SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times DATE: Issue #827 (92), Tuesday, December 10, 2002 ************************************************************************** TITLE: City Elections Stir Little Voter Interest AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: Sunday's elections for the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly turned out light in terms of voter turnout, but was not without surprises with the defeat of a number of high-profile candidates. While the official posting of the results of the vote were not due to be announced officially by the City Electoral Commission (CEC) until Tuesday, initial reports late on Sunday and on Monday were that the races in the city's 50 districts had all been decided and would stand, even though the percentage of eligible voters who took part was less than 30 percent, according to the latest reports. Russian electoral law requires that at least 20 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in order for a result to be declared official, a number that was apparently reached in all of the city's districts. Voter turnout was announced as 29.4 percent, lower than the 31.8 percent registered in the second round of the 1998 Legislative Elections and a significant drop from the 40.6 percent registered in the first round that year. According to unofficial results available on Monday, independents will, once again, form the majority in the chamber, having garnered 32 of the 50 seats, with the SPS+Yabloko electoral bloc winning eight seats; Yedinaya Rossia (United Russia) grabbing four; Volya Peterburga (Will of St. Petersburg) electing three; two seats going to the Science, Industry and Education bloc; and one to the Political Center organization. Over two-thirds of the district races were won by incumbents. All the same, there were surprises among the few incumbents who did lose seats on Sunday, chief among them three of the bigger names from the SPS+Yabloko bloc. Mikhail Brodsky and Mikhail Tolstoi lost to a pair of independents, Vladimir Kruchenko and Igor Vysotsky, respectively, while Leonid Romankov was defeated by Yury Savelyev of the Science, Industry and Education bloc. Savelyev is not exactly a low-profile figure himself, having made news in 1999 when, as the rector of the Baltic State Technical University, he tried to fire four U.S. professors working at the school in reaction to the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia. He again made headlines in 2000, when the U.S. State Department announced that it was slapping sanctions on him for allegedly helping Iran develop a long-range missile system. Savelyev garnered over 47 percent of the votes cast in the 4th district, the second highest total for any candidate in the elections city wide. The highest percentage garnered was that by incumbent assembly speaker Sergei Tarasov, with 54 percent. Tarasov has been a consistent supporter of Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, and the SPS+Yabloko electoral bloc withdrew their candidate in the 39th district before the elections to avoid splitting the vote with Victor Yegoshin, a United Russia member who was seen by the anti-Yakovlev faction in the assembly as standing the best chance of unseating the speaker. The re-election of Yuri Shutov, an independent incumbent in the 9th district, has raised a few eyebrows. Charged in 1999 by the Prosecutor's Office with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and banditry - forming an armed criminal group with the intention of attacking citizens or organizations - in connection with a number of high-profile, contract-style killings, Shutov spent most of his term of office in prison. He will be able to resume his seat in the assembly, as he is presently free on the condition that he does not leave the city. The gender ratio in the chamber remains the same, as incumbents Zoya Zaushnikova, a Will of St. Petersburg candidate in the 12th electoral district, and Natalya Yevdokimova, a member of the SPS+Yabloko bloc in the 34th electoral district, both retained their seats, while no new female lawmakers managed victories. While there have been numerous charges of unlawful activities made during the campaign, including vote-buying and the publication of fake campaign materials, the police said that the vote was calm compared to previous years. "There were no significant charges of election-law violations made on the day of the elections," said Pavel Rayevsky, the head of the St. Petersburg Police press service. "This election was much calmer than the previous one, held four years ago, when there even were candidates being attacked," Rayevsky said. "This year, we didn't even receive fake bomb threats during the vote." Rayevsky said that the police had nonetheless registered a number of violations on Sunday. In the Kirovsky district, for instance, a man was detained while offering to give vodka outside a polling station in exchange for a vote for a specific candidate. Rayevsky said that the man was released after paying a fine. Rayevsky said that criminal cases related to electoral-law violations have also been opened by two separate district prosecutor's offices. The police press service declined to give further details. However, Nikolai Vinnichenko, the federal inspector for St. Petersburg, said on Sunday that he was concerned with the number of electoral-law violations reported on Sunday. "Attempts at vote buying and at taking ballots outside the polling station before the vote in order to falsify them are serious violations," Vinnichenko said. One candidate defeated in the elections, St. Petersburg Audit Chamber chief Dmitry Burenin, who ran as a candidate in the 41st district, has already announced that he will contest the results of the vote in court. According to Burenin, the campaign run by the eventual winner in the district, Balt-Uneximbank Director Yuri Rydnik, was involved in buying votes and campaigning activities on election day. Burenin told Interfax on Monday that other candidates who ran in the district would support his allegations. According to preliminary results, Rydnik garnered 47.58 the percent of votes in the 41st district, followed by Burenin with 15.41 percent. One agency involved in monitoring the elections said that the police may have been too active. Roman Mogilevsky, the head of the Agency for Social Information, an independent polling and research organization, said on Sunday that some of the agency's staff had been arrested by police in a number of districts while attempting to carry out exit polling. Mogilevsky said that those detained were released relatively quickly. TITLE: Kremlin Asks Britain To Extradite Zakayev AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: MOSCOW - In a continuing, sometimes embarassing test of the Russian justice system, Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev was detained by British police for several hours upon his arrival in London but released on bail early Friday pending an extradition hearing. Zakayev traveled to Britain from Copenhagen two days after a Danish court had refused to extradite him at Moscow's request on grounds of insufficient evidence. Zakayev, who spent 34 days awaiting the decision in a Danish jail, is wanted by Russia on suspicion of crimes committed during the 1994 to 1996 war in Chechnya, including taking civilians hostage and ordering the murder of Chechens loyal to Moscow. Russian officials lashed out at British authorities for releasing Zakayev. "What if some other terrorist had come to London - [Osama] bin Laden, who, like Zakayev, is under an international search warrant?" Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, in Lisbon for a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said in televised remarks. "And if bin Laden had said new terrorist acts were being prepared against civilian targets in the U.S., how would he be dealt with? Like Zakayev? Taken to a police station and then let out onto the street?" Ivanov asked. Zakayev, an official representative of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, has warned that continued military action in Chechnya would lead to more terrorist attacks like October's hostage-taking in a Moscow theater - a warning that Russian officials have interpreted as a direct threat by the rebel leadership. After his release, Zakayev denied Russia's allegations against him and said he would continue to speak out for a political resolution to the conflict in Chechnya. "This whole provocation started against me by the Russian prosecutor's office is aimed against my public political activity in Europe in the name of President Maskhadov and our leadership," Zakayev said Sunday in a telephone interview from London. He added that Russia authorities were trying to force him underground so that they could "spread anti-Chechen propaganda and classify everything they are doing there [in Chechnya] as the fight against international terrorism." Zakayev was accompanied on the trip to London by British actor Vanessa Redgrave, his most high-profile supporter and a longtime critic of rights abuses in Chechnya. "Mr. Zakayev is not a warlord and he is not a terrorist," the Oscar-winning actor told a news conference in London, Reuters reported. "I'm Akhmed's host. I'm his friend, I'm his guarantor." Zakayev, himself an actor, said that Redgrave has been host to his wife and the family of his son for the past several months. Redgrave posted the Pound50,000 ($78,975) initially set by police as bail, but Zakayev said Sunday that no money had been paid yet. A London magistrate court is to decide Wednesday whether to accept bail and allow Zakayev to remain free. Extradition hearings will begin after the British Home Office submits its official recommendation on the case, which it has 40 days to do. Zakayev said he had no forecast regarding the British decision, but scoffed at the work of Russian prosecutors, saying their failure to get him extradited from Denmark was "a big favor to Chechens and all of Europe. Zakayev's arrival in London promises to create an awkward situation for British diplomats and for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has developed a warm personal relationship with President Vladimir Putin and is banking on his support for possible U.S.