said.
RIA news agency, quoting traffic police, said a drunk driver had ploughed his car into the officials' motorcade.
The mayor of the northwestern city of Novgorod, Alexander Korsunov, died in a car crash late on Sunday, and a Siberian member of parliament was killed in a road accident last week.
Interfax reported Monday that Korsunov will be buried on Wednesday in Novgorod's Khutynsky Cemetery.
At least 12,000 people died on Russia's roads in the first half of the year, 18 percent more than in the same 2001 period, according to government statistics.Traffic police blame the carnage on increasingly old and decrepit cars.
(Reuters, SPT)
TITLE: Kabul To Get Russian Choppers, Radios
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia will provide the Afghan army with helicopters, communication equipment and materials to maintain its Soviet-made weapons, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Saturday after returning from a trip to Kabul.
Ivanov visited Kabul on Friday - the first visit by a Russian defense minister to Afghanistan since Soviet troops withdrew from the country in 1989, after nearly a decade of occupation and war. He met with President Hamid Karzai, Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim and other Afghan officials.
Speaking to reporters Saturday, Ivanov said that Russia was focusing on providing economic and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan but was also interested in helping its fledgling military.
He said that Russia would provide radios, lubricants, trucks, spare parts and several military transport helicopters to the Afghan military.
"We aren't going to equip the entire Afghan military with helicopters - we are talking about supplying just a few helicopters," Ivanov said. "We proceed from our own economic potential."
Ivanov wouldn't say how much the Russian military assistance would cost, or how many helicopters and other military hardware will be delivered. He said Friday that all supplies would be delivered free of charge.
Earlier in the week, Itar-Tass quoted an unidentified military official as saying that, before the end of the year, Russia could provide Afghanistan with 15 Mi-8 transport helicopters and Mi-24 helicopter gunships, tanks, armored personnel carriers, mortars, rocket launchers and other weapons from the defense ministry's arsenals worth $35 million to $40 million.
Last year, Moscow provided $34 million in arms to anti-Taliban forces, according to Russian news reports. The supplies were mostly Soviet-era materiel, including armored vehicles, transport helicopters, anti-tank cannons and other weapons.
Ivanov said on Saturday that more weapons supplies weren't on the agenda.
"We aren't talking about weapons in the direct sense of the word," he said.
Ivanov also said that his ministry would set up a military school for training junior Afghan officers in Tajikistan, which borders on Afghanistan.
TITLE: Russian Stocks Listed in The FT
AUTHOR: By Mikhail Overchenko and Boris Safronov
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Financial Times set a milestone last week for the Russian stock market by permanently adding top Russian companies to its stock index.
Fifteen of the largest Russian companies in terms of market capitalization debuted in the financial daily, along with Indian and Chinese companies.
"This is symbolic. This is an admission of the growing importance of Russia on international financial markets," said Martin Vishnevsky, vice president and head analyst of Morgan Stanley in Russia. "And it's not bad PR."
The Wall Street Journal already publishes Russian stock quotes, but their appearance in the Financial Times could have a bigger impact on the Russian market.
"European clients are more active than Americans. They have a larger turnover, although their volumes are lower," said Timur Nasardinov, head trader at Troika Dialog brokerage.
According to Simon Brisco, director of the Financial Times department of statistics, the decision to include stocks from a number of developing markets, including Russia's, had been pending for the past two years. Until now, the newspaper had a priority to cover the situation on the world market. Now Russia's turn has come. "We're glad to fill in a blank space," he said.
The capitalization figures for a number of Russian companies have reached impressive levels. The FT 500 list of the world's largest companies, published in May, listed Yukos (227th place), Surgutneftegaz (348th place) and LUKoil (336th place) for the first time, while Gazprom made its first appearance (254th place) since its 1997 debut, when it was 421st. In addition, there were more firms from Russia than from any other country listed in the 100 largest East European companies list, with Russia holding 36 places.
The presence of Russian companies in the Financial Times, although positive, will not on its own attract financing to the Russian stock market.
"It will be convenient for investors interested in Russian stock quotes, but it won't lead to immediate growth," said Deutsche Bank analyst Krisztina Kovacs.
"A market's image is formed by other factors, such as companies releasing information about themselves, trade volume and accounting standards," she said.
