SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #830 (95), Tuesday, December 24, 2002
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Giving a HolidayGift Of Families
AUTHOR: By Caroline McGregor
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: GAGARIN, Smolensk Region - As a school bell clangs at the Gagarin internat school, sending students scampering down the chilly corridors for lunch, the director's office is abuzz with the news that more local families have been found to take the school's children into their homes for the winter holidays.
 
Alexander Shishpor and his assistant Anna Krotova can hardly believe their good fortune. This summer, 41 of their 160 charges were placed with families through a program called Summer Miracles run by Kidsave International, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization. All of them will return to their host families for two weeks, from Dec. 30 to Jan. 12, for Winter Miracles.
 Shishpor has long regretted that so many others get left behind to spend New Year's in the dormitory. Now, with more families volunteering, 20 more students may be given a glimpse into family life.
 "Can we find the money for this?" Krotova asks Kidsave Moscow director Eric Batsie, visiting for the day, who promises he will manage somehow.
 "If they want to help, how could we refuse them? It's impossible," Krotova says.
 Families are given 40 rubles a day to defray the cost of food for their young guests, meaning that, for about $20, Batsie calculates, a child can spend two weeks in a real home.
 Adding to the bustle and excitement, a television crew from the local Rossia affiliate is waiting in Shishpor's office to cover the home-stay program. After the spot runs, Shishpor expects even more families in the community to volunteer, and says he hopes he can place a total of 80 students this holiday season.
 Yelena Kondrashova, one of the host mothers, has come to the school to be interviewed by a television crew. When Vera Stepanova, 16, sees the woman she calls mama, her face lights up and she rushes over, resting her head on Kondrashova's shoulder.
 "Did you turn in your history homework?" Kondrashova asks. Vera nods. "What about math?" Vera nods again.
 Kondrashova, employed by the local power company, and her husband, a police officer, took Vera home this summer after being inspired by a friend who had taken a child the year before. By the end of August, when she had to return to the dormitory, "We'd become attached to her and she'd become attached to us," Kondrashova says. Now, she comes for Vera every weekend, picking her up Friday night and bringing her back before class Monday morning.
 As soon as Vera arrives, Kondrashova says, she slides smoothly into her role as big sister to Kondrashova's 11-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son. "She's so good with them. It's like constant playtime on the weekends."
 When she's not with her adopted siblings or hanging out with the "tons" of new friends she says she has made in the neighborhood, Vera can be found in the family's kitchen. Barred during the week from the cafeteria's food-preparation areas, she cooks as much as she can on the weekends.
 "Blini are my favorite," says the aspiring pastry chef.
 "Hers are even better than mine," Kondrashova leans forward to whisper.
 Vera blushes, beaming. "They're better in the summer, though, when there are wild berries."
 Kondrashova says she likes having Vera's help around the house, especially on Sunday mornings, when Vera makes breakfast.
 "It's kind of a tradition," she says. "She doesn't let my kids wake me up. 'Let her rest,' she says. When I wake up, hot tea and eggs are waiting for me."
 Still beaming, Vera is quick to deflect attention. It's not such a big deal, she insists with self-conscious pride: "I'm used to waking up early, that's all."
 Kidsave has been involved in Gagarin, a sleepy town 180 kilometers west of Moscow in the Smolensk region, for 2 1/2 years now, through its programs aimed at moving children out of institutions and into families.
 Teachers and staff at the school were the first to take children home more than two years ago. The school's bookkeeper, Lidiya Yermolayeva, regularly opens her home to four brothers whom she couldn't bear to separate.
 Olga Pyatakova, a young teacher without children of her own, has taken one of the most difficult girls in school under her wing and, with time at home with her one-on-one, has succeeded in breaking away her tough outer shell, according to Krotova, the internat director's assistant.
 As neighbors and friends in the community saw the benefits of these relationships, the programs have grown.
 "Finding families doesn't require a massive advertising or recruitment campaign. It's mainly just seeing other families do it and thinking, I could do that too," Batsie says.
