SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #807 (72), Friday, September 27, 2002
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TITLE: Kremlin Accuses Georgia After 16 Die
AUTHOR: By Ivan Sekretarev
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GALASHKI, Ingushetia - A Mi-24 military helicopter was shot down Thursday in Ingushetia during a fierce firefight with rebels. The two pilots were killed and at least 14 service personnel died in the battle.
The rebel incursion could be the final provocation leading Russia to launch attacks in Georgia, which it accuses of failing to take effective action against Chechen rebels allegedly based there, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said, speaking in Warsaw.
The Kremlin information office said up to 150 rebels charged into a forested Ingush region early Thursday, after making their way in small groups over a 120-kilometer stretch of mountainous terrain from Georgia's Pankisi Gorge. Fighting centered on the village of Galashki, less than one kilometer from the border with Chechnya.
Ivanov said that 14 soldiers died in the clash. Russian television showed live footage of military helicopters firing flares over forested hills in what journalists described as a hunt for remaining fighters.
During the fierce firefight, rebels downed an Mi-24 helicopter, killing both pilots, said Colonel Boris Podoprigora, a commander of the federal forces in the North Caucasus region. Citing military and police sources, Interfax blamed the downing on a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile.
The rebels also fired at another helicopter, but it was not damaged, said Madina Khadziyeva, a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry in Ingushetia.
An official in the headquarters of the 58th Army, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that 80 rebels died in the fighting. Russian news media and military officials routinely inflate Chechen casualty figures.
Ivanov has previously said Russia is prepared to launch attacks in Georgia against rebel positions. In Warsaw, asked if Thursday's fighting could be the "last drop" before Russia's patience runs out, Ivanov said, "It may be."
Journalists were taken to a military camp outside Galashki, where they were shown four bodies, one of which was believed to be that of a British freelance television camera operator. Federal forces said they found the body and an accompanying passport with the name Roderick John Scott. His year of birth was given as 1973. The passport had a Georgian visa, which was issued in June and expired on Sept. 15.
In London, Frontline Television News confirmed that a freelance camera operator, who had provided them with footage for about six years, had been in Georgia for about two months. The camera operator went by the name Roddy Scott, and the name in his passport was Gervase Scott, Frontline said.
"Obviously, it is a matter of grave concern that a British citizen has been killed," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said, speaking in London.
Arabs, a Turk and a Georgian national were also found among the dead fighters, Interfax reported, citing an unnamed source in the Ingush security service. Itar-Tass said none of the dead rebels had Russian identity papers.
A top Georgian official said Thursday that authorities were not trying to prevent rebels from crossing into Russia.
"We want them to leave and it seems they've left and are already in Russian territory. Let Russia deal with them," said Deputy Security Minister Lasha Natsvlishvili.
The rebels' arrival in Ingushetia, however, was a surprise for the Russians. While Ingushetia is home to hundreds of thousands of Chechen refugees, it has managed to stay out of the fighting that engulfed its neighbor. The incursion could destabilize the already fragile coexistence between ethnic Ingush and displaced Chechens living in sprawling tent camps throughout the republic.
By late Thursday, federal forces had surrounded Galashki, and the 58th Army headquarters reported that the remaining rebels were trapped on a farm. An Associated Press photographer in the region said that security was heavy, and busloads of civilians were seen leaving.
Journalists were also shown booty allegedly seized from the rebels, which included machine guns, an instruction manual on how to lay land mines and a copy of the Koran.
An anti-aircraft missile launcher was also on display.
Weakened by three years of fighting, the insurgents have been forced to shift tactics away from large-scale offensives. Since last September, when they successfully downed a military helicopter with a shoulder-fired missile, the rebels have hit Russian aircraft to devastating effect several times.
In August, rebels shot down a huge Mi-26 transport helicopter on its way to military headquarters in Khankala, Chechnya, killing at least 119 Russian service personnel in the worst military aviation catastrophe in Russian history. Less than two weeks later, an Mi-24 was downed by a missile in southeastern Chechnya.
Russia's Yezhenedelny Zhurnal magazine reported that at least 34 helicopters have been lost in the last three years of fighting, compared to 14 in the 20-month first Chechen war, which ended in 1996. But most loses were due to malfunctions or pilot error.
TITLE: KGB Files Shed Light on Intellectuals' Fate
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The worn folders are labeled "Top Secret" and bear the insignia of the Soviet secret police - GPU, NKVD, KGB.
Inside, in faded ink on yellow paper, the now declassified files from the archives of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, have much to tell about a milestone in the establishment of totalitarianism in Russia - the 1922 expulsion of non-Communist intellectuals.
The documents reflect the story of dozens of Russian philosophers and other leading intellectuals who were arrested in August 1922 and left Russia in September and November of that year on two German boats that became collectively known as the "philosophers' ship."
As part of the 80th anniversary of those events, and in an attempt to distance today's secret service from its repressive past, the FSB has been publishing its research on the deportation and showing some files to the media - including the first public disclosure of the number of people arrested and expelled.
Inside the files, the signatures of Russia's best known philosophers - Nikolai Berdyayev, Nicholas Lossky, Fyodor Stepun - and many other leading thinkers of the early 20th century can be seen next to that of Bolshevik secret police deputy, Iosif Unschlicht, who oversaw the operation ordered by Lenin and the Politburo.
"These are people here, people! Behind these signatures is our history!" said Vladimir Makarov, an employee of the FSB archive who researched the files and showed them to The St. Petersburg Times.
Makarov, who taught philosophy at a military college before joining the archive, has prepared a publication on Stepun's case for the October issue of the Voprosy Filosofii journal, which will be entirely dedicated to the deportation of the intellectuals.
"The Central Archive of the FSB often acts as either the initiator or one of the leading contributors of documentary publications on various historical subjects," the FSB said in a written response to questions.
This time, the reply said, "we took into account that the issue of the relationship between intellectuals and the authorities has not lost its relevance today, and not only in our country, but around the world."
The FSB denied last month's report in the Izvestia newspaper that only two case files - those of People's Socialist Party leader Alexei Peshekhonov and journalist Viktor Iretsky - have been declassified.
Most documents pertaining to the deportation were declassified in the early 1990s, the agency said, while personal dossiers were opened up five years ago, after the expiration of the 75-year term established for such files by the law on state secrets.
Although a great deal of historical research on the deportation has been published in the past decade, most of it relied on emigres' memoirs, which differed in their estimates of how many people were expelled.
The FSB said the discrepancies arose because not all those who were arrested were sent abroad. For example, many doctors were sent instead to the country's southern and eastern hinterlands to battle the epidemics there. Others were freed on the basis of requests from the organizations where they worked.
In total, officials said, the three detention lists approved by the Politburo for Moscow, Petrograd and Ukraine, included 228 people, 32 of whom were students. In Moscow, 100 people were to be arrested, but only 75 writers and academics were in fact put behind bars. Of those, 57 - including Berdyayev and astronomer Vsevolod Stratonov - agreed to leave Russia at their own expense and departed in September and November on two ships from Petrograd to Stettin, Germany. Eighteen more, most of them students, were deported under guard.
Makarov said that, in the course of his research, he discovered a lesser-known fact: that some intellectuals were expelled as late as 1923 by train to the Lavtian capital of Riga and by steamboat from Odessa to Constantinople.
Stepun's 20-page case is typical for deportees, Makarov said. It begins with a search and arrest warrant issued in mid-August. But the philosopher was not at home when officers arrived, and the file contains testimonies by his neighbors and an obligation by the dvornik, or janitor, to inform Stepun that he was being summoned to the GPU. When he was finally questioned on Sept. 30, Stepun described Bolshevism as a "very complicated religious and moral illness of Russian people's soul, which, however, will undoubtedly be useful for its spiritual development."
The investigator handling the case concluded that Stepun must be expelled "in order to stop [his] malicious anti-Soviet activity."
The last page of the file is much newer. It is a certificate of rehabilitation from the Prosecutor General's Office dated July 4, 2000. "There is no proof of his guilt in committing a crime in the case," prosecutors concluded. "No investigation was conducted other than questioning Stepun about his political views."
New York-based Russian poet Oleg Ilyinsky recalls listening to Stepun's lectures in Munich University and in private homes from 1947 to 1956. The lectures were equally brilliant in Russian and German, Ilyinsky said in a telephone interview last month.
"Through him, I and many others received a tremendous wealth of historical and philosophical culture," he said. "His artistic talent was no less than his philosophical knowledge. It impressed students profoundly."
Makarov pointed to several features that the deportation cases have in common. They lack original reports from GPU informers, thus testifying to the fact that all arrests were carried out on the basis of prepared lists. Most of the documents are written in one handwriting and only signed by the accused intellectuals - more evidence of a well-prepared operation, in which even procedural papers were prepared in advance.
The aim of the operation, he said, was "to clean up the ideological playing field."
"And they [the Bolsheviks] managed to do it very successfully," Makarov said. As a student and, later, an associate professor of philosophy, Makarov added, he personally felt the detriment of the protracted period when the writings of Berdyayev, Lossky, Stepun and others were off limits to Russians.
"It took me a long time to painfully figure out many things myself," Makarov said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: New Miss Universe
NEW YORK (AP) - Miss Panama Justine Pasek was crowned Miss Universe on Tuesday, replacing St. Petersburger Oksana Fyodorova, who became the first woman to be fired in the pageant's 52-year history for being too busy to keep up with her travel duties.
Pasek, 23, the first runner-up, was crowned at a news conference, saying of her predecessor, "I wish her the best and I'm very happy to be taking over this job now."
Paula Shugart, president of the Miss Universe organization, said Fyodorova, a 24-year-old law student, was dethroned because she "was unable to fulfill her duties." She visited France, Italy, Kenya, Canada and Greece while wearing the crown. "She needed to spend a lot of time in Russia," Shugart said on NBC television earlier Tuesday. "I believe her mother was ill at one point."
Fyodorova is to give a news conference in St. Petersburg on Friday.
Vilnius Visa Notice
VILNIUS, Lithuania (Reuters) -The Lithuanian government said Wednesday it had told Russia and Belarus it is canceling bilateral agreements on visa privileges for residents of its two eastern neighbors on Jan. 1, in line with European Union requests.
The government said that in revoking the privileges - in place since 1994 with Belarus and 1995 with Russia - it was simply fulfilling commitments undertaken during European Union accession talks.
Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, with about 1 million inhabitants, will be surrounded by EU territory once its neighbors Poland and Lithuania join the bloc, probably in 2004.
ISS Cash Quandary
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Manned missions to the International Space Station may have to be suspended because Russia cannot afford to build new craft to carry crews there, a Russian space official said Thursday.
"The situation is desperate," Valery Ryumin, director of the Russian section of the ISS, said by telephone.
Ryumin, also a top designer for rocket-builder Energiya - which supplies the Soyuz craft - said the company had no money beyond next year to build the vehicles.
"It takes two years to build a spaceship. Unless we place an order today, we will have nothing to fly on in 2004," he said.
TITLE: Plaque to Gogol's 'Nose' Imitates Original
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A monument to Major Kovalyov's nose, one of Nikolai Gogol's most famous protagonists, may have been inspired by its literary model and is on the loose in St. Petersburg.
In Gogol's famous short story, "The Nose," a Major Kovalyov wakes up one morning to discover that his nose has vanished and is wandering around St. Petersburg wearing his uniform.
The monument to the nose was erected in 1994 as part of the "Zolotoi Ostap" festival of humor and satire. The festival was named after trickster Ostap Bender, the hero of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov's "Twelve Chairs."
The nose was reported missing from the wall at 11 Pr. Rimskogo-Korsakova on Tuesday.
While the disappearance was reported to the police that day, the nose seems to have departed some time earlier.
The St. Petersburg Times visited the site Thursday. A woman working in a shop in the building said the nose had been gone since the beginning of the month.
"We noticed that it was missing about a week ago. We thought it could have been removed by workers," said Sofia Bukhayeva, the wife of the nose's sculptor, Vyacheslav Bukhayev, who could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Bukhayeva said workers had been working on the facade of the building where the nose was mounted, but there was no sign of them Thursday.
She and her husband were baffled by the theft, as the nose is made of marble, not metal, and therefore is of no interest to those who scavenge metal to sell for scrap.
"It cannot have been stolen for its material," she said cheerfully. "The disappearance is probably the deed of some art lover," she said.
Vladimir Timofeyev, the city's Sculpture Museum director, said vandals are likely responsible for the disappearance.
"Sometimes acts of vandalism are committed without any particular motive. Hooligans have already stolen and broken a number of plaques and monuments in St. Petersburg."
Meanwhile, the police are investigating the circumstances of the nose's disappearance.
"We sent an inquiry to the St. Petersburg city government culture committee to find out if the sculpture had been taken down by the workers, and we are still waiting for an answer," police spokesperson Elmar Shakhirzayev said Wednesday.
A second police spokesperson, Pavel Rayevsky, said Thursday that the police had no information on the nose, but suggested it had been stolen, most likely by a collector.
Stealing the nose would require considerable organization and physical strength.
Timofeyev said the sculpture weighed between 80 kilograms and 100 kilograms and was attached to the wall about 3 meters above the ground.
The plot thickened as it became clear the nose had been reported missing on the same day that another sculpture by Bukhayev, which had been stolen some months ago, was restored to its location on the Fontanka Embankment next to the Summer Gardens.
The monument to the brave sparrow Chizhik Pyzhik, a hero of Russian folk tales, was stolen several times and returned from a scrap-metal yard. This time, however, the five-kilogram metal bird vanished completely, and a copy of it was commissioned to replace the stolen one. A surveillance video-system was set up to protect the sparrow.
While the Bukhayevs and the scultures' fans will have to wait for the results of the investigation to find out what fate the nose has met, Bukhayeva says there is a guaranteed way of returning the nose to its original location.
"We still have a plaster copy of the nose at home, so we can always make another one" she said.
TITLE: Anti-Jewish Nationalist Party Gets Registration
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Justice Ministry has registered a radical nationalist party with an openly anti-Semitic leadership. But a party official said Thursday that the National Power Party of Russia would follow a more mainstream platform in hope of winning votes.
The Justice Ministry registered the National Power Party, or NDPR, on Sept. 16, giving the party the right to participate in regional and national elections. Two of its three co-chairpeople, Boris Mironov and Alexander Sevastyanov, are notorious for making anti-Semitic statements.
"We registered them on their first attempt," said Vladimir Tomarovsky, the head of the Justice Ministry's department on public and religious organizations. "The content of the party's documents that were presented for registration corresponded with the Russian Constitution."
None of the official party documents published on NDPR's Web site contain xenophobic content. However, other documents on the web site do.
"The law of life in Russia must be: 'Not an ounce of power to Yids,'" former Press Minister Mironov said in a statement on the site. "We must unite all indigenous peoples in the struggle against Yids."
In 2000, Sevastyanov wrote in an editorial in his Natsionalnaya Gazeta newspaper that, "We, the Russians, must keep up a defense against many enemies, of whom the Jews are the most dreadful."
The party's third co-chairperson, Stanislav Terekhov, is perhaps best known for his participation in the attempt to oust President Boris Yeltsin in Oct. 1993.
None of the party's co-chairpeople could be reached for comment Thursday.
Viktor Korchagin, a senior party executive and the editor of the first Russian newspaper to be banned for racist content, in July, said the personal beliefs of the party's leadership did not make the party anti-Semitic.
"We are a regular bourgeois party that wants a better life for the country's poor," he said by telephone. "It would be unwise to play only on anti-Semitic sentiments to win public support. The number of anti-Semites in Russia is small, and the media would give us a vigorous thrashing."
He said the party has about 11,000 members and has opened offices in 70 of Russia's 89 regions since its founding congress in February. He said some regional authorities had tried to prevent the party from setting up local branches.
He said that the party is a grouping of several public organizations and that Terekhov brought most of the party's membership with him. Terekhov is the head of the Union of Officers, a public military organization.
NDPR was the first radical nationalist party to be registered after the adoption of the law on political parties, which states only registered political parties can participate in elections. On Sept. 17, a day after NDPR's registration, the Justice Ministry gave the go-ahead to a radical nationalist party with an anti-Semitic platform, the People's Patriotic Party of Russia, headed by former Defense Minister Igor Rodionov.
Vladimir Pribylovsky, a nationalism expert of the Panorama think tank, said registering radical nationalist parties harmed no one. "The authorities make it easier to punish nationalists by getting them out in the open," he said.
TITLE: Monkey Business Thwarted, Primates Back in Zoo Cage
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Ten of the 12 South American monkeys that were stolen from the St. Petersburg zoo on Tuesday night were safely returned to their home Thursday. The other two have yet to be located.
The theft was reported on Wednesday morning when zoo employees found the lock to the cage broken and the monkeys missing.
Both police and zoo employees think the monkeys were stolen to be sold on the black market.
"The monkeys were probably stolen following a request from a buyer. These monkeys are small animals, which makes them easy to steal," zoo spokesperson Yelena Popova said Wednesday.
According to Popova's estimates, such monkeys fetch between $300 and $500 each.
This type of monkey lives in South America and is a protected species, with few remaining even on their native continent, Popova said.
The monkeys were found by an elderly woman on Thursday. They were inside a sports bag that was left near 81 Pr. Stachek.
Intrigued by the bag's movements, the woman opened it, to find it contained monkeys, one of which managed to jump out and find shelter in a tree, she later reported to the police.
The remaining monkeys were taken to the nearest police station, after which they were returned to the zoo.
"When police officers opened the bag, the monkeys went jumping all over the room," said police spokesperson Pavel Rayevsky.
"Only 10 monkeys were found in the bag, and we have no information concerning the other two monkeys," he said.
Rayevsky added that police had suspects, and said he was sure the thieves would be charged soon.
Two monkeys of the same breed as those stolen on Tuesday night went missing last year. They were quickly returned to the zoo.
"The person who had bought the monkeys saw a television report on the theft and immediately alerted the police," Popova said.
TITLE: Putin Declares End To Further Tax Cuts
AUTHOR: By Caroline McGregor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Contradicting his finance minister and setting the tone for the State Duma's budget debate, President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday declared there will be no more tax cuts.
"We have come to a point where it is impossible to continue reducing taxes," Putin told participants in the All-Russia Forum of Young Managers meeting in the Kremlin, in comments broadcast on the state-run Rossia television channel. "That's it, the party is over."
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin last week said the government over the next three years would cut the unified social tax from 36.5 percent to 30 percent, and value-added tax from 20 percent to 16 percent. The social tax, levied on employers, covers pensions and health insurance.
While in previous years cutting taxes had raised tax revenue to the budget, Putin said increasingly lower taxes cannot forever magically produce greater revenue.
"Reducing taxes is the easiest thing to do, but that does not mean it will always lead to the required result, because we also need to solve other problems, like those of a social nature," he told the young entrepreneurs.
As Putin made these remarks, Duma deputies a few blocks away gave preliminary approval to the government's 2003 draft budget, which calls for spending increases for the defense industry, the court system and education.
The budget expects revenues of 2.418 trillion rubles ($71.75 billion at 33.7 rubles per dollar, the budgeted 2003 average rate - about 2 rubles higher than the current rate) and spending is set at 2.346 trillion rubles, which together would produce a budget surplus of 0.6 percent of GDP, making this Russia's third surplus budget.
The conservative 2003 budget keeps spending lean, despite pressing social demands on Russia's limited resources, as Russia prepares to face a $17-billion peak in foreign debt next year, $3 billion higher than this year's payments.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told lawmakers that the country would not try to make any debt payments ahead of schedule. "God help us cope with those we have," he said.
The budget surplus will "serve as a cushion that will allow us to maneuver if certain factors" outside the government's control emerge, he said, alluding to foreboding instability in the Middle East.
The government's forecasts that inflation will be 10 percent to 12 percent this year seem to be on target, Kudrin told reporters, and thus GDP is slated to grow between 3.5 percent and 4.4 percent next year.
Also, speaking on ORT television, Kasyanov predicted that real incomes will rise 7 percent this year, more quickly than originally forecast.
Faced with two ways to stimulate the economy - lower taxes or distribution of collected taxes - Putin has chosen redistribution, in order to retain for himself the power to curry favor with potential swing voters through targeted spending.
With parliamentary and presidential elections on the horizon, Putin likely hopes to keep tax income steadily flowing into government coffers to "buy" key members of the electorate, including the military and teachers, said Renaissance Capital economist Alexei Moiseyev.
Indeed, the government's draft budget proposes raising salaries for members of the military as well as scientists and teachers.
