SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #819 (84), Tuesday, November 12, 2002
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TITLE: Arrests Made in Starovoitova Investigation
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Almost four years after the assassination of State Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova, six people were detained last week in connection with her murder by the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Administration of the Federal Security Service (FSB).
The FSB said that the arrest, which was announced on Tuesday, was made following an investigation into a criminal group active in the region, according to Interfax.
The FSB would not comment on the case when contacted on Monday.
Starovoitova, who was active in the leadership of the democracy movement in what was then Leningrad during the Perestroika era and as a prominent human-rights advocate, was shot dead in the staircase of her home on 91 Nab. Kanala Griboyedova on Nov. 20, 1998, one day before the local Legislative Assembly elections. Her press secretary at the time, Ruslan Linkov, was with her when she was killed, and suffered severe gun-shot wounds to his head and neck.
According to news Web site Fontanka.ru, the FSB has named three of the suspects as Yuri Kolchin, 34, Oleg Fedosov, 35, and Igor Lelyavin, 23, all from Dyadkovo, in the Bryanskaya Oblast, in Central Russia. The identity of the other suspects has yet to be revealed. Russian news agencies reported that some of the suspects had been picked up after country-wide warrants were issued for their arrests.
When the cases against the six will be brought to court is unclear. Russian law allows the suspects to be held in custody for up to 1 1/2 years while investigations continue.
"I congratulate our detectives in that they have finally achieved something concrete," the speaker of the State Duma, Gennady Seleznyov, was quoted by Interfax as saying on Monday. "Year after year, we kept hearing the same thing: The investigation is being carried out, and we still didn't know anything."
"Some of the individuals suspected of taking part in the murder have been detained. Now, the most important thing is for the investigators to bring the charges in such a way that the case doesn't fall through in court, but is carried through to the end," Seleznyov added.
While reactions to the news of the arrests were mostly positive, some politicians who had worked closely with Starovoitova reacted with a degree of skepticism.
Pyotr Kucherenko, a member of the Federal Political Council of the Union of Right Forces (SPS) and a former assistant to Starovoitova, told Interfax last Wednesday that he doubted the arrests would lead to the case being solved.
"In my opinion, these are minor participants [in the crime], who probably did not know the real goal of the operation," he said.
Linkov, Starovoitova's former press secretary, who now heads the local branch of the Staravoitova-founded Democratic Russia party, was more cautious, saying that the suspects are new figures in the case.
"I read the names for the first time on the news Web sites last week. I can't say anything yet. The material has to be studied, after which the court will make its decision," he said on Monday.
Linkov said that the four-year investigation could have come up with findings more quickly if the investigators had not been distracted by versions of the facts circulated by Starovoitova's opponents, "which didn't reflect reality in any way whatsoever."
Linkov was referring to comments by journalists who had been interviewed by investigators immediately after the murder, that the investigators were looking for negative information about both Starovoitova and himself.
Linkov, who says that the motives for Starovoitova's murder were "entirely political," says the investigators are now likely studying the relationships between the suspects and others who may have been involved in the murder, and hopes the investigation will ultimately lead to the discovery of those who commissioned the killing.
"I really hope that the case will be solved. It is very important to find not only the perpetrators of the murder, but also those who commissioned it," he said. "For this to happen, any politicians who do not want the case to be solved have to be prevented from influencing the investigation."
TITLE: Putin Stands Tough On Chechnya Policy
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium - Waving aside European Union appeals for moderation in the war in Chechnya, President Vladimir Putin on Monday defended the campaign in the republic as a crusade against international terrorists who threaten the entire world.
"We will fight these bandits and terrorists and hope we will be doing that through joint efforts," Putin said after meeting EU officials, who urged Moscow to ensure respect for human rights in Chechnya and negotiate a peaceful end to the war.
Putin said the Kremlin was considering political steps to end the war, now in its fourth year, but rejected talks with the rebels who staged last month's hostage-taking raid in the Moscow theater.
Putin met with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, European Commission President Romano Prodi and EU foreign and security affairs chief Javier Solana.
After his talks at the EU, Putin met with NATO Secretary General George Robertson who more warmly supported his crackdown on terrrorism.
"Russia has got the right to deal with breaches of law and order on its territory," Robertson said. Referring to the Moscow theater seizure, he said it was "increasingly clear international terrorist elements" operated in Chechnya.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, speaking in Moscow, vowed Monday to keep fighting rebels until they are flushed out the mountains of southern Chechnya. Speaking of "tough but targeted" operations that he announced last week, Ivanov said, "We will continue these targeted operations until there are no bandits left in the mountains."
Speaking on behalf of the 15 EU countries, Rasmussen took issue with Putin's assessment of the situation in Chechnya.
"The conflict there cannot be regarded only as a terrorist problem," he said, adding the two sides had "a frank and open" discussion - diplomatic language for saying they disagreed on Chechnya.
Some 100 protesters - demanding peace in Chechnya - demonstrated outside the EU headquarters where Putin and the EU met. Eight were detained for trying to block Putin's motorcade and display a banner in front of the president's car.
Putin sought to steal the thunder from his critics by meeting with pro-Moscow Chechen officials and activists on the summit's eve.
He promised to back next spring's referendum in Chechnya to pass the republic's constitution.
But Monday he said Moscow will continue battling "religious extremists and international terrorists" who he said seek to create an Islamic state throughout southern Russia.
If efforts to uproot "terrorists" in Chechnya fail to win global support, there will be repeats of the Moscow theater seizure, the Bali resort blast or other recent terrorist outrages "all over the world," Putin said.
Robertson briefed Putin on next week's NATO summit at which the alliance leaders are to invite up to seven ex-Soviet bloc nations to join their alliance.
Russia and the EU also agreed to step up trade and economic cooperation and reported progress toward agreements to open Russia's insurance market, cut airline overflight rights over Siberia and end low energy prices making Russian exports of manufactured goods very cheap.
The EU estimates Moscow gives its manufacturers an annual subsidy of 5 billion euros ($5.05 billion) by keeping the price of natural gas low. At present, oil and natural gas is supplied to the Russian domestic market at around a sixth of the price at which it is exported.
TITLE: Meeting Ponders How To End the War
AUTHOR: By Judith Ingram
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Human-rights activists, liberal politicians and Chechen representatives gathered at a Moscow hotel on Saturday to discuss an unpopular idea - ending the three-year war in Chechnya through peace talks.
"The authorities must show their wisdom in standing up for what is absolutely vital for society: The immediate start of a peace process in Chechnya, even if it goes against the mood in society," Lev Ponomaryov, the head of the organization For Human Rights told several hundred delegates at the conference.
The meeting came just two weeks after a hostage crisis that brought the Chechen war to the capital and hardened the government's already firm resolve not to enter talks with the rebels.
The presidential human-rights envoy for Chechnya, Abdul Khakim Sultygov, called on the organizers to cancel the conference, saying it was intended to "form an image of international terrorism with a 'human face"' and was in fact aimed at fulfilling the terrorists' demand.
The most prominent politician to address Saturday's conference, Grigory Yavlinsky, said he had hesitated to take part because there was next to no possibility that non-governmental organizations could do anything to influence the course of the war in Chechnya and he feared that the meeting would not be able to come up with serious recommendations in just two days.
However, he said he had decided to participate in order to throw a spotlight on what he feared was a growing wave of interethnic hatred in Russia, fueled by semi-official propaganda.
"Attempts to create an image of lower races and unacceptable nationalities in government and semi-official propaganda is the most dangerous threat to the future of our country," Yavlinsky said. "Encouraging interethnic discord, no matter what the cause or what tragic events are cited, is a crime."
Most speakers at the conference called on the government to negotiate with Aslan Maskhadov, a rebel leader who is also Chechnya's elected president, and many said that, after suffering eight years of brutal war with Russian forces, Chechnya could never again be part of the Russian Federation.
The government of President Vladimir Putin has rejected Maskhadov as a negotiator and said Chechnya's status as a Russian republic was not open to negotiation.
But Otto Latsis, the editor of the liberal Novye Izvestia newspaper, said another force for peace was necessary - and it had to be found inside Russia. "The only thing that can force the Kremlin to make peace is the [antiwar] sentiment of the Russian people, which does not exist now," Latsis said.
According to a recent poll by the respected All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, a growing number of Russians favor keeping Chechnya within the Russian Federation with no special autonomous status.
Of 1,500 people surveyed on Nov. 2, 45 percent said Chechnya should stay within Russia - up from 30 percent in February 1999.
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Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski turned down a request to close Chechen information centers in Poland, saying they will be allowed to keep operating unless they break the law.
"All centers operate on the basis of Polish law and, as long as they respect the law, there is no reason to make their activity impossible," he told reporters in Warsaw last Wednesday.
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Lithuania last Wednesday expelled 17 Chechens who had entered the country illegally the day before from Belarus.
The Chechens, including eight children and six women, were handed over to border guards in Belarus, the Lithuanian border service said in a statement.
It was the first time such a large group of illegal Chechen immigrants was caught crossing the border by foot; they usually arrived by train and in smaller numbers.
TITLE: Latest Copter Crash Not Caused by Rebels
AUTHOR: By Yuri Bagrov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia - A helicopter gunship carrying three crew members crash-landed close to the Khankala military base outside Grozny on Monday, but there were no casualties, military officials said.
The accident was caused by a technical fault, not rebel fire, a Defense Ministry duty officer said.
The Mi-24 helicopter disappeared from radar screens on Monday morning, Itar-Tass reported. Fourteen minutes later, the crew commander, Captain Sergei Masyura, reported that the helicopter had fallen close to Khankala, the military's main base in Chechnya, Itar-Tass said.
Lieutenant General Boris Podoprigora, deputy commander of federal forces in Chechnya, said it was a crash-landing. All three crew members survived and were evacuated to Khankala, where they were being monitored by medical personnel, said the duty officer at the Defense Ministry. The helicopter was completely destroyed by a fire that broke out on board, Itar-Tass said. The duty officer did not confirm the account.
Investigators were sent to the site. According to a preliminary investigation, the accident was caused by a technical failure, with no shooting from the ground, the duty officer said.
Rebels using shoulder-launched missiles have shot down three helicopters outside Khankala since August.
Meanwhile, federal troops and Chechen rebels engaged in heavy fighting in Chechnya's mountains Monday, and the Defense Ministry said dozens of rebels were surrounded.
The rebel band was ambushed by a group of Russian special forces overnight outside the village of Kharsenoi, about 50 kilometers southwest of Grozny, the Interfax-Military news agency reported, citing Russian military headquarters.
Podoprigora said that six rebels had been killed and 12 wounded by Monday afternoon. Earlier in the day, a duty officer in the Defense Ministry's press service said that about 30 rebels were surrounded. Neither he nor Podoprigora gave any information on casualties among the federal troops.
TITLE: Four Dead as Train Cars Derail
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Four people were killed and another five injured when two cars from a commuter train jumped the tracks at Baltiisky Vokzal on Monday morning.
According to initial reports from the press service of the St. Petersburg branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, at 10:25 a.m., during testing after repairs to the train, its first two cars came uncoupled and jumped out onto the platform of the station.
There were no passengers on the train. Two women, aged 60 and 16, respectively, and two men, one aged 69 and another whose age was not given, were killed instantly in the accident.
Later in the day, Anna Markova, the head of the city administration's emergency commission, said that "the accident was caused by an unexpected movement by the train," Interfax reported.
According to the Emergency Situations Ministry's press service, the train had started to move on its own after the engineer had left the locomotive to pick up some documents.
The statement added that the possibility of the incident having been the result of a terrorist act could not be ruled out at the time of the statement.
Markova also said that the engineer of the train was in serious condition in the hospital after the incident, but that he had already begun to provide evidence to investigators. She added that the engineer had been described by Oktyabrsky Railroad, which operated the train, as one of the company's most experienced engineers, Interfax reported.
A commission from the Russian Transport Ministry, headed by First Deputy Transport Minister Vadim Morozov, arrived in the city later on Monday to investigate the causes of the accident.
St. Petersburg Transport Prosecutors' Office announced that it had opened an investigation into the case under article 263, part 3, of the Russian Criminal Code (breach of railway-traffic safety rules and/or careless operation of railway transport causing the deaths of two or more people).
Traffic at the station was brought to a partial halt but, by 5 p.m., workers managed to clear away the wreckage and full service was restored.
The ZhASO railroad insurance company said that it would pay compensation to the victims of the accident or to their relatives.
Vladimir Ivanov, the general director of ZhASO, said that the relatives of the people who died would receive 25,000 rubles ($786.68), Interfax reported.
TITLE: BRIEFS
TEXT: Chemical Arms
MOSCOW (AP) - The top official in charge of destroying Russia's chemical arsenal said Monday that the biggest threat to the program was a lack of certainty in funding.
"Today, our strategy of how to complete the task of disarming is perfectly clear - what technologies to use, how, where and what to build. Problem No. 1 today is a lack of certainty in funding - from both the Russian budget and the budgets of donor countries," said Zinovy Pak, head of the Russian Munitions Agency.
Russia has the world's largest arsenal of chemical weapons - some 40,000 tons - which it pledged to destroy when it ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. However, Moscow has dragged its feet on disarmament because of a shortage of funds.