-British military action against Iraq. So far, Britain's tolerance for Putin's opponents - such as tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who lives in self-imposed exile in London, and former intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko, who received political asylum in Britain in May 2001 - has not done any visible damage to Russian-British ties. But Zakayev's case will be the first major test of the close relationship that has been forged between the two countries since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Zakayev said he was well aware of this tension. "I am an additional headache for any European country," he said. "But I do not believe I will be sacrificed for the sake of international politics." Russian officials have said that the international arrest warrant for Zakayev was issued in 2001. However, as late as November of that year, Zakayev was an acceptable negotiating partner for the Kremlin and met with presidential envoy Viktor Kazantsev to discuss chances for ending hostilities in Chechnya. It is also not clear how the allegations against Zakayev can be reconciled with an amnesty passed by the State Duma in March 1997. A duty officer at the Prosecutor General's Office said Friday afternoon that no immediate comment on "such legal intricacies" was available. TITLE: Vote Raises New, Old Questions AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: Even though the unofficial results from Sunday's Legislative Assembly elections indicate that the races in each of the city's 50 electoral districts had been decided, the election seems to have left everyone with questions. Analysts disagree over the causes of the low voter turnout on Sunday, politicians remain divided on what the results mean for Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's future, and many voters are left scratching their heads and wondering for whom exactly they voted. Concerns arose early in the day over the low turnout, with concern that, in some districts, participation numbers wouldn't break the 20-percent barrier needed for the vote to be considered valid. Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, who is the Legislative Assembly's representative in the Russian parliament's upper house, sent an appeal through the media from the RosBalt news agency offices to city residents, encouraging them to vote. "Every single person makes a difference. Ask your family and friends if they have voted. The whole country is looking at us," he said in his address to city residents. "I was shocked when I heard that, by 10 a.m., only 0.5 percent of the people had voted. I understood immediately that something was wrong," he told journalists later on Sunday. Viktor Pleskachevsky, a State Duma deputy with the Yedinaya Rossia (United Russia) party and a member of the commission appointed to observe the elections, and Lyudmila Narusova, also a State Duma deputy and the widow of late St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, were two other prominent political figures who issued appeals for residents to get out and vote on Sunday. Explanation for the low percentage of eligible voters that actually cast ballots varied. "We've seen very little information about the elections. A lot of the campaigning material didn't indicate the actual date of the election, nor at what time they began and finished. Citizens don't necessarily know this." said Grigory Tomchin, the chairperson of the State Duma's Committee for Economic Development and Entrepreneurship and the president of SPS's St. Petersburg branch. "I think that this was an attempt by the City Electoral Commission (CEC) to lower the turnout." Tomchin said that he had asked the CEC to place arrows in the city providing directions to polling stations, a proposition he says was turned down by the CEC. Leonid Kisselman, a political analyst at the Sociology Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, disagreed with Tomchin, saying that a low level of interest in elections has been a tendency for the St. Petersburg electorate over the last 10 years. "It has to do with the general estrangement people feel towards official institutions, preferring to rely on themselves, rather than on the state," he said on Monday. Kisselman also disagreed with the explanation that people weren't given enough information ahead of the vote. "People received enough leaflets in their mail boxes, but many didn't even bother to read them," he said. The eventual turnout of 29.4 percent, although low, was enough to elect deputies in every district, but political forces opposed to Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and, particularly, to his attempts to be allowed to run for a third term, put a negative spin on the results. Alexei Musakov, the head of the St. Petersburg Center for Regional Development, himself an unsuccessful candidate on Sunday, said that he was very disappointed in the results, which, he believes, have put the Legislative Assembly in the hands of the governor. "The results are a crushing victory for Yakovlev, who has greatly consolidated his position in St. Petersburg and in the Northwest region," Musakov said on Monday. "Two of the newly elected deputies, Yuri Rydnik and Denis Volchek, are particularly significant, being very wealthy and ready to serve Yakovlev's interests. I think that the governor now has enough allies in the assembly to manage to get a third term." "Otherwise, the elections will not bring much change, because the majority of incumbents have been re-elected," he added. The City Charter presently limits governors to two terms in office so, in order to have any opportunity to run for a third term, the charter would have to be amended. Amendments to the City Charter require the support of at least 34 deputies. Because of what's at stake, most political analysts say that this vote revolved almost entirely around the question of a third term for the governor and had little to do with the actual work of the Legislative Assembly. "The results are worse than four years ago, in the sense that they are a lot more criminal," said Ruslan Linkov, who heads the local branch of the Democratic Russia Party. "The new assembly will include more supporters of the governor than the former one, but Yakovlev still hasn't managed to gather enough allies in the assembly to secure himself a third term." Unlike Musakov, Linkov estimates that the new assembly will contain about 25 solid Yakovlev supporters. For many, the first session of the new Legislative Assembly, on Jan. 6, may also be the first opportunity to find out for themselves whom they have elected. One young couple who visited the polling station located in the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in the 39th electoral district on Sunday, who asked that their names not be given, said they were "deeply unsatisfied with the lack of information provided about the candidates." "We don't know anything about the candidates, apart from [assembly speaker Sergei] Tarasov," the young woman said. "We have never seen them on television or anywhere. We came here to try to prevent another crook from getting elected, but all we could do was base our vote on the candidates' appearance." Marina Strezhnyeva, a 33-year-old engineer who came to vote in a 7th district polling station set up in school No. 381, at 4 Ul. Zoyi Kosmodelyanskoi, said that she was among the ranks of the many voters who chose a candidate simply by reading the biographies in the polling station on Sunday. "I made my choice by reading about the candidates' professions, and who they are, in their biographies on the board. I had only heard of two or three candidates on the list," she said. "I don't feel there was enough information about them during the campaign." There were 13 candidates running in the 7th district. Pavel Ryatkin, who heads the polling commission at the station located in the conservatory, said that it was obvious that voters were largely unable to identify candidates. He said he was generally satisfied with the process, adding that the federal Central Electoral Commission members who came to inspect the polling station in the morning had had no complaints. "They came for around 15 minutes, looked around, asked questions and asked if we had any questions for them," Ryatkin said. "They didn't point out anything that wasn't in line with the electoral law, and that's what counts for me." Some of the voters coming to the station had a definite idea of what they wanted - or what they didn't. "I decided to vote to get rid of Tarasov. I don't care who gets through as long as it's not him," said an 81-year- old pensioner, who identified herself as Vera Pavlovna. "Four years ago, the neighbors in my communal flat were promised bottles of vodka if they voted for Tarasov. After he got elected, his people came to hand my neighbors the bottles. I saw it with my own eyes." Other expressed satisfaction at the choice of candidates and the organization of the elections in general. "I am satisfied, elections are taking place in a calm and peaceful climate, and there is a good choice of candidates," said Alexander Markov, a railway worker. "I voted for Tarasov, and so did my whole family. We supported him in the last elections, too." TITLE: Moscow, NATO Talk Trimming AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov PUBLISHER: The Associated Press TEXT: MOSCOW - Amid increasingly warm ties, Russia and NATO discussed strategies for fighting terrorism Monday, with NATO Secretary General George Robertson saying the former foes must trim their bulky, Cold War-style armies to adapt to new threats. "The military forces of yesterday - huge arsenals of battle tanks, static headquarters and inflexible soldiers ... divert scarce defense resources from urgent and pressing modernization," Robertson said while opening a joint conference on military efforts to combat terrorism. Pointing to NATO's plans to streamline its forces to make them better fit for tackling global terrorism, he said that Russia faces a similar task: Cutting the fat from an oversized military that was "organized and equipped for World War III." "The Cold War is over, Russia and NATO are partners and Cold War forces are simply a waste of money," Robertson told reporters later in the day. The Russia-NATO conference highlighted the new friendly relationship between Russia and its former enemy, which has seen a dramatic boost thanks to President Vladimir Putin's firm support of the U.S.