SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #804 (69), Tuesday, September 17, 2002
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TITLE: Killers Filmed Murder Of Azeri
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The murderers of an Azeri watermelon vendor on Friday evening recorded the killing on video, an action that may lead to their conviction, St. Petersburg police said Monday.
What appears to be a racially motivated murder sent ripples of fear through the northern capital's large Caucasian community over the weekend, despite police reluctance to pinpoint the motive or who stood behind the attack.
"The videotape was seized on Sunday, and shows the killing and the assailants," said Elmar Shakhirzayev, deputy head of the press service of the Interior Ministry's Administration for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast (GUVD), in a telephone interview on Monday. "The murder took place when it was still light on the streets, so their faces are identifiable."
Asked why he thought the attackers had videotaped the murder, he said the tape was probably intended to show proof of their nasty deed to "superiors."
A case of premeditated murder has been opened.
"All assailants have been arrested, and we have 100-percent evidence against them," Pavel Rayevsky, the head of the police press service, said Monday.
The case will be brought to court when the investigation is complete, and the killers face up to 20 years in prison for collective murder, Shakhirzayev said.
Several witnesses saw father-of-eight Mamed Mamedov, 53, being beaten to death next to his stand on Ulitsa Aviakonstruktorov in the Primorsky district. They described the attackers as having shaven heads and wearing army boots and black leather jackets.
The assailants, some of them armed with metal bars, approached Mamedov about 8:30 p.m. and hit him for about 2 minutes, then, after making sure that he was dead, fled. Police arrested two suspects at the scene of the attack.
Police detained 120 people in relation to the murder, 31 of whom were released on condition that they do not leave the city, Interfax reported Monday.
Mamedov was not the only Caucasian attacked over the weekend.
On Saturday evening, Uradzh Magomedov, a 35-year-old Azeri, was attacked on the staircase of his home, also located in the Primorsky district.
Magomedov, who was shown on television cut and bleeding, described his assailants as seven youths aged 17 to 20 with shaven heads and army boots.
They cut him with razor blades and told him that they would start killing other Azeris if they did not leave the city, he said.
Despite reports over the weekend suggesting the attacks had spurred anger and fear in the city's Azeri community, Gudsi Osmanov, the Honorary Consul for Azerbaijan in St. Petersburg, said that the community had resumed its normal life, and praised the work of the police.
"I met the head of the GUVD, Mikhail Vanichkin, this morning, and I want to stress how satisfied I am with the work of the police," Osmanov said Monday. "We can consider ourselves lucky that Vanichkin now heads the GUVD. He is very efficient, ending the time when such attacks were rarely investigated."
Both police and officials, however, were reluctant to link the two attacks or to say they were racially motivated.
"These incidents are not linked, they were perpetrated by different people," Rayevsky said.
"For the moment, information indicates that the crime may have been related to Mamedov's personal or business activities," he said. "We do not posses enough evidence to say that it was carried out by extremist groups, but if the investigation shows that it was, we will be the first to talk about it."
The fact that assailants in both attacks wore army boots and had shaved heads could simply boil down to fashion, he added. Other sources within the GUVD disagreed.
"Of course, the killers were skinheads," said Shakhirzayev. "They even declared themselves as such; some of them wore swastikas."
He said police were not able to confirm that the two attacks were linked.
"Magomedov has yet to file a complaint, and he ran away from the hospital to which he was taken after the assault," he said. "We will call him in to see if he can identify anyone on the video."
Mamedov's body was flown to Azerbaijan on Monday. He is survived by seven daughters and one son.
TITLE: Critics Rail On Luzhkov's Plan for Iron Felix
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Liberal lawmakers and human rights activists on Monday fervently protested Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov's plan to put a statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky back on a pedestal in front of the former KGB headquarters.
The 14-ton bronze statue, one of the most controversial and notorious icons of the Soviet past, was toppled from its pedestal near the former headquarters of the KGB on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad by jubilant pro-democracy protesters after the failed coup by Communist hard-liners in August 1991.
Alexander Barannikov, a deputy head of the Union of Right Forces, said that in raising the issue, Luzhkov had experienced "a moment of temporary insanity."
The Kremlin's representative to the Duma, Alexander Kotenkov, said, "Monuments shouldn't be toppled but, if toppled, they should not be restored."
"Dzerzhinsky was a butcher who, along with his henchmen, killed millions of Russians," said Boris Nemtsov, the leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces parliament faction which sponsored a protest outside the Lubyanka building, where the KGB successor agency, the Federal Security Service, has its headquarters.
Nemtsov said Monday that his party and other liberal groups would try to collect 1 million signatures to prevent the return of the statue.
Dzerzhinsky, known as "Iron Felix" for his unbending belief in harsh punishment, was a ruthless disciplinarian and founder of the Soviet prison camp system.
"It's an excellent monument and was the highlight of Lubyanskaya Ploshchad," Luzhkov said at a meeting of the city's construction committee, Interfax reported.
He said re-erecting the statue would not mean "a return to the past."
Luzhkov told reporters Saturday he expected a fierce public debate over his announcement and he would defend his position. Luzhkov focused on Dzerzhinsky's positive achievements, rather than the mass arrests and executions.
"We should remember that he solved the problem of homeless children and bailed out the railroads in a period of devastation," Luzhkov was quoted by Interfax as saying. "There were excesses at that time, the Red Terror. But if all the useful things Dzerzhinsky did were taken into account, it would be obvious to make the decision to return the statue to Lubyanskaya."
Alexander Yakovlev, once a close adviser to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and a veteran reformer who led the government's commission for rehabilitation of political repression victims, said that Dzerzhinsky personally ordered mass killings and tortures. "He is the shame of Russia," Yakovlev said.
Several dozen liberal politicians and human rights activists who gathered on Lubyanka Square on Monday said the resurrection of Dzerzhinsky's statue would herald the government's approval of the Communist terror.
"We have joined the international coalition against terror, so how can we restore the statue of Dzerzhinsky, the symbol of Red Terror against the country's citizens?" said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a leading human rights organization.
Sergei Yushenkov, a leader of the Liberal Russia party, speculated that Luzhkov initiated the idea to return the statue in an attempt to please President Vladimir Putin, a KGB veteran who turns 50 next month - a theory shared by some Russian media. Luzhkov "thought that the restoration of this statue would be the best present for Putin's birthday," Yushenkov said.
Putin has spoken with pride about his 16-year KGB career, but hasn't commented on Luzhkov's latest move or earlier proposals to restore the statue.
In sharp contrast with his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who abhorred all symbols of Communism, Putin endorsed the Russian parliament's move to reinstate the music of the old Soviet anthem, albeit with different words, in 2000.
Four years ago, Luzhkov opposed a proposal by the Communist-dominated State Duma to return the statue to the square. But he inexplicably did an about-face Friday and embraced Dzerzhinsky for his unbending determination to impose harsh punishment.
Leftist politicians and several centrists support Luzhkov. Some said Dzerzhinsky had every right to crown the downtown square, while others declared Luzhkov could put up anything he wanted in the capital. "Luzhkov is the master of Moscow, and we must consider his opinion," said Deputy Duma Speaker Lyubov Sliska, a centrist.
The Dzerzhinsky statue was erected in 1958 by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and was a landmark in Soviet times.
When the statue was pulled down in 1991, the U.S. Embassy provided a crane to remove it, former Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov wrote in his memoirs.
Luzhkov said Saturday that the toppling of the statue had nothing to do with Dzerzhinsky personally.
"It was a protest against the [social] order, not against the statue," he said.
Luzhkov, who was a top city official in 1991, ordered that the statue be stored in a graveyard of Soviet monuments at the Central House of Artists. The mayor promised Friday that the statue would be on the agenda of the construction council's next meeting in October.
Luzhkov's suggestion came a day after Izvestia newspaper again raised the issue by publishing opinions of a cross-section of Russians.
Legislator Nikolai Kharitonov, who has long lobbied to restore the original statue, told the newspaper that it was a symbol of order in the country.
Yury Kobaladze, former spokesperson for the foreign intelligence service, told Izvestia that while he thinks that Dzerzhinsky's "pluses ... are greater than the minuses," he still doesn't support the statue's return.
(SPT, AP)
TITLE: Thousands Call for Kuchma To Resign
AUTHOR: By Tim Vickery
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KIEV - Some 15,000 demonstrators marched in Kiev and tens of thousands of others gathered in public squares around the country Monday, demanding that President Leonid Kuchma resign or call new elections.
In one of the largest demonstrations since Ukraine's independence 12 years ago, protesters from diverse opposition groups blocked Kiev's main thoroughfare, chanting "Away with Kuchma!"
A broad-based coalition of opposition groups organized the protests, saying the president and his administration are mired in corruption that is stifling democratic rule and economic development.
"Our demands to the president are just," Socialist party leader Oleksandr Moroz told his fellow protesters. "We have one aim - for truth and for an honest life in Ukraine," he added.
The protest organizers were buoyed by support from the country's most popular politician, former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko.
Political tensions have been rising steadily since the March 31 parliamentary election, in which opposition parties won the bulk of the popular vote.
The election was seen as a gauge of Kuchma's popularity, after eight years ruling this Texas-sized country of 49 million. The campaign of the pro-Kuchma party, created just a few months earlier, was considered a rehearsal for him or a hand-picked successor for the 2004 presidential elections.
Moroz, the Socialist leader, opened the protest Monday with a minute of silence to commemorate crusading journalist Georgy Gongadze and other "victims of the [Kuchma] regime."
The demonstration was timed to mark the second anniversary of Gongadze's disappearance. The discovery of his beheaded body in October 2000 touched off months of protests as the opposition accused Kuchma of involvement. Kuchma denied the accusations.
"We're here to push Kuchma and all the thieves from power, because it's not Ukrainians but the mafia that's ruling the country," said Semen Vilous, 77, from the Kiev suburb of Zhuliany.
Across Ukraine, all television broadcasts were blocked until shortly before the protest. Officials said they were conducting maintenance, but they have always staggered the maintenance so that some channels were in operation.
"Without your true information about what is happening in the square, the nation will be blind," Yushchenko said in an appeal to the media.
Citing their constitutional right to peaceful assembly, protest leaders proceeded with the demonstration in defiance of a court decision last week ordering the protests to be moved to an airfield outside Kiev. Police surrounded the area Monday, warning the marchers through loudspeakers not to protest in the city center and to keep the peace.
"Those [demonstrators] are your children, brothers and sisters," Yushchenko told police patrolling the crowd. "Don't let provocations happen today. Respect your oath to Ukraine."
Protest leaders got a boost Sunday when Yushchenko declared he would join the demonstration. Yushchenko, whose nonconfrontational style has won the respect of millions of Ukrainians, had waffled for weeks, making it difficult to attract mass public support.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, and Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz traveled around the country for two weeks to drum up support for the protest.
q
Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma, attending the European World Economic Forum in Salzburg, Austria, on Monday, called for the European Union to extend membership to Ukraine, but was politely rebuffed by a top EU official, Reuters reported. Ukraine deserved to be treated as a partner of the EU and to become eligible for membership of the union, Kuchma said.
But Guenter Verheugen, the top European Commission official in charge of enlargement, said that there was no way of knowing what the EU would look like after the first round of enlargement, and no way of knowing how it would cope with the potential accession of Ukraine.
TITLE: Georgia Steps Up Its Action on Terrorists
AUTHOR: By Misha Dzhindzhikashvili
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia - Facing U.S. pressure and a threat of Russian military action on his territory, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said Monday that he had ordered a stepped-up security operation in the lawless Pankisi Gorge and offered to hand suspected Chechen militants over to Moscow.
In a weekly radio interview, Shevardnadze said he had ordered military and police forces to begin "active operations to arrest terrorists and criminal elements and free hostages" in and around the gorge, which Russia says Chechen rebels and foreign terrorists have been using as a base for cross-border attacks into Chechnya.
Shevardnadze said the "preparatory" phase of Georgia's security operation, which began late last month, was complete. He said Georgia had deployed a "very solid force" in the region, warned militants that "resistance is pointless" and promised to bring order to Pankisi within two to three weeks.
