SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #806 (71), Tuesday, September 24, 2002
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TITLE: Beauty Queen Stripped Of Title
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Just four months after St. Petersburger Oksana Fyodorova was crowned Miss Universe, she has been stripped of her title for refusing to fulfill her duties and for gaining weight, pageant organizers said Monday.
 
Fyodorova, the first Russian to win the Miss Universe pageant in its 51-year history, said she had stepped down for personal reasons.
 Pageant spokesperson Esther Swan said the dark-haired, green-eyed Fyodorova was sacked last week after being warned about her performance.
 "She was told that she must fulfill all the obligations, and she said she would make sure that it didn't happen again," Swan said from New York. "However, nothing changed for the better."
 Swan said pageant organizers sent Fyodorova, 24, a letter last week. The letter said her refusal to perform her duties as a Miss Universe titleholder "has and will cost the Miss Universe organization hundreds of thousands of dollars while gravely affecting our reputation," according to the New York Post, which reported the sacking Monday. The newspaper said that, among other things, Fyodorova had refused to participate in a recent live, two-hour broadcast of the 2002 Miss Teen USA competition.
 The crown was handed over to the first runner-up of the May 29 contest, Justine Pasek of Panama.
 "It's too bad it didn't work out better with Oksana, but our new Miss Universe is equally beautiful and she is a tremendous crowd-pleaser," pageant owner Donald Trump was quoted by the New York Post as saying.
 Swan said Fyodorova had blamed personal problems for her behavior. She refused to elaborate.
 The New York Post quoted an unnamed source in the pageant as saying Fyodorova was "an unbelievable beauty, and an unbelievably spoiled bitch" who "does not want to do anything."
 The source also said pageant organizers believed Fyodorova may be secretly married to her "well-connected boyfriend." The source said the boyfriend had showered Fyodorova with gifts since she was 16. Fyodorova said at the pageant that she had a 38-year-old boyfriend named Vladimir.
 Another insider told the New York Post that Fyodorova had gained about seven kilograms since the pageant and may be pregnant.
 Swan acknowledged that Fyodorova had gained weight and said none of her specially tailored clothes fit anymore.
 "I saw her last weekend, but these girls have such amazing bodies that you can't say immediately they have gotten bigger," she said. "But when she can't put on anything from her full wardrobe ..."
 Fyodorova, a ranking police lieutenant and a postgraduate student in civil law, denied being married or pregnant.
 "The duties of Miss Universe are a very good thing, but I would not have been able to continue my studies," she said in televised remarks. "As for marriage and pregnancy, they are excellent but still a dream [for me]."
 In Fyodorova's hometown, acquaintances greeted the news of her sacking with disbelief.
 "I am a military person, and I won't believe this newspaper until I see the official document," said Vyacheslav Bulavinov, the deputy head of the post-graduate faculty at the Interior Ministry University where Fyodorova is a third-year student.
 He said she has never stopped her studies and has remained in regular contact with the university's rector, Viktor Salnikov, and her mentor. He said she had nearly completed her dissertation on the regulation of private detective and security activities. She is expected to defend the dissertation next month and, after that, could be dispatched by the Interior Ministry as a senior police lieutenant.
 Salnikov blamed pageant organizers for being too hard on Fyodorova, Interfax reported. He quoted Fyodorova as telling him that the organizers did not want to let her go to the university to defend her dissertation in October.
 "All the speculation that has appeared in the Western press that Fyodorova got married, pregnant and seven kilograms heavier have no grounds," he was quoted by Interfax as saying. "She did not get married, did not get fatter and is not pregnant."
 Fyodorova said she would always be Miss Universe at heart. "I will remain Miss Universe for our citizens and, above all, for myself," she said.

TITLE: 100 Feared Killed by Avalanche
AUTHOR: By Yuri Bagrov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia -One man, reported missing after a devastating avalanche in North Ossetia, was found unhurt Monday, but more than 100 people are unaccounted for and authorities fear the list may grow as information comes in on shepherds and others who could have been in the path of the torrent of ice, mud and debris.
 
Two bodies were found Monday, a duty officer at the headquarters for the rescue effort said, bringing the total to eight. Emergency officials have said they fear that as many as 150 people were killed, and they held out little hope of finding anyone who was swept up by the avalanche alive.
 "I haven't lost hope, but when I saw from a helicopter what had happened, the conclusions are not comforting," said Lev Dzugayev, a top aide to the president of North Ossetia.
 According to a list compiled from inquiries from relatives, 113 people are missing, said Alan Doyev, a press spokesperson for the Interior Ministry in North Ossetia. The list could grow, Doyev said, as information comes in on shepherds and lookouts at remote tourist camps high in the mountains.
 One watchman was found unhurt near the mineral lode where he works, said Boris Dzgoyev, the head of the North Ossetia department of the Emergency Situations Ministry.
 Officials feared hikers and campers may also have been in the area, a destination for excursions among residents of the regional capital Vladikavkaz.
 Rescue workers continued efforts to clear the main road up the mountain under treacherous conditions. In 2 1/2 days, the workers have managed to clear just 1.5 kilometers of the road, which is covered with ice, sludge, trees and rocks.
 Dzugayev said the damage could reach 400 million rubles ($12.6 million), Itar-Tass reported.
 New dangers emerged as the temperatures mounted and could get worse, were rain to fall. 
 Relatives and friends of the missing gathered in small groups, desperate for news. "We're standing here for the third day, we don't know anything," said Batrazd Agayev, who was waiting for news on a friend who had gone into the mountains. "Bureaucrats pass by in motorcades. We tried to stop them to learn the truth and they almost ran us over."

TITLE: Anxious Wait for News of Bodrov Jr.
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Producer Sergei Selyanov was one of the first of Sergei Bodrov Jr.'s friends to fly south to the North Ossetian capital, Vladikavkaz, on Sunday.
 
He had little to report on Monday.
 "I am keeping in constant contact with all the rescue services, but there has been no news so far," Selyanov said, his voice trembling, in a telephone interview.
 Popular movie star Bodrov, 30, and his crew were in the North Ossetian mountains shooting footage for his upcoming film "Svyaznoi" ("The Messenger") when an avalanche roared through the Genaldon and Gizeldon gorges Friday night.
 His relatives, associates and fans were on edge Monday, waiting for reassuring news about Bodrov and the other 48 missing members of the film crew. Only nine crew members were safe - seven who were not with the others and two who managed to flee, officials said.
 One of the seven film-crew members said in an interview published Monday that he was back at a hotel Friday evening when the disaster occurred. He said he got a call on his cellphone from a woman in the crew, and she said an avalanche was bearing down on the group. 
 "The girl only had time to say that an avalanche was headed for them. After that, the connection was cut off, and whenever I tried to call, nobody answered," Alexei Ternovsky was quoted by Izvestia as saying.
 Selyanov, who produced most of Bodrov's films, including "Svyaznoi," said Bodrov's father, Sergei Bodrov Sr., arrived in Moscow from his home in Los Angeles on Monday and was due to fly out to Vladikavkaz.
 As news broke Monday afternoon that a 60-year-old villager had been rescued, Bodrov's associates spoke with cautious hope.
 "We are watching the news and catching every single word," said an official at the VID television company, which made several shows with Bodrov for ORT television in recent years. "We are too afraid to think of the worst." 
 The Emergency Situations Ministry could not confirm reports that the movie crew had detonated explosives in the mountains while filming.
 However, an Ossetian emergency situations official denied explosives near a glacier could have caused the avalanche. 
 Bodrov made his film debut in 1996 in the Oscar-nominated "Kavkazsky Plennik" ("Prisoner of the Caucasus") which was shot by his father in the Caucasus Mountains. The Moscow State University graduate with a degree in art history went on to star in 10 other movies. 
 Bodrov became a nationwide sensation overnight in Alexei Balabanov's blockbuster "Brat" ("Brother"), in which he convincingly portrayed the brother of a contract killer, who then becomes a killer himself. He starred in the sequel "Brat-2," and later shared the screen with Catherine Deneuve in the 1999 French movie "East-West." 
 Earlier this year, Bodrov hosted the immensely popular reality show "Posledny Geroi" ("The Last Hero") on ORT. In "Svyaznoi," he is the lead actor, screenwriter and director 
 It was the third time in a century that part of the glacier had fallen - an occurrence experts connected to humid, rainy weather over the summer that increased the volume of ice. 
 In 1902, a piece of the same glacier wiped out the village of Genal, killing several dozen people, The Associated Press reported. The government later monitored the glacier and when it began to grow in the 1960s, barriers were built below.
 When it did broke in 1969, the barriers helped contain the avalanche and limit the damage.

