SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #811 (76), Friday, October 11, 2002
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TITLE: Yakovlev Issues Budget Warning
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The city budget for 2003, although it was passed in first reading by the Legislative Assembly on Oct. 2, has become the center of heated debate in the corridors of the Mariinsky Palace, following threats from city Governor Vladimir Yakovlev that, should the budget be passed as it stands, he will not sign it.
In an interview broadcast on the TRK Peterburg television station on Tuesday evening, Yakovlev said that he would not sign the 2003 budget if a financial reserve fund for Legislative Assembly lawmakers was one of the items included.
"The governor has always been against the reserve fund," said the governor's spokesperson, Alexander Afanasyev, in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "It is not the place of the legislative branch to spend budget money."
The lawmakers' reserve fund, which was created in 1995, grants lawmakers a certain sum from the city budget to spend in their district at their own discretion. Two percent of all budget spending is divided evenly between the assembly's 50 members. In 2002, this meant about $1.7 million for each deputy.
The reserve fund has been fiercely criticized by a number of lawmakers, other politicians in the city and by the City Audit Chamber for contributing to levels of corruption and financial mismanagement.
But the assembly lawmakers are by no means unanimous in their opposition to the fund.
"Most deputies are in favor of the reserve fund because it allows them to buy their electorate, as well as sometimes serve their own financial interests," Ruslan Linkov, the leader of the Democratic Russia party's local branch, said in an interview on Wednesday.
Every budget Yakovlev has signed since coming into office in 1996 has contained provisions for the reserve fund, so his statements on Tuesday provoked angry reactions from a number of lawmakers, regardless of their own position on the question.
"It is a lie that Yakovlev has always been against the reserve fund for the deputies. He has had opportunities in the past to get rid of it," Boris Vishnyevsky, a leading local Yabloko party member, who is not himself a member of the assembly, said on Wednesday. "Besides, Yakovlev doesn't have the power to [get rid of the fund] at this point in time."
"Our governor often makes such fine-sounding comments, as if he were a tsar, or even God almighty. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have supreme power," Vishnyevsky added.
Yabloko has consistently voiced its opposition to the fund's existence, on the grounds that it creates a strong basis for corruption.
Linkov added that the budget also provides the governor with a reserve fund of his own.
"If the governor really wants to get rid of the deputies' reserve fund, then why doesn't he offer to get rid of his own as well?" he said. "At least the deputies have to discuss in parliament how they will spend their reserve fund. The governor's fund is a black hole that enables Yakovlev to spend two percent of the budget as he wishes, without having to consult anyone."
Most political commentators dismiss the governor's comments as just for show, especially since a veto of the budget bill would not ultimately stop it from passing.
"The budget usually ends up receiving the support of about 40 lawmakers, so the Legislative Assembly really doesn't need the governor's signature to pass the budget into law," said the Legislative Assembly deputy and Union of Right Forces (SPS) faction leader Mikhail Brodsky on Thursday.
To override a gubernatorial veto, the assembly would need to pass the legislation again by a two-thirds majority - 34 votes - instead of a simple majority of only 26 deputies.
Brodsky said that he finds it difficult to believe that Yakovev would refuse to sign the budget.
"Yakovlev can't afford to take responsibility for this. He's the one who drafted the budget, so he's going to look pretty bad if he doesn't sign it," he said.
Mikhail Amosov, the leader of the Yabloko faction in the assembly, thinks that Yakovlev's threat may be aimed directly at undercutting the deputies, and is largely an angry reaction to the chamber's recent rejection of a draft law that would have allowed the governor to run for a third term in office. The draft law was submitted on Oct. 4, but garnered only 18 of the 35 votes it needed simply to make it onto the assembly's agenda.
Legislative Assembly lawmaker Alexander Shchelkanov agreed with Amosov.
"This was a reaction based more on emotion than reason. [Yakovlev] just decided to punish the pro-governor members of the assembly," he said in interview with the newspaper Vedomosti. Shchelkanov was referring to pro-governor members who didn't support the motion to put the draft on the assembly agenda.
Muddying the waters of what was behind the governor's comments even further was a budget report submitted to Yakovlev by the City Prosecutor's Office earlier on Tuesday, requesting that he remove a number of elements in the draft, including the deputies' reserve fund. But most politicians were saying this week that the document from the prosecutor was not behind Yakovlev's comments.
"The Prosecutor's Office has sent the governor this kind of request every year since 1996 and nothing has been done so far to eliminate the lawmakers' reserve fund," Linkov said.
Afanasyev agreed on Wednesday that Yakovlev's statements had nothing to do with the request.
The debate over the reserve fund has overshadowed another budget-related question since the draft's first reading on Oct. 2. The 2003 budget projects revenues of 74.9 billion rubles ($2.37 billion) and expenditures of 76.4 billion rubles ($2.41 billion) - a deficit of $40 million - making it the first deficit budget submitted since 1997.
"According to the federal Budget Code, the deficit figure will allow St. Petersburg to take out foreign loans of up to $120 million before the end of 2002. The loan will be taken in October or November of this year," said Vitaly Okulov, an analyst at the St. Petersburg AVK investment company.
"The deficit is nothing catastrophic," he said. "It is normal in developed countries."
A number of lawmakers, however, disagree, and say the question of the deficit is political, rather than economic, in nature.
"The deficit is politically convenient for the executive branch. When there is a surplus, the Legislative Assembly is responsible for deciding where that money will go. A deficit contributes to the level of corruption," said Brodsky. "Personally, and this is the position of the SPS as well, I think the budget should be rejected by the assembly and sent back to the governor."
Linkov said that the budget deficit allows the budget to be mismanaged and manipulated for political purposes.
According to him, the fact that the majority of lawmakers voted for the budget doesn't mean that they necessarily agree with all of its provisions, as there remains ample opportunity to introduce amendments to the draft in subsequent reading.
The budget's second reading is scheduled for October, 23, and the third and final reading for October, 30.
TITLE: City's Census Takers Hit Streets
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It's census time in Russia and, while the first statistical investigation of the country's population will provide valuable answers for governments at all levels, it presents thousands of workers - most of them students - sent out to gather the information, with several particular difficulties.
The taking of the census, which began on Wednesday and will run for a week, faces the workers with a job that can be, by turns, difficult, risky, and sometimes humorous.
After ringing the bell at a door in an apartment building, Masha Zarubina and Olga Guseva, both 20-year-old students, wait.
A moment later, an elderly voice replies from inside the apartment.
"No, I'm not going to open the door for you," the voice says. "Do you see that slit above the door? You should see my fingers there. Push your papers through that slit ... ."
Zarubina and Guseva say that the exchange is a common occurence in their work, as many people, especially if they are elderly or alone, are afraid to open their doors to strangers, for fear of being robbed or attacked.
"It's pretty common for people not to want to open their doors," Guseva says. "We just ask them to call or to drop by our census centers."
At the next door, another elderly voice answers but, this time, more confidently, and the door to the apartment opens.
Waiting inside is a four-year-old boy with a toy gun - already loaded with a rubber projectile. The boy points the pistol at the two young women, says "Boom," and then breaks into laughter.
"To be honest, we are human too, and are sometimes a little afraid ringing strangers' door bells," Zarubina says. "But that's the job."
In the next apartment, on the next floor up in the building, the residents, while answering the census questions, have a few questions of their own ready.
"Why do you spend your time like this?" asks Olga Luktysheva, 48, as she invites Guseva and Zarubina in. "You should be studying, or out on dates."
Zarubina and Guseva are, in fact, studying, but their fourth-year course at the St. Petersburg Food Technology University has been freed from classes for a week for them to work as census takers.
St. Petersburg has 11,000 census workers, mostly students, pensioners and workers from the social sector. Each of them is to interview an average of 420 people per week, with a weekly wage of $50, said Tatyana Bogdanova, head of the census department at the St. Petersburg State Statistics Committee.
"My heart aches for them, especially for the girls," said Lyudmila Antonova, head of the census center at 14 Ulitsa Marata. "Who knows what kind of people they'll have to come across," she said.
The safety instructions for census takers stipulate that they should work in pairs, ring the bells of several apartments at once, not work after 8 p.m. and try not to enter apartments. If an entrance stairway looks suspicious, they are instructed simply to leave it.
Despite the precautions, Maksim Belov, another student working as a census taker, said that, despite the precautions and risks, the work has a lighter side.
He recounted how, leaving a darkened entranceway, he and his partner met a 22-year-old woman returning home. In order not to let another client slip, they stopped her in the darkness, flicking on their flash-lights.
"Are you bandits?" asked the girl. They explained their work and she answered their questions, but after a while she asked again: "Are you sure you're not bandits?"
Many people interviewed expressed their doubts about the confidentiality of the census. Belov said that one woman became afraid, having told him that she lives in a five-room apartment.
"Oh, people will think that I'm rich and come and rob me," she said.
Belov had to allay her fears and convince her of the census's confidentiality.
Denis Singayevsky, a trainer for the census takers, told of a client that he had nicknamed the "James Bond Woman."
"She told me to put 'X' instead of her name, and 'X' for her address. The only information she dared give me was that she has electricity and running water," Syngayevsky said.
The inhabitants of one communal apartment that Zarubina and Guseva visited, quickly crowded into the corridor.
One woman in her 50s, the clear leader in the cramped kommunalka, wouldn't let the other residents get a word in edgeways as she answered their questions for them. She also insisted that an elderly babushka, born in 1917, go back to her room.
"She always wants to know my secrets," the woman said, looking at the babushka, her eyes full of suspicion.
The census contains a broad variety of questions covering identity, age, citizenship, nationality, education, knowledge of foreign languages, work sphere and income sources. It also covers living space, presence of electricity, gas and other conveniences.
Another cause of laughter is the fact that all the questions have to be asked, however inappropriate the question. 80-year olds, for example, are asked where they work.
There are over five different forms, with foreigners having to answer questions from form "B," which includes questions about the purpose of their trip to Russia. "K" is for everyone, while "D" is a longer version, being filled out by every fourth interviewee. "P" covers questions relating to housing conditions.
The census takers are quick to point out that there are many who take the responsibility of answering the questions very seriously.
"Especially pensioners, lonely people," said Tatyana Maisashvili, another census taker. "They come to census points as if dressed for a party, telling us about their problems, their pets and their illnesses," she said.
Maisashvili said that, when she conducted a census at the Moskovsky Station on Wednesday, interviewing transit passengers, homeless people came in order to tell their life stories, rather than to specifically answer the census questionnaires.
Maisashvili, a manager at a tourist firm, and her partner, Oleg Pekhovsky, a post-graduate student, said that they really enjoy their work.
"It's so interesting to talk to different people, to hear how they live," Pekhovsky said. "The census only happens once every 10 years, and it's part of our history - I want to see what that history looks like," he said.
The census is meant to register the population of the country at midnight on October 9. This means that children born after that date will not be registered, but people who die during the following week, during which the census is carried out, will be on the list.
Of the 14 doors at which Zarubina and Guseva knocked, all on just one stairway, only three opened. The inhabitants of the other apartments were either too afraid to answer or simply not at home.
"In fact, about 50 percent of the people prefer to come to the census points themselves," Singayevsky said.
The final results of the census will only be complete by the fall of next year. First indications, however, are intriguing - most of the women questioned by Zarubina and Guseva on Thursday are divorced, while a significant number said they speak English.
TITLE: Criminals Take Advantage of Census To Get Into Homes
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: During the first two days of the week-long national census, police registered at least four robberies in which people got into apartments by posing as census takers, RIA-Novosti reported Thusday.
Con artists in St. Petersburg snatched $20,000 in the biggest robbery, RIA-Novosti said. In Moscow, a 23-year-old woman was robbed of jewelry worth $1,600.
Interior Ministry official Yury Korolyov told reporters Thursday that con artists usually get into apartments by pretending to be plumbers or social workers, using false documents, Interfax reported.
Meanwhile, several census takers themselves have fallen victim to violent attacks. Late Wednesday night, a 23-year-old census taker was attacked in Korolyov, a town in the Moscow region, Interfax said.
The unidentified attackers hit him over the head and vanished with his bag of census forms.
Similar attacks have been registered in several other Russian towns, Lenta.ru said Thursday.
The census, the country's first in 13 years, is expected to shed light on the sweeping economical and social changes that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
TITLE: Blair Brings U.S. Message on Iraq to Putin
AUTHOR: By Jim Heintz
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington's strongest ally in the push for tough action against Iraq, carried potentially strong influence when he arrived Thursday for talks with President Vladimir Putin, amid signs that the Kremlin may be softening its opposition.
Although Russia still opposes military action against Iraq, it has dropped its flat-out rejection of calls for a new UN Security Council resolution that would lay out strict terms for Iraqi cooperation with weapons inspectors, as called for by the United States and Britain.
Throughout the growing crisis, Russian officials have notably avoided statements supporting Saddam Hussein, indicating that the Kremlin's stance is dictated primarily by the desire to protect Russia's interests in Iraq - and that, say analysts, is where Blair can be influential.
Blair has cultivated personal relations with Putin, becoming the first Western leader to visit after Putin was named acting president on Dec. 31, 1999. Putin, in turn, made Britain his first foreign destination after being elected in March 2000.
By itself, the friendship and trust wouldn't be sufficient to change Putin's position on Iraq, but "the relationship means you can start the dialogue further down the track," said Christopher Langton, a Russia analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
In remarks broadcast Thursday on Russian television, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexander Yakovenko said his country's relationship with Britain was a "strategic partnership," and both countries' positions were "close or coincide" on most foreign political issues.
Russia's interests in Iraq hinge on money, with the Kremlin concerned about the $7 billion owed by Baghdad in Soviet-era debt, and about whether Russian oil companies would continue to have access to Iraqi petroleum fields post-Hussein.
"One of the things Blair can say is that we understand your concerns ... we'll look after your interests," said Ariel Cohen of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation think tank.
"If he hears that from Tony Blair, with whom he has a good relationship, if he had any doubts that there would be delivery on a promise, then maybe he would be satisfied," Langton said.
Cohen also suggested that Britain, and the United States, could curry Russian acceptance of tough actions by proposing to write off a portion of Russia's foreign debt, equivalent to the amount that Iraq owes Moscow - a move that could be especially attractive just a few months away from 2003, when Russia's scheduled foreign-debt payments spike sharply up, to $17 billion.