"The gorge will be forever cleansed of the remnants of illegal armed formations, criminals and drug traffickers," Shevardnadze said.
In later comments broadcast on Georgia's Rustavi-2 television, Shevardnadze said a Chechen rebel and a Georgian policeman had been killed during a clash in the gorge. He gave no other details.
Shevardnadze's comments came after President Vladimir Putin's blunt warning on Sept. 11 that if Georgia does not take harsh action against Chechen rebels and international terrorists who Moscow says are on its territory, Russia will reserve the right to take military action itself.
Putin's warning capped months of growing tensions between the two former Soviet republics. Russian officials have repeatedly derided the Georgian operation in Pankisi as an ineffective show of force and urged Georgia to let Russian forces into the area.
Georgia has refused, saying it can handle the problem on its own. Shevardnadze repeated that on Monday, but he also said that Russian security agents and American representatives are in the gorge. He also suggested that suspected Chechen rebels could be turned over to Russia without proof of guilt, softening his resistance to Russian demands.
U.S. officials have said terrorists with links to al-Qaida may be in Pankisi but have criticized Russia's threats of action there, stressing Georgia's sovereignty. U.S. military personnel have been training Georgian forces for several months as part of the campaign against terrorism.
Georgian and Russian critics of Moscow's policy allege that the real aim of the anti-terrorist rhetoric is to get rid of Shevardnadze, who has cultivated close ties with the United States and the West, and to annex two separatist regions in Georgia with close Russian ties: Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Colonel General Yury Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief of the General Staff, said that Putin had not given Georgia a deadline to deal with the alleged terrorists.
"There was no ultimatum, and the president's words should not be portrayed as an ultimatum from the Russian side to the Georgian side," Baluyevsky told a news conference Monday. He said Putin was simply "reminding" Georgia that it has not fulfilled its obligation to fight terrorism.
TITLE: Ancient Icon Draws Massive Crowds
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Crowds of believers flocked to see an ancient icon that is believed to have a strong connection with the fate of Russia as it was displayed in St. Petersburg for the first time last week.
Interfax estimated that 50,000 people came to worship the Fyodorov Virgin and Child, which is reputed to have miraculous properties.
People stood in lined up for up to four hours to worship the legendary image, which is considered to have been painted by the apostle St. Luke, and from which the first Romanov tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich was blessed at his coronation in 1613. After that, the icon became attached to his dynasty.
"This is one of the most important holy objects in all Russia," said Larisa Kopytova, a pensioner, who went to worship the icon four times while it was in the city.
"People come here because almost everybody has some kind of misfortune in their lives. Since we are too weak and sinful ourselves, we can just pray and ask for help from God," she said.
The icon was displayed in the Troitsky Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery; then at the Sofia and Fyodorov Cathedrals in Pushkin; and, finally, at the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, where many of the Romanovs are buried.
Tatyana Kostyreva, a retired engineer, came to worship to strengthen her faith and help her feel better.
"I have a serious health problem - a bad type of diabetes. I also have some problems communicating with my relatives, particularly with my mother-in-law, and I prayed for the Virgin's help to solve them," Kostyreva said.
The Fyodorov Virgin and Child is reputed to heal the blind, lame and the generally ill. The Kostroma church, where it usually hangs, has caught fire twice, but the icon was undamaged. The image on the icon is said to have darkened after Nicholas II abdicated in 1917.
As the priests took the icon from Peter and Paul's Cathedral on Monday, hundreds of believers, both adults and children, kneeled and stood still in respect along a long carpet, which was laid for the people carrying the sacred object. Many people wept.
Orthodox believers worship the Fyodorov Virgin and Child icon as a protector of families and children.
"I do believe that such icons work miracles," said one believer, who didn't want to be identified. "Once, when my son was ill and had a high fever, I brought him to worship another Fyodorov Virgin and Child icon, and he recovered almost instantly."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Bering Probe Opened
MOSCOW (SPT) - The General Prosecutor's Office will re-evaluate the 1990 agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States on the boundary of exclusive economic zones in the Bering Sea, Interfax reported Monday.
The agreeement ceded Russian fishing areas to the United States.
Deputy Prosecutor General Konstantin Chaika said his office has opened a probe of "the agreement and actions of officials that pertain to it," Interfax reported.
Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, currently under fire from the Kremlin over Chechen rebels in the Pankisi Gorge, signed the agreement when he was Soviet foreign minister. Federation Council Senator Alexander Nazarov, who raised the Bering issue in early September, has asked prosecutors to determine whether Shevardnadze exceeded his powers.
NATO Sub Plan
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and NATO will cooperate on future submarine rescue operations to prevent another Kursk-style disaster, a senior Russian officer said Monday.
"In the near future, we will sign a cooperation agreement relating to rescue operations at sea, specifically relating to submarine disasters," General Yury Baluyevsky, the deputy head of the General Staff, told reporters.
NATO and Russia formed a new council earlier this year to cooperate against mutual threats. Russia was criticized for refusing NATO offers of help when the Kursk sank two years ago.
New Election Bill
MOSCOW (MT) - President Vladimir Putin has proposed a new law on presidential elections to take into account changes in legislation on voters' rights and political parties, the presidential press service said last week.
The bill, which was submitted to the State Duma late Thursday, says, for example, that a presidential candidate can either be nominated by a political party or nominate himself if he has the backing of at least 500 voters.
Duma Deputy Boris Nadezhdin of the Union of Right Forces said Friday that the bill was "better and more democratic" than the existing law but criticized proposed campaign rules as too harsh, Interfax reported. Nadezhdin said his faction would oppose the bill's rules for neutral media coverage and would call for an increase in the campaign spending limit from 150 million rubles ($4.8 million) to at least 600 million rubles.
The estimated cost of the next presidential election, set for March 2004, is 4.9 billion rubles, which would have to be included in next year's budget, the presidential press service said.
TITLE: Sick of Being Scared, 8,000 Return to School
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: GROZNY - Buses with the sign "Student" in their windshields rumble through Grozny during the early morning hours, bringing thousands of students from the suburbs and even distant villages to Grozny University.
The campus was all but destroyed in the ongoing Chechen military campaign, but professors use the limited educational materials at their disposal to teach 8,000 eager students.
Students attend classes in bombed-out buildings equipped with the bare essentials - tables, benches, blackboards and a few pieces of chalk. Chunks of loose plaster in the ceiling overhead could fall on their heads at any moment. Students come even though they could be detained at checkpoints en route or during unannounced visits by soldiers to campus. Textbooks are scarce, and the schools have no electricity or water. There is also no campus security.
But students say they are sick and tired of living in fear and want to learn.
"I'm used to mopping-up operations and living in such conditions," says Rashid Baitayev, 23, a cybernetics physics student who takes the bus to Grozny University every day from the village of Alkhan-Chu, near the Khankala military base.
"We are lucky in our village - we are close to Khankala, the troops know us all and know that I am a student," he says.
The university started classes at the beginning of September. Some 3,000 of its 8,000 students study through correspondence courses, with attendance growing from when the university reopened last year. Grozny University closed its doors for two years due to the current military campaign.
In all, 16,500 students attend three institutions of higher education in Grozny - the university, the Oil Institute and the Pedagogical Institute.
At the university, 11 departments currently offer degrees in 34 fields.
Three buildings are still in ruins from the war of 1994 to 1996. Several mildly damaged buildings were handed over to the university last year, but a lack of usable space means classes still must meet in shelled-out facilities. The economics department, for example, is housed in a half-destroyed building. In the unused section, blackboards cling to ruined walls, and grass and bushes sprout from the floors.
Teachers are waiting for a much-needed shipment of textbooks and school equipment, which is expected to arrive from the United States later this year.
"I think that both the students and the professors are heroes," says Larisa Akhmatova, an economics tutor at Grozny University. "During this horrible time they are managing to push ahead with education."
The university's deputy rector, Vakha Gishlakayev, thought for a moment when asked whether it was possible for the average student to study under such conditions. He answered with a question: "How could an average person live in Grozny? Every morning I wake up and wonder whether I am still sane. But we live here. And as long as we live here, we must work. We have our work here, we love it, and we have nowhere else to go."
Gishlakayev says the first war hardened lecturers and students.
"In 1995, we thought that nothing worse could have happened to the university," he says. "It was like a tank drove through our souls, leaving scars in our hearts."
Although the university received no state funding after the first war - tuition fees covered all expenses - very few professors and lecturers left. Gishlakayev says the teachers stayed because they love their work. "The pure enthusiasm of professors and lecturers is responsible for almost everything that has been done," he says.
Some staff, however, had to take part-time jobs outside the university to earn enough to get by. Some still do. A professor's monthly salary is about $100.
When the second war broke out in September 1999, classes continued to meet until the end of October. Heavy shelling finally forced the teachers to flee the city.
They returned in March 2000, to find the university 80-percent destroyed. Obscenities had been painted on many walls.
The teachers rolled up their sleeves and got to work, fixing up buildings and preparing for classes.
The university is supposed to benefit from 9 million rubles (nearly $300,000) worth of renovations this year under a federal program to rebuild Chechnya. Gishlakayev called the amount woefully inadequate.
Repairs are only part of the problem. Gishlakayev says that even with help from other universities, such as Moscow State University, Grozny University has only about 40 percent of the needed learning materials. The library lost 90 percent of its collection.
The university's 80 computers are stacked up in a warehouse until electricity is reconnected to the campus, which could take another year. There is only one telephone, in the office of the university's rector, Adnan Khamzayev.
UNESCO plans to set up an Internet center on campus, but it remains unclear when, Gishlakayev says.
"I have a computer at home," the young student Baitayev says. "I am lucky. But studying materials are a huge problem. The quality of education suffers without books."
In a bizarre twist in a city where killings remain a daily occurrence, the university's 600 medical students have no cadaver to examine. They don't even have a laboratory.
"We wanted to buy a body from a local morgue to study," says medical student Laura Rostmayeva, 21. "We started to collect the money, but the plan did not work because the body must be kept somewhere and be taken care of. [Last year] we learned mainly from educational posters."
This year matters are expected to improve. The large U.S. shipment includes equipment and chemicals for the physics and chemistry labs. The shipment has been delayed at customs because some of the chemicals appeared to be on a list of banned imports, Gishlakayev says.
He says he is also trying to round up money to set up a laboratory for the medical students.
"We have already made all the calculations. It is not hard to get materials, but the problem is money," he says.
Ayub Buluyev, the dean of the medical department, which has five professors and 38 lecturers, says he is in talks with local hospitals, trying to work out an arrangement for students to get hands-on experience.
The head of the accounting department, Ruslan Gizikhanov, says one of his biggest needs is books. Without an adequate library, students have to buy their own books - and many just don't have the money.
"They have to prepare graduate theses, but how can they without new books and - what is more significant - functioning companies, which are scarce?" he says. "It is hard to produce a professional accountant under such conditions."
He says it is common for students to miss classes when whole villages are closed for military mopping-up operations. Sometimes the university has to cancel classes because of unrest near the campus.
"When I studied, we had to make up every class we missed," Gizikhanov says. "Now, they sometimes miss weeks of classes. Most students really want to learn, but how can they if their village is closed and they can't get out? We have to teach them individually in our spare time."
Gishlakayev says the campus has grown more secure this year. He says classes have not been disrupted, except for the occasional closure of the road leading to the university for special military operations.
Last year, a group of students was detained during a mopping-up operation at the university, and their friends protested near the Chechen government's headquarters.
"Things have quieted down in the past eight months. The tension is lower," Gishlakayev says. "Before, there were lots of disturbances - shouting, masks, uniforms, students lined up at gunpoint."
He says the biggest problem now is the security of students riding to classes and returning home. The private buses with "Student" in their windshields recently started picking up students from their homes, but they don't get special treatment at checkpoints. The university has sent several appeals to the Chechen government and the military, asking that the buses be let through without being stopped.
"It is getting better now," medical student Rostmayeva says. "But who knows. Last year we were stopped at every checkpoint. There were many shootings."
"Even now, we are late almost every day. Sometimes I'm so mentally exhausted after arriving that I can't study."