TITLE: Putin, Aliyev Sign Agreement That Divides Up Caspian Sea
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Geidar Aliyev signed an agreement Monday delineating the boundary between their countries' sections of the oil-rich Caspian Sea.
 
"It has taken a long time to reach this accord. There have been a lot of discussions, intensive work on both sides. I am glad that this work ended so positively," Putin said.
 The two leaders were also expected to discuss cooperation in the energy sector during their Kremlin meeting, presidential press spokesperson Alexei Gromov was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency.
 Gromov said they would also discuss preparations for an upcoming summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
 The meeting came less than a week after the groundbreaking ceremony on the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, which is to carry oil from the Caspian Sea basin through Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey. Russia is not participating in the project, which has strong U.S. support.
 Key on Monday's agenda was the fate of the oil resources in the Caspian Sea, which is bordered by Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Iran. Those states failed to reach an agreement at a summit in April on how to delimit the Caspian's borders, and since then have been concluding bilateral agreements on usage in their respective sectors.
 "The document we have signed is of great importance because three states, Kazakhstan, Russia and Azerbaijan, have found a common position," Aliyev said. "I am certain that this will have an impact on Turkmenistan and Iran."
 Before departing the Azerbaijani capital on Monday, Aliev said he and Putin would sign three agreements including the one defining the sea border. 
 He also told reporters that he and Putin would discuss the prospects for settlement of the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, since Russia is one of the co-chairs of an international diplomatic group that is searching for a solution.
 Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly ethnic Armenian province in Azerbaijan, waged a war from 1988 through 1994 against Azerbaijan in which its forces, backed by Armenia, won control of almost 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory. More than 30,000 people were killed and a million were driven from their homes during the war. Azerbaijan continues to demand return of the territory.

TITLE: Yabloko, SPS Join Forces for Election
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Union of Right Forces (SPS) and Yabloko on Monday officially announced the formation of a joint electoral bloc to contest the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly elections scheduled for December. 
 
The two liberal parties had already signed a partnership agreement in early August to run jointly in the elections, slated for Dec. 8. 
 The bloc, which has been named "SPS+Yabloko," proposes a common list of candidates for 30 of the city's 50 electoral districts.
 "Democratic forces stand a far better chance in the December elections if they are united," SPS party leader Boris Nemtsov said Monday at a news conference.
 The new bloc could garner 15 of the 50 seats in parliament, Interfax reported him as saying outside the news conference.
 Nemtsov added that a congress to be formed after State Duma elections in December 2003 intends to put forward a single candidate for the 2004 presidential elections. 
 The congress will be formed by all democratic parties in Russia, including those that did not take part in the Duma elections, Nemtsov said. 
 Participants at Monday's conference stressed that SPS+Yabloko's focus is on fostering democratic values and government in Russia. 
 "Over the past few years, the position of SPS and Yabloko have been very close. This does not mean, however, that both parties are identical and agree on all matters," he said. "SPS and Yabloko have a common global aim, which is building a free, democratic Russia."
 SPS+Yabloko said it considered St. Petersburg to be retreating from its democratic, European tradition and the leading role it played in the country's modernization process.
 "St. Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great as a window on Europe, has always been the most European city in Russia. Its role as a leader of Russia's modernization, which has been lost in the past few years, has to be restored," said Mikhail Amosov, the head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Asssembly, as he read the offical declaration of the new electoral bloc.
 "The policies of the present city government do not reflect the interest of the majority of inhabitants. It is transforming St. Petersburg into a neglected and provincial city," the declaration says. 
 The new coalition said it is opposed on principle to St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev running for a third term.
 To do so, Yakovlev will need to usher through amendments in the city charter, which restricts the governor to two terms only. To change the charter, Yakovlev needs the support of two thirds of the Legislative Assembly. 
 "[A third term] is an attempt to change the city legislation in the interests of one person. We consider it to be unacceptable and to pave the way for further unlawful actions," Amosov said.
 Nemtsov also said SPS+Yabloko was against the federal government's policies on Chechnya and Georgia, as well as the restoration in Moscow of a monument to Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, a proposal that was made this month by Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

TITLE: Stepashin Intervenes In Job-Review Tiff
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Sergei Stepashin, the head of the national Audit Chamber, has once more intervened in the running battle between the St. Petersburg Audit Chamber and the city parliament that has been going on for more than a year. 
 
Stepashin said on Friday that St. Petersburg's Charter Court had found that the Legislative Assembly acted illegally when it summoned local Audit Chamber head Dmitry Burenin to appear before an examination board to review his job performance.
 The charter court's duty is to ensure that the city charter is observed.
 Legislative Assembly Speaker Sergei Tarasov had ordered Burenin to appear before a board appointed by the assembly on June 25. Such reviews are standard for most of the city's civil servants.
 Burenin, however, did not attend the review, saying that his position was exempt, and that Tarasov was trying to sack him. 
 No comment was available from Tarasov's office Monday, and his deputy, Vadim Tyulpanov, declined to comment.
 Stepashin had already stepped in on the dispute in June, when he told Tarasov to resolve the conflict.
 On Friday, Stepashin said he had offered St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev a re-examination of the city's budget spending in 2000 and 2001, with the help of experts from the Association of Audit Organs of Russia.
 "If there are reasons for saying that the [St. Petersburg ]Audit Chamber's findings are wrong, then it has to be proven, including in court," Interfax reported Stepashin as saying.
 The national Audit Chamber had been sued 10 times already this year, and the chamber has not lost a case, he added. 
 "The Audit Chamber is not meant to operate according to the wishes of the Legislative Assembly," Burenin said Monday in an interview. "It is totally independent from the assembly."
 Several lawmakers said in June that the proposed review of Burenin's performance, and the way Tarasov organized it, broke federal law. 
 "Along with everyone else in our faction, I believe that Tarasov's decision was incompetent," Mikhail Brodsky, the leader of the assembly's Union of Right Forces faction, said in June. 
 "Any examination should involve the whole Legislative Assembly, or at least one deputy from each faction. Tarasov formed the board on his own, choosing deputies who are committed to him," he said.
 Relations between Burenin and Tarasov, who is a close ally of Yakovlev, have been strained since Burenin became head of the city's Audit Chamber in mid-2001 and strengthened financial controls over the city administration. 
 In March, the head of the city's Health Committee, Anatoly Kagan, was dismissed after an Audit Chamber inspection. A month later, an inspection of the Finance Committee resulted in criminal charges being brought against committee head Viktor Krotov. 
 Burenin has accused Smolny of mismanaging 1.5 billion rubles ($43.5 million at the time) from the city's 2000 budget. According to the Audit Chamber, Yakovlev's administration used the money to buy back Eurobonds, and to finance the reconstruction of the Yubileiny Sports Palace, which is not listed as state property.
 Several lawmakers sided with Tarasov, after Burenin tried to prevent lawmakers introducing so-called "packet" amendments to the city budget. 
 Burenin said such amendments allow each lawmaker to spend up to $1.7 million every year without any control. 
 "This whole story around the Audit Chamber revolves around the fact that our inspection has shown that the city budget is being spent in an irrational and illegal way," Burenin said. 
 Despite Friday's ruling, Burenin thinks that his opponents, whom he described as "officials who mistake the city budget for their own pockets," are unlikely to put an end to their attempts to fire him.
 "Our opponents will probably appeal the court's decision and go ahead with the job-performance review," he said.

TITLE: Shevardnadze Puts Forward Gorge Plan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia - Trying to defuse an explosive war of words with Russia, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze proposed Monday that Russia send unarmed military observers to the rugged Pankisi Gorge. 
 
"Once again, I repeat my proposal to the Russian leadership: Send your military observers - unarmed, of course - [to] oversee the course of the operation in Pankisi and other districts," Shevardnadze said in his weekly radio interview. 
 After months of Russian browbeating over the alleged terrorist presence in the Pankisi Gorge, Shevardnadze also tried to direct attention to another long-running dispute with Russia, over Georgia's separatist Black Sea province of Abkhazia. He said that, in a letter received on the weekend, U.S. President George W. Bush had "welcomed" a Georgian proposal for three-way talks between the U.S., Russia and Georgia on Abkhazia. 
 "This cooperation will significantly accelerate the political regulation of the Abkhaz conflict on the basis of Georgia's territorial integrity," Shevardnadze said. 
 In another development, Deputy Defense Minister Gela Bezhuashvili said that French military instructors would arrive later this year to help train the Georgian army. U.S. instructors arrived in May to help the Georgia improve its military and capacity to mount anti-terrorist operations.
 President Vladimir Putin and other officials have threatened to launch military strikes across the Russia-Georgia border to destroy militants they claim are heading for Russian territory from the Pankisi Gorge.