Shutov Can Run
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg City Court ruled on Monday that the registration of the candidacy of Yuri Shutov in elections to the Legislative Assembly was legal, Shutov's lawyer, Andrei Pelevin, told Interfax.
The court overruled an appeal against the registration, made by Dmitri Kulikov, another candidate in the Legislative Assembly elections.
Shutov is already serving as a deputy of the Legislative Assembly, despite being under investigation and being held in custody for the alleged organization of a criminal group and a series of contract killings of senior St. Petersburg bureaucrats.
Shutov has been in custody since the spring of 1999, with the briefest of interludes on Nov. 16, 1999, when he was released in the Federal Courtroom of the Kalininsky District Courtroom, on the condition that he would not leave St. Petersburg. A few minutes later, he was rearrested, in the same courtroom, by an armed rapid-response team, with another series of charges being brought against him.
Budanov Trial Delay
ROSTOV-NA-DONU, Southern Russia (AP) - The drawn-out trial of Colonel Yury Budanov, who is charged with murdering a Chechen woman, cannot resume as planned next week because the Health Ministry has ordered the results of a psychiatric evaluation withdrawn, the defendant's lawyer said.
Budanov's lawyer, Anatoly Mukhin, said the military court for the district that includes Chechnya conveyed the Health Ministry's demand that he return a document outlining the results of the fourth psychiatric examination Budanov has undergone during his trial, which began in February 2001.
"This is the latest artificial delay of our case," Mukhin said Sunday.
Budanov admits to strangling Heda Kungayeva in 2000, but says he killed her in a rage because he thought she was a rebel sniper.
Newton Book Stolen
ST. PETERSBURG (Reuters) - Thieves have stolen Newton's "apple" from a St. Petersburg museum - the celebrated book in which the 17th century English physicist formulated his eponymous law on gravity that revolutionized science.
Posing as readers, the thieves stole a rare first edition of Isaac Newton's "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica" from the Russian National Library, a library official said Sunday.
"The loss was discovered right away when the reading room was closing on Nov. 6 and it had not been returned by the readers who had requested it," the official said.
TITLE: 'Nord-Ost' Cast on Stage Again
AUTHOR: By Caroline McGregor
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Except for the empty music stands in the orchestra, the moment of silence and the somber demeanor of the emcee, this concert might have seemed like any other.
Performers from "Nord Ost" sang and danced with obligatory enthusiasm and the audience kindly cheered, but there was no denying that last Saturday's concert "Nord-Ost, We're With You!," presided over by Georgy Vasilyev, the musical's director and himself a former hostage, was filled with the emotion of the past two weeks.
Eight music stands stood musician-less in the middle of the orchestra on stage, in memorial to lost colleagues, and behind the performers, projected on a giant screen, was a photograph of the "Nord-Ost" banner slashed open by commandos who raided the theater.
As the show's full company took the stage for the opening act, the audience stood in respect for the courage and resilience of the actors who, on Oct. 23, found themselves at the center of a national crisis, which dealt them a particularly cruel blow.
Of the 76 members of the cast and crew who were held hostage, 17 died - two child actors, seven support staff and eight musicians.
"We lost every fourth musician," said Dmitry Bogachyov, the show's commercial director. "This is a statistic of war."
One of those still recuperating had been one of the eight men on stage performing an exuberant high-kicking song-and-dance routine in military uniform at the very moment when Chechen guerrillas burst onto the stage. The other seven performed - and finished - the same upbeat number Saturday to the delight of the crowd.
The only other member of the cast still in the hospital is a member of the children's troupe, said Alexander Tsekalo, the producer of "Nord-Ost."
"There are skeptics who say it is still too soon to sing cheerful songs, but I wanted to give these kids a chance to come out here, to get out on the stage, and move on with their lives. We want to finish the play, not just the interrupted second act," Tsekalo said in the foyer before the show. "We want to decide when the play ends, not have it decided for us."
"We're wounded, but we're here. We exist," he said.
The performance had been in the works for months as a celebration of "Nord-Ost"'s one-year anniversary. In the first days after the crisis, there had been talk of canceling the concert, but "this is proof that 'Nord-Ost' is alive," Vasilyev said.
Songs from "Nord-Ost," intended to be only a minor part of the original concert, figured prominently in the evening's nearly three-hour program. "We've included more from 'Nord-Ost' - it's understandable," Vasilyev said.
Interspersed with "Nord-Ost" numbers were selections from "Jesus Christ, Superstar," "Phantom of the Opera," "Miss Saigon," "Oliver," "Les Miserables" and "The Lion King."
Tickets were on sale for 500 to 3,000 rubles ($15.73 to $94.40), and even with a near capacity crowd at the 2,400-seat concert hall inside the Rossiya hotel, proceeds from box-office sales would not cover the cost of putting on the show, Bogachyov said. "There's practically no profit. This was intended to be publicity for the musical, not a commercial measure." A repeat performance was held Sunday evening.
After a rendition of the song where their characters declare their love for each other, Andrei Bogdanov and Yekaterina Guseva, the show's two stars, were asked to stay on the stage to reflect on their experiences.
"Did you worry that the audience members might have been expecting you to be the hero, since that's the character you play?" Vasilyev asked Bogdanov, who had been one of the hostages.
"It was right that I was there with the hostages. It was right that I was no different from the rest," Bogdanov responded.
Guseva, who was not performing on Oct. 23, said she now better understands how to play the role of Katya Tatarina.
"Katya Tatarina waited for him her whole life. I waited for him for three days," Guseva said. "But it seemed just as long."
Midway through the first half of the show, Vasilyev brought Leonid Roshal onstage, whom he hailed as "the children's doctor of the world," and the crowd rose to its feet with applause for the pediatrician who became a face of hope during the hostage crisis.
"I want to apologize to the parents of the 27 children whose release I could not secure, and to the parents of the five I could not save," he said. "They died so that 'Nord-Ost' could live."
Snapshots of the two young actors who died during the seige - Arseny Kurilenko, 13, and Kristina Kurbatova, 14 - were projected on the giant screen as a young actor sang "Castle on a Cloud" from "Les Miserables."
Most of the children in the show were under 12 and had been released before the theater was stormed by special forces on Oct. 26.
"I hope this will be therapeutic for them," said Alexei Dyakov, a close friend of one of the cast members. "I know it was hard for them to decide to perform today. I admire them for having the strength and power to get out there and sing despite all their pain."
The show's producers have not been eager to return their show to the site of so much suffering, but government officials have pushed for exactly that, as a defiant statement to terrorists that Muscovites will not be cowed.
Thus two tracks for the show's future have been pursued in parallel: One, a touring version of the show that would perform in cities throughout Russia and abroad - to which President Vladimir Putin gave his approval last Wednesday while meeting with the "Nord-Ost" cast; and the other, a wholesale renovation of the Theater Center Na Dubrovke, tentatively scheduled to reopen in mid-January.
Oil company Yukos has pledged $2 million to underwrite a touring version of the show, which Bogachyov said they hope will be ready in a few months. There are plans to present the show in Israel in January, as well as talk, he said, of staging "Nord Ost" in New York next year on the anniversary of Sept. 11, as demonstration of the shared struggle against terrorism.
"We cried through the whole concert," said Natalya Salamakhina, there with her daughter Olga. "I was happy knowing that so many people lived to be here today, but it's difficult to know so many people perished. Especially during the pilots' number, I couldn't stop thinking about that."
Salamakhina had been at the musical's premier in October 2001. "Even compared to that, I felt they all acted with more energy and gave more of their spirit performing here tonight. This was even better - more beautiful."
TITLE: An Accidental Victim, Doomed by Her Bravery
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Oct. 23 was Olga Romanova's last day at one store in the L'Etoile perfume chain before moving to a long-awaited job in another. She returned home - an apartment around the corner from the theater where, just hours before, hundreds of people had been taken hostage - at around 1:30 a.m. to face questions from her mother.
"I asked her: 'Where have you been?'" Olga's mother, Antonina, said in a telephone interview. Olga told her about the police cordons outside.
"We sat around for a while, drank some tea. She was saying: 'How is it possible that they are keeping women and children in there?' Then - it was about half past three - she said, 'So, I'll go, maybe I'll get through, maybe I will be able to talk to them, maybe they will at least release the children. I feel sorry for the kids.' I tried to stop her from going: I yelled at her, cried, locked the door. But she left," Antonina Romanova said, ending the interview last week, saying she could not answer any more questions.
Two doctors who were allowed to enter the theater on Oct. 24 carried out the body of the first victim. The next day it was identified as the body of Olga Romanova - a 26-year-old salesperson, who had supported her pensioner parents and disabled brother.
It is unclear how Romanova entered the House of Culture - familiar to her since childhood - as it was surrounded by police, although the cordon was weaker in the early hours of the siege.
She apparently was not the only one who did; at least three others were reported to have gotten through police lines. Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Vasilyev was missing on the first night of the hostage crisis, and his body, with five bullet wounds, was found in the theater's courtyard after the assault, one of his friends said. A Cossack leader was reported to have approached the theater on Oct. 25 - apparently without permission from the crisis center - prompting hostage takers to begin shooting. Another man got through the security cordon to enter the theater several hours before special forces stormed the building. He said he was looking for his son, who was not found among the hostages. The man was beaten and shot, presumably fatally, according to former hostages, who said the Chechen gunmen accused him of being an FSB agent. Some former hostages said they heard this confirmed by security officials.
Yet Romanova will be remembered as the first victim and the only woman who somehow got in, apparently not realizing the danger.
Former hostage Mark Podlesny, a member of the "Nord-Ost" cast, said he saw the woman enter the hall from the rear left door.
"I don't know if it's true, but she looked drunk, and she spoke to [the hostage takers] sharply, something like 'Do you understand what you have done here?'" Podlesny said. "She behaved with them as if they were not terrorists with weapons in their hands, but as if she was arguing with them at the market."
The hostage takers suspected she was an FSB "spy," Podlesny said, and threatened to kill her. "Go ahead and kill me," he quoted her as saying. "Then she said something else, and then they took her away," Podlesny said. He said he saw a hostage taker who was inside the hall fire four or five shots from his Kalashnikov in the direction of the door through which Romanova had been taken.
Romanova's colleagues and friends say she was an honest, blunt and hard-working person with a strong sense of justice.
"She was a fighter of sorts," said Yelena Salicheva, a store manager under whom Romanova had worked in 2000 and 2001 and was due to begin working with again on Oct. 24. "There are such people, you know - something clicks and they think they can save the world. Maybe she was short on education, but she was an exceptional human being."
After culinary trade school, Romanova worked at the Krasny Oktyabr chocolate factory, Salicheva said. And then she went to work for the perfume chain.
Olga Fazyaullina, another manager at L'Etoile, said Romanova was a kind person who saw things "in black and white" and always rushed to help. "She simply could not understand how people could lie, how there could be injustice," Fazyaullina said.
Natalya Shchedina, a highschool classmate of Romanova who re-established ties with her last winter, also said Romanova's response to the hostage taking was not out of character. She recalled that Romanova often had forced herself into conflict situations, trying to resolve the dispute.
Shchedrina appealed via the Internet for help for Romanova's parents and brother, who, without her salary have only their combined monthly pensions and social payments of 5,000 rubles ($157) to live on. The appeal was posted on the Vazhno.ru Web site, which has gathered information about the hostages. From there it prompted a group of Russian emigres in the United States to start a U.S. tax-deductable foundation to gather donations for the families of Romanova and others.
Andrew Mogilyansky, the organizer of the Nord-Ost Fund for Victims and Hostages of Moscow Terror, said Monday that about $30,000 in donations has been collected in the past two weeks. And about the same amount has been pledged, pending the fund's registration as a charity, which he said should be finalized within days.
"As soon as we get registration papers, we will begin applying to Western corporate donors," Mogilyansky said by telephone from Bensalem, Pennsylvania. The fund will also then begin distributing the money, he said.
Shchedrina, who is on the fund's board, said she had received about $1,500, mostly from abroad, in direct donations for Romanova's family.
She said many people responded to her appeal in Russia as well. "I am amazed by how many people have responded," Shchedrina said. "Absolute strangers come, give money and ask to remain anonymous."
The U.S. foundation, which accepts donations by credit card, can be accessed at www.moscowhelp.org. The Web site has a special page for those interested in specifically helping Romanova's family - www.helpolga.org
TITLE: IKEA Plans Five Russian Stores by 2006
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - IKEA is planning three new stores in Russia by 2006 but must hike local production before it can make a profit here, the reclusive head and founder of the Swedish furniture giant said Friday.
"It's no secret that we have a certain loss today," Ingvar Kamprad, 76, whom Forbes ranks as the world's 16th richest person with an estimated worth of $13.4 billion, said at a news conference.
"With high import taxes, we have had to suffer during the first years with a rather too small margin. So, we have to increase domestic supplies and volumes so that we can come into the black."
Within three years, IKEA should have five stores in Russia with total turnover between $332 million and $443 million, Kamprad said. "That will enable us to find money for more Russian suppliers for the domestic market," he said.