TITLE: Government Urges Rail Minister To Destroy Monopoly
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government rebuked the Railways Ministry on Friday for failing to develop a competitive market by not giving private operators equal access to the national rail network.
"The main complaint that I received was that barriers to equal access by private companies have not been removed," Railways Minister Gennady Fadeyev told reporters after a cabinet meeting during which reforms were discussed.
He did not elaborate, but private operators account for just 10 percent of all rail cargo carried this year, a long way short of the 50 percent target. And while the number of private operators grew rapidly in 2001, there has been no increase at all this year. The development of the competitive sector in railroad transport is one of the main targets of the reform.
Reforming the ministry, which controls the world's largest rail system and is the country's second biggest taxpayer after Gazprom, is "one subject that we follow constantly," Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said in opening the cabinet meeting, Prime-Tass reported.
Despite chastising Fadeyev, Kasyanov said that the cabinet was generally satisfied with the progress of reforms. Fadeyev said after the meeting that he accepted the government's criticism and found it objective.
He said that the ministry's decision this year to stop selling rail tankers - which carry lucrative cargoes such as oil - to private companies, forcing them to buy on the open market at higher prices, had contributed to the stalling of growth in the number of private operators.
However, the minister's explanations have not satisfied the government, and it has told the Railways Ministry and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry to work out regulations for developing the rail-freight market and increasing the number of private operators by November.
In the future, according to the reform plan, the share of cargo carried by private companies must reach 50 percent.
Next year, private operators plan to invest $200 million into their own rolling stock, increasing the number of train cars to 43,000. Currently, private operators own 37,500 cars and rent 38,000, the Railways Ministry said.
The draft bills for railroad reform are awaiting a second reading in the State Duma.
The first stage of the reform process is planned to be completed by April next year, when the ministry's commercial and regulative functions will be split up and a joint-stock company, Russian Railways, will be created.
The ministry has finished making an inventory of its assets and capital, estimating it at approximately 1.3 trillion rubles ($41 billion), which the Russian Railways Co. will inherit after the second stage of reforms.
More than 1 billion units of property will have to be re-registered, a time-consuming process that is expected to cost 5.5 billion rubles ($170 million).
Fadeyev asked the government on Friday to find a way to ease the process.
The cabinet has decided to finance all of the ministry's social-sphere expenses - such as schools and hospitals - from the federal budget next year, as well as to fully pay for all military transportation by rail.
The ministry has been paying off its debts very well, Fadeyev said. Since the beginning of the year, the ministry's debt has been whittled down from 154 billion rubles ($4.88 billion) to 131 billion rubles ($4.16 billion).
Railroad revenues for 2003 are expected to reach 400 billion rubles ($12.7 billion), he said. The ministry has submitted a 125 billion-ruble ($3.17 billion) investment program to the Economic Development and Trade Ministry for its consideration.
TITLE: Analysts Condemn Greenspan's Policies
AUTHOR: By Martin Crutsinger
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - As Alan Greenspan begins his 16th year in America's toughest economic-policy post, the Federal Reserve has seen better days. He is beset by second-guessers, who blame him for a range of economic woes, from last year's recession to the $7-trillion meltdown on Wall Street.
Greenspan himself set off the latest round of nay-saying.
In a recent speech, he addressed one of the critics' biggest complaints - that the Fed was asleep at the wheel in the late 1990s and failed to avert Wall Street's speculative bubble.
Instead of resolving the debate, Greenspan generated more heat. Princeton economist Paul Krugman, for one, contended that Greenspan had been "disturbingly evasive."
It is all a marked reversal from the view of Greenspan during the heady 1990s. Then, he held a near cult-like status on Wall Street. Books such as the best seller "Maestro" praised his management of the U.S. economy, and cited his steady hand in helping world markets recovery from the Asian financial crisis.
But America's record 10-year-long economic expansion ended in March 2001, and Wall Street has racked up huge losses over the past two years.
"Greenspan was a great hero when everybody was getting wealthy, but now that people have lost a lot of money, he is the goat," said former Fed board member Lyle Gramley.
Critics fault Greenspan on both sides of the interest-rate equation.
They complain that he failed to raise interest rates soon enough in the late 1990s to keep the speculative stock-market frenzy from going out of control; they say he overdid the credit tightening in 2000, thereby triggering a full recession.