TITLE: FBI Evidence Links Chechens, al-Qaida
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - New evidence of links between Chechen rebels and the al-Qaida terrorist network emerged last week, as the FBI warned that al-Qaida had planned to use Muslims of "non-Arabic appearance," including extremists from Chechnya, to hijack a commercial airliner in the United States.
 
"Purportedly, al-Qaida members have discussed using Chechnyan [sic] Muslims affiliated with al-Qaida but already present in the U.S. for such operations in order to avoid security scrutiny at airports,'' the FBI said in a bulletin released Wednesday and quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
 The warning, which appears to be based on "discussions'' among al-Qaida members prior to last year's Sept. 11 terror attacks, implicitly serves to buttress Russian claims about cooperation between Chechen rebels and international terrorist groups.
 An FBI spokesperson said, however, that the media had made more of the bulletin than it was worth.
 "It was routine information sent out to local law enforcement and reiterating past information," the spokesperson said by telephone from Washington. He said the bulletin had not been intended for public release.
 The bulletin said that, "once aboard the aircraft, as many as 10 or 20 hijackers seated in first class would overwhelm the crew and seize control,'' the Los Angeles Times reported. The newspaper also quoted the document as saying that al-Qaida members have discussed using "improvised explosive device components transported onto commercial aircraft in carry-on luggage."
 There have been numerous reports of links between Chechen rebels, whom Russia has been fighting since 1994, and international terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaida. However, the scale of cooperation remains unclear.
 "Although al-Qaida functions independently of other terrorist organizations, it also functions through some of the terrorist organizations that operate under its umbrella or with its support, including [jihad groups in] ... the Chechen region of Russia," an FBI counterterrorism official said in a congressional statement last December.
 A terrorism expert with the Federal Security Service said Thursday that the FBI bulletin merely confirmed what had already been known.
 Osama bin Laden's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, slipped into Russia in 1997 to scope out Chechnya as a possible base for his cause, and even spent several months in a jail in neighboring Dagestan before fleeing to Afghanistan.
 Several news reports have pointed to Chechens fighting alongside al-Qaida in and near Afghanistan. As of early this month, seven Russian nationals were reported to be among the suspected Taliban and al-Qaida fighters held at Guantanamo Bay. It was not clear whether any of them were ethnic Chechens.
 The links between Chechen rebels and al-Qaida have also fanned the flames of Russia's conflict with Georgia, which Moscow accuses of harboring terrorists who pose a direct threat to Russian security. U.S. officials have confirmed that there may be al-Qaida fighters hiding among the 6,000 or so Chechen refugees in Georgia's crime-ridden Pankisi Gorge.

TITLE: TVS Appoints Kiselyov Head
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The board of directors at Shestoi Telekanal has appointed Oleg Kiselyov, the former head of the Metalloinvest holding, as the new general director of TVS television.
 
The board, at a meeting late Wednesday night, demoted Alexander Levin to first deputy general director. Levin had been appointed general director last spring when the channel was being formed during difficult talks between Yevgeny Kiselyov's team of journalists and a group of business people.
 Oleg Kiselyov acted as a spokesperson for the business people and has served as general director of Media-Socium - the holder of TVS's license - since the spring. Shestoi Telekanal is the company that oversees TVS's operations.
 He said Thursday that his priority would be to "optimize expenses," attract additional investment and relieve producers from administrative and financial burdens so that they could concentrate on new projects.
 He also said he felt confident that he was qualified to run TVS. "Economic models are the same for any type of business," he said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
 TVS has been scrambling to position itself since it went on the air June 1. While other channels have shifted their emphasis toward entertainment programming, TVS, with a journalist team whose expertise is politics, has not been able to find a niche with viewers. As a result, TVS's nationwide ratings are far below rival NTV's.
 In the run-up to the board meeting, one of the TVS journalists, satirist Viktor Shenderovich, said he and several other journalists might leave if Levin was fired. It was not clear Thursday whether he would make good on the warning.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Khakamada To Run
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Deputy State Duma Speaker and Union of Right Forces (SPS) member Irina Khakamada will run for election to the State Duma in St. Petersburg next year, Interfax quoted SPS leader Boris Nemtsov as saying Monday.
 Khakamada has chosen to run in the 209th electorate that was once represented by democrat Galina Starovoitova, who was murdered in Nov. 1998. In 1999, former prime minister Sergei Stepashin was elected, but no one has represented the electorate since he became Audit Chamber head in April 2000.
 "We can't surrender this electorate to some inappropriate political force; that would be forgetting Starovoitova's legacy," Nemtsov said.
 
 
<b>Imperial Bird To Return
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The two-headed Imperial Eagle will decorate the cast-iron gates on a new entrance to the State Hermitage Museum during the 300th-anniversary celebrations next year, Interfax on Monday quoted the director of the museum complex as saying.
 Mikhail Piotrovsky said that, during the celebrations, the Hermitage and its art collection will be open 24 hours a day at no charge, the report said.
 One highlight of the season will be a display of the personal belongings of the city's founder, Peter the Great, the report said. 
 
 
<b>Dec. 8 Novgorod Poll
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Elections for a new mayor for Novgorod will be held Dec. 8, Interfax on Monday quoted an unnamed source in the Novgorod Legislative Assembly as saying.
 The elections are being held after the death in a road accident of Mayor Alexander Korsunov on Sept. 8.
 The elections will be the first held under a new Novgorod Oblast law that requires at least 20 percent of voters to participate for an election to be valid, the report said.
 
 
<b>Visas 'Preferable'
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - Finnish President Tarja Halonen said Monday he does not support proposals to change the visa regime between Russia and the European Union, Interfax reported. 
 "I personally prefer a visa regime," he said in an interview published in Novaya Gazeta. "This piece of paper helps us control the border effectively. I see no need for radical reforms, for which we are not really ready."
 Halonen was commenting after President Vladimir Putin suggested that the EU and Russia waive visa requirements for travel between each other. Putin's initiative was partly in response to concerns that Russians may be required to get visas when traveling between Kaliningrad and the rest of the country after Lithuania and Poland join the EU in 2004.
 
 
<b>Kursk Investigation
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A lawyer for the families of sailors who died in the nuclear submarine Kursk when it sank more than two years ago says a criminal case could be opened into the deaths of those who survived explosions, Interfax reported.
 According to the official explanation, a torpedo exploded in the bow of the submarine, which then sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea. A second, much larger explosion killed most of the sailors, but a handful survived in the submarine for a period of time that is disputed.
 Lawyer Boris Kuznetsov, who represents families living in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, said Saturday that, if they survived at least two days, then other Navy staff could be guilty of letting them die, Interfax reported. 



TITLE: Avtovaz Opens New Car Production Line
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOGLIATTI, Russia - General Motors Corp. and Russia's largest automaker, Avtovaz, on Monday opened a new plant that is slated to make 75,000 sports utility vehicles a year in one of the largest and most ambitious joint ventures in post-Soviet Russia.
 