"Our goal is to furnish millions of homes in Russia, and not just for rich people," Kamprad said, adding that the average purchase value in a Moscow IKEA store is about 2,000 rubles [$63], the same as in Stockholm.
IKEA hopes to raise sales of local production to 30 percent of total sales from the current 11 percent, he said.
Kamprad slammed import tariffs, describing them as a disincentive to local furniture makers to produce internationally competitive goods.
Import tariffs, which are levied according to weight, make up about 70 percent to 80 percent of the cost of an IKEA shelf, Lennart Dahlgren, head of IKEA Russia, said earlier this year.
"IKEA products have a low value per kilogram compared to, for example, expensive Italian furniture," he said in an interview. "We have to pay much more in terms of value."
IKEA is planning to open its next store, near St. Petersburg, in December 2003, Dahlgren said at the news conference Friday. The company had planned to open a store on Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow at the same time, but that project may be delayed until 2004, he said.
IKEA already has two stores in Moscow - one that opened in March 2000 in the northern suburb of Khimki and another store that opened in December 2001 in the incomplete MEGA mall in the city's south.
Tapio Korkka, vice president of construction company Skanska East Europe, an international partner of IKEA, said that IKEA is having a tremendous impact on the Moscow retail sector.
"IKEA is a very proactive company," he wrote by e-mail. "They have a successful business practice in Europe and elsewhere, and they have brought that same business practice to Russia, where it will work well."
Dahlgren said that Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has not delayed IKEA's development, despite a protracted dispute over plans to build a bridge to improve access to the Khimki store.
"We know that Mr. Luzhkov is positive toward IKEA ... but, in a big city like Moscow, Luzhkov cannot decide everything," Dahlgren said. "He has a lot of people around him, and there are different opinions."
City Hall said that the incomplete bridge would block a view of the Tank Trap monument, which marks the spot where the Soviet army halted the German advance on Moscow during World War II.
IKEA should eventually have 17 stores in Russia, more than half of them in provincial cities, Kamprad said in a statement. "I see some four to five stores in Moscow region, one to two in St. Petersburg, and up to 10 in the regions of Russia," the statement said.
TITLE: Russia Gets New Status Following EU Ruling
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The European Union has officially granted Russia market-economy status and simultaneously enacted amendments that could negate some of the benefits.
Recognition has been looming since May, when European Commission President Romano Prodi kicked off the EU-Russia summit in Moscow with a surprise promise to grant Russia market status. The EU formalized the commission's Aug. 19 approval of relevant trade-law amendments. The new rules apply to all anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases initiated after Nov. 8, 2002.
The key amendment to the anti-dumping law struck Russia from the list of countries with non-market-economy status Thursday.
But at the same time, the commission introduced a number of changes to anti-dumping and anti-subsidy legislation, which some say could counteract the main benefit of market status, namely the use of exporters' own costs and prices - rather than proxy costs and prices from a third country - in dumping cases.
The Russian government has estimated that anti-dumping cases cost producers about $300 million per year. Eleven products from Russia are subject to anti-dumping measures. Four cases, affecting about 50 million euros worth of goods, were filed this year, three of them since Prodi made his promise in May.
"It's very likely that, whatever the commission gives as a political gesture, it might take back on the technical side," said Richard Luff, a lawyer with the Brussels office of Van Bael & Bellis, which represents a number of Russian companies in anti-dumping cases.
In particular, the amendment to the anti-dumping law allows the commission to use information from another producer in the same country, or even a third country, if it decides that a company does not reasonably reflect its production and sales cost in its records.
It also allows the commission to increase the cost of production of an exporting company by "a reasonable amount" under a "particular market situation" such as "when prices are artificially low or when there is significant barter trade, or when there are noncommercial processing arrangements."
The amendment to the anti-subsidy law also gives the commission the right to adjust costs and prices for goods or services if it decides that the country has no benchmark prices, either by an "appropriate amount that reflects normal market terms and conditions" or based on information from a third country.
"In cases where the costs of imported goods are artificially low, we retain the right to compare prices with producer prices in other markets," Interfax quoted Fritz-Harald Wenig, head of the European Commission's Trade Defense Directorate, as saying.
TITLE: $95M Ruling On Ilim Pulp Overturned
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Kemerovo court presidium on Monday overturned the $95-million decision against leading pulp-and-paper holding Ilim Pulp Enterprises that led to it losing a 61-percent stake in its flagship mill, the company said.
The original case, brought on April 25 by a super-minority shareholder named Sergei Melkin, accused Ilim Pulp of violating the terms by which it privatized the Kotlas Pulp and Paper Mill in the northern Arkhangelsk region. Melkin sought 3 billion rubles ($95 million) in damages.
As a result of the decision, a 36-percent stake and a 25-percent stake belonging to Ilim Pulp were sold off and eventually acquired by aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska's industrial holding Base Element and St. Petersburg banker and former Ilim Pulp shareholder Vladimir Kogan.
Deripaska and Kogan later announced plans to form a forestry holding.
According to Ilim Pulp, the presidium ordered a retrial after a protest submitted by Kemerovo prosecutor Alexander Khalezin.
The protest outlined a number of procedural violations committed by the judges during the case, including Ilim Pulp's complaint that it was notified neither of the proceedings nor the decision in time to defend itself or file an appeal.
In addition, the prosecutor argued that the court did not prove direct injury to the plaintiff, Ilim said.
Neither the court nor Base Element could be reached for comment Monday.
TITLE: Kremlin Gives Reprieve to MBA Program
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A pioneering program created by presidential decree in 1997 to foster a new breed of business leaders was given a new lease on life on Tuesday.
"We are so impressed by the results that we've decided to extend the program until 2007," Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko told some of the 26,000 past and present participants of the program who gathered in Moscow to commemorate its fifth anniversary.
Created in 1997 by then-President Boris Yeltsin, the Presidential Manager and Executive Training Program has given thousands of young people from all over the country the opportunity to study modern business-management techniques both at home and abroad.
Ilnur Taktabayev was one of the first applicants. Back in 1997, he was living in Omsk and had been working in a small real-estate company for two years when he heard about the scholarship opportunity and decided to apply.
Now, Taktabayev has a master's degree in business administration from the University of South Carolina and is a senior manager at a successful company in Moscow.
The program, financially supported by a combination of federal and regional budgets, big business and grants from 12 countries, is administered by some 2,000 employees in offices in 80 regions. A quota system ensures that people from all over the country are included - with the government reserving 10 percent of the scholarships for its own employees.
Although wildly popular - more than 14,000 applications have been received so far this year - the $10-million annual contribution from the Russian side pales in comparison to the funding received from abroad. Germany, for example, has contributed more than $31 million over the last five years, while Britain has pitched in $10 million and the European Union $6 million. Even so, it is not enough to fund a Western-style education program, participants say.
To qualify, applicants must be under 40, have at least one year of managerial experience and pass four exams. The program is divided into two parts - theoretical-business education at home and practical training abroad. Winners receive grants to study masters-level courses for two years - one at a Russian university and one either at a participating university abroad or as an intern in a foreign firm.
Oksana Grishina, 28, is the general director of Greenurbonet, a public relations company in St. Petersburg. Although she runs a company, Grishina said that she applied for the program last year because she has an arts degree and lacks managerial training.
She was accepted and is now juggling her professional duties while studying in her first year at St. Petersburg State University. For the second year of the program, Grishina said she wants to study in Britain.
When finished, Grishina could join the hundreds of graduates of the program who are filling the ranks at some of the biggest companies in the county - there are 75 at Severstal, for example, 60 at United Heavy Machineries, 59 at AvtoVAZ, 56 at Unified Energy Systems and 20 at Russian Aluminum.
Despite the program's success, however, it cannot meet a fraction of the country's need, according to Arkady Volsky, the head of the country's most powerful lobby group, RSPP, which unites many of the companies who have benefited the most from the initiative.
A lack of skilled managers remains one of the biggest problems facing Russian companies, Volsky said.
"We have a lot of entrepreneurs, but we don't have enough qualified senior managers - we need at least a million and a half more," he said.
TITLE: TNK Joins Race for Control of Slavneft
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Tyumen Oil Co. has officially entered the Slavneft sweepstakes, publicly confirming for the first time its intention to participate in the largest privatization tender of the year.
Simon Kukes, the president of Tyumen Oil Co., or TNK, told the Financial Times in an interview published Tuesday that his company, the country's fourth-largest crude producer, would submit a bid for the government's 74.95-percent stake in Slavneft within two weeks.
Kukes declined, however, to say whether TNK would bid alone or with a partner.
"There are a lot of possibilities, but I cannot say any more at the moment," he said.
The State Property Fund has set a minimum price of $1.3 billion for the stake, but analysts say that competition from other oil majors could push it into the $2 billion range.
The country's top three producers - LUKoil, Yukos and cash-rich Surgutneftegaz - are rumored to be preparing bids, but all have refused to commit one way or the other, leaving No. 5 Sibneft and now TNK the only declared bidders.
"We are interested in participating in the action," Sibneft spokesperson John Mann said Tuesday. "But we recognize the fact that we will not be the only company interested."
Like Kukes, however, Mann declined to say whether a joint TNK-Sibneft bid was in the works, a move analysts say would be logical.
Timerbulat Karimov, oil and gas analyst at the Aton brokerage, said that a joint bid for Slavneft, which accounts for just over 4 percent of Russia's crude output, would make sense for both companies, particularly since they already have an existing partnership.
The two oil majors already jointly hold a 13-percent stake in Slavneft via an investment trust, and TNK controls some 40 percent of Slavneft subsidiary Megionneftegaz, which accounts for 80 percent of Slavneft's total production.
In addition, the two companies recently announced the creation of a strategic partnership in which Sibneft will receive an 8.6-percent equity stake in offshore company TNK International Ltd., the main shareholder in the TNK and Onako oil holdings. In exchange, TNK will get 40 percent of Orenburgneft, Onako's main operator.
Sibneft and TNK have also been actively raising funds by securing loans, in Sibneft's case, or, like TNK, placing debt paper abroad, which could indicate that both oil majors are readying themselves for the purchase, Karimov said.
The date for the tender has not been set, but Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said Tuesday that it would definitely be before the end of the year.
"The sale of the stake will take place in mid-December, but no later than Dec. 20," Kasyanov said.
State Property Fund chairperson Vladimir Malin said in a press release Tuesday that the government wants "to make the auction transparent and the details about the item on sale maximally open."
TITLE: Firms Taxi for Takeoff in Race To Produce Regional Plane
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The drive to create a new Russian short-range commercial jet is gathering momentum, with domestic manufacturers slugging it out in a bid to win a government tender as part of the country's regional jet program.
By the end of the year, the government will name which aircraft will, by the end of the decade, fill the underdeveloped niche currently occupied by the aging and obsolete Tu-134, Yak-42 and An-24.
Meanwhile, Base Element, in conjunction with Sukhoi fighter-jet maker Irkut, is bidding for bankrupt German regional jet maker Fairchild Dornier in an attempt to get a head start on the competition and position itself as a market player.
But while local aircraft manufacturers busily pitch their ideas, domestic carriers say that they need regional jets now, and are increasingly looking for solutions abroad. "We needed these aircraft yesterday," said Aeroflot's director of fleet planning, Sergei Koltovich. "It would be nice to have them tomorrow."
The Russian Aviation and Space Agency, or Rosaviakosmos, met last week with three aircraft companies - Sukhoi, Tupolev and Myasishchev - and took their proposals on the development of a regional aircraft, promising to identify the winner by the end of the year.
Although short on details, the proposals in general are for a 50 to 95-seat aircraft with a range of 2,000 kilometers to 4,000 kilometers. These jets would be competitive with analogous foreign craft - which carry an average price tag of $25 million - both in terms of quality and price.
The creation of a new domestic regional jet is part of the government's program for civil aviation through 2015. Originally, development of such a plane was slated to begin in 2006, with mass production following in 2015. But, according to Vladimir Stroshinsky, deputy head of research and development at Rosaviakosmos, the timing has been shifted in response to growing demand from domestic carriers and the need to develop a regional network. The proposed regional jet is scheduled to take off in 2006 and enter mass production at the end of the decade.
The program allots financing of 3.8 billion rubles ($120 million) over 10 years, 1.4 billion rubles of which will be covered by the budget, with the rest coming from other sources.
Sukhoi - better known for its fighter jets - is participating in the tender in a consortium with Boeing Co., Ilyushin and Yakovlev. The group has proposed a family of regional jets seating 60, 75 and 95 passengers, with the final technical characteristics expected to be decided on by the end of the year.
The group puts worldwide demand for the 75-seaters at around 650 aircraft, 340 of them to be sold abroad. It wants the government to cover 10 percent of the estimated $560-million development costs.
Tupolev estimates its research and development spending at $215 million, largely due to the fact that its Tu-414 is derived from previously completed design work on the 50-seater Tu-324, said Anatoly Polyakov, deputy designer for the program.
Tupolev is looking for 6 percent to 10 percent to be covered by the state. But Polyakov said that Tupolev is not pinning much hope on state financing - development of the Tu-324 remains stalled due to the government's continued failure to provide promised funding.
Polyakov said that Tupolev's estimate of the domestic market for regional aircraft through 2015 stands at 140 planes. Its jet will retail at $14.5 million on the domestic market and $16 million abroad.