 Summer Miracles matches children aged 8 to 16 with host families in Russia or the United States for the few months of summer vacation. Host families in Russia rarely adopt, due to financial constraints and legal disincentives, but they can bring the children home with them on weekends during the school year, as Vera's "family" does, as part of the mentoring program Kidsave runs with a Russian nonprofit partner organization it created called Secure Futures.
 Lyudmila Savchenkova, a teacher in a nearby community, has taken Ruslan Maltsev and Igor Nesterov, two 14-year-olds from the internat, home to be with her own 14-year-old boys ever since they visited during Summer Miracles this year.
 "We don't lose anything taking them for the weekends. The four boys play outdoors and joke with each other. I end up spending a lot of time cooking for them in the kitchen, but I don't mind," Savchenkova says.
 With the privileges of family life come responsibilities, and children on the program are expected to pull their weight with family chores, often doing yard work or washing dishes for the first time in their lives. Eager to win approval, the children apply themselves to the work, parents say.
 "Even though they haven't grown up with family responsibilities, Ruslan and Igor do everything I ask of them," Savchenkova says. "Which I can't say of my own boys."
 Red-headed Igor is looking forward to spending two full weeks with them at their home in the countryside over New Year's. "We'll get to go fishing. Anatoly Alexeyevich [Savchenkova's husband] has been teaching us how to ride bikes too," he says. "I'm happier when I'm with them. And more optimistic."
 Orphans' lives are tough, and life for those sent not to orphanages but to internats is surely tougher.
 Internats are boarding institutions and, like orphanages, they are often referred to as <i>detskiye doma</i>, or children's homes. Orphanages are homes for parentless children, while internats accommodate a wide range of children: those whose parents are unfit or unable to care for them - due to anything from alcoholism to poverty to an oil-rig job in the Far North - those with behavioral or emotional problems needing supervision, as well as orphans with special needs. Many of those sent to internats were judged as preschoolers to have some sort of physical or mental handicap due to abuse or neglect. Unofficial estimates are that as much as 70 percent of those case evaluations are incorrect, Batsie says.
 Orphanage children go to public schools through the 11th grade, while internat children have classes within their building and get only nine years of education, after which they are often directed toward vocational schools.
 Igor says he wants to be a construction worker when he gets older. Ruslan wants to be a truck driver. &quot;In the internat, they start asking us this really early, because we can't expect there to be any support for us when we leave,&quot; he said.
 During the week and on the weekends that she and her husband can't make the hour trip to Gagarin to collect the boys, Ruslan and Igor often write them letters, Savchenkova says.
 &quot;They promise they are not getting into fights and that they aren't smoking, like a lot of their classmates do. They want so much to live up to our respect for them,&quot; she says, batting away tears at the corners of her eyes. &quot;Even without the 40 rubles a day, I'd still come for my boys. They only have one childhood and you give them what you can.&quot;
 Under Russian law, the state gives certain benefits to children when they leave the orphanage, usually at age 16, including a monthly stipend, relaxed entrance requirements for secondary education and, in some regions, an apartment of their own. If adopted, a child would no longer be eligible for such benefits, which are more than most host families could provide.
 &quot;When they finish school, it's better that they get the money, but they know we'll always be there for them and they can come to our home anytime,&quot; Savchenkova says.
 Many of the children from the Rostov, Tver and Smolensk regions whom Kidsave sends on Summer Miracles to the United States form strong bonds with their families and are later adopted - separately from Kidsave, Batsie is quick to point out.
 &quot;We're not an adoption agency, and we don't advocate for international adoption. We advocate for children to go into families here, but at the end of the day, kids just need a family,&quot; Batsie says.
 Last January, Ana and Paul Ramos adopted Julia and Katya Galkina from the Gagarin Internat after the sisters, now 12 and 10 years old, spent summer 2001 with them in their suburban Washington home.
 The Ramoses were prompted to get involved with Kidsave after seeing a television report on orphanages in Eastern Europe. &quot;We just couldn't believe the number of children that were living there without a family,&quot; Ana Ramos says.
