SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #821 (86), Tuesday, November 19, 2002
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TITLE: State Set To Add To Visa Rules
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In a continuing effort to tighten up migration policy, the State Duma has given preliminary approval to a bill expanding the grounds for denying entry to foreign nationals or expelling them from the country.
 
The bill, which also establishes new visa categories, consists of amendments to the existing law on entering and leaving Russia. The legislation passed 340-0 in its first reading on Friday.
 "The aim of the legislation was not to make everything as easy as possible. Its main aim was to protect the citizens of the Russian Federation and the state," the bill's author, Duma Deputy Nikolai Ovchinnikov, said by telephone Monday.
 Some of the new criteria for expelling foreigners or denying them entry are based on the law on foreigners, which took effect Oct. 31, while others are new altogether. The legislation was developed with input from an interministerial working group headed by Kremlin Deputy Chief of Staff Viktor Ivanov, a former KGB officer and a long-time colleague of President Vladimir Putin.
 Under the propsed rules, foreigners legally residing in or visiting Russia could be kicked out if they are deemed to pose "a real threat to the state's defense capabilities and security, to public order or to public health." Such decisions would be made by the Interior Ministry, but the procedure for making them has yet to be determined. Foreigners ordered to leave on these grounds would have three days to do so. If identified ahead of time, foreigners who pose security risk would not be allowed to enter the country at all. Also banned would be those who fail to prove that they have enough money to support themselves while in Russia; those convicted of intentionally committing a crime during a previous stay here; those who have been deported from the country; and those whose presence in Russia is "undesirable."
 A procedure for determining "undesirability" has not yet been established, Ovchinnikov said.
 Categories of foreign visitors who could be denied entry, but wouldn't be banned automatically, include drug addicts and people with infectious diseases that could pose a public health risk. They also include foreigners who have been called to account for administrative violations - such as traffic tickets or disturbing the peace - on Russian territory two or more times within a three-year period, and those who have had some restrictions imposed on them as a result of convictions in Russia or abroad. Ovchinnikov predicted that a significant number of changes would be introduced before the bill reached the critical second reading and that, if it was passed, a raft of by-laws would be needed to set up mechanisms for implementation.
 If the bill becomes law, it could mean inconveniences for foreigners who live in Russia for more than half a year at a time and hope to make their lives easier by getting the new temporary residence permits introduced by the law on foreigners. Temporary residence can be granted for a three-year term to eligible foreigners planning to be in Russia longer than 90 days. But, under the proposed legislation, the visas required for those seeking such permits fall into the single-entry category; therefore, each time temporary residents leave Russia, they would have to get new visas to come back.
 The proposed legislation establishes five types of visas: regular, transit, temporary residence, diplomatic and official. While the first four types already exist, the last is a new category to conform with the law on foreigners, which does not include concrete provisions on visas. The "regular" visas are further broken down into eight types: business, study, private, tourist, tourist group, work and refugee visas and visas for cultural, political, athletic, religious and scholarly or scientific exchange, pilgrimage, charity work or humanitarian aid deliveries. The bill also splits visas into single-entry, double-entry and multi-entry with respective terms of three months, six months and two years. However, foreigners with multi-entry visas, despite the two-year term, would not be allowed to stay in Russia for more than six months at a time; they would have to leave and re-enter the country.
 On an optimistic note, the bill attempts to stimulate tourism by waiving visas for foreign tourists who come to Russia for less than 72 hours on cruises.

TITLE: Schools Get Orthodoxy Course
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With the apparent blessing of the Kremlin, the Education Ministry has defied resistance even from its own ranks and taken a step toward introducing an Orthodox Christian component into the public school system.
 
Education Minister Vladimir Filippov last week released a 30-page description of an optional course called "Orthodox Culture," which can be taught in public schools as a part of the basic curriculum if regional officials or a school's principal decides to do so. Filippov said he was submitting the course, developed by Orthodox educators, only for "consideration." But one of the authors said it gives a green light to those who have wanted to introduce such a course and attempts to provide a framework for the wide variety of courses already taught in about 60 of Russia's 89 constituent regions.
 "It means the ministry does not mind if such courses are introduced," said Hierodeacon Kiprian Yashchenko, dean of the pedagogical department at Moscow's St. Tikhon Orthodox Theological Institute and one of the authors of the course. "Our bureaucrats use their offices according to their worldview. Most of them are atheists and say it is impossible because the school is separate from the church. We are separate from the state, but we can cooperate, can't we?"
 Yashchenko, who has a doctorate in pedagogical science, said he led the group of educators who compiled the program from what is already being tested in the Noginsk district of the Moscow region, Smolensk, Kursk, Belgorod and other regions of Russia. Although the intention is to immerse children in the Orthodox worldview, the course is taught by regular teachers and does not include any church ritual. "Priests may be consultants," he said.
 The 30-page document is a vast catalogue of themes, including Biblical subjects, Orthodox tradition, asceticism, liturgy, literature and art. By the end of the course, a student could be asked to write a paper on one of 64 subjects, such as "Faith and Science," "Moscow as the Third Rome" or "Orthodox Understanding of Freedom." The ministry says the course, which it recommends teaching once a week in primary school and twice a week in secondary school, is to be part of the main curriculum but with voluntary attendance.
 "Russia is a multinational country, and even within one subject of the federation, there are places where there are practically no Orthodox," Interfax quoted Filippov as saying in Novosibirsk. On the other hand, he said, Orthodox culture has existed in Russia for more than a thousand years and there is an "objective need" to learn it in school.
 The program does not spell out how the decision to teach the course is to be made. If the course is taught, there is as of yet no provision for children who chose not to attend.
 Religious education in public schools is a highly sensitive and controversial subject anywhere in the world and especially in Russia, where interpretations of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state vary greatly, and a system of church-state relations is being painfully developed after decades of Soviet atheism. The program appears to have bypassed the Education Ministry apparatus, which Orthodox Church officials have described as among the most reluctant to cooperate with the church.
 "We have not produced, ordered, reviewed or issued any such program! We have a [secular] religion studies program, but no 'Orthodox Culture!'" Tamara Tyulyaeva, an official with the Educational Ministry's general education department, said angrily by telephone on Thursday. "There were attempts, but we have a simple answer: We are a secular school system and will never introduce any confessional program - neither Muslim, nor Jewish, nor our dear Orthodox. Otherwise, we'll have a mess!"
 Opponents of religious education in public schools - who at various stages included State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, Deputy Speaker Irina Khakamada and the Yabloko party - say it will divide people and sow xenophobia. "This smacks of the Middle Ages and obscurantism," government spokesperson Alexei Volin was quoted in Friday's Gazeta as saying. "If the Education Ministry considers it necessary to introduce studies in religion, the course should include the basics of all religious world views and the history of atheism as well."
 The Orthodox Church has argued that secular religion classes do not offer students a choice of worldview, because religion is taught from a non-religious perspective. An Orthodox class, however, would add a moral dimension otherwise missing in the post-Soviet school system and would help reverse the proliferation of crime, drug-addiction and alcoholism, the church said. "The moral disorientation of many young people, their loss of a meaning in life, becomes the soil for various vices and threatens Russia's future," Patriarch Alexy II wrote in an address to a state-church conference on education in October. "That is why all of us - religious leaders, [state] authorities and society - have to realize that school should give not only a sum of knowledge, but also an upbringing."
 The conference, which took place Oct. 10 and 11, appears to have played a pivotal role in the Education Ministry's paper, which is dated Oct. 22. In addition to Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist leaders, the conference was attended by presidential envoys Georgy Poltavchenko and Sergei Kiriyenko, State Duma members and Educational Ministry officials. Izvestia quoted Poltavchenko - the presidential envoy to the Central Federal District who is known as a practicing Orthodox Christian - as saying at the conference that it is time for an "Orthodox Culture" course across Russia. Kiriyenko, from the Volga Federal District, named education as one of the fields where the state should cooperate with "traditional" religions. With most post-Soviet school programs still permeated with atheism, a religious course offers an alternative, he said.
 A former employee of the Moscow Patriarchate's department of education and cathechism, who did not want to be named, said the decision was likely made on the sidelines of that conference. He also said the government's program to help Muslim education in Russia, aimed at preventing Russian Muslims from traveling to the Arab world's often radical schools, played a role in the Moscow Patriarchate's lobbying efforts. That perhaps explains why official Muslim leaders did not protest the Education Ministry's decision.
 "We are not against our Orthodox brothers finding out as much as possible about their culture," said European Russia's Mufti Ravil Gainutdin, chairperson of the Council of Muftis of Russia. He stressed, however, that the voluntary aspect is crucial and complained that Russia's Muslims and other groups are unable to reach all schools because they "suffered even more than the Orthodox Church during the Soviet period," Interfax reported.
 The mufti of Siberia, Nafigulla Ashirov, who is seen as more radical, strongly opposed the Orthodoxy course. "Russia is living through one of the most complicated moments in its history, and raising this issue when the Chechnya wound is bleeding in the south of Russia, when skinheads are walking the streets of Moscow, is a direct violation of the Constitution," Ashirov said Friday.
 Human-rights activists are among the fiersest opponents of the program. The For Human Rights group led by Lev Ponomaryov complained to the Prosecutor General's Office earlier this year about the textbook on the "Basics of Orthodox Culture" by Alla Borodina, but the complaint was thrown out. "The textbook's authors help the growth of xenophobia and nationalism in our society," Interfax quoted Ponomaryov as saying. "This textbook, which is already used in state schools, imposes the views of one confession on schoolchildren and thus violates the principle of a secular state."
 Yashchenko said the second edition of Borodina's textbook will be corrected to take into account human- rights activists' complaints.
 "We in the Church are first and foremost against violating the will of children and their parents," he said by telephone Friday. "If it turns into the Divine Law [the doctrinal course taught in tsarist Russia], if we don't take into account that most children are not church-goers, if it does not create a field for thinking, then we will definitely kill the cause. Then it will turn out like before the revolution, when everybody went to the Divine Law, knew the prayers and holidays, but lived differently."
 
 <i>
The Education Ministry's program can be found at http://www.ed.gov.ru/sch-edu/prkult/let.html </i>

TITLE: Kursk Memorial Design Chosen
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A design for a monument to be erected in St. Petersburg's Serafimovskoye Cemetery to the 118 sailors who died when the Russian submarine Kursk sank on Aug. 12, 2000 was selected Friday from a group of 11 submissions. But the selection was not everyone's first choice.
 
