SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #808 (73), Tuesday, October 1, 2002
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Election System Again in Firing Line
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The country's often-criticized electoral system took a thrashing Monday as turmoil broke out in elections in Krasnoyarsk and Russia's third-largest city, Nizhny Novgorod.
 
The head of the Central Elections Commission, Alexander Veshnyakov, cut short a vacation in Sochi to fly back to Moscow to try to sort out the confusion, which exposed serious gaps in the electoral system 15 months ahead of State Duma elections.
 Alexei Volin, the deputy chief of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov's administration, cautioned that the population's faith in democratic elections could be shaken to the core. "The biggest danger is that these scandals can discredit the very idea of elections in the eyes of the population," he said on TVS television.
 The controversy began when the Krasnoyarsk election commission announced Sunday that it was invalidating the results of last week's gubernatorial election, in which former Norilsk Nickel head Alexander Khloponin, a Moscow native, beat Krasnoyarsk native Alexander Uss. It gathered steam Monday after a Nizhny Novgorod court ordered that ballots cast in a mayoral runoff Sunday be impounded, although it later reversed its decision.
 The court stepped in when a preliminary count of almost all of the ballots had been completed, with State Duma Deputy Vadim Bulavinov holding a slim 0.64-percent lead over incumbent Mayor Yury Lebedev. Nearly 30 percent of the voters had voted against both candidates.
 "When the margin is a half percent, the candidates start losing their nerve," CEC head Veshnyakov told Interfax. "We have watched it in the United States and now in Nizhny Novgorod. Here, unfortunately, the court lost its nerve."
 The Nizhny Novgorod court ordered that ballots cast in several districts be impounded following a complaint by Bulavinov, who had 35.57 percent of the vote, against Lebedev's 34.93 percent.
 Bulavinov later withdrew his complaint, and the court allowed the counting to resume.
 "The court decision did not interfere with the results, but protected the authenticity of the ballots," Bulavinov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 Lebedev filed a protest in the same court, demanding that the results be invalidated due to campaign violations.
 City election officials said they had received complaints of money and vodka being given to voters, Interfax reported. The officials said it was not clear who had offered the bribes and that the complaints had been forwarded to the police.
 Final results are expected in a week.
 In Krasnoyarsk, meanwhile, Khloponin filed a complaint in court about the decision to invalidate his victory. The court was expected to consider the appeal Tuesday.
 Krasnoyarsk legislative-assembly speaker Uss, whom some politicians in Moscow have accused of being behind the decision, said Monday that he had been caught off guard.
 "The decision was quite unexpected," he said on ORT television. 
 "I was not actually following [the developments] but was getting ready to participate in the inauguration ceremony," he said.
 Analysts say Uss has the backing of powerful regional business groups in the election who were stunned by his defeat at the hands of an outsider. They said the businesspeople may have been afraid of being reined in and pushed for the invalidation.
 The Central Elections Commission said on Sunday that it appeared the regional election commission may have been pressured.
 "This decision was made without sufficient legal grounds, to put it mildly, and must be canceled by either a court or a higher-ranking election body," CEC official Olga Zastrozhnaya told reporters Monday in Moscow.
 The Central Elections Commission has the right to overrule regional commissions. It was not clear Monday whether it might do so.
 The head of the Krasnoyarsk commission, Georgy Kostrykin, was hospitalized Monday after suffering a heart attack, Interfax said. He had been summoned to the regional legislative assembly to explain his commission's decision. He had called for a new vote in March.
 His deputy, Alexander Bugrei, stood by the decision on Monday, saying the commission had received about 150 complaints of violations during the election campaign. He said it lacked the resources to check all of the complaints filed by voters and representatives of Uss, Interfax reported.
 In Moscow, human-rights ombudsperson Oleg Mironov and other politicians lambasted the election system.
 "Our [regional] election commissions have turned into monsters with bloated staff, while the Central Elections Commission is no longer a commission but a ministry for conducting elections," he said. "No other country has more election violations than Russia."
 Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the Liberal Democratic Party and a deputy State Duma speaker, said the two elections showed the system was in a state of crisis and called for new officials to be appointed to the CEC. He recalled his party's representative from the commission.
 Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov said electoral laws needed improvement: "This is proof that various methods can be used to divert the free will of voters."
 The disputes are a test for the election system and the law, said Alexei Titkov, a regional-election analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center. "The crisis is yet another argument for the Central Elections Commission and the Kremlin that the regions should be brought under stricter federal control," he said.
 President Vladimir Putin has trimmed the powers of regional leaders and made restoration of central authority a priority.
 Mudslinging has surrounded a number of other regional elections. Lebedev became Nizhny Novgorod mayor after the original 1998 election was invalidated. The initial winner, Andrei Klimentyev, was arrested on charges of embezzlement.

TITLE: 'Russian da Vinci' May Be Among Remains
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The remains of what the human-rights group Memorial says are approximately 30,000 victims of the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s that the group has discovered outside the Leningrad Oblast town of Toksovo may include those of prominent Russian philosopher, theologian and scientist Pavel Florensky, representatives announced on Thursday.
 
Florensky is widely regarded as Russia's greatest 20th-century theologian and has been referred to as the Russian Leonardo da Vinci. He joined the Russian Orthodox priesthood in 1911 and remained deeply involved in cultural, artistic, and scientific studies up until he perished in the terror of the 1930s.
 "There is a certain degree of indirect evidence that Florensky might have been executed in that area on Dec. 8, 1937," said Irina Fligye, the head of Memorial's historical section in St. Petersburg.
 Fligye said that, in December 1937, Florensky was brought from his place of exile on the Solovetsky Islands, in the White Sea, to Leningrad, and then shot at the Rzhevsky artillery range, near Toksovo, which is located about 30 kilometers south of St. Petersburg.
 "We know that he was on the list of 509 people who were murdered in that area on the same day" Fligye said.
 Memorial has been carrying out a search for the mass graves over the last five years and found the first evidence of their whereabouts - the remains of about 20 people - in a forest at the artillery range this August.
 Forensic examination of nine of the skulls found at the site determined that they are those of men and women, ranging from 15 to more than 60 years of age. All of the remains indicate that the victims died from gunshots to the base of the skull - standard procedure for the NKVD, which was the precursor of the KGB. The caliber of the weapons used was 9 millimeters and 11.43 millimeters, which were standard issue for NKVD officers in 1920s and the 1930s.
 Before Memorial's discovery, just one mass grave of victims of the terror had been confirmed in the St. Petersburg area by Federal Security Service (FSB) officials, located near the village of Levashyovo, which is also located in the Leningrad Oblast. The FSB today maintains responsibility for the archives of both of its predecessors, the KGB and NKVD. While relatives of the victims of the purges may gain access to documents containing the charges against the victims and the dates of their executions, the FSB maintains that it possesses no information relating to the location of the executions or of the remains of the victims.
 However, Memorial has information that, when interviewed in the 1960s, drivers of trucks that were responsible for bringing the bodies to the Levashyovo site put the number there at about 8,500. Over 40,000 people were executed in Leningrad and the Leningrad area during the terror, leaving the whereabouts of the remains of over 30,000 of those who perished a mystery.
 Father Andronik Trubachyov, Florensky's grandson, who teaches at the Theological Academy in Sergiyev Posad, near Moscow, said that the official assumption of his grandfather's burial site is in Levashyovo, though he has never seen any archival documents specifying this.
 "I'm sure that the FSB will deny the existence of any other mass graves right to the very end, because it is a state secret," Trubachyov said.
 Fligye said that Memorial's strong belief that Florensky is buried near Toksovo comes from the fact that victims that were buried at the Levashyovo site were executed in the cellars of the so-called "Big House" - the NKVD headquarters in Leningrad, located on Liteiny Prospect - from which they were transported to mass graves.
 The artillery range near Toksovo, conversely, was used both for the executions and subsequent burials.
 "There's no question that it was inconvenient, if not impossible, for the NKVD to murder the entire group of 509 people of which Florensky was part, in the cellars on the same day. That's why we are sure they brought them to Koirangakangas," Fligye said.
 "Of course, we can't be 100-percent sure that Florensky is buried in Koirangakangas, even though he was on the list of the people executed there," she added. "We don't know that something didn't happen to him on the way. It's very likely that he is there, though."
 Florensky's internment on the Solovetsky Islands was not the first time he served time in Stalin's camps.
 He refused to give up his church work after the 1917 October Revolution, continuing to wear his priest's clothing and standing up for his convictions, which ultimately led to his arrest in 1933.
 He was sentenced to 10 years of corrective labor in Siberia under Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code (propaganda and agitation calling for overthrow or weakening of Soviet power).
 While in Siberia, Florensky continued his scientific work on construction on permafrost sites and a project to extract iodine from seaweed. He patented 10 different scientific discoveries in relation to the second project.
 In 1937, he was sentenced to death by a special NKVD tribunal in the Leningrad Oblast.
 Florensky's major theological work, entitled "Stolp i utverzhdeniye istiny" ("The Pillar and Ground of the Truth") (1914), conveyed the teaching on Divine Sophia (Feminine Wisdom) as the basis for the comprehension of the integrity of the universe. He explored the various meanings of Christian love, which he described as a combination of friendship and universal love.
 "Friendship bestows the greatest joy, but it also demands the greatest effort. Every day, every hour, every minute, as the ego sorrowfully loses its life for the sake of a friend, it joyfully finds that life restored," Florensky wrote in his work.
 Modern researchers often cote Florensky's thought in relation to modern phenomena.
 "Florensky was one of the first thinkers in the twentieth century to develop the idea of the Divine Sophia, who has become one of the central concerns of feminist theologians," wrote Richard Gustafson in the introduction to an English edition of Florensky's work.

TITLE: Miss Universe Denies Signing A Contract
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Oksana Fyodorova, the St. Petersburg law-enforcement student who was crowned Miss Universe in May, only to surrender the title last week over scheduling conflicts, said at a press conference here on Friday that she had not signed any contracts with contest organizers detailing her expected duties and schedule.
 
She also said that her reason for stepping down as Miss Universe was not, as has been rumored, due to the fact that she is pregnant.
 "The contract was in English and nobody gave me a Russian copy. So, I didn't sign the contract," Fyodorova said.
 Dressed in black leather pants and a black blouse, she added: "As you can see, I haven't gained any weight. I can also tell you that I didn't get married, and I'm not pregnant."
 Fyodorova said that her chief reasons for stepping down were her discomfort with some of the duties that came with the crown and that the organizers would not allow her to miss certain events in order to spend more time completing work on her thesis.
 "The first instance that prompted my decision was the interview on the Howard Stern Show," Fyodorova said. "Nobody warned me about the kind of questions I would be asked."
 According to Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, the shock-talk radio host asked Fyodorova a number of obnoxious questions regarding her sexual preferences and other intimate details.
 Fyodorova was accompanied at the press conference by representatives from the St. Petersburg Police Academy, who supported her decision.
 "Oksana made her choice, not in favor of a star modeling career, but in favor of becoming a scientist and teacher," said Viktor Salnikov, the head of the academy, where Fyodorova is a post-graduate student. "It is, of course, unusual for a young woman to make such a choice, but she did it. This is her mentality, her philosophy of life."
 Salnikov said that Fyodorova made the choice herself, and that nobody could have deprived her of the Miss Universe title, if she had wanted to keep it.
 Fyodorova said that neither she nor the organizers of the prestigious pageant have any outstanding financial claims on each other because the "agreement on my resignation of the title was mutual."
 She also said that she would not take court action against the newspapers that said she had gained weight since the pageant and was pregnant.
 "I'm not a scandalous person," Fyodorova said.
 While the former Miss Universe said she didn't think of the possible consequences of her decision for future Russian contestants, Viktor Zemskov, the director of the Miss St. Petersburg contest, which Fyodorova won in 1999, said that, in the future, Russian participants may face difficulties taking part in Miss Universe pageants.
 "The organizers of the Miss Russia contest, at least, will face some complications," he said.
 Fyodorova did say that, despite the fact that she didn't foresee any difficulties, she advised future contestants to acquaint themselves with their duties beforehand, and balance them against what they want to achieve personally.
 She also expressed surprise that, after she won the title, there was no official reception organized for her in Russia. She said that she had felt uneasy when attending this year's Miss Italy contest instead of the one in Russia. Generally, the winner from the previous year presents the new crown, but Fyodorova says that she was not invited to the Russian event.
 She said that she now plans to finish her thesis before working as an instructor either at the police academy or some other police institution.

TITLE: Putin Backs Lifting of Blockade
AUTHOR: By Steve Weizman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Monday praised Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's lifting of a 10-day siege on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters and repeated calls for Israeli troops to leave Palestinian cities and for the Palestinians to punish attacks against Israel.
 
Speaking at the start of talks with Sharon in the Kremlin, Putin said Russia supports the U.S.-led coalition against terror and views Israel as an important member of that alliance.
 "We keenly welcome your decision to lift the siege of Yasser Arafat's headquarters," Putin told Sharon. "I believe the decision was difficult to make."
 The blockade, aborted under intense U.S. pressure, had been deeply criticized by the Israeli media and members of Sharon's own government, who say he seriously underestimated Washington's opposition to the operation.
 Sharon met Putin at the start of two days of talks with Russian officials on security concerns, including alleged Iraqi and Iranian efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
 Israeli officials believe that the technology for such arms could come from Russia, with or without official sanction from Moscow.
 Putin called for a speedy return of UN weapons inspectors to Baghdad, but said a solution to the Iraqi issue must be found by the Security Council.
 On Israel's two-year conflict with the Palestinians, Putin said Russia backed last week's UN resolution calling for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian centers. The resolution also demands that the Palestinian Authority arrest and try "those responsible for terrorist acts."
 Sharon, accompanied by Israeli National Security Council head Ephraim Halevy, was to meet later Monday with leaders of Russia's Jewish community. Halevy, until recently the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, is considered one of Sharon's key foreign-policy advisers.
 On Tuesday, Sharon was to meet with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.
 Izvestia reported that the Israeli delegation brought files proving links between Palestinian militants and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The documents show that Palestinians helped Hussein violate UN-imposed restrictions on oil sales and used their share of the proceeds to buy arms from Iran, the paper said.
 Russia is one of the so-called quartet of Mideast peacemakers, with the United States, the European Union and the United Nations. Israel considers the EU and the United Nations biased in favor of the Palestinians and hopes that Russia, fighting its own battle against mainly Muslim insurgents in Chechnya, might take a more sympathetic view of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians.
 Sharon brought three Russian-born survivors of a June 2001 Tel Aviv disco bombing in which a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 21 people, many of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
 "The message is to say to people that we who emigrated from Russia still suffer from terrorism as the Russians do from Chechen terror," 20-year-old Faik Khuliev, wounded in the bombing, told reporters on Sharon's aircraft.
 Arafat's deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, is also due to visit Moscow this week for talks with Ivanov and other officials. Abbas is due to arrive on Tuesday but is not expected to meet Sharon, Palestinian officials said.
 According to Israeli officials, Sharon will ask Russia to use its traditional influence with Syria to ask that Damascus stop the radical Islamic Hezbollah militia from attacking Israel from neighboring Lebanon, where Syria is the main power broker.