 The family went through all the paperwork and attended mandatory orientation meetings before the girls arrived.
 Julia told Ramos she hadn't wanted to come to the United States because she was worried she would forget her Russian heritage. Also, the girls' natural mother had promised she would come back for them.
 &quot;She never did, though,&quot; Julia says by phone, &quot;and I thought it would be better to go to America and have a family.&quot; In the background, her older sister, Melissa, 15, can be heard announcing that the pepperoni pizza - Julia's favorite - has arrived. Katya is away at gymnastics lessons.
 Though the girls speak English with each other now, with the Ramoses' support, they have stayed connected with their classmates from the internat. &quot;Our parents let us call our friends every week,&quot; Julia says, adding that &quot;it's hard with the time difference because sometimes we call and it's past their bedtime.&quot;
 &quot;I think if we let them keep in touch with their friends it will help them keep the Russian language alive,&quot; Ana Ramos says.
 Besides running Summer and Winter Miracles, Kidsave works with Secure Futures, an organization it incubated and spun off in the Smolensk region, to prepare older orphans for graduation from state institutions by offering classes to teach them life skills ranging from budgeting and self-respect to anger control and communication.
 Kidsave has tentative plans to start an Internet cafe in St. Petersburg run by orphans, as well as a carpet and furniture-repair shop in Roslavl to aid poor single mothers who are in danger of being forced to give up their children for economic reasons.
 The program helps to counter the widespread belief that orphans are orphans because there's something wrong with them. &quot;Once you get to know these kids, all those stereotypes fall away. You see they're not genetically predisposed to be hooligans and prostitutes and what happens is, families fall in love with these kids,&quot; says Batsie, who has been working on behalf of children in Russia for the better part of the last decade. He helped set up support centers for at-risk adolescents in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Uglich and Smolensk for Seattle-based Miramed before joining Kidsave.
 Parallel to Kidsave's work, child advocates here, such as Boris Altschuler who heads the organization Rights of the Child, campaign for <i>patronat</i>, a system that combines aspects of mentoring and foster care, where children of all ages are placed in proxy families without being legally adopted.
 Altschuler cites statistics that show Russia has 1 million fewer minors every year because of falling birth rates. Despite this, he says, the number of orphans is growing.
 Altschuler has been working with Kidsave's Batsie to bring Summer Miracles to Moscow, so far without success. Both express frustration at the complications they have encountered with the Moscow city government's education committee, which oversees children's affairs and has proven less supportive of Kidsave's work than its counterpart in Smolensk.
 Nonetheless, Batsie hopes to get the Moscow committee's approval to launch a mentoring program here by March. His plans are to start by matching 50 to 100 children from one city orphanage with Moscow families and expand from there.
 A gala is planned for March to kick off the program and attract support from the local community, to follow on the success of a comparable event held in November at the Russian ambassador's residence in Washington, Batsie says.
 Bechtel engineering company's representation office has already lent its assistance, with Don Hughes, a local executive, agreeing to serve on the gala's steering committee.
 &quot;Flying back and forth to New York, you see so many orphans getting adopted out of the country, so I think it's really important that Kidsave tries to keep kids here. They offer a lot of hope,&quot; Hughes says, adding that he hoped to help raise the organization's profile among Muscovites. &quot;Probably a lot of people here would like to do something to help, and these programs give them a way to do that.&quot;
 Kidsave has set the ambitious goal of getting all children out of state institutions by 2025. &quot;It's a dream, but dreams are the most important thing, because then you begin to act,&quot; Altschuler says.
 Staff at children's' homes, whose livelihoods are predicated on institutional care for orphans, are often the most outspoken opponents of moving children into families. But not always. Krotova calls family life the best solution to the many hurdles that life throws orphans' way.
 &quot;No internat - and I really love ours - can give a child what a family gives,&quot; she says.