The submission by architects Nikita Sokolov and Gennady Peichev comprises a black granite cube - symbolizing the ocean depths - with its top shaped to imitate the restless surface of the Barents Sea, where the submarine sank, and a stormy petrel - a kind of sea bird - flying above the waves as a symbol of tragedy.
 The front of the monument will bear the date of the tragedy and the coordinates where the boat sank due to the explosion of a torpedo on board. The names of the crew members are to be engraved on the back of the monument.
 The jury of eight consisted of representatives from the St. Petersburg Architects' Union, the St. Petersburg Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade Committee - which is responsible for erecting the monument - and the Kursk Memorial Foundation.
 According to Zarifa Ivkina, an assistant at the Architect's Union, the jury members from the Kursk Memorial Foundation, who were expressing the views of the families of the crew members, preferred another submission. &quot;However, from a professional point of view, the specialists involved disagreed with the choice,&quot; she said.
 While some of the family members present agreed that, while they had preferred another of the contestants, the ultimate choice had caused no bitterness. Vladimir Mityayev, whose son Alexei was an officer on the Kursk and who was a member of the jury, said he was not offended by the different opinion of the majority of the jury.
 &quot;The most important thing is to preserve the memory of the Kursk sailors,&quot; Mityaev said, adding that the Kursk relatives also had divergent opinions on the best monument.

TITLE: Zakayev Evidence On Shaky Ground
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prosecutors have sent Denmark evidence implicating Akhmed Zakayev in the 1996 kidnapping of two priests in Chechnya to back up a request for his extradition, Interfax reported Saturday.
 
But the human-rights group Memorial, whose members interviewed one of the priests after he was freed, said the evidence does not hold up.
 Zakayev, a top aide to Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov, was detained Oct. 30 in Copenhagen after attending a congress of Chechen separatists and human rights activists there. A Danish court ruled he should remain in jail until Nov. 26 while Russia's extradition request is considered. Interfax, citing Prosecutor General's Office spokesperson Leonid Troshin, said prosecutors sent Danish officials evidence of Zakayev's involvement in the kidnapping of Sergei Zhigulin and Anatoly Chistousov, two Russian Orthodox priests.
 The evidence is based on the testimony of Zhigulin, who was held for five months before being swapped for a bodyguard of the late Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev. His testimony was translated into Danish and handed over to Danish authorities, Troshin said.
 Memorial, in a statement posted on its Web site, Memo.ru, said its members visited Zhigulin in the hospital shortly after he was freed and determined that Zhigulin had named Zakayev only because he knew his name.
 When a Memorial member showed Zhigulin photos of another Chechen warlord, Doku Makhayev, the priest recognized the man as his abductor and agreed that Zakayev probably was not linked to his abduction, the statement said.
 Both Memorial and Ivan Rybkin, a former head of the Security Council, who visited Zakayev in his jail cell in Copenhagen last week, noted that documents implicating Zakayev in crimes in Chechnya that Russian prosecutors had sent to Denmark earlier had several factual mistakes and discrepancies.
 For example, in one of the documents the prosecutors wrote that Zakayev's people had seized the two priests and executed both by gunshot, Memorial wrote. In the same batch of documents, prosecutors said one of the priests was freed. According to Zhigulin's own account, Chistousov was beaten to death, not shot.
 Prosecutors provided the Danes with a wrong patronymic for Zakayev, and his date and place of birth differed between documents, Rybkin was quoted as saying by the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper Friday.
 &quot;The Danes look at this and decide that this man fell victim to a fit of temper,&quot; Rybkin said. &quot;[Russian officials] are often commanded by the demands of political expediency and turn a blind eye to the judicial aspects.&quot;
 At the time of Zakayev's arrest, Danish police said they had information from Russia via Interpol of Zakayev's suspected involvement in the Oct. 23 raid by armed Chechen separatists on the Dubrovka theater.
 But Danish Justice Ministry officials later said Russia's formal extradition request did not include evidence linking Zakayev to the theater siege.

TITLE: General Killed in Grozny Gun Attack
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Russian general was killed when unidentified attackers opened fire on his vehicle in Grozny late Friday, an official in the Moscow-backed Chechen administration said.
 
During a hunt for the killers of Lieutenant General Igor Shifrin, two police officers were shot dead and two were wounded, according to news reports Sunday. Police were searching the Chechen capital for the gunmen on Saturday when one of their patrols came under rebel fire, Itar-Tass said. An unspecified number of Chechen gunmen were reported killed in the firefight.
 In a separate incident, a group of masked gunmen stopped a car carrying Chechen transport minister Said Ali Ediyev and two of his aides on the road between the cities of Argun and Gudermes, the official said. The gunmen tied up Ediyev's and the other passengers' hands, threw hoods over their heads, and drove them away. After driving a short distance, the minister and one of his aides were thrown out of the car, while the other aide was taken away to an unknown location, the official said.
 Prime Minister Mikhail Babich, appointed by the Kremlin last week, said Sunday that his government's main goals are to &quot;complete the construction of unfinished projects and shape a budget for 2003.&quot; Speaking in a television interview, he said there was no single constitutional authoritative body in Chechnya, and that a referendum on the Chechen constitution and parliamentary elections should be held as soon as possible, Interfax reported. 
 Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen administration, said that so many people are disappearing in the republic that he's ashamed before his people. In the wake of last month's hostage crisis, federal forces have stepped up the hated mopping-up operations in which villages are sealed off while troops search for rebels. &quot;Nine people have been taken away from my native village of Tsentoroi this week and it's impossible to find out where they are now. I can't look my fellow villagers in the eye,&quot; Kadyrov said Friday, according to Interfax.
 At least 220 people were detained by Russian forces over the preceding 24 hours, an official in the Chechen administration said Friday. The official also said that 12 service personel and allied Chechen militia soldiers were killed in the previous day.
 Kadyrov's security services have also faced allegations of criminal activity. On Friday, police in Ingushetia said that three men carrying papers identifying them as Kadyrov's guards had burst onto a bus Thursday and tried to seize two passengers. The attempt ended in a grenade explosion that killed four people and injured nine more, and the three supposed guards now face charges of attempted kidnapping for ransom.

TITLE: Hunt Underway for Red Cross Kidnappers
AUTHOR: By Yuri Bagrov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia - Soldiers and security agents combed a village on the outskirts of Grozny on Monday, searching more than 100 homes and detaining at least 10 people on suspicion of involvement in the kidnapping of two Red Cross drivers who were freed on Sunday, Interfax reported.
 
The drivers, Alexander Panov and Musa Satushiyev, were abducted Wednesday by masked gunmen, who stopped their convoy as it was driving back to Ingushetia after delivering a humanitarian-aid shipment to Grozny.
 In televised comments Monday, the two men, looking tired and drawn, said they were moved several times during the five-day ordeal, and were too scared to call out at first when troops burst into their room to rescue them.
 &quot;The guys who came in to free us asked, 'Who's there?&quot; Satushiyev said. &quot;We were too afraid to answer, [but then] said, 'We're here! We're hostages!&quot;'
 It was not clear whether any of the abductors had been detained or killed in the rescue operation or whether any troops had been killed or wounded.
 On Monday, troops searched the village of Raduzhnoye, near Grozny, where the drivers were freed, detaining at least 10 people suspected of belonging to a gang authorities believe was responsible for the kidnapping, Interfax reported, citing a Federal Security Service spokesperson.
 In a statement Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was &quot;extremely relieved&quot; that the two drivers are now free, adding that they were in good health and would soon be reunited with their families.

TITLE: Bison Seek Better Life in Russia
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - They once wandered Europe from southern Britain to Russia in the thousands but, now, the European bison, a shaggy-haired cousin of the American buffalo, number a few hundred.
 
The World Wildlife Fund, with the help of a Dutch truck driver, is trying to give the European bison, or <i>zubry</i>, a better chance of survival by importing them to Russia and releasing them in the vast forests.
 Dutch truck driver Ben Buse pulled into the Prioksko-Terrasny nature reserve just outside Moscow late last Wednesday evening with the latest group of immigrant bison in the back. Buse fell in love with the animals on his first trip for the WWF in 1999, and has taken their cause to heart.
 Wurella, a medium-sized bison, had left a Swiss zoo the Thursday before and, despite the long journey, was reluctant to leave her hotel on wheels. Perhaps it was the temperature outside - minus 10 degrees - or perhaps the television cameras that put her off, but no manner of persuasion could convince her to be the first to leave the warm truck.
 Hanging from the side of the truck, Buse tempted Wurella with a handful of hay, which had her poking her nose out and then going back inside. A carrot left her equally unmoved, as did a cabbage until, finally, after more than an hour of pushing and prodding, she took the plunge and walked out into the large field that had been fenced off for the new arrivals. Six other bison came out on their own accord, but the eighth had died along the way. Although one WWF official thought the five-hour delay at customs in Serpukhov outside Moscow could be to blame, local vets said it was unlikely.
 The zubry, or Bison bonasus, are close cousins of the American buffalo. Some scientists claim they are a separate species, with others saying they are a sub-species of the American buffalo.
 The European bison nearly died out completely. In 1927, there were only 52 left, all in captivity, but a breeding program managed to reintroduce them into the wild so that by 1999 there were 1,177 bison in captivity and 1,738 in the wild.
 The situation in Russia was bleaker. The break up of the Soviet Union led to a drastic drop in the number of bison. Numbering 1,480 in 1991, less than seven years, later there were only 185 in the wild. The largest drop in the population was in the Russian Caucasus.
 &quot;They were nearly all eaten,&quot; said Olga Pereladova, a scientist and WWF coordinator for the project.
 Since 1997, the WWF has released 54 bison, transported from zoos and breeding programs all over Europe, into Russian forests. In order for the species to survive in the wild, activists say they need to establish herds of between 500 and 1,000. They hope Russia will play a major role in ensuring the future of the European bison, since it is the only European country with enough forest for the animals to thrive.
 The World Wildlife Fund hopes eventually to spread the bison to forests in the Bryansk, Kaluga, Novgorod and other regions.
 &quot;Our country shares the responsibility for saving this powerful beast,&quot; the WWF wrote in a booklet on saving the European bison issued in August.
 The seven Swiss bison will stay in the nature reserve for a month for quarantine and observation. Some will then be moved into other families of bison in the reserve, and some will be released into the wild.
 For this last trip, Buse had arranged for sponsors to pay the cost of transportation and had specially built four compartments within the truck, which he jokingly called &quot;the Ritz.&quot; When he dished out the carrots he called out &quot;room service&quot; to the animals.
 &quot;The bison were very good on the trip, we fed them and gave them water and they had no stress,&quot; Buse said. &quot;It takes a lot of my life. It's a wonderful animal. We have to protect them.&quot;
 &quot;When you look at them you feel calm,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Police Detain Two More In Rare-Book Theft Case
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg police force said Monday that it had detained three people suspected of stealing three rare and valuable editions from leading St. Petersburg libraries.
 
