SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #814 (79), Tuesday, October 22, 2002
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TITLE: Reserve Fund About To Hit the Road
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The debate over the city's 2003 draft budget, and the deputies' reserve fund in particular, took a new turn on Monday when the Legislative Assembly's Budget and Finance Committee (BFK) decided to exclude the fund from the draft.
In its place, the BFK introduced an amendment calling for a fund earmarked for the resurfacing of city roads. But some members of the assembly say that the move merely exploits a legal loophole and the money will ultimately be used in the same way as the reserve fund has been in the past.
The reserve fund, which has existed since 1995 and allows deputies to spend equal shares of 2 percent of the city's budget, has been repeatedly criticized by both the Prosecutor's Office and the local Audit Chamber as being unlawful. In 2001, the reserve fund provided each deputy with around $1.7 million.
"The reserve fund will not be included in next year's budget, in the form in which it had been existing in previous years," Sergei Nikishin, who heads the BFK, said on Monday, Interfax reported.
"The Budget and Finance Committee has fulfilled all the requirements of the legislation, the Audit Chamber, the Prosecutor's Office, and the city administration," he said
According to lawmaker Leonid Romankov, however, the deputies will still get their money to spend.
"What happened is that the reserve fund was brought into line with legislation. The governor proposed a draft budget that included a reserve fund, and this is not lawful," Romankov said on Monday. "Basically, the reserve fund will not exist as such, but the principle remains the same. The BFK proposed to reserve 2 percent of the budget for a supposed resurfacing of roads. This money will be used as a reserve fund."
According to Romankov, the money will be split between the deputies in the name of the road fund, and will allow them to fund projects as they have in the past - as they see fit.
The draft budget, which initially contained a provision for the reserve fund, was passed by the Legislative Assembly in its first reading on Oct. 2.
Monday's amendments to the draft budget will be discussed by the Legislative Assembly at the budget's second reading on Wednesday.
The decision to pass the budget draft for 2003 on first reading was immediately criticized as a violation of the Budget Code by a number of analysts and politicians, who protested that the reserve fund could only be introduced into the budget in its second or third reading.
"The assembly should not have passed the draft budget in first reading. It should have sent it back and requested that the deficit and the reserve fund be excluded," said the Union of Right Forces faction leader in the assembly, Mikhail Brodsky, who was one of the few deputies to criticize the budget on first reading.
Romankov and Brodsky both said that the draft budget and its amendment concerning the reserve fund would have no difficulties in garnering the required 26 votes.
The controversy around the reserve fund was revived on Oct. 11, when Governor Vladimir Yakovlev said that he would not sign off on the budget if it included the deputies' reserve fund.
A number of analysts characterized the governor's statement as an angry reaction to the Legislative Assembly's rejection a few days earlier of a draft law aimed at granting him the right to run for a third term.
On Oct. 14, St. Petersburg Audit Chamber President Dmitry Burenin told journalists that the chamber would join the fray by carrying out a review of the draft budget, saying it was in violation with the Budget Code.
Burenin has repeatedly stated his opposition to the reserve fund, saying that it created a basis for corruption, since deputies are not required to discuss in parliament how they will spend the money.
"I think that the budget, as it currently stands, should be protested. I want to stress, once again, that the reserve fund contradicts the law," he said in an interview on Monday. "The deputies are acting in their own interests, not in the interest of the city. It is not to the citizens' advantage to have deputies spend 2 percent of the city budget without any control."
Burenin, who was present at the BFK meeting, said that Monday's decision also violates the law.
"This proposition violates the Budget Code, which stipulates that where the money comes from and how it is spent should be accounted for. At present, a mechanism remains by which deputies are able to spend two percent of the budget without any control," he said.
"It is not the Audit Chamber's role, however, to enforce the law. The chamber can only point out violations of the law," Burenin added. "If the Prosecutor's Office takes a firm stand against the reserve fund, then things could change."
TITLE: Census Shows Rise in Chechnya Inhabitants
AUTHOR: By Timur Aliev
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: GROZNY, Chechnya - Given that Chechnya has suffered three years of conflict and emigration, many here were astounded when the results of the first census since the second Chechen war showed that the population had undergone a miraculous expansion.
Provisional returns from the census showed that Chechnya's population stood at about 1.08 million - around 300,000 higher than 1999 estimates. Since then, human-rights activists calculate that up to 100,000 Chechens have died in fighting, and far more have been forced to flee. Around 150,000 refugees are registered in Ingushetia alone.
According to the 1977 Soviet census, Chechnya and Ingushetia had a combined population of 1.1 million, including 300,000 Russians, almost all of whom have left since 1991, and 200,000 Ingush, who formed a separate republic in 1992.
Chechnya underwent another census in 1998, when it was de facto independent from Moscow. "A lack of funds did not allow us to make a detailed analysis of the data," said Lyuba Magomadova, who was responsible for that count. "But the number of residents of the Chechen republic was counted - it was approximately 800,000 people."
Moscow allocated almost 50 million rubles (more than $1.5 million) for this month's census in Chechnya and employed more than 10,000 people to work on it. Perhaps fearing a backlash from the local population, it produced trinkets and pens and printed 400,000 leaflets - 200,000 each in Russian and Chechen - advertising the coming count. It was then trailed in newspapers and on television.
"The population of the republic actively participated in this state activity," Ramzan Digayev, the top census official, told a session of the local government. He estimated that 90 percent of the population had taken part. "The only people we could not count were those living in places that were hard to reach because of military action or the weather."
Still, even in Grozny, many people say the census simply passed them by. Fatima Rasayeva, who lives in Chernorechye on the outskirts of Grozny, simply shrugged her shoulders when asked if she was surveyed. "No one came to either us or to our relatives," she said.
Chechens who filled in the forms said that answering some of the questions was a real challenge. "Take the point 'size of space occupied,'" said Lidia Yusupova, who was in charge of the census in the Leninsky District of Grozny. "Many of our residents live in semi-destroyed homes. In my own two-room apartment, one room is closed. The floor has fallen through from the fifth to the first story. What should I say?"
Census-taking in Grozny was a tricky undertaking altogether. "In one five-story apartment block, which was not even ruined, I could not get an answer from a single apartment," said Suleimanova. "Either absolutely no one is living in the house or no one wanted to answer the door."
Ruslan Badalov, a prominent Chechen human-rights activist based in Ingushetia, said he saw political motives for the high results.
"I see two possible reasons for what has happened," he said. "In the first place, a deliberate increase in the size of the population is useful to heads of administration in Chechnya: It means allocating financial resources for 'dead souls,' children's benefits, pensions and so on, which can then be 'pocketed away.'
"Second, the authorities in the Kremlin and the Russian military need to show that people are returning and that means that military action in the republic has ended and peaceful life has returned."
Despite the chorus of complaint, the authorities have already begun to make use of the new figures. Meeting Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, the pro-Moscow prime minister of Chechnya, Stanislav Ilyasov, asked: "One million one hundred thousand people are living peacefully in Chechnya, so why don't the refugees in Ingushetia return home?"
Ilyasov said the census data showed there were only 26,000 refugees living in camps in Ingushetia (many others live in private accommodation). He said most of them could be found homes in Chechnya.
Timur Aliev is a freelance journalist based in Nazran, Ingushetia. He wrote this story for the London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting (iwpr.net).
TITLE: Officials Pave Way For WHO TB Loan
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A working group of international and Russian health officials agreed on a tuberculosis program Friday that should pave the way for the release of a stalled World Bank loan for fighting the infectious disease.
Health Minister Yury Shevchenko is expected to sign off on the program, which is modeled on the World Health Organization's TB strategy, in the next few weeks.
Wieslaw Jakubowiak, the World Health Organization's tuberculosis-program director in Moscow, said the approval should open the door to a $150 million World Bank loan to fight TB and AIDS that has been in limbo since 1998.
Jakubowiak said the working group, which was created in August 1999 to advise Shevchenko on tuberculosis, had ironed out the contradictions between WHO's tuberculosis program and local practices that had stalled the loan.
Once Shevchenko approves the program, the next step will be to implement a five-year plan that includes World Bank funding, he said.
Christof Ruhl, the World Bank's chief economist in Russia, said $100 million of the loan is earmarked for TB and $50 million for HIV and AIDS.
"There has been increased budget finance for these things," he said in a telephone interview earlier this month. "This project has been designed now so that it fits into these federal targeted programs and basically fills the gaps that are left despite the increased budgetary funding."
The federal budget to fight TB has increased steadily in the last four years from $21.5 million in 1999 to $51.2 million this year, according to the WHO.
Ruhl said negotiations for the loan are expected to start in December.
Jakubowiak said World Bank funding might become available in the second quarter of next year.
A main point of contention in working group talks had been a World Bank demand that drug supplies be bought through tenders.
Asked whether there had been a compromise on the issue, Jakubowiak said Friday that it is understood that the government will buy the drugs from local suppliers. The WHO is helping to certify four suppliers to international standards.
Russia has one of the highest TB rates in the world, but in 2001 there was no increase in the number of new cases for the first time in many years.
About 30,000 people die in Russia from TB each year, according to the WHO. Last year, there were about 130,000 new cases of TB and the incidence was 88.2 people per 100,000. However, incidence rates are some 30 times higher in the prison system, at 2,783 per 100,000 convicts in prison and 1,509 per 100,000 in pre-trial detention centers.
WHO officials are hoping to bring down the annual TB death rate by 4 percent to 6 percent.
Mikko Vienonen, a special representative of the WHO director general in Russia, said the group's efforts had laid the ground for closer ties between Russian and international health officials.
"The group for tuberculosis has not only done a good job on TB but has likely opened the door for further cooperation between the WHO and the Health Ministry," he said.
TITLE: Magadan Governor Gunned Down in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A gunman hiding behind a billboard on Novy Arbat in Moscow shot the governor of the gold-rich Magadan region on Friday morning, in one of the country's most brazen assassinations in years.
Valentin Tsvetkov, 54, alighted from his Mercedes near his office at 8:50 a.m. and was waiting for his wife, Lyudmila, and aide Pyotr Shapka to get out of the car when the unknown attacker fired a single 9-mm bullet into the back of his head. Tsvetkov died on the spot.
The attacker fired a shot at Shapka but missed. He then fled through an archway and jumped into a waiting car.
Tsvetkov, who had been governor of the far-eastern Magadan region since 1996, is the highest-ranking government official to be murdered in post-Soviet Russia.