TITLE: Official: Starovoitova Case Solved
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Prosecutor General's office on Friday said that it considered the case of the murder of Galina Starovoitova to be solved, but relatives and former colleagues of the late State Duma Deputy are far from convinced.
 
More than four years after Starovoitova was shot dead, on Nov. 20, 1998, in the stairwell of her St. Petersburg apartment building, Deputy General Prosecutor Vladimir Zubrin announced at a press conference on Friday that the investigation into the murder had been extended by six months, to June 20. He said that the extension was necessary because recent changes to the Criminal Code and to Russian legal procedures put greater demands on investigative bodies. But Zubrin said that the basic facts of the crime were already known to the Prosecutor General's office.
 &quot;We consider the case to be solved,&quot; Zubrin said. &quot;We are currently questioning the organizer of the crime and the prospects are good.&quot;
 Zubrin declined to provide any further names, the alleged motive for the crime or other details pertaining to the progress of the investigation.
 In November, six men, Anatoly Voronin, Yuri Yunov, Vitaly Akishin, Igor Krasnov, Yuri Kolchin, and Igor Lelyavin, were arrested and charged in connection with the crime.
 Four other people believed to have taken part in the murder are currently being sought by police authorities, Zubrin said.
 More detailed information was provided by Sergei Smirnov, the head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast department of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in an interview with Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosty published on Friday.
 One of the gunmen and an accomplice to the crime were among the six men who have already been charged, he was quoted as saying.
 &quot;In the course of the investigation, a strong criminal group with interregional ties was uncovered,&quot; Smirnov said. &quot;The roles of the members of this group in the organization, preparation and execution of the crime have already been established.&quot;
 According to Smirnov, a &quot;colossal amount&quot; of investigation remains to be carried out before the case can be handed to the City Prosecutor's Office and tried in court. 
 Those close to Starovoitova have reacted with little enthusiasm to Friday's announcement.
 &quot;The investigation is finally advancing, and six people have been arrested. This is a big step forward. I wouldn't have believed it possible a year ago,&quot; Olga Starovoitova, the victim's sister, said after the press conference on Friday. &quot;But I have an allergy to the word 'solved.'&quot;
 The case will only be solved when the names of those who ordered the murder are revealed. This is what everyone really wants to know,&quot; she added. &quot;They are trying to take us to be more stupid than we are.&quot;
 Ruslan Linkov, who worked as an assitant to Starovoitova and who was with the deputy when she was killed, said that he couldn't understand why Zubrin would declare the case to be solved.
 &quot;It was very strange to hear this. After all, not one of those who ordered the murder has been arrested, and half the participants in the crime are still being sought by the state,&quot; Linkov said Monday.
 &quot;I think that this declaration was made by the law-enforcement agencies, simply to remind people that they are still around,&quot; he said.
 Linkov, who himself suffered severe gunshot wounds to his head and neck during the attack, said that Zubrin's declaration was irresponsible and could put his life in danger.
 &quot;When people make such statements, they should keep in mind that there is one eyewitness who is still alive: Me. Every statement entails certain consequences,&quot; Linkov said.
 &quot;I wouldn't rule out the possibility that whoever ordered the crime would now want to get rid of the only eyewitness,&quot; he added. &quot;I would like to live to see the day when I can give my own testimony in court.&quot;

TITLE: Christmas Services at St. Petersburg Churches
TEXT: <strong>Church of Our Lady of Lourdes <br> (Roman Catholic)
 </strong><i>5 Kovensky Per. Tel.: 272-5002.
 </i><strong>Dec. 24
 </strong>8 p.m. - Christmas Eve Mass (Latin)
 10 p.m. - Christmas Eve Mass (Polish)
 Midnight - Christmas Eve Mass (Russian)
 <strong>Dec. 25
 </strong>9 a.m. - Christmas Day Mass (Polish)
 Noon - Christmas Day Mass (Latin)
 2 p.m. - Christmas Day Mass (Polish)
 7 p.m. - Christmas Day Mass (Russian)
 <strong>Dec. 26
 </strong>9 a.m. - Mass (Polish)
 7 p.m. - Mass (Russian)
 
 ***
 <strong>St. Catherine's Church 
 (Swedish Lutheran)
 </strong><i>1-3 Malaya Konyushennaya Ul.
 </i><strong>Dec. 24
 </strong>7 p.m. - Christmas Eve Mass (Russian)
 
 ***
 <strong>St. Catherine of Alexandria Cathedral (Roman Catholic)
 </strong><i>32-34 Nevsky Pr. Tel.: 311-5795
 </i><strong>Dec. 24
 </strong>5 p.m. - Christmas Eve Mass for children, followed by a Christmas concert
 8 p.m. - Christmas Eve Mass (Russian)
 <strong>Dec. 25
 </strong>Noon - Christmas Day Mass (Russian)
 1:30 p.m. - Christmas Day Mass (Polish)
 7 p.m. - Christmas Day Mass (Russian)
 