The criminal group is suspected of being behind the theft of at least 20 such books from major libraries in Moscow, Saratov, Kazan and St. Petersburg over the last three years.
 The police said that the three were responsible for the disappearance of a copy of Isaac Newton's &quot;Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica&quot; (&quot;Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy&quot;), published in London in 1687, and an illustrated 1913 edition of poems by Russian futurist Konstantin Bolshakov titled &quot;Le Futur&quot; (&quot;The Future&quot;) from the Russian National Library on Nov. 6. On the same day, an 1813 edition of English philosopher Robert Owen's &quot;A New View of Society&quot; was taken from the reading room of the Russian Academy of Science Library, also in St. Petersburg.
 The suspects, who all live in the Central Russian city of Saratov, were named as 29-year-old Svetlana Danilina, the head of the Electropribor construction bureau in the city; 33-year-old Dmitry Zinchenko, who is unemployed; and 22-year-old Pavel Prokofyev, an employee at a prison ther.
 All three hold university degrees in either philology or history. Zinchenko, who police say was the leader of the group, graduated in history. During their investigation, the police found a database of files for various valuable book sales on his computer.
 Danilina was detained on a train on her way from St. Petersburg to Astrakhan last Tuesday, while the other two were detained in Saratov. According to the police press service, Zinchenko, who is a veteran of Russia's special forces, attempted to commit suicide in the course of his arrest.
 As a result of the police operation, all editions stolen from St. Petersburg were returned to the local libraries on Monday. With the exception of the volumes stolen in Kazan, the books stolen from the libraries in the other cities were also recovered.
 The estimated value of the four editions stolen from the St. Petersburg libraries alone was $85,000.
 A commission from the Culture Ministry that was dispatched to the Russian National Library after the thefts were reported has evaluated the security measures at the institution and has submitted a list of recommendations on tightening the situation at the library, Yelena Nebogatikova, the deputy head of the library, said on Monday.
 At present, security measures at the library are relatively lax, with patrons required to have a control slip that they receive on entering the facility stamped by a person on duty in the department from which they receive materials upon their return. A police officer at the library exit, who is responsible for checking the slips, may also require those leaving the library to submit to a search of any bags they are carrying. There are no electronic or other technical security systems in place.
 The three suspects were arrested on charges under Article 164, Part 1, of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers the theft of articles of special cultural value. Danilina and Zinchenko have been brought back to St. Petersburg while the investigation continues. Prokofyev remains in Saratov.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Bulking Up for Bush
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - City police say they are strengthening safety measures in the city ahead of Friday's meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin in the St. Petersburg suburb of Pushkin.
 Police are already checking out the attics and cellars of apartment buildings in the area, and the duty roster for city police will be beefed up during the one-day visit Pavel Rayevsky, the head of St. Petersburg police press service, said Monday. Rayevsky said that the police will pay particular attention to anti-terrorist measures, while local and federal transport police will take special security measures at Pulkovo Airport.
 Bush and Putin are meeting to discuss a whole spectrum of bilateral and international issues, including cooperation in dealing with global threats and challenges, ensuring international safety, and economic collaboration, Interfax reported.
 
 
<b>Football Blasts
 </b>

VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia (AP) - Two explosions rocked a stadium Sunday in Vladikavkaz following a soccer match, a top regional police official said Monday.
 Soslan Sikoyev, the acting interior minister of the North Ossetia region, said investigators were considering various motives for two back-to-back blasts, including simple hooliganism. However, investigators in the prosecutor's office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the main motive under consideration was terrorism.
 The explosions occurred two to three seconds apart Sunday at the Spartak stadium in Vladikavkaz, about an hour after the close of a match between soccer teams Alaniya Vladikavkaz and Rotor Volgograd.
 Nearly everyone had left the stadium and there were no reports of injuries. Investigators said that, if the kickoff time had not been put forward an hour shortly before the game, there would have been many casualties as fans left the stadium.
 
 
<b>Army Numbers
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Monday that the armed forces number slightly more than 1.1 million - a drop of about 14 percent compared to the number he gave at the beginning of the year.
 Ivanov said the military now has "a little over" 1.1 million personnel, the Interfax-Military News Agency reported. Previously, Ivanov said the Defense Ministry had 1,274,000 service personnel, as of Jan. 1. He said that there could be further cuts, but he gave no specific figures.
 "Nobody disputes the possibility of the reduction of the armed forces if the international situation and, more importantly, a higher standard of the army and navy, their technical supplies, resources and so on permit it," Ivanov was quoted as saying.
 
 
<b>Communist Backlash
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov lashed out at President Vladimir Putin on Monday for doing nothing to curb NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe.
 Russia has shown "complete helplessness and impotence ... in opposing NATO expansion onto the territory of former Union republics" and will soon be faced by the prospect of NATO troops stationed in the former Soviet republics in the Baltics, Zyuganov said.
 At the summit beginning Wednesday in Prague, NATO is expected to invite the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania along with Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria to join it. 



TITLE: LUKoil Joins Bidding for Slavneft, Auction Begins
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Property Fund announced Monday that it has begun accepting bids for a 74.95-percent stake in the Slavneft oil company at a starting price of $1.7 billion and will continue until Dec. 15.
 
The fund starting accepted bids Saturday and the winner will be announced Dec. 18.
 The privatization of Slavneft, which produces some 4 percent of all the country's oil, should be the largest in Russian history and has grabbed the attention of all domestic oil majors, as well as some unnamed foreign companies.
 The State Property Fund earlier said that the stake would be auctioned off for $1.3 billion.
 Leonid Fedun, vice president of No. 1 oil major LUKoil, announced Monday that his company will participate in the auction for one of the last two state-owned oil companies, the other being Rosneft.
 Oil majors Tyumen Oil Co., or TNK, and Sibneft have already said that they would bid.
 TNK may submit a joint bid with rival firm Sibneft, Reuters reported the company's vice president Igor Dibtsev as saying Monday.
 &quot;A joint bid, combining us and Sibneft could be interesting and beneficial to both sides,&quot; he said without elaborating.
 LUKoil is &quot;extremely interested&quot; in Slavneft, Fedun said in a telephone conference Monday. &quot;Slavneft assets are being sold at about 40 to 50 cents per barrel, which we see as a good investment opportunity,&quot; he said.
 LUKoil recently raked in $1.25 billion from the sale of its 10-percent stake in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field in the Caspian. 
 Fedun did not say whether LUKoil would use that money to bid for Slavneft. He did say that the company plans to use funds from the sale for projects in which it holds a majority stake, mostly upstream and in the Caspian region. 
 LUKoil earned $500 million more than it invested in ACG, he said. 
 Fedun also said that LUKoil may team up with a strategic partner - possibly a foreign company - to bid for Slavneft. 
 No final decisions have yet been made, he added, and LUKoil could enter the race alone.
 Fedun said that LUKoil is in a better position to bid for Slavneft because it would not have to borrow. Sibneft and TNK have said that they would have to borrow.
 Kakha Kiknavelidze, an analyst at Troika Dialog, said that Sibneft is the likely winner in the auction.
 The company &quot;is best set to consolidate Slavneft and already manages some of Slavneft's assets,&quot; he said. &quot;But one should never discount the potential of companies like Surgutneftegaz, or, for that matter, LUKoil.&quot;
 Sibneft and TNK both have minority stakes in Slavneft subsidiaries. Analysts have said that those stakes are a risk to any other oil company. 
 Fedun said that LUKoil was not discouraged by other oil majors owning minority stakes in Slavneft subsidiaries.

TITLE: Aeroflot Signs 18-Airbus Deal
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: TOULOUSE, France - With the prime ministers of France and Russia looking on, officials of Aeroflot and Airbus signed a contract Monday for the purchase of 18 Airbus passenger planes worth hundreds of millions of dollars. 
 
The deal for the A319 and A320 medium-range planes was first unveiled in July during a visit by President Jacques Chirac to Moscow, and delivery of the first plane was expected in the fall of 2003, Airbus said. 
 No price tag was put on the deal, but when first announced in Moscow it was valued at $600 million. 
 The signing ceremony capped a visit to Toulouse, Airbus' headquarters, by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. 
 The leaders also attended the signing of a protocol for the creation of a Moscow-based engineering center with Airbus to open in December. 
 Airbus called the two events &quot;important milestones in the partnership between the Russian aviation sector and Airbus.&quot; 
 &quot;We are very pleased that the links that we started 11 years ago with the Russian aviation sector ... have developed into a close and mutually beneficial partnership,&quot; Airbus president Noel Forgeard said in a statement from the company. 
 Before the signing ceremonies, the two prime ministers visited an Airbus assembly line and a cabin mockup of the A380, the 555-seat super-jumbo plane planned by Airbus. 
 Airbus, Boeing and Russian aircraft makers had long been lobbying Aeroflot to modernize its fleet with their planes. 
 Kasyanov met with Chirac on Sunday, focusing their talks on Russian-French cooperation in space and aeronautics.
 The two sides were to discuss using the Soyuz rocket for commercial satellite launches from a French cosmodrome in Guyana, as well as TotalFinaElf's participation in the Shtokmanovsky oil and gas field in the Arctic, Interfax reported
 
 <i>(AP, SPT) </i>

TITLE: LUKoil Plans To Sell Stake In Azeri Field
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - LUKoil said Friday that it intends to sell its stake in a key Azeri oil field to an unnamed Japanese company for $1.25 billion, a record transaction in Russian corporate history.
 
LUKoil said that it would sell its 10-percent stake in Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli, because the company wants to focus on projects where it holds majority stakes.
 &quot;LUKoil is looking over the possibility of cutting back its participation in projects in which the company does not hold the status of operator and use the capital for high-performance projects in Russia, including privatization,&quot; the company said in a statement, Interfax reported.
 The deal must be approved by the Azeri state oil company SOCAR and all participants in the ACG consortium, the statement said.
 The planned sale was part of an outline announced by LUKoil chief Vagit Alekperov to restructure the company and optimize its assets, the statement added.
 LUKoil declined to disclose the name of the Japanese company.
 The ACG project, a major source of crude for the planned $2.9 billion U.S.-backed pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, is operated by BP.
 Analysts praised the deal, saying that LUKoil managed to sell its stake at a fair price and at the right time. &quot;This is a very good price for LUKoil. It amounts to about $3 a barrel [for their stake], while LUKoil is currently valued at $1 a barrel,&quot; said Steven O'Sullivan, an analyst at United Financial Group.
 
 <i>(Reuters, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Cutbacks Put Russian ISS Plan in Danger
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With no substantial increase in financing earmarked in the draft 2003 budget, Russia's space research and development program will see cutbacks next year that might be to the detriment of its involvement in the international space station, or ISS, officials said Friday.
 
