SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #809 (74), Friday, October 4, 2002
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TITLE: Court Deals Blow to Yakovlev Hopes
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Vladimir Yakovlev's chances of running for a third term as governor suffered a serious blow this week when, after 15 hours of hearings and deliberations, the St. Petersburg City Charter Court handed down a ruling at 3 a.m. on Wednesday saying that the City Charter rules out such a candidacy.
 
"The terms of office beginning ... in 1996 and 2000 are those under consideration here and fall under point five, article 40 of the St. Petersburg City Charter," the news Web site NEWSpb.ru. quoted the decision as saying. "Consequently, Yakovlev is now serving his second term in office. He is not entitled to stand as a candidate for governor in 2004."
 Wednesday's ruling, however, seems unlikely to prevent attempts on the part of Yakovlev and his allies to usher through amendments to the city charter to allow him to run again.
 "Today's session means nothing. The court's ruling makes no difference and will not influence the Legislative Assembly whatsoever," said Legislative Assembly lawmaker Igor Mikhailov just before his appearance in court on Tuesday.
 But court officials disagreed, saying that the decision was binding.
 "The governor cannot run again," City Charter Court spokesperson Olga Tulsanova said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "The court's decision is categorical and irreversible. There is no higher court to which an appeal to reverse the decision can be addressed."
 The question of a possible third term for Yakovlev has been at the center of political discussion in the city since Russia's Constitutional Court ruled in July that regional leaders who were elected for their second term after October 1999 were eligible to run for a third term. Yakovlev was elected to his second term on May 14, 2000.
 According to the City Charter, however, the governor is eligible for two terms only.
 "Yakovlev is the governor of St. Petersburg for the second time now, and can not run a third time," said Tulsanova. "The City Charter was passed by the Legislative Assembly lawmakers and signed by the governor himself. They must obey it."
 Tulsanova added that, even if the Legislative Assembly voted to change the charter, which most analysts say is unlikely, a federal law passed in 1991 specifically limits the governor of St. Petersburg to two terms. 
 "This restriction was introduced by [former St. Petersburg major Anatoly] Sobchak, who was a democrat and wanted to ensure the regular transfer of power in St. Petersburg," she said. "It has been ignored by Yakovlev and his supporters."
 Prior to its deliberations, the Charter Court questioned a number of Legislative Assembly members, including the speaker of the assembly, Sergei Tarasov, who is a close ally of Yakovlev, at hearings on Tuesday. The judges received only vague answers from many of the lawmakers to the question of why they included the two-term limitation when they passed the city charter in 1998.
 "I don't remember," Tarasov replied.
 At the end of his testimony, Tarasov said to the court: "I am not a lawyer. Why do you ask me such difficult questions?"
 Olga Chesnokova, a legal advisor to the city's administrative committee, who represented the governor in court, argued in the session that the two-term limitation covers chief executives, an official title which Yakovlev, she said, was granted by a vote of the Legislative Assembly in 2001 - after his second term began. She argued that a candidate is allowed to run twice for the chief executive office, meaning that, in her opinion, Yakovlev should be eligible to run again not only in the next gubernatorial elections in 2004, but also in those to be held in 2008.
 This argument was swiftly rejected by the judges, who pointed out that former President Boris Yeltsin had issued a degree in 1994 granting all city leaders within the Russian Federation the status of chief executive. This means that Yakovlev immediately became a chief executive when he was first elected in 1996.
 But those wishing to see Yakovlev get a third chance don't seem ready to give up the fight yet.
 At the Legislative Assembly Session on Wednesday morning, just a few hours after the court handed down its decision, a draft law was submitted aimed at allowing Yakovlev to run for another term. It was voted down, however, garnering only 18 of the 35 votes required for it to pass.
 The law was proposed by Igor Spassky, Zhores Alferov and Mikhail Bobrov, who are not Legislative Assembly members but are allowed to submit projects, having been granted the status of "honorary citizens" by the assembly.
 "It demonstrates our governor's level of legal culture. He doesn't pay any attention to the court's decision," Ruslan Linkov, the leader of the Democratic Russia Party's St. Petersburg branch, said on Wednesday. "This time he only used elderly people, these honorary citizens, to serve his purposes. It could have been worse."
 Yakovlev's reaction to the court's decision was dismissive, and suggested that he was not taking it as the last word on the question. "I'm surprised they were able to reach a decision so quickly. In 1999 it took [the Charter Court's judges] eight or nine months to reach a decision about postponing the election date," he told journalists at the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday. "[With this decision], I felt a rush of adrenaline in my blood, which usually gives me extra energy."
 He added that the city's residents should have a say in whether the governor should run again and that, if they decided in favor of a third term, he would still try to run.
 The City Charter Court's Tulsanova, however, says that Wednesday's decision is firm, and any attempt by the governor or his supporters to open the way for a third term would be unlawful.
 "If the assembly votes for an amendment to give the governor a third term, the court will not recognize it as legally valid," she said.
 According to her, such an amendment would automatically have to pass through the Legislative Assembly's Judicial Committee, which would not give its assent.
 "If it does manage to get through, it means that the committee has been pressured by politicians," she said.
 According to Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, attempts to introduce amendments to the City Charter regarding the governor's term of office would be "a waste of time, effort, and resources," he was quoted as saying by Interfax.
 "Such attempts are a simple violation of the Charter Court's decision, with all the consequences it would involve," he said.
 Within the Legislative Assembly, reactions varied, but a number of lawmakers, regardless of their political color, say that is ultimately up to the assembly, and not to the Charter Court, to decide whether the governor can run for a third term.
 "It is clear that the question of a third term is political and not judicial and the Legislative Assembly lawmakers will bring down the verdict, not the Charter Court," local Yabloko politician Boris Vishnyevsky was quoted as saying by the news Web site Fontanka.ru. "If the lawmakers want to grant the governor the right to run again, they will change the charter."
 Yabloko has regularly stated its official position as being opposed to a third term.
 Tulsanova, however, says that the statements indicate more about the level of legal knowledge the lawmakers possess than they do about the chance of the court's verdict being bypassed in some manner.
 "These types of statements could only have been made by people with a poor knowledge of the law," she said.

TITLE: Cops Getting Worse Rap From Consulates
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While corruption and bribe-taking have long been endemic problems in relation to St. Petersburg police and Russian police in general, a recent spate of robberies by police officers reported by foreigners has foreign consulates in the city warning citizens of their countries to be take special care when dealing with law-enforcement officers.
 
The message has also been picked up by a number of European media outlets, with diplomats saying that these reports could cause serious damage to St. Petersburg's appeal as a tourist destination.
 The Swedish Consulate has been particularly active in issuing warnings, with Consul General May Andersson discussing the issue in an interview last week with the major Swedish business daily Dagens Nyheter.
 "Watch out for police!" Andersson said in the interview. "Stay in groups of three or more while walking around the city and be particularly careful around Nevsky Prospect"
 One Swede, Anna Axman, the manager of the tourism agency Andrews Travel House, says that she was robbed by police twice this year in the space of less than a month.
 On the evening of Aug. 25, as Axman and a friend were leaving the Magrib nightclub on Nevsky Pr., they were surrounded by seven or eight men wearing police uniform.
 "About five of them stood around me, asking for my documents, while the other three rummaged through my backpack," Axman said. After the search was finished and the police had left, Axman said that 6,000 rubles ($200) were missing from her backpack.
 A number of representatives of consulates in St. Petersburg, as well as Interior Ministry officials, say that there has been a recent upswing in reports of crimes committed by police against individuals.
 "We received at least five complaints of police robberies from Finnish citizens over the last month," said Vesa Hakkinen, a consul at the Finnish Consulate in St. Petersburg.
 Andersson said that the Swedish consulate had also received a number of such complaints over the last month.
 Axman, who was robbed by police again on Sept. 21 just outside her apartment building on Liteiny Pr., said she is aware of at least six more cases where her acquaintances, both Russians and foreigners, have been robbed by police officers over the last three weeks. One Swedish man was also robbed near Magrib club.
 One of her Russian friends was targeted by police officers just after leaving a major hotel in the city center, while another had both her cellular phone and her money taken by a police officer in the courtyard of her own building.
 The problem, while it may indeed be getting worse, is not a new one, as consulates in the city say they have always received complaints about the problem.
 The number of cases regarding theft and other crimes committed against tourists and foreigners living in St. Petersburg is significant while, last August, police caused an uproar when two visiting Swedish diplomats were assaulted by police - one receiving a bleeding nose and black eye - after refusing to get into a police car after an officer discovered that they were not carrying their passports (The St. Petersburg Times, Aug. 17, 2001).
 The number of incidents that are reported to consulates in the city has led some diplomats here to talk about the situation a little less than diplomatically.
 "It is strange, but we feel safer with ordinary people in the city, than with the city police," said Tim Waite, a consul at the British Consulate, who said that the consulate received six or seven reports of robberies and abuse committed by police last summer.
 Hakkinen said that the Finish Foreign Affairs Ministry has even placed a warning about the situation on its Web site, advising Finnish tourists how to behave when interacting with city police.
 Lev Loschilov, head of the research department at the Personal Safety Department of the St. Petersburg branch of the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for fighting corruption within the police department, said that the department registers hundreds of complaints against the police every year from Russians, with dozens more coming from foreigners, and that these are probably only a fraction of the actual number of incidents.
 "I'm afraid that the situation is very difficult to solve," Loschilov said. "First of all, there usually are no witnesses to those crimes. Second, our police officers are very badly paid. As a result, the local police forces is understaffed and often we can't exactly hire the people with the best qualifications for this work."
 Therefore, Loschilov said, the government indirectly contributes to abuses being committed by the police.
 "It doesn't excuse the behavior, of course, but just try think about how a grown man who has a family can be expected to live on a salary of $100 a month?" he asked.
 This summer, Boris Gryzlov, the head of Russia's Interior Ministry, filed a report on the local police that strongly criticized the level of corruption here and led to a number of senior police officials losing their jobs.
 Last year, the St. Petersburg diplomatic corps also set up the creation of a special council, consisting of diplomats, city police and city administration representatives, to try to address questions surrounding the safety of foreigners in St. Petersburg.
 But the efforts, at least for the present, seem to be having little effect.
 "The local authorities are taking the problem very seriously, but it seems to be difficult to solve it, " said Per Tollefsen, Norwegian consul general in St. Petersburg.
 According to Axman, the biggest difficulty is that many of people who are robbed in this manner, don't report the incidents to the police, so the magnitude of the problem doesn't get the recognition it should.
 "Of course, how are people supposed to trust the police to deal with this problem if it was the police themselves who attacked them?" she said.
 Loschilov said that the problem is exacerbated by the fact that, in some cases, its not police robbing people, but soldiers or civilians wearing in police uniforms. He added that they do manage to apprehend a few corrupt police officers every year through special operations set up to root them out, but said that the number is small in relation to the number of officers actually involved in illegal activities.
 He also offered advice for people when dealing with police officers on the street.
 He said, first, that people shouldn't physically resist the police, because this, itself, is criminal behavior and the police are armed. Second, they should try to remember specific characteristics of the officer, such as badge or identity card number, the number of the police car, if one is involved or, at least the appearance of the officer in question.
 He also advised against carrying large sums of cash or keeping money inside a passport, which the police have the right to request and examine.
 Meanwhile, Axman says, the situation is damaging both to investment and the tourism industry in the city.
 "At various seminars about business opportunities in Russia, the first two worries Swedish businesspeople raise are Russian economic stability and crime," she said.
 Waite said that, when British people who have been the victims of police abuse in St. Petersburg return home, the story immediately spreads around among their friends.
 "I doubt their acquaintances will be willing to come to the city after that," he said. "Meanwhile, it is the city that will be missing the money in the end."
 Loschinov agrees. "It is definitely a very painful situation with respect to the city's image, particularly ahead of the city's 300th anniversary celebrations next year," he said.

TITLE: New Videotape Provides Pankisi Evidence
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Although a videotape shot by a British reporter provides compelling evidence that Chechen rebels are allowed to move freely in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge, Russia will hold off from taking any action until President Vladimir Putin meets with Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze this weekend, analysts said.
 
Rossia television broadcast a video this week of Chechen rebels crossing from Pankisi to North Ossetia and then sneaking into Ingushetia, where they fought Russian forces near the village of Galashki. The footage was shot by Roddy Scott, a freelance British reporter who apparently was killed in the fighting.
 "The tape is evidence that Chechen rebels can move freely through Georgian territory," said Dmitry Rogozin, the chairperson of the State Duma's international affairs committee.
 The tape starts with a short monologue by Scott, who says he plans to travel to Georgia and then to Chechnya. The next scene shows armed, bearded men in camouflage fatigues, camped out on the side of a grassy hill. One of the men jokingly tells Scott that he will die a Moslem martyr. "Roddy, you will soon become a shakhid," the man said.
 Scott reportedly died last Thursday when a bullet pierced the lens of his camera.
 The footage then shows the rebels taking down their tents, loading equipment onto horses, and walking up a mist-covered hill. One piece of equipment has a tubular shape, similar to that of a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile.
 The rebels, carrying bulky backpacks, can be heard breathing heavily and gasping in the thin mountain air.
 The rebels are next seen watching a village.
 Then the video abruptly zooms in on a low-flying Russian helicopter. It ends with a shot of motionless bodies dressed in camouflage lying on ground.
 Rebels seized in the fighting near Galashki have said there were 200 men in their group. The rebels managed to shoot down a Russian helicopter and burn an armored vehicle before scattering into nearby forests. It is unclear whether any rebels had fled back into Georgia.
 The military said 17 soldiers and 80 rebels died in the clash.
 Alexander Pikayev, a senior researcher at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said the "footage is rather solid evidence" supporting Russia's case that Chechen rebels are able to move about unrestricted in Pankisi and could carry out strikes in Russia.
 "The fact that they did not try to hide when camping indicates that they were some place in Georgia," Pikayev said.
 However, he said, Russia will not make good on a threat to carry out strikes in Pankisi until after Putin speaks with Shevardnazde at a summit of Commonwealth of Independent States leaders in Moldova on Sunday.
 "Putin has made it clear that there should be no strikes until he meets with Shevardnadze," Pikayev said.
 Putin warned Georgia on Sept. 11 that Russian planes might launch strikes in Pankisi and asked the military to draw up plans for such an operation. However, he toned down his rhetoric a few days later, saying he was looking forward to discussing the Pankisi problem with Shevardnadze on Oct. 6.
 Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov apparently took the hint and did not order any strikes after federal troops detected the 200 Chechen rebels last week. Ivanov only said the incident might be the last straw.
 Pikayev predicted that Shevardnadze would offer some concessions in order to defuse tensions at the Sunday meeting. But the concessions are unlikely to go beyond the extradition of 13 Chechen rebels caught while crossing into Russia, he said.
 Moscow has long accused Tbilisi of harboring Chechen rebels in Pankisi. Georgia responded by launching what it called an "anti-criminal operation" in Pankisi in August. Shevardnadze declared the gorge free of Chechen rebels on Monday.
 A deputy Georgian security minister said last week that the operation had been designed to push the rebels back into Russia.