 ***
 <strong>Cathedral of the Assumption 
 of the Virgin Mary (Roman Catholic)
 </strong><i>11 Pervaya Krasnoarmeiskaya Ul. <br> Tel.: 316-4255.
 </i><strong>Dec. 24
 </strong>8 p.m. - Christmas Eve Mass (Russian)
 Midnight - Christmas Eve Mass (Russian)
 <strong>Dec. 25
 </strong>Noon - Christmas Day Mass (Russian)
 7 p.m. - Christmas Day Mass (Russian)
 
 ***
 <strong>Church of St. Michael of Ingria (Evangelical Lutheran)
 </strong><i>18 Sredny Pr., Vasilievsky Island. <br> Tel.: 323-3317.
 </i><strong>Dec. 24
 </strong>6 p.m. - Christmas Eve Mass (Russian)
 Dec. 25
 6 p.m. - Christmas Day Mass (Russian)
 <strong>Dec. 26
 </strong>6 p.m. - Mass (Russian)
 
 ***
 <strong>St. Peter and Paul Church <br> (Evangelical Lutheran)
 </strong><i>22-24 Nevsky Pr. Tel.: 311-4689.
 </i><strong>Dec. 24
 </strong>6 p.m. - Christmas Eve Mass (German with Russian translation)
 <strong>Dec. 25
 </strong>6 p.m. - Christmas Day Mass (German with Russian translation)
 
 ***
 <strong>Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church
 </strong><i>4 Naberezhnaya Ul, Pushkin. <br> Tel.: 470-7763.
 </i><strong>Dec. 24
 </strong>4 p.m. - Christmas Eve Mass (Finnish with Russian translation)
 5 p.m. Christmas Eve Service and theatrical show for children
 <strong>Dec. 25
 </strong>10:30 a.m. - Christmas Day Mass (Finnish with Russian translation)
 
 ***
 <strong>Baptist Church
 </strong><i>27 Bolshaya Ozernaya Ul. Tel.: 553-4578.
 </i><strong>Dec. 24
 </strong>7 p.m. - Christmas Eve Mass (Russian) 
 <strong>Dec. 25
 </strong>11 a.m. - Christmas Day Mass (Russian)
 7 p.m. - Christmas concert
 <strong>Dec. 26
 </strong>11 a.m. - Mass (Russian)
 
 ***
 <strong>St. Mary's Church (Evangelical Lutheran)
 </strong><i>8 Bolshaya Konyushennaya Ul. <br> Tel.: 314-7083
 </i><strong>Dec. 26
 </strong>7 p.m St. Petersburg Serenades Choir performs Camille Saint-Saens' &quot;Christmas Oratorio.&quot; Entrance is free.

TITLE: From Russia to Guantanamo, via Afghanistan
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: NABEREZHNIYE CHELNY, Tatarstan - Ravil Gumarov, 40, was once a model Soviet citizen. He was a member of the Komsomol, he graduated from vocational school, and he had a well-paid position as a foreman at construction sites in his hometown.
 