President Vladimir Putin, whose motorcade sweeps through Novy Arbat to the Kremlin almost every day, called the killing "a crime against the state." He ordered the country's two top law-enforcement officials, General Prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov and Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, to oversee the investigation personally.
"The criminals simply crossed a line that nobody has crossed before - I mean, an attack on a public servant of such a high rank," Ustinov said in televised remarks Friday.
Shaken governors accused the police of incompetence.
"What happened went beyond sensible limits, and measures should be taken," said Pskov Governor Yevgeny Mikhailov. "Every citizen of our country must know they will be protected."
"Governors have become very vulnerable after being stripped of [state-funded] security," said St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. "The murder of Vladimir Tsvetkov is proof of this."
Investigators almost immediately declared Friday that the killing was probably linked to a business dispute in Magadan. Tsvetkov had been trying to bring his far-eastern region's lucrative gold, oil and fishing industries under his personal control.
"The version related to Tsvetkov's professional activities is being treated as the main one," Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasilyev said on the NTV television station.
Tsvetkov was caught in disputes with several companies operating in Magadan, said Interior Ministry official Vladimir Gordiyenko. He did not name the companies.
He said the ministry would investigate the killing with prosecutors and the Federal Security Service in both Magadan and Moscow, where Tsvetkov owns an expensive apartment. His family has lived in Moscow for years.
Magadan's top police official, Yury Gorlov, said Saturday that investigators were analyzing all information about people with criminal ties to Moscow.
"We are looking at people allegedly linked to criminal groups in the gold mining, fishing and oil sectors," he said.
In a recent interview on NTV, Tsvetkov spoke at length about his efforts to bring Magadan's gold trade out of the shadows, by forcing miners to sell to the state instead of Ingush crime rings.
Magadan has more gold than any other region and accounted for about 20 percent of the country's 154.5-ton output last year, Izvestia newspaper said Saturday.
Tsvetkov also lobbied the federal government to shift its right to sell fishing quotes to regional administrations. A transfer would lead to the redistribution of the multimillion-dollar profits of fishing companies.
Tsvetkov's attempts to redirect cash flows infuriated Magadan business players, said Vladimir Butkeyev, the region's representative in the State Duma.
"When a governor starts thinking about participating in a region's economy, his job becomes dangerous, because he inevitably jeopardizes somebody else's interests," Butkeyev told NTV on Friday.
Butkeyev described Tsvetkov as an authoritarian and rigid administrator.
"If a governor has the option of single-handedly deciding matters worth billions of dollars, it is easier for many people to kill him than to negotiate," Yury Boldyrev, a former deputy head of the Audit Chamber and a close friend of Tsvetkov's, said on NTV.
The police have a notoriously poor track record when it comes to making arrests in the murders of government officials. However, the day after shooting on Novy Arbat, Moscow Prosecutor Mikhail Avdyukov expressed optimism that Tsvetkov's killing would be solved quickly.
"We have made substantial progress in the investigation, but we will not disclose any details in the interest of the probe," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Moscow police chief Vladimir Pronin said only that the killing was ordered.
"Clearly it was a contract hit," he said Friday. "It was the job of a professional killer."
The attack was caught by two outdoor cameras - at the Angara restaurant and at a nearby police station. Investigators, after scrutinizing the tapes and questioning witnesses, have compiled a composite sketch of the attacker. He is about 30 years old and has a Slavic appearance.
Police said the assailant dropped the murder weapon, a Makarov pistol equipped with a silencer, near the body before running away. He was whisked away by an accomplice in a Zhiguli sedan.
An hour after the murder, police found the car abandoned in the center of Moscow, according to media reports. Inside they found the killer's jacket, pants and boots.
Investigators said they suspected the two men were now using a Lada hatchback owned by a third accomplice - an indication that the killing was well organized.
The last registered owner of the Lada was questioned by investigators Friday, but he told them that he had sold the car three years earlier and knew nothing about its new owners, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported Saturday.
Tsvetkov was a member of the pro-Kremlin Unity party and strong supporter of Vladimir Pekhtin, a Magadan native and head of the Duma's Unity faction.
Tsvetkov's colleagues in the State Duma and the Federation Council - where he represented Magadan from 1993 to 2000 - denied he had been caught in a political power struggle. They said his main focus had been on lobbying Magadan's economic interests.
Before becoming elected governor, Tsvetkov worked for 20 years in Magadan industry, beginning as a lathe operator and ultimately becoming the head of the Magadannedrud mining giant.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his mother and daughter. A funeral was scheduled for Tuesday in Moscow.
TITLE: Kalmykia Vote Set for Run Off
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: ELISTA, Kalmykia - The presidential election in the southern republic of Kalmykia was forced into a runoff on Monday, after vote counts showed that none of the 11 candidates managed to top the 50-percent mark in Sunday's poll.
The two leading candidates set to face off in the second round are the power incumbent, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who won 47.3 percent of the vote, and Moscow banker Baatr Shondzhiyev, who came in a distant second with 13.6 percent.
Both Ilyumzhinov and Shondzhiyev claim to have powerful backers in the Kremlin, although President Vladimir Putin has not commented on the race.
The winner of the second round will become president for a five-year term. For Ilyumzhinov, a flamboyant businessperson and autocratic ruler who has headed the republic since 1993, this would be his third term. Shondzhiyev said he believed the other opposition candidates would rally around him to ensure a victory against Ilyumzhinov.
But a spokesperson for third-place candidate Nikolai Ochirov, who won 12.8 percent of the vote, made it clear that those who hadn't made it into the runoff were still weighing their options.
"We have had lots of proposals," Andrei Goryayev, Ochirov's campaign manager, said by phone. "We need to think carefully about everything that has happened over the past months and make a decision. We cannot reject anything out of hand or make rash decisions."
Critics have accused Ilyumzhinov of destroying Kalmykia's economy, giving favors to relatives and loyalists and suppressing dissent, sometimes by force. Ilyumzhinov has denied wrongdoing.
Throughout the campaign and voting, opposition candidates cited numerous violations favoring Ilyumzhinov. But Yelena Dubrovina, a visiting member of the Central Elections Commission, said the violations were not grave or widespread enough to change the election results.
TITLE: NATO Worries Linger, Despite Rapprochement
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: PSKOV, Western Russia - Despite a noticeable warming in Russia-NATO relations, particularly following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States last year, a meeting of representatives of the two sides at the end of last week showed that a number of the old concerns about the Western military alliance remain for Russians.
Officials from Russia, NATO member countries, and a number of other countries looking to join the organization gathered in Pskov on Thursday and Friday for a two-day conference to discuss issues surrounding NATO enlargement. While the sessions were lively and amicable, none of the sides moved far from positions they had established long before the meeting began.
The Russian side continues to be leery of NATO expansion to its borders, with the former Soviet Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania likely to be invited to join the organization at a NATO summit next month in Prague, and questions what is positive about the expansion for Russia.
"NATO has not yet answered the question of what benefits Russia will gain from its expansion," the chairperson of the Federation Council's foreign affairs committee, Mikhail Margelov, said at the end of the conference. "[NATO expansion] looks like a revival of the old mechanisms that worked during the Cold War. I think we should not waste time on that but, rather, should create new systems for providing security in the world."
But NATO representatives took a different tack.
Rolf Wesberts, the director of the NATO information office in Moscow, argued that "NATO is a guarantor of stability in Europe and, I think, its enlargement is hardly going to affect Russia's citizens."
On Thursday, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow, argued that, by welcoming new members and improving ties with Russia, NATO was developing new capabilities to meet today's threats, particularly the one of international terrorism.
However, Margelov and a number of other Russian participants questioned the assumption that NATO enlargement would help combat the problems associated with terrorism and bolster world security.
"The new enemy is different. The threats are different that those we were preparing to counter during the Cold War. This enemy doesn't have a definable territory or political color, and acts entirely differently," he said. "None of the most modern anti-ballistic-missile defense systems or tank divisions can defend against terrorists who seize civil aircraft."
One of the major concerns voiced from the Russian side at the conference was that NATO expansion could create a number of so-called "gray zones" near Russian boarders. Vladimir Nikishin, a senior Russian Defense Ministry official, said the countries that are preparing to join NATO are not signatories of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. The pre-expansion members are all signatories to the treaty.
"Therefore, there is a potential threat that NATO could deploy significant numbers of tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons on the territories of those countries," Nikishin said.
Welberts agreed that the question linked to the Conventional Forces in Europe should be solved, but hurried to assure the Russian side that the situation at present carried no danger along these lines.
"NATO is not planning to locate a combat army close to Russian boarders," he said.
Russia and NATO significantly improved their ties after the Sept. 11 attacks and, in May, President Vladimir Putin and his NATO counterparts signed an agreement setting up a new cooperation council. According to the agreement, Russia became a unique non-NATO country, able to participate in discussions together with the 19 NATO countries, although it is still not allowed to be present at meetings on NATO's military talks.
However, Moscow has continued to voice its opposition to the alliance pushing further east.
Yevgeny Mikhailov, the governor of the Pskovskaya Oblast, which will share a border with a NATO country should the Baltic states join as expected - the Estonian boarder is about 50 kilometers from Pskov - said that there is obviously no direct danger to Russia from NATO enlargement, but stressed that there should be more mutual guarantees.
"If you ask a somebody on the street in Pskov about his attitude to NATO enlargement, you are going to receive a negative answer in most cases," Mikhailov said.
While much of the discussion at the conference focused on Russian concerns over enlargement, the expectations of the Baltic countries with regard to NATO membership also played a part.
Argita Daudze, a Latvian consul, said that Latvia shares the same principles of democracy by which the NATO countries live and wants to be in the alliance with them. She said the most important reasons behind Latvia's desire for NATO membership were economic.
"All countries are interested in attracting more investment and we hope foreign investment in Latvia will increase as a result of NATO membership," Daudze said.
Another expansion issue, although one not related to NATO, was also discussed at the conference. A 1 1/2 hour discussion was held concerning Kaliningrad, Russia's Baltic Sea enclave, which will be separated from the rest of the country by the European Union's expected expansion in 2004. Russia has been pushing for the EU to allow visa-free travel between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia for the region's 1.5 million inhabitants.