At Myasishchev, Boris Morkovkin, head of the 72-seat M-60 program, said that his company's proposed craft exists only as an idea that dates back to the Soviet era. He said that Myasishchev needs the state to cover 40 percent of its estimated $270-million development costs.
All manufacturers agreed that government approval was the key to luring investors, but insisted that they would pursue the projects regardless who wins.
Irkut and BasEl also turned to Rosaviakosmos with a view to participate in the tender, Irkut President Alexei Fyodorov said last week, but added that taking part in the tender was not crucial.
"The tender that was announced is for an aircraft yet to be developed. As for Fairchild Dornier, they practically have the aircraft ready," Fyodorov said. "We do not expect to receive budget financing to develop the craft. We will position ourselves as players on the market. We will talk to Aeroflot and other companies."
Irkut and BasEl plan to take over Fairchild Dornier as a whole, including its Airbus component-manufacturing, maintenance and regional aircraft divisions. The company already has a 32-seat model, the 328 JET, and is working on a 70-seat 728 JET, which is still at the prototype stage.
"We are looking at regional aircraft that already exist and those [at the design stage] with interest," said Aeroflot's Koltovich. "There are a certain number of routes that Aeroflot could operate if these aircraft were available in the required numbers."
Koltovich said that, in the next five years, Aeroflot could take 20 to 30 regional jets seating 50 to 90 passengers, but local manufacturers have yet to deliver. Aeroflot is facing a choice of either losing the market now covered by Tu-134s or using aircraft with excess capacity, he said.
Koltovich said that the Fairchild Dornier concept seemed to be one of the best options but, if the aircraft were produced abroad, prohibitive customs duties would be a problem.
TITLE: Kudrin Belatedly Backs Better Beer
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Brewers gave a weary welcome Tuesday to a government decision to halve import duties on aluminum cans and foreign equipment.
An upbeat Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin said that the move would finally let Russians "drink world-class beer at lower prices."
But the country's leading brewery was more morbid. "It's like sewing severed fingers back on," Baltika spokesperson Alexei Kedrin said. "This news would have been better had they not increased import duty on cans back in January."
The decision is technically a recommendation, but it is widely expected to be adopted by the end of the year. When it does, the duty will drop from 41 euros ($41) per 1,000 cans to 22 euros, while duties on foreign brewing equipment will drop to 5 percent from 10 percent.
The Brewers' Union was outraged by the January hike, but a spokesperson for the committee that made the decision defended it, saying that local can makers invested $111 million to expand production as a result.
National beer consumption shrank in October, dropping 8 percent, but demand for cans continues to rise - by some estimates, domestic production is expected to fall short of demand by as many as 1 billion cans next year.
Several brewers, most noticeably Baltika, long relied on Polish can producer Canpak, but turned to Rostar, Russian Aluminum's domestic producer, after the January hike.
TITLE: New Breed of Business Master of the Universe Lands in Russia
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia has become a major target for many prestigious business schools, but while the number and quality of budding Masters of Business Administration programs is growing, Russia is still catching on to the true value of an advanced degree.
Just seven years ago, there was scarcely a Russian student who knew what was meant by the letters MBA, but that's hardly the case now. More and more young Russians are dreaming of changing their lives, enhancing their careers, expanding their knowledge and boosting their incomes by attaining Masters of Business Administration degrees - as long as they can first figure out how to afford the tuition fees.
To meet the growing demand, representatives from about 70 business schools, including top U.S. and European campuses such as Kellogg and Chicago University, gathered in Moscow in late October as part of the annual World MBA Tour, which first reached Moscow in 1999.
"We have over 1,000 people already registered for our tour in Moscow," World MBA Tour spokesperson Sabeena Uttam said.
In the second half of this year alone, the World MBA Tour will visit 20 major European and Asian cities, presenting the world's leading MBA programs. Participants will have the opportunity to speak to representatives of business schools from more than 30 countries.
A QUEST FOR IMPROVEMENT
As the number of Russians interested in attaining an MBA grows, so does the choice that confronts them.
And with the number of schools and universities offering MBA programs increasing every year, many business schools are moving away from the "generalist" format that has been the standard MBA model for the past 30 years. The schools are either building strength in depth within certain departments or going further, by adopting highly specialized programs geared toward a particular niche of professional people.
Candidates can choose from a wide range of MBA specializations, ranging from accountancy and finance to technology management and even sports management. These programs are mainly proving popular with applicants who have a clear view of the industry in which they wish to work and want to expand their knowledge of it, rather than just receive a general education.
"For me, it is an opportunity to enhance my career and to get knowledge of those business practices that I know nothing about," said Konstantin Samoilov, 32, a student with Chicago University's executive MBA program in Barcelona.
Samoilov is also marketing director in Russia for the world's second biggest brewer, South African Breweries/Miller. The executive MBA program allows him to continue working while getting his MBA, as he only needs to attend lectures for 16 weeks of the course's 20 months.
The most recent executive MBA business class at Chicago University's European campus in Barcelona has eight Russian students - 10 percent of the total - according to the program's managing director, Glenn Sykes. Since 1994, when the school had its first Russian graduates, Russians have made up about 5 percent of enrollments on average, the largest representation of any Eastern European country.
Rosemaria Martinelli, admissions director from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said that the number of Russian MBAs in the program quadrupled from three in 2001 to 12 this year.
Russia has also become one of the main target countries for the Columbia Business School. According to its admissions department, what has changed over the years in terms of Russian students is "the quality of the applicant pool, which has become much stronger."
"There was a huge number of applications from Russia in 1999 and 2000, following the crisis of 1998," a Columbia spokesperson said. "But most of the recent applicants are stronger and much more focused. They do not merely want an MBA, they know what exactly they need it for."
It was the financial crisis that helped focus the mind of George Mirilashvili, a one-time forex trader with Societe Generale.
"It was shortly after the 1998 crash. I almost lost my job and realized that I had to be much more competitive to survive such crises in the future," said Mirilashvilli, now in his second year as a full-time MBA student at Columbia. "In addition to that, the gap between the quality of business education in Russia and in the U.S. is still huge."
But, while most Russians prefer to get their MBAs at U.S. schools, which lead all the ratings, there are also those who prefer to go to Europe.
France's INSEAD School is the most popular European school among Russians because it offers a one-year MBA program. The one-year course might be far more intensive than the longer programs offered, but it is also cheaper and closer to home.
One MBA student at INSEAD is Leonid Bershidsky, the former editor of business daily Vedomosti, a sister newspaper of The St. Petersburg Times.
"I felt like I was no longer developing, so for me the MBA seemed the only chance to get a formal education," Bershidsky said.
"It does provide a lot of exercise for the brain: A lot of what's going on around us suddenly has more than just an intuitive explanation ... Basically, this is a self-improvement quest," he said.
DEGREES OF SEPARATION
Like anyone else who does it, Russians go abroad not only to get an MBA but also to establish valuable contacts. There are, however, several things that make them differ from other alumni, most noticeably their age.
Russia's market economy is only 10 years old, so Russian managers and successful businesspeople are relatively young compared to their European and American colleagues.
"We have such an intense life that every day in Russia equals a week or a month in Europe or the U.S.," said Miller's Samoilov. "So it is not surprising when a person in Russia understands by age 25 that he needs to get an MBA."
The average age of those on his program is 36, and most Russian students in the class are younger than that. The youngest is 28 and works as a financial director with mobile phone company Moskovskaya Sotovaya. Another is 30 and is SunInterbrew's financial director.
"What is probably even more important is that it gives you time and opportunity to think about what you would like to achieve in life," said Sergei Ambartsumov, 30, an associate portfolio manager with the Hermitage Fund. "Like many Russians who started working in their 20s, I was always too busy and never had enough time to think about that."
Ambartsumov got his MBA from INSEAD last summer.
A STEP ON THE LADDER
Statistics show that, with an MBA diploma in hand, it is possible to double or even triple one's salary, and the chances of career enhancement increase considerably. However, an MBA on its own is no guarantee of a highly paid or even likeable job.
"After I graduated from the Harvard business school, I felt like I could advise Bill Gates," said Juan Cavalier, a Harvard MBA and partner with Moscow-based executive search company Somers & Cavalier. "But this was far from reality, and I joined Procter & Gamble as a junior assistant," he said.
For some Russian MBA holders, it can come as a disappointment to realize after coming back home that, while the degree gives them an understanding of conceptual business issues and organizational structures, it does not give them the edge of experience, something that only comes with time. And doing business in Russia can be very different from what gets taught during an MBA course.
Marina Somers, co-partner with Somers & Cavalier, said that many Russians are going abroad to get their degree thinking that, by bringing it back to the market, they will land themselves very senior positions with senior salaries to match. "That's not the case, because the business environment is not mature enough," she said.
"I know people for whom the [size of the] compensation package was the main criteria when they were searching for a job after graduating," said Hermitage's Ambartsumov. "But this does not mean that all MBA students are only looking for money. Professional growth is also very important."
Columbia's Mirilashvilli said that salary will be an important factor in his - and many other graduates' - decision on whether to return to Russia or stay abroad.
NOT YET ESSENTIAL
While it can be difficult to land a job with a leading bank or investment company in the United States or Europe without an MBA, this is not the case in Russia. At least, not yet.
"We welcome Western diplomas and MBAs, but this is not a goal in itself," said Galina Vaisband, head of human resources at TNT Express in Russia. She said that TNT places greater value on experience and professional background. "If the person has the required skills, we are ready to teach him or her within the company," she said.
According to Somers, very few of her company's clients in Moscow ask for an MBA-degree qualification, which is mainly sought for positions where financial expertise or analytical skills are expected. "In such cases, companies usually say that an MBA will be preferred," she said. "But it is not a must."
"We require an MBA for several top-management positions that have to do with investor relations and business development," said Marina Maizenberg, HR director with the Russian office of Golden Telecom. But, she pointed out, the number of such positions is very limited.
"We also don't pay much attention to which university the person got his or her MBA from," she said.
Unfortunately for many Russians with MBAs, the value of a top MBA is appreciated far better in the United States than in Russia. But the flipside of the coin is that, with the dire current state of the job market in the United States and Europe, suitable positions there are not easy to come by.
After the recent rounds of job cuts and salary slashing at many major international-investment banks, the Russian financial-job market has witnessed the return of a large number of MBAs after several years of working abroad. Most of them find work in Russia more challenging, if somewhat faster paced.
Recruiters agreed that Russians who remain in the West after getting their MBAs will go through the traditional, stage-by-stage career path. By contrast, at home they have a chance to leapfrog several stages and become, for example, a general manager. This is particularly true of Russian companies, which are willing to give someone with Western training a chance.
"Where I will make the best use of my MBA degree depends on the particular opportunities available to me at the time of graduation," Mirilashvilli said.
"All other things being equal, I would prefer to come to Russia, where I believe I have a chance of realizing my full potential faster," he said.
The situation is already changing, and more Russian companies are coming to the realization that the biggest factor of success in business is human capital.
"Maybe it is not very important to have an MBA in Russia now," Samoilov said. "But I would not rule out that, in 20 years' time, it will become a must for those who want to succeed in business."
TITLE: Top Accountant Quits Over Probe on CIA/FBI Candidate
AUTHOR: By Marcy Gordon
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The chief accountant of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission resigned on Friday amid investigations into his role in the selection of former CIA and FBI director William Webster to head a new accounting oversight board.
Robert Herdman's departure came three days after SEC Chairperson Harvey Pitt, an appointee of President George W. Bush, who pushed Webster's appointment, announced his own plans to resign.
The move deepened the sense of turmoil at the watchdog agency at a time when it must resolve a wave of accounting scandals that shook Americans' confidence in the stock market and corporate integrity.
Webster said this week that he will step aside if he decides he can't be effective heading the board because of the controversy. Bush would not indicate whether he wanted Webster to remain, saying he wanted to see the results of an internal SEC investigation.
In a letter to Pitt, Herdman said that he was resigning immediately "in light of recent events" and because the SEC's objectivity in making important decisions in coming weeks could be compromised if he stayed.
"The objectivity of those decisions will be enhanced if someone other than I functions as the [SEC's] principal adviser on accounting matters," Herdman told Pitt.
Pitt, in a speech in Florida to a securities-industry group, acknowledged that "turmoil surrounding my [chairpersonship] makes it very difficult for the commissioners and staff to perform critical assignments."
"I hope my successor isn't greeted with the same climate of attack and partisanship," said Pitt, who is remaining as chairperson for a transition period. Bush must nominate a replacement for confirmation by the Senate.
Pitt, Herdman and an SEC commissioner initially approached Webster about taking the oversight job, mandated by congress last summer in response to the accounting scandals. Webster has said that he told Pitt that he headed the audit committee at a company now facing fraud accusations. Herdman's office then told Pitt that that information did not create a problem for Webster's selection.
Pitt did not tell his fellow commissioners about Webster's watchdog role at U.S. Technologies before they voted two weeks ago to approve Webster in the new job. Nor did Pitt inform anyone at the White House, where Chief of Staff Andrew Card had endorsed Webster's selection.