TITLE: Sheverdnadze Says That Pankisi Has Been Cleared
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said Monday that his country had successfully completed its operation to bring order to the Pankisi Gorge - a source of tension with Moscow, which says the gorge serves as a base for Chechen rebels.
 
Also Monday, Georgian border guards said they registered two powerful explosions near the border with Russia. They said it was too early to say whether the blasts were caused by airstrikes.
 "The active phase of the anti-criminal and anti-terrorist operation is over," Shevardnadze said in a weekly radio interview. "The gorge is cleared of illegal armed groups. ... The so-called Pankisi problem, widely discussed over the past two years, doesn't exist any more."
 The rebels, Shevardnadze said, had been killed or had returned to Russia.
 "These groups have been on Russian territory for practically a month without being noticed," he said.
 The Interior Ministry said a total of 41 people had been arrested during the operation.
 But a top Russian border-service official said hundreds of rebels were still in the gorge.
 "No one has counted their number, but judging by all accounts, there are several hundred rebels and mercenaries in the Pankisi Gorge," said Valery Putov, chief of the border guards' North Caucasus department, according to Interfax.
 Russian officials have threatened to launch a military operation on Georgian territory to root out Chechen rebels they say are hiding there. Moscow has dismissed the Georgian police operation as ineffective.
 Shevardnadze denied the Pankisi operation had been conducted under outside pressure, but invited Russia and other countries to send military observers to see the results for themselves.
 "The time has come to end the tensions between Russia and Georgia," he said.
 "How stable the situation in Pankisi is can very easily be verified. I once again invite the Russian side to send its observers, without arms of course, to Pankisi and to regions where rebels could hide," he said.
 Georgia sent 1,000 Interior Ministry troops into the Pankisi Gorge on the border with Russia in August, but Russia has consistently derided Tbilisi's efforts. Russian officials have derided the mission as a show unlikely to yield results.
 Meanwhile, border-guard spokesperson Shalva Londaridze said Georgian troops and observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had registered two strong explosions Sunday near the border with Ingushetia.
 He said authorities would have to investigate before drawing conclusions about whether Georgian territory had been bombed.
 Georgia in the past has accused Russia of conducting strikes on its territory.
 Last week, militants downed a Russian helicopter and clashed with federal forces in Ingushetia. A total of 17 Russian troops were killed.
 Russian officials said the fighters belonged to a Chechen rebel unit commanded by Ruslan Gelayev, who allegedly had been hiding in the gorge.
 Shevardnadze acknowledged that Gelayev and his fighters had gotten past Georgian border guards, but said Russian border guards had also let them slip through.
 Small groups of rebels who had come from Georgia were seen recently in Chechnya's Achkhoi-Martan district near the border with Ingushetia, district chief Shamil Burayev said Monday.
 Shevardnadze said the air patrols that Georgia began along the border last week would not help deflect a possible attack by Russia. "But I'm convinced Russia will never do this," he added.
 He suggested Moscow could be threatening strikes in an attempt to scare off investors from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which will bypass Russia as it takes Caspian crude to the West.
 Also Monday, a Russian military convoy traveling from Tbilisi to a Russian military base in Batumi was stopped by Georgian authorities, officials said. Defense Ministry spokesperson Nino Sturua said the Russians had failed to obtain the necessary permission for the convoy.
 
 <i>- AP, Reuters </i>

TITLE: Court Orders End of Detention for Krasnoyarsk Physicist
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Valentin Danilov, a physicist accused of spying for China, was released from custody Friday after 19 months in a Krasnoyarsk prison and said his release showed the judge was following the law.
 
A professor with Krasnoyarsk Technical University, Danilov was arrested in February 2001 on charges of selling secret space technology to China. He has maintained his innocence, saying the information was no longer classified and had been published in scientific journals. Danilov was later charged with misappropriating university funds, which he has also denied.
 Danilov's term of detention expired Friday, and the central-district court in Krasnoyarsk chose not to extend it, his lawyer, Yelena Yevmenova, said. Danilov's detention already had been extended; investigators routinely request that detentions be extended, and the requests are almost always granted.
 &quot;I believed that, sooner or later, someone would pay attention to the law and I'm glad that the judge made a decision based on the law,&quot; Danilov said by telephone from his home in Krasnoyarsk on Friday.
 He was released on condition he not leave the Siberian city, Yevmenova said, adding that the scientist remains in danger of being placed back behind bars since the regional prosecutor has appealed last Wednesday's decision to release him.
 Danilov said he planned to bring his case before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to protest the unreasonably long consideration of his case, which has been dragging on for 2 1/2 years.
 &quot;Practice shows that investigations of cases in our country can last indefinitely,&quot; he said.
 Earlier this year, the Krasnoyarsk court sent his case back to prosecutors for further investigation. No trial date had been set.
 The charges against Danilov stem from a contract he signed with a state-run Chinese company in 1999 on behalf of his university. The $366,000 deal involved the sale of a device designed by Danilov and his colleagues for testing the effects of electromagnetic activity on space satellites.
 The Federal Security Service, or FSB, has said this technology could save China time and money in developing spacecraft that could potentially harm Russia's security. Danilov's case is one in a series of high-profile espionage cases the FSB has brought against Russian scientists and ecologists who have cooperated with foreigners.

TITLE: Soviet Cartoonist Yefimov Turns 102
AUTHOR: By Sarah Karush
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Boris Yefimov remembers his telephone call from Josef Stalin like it was yesterday - the dictator's stern tone, the quick beating of his own heart.
 
Yefimov, the Soviet Union's most celebrated political cartoonist, had a front seat on the roller coaster of the 20th century. No wonder he thanked God when he opened his eyes on his 102nd birthday Saturday.
 At a news conference Friday, the spry, diminutive Yefimov gleefully recounted how he fought the Nazis with laughter and fired irony at the Americans during the Cold War. He paid tribute to the memory of his brother, journalist Mikhail Koltsov, who was shot by a firing squad during Stalin's Terror. And he lamented the death of his art in an increasingly chaotic world, where enemies are harder to define and thus harder to mock.
 Peppering his stories with a poem and a song performed in his booming voice, Yefimov made it clear that after more than a century he is still enchanted by the business of living. As to the secret of his longevity, he said he has no idea - though the former atheist admitted that lately he has taken to crediting a higher power.
 &quot;Every day when I get up, I thank God,&quot; he said.
 A Jew and a supporter of Stalin's enemy Leon Trotsky, Yefimov might have shared his brother's fate were it not for Stalin's appreciation of his art. His first encounter with the leader came in 1937, at the height of the purges.
 On Friday, he recalled a late-night call from Pravda editor Lev Mekhlis.
 Mekhlis asked him to come in to the office so he could give him a message &quot;from him.&quot;
 &quot;There was no need to say which 'he,&quot;' Yefimov said. &quot;There was only one 'he' with a capital 'h.&quot;'
 At a meeting the next day, Mekhlis conveyed Stalin's concern.
 &quot;'He noticed that when you draw Japanese samurai, you always draw them with big teeth sticking out,&quot;' Yefimov quoted Mekhlis as saying. &quot;'Well, he said you shouldn't do that because it insults the dignity of every Japanese person.'
 &quot;I said, 'OK, no more teeth.'&quot;
 Ten years later, the phone rang again. This time it was the Communist Party's Central Committee, instructing him to come in to see Politburo member Andrei Zhdanov.
 Zhdanov described a cartoon Stalin wanted as one of the first strikes in the Cold War. In Stalin's vision, U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower arrives at the North Pole with an army. An ordinary American asks, &quot;What's going on, General? Why such military activity in such a peaceful place?&quot; Eisenhower answers, &quot;Can't you see the Russian threat is looming here?&quot;
 The following afternoon, as Yefimov was working on the assignment, he got another call. It was Stalin himself, wanting to make sure that Eisenhower was depicted &quot;armed to the teeth.&quot; He then asked when the cartoon would be finished. Before Yefimov could answer, Stalin said, &quot;We need it today by 6 o'clock,&quot; and hung up.
 &quot;And I still had a whole day's worth of work to do on it. I thought, that's it. I'm dead,&quot; Yefimov recalled. &quot;But miracles happen, and can you imagine, I finished it at 6 o'clock on the dot.&quot;
 Yefimov has acknowledged ambivalence about his role as a dictator's helper, but expresses great pride in the historic role of his profession.
 &quot;To a certain extent, cartoons were weapons,&quot; he said.
 But those days are gone. &quot;It's a new era, my dear comrades,&quot; Yefimov said. &quot;The situation in the world and in our country is too complicated to approach it so primitively.&quot;
 Cartoons of Osama bin Laden would not work the way a World War II caricature of Adolf Hitler did, Yefimov said. &quot;He's not the kind of figure you can hurt with cartoons. He would just laugh at us: 'I throw bombs at them, and they answer with cartoons.'&quot;
 In some ways, life in modern Russia exceeds all the terrors of the last century, Yefimov said.
 &quot;In the worst time of Stalin's Terror, when ... no one could be sure that they wouldn't come for you during the night and you would disappear without a trace - even then at least when you woke up in the morning and nobody had come for you, you knew you were safe.&quot;
 But even bad times are worth living through, Yefimov said. &quot;I won't say that it's pleasant, but a person should experience everything. It's not good to always be lucky.&quot;

TITLE: PMs Fail To Catch a Fish
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LUOSTO, Finland - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and his Finnish counterpart and host, Paavo Lipponen, braved steady, sweeping rain on an angling trip in the Lappish wilderness Saturday, but the fish refused the bait.
 
&quot;The fish won, two-nil,&quot; declared Lipponen, after neither prime minister managed to catch anything during the 1 1/2-hour excursion.
 They joked and appeared relaxed after three days of talks in Luosto.
 On Friday, the prime ministers opened a new border post along the 1,290-kilometer frontier - the eighth international crossing on the European Union's only border with Russia.
 Kasyanov and Lipponen discussed Iraq, the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and EU expansion, as well as bilateral questions about the border, the environment and energy. Kasyanov rejected the EU's proposals for travel regulations governing Kaliningrad, which would still require residents of the exclave to acquire visas to travel through countries lying on the route to the rest of Russia.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Taking Too Long
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a Charter Courts decision to extend the detention of St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly lawmaker Yuri Shutov past July 1 was unlawful. Shutov was arrested in 1999 after being charged with setting up a criminal group responsible for the murder of a number of high-ranking officials and businesspeople.
 Prosecutors charged Shutov with participating in blowing up Dmitry Filippov, chairperson of the board of directors of Bank Menatep St. Petersburg, as well as the chairperson of the City Hall's Consummer Market Committee Yevgueny Agaryev.
 
 
<b>Plane Goes Missing
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - An An-2 cargo plane with four people aboard was reported missing in eastern Siberia on Monday after it failed to arrive as scheduled at a local airport, emergency officials said.
 The plane departed from Bodaybo, in the Irkutsk region, early Monday morning, said a duty officer in the Siberian emergency department. It did not arrive as scheduled 2 1/2 hours later in the settlement of Valyukhta, the duty officer said, adding that there was hope the plane had made an emergency landing.
 
 
<b>Kaliningrad Talks
 </b>

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - European Union foreign ministers sought Monday to accommodate Moscow's concerns over the possible imposition of visa requirements for Russians traveling to and from Kaliningrad after the EU expands to surround the exclave. 
 Diplomats were reasonably optimistic of finding a compromise last week before Russia on Friday rejected as insufficient the EU opening on the imposition of a special travel document that stopped short of a full visa.
 Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov called the latest EU proposals counterproductive, putting additional pressure on the 15-nation bloc to come up with another a workable proposal before a Nov. 11 summit meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Copenhagen, Denmark. 



TITLE: UES Tries To Boost Share Price
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Submitting to a wave of criticism from minority investors, Unified Energy Systems on Friday created a working group to raise the national power grid's sagging share price.
 
The group's formation, announced at a board meeting Friday, follows an earlier attempt by UES chief Anatoly Chubais to lift the stock by halting asset sales planned under an industry restructuring. Sales will be resumed once an agreement is reached between all shareholders on the value of the assets.
 UES shares have dropped by two-thirds over a year and a half - and the company's market capitalization has fallen from $9 billion to $3 billion.
 The working group will consist of four board members - Chubais, Alexander Branis, who represents minority shareholders, Valentin Zavadnikov and Sergei Kosarev, UES's press service said. Alfa Bank and Merill Lynch, UES's consultants on the restructuring, will together have one representative in the group who has yet to be named.
 The group has set no deadlines for its work.
 &quot;Of course, it needs to be done fast, but we cannot give any exact timing,&quot; said Andrei Trapeznikov, UES spokesperson and board member.
 The board of directors also ordered that the working group draw up a method for evaluating the value of UES assets by the end of next month. UES had earlier signed a contract with Deloitte &amp; Touche to design the scheme.
 The board also gave the go-ahead to Chubais' promise last Wednesday to complete work on the so-called &quot;3+3&quot; document, and the new working group was put in charge.
 The long-awaited document - which UES management promised to deliver in June - is expected to clarify the restructuring plans, particularly for minority investors, giving them insight into the sector's future and, most important, providing key financial data.
 Minority shareholders say that they have been kept in the dark on what they will receive after the restructuring.
 Presidential economic advisor Andrei Illarionov strongly criticized Chubais, and his UES restructuring plan, at a conference with foreign investors last week. He blamed UES management for the drastic fall in UES market capitalization over the past year.
 Illarionov said that the losses were incurred not only by minority shareholders but by UES's main shareholder, the government.
 Some minority investors were skeptical of the working group's ability to lift UES's share price.
 &quot;Chubais' credibility is very much correlated with UES's stock price,&quot; said William Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, a UES minority shareholder.
 &quot;The proof will not be in any nice-sounding words, but in actual concrete measures that are taken to protect dissipation of the assets of the company,&quot; he said.
 The UES board also decided Friday to convert all of the power monopoly's repair units into 100-percent UES-controlled subsidiaries.