-led international campaign against terror. "Russia and NATO are very close in their assessment of military needs ... in the new security environment," Putin said during a separate meeting with Robertson in the Kremlin. "In many ways, Osama bin Laden was the midwife of an incredible new rapprochement," Robertson said at a news conference. "But I don't think that in his wildest dreams, this fanatical criminal would have thought that he would have ended forever the Cold War and brought NATO and Russia so closely together." While hailing the new partnership between Russia and NATO, Robertson made a careful reference to the sensitive issue of Chechnya, warning that "the use of disproportionate or inappropriate force" by troops lacking proper training to "respect the rights and secure the trust of civilian populations ... can prove ineffective or even counterproductive." Robertson did not specifically mention Chechnya in his conference speech, but told reporters later that he was referring to "Chechnya and other terrorist conflicts." International human-rights groups accuse Russia of heavy-handed use of force in Chechnya resulting in a high number of civilian casualties. Moscow has shrugged off the criticism and presented its war against rebels in Chechnya, now in its fourth year, as part of the international campaign against terror. Like the United States, NATO has acknowledged that some rebels in Chechnya have links with international terrorism, but have also reaffirmed the need for a political solution to the conflict. The Kremlin, however, rejects peace talks with the rebels, calling them international terrorists. "There must be a political strategy to accompany any military counter-terrorist offensive if there is to be a lasting victory against extremists," Robertson said. TITLE: Ministry Plans on Police House Calls PUBLISHER: Combined Reports TEXT: MOSCOW - New rules will require police to go door-to-door to collect information on residents of the areas they patrol, the Interior Ministry said Monday. New instructions call for beat officers to visit everybody who lives in their neighborhoods once every three months. Answering such police inquiries would be voluntary and the information collected will be confidential, Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said, according to Itar-Tass. The beat officers will keep a close eye on former convicts, gun owners, suspected drug addicts, mentally disturbed people as well as those residents who are members of teenage gangs or have participated in public disturbance, he said. Just about every interior minister over the past decade has promised to restore the Soviet-era practice of having police officers closely monitor residents. But these efforts have floundered as low-paid police remain reluctant to check all the apartments on their beats regularly. (AP, SPT) TITLE: It's All About Freedom of Speech for Shuster AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr. PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: MOSCOW - As if to confirm the fabled addiction of television people to scanning their ratings numbers, the first thing Savik Shuster did when he came to his office for an interview last week was to switch on his computer and look at that day's graphs of how many people watched NTV's news programs, which he helps run as deputy chief of news. "I don't know why, but the best day for news is Thursday," said Shuster, who turned 50 three weeks ago and was congratulated by guests in the middle of his live political talk show "Svoboda Slova," or "Free Speech." Yet Shuster is not your average Russian television star. And not only because, at the age of 50, he sticks to using the diminutive version of his name, Savely, or because of the controversies that seen to have followed him throughout his career. Most recently, it was President Vladimir Putin's apparent fury at NTV's coverage of the Moscow hostage crisis, particularly at Shuster's Oct. 25 show featuring passionate pleas by hostages' relatives to end the war in Chechnya and not storm the theater. Afterward, several newspapers reported that the NTV leadership was under pressure to fire Shuster. "Thank God someone can make money, but not at any cost, not on the blood of your own citizens, if, of course, those who do this consider these citizens to be their own," Putin said at a meeting with media managers late last month, in remarks that were widely perceived as directed at NTV and its head, Boris Jordan, a U.S.-born descendant of White Russian emigres. Speculation was rife in Moscow media circles that Putin was directly referring to Shuster, a Lithuanian-born Canadian citizen. "If he indeed meant NTV, this has nothing to with Jordan, because it is hard to imagine blood more Russian than Jordan's," Shuster said. "Therefore, he meant me or people like me. As for me, there is no such thing as foreign blood." "And the very way in which the question is raised is wrong. If we say that terrorism has no borders, it means that blood has no borders." Shuster is married to an Italian, and his family presently lives in Florence. His parents emigrated from their native Vilnius via Israel in 1971, when Shuster was 19. A distant uncle, who was vice president of the oil company Shell Canada, intervened with Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin on their behalf. Shuster earned a medical degree in Canada and then moved to Florence to continue his studies. There, he began writing for a local newspaper after realizing that he "did not like sick people." But the real change came in 1980, when he ventured to Afghanistan for three months to help with a French humanitarian organization that was working on the side of the anti-Soviet mujahedin. In a shop in Islamabad, where he had gone to buy a saddle for a mujahedin commander, Shuster met Newsweek magazine's Asia editor and was offered a chance to write an article. A few days after he left Afghanistan, his story appeared in the magazine. "That was entering journalism through the front door," Shuster said. After a stint with Newsweek, he wrote for the French newspaper Liberation and the Italian magazine Frigider. Shuster spoke little Russian in his childhood and perfected it only when he began working full-time for U.S. government-funded Radio Liberty in 1988. He was offered a job at its Munich headquarters - after producing reports on the Afghan War for the station. Russian is his fifth language after Lithuanian, English, Italian and French. Shuster said he began to speak French fluently in Chad, where he covered the Sudanese occupation in 1982. "My Parisian friends still poke fun at me for having an African accent," he said. Shuster described his move to Radio Liberty as a turning point. "I fell into Gorbachev's glasnost and put my body and soul into Russia," he said. He went on to build up a network of local reporters around the Soviet Union for Radio Liberty, often against the wishes of the emigre dissidents who dominated the station in Munich. They tended to perceive all nondissident Russians as likely KGB agents, Shuster said. That was an uphill battle that he managed to win, albeit "balancing on the verge of getting fired." Shuster set up the station's Moscow bureau, consisting of several dozen staff members, in 1992, and went on to lead it for nine years. Radio Liberty, which never particularly liked Shuster's independent attitude, ended up firing him over a perceived conflict of interest during Gazprom's takeover of NTV from Vladimir Gusinsky's Media-MOST in April 2001. The incident was perhaps the biggest controversy of Shuster's career, costing him a number of friends in political and journalistic circles. Shuster, who had firmly backed Yevgeny Kiselyov's team of journalists at NTV and fiercely criticized the takeover bid, resumed working as the host of a soccer show on NTV just a few days after Gazprom had seized the station. He had begun producing the show, "The Third Half," a couple of years earlier. Radio Liberty said that, by continuing with the program, Shuster had violated its professional code and policy over conflicts of interests. "There was nothing like this in the contract," Shuster said Wednesday. "I began doing 'The Third Half' in 1998, and there was no conflict of interest. It emerged only during the conflict between Gusinsky and Jordan. After the night of the takeover, of course, my decision to do soccer [on NTV] was perceived in a purely political way." That decision, particularly in the light of a dramatic appearance by Shuster in NTV corridors on the night of April 4, 2001, when the takeover took place, is well remembered in Russia's highly divided and politicized media circles. The pro-Western liberal camp of journalists appears to view Shuster as a defector, while the more patriotic conservative camp has never accepted him as their own. At the same time, Radio Liberty's decision to fire a well-known journalist over a clearly political situation was perceived by many in Russia as proof of the hypocrisy inherent in a West that had lectured Russia on questions of free speech. One thing that no one disputes is