The draft budget allocates 8.429 billion rubles (about $266 million) for the federal space program in 2003, giving a slight increase over the 8.087 billion rubles set aside in this year's budget, according to officials within the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and the State Duma.
 However, since the 2003 budget puts annual inflation at 10 percent to 12 percent, the value of expenditures for the space program in real terms will be the same, if not even less, than what was spent this year.
 &quot;Yes, the 2003 draft budget doesn't accurately reflect the effect that inflation will have ... but we believe that it is adequate,&quot; said an official in the Duma's industry, technology and science committee.
 Given the budget crunch, Rosaviakosmos head Yury Koptev plans to propose that Russia's ISS partners contribute cash for the production of Soyuz-TMA crew craft at a meeting of space officials in Tokyo next month, a Rosaviakosmos official said.
 &quot;The problem is that our legislators wonder why they need to set aside the same amount or more for space if our partner countries have been cutting their expenditures and ISS budgets,&quot; the official said.
 He said that Russia will announce delays - and perhaps even cancellations - in the production of Soyuz-TMA craft for the program if the partners do not agree to help out with the financing of the Russian part of the program. The last craft to be built might end up being the one designated to send a crew to the space station in April, he said.
 A Soyuz-TMA craft costs about 310 million rubles ($9.78 million) to build.
 Of the 8.429 billion rubles earmarked in the draft budget, about 700 million rubles ($22 million) is to be spent on the production of spacecraft, or an amount roughly comparable to what was spent this year, an official at Rosaviakosmos' finance department said in a recent telephone interview.
 Some 6.365 billion rubles ($200 million) will be spent this year on space-related research and development, said the finance official, who asked not to be named. The official at the Duma's industry, technology and science committee said that the amount tentatively set aside for R&amp;D next year is 6.615 billion rubles ($208 million).
 The Rosaviakosmos finance official said that it was too early to say which programs other than the space station might face cutbacks. He said that top Russian space officials will meet after the federal budget is passed - probably next month - to discuss which programs need to be trimmed down.
 In previous years, Rosaviakosmos has cut back on launches of Glonass navigation satellites, which it jointly finances with the Defense Ministry, when facing a lack of cash.

TITLE: Telecom Revenues Soar 45 Percent in First Nine Months
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Rising personal incomes, a stronger economy and even a bumper grain harvest are pushing Russians to spend more on telephone services, Communications Minister Leonid Reiman said Friday.
 
Overall revenues for telecom services rose 45 percent year on year to 195.4 billion rubles ($6.14 billion) in the first nine months of 2002, he told a news conference.
 Reiman said that the cellular market has shown the largest growth, with the total number of mobile-phone users rising to 14.7 million, about 11 percent of the population, at the end of September, up from 6.2 million at the same time in 2001.
 The number of cellular users could reach 16 million by the end of the year, he said.
 &quot;A broader stratum of society is using mobile phones,&quot; Reiman said. &quot;We think we'll double the number of mobile-phone users this year, like we have in previous years.&quot;
 Reiman said that Internet use has also shown significant growth, although it is difficult to determine by how much.
 &quot;According to the majority of estimates, there are 8.5 million Internet users in Russia,&quot; he said.
 Foreign investment in the telecoms industry jumped 30 percent year on year to $277 million in the first nine months of 2002, while domestic investment grew 19.7 percent to 28.5 billion rubles ($896 million), Reiman said, adding that companies were starting to target underserved markets outside wealthy cities.
 &quot;If they once skimmed the cream in Moscow, they now approach the market in a more balanced way,&quot; he said.
 Among the most underserved markets in Russia are rural areas, especially remote regions of Siberia, but even small villages 100 kilometers from Moscow lack fixed-line telephone services.
 Reiman said that the pace of new fixed-line connections in rural areas had picked up, rising 11 percent from the first nine months of 2001.
 &quot;This is thanks, in part, to government efforts to raise the real income of the population. There is more business activity in rural areas ... and with more business activity, come more connections,&quot; he said. &quot;This is even linked to an increase in the volumes of grain produced.&quot;
 Russia had a bumper grain harvest for the second year in a row.
 Farms &quot;have been buying foreign-made combines with installed cellular terminals,&quot; he said. &quot;This is interesting from the point of view of telematic services. They transfer data on how the combines are working.&quot;
 Reiman said that a 25-percent stake minus two shares in state-controlled Svyazinvest should be sold only after the telecoms holding's long-awaited restructuring.
 He declined to give a price for the stake, but said that &quot;it is unlikely to be sold for as much as the first stake sold in Svyazinvest.&quot;
 Renowned investor George Soros bought a 25-percent stake plus one share for $1.875 billion in 1997.
 
 <i>(Reuters, MT) </i>

TITLE: RusAl to Provide Pots, Pans to IKEA
PUBLISHER: The Moscow Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Metals giant Russian Aluminum has become IKEA Group's first domestic supplier of nonstick cookware.
 
Under the terms of a deal officially announced Thursday, RusAl subsidiary Kappa-Kalitva will provide 280,000 pots and pans annually to IKEA for its stores around the world.
 Neither party would reveal the value of the deal, though RusAl said that it was aiming to supply 1.5 million units in the future. No timeframe was provided.
 &quot;This is a further indication of RusAl's growing status as an international producer and manufacturer,&quot; RusAl consumer-goods sales director Vladislav Ivanenko said in a statement Thursday.
 The company said that it plans to increase its share of the domestic cookware market from 15 percent to 40 percent.
 IKEA spokesperson Irina Vanyenkova confirmed that RusAl is the Swedish furniture giant's only supplier of nonstick cookware in Russia, but added that more deals with other firms are in the pipeline.
 &quot;There will be more,&quot; she said. &quot;All our contracts are big ones.&quot;
 The announcement was unrelated to the recent visit by IKEA's multibillionaire founder Ingvar Kamprad, though Vanenkova said that the trip had acted as a catalyst for other projects.
 IKEA works with 50 suppliers in Russia and hopes to double this figure over the next one to two years, Vanenkova said.

TITLE: Conflicting Reports on Success of the City's Fundraising Efforts
AUTHOR: By Avery Johnson
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: When St. Petersburg Deputy Governor Valery Nazarov addressed the Sixth Annual U.S.-Russian Investment Symposium on Friday, he was looking for more than just a birthday bonus for Russia's second city, which celebrates its 300th anniversary in May 2003.
 
The topic of his late-afternoon panel was fundraising programs for the city's tercentenary, but Nazarov's bigger mission is to drum up post-party investment.
 &quot;Of course, we need investment for the jubilee,&quot; Nazarov said in a telephone interview. &quot;But what I would most like to say is that St. Petersburg opened Russia to Europe and to the whole world. We had lost that for a while, but now we are ready to play our historical role again.&quot;
 However, Nazarov may find that he is facing an uphill struggle to achieve such ends. St. Petersburg and its governor, Vladimir Yakovlev, have been coming increasingly under fire amid allegations of an intransigent, corrupt city bureaucracy and the misuse of federal funds that had been earmarked for renovating the city's cultural monuments. 
 To make matters worse, the onslaught of bad publicity has been further aggravated by a slew of reports that its less glamorous neighbor, the Leningrad Oblast, has been stealing a march in the foreign direct-investment stakes, achieving significantly better results, despite having far fewer resources than St. Petersburg. 
 Add to that the relations between Yakovlev and President Vladimir Putin, which are tense even at the best of times, and the picture doesn't look at all good.
 Over the past ten years, St. Petersburg's name has become as closely associated with high-profile contract killings of politicians, bureaucrats and entrepreneurs as with the former capital's rich cultural legacy.
 &quot;I would say that transparency is certainly not Yakovlev's top priority,&quot; said Yelena Panfilova, director of the Russian affiliate of anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International. 
 &quot;At a meeting of the construction companies' club last year, I heard so many complain that the same businesses, supported by the government, win every tender,&quot; Panfilova said.
 Transparency International's survey of corruption in Russia's regions (conducted with the Indem think tank and Monitoring.ru polling agency), released last month, found that St. Petersburg was considered to be among the most corrupt of the 40 regions surveyed. 
 Moreover, in all but a couple of the 16 indicators used to rate regions in the survey, St. Petersburg was ranked as being less transparent than the Leningrad region.
 And the bad news doesn't end there. Last month also saw the release of the latest survey of administrative barriers to small-business development in Russia's regions conducted by the Moscow-based Center for Economic and Financial Research. 
 St. Petersburg had the dubious and unenviable distinction conferred upon it of having some of the most stubborn and insurmountable administrative barriers in the country.
 &quot;St. Petersburg was at the top of the chart for problematic regions,&quot; said Oleg Zamulin, co-author of the survey and an assistant professor at the New Economic School. 
 &quot;Registration and licensing indicate ease of entry into the market, and the fact that they are so difficult in this region shows that, somehow, somebody is not interested in small-business growth,&quot; he said.
 Nonetheless, many remain upbeat about St. Petersburg and the work that it has been carrying out to attract further investment.
 Richard Clifford, the deputy director of the World Bank in Russia, is impressed by the strides St. Petersburg has made in raising levels of transparency in business and in the local bureaucracy. His team is so confident about developments that it plans to approve a substantial $150-million loan in time for the city's anniversary. Clifford said that the first installment of the two-part loan will go to maintaining eight cultural sites. The second will be given to city officials for the improvement of financial management and to support new businesses.
 Robert Sasson, head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's St. Petersburg office, is similarly upbeat in his assessment of the investment environment in the city.
 The EBRD has committed about 1 billion euros - either in completed or pipeline projects - to St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, accounting for the lion's share of its investments into northwest Russia.
 &quot;There have been some very good success stories in St. Petersburg - Gillette, Wrigley, Coca-Cola, Baltika, to name a few,&quot; Sasson said. 
 &quot;Investment success in the Leningrad oblast and Novgorod have been very highly publicized and are to be commended, but you also have to look at the numbers, which indicate that St. Petersburg is also doing extremely well,&quot; he said.
 St. Petersburg, however, has come in for a number of unfavorable comparisons with its immediate neighbor, the Leningrad Oblast.
 Peter Vaihansky of the American Chamber of Commerce's St. Petersburg chapter characterizes the overriding differences in the neighbors' approaches as follows: &quot;Besides its cultural heritage, St. Petersburg also has a tremendous business potential, but has a number of steps to take in order to fully achieve it. The [Leningrad Oblast] realizes that it has fewer advantages and is therefore more eager to attract investors. They are very business-oriented and responsive to investors' needs.&quot;
 Sergei Naryshkin, head of the region's committee for external economic relations, argues that the Leningrad Oblast is one of the country's most progressive regions in its development policies, pointing out that it was the first in northwest Russia to adopt its own investment legislation. 
 Efforts by the regional administration to provide incentives and tax breaks to investors, as well as ensuring legal stability, have smoothed relations with investors and investment guarantees have received a great deal of positive coverage in the media, both local and foreign. 
 Last year, the Leningrad Oblast had the distinction of receiving an award from the AmCham which designated it as Region of the Year.
 Foreign direct investment to the Leningrad region is estimated at $400 million for 2002, an improvement on the $350 million garnered last year. 
 The main regional players to have backed Leningrad Oblast include Philip Morris, which has constructed a major tobacco factory ($340 million), International Paper ($160 million), Ford ($150 million) and Caterpillar ($54 million).
 Yet for all the positive press, on paper, St. Petersburg is well ahead in terms of foreign direct investment, or FDI, attracted. FDI was $1.2 billion last year and is expected to reach $1.7 billion this year. 
 Established players in St. Petersburg include Coca-Cola ($100 million), Wrigley ($70 million), Otis ($50 million) and Gillette ($40 million). 
 On top of that, this year saw two high-profile foreign purchases in the beer sector, with Heineken's purchase of the Bravo Brewery in a $400-million deal and Scottish &amp; Newcastle's $1.7-billion deal to acquire Finland's biggest beverage company, Hartwall. The purchase gave Scottish &amp; Newcastle a 50-percent share of Baltic Beverages Holding, the owner of Russia's No. 1 brewer, Baltika.
 &quot;We've seen a flow of new companies coming into St. Petersburg, and the tercentenary is a way to capitalize on that growth,&quot; Nazarov said.
 Transparency's Panfilova offered an explanation for the conflicting takes on St. Petersburg's investment climate. &quot;A lot of money has been invested, but the city is still in very poor condition just two steps left or right of Nevsky Prospect. It makes you wonder where the money is going,&quot; Panfilova said. 
 &quot;Still, maybe St. Petersburg is no worse than anywhere else, and the celebrations are just causing more attention to be focused on it,&quot; she said.
 The celebrations, coupled with bad relations between the city administration and the federal authorities, has put the heat on governor Yakovlev. 
 Last month, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref warned St. Petersburg officials that part of the 12.2 billion rubles ($386 million) that has been allocated for the St. Petersburg's jubilee celebration would be taken back if the preparations did not pick up speed.
 &quot;If the federal funds that have been allocated for the financing of the reconstruction and restoration projects for St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary are not used this year, we will have to confiscate them,&quot; Gref was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 This comes hot on the heels of a public dressing-down administered to city officials by Putin himself this summer. Putin reprimanded the local bureaucrats for misuse of funds given to renovate cultural monuments. 
 In a televised address, the president said that, of the 20.6 million rubles ($650,000) allocated to repair the Mariinsky Theater, some 20 million rubles never went toward the project.
 &quot;I would say that Yakovlev and Putin have a very bad personal relationship,&quot; said Vladimir Pribylovsky, director of the Panorama think tank. &quot;After Yakovlev became the governor, he tried to repair the relationship, but Putin refused. Once Putin decides not to like someone, it is forever.&quot;
 There is also a running feud between Yakovlev and Putin's presidential representative to the Northwest Region, Viktor Cherkesov.
 &quot;The conflict between Cherkesov and Yakovlev affects Petersburg very much. Cherkesov is an old friend of Putin, and he and Yakovlev do not get along,&quot; Pribylovsky said.
 Poor relations also seem to be having a detrimental impact on the city's fundraising endeavors. A number of fundraising bodies have sprung up, including the Committee for Preparation and Organization of St. Petersburg's 300th Anniversary, a federal committee chaired by Putin, and the Fund to Assist in Preparations for St. Petersburg's Tercentary, a municipal entity created by Yakovlev. 
 The confusion that has resulted from this plethora of bodies and the general lack of coordination between them has hampered fundraising efforts.
 &quot;There are so many funds - official, federal, municipal, Duma,&quot; said Alexei Kim, head of AmCham's St. Petersburg chapter. &quot;Businesses don't understand the differences between the various funds.&quot;
 At the Russian Investment Symposium at Harvard University, as well as elsewhere, St. Petersburg officials will no doubt be anxious to sell the city as a transparent place to do business with sufficient guarantees for investment.
 Yakovlev is sending Nazarov to Boston instead of attending himself because he was planning to pitch the May 27 anniversary to another set of investors in London, Nazarov said.
 Yakovlev, however, dropped out of last week's Russia Open to the World conference in London at the last minute. The conference was billed as having a special focus on St. Petersburg.
 Cherkesov showed up as a key speaker.
 