Greenspan's tenure as Fed chairman is exceeded only by William McChesney Martin, who had a 19-year run in the 1950s and 1960s.
The current chairperson has been the target of second-guessing before - during the only other recession on his watch, in 1990 and 1991.
At that time, much of the criticism came not from economists but from the administration of the first President Bush. His economic team tried to get Greenspan to cut rates more aggressively before the 1992 presidential race. Greenspan and the Fed resisted; Bush blamed his defeat in part on Greenspan's obstinacy.
By contrast, the current Bush administration has given no hints of unhappiness with Greenspan. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill takes every opportunity to link his economic views with those of Greenspan, who has been content to leave interest rates at a 40-year low this year in an effort to revive the economy.
Despite those low rates, Democrats and Republicans outside the administration have challenged the Fed to do more to spur growth. Greenspan probably will hear those demands repeated Thursday when he delivers his latest assessment of economic conditions in congressional testimony.
Greenspan's main argument in his recent speech to a Fed symposium was that any effort to prick the stock bubble would have required pushing interest rates so high as to bring on that which policy-makers wanted to avoid: a recession.
Some economists say Greenspan himself had considered trying to tame the market's frenzy but backed away after the storm raised by his famous question in December 1996 about whether it was possible to know when markets were in the grip of "irrational exuberance."
Greenspan's supporters say a chief reason that Greenspan cited during the boom years for leaving interest rates alone has been proven - that the country had entered a new era of higher productivity growth.
"In the 15 years he has been chairman of the Fed, the United States has had only two mild recessions, remarkably low inflation and stronger economic growth than most people might have felt was possible," said Michael Mussa, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. "Overall, his record has been very good."
TITLE: Suffer the Little Children
AUTHOR: By Bob Herbert
TEXT: IT still doesn't seem quite real. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Monica Watt was standing in a courtyard of the Gateway Plaza apartment complex in Battery Park City, just a block from the enormous towers of the World Trade Center. She was with two of her three children - Amanda, who was 5 and severely handicapped, and William, who was 2.
Her husband, Bill, had gone off to work, and their 7-year-old daughter, Melissa, had already left for school.
William spotted the plane first. He pointed and said, "Look, Mommy."
The sight was immediately disorienting. The plane didn't belong where it was. It was too low. Too close. In an interview last week, Monica Watt said she had the odd thought, "I've never seen a plane in that airspace before."
They watched as American Airlines Flight 11 plunged into the north tower. It was precisely 8:46 a.m.
"I'll never forget the feeling," Watt said. "There was an explosion, and you just saw the glass and everything else blow out of the side of the building."
William stared and began to shiver.
Moments later a school bus arrived to pick up Amanda. William was still staring at the north tower, and by that time people were beginning to jump. "You'd see a woman in a business suit and a man holding hands," Watt said. "And you're almost saying, 'Don't! Don't!' And then you'd see them leap."
The second plane hit while she was talking to the bus driver. Now there was no doubt that it was a terrorist attack. Watt grabbed her children and went up to their 14th-floor apartment. She strapped Amanda into a wheelchair, picked up a few items and then joined the crush of residents evacuating the building.
She wanted to get to a promenade behind the building that runs along the Hudson River. As she looked back at the trade center, she said to the superintendent, who was unlocking a gate for her, "You don't think those buildings are going to fall, do you?"
Just as the superintendent was saying no, the south tower began to collapse.
"When that tower went down," Watt said, "I thought at the time that an atomic bomb had gone off. It was the loudest explosion I have ever heard."
She tried to push Amanda to a safe spot, she said. "People were screaming, 'The building's coming down!' I stuck William under my shirt and went up against the wall. I just put my face to the building. The worst part was when all this stuff started raining down on us. You didn't know if it was going to be a foot [30 centimeters] deep, or 30 feet or 50 feet. It was pitch black and you couldn't breathe. The air was just taken away from you."
"I thought, 'This is it - we are going to die.' And I really just knelt down and prayed."
Watt and her children were eventually rescued by a fireboat on the Hudson. They were taken, along with many others, to New Jersey, and the family was reunited that night.
The story of the Watt family since then is really the story of the city of New York since Sept. 11. The family was stunned, frightened, traumatized.