Most of the discussion focused on NATO and Russia. U.S. Ambassador Vershbow, who worked as the U.S. ambassador to NATO before taking the Moscow posting, appeared to be looking the farthest ahead of any of the participants, suggesting that NATO would be willing to consider the possibility in the future of Russia becoming a member.
"In that case, Russia would be a full-fledged participant in NATO decision making," he said.
While the suggestion may be premature, the conference generated enough interest from both sides for Margelov and Welberts to turn what they referred to as the "Pskov Seminars" into an annual event, as both sides agreed that they were invaluable in allowing NATO and Russia to better understand each other.
But, as far as the suggestion that Russia might join the organization is concerned, some on the Russian side remain skeptical.
"Russia, of course, is not planning to join NATO," Dmitry Danilov, the head of the European security department at the Institute of Europe in Moscow, said. "But, potentially, Russia should keep such an opportunity in mind, since it could change the whole paradigm of NATO development."
TITLE: Cell-Phone Costs Russian Boss Pound2,500 Fine
AUTHOR: By Sol Buckner
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MANCHESTER, England - After spending three nights in a British jail for refusing to turn off his mobile phone during a flight from London to Manchester, the deputy commercial director of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works was fined Pound2,500 ($3,875) on Friday and released.
Sergei Lebedev was arrested late Monday upon arrival at Manchester Airport. The pilot had to abort a first landing attempt, because the crew had been too busy trying to get Lebedev to turn off his phone, that they had not properly prepared for landing, prosecutors said.
Appearing before magistrates on Tuesday, Lebed pleaded guilty to endangering an aircraft and refusing to comply with the captain's orders. He was denied bail on the grounds he was likely to flee to Russia. The case was sent to Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court, with sentencing set for Nov. 7, but the case was later moved up to Friday.
Prosecutor Mark Monaghan told the court on Friday that the pilot delayed the landing because there was not enough time to store away equipment in the galley area and that Lebedev had caused a "slight fracas."
"Lebedev started shouting at crew, and he was arrested for a minor public-order offense when he put his hand on the first officer's neck," Monaghan said.
"He was interviewed, and he said that he did not understand the dangers, but only thought it was a danger if the phone was being used. He accepted his phone was on for the duration of the flight."
Defense lawyer John Potter said Lebedev did not understand the need to have his phone switched off.
"Mr. Lebedev thought the warning was 'the phone should not be used,'" Potter said. "He assured them that he was not going to use the phone.
Judge Adrian Lyon fined Lebedev Pound2,500 and ordered him to pay court costs of Pound150.
"The use of mobile phones and the switching on of mobile phones on planes is dangerous," Lyon said. "It's an offense which has to be marked seriously. Even more so because it required members of staff to concentrate on you rather than securing the airplane."
"But this case is different. This is not a case of a drunken person behaving badly on a flight. I note that you have had your first taste of imprisonment and have decided you must pay a fine."
Lebedev released a statement outside court through his lawyer.
"He sincerely regrets what has happened and simply wishes to put it behind him and carry on with his life," Potter said.
Sol Buckner is the deputy news editor of Cavendish Press, a news agency based in Manchester.
TITLE: Birthrate Continuing Upward Trend
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Following almost a decade of steady decline, Russia's birthrate seem to be on the rise this year for a second year in a row, health officials said, while cautioning that the overall state of children's health remains poor.
Last year, the birthrate reached 9.1 per 1,000 people, while in 1999, it was only 8.3 per 1,000, Deputy Health Minister Olga Sharapova said last week. The rate is on track to increase again this year, ministry spokesperson Irina Kagramonova said Friday. While the birthrate grew, the total number of abortions last year dropped, to 1.9 million from 2.1 million in 1999, the report said.
Infant mortality continues to decline, although it is still higher than in advanced European countries, the report said. The rate of infants who die before their first birthday, which had fallen from 14.9 per 1,000 in 1999 to 14.5 in 2001, was 13.9 for the first eight months of 2002, Sharapova said.
Some 30 percent of births have complications, and every third newborn discharged from a maternity clinic has health problems, Alexander Tsaregorodsev, the Health Ministry's chief pediatrician, told Interfax.
Experts say that a lack of medical equipment, inadequate prenatal care and parental disorders are to blame for the poor state of children's health.
Respiratory illnesses are the main health problem for children, who suffer from colds and respiratory viral infections up to eight times a year on average, Tsaregorodsev said. "Maybe because we have too many kindergartens where children spend most of the day and catch diseases from each other," he said.
Another factor for poor health is that children are overburdened with studies, which results in many suffering from psychological disorders, he said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Getting Closer
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia hopes to resolve a row with the European Union over its Baltic outpost of Kaliningrad within a few weeks, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said on Monday.
Kaliningrad will be surrounded by EU territory once its immediate neighbours Poland and Lithuania join the 15-nation bloc, probably by 2004. Russia has demanded visa-free travel between the one-million-strong enclave and mainland Russia.
"Either an interim or a final, mutually acceptable solution will be found to the Kaliningrad problem before the Russia-European Union summit set for November," Interfax news agency quoted Kasyanov as saying on his arrival in Kaliningrad for a working visit.
Putin in Berlin
BERLIN (AP) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder will meet President Vladimir Putin in Berlin this week to discuss the situation in Iraq, the government said Monday.
Putin's planned stopover Thursday "is an expression of the good state of German-Russian relations," government spokesperson Charima Reinhardt said. Putin will become the first foreign leader to meet Schroder after his inauguration to a second term, scheduled Tuesday.
The two will meet for about two hours at Berlin's Tegel airport during a stopover by Putin en route to a visit to Portugal, Reinhardt said.
Rebels in Pankisi
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said Monday that some foreign militants remain holed up in the lawless Pankisi Gorge despite an ongoing police operation to root them out.
"The bulk of the fighters, the absolute majority have left Georgia," Shevardnadze told journalists in Tbilisi. "However, a certain number of them remain. Whether they're Arabs, Chechens or representatives of other countries, I don't know," he said.
Shevardnadze earlier said that the "active phase" of the police sweep was over and that no groups of foreign fighters were left in the gorge.
Georgia launched the operation in August amid growing tensions with Russia, which has accused Tbilisi of allowing Chechen militants to stay in the Pankisi Gorge and use the area to launch cross-border attacks.
Businessperson Freed
KIEV (AP) - A Russian businessperson has been released from detention a week after being arrested on charges of illegal weapons possession, Interfax reported.
The report did not specify the terms under which Konstantin Grigorishin was released Sunday.
Grigorishin, who heads a Russian-Ukrainian company, the Group Energy Standard, was arrested after police said they found a gun and packets of white powder assumed to be cocaine in his possession.
Grigorishin's arrest came shortly after he and Ukrainian lawmaker Volodymyr Sivkovich were allegedly attacked in Sivkovich's car by armed men purporting to be undercover police. The attack only stopped when Sivkovich identified himself as a lawmaker.
Police later arrived at the scene and arrested Grigorishin. Sivkovich, an unaligned lawmaker who quit the pro-presidential majority in Ukraine's legislature on Tuesday, wasn't arrested because he enjoys immunity as a legislator under Ukrainian law.
Grigorishin's Moscow-based lawyer, Genrikh Padva, suggested that the gun and drugs found had been planted.
TITLE: Russian Trademark Disputed in Germany
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A vodka vendetta over the rights to the best-known brands of Russia's national spirit has spilled over to Germany.
A German court has issued an injunction banning sales of Stolichnaya, Moskovskaya and several other trademarks whose international rights are owned by fugitive Russian vodka magnate Yury Shefler's SPI Group.
A spokesperson for the Hamburg district court said by telephone Friday that the injunction forbidding sales by Simex, SPI's distributor in Germany, was issued by the court's trade chamber after upholding a complaint filed by Dovgan GmbH, a Hamburg-based importer of Russian food and drink products.
Dovgan, founded in 1998 by friends of flamboyant Moscow entrepreneur Vladimir Dovgan to sell his eponymous products abroad, filed the suit because SPI's brands are labeled "genuine Russian vodka" and "imported from Russia," but are actually produced in Latvia, the spokesperson said.
The injunction, which has been appealed, bars Simex from selling or marketing the brands in Germany, which accounts for about 10 percent of SPI's annual global sales of nearly $700 million. Moskovskaya sells much better in Germany than international favorite Stolichnaya.
SPI says that it has no doubt who is behind the suit - Soyuzplodoimport, formerly the Soviet Union's food and drink import-export agency.
"Only Interfax reported the story, which means that the interest came from here - it is our friend Mr. Loginov," SPI spokesperson Sergei Boguslavsky said, referring to Soyuzplodoimport head Vladimir Loginov.
Soyuzplodoimport spokesperson Natalya Ilina denied that her company played a role in initiating the case, or of even having ever heard of a company called Dovgan GmbH.
She did say, however, that the German court's ruling was not a surprise, since "Russian vodka cannot be produced outside Russia."
Loginov claimed this summer that Shefler threatened to have him killed and the Prosecutor General's Office has wanted to question the tycoon ever since. Shefler, who reportedly owns homes in several European countries, has denied the charge and said he has no intention of returning to Russia.
Loginov, a former deputy agriculture minister, has spearheaded the legal battle to regain the domestic-trademark rights from Shefler, who essentially sold them to himself in 1997. That year, while the head of Soyuzplodoimport, Shefler created a similarly named company, Soyuzplodimport, which paid $300,000 to Soyuzplodoimport for the domestic and international rights to more than 40 trademarks, including Stolichnaya and Moskovskaya.
Since then, Loginov has resurrected the old Soyuzplodoimport and managed to regain the domestic rights to the trademarks through the courts. He has now turned his attention to regaining the international rights.
Dovgan GmbH founder Andrei Kovalyov admitted in a telephone interview from Hamburg that his company is in distribution talks with Soyuzplodoimport, but he insisted that he is not working for Loginov. He would neither confirm nor deny that his company initiated the case in Germany.
"We want to protect Russian manufacturers of vodka. Especially those included in our assortment, of course," Kovalyov said.
After the Russian economy imploded in 1998, the Dovgan food and beverage empire collapsed and today only accounts for a fraction of the 90 Russian and Ukrainian products - from Crimean wines to Altai honey - that Dovgan GmbH distributes in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The company imports about 350,000 liters of Russian vodka a year - all of it from Ost-Alko's plant in the Moscow region.