Gleb Pavlovsky, of the Fund for Effective Politics, dismissed the prospect of Britain defending Russia's interests in Iraq as "fantasy ... Britain will defend its own interests." But he said Blair could mollify Putin by assuring him that Russia, which is sensitive about losing influence to the United States in international affairs, would be a key player in a post-Hussein Iraq.
Russia wants "to see itself as a part of the long-term concept of developing Iraq," he said.
In addition, Blair's hand is strengthened by Britain's position as an influential country in the NATO alliance, with which Russia is pursuing closer relations through the newly created NATO-Russia Council, Langton said.
"Even though NATO probably has nothing dramatic to do with Russia at the moment, Putin will not wish to muddy the waters on that, and I think there will be discussion [with Blair] on what the NATO-Russia Council means to Russia and, by extension, to Russia's approach to the U.S. and the U.K. on the Security Council over Iraq," Langton said.
On Wednesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov said that Russia, while still promoting the earliest possible return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, could accept a new UN resolution on inspectors as long as it addressed Moscow's concerns that the resolution not call for the automatic use of force. France, which also has a Security Council veto, is pursuing a two-step strategy under which an initial resolution would call for unfettered access by UN weapons inspectors and, if this fails, a second UN resolution spelling out consequences that do not exclude force.
With that approach palatable to Russia, Blair is likely to be pragmatic enough to accept it also, the analysts said. Cohen added that Blair's sense of practicality may be one of the qualities that Putin respects most.
"Vladimir and Tony speak the same language - and it isn't German," Cohen said, referring to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's categorical rejection of military action against Iraq.
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LONDON (Reuters) - A major Russian company has sealed one of the largest oil supply deals in the history of Iraq's oil-for-food program, as Baghdad moves to reinforce commercial links with Moscow, industry sources said on Thursday.
Alfa-Eco, a subsidiary of Alfa Bank, one of Russia's largest private banks and a regular buyer of Iraqi oil, this week clinched a deal for 20 million barrels, one of the largest under the six-year UN-supervised humanitarian scheme.
Baghdad is eager to strengthen ties with Moscow, its main ally on the UN Security Council, as the UN deliberates a new resolution governing the return of weapons inspectors, analysts say.
"This big contract is happening at a politically sensitive time," said Raad Alkadiri of the Petroleum Finance Co., based in Washington. "The Iraqis have for a long time aimed to use their commercial power for political ends and they are not about to sit back now, particularly when the United States is finding it difficult to push their agenda through the Security Council at the United Nations."
Iraq's crude exports dropped around 35 percent, to 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) on average this year as international oil firms proved reluctant to pay a surcharge that customers said Baghdad was demanding for its oil.
With the United States trying to drum up support for the removal of President Saddam Hussein, by force if necessary, Iraq has moved in the past few months to reestablish ties with oil-company customers, instead of little-known traders that have dominated purchases for two years.
TITLE: Lawmakers Give Bush Go-Ahead For Action
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted to grant President George W. Bush the power he wants to launch a possible U.S. military attack on Iraq, a step that the Senate was expected to follow either later in the day or on Friday.
The Republican-led House endorsed a war-powers resolution, giving Bush the support he sought to confront Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who the White House says possesses weapons of mass destruction that threaten the United States and its allies.
The House voted 296-133 for the resolution that calls on Bush to pursue efforts through the United Nations to disarm Iraq before resorting to war.
The Democratic-led Senate earlier voted 75-25 to clear the way for a final vote on the war-powers resolution negotiated by the White House and congressional leaders. It was expected to pass the resolution late on Thursday or on Friday.
House Majority Leader Richard Armey, a Texas Republican who backed the war-powers resolution after initial skepticism, said taking on Hussein was central to protecting the United States in the war on terrorism.
"If you're going to conduct a war on terrorism then you must stop that person who is most likely and most able to arm the terrorists with those things that will frighten us the most," Armey said. "A strike ... is an integral part, a necessary part of the war on terrorism."
Democrats were split on the issue.
"I believe, as a whole, the resolution incorporates the key notion that we want to give diplomacy the best possible opportunity to resolve this conflict, but we're prepared to take further steps, if necessary, to protect our nation," said House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat who was key in negotiating the resolution's language with the White House.
But Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, second ranking in the House Democratic leadership, said a possible war with Iraq could backfire by increasing terrorist activities and undermining the international coalition that Bush formed to fight terrorism.
"I say flat out that unilateral use of force, without first exhausting every diplomatic remedy and other remedies, and making a case to the American people, will be harmful to our war on terrorism. We cannot let this coalition unravel," said Pelosi, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
As the lawmakers gave their summarizing statements before the final House vote, two protesters in the gallery shouted "no war" and "blood for oil."
Progress was slower on the diplomatic front, where three members of the UN Security Council - France, Russia and China - continued to hold out against a U.S.-British proposal sanctioning military action if Iraq does not comply with coercive inspections.
A 25-minute telephone call between Bush and French President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday failed to yield a breakthrough over wording of a new Security Council resolution to disarm Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "This is intricate diplomacy and we are continuing our consultations,'' White House spokesperson Sean McCormack said.
Catherine Colonna, a spokesperson for Chirac, said the French president was open to increasing weapons inspectors' powers, but still could not accept making military recourse an automatic response should they be hampered.
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: Russia To Join WFP As Donor Country
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The head of the World Food Program got what he came for - a promise from the government to become an official donor of the UN agency that supplies food to more than 70 million people around the globe.
After a meeting with WFP executive director James Morris on Wednesday, Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said Russia is prepared to supply the WFP with 30,000 tons of food-grade wheat, the government's Web site announced.
"This is a very good news," Morris said Thursday morning in an interview at the Metropol Hotel. "The Russian Federation is the most important country in the world that is not currently a donor to the WFP ... so this is a great step forward for the WFP, which is the place where the world comes together to provide help and support to very hungry and poor people all around the world."
Morris said he also had "a good visit" with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and a number of parliamentary deputies.
"Their response was that the Russian Federation was committed to becoming a donor to the World Food Program, and they were especially interested in our work in places like North Korea, Afghanistan, South Africa," he said.
The government already is familiar with the World Food Program's work in the North Caucasus. Since the current Chechnya conflict began in October 1999, more than $40 million in supplies has been funneled into the region by the WFP, according to UN figures.
Details have not yet been worked out for Russia's new cooperation with the WFP; in the past it served only as a contractor for the program, providing its services. Morris said the total volume of Russia's donations to the WFP is not yet clear, but he expressed the hope that Russia would become a permanent donor and the size of its commitment would grow.
Thirty-six countries have donated to the WFP this year, including Cuba, Hungary and Slovakia. The United States was the biggest single donor, with a contribution of $808 million as of the beginning of October.
The biggest donations - more than 60 percent of the total WFP budget of $1.9 billion last year - come from the United States, while most of the rest are sponsored by Canada, the European Union and Japan.
Russia's donation of 30,000 tons of wheat is worth $2.1 million, based on a minimum European price of $70 a ton, said Lyudmila Pigina, grain analyst for OGO, a major national grain trader.
Current prices in Russia, however, have dropped to almost $40 a ton, because of the good harvest. Russia harvested 45.7 million tons of wheat, 2.2 million tons more than last year, and planned to export about 8 million tons, according to the Agriculture Ministry.
"This amount - 30,000 tons - does not mean anything for Russia," Pigina said. "It will not affect prices here, and I don't think the donation was made for this purpose. But the fact that Russia is becoming a member of this very significant program is a very important political move."
Most of the WFP donations that reach the North Caucasus are sponsored by the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Program, or ECHO, said Philippe Royan, head of ECHO's Moscow office.
Last year, Russia received over $24 million, which allowed it to supply food regularly to more than 310,000 people in Chechnya and Ingushetia, including 47,000 schoolchildren aged 6 to 12 in 159 schools, the UN said.
In addition to providing food packages, the WFP runs the "food for work" and "food for assets creation" programs.
In the first one, 15,000 people are employed in social works projects: sweeping streets, repairing schools, disposing of rubble and planting trees. In return, they get food worth about 600 rubles ($19) a month, including flour, sugar, oil and salt.
The second program provides refugees who return from Ingushetia with roofing and other construction materials to repair their homes and also with food for several months for the whole family.
TITLE: Australian Murdered in Hotel
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A 55-year-old Australian schoolteacher found dead near Sheremetyevo Airport this week was nicknamed "Mr. Russia" by his students because of his love for the country, The Australian newspaper was to report Friday.
English and history teacher Peter Julian Hughes also appeared to have led a double life, with a wife and children in Australia and a girlfriend in Russia, Moscow police and Australian officials said.
Hughes was found bound and gagged at the Sheremetyevo-2 hotel on Monday. No arrests had been made by Thursday, but police had questioned four people who accompanied Hughes to his room just hours before his death.
The motive for the killing was under investigation.
Hughes' students at the Blayney Catholic High School in Bathurst, New South Wales, said they called Hughes "Mr. Russia" because he spoke of little else in the classroom.
"Everyone called him Mr. Russia," one of his students told The Australian in the report that was to be published Friday. The newspaper provided excerpts from the report Thursday.
Hughes also told his students that he had a Russian girlfriend whom he had met in the United States and that she spoke no English, The Australian said.
A maid found Hughes in a room in the Sheremetyevo-2 hotel room at 5:20 a.m. on Monday. His hands and legs were tied and his mouth was gagged, according to Russian media reports.
Police said his nose was broken, in a sign that there night have been a struggle, but they have ruled the cause of death as strangulation.
Staff writer Nabi Abdullaev contributed to this report.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Nine Die in Chechnya
ROSTOV-NA-DONU, Southern Russia (AP) - An explosion ripped through a police building in the Chechen capital Thursday, killing at least nine people and injuring several others, an emergency official said.
The blast heavily damaged the building in the Zavodskoi region of Grozny, said Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Lemeshev, duty officer at the Emergency Situations Department for Russia's Southern Region.
A Russian official in Chechnya, Imran Vagapov, said on the TVS television station that preliminary information indicated nine people were killed and eight were hospitalized.
Grozny's vice mayor, Supyan Makhchayev, told ORT television he believed the explosion was a terrorist act, but Vagapov said a gas explosion was also a possible cause.
Moscow fought a war with Chechen separatists from 1994 to 1996 that ended in de facto independence for Chechnya. Russian troops returned in 1999 after rebels raided a neighboring region and after apartment-block bombings in Moscow that killed more than 300 people were blamed on Chechen militants.
Putin Meets Manh
MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin met with Vietnam's Communist Party chief Nong Duc Manh in the Kremlin on Thursday to discuss boosting political and economic ties between the former Cold War allies.
"I would like to note with satisfaction that there has been a positive change in our trade and economic relations over the past year," Putin said in comments broadcast on Russian state television.
"As traditional friends, we are closely watching the success that the Russian people have achieved under your leadership," Interfax quoted Manh as saying at the meeting.
Manh is on a five-day visit to Russia. On Thursday, he laid wreaths at Lenin's Tomb and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside the Kremlin. He is also scheduled to travel to St. Petersburg, where he was once a student at the city's forestry institute, Interfax reported.
Putin said that Russia planned to hold a forum next year for Vietnamese citizens who have studied in Russia, and said he hoped Manh would attend, Interfax said.
Manh, who was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party last year, completed a five-day visit to Japan over the weekend. From Russia, he will travel to Belarus for a two-day visit, Vietnamese officials said.
Fake Nuclear Diplomas
KIEV (AP) - Authorities are investigating several nuclear-plant workers in western Ukraine for allegedly using fake diplomas to get high-paying jobs, a spokesperson for Ukraine's state nuclear-power monopoly said Thursday.
The 10 workers bought fake diplomas between 1999 to 2001 for as much as $600 from a university in the southern city of Odessa, indicating that they were specialists in "atomic energy and electric power stations," the daily Kievskiy Vedemosti reported, citing the deputy prosecutor general for Rivne, Vasyl Kundiuk.
Doubts about the workers' qualifications arose when officials investigated a number of reports of technical problems at the plant, the report said. The workers held a variety of engineering and administrative positions, ranging from senior operator to shift boss.
The apparent motive for the workers' ruse was higher salaries. They earned 6,000-8,000 hyrvnas ($1,100 to $1,500) per month at the plant - more than 10 times the average wage in Ukraine, Kievskiy Vedemosti wrote.
TITLE: Duma Backs Chubais Reforms
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After months of fierce debate and horse-trading, lawmakers on Wednesday passed a new electricity bill that allows for the carve-up of Unified Energy Systems, the world's largest power producer.
By a vote of 261 to 152, with one abstention, State Duma deputies passed in first reading the bill that frees the government to overhaul the monopoly and liberalize electricity prices if, as expected, it passes two more readings and is approved by the Federation Council and the president.
The government's pointman on the project, Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrei Sharonov, called the bill as crucial to the future of the economy as the law passed earlier this year that legalized the sale of agricultural land for the first time since 1917.
"[The bill] proposes the liberalization of the electricity sector, but leaves the most important regulative levers in government hands," Sharonov was quoted by news agencies as saying.
Opponents of the bill, including the Communist, Agrarian and Yabloko parties, say that it and four other bills in a reform package passed Wednesday will create a politically dangerous system that gives UES management the power to manipulate regions and republics and essentially blackmail businesses.
The bills were the only items on the Duma's debate docket Wednesday and they all passed by similar margins. They include the bill on electricity, a bill on implementing the law on electricity, amendments to existing laws on regulating electricity and heat tariffs, energy savings and natural monopolies, as well as changes to the second part of the Civil Code.
The package is designed to introduce competition into the sector, define the operational rules for a competitive wholesale market, new procedures for tariff setting, and the creation of new entities such as standalone generation, supply and distribution companies.
Sharonov said that if the bills don't become law, UES would have too much latitude to impose its own conditions on the market.
"If the package of draft bills had not been passed today in first reading, then the reform of UES, taking into account the pre-election political situation, would have been delayed at least two or three years, and maybe five," said Vladimir Pekhtin, the parliamentary leader of the pro-Kremlin Unity party.
The government submitted the package of bills, which are based on proposals by UES chief Anatoly Chubais, to the Duma in June. Hesitant lawmakers, however, delayed voting on the legislation in part because Chubais was behind it and because the complicated nature of the reform itself made reaching a consensus taxing and lengthy.