But recovery, however difficult, was the only option.
They lived in a hotel for several months, then moved back to the Gateway Plaza building. "William had a tough time," Watt said. "He would look out the windows and go, 'No towers. Towers gone.'"
He drew pictures, with his sister Melissa's help, of people leaping from the trade center, some of them in flames.
When he was outside and the wind was blowing, he would scream that buildings were falling on him. And every time he saw the attack replayed on television, he thought it was happening again.
The healing process was long and hard - and continues.
A therapist from the Children's Health Fund visited the apartment regularly to counsel William, and that helped. He still draws pictures of the towers, but now there are ropes and ladders and rescue workers at the windows. And as his family has settled more or less comfortably into its new life beside ground zero, he has become more accepting of the idea that the worst is behind him. Sometimes he actually says, "It's over."
Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of the Children's Health Fund, said youngsters across the city, like William, "and like all of us, really, are in a sense adjusting to the new reality of what we had to face then, and what we may have to face in the future."
It was a year unlike any other. Unreal, and all too real, all at the same time.
Bob Herbert is a columnist for The New York Times, where this comment first appeared.
TITLE: Japanese Visit Another Step For N. Korea
TEXT: JAPAN'S prime minister has scheduled an unprecedented visit to North Korea next week that could go far toward easing tensions in one of the more dangerous parts of the world.
Junichiro Koizumi's planned one-day summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il represents another small opening of North Korea to the outside world after nearly 60 years of secretive Stalinist rule. The last decade has seen Pyongyang swing back and forth, at times appearing approachable by Japan, South Korea and the United States but at most times remaining deaf. Internal and external pressures are pushing the North to open up now. Increasing numbers of North Koreans are trying to defect when they are lucky enough to reach other countries - especially China, Pyongyang's longtime ally. North Koreans at home are ill fed or starving. The economy is a shambles. U.S. President George W. Bush includes the country in his "axis of evil."
Koizumi is expected to press Kim to explain what happened to at least a dozen and perhaps as many as 100 Japanese kidnapped by North Korea over the years, for reasons unknown. Japan also wants North Korea not to test-fire another missile over its territory, as it did in 1998. Cooperation with Japan can be lucrative, but decades of enmity stand in the way. Japan ruled unified Korea brutally as a colony from 1910 to the end of World War II. Japan was a staging area for U.S. troops during the Korean War of 1950 to 1953. Nearly 38,000 U.S. troops are still in South Korea, and about the same number in Japan.
Japan has provided economic aid to South Korea and China after re-establishing diplomatic relations, and North Korea is hoping for more assistance and acceptance. In recent years the country has allowed several European nations to establish embassies. In recent months it has also started overhauling its economy, paying farmers more for rice, removing subsidies for unprofitable businesses and letting some prices increase to reflect actual costs.
There is no reason to expect North Korea's relations with other countries to progress quickly and evenly. Koizumi needs to return home with some visible sign of progress to show Japanese who were frightened and angered by the 1998 missile test, but he has to be a hard bargainer as well.
One accomplishment in this summit would be persuading Kim that it's in his best interests to negotiate with Tokyo, Seoul and Washington rather than sell missiles to any country willing to buy them.
This comment appeared as an editorial in the Los Angeles Times.
TITLE: Catastrophes Point To A Brighter Future
TEXT: WHEN I reflect on the year that has passed since Sept. 11, 2001, two images come to mind. The first I saw on television: clouds of smoke and flame engulfing the World Trade Center. The second I saw live, and much more recently, as I returned from vacation by train: the smoke screen stretching for hundreds of kilometers around Moscow.
Next the memory casts up all sorts of apocalyptic recollections: war and terrorism in Chechnya, Israel, Afghanistan; hideous plane crashes; unprecedented solar flares; endless fires and floods; some kind of asteroid headed our way; and, finally, shockwaves running through that bedrock of Russian life, the U.S. economy.
These images then blend with earlier psychological wounds: the Kursk in 2000, the apartment building bombings in Moscow and other cities in 1999.
On the other hand, I realize that for me personally this has been one of the most successful periods of recent years (knock on wood). For that reason I find it remarkable that I now feel more confused and dismayed that I ever did back in leaner times.
This feeling - shared, I believe, by people all over the world - is the result of watching television.