Although Loginov's Soyuzplodoimport last week awarded Ost-Alko a license to produce up to 880,000 dekaliters of Stolichnaya and Moskovskaya, Kovalyov laughed at the suggestion that his company would start importing Ost-Alko's version of the vodkas.
"If we did, it would be impounded and destroyed at the border," he said.
Kovalyov said that his company has no quarrel over the rights to the trademarks, which he said rightfully belong to SPI and its various distributors. But the present situation, whereby the Russian government owns the trademarks in Russia, while SPI holds the rights overseas - either directly or through allied distributors - is no good for anyone, Kovalyov said.
"This is a legal cataclysm," he said. "Foreign trademark owners don't have the opportunity to receive vodka from Russia, and Russia doesn't have the right to export its vodka," he said. "It's a bad situation - legally and commercially."
SPI produced its brands in Kaliningrad until earlier this year, when Russian customs officials impounded $40-million worth of its vodka, prompting the company to move production to its distillery in Riga, Latvia. SPI claims that it can still call its vodka Russian, however, since it uses spirits imported from Russia.
In a recent interview, Shefler said that he was unconcerned that Soyuzplodoimport might attempt to lure Simex or other distributors away from SPI.
"Let Loginov try to offer them better conditions, if he can," he said.
He also said that the issue of labeling had been carefully studied by the SPI's lawyers, and that the company conforms to legislation in each of the countries the company does business in.
Simex said that it had heard nothing about the court ruling and that deliveries were going ahead normally.
"We don't know about this and none of our goods are being stopped," said Simex spokesperson Jurgen Gockel.
A spokesperson for German retail-giant Spar had the same reaction. "All I can say is that this is the first time I have heard anything about it," said Christina Werthner.
The Hamburg court is scheduled to hear the appeal on Oct. 29.
TITLE: Budget for 2003 Passes In Second Reading
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma on Friday passed the 2003 draft budget in the crucial second of four readings.
After a four-hour debate, the deputies voted 279-122, with one abstention, to approve the budget.
During the discussion, lawmakers in the 450-seat Duma redistributed spending, increasing subsidies to regions outside Moscow, industry, agriculture and other sectors, while cutting allocations for the state's international activities.
"Today's passage of the budget will draw positive reaction on the markets and help further increase Russia's [credit] ratings," Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told reporters.
Moody's Investor Services is considering upgrading Russia a notch, which would make it just two levels below investment grade. "The private sector, our companies, banks will be able to attract cheaper investment for modernization," Kudrin told lawmakers.
The draft budget sets expenses at 2.3 trillion rubles ($72.8 billion) and revenues at 2.4 trillion rubles. It is set to become the third surplus budget, estimated at 0.6 percent of gross domestic product. GDP is projected at 13.1 trillion rubles ($414 billion), a rise of 3.5 percent to 4.4 percent compared with a 3.9 percent target this year. Inflation is forecast to be between 10 percent and 12 percent, from an expected 14 percent this year.
The cabinet forecast a ruble-exchange rate of 33.7 to the dollar - weaker than the current rate by about 2 rubles. It expects the world oil price to average $21.5 per barrel next year.
According to the draft, defense, law enforcement and security organs will receive 34.7 percent of overall spending, up from 31.5 percent this year.
"The year 2003 is a decisive year for us," Kudrin said. "I am sure that, after 2003, investors will believe in the positive development of the economy."
The year will see a peak in foreign-debt payments of $17.9 billion, compared with $14 billion this year.
Leftist deputies proposed cutting the state debt-financing article by between 500 million rubles and 18 billion rubles to allow more social spending ahead of parliamentary elections next year.
But Kudrin said that it was impossible to cut this article because the rise of the euro against the dollar had created a $70-million to $80-million shortfall.
Deputies voted for minor changes approved by the budget committee, including a cut to the international-activities article by 5.3 billion rubles, to 44.4 billion rubles. The money saved will go to agriculture and financial aid to regional budgets.
Spending for industry, construction and electricity, transport and communications, culture and art, natural disaster relief and security forces were all increased slightly.
Other items were left intact. The third reading, in which spending is looked at more closely, is scheduled for Nov. 22.
(AP, Reuters)
TITLE: Pension Fund To Make $5-Bln Investment in State Bonds
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Pension Fund plans to invest nearly $5 billion in domestic government bonds next year, fund head Mikhail Zurabov said on Thursday.
"In 2003, the total estimated volume of investments will be 140 billion to 150 billion rubles," Zurabov said. The fund is expected to accumulate and invest 70 billion rubles by the end of 2002.
Before January, when contributions to the fund were split into three parts - base, insured and accumulative, or invested - no interest was accrued on the hundreds of billions of rubles between collection and disbursement.
The money accumulated in 2003 will be fully invested in state ruble bonds, as the mechanisms for investing in other instruments allowed by law, including Eurobonds and corporate paper, have not been put in place.
"We understand that investing in a narrow spectrum of instruments is not great," said a spokesperson for the fund. "By the end of the year, however, it should be resolved."
The current pay-as-you-go system is already feeling the strain of an aging population that adds about 1 million new retirees each year. The working population cannot generate enough money to provide adequate pensions.
"We believe that it's a key element in the future economic growth of Russia," said Adam Payne, marketing manager for Troika Dialog.
"Pension reform is important politically, because it's the only way to raise pensions to a normal level," said Renaissance Capital economist Alexei Moiseyev. "Pension reform was one of the most important components of the economic growth in the United States and England in the 1990s. It generated a very large amount of money that was then invested in the economy."
Investment banks and funds have been eyeing the billions of dollars that is to be released into the market over the next several years. The invested portion of the fund has grown more rapidly than many expected.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, in opening comments at Thursday's cabinet meeting, praised the progress made on pension reform and said that, next year, invested pensions should reap a real profit of 6 billion rubles.
Starting in October 2003, after receiving their account statements in July, people can choose from a list of government-approved asset management companies. Troika Dialog estimated that about 20 companies, including itself, meet the criteria listed in the law. And beginning in 2004, future retirees will have the option of investing in nonstate pension funds as well. Legislation on the role of such funds is still pending.
People who don't choose will have their money handled by a state fund management company. The law that regulates such a company passed the first reading in the State Duma on Thursday.
"This is one of the cornerstone pieces of legislation," Payne said. "Given the progressiveness of the law, it should add a huge amount of strength and liquidity to the financial markets."
Zurabov said that the fund is still developing rules for money management, approving asset-management companies and forming its investment-portfolio and accounting procedures.
TITLE: $11-Bln Defense Budget Declassified
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - For the first time ever, the government on Friday declassified the makeup of the country's defense budget, providing figures that showed a marked increase in military spending.
The government budgeted 345.7 billion rubles ($10.9 billion) for the national defense next year - the second-largest spending item, according to documents released in the State Duma, which approved the 2003 draft budget in the second of four required readings.
Retired General Andrei Nikolayev, the head of Duma's defense committee, said that defense spending has quadrupled in ruble figures since 1999. "Even if we take inflation into account, the figure has increased significantly," Nikolayev said, according to the Interfax-Military News Agency.
In 2001, the defense budget amounted to around $7 billion, and military spending this year equaled about $9 billion, according to official figures.
Despite the increase, the defense budget is dwarfed by U.S. defense spending, projected at $355.4 billion for fiscal year 2003.
Nikolayev said that roughly 35 percent of the 2003 budget plan is allocated for weapons and other hardware while the rest is spent on personnel, fuel and supplies. He said that the government wants to reverse the spending to make it 60 percent and 40 percent, respectively.
According to the figures, which were given to lawmakers by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who also holds the rank of deputy prime minister, the government allocated 55.2 billion rubles for new-weapons purchases and 45.5 billion rubles for research and development on new weapons.
The government agreed to declassify military spending after liberal factions in the Duma said that they would vote against the budget if the Cabinet refused to provide the figures.
TITLE: Pulkovo Airport in Tax Mix Up
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A bureaucratic snafu has foreign airlines feeling extorted and airport officials scratching their heads.
Based on an interpretation of a vaguely worded passage in the new Tax Code that nearly everyone involved considers bizarre, the Tax Ministry has taken the unprecedented step of ordering all airports to charge foreign airlines a 20-percent value-added tax on ground handling services - a violation of international agreements Russia is party to.
The only airport to take the bait so far, however, is St. Petersburg's Pulkovo, which has sent letters to all the foreign airlines it services - including British Airways, SAS, KLM, Lufthansa and Air France - demanding up to an extra $180,000 a year from each.
"We suggest that this amount be transferred immediately and, in the future, the invoices for provided services must be paid strictly in accordance with the sum mentioned in the invoice," Pulkovo said in a letter sent to one of the airlines in September, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times.
The airlines, however, are refusing to pay, saying that the tax violates international aviation agreements.
Rightfully so, says the Justice Ministry, which calls the tax illegitimate.
Nonetheless, Pulkovo says that whatever the Tax Ministry says goes.
"In case of non or partial payment, Pulkovo will be obliged to readdress to your company those charges which may be presented to ... Pulkovo by currency-control authorities," the airport said in the letter.
"It is a very awkward situation; they are demanding quite a big amount of money, which we are very reluctant to pay, because we do not believe this is in conformity with the rules," said Marek Pedersen, Swedish airline SAS's manager for Russia and the CIS, adding that the company is consulting with lawyers over what steps to take.
Daniel Burkard, British Airways' commercial manger for Eastern Europe, said that his company is preparing, together with the European Business Club, an official complaint that it will register with airport and tax authorities, as well as St. Petersburg City Hall.
"We are not aware of any country in which airports would charge taxes on any services to Aeroflot, Transaero or Pulkovo airlines," he said.
Pulkovo - which handled 2.8 million passengers last year, 22 percent of whom flew on foreign carriers - adhered to international practices on ground handling before and after the new Tax Code came into effect in January 2001.
But the Tax Ministry later decided to slap VAT on airport ground-handling services following its own interpretation of the code.
Clauses 148 and 149 of the code state that no VAT is to be imposed on "services rendered directly in Russian airports" and in the country's air space involving the servicing of aircraft, including air-navigation services, but a list of such services is not provided.
The Tax Ministry, in order to find out what was meant by "services rendered in Russian airports," consulted a two-year old Transport Ministry order, said an official at the St. Petersburg branch of the Tax Ministry.
The Tax Ministry then decided that the tax break only covers air-navigation services and duties for landing and takeoff, overtime-aircraft parking, use of airport terminals and meteorological services. But the letter omits ground-handling activities such as servicing passengers and crew members, handling cargo and delivering food and fuel, which makes them automatically taxable, the ministry concluded.