A trilateral conciliation commission made up of members of the cabinet and both houses of parliament had to be formed to strike a compromise over the 300 changes to the government's version demanded by various factions.
The breaking up of 51-percent state-owned UES ahead of its further privatization is anxiously awaited by the country's major financial industrial groups, many of whom are busy buying up blocking stakes in regional utilities controlled by UES in an effort to influence and gain from the process.
Opposition leaders held out hope as late as Tuesday that they would have enough votes to block the plan, which they likened to the scandalous loans-for-shares scheme Chubais presided over in the mid-1990s.
TITLE: Northwest Region Slides In Rating for Investment
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The attractiveness for investors of the Northwest Region of Russia has fallen significantly, according to Lyubov Sovershayeva, deputy presidential representative for the region.
Speaking at a roundtable discussion on investment attractiveness for the Northwest region, Sovershayeva said that, "in 2001, the Northwest Region occupied second place among the regions in the country, in terms of investment attractiveness. In the first half of 2002, it only occupied third place."
Sovershayeva said that the cause of the decline was the lack of a clear business strategy at most local enterprises, as well as a poor balance between the interests of the regional government and those of business.
Alexander Ivannikov, deputy head of the Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade Department of the city administration, however, argued that the new tax code was to blame, as it removed a number of tax benefits which regions had been able to allocate previously. "The amount of foreign investment in the St. Petersburg economy for the first half of 2002 was $500 million, which indicates a decrease of $9 million in comparison with the first half of 2001," he said.
Ivannikov said that the Netherlands, the U.S., Switzerland and Finland were the main investors in St. Petersburg. Together, they account for 78 percent of foreign investment in the city.
Russian investment in the city reached almost $1 billion in the first eight months of the year, half of which was accounted for by the construction sector, Ivannikov said. The second largest sector for investment was communications.
Leonid Gryaznov, general director of the Horizon investment company sounded more optimistic "Over the next two years, we can expect $1.6 billion in Russian investment from the state pension fund, non-state pension funds and investment funds," he said.
The main obstacle preventing further investment, he said, is a lack of transparency in Russian companies. "The world's largest corporations seem to be exaggerating their profits, while Russian companies tend to underestimate them, if they register them at all," he said.
TITLE: Il-18, Mi-6 Grounded Over Safety Fears
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Transport Ministry said Wednesday that it has banned flights on Il-18 aircraft and is planning further measures to boost aviation safety.
The four-engine plane, in service for 40 years, will no longer be allowed for passenger services, Vladimir Rudakov, head of the flight-safety department at the State Civil Aviation Service, said at an aviation-safety meeting.
The aviation service decided to ban the Il-18 after the industry was unable to fix the plane's technical malfunctions following a crash last November in the Tver region that killed 27 people.
The service also revoked the license of IRS-Aero, which operated a Il-18, citing the use of bogus spare parts, aviation-service head Alexander Neradko said. Seventeen Il-18s remain in service.
The Mi-6 helicopter has also been banned for technical problems that led to the July crash of a craft belonging to the Norilsk airline that killed 21 people.
Aviation authorities are planning more steps to fight what they called sloppiness, saying that it has been partially to blame for a jump in air accidents in the past two years.
Rudakov said that although the number of air accidents dropped 27 percent in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period of 2001, the situation is worrisome.
Fifteen air accidents - including five crashes - occurred in January through September, killing 61 people. The statistics, however, do not take into account the Bashkirian Airlines tragedy earlier this year, when a Tu-154M collided with a DHL cargo plane in mid-air over Germany, killing 69 people.
"The situation in Russian aviation is not good, there is no room for complacency," Transport Minister Sergei Frank said at the meeting.
Some 20 percent of all accidents are due to technical failures that could be reduced, said Valery Voskoboinikov, first deputy head of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency. Human error accounts for the other 80 percent of accidents.
Voskoboinikov and other speakers at the meeting cited airlines' using aircraft after their service life is finished and bogus spare parts as major dangers that should be tackled immediately.
The number of idle planes has soared over the past decade due to falling passenger numbers, and many have been scrapped for parts. Also, a myriad of little companies has sprouted up around aircraft manufacturers offering to fix planes at rock-bottom prices.
Aeroflot CEO Valery Okulov said that a system of barcodes should be introduced to ensure the quality of spare parts.
These problems not only jeopardize safety, but also keep new-generation craft such as the Il-96 and Tu-204/Tu-214 from entering the market, Frank said.
New certification laws are expected by the end of the year, under which airlines would have to operate at least two aircraft, be financially solvent and, most importantly, have a technical-service base, Neradko said. He said that the last requirement would cause the closure of many of the 242 airlines operating in the country.
Frank said that the industry has to provide aircraft simulators to ensure adequate training for both flight and technical personnel.
The Transport Ministry and the Russian Aviation and Space Agency will iron out airline-safety issues at a meeting next month, he said.
TITLE: State Stake In Slavneft To Be Sold Off Early
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government intends to sell its entire stake in one of the country's most scandal-ridden oil companies, a turnaround that has prompted ferocious bidding ahead of the actual auction.
The move to sell 75 percent of Slavneft, the country's seventh-largest oil producer, at once, for a starting price of $1.3 billion, is a departure from the government's earlier plan to sell off the company in chunks.
"The order was sent to the government last week," a Property Ministry spokesperson said Wednesday. "We don't expect any revisions. It's just waiting for the signature of [Prime Minister Mikhail] Kasyanov."
If it goes ahead, analysts say the sale, slated to take place by the end of the year, will be marked by intense competition, as domestic companies fight for the dwindling number of lucrative oil assets left in state hands. Foreign companies will be able to participate in the auction, the ministry spokesperson said.
This competition should force the selling price higher than it would be if Slavneft were sold off in parts. Twenty percent of the company was scheduled to be sold this fall.
Before the changes were revealed, industry watchers were placing their bets on another Russian oil major, Sibneft. And, although the firm remains a top contender, its success is now far from assured. The government has whetted the appetites of the other oil majors, who say they will be willing to pay more for full control.
A Surgutneftegaz executive in Khanty-Mansiisk told Interfax that his company was willing to pay $1.5 billion or more for the Slavneft stake. While Slavneft's production is modest - it accounts for 4.3 percent of Russia's crude output - its Yaroslavl refinery, with 14 million tons a year of throughput and close proximity to the Moscow oil-product market, makes it an attractive acquisition.
"Slavneft is a well-developed company where everything works," said the Surgutneftegaz executive, who was not identified.
He added that his company, with several billion dollars in cash sitting on its balance sheet, would go it alone. "The only thing we need is complete control," he said.
A likely reason behind the government's change of tactics is an increase in next year's expected debt-service payments from $17.3 billion to $17.9 billion.
In addition, extra measures will have to be taken to ensure that there will be enough money in the financial reserve from which debt payments are made, said Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Kolotukhin. Proceeds from the revised Slavneft sale may be used to augment the reserve, he said.
Earlier, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that the reserve would hold enough money if the government was able both to float $1.5 billion in Eurobonds this year and sell 6 percent of LUKoil, Russia's largest oil company. Neither of these is likely to happen, analysts say.
Government officials unexpectedly halted the LUKoil float in August, saying that the sale price was too low. As a result, the budget didn't receive an expected $660 million to $800 million in privatization revenues. Since then, international market conditions have grown worse, giving Russian companies an excuse to focus their energies inward.
TITLE: Battle Over Car-Import Tariffs Rages On
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government on Tuesday backed away from plans to restrict imports of cars with right-hand drive, just a week after it raised tariffs on car imports older than seven years.
Speaking at a two-day auto-industry conference in Moscow, Deputy Science and Industry Minister Sergei Mitin said that his ministry "will not differentiate between right and left-handed steering wheels."
Right-handed imports, predominantly from Japan, are extremely popular in the Far East. About 140,000 such automobiles made their way across the Sea of Japan to Russia last year, Mitin said, adding that the total secondhand import market is worth an estimated $2 billion.
The Vladivostok-based auto enthusiasts' web site www.auto.vl.ru had called on drivers across the country to protest government threats to ban right-handed steering wheels and raise tariffs.
"Consumers in the Far East have to pay an extra $1,000 for Russian cars due to transport costs," Mitin told the audience of industry heavyweights. "Japan is simply closer."
However, the government has expressed worries as domestic producers' market share has shrunk from 71 percent last year to 64 percent in 2002.
On Sunday, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref shocked consumers when he said in televised remarks that he wanted tariffs to be doubled on all imported cars in three to four years. He said that such a move would stimulate foreign automakers to create plants in Russia before tariffs make their cars too expensive for the local market.
Asked to comment on Gref's remarks, Mitin said that his ministry does not support the idea of raising tariffs on imports again.
"We need to create equal conditions for consumers to be able to buy both foreign and domestic cars," he said, adding that tariffs on imported trucks and buses older than seven years should face tariff restrictions.
Influential aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska's Ruspromavto, Russia's largest bus holding, has lobbied for tariffs to be raised on the old imports.
Also at the conference, Vladimir Kadannikov, chairperson of No. 1 carmaker AvtoVAZ, said that his company - which commands a 75-percent share of the domestic auto market - planned to increase exports to 100,000 cars this year, compared with 85,000 in 2001.
The carmaker's sales fell by 40 percent in Ukraine this summer when Russia's southern neighbor imposed a 32-percent tariff on some of AvtoVAZ's models. The tariff has since been lifted, and sales are rebounding, Kadannikov said.
Mitin also said that the government would gradually impose more stringent environmental standards on domestic producers to squeeze polluters off the roads.
"By 2008, everyone should be producing cars at the Euro-4 emissions standard," he said.
TITLE: Fiat Workers Strike Against Further Cuts
AUTHOR: By Nicole Winfield
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROME - Hundreds of Fiat auto workers went on strike Thursday to protest plans to cut its automaking work force in Italy by nearly 20 percent - the first of two days of demonstrations against Fiat's latest restructuring plans.
Workers at Fiat's Termini Imerese plant in Sicily, particularly hard-hit by the reductions, walked off the job for eight hours Thursday and were to do the same Friday, said Enrico Stagni of the FIOM union, the main metalworkers' union.
Waving flags, the workers blocked the main Palermo-Catania state highway and occupied a train station, as they have done for much of the past week. Similar protests were staged at Fiat's Arese plant near Milan.
Fiat workers around the country planned to stage a four-hour general strike Friday.
Turin-based Fiat, Italy's largest private employer, said Wednesday that it would lay off 7,600 workers, on top of 3,000 temporary layoffs previously announced, as it struggles to stay afloat. It also planned to offer 500 more workers a chance to transfer or retire early. Fiat Auto employs some 35,000 workers in Italy.
Its restructuring plans drew immediate condemnation by union leaders and concern by the government, which was holding around-the-clock meetings to try to find a way out of the crisis.
Cabinet minister Roberto Maroni said that Fiat would ask the government for special "crisis" status so workers can get state-funded unemployment benefits.
In addition, the government may consider extending financial incentives to buy nonpolluting cars, Industry Minister Antonio Marzano said Wednesday. The measure was taken during the summer to boost car sales and is widely seen as an attempt to help Fiat.
Welfare Undersecretary Maurizio Sacconi said Thursday that he believed a meeting would be arranged in the coming days between Premier Silvio Berlusconi and Fiat as well as unions, the ANSA news agency said.
Berlusconi said Thursday that the government hoped to avoid closing plants by coming up with alternatives to avoid "leaving thousands of our people, in zones that don't offer any alternative, without work."
In a statement Wednesday, Fiat said that 5,600 of the layoffs would start in December, while the other 2,000 would come in July when production of the Panda model ceases.
All 1,800 workers at the Termini Imerese would be laid off, although Fiat said that they and other workers could be brought back when production increases.
The mayor of Termini Imerese, Luigi Purpi, said that he began a hunger strike Thursday morning to protest plans to close down the plant.
"It's the least I can do," he said by cell phone from the idled plant Thursday. "I may be the mayor of a small town but this is an important industrial area for Sicily."
Fiat is under strong pressure to sell its auto unit to the U.S. automaker General Motors, which bought a 20-percent stake of Fiat Auto in 2000.
Under an agreement between the two companies, Fiat could force GM to buy the remaining 80 percent between 2004 and 2009.
Fiat's auto sector has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years, as competition has eaten away at its sales, especially in Europe and Latin America, two of its biggest markets.
TITLE: Two Americans Take Nobel Economics Prize
AUTHOR: By Linda Johnson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PRINCETON, New Jersey - A Princeton University psychology professor studying decision making and a George Mason University economics professor who examines alternate-market designs won the Nobel prize in economics Wednesday.
Daniel Kahneman, 68, a U.S. and Israeli citizen based at Princeton University in New Jersey, and Vernon Smith, 75, of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, will share the $1-million prize.
It was the third year in a row that Americans have taken the prize. Of the 51 recipients over the years, 34 have been from the United States.
Kahneman, who has taught at Princeton since 1993, said that he was so flustered after being notified of the prize that he locked himself out of his house, and had to break a window to get back in.
He said that the award was a recognition of the field of behavioral economics, a movement in which he and others have tried to characterize how people make decisions, including ones that are biased or irrational or don't bring the best possible outcome.
In its citation, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences praised Kahneman's integration of insights from psychology into economics, "especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty."
His experiments in probability theory could explain large fluctuations in financial markets and other phenomena that elude existing models, the academy said.
The award is the fifth Nobel economics prize for a Princeton faculty member.
Kahneman said that he considers himself a psychologist, not an economist. He is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology, a joint appointment at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Princeton's psychology department.
As about 200 faculty, students and administrators at Princeton cheered him, Kahneman said that there was a "shadow on the joy I feel." He was referring to the 1996 death of his longtime collaborator, Amos Tversky. Together, they began studying how people make judgments amid uncertainty in the mid-1970s.
At George Mason, where he is a professor of economics and law, Smith laid the foundation for the use of experiments as a tool in economic analysis. His theories have proven that markets don't necessarily have to have a large number of buyers and sellers to operate efficiently.
The academy singled out his use of "wind-tunnel tests," where trials of new, alternative-market designs are done in the laboratory before being implemented. That could be useful, for example, in deciding whether to deregulate electric companies or privatize public monopolies, the citation said.
His experiments began soon after he started teaching economics at Purdue University in 1955.