 <i>
Staff Writer Victoria Lavrentieva contributed to this report. </i>

TITLE: Rough Justice for WorldCom
AUTHOR: By Jay Hancock
TEXT: IN life, WorldCom tormented its rivals by wrapping the planet in telecom capacity, thus depressing prices, and then lying about its profits, which made everybody else look like slackers.
 
In death, or something like it, WorldCom still weighs on its enemies.
 Having hung on to some $20 billion in yearly revenue, the company is moving through a debt-cleaning machine known as the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
 Verizon Communications, SBC Communications and other competitors worry that what emerges will be an intact, buff WorldCom, shorn of legal and financial sins, ready to wreak new havoc.
 Verizon boss Ivan Seidenberg has said that he is &quot;fire-engine-red mad&quot; about the idea that WorldCom could escape the chop shop. He wants an Arthur Andersen-style dismemberment for WorldCom, and you can't blame him.
 Verizon didn't break the rules, didn't invest far beyond its means and didn't inflate profits by $9 billion. So, why should the company that did be resuscitated and, what's more, endowed by the courts with extraordinary power?
 Verizon carries debt of $60 billion, a dead weight that cost it $3.4 billion in interest expense last year. A hypothetical, debt-free Verizon would have boosted profits many-fold, compared with those of the real McCoy.
 For its size, WorldCom is even more in hock, owing $42 billion to bondholders, banks, equipment vendors and other creditors, according to bankruptcy records. WorldCom paid about $1 billion in interest last year, if that part of its income statement can be believed.
 But there is a real chance, through the black alchemy of bankruptcy proceedings, that WorldCom will shrink its debt, keep most of its assets and re-enter the financial lists under the name of MCI, its best unit. Relieved of a $42 billion ball and chain, the company would be free to cut prices, raise capital and otherwise run circles around its law-abiding rivals.
 This kind of result, many analysts believe, is partly responsible for the perennial problems of the airline industry.
 Many airlines have been through bankruptcy in the past two decades, and many have come out of it with less debt and lower interest costs. When they do, they often kindle price wars, pressure other carriers and send other companies into insolvency and default. By and by, these companies, too, rise from the grave and haunt the righteous, renewing the misery.
 This is made possible by Chapter 11 bankruptcy rules, which allow a busted corporation to stay whole, pour its balance sheet into an Osterizer and reappear as a new company that looks a lot like the old company, only with less debt and different ownership.
 Verizon worries that this will happen with WorldCom.
 In bankruptcy, shareholders are wiped out and creditors trade bad debts for ownership stakes in the corporate carcass. The new owners can auction off the remains and split the proceeds or try to revive the company as a going concern, which often brings a higher payoff.
 Of course, Seidenberg likes Plan A, which would sow salt in the fields of Clinton, Missouri, WorldCom's home, and maybe let Verizon snap up some long-distance lines cheap. Creditors and WorldCom employees like Plan B, which would preserve jobs, revive the MCI name and offer the prospect of minting money while the rest of the industry staggers under debts.
 This last idea has lighted a fire under the price of WorldCom bonds recently. Remember that present bondholders are WorldCom's future owners, and the more bonds you own now, the more stock you'll own in a post-bankruptcy enterprise.
 The old WorldCom was such a colossal botch that bondholders and other creditors won't come close to getting all their money back. But in the past two weeks, the bonds have popped in price, rising from 13.5 cents on the dollar (bonds with a face value of $10 million would sell for $1.35 million) to almost 20 cents Friday, according to bond dealer Debt Traders.
 The bond buyers' hope is Seidenberg's fear. It is also the officially expressed fear of the Communication Workers of America, a union to which I belong.
 The CWA, which unsuccessfully tried to organize parts of WorldCom, wants the government to end the company's federal contracts and liquidate it. As is often the case, a union is pro-jobs only as long as the jobholders pay union dues.
 Unfortunately for Verizon, the CWA and everybody else who wants to euthanize WorldCom, the bondholders have the upper hand.
 
 <i>
Jay Hancock is a financial columnist for The Baltimore Sun, to which he contributed this comment. </i>

TITLE: The 'Chechen Business' Will Go On Unchanged
TEXT: PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin has pledged to hold a referendum in Chechnya on adopting a new constitution for the republic.
 
A constitution is, of course, just what Chechnya needs - about as much as a ballerina needs a supply of Pampers. I suspect that change won't come to Chechnya until it comes to Russia as a whole, because medieval Chechnya is a miniature version of medieval Russia.
 Chechnya, like Russia, has something resembling a power structure, but it's not quite clear whether that refers to the authorities or the gangsters. At any rate, the people in charge of Chechnya have no qualms about doing things that are considered crimes in the civilized world. Power in Chechnya is understood in a very primitive sense - as the right to kidnap, to kill and to pump oil out of the ground illegally.
 There can be no business in Chechnya without guns. There can be no entrepreneurs in Chechnya apart from separatist field commanders. The main business is the trade in human beings.
 Russia's economy is rather more advanced, of course. The Interior Ministry provides &quot;protection&quot; for businesses other than the trade in human beings. But I don't quite understand how Kalmyk Interior Minister Timofei Sasykov - who covered his republic with underground oil refineries - is any different from a Chechen field commander.
 Chechnya is a scale model of Russia.
 English bobbies and Irish terrorists share no common ground. They have nothing to say to one another and interact only with bullets.
 Chechen field commanders and Russian authorities, by contrast, speak a common language of criminality. Russia needs Chechnya as a house needs a toilet.
 The first war in Chechnya was financed not from Russia as a whole, but from Moscow. In other regions of Russia, the police helped local gangsters do battle with their Chechen competitors. The career of former Krasnoyarsk Aluminum head Anatoly Bykov began in Krasnoyarsk with a victory over gangsters from Chechnya who had moved into the area. Thanks to Bykov, the Krasnoyarsk region did not bankroll the first Chechen war. But Moscow did, because Moscow is on good terms with Chechen gangsters who have proven a financial boon to the city's cops.
 The main Chechen business is kidnapping. But is it purely Chechen? Some Chechens abducted the daughter of a big-time entrepreneur. They abducted her because he had started to get in the way of his Russian partners in crime. The police officers assigned to the case just happened to be on very good terms with those same Russian partners and, when they arrived in Chechnya, they handed over the ransom money but somehow forgot to bring the girl home.
 Being Chechen in Russia is a profession. If you need someone locked up, go to the cops. But if you need someone annihilated, go to the Chechens.
 Being Russian in Chechnya is also a profession. Why is our army fighting in Chechnya, you may ask? To bring the war to an end? Not quite. Any military operation in reality achieves two goals: it allows the brass to write off huge quantities of diesel fuel and ordnance, and it multiplies the number of terrorists. Which is to say that these operations ensure more work for the army, and more profit for the generals.
 Is there a way to end the war in Chechnya?
 No. Not for good, anyway.
 But Chechnya could be raised to the level of Northern Ireland, where the only terrorists are the people who really want to be terrorists, not just people whose sisters have been raped, their husbands executed and their fathers murdered. This is why the Irish terrorists evoke no one's compassion.
 For Chechnya to become Northern Ireland, however, Russia would have to become Britain. The civilian authorities, the army and law enforcement would all have to conceive of their functions in a fundamentally different way. For starters, they would have to stop relieving themselves in the toilet called Chechnya.
 There's no point cleaning the toilet when the entire house is covered in filth.
 