On Sept. 11, 2001, television showed the world that unbelievable, unthinkable and impossible evil is in fact more than possible. We saw it with our own eyes. Against this background, the many various, unconnected cataclysms occurring all over the world come together in a picture of growing global chaos - if only because they are shown nearly every day on television. On top of that, more and more people are confronted with first-hand experience of the reality of the unthinkable: affluent Germany is underwater, comfortable Moscow is suffocating.
Before Sept. 11, our global village looked just like any other village. Now it looks like an accursed place that it would be better to leave. But there's nowhere to go. This is the new era.
As Marshall MacLuen said, the medium is the message. This means that television, which will remain the dominant means of communication for the foreseeable future, cannot exist without spectacles and images. And the best shots are always of something extraordinary. And after a couple more television seasons like the last one, we will witness the onset of a worldwide psychological disorder. Psychologically unstable people and nations in turn pose a greater risk to themselves and to others. Take the Jews and the Palestinians, for instance.
Broadcast journalists have come to understand the potential risks posed by their medium. In developed, democratic societies they have taken steps to minimize that danger - not to dwell on the spectacle of bloody corpses, not to exploit the face of sorrow. Today many agree that the restraint shown by American television in its coverage of the Sept. 11 tragedy played a stabilizing role in society.
But this begs another question: To what extent are accepted ethical norms for coverage of local tragedies applicable to the coverage of cataclysm on a global scale? Simply put, what difference does it make if you show corpses or not when month after month the main story on the television news is by necessity some kind of catastrophe?
Worldwide television in the era of global catastrophes must come up with new ethical norms similar to the fundamental principle of the medical profession: First, do no harm.
Alexei Pankin is the editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals (www.internews.ru/sreda).
TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: As the world prepares to mark the anniversary of one of history's great turning points, it would be remiss not to make a contribution to the sad memorials. And so, with heavy heart, let us return to that fateful moment when the forces of violent extremism struck a cowardly and deceitful blow against the cause of freedom.
The moment in question is, of course, the weekend of Oct. 17 to 18, 1980, when a former and a future head of the CIA met in Paris with representatives from a terrorist regime to plot the cynical manipulation of an American presidential election.
It is an act of treason for private American citizens to negotiate political deals with foreign governments without official authorization. But that didn't stop George Herbert Walker Bush and William Casey from sitting down with the Ayatollah Khomeini's mullahs to discuss a matter of mutual interest: making sure the 52 American hostages being held by Iran stayed locked up until after the November election contest between President Jimmy Carter and Republican challenger Ronald Reagan.
The Republicans were terrified of an "October Surprise" - a move by the Carter government to free the hostages before the vote. So ex-CIA chief Bush - then Reagan's vice-presidential candidate - and Casey were dispatched to Paris to offer the Iranians a covert deal to keep the Americans in chains until Reagan was safely in office. The proposed payoff? A newly-elected Reagan-Bush administration would supply Khomeini's military with a secret supply of American weapons.
The deal provoked furious debate in Teheran. The secular revolutionaries who helped topple the U.S.-backed tyranny of the Shah wanted to wash their hands of the hostages, who had been seized by Khomeini's fanatical talibs. But the religious extremists who held ultimate power liked the cut of that Reagan-Bush jib.
And why not? The mullahs had much in common with the American archconservatives. Both groups hated Western modernity in almost all its forms (except technology - especially military technology, which they embraced with fervor). They despised its personal freedoms, its social upheavals, its sexual openness, its questioning of traditional authority and its many blasphemies against the primitive sky-god that both groups blindly worshiped.
The ayatollah cast his lot with Reagan and Bush. He held the American captives until the very minute that Reagan - victorious over the hapless Carter, who'd been pilloried for "failing to free the hostages" - was inaugurated as president. The CIA - hamstrung by Carter's reforms and his intermittent commitment to human rights - was back in business. They had their boy Bush in Reagan's White House; their old pal Casey was the new CIA boss.
Iran got its payoff, too: sophisticated U.S. weaponry flowed to the extremist regime, often using Israeli intelligence as a conduit. This conduit proved valuable a few years later, when the Reagan-Bush White House skimmed profits from secret Iranian arms sales to pay for their drug-running operations and terrorist camps in Latin America: the infamous Iran-Contra scam.