"It took me several years to realize that the textbooks were wrong, and the people in my class were correct," Smith said at a news conference.
TITLE: Tokyo Stocks Fall To 19-Year Lows
AUTHOR: By Yuri Kageyama
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TOKYO - Tokyo's best-known stock-market index closed at a 19-year low Thursday for the third time this week, dragged down by fears about possible corporate failures in Japan and the recovery of the U.S. economy. The dollar edged down against the yen.
The Nikkei Stock Average of 225 issues closed at 8,439.62 points, down 99.72 points, or 1.17 percent, from Wednesday. That was the index's lowest finish since it closed at 8,435.37 points on April 8, 1983.
On Wednesday, the Nikkei closed down 169.56 points, or 1.95 percent, at 8,539.34, the lowest since June 10, 1983.
The U.S. dollar bought 123.53 yen in late Tokyo trading, down 0.63 yen from late Wednesday in Tokyo, but above 123.30 yen in New York. The currency traded between 123.00 yen and 123.68 yen in Tokyo during the day.
Tokyo shares headed lower since opening Thursday morning, discouraged by losses Wednesday on Wall Street, and closed the morning session down by more than 3 percent. The index has lost more than 900 points, or about 10 percent, over this month's eight trading sessions.
Worries about U.S. economic weakness were compounded by concerns that the Japanese government is considering drastic structural reforms without adequate fiscal stimulus to mitigate the effects on companies, traders said.
Japanese economy minister Heizo Takenaka, who was appointed in charge of financial services on Sept. 30, has promised to speed up the clean-up of bad debts at the country's banks, which analysts have long blamed as dragging down the economy.
But his remark also set off fears about a spate of corporate failures that were likely to follow, possibly including top banks.
Adding to the fears were the recent vague comments from government leaders about a plan due at the end of the month.
"The market has read in the worst possible scenario," said Shoji Yoshigoe, a manager at UFJ Tsubasa Securities Co. in Tokyo. "Usually, government officials are very quick in comments to stop the stock fall, but this time they don't seem to have a sense of crisis."
TITLE: Do We Actually Need To Wage War on Iraq?
AUTHOR: By Robert Skidelsky
TEXT: THE United States wants to remove Saddam Hussein from power; its main allies would be content with his disarmament. The United States, therefore, wants to keep the United Nations weapons inspectors out of Iraq; its allies want to get them back in.
To reconcile these aims - at least formally - is the point of the intense jockeying now going on at the UN. The United States wants a new Security Council resolution drawn up so as to make the early use of force legal. France and Russia, while not opposed to the use of force as a last resort, want to use existing Security Council resolutions to give disarmament a last chance. Britain finds itself between a rock and a hard place. It is co-sponsor with the United States of a resolution whose not-so-hidden aim is to force out Hussein, while being openly committed to nothing more than his regime's disarmament.
In one sense, the maneuvers at the United Nations are a side show.
The United States will go ahead with "regime change" whatever the UN decides. So, the unenviable choice for America's allies is either to accede to the U.S. demand for a new UN resolution that brings about "regime change" in Iraq - probably by war - or to acquiesce in unilateral U.S. action to remove Hussein. No other choice is available, because there is no force capable of stopping the United States. This is the reality of a world with only one superpower.
The U.S. draft resolution - at the time of writing - makes eight demands on Iraq. Under extreme pressure, Iraq might be expected to accept seven of them, but not the one which gives the inspection teams "the right to declare for the purposes of this resolution ... ground and air-transit corridors which shall be enforced by UN security forces," i.e. which allows U.S. forces to enter Iraq where and when they want.
The technique of demands drawn up to be rejected, rather than accepted, is not new. On July 23, 1914, Austro-Hungary presented a 10-point ultimatum to Serbia following the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, giving it 48 hours to reply. Serbia accepted nine points but, not unexpectedly, rejected the 10th, which would have allowed Austrian officials to conduct the murder investigation on Serbian territory unhindered. The Austrian invasion of Serbia followed a few days later, and led to World War I.
A more recent example, also involving Serbia, was the so-called Rambouillet accord of March 20, 1999. In order to enforce "peace and self-government in Kosovo," NATO forces were to enjoy "free and ... unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." U.S. bombing started four days after Serbia's rejection of this implementing provision.
Monstrous though Saddam Hussein's regime is, there is much less justification for forcing a war on Iraq today than there was for going to war in 1914 or 1999. In the first case, the existence of Serbia posed a threat to the survival of Austro-Hungary; in the second case, there was - arguably-a humanitarian disaster in the making which only the expulsion of Slobodan Milosevic from Kosovo could avert.
Today, there exists no legal or security case for a pre-emptive U.S. attack on Iraq. Hussein is not a threat to the United States, though he may be a menace to some of his neighbors. He is not an Islamic fundamentalist, and no evidence has been adduced of Iraqi involvement in the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. In any case, effective disarmament of the Hussein regime - a legitimate peace aim following Iraq's expulsion from Kuwait - can be secured by a toughened inspection regime: Even the much-evaded inspection system in place between 1991 and 1998 succeeded in liquidating most of its external military capacity.
There is a moral argument for removing any regime which oppresses its own people, whatever international law says. But it is rather late in the game to come up with this in Hussein's case and, in any event, why stop with Iraq? The newly-proclaimed moral argument is simply a pretext for a war desired for other reasons.
Why, then, is the United States so eager to wage a war against Iraq? Put to one side President George W. Bush's personal motive for "finishing dad's business" and vague talk of oil interests. These may play some part in the thinking of the Bush administration but they are not of its essence. The fundamental reasons seem to be three.
The first lies in the area of psychological reassurance. The American people, devastated by the attack of Sept. 11, are looking to their government to restore a lost invulnerability. Given the subterranean and elusive nature of the terrorist threat, the only available riposte is against visible instruments of anti-American power, however little threat these actually pose.
In practice, absolute security is impossible and attempts to achieve it by using pre-emptive strikes against "rogue states" open up the grim prospect of "perpetual war to achieve perpetual peace."
Secondly, the United States is probably trying to alter the balance of power in the Middle East in favor of Israel by setting up a client state in Baghdad.
Finally, and somewhat at odds with the first reason, the United States today is immensely conscious of its power to reshape international relations to its own and - it would say - the world's benefit.
Russia cannot stop the United States from going to war if it chooses to do so. It can veto a Security Council ultimatum, but that will not stop the United States. However, there is a big difference between dignified acquiescence and undignified support. The political benefits the United States can offer in return for active support are pretty meager. Russia does what it wants in Chechnya and Georgia despite the United States, and promises of huge oil pickings in a new Iraq are unlikely to materialize.
There is no business reason for the United States to give Russia access to the vast Iraqi oil reserves, and the political calculation that the United States will "reward" Russia for its support by sacrificing the interests of its own oil companies and those of its long established allies is pretty flimsy. If Russia, lured by inducements, were to support the U.S. policy of regime change in Iraq, it would be sacrificing its principle of great-power cooperation, centered on the Security Council, in return for fool's gold.
Russia can best play its relatively poor hand in world affairs by cooperating with the world's superpower to the maximum extent compatible with preserving its independence and self-respect. It should always support the United States when it thinks it is right, but not be afraid to oppose it when it thinks it is wrong. It should reject Bush's simplistic alternative: "You are either with us or against us." Putin's response to the Sept. 11 outrage was the right response to a monstrous act. Slavish adherence to the U.S. line on Iraq would be wrong.
And what is true of Russia applies to America's other partners. We stand at a threshold in world affairs. The future can develop either according to the dictates of an unstable imperialism, with a growing gap between the West and Islam and scattered military interventions and terrorism feeding on each other, or according to the logic of a cooperative hegemony of the great powers, with a growing plurality of decision-making.
In truth, the United States is suited neither by its history nor present civilization to be a serious imperialist. It was the first product of anti-colonialism. Vietnam showed that it had no appetite for ruling foreign countries. Since Vietnam, its willingness to suffer casualties in pursuit of foreign policy aims has shrunk to almost zero.
A haphazard U.S. imperialism, which stirs up the rest of the world to fury, while failing to produce the benefits of orderly government, would be the worst possible outcome of Sept. 11.
Robert Skidelsky is a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords and professor of political economy at Warwick University, England. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Support for U.S. Action Is a Price That Russia Should Pay
TEXT: WHILE it is always risky to make predictions, U.S. military action against Iraq appears to be pretty much a given. The prevailing mood in Washington continues to be radical and President George W. Bush's administration remains determined to remove Saddam Hussein, the long-ruling Iraqi dictator, from power.
Much has been said and written about the combination of factors driving U.S. policy in this direction - domestic political factors, personal motives, world oil-trade interests, etc. In reality, it is not all that important why the Bush team wants Hussein's scalp. Hussein is not a sympathetic political figure, and the Iraqi people would probably be better off without him.
The concerns that the impending U.S. action should raise are not related to the nature of the objective but, instead, to the proposed manner for its realization. What is particularly disturbing is the hypocrisy being exhibited in both Washington and London in employing eloquent rhetoric that presents the whole issue as stemming from a genuine concern in those capitals about preserving the authority of the United Nations.
All of this said, the government in Russia's capital really has no option but to play along.
If President Vladimir Putin's administration is serious about its intention to join the "respected" club of Western countries, it has to be prepared to pay the membership fees. Yet, as is far too often the case, the Kremlin's stance regarding the current pre-crises over Iraq might best be explained by citing a popular Russian saying: "It's like trying to climb a pine tree without ruining your pants."
The point is that, in the real world, it just doesn't work.
Any pragmatic politician should understand that Russia today has no real strategic alternative to a close relationship with the West. All of the other options - a strategic partnership with China, or a Russia-China-India triangle, for example - pursued by Putin's predecessors, proved to be illusory and unrealistic.
Even if Russia is too big an entity to be integrated into Europe, it has no choice other than to join the Euro-Atlantic sphere. Other options, including going it alone, are, simply put, worse.
It is a fact of life that, whether we like it or not, the United States occupies the big chair in the leadership of this Euro-Atlantic sphere. If Moscow wants to join the club, then it has to comply with the club's - and its biggest member's - conditions. Agreement on Iraq is one of the conditions, even if it is a dirty business, and the Russian elite stands to lose a lot in the bargain.
It is very likely that Hussein's successor will not honor Iraq's Soviet-era debts, and that oil contracts that his government signed, by which Russian companies are looking to generate huge profits, will be reviewed. The economic stakes for Russia are immense. An optimist would say that the benefits of joining the Western club are greater, while a pessimist would say that there is no alternative anyway. Either way, a delay in joining the club is unlikely to generate better terms. The later we apply, the tougher the conditions to join will be.
Another irony of the situation, with relation to Iraq, is that Russia has been consistent in its efforts to preserve the role of the United Nations in international affairs. These efforts have not been driven solely by a belief that the United Nations represents the quintessence of international law. They also stem from the fact that, as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and enjoying the veto rights that come with the position, Russia stands a better chance of safeguarding its prestige in the world. The position is a useful tool to pursue its interests, if the world body is maintained as a central and effective force in international relations.
By contrast, Washington, as the only remaining superpower, has been looking to diminish the role of the UN in line with its (quite natural) desire to gain more freedom of action. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, NATO appears to have become a less effective tool for the United States in tackling its policy challenges, and Washington appears to be ready to turn its focus back toward the UN. Cynically enough, the Bush administration wants to use the UN as a mechanism to pass a resolution unacceptable to Baghdad and to further legitimize the pending military strike on Iraq.
Moscow's veto in the Security Council gives it the means to stop the resolution, but using it risks provoking Washington into acting unilaterally (Bush already has a mandate from the U.S. Congress) and to abandon the institution entirely. Bush has already provided reminders of the ultimate fate of the League of Nations in a not-so-veiled (if it was veiled at all) threat that the United Nations could well follow in its predecessor's footsteps.
There's no question that, as already noted, there is a great degree of hypocrisy involved in such a position. But, if Moscow wants the UN to maintain its relevance and, by extension, maintain the last real instrument capable of underpinning Russian prestige and influence, it has to support Washington.
Nothing comes without a price.
Igor Leshukov is the director of the Institute of International Affairs, St. Petersburg, a private think tank. He contributed this comment to the St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Classical Station Set To Hit City Airwaves
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The word "classic" is often used to describe St. Petersburg, a city of classic architecture and home to a great deal of Russia's classic writers and composers.
Now, the Northern Capital is about to get a radio station specifically designed to bring the classics - the musical classics, that is - together. Radio Klassika Peterburg will start broadcasting toward the end of December, on the frequency 88.9 Mhz.
The station's ideology encompasses classics on a global scale, instead of just local selections.
"We see klassika ['the classics'] as a way of life and, therefore, our goal is to give our audience classics in music, sports, fashion, food, and so on," says the station's director, Alla Shpanskaya. "We see our audience as educated, spiritual, successful and dynamic."
According to Klassika Peterburg's programming director, Marina Goltseva, the station will start out broadcasting for 12 hours per day, but she hopes to extend this to a round-the-clock schedule after a few months.
Musically, 80 percent of the broadcasting will be devoted to classical music - in the broadest sense of the term - with the rest slated to be shared between classical jazz, rock operas, film music, folk and world music.
"We interpret 'the classics' in a rather broad sense, not just confining ourselves to academic genres," says Shpanskaya. In addition, Klassika Peterburg will broadcast a number of programs hosted by well-known local musicians, actors, film directors and artists.
According to Shpanskaya, the preparation for the new station began in 1999, when the idea of Radio Klassika Peterburg first emerged. Since then, the brains behind Klassika Peterburg have been developing the station's concept and image, as well as establishing its broadcasting equipment and library of recordings, which currently numbers more than 800 pieces, stored on computer.
Prominent Russian composer Andrei Petrov, the head of the St. Petersburg Union of Composers, says that the new station is very welcome.
"The radio stations that exist at the moment do not give their audiences much of a chance even to listen to the most popular symphonic works, which always get full houses, such as, for instance, Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, or themes from [Tchaikovsky's ballet] 'The Nutcracker,' or Bizet's [opera] 'Carmen,'" he says. "Klassika Peterburg is certain to find a most grateful and faithful audience."
"When the jazz-focused Radio Hermitage was launched several years ago, there were doubts about its future. Now, the station flourishes," Petrov adds. "With the appearance of Klassika, the radio scene will definitely become more varied, moving us closer to Europe, where radio stations focused on classical music have done well."