Webster fired U.S. Technologies' outside auditors last year when he headed the board of directors' auditing committee.
The auditing firm, BDO Seidman, recently alleged that Webster had made "false and misleading statements" about how much he knew about the company's financial problems.
BDO Seidman released documents Thursday showing that in a July 13, 2001, conference call with the audit committee, its accountants warned the committee members of "material weaknesses in internal-accounting control."
Webster told Dow Jones Newswires on Friday that the auditors voiced concerns, but not in an urgent, "house on fire" way.
Webster continued to insist that BDO Seidman was fired because the audit committee believed it was charging too much and taking too long to do its audits - not because of a warning about the company's financial controls.
The SEC inspector general and Congress' investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, are investigating the events surrounding Webster's appointment. The Senate Banking Committee also plans hearings.
TITLE: Microsoft Toes the Line on Sanctions
AUTHOR: By Ted Bridis
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Microsoft Corp. took early steps to begin obeying court-approved sanctions in its antitrust case, appointing three of its existing board members to a new committee responsible for making sure the software maker doesn't break the rules.
Friday's appointments satisfy one requirement that U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly imposed against Microsoft on behalf of nine states that had rejected a settlement the company negotiated with the Justice Department.
The judge ordered Microsoft to allow computer makers and customers to remove icons for some Microsoft features, share some technical information with rivals and agree not to participate in exclusive deals that could hurt competitors.
The new committee is one of two oversight groups established under the judge's rulings. The Justice Department and state attorneys general can also file complaints with the judge if Microsoft fails to abide by the sanctions.
The new committee, led by Harvard University business professor James Cash Jr., 54, of Boston, will hire at an unspecified future date a compliance officer who will enforce the judge's sanctions.
Microsoft will almost certainly pay that officer's salary, but those financial arrangements and the exact day-to-day responsibilities of the three-person committee are among "many things that will have to be spelled out," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel.
The other new committee members are Ann McLaughlin Korologos, 60, of Washington, former Labor secretary under President Reagan; and Raymond Gilmartin, 61, of New Jersey, president and chief executive at Merck & Co. Inc., one of the nation's largest drug companies. All joined Microsoft's board after January 2000.
As board members, each is paid $35,000 by Microsoft. Last year, they also received options to buy 10,000 shares of Microsoft, according to Microsoft's securities filings.
In creating the committee, Microsoft's board explicitly acknowledged the additional oversight by the government. The Directors said that the board "recognizes and appreciates the important roles the Department of Justice and each of the state attorneys general will play in their oversight of Microsoft's compliance."
TITLE: War for Noble Aims, or for Oil?
AUTHOR: By Jay Hancock
TEXT: THE ChevronTexaco tanker pulled into Pascagoula, Mississippi, in August, laden with 485,000 barrels of Iraqi crude.
As raw oil goes, the cargo was nothing special, soured as it was by 2.4 percent sulfur. But ChevronTexaco's refineries are better equipped than many to handle the contaminants common to the Iraqi product. They have been doing so for years, federal records show.
U.S. imports of Iraqi petroleum have surpassed pre-Persian Gulf War highs in recent years, and ChevronTexaco has been at the front of the parade, joining ExxonMobil and Valero Energy as big American clients for Baghdad.
Even before its merger with Texaco, Chevron had its eye on Iraq. Kenneth Derr, then Chevron's chairperson, said in a 1998 speech that, "I'd love Chevron to have access" for exploring and pumping Iraqi crude - not just buying it downstream under the United Nations' oil-for-food program, as happens now.
Since 1999, ChevronTexaco and its executives have given over $1 million to the Republicans, the party of the president who is preparing to invade Iraq.
ChevronTexaco is the company whose board, until 1999, included Condoleezza Rice, U.S. President George W. Bush's national security adviser. The corporation named one of its tankers after her. She calls Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein "an evil man."
Nobody in authority wants to say much about all this. But the pecuniary facts of the U.S.-Iraq crisis are an ugly aspect of how it is seen by the world, a blemish on whatever nobler motives the administration may have, a lacing of corrosive sulfur in the purer hydrocarbon.
Iraq holds the world's second-largest store of petroleum. The United States is the world's biggest consumer of petroleum.
Shut out of new fields in Alaska, hindered in Libya and Iran, and worried about political risk in Saudi Arabia, U.S. oil companies are presumably weighing their Iraq options just as diligently as they are avoiding talking about them.
A recent report by Deutsche Bank's stock-research unit figures that oil-services outfits Schlumberger Ltd. and Halliburton Co. would quickly benefit from a Western victory in Iraq. Even if war damage was limited, this line of thinking goes, Iraq's wells and pipelines would require millions in new investment after decaying under years of economic sanctions.
If Halliburton, formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, plays its cards right and gives some impressive sales presentations, perhaps it will win some of the work.
But there's no guarantee that American companies would get most of the gravy in postwar Iraq.
Russia, China and France all have a keen desire to expand their Persian Gulf presence. They also have vetoes on the UN Security Council. Of course, Washington, which may end up essentially governing postwar Iraq, will consider promises of oil access to win UN votes.
And, obviously, war in Iraq would pose huge risks to all oil companies with interests in the region, Americans included. Prolonged conflict could wreck pipelines and wells, disrupt the flow of crude and depress world demand.
And even an easy victory wouldn't guarantee higher profits for anybody. Iraq's reserves are so vast that a fully productive Iraqi oil sector, after several years of investment and rehabilitation, could depress prices and profits worldwide.
I don't think oil is the main reason the United States wants to invade Iraq. The officials leading this charge, Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, are sincere hard-liners, idealistic in their way, who seem to believe that attacking Baghdad in the absence of an obvious, imminent threat is the lesser evil for Washington and the world.
Oil is not the motive. And U.S. petro-profits are not the guaranteed result. But that doesn't make a war feel good. And it doesn't make it look good.
Jay Hancock is a financial columnist for The Baltimore Sun, to which he contributed this comment.
TITLE: Middlemen Muscling in On Gazprom Customers
TEXT: PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin and the team of "St. Petersburgers" in the top echelons of government could soon find themselves embroiled in a financial scandal involving tens of millions of dollars and pretty much the entire Russian economy. Everything now depends on the results of an audit that Gazprom chief Alexei Miller has ordered of the gas giant's largest subsidiary, Mezhregiongaz, which holds a virtual monopoly on natural-gas sales within Russia. As part of a major purge at Gazprom last winter, Mezhregiongaz was taken over by a new management team headed by Nikolai Gornovsky.
The audit apparently came in response to a letter penned by Anatoly Chubais, in which the Unified Energy Systems boss accused the Mezhregiongaz leadership of forcing customers to buy their gas through intermediaries.
"The results of [numerous] audits point to the dubious reputation of these intermediary companies," Chubais wrote. "Regional gas suppliers force [their customers] to sign contracts [with these companies] as a condition of making additional deliveries. The inclusion of such intermediary firms has cost regional energos more than 500 million rubles."
The main thrust of Chubais' letter was laid out for me by a number of the people involved. Here's how it works. Gazprom owns the gas. The price of Gazprom's gas is fixed by the Federal Energy Commission. Mezhregiongaz's basic function is to sell that gas - more than 300 billion cubic meters per year - and collect the money.
Let's say that the manager of factory X pays a visit to his regional gas supplier. He enters the director's office: tables, chairs, a portrait of Putin on the wall. "Give me my 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas," he says.
"Sorry, pal," the director replies. "We can't handle that kind of volume. We'll deliver two thirds of that. You'll have to buy the rest from an independent producer."
The factory manager's jaw drops. "What are you trying to pull? The gas is yours. It belongs to Gazprom. Why should I pay half again as much for it when the difference just gets skimmed off by the middleman?"
The gas-company functionary points to the portrait of Putin hanging on the wall behind him. "Orders from upstairs. We're collecting for the election campaign."
This scenario, with a few variations, was described to me by a number of people - factory directors, not small fry. Oligarchs and such.
They might all have been lying. They might have wanted to discredit Putin's St. Petersburg team in the eyes of a journalist. But there were just too many factory directors, often mortal enemies, all telling me the same story, and not for publication. No one wanted to be interviewed on the record. "No way. Best not to get mixed up in that," they said.
It's also worth noting that all of these sources made clear that they understood the election-fundraising story was just a scam. Admi-servis isn't raising any money for Putin's re-election campaign. Some factory directors refused to pay. Those who agreed got the gas they needed - from 12 to 30 percent of their allotment - at prices up to one and a half times the official rate.
We're talking about tens of millions of dollars.
If Chubais' letter tells the true story, and if what my sources have told me checks out, then top officials of one of the biggest companies in Russia have been shaking down their customers for nine months now on behalf of Admi-servis. When this sort of thing is done under the table, it's called a swindle. When it's done by one of Russia's biggest companies and the team tasked with cleaning up Gazprom, I don't even know what to call it.
So far as I know, the real reason behind Miller's decision to order an audit of Mezhregiongaz had less to do with Chubais' letter, and more to do with the astonishment of the more liable members of the St. Petersburg team.
You have to choose: Either you strengthen the top-down power structure, or you serve the corporate interests of Admi-servis.
Yulia Latynina is the author and host of "Yest Mneniye" ("An Opinion") on TVS.
TITLE: Clearer Rules on International Arbitration
AUTHOR: By Maxim Kalinin and Igor Gorchakov
TEXT: INTERNATIONAL arbitration is now recognized and can be enforced in the 132 countries which are members of the New York Convention of 1958. In Russia, the general rules for the enforcement of arbitration awards were duplicated in a federal law on international commercial arbitration in 1993. This law, however, lacked clear guidelines on a number of key issues regulating the enforcement of the awards. On top of that, for a long time, the common jurisdiction - largely inexperienced in commercial matters - were the competent courts, again making the enforcement of an international arbitration award a highly complex task.
The situation has been considerably simplified, however, with the newly enacted Russian Code of Arbitration Procedure filling many gaps in the enforcement of international arbitration awards.
Starting on July 27, 2002, the new rules of jurisdiction will be brought within the jurisdiction of the Russian arbitrage courts, which are state courts for resolving commercial disputes. If, for example, a foreign company needs to enforce an arbitration award against a Russian company located in St. Petersburg, the foreign company should now apply to the Arbitrage Court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast.
The code also gives clearer procedural rules for the enforcement of international arbitration awards. The party seeking the recognition and enforcement of the award must submit to the court an application and certain mandatorily required documents, the list of which is exhaustive, reasonably short, and complies with the 1958 convention and the law of 1993. A decision should be given by a single judge within a month of the day when all the required documents are submitted to the arbitration court.
Establishing such a short time limit is an extremely important improvement from a practical point of view, as it will help to make the enforcement procedure much faster. The recognition and enforcement can be denied only on a limited number of grounds, which are duplicated from the 1958 convention. The application for the enforcement of the international arbitration award must be filed with the relevant arbitrage court within three years of the date when the award came into effect.
In addition, the code distinguishes between international arbitration awards, depending on the place where the award was rendered, which is to say, whether it was on Russian territory or abroad. The awards of international arbitration will be enforced with the use of slightly different rules. However, the code sets forth the same grounds for the refusal of the enforcement of an international arbitration award, regardless of the place where the award was issued.
In addition to the procedural rules for the enforcement of international arbitration awards, the code contains a crucial new development, in accordance with which, a party to the arbitration, including international arbitration, may apply to a Russian arbitrage court for measures securing its claims, including injunction relieves. This was not possible under the old Russian legislation and the inability of a creditor to arrest the assets of the debtor in commercial-arbitration proceedings was widely seen as a weaknesses in commercial arbitration, including international arbitration, in Russia.
Thus, the procedure for the enforcement of arbitration awards has been clearly improved by the code, and it's hoped that the new rules will be effectively applied by Russian arbitrage courts.
Maxim Kalinin is a partner and Igor Gorchakov is an associate at Baker & McKenzie St. Petersburg.
TITLE: History, Semantics, Chemistry Lessons
TEXT: In response to "A Pyrrhic Victory for Western Civilization" on Nov. 5.
Editor,
I would like to compliment Yulia Latynina for her excellent, insightful writing and well thought-out perspective.
Indeed, I wholeheartedly agree with the author that the Islamic extremists are waging a world war against all of Western civilization: Russia and the rest of Europe, the United States, Australia, etc. My heart goes out to the innocent victims of the terrorists in the Moscow theater. However, I believe that President Vladimir Putin made a brave decision. Leaders of countries must make tough decisions, and all of the West knows that his intentions were sincere in hoping to save as many hostages' lives as possible.
It must never be forgotten that the Islamic terrorists were the murderers in this tragic event. God bless Russia during this time of national mourning.
Brynell Somerville
Munich, Germany
Editor,
I thought the article "Pyrrhic Win for the Future of Civilization" by Yulia Latynina was extremely well written and right on target in many respects, except for the assertion that Westerners can only sympathize with Russia's recent tragedy because of our war with Islamic extremism.
Although it is always a danger to speak for a whole segment of people, I would like to reassure Latynina, and by extension all of the Russian people, that most people here in the United States have genuine sympathy for those who lost their lives and feel the Russian authorities did the absolute best they could under extremely difficult circumstances. Thank God, and thank President Vladimir Putin, for those who were saved.