&quot;We want to see the Togliatti plant produce high-quality vehicles and become as efficient as any GM facility in the world,&quot; GM chairperson John F. Smith said, as he unveiled the new production facility at the giant Avtovaz plant in Togliatti, about 950 kilometers southeast of Moscow.
 Under the $338-million deal to manufacture Chevy Nivas, Avtovaz provided facilities, equipment and know-how, while GM contributed mostly cash and some equipment. 
 GM and Avtovaz each get a 41.5-percent stake in the joint venture, worth $99.1 million apiece, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development owns the remaining 17 percent of stock, worth $40 million. The bank is providing $100 million more in loans.
 In line with Russian tradition, an Orthodox Christian priest sprinkled holy water on the production line and chanted prayers before the first Chevy Niva rolled off the assembly line Monday.
 Russia's auto industry has long been clamoring for foreign investment to help modernize its aging equipment and develop new products to replace designs dating back several decades.
 But Russia's struggling economy, legislation that provides little protection for investor rights, weak court system and rampant corruption have scared off investors. 
 Until recently, Russia had only a few small-scale projects for the local assembly of foreign-made cars. Some Western automakers have spent years in strenuous but so far fruitless talks for bigger projects.
 One exception came in July, when Ford Motor Co. launched a $450-million plant in Vsevolozhsk, near St. Petersburg, to produce the Ford Focus for the Russian market. The plant, which has begun limited production, has a capacity of 25,000 cars a year.
 In contrast, the new Chevy Niva is a Russian-designed product. It will be sold at Avtovaz dealerships in Russia and GM dealerships abroad. There are plans to export the vehicle to Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. No exports are planned to the United States or Canada.
 The Chevy Niva will cost about $8,000 in Russia, while the export version, quieter and powered with European engines, will cost significantly more. Engineers from Opel, GM's German subsidiary, have helped Avtovaz refine the initial prototype.
 Many Western automakers have hungrily looked to Russia, one of the few countries in the world with annual car sales exceeding 1 million vehicles.
 &quot;We believe that Russia is one of the six most promising emerging world markets for auto vehicles,&quot; Smith said at the opening ceremony, adding at a later news conference that the country was seen as &quot;one of the greatest growth markets for the next 10 to 20 years.&quot;
 However, their expansion efforts have been thwarted by the minimal purchasing power in Russia, a country where the average monthly wage is about $100.
 Only about 55,000 of the new cars sold in Russia last year were imported, and the rest of the market was divided between old-fashioned Russian-made vehicles, with prices starting at a mere $3,000, and imported used cars. Sales of Avtovaz cars have accounted for about 70 percent of the market.
 The Russian cabinet recently decided to double import duties for foreign cars older than seven years, which have been competing increasingly successfully with old-fashioned Avtovaz models.
 The huge Avtovaz plant was built in the late 1960s with Italian equipment and know-how in the purpose-built town of Togliatti, named after an Italian Communist leader, which was specially created to house the plant. The plant continues to produce an only slightly modified version of the Fiat-124, circa 1966. 
 The joint venture, which will employ 1,200 people, is set to reach full capacity by 2005. For the first full year of operation, it plans to produce 35,000 vehicles.
 The Russian government hopes the project will also help direct much-needed investment to the Russian auto-parts industry, which desperately needs upgrading.
 &quot;The example of the joint venture shows that it is possible to create investors' interest in the national auto industry and rely on it for further development,&quot; said Avtovaz head Vladimir Kadannikov.
 GM's Smith said that the joint venture would generate 2,000 more jobs at the plant to make Chevy Niva components.

TITLE: Repeat of Loans for Shares in Electricity?
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Is former privatization tsar Anatoly Chubais doing it again?
 
Is he orchestrating, like he did in the loans-for-shares scandal in 1995 and 1996, the looting of coveted assets for the benefit of a handful of powerful industrial groups at the expense of the government - and this time 500,000 Unified Energy Systems shareholders as well?
 The evidence suggests that the answer is yes, and a growing number of critics are calling for the electricity monopoly chief to be reined in.
 One need only look at the numbers, President Vladimir Putin's top economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, told the World Economic Forum's European summit in Salzburg, Austria, this week.
 Since last summer, when Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov signed a largely Chubais-inspired government decree on reforming 52-percent state-owned UES, &quot;the government has lost close to $4 billion in assets [due to] complete mismanagement,&quot; he said. &quot;The developments show that I was right and Chubais was wrong.&quot;
 Indeed, increasing anxiety over Chubais' handling of the company have dragged down the power grid's share price 60 percent since the start of the year, erasing nearly $2 billion in market capitalization. UES shares lost 5 percent of their value Wednesday and another 3 percent Thursday to close at a 52-week low of 76 cents.
 Compounding the panic is Chubais' reluctance to assuage investors' fears. He has made few public remarks about the share plunge and reportedly doesn't plan to do so until the issue is addressed by the UES board of directors at its monthly meeting on Thursday.
 In the meantime, Illarionov and others are turning up the heat. At an investment forum in Irkutsk on Thursday, Illarionov called for Chubais to quit.
 &quot;In any other country, the management of a company that proved itself similarly inefficient would resign the day after results were tallied,&quot; he was quoted by news agencies as saying. The way UES is being run is a &quot;disgrace for the country ... It is a great misfortune and a threat to national interests.&quot;
 Illarionov's sentiments are echoed in a new research paper by Hermitage Capital Management, which is thought to control between 1 percent and 2 percent of UES.
 In its report, which was issued this week, Hermitage urged the government to freeze the reform process immediately to keep Chubais from inflicting more damage on the nation's economy.
 Hermitage accused Chubais of circumventing government resolutions and pursuing a personal agenda that is reckless and costly to all shareholders but beneficial to insiders and major financial-industrial groups like Russian Aluminum and Yukos.
 The author of the report, Hermitage CEO Bill Browder, noted that Chubais has already proposed several deals to UES's board that would let major industrial groups snap up electricity assets for a fraction of their worth, indicating the former deputy prime minister has no intention of following the government restructuring plan.
 &quot;So, our estimate is that if he carries on doing this, he is going to force the government and shareholders to give away assets at an 86 percent to 99 percent discount to comparable Western companies,&quot; Browder said. &quot;That could work out to a future loss to shareholders in the tens of billions of dollars.&quot;
 If the numbers seem high, just look at Chubais's track record in the loans-for-shares scheme - he orchestrated a plan through which the government sold assets that are now worth more than $25 billion for just $1.2 billion, Browder said.
 And now he is doing it again, he said.
 In the past few months, Chubais proposed a number of preliminary agreements with strategic investors who have blocking stakes in UES subsidiaries, known as energos. The agreements effectively structure the planned sale of the energos' assets in a way that makes the current strategic shareholder the most likely winner, while UES, in exchange, receives support for its restructuring of the particular energo. Strategic investors have already accumulated blocking stakes in 16 energos, according to Vedomosti.
 Under the title &quot;Chubais' Mission: Giving Assets Away,&quot; Hermitage identifies various ways major assets will be stripped - in violation of a government decree - if the agreements go ahead.
 Hermitage concluded that Chubais isn't worried about the company's depressed share price because &quot;meager valuations only help him sell assets cheaper.&quot;
 &quot;Similar types of problems existed in the other countries like America and Brazil. For example, when AT&amp;T was broken up, they didn't let the CEO sell Bell South to some of the good-ole-boys down in Atlanta,&quot; said Browder. &quot;Selling assets makes no sense for UES, no sense for the government, no sense for the 500,000 shareholders and most importantly no sense for the citizens of Russia.&quot;
 &quot;Only in Russia can a hired manager like Chubais be allowed to direct reforms of such importance,&quot; said Viktor Kudryavy, vice president of the Russian Union of Producers and a former deputy energy minister and UES board member.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Czech Tractors
 </b>

The Titran transport and machine-building plant in Tikhvin, 200 kilometers east of St. Petersburg, has signed an agreement with the Czech company Alta to overhaul its facilities, the Leningrad Oblast press service reported. The work on the facilities will be carried out in 2004 and Alta, together with a group of Czech banks, will provide Titran with a $30-million credit line.
 It is planned that the works will allow Titran to produce modern tractors and road-building equipment. The total cost of the reconstruction program is estimated at $140 million.
 
 
<b>Ring-road Loan 
 </b>

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has confirmed a $229-million loan for the completion of the eastern section of the St. Petersburg ring-road and a 143-kilometer section of the main transcontinental route between Chita and Khabarovsk in the Far East Region.
 The loan agreement was signed in London by the Russian ambassador Grigory Karasin and EBRD President Jean Lemierre on Thursday. The 15-year loan, the Bank's first to the Russian roads sector, will help Russia build its first road link to the Far East and complete a by-pass allowing trucks to avoid the center of St. Petersburg on when traveling between Moscow and the Finnish border, Lemierre said. 
 
 
<b>New Dockyard
 </b>

Lodeinoe Pole, a town with 30,000 inhabitants in the Leningrad Oblast, 240 kilometers east of St. Petersburg, celebrated its 300th anniversary this town and the town's administration unveiled plans to rebuild its dockyard at a cost of over $1.5 million. 
 Peter the Great founded the Olonetsk dockyard, on the site where Lodeinoe Pole now stands, in 1702. 
 The administration's plans include the building of a hotel.
 
 
<b>Grain Quotas
 </b>

MOSCOW - Russia threatened on Thursday to retaliate against proposed European Union grain-import quotas and duties with tit-for-tat tariffs targeted against EU meat producers.
 "I think we should implement customs and tariff measures on meat ... imports," Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev told a news conference.
 In a bid to stem a tide of cheap Russian and Ukrainian wheat from entering the EU and undercutting internal prices, the European Commission has proposed worldwide-tariff quotas at reduced rates of duty - a response to repeated requests from producers for protection against Black Sea imports.
 The proposed quota covering soft and durum wheat would allow in 2.3 million metric tons with duties of 42 euros and 17 euros a ton, respectively. 



TITLE: U.S. Interest-Rate Cure Turns Into a Malady
AUTHOR: By David Friedman
TEXT: AS midterm elections approach in the U.S., a volatile stock market and sluggish recovery have made many a politician long for the economic policies of former president Bill Clinton. In 1993, the federal government imposed stiff tax increases to reduce budget deficits so interest rates would fall. Soon afterward, there was a boom. Today, the red ink is flowing again in the public sector, and there's talk of aborting the next phases of the administration of President George W. Bush's tax cut to keep interest rates low and trigger another economic miracle.
 