TITLE: Russia: U.S. Resolution On Iraq Is Unneeded
AUTHOR: By Edith M. Lederer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: UNITED NATIONS - Russia issued its first response Thursday to the U.S. draft resolution on Iraq, criticizing the document as an unnecessary delay in the return of weapons inspectors. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said there was no point sending inspectors without access to Saddam Hussein's palaces.
 
The comments reflected the sharp differences among members of the UN Security Council on how to proceed after Iraq agreed earlier this week to a plan for the return of weapons inspectors after nearly four years.
 Russian officials had studied the American draft, which "only strengthened our belief in the correctness of our position in favor of the soonest resumption of inspection activities in Iraq," Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov said, according Interfax.
 "We believe that a sufficient legal base already exists for the resumption of the UN inspections," Saltanov said in criticizing the need for the U.S. draft that significantly toughens the inspection regime.
 White House spokesperspon Ari Fleischer played down Russia's reaction. "It's not going to surprise anybody that from day to day you're going to see different statements from different leaders."
 Blair, whose diplomats helped draft the U.S. resolution, maintained that UN weapons inspectors must have "unfettered, unobstructed access to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs."
 Under the agreement reached Tuesday in Vienna, Austria, UN weapons inspectors would return, but under conditions unacceptable to Washington and London. The current deal leaves Saddam's palaces and other so-called presidential sites off-limits to surprise visits.
 UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was to report to the divided UN Security Council on Thursday on the agreement he reach with Iraq. The closed-door meeting will be the first opportunity for all 15 council members to discuss the deal and the next steps for the inspection program.
 Russia opposes a military operation in Iraq and had insisted that no new Security Council resolution was needed. But Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Wednesday that Moscow was willing to consider whether a new resolution was necessary "for the efficient work of the inspectors."
 On Thursday, however, Ivanov returned to previous formulations, saying he favored a quick return of inspectors to "answer the question whether Iraq has or has not mass-destruction weapons."
 The United States and Britain are demanding a nearly total revamping of the rules under which the inspections would be carried out. 
 The toughly worded U.S. draft resolution, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, would give UN inspectors broad new powers to hunt for weapons of mass destruction and provide them with military backing to carry out the search.
 Under the proposal, the Security Council would give Iraq 30 days to compile a "complete declaration of all aspects of its program to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons." False statements or omissions would allow members of the council to authorized "use all necessary means to restore international peace and security in the area" - diplomatic language permitting military force.

TITLE: Caring for the Child Victims of Chechnya
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: GROZNY - At age 29, Grozny-based psychiatrist Kheda Omarkhadzhiyeva's hair has turned almost completely gray - not just, she says, because of the many friends and relatives she has lost in the second Chechen war, but from the stress of her work with Chechen children.
 
Every day, Omarkhadzhiyeva deals with children suffering from fears and phobias, children who cry on hearing the sound of an airplane and who are tortured by nightmares of war.
 "Thousands of small children witness explosions, shelling, the deaths of their relatives and friends," said Omarkhadzhiyeva, who works at three schools in Grozny that were restored earlier this year by the Czech-run People in Need Humanitarian Aid Fund, or PINF. "They see collapsing buildings, including their own homes, and - what's worse - the helplessness of their own parents to exert any control over the situation."
 Professor Mussa Dalsayev, president of the Association of Chechen Psychiatrists, Narcologists and Psychologists and a member of the Association of European Psychiatrists, said that, according to his research, about 60 percent of Chechen children are in need of psychiatric help. In Grozny, which has suffered more than most parts of Chechnya in the war, the number of traumatized children requiring special treatment is even higher - about 75 percent, he said.
 Psychiatrists say the war in Chechnya has made some children overaggressive, while others have developed stutters or blocked out the outside world and lost interest in life due to acute depression. Many more have problems with their perception of reality or their memory. For example, obsessively recalling details of bad experiences. Many teenagers still wet their beds at night, and it is not rare for children to attempt suicide.
 Naib Timirsultanov, deputy head of the education department of Argun, which became notorious in the second Chechen war for non-stop street fighting and later for cruel mopping-up operations by federal troops, said education had suffered in the city "because everyone is concerned about surviving, not acquiring knowledge." Timirsultanov said every class not only contained someone who could not read or write, but also three or four children with major psychological problems.
 "We badly need centers for psychological rehabilitation," he said.
 There is no national program in Chechnya to help traumatized children, however.
 Chechen Education Minister Lyoma Dadayev said in an interview that "all Chechen children need psychological rehabilitation," adding that so far this amounted only to sending a few hundred children to summer camps outside Chechnya.
 Like other psychiatrists, Dalsayev says this is not enough. Last year, he took matters into his own hands by setting up a rehabilitation center for children - called Malkh, after the Chechen word for "sun" - at a substance-abuse clinic he runs in Grozny. Dalsayev said Malkh Center is one of only a handful of rehabilitation centers in Grozny - the others are run by international aid organizations like PINF - and he insisted that many more are needed.
 "We need 400 such centers: at least one in each village, a few in towns and at least 40 in Grozny," he said. "They are an instrument of making peace. They would let children and their parents get more positive information which will ensure that their symptoms don't develop further."
 The clinic in which the Malkh center is housed is half-ruined itself, the roof patched up by doctors after being hit by a missile at the start of the second war. Most of the plaster has crumbled from the walls, exposing bare bricks, and the windows are covered with pieces of plastic. There is no water, no telephone or proper toilets and the electricity is illicitly tapped from a nearby substation.
 The center has received some support from the World Health Organization but no money has been allocated to it from the government's Chechnya restoration program, for which 4.5 billion rubles ($140 million) of the 2002 federal budget was earmarked.
 About 130 children attend rehabilitation sessions at the Malkh center under the supervision of Dalsayev and a team of volunteers. The volunteers are trained by Dalsayev at his home, where he organizes seminars for people who want to improve their skills at working with children. 
 After the children have completed sessions with psychologists, they take part in drawing classes and lessons in foreign languages, molding clay, dancing and singing. Some also correspond with friends in other countries, with whom they are put in touch by aid organizations.
 One letter from a boy named Muslim Mutsayev to a pen pal in the Czech Republic was published by Dalsayev in a newsletter that he writes about the Malkh center. The letter says: "Here in Grozny everything is ruined. We have only military vehicles and soldiers. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to have a good time. Almost every day people are killed. We go to school and the Malkh, and here we have fun and play. People say that in the past our city was very beautiful and civilized. We had trams, trolleybuses, trains and parks, clubs, theaters, a circus, etc. I don't remember this and I haven't seen this. When the war started, I was small."
 "I hope you never have a war in your country. It is horrible when you have military planes and helicopters flying over you and when there is bombing and shooting. I hope you have peace in your country."
 In July, Dalsayev organized a festival in Grozny for children at the city's rehabilitation centers. He said it was a joy to see how they danced, sang and exhibited the clay and plaster models they made themselves. Children from the schools that were rebuilt by PINF - Nos. 7, 14 and 16 - were among those taking part in the festival.
 PINF runs several aid programs in Chechnya and Ingushetia, including two specifically aimed at providing psychological and social support for children and teenagers. Since May, PINF's psychiatrists have treated more than a hundred children at the schools in Grozny. Many now play, sing and make handicrafts in classes the organization runs for children who have recovered from the worst of their traumas.
 "We try to convince children that things will not always be as awful as they are now, that lawlessness will not be here forever, that people will not always die," Omarkhadzhiyeva said on a visit to PINF's main office in Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia.
 Omarkhadzhiyeva said children suffering from depression begin their treatment by watching what other children talk about and do during rehabilitation sessions. Gradually, they come to understand that their problems are not unique, that others have suffered as much or even more than them, and after that they begin to open up and share their problems, she said.
 "We tell them that if they want the world around them to be changed, they must study well and achieve good results," Omarkhadzhiyeva said. "That this will help change the world for their children, so they will not suffer."
 Dalsayev said up to 80 percent of children whose psychological traumas are not connected with mental illness are cured by attending his rehabilitation center.
 But Omarkhadzhiyeva said psychologists' efforts in rehabilitating troubled children can easily be undone with the situation as it is in Chechnya.
 "It doesn't make sense to talk about good results when military activities are still going on and children are stressed by them," she said. "Since May, when we started [the rehabilitation program in Grozny], there have been three shootouts nearby and mopping-up operations afterward, which put the children under additional stress and traumatize them."

TITLE: Khloponin Gets Job - For Now
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Thursday appointed Alexander Khloponin as acting Krasnoyarsk governor while the chaos surrounding the region's recent gubernatorial election is sorted out.
 
Putin, who had kept silent as the scandal unfolded this week, intervened a day after regional election officials invalidated the results of the Sept. 22 vote for a second time and called for a new poll on March 2. In the election, Taimyr Governor Khloponin had beaten Alexander Uss, the speaker of the Krasnoyarsk legislative assembly.
 "Alexander Gennadyevich Khloponin is appointed acting governor as the candidate who received the most votes and no one, including the regional commission, has any doubt about this fact," Putin said in televised remarks.
 Putin added: "The way in which the election was conducted is questionable."
 He said the Central Elections Commission must resolve the disputed election results.
 The Central Elections Commission will meet Friday, commission official Olga Zastrozhnaya said.
 By law, the commission has the right to override the decisions of regional commissions if it receives a complaint from a dissatisfied candidate or voter. Khloponin appealed to the commission Thursday, his lawyer, Sergei Maltov, said.
 Zastrozhnaya said candidates or voters have the option of taking their complaints to the commission or to court.
 Krasnoyarsk election officials invalidated the election results Sunday, saying they had received numerous complaints of campaign wrongdoing. Khloponin complained to a regional court Monday, and it ruled in his favor the next day.
 The court overturned the regional commission's ruling, saying officials had annulled the vote before approving and publishing the final results, a violation of electoral procedures. The court ordered the commission to reconvene. 
 The commission met Wednesday, approved the election results and then voided them.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Avalanche Body Found
 </b>

VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia (AP) - Emergency workers on Thursday recovered the body of a 67-year-old man from the mass of ice, mud and debris left by an avalanche in North Ossetia last month, bringing the total number of bodies recovered to 17, officials said. 
 A duty officer at North Ossetia's emergency department said there were 124 people still missing in the disaster, which was caused by a huge chunk of a glacier that broke off and crashed down a mountainside. 
 Workers were using explosives to try to clear out two tunnels in the mountains where people could have been trapped by the avalanche. However, their progress was slow, since the explosives caused the soft ice to crumble and mix with mud, instead of shattering, the duty officer said.
 
 
<style p_te>Budanov Stays in Jail
 

ROSTOV-NA-DONU, Southern Russia (AP) - A military court ruled Thursday to keep Colonel Yury Budanov, who is charged with the murder of an 18-year-old Chechen woman, behind bars for another three months as his trial continues.
 Budanov, the first soldier to face a public trial for crimes committed in Chechnya, admits to strangling Heda Kungayeva in 2000, but says he killed her in a rage because he thought she was a rebel sniper. Kungayeva's family says she was dragged from her home at night, raped and murdered during a drunken rampage by soldiers.
 On Thursday, the defense asked the court to free Budanov while the trial continues, but Judge Viktor Kostin ruled that Budanov should remain in jail at least until Jan. 3.
 It was the first court session since July, when a break in the trial was called for Budanov to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in Moscow. It was his fourth psychiatric examination since the case began. The third evaluation, at Moscow's Serbsky Center for Forensic Psychiatry, concluded he was temporarily insane at the time of the killing - a finding expected to prompt the court to free him.
 
 
<b>Missile Test Fired
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - The country's space forces have successfully test-fired an anti-missile missile from a testing ground in Kazakhstan, Interfax reported. 
 The missile was fired from the Sary-Shagan testing ground Wednesday to test its reliability, the space forces said, according to Interfax. 
 Major General Oleg Gromov, deputy commander of the space troops, told Interfax that the missile had been on combat duty for more than 20 years and was brought to the testing range to ensure that it was still functioning. He provided no other information. 
 
 
<b>Sibir Crash Memorial
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - Relatives of those who died on a Tu-154 Sibir jet accidentally shot down by Ukraine over the Black Sea flew from Novosibirsk to Sochi to take part in memorial ceremonies Friday, the first anniversary of the tragedy, Interfax reported Thursday.
 The group of 15 people will attend a service and then be taken by boat to the crash site, said Boris Kalinovsky, head of a foundation that supports families of those lost in the crash.
 He said Sibir gave relatives a 50-percent discount on tickets.
 All 66 passengers, most of whom were Israeli citizens, and 12 crew members died when the Tu-154 was hit by a Ukrainian missile during war exercises Oct. 4, 2001. 



TITLE: City To Get Refurbished Mid-Range Hotel
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A British company, Hospitality Developments Ltd, is to invest in the reconstruction of the Gavan Hotel, currently owned by Lenexpo, which will be renamed the Ramada Pushkin Hotel. 
 
Located on Sredny Pr. on Vasilievsky Island, the hotel was built as accommodation for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow but, by 1993, it had already been closed for major reconstruction. The reconstruction was subsequently put on hold for two years due to a lack of finances. In 1999, the City Property Committee (KUGI) decided to re-profile the building as an old people's home. Financing needed for the reconstruction, however, couldn't be found, and KUGI took the hotel back under control in 2000, before allocating it to the Lenexpo exhibition complex. 
 Though Lenexpo planned to begin reconstruction a year ago, work has not yet begun, the building now being in a dilapidated state - a sign hanging on one of the hotel's walls warns that passersby shouldn't approach the building, due to the risk of falling tiles. 
 In the past few months, however, Lenexpo found an investor, Hospitality Developments. &quot;We are about to start renovation of the hotel. Following the interior reconstruction, which will take us from one to two years, the Gavan will become a three to four-star hotel and will be renamed the Ramada Pushkin,&quot; John Warwick, the managing director of Hospitality Developments, said in a telephone interview last week. 
 Warwick said that the new hotel will have around 400 rooms and will be run by the Ramada International management company, which is part of the Marriott chain. Marriott presently runs 125 Ramada hotels.
 Marriot's international communications department has not confirmed the deal and Mikhail Voronin, deputy general director of Lenexpo, refused to comment on the situation.
 Warwick said that the estimated cost of the project is $28 million, with the Russian-Turkish joint venture Renaissance Construction acting as the main building contractor. 
 Anna Popova, spokesperson for the Renaissance Moscow Hotel, which is also part of the Marriott group, said that Ramada is one of 18 Marriott brands, of which only two - Ramada and Marriott - are represented in Russia. Ramada is considered to be an economy-budget, mid-priced chain of hotels. 
 Scott Antel, partner in charge of Ernst &amp; Young's hospitality-consulting group for Russia and the CIS, said that there is great demand for three and four-star hotels in the city, as the five-star market is now almost entirely occupied. 
 The reconstruction of the Gavan Hotel is the first project for Hospitality Developments in St. Petersburg, though Warwick said that the company will have more hotel projects in the city in the future. The company has already rebuilt 31 hotels in Britain.