We would feel the same way if Sept. 11, 2001, never happened.
Please accept our sincere condolences and be assured that you do not stand alone in your hour of grief.
Clifford Frederick
Phoenix, Arizona
Editor,
Yulia Latynina has put her finger on the truth and pointed out the increasingly obvious ties that make for a natural alliance between Russia and the West, as well as the cause for the general disgruntlement in Islamist states and the jealousy that poisons its waters and prevents Islamic countries from attaining any notable degree of progress, as it has since the Middle Ages. That poison is, plainly and simply, soul-shriveling envy, combined with its natural derivative, a hatred and jealousy born of that covetousness, and resentment of those who can create by those who once could create magnificence, but have destroyed their ability to do so. Having suppressed the innovative talents of their people and, hence, lost the ability to craft greatness or beauty, they resort, instead, to trying to steal it and what it yields.
There is an enlighteningly interesting and extremely revealing quote in this piece. Speaking 1,600 years ago, the Visigoth chieftain Ataulphus grudgingly asked about the Romans "Why do these pampered cowards ... have everything, while we, who are prepared to die, have nothing?" The answer is contained in the question. Advanced civilizations produce a population prepared to live, while barbarians produce a population prepared only to die.
People who are prepared to live - and to provide for their lives and posterity - seek ways to improve life. They invent technological gadgets, produce medicines to cure illnesses, build ever more comfortable and beautiful homes, which results in architectural improvements and varying designs often of artistic magnificence, seek greater degrees of education for themselves and their children, produce books and music, express themselves artistically and theatrically and so on.
When one is prepared to die and nothing else, when one's only thoughts regard the next life, with little or no concern for this one, for oneself or one's children, one will not bother with such things as those that are the result of a high culture, such as art, theater, beautiful design, insightful writing and philosophy, advanced medical and technological research and the use of its products to create a better and more fulfilling life. Unless, of course, it can be stolen. Incapable of producing it itself, the only way it can be acquired is through theft. But, having purloined the product without acquiring the ability and the talent - and providing the freedom of discourse, improvement and creation necessary for that talent and creativity to flourish - what is stolen cannot be either replicated or duplicated.
After Rome was sacked by the Visigoths, all the barbarians managed to produce was the Dark Ages. It took over a millennium for the Enlightenment to perceive and comprehend the indispensability of the need for, and production of, the resultant benefits that only a pluralistic, tolerant and, hence, society conducive to creativity can produce.
This writer has hit the mark.
Lorraine Stone
Oceanside, New York
Editor,
"I have no intention of indiscriminately knocking Islam," the seminal Yulia Latynina writes, "but for some reason we haven't seen Shintoist terrorists. The snipers captured in Washington had accepted Islam, not Buddhism."
Though for the most part self-evident, Ms. Latynina raises some valid points in her article. She does, however, do exactly what she claims she does not want to do: knock Islam.
Let's face it, she feels that Muslims are simply "barbaric," while she is "civilized," and not much different from "pampered" Western folks, living in smiling complacency in comfort and frequenting such places as the theater. And, thus, you are perpetuating the fatal mistake of generalizing and saying that all of Islam is composed of terrorists, rather than simply realizing that this is a fanatical faction, a minority and certainly not a reflection of the religion itself - no more than the Crusades were a true reflection of Christianity.
Latynina's quote is both outrageous and sad - sad because it reflects the very deep level of ignorance that is so steeped in an otherwise great culture. No, the terrorists who attacked both New York and Washington were neither Shinto, Buddhist nor Hindu. And, yes, Adolf Hitler and his cronies supposedly embraced "Christianity" and, no, Stalin's "statistic" of 25 million people was not executed by someone in Barbados - nor were the millions who suffered in the gulag at summer camp in the Rocky Mountains. It was on Nevsky Prospekt and not Hollywood Boulevard that I happened to see a poor defenseless bear cub beaten and rolled around by various men while no one stopped for a moment, and no police officer approached. Respect for life, huh? That would be something now, wouldn't it?
The truth is, every country has committed its sins, its transgressions and each has trudged in some way through its own darkness - and every person must fight against both darkness in him or herself as well as that which prevails in our world. Ours is a world with a bloody, violent and morally repugnant past and pointing the finger at this religious group or those "dark" people is not the way to change the situation constructively. It is merely a reductionist, racist option, which certainly doesn't reflect an evolved, "civilized" consciousness. Rather than thinking in "us and them" paradigms, we should address the deeper issues at the root of this cancer and, perhaps, for a moment, ask ourselves where our own responsibility lies, and what we can do to solve the problem. Simply killing off those "barbarians" clearly isn't the answer, so let's find what is.
Rizwati Freeman
St. Petersburg
Editor,
I read with interest Yulia Latynia's speculation on the future of civilization. It seem she has missed the point regarding the resurgence of terrorism in our modern world.
Terrorism is highly organized, irregular warfare requiring, in virtually all cases, resources beyond anything the third world could provide. Few believe the myth of "Islamic terrorism," separate from the irregular warfare ambitions of its true sponsors in powerful governments, supranational organizations and other utopians seeking a new world order.
The West is collapsing due to its own internal moral and economic contradictions and, not the least, to the greed of the immeasurably powerful few. These are the real terrorists.
The threat from Islam is largely synthetically generated, pabulum for the masses meant to distract attention from a systemic collapse of the financial structures supporting the world's physical economy. This collapse dynamic will generate powerful pressures among the powerful and the greedy to seek war on a scale that they believe will guarantee their continued rule. The trick is, of course, not letting the war thing get too far out of their control.
One thing is certain, war is being considered as the only option on the table. War creates order of a sorts. It is hoped that it will lead to empire.
Matthew Moriarty
Bumpass, Virginia
Not Just Semantics
In response to "Why Separatism Is Not the Same as Terrorism," a comment by Matt Bivens on Nov. 5.
Editor,
"Unlike the attacks on Sept. 11, however," writes Matt Bivens, "the terrorists in Moscow had a political demand: Stop the war."
Could Mr. Bivens please enlighten me, then, what the purpose of the Manhattan attack was? Was it all just a terrible accident?
D.M.Pennington
Moscow
Editor,
Matt Bivens tells us that Chechen terrorism is the result of Russia's policy in the territory. Foreign mercenaries, including al-Qaida, he says, are a small detail. He makes no mention of Turkey, where many groups sympathetic to Chechen terrorism and separatism appear to operate quite freely. Why were Russian forces sent there in the first place?
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has been more democratic than at any time in its history. Instead of seizing the moment to improve their living standards, certain Chechen elements started an armed uprising in 1994. Given the long-standing ambitions of Turkey for influence over the Caucasus, it is not unlikely that outside support was a factor in that uprising.
In 1999, when Russian forces had almost left Chechnya, armed Chechen groups, who, by that time, had developed a flourishing trade in illegal activities, together with foreign mercenaries, invaded neighbouring Dagestan.
Chechen separatism with a wider agenda than many appear to admit seems to enjoy significant sympathy in the Western media. It is not Chechen terrorism, but the behaviour of Russian forces, that is the focus of media attention.
Now consider the Kurdish uprising in neighboring Turkey, where it is estimated that around 2 million Kurds have been forced out out their homes by the Turkish army. Turkey is not only a member of NATO, but has been chosen by U.S. strategic planners to be the transport route of Caspian oil, bypassing Russia. Turkey's brutal operations are met with understanding and supplies of more weaponry by other members of NATO. The NATO leadership is opposed to any Turkish troop withdrawal from the Kurdish regions. For the most part, the Western media appears to echo this approach.
In the face of such hypocrisy, it will be difficult for the Russian public to be sure whether Western commentators are driven by genuine concern or by geo-political considerations when they offer their opinions on Chechnya.
George Collyer
London
Wrong Target
In response to "Zakayev Mulls Asylum Option" on Nov. 5.
Editor,
In relation to the inhuman and, in every way, unacceptable hostage taking of people in Moscow, I would like to congratulate the Russian people and President Putin on the outcome, which could obviously have been a lot more serious than it became, even though I feel deeply for the dead hostages and their families and friends. At the same time I wish to note for the Russian people the fact that most of the political parties and their members feel that, now that the internal problem has been solved, it is time to focus their attention on a small democratic country (Denmark) that, due to its form of democratic government and constituion, could not stop a privately arranged meeting with the purpose of finding ways for a dialog to try to end the war in Chechnya.
When hearing some Russian politicians' attacks on a peace-loving country like Denmark, using loud voices in order to make sure that as many Russians as possible can hear how badly the Danish politicians, people and system have behaved towards Russia, one has to wonder if this is to make the Russian people forget what the real issue is, namely the "war," which, if I am not mistaken, is not against Denmark and its people. Denmark is a country and a people who, more than many others, have had a good relationship with this great Russian Federation. I, for one, am sorry that the usually good relation between Russia and Denmark have been distorted in the way that they have chiefly because of a difference in attitudes towards the subject of democracy. It is worth mentioning that Denmark is one of the oldest democracies in the world, and has been a role model for many other countries of the world when they were on the threshold of becoming democracies themselves
I hope that this strange situation will soon come to an end so that we can all continue the normal, friendly coexsistance that has existed between our countries. At least in Denmark, the people cannot understand why the situation has generated such an extreme level of rhetoric from some Russian politicians.
K. Larsen
Havnsoe, Denmark
Dangerous Dose
In response to "Goverment Finally Releases Gas Specifics" on Nov 1.
Editor,
The basic idea about how to counteract terrorism is great. But, fentanyl may not have been the best choice because of its well known side-effects, particularly re-introduction into the system after two to six hours, which makes it a silent killer, even under hospital conditions.
Perhaps a pharmaceutical company in its effort to sell did not inform them about the real problems and the need for professional medical attendance.
Ivar K. Rossavik
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
TITLE: Chechnya Threatens To Become Afghanistan
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: AFTER the hostage crisis ended in bloodshed in Moscow, the Kremlin announced there will be no peace talks with rebels under any conditions. Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin's chief spokesperson on Chechnya, said that "there is no one with whom to negotiate in Chechnya."
President Vladimir Putin had publicly acknowledged several times before that military force alone cannot solve the Chechen problem, that "wiping out the terrorists and bandits" is only a prerequisite to a peaceful solution. But then Putin spelled out what the Kremlin means by "political solution" - holding a local referendum that will approve a new constitution to turn Chechnya into one more regular Russian province with no special autonomy rights. After the referendum, local elections are scheduled to elect a "legitimate" pro-Moscow Chechen leadership.
In 1996, during the previous Russian military occupation of Chechnya, there were also elections that produced a loyal pro-Moscow leadership and parliament, but this did not help stabilize the situation. The rebels continued to fight, the population did not consider the pro-Moscow Chechens to be their true leaders, while the Russian military continued to perform deadly sweeps on towns and villages, totally disregarding the new "elected" authorities and their meek protests.
Elections results in Russia are often crudely falsified, with the North Caucasus republics being cited as the worst offenders. The "political solution" Putin has chosen in Chechnya will surely not work, so there seems to be no alternative to a continuation of an increasingly deadly armed conflict.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced last week that suicide fighters were being recruited in Chechnya and new "terrorist" attacks were being planned there and elsewhere. He added that Russia was temporarily suspending previous plans for a partial withdrawal of some of its military units and that "broad-scale, tough and targeted special operations are being launched in all Chechnya's regions," aimed at "nipping the threat in the bud."
Today there are some 80,000 service personnel in Chechnya (approximately 40,000 of which come from the Defense Ministry). The troops are spread out all over the region, there are hundreds of checkpoints, but they still cannot control the situation, even with the help of several thousand local pro-Moscow Chechen militia.
The new security sweeps, Ivanov has announced, will surely lead to hundreds of Chechens arrested as rebel suspects or "rebel sympathizers." Some will be killed on the spot for "resisting arrest," some will "confess their crimes" during investigation, while some will be released after their relatives pay the military hefty bribes. (Arrested genuine rebels are often the first to be released - the resistance movement can gather ransom money more efficiently than ordinary Chechen civilians.)
Ivanov's crackdown will not defeat the rebellion: Such sweeps have been carried out again and again during the last three years, and their only end result has been an increased determination of the majority of Chechens to support the rebels. Many ordinary Chechens told Russian journalists in recent days on camera that, in principle, they support the hostage taking in Moscow inasmuch as it was aimed at ending the war.
There seems to be no shortage of young Chechen boys and girls who are eager to take up arms - to join the rebellion to kill Russians. The contingent that performed the hostage taking in Moscow is typical of the present-day Chechen resistance: teenage fighters, whose leader, Movsar Barayev, is in his early 20s.
This increasingly young rebel movement, driven by national pride and radical Islamic fever, is also technically more sophisticated today than ever before. In the last two months, the rebels have shot down six Russian helicopters using Russian-made, shoulder-launched, heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles. Some 140 Russian solders were killed in these attacks and some 30 wounded.
The Mi-8 chopper that was downed (with all on board killed) near the main military base in Khankala in the suburbs of Grozny last week was carrying the chief of staff of the 58th Army, Colonel Gennady Chepik, and other top military officials. The command of the 58th Army, which was specially formed in 1995 to fight the Chechen rebellion, was decimated by this attack.