Today, his official title is detainee JJJBJC at the prison camp at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
 He is one of eight Russian citizens identified by Russian investigators among the hundreds of detainees suspected of having links to the Taliban or al-Qaida. They were seized by U.S. troops in Afghanistan earlier this year.
 Three of the eight, including Gumarov, come from Tatarstan, two from the republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in the North Caucasus, and one each from Muslim communities in Bashkortostan and the Chelyabinsk and Tyumen regions of western Siberia.
 One had been an imam in his local mosque, another a wrestling champion, and a third a police lieutenant.
 Most of them were seized while fighting against U.S. troops and the forces of the Northern Alliance near Kunduz in early 2002, according to Russian investigators.
 At least half, and perhaps all, of the Russian detainees had arrived in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001, at a time when the country was not thought of in the West as synonymous with Islamic terrorism. If it was thought of at all, it was as a desolate territory where belligerent tribes were attempting to create a society based on a literal interpretation of the Koran.
 Igor Tkachyov, the chief investigator of the North Caucasus branch of the Prosecutor General's Office and the head of a team of Russian investigators who visited the detainees at Guantanamo Bay last month, said they told him they had gone to Afghanistan in search of a society where they could study Islam and feel at home.
 &quot;They are religious fanatics who underwent very serious brainwashing - somebody found a crack in their psyche and made them believe they have to live by Sharia law,&quot; he said in a recent interview in the town of Yessentuki, in the southern Stavropol region.
 Even though they could face harsh punishment in the United States, most of them do not wish to return to Russia, Tkachyov said. Russia has been pushing for their extradition.
 Alexei Malashenko, an expert on Islam at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said that each of the detainees may have had a different reason for going to Afghanistan, but the underlying attraction was likely the same.
 &quot;For Muslims, the idea that, somewhere in the world, there is a place where life is fair and commanded by Islam is ineradicable,&quot; he said. &quot;It could be that, at a certain moment, for this handful of people, Afghanistan represented such a place and they took a risk in going there.&quot;
 If they had stayed in Afghanistan longer, they may have become disillusioned, he added, just as they probably were with life in Russia after the demise of the Soviet Union.
 For Gumarov, who after the collapse of the Soviet Union became a successful businessperson trading in fertilizer, the desire to live under the laws of Islam grew so strong that, in late 2000, he abandoned his wife and four children and two elderly parents for Afghanistan.
 &quot;He told us he would go and see life there and, if he liked it, he would bring us all there,&quot; said his 70-year-old father, Shaifi Gumarov. &quot;When I asked him what he would do abroad, Ravil said he was ready to tend sheep if he could live under the rule of Islam.&quot;
 His mother, Sariya, who said their family was never religious, showed photographs of Ravil, a lanky man with dark hair. In most of them, he is happily embracing his fair-haired wife and children.
 &quot;We were average Soviet people, we never studied Islam or had any interest in religion, and I remember how my children made fun of my father, their grandfather, when he prayed, saying he was doing his exercises,&quot; she said.
 Ravil, who never smoked or drank alcohol, started to pray and attend a mosque in 1997. He grew a beard, and his wife, Lilia, and two daughters began wearing headscarves when they went out.
 His relatives said they could not explain the drastic change.
 &quot;He was not a man to be easily influenced to do something,&quot; said his sister Rimma. &quot;If there was any brainwashing in his case, it must have been really sophisticated.&quot;
 &quot;We didn't understand what he was after. For us, he lived a wealthy life, had a good home and a car and could afford to help us out,&quot; said Sariya, a small, gray-haired woman who lives with her husband in a decrepit nine-story apartment building in Naberezhniye Chelny. &quot;But he said that he wanted to live in a fair society, he didn't like life in Russia after perestroika and wanted to live according to the Sharia and the rules of Islam.&quot;
 Gumarov, like all but two of the Guantanamo detainees, went to Afghanistan via Tajikistan, according to Tkachyov.
 &quot;These men would go to Dushanbe, where they got in contact with members of the Islamic opposition to Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov, who helped them get to Afghanistan,&quot; the investigator said.
 Once there, the newcomers found themselves in a kind of totalitarian sect commanded by the Taliban, Tkachyov said. They were not allowed to be alone and had to do everything together, obeying strict regulations that left no time for anything but prayers, he said.
 The news of Ravil Gumarov being among the detainees in Cuba reached his relatives in March. None of them believed it until they received a postcard from him from Guantanamo Bay in July, his mother said.
 &quot;In the first lines of the letter, he wrote that he was safe and sound. The rest of the text was blackened by censorship,&quot; Sariya Gumarova said.
 The last letter from him came in October. &quot;I am fine. Sorry for leaving you in your old age without support. My journey has been prolonged by the will of Allah. Be Muslims, say your prayers. The Almighty has promised that we will meet,&quot; she read, her voice trembling and her eyes watery with tears behind her thick glasses.
 Ravil Gumarov's wife sold their apartment and property in Naberezhniye Chelny and moved to her relatives' home in the regional capital, Kazan, fearing reprisals from authorities and neighbors.
 &quot;For many, Ravil is a stain on Tatarstan's image,&quot; his sister Rimma said.
 Ravil Gumarov was a member of a mosque called Tauba (&quot;penance&quot; in Arabic), which is widely considered a stronghold of radical Islam in Tatarstan.
 The white marble mosque with an angular star-shaped roof is the largest in eastern Tatarstan. It stands out from the prefabricated buildings that surround it in Naberezhniye Chelny, a city of 600,000 that sprang into existence in 1972 when Russia's major truck-producing factory, KamAZ, was founded on its outskirts.
 