TITLE: Putin Gives Warning of Potential Heat Crisis
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered his cabinet to make sure regional utilities are fully prepared for the heating season, to avoid a repeat of the crisis that left hundreds of thousands of people in the cold and dark two winters ago.
 
&quot;[Winter preparation] work is ongoing but, unfortunately, [the weather] is not like last year,&quot; Putin was quoted by RIA Novosti as telling his ministers.
 Putin said that in some regions problems may occur due to &quot;political issues.&quot; He did not elaborate.
 Putin told senior ministers that although preventing blackouts is not a &quot;direct duty&quot; of the cabinet, &quot;I insist that you pay attention to it.&quot;
 Regional officials, as well as national-power grid Unified Energy Systems and the State Construction Committee share Putin's concern. The committee is in charge of maintaining utility infrastructure.
 Putin was furious with the government for allowing hundreds of thousands of people in the Far East to go without heat and electricity for long periods of time in the winter of 2000 to 2001. As a result, the government avoided a similar fate last year, partly due to thorough preparations, but also because the winter was unusually warm.
 &quot;This winter will not be as warm as last year and we are getting prepared for it,&quot; said UES spokesperson Andrei Yegorov, adding that fuel reserves of nearly all utilities are above average.
 &quot;But we agree with Putin [on political issues] as well,&quot; said Yegorov, singling out two areas - Krasnoyarsk and Nizhny Novgorod - where recent elections have hampered preparations.
 The elections, for the mayor of Nizhny Novgorod and the governor of the vast Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk, have both been voided for legal violations, resulting in a power vacuum.
 Yegorov said that UES is still not sure if the Nizhny Novgorod government included heat and electricity payments in its budget. And in Krasnoyarsk, huge debt problems, combined with uncertainty over who is in charge of the region, have hampered preparations, he said.
 Adding to the worries is the nation's decrepit housing infrastructure, Yegorov said. &quot;We have resolved our problems for the winter and now we are going to help [the committee] ... No one can give any guarantees that a pipe will not burst when the temperature falls below minus 40 degrees Celsius,&quot; Yegorov said.
 Committee chief Anvar Shamuzafarov said last week that winter preparations have been much worse this year than last, mainly due to a financial squeeze caused by a pay hike for government employees.
 Shamuzafarov said that many regions were forced to use funds earmarked for housing repair, upgrading hot-water systems and fuel stockpiles to pay for the increase in salaries. He said that budget money for housing and utilities is between 30 percent and 60 percent less than last year.
 The &quot;crisis regions,&quot; where heating problems are expected, include Karelia, Tuva, Altai, Kaliningrad, Tver and Kursk, in addition to the regions that experience problems every year - Kamchatka, Ulyanovsk, Murmansk, Magadan and Sakhalin.

TITLE: Stoli Tycoon: Living in Exile Better Than Doing Hard Time
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Vodka magnate Yury Shefler, wanted in Russia for allegedly threatening to kill a government official, says that he has no intention of returning to his homeland any time soon.
 
&quot;It's much easier to do business from an office in the West than in Butyrka prison,&quot; Shefler said from Cyprus in an e-mail interview. &quot;Under the current circumstances, I have no desire to return.&quot;
 Shefler's Swiss-based SPI Group holds the rights to Stolichnaya, Moskovskaya and 41 other vodka trademarks internationally.
 But Soyuzplodoimport - a state-run company created by the Agriculture Ministry to manage 17 of the trademarks, including Stolichnaya, after they were returned to the state earlier this year - is gunning for Shefler's global empire, which it says was acquired illegally.
 Soyuzplodoimport is headed by former Deputy Agriculture Minister Vladimir Loginov, who has told prosecutors that Shefler threatened to kill him during a telephone conversation in March.
 Shefler denied ever speaking with Loginov.
 He said that the allegations against him are part of an illegal drive by the government to take over SPI Group, which had $400 million in revenue in 2001 and is forecasting $680 million this year.
 Shefler has not returned to Russia since the Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal investigation against him in March, based on Loginov's allegations.
 Besides Cyprus - where most of the companies included in the Swiss-registered SPI Group are registered - Shefler's representatives said that he has recently spent time in London and Sardinia.
 Shefler said that Russia suffers from a &quot;dictatorship of lawlessness and the arbitrariness of officialdom.&quot;
 &quot;The powers that be think that the public sees entrepreneurs as criminals, thieves of state property and bandits, and require that a heavy hand be applied to them, as they did in the past,&quot; he said.
 &quot;Today's authorities are hostages - not to yesterday's, but to the day before yesterday's stereotypes.&quot;
 Shefler said that Loginov is putting pressure on foreign vodka distributors to recognize Soyuzplodoimport as the rightful holder of the disputed trademarks.
 &quot;This bureaucrat threatened our distributors, saying that he would do everything to destroy the Stolichnaya label if Soyuzplodoimport failed to acquire the rights to it abroad,&quot; he said. 
 According to Shefler, Loginov's attorney had promised distributors that he would hound the management of SPI - as well as Shefler himself - with the help of Russian law enforcement agencies and even Interpol.
 Loginov denied those allegations in a telephone interview Tuesday.
 &quot;In my opinion, our business contact abroad is developing at a positive pace. All our steps are being conducted pursuant to international law,&quot; he said, adding that his company is making progress in negotiations with distributors.
 Shefler, however, said that Soyuzplodoimport has had no success after three or four months of talks.

TITLE: Russia To Shut Street Piracy Markets
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia will close down the country's popular music and video markets in an effort to put an end to rampant piracy, a government minister said Thursday.
 
&quot;We're talking about setting up special shops that will function according to the law,&quot; Media Minister Mikhail Lesin said in televised remarks following a cabinet meeting on intellectual property rights. &quot;Naturally, this will mean the end of trade at outdoor markets.&quot;
 More than 50 percent of audio and video recordings sold in Moscow and other cities are counterfeit, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said at the cabinet meeting.
 &quot;This is a sign of the country's backwardness,&quot; he said, adding that piracy is a major obstacle to foreign investment.
 Russia is not just a center for the sale of pirated cassettes and CDs, but a major producer. Citing the Media Ministry, the ITAR-Tass news agency said that while a few years ago, most of the pirated goods sold in Russia came from Southeast Asia, today they are produced in Russia.
 The Interior Ministry estimates the turnover in pirated goods at $1 billion to $5 billion.

TITLE: America Opens Its Doors to Russian Oil
AUTHOR: By Bradley Cook
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In a symbolic gesture that Russia hopes portends the future, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham guided Energy Minister Igor Yusufov through a key section of the heavily guarded U.S. emergency-oil-reserve network Tuesday. It was the first time a Russian official had been given such a tour.
 
&quot;This is an unprecedented step, a step of trust the United States has in Russia,&quot; Yusufov said in Freeport, Texas, after touring the Bryand Mound site.
 Yusufov and Abraham later joined other senior officials, oil executives and financiers at the first U.S.-Russia Energy Summit in nearby Houston.
 The brainchild of presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush, the two-day summit in America's oil capital, which opened Tuesday, was designed to expedite energy cooperation between the two oil and gas giants.
 For Russia, which gets half its revenues from oil and gas, the summit represents a united political push to increase its role as a dependable energy supplier to the world's biggest consumer. For that, however, Russia needs investment - lots of it. Yusufov put the figure at $50 billion through 2010.
 The summit is part of the Bush administration's geopolitical strategy of diversifying its energy suppliers while seeking support for its political objectives - both of which intersect in the Middle East and the hydrocarbon-rich Caspian region, which Russia considers to be in its sphere of influence.
 While few major deals were expected to be signed, several small but strategic ones have been announced that will benefit most of Russia's top oil companies.
 The U.S. Export-Import Bank has signed a $100-million agreement with LUKoil, Yukos and Sibneft to provide medium and long-term loans to buy U.S. equipment and services.
 Abraham said that next week a strategic reserve site similar to the one he toured with Yusufov will take 280,000 barrels of Russian crude.
 U.S. emergency reserves have never before held Russian oil.
 &quot;This further represents the things that are going on between our two countries,&quot; Abraham said.
 Including shipments due to arrive in October, America has imported 18.4 million barrels of Russia crude this year - up from zero last year, The Wall Street Journal reported.
 With Bush planning to add 120 million barrels to the emergency reserve, to top it off at 700 million barrels by 2005, Russian producers, whose blend trades at a discount to benchmark Brent, hope to ship even more crude to the United States in the coming months and years.
 Yusufov said that Russia is interested in creating its own reserves that would be used to help major energy-consuming economies avoid fallout from price spikes in times of political volatility.
 Also getting into the act is state-owned Rosneft, Russia's seventh-largest producer. Late Tuesday, Rosneft announced that it had teamed up with U.S. Marathon Corp. to create Urals North American Marketing, or UNAM, a joint venture to transport and market Russian crude in the United States.
 The two companies said that the deal is subject to final approval by both sides but that the expected start date for the venture is in the third quarter of 2003.
 &quot;UNAM is intended to help establish the United States as a significant long-term marketplace for Urals crude, while providing the United States with added diversity of crude oil supply,&quot; the companies said in a joint statement.
 A featured speaker at the summit, ConocoPhillips chairperson Archie Dunham, said that, in the next two to three years Russia could feasibly ship enough crude to impact U.S. markets.
 However, he warned that Russia still needs to do more work - such as passing production-sharing agreement legislation to stabilize taxation and protect contracts - to lay the foundation to be a major player in the U.S. oil market, Dow Jones reported.
 Conoco was one of the first Western companies to invest in the Russian oil sector, launching the Polar Lights project with LUKoil and Rosneft in 1991.
 Dunham said that the project was not very profitable because export laws and tax laws &quot;have seemed to change every month,&quot; Dunham was quoted by the Houston Chronicle as saying.
 &quot;ConocoPhillips is eager to do more in Russia as soon as the administrative and commercial basis for our cooperation can be strengthened,&quot; he said. &quot;In particular, we need to see the adoption of a consistent and comprehensive production-sharing agreement framework.&quot;
 Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref told participants that the energy law with the production-sharing guidelines could pass late this year or early next year, depending on how the second, third and fourth readings of the 2003 budget play out.

TITLE: Chipmaker To Invest In Russian IT Expansion
AUTHOR: By Larisa Naumenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - U.S.-based Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, intends to triple its Russian workforce over the next two years and open four new research and development laboratories, Intel chief Craig Barrett said Wednesday.
 
&quot;Russia is one of the top three countries where we are planning to increase our investment,&quot; Barrett said at the Intel Developer Forum at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
 The company plans to boost the number of workers at its research center in Nizhny Novgorod from 350 to 1,000 in the next few years, he said.
 Intel's four new facilities will be located at universities in Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow and St. Petersburg and will focus on telecommunications technology, Barrett said. 
 &quot;There's a huge opportunity in Russia to create technology, not only for the local market, but also for the world markets,&quot; he said. &quot;You educate people so that students can take their ideas in the marketplace and give them value.&quot;
 Barrett was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and a group of government officials and entrepreneurs Wednesday to discuss IT development.
 For Intel, there are a number of features that make Russia particularly attractive for investment, including its well-developed educational system, technical capability and Electronic Russia, a government program aimed at the development of the IT industry, Barrett said.
 The government, however, needs to create an agency to focus on IT development, cut taxes on high-tech companies, improve protection of intellectual-property rights and liberalize the telecommunications industry, he said. 
 Other priorities for the government should be building up communications infrastructure and installing new technologies itself.
 Barrett said that the government's forecasted spending of $4.2 billion on IT in 2005 is not enough and that extra investment would be needed.
 Furthermore, the state's education system must be improved, and IT should be made more available for children, he said.
 Intel on Wednesday opened a family-oriented computer center in Moscow that is expected to give classes to 1,000 secondary school students and their parents in its first year.
 The company is also continuing its program to train secondary school teachers to use IT in the classroom. Some 4,000 teachers have been trained at nine regional centers, and 6,000 more should be trained by 2003, according to Intel.
 Intel held the one-day developer forum in Russia for the first time this year, and some 800 IT specialists attended.
 Russia was chosen as the venue because of its impressive growth in the IT industry, said Steve Chase, president of Intel in Russia.
 &quot;We are sure that the forum's Russian session will help us implement our long-term program in support of development of Russia's computer and information technologies,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Central Bank Moves on Major Banking-Sector Reforms
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Central Bank and the government on Wednesday confirmed their commitment to reforming Russia's banking sector, which remains an obstacle to economic growth.
 
Central Bank first deputy chairperson Andrei Kozlov, speaking at a two-day banking forum that opened Wednesday, said that he expects the new law, setting bankruptcy procedures for banks, to be approved by the State Duma this fall.
 &quot;We consider it necessary to allow the Agency for Restructuring Credit Organizations to act as corporate liquidator of banks that work with private depositors,&quot; Kozlov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 In order to better protect the rights of retail depositors, who saw much of their savings wiped out in the 1998 crisis, Kozlov said that the bankruptcy bill should pass through the Duma at the same time as the bill guaranteeing private savings in banks.
 Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said that the government plans to discuss the bill on savings guarantees at a meeting on Oct. 24. The document suggests limiting the maximum amount to be repaid, in any instance, to 95,000 rubles ($2,998).
 In line with efforts to liberalize currency regulation, the Central Bank, Finance Ministry and Economic Development and Trade Ministry have reached a preliminary agreement to cut the rate of obligatory sales of export earnings from the current 50 percent to 35 percent, Dvorkovich said.
 The Economic Development and Trade Ministry is also working with the Central Bank on amendments to the law on banks and banking activities, which will allow both local and foreign investors to buy stakes of up to 10 percent in Russian banks without special permission from the Central Bank.
 &quot;I think this is a very positive step that will attract new foreign investments in banking,&quot; said Madina Butayeva, an analyst with the Aton brokerage. &quot;I am sure that Sberbank will be the primary target, as most Russian banks are still not transparent enough to become potential investment opportunities.&quot;
 Other analysts also welcomed the Central Bank's new initiatives but warned that banking reform is far from complete.
 &quot;It is a lengthy process that could well take 20 years before any results are seen, as the regulating authorities are learning together with the banks themselves,&quot; said Mikhail Matovnikov, deputy director general of Interfax Rating Agency.

TITLE: Plane Manufacturers Ply Old Markets
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Once the proud producers of a quarter of the world's commercial fleet, Russian airplane manufacturers are now humbly trying to re-enter markets they previously ruled.
 