In the mid-1980s the deployment of U.S.-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan was a turning point in the war. Not only the losses inflicted by the Stingers per se, but also the inability of the Russians to use their helicopters and fixed-wing planes freely to move forces rapidly by air and provide them with constant close air support, forced a negotiated settlement and a full withdrawal in the end.
Today, Russian forces use essentially the same weapons and methods as in the 1980s, but their overall strength and capabilities have drastically diminished after the demise of the Soviet Union. Under a sophisticated rebel attack in Chechnya, combined with deadly mega-terrorist assaults in Moscow and other cities, the Russians may flee from Chechnya, as from Afghanistan, while the rebel republic may be taken over (as Afghanistan was) by Taliban-style extremists.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.
TITLE: Cozying Up to the U.S.
AUTHOR: By Nicholas Berry
TEXT: BOTH the Chinese and Russian leaders have reached the same conclusion and have adopted similar policies toward Washington. "If you can't beat them, join them," says it simply. American foreign policy enjoys strong support in many areas from these two former enemies and reduced opposition in others. Their acquiescence to a tough UN Security Council resolution on Iraq - albeit softened by the French - is only the latest show of accommodation with the United States.
This support and reduced opposition are not because China and Russia approve of all American policies - they even support U.S. policies they disapprove of - but a reflection of their own national interests. Both have strong interests in getting Washington not to make big trouble for them as they tend to their more important issues.
China and Russia are in the midst of major domestic restructuring and, in the case of China, a change of leadership. Both President Vladimir Putin and President Jiang Zemin believe that their countries are not yet powerful enough to play assertive, independent world roles. To become powerful, they need a block of time to focus attention on transforming their emerging market economies, building modern infrastructures, solidifying the rule of law, consolidating political reforms, and resolving severe ethnic and territorial problems. Russia and China face problems on collecting taxes, rooting out corruption, and integrating wayward territories, such as Chechnya for Russia and Xingjiang for China, where both must deal with terrorism. China must re-integrate its "renegade province" of Taiwan. The problem of structural unemployment must be handled. In short, domestic affairs trump foreign affairs.
China and Russia know that an overwhelmingly powerful and assertive United States under President George W. Bush can make big trouble for them. The United States can restrict access to its huge market, give aid and comfort to dissidents and Taiwanese, halt cooperative programs in educational exchanges, nonproliferation, and dismantling weapons, pull back in foreign direct investments, and proceed with an enlarged, threatening ballistic missile defense program. Perhaps the greatest potential threat from Washington consists of blocking Russian and Chinese participation in international organizations. Putin has decided to integrate with Europe, and that means maintaining good relations with NATO and the EU. He seeks WTO membership, something China recently attained and in which it seeks to play a positive and rewarding role. Washington, if angered, could severely restrict their access to "the international community."
In addition, China and Russia really have no pressing motive to challenge U.S. leadership. Their officials believe that, as long as they do not make trouble for Washington, Washington will not make trouble for them. The Bush administration has backed off on human-rights complaints, the war in Chechnya, the status of Tibet and supporting Taiwan. There is substantial cooperation in counter-terrorism efforts and in nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Most recently, all three governments are working cooperatively to end North Korea's nuclear program.
Strangely, some sources in China and Russia use the same time frame by suggesting that it might take 20 years to make their countries strong enough to assert themselves in international affairs. In the meantime, they have downplayed their disapproval of American policies that would have sent them ballistic during the Cold War. Russia fumes over the failure to repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment (a humiliating immigration test for favorable trade), tolerates U.S. troops in Georgia and in Central Asia, keeps quiet about NATO expansion, and remains suspicious about U.S. missile defense. China, when probed, expresses strong feelings that the United States is encouraging Taiwan's independence by selling Taipei advanced weaponry. Both China and Russia see major problems for themselves if Bush attacks Iraq, such as lost oil concessions and debt repayments, dislocated trade and the likelihood of a wider war involving Israel.
But, as one Chinese official told me, "we must make the U.S. happy."
It is crucial that the Bush administration understand that it is not friendship or the emergence of complementary long-term interests that motivate China and Russia. Quite the contrary, their policies are relatively short-term. China and Russia are gearing up, if not to challenge the United States, then to be in a position to advance their interests without severe constraints. Taking Moscow's and Beijing's support for granted would be a monumental mistake. Doing so could launch Bush on a foreign policy adventure, such as a non-UN-authorized preemptive attack on Iraq, on the assumption that both countries would acquiesce and not take advantage of the situation by moving into profitable relations with an anti-American Arab and Islamic world. There are limits on Russian and Chinese quiescence.
On the positive side, the current posture of China and Russia creates a golden opportunity for Bush to make their relatively short-term policies decidedly long-term. He can consciously do more than just "consult" with Beijing and Moscow - both countries see consultation as little more than Bush telling them what he is going to do. Bush can manifestly seek out their fundamental national interests and facilitate them. In this way, when China and Russia get their acts together and become strong, Washington will not have to face two hostile powers.
Nicholas Berry, director of ForeignPolicyForum.com in Washington, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: UN Vote an Important Step for U.S.
TEXT: THE unanimous vote by the UN Security Council on Friday was an important achievement for U.S. President George W. Bush in his campaign to rid the world of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The resolution lays out a relatively tough program of inspections to verify whether Saddam Hussein's regime is giving up chemical and biological weapons, missiles and work on nuclear weapons. Moreover, it aligns the world behind the administration's campaign and should help ensure that any U.S. military action wins broad support. Getting the Security Council vote required eight weeks of negotiations and a series of U.S. concessions.
Bush was forced to agree to discuss any violations by Iraq with the Security Council, rather than moving automatically to military action. More intangibly, he has had to shift his public rhetoric away from the goal of regime change, leaving open the theoretical possibility that a disarmed and compliant Hussein would be allowed to remain in power.
This flexibility will prove valuable if it gains allies for the United States in a final confrontation with Iraq, and it ought to modulate the rhetorical din about the administration's unilateralism. But it also heightens the risk that the Iraq campaign will bog down or be diverted, making the regime's survival not just a diplomatic figment but a dangerous reality.
The danger exists because there is almost no chance that Hussein will comply with the resolution. Most likely, he will try to play the system, appearing to cooperate long enough to survive the winter, the most propitious time for a U.S.-led invasion. He will hope that the inspection team led by Swedish diplomat Hans Blix will not aggressively employ the powers granted to it. If challenged, he will count on cover by the French and Russian governments, which did their best to weaken the UN resolution and can be expected to filibuster any U.S. effort at enforcement.
Bush warned that, in the event Iraqi violations produce a Security Council stalemate, the U.S. will act without its sanction. That may well prove necessary. But, even as it avoids being paralyzed by Hussein's gamesmanship, the administration should do its best to preserve the coalition it has constructed.
The resolution calls for a full report by Iraq on its armaments within 30 days; the administration's hawks will want to declare any such statement false and move toward war. But there is hope that, if it avoids unilateral decisions or precipitous action, the U.S. can induce the council and key allies to join it in remaking Iraq. That's not only because the U.S. is powerful, but also because the goal of ending Hussein's aggression, brutality and violation of international law is just.
This comment ran as an editorial in The Washington Post.
TITLE: 'Opposition' Not Worthy of The Name
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Richard Gephardt, then the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, came out several months ago with a proposal: "an 'Apollo Project' to develop environmentally smart, renewable energy solutions."
The Apollo Project was the drive to put a man on the moon. It demanded major cash and commitment from Americans - the sort of dedication and purpose that has rarely been asked of them since. Gephardt was advocating a similar level of commitment to create a clean and reliable 21st-century energy infrastructure.
That was five days before U.S. President George W. Bush was to give his State of the Union address - and Gephardt was to offer the Democratic response. Surely, Gephardt would seize that national pulpit to rally people to his vision - right? After all, if something is important enough to advocate an "Apollo Project" level of commitment, then it's worth fighting for - right?
Wrong. Gephardt used his best platform all year to mumble something unmemorable. Apparently, the Apollo Project thing didn't fare well in focus groups.
Can anyone imagine Bush doing this? Arguing on Monday for something Apollo-esque-dramatic - war with Iraq, say, or a major overhaul of the tax code to hand billions of dollars to the mega-rich - and then, a few days later, dropping the subject, never to return to it?
No, these days only the Democrats are so feckless. Gephardt and Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle both complained all year about the Bush tax cuts, but they also helped see them into law (before Sept. 11 and before the U.S. economy began to sag).
As for war with Iraq, the Democrats are supposedly full of "private" anguish about whether this is a wise course - yet publicly, they handed Bush his green light, and at the time, Daschle claimed that, with "this Iraq question behind us," he could now lead the party's charge for its "economic plan." (That plan goes like this: The president should get new economic advisers. Shades of the Communists vs. Boris Yeltsin.)
"The Democrats should be sued for malpractice," sums up Nation columnist David Corn. "The [Republican Party] is the party of war and tax cuts. The Democratic Party is the party of ... well, war too (kind of) and, on tax cuts, not really, but some of us are for them, and in any case we're not going to fight them."
One could bicker over the meaning of it all. The Democrats only lost five seats in a 535-seat Congress; by one count, control of Congress hinged on just 22,000 votes; and Democrats who had voted against Bush's war with Iraq - a purportedly risky thing to do - tended to score big wins. The gutless wonders - those who whined about the president yet rushed to do his bidding - got bounced out.
"The only truly shocking thing about Tuesday's election is that the Democrats didn't do far worse, or as badly as they deserved," says Frank Rich of The New York Times. "Mr. Bush's high approval ratings notwithstanding, the election numbers reveal a vast opposition to where he is taking this country. But those numbers will not add up until there is an opposition party worthy of the name."
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The St. Petersburg Times, is a Washington-based fellow of The Nation Institute [www.thenation.com].
TITLE: Royal Family Facing Further Scandal After Claim of Rape
AUTHOR: By Ed Johnson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - The British royal family was faced with further awkward revelations on Sunday after a former servant of Prince Charles said in a newspaper interview that he was raped by another man on the staff.
Prince Charles' office has said the allegations were investigated internally, and by police, and that there was no basis for prosecution.
George Smith, 42, a former royal valet, told The Mail on Sunday tabloid he was assaulted by one of Charles' servants in 1989.
Smith, who was 29 and married with two children at the time, said he was invited to the man's home for lunch, given gin, beer and champagne, and raped as he slept on a sofa. The alleged attacker was not identified in the report.
Smith was quoted as saying the man also tried to assault him while they accompanied Prince Charles on a visit to Cairo.
The law firm Kingsley Napley later released a statement on behalf of the unnamed alleged rapist, denying Smith's claims.
"The allegations made now to The Mail on Sunday by Mr. Smith differ substantially and significantly in many regards from those made to the police last year and must cast serious doubt on Mr. Smith's reliability and the accuracy of any allegations he might be persuaded to make."
"Our client has consistently denied that these offenses ever took place, and whilst he has no desire to enter into the current media frenzy, cannot allow wholly untrue allegations against him to be reported and unchallenged."
The allegation of a homosexual rape was one of the sensational claims to emerge from the trial of Princess Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, who was acquitted on Nov. 1 of stealing items from her estate after Queen Elizabeth II revealed she knew he took the items for safekeeping.
Smith's revelations came as other tabloid newspapers continued their attack on Burrell, claiming he had been involved in homosexual relationships.
The former royal butler has sparked a frenzy in the tabloid press by selling his story to the Daily Mirror newspaper for a reported $620,000. While the Mirror has portrayed Burrell as a man of integrity who merely wants to set the record straight, other papers, whose bids for his story were rejected, have been vitriolic in their attacks - calling him a royal outcast, liar and "blabbermouth."
On Sunday, The News of the World tabloid said Burrell attempted to seduce Michael Barrymore, a television personality and homosexual.
The newspaper also alleged Burrell, who is married with two sons, had a gay relationship in the early 1980s. The People tabloid also alleged he tried to to seduce two men.
TITLE: Tornadoes Claim 26 Lives Across Central U.S.
AUTHOR: By John Gerome
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CLARKSVILLE, Tennessee - Devastating tornadoes ripped through Alabama, Tennessee and Ohio on Sunday, killing at least 26 people, trapping others in damaged buildings and leaving thousands without power, authorities said.
The toll included at least nine deaths in Alabama, 12 in Tennessee and five in Ohio, officials said. Dozens were injured, and authorities expected the number of victims to grow as they pick through the damage scattered across the region.
One of the hardest-hit areas was Mossy Grove, a tiny town about 40 miles west of Knoxville where a tornado touched down at about 10 p.m. Authorities said 45 people were believed to be missing in the area.
"It's mass destruction, death," said Ken Morgan, an officer in nearby Oliver Springs. "Mossy Grove is destroyed ... We're just getting bits and pieces right now, but there are several dead and several missing."
Much of the damage was initially believed to be concentrated in Tennessee and Ohio, but reports began to emerge late Sunday that devastating storms had struck Alabama as well. At least nine people were killed in the northern part of the state, and another 46 were injured.
The storms caused at least 25 injuries in Tennessee, and at least 21 were injured in Ohio, where a weather spotter saw at least four twisters hit rural northwestern Van Wert County.