 
<b>An Imam
 </b>
In the late 1980s, Naberezhniye Chelny earned nationwide notoriety for its violent youth gangs and, to save her teenage son, Airat, from the street, Amina Khasanova sent him to the newly opened madrassa called Yildyz, which means Star in Tatar.
 
Airat Vakhitov, now 27, entered the religious school in 1991 and, five years later, became imam of the Tauba mosque. At the end of 1999, after a troubled stint in Chechnya and with the Federal Security Service on his tail, he disappeared. Vakhitov turned up in Guantanamo Bay with Gumarov and another compatriot from Chelny, Ravil Mingazov.
 At the age of 6, her son had been hit by a car and suffered a brain injury, Khasanova said. Two years later, he barely survived meningitis.
 As a boy, Vakhitov suffered from terrible headaches and was unable to learn a single lesson by heart in the Soviet school he attended, she said.
 But after half a year at the madrassa, which was run by lecturers from Arab countries, he surpassed all other students in religious studies and was sent to continue his education at a madrassa in Turkey, she said. But he left because the teachers beat students with sticks, according to his mother, a heavy-set woman who was wearing a white headscarf.
 Vakhitov crossed the border, was seized by Georgian border guards and put in a prison for juveniles. He spent several weeks there, until his father went to bring him home.
 Vakhitov returned to the Yildyz madrassa. &quot;There were Arab teachers there and they gave him a very good knowledge of Islam,&quot; his mother said.
 Foreign teachers of Islam flooded into Muslim regions of Russia in the early 1990s, often setting up their own madrassas and generously donating money for building new mosques and repairing old ones. The Islam they taught was radically different from the Islam that Soviet Muslims had known from the communist era.
 Most of the foreigners were later expelled from Russia for preaching Wahhabism, an aggressive brand of Islam that calls for overthrowing secular authorities and establishing self-governing Muslim communities with laws based on the Koran.
 The seeds sown by these missionaries sprouted in the North Caucasus. In 1998, the residents of several Dagestani villages drove out the Russian authorities and established the self-governed Muslim enclave of Karamakhi. It lasted for more than a year before Russian warplanes levelled the villages in September 1999.
 But in Tatarstan, where state power has remained strong and is still concentrated in the hands of former Communist Party boss Mintimir Shaimiyev, such a rejection of secular authority was always out of the question. Those looking for an Islamic way of life had to look elsewhere.
 Vakhitov went to Chechnya. After troops pulled out to end the war of 1994 1996 war, Chechnya had de facto independence and became a haven for radical Muslims from all parts of the world.
 They established institutions to equip students with the religious knowledge necessary for a jihad, and to train them in guerrilla warfare. The most notorious training camp in Chechnya was Institute Kavkaz, set up by Khattab, the Chechen warlord of Arabic origin who was killed earlier this year.
 One Dagestani-based Islamic fundamentalist who visited such a camp in 1998 described its students.
 &quot;These young men were real mujahedin, the warriors of Islam,&quot; he said in an interview last summer, on condition of anonymity. &quot;In the camps, they got what they missed in secular life: A common goal, a sense of community and the spirit of masculine camaraderie.&quot;
 Several times before the second conflict began in 1999, Chechen emissaries from such training camps showed up at Tauba and recruited young men, luring them with prospects of better religious education from foreign preachers, one of the Tauba mosque's laymen said on condition of anonymity.
 
 
<b>Under Suspicion
 </b>
Vakhitov made several trips to Chechnya, the last one in early 1999.
 