that Shuster, whose father was a soccer coach, knows his sports. "He knows his way around soccer," said Alexei Gridnev, editor of the Futbolnoye Obozreniye weekly. Vladimir Radionov, the general secretary of the Russian Football Union, agreed, but said he was not a fan of Shuster's political programs. "I'm not always sure that I'm right, but Shuster always knows he's right," Radionov said. Shuster's tiny office - which contains a photograph of his father in a Red Army World War II military uniform, books in several languages and posters of Tuscan wines - is on NTV's eighth floor in Moscow's Ostankino television center. It was to these corridors Shuster came on the night of the takeover. In footage that NTV managed to broadcast before its programming was switched to that of its sister station THT, Shuster appeared to be scolding the journalists who chose to stay at NTV. Shuster insisted he has never compromised his principles. He said he came to NTV's offices as a Radio Liberty reporter and was let in by the new management's guards because "there is no such thing as a guard who doesn't like soccer." He said that after reporting for Radio Liberty via his cellphone, he entered the newsroom where the morning news team was working. "I asked [newscaster Olga Belova] 'Are you going to cover this? And how are you going to cover this?'" he said. ("I don't know," Belova replied.) "Later on, it was perceived as an ideological question," Shuster said. "But what kind of ideological question was it? I would have asked the same question today." Just weeks after the takeover, Shuster began anchoring NTV's "Hero of the Day" interview show and then "Svoboda Slova." Asked whether he regrets what happened, he paused. "You know, it's always better to be a big fish in a small pond," he said. "But then, of course, I don't regret it because television work is a new challenge. And now I can say that from print journalism through radio journalism, I have come to television journalism. And professionally, it gives me a special satisfaction." As for the hostage-crisis show that sparked the latest debate, Shuster said it is one of the few programs he regrets doing. "If the clock could be turned back, I would probably not have done it - not because I would be concerned about what the hostages' relatives would say, but because it is not a subject of discussion for a large [studio] audience. It's a subject to be discussed by a few people who know what they are talking about and can measure their words." TITLE: Truck Firms Threatened By Customs Restrictions AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia's top trucking union said Monday that it has no choice but to continue selling its members special permits that let their trucks sail through customs without inspection, despite a decision by the issuer to suspend the practice indefinitely. After a contentious meeting Friday with top Transportation Ministry and State Customs Committee officials, Europe's leading haulers union, Geneva-based International Road Transport Union, or IRU, said it would stop issuing the special one-trip permits to its Russian member, the Association of International Road Carriers, or ASMAP. Visiting IRU general director Martin Marmy said Friday that the move was to protest Russian customs officials turning a blind eye to contraband and then asking non-Russian members to pay for lost duties. ASMAP spokesperson Alexei Belyakov said Monday, however, that the union had not been officially notified about the decision and that it would continue to sell the permits it already has until they are all gone. He did not know how many permits the union has in inventory or how long they will last. The permit system, called TIR, after the Transport Internationaux Routiers Convention that Russia signed 20 years ago, provides holders cheap insurance for their cargo, but IRU says Russian customs and law-enforcement officials too often fail to investigate shipments that never make it their destination. Customs is now demanding IRU pay $60 million in insurance claims for cargo that disappeared. Including international haulers, the documents are used by more than 60 percent of the trucks that ship goods in and out of Russia, accounting for some $3 billion - or 10 percent of annual foreign trade. ASMAP itself issues some 200,000 of the permits a year to its 1,000 members, and everyone involved says ending the system, which can save a trucker days in travel time, could paralyze traffic and put scores of domestic trucking companies out of business. Those fears are unlikely to be realized in the immediate future, however, as long as ASMAP still has permits it can issue. "A new batch of permits has just arrived from IRU today," said Alexei Vasilkov, general director of the trucking company Eurotransservice and head of ASMAP's Central Federal District. Vasilkov has threatened to block all major roads at the border if the TIR system is suspended. "The procedure is too complicated to say exactly when the system will come to a complete halt," said Igor Runov, who runs IRU's Moscow office. "The precedent is too unique for comment." "Talks on what needs to be done to resolve this conflict are taking place in the government today," said an industry source close to the negotiations who did not want his name published. Meanwhile, ASMAP president Yury Sukhin and other union leaders are under fire on a different front. Vasilkov said union members want to know why they have to pay ASMAP $78 for a permit that the IRU sells for $25. With 200,000 permits sold each year, the difference comes to more than $10.6 million. Sukhin was said to be sick Monday. TITLE: Sibneft Buys Belarussian Stake in Slavneft PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times TEXT: MOSCOW - Sibneft bought out Belarus' 10.85-percent stake in Slavneft for $207 million on Friday, bringing it a step closer to victory in next week's auction for Moscow's 75-percent stake. "The only bid was from Slavneftbank," said an official from the Belarus Currency and Stock Exchange, Reuters reported. Slavneftbank has said that it represents Sibneft interests. Sibneft had been in talks with Minsk for weeks over the price of the stake. Minsk repeatedly delayed the tender, trying to bump the price up to at least $250 million. The acquisition may further help Sibneft, long seen as the front runner in the Dec. 18 auction for Russia's 74.95-percent Slavneft stake. Former Sibneft manager Yury Sukhanov emerged as president of Slavneft after a prolonged fight for control of the company this summer. Sibneft also holds 12.8 percent of Slavneft's shares jointly with No. 4 Tyumen Oil Co. (TNK) via an investment trust. Through the trust, Sibneft and TNK also have stakes in other Slavneft subsidiaries, including 27 percent of the voting shares in Megionneftegaz, which accounts for about 80 percent of Slavneft's total production. In addition to Sibneft, only TNK and China's CNPC have publicly announced plans to participate in the auction. State-owned Rosneft and No. 3 Surgutneftegaz are thought to be interested in the stake, while British Petroleum and No. 2 Yukos have stated that they will not participate. And LUKoil waited until Thursday to bow out of the tender, preferring to concentrate on developing its Timan Pechora and north Caspian fields. LUKoil had already issued five-year, $350-million convertible eurobonds and sold a 10-percent stake in an Azeri project for more than $1.25 billion to raise cash for the auction. Vedomosti reported that LUKoil opted out over fears that it could be left with little to show for its investment if it won the tender. Megionneftegaz, for example, must make a net profit by year's end and pay dividends on privileged shares, or the shares acquire voting rights, which could leave Slavneft bereft of control. The starting price for the 75-percent stake is $1.7 billion. TITLE: Stocks Pinned Down by United PUBLISHER: Combined Reports TEXT: Stocks were pinned lower in light trading on Monday as a ratings cut for computer maker International Business Machines Corp. and jitters about the economic fallout from the bankruptcy of United Airlines kept a lid on sentiment. Fears about the costs of a possible attack on Iraq also weighed on minds as U.S. officials began poring over Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration. Iraq says that it has no weapons of mass destruction, though U.S. officials say that they have evidence of nuclear, biological and chemical programs. "The foundation of the U.S. economy is shaken by that UAL headline. It's going to have a ripple effect," said Steve Kolano, equity trader at Mellon Growth Advisors. In addition, he said, "Iraq is a big question mark. There's geopolitical ambiguity in the market and the market doesn't like it." Stocks had rallied after hitting five-year lows on Oct. 9, but investors are now worried that stocks have climbed too far, too fast after a surprisingly weak employment report for November and a trickle of corporate-profit warnings last week reignited concerns about the fragile economic rebound. Market gauges were down for the week, and the Dow snapped an eight-week streak of gains. "The momentum has changed after the Institute for Supply Management's report last Monday," said David Memmott, head of listed trading for Morgan Stanley, referring to the manufacturing index that showed contraction for the third straight month. "Ever since then, the news flow has been negative." The Dow Jones industrial average was down 119.14 points, or 1.38 percent, at 8,526.63. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 14.27 points, or 1.56 percent, at 897.96. The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index was down 39.61 points, or 2.78 percent, at 1,382.83. Trading was light, with 1.01 billion shares traded on Nasdaq and 830 million changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange. All but four of the Dow average's 30 stocks were lower, and all but three of the Nasdaq 100 index's stocks were down. United Airlines filed for bankruptcy, making it the largest ever in the global airline industry, as high costs and low fares slammed the world's No. 2 carrier. The Chapter 11 filing was the sixth-largest ever as measured by assets. The suburban Chicago-based company has lost $4 billion in the last two years due to a slumping economy, flawed business strategies and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It faced debt payments of $875 million later this week. "We're in control of United's destiny," United CEO Glenn Tilton said in a telephone interview. "We've made a good decision for United. It is in fact Chapter 1 ... This is a tremendous opportunity for United to transform this company and to emerge stronger than ever." Tilton said that he expects the bankruptcy process to be completed within 18 months. At a bankruptcy hearing on Monday morning, Chief Judge Eugene Wedoff issued orders allowing United to keep operating until another hearing when he is to issue further orders allowing the airline to continue its operations. United said that it obtained $1.5 billion in financing from several banks to continue operating. The airline said it has $800 million in cash on hand. Shares of UAL dipped earlier in the day but then clawed higher, up 13 cents to $1.06, after United Airlines said that it would cut pay for all officers and salaried and management employees, as it reduces costs and reorganizes under bankruptcy protection. Still, the ripple effects of the bankruptcy were felt throughout Wall Street as investors feared the bankruptcy could hurt other companies. Airplane maker Boeing Co., for one, dropped 89 cents to $32.51. Electronic Data Systems Corp. fell 48 cents to $16.41 after the computer-services company cut its fourth-quarter earnings forecast by 10 percent, citing the bankruptcy of its leasing partner United. Bank of America also dragged on sentiment after cutting its investment rating on IBM to "market perform" from "buy," saying that there are a lack of catalysts to drive shares higher. IBM fell $2.60 to $79.72, making it the biggest point decliner in the Dow average. Qualcomm, the No. 1 maker of chips used in mobile phones, slumped $2.03 to $39.45. Salomon Smith Barney cut Qualcomm Inc. to "in-line" from "outperform," citing the 60-percent gain in its stock price since its recent lows in mid-September. (Reuters, AP) TITLE: WEF Tips Russians as Leaders AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva and Larisa Naumenko PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: MOSCOW - Russians continue to rank among the world's most powerful businesspeople. This year's World Economic Forum list of the 100 global leaders of tomorrow, announced this week, includes two natives - Vneshekonombank chairperson Vladimir Chernukhin and leading mobile operator MTS first vice president Mikhail Susov. According to Daphne de Laleu, senior communications manager for WEF, which runs the annual Davos forum for the global elite, "each year, the global leaders of tomorrow, or GLTs, are selected based on a strict set of criteria, and their remarkable backgrounds make a GLT gathering a virtual who's who of tomorrow's household names." Past leaders include Tony Blair, Michael Dell and Bono. Russians are not newcomers to the list. Since it first began compiling the list in 1993, a total of 32 Russians have been included, such as economists Yegor Gaidar and Mikhail Zadornov, politicians Boris Nemtsov, Grigory Yavlinsky and Vladimir Ryzhkov, and even officials such as Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin. But the majority of Russians to make the list have been from the business sector - Unified Energy Systems' CEO Anatoly Chubais, Alfa Group chairperson Mikhail Fridman, Gazprom and Sberbank board member Boris Fyodorov, NTV chief Boris Jordan, Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Severstal's Alexei Mordashev and Russian Aluminum co-owner Oleg Deripaska have all been honored. To make the exclusive list, candidates must be younger than 37 years of age, have achieved a position of considerable influence and responsibility in their country, shown commitment to public affairs and demonstrated leadership in addressing issues beyond their immediate professional interest, de Laleu said. MTS's Susov, 34, has 10 years of experience in the telecommunications sector. In 1992, after graduating from the Moscow Communications Institute, Susov began working on his first project - building a group of companies specializing in designing and building communications networks. In 1996, he was appointed general director of cellular company Personal Communications, which operates under the Sonet brand. In December of last year, Susov was appointed general director of Comstar, one of Moscow's leading alternative operators. Just three months later, he moved to his present position at MTS. "It was a pleasant surprise," Susov said by telephone Thursday. "I hope it will be useful for the company and bring new contacts for my work," he said. "I am pleased that Russian business is taken seriously." Chernukhin, who was among the business delegation on President Vladimir Putin's trip to India this week, declined to comment. His spokesperson said by telephone from India said that he is planning to participate in the annual Davos forum next month. Chernukhin, 34, graduated from the International Business Academy. He has worked for various export-oriented companies since 1986. He first joined Vneshekonombank in 1996 as a deputy head of its loan department. Two years later, he became head of the bank's credit committee and got a seat on the board of directors. A year later, he became deputy chairperson. In 2000, he left the bank to work as a deputy finance minister in charge of foreign assets and state loans. He returned in July 2002 to take over from outgoing chairperson Andrei Kostin, himself a former WEF leader of tomorrow. TITLE: Experts Gather in Search Of Elusive Middle Class AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times TEXT: The much disputed existence of a Russian middle class was the subject of an international conference held in St. Petersburg last week, entitled "Middle Class - the Myths and the Reality." With income per capita in Russia currently amounting to $155 per month, the COMCON research agency suggested that $155 be taken as the dividing line between lower class and lower-middle class. For comparison, the same figures for Spain and Poland currently stand at $940 and $236 respectively. Others, however, argued that factors apart from income, such as spiritual values, lifestyle and the traditions of the country, are also key in determining who is middle class and who isn't. "Every era has its own middle class, so the whole conception is slowly changing as time moves on," said Tatyana Gurova, the head of a research project on the middle class being carried out by Expert Magazine. "For a certain period, we used questions such as whether or not someone wanted to have their own enterprise or whether they envied those that had emigrated, to define the middle class. Now, we think that anyone with an income of $150 per month per member of the family can be referred to as being middle class - which amounts to 20 percent to 25 percent of the country's population." Gurova drew parallels between the middle class of present-day Russia and that of the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s. "The structure of household expenditures is almost the same - the real estate, car and education sectors are the fastest growing." Others, however, were more dismissive. "The existence of a middle class [now] is an impossibility; Russia is a country of poor people," said Igor Kachalov, senior partner at the Kachalov and Colleagues research agency. Nevertheless, Kachalov added that there was a glimmer of hope for the future. "In 1992, the average income per month was $5 to $6, while in 1997 it was $100. Now we have $160 to $180 as the average income of a Russian, with the figures in Moscow, Salekhard or Tyumen reaching $500 to $600 ... If the economy continues to grow at the same pace as it has been, in seven to 10 years, a middle class will appear in Russia," Kachalov said. Kjell Nordstrom, a Swedish researcher, said that he had serious doubts about whether much could be ascertained by breaking down people into class groups merely on the basis of their income. "Something that a person consumes says more about him than where he works," he said. "We tend to flock together around something we like, but we don't flock together around our income." He added that, in Russia, as in the rest of Europe, "consumer groups" are growing in significance relative to the divisions that can be measured across traditional state boundaries. "The people's republic of Britney Spears is of more commercial interest than Belgium," he said. The point was backed up by Gurova, who said that, according to the research of Expert magazine, 55 percent of all purchases in the consumer goods market are made by the middle class. According to Gurova, there are more worrying aspects to the emergence of a middle class. The evidence contradicts the widely held opinion that the middle class has a predominantly liberal outlook, she said. "When asked if Russia should only be for Russians, the majority of middle-class people - surprisingly for us - said yes," Gurova said. "75 percent of people who we consider to be middle class support a strong state and a strong army and think that Russia should not follow in the path of Western countries," she said. "On the other hand, 80 percent of the group supports personal freedoms, while 66 percent say that the state should take care of the poor - this is a model of a social-democratic approach with Russian peculiarities." TITLE: IN BRIEF TEXT: Telecom Merger ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg-based Comincom and Moscow's Combellga, two telecommunications companies providing