But Americans' investment strategies have changed in recent years, and that transformation has altered how interest rates affect government finance. In the mid-to-late 1990s, low rates stimulated investments that ultimately produced a bonanza for government coffers. Today, savvy investors are using them in ways that are starving the government.
 Then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was the chief driving force behind the 1993 tax hikes. He believed that government borrowing was sapping the country's economic vitality by keeping interest rates too high. Money that could be invested in stocks, business start-ups or other wealth-creating activities was instead parked in high-yield CDs or Treasury bonds. If taxes were raised, Rubin contended, interest rates would fall and people would make more productive investments.
 It's hard to know if Rubin was right. Interest rates were dropping before Clinton became president, and they only exhibited a sustained decline after 1997, when the Asian financial crisis forced the Federal Reserve to ease monetary policy to keep the world economy afloat. But there's no denying that hundreds of billions of dollars moved out of savings and retirement accounts into stocks after the tax increases. Venture capital became plentiful. Stock-driven earnings boosted high-end executive incomes and produced huge tax windfalls. Public budgets that had long bled red ink were in balance. The United States was suddenly blessed with what many thought was endless prosperity.
 But Rubin's economic strategy can't save us today, for many reasons. The U.S. trade deficit, which also affects borrowing rates, is incomparably larger today than in the early 1990s. Oil and other import-commodity prices are far more volatile. U.S. manufacturing was expanding in 1993, not declining at the most rapid pace in a century, as it is today. And the post-Cold War euphoria that enabled Congress to cut billions from defense and further shore up the federal budget, evaporated after Sept. 11.
 Indeed, with interest rates already near historic lows, it's difficult to believe that cheap money is our most pressing economic problem. And the idea that tax increases are needed to drive borrowing rates even lower is especially risky when consumer spending is generally cited as the main reason why the country has, so far, avoided a double-dip recession. Why pinch America's pocketbooks at such a crucial time in the hope of nudging remarkably low rates downward a few more ticks?
 But even if, against all evidence to the contrary, mounting government deficits are keeping interest rates too high, the public's response to lower rates is quite different today. During the 1990s, a combination of low savings yields, media hype and an unprecedented comity between Washington and Wall Street transfixed investors with the seemingly limitless prospects of the &quot;new&quot; economy. Everyone invested in stocks and largely ignored other investments, like real estate.
 When the stock market collapsed, resourceful investors transferred their attention to more tangible assets, particularly tax-subsidized residential real estate. Put another way, they abandoned the kinds of investments that produced windfall income gains and increased tax revenues. Exploiting home-refinancing opportunities, higher-income, high-tax-paying Americans, in particular, now manage their wealth in ways that dramatically reduce government income.
 During the last two years, for example, about $4 trillion in new home mortgages was financed in the United States, an all-time record volume. More than half of these transactions were refinancings - a higher-interest loan was replaced by one with a lower rate - unrelated to buying a new home. This, too, is a very high ratio. By contrast, refinancings accounted for just about 30 percent of all new mortgages from 1994 to 2000.
 More important still, more than 60 percent of the most recent refinancing activity - or, roughly, loans totaling $2.4 trillion - were &quot;cash out&quot; transactions. Borrowers retired their old loans and secured tens of thousands of dollars to spend as they wished. All this extra cash was financed with tax-deductible real-estate mortgages.
 This financial pattern represents the greatest difference between today's economy and that of the 1990s. In the heyday of the boom, people financed their consumption by selling what were often wildly appreciated paper assets, and they paid correspondingly enormous taxes on their earnings. Since stock-price speculation was so extreme, consumers, in most cases, had more than enough money left over for cars, vacations or fancy furniture even after paying the government.
 Today, Americans are generating disposable income by refinancing homes, cashing out their equity and charging the interest on their new mortgages against their taxes. Refinancing old loans, even at lower rates, generates a larger proportion of currently deductible mortgage interest with each new loan payment. Cash-out transactions add hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax-deductible interest on top of these amounts. All this is generating billions of dollars of new tax deductions that are further straining public budgets.
 It seems folly to argue that tax hikes, or canceled tax cuts, are critical to assure lower interest rates, particularly if they stimulate even greater tax-avoidance borrowing. People are looking for safe ways to build and spend wealth. Tax-subsidized real-estate financing has clearly emerged as their strategy of choice. And with each dollar of increased borrowing, they draw funds from increasingly challenged public budgets. That's one reason why Federal Reserve Chairperson Alan Greenspan called for more discipline in public spending - not new taxes - during his congressional testimony last week.
 There is no quick-fix tax and interest-rate panacea for America's current economic challenges. In any case, it seems especially inappropriate to look to one of the most profligate decades of U.S. history for guidance. Instead, we have no choice but to rebuild our now-declining productive economy and encourage steady, rational savings and investment.
 
 <i>
David Friedman is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He contributed this comment to The Los Angeles Times. </i>

TITLE: Election in Nizhny Novgorod is a Filthy Business
TEXT: VOTERS went to the polls in Nizhny Novgorod this month to elect their next mayor. But, with front-runner Andrei Klimentyev struck from the ballot the day before for campaign-finance violations, the city's voters resembled steak lovers in a vegetarian restaurant. As a result, only 29 percent of eligible voters turned out, barely enough for the election to be valid. And nearly one-third cast their ballots for &quot;none of the above.&quot;
 
The campaign in Nizhny Novgorod literally wreaked havoc on the city. In the run-up to the election, the city's hot water supply broke down, leading to a 75-percent rise in new hepatitis cases. In Nizhny Novgorod's historical city center, whole blocks were destroyed by fire. And the city's sewer system was hooked up directly to the mass media.
 That was probably a fortuitous move because, if all the muck and mud slung around Nizhny before the election had flowed into the Volga instead of the airwaves, the city would have been washed away.
 Despite what you might expect, Klimentyev - whose nickname is <i>Pryshch</i>, or &quot;Pimple&quot; - was not the main muck-raker. That distinction belonged to two other candidates: State Duma Deputy Vadim Bulavinov, backed by Sergei Kiriyenko, presidential envoy to the Volga Federal District; and Mayor Yury Lebedev, backed by entrepreneur Dmitry Savelyev. Lebedev and Bulavinov finished one-two in the first round, with Bulavinov edging out &quot;none of the above&quot; by just one half of 1 percent.
 The real story of the election was the war of words between Kiriyenko and Savelyev, former partners who have since become arch-enemies. They accused one another of everything under the sun, from the lack of hot water to the fires in the center of the city.
 The highlight of the campaign was a videotape of Bulavinov, broadcast by a television station belonging to Savelyev. The tape shows Bulavinov soliciting money from a local criminal. Five minutes before Bulavinov's arrival, that same criminal had said that, if Klimentyev were to win the election, he would be assassinated by order of the Kremlin.
 In the end, the citizens of Nizhny Novgord turned on both candidates, and Klimentyev, convicted in 1998 on charges of bribery, forgery and embezzlement, emerged as the front-runner. All of this shows that if those in power are going to behave like the Sheriff of Nottingham, the people will vote for Robin Hood.
 Robin Hood, a.k.a. Pimple, stood out from the establishment candidates because he didn't drag anyone through the mud. He simply promised - as set forth in his campaign program - to pay city workers 10,000 rubles ($316) a month and to give young families apartments costing $120 per square meter. In Russian politics, this is known as a populist election campaign.
 Klimentyev was already elected mayor of Nizhny Novgorod four years ago. However, the election was declared invalid, and Pimple was sent to prison.
 This mayoral election could turn into a real headache for Kiriyenko. Presidential envoys were created by Vladimir Putin with one goal in mind: to control the gubernatorial elections. To date, his envoys haven't had much success.
 In October 2000, the sitting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Rutskoi, was removed from the ballot. The idea was that bumping Rutskoi would hand the election to the presidential envoy's hand-picked candidate, FSB General Viktor Surzhikov. A Communist, Alexander Mikhailov, won instead. Last June, Viktor Cherepkov was thrown out of the governor's race in the Primorye region. The presidential envoy's man, Gennady Apanasenko, proceeded to lose to entrepreneur Sergei Darkin.
 President Vladimir Putin's envoys are basically matchmakers. They are meant to find suitable matches for the voters and, like a good father, to get the voters to the altar. But instead of the altar, the voters get done outside in the bushes.
 