But, like the American people, the Iranian mullahs were also suckered. While shipping arms to Tehran, Reagan and Bush quietly embraced the mullah's mortal enemy, Saddam Hussein. They gave him weapons, supported his invasion of Iran and supplied military intelligence to guide him while he sprayed Iranian soldiers and innocent civilians with poison gas. When Bush ascended to the Oval Office, he moved tons of dual-use technology to Iraq, allowing Hussein to expand his biochemical and nuclear weapons capabilities. If - and it's a big if - Iraq poses any nuclear or biochemical threat today, it's because George Bush and his cronies fiddled the 1980 election and foisted a "shadow government" dedicated to covert war and death-dealing treachery on the American people, and the world.
A few tendrils of these dark truths emerged during the last days of half-hearted Congressional investigations into Iran-Contra. The treasonous Republican intervention with the mullahs was confirmed by several credible sources, foreign and domestic, including two national leaders: Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who as president of Iran in 1980 had full knowledge of the negotiations; and future Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin. At the time of the probe, Stepashin was head of the Supreme Soviet's Defense and Security Issues Committee. At the request of the investigators, he carried out an extensive review of Soviet intelligence files and sent Congress a remarkably detailed report on the Reagan-Khomeini connection.
Several witnesses (and Stepashin's report) put Bush on the scene for at least one day of the Paris sessions. Although Bush had unaccountably disappeared from the campaign trail on the date in question, he told Congress that he'd "taken a day off" - in the final push of a heated presidential campaign - to visit two family friends. However, one friend - the widow of a Supreme Court justice - said the purported visit never happened. Bush adamantly refused to identify the second friend - unless Congress promised not to interview them at all.
Meekly, Congress agreed. There were no subpoenas, no grand juries, no [Ken] Starr warriors set loose to dissect Bush's claims: just a quiet agreement among the elite to look out for their own. Stepashin's report was disregarded; even Bani-Sadr's direct knowledge was derided as a "secondary account." The testimonies were buried in obscure archives until investigative reporter Robert Parry hunted them down and published them in his invaluable journal, Consortiumnews.com.
So yes, on Sept. 11, let's remember the victims of violent extremism, and the heroes who died fighting to save them. But let's also remember October, 1980, and the cynical operators who helped create a world where such insanity can thrive.
For annotational references, please see the "Opinion" section at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: Arafat Blasts Attacks, Hints at Retirement
AUTHOR: By Jamie Tarabay
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat told the Palestinian parliament Monday that he condemns "every act of terror against Israeli civilians" and that he is willing to give up executive power, if asked.
It was not immediately clear whether he was seriously proposing stepping down or merely mocking his critics.
Arafat's appearance before the legislature, his first in 18 months, was considered a key test of his standing. He was seeking approval for a new cabinet and for reform plans sought by the United States and Israel.
Arafat's popularity has plummeted in recent months. Shunned by the United States, he has largely been confined to his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
In his speech Monday, Arafat said he condemned "every act of terror against Israeli civilians," but did not say explicitly that the attacks must be halted. He said such attacks served Israel's interests, by drawing attention away from the suffering of the Palestinians under Israel's occupation. He asked legislators to uphold the national interest, but did not specify what this would mean.
A draft version of the speech contained several paragraphs in which he called for a ban on suicide bombings in Israel, but the speech Arafat delivered did not include such a call.
Arafat said the world expects from the Palestinians a "clear stance and firm answers regarding peace with Israel and the Israeli peace, as well as with regard to democracy and reforms in our society."
In an off-the-cuff remark, Arafat said that "if you would like to replace me in the executive powers, I wish you would do it and give me some rest."
The 88-seat legislature has convened only sporadically, and usually with a low turnout, during the past two years of fighting, because of Israeli travel restrictions.
Israeli hard-liners criticized Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for permitting the session to go ahead, arguing it would give new credibility to Arafat at a time when Israel is trying to sideline him. Sharon initially blocked the parliament meeting.
The session opened at Arafat's sandbagged headquarters, which has been heavily damaged in several Israeli raids. In a first step, legislators re-elected their speaker, Ahmed Qureia, by an overwhelming margin.
Qureia, also known as Abu Ala, was a key player in earlier peace accords with Israel. Qureia is considered a confidant of Arafat, but is also considered a possible successor to the Palestinian leader.