Despite repeated requests, the Tax Ministry said that "it would take some time" to formulate a comment.
Pulkovo questioned the Tax Ministry at first and sent an inquiry to the local tax directorate, later receiving confirmation that the ground services were to be taxed, said Irina Grigoryeva, Pulkovo's chief economist.
The airport has no choice but to comply with the local directorate, even though Pulkovo management believes that the demands in the letter are wrong, she said.
"The situation has become somewhat twisted, and our sympathy is with the foreign airlines, but if we don't comply, we will be fined," said Grigoryeva. "We don't wish to step into the conflict with tax authorities, this is a very expensive undertaking and is useless.
TITLE: Senators, Execs Push for New Strategy in Energy
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Senators and industry figures called for a new energy strategy Friday, slamming the present one as unworkable and proposing a greater government role in the development of the sector.
"It worries us that both the first energy strategy of 1995 and the second that was approved in 2000 [covering energy sector development until 2020] turned out to be unviable," Interfax quoted Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov as saying at a hearing into problems of energy-sector development.
Neither strategy "corresponded with modern trends of development in the energy sector" and lacked any levers or mechanisms for fulfilling the plan, Mironov told the Federation Council hearing.
He said that senators propose a strengthening of the government's role in developing the fuel and energy sector, and called for the creation of a special body that would be in charge of strategic planning in the energy sector.
Russia is one of the world's leading energy producers. In terms of world reserves, it has 45 percent of natural gas, 23 percent of coal, 14 percent of uranium and 13 percent of oil. The energy sector provides 20 percent of the country's gross domestic product, more than 50 percent of federal-budget revenues, 45 percent of hard-currency income and more than 25 percent of industrial production.
Farkhad Akhmedov, CEO of independent gas producer Northgas, said that Russia needs to spend about $500 billion between now and 2020 to secure the national energy supply.
Mironov said that, to make the sector work efficiently, not only is "enormous investment needed, but the right priorities and specific measures must also be chosen by the government," adding that only then can energy supply, currency income and revenues to the budget become stable.
The basic principle of Russia's energy strategy must become guaranteed stability for investors, said Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The strategy of energy-sector development must follow anticipated production volumes, he said.
Khodorkovsky also said that, since 1996, oil production increased 15.6 percent while gas production dropped 3.2 percent. Meeting the market demand in cheap natural gas can only be done by liberalizing the gas market, leading to competition and lower prices, he said.
Gazprom board member Vladimir Rezunenko said that low gas prices create an unfavorable investment climate in the gas sector, obstruct further increases in gas production and do not stimulate the energy reserve.
The existing energy strategy calls for doubling coal consumption for national-power grid Unified Energy Systems to produce electricity. By cutting UES' gas consumption, Gazprom could increase its sales abroad, where prices are much higher.
UES deputy CEO Vyacheslav Voronin said, however, that such a policy has no real economic foundation and that an increase in electricity production will require increased gas consumption.
In 1991, 59 percent of UES electricity was generated using gas and 27 percent using coal. By 2001, the proportions had changed to 67 percent and 20.4 percent respectively.
Senators said that the creation of legislation for electricity reform must not be dragged out.
Top presidential economic advisor Andrei Illarionov continued his criticism of UES reforms, accusing them of being directed at "weakening the country," Interfax quoted him as saying.
Members of the hearing panel intend to work out recommendations and submit them to the government and President Vladimir Putin within two weeks.
TITLE: Siemens Obtains Stake in Siloviye
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Power-engineering company Siloviye Mashiny said Thursday that it had reached agreement with Siemens allowing the German electronics and engineering giant to swap a 25-percent stake in a plant partly owned by Siloviye for a direct stake in Siloviye itself.
The share swap will give Siloviye outright control of the Kaluga plant, in which it currently has a blocking minority stake, and allow it to consolidate the subsidiary in its balance sheet in preparation for a stock market flotation in 2004.
"We have a basic agreement, but the deal is still under discussion," General Director Yevgeny Yakovlev said.
It was not clear how large a stake Siemens would get in Siloviye in return for its shareholding in the Kaluga plant, which is some 250 kilometers southwest of Moscow.
Yakovlev said that Siloviye Mashiny is interested in buying other assets, among them Ukrainian nuclear-power engineering company Turboatom (Kharkiv).
(Reuters, Prime-Tass)
TITLE: NYSE Praises Watchdog For Post-Crash Repairs
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The world's most influential stock market on Friday praised Russia's securities watchdog for regulating and nurturing the market since the 1998 crisis laid waste to the economy.
"I really think the Federal Securities Commission is doing a remarkable job developing the market and protecting investors' rights," said Annemarie Tierney, senior counsel with the New York Stock Exchange and head of its Russia division.
Tierney made the remarks at the three-day Russian Securities Market Conference in St. Petersburg. A record 1,100 market professionals from across the nation attended the fifth version of the event, considered the most important in the industry.
Igor Kostikov, chairman of the FSC, which organized the conference, said that since 2000, when the last conference was held, the number of companies approved to provide professional market services has nearly doubled to 1,700 - and the number of asset management companies has rocketed to 91 from 11 just two years ago.
"So far, the Russian market has resisted the global meltdown and proved to be one of the best performing in the world over the last two years," Kostikov told the conference. "More and more investors are beginning to acknowledge that the market is changing for the better."
While most of the world's major equity markets are struggling through one of the worst years in decades, Russia's benchmark Russian Trading System index is up 35 percent since January, after having nearly doubled in value in 2001. Some of this success has been attributed to the efforts of its main regulator, the FSC, Tierney said.
The performance is all the more remarkable if you consider that it's only been 10 years since privatization began, which produced the first tradable securities - vouchers - and just eight years since the RTS was created, she said.
Tierney was in St. Petersburg to inform issuers of new requirements for listing their American Depository Receipts on the NYSE. While, for many Russian companies, ADRs have become a major source of attracting foreign money, a new instrument - Russian Depository Receipts - was touted as a new opportunity for local investors to own stock in European and American companies.
"This is a new instrument that will increase the liquidity of the market and provide more investment options for individual and collective investors, including banks and funds," said Yelena Loginova, head of depository operations for Deutsche Bank Moscow.
The main hurdle to creating RDRs is currency regulation, which is a hot topic in the Cabinet and Central Bank.
First Deputy Central Bank Chairperson Andrei Kozlov said that the instrument will help liberalize Russian investments abroad and also make the export of capital more transparent.
He also said that the Central Bank wants to improve the legal framework for forward contracts, which are not recognized by Russian courts, leading to many defaults by Russian banks in 1998.
TITLE: Following Recent Trends in Regional Elections
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Pribylovsky
TEXT: THE recent elections in Nizhny Novgorod and Krasnoyarsk, for all their differences, exhibited one principal similarity: "Administrative resources" were split almost evenly between the main candidates.
In Nizhny Novgorod, the administrative resources of then-Mayor Yury Lebedev and Volga Federal District presidential envoy Sergei Kiriyenko were evenly matched; while, in Krasnoyarsk, acting Governor Nikolai Ashlapov, Taimyr Governor Alexander Khloponin and Krasnoyarsk Mayor Pyotr Pimashkov all had roughly equal resources.
Furthermore, in neither case did the Kremlin have a consolidated position. In Krasnoyarsk, each of the three main "court-oligarchic" groups had its own candidate. The "Family," headed by presidential chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, supported Krasnoyarsk regional legislature Speaker Alexander Uss; the "old St. Petersburgers," headed by Anatoly Chubais, backed Pimashkov, and the "new St. Petersburgers," headed by deputy head of the presidential administration, Viktor Ivanov, backed Khloponin. The presidential envoy to Siberia, Leonid Drachevsky, preserved neutrality up until the end - which is unusual, as other polpredy have certainly not been averse to interfering in the regional elections in their jurisdictions.
In Nizhny Novgorod, the "new St. Petersburgers" initially lobbied for Deputy Governor Yury Sentyurin (a chekist and protege of Nizhny Novgorod Governor Gennady Khodyrev), and then switched their support to Vadim Bulavinov; the "Family" had no distinct preferences because it was split between Bulavinov (a Kiriyenko protege) and Lebedev. Khodyrev, who was let down by his own protege, Sentyurin, stated publicly that he was going to vote "against all candidates." Thus, both contests were marked by a battle of administrative resources, although in Krasnoyarsk - in addition - two financial-industrial groups were fighting it out: RusAl with MDM against Interros.
Administrative resources can be broken down into more or less "clean" and "dirty" resources. Clean resources are the natural advantages of a big boss over an ordinary candidate - e.g. greater opportunities for self-promotion and, generally, better funding.
Dirty resources include the ability to obstruct the registration of a rival candidate and/or exclude a candidate from running - this is called "Bashkir electoral technology" in honor of Bashkir President Murtaza Rakhimov, who has perfected these techniques in Bashkortostan. Following President Vladimir Putin's ascent to power, these techniques have been applied across the country, most notoriously in the Kursk gubernatorial election in 2000; the Sochi mayoral election and Rostov gubernatorial election in 2001; and the Ingush presidential election and Nizhny Novgorod mayoral election in 2002. State Duma Deputy Viktor Cherepkov has been on the receiving end of these techniques on several occasions in Primorye in gubernatorial and mayoral elections. Ballot-stuffing and spoiling can also be used, as can direct falsification during vote-counting and protocol compilation.
When the "party of power" is united and the competition is weak, there is no great need to resort to dirty campaign methods. However, in both Krasnoyarsk and Nizhny Novgorod, the authorities were divided and the competition was strong. Under these circumstances, the "dirty" component of administrative resources came to the fore.
In Nizhny Novgorod, on the eve of the first round of elections, candidate Andrei Klimentyev was excluded from the race by a court ruling - the handiwork of Kiriyenko (who had, prior to that, persuaded two other candidates, including Sentyurin, to drop out in favor of Bulavinov).
In Krasnoyarsk, in the first round, administrative vote-counting methods were brought to bear against the Communist-backed candidate Sergei Glazyev. Ballot-stuffing and spoiling techniques were employed in Norilsk and Taimyr in favor of Khloponin, and in the southern parts of Krasnoyarsk in favor of Uss.