TITLE: Top Producers Join Fight Against Trademark Piracy
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Twenty four major international and domestic consumer-goods companies - including Proctor &amp; Gamble, Unilever, Philip Morris and Wimm-Bill-Dann - have teamed up to fight for their property rights.
 
The new lobbying group, Rusbrand, plans to defend brand names by promoting tougher legislation against counterfeit goods and illegal imports and educating authorities and the public.
 &quot;Brands have come to play a very large role in the development and stabilization of the Russian economy,&quot; David Yakobashvili, head of dairy and juice giant Wimm-Bill-Dann and chairperson of Rusbrand's board of directors, said at a news conference Wednesday. &quot;However, the positive role of brands is little understood in Russia, either by consumers, regulators or legislators.&quot;
 Viktor Kramarenko, head of Rusbrand's intellectual property rights committee and foreign-relations director at consumer-goods giant Procter &amp; Gamble, said that, although trademark legislation has been improved, there are still many holes.
 Article 180 of the Criminal Code, which clearly defines trademark violations, was a positive step against counterfeiters, but the law is nonetheless &quot;half-dead&quot; because its implementation was not included in the new Criminal Procedural Code, which came into force earlier this year.
 Rusbrand will be open to large and small companies, said Alexandrine Linyer, executive director of the association, and they will pay a yearly fee.
 Companies already in Rusbrand have invested a total of more than $3 billion in Russia over the past 10 years, said Yakobashvili, who added that membership is expected to double by 2003.
 &quot;In terms of lobbying, they have serious potential,&quot; said Peter Necarsulmer, president of the Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights, a nonprofit organization that defends property rights throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Baltics.
 Although there have been earlier attempts to create such an organization, Rusbrand - which has absorbed the members and functions of the Brand Protection Group created in 1999 - would be by far the broadest in scope, Yakobashvili said.
 The organization fills a growing need because, although the consumer-goods market is growing, Russians know little about the value of brands, he said.
 The retail market grew a record 27.8 percent in dollar terms last year, and is set to expand a further 20 percent in 2002 to $123 billion, said Renaissance Capital analyst Natalya Zagvozdina.
 The average per capita disposable income is rapidly approaching $115 per month, which is when consumers become brand aware, she said, adding that Russians are not yet brand loyal.
 &quot;There is no such thing as consumer retention,&quot; she said.
 Some companies, such as Nestle, actually need more brands to compete with, she said.
 Due to a lack of top-end ice cream in general, customers do not understand why they should pay an extra $0.20 for the Nestle brand, for example.
 Necarsulmer said that, although Russian consumers are brand aware, they are not brand loyal.

TITLE: Microsoft Courts Local Clients
AUTHOR: By Larisa Naumenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Despite concerns about rampant piracy, Microsoft sees a rosy future in Russia and will continue to invest here, Microsoft president Steve Ballmer said Friday.
 
While in Moscow on a one-day visit as part of a whirlwind tour of Europe, Ballmer met with major Microsoft clients, including Sberbank, and took part in a forum that brought together several hundred Microsoft partners from Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
 Ballmer also had a meeting with metals magnate Oleg Deripaska to discuss cooperation and possible business opportunities for collaboration between Base Element, Russian Aluminum and the software giant, but declined to give any details at a news conference late Friday.
 Microsoft, which earlier this month announced an 80-percent leap in Russia and CIS sales to almost $100 million, is upbeat about its future here.
 &quot;We're very optimistic about Microsoft in Russia,&quot; Ballmer said, adding, however, that he did not expect the company to repeat its astonishing performance of the 2001-2002 financial year.
 Microsoft - which will mark its 10th anniversary in Russia in November - plans to expand its presence in the CIS by setting up a representative office in Almaty, Kazakhstan next year, and another branch office in Ukraine at an unspecified later date, Ballmer said.
 Although he gave no specific investment plans, Ballmer was to the point about the monolithic software company's biggest headache. &quot;The main problem for Microsoft in Russia is software piracy,&quot; he said.
 At 87 percent, Russia's piracy rate far outstrips that of the United States, which has the lowest rate in the world, at 27 percent.

TITLE: Gazprom To Double Profit, Sell Media Stake
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - A former Central Bank subsidiary with a murky history has become the newest player in national broadcasting.
 
On Thursday, Evrofinance, a former finance company that evolved into one of Russia's largest banks, struck a $700-million deal with Gazprom to acquire 49 percent of a new holding company to be based on the assets of Gazprom-Media, the gas giant's media arm.
 In exchange, Evrofinance agreed to pay Gazprom-Media $100 million in cash and assume its $600-million debt to Gazprom.
 The deal ends months of speculation over the fate of the company and its most valuable asset - NTV, the country's No. 3 broadcaster. The restructuring of its media assets is part of Gazprom's drive to shed itself of noncore assets.
 Most of Gazprom-Media's debt came on its books earlier this year when its parent company acquired the remaining stakes of NTV founder Vladimir Gusinsky, who is now living in exile. The debt has been the main obstacle to Gazprom finding a buyer for its subsidiary.
 Gazprom contends that it pumped some $1 billion into Gusinsky's companies, and that selling is the only way to get its money back. Thursday's deal was billed by its signatories as a step toward that goal. They said that the holding will continue to look for other investors and that they are planning an initial public offering, though no date has been set.
 Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said on NTV that his company hopes to get its money back &quot;once the capitalization of the new company grows.&quot;
 Evrofinance chairperson Vladimir Stolyarenko said that he expected quick returns on the investment.
 Evrofinance, whose predecessor was founded in 1990 by offshore subsidiaries of the Central Bank, now has several shareholders, including Alrosa, Slavneft, Vneshtorgbank and Troika-Dialog as a nominal holder. For several months last year, Gazprominvestholding held a controlling stake in Evrofinance, according to Vedomosti, but it sold the stake in October to Vneshekonombank and Troika.
 Evrofinance was reportedly once owned by FIMACO, the offshore piggy bank through which Central Bank officials allegedly laundered billions of rubles in profits made on the government bond market before the 1998 crisis.
 It is not clear how the media holding and its debt will be restructured. A source familiar with the deal stressed that, while Evrofinance has taken the $600-million debt off Gazprom-Media's books and put it on its own, it is expecting to repay the debt at a discount of several years. Evrofinance could not be reached for comment Thursday.
 Perhaps the biggest winner in the deal is Boris Jordan, the CEO of both Gazprom-Media and NTV.
 In recognition of his team's efforts in reviving the company after it nearly collapsed in the protracted legal struggle between Gazprom and Gusinsky two years ago, NTV management will get 10 percent of the company. In addition, Jordan will get an option to buy 5 percent of the non-voting stock in the new holding. Jordan will also get a three-year contract to run both NTV and the new holding.
 Apart from NTV, Gazprom-Media controls second-tier channel THT, satellite network NTV Plus, 66 percent of Ekho Moskvy radio and a controlling stake in the Sem Dnei publishing house.
 In terms of its general position, Gazprom announced last week that its profits were expected to more than double in 2005 and that revenues would also rise steeply.
 Gazprom CFO Boris Yurlov said that the company expects to raise revenues to 750 billion to 800 billion rubles ($23.7 billion to $25.3 billion) by 2005 from 474.5 billion rubles in 2001.
 Yurlov told the Brunswick UBS Warburg conference that the figures were to Russian accounting standards and referred to the parent company.
 Revenues in the first half were 297.6 billion rubles, he said.
 He said that he expected a net profit of 180 million to 200 million rubles in three years, after 71.9 billion rubles in 2001.
 Gazprom also said that it has increased the volume of a planned Eurobond to up to $500 million from $400 million.
 First-half net profit was 16.1 billion rubles.
 The company had cut costs of 10 billion rubles in the first half of this year and planned to cut another 30 billion rubles next year, Yurlov said.
 &quot;This is almost $1 billion, and this figure is higher than any possible changes of tariffs that are being talked about,&quot; he said.
 Gazprom's prices, which are among the lowest in any country, are regulated by the state, and the government has allowed it to increase prices by 35 percent this year and 20 percent next year.
 The company's Eurobond is to have a seven-year maturity.
 Yurlov said that the roadshow for the issue would start next week.
 
 <i>(Reuters, SPT) </i>

TITLE: KrasAir To Lease 10 American Planes
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Frustrated in its attempts to lease locally built aircraft, Krasnoyarsk-based KrasAir is negotiating with German charter operator Germania to create a joint-leasing company and add eight Western jets to its fleet, officials with the state-controlled airline said last week.
 
KrasAir management met with Germania chief Hinrich Bischoff in Krasnoyarsk on Thursday, and will finalize the agreement in Germany in two weeks, KrasAir spokesperson Svetlana Volodina said in a telephone interview Thursday.
 Volodina would not detail the structure of the new company, saying only that the company will be registered in Krasnoyarsk. &quot;The contribution of each side and share in equity are still under discussion,&quot; she said.
 Germania is a private airline which operates scheduled flights from Berlin to Frankfurt, Cologne and Tbilisi, and charter flights in the Mediterranean region. 
 The airline is also a contractor for German tourist giant TUI Group.
 Volodina said that KrasAir's chief interest in Germania is eight McDonnell Douglas MD-83 passenger jets it plans to lease from the company, a deal that analysts say will cost the No. 4 airline - which operates a fleet of 44 Russian-built aircraft - $12 million to $14.5 million per year.
 The additional planes, to be added to the airline over the next two years, will meet KrasAir's growth ambitions. &quot;We have a shortage of aircraft, even on domestic routes,&quot; Volodina said. KrasAir carried 880,000 passengers in the first eight months of 2002, a 26-percent jump from the same period last year.
 &quot;The planes will in time replace Tu-154s,&quot; Volodina said. &quot;The MD-83 carries the same number of passengers as the Tu-154, but burns half as much fuel.&quot;
 Volodina said that the decision to use Western aircraft was based partially on KrasAir's disenchantment with leasing domestic aircraft. KrasAir operates two leased Tu-204s, but is still waiting for a third Tu-204 that was due more than a year ago.
 Earlier this year, KrasAir announced plans to lease two Boeing 767s from an Australian leasing company. The first one is due in October and the second in November, Volodina said.
 Independent aviation analyst Paul Duffy said that, while the MD-83 makes financial sense and will save KrasAir $1.5 million in fuel bills per aircraft per year, Russia does not have many runways physically strong enough to support the plane.
 Yelena Sakhnova, analyst with United Financial Group, said that the company's finances will be hit hard if it is forced to pay the combined 40 percent of import duties and VAT.
 KrasAir marketing director Andrei Yegorov said that the airline is currently considering a number of ways by which it can avoid paying the full tax rate. He did not elaborate.

TITLE: Tatar Brewer Sets His Sights on Top-Ten Spot
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: KAZAN, Central Russia - &quot;Every business needs one owner,&quot; said Airat Khairullin, head of the Krasny Vostok brewery.
 
&quot;I am risking my money on the market and my business and myself ... I have to calculate everything and, because of that, I have to be better than everybody else,&quot; he said.
 Khairullin, 31, took over Kazan-based Krasny Vostok in 1996, when it was producing just 2 million decaliters a year. The brewery saw sales soar 68 percent to surpass 24 billion rubles ($770 million) last year, when the entire beer market grew just 18 percent.
 But Khairullin is not satisfied. He wants the brewery - which produced 40 million decaliters last year - to eventually become one of the 10 largest in the world.
 &quot;This year, we will produce about 55 million decaliters,&quot; he said in an interview at the company's headquarters on the outskirts of the capital of Tatarstan.
 After Krasny Vostok opens its $60-million brewery in Novosibirsk in the first quarter of 2003, the company's capacity will rise to 150 million decaliters per year, Khairullin said. &quot;By capacity, we will be one of the top two [brewers] in Russia.&quot;
 Krasny Vostok's brands include Krasny Vostok and newcomer Solodov, among others.
 Solodov, a high-end beer, was rolled out last year, and the ad campaign cost $5 million, according to Profile magazine. The campaign included a series of billboards before the beer was launched in Moscow that mysteriously proclaimed: &quot;Solodov, I Want You.&quot;
 The billboards kicked up a controversy for their sexual overtones - because there was no indication that Solodov was a beer and not a person. But, despite the ruckus, Solodov earned a brand-of-the-year award.
 Krasny Vostok is the engine behind the Kazan-based Edelweiss holding, which is worth $10.67 million, according to Profile.
 The holding, which has 10,320 employees, includes a chain of 124 stores, also called Edelweiss, along with the Edelweiss-M dairy factory, the Kristina soft-drinks factory and the Regina chocolate factory.
 Airat Khairullin and his brother Ilshat set up Edelweiss in the early 1990s, beginning with the retail chain. Ilshat, who remains at Edelweiss, is a less public figure than Airat and was unavailable for comment.
 The brothers began with no start-up capital, selling beer from the Krasny Vostok factory on the street, Airat Khairullin said. The brothers were able to double the amount of beer they were selling in a matter of days, reinvesting the proceeds to buy even more beer.
 They then built a chain of kiosks, expanding to other fast-moving consumer goods and keeping prices low, so that customers could afford them. The brothers were then invited by the city council to revive run-down Soviet-era shops in Kazan.
 &quot;I wanted to be the best retailer in Kazan and in the republic [of Tatarstan],&quot; said Khairullin, adding that he made his first million dollars at the age of 21.
 &quot;I try to do better than others. To do that, whether in production or in retail, you need the best technology, the best equipment, the best specialists,&quot; he said.
 The brothers began purchasing soft drinks in Moscow to sell at their stores in Tatarstan - and even had them delivered by road at one point - but this system was expensive and pushed up retail prices, Khairullin said.
 The brothers took a trip to Poland, where the soft drinks were made, in the hope of cutting out the Moscow intermediary. Instead, they decided to build the Kristina factory in 1994.
 &quot;We invested about $748,000 and, at that time, it seemed to be huge, huge money, but the factory paid for itself in its first few weeks,&quot; Khairullin said.
 Trucks began arriving from as far away as Vladivostok in the Far East, as well as Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, to buy soft drinks from Kristina.
 &quot;We sold five truckloads a day,&quot; Khairullin said. &quot;Some of our shops were selling at almost wholesale prices. People were buying not only from our retail outlets for retail prices, but were buying by the truckload.&quot;
 Kristina was the first factory in the country to produce carbonated soft drinks in 1.5-liter plastic bottles.
 Edelweiss also began producing candy and yogurt. &quot;We just needed the technology and the equipment,&quot; Khairullin said.
 In 1996, Khairullin was invited to take over 100-year-old Krasny Vostok, which at the time was the country's 56th-ranked brewery.
 Some $300 million has been invested in the plant, Interfax quoted Khairullin as saying earlier this year. Krasny Vostok signed a deal with KHS, a German bottling-equipment company, in August for a ninth bottling line, which is capable of filling 30,000 bottles of beer per hour.
 Krasny Vostok paid 1 billion rubles in taxes last year, making it Tatarstan's fifth-largest taxpayer, Profile reported. Khairullin, who is also a deputy in the Tatarstan parliament, said that large taxpayers have the right to expect recognition of their business needs from the local government.
 Khairullin controls production of the raw materials for Krasny Vostok, which is vertically integrated. &quot;I have three of the biggest grain elevators in the Kursk region, which are located at an equal distance from each other along the southern part of the region,&quot; he said. &quot;We like the south of the Kursk region, the north of the Belgorod region and the west of the Voronezh region - that's where the best barley is grown.&quot;
 Natasha Zagvozdina, an analyst at Renaissance Capital, said that Kazan is a strategic location for beer production.
 &quot;It is right in the middle of the Urals region, where beer consumption is high, and has good access to the southern region and to the center of Russia,&quot; she said.
 Krasny Vostok has 578 agreements with state and collective farms and funds seed and fertilizer programs, Khairullin said, adding that payouts are deducted from the cash payments for the harvest. &quot;There is no speculation here, everything is calculated ahead of time.&quot;
 The company also has some 300 insulated railroad cars to transport the beer, the Tatarstan.ru Web site reported earlier this year.
 Khairullin declined to reveal the ownership structure of Krasny Vostok, a joint-stock company. But Interfax reported in June that he controls 93 percent of the charter capital of Krasny Vostok. United Financial Group said in May that the company is 70-percent privately owned and 30 percent belongs to the Kazan city government.
 Foreign brewers have approached Krasny Vostok about producing beer at the Kristina plant, Khairullin said, but the company has turned down the offers.