St. Petersburg currently boasts 24 commercial radio stations, with Europa Plus topping the popularity ratings with an audience share of 14.8 percent, according to research carried out last month by the COMCON market and media-research center. Hot on the heels of Europa Plus comes Russkoye Radio, with 13.4 percent. Klassika Peterburg is hoping to establish itself at sixth or seventh place on the list, which would give the station a rating somewhere between Radio Chanson and Love Radio.
"We realize that we cannot claim a greater share of the market, because our audience is rather narrow," says Shpanskaya. "However, classical music is impossible to ignore. Classical-music stations are very successful business enterprises in Europe ... and it was inevitable that someone would launch a local station focused on the classics. Why not us?"
Anna Kosyakova, the head of radio research at COMCON St. Petersburg, says that the new station can expect to win up to 5 percent of audience share, but that greater claims would not be not realistic.
Similar projects launched in Russia during the last 10 years have not been successful, with stations either closing down or changing their format. The latter was the case, for example, with the Moscow-based station Radio Klassika, which began as a commercial, classical-music-focused FM station in 1997, but soon had to abandon that philosophy due to its small audience share.
"I think the reason for that is that [classical-music] stations were appealing to captive audiences, who were already very deeply and very seriously into classical music," says Kosyakova. "It would have been wiser to target wider audiences, to encourage new people to listen to classical music, and provoke their interest in the classics by telling them more about composers, particular musical works and events."
Kosyakova's research backs up this theory. Radio stations regularly run special polls, known as "musical testings," which involve playing a 10-second music fragment to a person over the phone and ask if the person likes it. The research is carried out to evaluate the popularity of various musical works, songs, genres and the like. According to Kosyakova, classical pieces usually garner a very high rate of approval.
"Some people even say that they turn on Eldoradio at the end of each hour, knowing that the station plays classical works at that time," she says.
Every hour, there will be two brief news summaries, one of which will focus on culture. "It is a shame that people here know nothing about the successes of, say, Russian orchestras and singers at highly acclaimed international festivals," says Shpanskaya. "The audiences are ignorant of what is going on in the international musical and arts scene. But, if we want Russia to be a cultural Mecca rather than a cultural province, we should start by telling our people more about culture in the contemporary world."
TITLE: BDT's New Production Makes a Drama Out of a Crisis
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Theater audiences have always wondered what goes on behind the scenes. To some of the spectators, the world of the backstage is even more attractive than the performance itself.
As if responding to these hidden thoughts nursed by its audiences, the Bolshoi Drama Theater has turned to Ronald Harwood's play, "The Dresser," which was a hit in London and New York in the early 1980s. The BDT's version premiered on Sunday, with one of the troupe's star actors, Oleg Basilashvili, in the lead role of Sir John, and Yan Tsapnik as the dresser, Norman.
The play is set in England during World War II and shows the last days of Sir John, an aging leading actor with a theater company, and his relations with the rest of the troupe and, first and foremost, with his costumier.
Basilashvili is himself a theatrical patriarch - he joined the BDT's troupe in 1959 - and, as such, is an obvious choice to play Sir John. Certainly, he does not carry the theater's repertoire on his own, but he is one of a handful of artists who does. Now aged 70, Basilashvili, one of the colossuses of the company, whose name brings in crowds and does much to fill BDT's coffers, knows all about the burden of responsibility and the taste of fame.
There is another point of similarity here between art and life. In Harwood's play, the troupe is short of young actors, who have all gone to fight in the war. At the BDT, ironically, young actors have also been in short supply recently, but for a different reason - the directors find it too risky these days to stage a production based on young, unknown talent.
Basilashvili brings power and a lot of psychological strength to his interpretation of the role of Sir John, making the character a bit more ponderous than it may have appeared from the script. His Sir John is a wayward, impulsive master - virtually a dictator for the troupe. During his first appearances, Basilashvili's character is feeble, desperate and devastated; he has nothing more to give to his audiences.
However, as the play progresses, Sir John's "illness," as played by Basilashvili, begins to look more like the whims of a capricious star, while his complaints begin to appear melodramatic. The character of Sir John gets "King Lear" confused with "Othello" and "Macbeth," but demonstrates a lot of will, strength and passion for someone with, apparently, one foot already in the grave.
Director Nikolai Pinigin allows the play's Shakespearean overtones to overwhelm Harwood's writing; in this production, the two become almost indistinguishable. The relationship between Sir John and Norman is reminiscent of that between King Lear and his court fool. Tsapnik portrays a daring servant, who forgets his place easily and is allowed much beyond his duties. At times, his character almost tangibly enjoys his power over his hapless master. At the end of the play, Pinigin makes the Shakespeare parallel visible, as Tsapnik wears a jester's hat in the final scene.
The other actors' performances only add to the impression that Pinigin has turned the play into the story of a dying dictator. Geoffrey Thornton (Izil Zabludovsky), Irin (Yulia Alexeyeva), Sir John's beloved Milady (Irate Vengalite) and Madge (Larisa Malevannaya) all appear utterly dependent on Sir John, whom they all treat as their master. It all combines to make a melodrama out of what could have been a tragedy.
Zinovy Margolin's set literally places the actors between two stages. Winningly, Margolin hangs a stage above the main stage, complete with trapdoors and ladders. The environment barely changes throughout the piece. Some may consider this approach too literal to the play's subject of life behind the scenes, but it serves the director's goals well.
"The Dresser" plays on Saturday, and then on Oct. 22. Links: www.bdt.spb.ru
TITLE: K-19: Read The Truth Behind the Film Fiction
AUTHOR: By Genine Babakian
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The dramatic opening of Peter Huchthausen's "K-19: The Widowmaker" signals readers to strap themselves in for a chilling 243-page ride.
But forget for a moment all the elements that promise a suspenseful, page-turning read, and anything to do with the film of the same name that opens on Thursday (see story, p. ii). Shortly after the first page and a half, it becomes clear that this book is not going to be a thrill ride. Rather, it is an examination of the Soviet Union's efforts to become a naval power to be reckoned with in the nuclear age. This is not the story of one sub, but of the tragic events of a whole fleet, from the K-19 to the Kursk, which exploded and sank in August 2000.
The tragedy, Huchthausen points out, is that these events could have been avoided, had the top brass been more concerned with safety and testing procedures than with cranking out a Potemkin fleet to flaunt before the encroaching "capitalist threat."
Although there were officers like Captain Nikolai Zatayev (the commander of the K-19, who is played by Harrison Ford and called Captain Alexei Vostrikov in the film), who repeatedly pointed out their vessels' design flaws, the military chose to ignore and suppress these alarmists. It was easier to lose lives than to learn from their mistakes.
Huchthausen, a retired U.S. Navy captain who served as the senior U.S. Navy attache in Moscow in the late 1980s, may be the author of "K-19," but Captain Zatayev is the book's backbone; the memoirs of the sub's commander are peppered throughout the text and provide the most compelling reading.
In his unpublished memoirs, Zatayev is extremely critical of the rush to become a naval power. Writing about the first generation of nuclear-powered attack subs, Zatayev wrote: "These ships were being completed in a hurry. The shipyard and government sea-trial programs had been combined, telescoped and abbreviated, taking no more than six or seven days at sea. Then, without mechanical inspections, the ships were sent north. Not one of the submarines was put through its complete program of trials. ... All three submarines left the shipyard with defects and incomplete assemblies and had to undergo repairs and final construction at their bases."
At the same time, the K-3, later known as the Leninsky Komsomol, was berthed at the shipyard for "experimental operation." "To put it plainly," Zatayev wrote, "it was unseaworthy."
Zatayev did not keep his critical words to himself. He was among a minority of officers who tried to alert the naval authorities to the deplorable safety conditions aboard nuclear subs.
"The rational criticism of the wiser heads in the leadership were going unheeded; these people were ignored and soon came to be persecuted," Zatayev wrote, citing in particular former Northern Fleet Commander Andrei Chabanenko. Chabanenko tried to slow down the frantic pace of submarine production in favor of a safer, more reliable fleet. He was, as a result, dismissed from his post and all of his supporters soon thereafter lost their jobs.
Huchthausen's prose is sometimes extremely technical, especially for readers who are not particularly interested in the intricate workings of a nuclear reactor. But, if "K-19: The Widowmaker" is often heavy on technology, it is light on the environmental consequences of five decades of nuclear accidents at sea. Gutted reactors, irradiated equipment, spent fuel and nuclear warheads are scattered about the ocean floor, most notably near Novaya Zemlya. There are still eight Russian submarines resting at the bottom of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Barents Sea, along with 18 reactors and more than 46 nuclear warheads.
Huchthausen is quick to portray the efforts of Russian sailors who perished during incidents at sea to save their ships and crewmates as courageous and selfless. These men were the real victims of the Cold War and of the Kremlin's dangerous drive for a nuclear fleet.
"Men were dying in this grand experiment," Huchthausen writes. "The Americans didn't have to fire a shot. The Russians were willing to kill their own."
"K-19: The Widowmaker." By Peter Huchthausen. National Geographic Society. 243 pages. $16.00 (paperback).
TITLE: Familiar Face, New Production
TEXT: The Mariinsky Theater opened its 220th season on Sunday with its new production of Mussorgsky's opera "Boris Godunov." Although the production premiered in May, Sunday night was the first time that Vladimir Vaneyev, one of the Mariinsky's leading basses, sung the title role. (Vaneyev had previously performed the part of Pimen, the old monk, when the production ran at Milan's La Scala theater.)
Vaneyev graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod Conservatory in 1986, and joined St. Petersburg's Mussorgsky Theater where, over the following decade, he performed many lead roles - including Godunov.
In 1997, Vaneyev joined the Mariinsky, with which he has performed - among other major roles - the Dutchman, in Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman;" King Filippo II of Spain, in Verdi's "Don Carlos;" Ruslan, in Glinka's "Ruslan and Lyudmila;" and Kochubei, in Tchaikovsky's "Mazepa." Two years ago, he sung the part of Wotan in the Mariinsky's staging of Wagner's "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walkuere," and few doubt that he will take the role in the third part of the tetralogy, "Siegfried," which opens in December.
Before Sunday's premiere, Vaneyev talked to Larisa Doctorow.
Q: Before "Boris Godunov" premiered, director Viktor Kramer explained how he was trying to bring forward Boris' inner drama, to show him as a person corrupted by power - a tragic figure; it sounded very persuasive. However, Mariinsky Artistic Director Valery Gergiev said afterward that he was not very happy with the production, because it failed to achieve the result for which he had hoped. What do you think?
A: I think [the production] is not complete. The music is there. The scenery, which I like very much, is there. But the show is missing action; it is static.
Q: But "Boris Godunov" is a static opera ...
A: Not at all. We started rehearsals very well. Then, as usual, there was not enough time to do everything the way it was conceived. But now, there have been a lot of changes, introduced after the premiere.
Q: You have been singing the part of Boris for nearly 20 years and participated in many different stagings of the opera. Which version of the opera do you prefer: the shorter, original one, which is being performed now, or the long version?
A: Definitely the long one. In the long version, with the Polish act, there is an extended scene of Boris with children that helps to establish his multifaceted character. He is shown as a good father. He could be a normal person, but power destroys him. I always feel sorry for Boris.
Q: Isn't it difficult performing for 2 1/2 hours without a break, as in the new production?
A: It is better [without a break]. During breaks, I cool off, relax and have to grow into the character again. Here, I can keep my emotions intact. I hardly have time to change. Boris is not a large role, but it demands not just singing but also precise acting. Underacted, it is bad; overacted, even worse.
Q: Where do you prefer to work, here or in the West?
A: If I were a rich man, I would only work here. Tours wear you out. Western contracts often don't give the specifics of what they need from the singer. You imagine and prepare your role one way, then you arrive and discover that the conductor and the stage director have a different idea. You have to change everything. Often, you don't like what they ask you to do, but singers are not free; they follow the orders from the director and the conductor. If you want to introduce something of your own, you have to fight for it.
Q: What was it like being in "Das Rheingold"?
A: The production came out very well. But it cost a lot of blood.
Q: Isn't that always the case in any theater?
A: Not necessarily. There are good productions staged without great difficulties or great clashes. The stage directors have to be good diplomats - they should know how to project their ideas to the singers. They have to know how to persuade the singers that their ideas are great. Then the singers can calmly do what is asked. Usually up to the general rehearsals, the singers do everything the director wants them to do - then the director leaves and the production falls apart.
Q: Generally, it holds together better in stagione theaters than in repertoire theaters. Which system do you prefer?
A: Definitely the stagione system - where you perform an opera only 6 to 8 times before rehearsing for the next one. The preparation is different. Right now, for example, I am preparing Boris; next is Mazepa, then Siegfried - and all within a short period of time.
Q: Are you are afraid of developing a split personality?
A: Something like that.
Q: In which language do you prefer to sing?
A: Italian. It is easier. But I also like to sing in German - it is a very beautiful language. There is nothing better than to hear German singers singing in German. In Bologna, I enjoyed listening to two German basses, first speaking and then singing in German. They inspired me to learn German well.
Q: Does that mean you will continue to sing both Verdi and Wagner?
A: Experienced people have warned me that it is not possible to combine Wagner and Verdi, but I will probably try. I still haven't decided.
Q: If the opportunity arose, would you go to work abroad?
A: Never. I could have done it a long time ago and I refused.
Q: Can you name a production in which you participated recently and which you consider close to ideal in the sense of staging as well as musical and vocal sides?
A: I would say [Verdi's] "Don Carlos" in Naples, with Jose van Dam as the Spanish King Filippo II, in which I sang the role of the Grand Inquisitor. The cast was full of stars. Things like that are rare, because it costs so much. But the experience was unforgettable.
Q: Do you have some examples of singers you would like to follow?
A: I like Jose van Dam, the Belgian bass-baritone. He is very serious about his work, a great personality, a star and, at the same time, simple to deal with.
Q: They say that he never comes unprepared and never gives a bad performance.
A: I can believe it. Watching him, I tried to understand his technique, because he does everything so well, so balanced, so rational.
Q: At the same time, though, he never reached great heights.
A: That's true. But this is a Western tradition. Besides, the public's opinion is different from the professionals' opinion. Professionals like everything balanced, reliable, without faults.