 <i>
Yulia Latynina is author and host of &quot;Yest Mneniye&quot; (&quot;Some Believe&quot;) on TVS. </i>

TITLE: Credit Market Heads Straight for the Rocks
AUTHOR: By David Ignatius
TEXT: WHAT'S the chance that credit markets could suffer the kind of bubble-bursting collapse that has afflicted stock markets around the world over the past two years?
 
Even if the likelihood of such a financial crisis is relatively small, that's the kind of question U.S. President George W. Bush and his economic advisers should ponder as they think of how to use the mandate the president won in last week's midterm elections. For Bush now has the political power to fix important things that are wrong - not just in Iraq, but in the global economy.
 Bush should start by finding a serious financial expert to succeed Harvey Pitt as chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His administration has been shamefully weak in financial expertise, fielding what many analysts say is the weakest team at the Treasury and the White House in decades. Now is the time to bolster the group with a heavyweight who would make clear to Wall Street and the world that there is a new financial sheriff in town.
 Bush would be wise to send a born worrier to the SEC, as opposed to a cheerleader like Pitt or the sadly miscast William Webster, who this week withdrew under fire from his post as the administration's accounting watchdog. Ideally, Bush will replace Pitt with someone of the stature of former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin or former SEC chairperson Arthur Levitt. Both were constant worriers while in office; they saw the clouds behind the silver lining of the 1990s boom, even if they didn't always act on their foreboding.
 There's plenty for financial regulators to worry about these days, according to some new figures, prepared by the investment bank Morgan Stanley, that were presented in London last week at the Oil &amp; Money 2002 Conference sponsored by the Energy Intelligence Group and the International Herald Tribune.
 The Morgan Stanley numbers suggest that there's far more weakness in credit markets than most policymakers recognize. Morgan Stanley Managing Director J. Robert Maguire noted that bond defaults in 2001 and 2002 have totaled over $180 billion, and that defaults in investment-grade bonds over the past two years have exceeded the cumulative total of the past 20 years. Credit quality has been dropping since 1995, as measured by Moody's ratio of credit downgrades to upgrades, Maguire said.
 Overhanging the credit market, meanwhile, are severe weaknesses in the banking sectors of other key countries. &quot;Japan, China and Germany - that's the whole world,&quot; said another top executive with one of the globe's largest commercial and investment banks.
 The scariest numbers involve those exotic financial instruments known as &quot;credit derivatives,&quot; which have exploded in volume over the past several years, largely in response to the weakness in credit markets. According to Morgan Stanley, the value of credit derivatives has grown from just $50 billion in December 1998 to an estimated $2.4 trillion in December 2002. The dot-com run-up was modest by comparison.
 Because &quot;derivatives&quot; aren't well understood even by the people who buy and sell them, here's a brief explanation. They get their name from the fact that they are &quot;derived&quot; from an underlying financial asset. An example is &quot;futures&quot; options that allow investors to bet on whether the underlying common stocks will go up or down in price.
 Today, investment banks can create derivatives that allow you to trade almost any slice of the global economy you want - from the risk that a particular company will default on its bonds to the risk that interest rates will go up, down or sideways.
 Credit swaps offer the appearance of stability, through a kind of ad-hoc insurance pool. 
 Interestingly, a major market for these credit-default swaps is created by financial institutions that hold bonds of clients that have become shaky. Rather than risk offending the client by selling the bonds, the financial institution will quietly buy a credit derivative.
 It's a big, unregulated circus, and sensible analysts have been scared about the derivatives market for years. Investment guru Warren Buffett sounded the alarm in a long interview in Fortune during the mid '90s. And while he was Treasury secretary, Rubin often complained privately about the danger of a cascading failure in the derivatives market that could take down the rest of the financial system.
 And yet, despite all this high-level worry, Washington has done little to address the problem. Wall Street banks headed off regulation by imposing internal standards for risk management after the August 1998 financial crash. And politicians have had no stomach for challenging the financial institutions whose lobbyists effectively control the key congressional committees. Finally, regulating derivatives would be a bureaucratic nightmare, with the Fed, the Treasury, the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and several other agencies all claiming pieces of the action.
 So, the derivatives bubble keeps growing. It's like Enron before the Enron scandal - too complicated for anyone to understand, except the people who are profiting from it.
 After this month's electoral triumphs, President Bush has the clout to impose real regulation on Wall Street and thereby restore confidence in the global financial system. But does he have the will?
 
 <i>
David Ignatius is a columnist for The Washington Post, to which he contributed this comment. </i>

TITLE: Are Reforms in Russia Running on Autopilot?
AUTHOR: By Julian Schweitzer and Christof Ruehl
TEXT: THERE is widespread agreement that Russia's economy has done well over the last four years, despite an increasingly volatile international environment. The more optimistic observers of Russia's economic reforms even argue that the country has turned the corner for good. After the chaos of the 1990s, there is now a reform-minded, stable government in place. Privatized industry has consolidated itself as well, and it now faces incentives powerful enough to lift the economy permanently out of its second-tier status ,to catch up with the advanced market economies of the OECD (which, as we all agree, is where it should be). Rapid growth is sustainable, so the argument goes, because secure property rights have finally been established. This has led to a demand by the new owners of industry for market rules and institutions, which foster and safeguard market behavior and make it irreversible.
 
The optimists therefore cite not only the evidence of, for example, the excellent performance of several domestic enterprises, across-the-board productivity increases and, most interestingly, indications of improved corporate governance. The theory is that the reforms early in the last decade succeeded in providing incentives to establish market institutions and market-based rules of behavior. Privatization accomplished exactly what its founding fathers said it would accomplish. The private sector demands market rules to maximize the value of its assets, now that property rights to these assets have been secured. The new owners want the enforcement of rules and the building of institutions that make markets work. Anarchy has turned into market interaction, and Adam Smith's &quot;invisible hand&quot; has started to work its wonders.
 No one seriously denies that private industry performs better than the state sector. However, the optimists also argue that it will be beneficial for Russia's economic development in the long run ,that privatization and its chaotic aftermath created a large concentration of ownership rights (recent research suggests that the top 65 private companies in Russia are now controlled by no more than eight holding companies). This will ultimately be beneficial, so the argument goes, because control of Russia's largest assets in a few, firm hands is increasing productivity. When the dust has settled, there are two basic and inter-connected options left to the new owners: either to improve the performance of their financial-industrial groups so as to compete better, or to improve the value of their enterprises so that they can be sold off more profitably. The high concentration of ownership rights thus increases the productivity of the conglomerates, provides for an incentive to invest, and strengthens competition between them. These cash-rich groups can also attract the best managerial talent. The desire to raise valuations has triggered better corporate governance and strengthened the drive toward more transparent and effective secondary markets. In this way, the newly consolidated financial-industrial groups are helping develop market institutions and behavior and have triggered the irreversible drive toward expansion, restructuring and performance that was missing during the early years of privatization.
 This, of course, is exactly what the early reformers promised - market institutions would arise naturally out of mass privatization, no matter how chaotic and unfair the process. But Russia would be a true exception if its high concentration of ownership rights did not trigger negative effects that may call into question many of the advantages associated with rapid privatization. Three big questions stand out on economic grounds.
 First, on competition. &quot;People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion&quot; wrote Adam Smith, &quot;but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.&quot; A recent survey indicates that, throughout Russia, barriers to entry are higher where production and employment are concentrated; and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that powerful regional interest groups continue to impede competition and the creation of new firms. As the big financial-industrial groups acquire ever more assets in their non-core sectors, it is not obvious that these groups will become advocates of pro-competition policies, keep an arms-length distance from regional governments and will fight barriers to entry for their competitors, nor that the full benefits of their new investments will naturally accrue to consumers. In sum, we doubt that Russia's powerful conglomerates will act very differently from monopolies elsewhere in the world.
 Second, it is not clear why powerful interests holding concentrated ownership positions would support the institutions that are vital for the effective functioning of a market economy. If they follow their own best interests, the conglomerates might be ill-advised to demand effective anti-trust legislation, protection of minority shareholder rights or independent regulatory bodies that mold secondary capital markets so as to facilitate takeovers. It has been argued that the situation in Russia today resembles that in the United States a century ago. In reality, however, it was only after the introduction of decisive anti-trust legislation that America's economy opened up, became accessible for new enterprise startups and experienced the large boost of productivity and growth that moved the country to its current position. It is difficult to see why many of the Russian conglomerates would be much more supportive of such equal-opportunity policies than their American cousins were a century ago.
 Finally, while a degree of inequality in the distribution of wealth is necessary to ensure effective control of large public companies, too skewed a concentration of ownership may actually be detrimental. If a large fraction of society's wealth is concentrated in too few hands, limitations of time and knowledge will undermine the ability of this small group to run a large share of society's productive capacity effectively. Inefficiencies inevitably result. A variety of mechanisms have evolved in developed market economies to correct these distortions, all centered around functioning secondary markets for ownership rights in public companies. Takeovers, mergers and bankruptcy procedures are the most visible mechanisms to tighten weak control over productive assets, and there are other mechanisms associated with well functioning capital markets, such as the role of universal banks or mutual funds, which can channel diffuse sources of wealth into more concentrated ownership positions. But the weakness of these secondary markets in Russia means that there are few mechanisms available yet to countervail the inefficiencies of highly concentrated ownership.
 There are other potentially negative implications of a highly concentrated distribution of ownership in society not addressed here, such as its adverse affects on investment in education, health and social protection. These are key issues if Russia wants to maintain high levels of growth.
 So, are Russian reforms now on autopilot, as some observers have recently suggested? The concentration of ownership rights, the attendant small number of new firms entering the marketplace and the lack of diversification in the economy all suggest that, despite the considerable achievements of the past few years, there is much reform work still to be done. Russia is not yet on autopilot.
 