hardware lines and Internet-provider services, are merging to form Combellga, Alexander Kozhanov, the president of the new company, announced at a press conference in St. Petersburg on Monday. "The merging process will be completed within two to three months," he said. The shareholders of the new company will include the Norwegian telecom Telenor, which holds 75 percent of the shares, with the remainder being held by Russian shareholders. The company plans to invest $27 million in network development next year, Kozhanov said. Debt Arbitrated ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The St. Petersburg Arbitration Court overturned its July ruling which would have forced Severnaya Verf, one of the country's largest shipbuilding companies, to pay out $605 million to the Finance Ministry. In 1997, Severnaya Verf signed a contract with the state for the construction of two destroyers for the Chinese state. It was agreed that the company would later offset the state's costs for preliminary construction, which amounted to $6 million. Severnaya Verf did not pay, however, so the City Prosecutor's Office, on behalf of the Finance Ministry, filed a case against the shipyard, at first demanding $6 million, which was later adjusted in June, 2002, to $604 million, which was said to be the profit made following Severnaya Verf's sale of the destroyers to China. At the time of the ruling, market analysts widely predicted that the payment would bankrupt the company. In July, the St. Petersburg Arbitration Court ruled that Severnaya Verf should pay the full $604 million, but the new ruling, given on Monday, reduced the amount to the original $6 million. TITLE: Global Eye TEXT: As Islamic extremists strike now in Bali, now in Mombasa, working their way toward the next big attack on Western soil, it would perhaps be salutary to recall once more how we got to this dire point in our common human history. Terrorism itself is nothing new, of course - not even suicidal Islamic terrorism. For example, those of us of a certain age can easily recall the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine compound in Beirut, when a couple of holy-rolling yahoos with an old truck inflicted a devastating military defeat on the world's greatest power, killing more than 200 soldiers in a single blow. We likewise recall the reaction of Ronald Reagan on that occasion. The hard-right hero didn't declare an endless "war on terrorism" - no, he just turned tail and ran. A wise move under those particular circumstances, although this belated perspicacity hardly makes up for the murderous stupidity of the original decision to send young Americans into the middle of someone else's civil/religious war. In any case, it would have been somewhat awkward for Ron (and his vice president/CIA handler, George H.W. Bush) to launch a "war on terrorism" - seeing as how terrorism was one of the prime instruments of their foreign policy. At that time, Reagan and Bush were secretly supplying terrorist regimes in both Iran and Iraq (using Donald Rumsfeld as their special conduit to Saddam Hussein), plus fielding terrorist proxy armies in Latin America and Afghanistan. It is the latter group of godly guerrillas that concerns us here. For, while there is no real difference in kind between the terrorists who afflict us now and the carnage-wreakers of yesteryear, there is a difference of several magnitudes in the firepower, finance, technology and training that today's mass killers can command. And these enhanced capabilities are the direct result of the bipartisan decision by successive American governments to build an army of Islamic extremists to bedevil the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. As noted here recently, the U.S. arming of international jihad actually began before the Soviets sent troops to help their client regime in Kabul quell growing unrest in 1980. The American operation was not just a reaction to the Soviet incursion; it was also one of its causes. Under the direction of Bush's CIA, the anti-Western, woman-hating, death-addicted holy warriors set about their fanatical task. The CIA schooled them thoroughly in terror tactics - including the ability to operate under deep, impenetrable cover, to strike without warning, and to use the vicious slaughter of non-combatants to demoralize the enemy. The CIA also drew on its long history of drug-running to add another source of funding for jihad - and another weapon of demoralization aimed at the Russians. Cheap heroin and other goodies from the extremists' vast poppy fields soon flooded Soviet ranks - and from there, into Soviet society. The drug trade was protected by the deeply pious president: Reagan's attorney general signed a "special waiver" exempting the CIA from having to report on its arrangements with international dope lords. In fact, the unholy nexus of narcobusiness, terrorism and government intelligence agencies is one of the great hidden movers of the modern world: a genuine "axis of evil" that touches - and taints - almost every aspect of global society. It's the primary reason why terrorism is now amped to globe-rattling levels. Fattened by the profits from well-connected criminal enterprises, terrorists can obtain any deadly technology, any weaponry they want from the endless supply of arms being made and marketed by the bastions of "civilization" - America, Britain, France, Russia and their imitators among the "lesser" nations. The arms trade is one of the most state-coddled, pampered and protected industries on earth. (The oil industry probably outranks it, but just barely.) The sheer amount of death-machinery available on the market today dwarfs the wildest dreams of the most virulent terrorist of previous generations. And in the case of bin Laden and his Afghan war veterans, some of the deadliest weapons were just doled out to them "like lollipops" by the CIA, as John Cooley reports in his indispensable work, "Unholy Wars." The attack in Mombasa saw the first appearance of Western security agents' worst nightmare: the use of shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to shoot down civilian aircraft. In this case, it was a near-miss, probably because the Israeli plane had been hardened with anti-missile technology. But almost every other kind of airliner in the world is defenseless against a hit from a Stinger, or one of its many knock-offs. And bin Laden and the boys were given hundreds, perhaps thousands of these missiles by the CIA, which then directly tutored the Islamic extremists in their use. The sheer pig-ignorant lunacy of this "grand strategy" is now coming to deadly fruition all over the world. And incredibly, even after the supreme blowback of Sept. 11, the policy is still being followed. For in addition to arming and bankrolling extremist dope lords in Afghanistan, the Bush regime is courting Islamic warriors from Iraq - Shiite leaders exiled to Iran - in hopes of using them to help unseat Hussien, The New York Times reports. Well, perhaps it's not so incredible. The Bush family is hardwired into the Nexus, and the current Regime is larded with many of the same people who plunged America into this blood-soaked filth in the first place. With the world's security in the hands of such blundering, blinkered fools, we'll see a lot more deadly fruit come falling down. For annotational references, see the "Opinion" section at www.sptimesrussia.com TITLE: Slush or Stability Fund? AUTHOR: By Peter Westin TEXT: IN an effort to ensure smooth debt payments in the future and enforce budget discipline, the Russian government established a stabilization fund, or financial reserve, last year to hold excess budget revenues from high world oil prices. This type of fiscal instrument has been used by other natural-resource-dependent countries as a means of cushioning the economy from dramatic fluctuations in global commodity prices. Alas, few have been successful; the majority have fallen victim to the temptation of spending while the money is available. And the way the Russian government is going at the moment, it is headed for the same sorry fate. The 2002 budget envisaged a federal surplus of 1.6 percent of GDP, or $5.7 billion. Of that, $2.2 billion was allocated to foreign-debt payments, and the remaining $3.5 billion was to be channeled into the financial reserve. As a result, the government expected the financial reserve to hold $6.1 billion by the end of this year. This was based on the assumption in the 2002 budget that the average price for Russian crude would be $23.50 per barrel. In a report published earlier this year, we estimated that an oil price of $19 per barrel is critical to ensure some build-up of the financial reserve this year. Anything less than that would result in no reserve accumulation, as the budget surplus would only cover the $2.2 billion designated for debt. In other words, the ability to accumulate reserves would hinge on the world market price for oil. As of the end of November, the oil price this year has averaged $23.44 per barrel, almost exactly in line with the $23.50-per-barrel target in the 2002 budget. But, in a year when oil prices should have seen the stabilization fund steadily growing, reserves have actually run down, falling to $2.7 billion on Oct. 1, according to Finance Ministry officials (although up from the low of $1.6 billion in mid-2002). Furthermore, in August, the government reduced its budget-surplus forecast for 2002 from 1.6 percent of GDP to 0.7 percent of GDP, citing increased spending and lower tax collection. Nevertheless, the government remains adamant that it will meet, or come close to meeting, its year-end financial-reserve target. This would require the accumulation of an additional $3.7 billion in the last quarter, which, judging from the performance thus far, is well-nigh impossible. It is possible, however, if we accept that there is no longer any relationship between world oil prices and the size of the stabilization