She says she has applied to study at Yaroslavl University, located in the city of the same name just a few hundred kilometers north of Moscow.
"I just can't study here any more," she says. "But if things improve, I will come back to work. My Chechnya needs me."
TITLE: State Duma Votes on Ban of TV Beer Ads
AUTHOR: By Larisa Naumenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOCOW - The State Duma on Friday voted overwhelmingly to crack down on beer advertising, including prohibiting the use of images of people or animals and banning television commercials altogether between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m.
Ignoring Kremlin opposition, deputies passed amendments to the law on advertising in the crucial second reading by a margin of 231 to 24.
In addition to the blanket ban on prime-time television, the amendments would also prohibit brewers from targeting teenagers and using famous people in their TV and radio campaigns. They would also make it illegal for an ad to suggest that beer can help people raise their social status, improve their physical or emotional condition, or quench thirst.
Industry players and analysts say that, if eventually signed into law by President Vladimir Putin, the amendments would deal a serious blow to two of Russia's fastest-growing industries - beer and advertising. Brewers accounted for nearly a quarter of all television ad revenues last year, spending an estimated $400 million.
While Putin's personal position is unclear, his administration is lobbying energetically against the amendments, agreeing with the Russian Union of Brewers that they would not achieve what lawmakers essentially want, which is to curtail the amount of alcohol the country - especially teenagers - consumes.
Government spokesperson Alexei Volin told radio station Ekho Moskvy on Friday that banning beer ads on television in the evening would only result in more ads being shown in the morning and during the day.
Volin also said that the amendments would lead to an increase in vodka consumption, which has been decreasing recently, in part because it can no longer be advertised on television at all.
The government's representative in the Duma, Andrei Loginov, told lawmakers that the recent boom of beer ads on television could actually be considered a positive development in the sense that it was responsible for luring young people away from using stronger alcohol like vodka.
Brewers' union spokesperson Vyacheslav Mamontov said that while limiting television ads would hurt all brewers, those only now preparing to enter the market would be hit the hardest.
"The amendments prohibiting the use of images of people and animals, even animated ones, would have a negative impact on many brewers who have built their brands on such images," said Mamontov.
Andrei Fedotov, an analyst at RPRG, which tracks advertising trends, said that the amendments could be disastrous for the industry.
"Not all brewers will be willing to air their commercials in the daytime or late in the evening, since the audience is small or specific," he said. "Therefore, the television industry - the main advertising medium for beer - will be [hit hard]."
Volin said that he hoped deputies would come to their senses and "bury it" in the third reading. If the bill is passed, however, it would then go to the Federation Council for approval and then it would be up to the president to either sign it into law or veto it.
TITLE: Itera Threatens To Turn Off Gas to Georgia
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Already reeling from a Kremlin threat to strike Chechen bases in the strategic Pankisi Gorge, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze must now engage Russia on another front: securing stable gas supplies.
With winter fast approaching, the former Soviet republic has no choice but to reverse a decade-long strategy and increase its energy dependence on Russia, despite the heightened military tensions.
The day of reckoning for Tbilisi came in late June, when monopoly gas supplier Itera turned off the valve and kept it off until its demands were met.
Now Itera looks set to expand its influence and take control of the country's gas-pipeline network, via a joint venture with the government. And officials are helpless to do anything but sign off on it, because they know what can happen if they don't.
While a lack of gas during the summer can be considered to be an inconvenience, during the winter, even in southern Georgia, it can be lethal.
The controversy surrounding Itera, which in Georgia has become a national debate, has been compounded by mounting tension with Russia. President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered the military to draft plans to strike suspected Chechen bases in the gorge.
Georgia has run up $90 million in debt to Itera since 1996, when the gas trader picked up where Russian gas monopoly Gazprom left off. Both Gazprom and Turkmenistan stopped supplying Georgia in the mid-1990s because they were not getting paid.
Recently robbed of Gazprom's patronage, Itera has found itself in difficult straits and, as a result, has toughened its stance on its long-term debtors.
But Alexander Iskandaryan, deputy head of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Media Institute, sees political motivations behind Itera's crackdown.
"The pressure isn't economic, it's political," Iskandaryan said. "The decisions are made by the upper echelons of the Russian government. Georgia isn't able to resist, because it is a small and weak state with many internal problems. Problems of domestic management. Problems of the entrenched government elite. Problems having to do with territorial disputes."
These problems, however, arose from the ashes of the Soviet Union's centralized economy and are only exacerbated by the domineering attitude of present-day Russia.
During Soviet times, Georgia grew dependent on cheap energy. Market realities settled in after the fall of communism, and consumption of natural gas fell more than 75 percent over the next 10 years to about 1 billion cubic meters.
Industry has fallen with it, plunging Georgia into a quagmire perpetuated by corruption and military clashes that have kept foreign investors away. To add to its woes, the country has also been caught in a tug-of-war between former Cold War foes.
Tensions have flared in the Pankisi Gorge, an area along the border from which Russian officials say rebels launch raids into Chechnya.
At the same time, they were refusing Russia's request to send in its own troops to the gorge, Georgian officials said that they would consider allowing U.S. troops to participate in anti-terrorist operations on its territory. In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, America has stepped up its overtures to Central Asian states and Georgia.
But security is not the only bone of contention. As more oil and gas deposits are being discovered in the Caspian basin, Georgia has evolved as a key transit country for bringing these hydrocarbons to the West by circumventing Russia.
Roman Gotsiridze, head of the Georgian parliament's budget office, is worried how a more influential Itera could affect those plans. "If it hands over gas transportation networks to Itera, the government might as well dig a grave for projects that would transport oil and gas from Azerbaijan through our country," he said.
The deal currently under negotiation would create Itera-Georgia, a company that would be jointly owned by Itera and the Georgian government. Itera would own 51 percent of the company and staff it with its own managers. It would also be obligated to upgrade Georgia's decrepit pipeline network, which employees say could break down at any time.
The government would hold the other 49 percent, bringing its state-owned Tbilgaz distributor to the table.
The deal is scheduled to be finalized by the beginning of heating season in early November.
"The Georgian side is probably interested in getting this done before winter," said Itera spokesperson Nikolai Semenenko. "Why? It will be cold, and people will need gas to stay warm."
He said that Itera has never threatened to cut off gas to get its way during various negotiations.
As for Russian influence, "it's very minimal," Semenenko said, pointing out that, despite being headquartered in Moscow, the company is registered in Jacksonville, Florida.
Its out-of-the-way incorporation is not the only thing that makes Itera peculiar. The mystery of its creation and beneficial owners have fueled theories that are now the folklore of the post-Soviet gas industry. Most observers believe that former Gazprom executives created Itera - which later became the lucky recipient of lucrative Gazprom assets - while they were still in power and that they continue to finance their retirement with Itera's profits.
No smoking gun proving direct ownership, however, has ever surfaced. And debates over the firm's real motives continue. Is it an arm of some government? U.S.? Russian? Central Asian? Or does it act according to its own economic interests?
"The United States doesn't hold Itera in too high regard," said Robert Ebel, a director of the Energy Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There are too many questions about its makeup and how it acquired such a prominent position in the natural-gas industry."
TITLE: State Blasts Shareholder Over Board At Aeroflot
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government rejected and then blasted efforts by Roman Abramovich's Millhouse Capital to change Aeroflot's board of directors at an extraordinary shareholders meeting Saturday.
"The state does not see any grounds to terminate the work of the board that was elected in May," Aeroflot chairperson and Transport Minister Sergei Frank told reporters after the meeting. "This could be the wish of one of the shareholders, but it is disrespectful to other shareholders."
Millhouse, which controls 26 percent of the flagship carrier, won three seats on the 11-member board at the annual shareholders meeting in May. A few weeks later it called an extraordinary meeting, reportedly in an effort to get Aeroflot chief financial officer Alexander Zurabov back on the board.
Prior to the Saturday meeting, Millhouse chairperson Yevgeny Shvidler said in an e-mail interview that "Millhouse supports those candidates whose activity increases the capitalization of the company ... If Zurabov meets these requirements, we will vote for him."
Zurabov was not available for comment.
Frank said that the government, which owns 51 percent of the carrier, wanted to send a message to Millhouse, whose holdings include oil major Sibneft and metals giant Russian Aluminum, that "instability" is "not desirable."
For the May vote, Aeroflot employees, who own 12 percent of the carrier, nominated Zurabov and CEO Valery Okulov and were expected to split their votes between the two candidates, which would have assured both were re-elected. Instead, employees apparently opted for Okulov by a large majority, keeping Zurabov off the board and allowing the government to get seven seats, one more than expected.
On Saturday, the government decided to keep it that way.
"We are sending a signal that we are for stability. If this signal is not given straight away, then it can be repeated over and over," Frank said. "Let's be more responsible at annual meetings. If you've come and made your decision, why call for an [extraordinary general meeting] after two weeks?"
Alexander Bordin, who heads the Property Ministry's transportation and communication department, said that the issue of Zurabov, who is widely credited with turning the company around, was the last thing on the government's mind.
"This is the second time in a row [that the owners of Millhouse] have demanded an EGM," said Bordin, who was filling in for First Deputy Property Minister Alexander Braverman. "This is a problem."
Millhouse spokesperson Alexei Gaidin said that the government had the right to block the reelection proposal and that Millhouse would hold no grudge.
A source within Aeroflot said Saturday that the government's decision appeared to be a signal to investors that they should not dabble in businesses that it controls.
"It's a message that the state will not be acting in the interests of the company's strategic development or the interests of minority shareholders," the source said.
TITLE: U.S. Puts Three Russian Defense Contractors on Blacklist
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The United States has blacklisted three Russian defense contractors that it says are "transferring lethal military equipment" to countries supporting terrorism.
The companies, all state owned, are Rostvertol, which manufactures the Mi-24 attack helicopter and the giant Mi-26 transport helicopter; the Tula Design Bureau of Instrument Building, or KBP, which makes anti-aircraft and anti-tank systems; and Bazalt, which makes grenades and other munitions.
"It is the policy of the United States government to deny all U.S. government assistance, contracts and defense-related licenses to these entities," the department bureau of nonproliferation said late Thursday in the public notice printed in the official Federal Register.
"We made the determination that these three companies were involved in the transfer of weapons to state sponsors of terrorism and we are declaring them sanctioned under American law," a U.S. State Department official said by telephone from Washington on Friday.
The "state sponsors of terrorism" are Syria, Sudan and Libya, according to The New York Times, but the official would neither confirm nor deny the report.
The sanctions, which will be reviewed in one year, added fuel to the growing political fire between the two Cold War foes over a range of issues, including Georgia and Iraq.
Government officials and the enterprises themselves all expressed outrage and astonishment at the move, which was compounded by a statement released by Washington the same day slamming President Vladimir Putin for threatening to carry out attacks on Chechen rebel bases in neighboring Georgia.
"Military-technology cooperation between Russia and these countries is absolutely legitimate," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Boris Malakhov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
"We are particularly disappointed that such a groundless action was taken by our partner in the anti-terror coalition," he said. "Our demarche has been made known to the American side."
Visiting U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton defended the sanctions, saying that they had to be imposed because U.S. laws regarding terrorism had been violated.
KBP's deputy chief designer, Leonid Roshal, said by telephone Friday that the the move was an attempt by Washington to divert attention away from its policies on Iraq and Georgia.
"U.S. officials have clearly stepped up their confrontation with Russia and decided to squeeze a few Russian enterprises that bear no relation to them," Roshal said, adding that his company's work would not be affected.
"We are not under the command of the U.S. State Department," he said.
"Experience shows that Russian weapons, air defense systems and anti-tank systems are better than the Americans', and that makes the U.S. nervous," he said.
Roshal said that this is the third time the State Department has blacklisted KBP. The last time was after the company delivered Kornet-E anti-tank missiles to Syria in 1998. "They said that by delivering the Kornet missiles to Syria we considerably weakened the capabilities of Israel, America's strategic partner," he said.
He added that KBP had not signed any contracts with Syria since then and it has only held talks with Sudan and Libya.
He said his company's main clients are China, India, the United Arab Emirates and Greece.