Q: If you had to choose, which would you prefer: well-balanced shows all the time, or less balanced ones with an occasional performance that's unbelievable and unforgettable?
A: I favor the Russian tradition. Let it be less balanced, but with a big fire underneath - something phenomenal, even if it happens rarely. Everyone should have their professional focus on the work - like Jose van Dam - and, on top of this foundation, they can build their own image. In our profession, a little bit of craziness is helpful and inevitable.
TITLE: Geert Mak: Breaking the Myth About Amsterdam
AUTHOR: By Charles Hoedt
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: History and travel books often present St. Petersburg and Amsterdam almost as twins. After all, Peter the Great was inspired by the capital of the Netherlands when he began building his city on the banks of the Neva River in 1703.
According to best-selling Dutch writer Geert Mak, however, the two cities do not have that much in common.
"The two cities are surrounded by a lot of water, canals, beautiful clouds and sky, but that is about the only thing they have in common," he said in an interview last week. "The harmony between Amsterdam and St. Petersburg has been romanticized too much in the past. In reality, the two cities are the opposite of each other - two distant sisters, both with their own specific looks and characters."
Mak was in St. Petersburg last weekend to deliver a lecture, entitled "Amsterdam in the Reflection of St. Petersburg" in a packed conference hall of the State Hermitage Museum. The lecture was the first in a series of public talks about Dutch-Russian history and culture that will take place at the beginning of every month.
Mak is one of the Netherlands' most popular journalists and best-selling writers. His book "Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City," a rich collection of details and facts about the city's past, has sold more than 250,000 copies. His latest book, "My Father's Century," has already exceeded that, with 400,000 sales. His works have been translated into English, German and even Hungarian and Czech.
Readers love Mak for his ability to bring together international and national history with personal stories and experiences. He employs real people as guides through world history: In "My Father's Century," for example, the story of Mak's own family leads the reader through the history of the 20th century.
According to Mak, his book about Amsterdam may have been translated into Russian.
"I signed a contract with a publisher in Moscow, and a rumor reached me that it has been published, but I have not been informed about this," he says. "Strange things happen in Eastern Europe. They did not offer me any payment for the translation but, when I signed the contract, they made me an offer to spend the weekend in Moscow. For my wife and me that was fine."
Moscow is a good example of how large-scale investment in reconstruction can damage the historical appearance of a city, says Mak, who holds a special chair in urban studies at Amsterdam University. In contrast to Moscow, St. Petersburg received no funding for new buildings in the last century.
"Actually, this lack of money saved the city," he says. "You won't find a city like St. Petersburg, with an 18th and 19th-century city center that is almost intact, in Europe very often."
Poverty also saved 17th-century Amsterdam. Soon after Peter visited the city for the second time, Dutch influence on trade and science at the international level declined. As a result, Amsterdam lost investment, and the center of the city was preserved.
"At that time," says Mak, "Amsterdam was like Sleeping Beauty in a glass coffin."
Meanwhile, St. Petersburg adopted all of the trends and styles of Western Europe.
"[Peter] intended to build a Dutch city in Russia, a city with a window on the West, but he remained a Russian tsar - a despot ruling a huge Asiatic empire with poor, indigent farmers working as slaves," says Mak. "This reality thwarted his Dutch dreams. Although Peter preferred to live a rather plain life, the royal court wanted to be rolling in wealth."
This led to an obsession to build a Dutch Petersburg, says Mak.
"Whereas Amsterdam had developed naturally, driven by increasing trade, Peter simply forced his people to build a city," he says. "St. Petersburg soon became a monumental city with boulevards and squares on which the rich nobility could see and be seen, and where military parades could take place."
"Amsterdam is still picturesque; it does not have big squares for parades. Amsterdamers do not like monuments - they never did," says Mak. "The city is anti-military, built not for the nobility and the tsars, but for the bourgeoisie and republicans. Even our city hall does not have its own square - it was built in front of the market, where you can come across our mayor riding on his bicycle through the city."
According to Mak, while Peter took Dutch symbols with him, they did not change the character of his land or his people.
"What Peter did can be compared to what Coca-Cola's symbols do now," he says. "The tsar attended Russian balls in his Dutch carpenter's clothes, but this does not mean that his people adapted the customs of people in the West - it is all a facade."
"St. Petersburg is still a city of facades," says Mak. "Everywhere, you see expensive shops, cafes and restaurants; you know that 90 percent of the population will not see them from the inside."
Mak's next book is a voyage through European history, expected in September next year.
"In 1999, I travelled around Europe for a year, and stayed in all sorts of cities: Berlin, London, Paris, Budapest. I spoke to many people - mainly ordinary, elderly people - about their life and history," he says. "The book starts in 1900, [travels] through the battlefields of World War I, the rise of Communism and Fascism, World War II, to the end of the last century."
St. Petersburg has a place, too.
"I spoke to a 102-year-old survivor of the blockade - her husband died on a sledge during the siege of Leningrad. She told me about her life under the tsar," says Mak. "She remembered going to the Mariinsky Theater as a little girl."
Mak became a best-selling author only a few years ago. How has it affected him?
"My success came like an unannounced guest; sometimes, I sometimes wish that this guest would leave for a while," he says. "Of course, it is nice to be famous, but it also disturbs your normal life."
TITLE: heroism torpedoes this k-19
AUTHOR: by Kenneth Turan
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: It's not that Hollywood doesn't know a good story when it sees one, it's that it doesn't trust that others will be equally discerning. For proof of that theorem, look no further than "K-19: The Widowmaker."
The system hasn't totally wrecked this "inspired-by-actual-events" story of undersea heroism in the face of near nuclear catastrophe. The tale is too potent, and the talent involved, from stars Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson to director Kathryn Bigelow, are too strong for that.
Rather, it's that "K-19's" determination to push hard for self-congratulatory morals and convenient resolutions undercut the film's strengths and make it more conventional. Compared to the gold standard of submarine dramas, the crackling German "Das Boot," "K-19's" self-consciousness stands out in unfortunate relief, especially because of the obvious potential for something better.
The story of what nearly happened on Russian nuclear submarine K-19 in 1961 was chilling enough for the U.S.S.R. to keep it a state secret for nearly 30 years. The cooling system on the ship's nuclear reactor malfunctioned, causing the core to heat up ominously. Unless the process could be reversed, a disastrous thermonuclear explosion would result that, given the state of U.S.-Soviet tensions at the time, would likely trigger a world war.
Bigelow, one of the top action directors of recent years, had been trying to get this story filmed since 1996. It's been a while since the director of "Near Dark" has had something on screen, and you can feel the pleasure she takes in moving both cameras and men through the constricted spaces of a Soviet submarine re-created with amazing authenticity.
As written by Christopher Kyle from a story by Louis Nowra, "K-19" opens with Mikhail Polenin (Neeson) as the captain of the brand-new submarine, the pride of the Soviet Navy and able, like the U.S.'s Polaris, to fire nuclear-tipped missiles. As a commanding officer, he's the caring father type, determined to put the welfare of his men ahead of the dictates of the state and party. And he has the nerve to talk without a Slavic accent.
The Soviet hierarchy, however, in the interest of establishing mutually assured destruction with the United States, needs the K-19 to go on its maiden test voyage before Polenin thinks it's ready. When your boat's in trouble, you need a captain willing to speak with a Russian accent, and that would be Alexei Vostrikov.
As played by Ford, Vostrikov is a somber martinet who last smiled after Stalingrad. With Polenin still on board, but demoted to executive officer, Vostrikov is determined to get the missile test done on time. Never mind that the men think the boat is cursed because the champagne bottle didn't break at the christening, never mind that the ship's doctor gets seasick and their reactor officer (Peter Sarsgaard) is new, never mind that so many men have died before the mission that the men nickname the boat "the widowmaker." "We deliver," the new captain tells Polenin, "or we drown."
Vostrikov turns out to be a bear for drills, putting his men through more turmoil than a fraternity pledge-master during Hell Week. This leads to some high decibel conflicts with Polenin, as the two men engage in a Harvard Business School-style colloquium about leadership styles. Is the captain recklessly endangering the crew, as well as scaring the heck out of them, or is he building their self-confidence by setting high standards? Vostrikov may seem like one dour dude but, with Ford in the role, there's a limit to how badly we can think of him.
Pleasantly old-fashioned for the most part, "K-19" frankly spends more time than is necessary on these preliminaries. It becomes another, better movie when the nuclear crisis begins; scenes of the men risking horrific radiation sickness as they attempt to fix the problem generate a grim kind of power. But, unwilling to let the audience draw the appropriate conclusions about these men's heroism, "K-19" throws in signpost dialogue, artificial plot complications and melodramatic character changes that cheapen, rather than enhance, the drama.
Some of the real-life K-19 survivors felt an early draft of the script portrayed them as "incompetent and undisciplined drunks." As a finished film, however, "K-19" has the opposite problem. It celebrates heroism with such a zeal for conventional emotional closure it might as well have been made under the old Soviet system that created K-19's problems in the first place.
"K-19: The Widowmaker" opens on Thursday.
TITLE: griboyedov: going overground
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Over the past six years, Griboyedov has become a St. Petersburg legend, and established itself as one of the city's top underground clubs - literally and metaphorically.
Now, the club located in a bunker is planning to surface from its lair, as it gears up to celebrate its sixth anniversary next weekend.
Further proof of the club's status was provided by a recent episode of the popular cartoon series "Masyanya," called "Sweet Dreams," in which the eponymous squeaky-voiced hero is seen playing mind games while sitting at the club's bar. The club has also recently become the subject of a documentary, which will be shown at the party next week.
The club, which opened on Oct. 18, 1996, has been in existence longer than most local clubs that called it quits over the last few years.
"Six years is a very long time, and it's fair to say that it is the city's oldest surviving underground club," says Griboyedov's spokesperson Mikhail Sindalovsky, who plays drums with Dva Samaliota, the colorful local band whose energy and inventiveness have been a key to the club's success. "Imagine - people who are coming to the club now were 12 years old when it opened. Now, they're 18."
"The club has changed people's consciousness," says Sindalovsky. "Many bands that started here have become superstars, like Multfilmy and Leningrad."
"Leningrad had its very first rehearsal and played its first few concerts at Griboyedov - for friends," he says. "And, now, they are unreachable stars."
Leningrad frontman Sergei Shnurov still occasionally visits the club to play a song or two without any advertising - to save the club from being swamped by fans - something he will probably do for the club's celebration.
From the start, the club positioned itself as independent and underground; although its repertoire varied broadly, the main demand was creativity.
Some bands that later became widely popular were not welcome at Griboyedov - for instance, pompous "Russian-rock" band Nochniye Snaipery ("Night Snipers").
"Nochniye Snaipery once asked to play a concert here - but nobody would listen to the concert," says Sindalovsky. "A few people came, but nobody liked it - the [public] said it was not 'our format,' so we don't put them on here anymore."
The idea to open a club in the bunker came from pioneering techno club Tunnel, which had opened in a former bomb shelter on the Petrograd Side two years earlier.
"There are lots of bunkers, belonging to various enterprises, so it's easy to get hold of them," says Sindalovsky about the Cold War-era underground installations. "But the main advantage is that [the bunkers] are sound-proof and light-proof, so the neighbors can't complain about noise."
Now, Griboyedov plans to go overground as well, by erecting a huge sphere over the hill inside which the bunker is located. The sphere will hold another, small bar, a dance floor and a stage for acoustic concerts. The expanded premises will be capable to hold twice as many visitors as they can now.
The avant-garde project, designed by Mikhail Barkhin, an architect and promoter of St. Petersburg's famous outdoor raves, was much talked about when it first appeared last year. According to Sindalovsky, however, it has never been as close to reality as it is now; construction work is scheduled to start before December.
"I don't think there are any other real clubs in the city; a club is defined by the crowd that gathers there," says Sindalovsky. "Jazz clubs such as JFC have it, maybe some others. Places like Hollywood Nites are not clubs - they are just money-making machines."
The club, which used to publish the amusing micro-almanac "Pam Pers," containing stories, poems and pictures, started to produce CD compilations called "Griboyedov Music" last year. With four volumes released so far, the discs include bands - both famous and unknown - that have played at the venue.
"They've become part of show business. Many bands that now make their careers in Moscow say in their biographies that they took part in Griboyedov compilations," says Sindalovsky, who also revealed that the future volumes are likely to be recorded live at the club's concerts.
Despite its honorable, underground past, the club will aim toward more respectability in the future, claims Sindalovsky.
"The underground is changing, like anything else," he says.
"[The city's pioneering underground club] TaMtAm had sh***y toilets, disposable glasses and bottled beer, as well as unwashed youth bands playing some rock and roll," he says. "Now, however, we can't pour anything into disposable glasses or tolerate dirt in toilets any more."
"I think we will take a large step toward respectability with the second floor, but I hope that young and talented bands will continue to play," he says. "The club can exist for as long as it has already, and even longer."
Griboyedov's Sixth Anniversary Party takes place on Oct. 18. See Clubbing for details. Links: www.griboedovclub.ru.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: London band Nigel Burch and The Flea-Pit Orchestra is set to bring its hard-edged skiffle and bar-room ballads to Russia - but their five-date tour includes only Moscow and, surprisingly, Obninsk, a town 106 kilometers southwest of Moscow that boasts the world's first nuclear-power plant.
But, even if you can't go to Moscow, where the band will be performing starting on Thursday, there is the group's first - and so far only - album "Bottle Sucker," officially re-released in Russia and available from the city's better record shops.
Burch, the band's frontman and songwriter, describes The Flea-Pit Orchestra's style as "punk-diddly, chamber-pot, music-hall, Cockney-Weimar, cabaret-style, urban ditties and dirges you can dance to."
Apart from Burch, the band, which is reminiscent of The Pogues' early work, features Andrew Ranken, who has played drums with The Pogues for their entire 15-year career.
In an email interview this week, Burch wrote: "The Pogues came along with the edge, the rawness and the energy but more importantly songs that were real and had intelligent [lyrics] - although since meeting Shane recently it makes you wonder how. (A good example of the negative effects of alcohol, part of the complex feeling I indeed do have about the subject.)"
Burch grew up listening to Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and English singer/songwriters like John Martyn, Richard Thompson and Nick Drake, but claims Kevin Coyne was one of his most important influences.