fund. Instead, it seems, the government's ability to meet the year-end target hinges on privatization revenues and ,possibly, domestic borrowing. The price tag of the government's 75-percent stake in Slavneft slated for auction on Dec. 18 has been set at $1.7 billion, although market expectations are closer to from $2.2 billion to $2.4 billion, which should help top up the fund. The point, however, is that the original purpose of the reserve - ensuring fiscal discipline during periods of high oil prices - has been cast aside. Interestingly, while the stabilization fund is reported to have fallen in the first nine months of this year, the federal government's accounts with the Central Bank have continued to grow. These accounts contain funds disbursed to ministries from the budget that remain unspent but should also contain the financial reserve's funds. As of Oct. 1, according to Central Bank figures, these accounts contained almost $10 billion. In other words, the government has a significant amount of unspent cash at its disposal. Last week, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov suggested that those budget funds unspent at the end of the year would be confiscated and transferred to the financial reserve. Apart from the stabilization fund's decoupling from oil prices, the other problem with the reserve is its lack of transparency and unclear legal status. There are no regular statements on the size of the fund or regarding what money removed from the reserve is being spent on - its balance is only revealed through occasional public comments by Finance Ministry officials. As a result, there are no checks on the management of the financial reserve. International experience with similar stabilization funds shows a high failure rate. A study by the IMF indicates that natural-resource-dependent countries that have stabilization funds nonetheless tend to increase spending when international commodity prices are high - exactly what a stabilization fund is designed to prevent. The two exceptions are Norway and, to date, Kazakhstan. The supervision of Kazakhstan's fund remains at arm's length from the government, coming under the aegis of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, which is mandated to use it solely for debt payments. The lack of transparency of Russia's stabilization fund is particularly worrying in light of forthcoming State Duma elections in 2003 and the presidential election in 2004. In order to dispel concerns that the financial reserve will serve as little more than a slush fund for the elections, the government should take immediate steps to clarify its role, increase transparency and ensure independent oversight. Peter Westin is senior economist at Aton Capital. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times. TITLE: Time To Stop Arguing Over The Rules TEXT: ASK just about anybody who was involved in the campaign leading up to Sunday's Legislative Assembly elections what was the central issue and, sadly, they'll give you the same answer: A third term for Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. This is sad for three reasons. First, the makeup of the next assembly will determine Yakovlev's ability to remove the stipulation in the City Charter that limits any governor to two terms. This fact shifted attention away from other vital questions, such as education, health services, transportation, to name but three. Second, the foscus on a question that can't be answered in full until the gubrnatorial election in 2004 likely played a role creating the low turnout witnessed in Sunday's vote. If the real question can only be answered only two years down the road, how can we expect to get even 30 percent of eligible voters to show up to vote now? Finally, and most disturbingly, the debate shows how little headway has been made in establishing a set of political rules on which all of the players can agree. The argument against the two-term limit is a simple one: The rule is undemocratic in that it denies the electorate the opportunity to return a two-time incumbent who they may feel is still the best person for the job. At present, Yakovlev is a popular governor. The argument for the limit is that extended terms in offices such as the governorship lead to a consolidation of political groupings at the top of the system so powerful that they are able to prevent the establishment of any real and effective opposition, thus undercutting the democratic nature of the system. Given the particularities of Russian politics and the short period of time in which a democratic method of selecting governments has been in place here, this is a realistic concern. Regardless of which argument is stronger, establishing a tradition of flip-flopping between them depending on the direction in which the political winds within the Legislative Assembly are blowing is clearly worse than picking one course and sticking with it. If the term-limit portion of the charter is ammended this time to allow Yakovlev to run again, and should he win reelection as governor in 2004, the question of term limits will likely resurface again during the next vote for the Legislative Assembly. Anti-governor candidates will be looking to remove him from office, not by means of the ballot box but by, once again, adjusting the rules of the game. This won't bring electoral politics in the city any closer to resembling a functional democratic system. And, worst of all, it won't bring us any closer to electoral campaigns that focus the public's attention on questions like education, health care, transportation ... . TITLE: The President's Pro Bono Job For NTV TEXT: BORIS Jordan, the American-Russian general director of NTV, has proven to be an exceptionally ungrateful person. Rather than appreciating what was done for him, he denied the assertions of his benefactor. Heads of major media companies met last month with President Vladimir Putin. The president faulted one television station for "showing the movements of commandos a few minutes before the raid began" at the Theater Center na Dubrovke, the Kommersant newspaper reported. Putin went on to inquire: "Why was this kind of thing done? To boost ratings and capitalization, and, in the final analysis, to make money. But not at any price! Not on the blood of our citizens! If, of course, the people who did this consider [those who died] to be their own." Kommersant and everyone else took this to refer to NTV. I, for one, was extremely happy for NTV, and for Boris Jordan personally. Ever since former NTV owner Vladimir Gusinsky was squeezed out and Yevgeny Kiselyov took his rebellious band of journalists to TV6/TVS, NTV under Jordan had come to be seen by progressives both in Russia and abroad as a symbol of the government's attack on freedom of speech. Jordan acquired the image of an adventurist, an American collaborator with Russia's authoritarian regime. By all accounts, Jordan was deeply offended by all this, and he went to great lengths to remedy the situation. The Web site Utro.ru published the following information a few months ago: "According to the National Journal, Russia's NTV television company in 2001 spent $1.06 million on a lobbying campaign in the United States. By comparison, Microsoft spent just $440,000 on lobbyists." (The full text of this report can be found online at: www.utro.ru/news/2002041719124773380.shtml) What's more important, however, is that NTV in recent years has turned itself into a state-of-the-art Western-style television station. Its news coverage is balanced and objective, critical of Putin and the government but not involved in information wars. Neither NTV's quality nor the huge sums spent on lobbyists seems to have done much to erase the station's negative reputation. Until quite recently, the Western press almost never referred to NTV as anything other than a station controlled by the state-owned natural-gas monopoly Gazprom. After the events at the Theater Center na Dubrovke, however, rumors started to spread that the Kremlin was calling for the dismissal of Savik Shuster (also a foreign citizen, by the way), a top member of NTV's news team. Putin's remarks were the icing on the cake. No one now believes NTV is a Kremlin mouthpiece. Even TVS, which was built on the ruins of the original NTV, has rushed to its defense. So how did Boris Jordan reply to his benefactor? With black ingratitude. In an interview with Kommersant, Jordan denied that Putin had NTV in mind when he criticized coverage of the raid. The only source of that information was the Kommersant reporter who had attended the meeting. And if Putin did have NTV in mind, he had obviously been given misleading information. Strange people, these foreigners. Who's going to do them a favor after this? Alexei Pankin is the editor of Sreda, a magazine for media professionals (www.sreda-mag.ru) TITLE: enormous in an intimate setting AUTHOR: by Tobin Auber PUBLISHER: Staff Writer TEXT: Inhabitants of the Petrograd Side, native or otherwise, are a proud bunch and, with the construction, renovation and retailing boom that is running at full tilt on Bolshoi Prospect, they have had much to cheer over the last year or so. A new clothing or furniture boutique or salon appears to be opening on this central thoroughfare every other day, the Mirazh cinema complex turns the entire Prospekt into an up-market parking lot for its evening screenings and real estate agents whisper that a square meter of retailing property on Bolshoi now costs more than a square meter on Nevsky. It seems that for locals, in terms of prestige, the neighborhood is fast catching up with the area around Tavrichesky Gardens and Smolny as the top residential area for the city's elite. At least, that's what those of us that live there like to think. Apart from a certain degree of wishful thinking, however, the boom taking place on and around Bolshoi also brings certain disadvantages. Innumerable grocery stores and smaller eateries have