Emboldened by renewed government interest in the long-neglected industry, companies like Tupolev, Aviastar-SP and the Kazan Aviation Production Association, or KAPO, have been scouring the globe in search of clients.
 A delegation of Tupolev and KAPO executives visited Bulgaria last week to show off their mid-range Tu-214 airliner, and did the same in China this week.
 &quot;We signed a cooperation agreement with the Bulgarian Aerospace Agency to promote the Tu-214 in Eastern Europe,&quot; KAPO deputy general director Ildar Mingaleyev said by telephone from Kazan. &quot;And we are at an early stage of discussions with China.&quot;
 The twin-engine Tu-214 can carry 210 passengers and has a range of 7,200 kilometers, making it a direct competitor of Boeing's 757-200 and Airbus' 321.
 Although it flew for the first time in 1996, the jet only entered service last year. Just two airlines currently fly it - Khabarovsk-based Dalavia, which operates two of the craft, and State Company Rossia, which operates one.
 But the manufacturers hope to change all that: Despite having to go head to head with the two giants of the industry, Boeing and Airbus, whose service and maintenance quality they cannot match, they have one key advantage - price. At $30 million, the Russian plane retails for less than half the cost of its European and U.S. equivalents.
 Although sales have been slow to take off, the plane is starting to gain interest. Rossia will receive its second plane by the end of the year and its third and fourth next year, said Igor Kabatov, chief designer for the Tu-214.
 Libya, too, is looking closely at the model, having signed an agreement of intention earlier this year to purchase six of the craft.
 The general director of the Bulgarian Aerospace Agency, Boris Bonev, who was among officials and executives from a dozen or so airlines to inspect the craft at showings in Sofia and Varna, praised the plane.
 &quot;What we have signed is the future,&quot; Bonev said by telephone, referring to the cooperation agreement.
 &quot;In the past, it was through Bulgaria that Russia broke into the [foreign] market. Now it has a real chance of doing it again,&quot; he said.
 Bonev said that Boeing and Airbus are in constant communication with Bulgarian carriers, but Tupolev is now a serious competitor. &quot;We have a lot of experience with Russian aircraft - our pilots, engineers and maintenance personnel are very familiar with them. So, now we'll let the companies see what is best for them.&quot;
 Georgy Popov, flight director of Air Sofia, which is mainly a cargo airline that currently flies the Soviet-made Antonov models An-12 and An-26, said that his company was looking closely at the cargo version of the Tu-214.
 &quot;The Tu-214 is practically the only Russian-made aircraft that can successfully compete with Western aircraft,&quot; Popov said, adding that Air Sofia would most likely lease rather than buy, if it decides to acquire one or more of the planes.
 Another Bulgarian airline, Air Via, which operates Tu-154Ms, said that it would be ready to fly Tu-214s tomorrow if they were ready for delivery.
 KAPO's Mingaleyev said that he believes Bulgarian carriers could buy or lease up to 25 of the jets if a financing scheme can be worked out.
 Mingaleyev said that at least one plane will likely be sold as a result of the trip and that a contract could be finalized in the next few weeks.
 He said that the purchase may be financed through one of the Russian government's programs to support manufacturers, but he declined to elaborate.
 &quot;So far, this is the first step of a big program to promote the aircraft abroad,&quot; he said.
 Paul Duffy, a Moscow-based independent aviation analyst, said that history makes Bulgaria a key market for Russian producers.
 &quot;Bulgaria ... has had very good experiences with Tupolevs and Yakovlevs in the past, so the doors there will be much more open than in other countries,&quot; he said.
 If the industry is to reach a breakthrough, however, it will be in China, Duffy said.
 Over the next couple of years, the Chinese market will start to develop quite seriously for Russian aircraft, Duffy said.
 Another aircraft manufacturer, the Ulyanovsk-based Aviastar-SP plant, which makes the Tu-204, has been promoting its craft in tandem with Egypt's Sirocco Aerospace International.
 Sirocco has the exclusive rights to market internationally the passenger and cargo versions of the Tu-204-120, which has Rolls-Royce engines and Honeywell avionics.
 Air Cairo already flies four of the craft and global mail-express giant TNT operates two.

TITLE: A U.S. Pepsi Legend Swaps Sodas for Spuds
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Forty-three years after his first visit to Moscow, former PepsiCo Inc. President and CEO Don Kendall is back in town on a mission. This time, however, it is not to swap Pepsi for vodka or deliver a message from the U.S. president.
 
He is here to promote the humble potato.
 Kendall, who reels off the names Brezhnev, Nixon and Kosygin like they were old friends, will cut the ribbon Thursday at Frito-Lay's $60-million potato-chip plant in Kashira, some 100 kilometers south of Moscow.
 Speaking at a conference Tuesday in the Marriott Grand Hotel, Kendall, 81, was upbeat about the Russian economy and lavished praise on President Vladimir Putin.
 &quot;Since Putin came in, things have been going from strength to strength,&quot; Kendall said. &quot;He's hard working, stays in shape and doesn't drink.&quot;
 &quot;He has a wonderful relationship with the United States. The first meeting went great - he's been to the [Bush] ranch,&quot; he said.
 For evidence of Russia's economic upturn, look no further than PepsiCo's bottom line, Kendall said. &quot;Our sales have gone through the roof,&quot; he said. &quot;That, to me, is one of the best examples of what is happening with the economy.&quot;
 Over the past seven years, PepsiCo has invested almost $1 billion in Russia, and soft-drink division Pepsi has earmarked $25 million per year to finance new production.
 The bricks and mortar at Frito-Lay's Kashira plant cost $18 million, but the most important investment has gone into the soil, said David White, PepsiCo president and CEO for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
 &quot;This is more than just opening a plant,&quot; he said. &quot;We can only grow our potato-chip business as fast as we can grow our agriculture side of it.&quot;
 Frito-Lay has provided support to some 3,000 farmers in the Kashira area, purchasing harvesting equipment and importing irrigation facilities.
 By November, 50 percent of the plant's potato supply will be provided locally, White said.
 The 18,200-square-meter plant and warehouse complex has an annual capacity of 40,000 tons of snacks, or 1.4 billion bags, and will employ 400 workers.
 White said that Russia is a &quot;bright spot&quot; among emerging markets internationally, and with Frito-Lay expecting $100 million in sales next year, the country will become a &quot;real-scale emerging market&quot; for PepsiCo.
 Frito-Lay plans to invest $10 million into local operations next year, and $30 million in 2004.
 A second factory is planned for 2005, and the company is looking to move in on the market for Russians' beloved salty snack - the crouton-like <i>sukhariki.</i>
 &quot;Ultimately, we're all competing for share of stomach,&quot; White said.
 Major food and drink manufacturers want to get in on Russia's retail market, which grew by nearly 30 percent last year and is expected to increase a further 20 percent in 2002 to $123 billion, according to data from Renaissance Capital.
 While Heineken and Scottish &amp; Newcastle have made acquisitions in the beer sector worth more than $2 billion, Nestle, which dominates the candy sector, recently snapped up Saint Springs for $50 million - and with it 10 percent of the local bottled-water market.
 Frito-Lay is the leader in Russia's fast-growing potato-chip market with a 42-percent share, according to company estimates. No. 2 Russian player Kolos trails with 12 percent.
 The salty-snacks market, of which chips account for about 38 percent, is expected to leap an impressive 40 percent this year, Frito-Lay said.

TITLE: Oil Controls Hussein's Fate
AUTHOR: By Eugene Rumer
TEXT: GIANTS of the American and Russian oil industries come together in Houston this week for the first U.S.-Russia Energy Summit. The event brings together cabinet members, top corporate executives, legislators and financiers and could lead to a breakthrough. It is an opportunity for the United States and Russia to lay the foundation for a genuine global-energy partnership.
 
As officials, executives and legislators discuss ways to bring more Russian oil to U.S. and global markets, they should not lose sight of oil as a strategic commodity and of the truly historic opportunity before the United States and Russia to form a partnership that could bring stability and security to the global oil market. That means they need to discuss the future of Iraq, the nature of U.S. and Russian interests there and the opportunity a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq would present to the U.S. and Russian oil industries.
 The Russian oil executives attending the Houston summit, including some holding contracts with Hussein's government, have been watching U.S. policy toward Iraq with a wary eye. They are concerned that the post-Hussein oil sweepstakes will be rigged against them. They have used a variety of surrogates to let it be known that when Iraq's future leaders award new oil contracts, Russian oil executives want a seat at the table.
 The summit is also an opportunity for U.S. policy-makers to engage some of the most powerful people in Russia. When Russian oil executives speak, President Vladimir Putin listens.
 But, for all their wealth and influence at home, these oil executives have had to pursue recognition and respect abroad. Their reputations suffered badly in the 1990s, first when insider privatization schemes landed them billion-dollar assets for pennies on the dollar, then as a frenzy of asset-stripping after the financial collapse of 1998 left many of their creditors, both at home and abroad, holding the bag.
 In recent years, the performance of Russia's oil industry has improved; several privately controlled companies have made important steps toward greater transparency, better corporate governance and more efficient operations. Yukos has been especially active in an effort to spruce up the tarnished image of the Russian business community by donating money to charities, reaching out to Wall Street and courting the political establishment in Washington. The message from Yukos is that the bad old days of Russian capitalism are over and that Russia's new business elite is ready for a long-term partnership with the United States.
 Russian oil companies want better access to international capital markets and cutting-edge technology, both of which they need to sustain and expand oil production vital to Russia's growth and financial stability. But that is not all. The best and brightest among the oil executives crave international acceptance because it is their best guarantee against the vagaries of the Russian domestic political scene, where, despite a decade of capitalist reforms, the specter of re-nationalization still lurks. With this kind of domestic uncertainty likely to be a fact of life in Russia for years to come, the oil tycoons' best insurance is in business and political alliances outside their country. The latest Iraq crisis is an opportunity these Russian oil executives must have been praying for - a chance to sell out Hussein in exchange for a piece of Iraqi oil and a new partnership with Washington.
 As tensions in the Persian Gulf escalated in recent months, Russian oil barons telegraphed - repeatedly and with unprecedented clarity - the price of their acquiescence to regime change in Baghdad. All along they have made clear that they are not asking for guarantees, merely reasonable assurances of Washington's goodwill and influence to back up their claims, possibly in partnership with U.S. companies.
 Regardless of whether war in Iraq can be avoided, these oil tycoons can be critical to U.S. efforts to isolate Hussein and undercut Moscow's residual support for him. And if war in Iraq is imminent, Russian oil companies - in partnership with U.S. companies - could help lay the foundations for a true U.S.-Russian energy partnership. Russia's 5 million barrels of oil a day in exports, combined with Iraq's projected capacity of 4 million barrels, could match Saudi Arabia's daily output of 8 million barrels and become an unprecedented force for stability in the global oil market. That's why it is very much worth watching what comes out of Houston this week.
 
 <i>Eugene Rumer, a senior fellow at the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies, contributed this article to The Washington Post. The views expressed here are his own. </i>

TITLE: Electoral Farce Bad for Putin's Image
TEXT: THE election skulduggery in Krasnoyarsk and Nizhny Novgorod last weekend made for depressing news, but at least it has put an all-too-welcome spotlight on the dubious practices employed in gubernatorial and mayoral elections.
 
Unfortunately, it would appear that certain politicians and commentators have drawn completely the wrong conclusions from the events of the past few days, arguing that they highlight the need for further strengthening of federal control over the regions. Some have gone as far as to argue for doing away with regional elections altogether and having the president appoint regional leaders instead. If anything, the events in Krasnoyarsk and Nizhny Novgorod are confirmation of the exact opposite.
 Key protagonists in many of the biggest election scandals of the past two years have been the president's envoys, or <i>polpredy, </i>to the seven federal districts - and Sergei Kiriyenko, envoy to the Volga district, is certainly no exception in the Nizhny Novgorod scandal.
 The polpredy seem to consider it their duty to keep &quot;undesirable&quot; types out of the race and guide the electorate to make the &quot;right&quot; choice in the regions under their jurisdiction - by hook or by crook. By doing this, they show complete disdain for voters and the democratic process.
 Thus, we have witnessed Kiriyenko's heavy-handed intervention to steer his protege, Vladimir Bulavinov, to victory. Similar tactics have been employed by polpredy in Ingushetia, Kursk and Primorye, with mixed success. It is worth recalling that President Vladimir Putin created the institution of polpredy and hand-picked the seven envoys, all of whom act in his name.
 The situation in Krasnoyarsk is somewhat different, with powerful business groups manipulating state institutions to influence the outcome of the elections (or simply to improve their bargaining position with the winning candidate post-election).
 Introducing a system of appointed governors and mayors would be a major step in the wrong direction, as it would spell victory for those well-connected business groups and political clans that are at forefront of efforts to subvert the democratic process. At least now these groups aren't able to rig elections to such an extent that voters can't deliver up an unwelcome surprise from time to time.
 Boris Nemtsov hit the nail on the head when he called on the president to take a public stand on the events in Krasnoyarsk and Nizhny Novgorod.
 Putin's failure to take a firm stand - particularly regarding the egregious behavior of his personal representatives - is damaging to him personally, and discredits the authorities and Russia's shaky democracy.

TITLE: Arab's Sharon Perceived as U.S.'s Hussein
AUTHOR: By Nicholas Berry
TEXT: MANY in the Arab world portray Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon virtually the same way the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush portrays Saddam Hussein. The parallels are astounding.
 
The Bush administration says that Hussein has twice invaded his neighbors - Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. Well, Israel has invaded its neighbors three times - Egypt in 1956; Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967; and Lebanon in 1982.
 Saddam claimed he was fully justified in his attacks. Iran, under Ayatollah Khomeini, had been urging Iraqi Shiites to overthrow Hussein's secular Baath regime as part of the Iranian leader's insidious scheme to export his Islamic revolution. Kuwait had to be stopped from stealing Iraqi oil from a shared oil field on their border.
 Similarly, Israel claimed self-defense in its incursions. Its Arab neighbors employed terrorism, used the Palestinians to subvert the Jewish state, and threatened war. Sharon fought in all three wars and actually planned the 1982 advance into a helpless Lebanon.
 The Bush administration says that Hussein continues to develop biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, and is seeking to develop nuclear arms. He has at least 20 Scud missiles tucked away, the administration claims, and has promised fierce resistance if attacked.
 Sharon, of course, actually has a robust stock of WMD, including an estimated 50 nuclear weapons. He controls the most lethal air force in the region and maintains a large arsenal of both cruise and ballistic missiles. Sharon has made no secret of the fact that Israel will retaliate with &quot;weapons of its own choosing&quot; if attacked.
 The Bush administration links Hussein to international terrorism, including a definite connection to al-Qaida. He is also, Bush has said, &quot;a guy who tried to kill my dad.&quot;
 Israel has been known to hunt down opponents in far-off lands (even Sweden) and kill those on its list of enemies.
 Finally, the Bush administration condemns Saddam for violating 16 UN resolutions, thereby flouting the will of the international community.
 Well, Israel has flouted even more - over 25 by one count. Only days ago, a UN Security Council resolution, approved with 14 votes to one abstention (the United States), demanded that Israel end its siege of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound. Sharon continued the siege even after receiving a personal message from Bush urging him to end it.
 Is it any wonder that Sharon is Hussein for most of the Arab and Islamic world?
 There are aphorisms, of course, explaining why some like Sharon and hate Hussein and vice versa:
 &quot;Where you stand depends upon where you sit.&quot; The United States sits with a strong population devoted to Israel, who have enormous political clout. The Arabs and Palestinians sit next to a hard-line Israel.
 &quot;It all depends upon whose ox is being gored.&quot; Israel is a U.S. ally that can be counted on to gore Washington's enemies when the chips are down. Israel is goring Palestinians, much to the dismay of Arabs and Muslims.
 All this adds up to the United States - because of Israel - having one hell of a time trying to convince the world that it has a righteous case for an assault on Hussein.
 