Steve Henderson, tax partner at Deloitte & Touche, said he was not alarmed by Putin's freeze on new tax cuts. "It is not necessarily a bad thing," he said. "If they maintain the current level of taxation [13-percent personal and 24-percent corporate] that is positive, and Putin can continue to create a favorable environment [for tax-paying corporations] without cutting the actual percentages."
The budget sailed through its first reading Wednesday with a vote of 308-117 with three abstentions, and most analysts expect that the Duma, dominated by Putin loyalists, will not force any major changes to the text.
The Duma plans to hold a second reading on Oct. 18.
TITLE: Chechnya Pictures Open
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The opening of the "Chechen Children" exhibition in St. Petersburg on Thursday is linked to the beginning this week of the fourth year of war in Chechnya.
About 100 photos of Chechen children, from different villages and towns in the republic, are on display in the exhibition in the premises of the St. Petersburg branch of the Memorial human-rights center. The photos, mostly faces of Chechen children, were taken by Memorial staff from Stavropol and have already been shown in 11 Russian cities.
"These children have seen and know things that even an adult should not see and know," said Yury Vdovin, deputy chairman of the Civil Control regional human-rights center. "I am very upset that there are only a few visitors at the exhibition. If we don't value someone else's children, we will not value our own."
Vyacheslav Dolinin, of the St. Petersburg branch of Memorial, said that by staging the exhibition, the center is protesting random violence in the republic "in which those who suffer the most are non-combatants."
"The trouble is that, when these children grow up, they might take weapons and go to the mountains to fight, or just leave this country for good," he said.
Yelena Galkina, journalist with the Paris-based Russkaya Mysl newspaper, brought her own pictures to the exhibition opening. Two of those that she took in the Gekhi village showed the scene just after the bombing of a home. A mine exploded and ruined part of the house where three children lived. Another mine fell through the roof and ended up on the bed where the two youngest members of the family were playing. For some reason, it did not explode.
"Many [Russian] soldiers told me they did not feel bad killing Chechen children. One top officer told me that, until we exterminate this nation, there will be no peace in Russia," she said. "Only when all of us understand that we are responsible for the problems in this place, only when we start crying against it, will the war stop."
TITLE: LUKoil Kidnapping Resolved
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Investigators Thursday resumed questioning LUKoil Chief Financial Officer Sergei Kukura but said he was still disoriented after his abduction.
On Wednesday afternoon, two weeks after being kidnapped on his way to work, Kukura was dropped off near his home in a release that was as mysterious as his abduction.
LUKoil spokesperson Mikhail Mikhailov said Thursday that no ransom had been paid. The kidnappers had earlier demanded a $6 million ransom, Russian newspapers reported.
"He came back home himself," acting Moscow region prosecutor Alexander Mitusov told Interfax on Wednesday. "According to our information, no ransom was paid for his release."
Itar-Tass, citing investigators in the regional prosecutor's office who questioned Kukura after his release, reported that a ransom had been paid.
A car dropped off Kukura, 48, near his red-brick mansion in Vnukovo, near Moscow, at about 2 p.m., Rossia television reported. Investigators told Rossia that Kukura said he had been kept in a basement and had been treated well.
An unnamed source in the investigation told Interfax that Kukura was injected with a drug before his release and was unable to talk with investigators.
"We had to call a police medical expert because of his sluggish behavior," the source was quoted as saying.
The RIA-Novosti news agency, citing LUKoil officials, said Kukura was freed in a special operation conducted by LUKoil's security service.
Mikhailov said LUKoil would pay a reward of 30 million rubles ($950,000) for information that helped to secure Kukura's freedom. He refused to elaborate.
Kukura was kidnapped Sept. 12 when his car was stopped by four masked gunmen in police uniforms, investigators said. They injected Kukura's driver and bodyguard with heroin, which knocked them out, and whisked Kukura away in a Volga sedan with blue police license plates.
Kukura had access at LUKoil to confidential financial information and state secrets, the company said.
Staff Writer Alla Startseva contributed to this report.
TITLE: Chubais Orders Halt on Sales
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Responding to intense pressure from investors, Unified Energy Systems chief Anatoly Chubais on Wednesday unveiled a seven-point plan to regain the confidence of demoralized shareholders, amid a sweeping overhaul of the world's largest electricity utility.
Chubais told international investors that he had banned the sale of company assets, until their value could be accurately assessed.
"Until we are able to reach a common understanding and common support for a mechanism to value assets and distribute proceeds, we will stop asset sales," Chubais told the Brunswick UBS Warburg conference.
The former privatization tsar also pledged not to engage in a scheme he himself notoriously pioneered in the mid-1990s - loans for shares.
One such scheme proposed by Chubais would for just $10 million have given metals giant Russian Aluminum a significant equity stake in a strategic hydropower plant in which UES has invested more than $1 billion.
"There will be no shares in exchange for loans," Chubais said.
Additionally, he said that no assets would be sold to the government at less than fair value, and that all shares in the myriad of companies to be created from UES assets during the overhaul would be distributed pro rata to shareholders, who have seen the value of their stocks halve this year, as distrust in Chubais has grown.
Investors leapt at the news, unleashing a wave of buying that boosted UES shares by nearly 9 percent.
Chubais said that he and his management team were to blame for the dismal performance on the stock market.
"The perception of the market is strange, but it's reality. I wouldn't blame the market, but the management," Chubais said.
The management's mistake, he said, was considering assets sales "in uncertain sector conditions" and not communicating well with minority shareholders.
"The sales are a market phobia, but we have to take this phobia into account. There are no secret management plans for asset sell-offs," he said.
Chubais' about-face comes at a critical moment for UES, as lawmakers prepare to vote in the coming weeks on controversial bills needed to move the ambitious restructuring forward.
"Parliament has still not made a decision [on the bills]," Chubais said. But, once they are passed in the first reading, "the process will be irreversible," he added.
The push to become more shareholder friendly also comes on the heels of a series of political setbacks for Chubais.
In a three-day verbal assault from Salzburg to Irkutsk and then Moscow last week, President Vladimir Putin's influential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov called Chubais' handling of the monopoly "a national disgrace."
And, on Friday, UES board member David Herne, a foreign fund manager who represents minority investors, sent a letter to Chubais urging him to implement a moratorium on all sales of assets until after restructuring is completed in 2004.
But while Herne and other market players applauded Chubais' move, they were not convinced that Chubais is out of the woods yet.
"I am here to reflect the opinion of all minority shareholders, [and] they are skeptical and want to hear more concrete steps," Herne said.
"It would be useful if someone - management - would explain what they mean by "concrete agreement on valuation and distribution [of proceeds]," Herne said.
Bill Browder, the CEO of another fund with a minority stake, Hermitage Capital Management, said that there are still plenty of reasons to be suspicious of Chubais.
"The reason why the UES share price has gone down so much is because of investors' fears that Chubais is going to sell assets out of the company," Browder said. "The market rumors are that nearly 50 percent of generating assets have already been spoken for by various oligarch groups."
TITLE: Lenoblast Gets $30M in Philip Morris Investment
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Philip Morris International announced at a press conference on Tuesday that is investing another $30 million in the expansion of cigarette-manufacturing facilities in the Leningrad Oblast this year, expanding production capacity to 50 billion cigarettes per year.
The Philip Morris Izhora factory, located to the south of St. Petersburg in Lomonosov, was opened in February, 2000 at a cost of $330 million. At present, 850 people work at the factory, which currently produces 30 billion cigarettes per year. Brands produced include Marlboro, Parliament, Virginia Slims, L&M, Chesterfield and Bond Street. Philip Morris also owns another plant in Russia, Philip Morris Kuban, located in Krasnodar.
Total investment in the two factories currently amounts to $500 million, Dmitry Khrol, a PR officer for Philip Morris, said at the conference. "In 2002, 100 percent of our cigarettes sold in Russia are produced in Russia," he said.
According to research by the Business Analytica market research agency, Philip Morris holds 21.5 percent of the Russian cigarette market, followed by Japan Tobacco International (15.8 percent), British American Tobacco (13.7 percent) and Galaher (13.9 percent). The Russian cigarette market is the fourth largest in the world after the Chinese, American and Japanese markets, with 280 billion cigarettes sold per year.
"At Philip Morris Izhora, we now have 16 machines for cigarette manufacturing, 10 filter-making machines and two production lines for tobacco processing. Following the investment of the $30 million, and after the production capacity has been expanded, we'll have four more machines for cigarette production and another tobacco-processing production line," said Guy Goeffers, Philip Morris's operations director for Russia.
Sergei Naryshkin, head of the international economic-relations committee of the Leningrad Oblast administration, said that the company's activity would not be affected by the State Duma decision to award excise-tax payments on tobacco to the federal budget instead local budgets.
"We will not break the contract with Philip Morris. All benefits coming from the investment contract between Philip Morris and the Leningrad Oblast will stay the same," he also said.
"The federal authorities take away part of our income, but we are continuing to hold consultations in the State Duma and with the federal government," Naryshkin said.
TITLE: Tackling the Pencil-Pushers
TEXT: THE shortcomings of Russia's bureaucracy are legion, its incompetence is legendary. Therefore, the release of a report last week highlighting the ineffectiveness of the executive branch and its lack of discipline in fulfilling orders and instructions did not come as any great surprise. What is more interesting, however, is that the report was prepared by the Main Control Directorate of the presidential administration, the president's oversight body. And among other things, it shows that only half the orders issued directly by President Vladimir Putin last year to various ministeries were fulfilled by the assigned deadline.
Hopefully, the report, which draws mainly on checks conducted in the Property Ministry, Finance Ministry, Economic Development and Trade Ministry, Transport Ministry and State Construction Committee, will not simply result in the head of state uttering the historical refrain "Who is to Blame?" finding a few ministerial scapegoats to sack and then engaging in some populist fulminations about how lazy or incompetent or corrupt the country's civil servants are.
Problems in the government administrative machine and civil service are systemic and can only be dealt with as such. The report exposes some of the symptoms, but does not uncover the root causes of the disease, of which there are several.
First is the poorly defined and often overlapping roles and responsibilities of different agencies within the executive branch. Despite the Putin administration's rhetoric about strengthening the "power vertical," almost nothing has been done to make a very fuzzy chain of executive command more clear-cut. There is duplication (and sometimes even triplication) of functions and competencies between the presidential administration, the apparatus of the government and the ministries. The result is chronic bureaucratic wrangling and documents needing endless stamps of approval. Moreover, it brings out the worst in officials by encouraging the evasion of responsibility and buck-passing.