A Rostvertol spokesperson was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that the sanctions are just an attempt by Washington to edge Russian companies out of a competitive market, noting that his company had just signed deals with countries in South America and Asia.
In 2000 and 2001, Rostvertol delivered as many as 10 Mi-24 helicopters to Sudan, according to Marat Kenzhetayev, an expert with the Center for Arms Control think tank in Moscow.
Rostvertol has also sold dozens of helicopters to Syria and Libya, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
As for Bazalt, Kenzhetayev said it had sold a few thousand anti-tank grenades to Sudan.
State-owned arms export monopoly Rosoboronexport declined to comment Friday.
But the head of the agency, Andrei Belyaninov, said last month that it works "within the international obligations that Russia has."
"Therefore, we do not work with countries where there are international bans," he said.
The last time the United Statesblacklisted Russian entities was in 1999, when then President Bill Clinton's administration blacklisted certain Russian companies and institutes, including the Scientific Research and Design Institute of Power Technology, the Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology and the Moscow Aviation Institute.
Washington said that they were guilty of breaking nonproliferation agreements on missile and nuclear technology cooperation with Iran.
TITLE: Former CEO Opts for Self-Inflicted Cuts
AUTHOR: By Rich Harris
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HARTFORD, Connecticut - The Securities and Exchange Commission has started an informal investigation into the compensation agreement that General Electric Co. has with former chairperson and chief executive Jack Welch, the company said Monday.
GE said that it was cooperating with the request, which it received Friday.
That was a day after GE's board cut Welch's post-retirement benefits to include only an office and administrative support, acting in response to widespread criticism of the extent of perks that had included use of a Manhattan apartment and planes.
In a column in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Welch disclosed that he had offered to give up many of his benefits, which received wide attention after they were discussed in court papers related to his divorce.
"In these times when public confidence and trust have been shaken, I've learned the hard way that perception matters more than ever. In this environment, I don't want a great company with the highest integrity dragged into a public fight because of my divorce proceedings," he wrote.
Welch's announcement comes amid a series of disclosures involving alleged misbehavior by top-level executives at companies such as Tyco International and ImClone Systems.
In late-morning trading Monday, shares in Fairfield-based GE were up $0.33 to $27.38 on the New York Stock Exchange.
During Welch's two decades as GE's leader, the company expanded from a $13-billion maker of appliances and light bulbs into a $480-billion industrial conglomerate.
Welch became one of the most admired entrepreneurs in the country, and received a $7.1-million advance for his best-selling autobiography, "Jack: Straight From the Gut."
He wrote in the Journal that he reached an agreement in 1996, under which he opted to take a package of benefits extending into his retirement instead of taking a "special one-time payment of tens of millions of dollars."
But he said that he had since asked the GE board to eliminate everything from his contract "except the traditional office and administrative support given for decades to all retired GE chairpersons and vice chairpersons."
"In today's reality, my 1996 employment contract could be misportrayed as an excessive retirement package, rather than what it is - part of a fair employment and post-employment contract made six years ago," he said.
There was no additional comment Monday from Welch. Messages were left at his GE office and with the attorney representing him in his divorce.
GE spokesperson Gary Sheffer said that Welch would reimburse the company for the value of any services and facilities he has used since his retirement on Sept. 7, 2001 - an amount Welch estimated at $2 million to $2.5 million.
Terms of Welch's compensation package received wide attention two weeks ago after divorce papers were filed by his wife, Jane.
The divorce papers said that GE paid for all expenses at the Manhattan apartment, including food, wine, cook and wait staff, laundry, and furnishings, the New York Times said. In addition, the company provided for Welch's travel expenses, entertainment, private car and driver, and computer equipment, the documents said.
Welch said that the divorce papers "grossly misrepresented many aspects of my employment contract with General Electric."
TITLE: Box Office Smiles on Ice Cube Comedy
AUTHOR: By David Germain
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - Movie-goers might want to phone ahead for an appointment to get into "Barbershop."
The warm-hearted ensemble comedy, starring Ice Cube as a reluctant proprietor of his late father's business, debuted in first place at the box office with $21 million over the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The year's big sleeper hit, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," remained in the No. 2 spot with $11 million, pushing its total to $110.7 million and becoming the 15th movie of 2002 to cross the $100-million mark.
And, in its first weekend of fairly wide release, Robin Williams' stalking thriller "One Hour Photo" came in third, with $7.7 million.
The weekend's other new wide release, Jason Lee and Tom Green's crime comedy "Stealing Harvard," premiered at No. 4 with $6.3 million, finishing slightly ahead of last weekend's top film, "Swimfan," which grossed $6.1 million.
Overall box office revenues rose for the first time in nearly two months. The top 12 movies took in an estimated $72 million, up 38 percent from the same weekend last year, although that was a relatively slow period in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"Barbershop" played in 1,605 theaters and averaged a whopping $13,084.
"If you make a good movie, they'll come," said Peter Adee, head of marketing for "Barbershop" distributor MGM. "I think there's a big audience out there that goes to good movies, whether they're ethnic or not. Just look at 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding.'"
"Greek Wedding" added 69 locations to reach its widest release yet at 1,764 theaters and an average of $6,254 per theater, an impressive figure considering it has been out for five months.
The romantic comedy, starring its screenwriter, Nia Vardalos, and John Corbett, cost just $5 million to make and could finish with a domestic gross of $150 million to $160 million, said Rob Schwartz, head of distribution for IFC Films, which released "Greek Wedding."
"One Hour Photo" averaged $6,337 in 1,212 theaters. "Stealing Harvard" played in 2,366 theaters and averaged a so-so $2,663.
Besides "Barbershop," MGM had good news over the weekend with the dark comedy "Igby Goes Down," which averaged $31,918 at 10 theaters in New York City and Los Angeles. The film, featuring Kieran Culkin, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, Claire Danes and Ryan Phillippe, expands to more theaters over the next two weekends.
MGM is struggling to recover from a string of box-office losers such as "Windtalkers" and "Hart's War." With "Barbershop" and "Igby," the studio now has two solid lead-ins to an almost certain smash in "Die Another Day," the 20th James Bond flick, which opens in November.
Studios often use the lull between summer and holiday blockbuster seasons to slip in smaller, edgier fare such as "One Hour Photo," "Barbershop" and "Igby," which was delayed from a late summer debut in favor of the quieter period after Labor Day.
"You get into this time of year and it's a better climate for quirky and more sophisticated movies," said "Igby" producer Marco Weber.
TITLE: European Economic Summit Criticizes EU Performance
AUTHOR: By David McHugh
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SALZBURG, Austria - Shielded from demonstrators by riot police, European political and business officials gathered Monday for a two-day summit on the lagging economy and the last snags to expanding the European Union into eastern Europe.
The European Economic Summit brought together officials from EU countries and from the 10 that want to join in 2004, such as Poland and Hungary.
Police barricades closed off the area around the conference center, keeping back several thousand socialists, anarchists and assorted other protesters who dislike the summit's organizer, the Swiss-based World Economic Forum.
They accuse the forum of furthering global capitalism, which they see as harmful to workers and the environment. Some 2,500 marched peacefully Sunday under banners such as "Fight Capitalism" and "A socialist world is possible."
Inside the barricades, Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma were among the 600 officials and executives expected to attend, along with Finnish President Tarja Halonen and Austrian President Thomas Klestil.
Europe's sluggish growth rate - 0.3 percent in the second quarter for the 12 countries using the euro - is expected to be a major topic, with debate fueled by a forum survey that was critical of the EU's economic competitiveness.
Business leaders found the EU lagging behind the United States and other developed countries, according to the review by the economic forum's experts.
The EU ran behind the United States in conditions for starting a new business, efficiency of financial markets, up-to-date telecommunications and utilities, and embracing information technology.
Individual countries, such as Finland, ranked slightly ahead of the United States in some areas, but the forum's authors complained that Europe's economic policy was not keeping up.
Germany, the continent's biggest economy, got low marks for its business environment, ranking 11th.
"There is no beating around the bush. Europe continues to underperform," the forum's European director, Ann Mettler, said in a statement accompanying the study.
TITLE: Microsoft Reveals Major Flaw In Word 97
AUTHOR: By Ian Hopper
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Microsoft's flagship word processor has for years had a security flaw that could allow a criminal to steal computer files by "bugging" a document with a hidden code.
The company said that, for now, it will repair the problem only for owners of the most recent versions of the software.
That decision - still left largely up in the air by Microsoft engineers - may leave millions of users of Word 97 without a fix. All versions of Word are susceptible to the flaw, but the problem is most severe in Word 97.
"It's incredible to me that Microsoft would turn its back on Word 97 users," said Woody Leonhard, who has written books on Microsoft's Word and Office software. "They bought the package with full faith in Microsoft and its ability to protect them from this kind of exploit."
The attacker sends the victim a bugged document, usually with a request that the document be revised and returned to the sender - a common form of daily communication. When the document is changed and sent back, the file the attacker wants to steal is attached.
The flaw would most likely occur in the workplace, where Word is the most prominent word-processing program. Potential targets for theft are sensitive legal contracts, payroll records or e-mails, either from a hard drive or computer network, depending on the victim's access to files.
Microsoft says an attacker would have to know the exact file name to be stolen and its location. But many critical files - an address book or saved e-mails, for example - are usually in obvious or predictable places on every Microsoft Windows computer.
"The issue appears to affect all versions of Microsoft Word," Microsoft said in a statement Thursday in response to questions by The Associated Press. "When the investigation is complete, we will take the action that best serves Microsoft's customers."
Word 97, an earlier version of the program, is most susceptible to the attack. Microsoft said it is its policy to no longer repair Word 97, but said that the company is still exploring the issue.
A research firm reported in May that about 32 percent of offices have copies of Word 97 running, according to a survey of 1,500 high-tech managers worldwide.
Analyst Laura DiDio of the Yankee Group said that companies are taking a risk by using such old software, but Microsoft should correct the problem because of its severity. "These are paying customers," she said.
Word 97 users may be able to get some help from Microsoft's telephone technical support, company spokesperson Casey McGee said. But, referring to Microsoft engineers, McGee said "there's only so far back they can go."
The flaw involving Word 97 was discovered by Alex Gantman of the cellular phone company Qualcomm and was released on the Internet last month.
If the intended target uses Word 2000 or 2002, the most recent versions, the attack will only work if the Word document is printed before the reply is sent to the attacker.
After seeing Gantman's work on a public security e-mail forum, Leonhard found a similar flaw that affects recent Word versions even when a document is not printed.
TITLE: Robot May Uncover Mysteries of Egypt's Great Pyramid
AUTHOR: By Donna Bryson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CAIRO, Egypt - A robot the size and shape of a child's toy train is exploring one of the enduring questions of Egypt's Great Pyramid: What lies at the end of a shaft first discovered by explorers in the 19th century?
Engineers from the Boston firm iRobot and researchers from National Geographic and the Egyptian government's Supreme Council of the Antiquities showed the robot to reporters Friday. On Tuesday, it will crawl 60 meters up the 20-centimeter-square shaft before a live, international television audience.
If all goes according to plan, television viewers and researchers will discover what's behind a door at the end of the shaft at the same moment.
"It's a moment of revelation that scientists get to experience fairly often, but the rest of us don't," said Tim Kelly, president of National Geographic's television and film division.
Then begins the hard work - trying to understand the meaning of whatever is behind the door, said Zahi Hawass, director of the Supreme Council of the Antiquities.
"You have a mystery and the mystery will be solved - what's behind this door, whether it is something or nothing," Hawass said, adding that it was difficult to guess what would be found. "Whatever we are going to find, there still will be a lot of work for us to do."
No other Egyptian pyramid has such shafts, Hawass said. The Great Pyramid, built 4,500 years ago by Khufu, a ruler also known as Cheops, has four.
The shafts may have played symbolic roles in Khufu's unique religious philosophy. Khufu proclaimed himself Sun God during his life - pharaohs before him believed that they became sun gods only after death - and he may have tried to reflect his ideas in the design of his pyramid, Hawass said.