 <i>Nicholas Berry, director of ForeignPolicyForum.com in Washington, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Pletnyov Returns to RNO Job
AUTHOR: By George Loomis
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Russian National Orchestra last week announced the appointment of Mikhail Pletnyov as its artistic director, for a tenure to begin in January. The move comes less than a week after internationally-reknowned violinist Vladimir Spivakov resigned as musical director and principal conductor, following the orchestra's decision not to renew his contract when it expires next fall. 
 
The post of artistic director, according to an orchestra statement released to the press this week, is new and reflects the orchestra's decision to operate under a new leadership arrangement without a principal conductor. Instead, Pletnyov will head what was described as a &quot;conductor collegium&quot; consisting of a small group of conductors. 
 The rapidity of Pletnyov's appointment is no doubt a sign of his eagerness to return to a role of prominence with the orchestra that he founded in 1990 and led until 1999, when he became conductor laureate, in order to devote more time to his work as a pianist and a composer. He was succeeded by Spivakov, but nevertheless continued to make frequent appearances with the orchestra. Pletnyov's availability was no doubt a factor in the orchestra's decision not to renew Spivakov's contract when its term concludes next September. Because of his resignation, Spivakov will now serve only until the end of December. He has said, however, that he will honor all previous commitments for future appearances, even in the new year. 
 The Russian National Orchestra is perhaps Russia's finest orchestra, with the possible exception of the Mariinsky Theater's Orchestra under current general director Valery Gergiev. But many were skeptical of Spivakov's appointment from the beginning. 
 For all his renown as a violinist and his immense popularity in Moscow, Spivakov had limited prior conducting experience apart from having led his Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra, and he never succeeded in developing into a truly persuasive symphonic conductor. His scheduling, too, was often uninspired. A case in point was the unusually short season-opening program the orchestra offered twice last week in the Conservatory Great Hall. It consisted solely of a Mozart piano concerto and two over-played works of Ravel, Bolero and La Valse, and as an encore a selection from Rodion Shchedrin's ballet &quot;Carmen.&quot;
 Speculation now focuses on who will be named to the collegium. 
 One prominent name unofficially mentioned is that of Kent Nagano, principal conductor of the Los Angeles Opera and of Berlin's Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester. Given a group of conductors of sufficient artistic stature as well as Pletnev's active involvement, the new arrangement could produce good results, at least for the short term. But an orchestra needs someone at the top, and the Russian National ought to use the time it has thus bought itself to find the right one.

TITLE: Mariinsky Opens Season With Film, Ambitions
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Mariinsky Theater opens its 220th season on Sunday, and, for the first time in its history, the venerable company is starting its season with a film premiere.
 
Yes, there will be the theater's new staging of Mussorgsky's opera &quot;Boris Godunov&quot; at 7 p.m. on Sunday, but first comes the first official screening in Russia of &quot;K-19: The Widowmaker,&quot; which stars Harrison Ford as the captain of the eponymous, sinking Russian submarine.
 Why put the movie before the opera? The Mariinsky has a good reason: Last summer, its symphony orchestra and chorus, under the baton of the theater's artistic director, Valery Gergiev, recorded the soundtrack for the movie, which opens across Russia on Oct. 17.
 The upcoming season will overlap with St. Petersburg's long-awaited - and much-hyped - 300th-anniversary celebrations. The Mariinsky's contribution to the festivities will be a vastly expanded version of its annual showcase, &quot;Stars of the White Nights.&quot;
 The musical feast will run from May 6 through Aug. 6 and will feature an absolute galaxy of international stars. According to the theater, those taking part will include Placido Domingo, Ren&eacute;e Fleming, Dmitry Khvorostovsky, Olga Borodina, and Vadim Repin. Joining them on the banks of the Neva River will be the New York City Ballet, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the orchestra of New York's Metropolitan Opera, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Opera de Lausanne - to name a few.
 There is another date of note just before the festival kicks off. Gergiev could hardly have picked a better time to be born if he had tried - he celebrates his 50th birthday on May 2. However, no special events have been scheduled so far.
 The season's first operatic premiere will be Verdi's &quot;La Traviata&quot; on Dec. 13, with talented young soprano Anna Netrebko, one of the theater's biggest names, in the lead female role, Violetta. The production is being staged by French director Charles Roubaud, who staged Puccini's &quot;Turandot&quot; for the theater this summer. Soprano Tatyana Pavlovskaya, who sang the part of Liu in that production, says that Roubaud is a very valuable partner for the Mariinsky.
 &quot;Roubaud's attitude to art, music and life is unique,&quot; she says. &quot;'Turandot' is such an image-rich production. He is very delicate and sensitive to nuances.&quot;
 &quot;Even singers and musicians not involved in the rehearsals came, just to witness what was going on,&quot; Pavlovskaya recalls. &quot;He treated every singer as a fragile vase, and asked us to treat each other like that. He is one of my favorite directors.&quot;
 After &quot;La Traviata,&quot; opera lovers will take a deep breath and prepare for two more premieres later in December, when the Mariinsky completes its production of Wagner's operatic tetralogy, &quot;Der Ring des Nibelungen.&quot; The third part of the cycle, &quot;Siegfried,&quot; is slated for Dec. 26, while &quot;Gotterdaemmerung,&quot; the final part, will follow on Dec. 30.
 The Mariinsky's Ring cycle has been one of Gergiev's pet projects. In a break with tradition, the cycle is being staged at the theater by several directors. The first installment, &quot;Das Rheingold,&quot; was directed by Johannes Schaaf, and premiered in 2000; the second part, &quot;Die Walkuere,&quot; was directed by Gottfried Pilz in 2001. The names of the directors of the final two operas have not yet been officially announced, but Moscow's Vladimir Mirzoyev is frequently mentioned within the theater. Mirzoyev's experiments have always attracted a lot of attention - as well as much debate. His most recent work, Edmond Rostand's &quot;Cyrano de Bergerac,&quot; at Moscow's Vakhtangov Drama Theater, with Maxim Sukhanov in the title role, was considered an indisputable success.
 Ballet audiences will not be deprived of their share of shows, with most of them set to be performed in February, when the Mariinsky's third International Ballet Festival takes place. During the festival, the Mariinsky troupe will present three premieres. Pierre Lacotte's &quot;Undine&quot; will be the first, on Feb. 21. Dissident artist Mikhail Shemyakin returns to create sets and costumes for the second, &quot;Princess Pirlipat,&quot; which will open on Feb. 27.
 &quot;Princess Pirlipat&quot; is based on a part of E.T.A. Hoffmann's story &quot;Nutcracker and the Mouse King.&quot; In 1891, choreographer Marius Petipa commissioned Tchaikovsky to write the music for a ballet based on the tale, but left out the story of Princess Pirlipat. Shemyakin sees his ballet as a prologue to the ballet that resulted - &quot;The Nutcracker.&quot;
 Shemyakin wrote the libretto for the one-act &quot;Princess Pirlipat&quot; himself, and the music has been written specially for the ballet by prominent local composer Sergei Slonimsky. The ballet will become the Mariinsky's second production set to music by a living St. Petersburg composer; the other is Sergei Banevich's opera &quot;The Tale of Kay and Gerda.&quot;
 The ballet will be choreographed by Mariinsky dancer Kirill Simonov, who choreographed the theater's most recent version of &quot;The Nutcracker,&quot; which premiered in the spring of 2001.
 &quot;I never perform in my own ballets, but I made an exception for the production of Nutcracker,&quot; Simonov says. &quot;[Shemyakin] asked me to do so and, in the process, I became very much involved in the story.&quot;
 &quot;While working on the character of the Nutcracker, I started with my own physical capabilities and even human qualities,&quot; he says. &quot;We have a lot in common.&quot;
 Recalling rehearsals of the Nutcracker, Simonov - whose work was blamed for lack of originality, and even accused of breaking no new ground in terms of choreography - admits that the pressure was incredibly high.
 &quot;The fact that the show's concept had already been developed by Shemyakin and choreographer Alexei Ratmansky [who was initially invited to stage the ballet] tied my hands,&quot; he says. &quot;It was also my first take on a large-scale costumed production.&quot;
 Balletmaster Alexei Ratmansky, a soloist at the Danish Royal Ballet, whose one-act ballets and ballet &quot;Cinderella&quot; are now a part of the Mariinsky's repertoire, was initially invited to do &quot;The Nutcracker.&quot; However, he left after a few rehearsals, citing a hectic schedule, and the Mariinsky did not hide the fact that Simonov was basically coming to the rescue of the production.
 Simonov, himself a member of the Mariinsky ballet troupe, is taking on his new role as a choreographer with some confidence. &quot;I am at liberty to choose dancers for my ballets,&quot; he says. &quot;They don't have to be the top soloists or the most obscure members of <i>corps de ballet</i>;<i> </i>they have to fit my concept - and they have done so, so far.&quot;
 
 <i>
Links: www.mariinsky.ru </i>

TITLE: Looking at Five Years of Life in Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: First of all, a disclaimer. As the editor of All About Town, I could be accused of a conflict of interest; this article's subject is an exhibition of work by Sami Hyrskylahti, who has been contributing articles and photographs to this paper, and in particular to All About Town, for the last few years on a freelance basis.
 
Nevertheless, the exhibition of Hyrskylahti's photographs, &quot;Five Years of Photographs,&quot; that opened at the cafe-club Che on Thursday deserves attention for more than one reason. First, exhibitions of work by long-term foreigner residents of St. Petersburg are very rare; second, the exhibition is the first that has been hosted at Che, a stylish place that has become very popular in the few months since it opened.
 Hyrskylahti, a Finn, has been living in St. Petersburg since 1995, working as a journalist and a photographer, mainly covering the city's club scene and events related to Finland. His photography is, broadly speaking, documentary; he is continuously looking to capture aspects of everyday life. &quot;My camera is always with me,&quot; he says. &quot;I basically shoot all the time, everywhere.&quot;
 Photography, he says, is a means to an end. &quot;The camera is not the main point; the main point is the eye, the things I see,&quot; he says. &quot;This is just a way to record things my restless eyes are seeing.&quot;
 The exhibition consists of around 20 photos, which represent a tiny fraction of the 100,000 - some 2,500 rolls of film - that Hyrskylahti estimates he has taken in the past 5 years. During this time, he has formed a typically offbeat idea of what makes a good picture.
 &quot;The best photos are children, dogs and old people,&quot; he says. &quot;They are usually the most interesting material.&quot;
 These subjects, along with pictures of St. Petersburg's night life, are prominent at the exhibition. A boy brandishing a toy gun is caught unaware and slightly unfocused; a mother and her two grandchildren struggle with heavy bags through the hall of Vitebsky Vokzal; revelers watch the sunrise after the all-night rave at Alexandrovsky Fort this summer. The overall effect is of a dynamic city, a city in motion, where the exceptional becomes everyday, and vice versa.
 The sole criterion by which Hyrskylahti was chosen to stage the first exhibition at Che, according to the cafe-club's manager, Mikhail Dolgopolov, is that he is a very good photographer.
 &quot;I also like the fact that he does this all with a LOMO compact,&quot; he says, referring to the small camera that Hyrskylahti habitually carries.
 LOMO is the largest optics firm in Russia, which - as well as manufacturing missile-guidance systems, among other things - created the LOMO camera, which has spawned a cult following of &quot;lomographers,&quot; who love the camera for the unusual colors that it can produce.
 The exhibition continues one of the <i>raisons d'etre </i>of Che - internationalism.
 &quot;When we opened, there was nothing like it in St. Petersburg,&quot; says Dolgopolov. &quot;In New York or Paris, yes, but not here.&quot;
 The club plans more exhibitions. According to Dolgopolov, currently on deck is a display of engravings in wood by Pyotr Bely, the local printmaker who recently returned from London to set up the St. Petersburg Print Studio (see &quot;Reviving the Printmakers Art,&quot; Sept. 27).
 Hyrskylahti, meanwhile, plans to continue with photography. In fact, he says, he can't stop. &quot;That's probably why some people think I am a spy, because I am always looking somewhere,&quot; he laughs. &quot;But it's just due to the fact that I was born like that.&quot;
 
 <i>
&quot;Five Years of Photographs&quot; runs through Oct. 13 at Che, 3 Poltavskaya Ul. </i>

TITLE: Celebrating a Life of Devotion to the Theater
AUTHOR: By John Freedman
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Imagine a theater director who, during his career, has staged 101 shows in 30 cities in 15 countries. Keep in mind that, before this director founded one of the most famous theaters of the 20th century at the ripe age of 47 in 1964, he had been a popular film and theater actor and had won a coveted Stalin Prize for his work on stage. 
 