After Arafat's speech, lawmakers were to move to the parliament building in Ramallah.
Arafat advisers said the Palestinian leader chose not to leave his headquarters for Monday's session because he wanted to avoid possibly embarrassing encounters with Israeli troops. Israeli troops reoccupied Ramallah and several other West Bank cities in June, as part of an offensive against Palestinian militants.
In other developments Monday, a senior Palestinian official said Sharon would meet in the coming days with Arafat's deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, to try to find a way to end the fighting. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, is seen by the United States and Israel as a moderate.
Sharon's aides declined comment.
In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, troops blew up the house of a suspected Palestinian militant in the Boureij refugee camp. During the operation, about 60 tanks encircled Boureij and two adjacent camps and rounded up suspects.
The army said the suspect, a fugitive, is responsible for firing mortar bombs and for an attack on a tank in February that killed three soldiers. During the raid, troops found a building used to manufacture anti-tank missiles and mortar bombs and blew it up, the army said in a statement.
The Palestinian parliament was to discuss Palestinian reforms demanded by Israel and the United States as part of a shake-up of the Palestinian Authority. Elections are to be a centerpiece of the reforms.
TITLE: Bin Laden Aide A No-Show at Cairo Call
AUTHOR: By Hamza Hendawi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAIRO - Nearly everyone was skeptical, but many - including a dozen TV news crews and a brigade of reporters - went just in case.
Ayman al-Zawahri, a top deputy of Osama bin Laden in hiding for months, possibly in the mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan, had been invited to address a conference Sunday in a downtown Cairo hotel - by any means possible.
The hosts on the conference on Islamic political movements had hoped al-Zawahri would explain his role in the Sept. 11 attacks, either by posting a statement on the Web, sending an e-mail or calling. But the Egyptian doctor sent no word.
Doing so would have run too much of a risk of exposure to U.S. or Egyptian authorities, al-Zawahri's great-uncle and former lawyer said.
"With the new technology, they could have located him had he tried to get in touch," Mahfouz Azzam said. "It would have been suicidal."
Montasser el-Zayat, a Muslim fundamentalist who has defended Muslim militants in Egyptian courts and helped organize Sunday's event, has said that he had contacted several people he did not identify who are known to be in touch with al-Zawahri, and passed the request for him to address the seminar.
He had also posted the invitation on several Islamic Web sites. Last week, the London-based Al-Hayat daily published the invitation's text, in which el-Zayat asked al-Zawahri to tell the world all he knew about the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We had no reply, but we're still waiting," el-Zayat said.
Al-Zawahri is on the most-wanted list of U.S. anti-terrorism officials for the Sept. 11 attacks. Egypt also sentenced him to death in absentia in 1999 for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan and for attempting to kill officials in Egypt.
Like bin Laden, his whereabouts have been unknown since the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan began in October, following the terror attacks on New York and Washington.
The Sept. 11 attacks, in which some 3,000 people died, are blamed on bin Laden's al-Qaida network. Al-Zawahri, leader of Egypt's militant Jihad group, is thought to be al-Qaida's chief ideologue and bin Laden's right-hand man. Both have been seen together in several video tapes broadcast by Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television during the past year.
"I hope he's alive. I hope he's well," Azzam, 75, told reporters. "I am very proud of him and I say God bless him."
Sunday's conference, gathering secular and Islamic analysts, was hosted by the Future Center for Studies and Research, a think tank for political and social studies.
With no word from al-Zawahri, seminar participants spent hours Sunday listening to speakers cataloguing the ideological evolution of Islamic movements in the year since Sept. 11 and warning of further attacks.
Mohammed Salah, an expert on radical Islamic groups who writes for Al-Hayat, said U.S. policies since Sept. 11 may have helped militant groups recruit new Muslim activists sympathetic to al-Qaida and bin Laden. He said such recruiting was likely to be taking place in Europe and North America.
TITLE: Texans First Win Tops List of Wild Season Openers in NFL
AUTHOR: By Dennis Waszak Jr.
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - A wild opening NFL weekend was highlighted by the expansion Houston Texans winning their first game, three games going to overtime and two others decided in the final seconds of regulation.
Just one game into their first season, the Texans showed they know what it takes to win. Rookie quarterback David Carr came out heaving the ball, throwing a touchdown on his first completion.