TITLE: Tyco Case May Pit Board Against Fallen Top Execs
AUTHOR: By Harry Weber
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CONCORD, New Hampshire - The case against three former Tyco International Ltd. executives accused of looting the company could boil down to a blame game between the board of directors and the defendants, legal experts say.
 
Tyco documents show that some board members knew of certain loans to top executives - knowledge that could help the defense. But those documents also include details of extravagance in how the money was spent, and that could hurt the defendants, according to former federal prosecutor Gregory Wallance.
 &quot;They're bringing the charges in the middle of a climate of public outrage at executives pigging out at the expense of investors,&quot; Wallance said. &quot;The sheer magnitude of the money is going to be a problem for the defense.&quot;
 A recent Tyco filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said that former chief executive Dennis Kozlowski, former chief financial officer Mark Swartz and former general counsel Mark Belnick enriched themselves at the company's expense. The company also has filed a civil suit against Kozlowski, seeking $730 million.
 Prosecutors have accused Kozlowski and Swartz of stealing $600 million from Tyco, and both are charged with enterprise corruption and grand larceny. Belnick was charged with falsifying business records to conceal $14 million in improper loans.
 The three men have pleaded innocent, and their lawyers have said that any money they received was approved.
 The king of excess was Kozlowski, Tyco maintains. One example cited by the company: a $2.1-million birthday party Kozlowski threw last year for his wife, Karen, on the Italian island of Sardinia. In documents filed with the SEC, Tyco says it footed half the bill.
 Among the documents is an e-mail from Kozlowski to friends that listed an itinerary for the bash, characterized by indulgence and a touch of decadence.
 &quot;We have a lion or horse with a chariot for the shock value,&quot; the e-mail says. &quot;The guests come into the pool area, the band is playing, they are dressed in elegant chic. A waiter is pouring ... vodka into his back so it comes out his penis.&quot;
 The party would also feature waiters, dressed in linen togas and wearing fig wreathes on their heads, passing out cocktails in chalices, and a pool decorated with floating candles and flowers.
 &quot;At the end, Elvis is on the screen wishing K a happy birthday and apologizing that he could not make it,&quot; Kozlowski wrote.
 The documents accused the executives of buying homes and luxury items with Tyco money, and Kozlowski in particular of giving $43 million of Tyco's money to charities in his own name.
 In another e-mail the company released, Kozlowski wrote to the president of the Shackleton Schools in Boston that he was pledging $1 million to the organization because he was impressed by its educational motto, &quot;One Leader at a Time.&quot;
 The e-mails will prove highly useful to prosecutors in a trial where a jury is likely to include average wage-earners, said Jerry Reisman, a corporate fraud lawyer in Garden City, New York.
 &quot;It's going to be difficult to overcome that image to such a jury,&quot; he said.
 Reisman said that the three men are likely to argue that the years they spent building Tyco into a huge conglomerate left them entitled to money and perks.
 &quot;Kozlowski's argument is going to be, 'I built this company into a billion-dollar company as chief executive and I have to maintain a certain lifestyle, which entitles me to have a fabulous home on Fifth Avenue and have parties on Sardinia,'&quot; Reisman said.
 New York prosecutors have said they that believe Tyco's directors were misled by Kozlowski, Swartz and Belnick. But minutes from a Feb. 21 Tyco board meeting contradicted company statements to federal regulators last week that board members didn't know about excessive pay packages allegedly arranged by Kozlowski.
 Also, a source familiar with the investigation has said that Tyco's head of human resources, Patricia Prue, told company lawyers and investigators that she was asked to rewrite committee meeting minutes to omit critical details.
 New Hampshire regulators, in a letter Wednesday to Tyco, urged the company to force the nine board members who served under Kozlowski to resign. The regulators accused directors of failing to properly oversee Tyco's financial affairs.

TITLE: Finance Leaders Promise Action on Poverty
AUTHOR: By Harry Dunphy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Top financial leaders ended their weekend meetings by promising action to prevent plunging stock markets from derailing the global economy's fragile recovery and vowed to draw up a plan to help bankrupt countries by April.
 
The leaders completed their meetings without major protests in the streets or disagreements in the meeting hall.
 The head of the International Monetary Fund, Horst Koehler, said that the agreement to advance the bankruptcy proposal was a major achievement for this year's meetings of the 184-country IMF and its sister lending institution, the World Bank.
 &quot;This is a kind of breakthrough ... There is a recognition that there is a gap in the international financial architecture,&quot; Koehler told a concluding news conference.
 Delegates at the final session Sunday approved a recommendation that the IMF develop in six months measures that would allow countries in financial crisis to essentially declare bankruptcy and force creditors to negotiate more lenient repayment terms.
 The idea has generated stiff opposition from international banks, which want to be repaid in full on the billions of dollars they have loaned developing countries and some emerging market countries don't like the proposal because they fear it will increase the cost of loans.
 During the weekend meetings, the financial leaders voiced a mixture of concern and optimism over some of the world's most troubling economic problems - crises in Argentina, Brazil and Japan.
 Threats to shut down the U.S. capital and disrupt the IMF-World Bank meetings went unfilled Sunday as three days of demonstrations wrapped up much the way they started - with smaller than expected, peaceful gatherings.
 But protesters said that needed attention was drawn to those seeking more money for global AIDS research, calling for changes in world economic policies including debt relief for poor countries and opposing war with Iraq.
 Police had prepared for as many as 20,000 demonstrators. During the largest event on Saturday, several thousand protesters filled five city blocks as they shouted opposition to the policies of the two lending institutions, using puppets and banners to display their unhappiness.
 Koehler and World Bank President James Wolfensohn said that the protesters didn't realize that both institutions have become more responsive to the needs of poor countries.
 But both officials conceded that more needed to be done to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries, with 15 percent of the world's population controlling 80 percent of the world's income.
 &quot;Today, more and more people are saying that poverty anywhere is poverty everywhere, and their voices are getting louder,&quot; Wolfensohn told the delegates Sunday. &quot;Their demand is for a global system based on equality, human rights and social justice. It must be our demand too.&quot;
 At the concluding news conference, Wolfensohn listed World Bank initiatives that the World Bank is undertaking to improve drinking water in poor nations, educate millions of children not now in school and combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
 &quot;We have to stop philosophizing and get on with the tasks,&quot; Wolfensohn said.
 Finance officials conceded that their job of promoting prosperity was being made harder by the sluggish global economy. This year's recovery has been weaker than expected because of continued stock market plunges in the United States and many other nations.
 Argentina was forced into a record default on government debt last December and Brazil has seen its currency plunge to record lows in the past week, over rising investor fears that Latin America's largest economy will soon default on its debt, in spite of a record $30-billion loan approved by the IMF in early September.
 Billionaire investor George Soros said Sunday in an interview on ABC that even though this possibility is rising, IMF officials were &quot;asleep at the switch.&quot;

TITLE: World Bank, IMF Must Lead the Way
AUTHOR: By James D. Wolfensohn
TEXT: AS finance ministers gathered in Washington last weekend for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings, their focus was on implementing the historic compact between rich and poor nations that emerged from a year's worth of global summits in Doha, Monterrey and Johannesburg. The agreement is simple: Rich and poor countries have pledged to speed poverty reduction and progress toward the 2015 Millennium Development Goals, including urgent improvements in health and education levels for the world's poorest people. Action on trade is one of the best places to start.
 
At the World Trade Organization summit in Doha last November, world leaders agreed that trade talks should focus on a development agenda addressing the problems faced by poor people. But rich countries need not wait for the WTO-ministerial conference in Mexico next year to make good on their pledges. They can lead by example now, by reducing tariffs, subsidies, capricious product standards, protectionist anti-dumping actions and other impediments to developing countries' efforts to compete in global markets.
 Taking these steps won't be easy. Vested interests will try to protect the advantages that they enjoy under the status quo, or indeed push for more. But the momentum for change is large and growing. Civil society groups that successfully pressed for action on debt reduction and landmines are insisting that developing countries receive a fair shake in the global market place. The United Nations, multilateral financial institutions, academic economists and leaders of developing countries are all urging that rich countries show the way when it comes to trade.
 Major trading nations have taken steps in the right direction. The United States, Europe, Japan and Canada have adopted programs to improve market access for exports from the poorest countries. There are encouraging signs in the recent passage of the Fast Track Authority in the United States, and talk in Europe and the United States of addressing agricultural subsidies. But there have also been recent and damaging setbacks, and there is still a long way to go. Now is the time to build on these pledges and partial initiatives by removing the remaining impediments to developing countries' participation in the global economy.
 Tariff peaks - exceptionally high tariffs on goods that poor countries are best able to produce - can be particularly pernicious. In the United States, tariff peaks are concentrated on textiles and clothing; in Europe and Japan on agriculture, food and footwear. These are precisely the labor-intensive products that offer the first step up the technology ladder for developing countries. Tariffs and quotas for textile exports to developed countries cost developing countries an estimated 27 million jobs. Every textile job in an industrialized country saved by these barriers costs about 35 jobs in these industries in low-income countries, where being a bread winner literally means putting bread on the table. Meanwhile, in the high-income countries, tariffs on food and clothing raise prices, straining the household budgets of low-income families.
 Escalating tariffs - duties that are lowest on unprocessed raw materials and rise sharply with each step of processing and value added - undermine manufacturing and employment in industries where developing countries would otherwise be competitive. Escalating tariffs in rich countries help confine Ghana and Ivory Coast to the export of unprocessed cocoa beans; Uganda and Kenya to the export of raw coffee beans; and Mali and Burkina Faso to the export of raw cotton.
 Agricultural subsidies in rich countries of about $350 billion a year - nearly $1 billion per day - undercut poor farmers in developing countries. These subsidies, which go mainly to large agribusiness corporations, are seven times the $50 billion that these countries provide annually in foreign aid. 
 Other non-tariff barriers - standards and anti-dumping actions - are often applied in ways that impose undue burdens on developing-country producers and sometimes amount to underhanded protectionism. To meet EU standards, mango-pulp processors in India must keep detailed records of each delivery from the small farmers who grow the fruit. Would it not be better to focus directly on quality standards instead? Meanwhile, anti-dumping actions hit especially hard at the small countries and small firms.
 Developing countries are working hard to become more competitive and are eager to enter the international market place, given a fair chance to do so. I have heard this again and again in meetings with leaders of developing countries around the world. Give us market access, give us a level playing field for our products and goods, give us a trade partnership that is more than just in name. That is what these leaders and many others are saying.
 The world is watching to see how the leaders of the rich countries will respond.
 
 <i>
James D. Wolfensohn is the president of the World Bank. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Possible War, OPEC and Russia
AUTHOR: By Chris Weafer
TEXT: IN September 1960, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was born at a conference in Baghdad. Over the following 42 years, it has managed to avoid serious retaliation for operating the most significant pricing cartel the world has ever known, as well as frequent threats to its unity resulting from internal differences and disputes.
 
However, over the next 12 to 24 months, it faces one of the most critical, and potentially dangerous, periods in its existence. A combination of having sustained the average oil price at too high a level for too long, coupled with the aftermath of a likely second Gulf war, may have an explosive effect on OPEC.
 The global oil industry has thrived due to OPEC interventions in the oil market, and the only reason why Russia's economy still has a future is because of the supply reduction decision taken by OPEC in March 1999.
 After several years of allowing uncontrolled supply growth among its members that brought the oil price down toward $10 per barrel, the decision to cut supply to just below demand and to continue cutting supply over the following three years forced a sharp price recovery, which led directly to both the recovery in the Russian economy and funded the growth in Russian oil production. 
 Far from celebrating the fact that Russian oil companies are taking market share from OPEC countries, market participants and the Russian government should be praying for the survival of OPEC in order to avoid the supply free-for-all and price collapse that would be the inevitable legacy of its destruction.
 Looking at the history of oil prices, there are several periods when the price had been sustained well above the average. It was always followed by a comparable period when the price was below the average. The equation is relatively simple: High oil prices lead to increased competition, while encouraging substitution and conservation among consumers. This usually coincides with intensified internal squabbling among OPEC-member states and an increase in quota cheating. And these factors, historically, have led to a fall in oil prices. Then the cycle starts again, almost irrespective of global demand.
 Saudi Arabia tried to break this &quot;boom-bust&quot; cycle 20 years ago (when Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani was oil minister and Faisal was king) in favor of a &quot;fair&quot; price negotiated with the United States, but found no support from other members who, even today, dispute Saudi Arabia's dominant role in OPEC. However, Saudi Arabia, with the largest quota share and over 50 percent of OPEC's total spare capacity, plays a critical role in supply restraint. Without its willingness to be the &quot;swing-producer,&quot; it is certain that all current OPEC countries will follow the example of non-OPEC producers and turn the taps on full.
 The threat of a second Gulf war, and the political and economic consequences that such a war could have for the Middle East and Gulf countries, mean that a lot more is at stake for OPEC than at any other time in its history. 
 Iraq is currently thought to be producing about 1.6 million barrels per day against a capacity of about 3 million barrels per day. Assuming that there is no significant destruction of oil facilities, a post-Saddam Iraq can be expected to increase exports toward capacity. OPEC countries would have no choice but to allow this.
 Iraq has made no significant expenditures on its oil infrastructure since the start of its war against Iran in the 1980s. Many industry observers now assume that the current proven oil reserves of 113 billion barrels (last validated 20 years ago) will be increased to around 250 billion barrels once access is allowed for modern exploration techniques. Iraq should be able to increase daily production to 4.5 million barrels relatively quickly, based on current proven reserves, and eventually to over 10 million barrels if the higher reserve base is proven.
 The only way that Iraq can increase oil exports to capacity without making the oil price collapse, is if Saudi Arabia can persuade other OPEC members to agree to a pro rata reduction or, more likely, if it is willing to bear the brunt of the required reduction itself. Although Saudi Arabia doubled its daily output just after the first Gulf War, it will not be easy for it to reduce output significantly now, due to internal budget constraints resulting from high defense, social and debt-service costs.
 The Russian economy is still in a period of transition and still very dependent on oil, despite the progress of the past three years. The economy should not be expected to move away from oil dependency in any meaningful way until there is a substantial increase in investments to sectors other than oil and gas. 
 This is unlikely to happen until well into President Vladimir Putin's (probable) second term in office, i.e. no earlier than in three to four years time. In the meantime, what happens to Iraq and OPEC is of critical importance to the Russian economy.
 The ideal outcome for Russia is exactly the same as that for Saudi Arabia and OPEC, which is to say the maintenance of the status quo and the sanctions regime on Iraqi oil. Thus, Russia's opposition to a U.S. invasion of Iraq is completely rational.
 It would be an irony indeed if events in Baghdad this winter were to signal the end of the modern oil era and OPEC, just as 42 years ago they saw its start.
 