While researchers remain in one of the chambers in the heart of the pyramid, the robot will be climbing the shaft. The shaft rises over rough stone at a 40-degree angle from the chamber and ends at a door adorned with two brass handles. In a test using ultrasound equipment mounted on the robot, researchers have determined that the door is about seven centimeters thick.
Over the next few days, the exploration team will determine how the robot will penetrate the door. Hawass says the robot may drill a hole for a tiny camera and a light to pass through.
Engineers from iRobot, benefiting from the experience of a German team that sent a robot as far as the door in 1993, have spent the last six months designing their machine. Its motors and mountings for cameras and other equipment are encased in a frame the size of a loaf of bread with two sets of flexible treads that allow it to grip the top and bottom of the shaft. Flippers at the robot's front increase its maneuverability - the German robot couldn't negotiate a small bulge near the door.
Using the robot's "brain" - a black box with motor and camera controls - engineers can monitor the robot and its surroundings and send instructions via cables. The tons of stone all around made radio controls impractical, according to iRobot's Gregg Landry.
The pyramid has two inner chambers and, underneath, a burial chamber. The shaft that the $250,000 robot was built to explore rises to the south from the middle chamber. Another shaft that heads north from the same chamber appears to come to a dead end. Two more stretch north and south from the topmost chamber, known as the King's Chamber, to the surface of the pyramid.
Hawass said that the shaft may have been intended as pathways to other worlds for two of Khufu's spiritual incarnations - the Sun God and Horus, god of goodness and light.
TITLE: Not a Good Time To Be Martha
AUTHOR: By Robert Reno
TEXT: THE problem of what to do with Martha Stewart is beginning to assume grotesque proportions, somewhere between an incompetently staged melodrama and one of those scenes in a Jerry Springer show where families behave like baboons.
If Martha had been roasting on a spit since she unwisely dumped 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems last December, she couldn't have endured a more cruel and unusual punishment. And all that for a crime like insider trading that is ultimately provable only by getting inside her head to discover what it was that provoked her to make a stock trade involving a drug called Erbitux that may or may not cure colorectal cancer.
If only Martha hadn't been everybody's idea of a smug perfectionist, trading on the name of a former husband with a typically white Anglo-Saxon Protestant name, lording it over her WASPy Connecticut neighbors who may have been just as Polish as she is. I confess to utter disgust that Martha, a former professional stock broker herself, didn't better appreciate the insider trading laws, so she could at least understand why so many cynical people assume she violated them. The screaming irony is that, for all the money she saved by dumping her ImClone shares in advance of the sudden collapse in their value, she could have afforded to hire more lawyers than God to tell her it looked smelly.
Meanwhile, there is a growing market for Martha disparagements. These include Internet-traded T-shirts that read "Insider trading: That's not a good thing."
More importantly, there's a rumor rampant on Wall Street that Martha wants to get out of being Martha Stewart. This takes the form of reports that she will retire as chief executive and chairperson of the board. If Martha is a sinking ship, what shrewder strategy than to pretend she's no longer in command?
There are problems with this sort of thinking. Obviously, even as she has become an increasing liability to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she also remains a very real human being. Separating her from her brand name could require a crowbar, maybe even a team of mules.
Martha's main problem is that she has assumed such a thoroughly defensive position. Nasty people will logically assume that she has something to hide. She even canceled appearances on CBS' "Early Show," a lightweight format of fluff and prattle where her skilled handlers might have babbled on endlessly about her innocence in between the cabbage recipes and schemes to stencil her ceilings in bright orange Amish patterns.
Martha has yet to agree to appear before congressional committees, whose members are drooling incontinently to be the first to ask her a leading question or, that failing, be able to brag that they've been on TV with Martha Stewart. This tries the patience of Congress, which knows that the first hearings at which Martha appears, will have ratings approaching the stratosphere. Pressure for her to appear can only intensify as members of Congress lust to be associated with her star power.
Martha's miseries are multiplied by the fact that her principal retail outlet, Kmart, is in bankruptcy, her legal expenses are mounting, and the price of a share of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is suffering. The battering she and her company are taking would daunt the most skillful managers even without the carcass of Kmart to deal with. Her Merrill Lynch stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, is under suspension, as is his assistant, Douglas Faneuil. Both are crucial to support for her position that her ImClone trades were innocent acts prompted by nothing more sinister than a longstanding "sell" order.
The only piece of recent good news for Martha is that her shares leaped for a time last week when newspapers reported she might step down as CEO. But that was precisely the sort of good news Martha can do without, since it implies that she has become a drag the company would be better off without.
Obviously, Martha has made a judgment that the less she says, the better. But for a woman so used to giving advice and yakking her head off about appearances and how they matter so desperately, she is, for once, unconvincing.
Robert Reno is a columnist at Newsday, to which he contributed this comment.
TITLE: Geopolitics or a Load of Pollocks in Fish Quotas?
TEXT: THE State Fisheries Committee has intervened on behalf of the Russian trawler Viytna, seized last week by the U.S. Coast Guard for illegal fishing and failing to stop when ordered. According to the committee's deputy chairperson, Yury Moskaltsov, the trawler had no intention of crossing the so-called Baker-Shevardnadze line. It crossed the line when swept across by a storm. In any case, he said, the seizure was "unwarranted."
A storm at sea is a pretty good excuse. When the trawler Petropavlovsk was caught fishing for Alaskan salmon in U.S. waters not so long ago, its captain claimed that the border line on his map had been accidentally smudged.
The current push to review the Baker-Shevardnadze line - the Russian-U.S. border in the Bering and Chukotka seas - did not arise by chance. First, our poachers have already emptied the Sea of Okhotsk. And second, State Fisheries Committee chief Yevgeny Nazdratenko desperately wants to generate some geopolitical buzz.
Last year, the former and current governors of the Primorye region, Nazdratenko and Sergei Darkin, had a falling-out over fish. When he became governor, Darkin handed over the entire regional walleye-pollock quota to a trio of friendly firms. When Nazdratenko found out about this, he immediately overrode the orders and assigned the harvest to companies loyal to himself. Darkin took his case to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, and Kasyanov became rather exasperated. The conflict reached the point where Kasyanov, at a Cabinet meeting, asked Nazdratenko why he was asking for such a high limit on catching crab for scientific purposes. These quotas are handed out without a tender and offer a gold mine of backhanders for the committee. Nazdratenko, unfazed, said that the crab needed to be studied. The Far Eastern Russian crab has now reached Norway and may turn up in the English Channel, he said. "Why did the crabs move to Norway? And why didn't they go sooner?" asked Kasyanov. "That's what we need to find out," Nazdratenko replied.
Interrogation like this indicates that a bureaucrat is in the hot seat. And when Nazdratenko is under fire, his mind turns to geopolitics.
This time he set his sights on the Baker-Shevardnadze line. "Our former territory in the Bering Sea would be a big boon," he told the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. "We could put 500 fishing ships to work in the area."
In the interest of accuracy, it is worth noting that 14 - not 500 - Spanish super-trawlers working in the Sea of Okhotsk reduced the pollock population by 80 percent. Five hundred such ships in the Bering Strait would work better as a pontoon bridge than a shipping fleet.
How can anyone seriously assert that Russia would pull in $200 million a year from 8,000 square kilometers of ocean when the Primorye region's annual budget revenue currently stands at 12 million rubles (roughly $380,000), and businesses pay all of 19 rubles in tax on every ton of fish they catch?
Scrape the surface of any Russian statist and you'll find a Nazdratenko underneath.
Yulia Latynina is the author and host of "Yest Mnenie" ("Some Believe") on TVS.
TITLE: Nickname Robs You of Credit And Creditability at Banks
AUTHOR: By Andrew McChesney
TEXT: THE telephone rang on my desk. It was Alexander Knaster, the chief executive of Alfa Bank, Russia's largest commercial bank.
It was early 2000. I had written a profile of the bank, and it had recently appeared in a business magazine.
I had interviewed Knaster, a soft-spoken American citizen of Russian heritage, in his office for the article. He spoke with long pauses, as though chewing through each thought before spitting it out. He lavished praise on the bank like a father boasts about his child. He refused to talk about his own family.
In the interview, Knaster touted Alfa's stability and emphasis on customer service. He spoke of the bank's drive to adopt Western standards.
Now he was on the phone to say he liked the profile.
"I called to thank you for the article," he told me. "I owe you one."
Two years later, I decided to try to take Knaster up on his offer for a favor.
A medical emergency came up requiring several thousand dollars. My credit card didn't permit large ATM withdrawals, so I had to go directly to a bank teller. I went to Alfa Bank.
Late in the afternoon, I rushed into an Alfa office and offered my Visa card to a bespectacled, middle-aged clerk. After comparing the credit card with my passport, she looked up and firmly shook her head. The problem: My passport read Andrew Robert McChesney, and the credit card read Andy R. McChesney.
"Andy is the nickname for Andrew," I said.
She shook her head again.
I explained that in more than six years I had never had a problem with the card being accepted in Moscow. Bank Moskvy and Raiffeisenbank had never said a word about my nickname. The somewhat-Soviet Sberbank also took the card.
The Alfa teller was not impressed.
I offered further documentation of my identity and suggested that she compare my signature with that on the card.
She refused.
I was out of luck. It was after 5 p.m., and other nearby banks were closed. I had to get back to work.
The first thing I did back at the office was fish Knaster's business card out of my desk and send him an e-mail. I asked for that old favor in the form of an explanation. Why had the bank turned down my card?
Knaster's secretary responded by e-mail a month later, saying her boss had been on vacation. She said he would look into the matter.
Within an hour of receiving the e-mail, my phone rang. It was Alfa Bank's deputy chairperson, and he promised to get to the bottom of the matter.
Andrew McChesney is deputy editor of The Moscow Times.
TITLE: Western Allies Worried by Unrestrained U.S.
AUTHOR: By Francis Fukuyama
TEXT: A YEAR after Sept. 11, one of the most notable features of international politics is how the United States has become both utterly dominant and lonely. There was a large, spontaneous outpouring of support for the United States and for Americans around the world after Sept. 11. But, with the demonstration of U.S. military superiority that came with the rousting of al-Qaida and the Taliban from Afghanistan, and U.S. President George W. Bush's doctrine of pre-emption against the "axis of evil" powers, new expressions of anti-Americanism began to pour forth. Americans are largely innocent of the fact that much of the rest of the world believes that it is American power, and not terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, that is destabilizing the world. And nowhere are these views more firmly held than among the United States' European allies.
The United States fought the Cold War as the leader of Western democracies with shared values and institutions. What is going on here? Does "the West" still exist as a meaningful concept? In my view, deep differences are emerging among Western democracies on the subject of democratic legitimacy at an international level - differences that will be highly neuralgic in America's dealings with the world in the coming years. Navigating these shoals - and preventing opposition to U.S. policies from becoming the chief passion in global politics - is something that ought to be of central concern to Washington.
The ostensible issues raised in the U.S.-European disputes since the "axis of evil" speech revolve for the most part around alleged U.S. unilateralism and international law. By now, the list of European complaints about American policy is familiar, including, but not limited to, the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and pursuit of missile defense, its opposition to the ban on land mines and the biological warfare convention and, most recently, its opposition to the International Criminal Court.
The most serious act of U.S. unilateralism in European eyes concerns, of course, the Bush administration's announced intention to bring about regime change in Iraq, if necessary through a go-it-alone invasion. Europeans argue that they are trying to build a rule-based international order, and they are horrified by the Bush administration's announcement of a virtually open-ended doctrine of pre-emption against terrorists or states that sponsor terrorists.
The first thing that must be said about this rift over the role of international law and institutions is that we should not necessarily take for granted the conventional wisdom that Americans are unilateralist and Europeans multilateralist. If we look at economic issues, the United States has played a key role in the creation of a series of overlapping international organizations, from the World Trade Organization to a host of bodies promoting standards, aviation safety, banking, telecommunications, drug enforcement and the like. In this realm, the Europeans have arguably been more unilateralist than the United States, resisting verdicts by international arbitration panels on trade issues and unilaterally imposing their policies toward genetically modified food, data privacy and antitrust on American corporations. With the exception of environmental agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, most instances in which Americans are more consistently unilateralist concern security.