been pushed out by the influx of fashion and furniture outlets and the restaurant scene, as yet, has lagged well behind the advances the neighborhood has made as a destination for shoppers. There are exceptions, perhaps most notably the first-rate Georgian restaurant, Salkhino, on Kronversky Prospect, but, for the most part, they tend to be on the expensive side. Being a couple of connoisseurs of the Chinese food available in the city, we ventured off Bolshoi to Yan Gon, a stone's throw from Chkalovkskaya metro station, and we were far from disappointed. The restaurant is intimate, with two rooms warmly decorated in dark wood panels. The atmosphere was enhanced by the fact that almost all of the tables were occupied by laid-back diners who were clearly regulars. Even the schmaltzy Chinese "estrada" pop-rock on the stereo couldn't mask the fact that people were having a good time. The informal atmosphere had whet our appetites, then, but would the food match the billing provided by the friends that had recommended it? Be warned: The portions here are enormous. My dining companion ordered a half-portion of oyster soup with prawns, bamboo shoots, white Chinese mushrooms and egg for 168 rubles ($4.30). Our server soon returned to our table laboring under the weight of a vast ceramic cauldron containing a deliciously tasty concoction that could have easily fed a soccer team coming off a prolonged hunger strike. Along with the soup, we ordered some bread for 18 rubles ($0.60), which turned out to be freshly prepared buns with a crispy, golden outer layer. For a cold starter, I took the duck in soya sauce for 199 rubles ($6.30), which would have more than done the trick as a main course in its own right, with succulent chunks of meat on the bone and crunchily fresh vegetables. The sauce itself was a perfect compliment, not being too heavy and allowing the freshness of the ingredients to shine through. For the main course, I took pork in a thick sweet and sour sauce for 189 rubles ($6), which was excellent, even if the taste of the sauce did tend to overpower that of the meat. My dining companion tried the fried pork with bell peppers, carrot, cucumber and cashew nuts in a spicy sauce for 210 rubles ($6.70). The sauce was far from being spicy, but the dish was nevertheless excellent, again featuring the crunchy freshness of the ingredients that seems to be a characteristic of the menu. A minor complaint would be that, although the service was polite, the dishes arrived in no apparent order, with the fried egg and ham rice that we'd ordered as a garnish only managing to make a late appearance (although it too came in vast quantities and was deemed a hit). For inhabitants of the Petrograd Side, then, Yan Gon gets a strong recommendation. Those of you that lack the privilege of living on Petrogradka, however, shouldn't worry - rumor has it that there's another Yan Gon to be investigated on Moskovsky Prospect. Yan Gon. Tel.: 235-2780. Open daily, noon to 11:30 p.m. Menu in Russian and English. Credit cards not accepted. Dinner for two, with alcohol: 899 rubles ($28.50). TITLE: chernov's choice TEXT: Devics, the dark, atmospheric, Los Angeles-based band that will play St. Petersburg on Saturday, has incorporated a wide range of diverse influences in order to create its own special musical blend. "From vintage jazz to Kraftwerk; Chopin to David Bowie; silent films to Andy Warhol," says co-founder Dustin O'Halloran. "We try to take it all in and create our own mix ... A cocktail that's always changing with time." Devics was formed in 1991 by guitarist/pianist O'Halloran and singer Sara Lov, who had met two years earlier in an art class at Santa Monica College and begun writing music together. Ed Maxwell, who plays double bass, sometimes with a bow, is the third member of the recording trio that tours as a five-piece outfit, adding electric-bass player Ted Liscinski and drummer Scott Mathers. "I guess we play a little bit of musical chairs and are switching the instruments around depending on what the song needs," says Lov. "The current live band is definitely our favorite. The sound is really full and there is nothing better than playing with your friends." Devics has incorporated a wide range of influences, quoting names such as Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Cowboy Junkies, Mazzy Star or the Cocteau Twins frequently in reviews. The band's most recent album, "My Beautiful Sinking Ship" (2001), has an obvious Weimar's Roadhouse feel. "Yes definitely," agrees O'Halloran. "At that time there was a lot of influence from old records and silent films. Eastern European cabaret sounds have always seemed to find their way into our music. But we have always evolved and tried different things ... I don't think we would be content with one formula. We love experimenting with new ideas and sounds - trying to keep it fresh to always hold our interest." O'Halloran claims that Devics' forthcoming album, "The Stars at Saint Andrea," due out on Jan. 27, will be "very different from 'My Beautiful Sinking Ship' in many ways." "The moods and feelings are the same, but we wanted to try different instrumentations," he says. "So many artists find a sound or formula that works for them and they never diverge from that ... and end up becoming stagnant and irrelevant. I think it's important to challenge both yourself and the listener." Indie-minded from the start, Devics formed its own record label, Splinter Records, for a number of singles and its first album, "Buxom," which came out in 1996. The debut CD was followed by "If You Forget Me ...," in 1998, and "The Ghost in the Girl," in 2000, also on Splinter. The latter brought them to the attention of Bella Union, the label run by Simon Raymond, formerly the bassist of the Cocteau Twins. The next - and the most recent - album, "My Beautiful Sinking Ship," came out on Bella Union in Sept. 2001. "We were big fans of 4AD bands, especially the Cocteau Twins, so meeting Simon and Robyn [Guthrie, guitarist] was a treat," says Lov. "It's ironic that the band we loved so much is the one that helped us to bring our music to the world." Devics' music has a certain cinematic quality, and is frequently described as a "soundtrack to a movie not yet made." Lov says that she is an ardent movie fan. "I always think it's a great compliment when people say our music is cinematic," she says. "To me, it means that our music creates a mood," she says. Devics will play at Red Club on Dec. 14. Check out www.devics.com for more information and sound files. - by Sergey Chernov TITLE: SPORTS WATCH TEXT: Holding Serve MOSCOW (Reuters) - Yevgeny Kafelnikov has scrapped his retirement plans and will now try to regain the form that made him the first Russian world No. 1 tennis player. "Hopefully, my physical conditioning will allow me to regain my top form, to be the player that I was not so long ago," the 28 year old said on Friday. Kafelnikov had repeatedly insisted he would retire if Russia won the Davis Cup this year. It achieved that, beating France in a dramatic final last week, but Kafelnikov contributed little to the victory. He lost his opening singles match, lost the doubles and was dropped for his second singles. The player, who earlier this week underwent surgery for varicose veins, said he would delay his comeback until the European indoor tournaments in early February. "The way it looks right now, I don't think I will be able to play in the Qatar Open in Doha, nor in the Australian Open," he said. "My plan is hopefully to get back into action later next year, during the indoor season in Europe." Matchups Set NEW YORK (Reuters) - The final Bowl Championship Series (BCS) U.S. college-football rankings were released on Sunday and, as expected, the No. 1 Miami Hurricanes and the No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes will battle for the national title in the Fiesta Bowl. The only two unbeaten teams left in Division 1 will meet on Jan. 3 in Tempe, Arizona, with the winner the undisputed national champion. The Hurricanes (12-0) have won 34 games in a row and will be looking for their second national title in a row against the Buckeyes (13-0). The final BCS rankings determined the other BCS Bowl match-ups. The Orange Bowl will now feature No. 5 Iowa against No. 4 Southern California. No. 6 Washington State, the Pac-10 champion, will play Big 12 champion and No. 7 Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl. The Sugar Bowl will feature SEC champion No. 3 Georgia against ACC champion No. 14 Florida State. With Iowa and USC chosen as the at-large teams, Notre Dame is left out of the BCS Bowl picture. Secret Hijack AUCKLAND, New Zealand (Reuters) - An America's Cup arbitration panel handed U.S. challenger OneWorld a stiff penalty on Monday but stopped short of disqualifying it for breaking Cup rules by having boat-design secrets from other teams. OneWorld, a $75-million team backed by telecoms investor Craig McCaw and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, will have one point subtracted for each remaining stage of the regatta. The five-man panel also ordered the team to pay fines of $65,000 before next Monday. The Seattle-based team has reached the challengers' semifinals, where it will sail against defending Louis Vuitton Cup challengers champion Prada of Italy in a best-of-seven race series. Each race is worth one point. Racing in the semifinals was due to begin on Monday, but was postponed until Tuesday due to strong winds in the Hauraki Gulf off New Zealand's largest city of Auckland. OneWorld will also lose a point if it reaches the Cup challengers final next month and again if it wins and advances to the America's Cup against Team New Zealand in February 2003. Prada and Team Dennis Conner lodged protests last month seeking OneWorld's disqualification for allegedly possessing and using design secrets taken from other teams. OneWorld later beat Team Dennis Conner 4-0 to reach the semifinals.