 <i>
Chris Weafer is an adviser to OPEC on the Russian economy and, until recently, was head of research at Troika Dialog. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Losing the Plot in the Abduction of Kukura
TEXT: THE police may still be trying to figure out who abducted Sergei Kukura, CFO of LUKoil, but the Russian business elite knows perfectly well who pulled off the kidnapping and why. While the press plays up the juicy details ($6 million in small bills, a videotape unearthed in a cemetery), big-business types can't help but laugh.
 
When you put all the details together, what you end up with is a cover-up, not a kidnapping. You get the impression that everything's been taken care of, that Kukura will soon appear safe and sound, and that right now what's important is to show that this kidnapping is a carbon copy of how kidnappings are in the West: money, videotapes, thugs - in a word, pure Agatha Christie. But Western detective stories don't happen in Russia. Our social structure is totally different. Small-time criminals don't kidnap big-business types in Russia. Oligarchs are only nabbed when old personal feuds are involved.
 Last year, I wrote about the abduction of Mikhail Mirilashvili's father. Mirilashvili is a St. Petersburg entrepreneur. The kidnappers grabbed Mirilashvili Sr. out of his car but, in the ruckus, one of them dropped a cell phone. Police tracked down the phone's owner, detained two Georgians, and handed them over to Mirilashvili. Both were killed.
 The kidnappers in that case weren't interested in something as pedestrian as ransom. Local mafia bosses decided that Mirilashvili was a couple of million dollars behind on his tribute payments to the mob.
 Clearly, LUKoil has failed to show someone the proper respect.
 The biggest skeleton in LUKoil's closet is its late vice president, Vitaly Schmidt, a co-owner of the company who died on Aug. 31, 1997. LUKoil's enemies hinted that he had been murdered, though this has never been proven. However, one thing is certain: Schmidt's lawful wife - he lived with another woman - and his son, Vadim, received almost nothing after his death. 
 It's known that young Vadim Schmidt approached certain oligarchs as well as federal government agencies for help. I'm not saying that Kukura was kidnapped by Schmidt's son. I am saying, however, that within the framework of Russian business ethics, he had every right to do so.
 I doubt that Kukura's kidnapping could have happened without some level of approval from our &quot;new statists,&quot; who wanted to test LUKoil's reactions. And such approval is only granted when the request involves a serious grievance.
 Why was Kukura abducted? For money. Money is the best revenge. But not for six million in small bills.
 Kukura is privy to all of LUKoil's secrets. And the finances of Russian companies do not flow in a straight line - they go via Cyprus. This opens possibilities for Kukura's kidnappers that kidnappers of a Western executive could only dream of - in terms of providing information to LUKoil's competitors or interested government agencies.
 Six or even 60 million dollars wouldn't be enough to save your skin for long if LUKoil came looking for you. But the threat of publishing information, extracted from Kukura, in the West is a completely different matter.
 LUKoil has recently been trying to show how transparent it is to Western investors. If LUKoil is hiding something, and this were to surface in the West, the company could face huge problems.
 The wider public will never learn what really happened. Everything will be taken care of. We'll be told a humdinger of a story, with big money and a videotape buried in a cemetery. But Euclidean detective stories just don't happen in a non-Euclidean society.
 
 <i>
Yulia Latynina is author and host of &quot;Yest Mneniye&quot; (&quot;Some Believe&quot;) on TVS. </i>

TITLE: Standing Up for the 'Real' Miss Universe
TEXT: In Response to &quot;Beauty Queen Stripped of Title&quot; on Sept. 24.
 
 Editor,
 </i>Being an older American woman going to school, I want to applaud Miss Fyodorova for her dedication and determination to her profession and her education. She is beautiful and, even though she has resigned as Miss Universe, she brings more depth and honor to the pageant than any one else before her.
 
It upset me greatly to see that the Miss Universe organization thought so little of her goals and ideals by asking her to resign. They have really brought shame to their organization by asking Miss Fyodorova to step down. She was the epitome of what a Miss Universe should be!
 I still congratulate her and will always think of her as 2002 Miss Universe.
 <i>Tina Morris
 Raleigh, North Carolina
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>First stripping gold medals from Russian Olympic competitors because of the contraceptive pills, now the Miss Universe title due to the unexplained and unconfirmed circumstances.
 
Why don't they just make a rule to stop admitting Russian competitors to any international events.
 Wouldn't this make life easier for all Americans!
 <i>Tate Green
 Sydney, Australia
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>Justice, not Justine! Fyodorova will always be my Miss Universe.
 
The Miss Universe Organization should have given her a chance to continue her reign.
 For me, what happened to her is all rooted to politics. Fyodorova is not your typical beauty queen who poses for photo ops and does showbiz stuff to uphold her title. Instead, she's a unique beauty queen who has substance. She prizes education and her innermost long-term goals. That, to me, is what a true beauty queen should be.
 Fyodorova is the most beautiful Miss Universe. I feel that justice should have been done by her. It's so sad.
 I join the entire Russian people in their lamentation.
 For Fyodorova, I send my warm embrace and kisses. I wish her all the best in her goals to be a good law-enforcement officer and teacher. She can rest assured that she has provided a shining example to all young people around the world.
 <i>Raymond Diamzon
 Manila, Philippines
 </i>
 <i>
Editor,
 </i>A police sharpshooter, a lawyer, a post-graduate student and very attractive. It is difficult to see how Fyodorova could harm the reputation of the Miss World pageant. What is really going on here? Perhaps she is also ethical. That may have annoyed pageant co-owner Donald Trump.
 <i>
Gary Porter
 Toronto, Canada
 </i>
 <strong>
<b>Civil Borders
 </strong><i></b>
Editor,
 </i>Foreigners working in or traveling frequently to Russia are undoubtedly watching the Kaliningrad debate, realizing there could be something in it for them and their business that the European Commission seems to have either forgotten or quickly pushed to one side.
 
It is obvious to all who do business here or come to Russia as tourists that the current visa situation is a farce that should not be tolerated in the 21st century. If this situation is a barometer of the real relationship between the EU and Russia, as opposed to political hot air, then the Cold War is still raging.
 The real issue here is simplifying the whole bilateral visa set-up between EU countries and Russia. Any other remedies - sealed trains, stickers and the like - are simply treating the symptoms but not healing the illness.
 I, for one, have lived through single and multi-entry visas for other Eastern European countries that now allow visa-free travel. The opening of those borders has done immense good for trade and relations between the EU and these countries. The real barrier to travel is now market-driven and not political.
 Russians are still suspicious of the Western world, not least because of the visa farce. I say &quot;farce&quot; because I am 100-percent certain that if the worst elements of Russian society want to travel, they will, regardless of restrictions. The people who are trapped and don't get to travel are those who should be granted a visa. I'm sure most readers of The St. Petersburg Times in Russia can name several close acquaintances who have had applications turned down unfairly.
 If the Cold War is over then, for God sake, let's open the borders to allow civilized access to each other's countries.
 <i>Guy Eames,
 Moscow
 </i>
 <strong>
<b>The Dark Side
 </strong><i></b>
In response to &quot;Chris Floyd's Global Eye&quot; on Sept. 24.
 
 Editor,
 </i>I was alarmed by the comment entitled Dark Passage by Chris Floyd. The threat of the United States to the well-being of the world is sadly apparent. Bush and his close cronies are frighteningly arrogant.
 
The other countries of the world cannot allow themselves to be picked off, one by one. Britain seems already to be in a state of total submission, although it is much more the government and Tony Blair than the people or parliament.
 The disagreement over how Iraq should be dealt with will be a test. It is imperative that the other permanent members of the Security Council do not submit to U.S. and British pressure. They did well over the resolution on Palestine, forcing the United States to abstain. The American people are 60-percent opposed to war with Iraq without UN approval.
 It is very important that there should be no excuse. Ideally, Russia, China and France should stick together.
 <i>Christopher Leadbeater
 Oxford, England
 </i>
 <strong>
<b>Smiling Faces
 </strong><i></b>
In Response to &quot;Masks Remove National Veils&quot; on Sept. 27.
 
 Editor,
 </i>I very much enjoyed reading the article by Helen Tekepournova.
 
This summer, a group of us from New York City, (20 members of St. Mark's Church) from diverse backgrounds, took part in a mask making and diary project with Kiboko Projects. We found, as Tekepournova relayed in the article, that the experience was a healing one.
 Kind regards to all in St. Petersburg.
 <i>E. Diane Nichols
 New York
 </i>
 <i>
In response to &quot;Cure for Symphonic Migraine&quot; on Sept. 27.
 
 Editor,
 </i>What an interesting article!
 
One small quibble: Bach never saw a Modern piano. His &quot;Musical Offering&quot; had its origin as a test piece for a piano belonging to Frederick the Great.
 Rob Turner
 Bloomington, Indiana
 
 <strong>
<b>Not Just Numbers
 </strong><i></b>
In response to &quot;Investigation Blames Senior Police Officers&quot; on Aug. 9.
 
 Editor,
 </i>I would like to address the disingenuous and irresponsible remarks in this story made by Arkady Kramarev, former St. Petersburg Police Chief and current Legislative Assembly lawmaker.
 
I will begin by recognizing that Mr. Kramarev's statement pointing out the lack of human and monetary resources available to Russian police is true. In the years immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, police agencies were faced with sharp budget reductions at a time when crime rates were rapidly and dramatically increasing. This situation resulted in high turnover, staff shortages, very low salaries (and the corruption this invites), a lack of equipment, low levels of training for many officers and administrators, and the low morale that accompanies such an environment.
 While difficult conditions are not excuses for inefficiency and corruption, we must recognize that they create serious obstacles to effective policing, which is an arduous and dangerous task under the best of circumstances.
 It is Mr. Kramarev's second set of statements, however, that are irresponsible, disingenuous, and characteristic of the ancien regime.
 He states that the main problem is the failure to register crimes, insinuating that these unregistered crimes are in fact &quot;trivial situations&quot; (Mr. Kramarev's words) for which the police should not be responsible. He then goes on to dismiss the high rate of street crime in St. Petersburg, suggesting it is simply the result of statistical smoke and mirrors.
 First, &quot;the most common infringement&quot; may be the failure to register cases, but this is hardly the most serious problem. Failure to register cases is only a symptom of the negligence and inefficiency that characterize the system, according to the recent Interior Ministry investigation.
 Second, not all of those unregistered crimes are &quot;trivial situations&quot; for which the police are absolved of responsibility. For example, according to ministry data, the juvenile arrest rate for rape in Russia dropped by 75 percent between 1991 and 1999. The ministry readily admits that this is the result not of an actual reduction in these crimes, but is due largely to police non-registration. Further, throughout the 1990s, Interior Ministry data annually recorded only between two-thirds and three-quarters the number of homicides recorded by Ministry of Health mortality data. In 1995, this difference amounted to more than 12,000 human lives. Rape and murder are not &quot;trivial situations.&quot;
 Third, to dismiss high rates of crime by saying &quot;statistics can mean anything,&quot; is disingenuous. It denies the problem exists, thereby absolving lawmakers and police agencies of any responsibility. This sort of statement is especially irresponsible given the Soviet government's and the Interior Ministry's history of falsifying all types of information, including crime data. Crime statistics do not mean just anything, each tally (and countless others that go unreported by citizens who do not trust their police protectors to respond appropriately or that are reported to but not registered by the police) represents a victim of crime, many of whom are Mr. Kramarev's constituents.
 In sum, Mr. Kramarev's remarks reveal the arrogance of public officials who still operate under the old rules. He and others must understand that, in a democratic nation governed by the rule of law, the role of lawmakers and police agencies is not to serve the state (as they do in a totalitarian government), but instead to represent, serve, and protect Russian citizens.
 <i>William Alex Pridemore, PhD
 University of Oklahoma
 Department of Sociology
 Norman, Oklahoma
 </i>
 <strong>
<b>Unfair Rap
 </strong><i></b>
Editor,
 </i>I often read in your newspaper coverage where Oleg Deripaska is commented on as being a person that is not aiding Russia's economy, but is in business only for himself. Why don't you, and Russia, for once look on the positive side of what in fact Oleg Deripaska has done for several communities in Russia. Just consider the following example:
 
I worked for Oleg Deripaska as the Acting Director of Sayanal Aluminum from 1996 through 1998 and, let me tell your readers for an absolute fact that, without Mr. Deripaska's willingness to borrow funds for the aluminum foil plant in Sayanogorsk to operate, backed by his personal guarantee, over 1,400 employees would have been put out of work. This means that over 5,000 people would not have had any income when you include the mothers, children, and parents that the Sayanal plant in Sayanogorsk provided funds for to put food on the table.
 Everyone, including newspapers, is quick to judge someone when it appears that they have made some amount of profit but, let me tell you, without profit, all business will close and absolutely no one will have any income, so no one will eat.
 The unusual thing about this is that I am an American citizen who willingly went to Sayanogorsk to bring this plant up from the ashes to being a productive plant in 1995 and, thank goodness, Oleg Deripaska had faith in me and Sayanal Aluminum Plant and provided the funds needed to continue to operate. Today, this plant provides an income for many families in Sayanogorsk, Russia.
 Be fair in your coverage. Give credit where credit is due.
 Thank you.
 <i>James R. Hale
 Salisbury, North Carolina
 </i>
 <strong>
<b>No Friendly Felix
 </strong><i></b>
In response to &quot;Critics Rail on Luzhkov's Plan for Iron Felix&quot; on Sept. 17.
 