Toss in the fact that this same director became an international celebrity in 1984 when the Politburo stripped him of his Soviet citizenship, and that he became a national icon when he returned to Russia from exile in the West in 1989. Moreover, when the euphoria of his return wore off, he weathered a nasty civil war at his theater that broke it into two warring factions and left him in control of only one of the two large stages he once had at his disposal. Having put that behind him, he settled down to the task of making his theater one of the most lively and popular in Moscow again. 
 Now, the question is this: If you were this director, what would you do for your 85th birthday? 
 Well, if you were Yury Lyubimov, who celebrated his 85th at the Taganka Theater on Monday, you would stage the 102nd production of your career. In this case, the production is a brief, brisk interpretation of both parts of Goethe's &quot;Faust,&quot; a show that has been playing in previews since April but which will have its official opener go down in the books as Sept. 30, 2002, the day Lyubimov commemorates number 85. But as important as &quot;Faust&quot; is to Lyubimov, it is not really his new production that was the focus of attention on Monday, but rather the man who created it, and what he means to theater, to Moscow, to Russia and the world. 
 It is enough to pronounce the name &quot;Yury Lyubimov&quot; and you instantly realize that you have bitten off more than you can chew. 
 Which Lyubimov are we talking about? The innovator who injected a whole new aesthetic into Soviet theater in the 1960s and 1970s? The political dissident who openly waged wars with the communist authorities? The extraordinarily shrewd backroom wheeler-dealer who used his connections and popularity with people in the KGB and the Communist Party to play both ends off the center and keep his theater afloat? The cantankerous, opinionated and demanding director whose quarrels with actors and theaters are legendary? The gentle, courteous man who, nearly 20 years ago while in the middle of a scandal causing the cancellation of a production at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, spent nearly three hours patiently answering every silly question I had to ask him? 
 And that is barely a start. 
 Lyubimov is an era unto himself. Here is a man who was born just weeks before the Russian revolution in 1917. He met the legendary director Vsevolod Meyerhold in the 1930s while still an acting student and, during World War II, he worked in one of the most bizarre cultural organizations ever contrived - the Song and Dance Ensemble of the NKVD secret police, the precursor to the KGB. This is probably where he met some of the agents who helped him keep the Taganka afloat 20 and 30 years hence and who saw to it that he was kicked out of his theater and homeland in the 1980s. The Song and Dance Ensemble is also where Lyubimov met and worked with such people as the great composer Dmitry Shostakovich and the influential playwright Nikolai Erdman, both of whom helped form him as an artist. 
 Lyubimov is the man who gave the actor and bard Vladimir Vysotsky a platform from which to become a national legend. Vysotsky was Lyubimov's top actor until he died at age 42 in 1980. Lyubimov is also the man who helped bring the set designer David Borovsky to international prominence. Borovsky was unquestionably one of the most innovative theater designers of the second half of the 20th century. Lyubimov routinely worked with such world-class composers as Alfred Schnittke, Edison Denisov and now Vladimir Martynov. 
 Many of Lyubimov's productions at the Taganka - &quot;Faust&quot; is his 51st there - have been instrumental in shaping the style of Russian theater over the last 40 years. Such shows as Brecht's &quot;The Good Person of Setzuan&quot; (1964), John Reed's &quot;Ten Days that Shook the World&quot; (1965), &quot;Hamlet&quot; (1971), Yury Trifonov's &quot;The Exchange&quot; (1976), Mikhail Bulgakov's &quot;The Master and Margarita&quot; (1977) and Dostoevsky's &quot;Crime and Punishment&quot; (1979) form an anthology of top theatrical achievements for those years.
 Since returning from exile and resuming control of the Taganka, Lyubimov has added several more key productions, including Euripides' &quot;Medea&quot; (1995), Dostoevsky's &quot;The Brothers Karamazov&quot; (1997), Peter Weiss' &quot;Marat and Marquis de Sade&quot; (1998) and Pushkin's &quot;Eugene Onegin&quot; (2000). 
 Over the years, I have observed Lyubimov in nearly every possible state of being: embattlement, fury, triumph, leisure and labor. I have talked to actors, directors, critics and backstage hands - some of whom cannot forgive his authoritarian manner, some of whom continue to have tremendous respect for this man, whose accomplishments are so great in number and scope. Few who have ever come into contact with Lyubimov are neutral in their feelings about him. 
 As the noted American theater scholar Alma Law has put it, &quot;Lyubimov's creative juices have always thrived on crisis.&quot; For most of his life, Lyubimov has loved a good fight and has been able to use it in the service of his art. 
 Even as he nears 85, he has hardly slowed down. Suffice it to say that between the ages of 80 and 85, Lyubimov has staged 11 shows. It is true that during rehearsals he no longer jumps up on the stage to show his actors what he wants. Now, an assistant does that for him, as he sits at a table in the middle of the auditorium. And Lyubimov doesn't seem to bait and badger journalists with the same relish he used to - now he seems more inclined to regret any precious energy that must be wasted on anything but his work. 
 And that brings us to the crux of the matter - Lyubimov is and always has been a worker. Maybe not every show he has created has been successful - I have seen plenty that I would say were not. And maybe he has not always been as respectful of his colleagues as it would seem he could be - aside from Vysotsky, only rarely will you hear him say kind words about the several generations of actors who have helped him make his reputation. I could not possibly claim to know or understand Lyubimov, whom I have observed at relatively close hand for twenty years. But I do know this: He is an artist who is utterly dedicated to his gift and his art. 
 Once again, Law has put her finger on Lyubimov's pulse. &quot;Endowed with a seemingly boundless reserve of energy,&quot; she wrote, &quot;Lyubimov spares neither himself nor his actors. As one of them commented in describing life at the Taganka Theater, 'For us ,the concept of a working day ceased to exist. There was only a working life.'&quot; 
 If we must draw conclusions - and I guess we must - here is mine: Lyubimov has had one of the most extraordinary working lives in Russian culture of the last eight and a half decades. It's been a privilege to be a witness.

TITLE: Mission: Baroque 'n' Roll for Earlymusic's Reshetin
AUTHOR: By Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: How many violinists do you know who graduated from one of the world's top conservatories, were an integral part of an underground scene under a repressive regime, played for five years with a legendary rock band after their best friend, the band's violinist drowned, before reinventing themselves as their country's leading exponent of the baroque violin?
 
Anyone who has talked with Andrei Reshetin, the artistic director of the ongoing festival Earlymusic, will recognize this description.
 Reshetin began playing the violin when he was 6 years old, and went to a specialist music school before entering the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in 1981. So far, so Soviet. But then, in 1982, he was introduced by philosopher and painter Boris Axelrod - a.k.a. AXL - to Felix Ravdonikas, a painter, scholar and maker of baroque instruments, whose kitchen meetings were the center of the tiny early-music scene - Reshetin estimates 25 people at the most - in Leningrad at the time.
 &quot;Felix is an astonishing person,&quot; says Reshetin. &quot;Just about everything connected to early music at that time was connected with that kitchen, because Felix made all the instruments made in Russia at that time. Harpsichords, flutes, violins, oboes - he made them all.&quot;
 &quot;He was the first to translate tracts on early music,&quot; he adds. &quot;He regularly appeared in the English magazine Early Music.&quot;
 At that time, Reshetin says, early music was &quot;pure kitsch.&quot; It was also, by necessity, an underground movement.
 The important thing to understand about the underground scene in St. Petersburg, according to Reshetin, is that it was not a dissident movement.
 &quot;Imagine a prison. In that prison, you have people who constantly argue with the guards, and who constantly get beaten. Then you have the people who manage to live quietly,&quot; he says. The dissidents were the ones who always got beaten; the underground was the others.
 &quot;You had to make sure not to draw attention to yourself; then you could do whatever you wanted,&quot; he says. &quot;I would say that the underground people were the freest people in the world; maybe even the happiest.&quot;
 The underground of the time was a hangover from the past.
 &quot;It was always about St. Petersburg. We always called [the city] Piter, never Leningrad,&quot; he says. &quot;The spirit somehow survived.&quot;
 Reshetin cites the huge slogan on the city's artillery institute as an example of the subtly subversive nature of the underground. Other buildings were decorated with such sentiments as &quot;Long Live the Revolution.&quot; The artillery institute's slogan was <i>&quot;Nasha tsel - kommunizm,&quot; </i>which can be translated either as &quot;Our Goal is Communism&quot; or &quot;Our Target [in the military sense] is Communism.&quot;
 &quot;Whoever put it up was from the underground,&quot; says Reshetin. &quot;That's very clever. It was only for the very clever.&quot;
 In 1986, Reshetin was asked to join Akvarium, after his closest friend Sasha Kussul, who had been the band's violinist since 1984, and with whom Reshetin had been at school and at the Conservatory, and who was also one of the Ravdonikas kitchen circle, drowned in the Volga.
 &quot;It was a very important part of my education,&quot; he smiles. &quot;It taught me two things: One, a sense of rhythm; two, not to play by the written notes.&quot;
 Rock and jazz are very similar to early music, says Reshetin. Both build from the bottom up (the baroque separation of ground and division; the jazz structure of bass and improvized melody) and both allow the performer to play around with rhythms (the baroque concept of <i>inegalite, </i>or emphasizing some notes and weakening others; the use of swing rhythm in jazz).
 Reshetin returned to early music in the late 1980s and, after a couple of years, it took over as his main occupation.
 &quot;I had to make a choice,&quot; he says. &quot;I was starting to miss Akvarium concerts.&quot;
 Why? &quot;I just felt that I had to,&quot; he says. &quot;I still love rock and roll; maybe I'll go back to it in two or three years.&quot;
 For now, though, Reshetin is passionately proselytizing early music in Russia. One of the aims of Earlymusic, he says, is to build up a base of musicians in the country who are devoted to playing early music. To do that, the festival is bringing the best musicians it can to perform here.
 &quot;Everything depends on the quality of the performance. People want something new. They want the best,&quot; he says.
 Reshetin is especially angry about the lack of support that the festival receives in certain quarters, especially the state, which gives the festival no support at all. As he points out, the festival is unique in Russia. Moreover, St. Petersburg is supposed to be Russia's most Western city, and the festival is the only one to focus on music from around the time of the city's foundation, next year's 300th anniversary of which the city administration is so keen to promote.
 &quot;They're just lazy, not curious, and incompetent,&quot; he says. 
 The festival has attracted lots of attention abroad, says Reshetin, in the media as well as in early-music circles. &quot;The BBC made a program about us; West Deutsche Rundfunk made a huge program about us ... but we can't get [local channel] Kultura to come to a concert.&quot;
 &quot;We want to change this attitude,&quot; he says. &quot;It's shameful for the ministry. They are not interested in the city's culture.&quot;

TITLE: sputnik comes back to earth
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Club Sputnik - the promoters who have presented Helsinki bands to St. Petersburg club crowds, and vice versa on a regular basis - have announced the folding of the project. There will, however, be a few more shows, including the one at Moloko this Friday.
 
Although the idea of Sputnik seems to be rather obvious, nobody put it in to practice for the first few years after the Iron Curtain collapsed.
 Sputnik Club developed from occasional concerts, called <i>Severny Udar </i>(&quot;Northern Strike&quot;) - a joking reference to massively popular <i>Vostochny Udar</i> (&quot;Eastern Strike&quot;) raves in St. Petersburg - that used to introduce Finnish bands to local audiences. 
 The first included a few punk bands, and was held at the tiny underground club VMC in 1999, while the second took place at the larger premises of the Spartak cinema and was headlined by Apocalyptica, a quartet of Finnish cello players who became famous through their cover versions of Metallica songs in 2000.
 The concerts were promoted by Sergei Mitrofanov, a St. Peterburger now based in Helsinki, with Oranssi, the Helsinki non-governmental socio-cultural organization that continues to promote Sputnik's events. Mitrofanov says the idea stemmed from his acquaintance with Oranssi's founder, Vesa Peipinen.
 The Finnish bands that Sputnik Club brought to St. Petersburg were of every possible style, from blues to punk to electronica. According to Mitrofanov, the choice was determined by what he or his friends at Oranssi heard and liked. 
 &quot;There's no competition. Somebody likes a demo, then we listen to it and, if we like it, we invite the band,&quot; he says.
 Introducing St. Petersburg club bands to Finnish clubbers was also a thing that nobody had done before. &quot;Nobody wanted to promote a band that was less popular than DDT or at least Tequilajazzz,&quot; says Mitrofanov. 
 &quot;But Oranssi started to bring bands like Dva Samaliota, Spitfire, Markscheider Kunst in 1995 and 1996,&quot; he says. &quot;Now, Spitfire and Kunst, due to their professionalism and diligence, have no problems with organizing a tour in Finland at any moment. But the rest could hardly do this without outside help.&quot;
 According to Mitrofanov, the Finnish audience for Russian bands split into three groups: Finnish students who study Russian, Russian expats and Finnish musicians who are interested in listening to something new.
 &quot;Sputnik Club has reached to the former two groups to a lesser degree,&quot; says Mitrofanov. &quot;The people who came were mainly friends of Oranssi's and musicians. It was not about a Russian party, but rather purely musical events - beyond politics, beyond nationalities.&quot;
 However, Mitrofanov claims the project has now run its course.
 &quot;It was more relevant when we started,&quot; he says. &quot;Now, there's many more people who do this, and also we have nothing left to say; we showed everything we wanted to show.&quot;
 &quot;With St. Petersburg, it's different,&quot; he says. &quot;These events started to draw attention only recently. There are a lot of Finnish bands that we'd like to present, but we'd like to stop it when it's on the rise. There will be new projects, though.&quot;
 Despite plans to fold the project, there will be some more events in both St. Petersburg and Helsinki. 
 &quot;There will be another concert in St. Petersburg in November and one in Helsinki - and we'd like to make the farewell show in Helsinki in January.&quot;
 <i>
 
Club Sputnik presents Fun and Damn Seagulls at Moloko on Friday. Links: www.oranssi.net/sputnik </i>

TITLE: ice palace set for a starry night
AUTHOR: By Olga Dervenyova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: This Sunday is set to be one of the busiest days of the year in terms of the number - and quality - of events taking place at St. Petersburg's many cultural venues, with high-profile happenings at the Mariinsky Theater, the Shostakovich and Glinka Philharmonics, Baltiisky Dom, the Alexandriinsky Theater, to name but a few.
 
However, anyone in search of something different should ignore all of this and, instead, head down to the Ice Palace by Prospekt Bolshevikov metro station for the Ice Olympus, which promises to be one of the top shows of the year - never mind just this weekend.
 For the second time, St. Petersburg - the undisputed capital of Russian figure skating, and the birthplace of innumberable champions - is welcoming stars from across the globe.
 After the success of last year's &quot;Ice Olympus 2001&quot; - success attested to by the popularity of the television coverage of the event - the show's main organizer, Artur Dmitriyev, himself a double Olympic champion (at Nagano, Japan, in 1998, and at Calgary, Canada, in 1992) and double world champion, is once again bringing his friends - the champions and prizewinners of major figure-skating events - back to the city to demonstrate some of their unique tricks and world-renowned programs.
 A glance at the names of the participants confirms that this will be a spectacular show. Not only are all of last year's participants returning - Surya Bonaly, the &quot;Pearl of France,&quot; with compatriot Philippe Candeloro; Viktor Petrenko from Ukraine; Russian ice dancers Anzhelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsyannikov; and many others - but other big names, newcomers to the Ice Olympus, are coming to join these stars this year.
 These newcomers include both current amateurs - such as Maria Butyrskaya of Russia, Canada's Elvis Stoiko, Italian dance duo Barbara Fuzar-Poli and Maurizio Margaglio, and the international pairing of Kioko Ina and John Zimmerman - alongside former-champions-turned-professionals, such as Yekaterina Gordeyeva, who won two Olympic golds with Sergei Grinkov, and Brian Boitano, Olympic champion in 1988 and six-time world champion. (Technically, all Olympic competitors are amateurs, while skaters who make a living from participating in events, such as the &quot;Ice Olympus,&quot; which are incredibly popular in the U.S., for example, are categorized as professionals.)
 The evening's two &quot;hosts,&quot; Dmitriyev and Oksana Kazakova, will not be the only skaters exhibiting in front of their home crowd, as Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, the joint gold-medal winners from this year's controversial Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, are also involved in the show, along with another St. Petersburger, Alexei Urmanov.
 On top of all this, the show will feature special guests from Odessa, Ukraine, in the form of Alexei Polishchuk and Vladimir Besedin, the ice acrobats who were hugely successful last year with their individual and extremely funny version of Tchaikovsky's ballet &quot;Swan Lake.&quot;
 The event will take place in the Ice Palace, built specially for the World Ice Hockey Championships in 2000 and one of Europe's best-equipped ice complexes. The show consists of two parts, in which all of the participants will present two different programs.
 