It would seem that there was more blatant falsification in favor of Khloponin, due to the small number of Uss and Glazyev election observers in the north. However, initially, the regional election commission, controlled by Uss sympathizers, did not respond, as it hoped that Uss would receive a good portion of the votes cast for Glazyev and Pimashkov in the first round. This didn't happen, and, as a result, the election commission became more attentive to falsification in the north after the second round.
In the end, the Krasnoyarsk contest was resolved by Putin: The president appointed Khloponin as acting governor, although the manner in which he did this is highly questionable from a legal standpoint (according to the law, he could only appoint the first deputy governor, i.e. Ashlapov, or he had to first remove Ashlapov and then appoint Khloponin as first deputy governor). Only this clear demonstration of the president's sympathies was sufficient to persuade the regional election commission to back down.
In Nizhny Novgorod, the president's position was also a determining factor. Putin had expressed dissatisfaction with a pilot project to introduce alternative, non-military service in the city in the spring. Back then, Putin said that Lebedev had "no chance of being re-elected" because his popularity rating was so low. Following this, Kiriyenko clearly felt obliged to ensure that the president's prediction became reality.
However, there is strong evidence that, after Klimentyev was excluded, more votes were cast in the first round "against all candidates" than for any candidate. This is corroborated by the results of an unofficial exit poll and by the fact that, officially, the total number of ballots cast "against all candidates," plus spoiled ballot papers, was greater than the number of votes for Bulavinov or Lebedev. The exit poll conducted in the second round also registered a victory for "against all candidates."
Voting "against all candidates" is becoming more and more popular in Russia - particularly in those elections in which the authorities exclude "unacceptable" candidates. In the Rostov gubernatorial election in September 2001, the incumbent, Governor Vladimir Chub, had his main rival, the Communist-backed Leonid Ivanchenko, excluded and, as a result, more than 12 percent of ballots were cast "against all candidates." In Sochi, in the mayoral election in April and May 2001, after the favorite, Vadim Boiko, was excluded, 27 percent voted "against all candidates" in the first round, and 15.6 percent in the second round.
In the December 1999 State Duma elections, "against all candidates" prevailed in eight single-mandate constituencies. Similar things happened in mayoral elections in Serpukhov (Moscow Oblast) and Sosnovy Bor (Leningrad Oblast), when excluded candidates called on voters to vote "against all candidates."
There will, undoubtedly, be many more such cases. The new election law de facto forbids campaigning for "against all candidates" (one can only campaign using money from the campaign fund of a specific candidate or party list, and "against all candidates" cannot have a campaign fund).
The presidential election in Kalmykia this weekend was the last to be conducted under the old election law. Now, all elections will be held in accordance with the new law on voting rights. In some respects, the new law is an improvement on the old one.
In particular, only the courts will be able to exclude candidates and, in any case, no later than five days before the election is held - and there will now be a finite number of grounds for excluding candidates.
Furthermore, within three months after an election, election commissions will be obliged to publish in the press and on the Internet the full results of any federal or regional election, with data broken down by individual polling stations.
In theory, this reduces the potential for falsification during the compilation of voting data at the level of territorial commissions (the level at which total falsification of results occurred in Dagestan in the 2000 presidential election, for example).
However, in other ways the new law is worse than the old one - in particular with regard to the rules for campaigning. Moreover, under the new law, the media must cover the activities of all candidates equally - which is physically impossible. And, finally, the new law leaves open a loophole for falsifiers: It does not oblige election commissions to provide copies of voting protocols in a centralized manner.
Vladimir Pribylovsky, director of the Panorama think tank in Moscow, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Registering the Change in the Atmosphere
AUTHOR: By Alexei Pankin
TEXT: ANALYSTS, the mass media and politics constitute a system of separate, but connected, vessels. Ideas take shape and are tested in a variety of formal and informal forums. Some of these ideas go nowhere, while others find their way into the wider public debate and/or the political process.
Beyond what gets put into words, this system of interaction has its own atmosphere, what the Germans call Geist. At times, even when nothing is obviously happening in society, this atmosphere changes imperceptibly.
I began to detect an atmospheric change earlier this autumn. By the time of President Vladimir Putin's 50th birthday, the change had become quite distinct.
Starting back in June, ORT's "experts' club" - a gathering of well-known political scientists, sociologists and economists - began meeting on a weekly basis to discuss foreign policy, domestic politics, prospects for economic development, the state of public opinion and the key issues and players in the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. After covering the full range of topics, the experts concluded that the country was stable, and that Putin and his administration were in complete control of the Russian political scene. Everyone agreed that the elections would be a dull affair.
Faced with this prospect, the experts themselves got a little bored back in September, and decided to spice things up by contemplating possible force-majeure scenarios that could undermine stability. The discussion began as a sort of futurist game, and ended with the conclusion that not everything in our lives today is as stable and positive as it first seems. Putin may inspire confidence in Russian voters, but his sky-high poll numbers in no way indicate that the public has much confidence in the government or its policies. Society, exhausted by the stormy upheavals of the last decade, seems happy to view Putin as the symbolic guarantor of stability so long as that stability lasts.
The change of atmosphere in analytical circles led one to expect new developments in the political process as well. And we didn't have to wait long. I have in mind the Kremlin's irrational and disproportionately harsh reaction to the "Georgian threat," Yevgeny Primakov's sensational article in the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta criticizing the government's Chechnya policy and Putin's inexplicable decision to revoke the special status of Radio Liberty's Moscow bureau. These, and other decisions that I have discussed in previous columns, have different causes and implications but, on the whole, they suggest that the Putin team isn't all that confident after all.
I found the coverage of Putin's birthday particularly interesting. Some media outlets were filled with joyous euphoria, while others raised the prospect of a nascent cult of personality around the president. But Leonid Parfyonov's wry piece on Putin's 50th on his "Namedni" ("Just the Other Day") weekly news and entertainment program on NTV stood out.
We hadn't heard this kind of irreverent coverage of the president since the heyday of Vladimir Gusinsky. And not just because the presidential administration has leaned hard on the mass media, but because, just a couple months ago, this kind of coverage wouldn't have found a receptive audience.
On Putin's birthday a group of analysts, gathered under the aegis of the Civil Debates Club, discussed "The Putin Phenomenon as a Challenge to the Analytical Community." The group is headed by Gleb Pavlovsky, widely viewed as a Kremlin ideologue. The press was especially interested in the group's speculation about possible Putin successors. "I am certain that the regime of managed democracy will not survive the 2003-2004 election cycle," Pavlovsky told the newspaper Kommersant.
When you consider press coverage as a whole, everything is just as it seemed to the ORT experts at the beginning of the summer.
I have singled out just a few signs of atmospheric change. Only time will tell if they lead to a real change in the weather.
Alexei Pankin is the editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals (www.sreda-mag.ru)
TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: Booby PrizeThose merry pranksters at the Nobel Academy kept up their wonted hijinks this month by awarding their Peace Prize to that prime purveyor of former presidential piety, Jimmy Carter. It's the Silly Swedes' best joke since they laid the peace purse on Hank "Hang 'em by Their Gonads and Fling 'em to Their Deaths but Be Sure to Maintain Our Plausible Deniability" Kissinger back in the day.
It's true, of course, that our good Jimmuh has spent years building houses for the poor and ensuring fair elections all over the world (with the notable exception of United States - but that's OK, because God decides who rules in America, not the people). Certainly, such a post-Oval Office career sets Carter several moral leagues above that gutter-crawling mass murderer George H.W. Bush, who, after killing thousands of innocent people in Panama (and for what, exactly? Do you remember? Does he?), now feasts with his war-profiteering Carlyle partners on the blood and fear being churned by his numbskull namesake in the White House.
Still, it's only in comparison to such stinking pitch that Carter seems to gleam so brightly. For, while he may have done years of laudable penance with hammer and nails, he must also bear a good portion of responsibility for the perilous state of the world today. It was Carter, milky mild and comfortably sweatered, who gave the greenlight to one of the most disastrous strokes of "grand strategy" since Hitler crossed the River Bug:
Arming the jihad.
He was goaded into this monstrous misstep by his national security adviser, the fierce Polish expatriate, Zbignew Brzezinski. Z-man - perhaps understandably in light of his ancestral history - was consumed with one overriding passion: sticking it to the Russian bear. It was Zbig who conceived the idea of arming the various warlords of extremist Islam who were beginning to stir against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. Using the CIA's brotherly relations with the brutal Pakistani secret service, Carter and Zbig began pouring weapons and money into the hands of the warlords, who despised Western modernity in all its manifestations (again, as always, with the exception of our murderous technology).
Now here's the beautiful part: Zbig began arming the jihadniks months before the Soviets moved troops into Afghanistan. "We can give them their own Vietnam," he told Carter, when outlining his plan to sucker the Russians into a military overreaction. And Jimmuh - no doubt just back from one of his White House prayer breakfasts - gave his meek and mild blessing to the scheme.
A few months later, when Ronald Reagan and former CIA chief GHWB took power - with the help of a special team of CIA insiders on the campaign payroll and the paid cooperation of the American-hating extremist Ayatollah Khomeini - Zbig's baby really took off. The Reagan-Bush gang expanded the relationship with militant Islam, drawing Communist China into the alliance, in backroom deals that saw the Chinese - the same Red Devils against whom Reagan had raged so long and so profitably - allow the United States to build secret communication posts in western China to help coordinate the anti-Soviet jihad.
(What, did you think Reagan meant all that hogwash? You actually expected Carter to live up to his ideals once he was in the catbird seat? You still believe that there is the slightest connection between the lofty rhetoric spewed by our betters and the ugly, death-dealing reality of power they wield behind the scenes? You must have rocks in the head, dad!)
But, as we all know - and as our leaders never seem to learn - war operates according to the laws of unintended consequences. The Soviets got their "Vietnam" - although that quagmire was not quite as ruinous as modern myth now paints it (except for the suckers who fought in it, of course). Certainly, it didn't lead to Vietnam-style social upheaval: The Soviet people were shielded from the war's brutal and bumbling reality as ruthlessly as the American public is now being kept in the dark about what's being done in their name in Afghanistan. And it occupied only a fraction of Soviet military resources.
Still, lots of people died, the country's infrastructure was destroyed, its social progress was hurled back several centuries and gangs of vicious, ignorant warlords were enthroned in power, where they proceeded to gnaw each other to pieces, killing more than 50,000 people in Kabul alone. That's something, isn't it? Certainly a price worth paying to cause mild aggravation to a tottering Soviet regime which was already collapsing under the weight of its own corruption and contradictions anyway, right?