 Editor,
 </i>I have been in part relying on your Web site for news of what is happening back home for over two years. But time does not stand still, and sometimes it even rolls back.
 
During the time I have been away from home, both our anthem and flag have been changed back to that of the Soviet era, and now they are considering re-erecting the statute of mass murderer Felix Dzerzhinsky. It is an insult and disgrace to our Russian heritage!
 It is clear that Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov did not have any relatives who rotted in gulag cells packed to 15 times their capacity. How quickly he has forgiven Dzerzhinsky his sins. Luzhkov urges us rather to focus this sadist's &quot;positive achievements.&quot;
 Luzhkov says Dzerzhinsky solved the problem of homeless children. If he had not killed so many millions, there would not have been so many orphans in the first place.
 It is sickening to see Luzhkov pushing to re-erect a monument to the person who sent millions to experience the hell of the gulag because &quot;he helped children.&quot;
 Luzhkov, if you truly are that concerned for the children, why not have your architects come up with a monument that portrays all that grief, confusion and agony those kids experienced having their parents massacred? Or one with the faces of the kids who only heard their parents called enemies of our country? Would not that provide a great inspiration in the square facing the former KGB building?
 I might have to send Luzhkov a copy of &quot;Archipelago Gulag&quot; by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to remind him the parts of history he chose not to accentuate while decorating our city with ghosts from the past. If this goes on, our streets will be a live freak show.
 <i>Angela Nunez
 Lansing, Michigan </i>

TITLE: The Lessons of East Timor for the Middle East
AUTHOR: By Ian Urbina
TEXT: LAST week, the United Nations momentarily turned its attention away from the Middle East to congratulate itself on a job well done on the other side of the globe. There was much reason for pride, as delegates ushered in East Timor as the newest member of the international body.
 
Only three years ago, the small island north of Australia was being ravaged by increasing bloodshed and a brutal Indonesian military occupation. But, thanks to the role of armed peacekeepers, the UN, equipped with a clear political mandate and a strict timetable for implementation, succeeded in ending the conflict, dismantling a decades-long occupation and setting this century's first new democracy on its feet.
 East Timor's flag now joins that of 190 other member countries - but, before the international community moves on, it should pause and reflect on the lessons learned. As the conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories heats up again, and solutions seem further away by the day, the case of East Timor may have some feasible instruction to offer.
 In 1975, Indonesia invaded the small Portuguese enclave of East Timor, initiating a military occupation that killed an estimated 200,000 people, close to one-third of the population. The UN intervened to conduct a 1999 referendum, in which the country's people voted overwhelmingly for independence.
 After widespread violence broke out in response to the vote, the UN dispatched 8,000 troops to establish security and ensure a full withdrawal of the Indonesian military and local militias. The UN then created a transitional government to administer the territory, exercise executive and legislative authority and support the process of state-building.
 The intervention was generally successful, especially considering that this was the first time the international body had run a country. Not only did the UN help establish an independent justice system, backed by an impartial police force (one-third of whom are women), it also helped train 11,000 civil servants to run the country, fewer than half the bloated number under Indonesian rule.
 The modest, but highly professional, defense force that the UN helped train to patrol the East Timorese borders offered the beginnings of a restored sense of security to the beleaguered country. But one of the UN's most important successes in East Timor was keeping to an ambitious timetable of progressively delegating responsibility for education, health and other services to local leadership, handing over the reins in full after only 33 months of transitional rule.
 In the Palestinian territories, a UN intervention would need a clear political mandate, codified in a Security Council resolution, to end the occupation and stop the killing of civilians. As in East Timor, peacekeepers would need the power to disarm and arrest those from either side who disrupt the peace, and the intervention would need to adhere to a strict timetable, at the end of which would be a sovereign Palestinian state, with secure borders respected by all parties.
 These would be preconditions for re-establishing good-faith negotiations, under UN supervision, to resolve the issues of refugees, Jerusalem and water. The accomplishments of the transitional government in East Timor indicate that the UN is equipped to provide the space and oversight for a Palestinian-led reform movement in any effort to elect leaders, adopt a constitution, reform the financial system and overhaul the security forces.
 With UN assistance, the settlement process, too, is reversible. As one of the most densely populated countries on the globe, Indonesia suffers from severe overcrowding. It was mainly economics - not religion or politics - that drove more than 100,000 Indonesian settlers to migrate to East Timor. Recent studies indicate that the same is generally true for the settlers in the Palestinian territories. A largely overlooked poll released in July by the Israeli organization Peace Now found that, for 77 percent of the settlers, it was not ideology but &quot;quality of life&quot; issues, such as cheap land prices, tax breaks and reduced mortgages, that brought them to the West Bank. The poll also found that 68 percent of the settlers said they would leave immediately and peacefully if the Israeli government demanded it. These statistics betray a pragmatic and hopeful prospect: With the right combination of financial incentives and political will, a peaceful withdrawal is possible.
 The process would not be easy. For more than 20 years, the official, if not enforced, U.S. position has been to oppose new settlements. For even longer, the UN has pointed to their illegality under international law. But the Israeli population in the West Bank has steadily increased, topping 200,000 in the most recent count, plus about 175,000 who live on territory annexed by the city of Jerusalem. Israel, like Indonesia, will not institute a withdrawal of its own accord. Pressure from the UN will be required, and peacekeepers will need to assume the tasks of evacuating settlers and dismantling the settlements - both likely to be politically impossible for any Israeli government to do by itself.
 This type of intervention can only occur with U.S. support. In the case of East Timor, the Indonesian government long refused to permit a UN-backed peacekeeping force to enter the fray. The United States supported Indonesia for decades but, as the occupation received more attention, the United States shifted its position, eventually severing economic and military aid. Within days of that action, the Indonesian government reversed its stance and peacekeepers were en route.
 Since the start of the recent wave of Middle East violence, the UN has drafted several proposals for intervention, but the United States has vetoed each one. If calm is to be restored, the United States will have to help facilitate UN involvement by exerting a pressure similar to that it eventually applied on Indonesia.
 Aside from UN intervention, another important factor in ending the occupation of East Timor was the grass-roots international solidarity movement whose tireless work in cities across the globe - staging protests, teach-ins, film festivals and letter-writing campaigns - helped mobilize international public opinion. The strength of this solidarity movement was in part a result of the wisdom of the leadership of the East Timor resistance, which engaged in a largely nonviolent struggle.
 But Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's leadership is a far cry from that of East Timor's Jose Alexandre &quot;Xanana&quot; Gusmao. The prospect for an end to the Israeli occupation endures despite, not because of, the Palestinian leadership. The Palestinian Authority's lack of strategic vision has ceded the struggle to a logic of retribution. The morally bankrupt and politically counterproductive suicide bombings add a significant barrier to the already uphill battle of the international solidarity movement working for a military withdrawal from Palestinian areas.
 Still, hope must not be abandoned in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; nor should the exclusive focus on Iraq delay much longer a re-engagement of the UN in the steadily deteriorating situation in the Palestinian territories.
 On the eve of the 1999 UN intervention in East Timor, the situation seemed beyond repair, and the international community had opted to look the other way. Three short years later, there stands a sovereign and democratic country joining the UN, a country well on its way to full reconciliation with its former adversary. Let's not let things get even worse in the Middle East before taking decisive action.
 
 <i>Ian Urbina is associate editor of the Middle East Report, a publication of the Middle East Research and Information Project. He contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times. </i>

TITLE: Chechnya Is Trapped in Bloody Deadlock
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: A Chechen rebel videotape was released last week showing the last moments of the Mi-26 military helicopter as it fell out of the sky in August near the federal military base of Khankala, in a crash that killed at least 119 people.
 
The footage confirms that the Mi-26 was hit by an Igla shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile. It shows the helicopter going down with its right-side engine in flames after the hit. It is also clear that the crew of the Mi-26 still managed partially to control the chopper, which did not tumble, but descended in a fairly orderly fashion through an auto-rotation maneuver (when a chopper lands despite malfunctioning engines, thanks to the kinetic energy of the rotor blades).
 Many of the passengers, it seems, survived the crash landing. But the huge helicopter was coming from Mozdok air base in North Ossetia loaded with fuel for the return journey, since there are often shortages at Khankala. When the Mi-26 hit the ground, the fire in the engine ignited the fuel tanks.
 The main rear-end exit hatch became jammed, the passengers were engulfed by tons of burning fuel and, it seems, scorched alive. The crew of five and 29 passengers lucky enough to be sitting near the small cockpit exit hatch managed to escape. Days later, at least four of the surviving soldiers died in a hospital from severe burns.
 It is obvious that the rebels prepared for the downing of the Mi-26 thoroughly. They not only put an Igla missile in place, but also a camera operator to film the attack. They were clearly seeking to shoot down not just any chopper, but a big transport Mi-26 with lots of soldiers aboard. Russian soldiers from Khankala organized a search immediately after the Mi-26 was hit, but did not catch the assailants. Only the spent tube that contained the Igla missile was recovered.
 In a televised statement, attached to the footage of the Mi-26, separatist Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov announced: &quot;Here is a helicopter that is on fire and falling near Khankala. It was hit by our Igla anti-aircraft missile.&quot;
 Maskhadov seems to be in good shape, dispelling rumors recently spread by some Russian generals that he is dead or wounded. Bearded men in battle fatigues surround Maskhadov, to whom he refers as &quot;our mujahedin.&quot;
 The Chechen president is wearing epaulets with verses from the Koran - a trademark of the religious extremist wing of the Chechen resistance - something he did not do before. Maskhadov is filmed sitting under a Chechen flag that no longer bears the traditional Wolf of Ichkeria, the banner of the independence struggle for a decade. It has been replaced by Koranic verse and a sword, similar to the national flag of Saudi Arabia.
 John Evans, director of the U.S. State Department's Russian-affairs office, said, &quot;in recent months, Maskhadov has embraced jihad elements and terrorists, so we are now reluctant to offer him to Moscow as a partner for negotiations.&quot; The latest footage seems to corroborate this. Until recently, Maskhadov, a former career Soviet artillery commander, represented the more moderate, secular wing of the Chechen independence movement. At the beginning of the war, he openly denounced &quot;jihad elements&quot; for provoking a Russian onslaught by unsuccessfully invading Dagestan in August 1999.
 Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government and intelligence services have, according to official sources, substantially decreased the flow of funds coming from abroad to support the Chechen resistance. An informed German government official told me recently that the rebel money supply is now down to roughly $1 million per month - at most a hundredth of what the Kremlin is spending on its war effort in Chechnya.
 Maskhadov could have joined al-Qaida-connected elements due to a lack of money and/or because neither Moscow nor Washington offered him any genuine reward for breaking with the jihadists. As a result, the Kremlin has lost the only person in the resistance with whom it could negotiate peace. The ordinary people of Chechnya are now stranded between a marauding Russian army, an unruly pro-Moscow Chechen militia that is allegedly kidnapping people to extract ransoms, and a jihadist resistance that is a total international outcast.
 There is zero possibility of peace in Chechnya anytime soon. Even if most Russian forces suddenly withdrew, the carnage would still continue. After three years of unending war in Chechnya, the Kremlin has managed to trap itself in the worst bloody deadlock imaginable.
 
 <i>Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst. </i>

TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: <b>Brothers in Arms
 </b>
Last week, Global Eye explored the extremist texts underlying the Bush Regime's maniacal foreign policy. On the very day that column was published, George W. Bush made these dreams of global domination the official &quot;National Security Strategy&quot; of the United States.
 
In many ways, this bellicose document represents the final twinning of Bush and his shadow, Osama bin Laden. There has always been a remarkable symmetry between these two sons of privilege: pampered, high-living wastrels in their youths, each coasting on his father's name and money, then turning to a grim fundamentalism with simplistic creeds that overpowered their weak intellects and closed their minds forever.
 Both believe you must strike your perceived enemies, without provocation, before they strike you. Both accept that innocent people will die in these &quot;pre-emptive attacks,&quot; but consider it an acceptable price to pay for combating &quot;evil.&quot; Both utterly reject the way of peace - unless it's the peace of the conqueror, the bold warrior who serves God with the sword: &quot;The only path to safety is the path of action.&quot; (Which man said that?) Finally, both believe there is only one acceptable vision of reality, and both are willing - no, eager - to impose that vision by force.
 Now, this dark fraternity finds &quot;legitimate&quot; expression in the new security strategy. Bush begins with a grandiose flourish, proclaiming that, in all of Creation, there is but &quot;a single sustainable model for national success.&quot; That model, needless to say, turns out to be the rarefied world of the American elite at the turn of the 21st century, where the wealthy must never be encumbered in any way by restrictions of law, regulation, popular will, morality or common sense. Air, earth, water and sky must be laid bare to exploitation by the powerful, whose investments are guaranteed by the military might of the state.
 Bush not only recommends this model to others, he <i>insists</i> they follow it, or else they'll be ranged with those who &quot;reject basic human values and hate the United States&quot; - an act of apostasy that makes them targets for &quot;the path of action.&quot; In any case, no country, friend or foe, will be allowed to pursue even the &quot;hope of surpassing or equaling the power of the United States,&quot; says Bush. How will they be dissuaded from such a foolish course? Simple - by &quot;the unparalleled strength of the United States armed forces and their forward presence&quot; throughout the globe.
 Naturally, this bristling military occupation of the earth will not be carried out for &quot;unilateral advantage,&quot; but only to advance &quot;human freedom.&quot; What is freedom? Here is Bush's definition, with some slight exegesis.
 Freedom, Bush says, means people can &quot;say what they think&quot; - unless of course they criticize the Regime and its allies too harshly or demonstrate against the president or speak with a strange accent in a Georgia restaurant, in which case they will be denounced as terrorists, fired from their jobs, arrested for stepping out of officially circumscribed &quot;free speech zones,&quot; or chased down the Florida highways by Jeb Bush's stormtroopers, all of which happened recently in the heartland of the &quot;single sustainable model.&quot;
 Freedom, Bush says, means people can &quot;choose who will govern them&quot; - unless of course they choose the wrong person, as the American people did in 2000, in which case a better leader will be appointed for them.
 Freedom, Bush says, means people can &quot;worship as they please&quot; - unless of course, they worship a god who calls for the wrong kind of holy war, or a god who enjoys the sacrament of ganja, or a god who denounces the rich, demanding that we give everything to the poor and live in common, or a god who promotes polygamy or blesses homosexual marriage or does anything that offends the sensibilities or threatens the privileges of the single sustainables.
 Freedom, Bush says, means people can &quot;educate their children, male and female&quot; - unless, of course, you want to educate them about sex or evolution or the history of all the crimes that governments have committed in their name.
 Freedom, Bush says, means people can &quot;own property&quot; - if they can afford it, that is, or unless some rich wastrel wants to, say, build a baseball stadium on it, or drill for oil under it, or put a military base on it, in which case it will be taken away.
 Freedom, Bush says, means people can &quot;enjoy the benefits of their labor&quot; - unless, of course, they have unionized in order to procure these benefits, in which case they can be fired or beaten or killed, as happens every day in countries employing the &quot;single sustainable model.&quot;
 &quot;These values of freedom,&quot; Bush says, &quot;are right and true for every person, in every society&quot; - except, of course, when they are not, and always exempting those countries (such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Colombia) that repress and murder their own people but don't interfere unduly with the profits of the Bush family and the other Sustainables.
 Tellingly, Bush's list of basic freedoms contains no right of privacy, no inviolability of person, no right to information about government actions, no right of redress for wrongs inflicted by the powerful, nor a host of other freedoms once considered essential to the liberty of an independent citizen.
 No, what we have here is simply a candy-coated model for a militarized world, a fanatical ideology enforced by the ever-looming threat of punishment and death.
 What we have here is bin Laden writ large.
 