While it is tempting to say that this is simply a matter of the Bush administration's often sharp-elbowed approach to issues such as the International Criminal Court, a much deeper matter of principle is involved. To put it rather schematically, Americans tend not to see any source of democratic legitimacy higher than the nation-state. To the extent that international organizations have legitimacy, it is because duly constituted democratic majorities have handed that legitimacy up to them in a negotiated, contractual process, which they can take back at any time. Europeans, by contrast, tend to believe that democratic legitimacy flows from the will of an international community much larger than any individual nation-state. This international community is not embodied concretely in a single, global democratic constitutional order. Yet it hands down legitimacy to existing international institutions, which are seen as partially embodying it, with a moral authority greater than that of any nation-state.
Between these two views of the sources of legitimacy, the Europeans are theoretically right but wrong in practice. It is impossible to assert as a matter of principle that legitimately constituted liberal democracies can't make grave mistakes or indeed commit crimes against humanity. But the European idea that legitimacy is handed downward from a disembodied international community rather than handed upward from existing democratic institutions reflecting the public will on a nation-state level invites abuse on the part of elites, who are then free to interpret the will of the international community to suit their own preferences. This is the problem with the International Criminal Court. Instead of strengthening democracy on an international level, it tends to undermine democracy where it concretely lives, in nation-states.
There are three basic reasons for this divergence of views on the role of international law. The first, as Robert Kagan has noted, is the imbalance of power between the United States and everyone else. Weak states understandably want stronger ones constrained by norms and rules, while the world's sole superpower seeks freedom of action. But power alone cannot explain the gap, as the Europeans are rich and populous enough to project military power if they wanted.
A second reason has to do with the concrete experience of European integration, where European countries have been giving up key elements of sovereignty to the European Union. Like former smokers, they want everyone else to experience their painful withdrawal symptoms from sovereignty.
But the final reason has to do with America's unique national experience and the sense of exceptionalism that has arisen from it. Americans believe in the special legitimacy of their democratic institutions and indeed believe that they are the embodiment of universal values that have a significance for all of mankind. This leads to an idealistic involvement in world affairs, but also to a tendency for Americans to confuse their national interests with universal ones. Europeans, by contrast, regard the violent history of the first half of the 20th century as the direct outcome of the unbridled exercise of national sovereignty. The house that they have been building for themselves since the 1950s, called the European Union, was deliberately intended to embed those sovereignties in multiple layers of rules, norms and regulations to prevent those sovereignties from ever spinning out of control again.
This conflict does not lend itself to "moral clarity;" both sides believe what they believe by dint of their histories and experiences. Americans are right to insist that there is no such thing as an "international community" in the abstract, and that nation-states must ultimately look out for themselves when it comes to critical matters of security. But they should also understand that they are dependent on international institutions and cooperation to manage this thing called the global economy, from which they benefit enormously.
The tremendous margin of power exercised by the United States in the security realm brings with it special responsibilities to use that power prudently. Washington owes the rest of the world an elucidation not just of its new doctrine of pre-emption, but of what the limits of that doctrine will be. It will be a challenging but not an impossible task to use the United Nations to build support for a tough policy toward Iraq, indeed, to provide a clear casus belli for a pre-emptive operation. A recent poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations and the German Marshall Fund suggests that Europeans and Americans are not as far apart on many issues, including Iraq, as their political leaders are. But, while majorities on both sides of the Atlantic favor action, neither Americans nor Europeans want the United States to act alone.
The U.S.-European rift that has emerged in 2002 is not just a transitory problem but reflects deeply differing views of the locus of international democratic legitimacy that will re-emerge in different forms in the coming years. But the United States can mitigate the problem by a degree of moderation on its part within a system of sovereign nation-states. Overreaction to Sept. 11 will lead to a world in which the United States and its policies remain the chief focus of global concern.
Francis Fukayama is a professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. This article, contributed to The Washington Post, is adapted from the Bonython Lecture given in Melbourne, Australia.
TITLE: Deadlocks Over Georgia, Iraq Are Two Sides of the Same Coin
TEXT: PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin's keen eye for analogies in international power politics has paid off once again. By outlining plans for a possible military strike on Georgia and citing UN resolutions as the basis, Putin has underscored the similarity between Moscow's conflict with Tbilisi - which it accuses of harboring terrorists who pose a direct threat to Russia's security - and Washington's explosive conflict with Baghdad. (One year ago, Putin did a similar shadow dance when he offered Chechen rebels a 72-hour deadline to sever ties with terrorists, mirroring an ultimatum Washington had just presented to the Taliban.)
Putin's threat of military action has raised the stakes of the game. His reference to the UN Security Council's anti-terrorism resolution gives Russian national interests a thick coat of international legitimacy.
Moreover, the harshness of the warning sends a double message to Washington. On one hand, Putin has put pressure on the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to show how far it will go in its support for Tbilisi. On the other, by acknowledging the United Nations' role as arbiter, he has played on the world's exasperation with Washington's go-it-alone attitude on Iraq.
Additionally, open talk of a potential use of force is an attempt, albeit clumsy, to justify last month's poorly handled Russian air raid into the Pankisi Gorge, which Moscow has unconvincingly denied.
But Putin's bark is worse than his bite.
Russia is highly unlikely to pursue a ground operation that would put new demands on its shoddy armed forces. More important, a military conflagration in Georgia could quickly fan out across the Caucasus, further destabilizing the entire region.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who has railed against Tbilisi for providing safe haven to terrorists, said Thursday that using force against Georgia "may prove unnecessary."
Some observers say Putin's statement on Georgia was aimed at Washington. Clearly, there has been no simple trade-off, whereby the Kremlin has agreed unconditionally to support Bush's drive to oust Saddam Hussein in exchange for carte blanche in Georgia. But both Moscow and Washington have overlapping security and economic interests in Georgia and Iraq. And the former superpowers have obviously linked their plans for these two nations in more subtle, still nascent agreements.
If Russia's tough stance on Georgia helps nudge the Bush administration toward accepting world opinion and seeking UN approval for an attack on Iraq, both Moscow and Washington will win out. What would otherwise have seemed like the unbridled pursuit of national interests will be ennobled by the air of international legitimacy.
TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: Blood SimpleAs the fog of war emanating from Washington D.C. spreads over the world, smothering us all in its impenetrable haze of posturing and propaganda, you must hold on to one hard fact, one demonstrable, incontrovertible truth:
The warmongers are liars.
This is not an opinion. It is a matter of public record.
The team now marshaling the overwhelming power of the United States toward a war of aggression against Iraq is largely the same group that directed the first Gulf War under the current president's father. To whip up hatred and bloodlust for that earlier conflict, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and other Bush operatives resorted to blatant deception, crude propaganda and outright perjury before Congress. And there is every sign that they're doing it again.
This history of deceit was outlined last weekend by The Christian Science Monitor. The newspaper uncovered no secret files, no deep-sixed documents or classified material; it merely reviewed confirmed incidents which were reported in mainstream publications at the time.
Although George Bush I had been an enthusiastic supporter of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait was considered a step too far. After all, Bush had extensive business ties to Kuwaiti royalty, going back 30 years; his CIA-connected company, Zapata Oil, had drilled Kuwait's first offshore wells. Saddam had to be slapped down - and Bush had no compunction about shedding American blood to protect his partners and his investments.
Otherwise, the attack was a godsend for the beleaguered president. Bush's mediocre administration was floundering in the polls. His small-time 1989 aggression against Panama - when he and Colin Powell killed a few thousand civilians to get at their drug-dealing CIA employee, Manuel Noreiga - failed to goose his numbers. But a big war against "an evil aggressor" would surely raise Bush's standing.
What's more, it would eat up that silly "peace dividend" - the proposed shift from military to domestic spending at the end of the Cold War - which threatened the profits of his patrons in the arms industry. It would also allow the United States to establish a military foothold in the region: a vital step in the long-range strategic plans then being drawn up by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to secure American dominance over the world economy in the coming century - "by force if necessary," according to one of the planners, Zalmay Khalilzad, now Bush's "special envoy" to Afghanistan.
But how to convince the American people to intervene in a falling out among thugs in the far-off desert? Hit them in the pocketbook, of course. The internal Arab struggle was pitched as a dire threat to the American economy. Cheney solemnly announced that Hussein had massed a huge military force on the Saudi border. In a matter of days, Cheney said, Saddam could seize the Saudi fields and cut off the main U.S. oil supply. Only war would save American jobs.
But it was all a lie. The St. Petersburg Times - the Florida version - obtained satellite imagery of the Kuwaiti-Saudi border: There were no troop concentrations there, just miles of empty desert. Military intelligence reports confirmed the absence. Yet this phantom border buildup was given as the main reason for ditching negotiations and moving to war. Cheney refused to explain the anomaly.
Then came the atrocity stories. A comely Kuwaiti lass testified before Congress that she had seen Saddam's evil minions ripping hundreds of innocent babies from hospital incubators. Outraged members of Congress repeatedly cited this abomination in their calls for war. Bush I cried that Saddam was "worse than Hitler." (And given the fact that Bush's father did business with Hitler - even after Germany declared war on America - he perhaps had some unique insights in this regard.)
But the atrocity stories were also a lie, part of a $10-million PR campaign to "sell" the idea of war to the public. The comely lass was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington - where she had safely passed the invasion, having seen neither incubators, dead babies nor a single Iraqi marauder.
Now, the lies are beginning again. Bush Junior proclaimed last week that the United States "had all the evidence we need" to justify aggression. His proof? A United Nations report on Iraq's "nuclear rearmament." But just hours after Judge George rendered his guilty verdict - with Deputy Blair nodding eagerly at his side - the White House admitted that Bush had "misrepresented" the case entirely: The UN report "supported no such conclusion."
Meanwhile, Cheney warned that Saddam would use this nonexistent nuclear capability to - what else? - seize control of Saudi oil and destroy the U.S. economy. He and Bush and Blair continually intoned the same mantra: "Inaction is not an option." Yet, last week, the United States and Britain sent 100 warplanes to obliterate an Iraqi communications complex - just another round in the 11-year campaign of regular attacks on Saddam's military facilities. An odd sort of "inaction."
But perhaps Cheney too has unique insight into evil dictators: He was Saddam's business partner in the 1990s, helping the murderer restore the oil fields destroyed in the Gulf War. (A nice racket, that: Blow things up, then get paid to rebuild them.) Saddam's "Hitleritis" was obviously in remission then - as long as he filled Cheney's pockets.
So in the coming weeks, as the "evidence" for military aggression mounts, hold hard to this one fact: Nothing - absolutely nothing - the warmongers say can be taken at face value. The historical record is clear: They will lie to make war. It's that simple. It's that horrible.
For annotational references, see the "Opinion" section at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: Dutch Talking Their Way to Dominance
AUTHOR: By Charles Hoedt
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The people of the Netherlands, already beloved by the rest of the world for their tulips, cheese and wooden shoes, are establishing themselves in Russia by exploiting another of their national characteristics - talking.
With more than three weeks of conferences, seminars and cultural events, currently happening as part of the "Window on the Netherlands" festival, the eager Dutch are obtaining a firm footing in the business, political, scientific and cultural life of St. Petersburg.
The festival, which started earlier this month, is taking place for the seventh time. It brings together Russian and Dutch experts in all kinds of different fields, such as transport, economics, history, the law, medicine, and so on. Last year, the festival managed to attract military specialists from the Russian Army to take part in a conference on the environment, in which they talked openly about Russia's nuclear-waste problems.
The festival is inspired by the Netherlands' world-famous Polder Model, which is also known as the Delta or Tulip Model. Broadly speaking, this model is the system on which the economy of the Netherlands built its success in the 1980s and 1990s. The Dutch way of solving problems - through talking and compromising, instead of causing conflicts - is rooted in the Middle Ages, when members of the aristocracy and farmers, organized in special institutions, fought side by side against the overflowing water that periodically threatened their land.
According to Svetlana Datsenko, the senior assistant at the economic department of the Dutch Consulate, the Netherlands are the only country represented in St. Petersburg that has such a long-established festival.