Of course, there was that little problem of the Soviet-whupping holy warriors. Armed with the latest Western weaponry, flush with Western money, and well schooled by the CIA in covert ops, terrorism, illicit fundraising through front companies and dope dealing, the armies of Allah simply turned their guns to other targets. Osama bin Laden, for example, wanted to lead his troops against that modernizing evildoer and enemy of Islam - Saddam Hussein, the invader of Kuwait. The Saudis, however, declined, and called in GHWB's American troops instead - a "desecration" of Muslim holy ground that energized Osama's pea-sized brain and gave him a new enemy to fight with his CIA methods.
And so here we are. It's true Ronnie and Georgie would have jump-started the jihad all on their own, but Jimmy - good ole mild, milky, Jesus-lovin' Jimmy - beat them to it and showed them the way. Thanks, Jimbo! Enjoy them Nobel laurels, y'hear?
For annotational references, please see the "Opinion" section at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: Iraq Announces Amnesty for All Prisoners
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government announced an amnesty Sunday for all Iraqi prisoners, in an apparent attempt to rally domestic and international support in the face of U.S. determination to topple it.
The government called the amnesty, which includes political prisoners, a way of thanking the country for re-electing President Saddam Hussein last week in a referendum.
Iraqi television showed men leaving a prison carrying their belongings in plastic shopping bags and chanting: "We sacrifice our blood and souls for Saddam."
In the United States, Secretary of State Colin Powell, interviewed Sunday on ABC's "This Week," said the amnesty was a political ploy by Hussein.
"This is typical of this man's use of human beings for these political purposes of his," Powell said. "This is the kind of manipulation he uses to try to paint himself as something other than what he is, a brutal dictator."
A statement attributed to Hussein, read on television by Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhafa, said the "full and complete and final amnesty" applied to "anyone imprisoned or arrested for political or any other reason."
Amnesty International accuses Iraq of holding tens of thousands of political prisoners and of torturing and executing its political opponents. There was no figure available as to how many inmates the amnesty would involve.
Later Sunday, Interior Minister Mahmoud Diab al-Ahmed was seen supervising the release. Some prisoners were heard pledging not to commit crimes in the future. Others said they were "ready to defend Iraq and the great leader."
Those convicted of murder, the statement said, would only be released if the victims' families agreed. Those convicted of theft would have to work out a way to repay their victims before being released. Soldiers accused of desertion and those awaiting execution were also included.
"We are shifting the responsibility of reforming them to their families and society, after we have provided them with this opportunity," the statement said. "We ask God that we will not regret this decision."
State-run television said later that other Arabs imprisoned or detained in Iraq - except those held on charges of spying for Israel or the United States - were included in the amnesty.
Iraq did not mention Kuwaiti prisoners of the 1991 Gulf War. Kuwait accuses Iraq of failing to account for more than 600 Kuwaitis and nationals of other countries who disappeared during the Gulf crisis. Baghdad insists it has released all war prisoners in recent years.
The amnesty was intended to thank the Iraqi people for their support of Hussein, who claimed a 100-percent "Yes" vote in a presidential referendum last week, the statement said.
"It's a unanimity that others are incapable of believing and it is the greatest truth of this age from this great, honest, warm people," the statement said. "The referendum honored us before the whole world."
As al-Sahhafa completed his statement, Iraqi television switched to file footage of Iraqis celebrating Hussein's elections victory, chanting his name and pledges of support.
Iraqi exiles and the United States scoffed at Hussein's referendum and the reported results. Hussein was the only candidate and Iraqis were asked to vote "Yes" or "No" on whether he should serve another seven-year term. In a country where dissidents face torture or death, according to exiles and international human-rights groups, assessing voters' sincerity is difficult.
U.S. President George W. Bush has called for Hussein to be overthrown, accusing him of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and harboring terrorists, and has expressed concerns about his human-rights record.
The Iraqi regime has "probably the worst human-rights situation anywhere in the world ... uses the death penalty, rape and torture as a political tool," said a British government report on human-rights abuses around the world, released on Thursday.
TITLE: N. Korea Ready for Nuke Talks
AUTHOR: By Paul Shin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Monday that it was willing to negotiate over its nuclear weapons program if the United States withdraws its "hostile policy" toward the communist country.
The comments by Kim Yong Nam, North Korea's ceremonial head of state, were unlikely to mollify the United States, which has said its nuclear program is a non-negotiable issue and must be dismantled immediately.
Kim made the remarks in a meeting with South Korean delegates in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, according to South Korean pool reports. The comments were the first official response to a U.S. announcement last week that the communist country had admitted to having a nuclear-weapons program, in violation of international agreements.
"We consider the recent situation seriously," reports quoted Kim as telling the chief South Korean delegate, Jeong Se-hyun. "If the United States is willing to withdraw its hostile policy toward the North, the North also is ready to resolve security concerns through dialogue."
North Korea has repeatedly accused the United States of plotting to overthrow its government, and has long called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, whose policy of engaging North Korea is under pressure because of the revelation about the nuclear program, said his country's security was at stake.
"The danger of North Korea's nuclear weapons development and other weapons of mass destruction should be eliminated completely," Kim said.
The meeting with Kim Yong Nam took place before the two sides re-convened another round of talks. After receiving five South Korean delegates as a group, the leader met the chief South Korean delegate privately for 50 minutes, according to reports by South Korean journalists.
No foreign reporters were allowed to cover the three-day, inter-Korean talks, which opened Sunday.
"Both sides were in agreement that the issues raised recently should be resolved expeditiously through dialogue," the reports quoted Rhee Bong-jo, a South Korean spokesperson, as saying.
The talks in Pyongyang, the eighth since a historic inter-Korean summit in 2000, were meant to discuss reconciliation, but the nuclear issue took priority.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly met Kim Yong Nam when he visited Pyongyang from Oct. 3 to 5. During the trip, North Korean officials admitted they have a uranium-enriching program to make nuclear weapons.
North Korea's admission violates a 1994 agreement it signed with the United States, promising to abandon its suspected nuclear-weapons program in return for construction of two modern, light-water reactors and 500,000 tons of fuel oil a year until the reactors are completed.
In talks with Kelly, North Korea said it considered the so-called Agreed Framework invalid because the reactors were not expected to be completed by 2003, as promised.
But, on Monday, North Korea's Pyongyang Radio urged the United States to honor its commitments under the deal, and said the most pressing issue was compensation for the loss of electricity caused by the delay.
"Eight years after the Agreed Framework was adopted, the U.S. is still shifting around at the starting line," the radio said in a broadcast monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
"The framework is at crossroads - whether it should be scrapped or not - because of the delay in providing the light-water reactors," the radio said.
Kelly, in Tokyo to meet with Japanese officials Monday, said Washington has not yet decided to abandon the agreement. Kelly and other U.S. officials have been working to coordinate an effort among Washington's allies to press North Korea to give up its nuclear program.
But U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday that the U.S. government considers the agreement effectively dead because of the North's secret nuclear-weapons development.
North Korea "blamed us for their actions and then said they considered that agreement nullified," Powell said on NBC television. "When you have an agreement between two parties, and one says it's nullified, then it's hard to see what you do with such an agreement."
TITLE: Schools Closed After Another Washington Sniper Shooting
AUTHOR: By Stephen Manning
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROCKVILLE, Maryland - Schools closed across a swath of Virginia on Monday, after a message to authorities and a cryptic police response suggested that the elusive Washington-area sniper had expanded his spree further south.
In a brief but dramatic news conference late Sunday, police issued a direct plea to whomever left a note at the scene of a shooting Saturday outside a Ponderosa restaurant in Ashland, Virginia.
"We do want to talk to you," said Charles Moose, police chief of Maryland's Montgomery County and a leader in the sniper investigation.
It was the closest link yet that the Saturday shooting was related to the sniper attacks on 11 people, nine fatal, in the Washington area since Oct. 2.
A law-enforcement source close to the investigation said that investigators believe the person who left the message is probably the sniper.
School officials in the Ashland and Richmond areas of Virginia decided to close Monday, keeping more than 200,000 public students out of class "based on the volume of parent and community concern."
In Ashland, Randolph-Macon College also announced it would cancel classes on Monday. The school, with 1,100 students, is just over a kilometer from the latest shooting.
"We've been in close contact with local law enforcement agencies, and basically we're following their advice," said spokesperson Anne Marie Lauranzon.
Surgeons succeeded Sunday night in removing the bullet from the 37-year-old man shot in Ashland on Saturday night and turned it over to investigators.
The victim was in a critical condition early Monday after six hours of surgery. Doctors had to remove part of the man's stomach, half of his pancreas and his spleen. They were cautiously optimistic about the victim's recovery, but expected he will need more surgery.
The nature of the message that investigators say was left at the Ashland shooting scene was unclear. But Moose had a message of his own to the sender.
"To the person who left us a message at the Ponderosa last night. You gave us a telephone number. We do want to talk to you. Call us at the number you provided. Thank you," Moose said.
Moose refused to elaborate. But Joyce Utter, a spokesperson for Montgomery County police, said the statement "should make complete sense" to the person who left the message.
"That is the only person Chief Moose wants to talk to," she said.
The message was found in the woods behind the restaurant, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Monday, quoting law-enforcement sources it did not name. The report also said that police have found more than one tarot card during the investigation.
The most recent confirmed sniper attack was the Monday night murder of FBI analyst Linda Franklin outside a Home Depot store in Falls Church.
Police said the latest victim and his wife were traveling and stopped in Ashland for gas and food. His wife told authorities the shot sounded like a car backfiring and said her husband took about three steps before collapsing. The name of the latest victim has not been released.
Residents were on edge in Ashland, a town of about 6,500. At the Virginia Center Commons mall, about 10 kilometers from the shooting, a normally busy food court sat half-empty Sunday. Shopper Nancy Elrod said she almost had been too afraid to come.
"We certainly felt sorry about all the people up north who were nervous and now it's down here and we're nervous, too," said Elrod, 45.
TITLE: DiMaio Helps Stars Rebound Past Capitals
AUTHOR: By Jaime Aron
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DALLAS - The Dallas Stars studied what went wrong, vowed it wouldn't happen again - then fulfilled their promise.