 <i>
&quot;Ice Olympus 2002&quot; starts at 7 p.m. on Sunday. </i>

TITLE: exploring the music of spain
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Spanish conductor and Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory graduate Alexis Soriano has a special feeling for the city where he studied music.
 
&quot;I have been in many countries and towns, but only here I have met such an incredible love and enthusiasm for Spain and Spanish [culture],&quot; he recalls. &quot;This admiration touched me to the bottom of my heart.&quot;
 As a response to this enormous love, in 1998, Soriano created a festival dedicated to a subject close to his heart - Spanish music. This year, the fifth running of the festival - called &quot;Spanish Evenings&quot; - kicks off at the Shostakovich Philharmonic on Friday.
 The event runs through Oct. 13 and features six concerts at four venues, to introduce St. Petersburg audiences to Spanish music, performed by Spanish singers and Russian orchestras, with conductors from both countries.
 The idea behind &quot;Spanish Evenings&quot; is to reveal more obscure music by famous Spanish composers to Russian audiences. Special attention is devoted to contemporary classical music in Spain. Ironically, though, even the festival's organizers on the Russian side admit that contemporary Spanish classical music as such has been virtually a <i>terra incognita.</i>
 &quot;When the festival started five years ago, I basically discovered a new world for myself,&quot; says Sergei Yevtushenko, the head of the Hermitage Musical Academy, which supports the festival. &quot;Before, I was under the impression that Spanish classical music ... was dead and buried. It isn't even studied at the Conservatory.&quot;
 However, the festival proved that classical music is thriving in Spain.
 &quot;I was amazed to see the variety of names, styles and approaches,&quot; he says. &quot;Contemporary classical music has surely had a luckier fate in Spain than in St. Petersburg. Every [&quot;Spanish Evenings&quot;] features several Russian or even world premieres.&quot;
 This festival's highlights include the Russian premiere of Jose Lidon's 1791 opera, &quot;Glaura And Cariolano.&quot; According to Soriano, the full version of this work hasn't even been performed in Spain since its premiere. Undeservedly forgotten, the score gathered dust in libraries until it was found by the organizers of the festival.
 Soriano will conduct the St. Petersburg Camerata in concert performances of the opera on Saturday and Sunday at the Hermitage Theater. He will be joined by four of his compatriots - soprano Maria Fernandez, mezzo-soprano Elena Gragera, tenor Alberto Nunez and baritone Jose Antonio Carril.
 Another must-see is the concert on Oct. 13 at the Hermitage Theater. Elena Gragera will treat the public to an evening of songs, comprising settings by 20th-century Spanish composers of selected Spanish verse by representatives of the so-called &quot;Generation of 1927,&quot; known for their idealistic and intellectual poetry.
 

 <i>Links: www.tardes. spb.ru </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Despite negotiations and rumors about a one-time gig at a Moscow club, <strong>Morrissey's </strong>Russian tour is not happening at the moment, the tour's British promoter revealed on Thursday.
 
Meanwhile, Morrissey triumphantly returned to the U.K. at two sell-out shows at London's Royal Albert Hall in late September.
 Speaking to the audience, Los Angeles-based Morrissey, who is currently without a record contract, announced that no British record companies had approached him, Britain's NME reported.
 &quot;No one in the whole England will give me a record deal ... so I must be doing something right,&quot; he was quoted as saying.
 Back home, Sergei Shnurov's <strong>Leningrad </strong>will play its first local upscale-nightclub show at Astoria Club this Friday. According to the club, tickets cost between 1,000 to 3,500 rubles ($31.50 to $110.40), but, at press time, only 3,500-ruble tickets remained available.
 When asked by The St. Petersburg Times in late August about how he felt about playing at the venue so socially different from the places Leningrad usually performs, Shnurov said: &quot;This one is strictly for the money. I'm not worried. When the art director of a club calls you endlessly for a year, which is easier - to keep having to listen to him or to play? ... I think it's easier to play.&quot;
 Meanwhile, a recent posting on Leningrad's official Web site, www.leningrad.spb.ru, says that Shnurov is &quot;f***ing sick&quot; of promoters' calls.
 On the jazz club scene, there is yet another festival. As we all know, local clubs tend to call usual gigs &quot;festivals&quot; to draw some attention to the acts which play on a weekly basis anyway, if they happen to get some visiting star. 
 But this time, it is <strong>Peter King, </strong>the renowned British alto saxophonist, who probably cannot be ignored.
 Described as &quot;the finest alto saxophonist that Britain has ever produced, and one of the finest in the world today,&quot; King has played with everybody from Elvin Jones to Ray Charles, as well as being a prolific composer.
 Peter King will appear at JFC Jazz Club on Oct. 7, at Take Five on Oct. 8, and is expected to take part in a jam session at Karelia Hotel on Oct. 9.
 The festival, called Autumn Jazzmania, is dedicated to Take Five's third anniversary and will be held at both JFC and Take Five from Oct. 3 to 9. 
 Despite Take Five's claims that is has existed for three years, the reality is that the club exists only sporadically and resurfaced just recently to celebrate the anniversary. 
 Its new, hastily-made Web site, www.takefive.spb.ru, contains little apart from schedules for October. The club is located at 27-1 Komendantsky Per. Call 306-9358 for more information.
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: mutton dressed up as lamb
AUTHOR: by Eric Bruns
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Sometimes, you plan fine dining well in advance. Other times, a colleague may invite you out after a hard day at work. Or, a colleague may have thoughts about a restaurant and ask you to go instead, to tell them about it later. It was this latter reason that led me to Peterburgsky Ugolok (&quot;Little St. Petersburg Corner&quot;), near the corner of Pushkinskaya Ul. and Nevsky Pr.
 
The place recently got a rather impressive, even intimidating, overhaul. However, as I waited for my dining companion and ventured inside to ensure that they accept credit cards, unsure whether I had enough roubles to cover a swank-looking new restaurant on Nevsky Pr., my fears quickly evaporated. The classic black-and-white photographs hanging in the windows do more than project a stylish ambiance to the exterior: They also conceal a spinning disco ball, karaoke singer and tacky patriotic interior decorating.
 All of these elements are par for the course at a number of competent dining establishments throughout the city, but rarely does the theme masquerade in such elegant clothing. Behind the polished Nevsky Pr. facade, lurks the heart of a mediocre <i>stolovaya. </i>My credit-card inquiry precipitated only a few grunts from the thug at the door, who grudgingly called for a server to resolve the more intellectual questions. She told me they are accepted, but made me feel like I owed her a favor for her assistance. I walked away wondering whether or not I wanted to return with my companion.
 We returned, however, if not for a thrilling dining experience, then for background information to advise St. Petersburg diners what they might otherwise miss on Nevsky Pr. The restaurant was nearly empty when we arrived at 8 p.m., but gradually attracted other customers, like moths to a flame. 
 Taken hostage by the karaoke, I could not help but contemplate how the numerous autographs of famous Russian celebrities hanging on the wall behind the singer found their way to this particular restaurant. Just then, Lenin and Brezhnev walked through the door. With a photographer. With an offer that you can pose with the famous Russian leaders. To prove to yourself (and friends at home) that you are truly in St. Petersburg. For a small fee, of course. The karaoke singer costs 30 rubles ($0.95) per person as soon as you walk through the door.
 What the restaurant lacked in atmosphere was not compensated by the menu. All items are described in Russian but only some of them have English translations. There are no vegetarian options beyond small, lettuce-free, mayonnaise-laden salads, but there is a wide selection of fish appetizers and main dishes. My partner opted for the &quot;Vegetable salads of chicken&quot; for 90 roubles ($2.85), &quot;Pork with <i>kvass&quot; </i>(a traditional fermented beverage made from stale rye bread) for 150 roubles ($4.75) and a potato garnish for 20 roubles ($0.65). Although the description for the salad included sunflower seeds, none could be found on her plate. The meat and potatoes were plain enough, if a bit oily, but they apparently ran out of kvass and decided she would prefer a garlic sauce.
 I ordered the &quot;Borsche 'Moskau'&quot; for 100 roubles ($3.15) and &quot;Sturgeon steamed 'Russky sause'&quot; for 260 roubles ($8.20) with rice as a garnish for 20 roubles. The borshch was nothing special but came with delightful little <i>grenki</i> (dark-bread pieces covered with garlic and butter and toasted to perfection so that the surface is crisp while the center remains soft). The fish was about as good as I expected, but I was able to discover that &quot;Russky sause&quot; means it is breaded and covered in a thick mushroom gravy. We were delighted to see an assortment of beans, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers on each of our plates without having to order them.
 We ordered tea for 20 roubles each but had to pay one rouble extra for a packet of sugar. A basket of bread was also placed on our table, but close inspection of the bill revealed that they counted how many pieces we ate and charged us five roubles each. We attempted to order a glass of wine, but were told that only some of those listed by the glass can be ordered that way - the menu is incorrect - the majority can only be obtained by the bottle. We found a glass of sommelier we could order for 37 roubles ($1.20) and were glad we didn't commit to a bottle. Instead, we washed it down with a half-liter glasses of Baltika beer for 40 roubles ($1.30) each.
 To complete our review, we ordered the Cranberry <i>kisel </i>(a common, smooth and fruity, jello-like pudding) and Dessert of Peterburgskii Ugolok (a dry, hard cake with canned peaches and whipped cream), each for 50 roubles ($1.60). Neither one of them is listed in English on the menu, but neither one is worth the effort of finding the Russian equivalent.
 In the end, I decided that trying a restaurant for a colleague who does not want to try it herself is not worth the effort. After a hard day's work, it is much more rewarding to collapse on the couch at home, crack open a beer and throw a frozen pizza in the oven.
 
 <i>
Peterburgsky Ugolok, 79/2 Nevsky Pr. Tel.: 311-8589. Open daily, 11 a.m. to midnight. Menu in Russian (with English translation for some items). Dinner for two, with alcohol: 1,036 rubles ($32.70). </i>

TITLE: Blair: Hussein Must Give UN Full Access
AUTHOR: By Beth Gardiner
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Iraq must give UN weapons inspectors full and free access to all sites that could produce or conceal weapons of mass destruction - including its presidential palaces, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday.
 
&quot;The world demands total, unfettered, unobstructed access to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs,&quot; Blair said.
 &quot;The access we require must include the presidential palaces. It is no good allowing inspectors access to 99 percent of Iraq, if the weapons of mass destruction are located and stored and worked on in the remaining 1 percent of Iraq.&quot;
 Blair also said that the world must give Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a stark ultimatum - to disarm peacefully or face military action.
 &quot;It can happen peacefully, but if it does ... it will have to happen through military action,&quot; the prime minister told a news conference in Blackpool, England, where his governing Labor Party has been holding its annual conference.
 A toughly worded U.S. draft resolution, obtained Wednesday, would give UN inspectors broad new powers to hunt for weapons of mass destruction and provide them with military backing to carry out the search.
 Under the proposal, which was written with British input, the Security Council would give Iraq 30 days to compile a &quot;complete declaration of all aspects of its program to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.&quot;
 If any &quot;false statements or omissions&quot; are in that declaration, member states would be authorized to &quot;use all necessary means to restore international peace and security in the area&quot; - diplomatic language permitting military force.
 Blair said that he was optimistic that the Security Council would pass a tough new resolution, but when asked if Britain would take military action without UN backing, he declined to speculate.
 Blair said that Hussein could keep his armed forces and conventional weapons.
 &quot;The world has decided, rightly, that Saddam Hussein ... can have a conventional army and navy and air force, and however much we might want to see rid of him, he's got the ability to have that,&quot; Blair said. &quot;What the international community has said, however, is that he's not to have chemical, biological, nuclear weapons.&quot;
 The United States and Britain are lined up against Russia, France and China - the three other veto-holding permanent members of the Security Council - who oppose authorizing military force before inspectors have a chance to test Hussein's willingness to comply.

TITLE: Families of Kidnapped 'Spies' Call For Return
AUTHOR: By Natalie Obiko Pearson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOKYO - The families of Japanese kidnapped by North Korea decades ago demanded Thursday the return of their loved ones - despite their videotaped claims that they are happy in the reclusive communist state.
 
The families said that they doubted that their relatives had been allowed to speak their minds on the tapes, which a Japanese government mission brought back to Japan earlier this week and were shown to the relatives on Thursday.
 &quot;My position has always been that if she is alive, give her back. Bring her home immediately,&quot; said Yuko Hamamoto, the older brother of Fukie Hamamoto, who went missing from a beach 24 years ago and was found last month to be among the survivors.
 &quot;She was speaking following a North Korean script. She can't say what she wants to say,&quot; he told reporters. &quot;She can't say she wants to come home.&quot;
 The videotapes were of five surviving kidnap victims and the daughter of one who North Korea says has died. All the victims said that they were leading happy lives and expressed reluctance about returning to Japan.
 The Japanese mission visited the North Korean capital of Pyongyang to discover the fate of 13 of its nationals that North Korea admitted last month to abducting in the 1970s and 1980s, to train spies in Japanese language and customs and to allow agents to take on their identities.
 North Korea's disclosing of the whereabouts of the kidnapping victims was a condition for Tokyo and Pyongyang to resume talks on setting up diplomatic relations. But subsequent disclosures about the victims' fates have turned public opinion against the resumption of talks.
 North Korea claims that eight of the kidnap victims are dead and that all but one of their graves had been washed away in floods. Officials in Pyongyang said that only two of the victims had died of sickness. The others died of suicide, car crashes, gas poisoning and drowning.
 Family members have dismissed the claims, saying that they refuse to believe their relatives are dead.
 &quot;We want Japan to kidnap our family back,&quot; said Tamotsu Chimura, whose son, Yasushi, has been confirmed as alive in Pyongyang.
 Despite the mounting public anger, Tokyo wants to push ahead with forging diplomatic relations as Japan has long worried about Pyongyang's suspected nuclear-weapons program and missile development.
 &quot;If normalization talks are halted, those things we don't know now will remain unknown indefinitely,&quot; Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said as he announced that Japan hoped to resume talks in late October.
 Hatsui Hasuike, mother of Kaoru Hasuike, another kidnap victim who has also been confirmed to be alive in North Korea, said that watching the videotape had been extremely hard for her because she could see how her older son must have endured tough times in North Korea.
 &quot;I felt that 24 years had been a really long time,&quot; she said. &quot;I carried, in my heart, my son at age 20.&quot;

TITLE: Israeli Commandos Practice Forcible Expulsion of Arafat
AUTHOR: By Karin Laub
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - Israeli troops have practiced expelling Yasser Arafat by helicopter, security sources confirmed Thursday, as a newspaper reported that commandos have scouted the Palestinian leader's place of exile in a foreign country.
 