"It gives us a good stage for promoting the Netherlands in Russia," she says.
Datsenko estimates the number of participants in the festival at around 1,000, excluding members of the public who come to visit. Most of the festival's activities have been organized by Dutch and Russian organizations
According to the statistics provided by the St. Petersburg city administration, the Dutch are the No. 1 foreign investors in St. Petersburg - with $420 million in 2001 - followed by the United States, Finland and Germany.
"We have more than 600 requests from Russian companies that want to do business with enterprises in the Netherlands," says Datsenko. "That number grows each year."
However, for all this activity, it is difficult to quantify the benefits brought by the "Window on the Netherlands."
"First, we are here to make contacts," says Michael Strauss, the manager of a dredging firm, who took part in a three-day conference on the environment and transport this month. "Here, you meet representatives and local-government officials with whom you normally never get the opportunity to speak."
Strauss hopes that the contacts he has made will eventually lead to involvement in the much-trumpeted, $400-million flood-prevention scheme near Kronstadt. Although he does not always like long and sometimes boring conferences - "our company sometimes believes there is too much talk," he says - he hopes to get involved in other projects in the Finnish Gulf in the long term. Other companies also intend to get involved in future projects, for example in the reconstruction of the shore near Lomonosov.
"We can learn from the Dutch by working together," says Ivan Sobol, an expert on international law. "We always send the best experts from our universities to the environment and transport seminars."
Sobol hopes that, in the future, the Netherlands will send more scientists and fewer government employees and businessmen to the festival.
The Dutch Consulate first organized the festival in 1996, to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Peter the Great's "Great Embassy" to the Netherlands in 1696. Peter, determined to become skilled in the crafts of shipbuilding in Holland, brought many Dutch techniques and traditions home to Russia: For example, the popular Russian blue ceramic, gzhel, takes its cue from the world-famous blue Delft porcelain. The tsar was so impressed by the skillful Dutch that he also copied the colors of the Dutch flag.
The Dutch festival always offers a variety of Dutch culture. This year, the St. Petersburg State University Philological Faculty's Dutch department will be at the center of attention, when it celebrates its 30th anniversary on Sept. 20. Graduates from the department - many of them now working with Dutch firms or organizations in St. Petersburg - will have the chance to meet up again. A special quiz is to be organized, in which students and representatives from Dutch businesses will put one another's knowledge to the test.
"For me, it was a big adventure to study the Dutch language," remembers Lyudmila Chevalier, the director of the Dutch Institute. "In 1988, I came from Samara to Petersburg and wanted to study German but, while registering at the university, I decided otherwise."
Then, Chevalier could not have guessed at the opportunities the Dutch language would give her. Toward the end of her time in college, the U.S.S.R. collapsed, and she suddenly got the ability to work for foreign companies.
"Thanks to my knowledge of Dutch, I worked for different trading companies as interpreter," she says. "I even was representative for a Belgian fruit-and-vegetable company."
This month, the Dutch Institute, in cooperation with the State Hermitage Museum, is launching a new cultural program. Russian students of Dutch from the State University will be able to take courses in the history of Dutch art. And, from October through May, Dutch experts will be giving a series of public lectures about culture and history, entitled "Dutch Living Rooms."
The first of these will be given on Oct. 4 by the renowned writer Geert Mak. His lecture - entitled "Amsterdam in the Reflection of St. Petersburg" - will close the festival's windows, metaphorically speaking.
This year's festival is being seen as a dress rehearsal for next year, when St. Petersburg will celebrate its 300th anniversary. The Dutch will be back in the last two weeks of September 2003, with a huge cultural and economic program.
Some festival highlights will be:
Sept. 17. Legal seminar, in cooperation with the Association of Young Lawyers of St. Petersburg and Amsterdam.
The seminar will look at issues including real estate, intellectual property, and labor-law issues of doing business in a foreign country. Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel, 10 a.m.
Sept. 20. The Dutch Language and Literature Department of St. Petersburg State University's Philological Faculty will hold celebrations of its 30th anniversary. St. Petersburg State University, Philological Faculty, 4 p.m.
Sept. 21. Yulia Khutoretskaya will conduct the St. Petersburg Youth Chamber Choir in a concert of music by contemporary Dutch composer Hans Koolmees. Also taking part will be the early-music group Laterna Magica. Menshikov Palace, 7 p.m.
Sept. 22. Dutch companies will unveil their project for a school garden and children's farm (see story). Children's Home No. 67, Pushkin, 11 a.m.
Tenor Marcel Beekman will perform a selection of Dutch songs. Rimsky-Korsakov Apartment-Museum, 7 p.m.
Sept. 25. The exhibition "Modern Dutch Interiors" will open through Sept. 27. Gallery Design Bulthaup, 7:30 p.m. Call 315-7274 for more details.
Sept. 26 through Sept. 27. "Diagnosis and Treatment of Malignant Lymphomas," a medical conference organized by the St. Petersburg Group for the Study of Lymphomas and the Utrecht University Medical Center. Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel.
Sept. 27. "From the History of Amsterdam," a lecture sponsored by the Russian-Dutch Club, will be given by Rene Kistemaker, the director of the Amsterdam History Museum. Menshikov Palace, 5 p.m.
Oct. 4. "Amsterdam in the Reflection of St. Petersburg," a lecture by Geert Mak, a writer and professor at the University of Amsterdam. Hermitage Conference Hall, 7 p.m. Call 327-0887 for details.
TITLE: Links Cover Everything From Beer to Oil to Pigs
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Since the era of Peter the Great, who himself worked in a Dutch shipyard, business ties between St. Petersburg and the Netherlands have been close. In the post-Soviet era, those links have again flourished, with over 50 Dutch companies currently operating in various business sectors in St. Petersburg. According to the Dutch Consulate, those companies have invested $410 million in the local economy, accounting for a very impressive 38 percent of all foreign investment in the city since the fall of the Soviet Union. The St. Petersburg Times takes a look at some of the major business bridges being built between St. Petersburg and the Netherlands.
The arrival of Heineken on the Russian market at the beginning of 2002 was an event that made headlines on business pages across the country. In a bold move, Heineken acquired Bravo International, a local brewery originally established by an Icelandic holding company, which had already spent $150 million to set it up. Heineken bought Bravo - then the fastest expanding brewery in Russia - for $400 million.
The deal brought Heineken the popular Bochkarev and Okhota brands of beer, as well as Loewenbraeu and Bear, produced under licensing deals, and a range of low-alcohol cocktails.
According to Business Analytica, a market-research firm, the company's share in the St. Petersburg beer market amounts to 15.7 percent, while in Russia as a whole it runs at 5.6 percent.
In terms of volume, this means producing 240 million liters of beer in 2001; in the coming year, Heineken hopes to increase its production volume to 522 million liters and begin producing what many consider to be one of the leading symbols of the Netherlands - Heineken itself. Until now, Heineken has only been imported, accounting for a modest 0.02 percent of the local beer market.
In the oil and petroleum sector, Royal Dutch Shell constitutes another major symbol for the Netherlands, but the company's links with Russia originally derived from London. In 1833, Marcus Samuel opened a small shop in London trading in seashells. On a visit to the Caspian Sea, he saw a great opportunity to export oil for lamps and cooking to the Far East. He commissioned the first purpose-built oil tanker in 1892 and subsequently delivered 4,000 tons of Russian kerosene to Singapore and Bangkok. His firm eventually merged with Royal Dutch, making it 60-percent Dutch and 40-percent British owned.
At present, Shell's operations in St. Petersburg are limited to developing and servicing gas stations. "At the moment, we have six gas stations in St. Petersburg, but we are currently planning to increase that number by building new ones," says Maxim Shub, a spokesperson for the company. Analysts estimate that the company now has from 2 percent to 3 percent of the St. Petersburg market.
Another titanic Dutch presence on the local business landscape is Unilever, which acquired the Severnoye Siyanie factory, a local perfume producer, in St. Petersburg in 1994. In the same year, the factory was refitted to produce Timotei, Sunsilk and Organics shampoos and Rexona deodorant. In 1996, the company launched Rama margarine and Calve mayonnaise, both of which have also carved themselves strong niches on the Russian market.
The Dutch giant hasn't restricted itself to these products, however. More recently, in March 2002, Unilever opened a new, purpose-built tea factory in St. Petersburg, manufacturing Lipton, Brooke Bond and Beseda tea. Total investment in the tea factory alone came to $12 million, with 110 employees working permanently at the plant.
Another business flagship for the Netherlands operating on the local market is KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, which has had a branch office in St. Petersburg for 12 years. "Via Amsterdam, we fly worldwide to 400 cities," says Andrei Gusarov, a spokesperson for the company.
Working in St. Petersburg, however, hasn't been without its problems for the airline in recent times. "We had to decrease the number of flights because conflicts with Pulkovo Airport - now we're only allowed to fly three times a week, whereas we had been flying seven times a week previously," says Gusarov. "After the European Commission banned noisy Russian planes from flying in the skies of Europe, Pulkovo imposed strict limitations on the number of flights made by foreign air companies."
Two companies have made a major impact on the local insurance market - a market that is developing, but one that many feel has a long way to go. AON Insurance brokers has been operating in St. Petersburg since 1995, for the most part operating as a brokerage company, dealing in the policies of other insurance firms. "We cooperate with insurance companies that are based in Russia, as the local laws require," says Vyacheslav Kunilovsky, the company's acting general director.
"Most of our clients are companies with foreign capital - Dresdner Bank, Henkel, McDonalds, Coca-Cola and Motorola - although, just a few months ago, we developed an insurance program for the Russian Aluminum holding," he adds.
The company is currently expanding, having turned over $5 million in 2001 and the same amount in the first eight months of 2002 alone.
The other Dutch player on the local insurance market is Performance Foundation, which acquired the non-state Admiralteisky pension fund, based in St. Petersburg, in 2001. The fund currently consults on and creates non-state pension programs for enterprises, working closely with the Rogosstrakh and Klass insurance companies. Irina Balabanova, a company spokesperson, says that recent major achievements included creating a pension scheme for the employees of the Kushelevsky bread factory.
Last but not least, in this brief overview of some of the major business links between the Netherlands and the Northwest region, comes the Ruchiye pig-breeding farm in the Leningrad Oblast. In July, 2002, two Dutch companies, DLV AgroConsult and VDL Agrotek, embarked on a joint Dutch-Russian project to transport a new breed of Dutch piglets from Holland. The piglets have the advantage of growing 50 percent faster than their Russian relatives, and their fat layer is 2 centimeters thick. According to the Leningrad Oblast press service, another 12 farms in the region are lining up to get their hands on the new pig-breeding technology.
TITLE: One Dutchman Trying To Make Kids Happy
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Teachers at orphanages often complain that their pupils lack knowledge of many practical, everyday things - such as how to send a letter from a post office, how to manage their pocket money, or how to take care of an orchard or animals.
The children would have learned these things naturally if they had parents who took them out to different places. However, they either don't have parents, or the ones they have neglect them.
Therefore, when the teachers at the No. 67 boarding school for abandoned children in Pushkin heard of Dutch architect Coen Hoogesteijn's plans to construct a garden and a farm on the school grounds, they were delighted.
Hoogesteijn said his initiative grew out of his activities in Northwest Russia.
"I have worked in St. Petersburg on and off since 1994," he said Monday by telephone from Amsterdam. "Those years have been hard for Russia. I felt so sorry for the beggars around the metro stations and for the street children."
"I thought that I should try to help at least some people in the country. And it happened to be this boarding school," he said.
For the last several years Hoogesteijn has brought medicine and food to the school from the Netherlands. Two years ago he thought that the more serious project of creating a small farm and a garden was no less important.
As a result, the garden, where the flower beds for tulips, daffodils and crocuses from the Netherlands, are ready to be planted, will open on Sept. 22.
That day, representatives of the Netherlands General Consulate, Dutch companies participating in the project, and 106 children from the school will plant 5,000 flower bulbs.
After that, the children will tend the flower beds and next spring they will plant fruit trees, for which they will also be responsible.
In the fall of next year a group of Dutch students and volunteers will come to build a farm for hens, rabbits and a pony on the school grounds.