This bureaucratic muddle is a legacy of the Soviet Union. However, Boris Yeltsin did precious little to dismantle the system and streamline the apparat, in part because it actually suited him. He was able to consolidate his own position by personally arbitrating in the bureaucratic turf battles that ensued as a result of poorly demarcated competencies.
Bureaucrats' meager salaries mean that there is a dearth of qualified and competent personnel in the civil service. There are two particularly harmful consequences of this: Officials lack the material incentives to do their job properly, and have far too many incentives to use (or abuse) their position for the purpose of personal enrichment. Inefficiency and corruption tend to go hand in hand.
The above factors and the authoritarian political culture inherited from Soviet times have contributed to a system of decision-making that is far too top-heavy. Too many unimportant decisions are taken at too high a level in the state apparatus, resulting in bottlenecks and a slow and unresponsive administrative machine.
It is this nexus of deep-seated problems that Putin must tackle if he is to make an impact on bureaucratic inefficiency. He needs to undertake a major reform of the executive branch and create a more compact, better-paid civil service.
This is, of course, no mean feat. However, the potential dividends-both economic and political-are huge and the dangers of inaction on this front are grave. We have already seen how a number of Putin's reform initiatives have been undermined by bureaucratic incompetence and sabotage at the implementation stage (de-bureaucratization measures being one example).
Done properly, the reforms could have a direct, positive impact on ordinary citizens' lives and their day-to-day dealings with officialdom.
Putin, in his state of the nation address and elsewhere, has shown that he has a clear understanding of the problems and has indicated that he is committed to resolving them.
The decision to publish the aforementioned report on the presidential web site may well be part of a campaign to prepare the ground for reform.
Unfortunately, with parliamentary and presidential elections looming on the horizon, it is increasingly unlikely that Putin will bite the bullet until after he gets re-elected (as he surely will). Apart from not wanting to rock the boat, hiking bureaucrats' wages dramatically in an election year is not likely to be a winner with voters.
Nonetheless, administrative and civil service reform should be right at the top of Putin's agenda for his second term. And if he succeeds in pulling it off, that alone would earn him his place in the history books.
TITLE: How Long Can Bush Back Sharon?
TEXT: FOR 18 months Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon responded to Palestinian terrorist attacks by systematically destroying the infrastructure and institutions of the Palestinian Authority, all the while insisting that his intention was to pressure the very forces he targeted into cracking down on the terrorist groups.
Three months ago his government moved beyond that strategy: It invaded the West Bank, crushed the remaining Palestinian forces there and assumed control over security. With the support of the Bush administration, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was declared irrelevant. After two more suicide bombings by terrorists, Sharon has again responded by besieging Arafat.
Sharon has also introduced complications into the Iraq campaign of his greatest ally, President George W. Bush. The gratuitous siege in Ramallah grabbed the attention of the UN Security Council as Bush was seeking its support for a new resolution on Iraq; and Israel's refusal to respond to the council's order to pull back its forces, if sustained, will complicate U.S. attempts to win Arab and European backing for the enforcement of UN resolutions against Saddam Hussein.
Yet Sharon may have good reason to risk White House irritation.
In recent weeks, despite the Bush administration's conspicuous lack of engagement, there had been notable progress toward the formation of a reform-oriented Palestinian leadership that could supplant Arafat and renew a peace process. The Palestinian legislature this month forced Arafat's Cabinet to resign; last week the reformers were close to forcing Arafat to accept the appointment of a moderate to the new post of prime minister. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell put the Bush administration's imprimatur on a peace proposal drawn up by the multilateral Quartet group: It lays out a three-phase plan for creating a Palestinian state and includes near-term measures Sharon opposes, including the staging of Palestinian elections next year, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories they have occupied , and a halt to Jewish settlement construction.
It's hard to tell whether Bush genuinely supports the peace plan; his principal goal seems to be to avoid engagement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, or any hint of trouble with the Israeli government, whenever possible.
Sharon's latest attack on his nemesis has succeeded in freezing the process; if he continues, he may effectively block it altogether. That he is stepping on Bush's toes is unlikely to deter the Israeli warrior: His experience has taught him that this is a president he can push around.
This comment first appeared as an editorial in The Washington Post.
TITLE: Psychotherapy Courtesy of State Channels
TEXT: THIS week's column is devoted to the start of the fall television season. Traditionally the season gets under way in September, but I'd like to begin back in August, when I was vacationing in Lithuania at the seaside (pine forests, the beach, hot sun, lapping of the waves, rustling of the dunes). Before bed, I would watch television, and thankfully there were plenty of Russian channels.
On a glorious evening I was peacefully falling asleep to the sounds of the latest series on NTV, when my wife suddenly poked me in the ribs: "Something has happened in Moscow!" I opened my eyes and saw an announcement along the bottom of the screen: "Please stay tuned for a breaking news bulletin on NTV." That gave me a start. For Russians, August-the month of the putsch, the default, the apartment building bombings and the Kursk-is a time of anxious expectation.
Twenty minutes of waiting for the news bulletin kept us on tenterhooks. Finally a news anchor appeared and announced that an explosion had occurred in a Moscow apartment building. Then came the live report from the scene of the explosion. "Rescue workers and experts are saying this was a routine gas explosion, but the residents here don't buy it, and my own experience tells me that things are a little more complicated than that," the reporter said. Updates continued all night, with the journalists suggesting this was terrorism attack.
The next day we arrived at the beach later than usual, exhausted and cranky. Our conversation turned not on the delights of Lithuanian cuisine, but on the irresponsibility of the editors at NTV.
A couple of days later we suffered through yet another news flash on the same channel. This time the camera followed a truck through the streets of Moscow. The truck, we were told, was loaded with explosives, and its driver was demanding a meeting with Putin. This momentous event also turned out to be nothing, but it certainly frayed our nerves.
When we returned to Moscow in September, I was horrified to read in the newspapers that what struck me as an annoying error on the part of NTV's editors was, in fact, the focus of their new news policy. NTV has warned that it plans to continue interrupting good movies and sports programs with bad news. I took this as a personal insult. While I was trying to relax, it turns out, NTV was having a rehearsal.
I also read that some 50 million Russians are in need of psychiatric treatment as the result of protracted psycho-emotional stress. According to a poll conducted by the ROMIR polling agency, 72 percent of respondents supported the idea of regulating news coverage in the mass media.
It seems the stations not controlled by the state, NTV and TVS, are starting to flex their political muscles, while the state's RTR and ORT are going for more entertainment and less politics. "With the start of the election campaign virtually upon us, the stations trusted by the state have sheathed their swords," Nezavisimaya Gazeta opined last week.
A well-known political consultant said to be close to the Kremlin told me that one of the main goals of the government's "information policy" was to help the population overcome the "August syndrome."
And then I thought to myself: From here on out, I will only watch news, sports and movies on the state channels.
Alexei Pankin is the editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals (www.internews.ru/sreda)
TITLE: masks remove national veils
AUTHOR: by Helen Tchepournova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: What sort of thoughts would most likely cross your mind when, squirming your way through a bustling downtown crowd of unmemorable faces, your eye lights on a unique briefcase: transparent photographs of two lions, intricately illuminated from behind?
Bizarre? Refreshing? Ingenious? Would your interest be sparked? To the point that you would stop in your tracks and fall into conversation with the owner of a briefcase less ordinary?
That's the reaction that Mark Scheflen, a professional photographer and renowned visual artist from New York, hopes for when walking his "lions" around the streets of the Big Apple.
"It's a nice way to reach out and make contact with people," he says.
Hence "My Life ... My City," an exhibition that opened at the Artists Union of Russia Exhibition Center on Wednesday. The exhibition is the St. Petersburg part of a project that Scheflen runs from his base in New York, to showcase art mainly created by young artists in the United States, Kenya, South Africa and, now, St. Petersburg.
Scheflen's organization, Kiboko Projects - kiboko means "hippopotamus" in Swahili - is a non-profit artistic, educational and cultural organization that serves youths and adults in communities around the world, and aims to bring people of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds together through creativity.
Scheflen is positively evangelical about his brainchild.
"We strongly believe that it's important to expose children to other cultures, the earlier the better," he says. "Seeing and sharing each other's work helps them develop tolerance and eliminate racism."
The project began in 1995, with a series of workshops and an artistic exchange between at-risk schoolchildren in New York and students from Kenya - a country that Scheflen has held with special affection since his days as a cultural-anthropology student - and has gone from strength to strength, and from country to country.
Last fall, Scheflen brought the project to St. Petersburg, where it is being run in collaboration with the city's Pedagogical College No. 2 on Ul. Zamshina. Fifteen students were selected - on both artistic ability and English-language skills - to take part in workshops over a six-week period. The students met every day to create the works - masks, paintings, and books - interact, get to know each other and explore their identities - with lots of fun and games, and with Scheflen's winning ways with teenagers given free rein.
The key element in the intimate, complex process of reaching within and out was making masks. "The mask has been a symbol of this project, and a theme," says Alevtina Kuzub, the head of the college's art department. With the city's 300th anniversary approaching, many masks reflect the students' vision of their city, as do the paintings on display.
The participants were also given 35-millimeter cameras, and state-of-the-art digital video equipment - courtesy of the project's U.S. sponsors - to document the creative process, conduct interviews and gain hands-on experience. The result is a 23-minute documentary that makes for compelling viewing.
When completed, the project was taken back to New York, where it enjoyed a successful showing at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, an historic church that also works as a successful arts center. American artists' responses - their masks and books - are also part of the current exhibition.
The exhibition is an eclectic mix, with paintings, drawings, videos, photo-diaries, hand-made books and masks, but it makes for a well-rounded show.
The most striking element is the works' energy and immediacy - it is all visually compelling. A closer look shows just how much the young artists from the three countries have in common, as well as the obvious cultural differences.
One difference between the African artists and their U.S. and Russian counterparts is the Africans' use of color, says Scheflen.
"One painting of a funeral is very cheerful," he says. "The casket has a light so the body can look out. There are bright, happy birds. There is not an ounce of black."