Some of Burch's influences come from Russia. He cites Dostoyevsky, especially "Zapiski iz Podpolya" ("Notes From Underground") and "Moskva-Petushki," the alcohol-soaked samizdat epic written by the late Venedikt Yerofeyev in 1970. Burch's literary interests even led him to a book by, and to exchange letters with, Charles Bukowski.
"Beside the songs I've always written other stuff - poetry I suppose you would call it - although that word in England sends people running screaming from the room ... I sent some poetry and stuff to Bukowski in 1984. I was surprised to receive a wonderfully supportive, friendly and very positive reply. He said, rather perversely, that great writing always made him laugh and he hadn't laughed so much since reading Celine decades ago. He also wrote, 'You're the best cure for a hangover I ever lucked across,'" he wrote.
The tour dates are at http://burch.badtaste.ru
Locally, world-music diva Cesaria Evora performs on Saturday, with tickets from 500 to 3,500 rubles ($15.80 to $110.75), which is a shame, taking into account the stories about her past in poverty. French electronica meister Kid Loco will entertain clubgoers at Shuvalov Palace the same night.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: lunch saved by a cheap italian
AUTHOR: by Thomas Rymer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: To subtitle this piece "A Tale of Two Lunches" almost necessitates that the sentence "it was the best of lunches, it was the worst of lunches" be present somewhere in the text, so there it is.
In this case, my experience in writing a lunch review actually came in the opposite order, saving the best for last.
My lunch companion and I set off to find out what was happening at the hip-looking new joint CCCP (for those with Russian-alphabet difficulties, this is the Cyrillic form of U.S.S.R.), brimming with curiosity. The location, on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Sadovaya Ulitsa, used to be home to a Titanic music and video store, which ultimately went under. (To be fair, the chain itself appears to be doing fine; I just threw that in to have more fun with the metaphor.). So, the choice of the name for the new occupant led us to question whether it wasn't tempting the fates to select another enterprise that ended less than successfully.
Our fears were confirmed when we discovered that the worst of lunches, with the exception of the one that gives you food poisoning, is the one that you don't get to eat.
Upon arrival, we found a sign reading "Closed for Technical Reasons" (which, I'm starting to believe, may be the most appropriate Russian translation of the Spanish word siesta). Interested in finding out how long the break would be, I stuck my head inside, where a young man informed me that the restaurant would open in 1 1/2 hours. But, just a moment later, he stuck his head out the door to the street and revised the earlier number down to only one hour. Deciding that we would wait, my companion and I retired to a nearby cafe to pass the time.
Returning to CCCP 90 minutes later, we found the same sign posted on the door. Again, I ducked my head inside, this time to be brusquely informed by two young men on their way out that they were closed and would open at six. Telling them what their colleague had said earlier generated nothing more than a smirk from the two, and they ignored any other questions that I asked. Summoning my regular level of cool, calm and collected maturity in stressful situations, I swore at them as they were walking away.
So, angry, frustrated, hungry and knowing that I had promised our arts editor that I would write this week's restaurant review, I turned for what I knew to be a sure thing - Mama Roma's business lunch.
I am no stranger to the Mama Roma business lunch, as I became a big fan of it over the summer. For the low price of 128 rubles ($4), the restaurant offers a buffet of hot dishes, usually comprising at least two pastas, a meat dish or two, as well as a concoction worked up from rice or potatoes. The dishes vary from day to day.
The salad bar, if not as comprehensive as some you may have sampled, definitely stands out in the city for providing not one, but two very fresh lettuce options and a basic complement of other, again, very fresh, vegetable options, along with three dressings, pickles, olives and the like.
As a bonus, there are a number of prepared salads - the pasta creations are almost always great - and, if you look on top of the bar, pizza.
Topped off with fresh bread and soft drink or juice, the Mama Roma option is quick, tasty and filling.
My companion and I, arriving late as a result of the CCCP debacle, headed straight to the steam tables, where we were greeted by stuffed green peppers; rigatoni prepared in a white cream sauce with ham, peas and green onions; another rigatoni, this time in a tomato sauce with green peppers; and fish-and-potato patties.
The stuffed peppers were a new twist at the restaurant for me, but they were great, filled with a ground-beef and rice mixture done in enough tomato sauce to give it all the taste it needed.
My dining companion chimed in with accolades for the fish patties, seeing that my indifference to fish had led me to skip the dish entirely. I was happy just to busy myself with the cream-sauce rigatoni.
Going further through the items on the buffet is pointless, as they change daily, but there are a few that have become favorites. Of special mention are the pasta in mushroom sauce, which is wonderfully creamy and makes a perfect bed for whatever the meat dish(es) may be on that day. The meatballs are also a treat.
Following our lunch, and feeling a little calmer, we relaxed with dessert. I opted for a Black Forest gateau (96 rubles, $3) and an American coffee (50 rubles, $1.50), while my lunch companion went with the tiramisu (128 rubles, $4) and a cappuccino (64 rubles, $2).
Returning to the street, we decided that we should just have set out for Mama Roma from the beginning. A good, filling and tasty meal in a reasonable amount of time, and the whole thing for about $20, including dessert.
So, especially after being in the CCCP, it makes more sense to do as the Romans do.
Mama Roma, 3 Karavannaya Ul. Tel.: 314-0347. Business lunch, noon to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. Credit cards not accepted. Business lunch for two, with dessert: 624 rubles ($19.75).
TITLE: Suicide Bomber Kills Two in Bus Attack
AUTHOR: By Ramit Plushnick-Masti
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TEL AVIV, Israel - An Israeli bus driver and a paramedic pinned a Palestinian suicide bomber to the ground Thursday after spotting his bomb belt, then fled with other bystanders before the man detonated the explosives. The assailant and an elderly woman were killed, and four people were injured.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The Islamic militant group Hamas has said that it would avenge an Israeli raid on the Gaza town of Khan Younis this week in which 16 Palestinians were killed.
Also Thursday, two Palestinian boys, ages 12 and 17, were killed in an exchange of fire between Israeli soldiers and local gunmen in the Gaza Strip. The deaths brought to 20 the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza this week.
In the suicide attack, the bomber first tried to board the bus at a crowded bus stop near the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, but slipped and fell onto the sidewalk, apparently pulled back by the weight of the explosives. The driver said that he got off the bus to help the man and spotted the bomb when he opened the man's shirt to check for injuries.
A Hamas spokesperson, Ismail Abu Shanab, said that he did not know who was behind the suicide attack, but that "resistance will continue by all means until we get our rights."
Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority has condemned attacks on civilians in Israel. However, Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rdeneh, said Thursday that "the Israelis are responsible for every single act of violence in the region."
David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, said that "Palestinian terrorists have declared open season on Israelis," and held the Palestinian Authority responsible, saying that it does nothing to prevent attacks.
The explosion went off at a bus stop on a major highway east of Tel Aviv. Just before the explosion, the bomber tried to board a bus which was crowded with soldiers.
The Tel Aviv police chief, Yossi Sedbon, said that the bomber slipped and fell off the steps, onto the sidewalk.
The driver, Baruch Neuman, got off the bus to help the man, still unaware he was carrying explosives. A paramedic also approached the man lying on the ground.
The driver said that he opened the bomber's shirt to check for injuries and spotted the bomb belt. "We pinned down his arms," Neuman said. "There were lots of people at the bus stop. After everyone fled, we released him and he blew up."
Neuman, who was unarmed, said he let go of the bomber because he began to fear for his life. He said the assailant, who had been passive, was beginning to struggle. "We [the driver and the paramedic] made the decision together to let go of the arms, and to flee together," Neuman said.
The bomber then got up and ran for about 30 meters, toward a group of people at the bus stop.
"I saw the terrorist run after us and then I heard the explosion," said a bystander, 45-year-old supermarket cashier Niri Salam.
An elderly Israeli woman was killed and four other bystanders were wounded, police said. About a dozen others were treated for shock.
Many of the passengers were soldiers. It was not immediately clear why they did not kill the assailant before he blew himself up.
It marked the second time in three weeks that the Tel Aviv area was targeted. On Sept. 19, a Hamas activist blew himself up on a Tel Aviv bus, killing five Israelis.
The pace of suicide attacks has slowed since June when Israeli troops reoccupied most West Bank towns, in response to two deadly bombings in Jerusalem. However, even with the heavy military presence, including curfews that confine hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to their homes, Israel has been unable to seal its frontier with the West Bank completely.
Overnight, Israeli troops entered several West Bank towns and villages and arrested 70 Palestinians. The military said that the raid targeted Hamas. In one village, soldiers found and detonated a 15-kilogram bomb.
In Gaza, Israeli tanks and troops exchanged fire throughout the night and into the morning with Palestinian gunmen in the Rafah refugee camp near the Egyptian border, witnesses said.
Palestinians said that more than 20 tanks and several jeeps, backed by attack helicopters, moved on the refugee camp from two directions, firing machine guns. After daybreak, children and teenagers came out of their houses to watch the fighting, residents said, and two boys, ages 12 and 17, were killed.
The Israeli military said that the fighting broke out during an army operation to seek and destroy tunnels used to smuggle arms into Gaza from Egypt. It said two such tunnels were sealed.
A few hours earlier, two Palestinians were killed and 17 wounded when soldiers in tanks opened fire with machine guns at Palestinians throwing rocks at them, witnesses said. The Israeli military said that soldiers returned fire after gunmen shot at them.
TITLE: Hungarian Writer Gets Nobel for Literature
AUTHOR: By Kim Gamel
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian who survived Auschwitz as a teenager, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for writing that "upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history."
The Swedish Academy singled out his 1975 debut novel, "Sorstalansag" ("Fateless"), in which he writes about a man who is arrested and taken to a concentration camp, but conforms and survives.
"For him, Auschwitz is not an exceptional occurrence," the academy said. "It is the ultimate truth about human degradation in modern experience."
The 72-year-old Kertesz, a Jew born in Budapest, was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, then to Buchenwald, where he was liberated in 1945.
"The refusal to compromise in Kertesz's stance can be perceived clearly in his style, which is reminiscent of a thickset hawthorn hedge, dense and thorny for unsuspecting visitors," the citation read.
"Fateless" was the first of a trilogy of novels reflecting on the Holocaust. In "A kudarc" ("Fiasco"), published in 1988, an aging author writes a novel about Auschwitz that he expects to be rejected. When the book, to his surprise, is published, he feels only emptiness and a loss of privacy.
"Kaddish a meg nem szueletetett" ("Kaddish For a Child Not Born"), the third work of the trilogy, is a short novel published in 1990. The narrator is a middle-aged Holocaust survivor who has become a writer and literary translator. He agonizes over the effects of his past, lamenting that he cannot raise a child in so cruel a world and looks back on a failed marriage and disappointing career.
Kertesz's other works include such nonfiction collections as "The Holocaust as Culture," "Moments of Silence While the Execution Squad Reloads" and "The Exiled Language."
The Nobel award is worth about $1 million.
The 18 lifetime members of the 216-year-old Swedish Academy make the annual selection in deep secrecy at one of their weekly meetings and do not even reveal the date of the announcement until two days beforehand.
Nominees are not revealed publicly for 50 years, leaving the literary world only to guess about who was in the running. However, many of the same critically acclaimed authors are believed to be on the short list every year.
Last year's award went to perennial favorite V.S. Naipaul, a British novelist and essayist born in Trinidad to parents of Indian descent.
A week of Nobel Prizes started Monday with the medicine award, followed Tuesday by physics and Wednesday by chemistry and economics.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner will be named Friday in Oslo, Norway, the only Nobel not awarded in Sweden.
Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, specified in his will endowing the awards that nationality should not be a consideration, but many believe the Swedish Academy tries to spread the honor over different geographical areas.
Nobel otherwise gave only vague guidance about the prize, saying that it should go to those who "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind."
TITLE: German Police Arrest Second 9/11 Suspect in Hamburg
AUTHOR: By Geir Moulson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BERLIN - A Moroccan man was arrested Thursday on suspicion that he provided logistical support to the Hamburg cell of the Sept. 11-terrorist plotters believed to have been led by suicide pilot Mohamed Atta, German federal prosecutors said.
Abdelghani Mzoudi, 29, had close contacts over several years with the members of the cell, which included two of the other Sept. 11 pilots - Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah - and attended training camps in Afghanistan in the summer of 2000, prosecutors said in a statement. Mzoudi was arrested in a Hamburg suburb on Thursday.
"He was aware of the aim of the group to commit terrorist attacks and supported it logistically," the statement said.
Mzoudi, only the second person arrested in Germany in connection with the attacks, is accused of supporting a terrorist organization. Prosecutors said that his training in Afghanistan overlapped with fellow Moroccans and suspected Hamburg-cell logisticians Mounir el Motassadeq, who faces trial later this month, and Zakariya Essabar, who is at large.
Mzoudi had been under investigation for nearly a year and was questioned in July when Hamburg police raided an Islamic bookstore that investigators believed was a meeting place for a fundamentalist group plotting new attacks.
Police at the time questioned eight men but found insufficient evidence to make any arrests. However, they remained suspicious, saying that Mzoudi remained under investigation in connection with the Hamburg cell.
Federal prosecutors said that they arrested him following a "complex investigation" that included a witness statement obtained this summer confirming his Afghanistan stay.
After arresting him at an undisclosed location, German federal police took Mzoudi to his own apartment on a quiet street in the Hamburg suburb of Harburg. Mzoudi, in jeans and sneakers, zipped the collar of his jacket over his face as officers led him in and out of the building and did not speak with reporters.
His landlady, who would not give her name, said that Mzoudi had lived with a roommate, Abderrazek Labied, in a first-floor apartment for about four years.
An elderly man who lives on the top floor of the four-story building said that while Labied was often friendly when they passed in the hallway, Mzoudi kept to himself. "He was odd," said the man, who declined to give his name.
Mzoudi once shared a Hamburg apartment with Essabar and Ramzi Binalshibh, both suspected members of the cell. Binalshibh, a Yemeni who German prosecutors say is the key contact person with the al-Qaida network, is now in U.S. custody, while Essabar disappeared around the time of the Sept. 11 attacks and is wanted by German authorities on an international arrest warrant.
Atta also lived in the apartment at one time, but had moved out by the time Mzoudi moved in on Sept. 1, 1999, authorities said.
Mzoudi transferred money to Essabar to finance his planned flight training in the United States at the end of 2000 or beginning of 2001, prosecutors said Thursday.