 <i>
Yulia Latynina is author and host of &quot;Yest Mneniye&quot; (&quot;Some Believe&quot;) on TVS. </i>

TITLE: Powell's Peacekeeping Role
AUTHOR: By Nicholas Berry
TEXT: SADDAM Hussein agreed to the return of United Nations weapons inspectors &quot;without conditions.&quot; The Iraqi dictator has U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to thank for leading him to adopt a strategic move that has baffled Powell's own president and stymied a U.S. attack. The reason for Iraq's decision, given by its Foreign Minister Naji Sabri in his Sept. 16 letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (&quot;to remove any doubts that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction&quot;), is nonsense. We must look to Powell's actions to understand why Hussein did what he did.


TITLE: Russia Must Be More Responsible
AUTHOR: By Grigory Yavlinsky
TEXT: RUSSIAN military strikes on Georgia are inadmissible. The questionable gains of a military operation are completely outweighed by the political damage that Russia would incur both at home and internationally if it spreads the war in Chechnya to the neighboring independent state of Georgia. For 200 years, we lived together in a single state, including 70 years under the Soviet regime. The consequences of such a move would be destructive for both countries.
 
Moreover, the situation in the Pankisi Gorge is not key to ending the war in Chechnya. There are many more rebel fighters and terrorists in and around Chechnya itself than in Pankisi. Georgia is far from being the main conduit for rebels, terrorists, mercenaries, weapons and money to enter Chechnya. Furthermore, Chechnya gave rise to the &quot;Pankisi factor&quot; - not the other way around.
 The military, by proposing strikes to President Vladimir Putin, is trying to conceal from the president its inability to deal with the task at hand in Chechnya; talk of strikes is also being used as a ruse to divert public attention. This could well prove to be a costly escapade.
 Certain forces in Georgia are undoubtedly providing political support to active adversaries of Russia's constitutional order. Some Chechen fighters have illegally crossed over onto Georgian territory. Instead of prosecuting them, Tbilisi has been giving them a free hand and using them for political purposes.
 Chechen insurgents in Georgia should be disarmed, and terrorists neutralized and tried. This is the political cooperation on which the leaderships of Russia and Georgia should focus. Russia can and should bring pressure to bear on Georgia to use its law enforcement agencies to this end. But this is not an issue of armed conflict between sovereign two states.
 Indeed, Russia's myopic, irresponsible interventions in Abkhazia, Adzharia and South Ossetia have been futile and dangerous. In response to the Russian elite's penchant for indulging separatist aspirations, Tbilisi considers it acceptable to give political cover to Chechen terrorists. Counting on international backing, Tbilisi is mistakenly serving up a &quot;symmetrical response&quot; to Russia and, as a result, is simply repeating Russia's mistakes.
 Russia's military might is incomparably greater than that of its neighbors. For this reason, it is incumbent upon Russia to show more responsibility in regional matters.
 Putin should reach an agreement with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. And after that, the relevant law enforcement agencies in Russia and Georgia should be left to do their jobs. And that's it.
 
 <i>Yabloko party leader Grigory Yavlinsky contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Missing Nukes Are Not Really A Bombshell
TEXT: WASHINGTON - It is easy to forget that the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal once belonged to little Ukraine. 
 
Kiev made history when it renounced its mini-superpower status in a three-way deal brokered with Russia and the United States. In the summer of 1996, top military officials from those three countries marked the departure of the last warhead by planting sunflower seeds at a Ukrainian missile base. Overnight, the sunflower - emblem of Ukraine's willingness to give up the bomb - became the leading symbol of global movements for nuclear disarmament. 
 Now, Petro Symonenko, the Ukrainian Communist Party chief, insists the sunflower photo-op was a farce. He says a parliamentary investigation a few years ago determined that 200 warheads Ukraine had pledged to deliver to Russia for dismantling never arrived - at least according to the paperwork.
 &quot;Two hundred Soviet Army nuclear warheads that were located in Ukraine are now located no-one-knows-where,&quot; Symonenko said recently. 
 The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has denied the allegation. U.S. and Ukrainian arms control experts have also expressed surprise. 
 &quot;My initial reaction is one of skepticism,&quot; said Jon Wolfstahl, of the Carnegie Endowment's Nuclear Non-Proliferation Project. &quot;The process by which nuclear weapons went from Ukraine to Russia was a very tightly controlled one, where the United States acted as an honest broker of sorts. All information that the U.S. government has ... says the weapons are accounted for.&quot; 
 Oleksandr Sushko, director of Ukraine's Center for Peace, Conversion and Foreign Policy, dismissed Symonenko's bombshell as &quot;political speculation.&quot; 
 The political context is certainly important to bear in mind. Thousands of street protesters have been demanding the resignation of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who has been compellingly implicated in corruption and in the murder (and beheading) of an opposition journalist. (Kuchma's government has admitted that it is the president's voice on a tape recording in which he seems to be ordering the journalist's death, though it says the tape itself has been doctored.) 
 Investigators from the U.S. Justice Department are also investigating a tape in which Kuchma seems to be giving permission for Ukraine to sell four radar systems for detecting Stealth fighter jets to Saddam Hussein. Opposition figures in Ukraine say Kuchma himself has overseen the sale of other (as-yet-unspecified) military hardware to Iraq. 
 Some U.S. observers ask if this means Hussein has 200 Ukrainian nuclear warheads. Not likely. It is far more probable that Kuchma's opposition is angling for terrified and angry international headlines - the kind designed to put the Ukrainian president in the camp of the international villain of the hour. 
 So, dismiss Symonenko's missing warheads as a politically motivated hoax. But remember that the story of Ukraine's missing 200 nuclear bombs is so sobering precisely because, like any good hoax, it is a plausible fit with some harsh realities: The world is awash in weapons-grade nuclear materials, more such material is being created by the hour and very little of effect is being done - indeed, very little can be done, short of renouncing nuclear power and closing reactors worldwide - to secure it all. 
 
 <i>Matt Bivens, a former editor of The St. Petersburg Times, is a fellow with The Nation Institute. [www.thenation.com] </i>

TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: <b>Dark Passage</b>
Not since <i>Mein Kampf </i>has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed, years ahead of the blow.
 
Adolf Hitler clearly spelled out his plans to destroy the Jews and launch wars of conquest to secure German domination of world affairs in his 1925 book, long before he ever assumed power. Despite the zig-zags of rhetoric he later employed, the various PR spins and temporary justifications offered for this or that particular policy, any attentive reader of his vile regurgitation could have divined his intentions as he drove his country - and the world - to murderous upheaval.
 Similarly - in method, if not entirely in substance - the Bush Regime's foreign policy is also being carried out according to a strict blueprint written years ago, then renewed a few months before the Regime was installed in power by the judicial coup of December 2000.
 The first version, mentioned in passing here last week, was drafted by a team operating under then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. It set out a new doctrine for U.S. power in the 21st century, an aggressive, unilateral approach to secure American domination of world affairs - &quot;by force if necessary,&quot; as one of the acolytes put it.
 When the Dominators were temporarily ousted from government after 1992, they continued their strategic planning with funding from the military-energy-security apparatus and right-wing foundations. This culminated in a new group, the aptly-named Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Members included hard-right players like Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad (now &quot;special envoy&quot; to the satrapy of Afghanistan) and other empire aspirants currently perched in the upper reaches of government power.
 In September 2000, PNAC updated the original Cheney plan in a published report, &quot;Strengthening America's Defenses.&quot; In this and related documents, the earlier precepts were reiterated and refined. The plans called for unprecedented hikes in military spending, the plantation of American bases in Central Asia and the Middle East, the toppling of recalcitrant regimes, the militarization of outer space, the abrogation of international treaties, the willingness to use nuclear weapons and control of the world's energy resources.
 And the present course of action was clearly set forth: &quot;The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.&quot;
 But Iraq is just a stepping stone. Iran is next - indeed, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the PNAC team say that Iran is &quot;perhaps a far greater threat&quot; to U.S. oil hegemony. Other nations will follow, including Russia and China. In one way or another - by military means or economic dominance, by conquest, alliance or silent acquiescence - they must all be brought to heel, forcibly prevented from &quot;challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.&quot;
 These texts spring from the Dominators' quasi-religious cult of &quot;American exceptionalism,&quot; the belief in the unique and utter goodness of the American soul - embodied chiefly by the nation's moneyed elite, of course - and the irredeemable, metaphysical evil of all those who would oppose or criticize the elite's righteous (and conveniently self-serving) policies.
 Anyone still &quot;puzzled&quot; over the Bush Regime's behavior need only look to these documents for enlightenment. They have long been available to the media - which accepted Bush's transparent campaign lies about a &quot;more humble foreign policy&quot; at face value - but have only now started attracting wider notice, in the New Yorker this spring, and this week in the Glasgow Sunday Herald.
 The documents explain America's relentless march across Afghanistan, Central Asia and soon into the Middle East. They explain the Bush Regime's otherwise unfathomable rejection of international law, its fanatical devotion to so-called &quot;missile defense,&quot; its gargantuan increases in military spending - even its antediluvian energy policy, which mandates the continued primacy of oil and gas in the world economy. (They can't conquer the sun or monopolize the wind, so there's no profit, no leverage for personal gain and geopolitical power in pursuing viable alternatives to oil.) The Sept. 11 attacks gave the Regime a pretext for greatly accelerating this published program of global dominance, but they would have pursued it in any case.
 So there will be war: either soon, after the November mid-term elections, or - in the unlikely event that Iraq's offer of inspections is accepted - then later, after some &quot;provocation&quot; or &quot;obstruction,&quot; no doubt in good time before the 2004 presidential vote. The purse-lipped rhetoric about &quot;evil&quot; and &quot;moral clarity&quot; is just so much desert sand being thrown in our eyes. Backstage, the Bush Regime is playing Mafia-style hardball, warning reluctant allies to get on board now, or else miss out on their cut of the loot when America - not a &quot;democratic Iraq&quot; - divvies up Saddam's oilfields: a shakedown detailed last week by the Economist, among many others.
 The Dominators dream of empire. Not only will it extend their temporal power, they believe it will also give them immortality. Indeed, their chief guru, Reaganite firebreather Richard Perle, says that if the Dominators reject &quot;clever diplomacy&quot; and &quot;just wage total war&quot; to subjugate the Middle East, &quot;our children will sing great songs about us years from now.&quot; This madness, this bin Laden-like megalomania is now driving the hijacked American republic - and the world - to murderous upheaval.
 It's all there in the text, set down in black and white.
 Read it and weep.
 