 <i>Julian Schweitzer is the World Bank Country Director for Russia and Christof Ruehl is the World Bank's Chief Economist for Russia. They contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: The 'Window on the West' Should Be Right Out Front
TEXT: FOR many people, St. Petersburg is the most European of Russia's cities. The signs of this are everywhere. Its history, geographic location and cultural heritage all indicate its orientation toward European traditions and values. There is a stong symbolic element as well in St. Petersburg's Westward orientation, as it was specifically here, according to Russian mythology, that Peter the Great hacked open a &quot;window on Europe.&quot;
 
The symbolic foundations have been buttressed by historical practice. Since its foundation, St. Petersburg has played a decisive role in giving Russia a European identity, and Russia's fate along these lines and developments in the city have been closely linked. Even during Soviet times, despite being renamed Leningrad, the city remained - and sometimes suffered for being - a symbol of a more open and liberal space - a sort of alternative to the more conservative and ideologically driven Moscow. Given this background, what is striking is that, now, Russia's government is placing such a high stake in the development of closer links with Europe and its flagship institution - the European Union - St. Petersburg is not playing any significant role in the process. At best, the city and its splendid cultural sights serve as a cozy backdrop against which President Vladimir Putin likes to meet with foreign guests.
 It makes you wonder what is going on. Is something wrong? Do the city's European associations hold a different view? How serious can Russia's leaders be about their commitment to foster good relations with Europe if St. Petersburg is left at the margins of this process?
 In Russian political rhetoric, the EU is traditionally presented as a positive direction for European development - an antidote to NATO. In contrast to the eastward expansion of the military alliance, Moscow has never opposed enlargement of the EU.
 But, even on the EU front, the Russian establishment has yet to abandon old diseases and has been unable to formulate a constructive strategy. Official Russia remains more concerned with damage limitation than with exploring the potential for development. The Kaliningrad visa problem, and not St. Petersburg's economic potential (for example), became the political test case for both the government and the public for cooperation between the EU and Russia. There is no doubt that the difficulties with regard to the exclave of Kaliningrad were a headache that required treatment and some sort of compromise solution. But focusing only on this sort of damage limitation is clearly not the way to forge a constructive partnership.
 Brussels cordially welcomed Moscow's proposal to treat Kaliningrad as a pilot region for cooperation between the EU and Russia. As politically attractive as it may be, this proposition is based on wrong assumptions. Pilot projects are normally used to test approaches that will be implemented on a larger scale later. As an exclave territory, Kaliningrad is special in so many respects that, whatever is achieved, there can not be extended to or duplicated in the rest of Russia. Other parts of Russia's Northwest Region provide much more attractive prospects in this case, with St. Petersburg clearly being the leading candidate and possessing the greatest potential for exploration.
 Peter the Great started his European experiment here in a blunt attempt to build a modern European state. It makes a lot of sense, if only in terms of political symbolism, to try finally to accomplish here what Peter started. This shouldn't contradict the official ambition that Russia be something larger than just a European entity, with a role that extends beyond European borders. But I am convinced that Russia needs first to be European, and this can not happen without St. Petersburg.
 Despite its special history and European identification, St. Petersburg remains a standard Russian region. Its European facade hides a troubling ecological system, a crippled infrastructure, mounting municipal problems and an unattractive investment climate. People used to describe St. Petersburg as &quot;a great city with a provincial fate.&quot; To realize its European potential is, perhaps, the only way to break a vicious circle and to give the city a sense of direction. This should not lie just in the realm of lofty ideas, but in concrete deeds and real economic projects in cooperation with European bodies.
 Being a very special case with limited opportunities for the application of success or failure, Kaliningrad will not generate positive, large-scale systemic effects, either in developing the Baltic Sea region or in developing trends in EU-Russia cooperation. The St. Petersburg case is different, and to mobilize its potential will have tremendous systemic effects.
 It seems a simple proposition that, when there is no tangible success in St. Petersburg, which is closer and more exposed to Europe than any other major Russian city or region, there is little reason to expect significant progress in that direction from the rest of the country.
 
 <i>Igor Leshukov is the director of the Institute of International Affairs, St. Petersburg, a private think tank. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: <b>Taking the Fifth</b>
 Since the last Global Eye, George W. Bush has been enthroned in near-absolute power by a whopping, er, 21 percent of the American electorate, which narrowly voted in a slate of congressional Republican rubber-stamps - who bid fair to outdo Baghdad's parliamentarians in their cringing obedience to the all-wise Leader.
 
Now, you might think that a government unsupported by a full 79 percent of the voters - the 60 percent who opted out altogether plus the 19 percent who held their noses and voted for the tub of wriggling, gutless jellyfish the Democrats offered - could hardly claim a &quot;mandate&quot; for its extremist program of permanent war, environmental destruction, tycoon coddling and savage rapine of the nation's liberties. But you, boychik, would be wrong.
 After all, the Bush junta had already seized the White House against the clearly expressed will of the people. They certainly wouldn't blanche at claiming a mandate from God after capturing Congress as well, even with a vicious campaign of unprecedented sleaze (and record-breaking oodles of fat-cat boodle) that, among countless other things, smeared a war-crippled Vietnam veteran as an Osama-loving traitor (for lack of proper zeal in supporting the Oval One), threatened black voters in Baltimore with jail or eviction if they dared cast their ballots, kept tens of thousands of illegally &quot;purged&quot; voters off the rolls in Florida (again!) and romped home to several &quot;surprising upsets&quot; by razor-thin margins in places using new computer voting gizmos owned - and programmed - by private companies run by Republican donors who refuse to allow any public scrutiny whatsoever of the &quot;proprietary&quot; software that processes the now-paperless, recordless votes.
 No, 21 percent means Mandate City for the mud-slinging mullahs, and they are now advancing their extremist agenda on every front: a Blitzkrieg designed to gut the remaining vestiges of genuine democracy and install a monolithic state based on militarized nationalism and the spoils of empire. In addition to giving even more tax cuts to the rich, rolling back even more environmental safeguards and lining up even more bagmen and religious cranks for the federal judiciary, they've also been busy knee-capping an international treaty outlawing torture - wouldn't want to upset the eager viceroys in Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, etc., who &quot;vigorously interrogate&quot; prisoners for the Regime. (Like his corporate cronies, Bush likes to move his more dubious activities to off-shore havens.)
 Then, of course, there's the new penchant for &quot;targeted assassination.&quot; Brays of teeth-baring triumph greeted the killing of a carload of suspected al-Qaida operatives in Yemen by a remote-controlled CIA drone. (Yes, there's a remote-controlled CIA drone currently residing in the Oval Office, but this was a different one.) This adventure in extra-judicial, extra-territorial execution is only the beginning, excited security officials told an enthralled media. There was, of course, one little problem: the missile blast apparently left all the victims burned beyond recognition; even the identity of the primary target, an alleged bin Laden lieutenant, was disputed by witnesses.
 As for the other five people in the car - including, apparently, an American citizen, although nobody knows for sure - who cares? In fact, that was the general consensus all around. Either it was bin Laden's guys or it wasn't, either they were hardcore gangbangers or they weren't - guilt or innocence is beside the point. The point is that Bush can now aim and fire his drones anywhere in the world he damn well pleases, and nothing - certainly not law, or that stinking rag, the U.S. Constitution - is going to stop him.
 Since the last Global Eye, there has also been the final scene in the drawing-room comedy being played out in the UN, where Bush pretended to consult with the Security Council and Council members pretended they were acting to &quot;prevent war and preserve the UN's credibility.&quot; Meanwhile, the Bush boys were backstage twisting arms and issuing threats over oil deals and debt servicing. The whole pantomime was merely a time-killer, something to do while the Generalissimo continues his massive build-up for the already-announced &quot;optimum invasion window&quot; of late December to mid-February.
 Finally, if that don't float your boat, try this: The Pentagon announced last week that it's building a computer system to give government spies and federal cops &quot;instant access to electronic information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents - <i>without a search warrant,&quot; </i>The New York Times reports (italics added). This global eye will be aimed not only at international terrorists but also at the United States - whose citizens will at last be stripped of their remaining rights to privacy.
 But rest assured, the spy program &quot;won't be abused,&quot; says the Pentagon honcho in charge of the plan. And who is this comforting, fatherly figure? None other than Vice Admiral John Poindexter. That would be the same John Poindexter who was convicted on five felony counts in the Iran-Contra affair - including lying, under oath, to Congress and the American people.
 Poindexter was a key operator in the Reagan-Bush scam that funneled deadly weapons to the terrorist-succoring regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, in exchange for blood money that the Reagan-Bush team then used to pay off the terrorist army it was running in Nicaragua - an army schooled with CIA manuals on torture and assassination. Poindexter and the other thugs also threw some drug-running into the mix, just to keep the kitty flush.
 But hey, surely, the convicted oathbreaker is telling the truth this time. How surely? Oh, about 21 percent.
 
 <i>
For annotational references, see the &quot;Opinion&quot; section at www.sptimesrussia.com </i>

TITLE: UN Weapons Inspectors Return to Iraq
AUTHOR: By Bassem Mroue
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - After a four-year interruption, UN weapons inspectors returned to Iraq on Monday to resume the search for weapons of mass destruction in a mission that could determine whether the Persian Gulf is plunged into a new war.
 
Chief UN inspector Hans Blix told reporters that credible inspections were &quot;in the interest of Iraq and the interest of the world.&quot;
 He arrived in Baghdad aboard a UN cargo plane with Mohamed El-Baradei, who oversees the International Atomic Energy Agency. They were met by an Iraqi delegation led by General Hosam Amin, head of the national monitoring directorate, set up as a counterpart to the inspection team.
 U.S. President George W. Bush has warned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that failure to cooperate with the inspectors will trigger an American attack.
 Also Monday, allied warplanes bombed Iraqi defense systems in the northern no-fly zone after being fired upon during routine patrols, the U.S. military said. Iraq considers patrols of no-fly zones over the northern and southern ends of the country a violation of its sovereignty and frequently shoots at the patrols.
 Ewen Buchanan, the UN inspectors' spokesperson, said Monday he did not think the no-fly-zone activity would affect the inspection mission.
 The UN team planned to reopen the Baghdad offices that inspectors abandoned in 1998. Among the equipment transported to Baghdad were several vacuum cleaners, &quot;to clear up four years of dust,&quot; Buchanan said.
 The advance team was also to set up secure phone lines at the office and arrange transportation ahead of the first inspections, which Blix has said would begin as early as Nov. 27.
 Iraq must file a declaration of its banned weapons programs by Dec. 8 or provide convincing evidence that they have been eliminated. Full-scale inspections are to resume after that, with Blix reporting his findings to the UN Security Council within 60 days.
 &quot;I urge president Saddam Hussein to comply fully for the sake of his people, for the sake of the region and for the sake of the world order,&quot; UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Monday in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
 The last UN inspectors left Baghdad in December 1998 amid Iraqi allegations that some were spying for the United States and countercharges that Iraq was not cooperating with the teams. Their departure was followed by four days of punishing U.S. and British airstrikes.
 Leading Iraqi newspaper Babil, owned by Hussein's son, Odai, said in an editorial Monday that Iraq wants the inspectors' mission to &quot;prove to the Americans ... that our country is free of weapons of mass destruction.&quot;
 A front-page editorial in the ruling Baath Party newspaper Al-Thawra called the previous UN inspection regime &quot;an American organization to spy on Iraq,&quot; and said it hoped the new team would avoid that trap.
 Iraq has been under strict economic sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The sanctions can be lifted when UN inspectors declare Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction.
 Blix and El-Baradei flew from Vienna to Cyprus over the weekend to join up with about two dozen other members of their team before heading for Iraq. Blix said the team was prepared to meet the challenge of ensuring Iraqi compliance, but he hoped Iraq would not try to hide anything.
 &quot;The question of war and peace remains first of all in the hands of Iraq, the Security Council and the members of the Security Council,&quot; Blix said Sunday.
 The United States is waiting to see Iraq's response to inspections before going to the Security Council for debate on military action, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday.
 &quot;It seems to me that what will happen is a pattern of behavior will evolve and then people will make judgments with respect to it,&quot; Rumsfeld said.
 Sounding a tough line, El-Baradei said Sunday there was agreement on the need for &quot;intrusive verifications - that means we would go everywhere, we will use every means at our disposal to make sure that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction.&quot;
 Blix favors cooperation instead of confrontation with the Iraqis, and the differences in approach could create tension between the inspectors and the Bush administration, UN officials said Sunday on condition of anonymity.