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that commandos were ready to carry out the plan at short notice. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reportedly has been pushing for Arafat's removal, but has been held back by opposition from Israeli security chiefs and the U.S. administration.
 Dore Gold, an Israeli government official, declined comment.
 In Tel Aviv, the trial of Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the Palestinian uprising, resumed Thursday.
 &quot;We will be victorious over the occupation,&quot; Barghouti shouted. Barghouti was led out of the courtroom several times because he kept interrupting proceedings. Scuffles broke out between Palestinian and Israeli spectators.
 Israel accuses Barghouti, the leader of Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank, of helping plan and finance attacks that killed 26 Israelis. Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian parliament, says that the court has no jurisdiction, and that he is a politician not involved in violence. His lawyers distributed a 54-count &quot;indictment&quot; of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of committing war crimes during its 35-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
 In violence Thursday, a Palestinian vegetable vendor was killed by Israeli troops enforcing a curfew, and an Israeli worker was wounded by Palestinian gunmen.
 At Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, advisers denied reports that the Palestinian leader was considering relocating to biblical Bethlehem.
 &quot;The president is staying here,&quot; said Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rdeneh.
 The compound was largely demolished in a 10-day Israeli siege that ended earlier this week, under intense U.S. pressure. Palestinian officials estimate the damage at $15 million, and Abu Rdeneh said that the complex would be rebuilt.
 Israeli security sources, meanwhile, confirmed a report in the Maariv daily that the Israeli military is ready to expel Arafat at short notice, if given the go-ahead by the government.
 Commandos have practiced the operation, which would involve grabbing Arafat at his compound, bundling him into a helicopter and dropping him off in an isolated location in a foreign country, the security sources said.
 The sources said that the commando unit had been placed on standby three times in recent months, including after a Passover suicide attack that killed 29 people in March and triggered a major Israeli offensive against Palestinian militants.
 Maariv said that as part of the preparations, commandos scouted Arafat's intended location. It did not name the country to which Arafat would be flown, but Israeli television said several weeks ago that Libya was chosen as the place of exile.
 Sharon has repeatedly pushed for Arafat's removal, an idea that is opposed by Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, army commander Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon and other security chiefs. Opponents say expelling Arafat would only boost his standing.
 It appears unlikely that Sharon will expel Arafat at a time when the United States wants to keep attention focused on Iraq and avoid friction with the Arab world.
 Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said that continued Israeli preparations for a possible expulsion of Arafat laid bare what he said was Sharon's hidden agenda. &quot;This ... reflects that the end game of the Israeli government is to destroy the Palestinian Authority, to kill President Arafat and resume occupation,&quot; Erekat said.
 In other developments Thursday, in the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops demolished the house of a Palestinian member of the militia who had staged an attack on a Jewish settlement several months ago.

TITLE: Last-Minute Goal Breaks Zenit Hearts
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Grasshopper Zurich midfielder Mate Baturina broke the hearts of Zenit fans at Petrovsky Stadium on Thursday night, when he stunned the Petersburgers with a last-minute goal to advance the Swiss team into the second round of the UEFA Cup winning 4-3 on aggregate despite losing to the Petersburg side 2-1. 
 
With a minute left in regulation Baturina advanced into the penalty box and redirected a crossing pass past Zenit goalkeeper Vyacheslav Malafeev into the top of the net. 
 Petrovsky Staduim, which had been rocking with excitement moments before, fell silent, as the home side in blue was shocked - frozen on the pitch - and its hopes of advancing to the next round of the competition dashed. 
 Alexander Kerzhakov neutralized the 3-1 reverse suffered two weeks ago in Zurich by scoring two early goals, leveling the aggregate at 3-3, with Zenit having the edge having scored an away goal. 
 The first goal came in the 7th minute, when Dzambulat Bazzayev fed the ball up to Kerzhakov and he easily beat visiting keeper Fabrice Borer. Kerzhakov scored again in the 19th minute, picking up the ball in midfield and working it up to the goal box before sending a high arc over Borer into the upper far corner. 
 &quot;I warned the team that they had to be really careful early on,&quot; said Grasshopper head coach Marcel Roller. &quot;True, Zenit came out really strong and we couldn't do anything. They applied real pressure and we had lots of problems. It was much more difficult than in Zurich. It was really only until the last 15 minutes of the first half that I saw my team playing the way that I wanted.&quot;
 Zenit's defense in the first half was a strong offense, as Grasshopper hardly ever worked the ball into its opponents half of the pitch. 
 Zenit controlled the match and the momentum well into the second half, but perhaps made a strategic mistake by substituting Kerzhakov and Bazzayev off for midfielder Vladimir Bystrov and forward Dmitry Ogorodnik in the 58th and 76th minutes, respectively. The subsititues did little to keep the ball at the offensive line, and the home side became sluggish around the 70th minute making a number of defensive mistakes. Zenit's final substitution, in the 82nd minute, switched attacker Andrei Arshavin for another attacker Predrag Randejelovich. 
 &quot;In the second half, we couldn't keep pace,&quot; lamented Zenit head coach Boris Rapoport. &quot;We lost the initiative. Perhaps it was psychological, perhaps it was physicial. We began to lose ground and Bazzayev and Kerzhakov got weaker and the vistors were able to start attacking.&quot;
 &quot;The only thing that we wanted to do was score a goal,&quot; Roller said with a sigh of relief. &quot;It was a late one, but we scored it.&quot;

TITLE: Angels Learn From Yankees, Rally for Win
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - A night after the New York Yankees put together a dramatic eighth-inning rally, the Anaheim Angels staged one of their own, a comeback that could have been scripted in a Disney movie.
 
Garret Anderson hit a tying home run off Orlando Hernandez in the eighth inning, Troy Glaus followed with a go-ahead shot and Anaheim evened the best-of-five AL playoff series at a game apiece by winning 8-6 Wednesday night.
 &quot;I know crazy things happen here,&quot; said Troy Percival, who escaped jams in the eighth and ninth innings, &quot;but not tonight.&quot;
 After watching the Yankees claw back from a 4-0 deficit to take a 5-4 lead, the Bronx crowd was stunned when the Angels rallied. It was the first time New York lost a postseason game at Yankee Stadium when leading after the seventh inning, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
 &quot;We know we can come back and win any time,&quot; Anaheim's Bengie Molina said. &quot;They probably know that, too.&quot;
 A night after not bringing in Percival and watching his bullpen squander a lead, Angels manager Mike Scioscia called for his closer with Anaheim trying to protect a 7-5 edge in the eighth.
 Percival got out of the bases-loaded jam, throwing a called third strike past Derek Jeter, who questioned the call by plate umpire Doug Eddings.
 &quot;In my opinion it was outside,&quot; Jeter said. &quot;There's nothing you can do about it. He's not going to call the other team back onto the field and change it to a ball.&quot;
 Scott Spiezio made it 8-5 with a run-scoring double in the ninth off Jeff Weaver, his third hit and RBI.
 The Yankees nearly came back again in the bottom half, when Jorge Posada blooped an RBI single with one out. But with two on, Percival struck out Nick Johnson and retired Raul Mondesi on a game-ending popup.
 Anaheim, which set a team postseason record with 17 hits, headed home to California after the 4:11 marathon with its first playoff win since 1986.
 &quot;We do what it takes to win, no matter the circumstances, no matter whatever,&quot; Glaus said.
 
 <strong>
Oakland 9, Minnesota 1. </strong>David Justice's bases-loaded triple highlighted Oakland's 14-hit barrage, and Mark Mulder pitched six strong innings as the A's beat the Minnesota Twins Wednesday to even the series at one game apiece.
 
Eric Chavez had a three-run homer, and rookie Mark Ellis got three hits as Oakland emphatically replied to the Twins' 7-5 comeback victory in Game 1 with a tremendous offensive game against Joe Mays (0-1) and the Twins' bullpen.
 &quot;Just looking at the guys in the locker room, you could tell everybody knew how important this game was,&quot; said Mulder, who allowed five hits. &quot;We've been through this before. There was no need to say anything. We had to have this one, and we got it. Now, we'll go to Minnesota and see what happens.&quot;
 After losing to the Yankees in the last two postseasons, Oakland finally got a matchup against a team with even less playoff experience - almost none, in fact. The A's used that maturity to full advantage in Game 2, knocking the Twins down early and never letting them up.
 &quot;I know their makeup, what they're all about, and that's why I didn't have to sit around and talk to anybody,&quot; Oakland manager Art Howe said. &quot;I just checked out the scene when I came in. Everybody was pretty relaxed and confident, and they went out and played that way.&quot;
 
 <strong>
San Francisco 8, Atlanta 5. </strong>Barry Bonds didn't have to come up big for the San Francisco Giants to get a jump on the Atlanta Braves. The rest of the San Francisco hitters knocked around Atlanta's heralded pitching staff while Russ Ortiz threw seven strong innings, carrying the Giants to an 8-5 victory Wednesday in Game 1 of the NL division playoffs.
 
&quot;Obviously, Barry gets most of the attention, and he deserves the attention,&quot; Ortiz said. &quot;But we have a really good ballclub up and down the lineup.&quot;
 Down 8-2, Gary Sheffield and Javy Lopez homered in the eighth to get the Braves close. Atlanta had its chance in the ninth, but Robb Nen got Sheffield to ground into a game-ending double play with two runners on for a save.
 &quot;It doesn't matter how you get it or the way you get it,&quot; said J.T. Snow, who got San Francisco off to a quick start with a two-run double in the second off Tom Glavine. &quot;You've just got to get the win.&quot;
 Bonds, an overwhelming favorite for his fifth MVP award, was denied a homer in the eighth when Andruw Jones leaped above the center-field wall to make a catch.
 Bonds' teams are 0-for-5 in the postseason, losing twice to the Braves in the early '90s while playing for Pittsburgh. But the wild-card Giants grabbed an early advantage in the best-of-five series over the East champion Braves, who led the league with 101 wins in claiming their 11th straight division title.
 &quot;It helps when you get on top early,&quot; Snow said. &quot;We pride ourselves on being able to jump on the other team quickly.&quot;

TITLE: SKA Names Mikhailov as Head Coach
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Boris Mikhailov, the head coach of the Russian national ice-hockey team, was named as the head coach of SKA on Thursday.
 
&quot;I can't give any details regarding [Mikhailov's] contract, but I know that he is in St. Petersburg and with the team,&quot; SKA spokesperson Viktor Mukovoz said by telephone on Thursday.
 Mikhailov made his first appearance with his new charges on Thursday night when SKA faced last year's champion, Ak Bars of Kazan, at the Yubileiny Ice Palace. His presence, however, failed to produce an immediate result, as Ak Bars prevailed, 2-1 in overtime.
 Outgoing coach Nikolai Puchkov had the shortest tenure of any of the team's recent head coaches. He was named to the position in June, and was in charge for just seven games this season.
 With Puchkov as head coach 30 years ago, SKA enjoyed one of its golden ages, as the team captured its first-ever league bronze medal in 1971. This stint, however, was noticeably less glorious, as SKA could only manage two wins, with five losses, including one in overtime.
 According to Mukovoz, Puchkov requested to take a different position with the club, and has been reassigned to coach SKA's youth-junior Olympic reserve team. 
 Mikhailov last worked with SKA in 1999 as a consultant-coach during the relegation-promotion competition at the end of the 1998-1999 season. Mikhailov's consulting saved the team from relegation. 
 Mikhailov was SKA's head coach from 1992 to 1998. He left the St. Petersburg team after being offered the head coach position at CSKA in Moscow, where he spent his entire career as a player. He was dumped from CSKA during the 1999-2000 season, and was named head coach of the Russian national team after Alexander Yakushev was unceremoniously sacked following Russia's pathetic performance at home at the 2000 World Ice Hockey Championship in St. Petersburg. 
 It is unknown if Mikhailov's son, Yegor, who joined his father in the move to CSKA in 1998 and is currently playing with Metallurg Magnitogorsk, will request to be transferred to SKA. 
 Mikhailov told reporters at the post-match press conference that he hasn't signed a contract with the team. &quot;I just arrived today and I am still thinking about it,&quot; he said.
 &quot;The team really showed their game today showing that they can play with the best teams in the league,&quot; he said. &quot;They did everything they could today and pull off a win but unfortunately fell short.&quot;
 He was later pessimistic about SKA's chances at a play-off spot at the end of the season, saying, &quot;This team will more likely be doing what it can to keep its place in the Superliga.&quot;

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Ponting in Command
 </b>

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) - Ricky Ponting blazed 141 runs to guide Australia from a first-over setback to a commanding 330 for five when bad light stopped play Thursday on the opening day of the first test against Pakistan. 
 Ponting went to the crease at the departure of Matt Hayden (4) on the fifth ball of the morning and combined with Justin Langer in a 183-run wicket to salvage the innings and put the world No. 1 Australians on track. 
 Skipper Waqar Younis and offspinner Saqlain Mushtaq with two wicket apiece helped Pakistan bounce back in the last session as the Australians lost three important wickets after the tea interval at Colombo's Saravanamuttu Stadium. 
 Younis, who removed Hayden in the first over, had Ponting caught by Khan in the sixth over after tea. The Australian No. 3's innings included 24 fours in 163 deliveries. 
 Veteran Mark Waugh crossed 8,000 runs in tests when he scored 51 to record his 47th half century. The 37-year-old is playing his 126th test. But his innings ended on 55 when he offered a return catch to Mushtaq after facing 82 balls. 
 
<b>Tighter Drug Rules
 </b>

NEW YORK (AP) - Players who plead guilty to drug possession face automatic suspensions under baseball's new labor contract. 
 The drug prevention program, the first one agreed to by players and owners since 1985, was included in the Memorandum of Understanding signed Tuesday by the sides. Copies were released Wednesday. It calls for suspensions of 15 to 30 days for a first offense, 30 to 90 days for a second conviction, an automatic one-year penalty for a third and a two-year suspension for a fourth. 
 For players convicted five or more times, the commissioner would determine the level of discipline. If the commissioner didn't want to suspend players, he has the option to fine them without pay, with the maximum amount increasing with each offense. Players convicted of the sale or distribution of prohibited substances face suspensions of 60 to 90 days and $100,000 fines for a first offense and two years for a second offense.
 Darryl Strawberry pleaded no contest to cocaine possession charges in May 1999. Under this agreement, he would've been subject to discipline.