 <i>
For annotational references, please see the &quot;Opinion&quot; section at www.sptimesrussia.com </i>

TITLE: UN, Iraq Begin Weapons-Inspector Talks
AUTHOR: By William J. Kole
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VIENNA, Austria - Staking out a tough position, UN weapons inspectors opened talks Monday with Iraq over a return to Baghdad by holding Saddam Hussein to his pledge of unfettered access to suspect sites.
 
Chief inspector Hans Blix told reporters at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency that the talks would operate under the assumption that nothing in Iraq - including Hussein's palaces - will be off-limits to inspectors hunting for nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry.
 &quot;The purpose of the talks is that if and when inspections come about, we will not have clashes inside&quot; over what the inspectors will do, Blix said. &quot;We'd rather go through these things outside in advance.&quot;
 Both sides will discuss &quot;practical arrangements&quot; with the Iraqis for inspections, he said, such as where the inspectors would be based, their accommodations and security, and how samples would be taken out of the country for analysis. Blix said he would report back to the UN Security Council on Thursday.
 Briefing journalists 2 1/2 hours into Monday's talks, chief IAEA spokesperson Mark Gwozdecky called the atmosphere &quot;businesslike&quot; and said the discussions were &quot;very thorough.&quot;
 &quot;We're moving along nicely,&quot; he said. &quot;They're all aware of the importance that there be no misunderstandings.&quot;
 IAEA spokesperson Melissa Fleming said the success of a new weapons-inspection mission would hinge on Hussein's promise of full cooperation.
 On Saturday, however, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan rejected any changes in the inspections regime.
 &quot;Our position on the inspectors has been decided and any additional procedure is meant to hurt Iraq and is unacceptable,&quot; Ramadan said.
 British Prime Minister Tony Blair has signaled, meanwhile, that he might be open to a strategy of using two, rather than one, UN resolutions to establish a new legal framework for disarming Iraq.
 Blair, who is the United States' staunchest backer for stern measures against Iraq and who has served as an intermediary with less-supportive European governments, made his comments in a BBC television interview Sunday.
 &quot;We can leave that open for the moment. The most important thing is to get a very clear determination from the United Nations Security Council saying ... these chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons pose a real danger to the world,&quot; Blair said.
 Britain and the U.S. have drafted a UN resolution that would force Baghdad to move quickly on supplying information on its weapons program and to open all sites, including presidential palaces, for the inspectors. The resolution reportedly would then allow military action against Iraq if the inspections fail.
 The French insist on a two-stage approach, starting with a resolution on inspections. A second - to support military strikes - would be drawn up only if inspections fail.
 Nearly four years ago, inspectors hunting for evidence of nuclear, biological and chemical weaponry withdrew from Iraq on the eve of U.S.-British airstrikes amid allegations that Baghdad wasn't cooperating with the teams.
 &quot;We're certainly aware of what happened last time,&quot; Fleming said Sunday. &quot;But we uncovered Iraq's secret nuclear program, and we dismantled it. We were successful last time. If we get unfettered access, we will be successful again.&quot;
 &quot;We're looking for Iraqi cooperation here, but these are not political talks,&quot; she added. &quot;We are not going to be negotiating here. We're going to be laying on the table the requirements we're going to have as inspectors.&quot;
 The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, seeking to build support for an invasion of Iraq, has cast doubt on the inspectors' main requirement: that they be given freedom to examine whatever they wish, including Saddam's eight sprawling palaces, which up to now have been off-limits.
 Under a 1998 deal worked out between Iraq and the UN to keep the on-and-off mission going, the inspectors were shut out of the palaces, which cover a total of about 30 square kilometers.

TITLE: French Scramble To Evacuate Ivory Coast
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Zavis
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YAMOUSSOUKRO, Ivory Coast - French troops fanned out Monday to locate rebel positions and search for Westerners still trapped in Ivory Coast's deadliest uprising, a day after U.S. and French forces plucked expatriates from a second rebel-held city.
 
Rebels and loyalist forces were fighting across the north, with a front-line around Tiebissou, 40 kilometers north of Yamoussoukro, the capital and the staging area Western troops used for their evacuation mission, Western military sources said.
 French jeeps with mounted guns, some with French flags, set out after sunrise Monday to the west, looking for U.S. Peace Corps workers and other isolated Westerners missed in four days of road and air evacuations.
 The French mission was headed for cocoa-growing, pro-government regions around Daloa and Bouafle, French Lieutenant Colonel Ange-Antoine Leccia said.
 With recent reports of rebels capturing the northwestern town of Odienne, and advancing toward the key western city of Man, French forces were also on a reconnaissance mission to establish the extent of the rebel advance.
 The French and U.S. rescue missions have scrambled to extract foreigners as Ivory Coast's government repeatedly threatened an all-out attack to retake two cities - Bouake and Korhogo - in rebel hands since a bloody failed coup attempt on Sept. 19. The uprising killed 270 people in the first days alone.
 Western military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Ivorian army had been thrown into some disarray by the mutiny of several hundred soldiers and was also grappling with poor communications and outdated materiel.
 &quot;They are going to fight. It's just a question of when,&quot; one high-ranking military official said Monday, on condition of anonymity.
 West African leaders grappled with how to support the embattled government of Ivory Coast, in dread of more harm to the region's stability and economy from the latest troubles in once-peaceful and prosperous Ivory Coast.
 Meeting in Ghana on Sunday, West African presidents expressed support for Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo, but did not approve an immediate deployment of regional peacekeepers.
 &quot;A threat to Ivory Coast is a threat to all of us,&quot; declared President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, which has dispatched fighter jets to Ivory Coast for the expected showdown between government and rebel forces.
 Gbagbo, who was in Italy when the attempted coup took place, returned to Abidjan on Sunday night from Ghana, reassuring citizens who had feared he might not come back. &quot;When one is right, there is no need to hide,&quot; he told reporters.
 Western diplomats say the rebels are well-armed, well-disciplined and motivated.
 Some diplomats privately say a West African deployment would be decisive - and suggest Ivory Coast loyalist forces, still hesitating to counterattack, may be outgunned.

TITLE: Sharon Slammed Over Arafat Siege Policy
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came under wall-to-wall criticism at home Monday for the bungled 10-day siege of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's compound, which was aborted Sunday under intense U.S. pressure.
 
Several cabinet ministers said Israel underestimated Washington's opposition to the operation and its determination to keep the focus on Iraq ahead of a possible U.S. strike against Saddam Hussein.
 In new violence Monday, Israeli troops enforcing a curfew in the West Bank town of Nablus and an adjacent refugee camp killed a 13-year-old Palestinian boy and wounded 25 people, some of them youngsters on the way to or from school, doctors and witnesses said. Many of the wounded were hurt in a clash in downtown Nablus, where dozens of Palestinians threw stones and several firebombs at troops who responded with gunfire. The army had no immediate comment.
 At Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah, Israeli troops were out of sight a day after ending their siege, though they still control the town, as well as most other population centers in the West Bank.
 A small bulldozer brought in by the Palestinians cleared some of the rubble; in the initial assault last week, Israeli troops leveled all but one building. Workers swept up shattered glass, fixed water pipes and tried to salvage air conditioners while crowd gathered nearby to gawk. Vendors quickly arrived to sell ice cream, coffee and newspapers.
 Arafat complained Monday that Israeli troops should pull back further and said Israel must now implement the remainder of last week's UN Security Council resolution - a withdrawal from Palestinian cities.
 Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rdeneh said that Arafat would resume consultations on appointing a new cabinet to replace the ministers forced to resign earlier this month as part of an effort by members of Arafat's Fatah movement to push Arafat to share power.
 &quot;There should be a new cabinet as soon as possible,&quot; the aide said.
 The withdrawal from Arafat's compound was seen in Israel as an unconditional surrender to U.S. pressure. Sharon initially demanded that dozens of wanted Palestinians holed up with Arafat come out.
 Immediately after Sharon informed his cabinet on Sunday that troops must withdraw, he left on a three-day visit to Russia.
 &quot;Sharon is leaving behind a colossal failure, the most notable failure since the beginning of his term in office,&quot; commentator Hemi Shalev wrote in the Maariv newspaper.
 Critics said Sharon failed to realise that the operation against Arafat would interfere with U.S. efforts to win Arab and UN support for a campaign against Iraq. Sharon also mistakenly thought the siege would force Arafat to seek exile or give up those wanted, critics said.
 Polls showed that Arafat emerged strengthened from the blockade, which temporarily froze efforts by his Fatah movement to force him to share power and appoint a prime minister.
 In the West Bank, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was killed in the Balata refugee camp near Nablus when soldiers fired from tanks at children who threw stones while on their way to school, doctors said. In Nablus, 25 people were wounded, including one who was in critical condition.
 The army said it was investigating the reports. Nablus has been under Israeli military curfew since June with residents only permitted occasionally to leave their homes. Many children violate curfew to get to school.
 In the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, a 43-year-old Palestinian woman was comatose after two Israeli tank shells hit her home, doctors and her brother said. Palestinians said the shells were fired without provocation. Israel's military denied firing tank shells. It said soldiers shot assault rifles after mortar shells fell near an army post.
 In a report released Monday, Amnesty International said both Israel and the Palestinian Authority were at fault for the large numbers of minors killed in the past two years.
 According to an Associated Press count, 236 Palestinians and 61 Israelis under the age of 17 have been killed since September 2000. Many of the Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers firing at stone-throwers. Many of the Israeli minors were killed in suicide bombings or shooting attacks by Palestinians.

TITLE: EU Backs Down Over War Court
AUTHOR: By Robert Wielaard
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium - Defusing a trans-Atlantic spat, the European Union agreed Monday to spare United States citizens the fate of standing trial on war crimes charges in the newly created International Criminal Court.
 
The EU foreign ministers reached a deal among themselves effectively preventing them from extraditing U.S. soldiers or government officials to the ICC, as long as Washington guarantees any Americans suspected of war crimes will be tried in the United States.
 The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has asked for such a blanket exemption, fearing Americans would face cavalier, politically motivated trials stemming from peacekeeping or other military operations in areas of war or crisis.
 Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, chairperson of the foreign-ministers meeting, said existing extradition agreements and principles will be strictly applied, foregoing the need of new bilateral accords with Washington.
 &quot;There is no concession,&quot; he said, referring to accusations from human-rights groups that the Europeans were caving in to U.S. pressure. &quot;There is no undermining of the International Criminal Court.&quot;
 The EU said there will be no exemption from prosecution for mercenaries - freelance soldiers who are not on a government-mandated peacekeeping or war mission but seek out a conflict or crisis on their own, officials said.
 The EU foreign ministers agreed to let countries sign bilateral accords with the United States exempting Americans from an ICC trial, if they wish. Britain and Italy have said they may do that.
 Countries that oppose bilateral accords for fear of a backlash at home will apply conditions that achieve the same goal. For instance, soldiers stationed abroad are usually exempt from prosecution in the country where they are based under existing accords. Also, officials said, EU member states will invoke diplomatic immunity agreements for U.S. civilians - such as politicians, defense department personnel or Central Intelligence Agency employees - to keep them out of the ICC.
 The EU foreign ministers said they will not exempt their nationals from any trial in the ICC, the first permanent international tribunal to judge individuals for war crimes, which opened for business in The Hague, Netherlands, in July.

TITLE: Backpacking Through Eden in South Crimea
AUTHOR: By Tatiana Andreeva
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: What does the word &quot;vacation&quot; stand for? A transparent, emerald-colored sea, sparkling under the tender sun and splashing over beige rocks? Ancient temples and imperial palaces, hidden among palm and fig tress, with smoky silhouettes of mountains in the background? Tasty wines and magical, black, star-studded nights?
 