In addition, whereas the Western art tends to be more abstract, the African works are more ethnocentric: The South African participants are outspoken in their concerns about HIV, environmental destruction, domestic violence, women's rights, poverty, teenage pregnancy and death; the Kenyans are less political, but hold more to their customs when depicting an ideal village or a famous bus. Their pictures mix modernity and tradition: a new car is parked next to a traditional hut.
One picture, "Bombing in Kenya," is distinctly unsettling, as is another work including blood and a knife used in female circumcision. At the top, the child artist writes, "Abandon some of the deadly traditions."
The exhibition is an eye-opener on Africa's recent past and its present - something of which most Russians are not very well aware.
Scheflen has big plans for the project's future. He plans to take it to Hanoi, Vietnam, then to Bolivia, and then back to Kenya, where he plans to create a series of workshops for young people with HIV.
And there's an element of chance, too, he says: "Other things will develop as I go along."
The exhibition runs through Oct. 6.
TITLE: televizor: do not adjust your set
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In the 1980s, Televizor spearheaded Russia's "rock revolution" - its rock protest anthems such as "Vyiti Iz-Pod Kontrolya" ("Get Out of Control"), "Syt Po Gorlo" ("Fed Up") and "Tvoi Papa - Fashist" ("Your Daddy Is a Fascist") were direct and outspoken, while the rest of the pack limited itself to hints and metaphors.
Televizor's leader Mikhail Borzykin was also an outspoken critic of the excesses of Communism, and even led a spontaneous demonstration of rock fans to Smolny in 1988 to protest a last-minute ban imposed upon a local rock festival by the authorities. Because of the protest, the ban was lifted in a matter of hours.
With the Soviet Union and party rule gone, Borzykin came back onto the musical scene, appearing occasionally at clubs with constantly changing lineups, and recording solo.
"The lineup is a virtual thing, as I am starting to understand as years pass," says Borzykin. "It's changed seven or eight times."
Its most recent lineup, formed earlier this year, comprises ex-Ulitsy Sergei Rusanov on drums and ex-Obereg Sergei Sivitsky on guitar, while Borzykin himself sings and operates the computer - "the band's fourth member," as he says.
Televizor's most recent album, "Put k Uspekhu" ("Road to Success"), was recorded by Borzykin alone, and released on local label Caravan Records in March. The label has also re-released the band's five previous albums.
"Sadly, I am my own producer, arranger and performer, so everything is very slow," says Borzykin.
Borzykin says he does not follow new musical trends as closely as he did a few years ago, citing Nine Inch Nails' "The Fragile" (released in 1999) as the most interesting album he has heard lately.
"I also like to listen to Radiohead's 'Amnesiac,'" he says. "I'm interested in everything that has a synthesis - a synthesis of styles [or] cultures. I'm not interested in mere stylization, or grunge bands who stole from hard rock bands like Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple."
Borzykin is critical of contemporary Russian rock, especially of what Mumii Troll's Ilya Lagutenko calls "rockapops," the combination of rock and pop made popular by Mumii Troll in the late 1990s that dominates Russia's music scene.
"Nobody can persuade me that Mumii Troll-style smutty humor is funny or anything," says Borzykin. "At the same time, I can understand why Eminem's 'Cleaning Out My Closet (I'm Sorry Mama)' topped the charts - because it's profound, it's sincere."
According to Borzykin, who appreciates such off-the-wall acts as Tequilajazzz, Auktsyon and Inna Zhelannaya, most Russian rock has been damaged by irony.
"There's nothing funny about the Eminem song. Russian rock is noticed only if it contains an element of spoof. This element has filled everything," he says. "It's a pity that this has happened, because it hasn't happened around the world ... only in Russia."
Borzykin says the change was determined by the poor tastes of businesspeople, who invest in the music industry and aim to create an easily accessible product to return a quick profit.
"I think that the level is set so low artificially. It happened in every sphere during the past 10 years; for instance, in science," he says.
However, unlike some of his contemporaries, Borzykin has no regrets about the fate of the Soviet Union.
"Destroying it with a calm heart, we just thought that we'd become part of the world and oriented toward what was happening in the world, in Europe," says Borzykin. "The wind of freedom was blowing from there, and all we wanted was to get out of isolation. Formally, we got out of isolation but, culturally, we didn't. The greed of radio directors and impresarios doesn't let us out."
Always a revolutionary, Borzykin's sympathies now lie with anti-globalism; U.S. mass culture and lifestyle, as promoted by MTV and advertising, are some things one should fight against.
"Variety is the source of life, while unification is the source of death," he says. "What the most of American industry promotes is an attempt to breed obedient, chewing little creatures."
"Televizor's creed is probably that the art should reflect a spiritual conflict, pain or strong emotional experience," says Borzykin. "That's why the conflict between an individual and a crowd was always present in Televizor's songs."
Televizor plays at Moloko at 7 p.m. on Sunday. Links: www.televizor.spb.ru
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: More and more international acts have included St. Petersburg in their tour schedules. Something of a sensation is Cesaria Evora, at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall on Oct. 12.
At the height of popularity of world and Afro-Latin music, West African singer Evora is a big hit in Russia. Her two concerts at the 953-seat Maly Theater in Moscow quickly sold out in May.
Evora made her Moscow stage debut in April, when she sang with a great success at an elite private concert attended by businesspeople, politicians and television personalities.
Hailed as the "Queen of Morna," she is the best-known singer in Cape Verde, and performs the islands' traditional music style - a soulful genre played in a minor-key, emotional tone.
Stemming from European, African and Arabic roots, Morna songs are sad and sentimental folk tunes, accompanied by guitar, cavaquinho (a plucked lute of Portugal and Brazil), violin, accordion and clarinet.
"Morna is like the blues, because it is a way to express life's suffering in music," she has been quoted as saying.
Evora, who is known to her friends as Cize, was born in August 1941 in the port town of Mindelo on the Cape Verde island of Sao Vicente. The local music was influenced by passing sailors from Portugal, Argentina, Brazil and the Carribean.
Though she sang at local cafes and bars in her young years, she gave up music due to financial problems in the 1970s, and started her career anew in 1988, at the age of 47. International fame came to her after her breakthrough album, "Miss Perfumado," in 1992. Her most recent release was "Sao Vicente di longe" in 2001.
The possessor of a soulful, finely-tuned voice, with a touch of hoarseness, it is no small wonder that Evora names Nat King Cole as her favorite singer, although she admits she also likes American pop performers, such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and Prince.
As far as the club scene is concerned, Ukraine's hottest export - Ya i Drug Moi Gruzovik - comes to town to play a series of shows. The minimalist rock trio from Kharkov will appear at Moloko on Saturday, and Fish Fabrique and then Red Club on Sunday. The band's new album, "Volanchik," will be available at the concerts.
Vyborg's melodic punk band PTVP, also known as Posledniye Tanki v Parizhe, will return to play at Front this Saturday. Its last release, a live cassette called "DeVstvitelnost," was recorded at the bunker venue in February.
Kolibaba, formed by accordion player Sveta Kolibaba - who became famous with Leningrad spin-off band Tri Debila - and featuring Leningrad tuba player Andrei Antonenko, returns to the scene at Moloko on Thursday.
Another Leningrad-related band, Chirvonstsy, will appear at Orlandina this Saturday.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: a lesson in restaurant journalism
AUTHOR: by Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In an attempt to broaden our culinary horizons beyond the confines of the center of the city, our tight-fisted team of restaurant reviewers decided to venture onto Vasilievsky Island in search of unexplored eateries. Luckily, our spy, while stuck in yet another of St. Petersburg's road-repair-induced traffic jams, had spotted an intriguing establishment, Kuznechny Dvor (roughly translating as "Smith's Yard") in the wilds of Sredny Pr.
Our mission was also something of an exception, in that we went to the trouble of inviting along a "proper" journalist - a correspondent from the Reuters news agency's Moscow bureau - to see just how well our restaurant-reviewing standards measure up on the world-class scene.
For our team, there were a few nervous moments waiting outside, as our scout went in on a reconnaissance mission - would Kuznechny Dvor be within the limits of our usual skinflint budget? He soon returned, however, and gave us the thumbs up - with main courses at around 200 rubles, the restaurant had just about scraped through our most demanding of tests.
Inside, the restaurant's management had clearly taken the smithy and metalworking theme to heart, with a variety of ironwork sculptures, including Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, scattered around the restaurant's interior. The effect was completed by, among other things, a mirrored ceiling, a stuffed crow, disco lighting and a cascading-waterfall rock-garden display. Never had Vasilievsky Island seemed quite so exotic. The overall psychedelic impression was only enhanced by a much more mundanely decorated cafe, operating almost in the same room.
If the interior designers appear to have been on drugs, the guy that translated the menu must have been keeping them company. I played it safe with a "Caravan of Wishes" (140 rubles, $4.40) and a "Seizure of Bastille" (280 rubles, $8.85), but our Reuters colleague headed straight for the "Sideways Treated Fish" (280 rubles). The translation for "Tamed Bull" (140 rubles), which turned out to be excellent meatballs in a rich tomato sauce, must have been based on associative - and fairly bloodthirsty - principles.
The Caravan of Wishes, a cold starter, was an excellent and very generous selection of freshly cut cold meats, including boiled pork, "smoked pork filet," dried beef, beef tongue and smoked sausage. Along with the equally generous portions of very thin lavash (Caucasian flatbread), it made for a very filling and very good starter, as did the Tamed Bull. The other two starters ordered - a Julien (90 rubles, $2.80) and a "Union of Swords and Plowshares" (90 rubles) - both scored well, the Julien being described as somewhat rich and the Union (tomatoes, paprika, kidney beans, mushrooms, walnuts and olive oil) being served in a wonderfully kitsch sculpted-glass bowl.
As we waited for our main courses, the live band began to work their wonders under the disco lights. With their synthesizer, programmed drum machine and touchingly crooned ballads, they perfectly recaptured the early-Casio era, even risking an English-language rendition of Sinatra's "My Way." It went perfectly with the above-mentioned stuffed-crow-on-perch and mirrored ceiling decorations.
It was also a more than fitting lead into the Sideways Treated Fish that we'd been curiously wondering about since our orders had been taken - you will be able to impress others at dinner parties when you reveal with a knowing air that Sideways Treated Fish, as served in St. Petersburg, is an excellent salmon fillet with paprika, boiled new potatoes, cream and horseradish sauce.