Two deaths were reported in the county, including one person who died after being thrown from a car during the storm. In nearby Putnam County, two people were killed and one critically injured when a mobile home overturned, said Sergeant Brad Nelson of the sheriff's office. As the storm moved east, a house collapsed in Seneca County, killing one person inside and injuring two others.
Many homes were destroyed and an undetermined number of people were trapped in damaged buildings, the Van Wert County sheriff's department said. A county hospital worker said several people were being treated.
"We've got a mess," said dispatcher Trena Bartz.
The storms cut a 160-kilometer swath from Van Wert near the Indiana state line to Port Clinton along Lake Erie. Emergency officials in many northern Ohio counties reported widespread damage to barns, homes and businesses.
Governor Bob Taft declared a state of emergency in Van Wert and Ottawa counties, though storms downed power lines, closed roads and poured golf ball-sized hail in many areas of the state.
Brian Farris, of Van Wert, said he saw a tornado level a house just outside the city.
"It pulled everything off, set it down, then threw it in a field," he said. "It was on the ground at least a mile."
Firefighters had to cut through steel to reach a trapped worker in a collapsed building at an industrial park. A five-screen movie theater outside the city was destroyed, but managers evacuated the building when they learned the storm was coming.
"It could have been a real tragedy," Snyder said. "We consider ourselves very lucky."
People fled their homes to seek shelter in the basement of a convenience store and in a high school.
"I looked up and this big pine tree was coming right at me," said Larry Longwell, who ran from his trailer to the store. "It was just a rumble."
TITLE: Injury Denies Sister-Act Final
AUTHOR: By Beth Harris
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - There's one more match to play before Serena Williams can call it a year, go count her millions and revel in ending the season as the No. 1 player in women's tennis.
Williams was to face No. 5 Kim Clijsters in the final of the WTA Championships on Monday night at the Staples Center.
Although her ranking is secure regardless of the outcome, Williams will try to extend her 18-match winning streak, improve her 56-4 record, defend the title she won last year in Germany and take home the top prize of $765,000.
If she does, the 21-year-old Floridian will become the first player in women's tennis to top $4 million in yearly earnings.
"Tomorrow is my last day and I'm hanging up the racket for a week and I don't want anyone to ask me any questions about tennis," she said.
Williams overcame 54 unforced errors to defeat No. 3 Jennifer Capriati 2-6, 6-4, 6-4, while older sister Venus Williams was forced out by a leg injury trailing 5-0 in the first set against Clijsters in the semifinals Sunday.
Venus Williams said she twisted her left ankle in a 7-5, 6-4 victory over Monica Seles on Friday night, but didn't feel the effects until Saturday night. She was diagnosed with a lower leg strain and left the court in tears.
"She was really injured," Serena said. "I don't think she should have went out there at all."
Serena Williams hit 42 winners against Capriati, but won just four more total points.
"We were playing great tennis. That's why it was so close," Capriati said.
After splitting sets, Capriati took a 3-1 lead in the third before the largest and loudest crowd of the week at Staples Center, where the tournament has suffered from poor attendance in its first year. Sunday's crowd was announced as 8,164 in the 20,000-seat arena.
Capriati was within a point of going up 4-1, but she returned Williams' serve long, Williams hit a 184-kilometer-per-hour ace and then Capriati missed a forehand as Williams won the first of three consecutive games for a 4-3 lead.
"I had so many chances," Capriati said.
Capriati survived four deuces and two frustrating net cords to hold at 4-4. When the second net cord dropped in, Capriati rushed forward and hit a forehand winner. She headed back toward the baseline, turned around and smacked the saggy net with her racket.
"It's pretty unusual for so many net cords to go one way in a match," she said.
Williams rolled through the final two games, allowing Capriati just three points. Williams used two big serves to hold at 5-4. Capriati led 30-15 on her serve before making three straight errors to lose the match.
"Our intensity levels were so high," Williams said. "She returned very well and hit some amazing shots."
Clijsters led 5-0 when Williams called for a trainer and announced she was done.
Wearing a white wrap on her left calf and heavy tape on her left ankle, Williams walked over to Clijsters, hugged her and then waved to the fans as she left the court to applause. Williams earned $191,000 for her 13 minutes on court.
"I wasn't really able to move or get on my toes or change direction," Williams said.
Williams won just six points and had seven errors. Clijsters hit 21 winners.
"I just wanted to try to see what I could do," Williams said. "I was a lot more disappointed than what I thought I'd be."
TITLE: Patriots Rally To Stun Chicago
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Tom Brady and David Patten pulled the New England Patriots out of a big fourth-quarter hole. They weren't alone on a day of comebacks in the NFL. Trailing by three touchdowns in the third quarter and by 11 points with 5:22 left, the Patriots rallied with Brady's poise and Patten's fancy footwork to stun Chicago 33-30 on Sunday.
Capping a wild finish that saw officials spend nearly as much time viewing replays as patrolling the field, Brady found Patten deep in the end zone for a 20-yard TD pass with 0:21 left.
On a day of mostly blowouts and defensive struggles, the Patriots' victory stood out, but for sheer entertainment, that outcome might have been topped by a game that didn't even produce a winner: The Steelers and Falcons played to a 34-all tie, the first in the NFL in five years and only the 16th in league history, out of 333 overtime games.
Michael Vick led Atlanta back from 17 points down in the fourth quarter. Two other teams rallied from late deficits: Tom Bulger brought St. Louis out a 10-point hole to beat the Chargers 28-24 on a 7-yard touchdown pass to Isaac Bruce with 1:14 left; and Aaron Brooks threw a 7-yard pass to Donte Stallworth with 0:31 left in the Saints' 34-24 win over Carolina.
New England 33, Chicago 30. In Champaign, Illinois, the Bears lost their seventh straight, and didn't get any help from instant replay, as two crucial calls on New England's game-winning drive went against them.
Chicago (2-7) took a 30-19 lead with 5:22 left on Paul Edinger's 32-yard field goal, and the Bears thought they had stopped New England's final drive when defensive lineman Brian Robinson appeared to intercept Brady's pass with just under a minute left.
But after a review, the officials ruled that Robinson didn't fully have possession, resulting in an incompletion. Brady ran for a 3-yard gain on fourth down to extend the drive.
Brady, 36-of-55 for 328 yards, found Patten on third down from the 20, with Patten - who had a step on defensive back R.W. McQuarters - diving to haul in the catch. Again, officials went to the video, and it showed that Patten got his right foot down and dragged his left in the end zone.
Adam Vinatieri kicked four field goals, including a team-record 57-yarder, for the Pats (5-4), who won their second straight.
Atlanta 34, Pittsburgh 34, OT. In Pittsburgh, Tommy Maddox and Plaxico Burress smashed team-yardage records, but their startling numbers couldn't help the Steelers hang onto a 34-17 fourth-quarter lead.
Michael Vick, who had 294 yards passing but just 52 rushing, got free for an 11-yard scramble for a touchdown with 42 seconds left in the game to send it to overtime.
After Pittsburgh's Todd Peterson and Atlanta's Jay Feely had overtime field-goal attempts blocked, Pittsburgh still nearly won it. With only a second on the clock, Maddox lofted a 50-yard pass that Plaxico Burress caught at the Falcons 1. Half of Burress' body was in the end zone, but the ball wasn't, and the Steelers didn't have enough time to run another play.
Maddox threw for 473 yards and four touchdowns, breaking Bobby Layne's 1958 team record of 409 yards. Burress had nine catches for 253 yards and two scores - for 33 and 62 yards - to break Buddy Dial's 1961 team mark of 235 yards.
Both teams are now 5-3-1.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: England Humiliated
BRISBANE, Australia (Reuters) - Australia crushed England by 384 runs to win the opening Ashes test in less than four days on Sunday after one of the worst English batting collapses in almost 100 years.
Set 464 to win after Australia declared their second innings at 296 for five, England crumbled to 79 all out in little more than two hours.
It was England's lowest total in Australia since they were dismissed for 61 at Melbourne in 1903-1904 and one of their heaviest defeats in the long history of the Ashes, cricket's oldest and fiercest rivalry.
Mark Butcher scored a defiant 40, more than half his team's score, but just two other players made it to double figures as the innings came to an abrupt end in less than 29 overs.
Australian fast bowler Glenn McGrath captured four second-innings wickets to finish with eight for the match while leg-spinner Shane Warne claimed three new scalps in an England innings that lasted just 127 minutes.
But even their performances were overshadowed by the heroics of opening batsman Matthew Hayden, who scored twin centuries to become just the seventh player to score hundreds in each innings of an Ashes test.
Hayden, now ranked as the world's top batsman after his golden run over the past two years, followed up his first innings 197 with 103.
U.S. Takes Gold Cup
PASADENA, California (Reuters) - A golden goal from striker Mia Hamm handed the U.S. women's team the CONCACAF Gold Cup trophy with a 2-1 victory over Canada on Saturday.
Hamm struck in the fourth minute of extra-time, latching on to a through ball from Aly Wagner to lob goalkeeper Karina LeBlanc.
The U.S. took the lead in the 27th minute when forward Tiffany Milbrett volleyed home a cross from midfielder Kristine Lilly.
Canada tied the score in stoppage time at the end of the first half when captain Charmaine Hooper scored from five meters after a goalmouth scramble.
The U.S., playing in the same Rose Bowl stadium where they won the World Cup three years ago, dominated the second half, but resolute defending from Canada forced the game into extra-time.
In the third-place game, Mexico comfortably defeated Costa Rica 4-1 to qualify for a play-off with an as-yet unknown third-place team from Asia for a spot in next year's World Cup finals.
Quinn Quits
SUNDERLAND, England (Reuters) - Sunderland and Ireland striker Niall Quinn announced his retirement from playing on Sunday following a long-standing back injury.
The 36-year-old waved an emotional goodbye to Sunderland fans on the field at halftime in his team's Premiership game against Tottenham Hotspur at the Stadium of Light.
"It has been an adventure," Quinn later told Sky Sports television. "I've enjoyed it. The luck I have had along the way has been incredible."
"The Indian summer I had at this club was something really, really special," he said. "I think somebody up there had a soft spot for me, because I wasn't the greatest trainer in the world."
Quinn, who played for Ireland at the World Cup in June and won 91 caps for his country, announced his decision after having originally planned to wait until he received the results of a scan on his back next week.
The tall Dublin-born striker retired from international football after the World Cup. He will stay on at Sunderland, for whom he has played since 1996, in an ambassador's role.
Como Protest
MILAN (Reuters) - The president of Italian Serie A club Como says he is resigning in protest of refereeing decisions.
Speaking on RAI television after his side had lost 1-0 to Bologna on Sunday, Enrico Preziosi said: "I can confirm that I am resigning."
Preziosi heavily criticized the decision of referee Alfredo Trentalange to award Bologna a penalty which its striker Giuseppe Signori converted to win the game.
"Today, we can say Bologna 1, Como 0 - goalscorer Trentalange," said Preziosi.
Preziosi, who heads an Italian children's toy company, has made several accusations in recent weeks that bigger clubs enjoy favoritism.
"Today, we saw more scandalous refereeing, all in the favor of Bologna. I criticized the referees during the week and this was the reaction," he said. "So, it is better that I go - I don't want to be part of this world anymore."
Como, promoted from Serie B last season, is currently second from last in Serie A and has yet to win a game.
Miami No. 1
MIAMI (AP) - The Miami Hurricanes regained the top spot in The Associated Press media poll on Sunday, a week after a 25-point victory over Rutgers saw them drop to No. 2 behind Oklahoma.
With the Sooners losing to Texas A&M 30-26 and Miami overpowering Tennessee 26-3 on Saturday, the Hurricanes (9-0) received all 74 first-place votes and 1,850 points from the sports writers and broadcasters on the AP panel.
Miami was No. 1 for a record 21 straight polls before being unseated by Oklahoma. For the first time this season, though, the Hurricanes made a clean sweep of the votes.
Ohio State (11-0), the only other unbeaten major-college team, moved up to No. 2 from No. 3 after its 10-6 win over Purdue. The Buckeyes totaled 1,771 points.
Dream Over
HOUSTON (AP) - Houston legend Hakeem Olajuwon formally announced his retirement before an adoring audience Saturday night, during a ceremony at halftime of the Rockets' game against the Golden State Warriors.
The home team retired his No. 34 jersey and hoisted it to the rafters of Compaq Center, where Olajuwon played 17 of his 18 seasons and led Houston to consecutive NBA titles in 1994 and 1995.
Olajuwon was an All-Star 12 times, holds the all-time record for career blocked shots and was named one of the NBA's 50 greatest players when the league celebrated its first half-century in business in 1996.
"I don't look at this as the end; it is the beginning of the next phase of my life," Olajuwon said. "You know what you accomplished over the years, and now it is time to sit and watch."
Olajuwon averaged 21.8 points and 11.1 rebounds during his career, but he decided to retire after a disappointing final season with Toronto, in which his production slipped to 7.1 points and six rebounds.
"I'm happy to be back in Houston to close this chapter in my life - basketball - and to have a new beginning," Olajuwon said. "It's something I look forward to."