"That was just letting them know we were here," Carr said.
He later hit Corey Bradford for a 65-yard touchdown early in the fourth quarter to beat the state rival Dallas Cowboys 19-10 on Sunday.
The Texans became only the second expansion team to start 1-0. Minnesota did it in 1961, beating the Chicago Bears.
"Now they can go back to Dallas and have a hard-knock life," said Texans defensive end Gary Walker, the only former Oiler on the squad. "We ruined their season."
Adding to the wildness of the NFL's opening Sunday, New Orleans beat Tampa Bay 26-20 in OT on a botched pass by punter Tom Tupa in the end zone that was intercepted; the New York Jets defeated Buffalo 37-31 as Chad Morton opened the extra period with his second kickoff return for a touchdown; and Ryan Longwell kicked a 30-meter field goal to give Green Bay a 37-34 victory over Atlanta with 5:15 left in overtime.
"If you are in the league long enough, you will see everything," Saints coach Jim Haslett said. "I can't remember anything like this, and I've been in some crazy games."
The three overtime games marked just the second time that that many games went to an extra period on the opening weekend, and first since 1979. The last time it happened in the regular season was Dec. 2, 2001.
At Cleveland, linebacker Dwayne Rudd cost the Browns a victory after an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty for throwing his helmet in celebration. That set up Morten Andersen's 30-meter field goal with no time showing Sunday, giving the Kansas City Chiefs a 40-39 victory.
"I'm sick," Browns coach Butch Davis said. "To have something like that happen at the end is inexcusable."
At Champaign, Illinois, Jim Miller hit David Terrell on a 9-yard touchdown pass with 28 seconds left as Chicago scored twice in the final 6:13 and stunned Minnesota 27-23 in Mike Tice's debut as the Vikings head coach.
In other games, it was Washington 31, Arizona 23; Carolina 10, Baltimore 7; Miami 49, Detroit 21; San Diego 34, Cincinnati 6; Indianapolis 28, Jacksonville 25; Tennessee 27, Philadelphia 24; Denver 23, St. Louis 16; Oakland 31, Seattle 17.
TITLE: Yugoslavia On Top of the World After Victory
AUTHOR: By Jim O'Connell
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: INDIANAPOLIS - The cars outside the arena were filled with people waving red, white and blue flags. The World Championships had ended an hour earlier, but the United States was nowhere close to a gold medal.
Downtown Indianapolis had the flavor of downtown Belgrade on Sunday, with Yugoslavia fans celebrating their country's 84-77 overtime victory over Argentina.
The U.S. team was done the night before, losing the sixth-place game to Spain, its third loss in the 16-team tournament.
A disputed non-call sent the game into overtime and Yugoslavia pulled away, becoming the first team to repeat as world champion since Brazil in 1963.
"It's wonderful we were able to defend the gold medal and, for the fifth time, prove we are champions of the world," said Dejan Bodiroga, who had 27 points, including Yugoslavia's last nine of regulation as it wiped out an eight-point deficit over the final 2 1/2 minutes.
Yugoslavia was 2-2 after the first game of the second round, prompting hard questions to coach Svetislav Pesic.
Bodiroga, Peja Stojakovic and Vlade Divac stepped up as team leaders and Yugoslavia was suddenly the favorite again when it eliminated the United States from medal contention with a quarterfinal victory.
Argentina, the first team to beat a U.S. team with NBA players on the roster, hadn't even made the medal round since winning the first World Championships in 1950.
The long wait appeared to be over when Argentina took a 74-68 lead with 2:31 to play in regulation. Bodiroga outscored Argentina 9-1 the rest of the way, tying it 75-75 on two free throws with 0:17 left.
Argentina had trouble getting the ball up the court and Divac, who said this most likely would be his last game for the national team, was fouled at midcourt as he tried to pick up a loose ball.
He missed both free throws with 0:05.9 left.
Argentina rebounded the miss and Hugo Sconochini drove to the basket, going down hard as he missed a shot just before the buzzer.
Germany won its first medal in a major international competition by beating New Zealand 117-94 in the third-place game. Dirk Nowitzki scored 29 points for Germany. He was voted the tournament's MVP and was the scoring leader with a 24.0 average.