The "Rossinant's Horseshoe" (200 rubles, $6.30), beef with mushrooms, bacon, onion, fried potatoes and tomato, came with an excellent, spicy mustard sauce. The "Good Take!" (lucky catch?) was a usual, but more than acceptable, affair - a whole rainbow trout still on the bone, which our excellent server informed us had been caught in the morning. Its lucky recipient was heard to whine that it was a little bland. The Seizure of the Bastille - battered salmon in a white wine sauce with shrimps - also suffered in this department. If there was one other minor complaint in what was otherwise a very good meal, it was that the potatoes were very slightly under-boiled. Our esteemed Reuters colleague was heard to cry with indignation, "I mean, there's al dente, and then there's al dente!" (Well, that's the level of training they get at Reuters. We may have to think about trying an AP correspondent next time.)
What can be said in favor of Kuznechny Dvor is that the generally well-prepared portions were more than generous. We could even afford the luxury of skipping dessert, finishing with espresso (30 rubles, $0.95) and cappuccino (40 rubles, $1.25).
Kuznechny Dvor is definitely an experience that should be sampled at least once, if only for its novelty value and the very reasonable food. Whether you would make a return visit, unless you happen to be in this neck of the woods, is another matter.
Kuznechny Dvor, 79 Sredny Pr., Vasilievsky Island. Tel.: 327-6160. Menu in Russian and English. Dinner for four, with alcohol: 1,800 rubles ($57).
TITLE: mariinsky touring ... again
AUTHOR: by Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: What tireless troupers the Mariinsky Theater's dancers are! When the theater reassembled last week after the summer holiday, half of its ballet company was busy rehearsing and preparing to leave on a two-week tour to China, where it last performed in 1999. The tour, which begins on Monday, will take in the capital, Beijing, as well as the financial powerhouse city of Shanghai. The company is also due to tour the Chinese territory of Hong Kong separately in December - details of that tour will be announced next month.
In China, the Mariinsky will perform the most famous classic of all time, "Swan Lake," as well as George Balanchine's 1967 three-act plotless masterpiece, "Jewels," both of which the company performed in New York's Metropolitan Opera House in July, to great critical acclaim. Significantly, it will be the first time that Balanchine's "Jewels" has been performed in China - indeed anywhere in the whole of Asia. The company's venue in Shanghai is the new Grand Theater, where the Shanghai International Ballet Competition took place last year.
China's National Day falls on Tuesday, and on that night the company will dance "Swan Lake" at the Exhibition Center in Beijing. It is to be hoped that there will still be a sizable audience that night, and that not too many people will be tempted instead to watch the fireworks display in Tiananmen Square, together with China's political leaders.
Barely a week after their last performance in Shanghai, the Mariinsky Ballet will embark on another two-week tour - this time to Paris - which is to begin on Oct. 16. The Mariinsky has not danced in Paris for a long time - not, in fact, since its last tour there in the mid-1990s. At the Theatre du Chatelet, the company will present the French audiences with three different programs: the sumptuous new production of "La Bayadere," based on Marius Petipa's 1900 version, which opened their New York season; a Michel Fokine program; and Mikhail Shemyakin's controversial 2001 production of "The Nutcracker," with choreography by Kirill Simonov.
There is simply no other major ballet company in the world that tours as extensively worldwide as the Mariinsky Ballet. The company's latest award comes from Mexico, where it just won the Best Ballet gong at the prestigious "Las Lunas" ("The Moons") awards for its performances on tour there last spring. The awards are handed out by the Auditorio Nacional, Mexico's highest-profile performance venue. The ballet's artistic director, Makhar Vaziyev, was in Mexico City to collect the award on behalf of the Mariinsky during a gala on Sept. 4, in which some Mariinsky dancers performed.
TITLE: reviving the printmakers' art
AUTHOR: by Katerina Fedorova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Two weeks ago, two local artists unveiled the result of eight months hard work, having turned a 150-square-meter former communal apartment at 7 Moskovsky Pr. into a one-of-a-kind printmaking workshop.
The St. Petersburg Print Studio, the only one of its kind in the city, was opened on Sept. 13, by its two organizers, Pyotr Bely and Yury Shtapakov.
The inspiration for the studio came from Bely, who visited similar studios while studying printmaking at Camberwell College of Art, in London, and working at the Artichoke Print Workshop in the city's Brixton area.
In Western Europe, printmaking is a highly developed, specialized art, and the use of digital and experimental techniques is widespread. In Russia, however, the art form is considered dead.
"St. Petersburg did have a workshop [like the new studio] - in the State Architecture and Building University - but that was 15 years ago," says Shtapakov. There is still a workshop at the university, but it has not been used for several years, due to a shortage of funds.
On top of this, most standard printing houses threw out machines of the sort that Bely and Chtapenko are employing years ago. Despite all these obstacles, Bely and Shtapakov pressed on, driven by a desire to create and to teach the art of printmaking.
A lithography press has been imported from Bristol Art College in the U.K. The press is more than 100 years old, and originally came from London.
A new etching press was made to order by the art-materials factory in Podolsk, near Moscow. The press is exceptional because of its size - 3 meters long and 1.5 meters wide.
"In Moscow, there is a similar - but slightly smaller - press, in an artist's studio; it is his own private press, and is not accessible to other artists," says Bely. "I can say that this is the only large printing press in Russia that is openly accessible to all artists."
Due to the scarcity of the materials in Russia, further help for the duo came from their friends in St. Petersburg and England, who donated materials for making intaglio prints - made from metal plates into which are engraved or etched designs, which hold ink for transfer to paper under pressure, or planographic prints - made by a lithographic technique, in which the image and the support are in the same plane and which is based upon the principle of the natural antipathy of oil and water.
"We have been using our personal contacts to find materials," admits Bely. "We don't have any formal sponsors or supporters as yet."
Before entering the studio, visitors pass through the gloomy atmosphere of a dungeon-esque room that has no natural light and smells of cold and damp. This is the artists' "Reconstruction" project, which shows what the workshop looked like before it was renovated.
"Reconstruction" has an allegorical meaning as well: The hanging wires, crumbling walls and abandoned lampshades represent the past - Dostoyevsky's St. Petersburg - and the path, made of beer bottles and building materials, that leads to the bright, white studio is the path into the future that promises hope. According to the organizers, most of the materials used in the project - which is only temporary - were actually found in this space.
The overall goal of the workshop is to establish a cultural institution in St. Petersburg that helps to change the situation of contemporary print artists, and to open a print gallery.
Bely and Shtapakov hope to achieve these goals in a number of ways - including master classes, cultural exchanges between Russian artists and artists from other countries around the world, exhibitions, and individual projects proposed by artists with unusual or interesting aspects in printmaking terms.
"We are founding a collection of contemporary prints that I have made abroad and Yury has made here," Bely says. "Also, we are creating a specialist library of technical information for printmakers, which will be placed in a garret."
As well as all this, he says, "We want to teach students how to print by themselves, without technicians, so that they can use the SABU print workshop."
The organizers are also gradually developing an information base for St. Petersburg's printmakers, to help them access international exhibitions, grant schemes and other resources. They also want to develop educational schemes to involve schoolchildren and students interested in printmaking, as well as set up art-tourism schemes.
TITLE: cleopatra reidentified
AUTHOR: by Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: An ancient statue kept at the State Hermitage Museum for 70 years has been identified as being of Egypt's most famous queen and last pharaoh, Cleopatra VII.
In addition, according to the Hermitage, while there are many statues of the famous lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, the Hermitage statue is the best preserved in the world.
"This case is a good example of the difficult problems scientists face when they identify who is portrayed in ancient artworks," said Georgy Velinbakhov, the deputy head of the Hermitage's scientific department, as the statue went on display in the museum on Tuesday.
The statue, which once belonged to the Russian royal family, was taken during the Soviet era from the tsars' summer residence at Peterhof to the Hermitage.
The museum did not identify the statue when it arrived in 1929. It was only in 1957 that Irma Lapis, who ran the Hermitage's late Egyptian art department at the time, identified it as another famous Egyptian queen, Arsinoe II, who lived from 316 BC to 270 BC.
Only this year was the black basalt figurine finally attributed to Cleopatra VII, who lived from 69 BC to 30 BC.
"When the first attribution of the statue was made, it was mostly based on the most obvious iconographic signs normally attributed to Arsinoe II - a double horn of plenty," said Andrei Bolshakov, the curator of the exhibition, which is called "Arsinoe or Cleopatra?"
The confusion was not entirely surprising, he added: Cleopatra had, in her youth, imitated Arsinoe.
However, scientists around the world queried Lapis' conclusion; the statue seemed to belong to a later period of Egyptian art, when Arsinoe II was not so popular among sculptors.
On top of this, researchers came to the conclusion that the double horn of plenty could also signify Cleopatra. Another feature - the three snakes carved on the statue's forehead - is characteristic only of Cleopatra. (Arsinoe II is usually portrayed with only two snakes.)
It was Sally-Ann Ashton, an expert on Egyptian art at the British Museum, who identified the Hermitage statue as Cleopatra. Ashton saw the statue when it was the part of the exhibition "Egyptian Cleopatra: From History to Myth," which traveled to Rome, London and Chicago, from 2000 to earlier this year.
While Ashton's identification has been accepted by the Hermitage, which has labeled the statue as Cleopatra, the name of the exhibition it appears in indicates there are still some doubts.
Velinbakhov said it may take many years before science will give the final answer on the personality of the statue.
Bolshakov said that Egyptian sculptors had not used the individual features of the person their works represented, but would simply write the person's name on the art.
However, the statue bears no signature.
Nevertheless, Bolshakov said, Cleopatra's individuality still shows through as the nose of the figure in the statue is a little larger than on other statues of those times.
"Everybody remembers Cleopatra VII's big nose," Bolshakov said.
"Arsinoe or Cleopatra?" runs at the Hermitage through Nov. 17.
TITLE: a man without a country
AUTHOR: by Carolyn See
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: A few words like "mizzle," "tubernose," "nuncle" and "minikin" soon warn the reader here that "Nowhere Man" is no ordinary book. The author has come to the United States very recently from what I guess we would still call the former Yugoslavia, and he has already been compared, in linguistic terms, to Nabokov and Conrad.