TITLE: Israel Launches Strikes After Gun Battle Leaves 12 Dead
AUTHOR: By Ibrahim Barzak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli helicopters and tanks fired on the main Palestinian security compound in Gaza City early Monday, demolishing several buildings that the army said were used to make weapons and seizing grenades and missiles.
 
In the West Bank, Israeli forces imposed a curfew Monday in a Ramallah neighborhood and searched for a wanted Palestinian, while Israeli officials reportedly considered a proposal to link Jewish enclaves in Hebron following an ambush Friday that killed 12 soldiers and security guards.
 Despite the violence and a bitter Israeli election campaign, negotiations continued over a U.S.-European plan to end the Mideast conflict, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.
 In Gaza City, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at the headquarters of Preventive Security, the main official Palestinian force, and tanks and soldiers moved in. Two Palestinian security officers and a TV camera operator working for Reuters were lightly injured, doctors said. No other casualties were reported.
 The army said the offices were used to make weapons. Dozens of mortar shells and grenades, three rocket-propelled grenades, several anti-tank missiles and a Qassem missile were found, along with welding equipment and intelligence materials, said a Gaza commander, Brigadier General Israel Ziv.
 Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the raid showed the &quot;tight connection between the security forces of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian terror groups.&quot;
 Palestinians fired on the troops and shot missiles against tanks but no soldiers were injured, the army said.
 A few hours after the Israeli attack, two missiles were shot toward a Jewish settlement near Gaza City but caused no damage or injuries, the army said.
 The Israeli forces pulled out after more than three hours, leaving several of the 11 buildings in the security compound in ruins. At the main administration building, targeted for the first time in two years of fighting, furniture was smashed and computers destroyed, their parts littering the floor as firefighters fought a blaze nearby.
 Palestinian official Tayeb Abdel Rahim, who said his house was hit by bullets, warned that &quot;security and stability for Israeli people cannot be achieved at the expense of the Palestinian people.&quot;
 So far, Gaza has been spared the large-scale military operations in which Israel has taken control of most West Bank Palestinian population centers, retaliation for bloody terror attacks. However, Israeli leaders have said that militant groups operate unfettered in Gaza, and the Israeli military would confront them at some point.
 Though serious incidents of violence occur every day, and Israel is at the beginning of a fierce campaign toward a general election on Jan. 28, diplomats are still fine-tuning a document aimed at negotiating a settlement to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
 The latest draft contains some answers to Palestinian concerns, including a softening of a demand to name a prime minister to relieve Palestinian President Yasser Arafat of some of his duties. Israel has said the plan must be shelved until after its election and formation of a new government.
 On Sunday, Israelis buried most of the 12 soldiers and security guards killed in the Palestinian ambush in Hebron on Friday night and Israeli troops and tanks fanned out through the West Bank city. The soldiers were guarding Jewish worshippers returning on foot from Hebron to the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba when they came under fire.
 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was quoted by Israeli media as calling for a continuous stretch of Israeli settlements from Kiryat Arba to the hotly disputed holy site at Hebron's center, a move that could mean uprooting many Palestinians.
 The Haaretz daily quoted Sharon as saying there was a short window of opportunity - 48 hours - to establish facts on the ground and create a continuous line of enclaves.

TITLE: Hijacker Planned Second 9/11
AUTHOR: By Esra Aygin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISTANBUL, Turkey - An Israeli-Arab man who tried to storm the cockpit of an Israeli jetliner told interrogators he wanted to crash the plane into a Tel Aviv building in a Sept. 11-like attack, Turkey's private NTV television reported Monday.
 
Security guards aboard the airliner on Sunday overpowered the man, who apparently had a pocket knife and threatened a flight attendant during the flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul. None of the 170 passengers on board the Boeing 757 was harmed and the plane landed safely.
 But the Israeli Airports Authority said Monday that the man was not holding a knife when he attacked.
 &quot;The small knife that the passenger had on his possession was not the reason the security guards acted on the plane,&quot; authority spokesperson Pini Schiff said in a news release in Tel Aviv. &quot;When the passenger was being overpowered, he was not holding any object in his hand.&quot;
 The suspect, Tawfiq Fukra, a 23-year-old Israeli Arab, was being questioned by anti-terrorism squads in Istanbul. Israel Radio reported that he was being taken to Israel for questioning by the Shin Bet security service.
 The Israel Airports Authority were eager to downplay the incident. An initial investigation showed that the security apparatus at Ben Gurion Airport had operated satisfactorily, Schiff said.
 However, officials were checking how the suspect got the knife onto the plane. El Al is regarded as the best protected airline in the world, but also one of the most threatened. From the late 1960s into the 1980s, El Al planes and passengers were subjected to shooting attacks, attempted hijackings and bombings.
 El Al's security includes armed guards at check-in, on-board marshals and extensive luggage searches. Passengers are told to arrive three hours ahead of flights to allow time for the security checks.
 Israel Radio reported that Fukra, sitting in the coach section, had entered the business class section twice to ask a flight attendant for water. On the third try, he was told to sit down since the plane was landing. He then pushed the flight attendant and a guard jumped on him.
 A second guard who helped overpower Fukra noticed he had a small knife in his possession, the radio said.
 NTV said Fukra told interrogators he wanted to force the plane to return to Tel Aviv and that he intended to crash it into a building there. The report could not be verified independently.
 Turkey's Anatolia news agency quoted Fukra as telling interrogators he had &quot;carried out the action to protest&quot; against Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
 In northern Israel, police searched the home of Fukra's father, confiscated a computer and questioned several relatives who were all later released, Israel's Army Radio said.
 Army Radio quoted Fukra's father, Salah, as saying his son shouldn't be called a hijacker just because he fought with a flight attendant. He said his son was going to Turkey for vacation.
 Passenger Viv Gulmez said the man was sitting just in front of her and that he looked suspicious. &quot;He was going to toilet very often, and once he made a telephone call from the plane,&quot; Gulmez told private CNN-Turk television.
 Another passenger said that after the incident, the flight attendants made an announcement, telling &quot;us not to get scared, to sit down, not to get up and be calm.&quot;

TITLE: League Title Set To Go To Playoff
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - CSKA Moscow will meet city rival Lokomotiv in a one-time &quot;golden&quot; game on Thursday to decide the Russian championship, after both teams ended the season with the same number of points.
 
CSKA defeated Saturn Ramenskoye 3-0, while Lokomotiv edged Dinamo 2-1 in a heated Moscow derby on Sunday. Both finished with 66 points after 30 games.
 Latvian international Yuris Lajzans put CSKA ahead two minutes into the second half and Rolan Gusev made it 2-0 with a 59th-minute header. Dmitry Kirichenko added a third in the final minute to finish as the league's joint top scorer with Gusev with 15 goals each.
 But the win was marred by clashes between CSKA supporters and riot police after the game in Ramenskoye, some 30 kilometers southeast of the capital.
 RIA news agency reported that hundreds of CSKA fans attempted to jump onto the field to celebrate their victory, but met with stiff resistance from police.
 &quot;It was a tough match, but there was no way they could have stopped us after we scored the first goal,&quot; said CSKA coach Valery Gazzayev, who is aiming to lead the army side to its first title in a decade, in his first year with the club.
 CSKA has not won a league crown since clinching the last Soviet championship in 1991, while Gazzayev, who also coaches the Russian national team, guided Alaniya Vladikavkaz to its only league title in 1995.
 Lokomotiv was looking to cap a perfect week by winning its first Russian title after reaching the second phase of the European Champions League in only its second attempt with a 2-0 win over Club Bruges in their final Group H match on Wednesday.
 Loko defender Vadim Yevseyev opened the scoring in the 38th minute when he knocked in a loose ball after a bad Dinamo clearance. It was Yevseyev's third goal in the last two games.
 Dinamo fullback Andrei Dyomkin evened the score less than five minutes later, but Lokomotiv captain Dmitry Loskov put the railway side back on top three minutes after halftime.
 Dinamo, which had Yugoslav striker Ognen Koroman sent off late in the game, pressed hard to tie, but Lokomotiv held on for the victory to force the decisive match against CSKA.
 Another Moscow team, Torpedo-ZiL beat Rostselmash Rostov-Na-Donu 2-0 to remain in the top division. Torpedo-ZiL finished ahead of Anzhi Makhachkala and Sokol Saratov.
 Anzhi, which won 1-0 at Uralan Elista, and Sokol, which lost 3-1 at home to Shinnik Yaroslavl, were relegated and will be replaced next season by Rubin Kazan and Chernomorets Novorossiisk, which returns to the Premier Division after a year in the first division. 
 Zenit, meanwhile, summed up its mediocre season with a 2-1 home defeat to Krylya Sovietov Samara on Sunday. The team is expected to appoint a new coach, after a turbulent term that saw frequent changes at the top, after Yury Morozov was forced to take a break, and then retire, for health reasons. The new coach is expected to be a non-Russian.
 Zenit is also set to lose Russian international attacking midfielder Andrei Arshavin to Spartak, although star striker Alexander Kerzhakov, who finished second in the scoring charts with 14 goals this season, signed a new deal with the club that runs through 2005.
 Club President Valery Mutko met with Leningrad Oblast head Valery Sidyukov about building a new stadium on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, Interfax reported this week.
 
 <i>
(Reuters, SPT) </i>