 <i>
For annotational references, check &quot;Opinion&quot; at www.sptimesrussia.com </i>

TITLE: Rebellion Heading Toward Face-Off
AUTHOR: By Clar Ni Chonghaile
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Rebels boasted of their firepower, government troops crept up on them for an attack, and French soldiers rolled into the countryside to protect foreigners, as Ivory Coast geared up for a showdown in its bloodiest-ever uprising.
 
Frightened residents in two cities controlled by the rebels waited Monday for the assault threatened for days by the government against the insurgents. Military sources claimed government troops have surrounded one of the cities, Bouake, slipping into position unnoticed.
 With fears of new fighting high, the uprising was also opening up deadly rivalries between the mainly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south, in a country that was once an oasis of stability in a region scarred by some of Africa's most brutal wars.
 The rebel soldiers early Monday remained in control of Bouake, the second-largest city in this former French colony, and of Korhogo, an opposition stronghold in the north. Civilians in predominately Muslim Bouake marched by the thousands in a show of support for the rebels Sunday.
 &quot;We are armed to the teeth, and there is no going back,&quot; a rebel commander, known by the <i>nom de guerre </i>Samsara 110, declared, speaking from Korhogo.
 He claimed insurgents had 1,000 rebels in Bouake, 780 in Korhogo and more hiding in Ivory Coast's commercial capital, Abidjan, ready for action.
 Among the half-million anxious residents of Bouake were around 100 American children, ranging in age from infants to 12-year-old schoolchildren, who attend a boarding school in the city. The children are the sons and daughters of missionaries working across West Africa.
 The insurgents apparently include a core group of 700 to 800 ex-soldiers angry over their recent purge from the army for suspected disloyalty. The attempt to oust President Laurent Gbagbo, which began Thursday, cost at least 270 lives in the first days alone and injured around 300.
 A French convoy rolled out of Abidjan Sunday night, heading toward the capital, Yamoussoukro, 240 kilometers to the north.
 A French military spokesman said the troops aimed to assure the security of French nationals and other internationals, trapped in Bouake, 95 kilometers further north.
 Earlier Sunday, French transport helicopters and a reported 100 extra French troops landed in Abidjan, reinforcing approximately 600 troops already there.
 In Abidjan, the Red Cross and other international organizations sought shelter for what it said were 3,871 people displaced by the coup violence.

TITLE: Officials Meet To Discuss Arafat HQ Siege
AUTHOR: By Jamie Tarabay
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RAMALLAH, West Bank - For the first time in the five-day siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's office, Israeli and Palestinian officials met Monday to try to end the standoff, and Israel later eased Arafat's isolation by allowing a Palestinian cabinet minister to brief him on the negotiations.
 
Under growing criticism from the United States for the assault, Israel overnight halted its demolition of Arafat's command compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah. But it maintained its siege around the sole building still standing, the Palestinian leader's office building.
 Palestinian protests and international criticism intensified. Palestinians observed a commercial strike Monday in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Palestinian leaders appealed to the Arab world for help.
 The United Nations Security Council was to convene Monday to discuss the operation. European and Arab states demanded flatly that Israel end the siege, which it launched after a suicide bomber on Thursday killed himself and six others in Tel Aviv.
 The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurtzer, met with Ariel Sharon at the Israeli prime minister's sheep farm over the weekend. Kurtzer told Sharon the assault on Arafat's compound is disrupting preparations for a possible attack on Iraq and is liable to disrupt internal reforms in the Palestinian Authority, media reports said.
 Publicly, the United States said the Israeli operation was not helpful to efforts to fight terrorism.
 Israel's cabinet secretary, Gideon Saar, said the United States &quot;understands Israel's right to self-defense ... On the other hand they have concerns and this is natural.&quot;
 Israel says it will not withdraw until dozens of Palestinian security officials holed up inside surrender. Israel says some of the men are suspected of involvement in terror attacks. Arafat has said he will not hand over any member of his entourage. Responsibility for Thursday's suicide bombing was claimed by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
 Israeli military officials met Monday with Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat at the Beit El military base north of Ramallah, Palestinian officials said.
 Erekat later briefed Arafat, becoming the first visitor to the beleaguered leader since the siege was launched. Arafat is confined to four rooms in the building, along with about 200 aides and security officials. The building is surrounded by three layers of barbed wire and partially by a trench.
 Israel insists that Arafat is not a target of the assault, but demands the surrender of everyone inside his office. Dore Gold, an adviser to Sharon, said 38 Palestinians had turned themselves in, and &quot;most of them&quot; were released.
 Sharon spokesperson Raanan Gissin said terrorists were hiding inside. &quot;As long as they are not put on trial before their Maker or before a judge, we will not end the siege,&quot; he said.
 At first, Israel had demanded surrender of about 20 suspected militants, including the Palestinian intelligence chief, Tawfik Tirawi.
 But Arafat was standing firm and would not agree to hand over any militants, said Palestinian legislative council member Hatem Abdel Khader who spoke to him by phone on Sunday. &quot;I will not kneel before Sharon, or will raise a white flag to Sharon,&quot; Arafat said, according to Abdel Khader.
 Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh, speaking by telephone from the surrounded building, said the Security Council must act. &quot;This is a dangerous and unacceptable situation,&quot; he said.
 After days of flattening building after building, Israeli military bulldozers pulled out of the city-block-sized compound after nightfall Sunday, the army said.
 But witnesses said early Monday that one bulldozer could be seen moving wrecked cars and rubble around at the compound.
 Water and electricity in the office building were cut for several hours Sunday. Palestinians interpreted this as pressure on Arafat. The Israeli military said the lines were cut by accident as huge bulldozers leveled structures there. Later, the lines were repaired, the military said.
 In a statement, the Palestinian parliament called on Palestinians to &quot;show their willingness to resist this escalation,&quot; warning that Israel's operation might lead to a regional explosion and blaming both Israel and its ally, the United States.
 Near Arafat's compound, a few hundred Palestinians demonstrated Sunday against the curfew imposed by the Israeli army on Ramallah and four other Palestinian towns. As soldiers using loudspeakers ordered them off the streets, the demonstrators chanted back, &quot;No more curfew!&quot;
 Earlier Sunday, four Palestinians were killed during confrontations between demonstrators and soldiers. A fifth, a 13-year-old boy, was shot dead by troops without provocation, a British activist who witnessed the killing said Monday. The army had no immediate comment.
 In Gaza City, thousands marched in front of the Palestinian parliament building. Holding an automatic rifle, Abu Mohammed, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militia, linked to Arafat's Fatah, said, &quot;It is time for all Palestinians to teach the Israelis a lesson and defend Arafat.&quot;
 Israelis were divided over the operation. Some hardline cabinet ministers urged Sharon to expel Arafat. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told CNN that, in an emergency session after the suicide bombing, Israel's cabinet considered expelling Arafat.
 &quot;We don't want to expel him, we don't want to kill him, we don't want to hurt him,&quot; Peres said. &quot;There was a vote in the government. The majority of the government decided against expulsion.&quot;
 Critics charged that the operation was counterproductive.
 The demonstrations were evidence that contrary to the Israeli intention of isolating Arafat and neutralizing him, the assault boosted his sagging prestige, said Israeli analyst Danny Rubinstein.

TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: <b>Al-Qaida Arrests
 </b>

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani and U.S. agents have arrested two suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist group in a raid in the northwestern city of Peshawar, official sources said Monday.
 The suspects, identified as Saeed, a Pakistani national, and Mohammad Din, an Afghan, were arrested in a joint operation by Pakistan's Crime Investigation Department and U.S. FBI agents Sunday evening.
 "A computer and some data were found in their possession," a senior government official told Reuters.
 Hundreds of al-Qaida militants and their Taliban allies are believed to have crossed into Pakistan after U.S.-led forces began pursuing them in Afghanistan last year.
 
 
<b>Rebels Killed
 </b>

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) - Nepalese government troops killed at least 76 Maoist rebels in a sweeping operation across the Himalayan kingdom, a Defense Ministry official said Monday.
 Most of the casualties occurred in the Rukum region, 400 kilometers west of the capital, Katmandu, where 55 rebels and one soldier died in the fighting, according to a ministry spokesperson.
 In neighboring Rolpa, another 14 guerrillas were killed, while the remaining seven were killed in different parts of the kingdom.
 The guerrillas have been fighting since 1996 to overthrow Nepal's constitutional monarchy and impose communist rule based on the tenets of Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. More than 5,000 people have been killed.
 There has been an upsurge in violence since the government lifted a state of emergency last month to allow free campaigning ahead of parliamentary elections in November.
 Human-rights groups have been concerned about the high numbers of rebel casualties reported by the government, expressing fears that some may be civilians caught in the cross fire. The figures cannot be confirmed as the fighting takes place in remote areas.
 
 
<b>Hurricane Chaos
 </b>

MERIDA, Mexico (Reuters) - Hurricane Isidore plowed across Mexico's Yucatan peninsula Monday, forcing thousands from their homes as it flooded streets, toppled trees and power lines and shut down offshore oil rigs.
 About 70,000 people in low-lying fishing villages on the peninsula were evacuated to shelters after torrential rains flooded homes and roads, and winds of more than 190 kilometers per hour ripped off roofs and uprooted trees.
 Local radio reported four road accident deaths during the storm, and Mexico's state oil monopoly, Pemex, evacuated more than 8,000 workers from its drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
 The hurricane lost force as it churned over land Monday, with its winds decreasing to about 120 kilometers per hour, but it was expected to gain power as it drifts west and heads over the Gulf. Forecasters said that later this week it could slam into Mexico's eastern coastline or head north toward Texas.
 "Isidore could fall below hurricane strength this morning while still over land," the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Monday. "After Isidore moves back over water ... strengthening is forecast."
 Isidore is one of the strongest storms to hit the peninsula since 1988 when Hurricane Gilbert caused major damage in Cancun before heading north and killing dozens in the city of Monterrey. 



TITLE: Second Half Saves Point For Zenit
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Zenit put on a strong second-half display Monday night, overcoming a two-goal deficit to draw against Anzhi Makhachkala at the Petrovsky Stadium. 
 
Zenit, down 2-1 at halftime, piled on the pressure, forcing Anzhi to keep players behind the ball to contain the Petersburg team's onslaught.
 The home side's persistence paid off at 72 minutes, when a midfield passing move led the ball to Predrag Randjelovic, who beat Anzhi keeper Sergei Armishev tidily into the right corner.
 With the match tied, Anzhi abandoned its tight defensive play and opened up the field, pressuring Zenit keeper Vyacheslav Malafeyev with a series of attacks. Malafeyev repelled the attacks in good form, in contrast to a poor performance in the first half. 
 A near-capacity stadium watched the home team squander a number of early scoring opportunities and make mistakes, which gave the game to the visitor. Anzhi, despite a number of bookings for roughing and tripping, controlled the match even though it had trouble controlling the ball. 
 Andrei Arshavin was booked at 23 minutes, after he took down an Anzhi attacker about three meters outside the goal box. Alexander Mitrofanov arched the direct free kick into the high far corner past a flailing Malafeyev.
 Three minutes later, Malafeyev gave Anzhi its second goal. He sent a goalkick almost directly to Andrew Velichka, who stole the ball, and quickly entered into a one-on-one against the Zenit keeper. Malafeyev rushed the midfielder and took him down inside the goal box area, setting up a penalty that was easily converted by Brazilian striker Souza Villa. 
 Villa celebrated his team's early 2-0 lead by doing backflips across the field. 
 Zenit answered in the 31st minute after Arshavin was taken down by two defenders, setting up a penalty kick. 
 Alexander Spivak converted, sending the ball to the left side just inside the post past Armishev, who made a heroic but unsuccessful dive to deflect the ball.

TITLE: U.S. Takes Back Solheim Cup on Final-Day Rally
AUTHOR: By Eddie Pells
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: EDINA, Minnesota - Led by Wendy Ward's clutch performance against Annika Sorenstam, the United States came from two matches down at the start of the day to beat Europe 15 1/2 to 12 1/2 and win back the Solheim Cup on Sunday.
 
It was sweet satisfaction for the Americans, who listened to the comments of next year's European Solheim captain, Catrin Nilsmark, played over and over to them in the weeks leading up to the matches.
 Nilsmark called Laura Diaz &quot;cocky&quot; and said Cristie Kerr was &quot;a little brat.&quot; She dissed Michele Redman for having a lack of talent and said Meg Mallon's best years were behind her.
 The Americans tried to set the shuns aside but, deep down, they admitted it motivated them.
 &quot;We thought it was funny,&quot; Diaz said. &quot;We used it as a joke. We gave ourselves nicknames based on that. Everyone's entitled to their opinion.&quot;
 Ranked 56th on the LPGA money list, Ward was sent out against the world's best player, Sorenstam, and she played her even through 18 holes. She actually had a chance to win the match on No. 18, but skidded a 1-meter putt past the hole.
 It didn't matter. She halved the match, earned a half-point the Americans didn't expect, and added to a slew of wins from earlier in the day.
 &quot;I've always been very comfortable against her,&quot; said Ward, who used to play against Sorenstam in college. &quot;Today was a day where I felt the most calm. I had 100 percent confidence that I could go out and beat her.&quot;
 Wearing a white ski hat to keep away the chill, Sorenstam did the unfathomable on No. 14, missing from less than 1 meter to give Ward a brief, 1-up lead.
 That pretty much summed up the day for the Europeans - lots of chances, lots of missed putts and not enough wins.
 &quot;Mickey Mouse could have beaten me the way I putted today,&quot; said Laura Davies, who lost 3 and 2 to Mallon. &quot;And Meg Mallon is a whole lot better than Mickey Mouse, that's for sure.&quot;

TITLE: Dodgers Rally Late To Keep Postseason Hopes Just Alive
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - Mike Kinkade and the Los Angeles Dodgers waited until the end to win. Because of them, a couple of other teams will have to wait a little longer, too. Kinkade delivered a pinch-hit single with two outs in the ninth inning to drive in the go-ahead run, and the Dodgers won at San Diego 4-3 on Sunday.
 
The Dodgers stayed two games behind San Francisco in the NL wild-card race because the Giants beat Milwaukee 3-1. Both teams have six games left.
 &quot;It would have made it a lot easier on them if we'd have lost this game and fallen three behind,&quot; Dodgers manager Jim Tracy said.
 The Dodgers also prevented the World Series champion Arizona Diamondbacks from clinching a playoff spot. Arizona lost 11-7 at Colorado.
 &quot;One win could turn it around for us. As bad as we played in this series, this could be the best thing that could happen to this team,&quot; Arizona reliever Mike Myers said. &quot;We're still loose and having fun.&quot;
 
 <strong>
Philadelphia 4, Cincinatti 3. </strong>In the final game at Cinergy Field, Philadelphia spoiled the closing ceremonies.
 
Former Reds manager Sparky Anderson threw the ceremonial first pitch to Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench, who starred when the park opened as Riverfront Stadium in 1970.
 After the game, the Reds introduced 52 luminaries from their Riverfront days. Missing from the procession was Pete Rose, who got record-setting hit No. 4,192 at the stadium in 1985 but is banned from baseball for life.
 One red rose was left on the field behind home plate during the game in honor of Rose. After it was over, former Reds pitcher Tom Browning got a can of red spray paint and put Rose's No. 14 on the mound. The crowd of 40,964 chanted &quot;Pete! Pete!&quot; as home plate was dug up and driven next door to the Great American Ball Park.
 
 <i>
(For other results and standings, see Scorecard) </i>