It might be better to look at "Nowhere Man" more simply as a novel, without the decorative wordplay. Aleksandar Hemon has created a fictional alter ego, a fellow named Pronek, born into Marshal Tito's made-up country, a sweet place of summer resorts "where pines gave off bounteous resin smells, when the breeze of the sea brought forth tickling sultriness, when warm bodies exuded coconut-milky sun-lotion scent." And the Bosnian capital, still poignantly untouched and alive: "They heard a hum, a gigantic hum, like the Big Bang echo. It was the sum of all the life noises Sarajevo produced, his father said: the clattering of dishwashers and buses; the music from bars and radios; the bawling of spoiled children, doors slamming: engines running." Altogether an enchanted country, a place that the reader knows - with an all-too-sickening feeling - is headed inexorably for historical disaster, chaotic civil war.
But, growing up, Pronek doesn't know. He's just a kid, meeting another kid - Mirza, who will remain his lifelong friend - the first day of kindergarten, waking up one night to find his beloved grandma dead, growing into puberty, falling in love with the Beatles, purchasing his first guitar, spending long afternoons in a series of bad garage bands, writing a slew of embarrassing songs, going on dates and finally getting lucky.
There's no way to prepare for the future if we don't know it's coming. Pronek can only grow up and live his life. He's conscripted into the army, hates it, gets out. He's part of a delegation to the Soviet Union, where he enthralls other foreign students by talking trash to the listening devices installed in every room. He takes vacations with his parents and is mildly revolted by the fact that they still want to have sex. In other words, Pronek is just a guy. But he's worth noticing, worth falling in love with, even, because he's human.
Then, the war. By a fluke, Pronek finds himself in the United States. His best friend, Mirza, remains home, caught in a ghastly nightmare: "One time I was with my friend Jasmin," Mirza writes, "and we are talking ... and one second later his head explodes like pomegranate. That second when I see it but I cannot say nothing, because the death is very fast, that second is the worst second of my life." Then Mirza goes on to tell the story of a horse who's looked at this nightmare world and had enough: At a clifftop military camp, "the horse goes slowly to the edge, we think he wants some grass there ... . He turns around, looks at us directly in our eyes, like person, big, wet eyes and then just jumps - hop! He just jumps and we can hear remote echo of his body hitting stones. I never saw anything so much sad."
When history runs its stupid steamroller over so much life, what is a surviving human to do? Pronek finds himself washed up in a Chicago flophouse; desperate, beyond desperate. But, again, what else can he do - what else can any of us do - but live out life? Like a latter-day Nelson Algren, he scurries out and across the very bottom of that city's society, an outsider, an outcast. Nothing if not brave, he works for a while as the world's saddest private detective; nothing if not hopeful, he falls in with a flock of Greenpeace protesters, drives through the U.S. Badlands ravaged by nuclear waste, notices how much the country looks like his own, then - what is there for him to do? - falls in love.
The author plays around a lot with chronology and point of view, but for all this, I think, "Nowhere Man" is still devastatingly simple. There is the world of safety, good times and peace, and there is that other world, of slaughter and suicidal horses. The one world can supplant the other at any time. Then there is a third world, of a universe of refugees, of all those who have seen the worst but still must go on. Pronek, with his new beloved, will end up heading out to Shanghai, legendary stopping place for the bereft of every continent and country. What kind of life can he expect to make for himself? The last section here is a melancholy riff upon the limited choices of the homeless, the plucky, the guileful. The merit of "Nowhere Man" rests on far more than gimmicky, literary stunts. It's a study of the human condition, sad as it is, today.
"Nowhere Man." By Aleksandar Hemon. Doubleday. 242 pp. $23.95.
TITLE: cure for symphonic migraine
TEXT: If the State Hermitage Museum's latest exhibition, "Man in the Middle," has become the must-see event of the season in the sphere of fine art (see last Friday's All About Town), then Earlymusic - the newly adopted name of the fifth running of the St. Petersburg Early Music Festival, which gets going this week - is set to be the highlight of this season's musical life.
The early-music movement - which broadly defines "early music" as music from the Middle Ages until the beginning of the Romantic era in the early 19th century - has been a revolution on the Western music scene since the 1960s, and one of the principal aims of the St. Petersburg festival is to encourage the development of the movement in Russia. To this end, the festival now produces an annual showcase, with the participation of soloists and ensembles that are representative of the achievements and current developments in early music in the West.
The festival - which is almost unique in Russia - has, over the course of its short history, attracted some of the biggest names in the field of early music to St. Petersburg. This year is no exception, with a fantastic line-up including Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt; Spanish violist and conductor Jordi Savall with his ensemble, Hesperion XXI; French countertenor Gerard Lesne with Il Seminario Musicale; and many others.
Over the last four years, the festival has achieved considerable national and international prominence. However, despite its success, popularity and solid reputation, this year's running of the festival sees a radical change in image, with a new label, new logo, and new conception.
This week, the festival's director, Marc de Mauny, sat down with Andrei Vorobei in the festival's official cafe - Che, on Poltavskaya Ul. - to explain what has been going on both inside and outside the festival.
q:Why Che? It's not the kind of place one associates with an early-music festival ...
a:It may help to know that the festival has been run by a group of close friends, from the very first day, in 1998: Andrei Reshetin, our artistic director, whose idea it was in the first place, and I as managing director. My "second in command," Sasha [Derbenyova, PR manager], has been with the festival since 1999. And Irina Shneyerova, harpsichordist with Musica Petropolitana, who will be performing with Andrei on October 3, is one of the two owners of "Che" - the other is the cafe's director, Misha Dolgopolov, who is ... Reshetin's godson. Which makes Andrei - Riusha as we call him - look like The Godfather and the rest of us look like a family mafia, which, in a sense, we are - an early-music-festival mafia.
In fact, there are more convincing, and more serious reasons, which explain the relationship between this cafe and the festival. These tie in with our change of name this year: we have shifted very deliberately from being a "festival starinnoi musyky" to being an "earlymusic" festival. We have discarded the Russian word starinnoy in favor of the two English words merged into one. Thanks to this, we are able to get rid of the negative connotations associated with the word starinnoi - such as skuchny ("boring"), stary ("old") or even starchesky ("geriatric") - and to project "Earlymusic" as a new label, a dynamic, ground-breaking phenomenon on the Russian music scene, and in Russian culture generally, which it is.
Part of our "mission," for want of a better word, has been to break down the stereotypes, which have built up around this repertoire and musicians who perform it. Secondly, we aim to position Earlymusic as being not within the field of classical music at all, but as an alternative to classical music, just as jazz and rock are alternatives. This isn't just PR: music as it was composed, played, and performed up to the end of the 18th century has a lot more in common with both jazz and rock than it does with music of the 19th and 20th centuries. I mean this both in terms of the musical material itself, the way the notes are written, the approach it demands, what is required from the musician, and in terms of its place and role in society.
q:I take it that this is your famous "new concept" ...
a:As the Russian saying goes, anything new is something long forgotten. What we're announcing as new isn't, in fact, new at all. It is what emerges when you scratch beneath the surface, though you have to scratch quite hard. You have to discard accepted 20th-century wisdom about how this or that piece of music should be played. That wisdom is fine when it comes to music written during the 19th or 20th centuries, but is hopelessly out of synch with what was going on before that, and unable to deal with it.
q: Is this the so-called "authentic performance" about which one hears?
a:It would be if there were any such thing. As Gustav Leonhardt, the patriarch of early music, pointed out in a recent interview, authenticity is impossible in music simply because a same piece will never be played the same way twice. The same piece will have sounded different on two consecutive days in 1703, to take an uneventful year in European history, for example. Or, as the Finnish musician Ansi Mattila remarked in last year's festival booklet, for an authentic performance of Haydn's "Miracle Symphony," one would have to arrange for a huge candelabra to crash down on the audience without hurting anyone, every time it was performed.
What matters really is respect. A musician driven by respect will seek to understand the composer's intentions. Doing that may well involve studying an original manuscript, rather than a 20th-century edition, reading the numerous tracts and essays that were written at the time about how to play this or that instrument, this or that piece. Learning to master the instrument, which the composer had in mind when he wrote the music. Bach, for example, never heard a piano and, judging by all accounts, wouldn't have liked it much. The result of such an approach to music-making is electrifying: it's what you will hear at all of our festival concerts.
q:Why is it that you have invited so few Russian musicians to play at the festival?
a:Because there are few who are capable of standing on the same concert platform as the ensembles and soloists we have invited from Europe and the U.S. For one thing, those few have already featured at previous festivals. This year, we are presenting only Riusha, who has achieved an international reputation as Russia's finest baroque violinist, with Irina Shneyerova on harpsichord, in a program of Bach such as you have never heard him played before. And the festival closing concert will be given by students from the Academy of early music which we are in the process of creating, and the Catherine the Great Orchestra, which we set up last year as Russia's first professional young baroque orchestra.
The point is that, whereas in the West this revolutionary approach to music-making got under way 40 years ago, which is why it has produced the mature and fantastic musicians who are starring at the festival, it is but a fledgling movement in Russia. It is far more important to provide study opportunities for young, talented and aspiring musicians with these great masters than to provide performance opportunities for weak ensembles and musicians. I'm sure that this way a new generation of Russian musicians will grow up - it's happening already - and reach the highest possible levels of musical endeavour.
q:How come you are in a position to invite such stars and run such a festival? Where and how do you get the support?
a:The festival's "power base" is made up of several EU consulates and cultural centers. Since it was set up, in 1998, the festival has made its mark from several "ideological" points of view: It has become the only major cultural event to which several Western countries make a substantial contribution - this reflects the way St. Petersburg itself came into being; It is the only initiative in the music industry to present what went before the 19th century - anyone used to the standard diet on offer here would think music was invented 200 years ago; And, while presenting what might be called "historical" music - especially relevant in the context of next year's 300th-anniversary celebrations - the festival champions an approach to music-making and performance which is avant-garde and contemporary.