The Stars rebounded from consecutive losses Sunday night, with Mike Modano setting up two early power-play goals and Rob DiMaio scoring twice in a 5-2 victory over Washington.
"That's the good thing about playing so many games - you get to bounce back right away," Modano said. "Now we have several days off, so it's good to have this one."
In Dallas' loss Saturday night in St. Louis, the Stars let a two-goal lead slip away by committing penalty after penalty. After allowing 13 power plays against St. Louis, the Stars gave the Capitals just one.
"We talked about staying solid, doing the little things you do to keep percentages in our favor," Stars coach Dave Tippett said. "But it's one thing to talk about it, and another thing to do it. Tonight, we did it."
Washington didn't for the second straight night. The Capitals have lost consecutive games since a 3-0 start, with goaltending letting them down both times.
Olaf Kolzig was supposed to be off after allowing three goals in the final 24:30 against Philadelphia. But the regular Washington goalie was forced into action when backup Craig Billington allowed three goals on eight shots during the first 10:13 of his season debut.
Kolzig stopped 21 of 22 shots, while Dallas' Ron Tugnutt made 26 saves to improve to 2-0.
Bill Guerin and Darryl Sydor scored the first two goals after Washington's Chris Simon picked up a double minor.
Jeff Halpern scored Washington's first goal, which made it 2-1, and Jaromir Jagr later scored to make it 3-2.
DiMaio's goals came after each one.
It was just the third two-goal game in his 15 seasons, and the first since December 1996. Teammates recognized he was on the verge of his first career hat trick and wanted him to score again - alas, DiMaio wasn't on the ice when Jere Lehtinen popped in an empty-net goal with 17 seconds left.
"That's not my forte, that's for sure," he said.
Anaheim 3, Colorado 2, OT. Andy McDonald scored 4:49 into overtime, lifting Anaheim over Colorado.
Joe Sakic scored twice for Colorado, including the tying goal with 9:15 left in regulation time.
Petr Sykora and Stanislav Chistov also scored to help Anaheim snap a four-game winless streak (0-3-1). The Avalanche hadn't lost in Anaheim since March 15, 1998.
Rookie Martin Gerber won his first NHL start, making 22 saves.
TITLE: Injury to Favre Not As Bad as Feared
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GREEN BAY, Wisconsin - The Green Bay Packers breathed a sigh of relief when they learned that Brett Favre will probably be around to help them build on their 6-1 start. Favre sprained his left knee Sunday in the third quarter of the Packers' 30-9 victory over Washington, but so far it appears he won't miss any games.
"Fortunately, it's not as bad as it may have looked or felt," the star quarterback said.
Favre, who started his 164th consecutive game, got sandwiched between LaVar Arrington and Jeremiah Trotter. Favre hobbled off the field and received a standing ovation from the Lambeau Field crowd when he was carted from the sideline.
The injury was to a ligament in Favre's left knee. He'll have an MRI on Monday.
"There was a lot of concern by us on the sideline, but it appears he'll be fine," Packers coach Mike Sherman said.
After winning five straight games, the Packers have a week off before facing Miami at home Nov. 4.
Ahman Green scored on runs of 24, 2 and 8 yards for the first three-TD performance of his career.
Favre finished 11-for-14 for 89 yards and left with Green Bay ahead 17-6. Backup Doug Pederson was 9-of-15 for 78 yards, leading the Packers to two field goals and a touchdown in five series.
In his second career start for Washington (2-4), Patrick Ramsey was 10-of-24 for 135 yards and was sacked six times.
San Diego 27, Oakland 21, OT. In Oakland, California, LaDainian Tomlinson scored on a 19-yard run with 11:22 left in overtime, giving San Diego the AFC West lead. Tomlinson carried 39 times for 153 yards.
San Diego coach Marty Schottenheimer, in his first year with the Chargers, has won five straight against the Raiders, and 20 out of 25 since 1985.
Oakland's Jon Ritchie scored the tying TD on a 7-yard catch from Rich Gannon with 1:21 left in regulation time.
The Chargers (6-1) have a one-game lead over Denver and a 1 1/2 -game edge over the Raiders (4-2) in the division.
Denver 37, Kansas City 34, OT In Kansas City, Missouri, Shannon Sharpe caught 12 passes for 214 yards - a record for NFL tight ends - and Jason Elam kicked a 25-yard field goal with 12:03 left in overtime for Denver (5-2).
Sharpe caught two TD passes, including an 82 yarder in the third quarter. Sharpe's yardage total was a franchise record, and broke the NFL tight ends record of 212, set by Jackie Smith with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1963.
The Chiefs are 3-4.
TITLE: Salmon Blast Ties World Series for Angels
AUTHOR: By Ben Walker
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ANAHEIM, California - Tim Salmon's two-run shot with two outs in the eighth inning lifted the Anaheim Angels over the San Francisco Giants 11-10, knotting the World Series at one game each on Sunday.
"We knew there was going to be a hero in the dugout," Salmon said, "and tonight it was me."
Francisco Rodriguez made a major contribution, by throwing three perfect innings. The 20-year-old relief sensation became the youngest pitcher to win a World Series game.
Credit this seesaw victory, though, to Salmon. Until this year, no active player in the majors had gone longer than Salmon - 1,388 games - without reaching the postseason. But that wasn't a well-known fact, because the Giants' Barry Bonds has been the center of attention, especially since this is his first World Series, too.
But Salmon put the spotlight squarely on himself, by homering to give the Angels their first-ever World Series win.
"I think I made the most of my opportunities. It was awesome," Salmon said. "The way the game went back-and-forth was unbelievable."
Salmon went 4-for-4 with a walk, driving in four runs and scoring three. He capped his performance with a drive into the Anaheim bullpen in left field that left Bonds hanging over the top of the fence.
The homer off Felix Rodriguez capped the Angels' comeback from a 9-7 deficit. They had led 5-0 after the first inning before homers rallied the Giants.
Francisco Rodriguez made the longest outing of his big-league career to improve to 5-0 in the postseason. He tied Randy Johnson's record for wins in a postseason set last year.
Bonds homered for the second straight day, hitting a solo shot with two outs in the ninth off Angels closer Troy Percival. Salmon hung on the dugout railing and admired the shot that landed halfway up the bleachers in right field.
But the crowd of 44,584 roared as Percival finished it without further damage for a save.
"It was too much Salmon," Bonds said. "It's phenomenal. He did everything any player could do in one game except steal home."
Bonds did his share, reaching base four times, highlighted by the homer.
"I scripted it in the bullpen," Percival said. "You get the first two guys out, it doesn't matter how far he hits it. I think I supplied all the power. It was impressive. I was going to go right after him."
"You could tell it was going to be an offensive night," Giants manager Dusty Baker said. "The ball was carrying."
"It was one of the best games I've ever been in," he said.
Bonds, making his first Series appearance in his 17th major league season, went 1-for-2 with three walks. Like everyone else in the San Francisco lineup, he couldn't solve Rodriguez as he grounded out. The rookie pitcher struck out four, all on three pitches.
The Giants scored four times in the fifth off John Lackey and Ben Weber for a 9-7 lead. Game 1 star J.T. Snow hit a tying, two-run single, then hustled to avoid being forced to give David Bell a go-ahead infield hit with two outs. Shawon Dunston, playing in his first Series game at age 39, added a sharp RBI single.
Scott Spiezio's sacrifice fly off Chad Zerbe pulled the Angels within a run in the fifth.
The Rally Monkey made its first appearance on the scoreboard in the sixth. And for the second straight night, the Angels promptly scored, with Garret Anderson's single off Aaron Fultz, making it 9-all.
The Angels started out doing everything right - of their first 15 swings against Russ Ortiz, they did not miss once.
In an inning symbolic of their whole season, they hit to the opposite field, aggressively streaked around the bases and even pulled a double steal that let Brad Fullmer sneak home.
TITLE: Yuzhny Dumps El Aynaoui in First Round
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: Russia's Mikhail Yuzhny claimed a notable scalp on the opening day of the eighth St. Petersburg Open on Monday, when he dumped Morocco's Younes El Ayaouni from the tournament in three sets.
El Ayaouni, ranked 19th in the ATP Champions Race and the tournament's No. 5 seed, looked set to win when he took the first set, 6-3, but the unseeded Yuzhny, ranked 46th in the Champions Race, recovered to take the next two sets, for a 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory.
Other results on day one saw Germany's Nicholas Kiefer drop just one game in despatching Israel's Harel Levy, 6-0, 6-1; and Belarus' Vladimir Voltchkov, a semifinalist at Wimbledon this year, having little difficulty in seeing off local qualifier Mikhail Yelgin, 6-4, 6-0.
The big guns open their accounts on Tuesday, with both defending champion Marat Safin and his fellow Russian Yevgeny Kafelnikov in action, against France's Cyril Saulier and Germany's Michael Kohlmann, respectively.
This year's star guest, Andre Agassi of the United States, will play Wednesday, after flying in from Madrid, where he won another title after Jiri Novak, of the Czech Republic, withdrew from the final without hitting a ball, due to a ligament injury. Novak is also due to compete in St. Petersburg this week.
The Madrid result leaves Agassi in second place in the Champions Race, just 43 points behind Australia's world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt, a fact that adds extra spice to the St. Petersburg tournament. Should Agassi win the tournament, he can overtake Hewitt, who plays this week in Stockholm, at the top of the standings.
Agassi's Madrid Masters triumph may not have come in the manner he wanted but a walkover against the injured Novak in the final was still a welcome boost in his bid to finish the year as world No. 1.
With two weeks left to play in the regular season, plus the Masters Cup in Shanghai, the race for the top spot is well and truly on, with Agassi determined to push Hewitt all the way.
"There's something extra at stake with the spot for number one," said Agassi. "It's been a lot of work all year, especially missing Australia and three Masters tournaments."
"I think there's a number of different things to accomplish in the game," he said. "I'd put winning grand slams at the top but finishing No. 1 is the symbol of a lot of work so it would mean something to me, definitely."
The tournament was Agassi's first competitive tennis since his defeat to Pete Sampras in the U.S. Open final and he was back near the top of his game, beating high-class opposition in Juan Carlos Ferrero and Sebastien Grosjean in the quarters and semi-finals.
"For my game to come together so quickly is very encouraging," Agassi said. "It's important, too, because there aren't many tournaments left."
"I'm looking forward to how this year is going to end," he said. "It's been a year that in many ways I've been proud of."
(SPT, Reuters)