They also said that he helped "cover up al-Shehhi's whereabouts," finding him a room in student housing where he was able to pass his last weeks in Germany "unnoticed" before departing at the end of May 2000 for flight school in the United States.
The three Hamburg suicide pilots - al-Shehhi, Jarrah and Atta - all began flight training in Florida around the same time, in the middle of 2000.
Hamburg police said that a video of suspected cell-member Said Bahaji's wedding, cited previously by authorities, showed both Mzoudi and Atta, indicating the men knew one another. Bahaji disappeared days before the attacks and German authorities have issued a warrant for his arrest.
Mzoudi was an electrical-engineering student at Hamburg's Technical University, where other cell members studied, from 1995 to 1997. He has been enrolled in a similar program at Hamburg's School for Applied Sciences since 1998.
His name was one of seven on an FBI list given to Hamburg Technical University officials by Hamburg police two days after the Sept. 11 attacks. The list also includes Atta, al-Shehhi, Bahaji and el Motassadeq.
El Motassadeq has been indicted on charges of being an accessory to murder in the Sept. 11 attacks and belonging to a terrorist organization.
TITLE: Rangers Kick Off New Season With Win
AUTHOR: By David Droschak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RALEIGH, North Carolina - Coaching an underachieving bunch of high-priced hockey stars in New York City hasn't exactly been a dream job the last few seasons.
Don't tell that to Bryan Trottier, who knows a thing or two about winning.
Trottier's quest to break the New York Rangers' five-year playoff drought got off to a strong start with a 4-1 season-opening win over the Carolina Hurricanes on Wednesday night.
The Rangers played inspired hockey in Trottier's head coaching debut, getting two goals each from 41-year-old Mark Messier and Petr Nedved, while killing off nine Carolina power plays.
"This to me was very, very special for a lot of different reasons," said Trottier, who won four Stanley Cups with the New York Islanders and two with the Pittsburgh Penguins as a player. He won one as an assistant coach with the Colorado Avalanche.
"When someone takes a chance on you, a guy like Glen Sather takes a chance on you, you've got to make sure you've got your team prepared. Secondly, the guys played hard. I thank them."
In other NHL season-opening games, it was Dallas 1, Colorado 1; and Los Angeles 4, Phoenix 1.
After a scoreless first period, Messier got career goals Nos. 659 and 660 within a three-minute span to send the Rangers on their way.
It was the first multigoal game in an opener for Messier, who is beginning his 24th NHL season.
"I guess there's a first for everything if you play long enough," Messier said.
Nedved's game was also a major positive for the Rangers, who have tried to deal the center at times after several lackluster years.
But Trottier switched Nedved to the wing this season, and he produced a pair of goals and an overall sound game at his new position.
"I said before the season I was confident I can change from center to wing," Nedved said. "There's no question this is a nice start for me, but the important thing is we won the game. A few of the chances I had last year, they weren't going in and they're going in now."
The most improved part of New York's game was its penalty killing, which finished last in the NHL last season.
The Rangers killed a 5-on-3 in the game's opening two minutes and were 6-for-6 through two periods en route to a 3-0 lead.
"Whenever they had good, smart pressure, we all moved as four," Trottier said. "Special teams are important to any team's success. If you believe in your penalty killing, believe in your power play, it's going to help tremendously."
The sellout crowd of 18,730 stood and cheered for 15 minutes before the puck was dropped as the Carolina mascot - Stormy - brought the Prince of Wales trophy onto the ice and the scoreboard replayed highlights of the team'splayoff run to the Stanley Cup finals.
Dallas 1, Colorado 1. In Denver, Colorado's Radim Vrbata scored the tying goal early in the third period, giving the Avalanche a tie.
Dallas goalie Marty Turco had 40 saves, and Colorado's Patrick Roy made 24.
Niko Kapanen scored early in the first period - the first goal of the NHLseason and the first of his career.
Los Angeles 4, Phoenix 1. Eric Belanger and Ziggy Palffy scored second-period goals and host Los Angeles opened the season with a win over Phoenix on the night the Kings retired Wayne Gretzky's No. 99 jersey (see stand alone photo).
Los Angeles goalie Felix Potvin stopped 25 shots for the victory.
TITLE: Safin Barely Through to Quarters
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LYON, France - Top-seeded Marat Safin reached the quarterfinals of the Lyon Grand Prix with a 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (12-10) victory over Wayne Arthurs on Wednesday.
Safin had never beaten the hard-serving Arthurs, who was playing him for the third time. Safin is ranked No. 3 by the ATP despite not having won a tournament this season, although he reached the final of the Australian Open. He has yet to qualify for the year-ending Masters Cup in Shanghai, China.
Also Wednesday, Yevgeny Kafelnikov beat Fernando Meligeni of Brazil 6-3, 6-4; Danish qualifier Kristian Pless rallied to beat Ivan Ljubicic 4-6, 6-4, 6-4; Arnaud Clement defeated sixth-seeded Fernando Gonzalez 6-4, 6-3; No. 7 Max Mirnyi beat Olivier Rochus 6-3, 7-5; Jonas Bjorkman downed Jan-Michael Gambill 6-2, 7-6 (9-7); and Paul-Henri Mathieu eliminated Julien Boutter 6-2, 7-5.
In Vienna, Austria, top-seeded Tommy Haas of Germany beat Mikhail Youzhny of Russia 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 to advance to the second round of the CA Trophy.
The German took the first set 6-2 in less than 30 minutes, but a series of unforced errors brought the Russian back into the match in the second set.
Youzhny kept the momentum going into the third set and took a 4-1 lead. But Haas fought back, winning four games in a row before closing out the match in the 12th game.
Earlier, Czech qualifier Radek Stepanek topped Stefan Koubek of Austria 6-3, 6-7 (3), 7-6 (1).
Also, sixth-seeded Roger Federer of Switzerland beat Croatia's Zeljko Krajan 7-5, 6-1; James Blake of the United States defeated countryman Vincent Spadea 3-6, 6-2, 6-3; Czech Jiri Novak topped Guillermo Coria of Argentina 7-5, 6-2; and former French Open champion Carlos Moya of Spain downed Agustin Calleri of Argentina 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (9-7).
In Filderstadt, Germany, top-seeded Jennifer Capriati lost to qualifier Alexandra Stevenson 7-6 (7-3), 4-6, 6-4 Wednesday in a second-round match of the Porsche Grand Prix.
The 35th-ranked Stevenson, who played three matches to reach the main draw, gambled on winners throughout and hit her second serve full strength to pressure Capriati.
The 21-year-old Stevenson, who reached the semifinals at Wimbledon as a qualifier in 1999, charged to a 5-2 lead in the third set before Capriati broke serve and closed within 4-5.
Stevenson broke back in the next game, winning a baseline duel and clinching the win in 2 hours, 11 minutes when Capriati netted a backhand.
Capriati, who reached No. 1 at the event last year when Martina Hingis injured her right ankle in the semifinals, was knocked out of the event in her first match for the third time.
TITLE: Giants Emerge Victorious From Slugfest
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ST. LOUIS - Barry Bonds delivered yet another big hit, then almost got into a real slugfest with the St. Louis Cardinals. In a postseason that is rapidly becoming all his own, Bonds was in the middle of the action Wednesday night. He lined a two-run triple and later became part of a bench-clearing brouhaha as the San Francisco Giants beat St. Louis 9-6 in the opener of the NL championship series.
Though no punches were thrown, there was plenty of pushing and shoving in the fifth inning after Kenny Lofton took exception to a high-and-tight fastball. Bonds jawed with the Cardinals as tempers flared.
"My job is to protect my teammates, and I will neutralize it, that's that," Bonds said.
Bonds went 1-for-2 with three walks and scored twice. He'd already put his previous playoff failures in the past, hitting three home runs against Atlanta in the opening round.
"The thing this win does, it guarantees us four more games, that's it," the four-time MVP said.
Benito Santiago, batting behind Bonds, homered and drove in four runs, and David Bell and Lofton also connected.
It was 6-1 after three innings as the Giants tattooed Matt Morris, and it was a good omen for them - the team that has won the last nine NLCS openers has reached the World Series.
There were two versions of what started the trouble at Busch Stadium.
Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said it began because Lofton stood at home plate and admired his home run.
"That was very unnecessary. It's a trick I've seen him pull before," La Russa said. "It caused a lot of stirring around and people saying nasty things to each other."
Lofton, naturally, disagreed. He said reliever Mike Crudale's inside pitch was to blame.
"This is the playoffs, you have fun, you enjoy it. I don't think I did anything wrong," Lofton said. "We were kicking their butts, and they wanted to do something to upset me."
Lofton had to be restrained by several teammates, a coach and an umpire.
"I don't think I overreacted," Lofton said.
As players sprinted toward the plate, Bonds and Cardinals reserve Eduardo Perez had to be separated, with Cardinals reliever Steve Kline pacifying the Giants slugger.
La Russa and Giants manager Dusty Baker, who a day earlier gushed about how much they liked each other, started screaming in an animated exchange that forced a pair of umpires to pull them apart.
About the only one to keep cool was Kirk Rueter. Born and raised right across the Mississippi River, he kept winning at the ballpark where he rooted for the Cardinals as a kid.
The big lead enabled the Giants to hold off a rally fueled by home runs from Albert Pujols, surprising Miguel Cairo and pinch-hitter J.D. Drew. Robb Nen pitched the ninth for a save.
Anaheim 6, Minnesota 3. A night after losing meekly to Minnesota in the opener, the Angels came alive.
Darin Erstad and Brad Fullmer hit big home runs, Troy Percival and the bullpen got important outs, and the Angels beat the perky, pesky Twins 6-3 Wednesday night to head home with a split in the first two games of the AL championship series.
"Our job was to come here and win one out of two on the road," Fullmer said. "So we've done that. We've bounced back. We're a resilient team. Nobody panics."
A night after Joe Mays stymied Anaheim's high-octane offense in the Twins' 2-1 opening victory, the Angels quickly got to Rick Reed. Erstad, the No. 2 batter, sent Reed's sixth pitch over the fence in right-center, where it landed 125 meters away - nestled in one of the stacked-up seats used for Vikings and Gophers games.
"It's nice to get a lead. It's nice to jump out. It gave us a big lift," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said.
Anaheim added three runs in the second, two of them unearned because of a costly error by catcher A.J. Pierzynski, who couldn't hold on to a throw home after Reed caught a runner off first.
When Fullmer chased Reed with a two-run homer in the sixth, it seemed over. But Minnesota battled right back, knocking Ramon Ortiz out in the sixth when Corey Koskie hit an RBI single and Doug Mientkiewicz, who had three hits, had a two-run single.
Then the Angels bullpen stopped the Twins as cold as the Midwest autumn air outside the done.
Brendan Donnelly got out of the inning, and 20-year-old rookie Francisco Rodriguez struck out two in a 1-2-3 seventh.
After a two-out walk to Torii Hunter and a single by Mientkiewicz put runners at the corners in the eighth, Scioscia brought in Troy Percival, whom he had been reluctant to use in the eighth until after New York rallied to win the division series opener.
"In the playoffs, it doesn't matter. I'll come out in the seventh," Percival said.
Percival, who hasn't allowed an unearned run to Minnesota in 35 innings during the regular season, got ahead 1-2 in the count on pinch-hitter Bobby Kielty. With the crowd on its feet, shouting and waving their hankies, Kielty took a called third strike on a changeup.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Sergeant Wilko Returns
SUNDERLAND, England (Reuters) - English Premiership club Sunderland opted for the tried and tested experience of Howard Wilkinson when it named the former Leeds United manager as the replacement for Peter Reid on Thursday.
Sunderland lies 17th in the 20-team premier division after winning just two of their first nine matches.
Wilkinson, currently a technical director with the England national team, has signed a contract until the end of the 2004-2005 season and his first match in charge will be a home game against West Ham Utd. on October 19.
Wilkinson, 59 next month, was last involved as a full-time club manager in September 1996 when he was sacked by Leeds, four years after leading them to the last-ever first division title before the introduction of the Premiership.
He was the last English manager to win the title and twice took temporary charge of the England national team after the sacking of Glenn Hoddle and the resignation of Kevin Keegan. He has long been involved with England's under-21 and youth teams.
"I am very, very excited," said Wilkinson, not known as one of the game's more excitable characters. "I can't remember the last time I was as excited as I am now."
Trammell Tigers' Skip
DETROIT (AP) - Alan Trammell became the Tigers' fifth manager since Sparky Anderson's 17-season tenure ended in 1995, signing a three-year contract with a club option for a fourth season on Wednesday.
With veterans that didn't perform as well as they were paid to, and prospects rushed to the major leagues, the Tigers tied Tampa Bay for the worst mark in the majors with a 55-106 record and their ninth straight losing season.
The Tigers have struggled for the most part since Trammell helped them win the 1984 World Series - Detroit's fourth - and the AL East title in 1987. Detroit's last winning season was in 1993.
Trammell will be a manager for the first time - at any level - when the Tigers begin next season on March 31 at home against Minnesota.
Trammell, 44, was San Diego's first-base coach the past three seasons and was the Padres' outfield and baserunning coach.
When Trammell's 20-season career in Detroit ended in 1996, he spent the next two seasons as an assistant in the franchise's baseball operations department and one season as the Tigers' hitting coach.
Trammell hit .285 with 185 homers and 1,003 RBIs as Detroit's shortstop from 1977-1996. The six-time All-Star won four Gold Gloves and was the World Series MVP in 1984 when the Tigers won their fourth and last championship.
Donovan Rewarded
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) - Landon Donovan was selected Honda Player of the Year on Tuesday after leading the U.S. team to the quarterfinals of the World Cup. The 20-year-old forward-midfielder received 497 points - including 74 first-place votes - in balloting by 277 U.S. journalists who cover soccer.
"I feel bad, like the young guy shouldn't win," Donovan said after the presentation at the Beverly Hilton hotel.
"I'm really astonished," said Donovan, who received a new car and a trophy.
Brad Friedel finished second with 382 points, and Claudio Reyna, who won the award in 2000, was third with 274 points.
Donovan became the youngest winner of the 12-year-old award, which goes to a member of the U.S. national team.
Donovan plays for Major League Soccer's San Jose Earthquakes and helped lead them to the 2001 MLS championship in his first season with the team.