What we lack, however, is real Russian political support. Obviously, the festival doesn't qualify for local or federal government grants or subsidies - hardly surprising, when the state can't support its own cultural institutions. But we could do with some real backing, and I hope that, some time in the not-too-distant future, those in a position to help will wake up to the value and significance of such a festival. We are increasingly reliant on the private sector and, if it weren't for those companies which have lent their support this year - especially our major sponsors KPMG and ILIM PULP - we would not have been able to stage the number of concerts and events which add up what one may call a festival.
q:What about your plans for the future?
a:This year, we've entered into partnership with the Utrecht and Potsdam Sanssouci early-music festivals, thanks to which, in 2003, we will contribute to the State Hermitage Museum's program for the revival of Russian 18th-century opera with a world-class co-production of an opera written for Catherine the Great, Giovanni Paisiello's "I filosofi immaginari" - which she enjoyed so much that she saw it 30 times. We will present a Monteverdi opera ["Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria," or "The Return of Ulysses to his country"] also - Monteverdi is practically unknown here - and Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas." Other than these opera premieres, the festival will include night-time concerts by candlelight, concerts to accompany fine food and wine, and concerts in unusual venues - such as Che.
Earlymusic opens on Friday with a concert by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, with soprano Claron McFadden, in the Shostakovich Philharmonic. The festival runs through Oct. 12.
Links: www.earlymusic.ru
TITLE: U.S., U.K. Accused of Attacking Civilians
AUTHOR: By Sameer Yacoub
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq said Thursday that a U.S. airstrike hit its civilian airport in the southern port city of Basra. No casualty figures were mentioned.
A Pentagon official said that two strikes early Thursday were in response to Iraq's firing of anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles at allied aircraft patrolling zones declared off-limits to Iraqi planes.
The strikewas aimed at a mobile air-defense radar system put at the civilian airport, said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesperson.
Officials repeatedly have charged that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein moves military equipment to nonmilitary sites in hopes that coalition forces will not strike for fear of injuring civilians.
Iraq quickly condemned Thursday's strike, which came two days after attacks aimed at radar and communications facilities in the southeast.
"This terrorist act is a breach of international civilian aviation regulations," an announcer on Iraq's state-owned satellite channel said.
The announcer said that the attack targeted Basra International Airport's radar system and damaged the terminal building. No further details were announced.
A Pentagon official said in Washington that aircraft from the U.S.-British coalition launched two strikes just after midnight local time, one near Basra and the other near Al Kufah in southern Iraq.
The strikes came about 90 minutes after Iraq fired at the allied planes, the official said without specifying the location of the Iraqi attacks.
The coalition strikes also targeted an air-defense communications facility, said Navy Lieutenant Commander Nick Balice, of the U.S. Central Command in Florida. He declined to say from where the Iraqis fired but said that the coalition strikes were not necessarily aimed at the Iraqi facility that provoked them.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disclosed last week that he ordered pilots to attack such targets as communications sites, command centers and fiber-optic links in Iraq's air defense network rather than the specific guns and radars used against U.S. and British pilots.
The goal of the new approach was to reduce dangers to fliers while increasing the damage to Iraq's increasingly sophisticated air-defense system.
The United States and Britain have patrolled zones in northern and southern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, declaring the areas off limits to Iraqi aircraft to protect Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south.
Those patrols routinely launch airstrikes, with allies saying that they are only responding when Iraq's military radar locks onto their fighter planes, indicating an anti-aircraft attack was imminent. On Sept. 6, American and British warplanes attacked and destroyed Iraq's biggest military compound, H-3, in western Iraq near the Jordanian border, the exiled officers said.
The latest incidents come during high tensions between the United States and Iraq. Exiled Iraqi military officers say that U.S. and British warplanes have intensified strikes recently in an apparent effort to undermine Iraq's air defenses as a prelude to war.
TITLE: Explosives Found on French Airplane
AUTHOR: By Pierre-Antoine Souchard
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - Explosives of the same type as found on alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid were discovered on a Moroccan jet after passengers left the flight at an airport in eastern France, authorities said Thursday.
There was no detonator attached to the half a kilogram of explosives discovered in the passenger section of a Royal Air Maroc airplane on Wednesday night after it landed at the Metz-Nancy-Lorraine airport, according to police.
Judicial sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the explosive material as pentrite and said that it was the same as the substance Reid, a British citizen, allegedly tried to detonate on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22.
The airline refused immediate comment on the case when called.
The explosives found Wednesday were wrapped in aluminum foil, police said, indicating that it might have been in transit for delivery. The Boeing 737 originated in Marrakech.
The judicial sources said that the amount of explosives was sufficient to blow up a plane. They said, however, that they had been unable to find a fuse mechanism needed for detonation.
The explosives were found between armrests by dogs from the customs service as they performed a routine search of the plane. Anti-terrorism police were investigating the find, along with the counterintelligence agency known as the DST.
TITLE: Time Runing Out for Angels To Secure Postseason Berth
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: ANAHEIM, California - The Anaheim Angels are running out of games. After Anaheim's 4-2 loss to Texas on Wednesday night, Seattle came from behind to beat Oakland, denying the A's the AL West title and keeping the Angels on hold for one more day.
Needing just one victory to clinch their first postseason berth since 1986, the Angels have lost four straight.
They finish up their series with Texas on Thursday before going home for three games against the Mariners.
"We're still in the driver's seat," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. "This is a little bump in the road. It is just that. We're going to be OK."
The Angels haven't been OK for more than a week now. They've lost seven of their last nine - and haven't been this bad since April, when they were more pretender than contender.
The finish against Seattle could be reminiscent of 1995, when the Mariners came from 13 games back to clinch - knocking the Mariners out in a one-game playoff.
"There is no panic whatsoever," pitcher Troy Percival said. "We're going to win, we're going to go to the playoffs. We're not playing great, but we showed signs of life."
The Angels have already set a club record with 96 wins. They are technically still in the hunt for the West title, but trail Oakland by three games with four to go.
And then there's the Mariners, four games behind Anaheim.
"I'm sure they're starting to feel a little bit jittery over there," said Mike Cameron, whose two-run homer in the eighth rallied the Mariners. "It sounds so easy to win just one game. But I don't think Texas is going to give into them."
Seattle 3, Oakland 2 Mike Cameron hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning and Seattle once again rallied to stave off elimination, beating Oakland at home to prevent the Athletics from clinching the AL West.
With four games left, the Mariners (92-66) still have a chance to catch Anaheim (96-62) in the wild-card chase.
Seattle won its fourth in a row. On Tuesday night, the Mariners scored four times in the eighth to overcome Oakland 8-7.
Chicago White Sox 7, Boston 2. Boston was eliminated from the AL wild-card race as Joe Crede hit a three-run homer off Derek Lowe in Chicago's home win.
The Red Sox (91-67) needed to win their final five games and have Anaheim lose its last five to set up a playoff for the wild card.
Lowe gave up a single to Frank Thomas and a walk to Jeff Liefer in the fourth, and Crede hit the next pitch into the left-field bullpen for his 12th homer and a 4-0 lead.
St. Louis 6, Arizona 1. Scott Rolen and JD Drew both hit three-run homers to guide the St. Louis Cardinals to a victory over the slumping Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League on Wednesday.
The Cardinals completed a three-game series sweep, leaving both teams with identical 94-64 records. St. Louis and Arizona are likely to play in the opening round of the playoffs and the team with the best record gets home field advantage.
St. Louis has won four games in a row, eight out of nine and 18 of its last 21. The Diamondbacks have lost six in a row, a season high.
Garrett Stephenson (2-5) tossed five shutout innings, allowing one hit while striking out two and walking five. Three relievers combined to make it a four-hitter.
Curt Schilling (23-7) was sharp but the two homers were too much to overcome. He allowed six runs on six hits but struck out 12 and walked one.
He was making his final scheduled start of the regular season, winding up with 315 strikeouts and just 33 walks.
Matt Williams hit a solo homer in the sixth to account for Arizona's run. The Diamondbacks have clinched a playoff spot but their slump has prevented them wrapping up the NL West title.
(AP, Reuters)
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: SKA Loses Again
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - SKA continued its losing streak last week, dropping the first two home games of the Professional Hockey League season.
After losing 5-2 on Sunday to Avangard Omsk at the Yubilainy Sports Palace, SKA moved to the Ice Palace where they lost 3-1 to Spartak Moscow on Tuesday. Spartak capitalized on two defensive mistakes, giving it a 2-0 lead at the end of the first period, and SKA struggled to get back in the game both mentally and physically.
SKA is already in 17th place with a 1-4 record. SKA has two road games left in September before returning home to play last year's champion, Ak Bars of Kazan, on Oct. 3 at Yubileiny.
Bure Under the Knife
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Pavel Bure of the New York Rangers will have arthroscopic surgery on his right knee on Thursday, the team announced on Wednesday.
An MRI has shown the "Russian Rocket" has a posterior tear of the medial meniscus. Bure must wait until after the operation to discover how long he will be out of action.
The 30-year-old right wing complained of stiffness in the knee during the second intermission of Tuesday's preseason game against the New Jersey Devils, but still played in the third period and assisted on a goal by Vladimir Malakhov.
Bure, three times a 50-goal scorer, missed nearly two full seasons - 1995 to 1996 and 1998 to 1999 - after undergoing reconstructive surgery on his knee.
Mrs. Ronaldo Moves
MADRID (Reuters) - The European transfer window may be closed, but Spanish club Rayo Vallecano still managed to pull off a coup on Wednesday by signing Milene Domingues, better known as Mrs. Ronaldo.
Rayo, the third-biggest Madrid club, was due to unveil the 22-year-old Brazilian for its women's team on Thursday, after winning the race to sign her on a contract running until the end of the season.
The move opens up the prospect of divided loyalties in the Ronaldo household, with her famous husband having signed for Real Madrid from Inter Milan before the start of the season.
Former model Domingues, who married Ronaldo in 1999, had been playing in midfield for Serie A women's side Monza.
Moss Charged
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (Reuters) - Minnesota Vikings receiver Randy Moss was charged on Wednesday with two misdemeanor offenses for using his car as a slow-motion battering ram against a traffic officer, but his playing status was uncertain.
Authorities said Moss, 25, tried to turn left in his 2002 Lexus sedan from the wrong lane and was confronted by a female traffic officer during Tuesday's afternoon rush hour. Witnesses said Moss nudged the officer with the car for about half a city block, then stopped when she was knocked to the pavement.
After a night spent in the Hennepin County jail, Moss was charged with careless driving and failing to obey a traffic officer, both misdemeanors punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Police said a small amount of marijuana was found in Moss's car for which he may receive a citation that carries a maximum $200 fine.
Moss spoke briefly after being released from jail, but refused to answer questions about the alleged incident.
"You're trying to talk about my case but I'm not going to tell you what happened," he said. "It was a misunderstanding but I'm not getting into it."