Is it possible to find all this in one place? Or maybe you think that this paradise is so far away that your budget will never stretch that far?
 Think again. Recently, I discovered just such a place - Crimea.
 Crimea, a huge peninsula jutting into the Black Sea, has been inhabited for thousands of years. Its ancient mountains have been home to Scythians, Greeks, Huns, Khazars, Tatars, Slavic dukes, Russian emperors and Silver Age poets. Last month, it was my turn to go, armed with a friend, eight free days, a backpack and piles of useful tips from the Internet.
 Sevastopol, our first stop, is a lively town, spreading its white mansions along five very deep bays and over numerous hills. The town's location gives Sevastopol innumerable viewpoints that offer gorgeous views over the bays and ships. For me, though, the highlight was Hersones - or, more precisely, its ruins.
 Hersones, an ancient Greek colony founded in the 6th century BC, later became the capital of the state of Hersonise Tauride, and survived through history's ups and downs until the Middle Ages. The place's magical feeling can not be explained in a few words. I recommend that you pack a lunch - make sure to include some juicy Crimean fruit - a beach towel and a flashlight, and spend a whole day and night exploring the ruins of the Greek houses, with their colorful mosaics; wandering along fortress walls; sunbathing; swimming on the tiny, charming beaches under the cliffs; and diving in search of <i>amphorae</i> - jars used by the ancient Greeks.
 We moved on to Bakhchisarai, the capital of the Crimean Tatars, situated inland among the mountains. Bakhchisarai Palace, the main residence of the Crimean Khan, is well known to Russians, thanks to Pushkin's romantic poem, &quot;Bakhchisaraiskiye Fontany&quot; (&quot;The Fountains of Bakhchisarai&quot;). We found the palace to be less attractive than in Pushkin's description, while our guide said that two thirds of the complex had been dismantled for good during a negligent restoration in the 18th century.
 However, Bakhchisarai is still worth visiting to see Chafut-Kale, a mountain cave-town, located 3 kilometers up the mountains. The only way to reach Chafut-Kale is on foot, climbing through grove after picturesque grove, so make sure you have comfortable shoes. The Crimean Tatars fortified a natural plateau on the top of a long, narrow mountain ridge, and turned it into a town that thrived until the late 18th century. We lost track of time - and reality - while enjoying magnificent views of the valleys, through the windows of the caves that are cut into the rock face, and while meandering through the maze of the town's streets. An ancient cemetery nearby solemnly added to the sensation of time at a standstill.
 After this, our feet led us to the Crimea's southern coast - an area known by its Russian abbreviation, YuBK. We stepped off the bus in Alupka, which is famous for the impressive Vorontsov Palace, with its enormous, beautiful park. The building has an unusual history - its architect had never visited the place, but drew up the plans in his London studio with only pictures of the mountains at Alupka to which to refer. Nevertheless, the palace represents a surprisingly organic mixture of a medieval English castle and the Taj Mahal that fits perfectly into its environment
 The palace's park is another wonder: a huge territory occupied by the unsurpassed combination of a regular park, with palms and roses, and a &quot;wild&quot; southern wood. Being lost there at night-time is an unforgettable experience of complete darkness, filled with the sounds and smells of nature. There are two swimming spots just below the park; adventurous swimmers and sunbathers should use them in the following order: the area with larger rocks during the day (to get away from the crowds), and the pebble beach at night (for safety).
 We were very lucky to get off the bus in a place that was not just beautiful; Alupka appears to be a perfect strategic point for discovering the YuBK. We took advantage of this, and were able to explore most of the region without our backpacks. For me, Yalta and Simeiz were too crowded and noisy, full of discos and restaurants (others, however, may well find this to be just what they are looking for); Livadia and its imperial palace looked very modest compared with Alupka; while the Lastochkino Gnezdo (&quot;Swallow's Nest&quot;) villa seemed like something out of a children's fairy tale. This architectural gem must be seen from the sea to be fully appreciated, so take the boat from Yalta to Alupka to admire it. Even so, I found the region's main attractions to be Mount Ai-Petri and the Big Canyon.
 Ai-Petri is one of the highest mountains along the shore, and its grayish peaks dominate most of the YuBK views to the west from Yalta. Its name is one of the numerous reminders of the Greek chapter in Crimean history, being a shortened version of Aigos-Petrius, or St. Peter in Greek. There are two ways to reach the top. The first is easy, although still breath-taking - by funicular, which departs from a station located just 10 minutes walk from Alupka's Vorontsov Park and takes you to the plateau at the top of the mountain.
 We, however, preferred the second way - the serpentine road to the top. As well as dizziness, the road gives you the chance to see the Uchan-Su waterfall. The views from the road and from the top of Ai-Petri are fantastic, although they can be spoiled by the thick fog that is a frequent occurrence in the area.
 Our route continued down the inland slope of Ai-Petri and passed close to the Big Canyon, a break between two mountains in which the Kokkozka river runs. The wild nature of the canyon, which can only be accessed on foot, made us feel as though modern urbanization had never happened. At the far end of the forest, about 1 1/2 hours walk from the road, is the canyon's most famous attraction, Vanna Molodosti, or the &quot;Bath of Youth.&quot; It is a 3-meter-deep depression in the shallow river bed, which holds water with a constant temperature between 3 degrees and 6 degrees. People come here to take a bath that is believed to be very good for their health. However, I didn't see anyone taking a bath that consisted of anything more than jumping in from a nearby rock and immediately jumping out again, often accompanied by unpublishable screams. I still don't understand what possessed me to follow the few people I saw do this, but it was worth it; I flew out of the &quot;bath&quot; feeling like some sort of teenage witch ...
 Another must-try in Crimea is the local wine. Every valley of the peninsula has its own micro-climate and soil that give the grapes a specific taste. The number of different wines is enormous, and everyone can find something that they like. To help with this, the Massandra Vineyard runs frequent tasting sessions, when you can taste 10 different wines and learn a bit more about their background, production and so on. I strongly recommend having a good lunch before going, as the tasting portions are not small and, by the end of it all, you could easily end up pretty tipsy. You can easily organize your own tasting session outside the official schedule - Massandra's wines are abundant in the local shops. They are divided into three groups by quality - ordinary (young wines), branded (two to five years old) and collector's (over five years old). The two latter groups are definitely worth trying. Among the most famous are the sherries, madeiras, &quot;Pino Gri&quot; and &quot;Bely muskat krasnogo kamnya&quot; (&quot;White Muscatel of the Red Stone&quot;). Remember the names, and enjoy ...
 Crimea's beauty arguably rivals more popular vacation destinations, such as Turkey or Spain. But Crimea has some very special advantages and, if you have a sense of adventure, you can find its true worth.
 Advantage 1: Absolute freedom. Go wherever you want, stay there as long as you wish. You're not bound to any hotel or travel agency.
 Advantage 2: You're the only source of income for the local people. So they are ready to do everything to please you. 
 Advantage 3: If you are a Russian citizen, you won't have any visa fuss or hassle. Just buy your ticket and go. 

<strong>TRAVEL FACTS </strong>
<strong>How to get there. </strong>Planes leave St. Petersburg every other day from Pulkovo-1 Airport. Flights take about three hours, and tickets cost about $290 round-trip. Charter flights are available, with a round-trip ticket costing about $215, but they leave just twice a week and only during the summer.
 
Trains for Sevastopol leave from Moskovsky Station every day during the summer and every other day during the rest of the year. Round-trip tickets cost about $80 - make sure to buy well in advance during the vacation season, as they tend to go quickly.
 
 <strong>
How to get around. </strong>A huge network of buses, trolleybuses and <i>marshrutki</i> - minibuses running regular routes that will stop on demand - serves the peninsula.
 
Simferopol, situated inland, can be reached in two to three hours, depending on the means of transport, from both Sevastopol and Yalta, the transport hubs of southern Crimea. A picturesque trolleybus route runs from Yalta to Simferopol via a mountain pass.
 Buses and trains run from Simferopol to Sevastopol, but we opted for a private driver to take us directly there for $30. Returning, another driver took us from Alupka to Simferopol for the same price - not bad for a two-hour drive! Prices are not dependent on the number of people in the car.
 Trains from Sevastopol to Bakhchisarai run every one to two hours. The journey lasts two hours, and is a bargain at the equivalent of $0.80. Buses from Sevastopol to Yalta run every two hours through numerous towns on the UBK. They also take two hours, and cost about $2.
 Marshrutki run within and between towns along the entire UBK. Prices range from $0.10 to $0.80, depending on the distance. Sevastopol's marshrutki run until 4 a.m., while in Yalta they stop at midnight.
 Finally, an all-day taxi trip around Ai Petri and the Big Canyon costs about $40 per car, irrespective of the number of people.
 
 <strong>
Where to stay. </strong>Every Crimean town has its own little accommodation market, which is usually situated next to the bus or train station. Owners can offer all possible options - from European-style apartments in the center of the city that cost between $10 and $15 per person per night - to beds in apartments.
 
However, it's easy to find accommodation even without looking for the market; just ask around. We paid $6 per night for a double room in a flat in Sevastopol, and $7 for a tiny house with a bathroom in an attractive fig garden in Alupka. I was particularly impressed with the sweet, motherly attitudes of all our hosts to their guests.
 
 <strong>
Money matters. </strong>Do not bring rubles - the exchange rate is very poor - and foreigners are not allowed to import the local currency, the hrivna. U.S. dollars are the best option. Bizarrely enough, the best exchange rate we saw was at Simferopol airport: 5.25 hrivna to the U.S. dollar. In other places, rates varied from 5.1 to 5.2 hrivna.
 

 <strong>
Entertainment. </strong>Anyone looking for adventure should take advantage of the diving offered along the whole coast. One dive as part of a group usually costs $20, including instruction and equipment rental. It is also possible to rent a yacht for between $25 and $30 per hour.
 
The Ai-Petri funicular costs $2, runs during daylight hours in the summer, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the rest of the year.
 A ticket for wine-tasting at Massandra costs $2.15. A bottle of decent wine starts at about $2, and &quot;collection&quot; wines go up to about $12.
 
 <strong>
Extra tips. </strong>Bring comfortable trekking shoes, swimming goggles - to enjoy glorious views of the sea floor even without going on a diving trip - and a flashlight to ensure that you'll always find your way through the black Crimean night ...
 

 <i>
Check out www.crimaniak.com; webua. net/crimea_unikum; crimea.net.md; or www.atlas-crimea.narod.ru </i>

TITLE: Diamondbacks Secure First-Round Home-Field Advantage
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHOENIX, Arizona - The Arizona Diamondbacks arrived at Bank One Ballpark with their bags packed, just in case. Because of a big day by Chad Moeller, their trip was postponed. Moeller homered twice and drove in six runs as the Diamondbacks clinched home-field advantage for the first round of the playoffs, defeating Colorado 11-8 on Sunday.
 
Arizona already knew it was starting the postseason against NL champion St. Louis on Tuesday. Once the Cardinals beat Milwaukee 4-0, the Diamondbacks needed to win to finish with a better record and begin the series in Phoenix - otherwise, it would've opened in St. Louis.
 &quot;That's the way this team has been the two years I've been here,&quot; first baseman Mark Grace said. &quot;Every time we've had must-win games, we go out there and we win them, and I'm real glad we don't have to get on a plane.&quot;
 With no playoff spots at stake, the American League was less dramatic on the final day of the season. The New York Yankees clinched home-field advantage throughout the playoffs with a win at Baltimore, and Boston's Manny Ramirez won the AL batting title.
 The Cardinals' victory was posted on the scoreboard at Bank One in the first inning. Arizona responded by scoring three runs, capped by Moeller's RBI single.
 &quot;Home-field advantage is always big,&quot; Moeller said. &quot;No. 1, you get that last at-bat. That's the biggest thing - you get that one last chance. On the road, you don't have that.&quot;
 Moeller went 4-for-4, and Junior Spivey and Felix Jose also homered for the defending World Series champion. The Diamondbacks won their final four games of the season to win the West for the second straight year.
 Randy Johnson, who led the NL in wins (24), ERA (2.37) and strikeouts (334), will start Game 1 for Arizona against Matt Morris.
 Curt Schilling, who lost at St. Louis on Wednesday, will pitch Game 2 for the Diamondbacks.
 Schilling made his first relief appearance since May 13, 1992, pitching the eighth inning against the Rockies. He gave up a three-run homer to Brent Butler that made it 11-6.
 &quot;It was meaningless,&quot; Arizona manager Bob Brenly said. &quot;Other than the fact he took three earned runs he wasn't counting on. It was his day to work on the side anyway.&quot;
 
 <strong>
San Francisco 7, Houston 0. </strong>San Francisco headed into the playoffs with an eight-game winning streak after Ryan Jensen and five relievers shut out Houston at Pacific Bell Park.
 
Barry Bonds and the rest of the Giants' regulars sat out, a day after they clinched the NL wild card. At 38, Bonds won his first batting title, hitting .370.
 The Giants open the playoffs Wednesday at Atlanta.
 
 <strong>
New York Yankees 6, Baltimore 1. </strong>Rondell White and Jason Giambi propelled the Yankees, who finished a major league-best 103-58 and headed home for their first-round series against Anaheim.
 
&quot;It's important for us to have that advantage and eliminate one of those cross-country trips down the road, if it comes to that,&quot; said Mike Mussina (18-10), who allowed one run - unearned - and six hits in five innings.
 At Camden Yards, New York's Alfonso Soriano went 0-for-5 and finished with 39 homers. He had 41 steals, falling short of his bid to join the 40-40 club.
 The Yankees, who open the playoffs at home Tuesday against Anaheim, finished with five straight wins. John Stephens (2-5) took the loss for the Orioles (67-95), 4-32 after reaching the .500 mark on Aug. 23.
 
 <strong>
Boston Red Sox 11, Tampa Bay 8. </strong>Ramirez finished with a .349 average, pinch hitting and driving in Boston's last run of a disappointing 93-win season with a bases-loaded walk. The Red Sox haven't won the World Series since 1918.
 
Wilson Alvarez (2-3) took the defeat for Tampa Bay, which set a team record for losses this year.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Gonzalez Wins Vuelta
 </b>

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's Aitor Gonzalez won a thrilling Tour of Spain Sunday after a superb time-trial ride secured him the 21st and final stage.
 The Kelme-Costa Blanca team rider trailed overnight leader and compatriot Roberto Heras by one minute eight seconds at the start of the day, but left his rivals for dead by clocking 47:55 for the 41.2-kilometer stage, which ended in Real Madrid's Bernabeu stadium.
 US Postal's Heras, who was aiming to clinch his second Vuelta victory in three years, had to settle for second overall after finishing 14th in the time trial in 51:16.
 Spaniard Joseba Beloki was third overall.
 
 
<b>United in the Money
 </b>

LONDON (Reuters) - Manchester United, the world's richest soccer club, reported a 48-percent rise in annual profits on Monday.
 The English Premiership champion for three years before Arsenal won the title this year, also kept players' wages below their target of 50 percent of turnover. United reported pre-tax profits of Pound32.3 million ($50.26 million) for the year, ending on July 31, compared with forecasts of around Pound31.5 million.
 Profits were boosted by player-trading profit of Pound17.4 million after a previous year profit of Pound2.2 million, due largely to the sale of defender Japp Stam and forwards Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke.
 The club said wages soaked up 48 percent of group turnover for the year as a whole, after accounting for 39 percent for the previous year.
 In March, United warned that after reporting a nearly 80-percent leap in first-half profits, this rise would not be repeated in the second half due to soaring player wages, which rose about 40 percent in six months.