"It will be a good school of life for our children," said Tamara Azatskaya, deputy director of the school.
"Everything our pupils need is provided to them. They have meals at school, beds, and lessons. But sometimes, I'm afraid they don't even know where the eggs on their plates come from," Azatskaya said.
"I think, when they take care of rabbits and other animals, they will become kinder to animals and will learn to love them," she said.
To raise money for the project, Hoogesteijn organized a charity foundation in Holland, and appealed for help to the Byzantine Male Choir of Northern Holland province.
The choir gave several charity concerts. The Dutch company Verbeek & Bol, which has a network of flower firms - Orange - in St. Petersburg, and Russia's ZAO Petroflora flower company provided the school with free bulbs.
"We are glad to help," said Irina Silkova, commercial director of Petroflora.
"All this work is for the children's future. If they don't have parents, other people are ready to help them," Hoogesteijn said.
His Russian isn't good enough to communicate with the children much. However, they already have a nickname for him: "the man in the hat," because Hoogesteijn always wears a hat.
TITLE: Investigators: Rat Poison Blamed in China Outbreak
AUTHOR: By Ng Han Guan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NANJING, China - Investigators suspect rat poison is to blame for a mass poisoning in eastern China that is believed to have killed dozens of people, a health official said Monday.
Authorities refused to release a death toll in Saturday's poisonings, traced to a snack shop in the rural outskirts of Nanjing. But state media suggested dozens of people might have been killed, including children, and more than 200 people were sickened.
Police were questioning the manager of a company that supplied food to the shop, the state newspaper China Daily reported.
"Examination of the samples sent from hospitals showed it's rat poison," said an official reached by telephone at the Jiangsu Province Epidemic Prevention Station. He wouldn't give his name.
A spokesperson for the Nanjing city government denied Hong Kong newspaper reports that 41 people were killed, but she refused to release an official death toll. The spokesperson wouldn't give her name.
China's Cabinet and Communist Party headquarters in Beijing have sent investigators to Nanjing and ordered "strenuous efforts" to uncover the cause, according to state newspapers.
Many of those affected were students at the nearby Zuochang Middle School and migrant construction workers, according to state media.
They became sick after eating fried dough sticks, sesame cakes and glutinous rice, bought at a branch of the Heshengyuan Soybean Milk Shop, the reports said.
Students and teachers at the military-run Nanjing Artillery Institute also were sickened, according to teachers contacted by telephone at the Zuochang school. They wouldn't give their names.
The China Daily, citing unidentified sources, said dozens of people might have been killed, many of them children.
"It is really unbearable to see young children dying right before my eyes and their parents crying desperately," the newspaper quoted an unidentified doctor as saying.
Many of those sickened were boarding students whose school provided breakfast bought from the Heshengyuan shop, the Ta Kung Pao newspaper of Hong Kong reported.
Students went into shock after taking only a couple of bites of food, spitting mucus and blood and falling to the ground unconscious, said the newspaper, which is close to Chinese authorities.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Sufficient Reason?
SANAA, Yemen (Reuters) - A Yemeni man divorced his first wife because she was loud and argumentative and picked a deaf and mute woman as his new bride, a local newspaper said on Monday.
Al-Thawra daily said a 40-year-old man named as Yahya from the southern Dhamar province so tired of his wife's "screaming and endless disputes" that he left her after 15 years to remarry.
Italy in Debate
ROME (Reuters) - Angry debate on immigration raged in Italy on Monday after a boat loaded with Africans sank off the coast of Sicily, killing 15, with one far-right politician saying Italians' blood was being "bastardised" by foreigners.
Mario Borghezio, a member of the Northern League party, said if the government didn't start enforcing new immigration laws more aggressively, the country would be overrun.
"We don't need any more illegal immigrant drug-dealers," Borghezio, a member of the European Parliament, said. "We've got more than enough of them, and the ones that are here already, we need to start kicking out."
In the early hours on Sunday, a 13-meter fishing boat, packed with an estimated 130 migrants from Liberia, sank in shallow waters just off the southern coast of Sicily.
Fifteen people drowned, including a teenage girl.
Old Woman Asleep
TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese woman said to be the world's oldest person turned 115 on Monday.
But Kamato Hongo, who lives in the southwestern city of Kagoshima, failed to stay awake for her big day.
"She has been in a deep sleep since 2 a.m. this morning, maybe because she got excited after seeing many visitors yesterday, on Respect for the Aged Day," the Kyodo news agency quoted her daughter, Shizue Kurauchi, 78, as saying.
Hongo, born in 1887, now adheres to a unique cycle of staying awake for two straight days and then sleeping for two days.
Although she can no longer walk without help, Hongo enjoys singing and "dancing" with her hands, Kyodo said.
TITLE: Kafelnikov Gets Ideal Davis Cup Warmup
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - Yevgeny Kafelnikov fought off an injured finger and qualifier Vladimir Voltchkov to win the $550,000 President's Cup 7-6 (8-6), 7-5 on Saturday.
Kafelnikov earned an early service break in the second set to grab a 3-0 lead. But Voltchkov increased the power of his serves and improved his ground strokes to win the next three games and get even.
Voltchkov, ranked 154th, then saved two match points in the 12th game before Kafelnikov closed out the match.
The final was played Saturday to give competitors time to get ready for next week's Davis Cup matches.
Kafelnikov injured a finger on his left hand during Friday's semifinal against Paradorn Srichaphan. After the match, the right-handed Kafelnikov was not able to grip the racket with his left hand.
Kafelnikov said that he wasn't sure if he would be able to play for Russia in next weekend's Davis Cup semifinal against Argentina. He has repeatedly said that winning the Davis Cup is his last major goal before retirement.
However, Kafelnikov's compatriot, Anna Kournikova, saw her hopes of ending her seven-year search for a WTA singles title crushed by Anna Smashnova in the Shanghai Open final on Sunday.
While the top-seeded Israeli collected her sixth career title with a comfortable 6-2, 6-3 victory, Kournikova was left to reflect on another missed opportunity, having lost her three previous finals.
The Russian, better known for her glamorous looks than her ability on court, could not cope with her 26-year-old opponent's explosive serve and booming groundstrokes as she slipped to a predictable defeat.
The 21-year-old improved after a sluggish start and managed to break serve in the second set, but she was no match for her powerful opponent, whom she beat in their last meeting in Stanford in July.
Kournikova was appearing in her first final since Moscow 2000, after which injuries and loss of form briefly dropped her to 99th in the WTA rankings from a career-high eighth. She came into the tournament ranked 38th.
Smashnova, an 11-year veteran of the women's tour and ranked 19th in the world, easily avoided the Russian's attempts to lure her to the net and only had to wait for her fourth-seeded opponent to make an unforced error.
In Costa do Sauipe, Brazil, on Sunday, Gustavo Kuerten won his first title of the year, fighting hard in scorching sunshine to beat Argentina's Guillermo Coria 6-7 (6-4), 7-5, 7-6 (6-2) in the final of the Brazil Open.
Kuerten, a former No. 1 player in the world, underwent hip surgery in February this year.
"I think there is nothing better than this achievement to motivate and realize dreams, to win here in Brazil," said Kuerten, a three-time French Open champion and Brazilian native. "Here, in this heat, to lose [the first set], to save match point. If you wanted to write a more dramatic novel, you couldn't."
The win will likely push Kuerten back into the top 40 of the ATP rankings.
Kuerten got off to a strong start, breaking Coria's first service game. The Argentine recovered to push Kuerten all the way, breaking service and taking the first set in the tiebreaker.
Both players held serve in the second set until Kuerten broke Coria at 6-5 to even the match. Coria had a match point at 5-4 in the third set but hit a shot into the net. Kuerten held serve and eventually won the tiebreaker.
Also Sunday, in Waikoloa, Hawaii, Cara Black became the first player from Zimbabwe to win a WTA Tour title, beating second-seeded Lisa Raymond 7-6 (7-1), 6-4 in the Big Island Championships.
"It's unreal," the 23-year-old Black said. "My coach [Brett Stephens] and I were talking about it during the U.S. Open when I lost there, that this week would be a good opportunity to win some matches and maybe win my first title. It shows that if you believe a little and think about it, you can do it.
"We had some unbelievable rallies out there and the difference was just one or two points. It just came down to a few points at the end of it and luckily I was the one who came through."
Black led 5-2 in the opening set, but Raymond fought back to tie it at 5-5. Black regained control, taking the tiebreaker 7-1.
"If I could have gotten that under my belt maybe I would have relaxed a little bit," said Raymond, 3-7 in tour finals. "Even losing the breaker I felt I could still win the match, but I just didn't get it done. She served well and she's really scrappy."
(AP, Reuters)
TITLE: Twins Defy Odds, Commissioner To Take AL Central Title
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - From contraction to a championship. The Minnesota Twins, targeted for elimination last November, clinched the AL Central with a 5-0 win Sunday over the Cleveland Indians, last year's division champs.
The small-market survivors that baseball couldn't get rid of will be hanging around even longer than few could have imagined. The Twins secured their first playoff berth since 1991, and 10 months worth of emotions spilled out in a wild clubhouse celebration.
"[Baseball Commissioner] Bud Selig couldn't get rid of us," Left Fielder Jacque Jones said. "The White Sox couldn't get rid of us. The Cleveland Indians couldn't get rid of us. Here we are, and we're staying."
For Minnesota, an unexpected season has become an unbelievable one.
"It's been a long haul," manager Ron Gardenhire said. "It started this winter when they tried to kick us out and take away our team. There's been a lot of buildup here, and we're going to let it all out today."
Kyle Lohse (13-8) pitched six shutout innings, and Denny Hocking hit a two-run single. Even after winning, the Twins had to put their postgame party on hold for about 20 minutes as they waited for the final score of Chicago's game in New York.
When the second-place White Sox lost 8-4 in a game called by rain, many of the Twins ran into the trainer's room to fetch champagne bottles that had been on ice since Friday.
Reliever Mike Jackson donned swimming goggles and taught a few players how to uncork and spray a champagne bottle. Torii Hunter hit the floor for some break dancing.
Reliever Eddie Guardado, who got the final out, broke down and cried.
"I'm glad I was out there," Guardado said before stopping. "Excuse me."
In November, the Twins learned of baseball's plans to eliminate them and the Montreal Expos.
"People said, 'Get rid of the Twins,'" Guardado said. "But we stuck it out. That's what we're all about."
Now, the party may last until October.
San Diego 4, San Francisco 1. Trevor Hoffman wanted to be somewhere else. His teammates wanted him right where he was. With the bases loaded and Barry Bonds at the plate as the winning run, Hoffman struck out the home run champ. He then struck out Jeff Kent to preserve the San Diego Padres' win over San Francisco on Sunday night.
"That was awesome," starter Jake Peavy said. "No one in this dugout wanted anybody else but Hoffman in that situation. When you see him walk out there, you expect to win. I don't think there are two tougher outs right now in the National League. I'm glad he's on my side."
Peavy allowed one run on six hits and three walks in five innings, and relievers Clayton Condrey and Brandon Villafuerte combined for three scoreless innings before Hoffman came on.
"That's not a situation I wanted to be in," Hoffman said.
Hoffman, fifth on the career saves list, remembers his previous encounters with Bonds.
"The last two times I faced Bonds, I intentionally walked him and he hit a home run on a fastball," Hoffman said. "With the bases loaded, you just try to get ahead. There's no room to put him with him being the winning run."
Ryan Klesko homered and drove in three runs for the Padres, who won for the first time in seven tries at Pacific Bell Park this season.
The Giants wasted a chance to take a two-game lead over Los Angeles in the NL wild-card race. The Dodgers lost at Colorado earlier in the day.
Anaheim 13, Texas 4. Troy Glaus hit three homers at Edison Field as Anaheim took sole possession of first place in the AL West for the first time this season and set a club record with its 94th win.
The Angels' 16th victory in 17 tries gave them a one-game lead over the Athletics heading into Monday's opener of a four-game series at Oakland.
Anaheim's magic number for clinching a playoff spot is six. It would be the franchise's first postseason berth in 16 years.