That time, his mother said, one of his friends, Abu Bakar, told Chechens that the young imam was an FSB spy. According to investigators, Abu Bakar is an ethnic Udmurt named Alexei Ilyin, who adopted Islam and attended Yildyz together with Vakhitov. Ilyin is reported to be on the national wanted list for fighting for the Chechen rebels.
 Chechens threw Vakhitov into a pit and he spent two months there, his mother said. &quot;Chechens regularly beat Airat, damaging his kidneys, but he prayed and read the Koran the whole time. They could not kill him.&quot;
 In April 1999, he was handed over to a Tatar living in Grozny, who helped him return home.
 &quot;The Chechens took away his documents, but Allah led my son safely through 14 passport checks on his way back,&quot; Khasanova said.
 Soldiers and police routinely accept bribes to let people without proper documents through checkpoints.
 Vakhitov returned to his work at the mosque, but he had changed, Tauba members said.
 &quot;He was an excellent public speaker, knew Arabic and could explain the Koran, but outside the mosque he had become very aggressive, someone who would attack people with his fists or even draw a knife,&quot; one of them said. &quot;Sometimes he would take a fancy skullcap from a worshiper and then not return it.&quot;
 Another mosque layperson said that some of Vakhitov's sermons were anti-Semitic and that he denounced the actions of the Russians in the North Caucasus as the second military conflict unfolded.
 In October 1999, Tatarstan's Supreme Mufti, Gusman Iskhakov, asked Vakhitov to resign from the post of imam. A day after Vakhitov complied with the request, he was arrested by the FSB on charges of participating in illegal armed formations in Chechnya.
 &quot;My son was the best candidate for a show arrest at a time when Moscow was declaring a counter-terrorism operation,&quot; Khasanova said. &quot;He talked too much, calling on Muslims not to trust the Kremlin's declared objectives in that war.&quot;
 Suffering from inflammation of the lungs, Vakhitov was released 10 weeks later after investigators failed to come up with evidence against him. He was freed on a written promise not to leave the city until the investigation was over, his mother said.
 At the end of the year, the FSB returned for him with an arrest warrant, but Vakhitov was not at home, Khasanova recalled. She notified his friends about the FSB visit, and he went on the run.
 The Yildyz madrassa was shut down in September 2000, after some of its former students were implicated in terrorist attacks. Two of the 11 convicted in a December 1999 bomb attack on the Urengoi-Pomary-Uzhgorod gas pipeline, which traverses Tatarstan and supplies several European countries, had attended Yildyz. One of the suspects in the September 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow, Denis Saitakov, also was educated there.
 Vakhitov went to Afghanistan via Dushanbe, his mother said. As he crossed the Afghan border with a companion, they were seized by Taliban fighters, who accused them of being Russian spies and locked them up in a Kabul jail, she said.
 When the U.S.-led military operation in Afghanistan started in the fall of 2001, Vakhitov was transferred to a jail in Kandahar. There, he was found in December 2001 by a reporter for the French newspaper Le Monde, who was with the advancing U.S. troops.
 &quot;I spent seven months in Afghanistan, locked in a total darkness. Two nights a week we were beaten until dawn and they screamed, 'Confess, you brute, that you are a KGB agent,'&quot; Vakhitov was quoted by Le Monde as saying. &quot;They slit my friend Yakub's throat in front of me, then hung me up by my hands and whipped me with electrical wire.&quot;
 The Le Monde reporter allowed Vakhitov to call home on his satellite phone.
 &quot;'I am free, I am free,' he kept telling me,&quot; his mother said. &quot;I asked him whether he had observed the fast during Ramadan in Afghanistan, he said no, and, knowing that it disappointed me, he told me he had learned the whole Koran by heart while in the Kandahar jail.&quot;
 It is not clear how Vakhitov ended up in Guantanamo Bay after being released from the Taliban jail.
 The first letter from him reached Khasanova at the end of September. &quot;Write and tell me whether you are alive and healthy. I haven't heard from you for eight months and I am worried,&quot; he wrote.
 &quot;I put my hopes in Allah that my son will be back one day,&quot; Khasanova said. &quot;And I pray that he will not be tried in Russia. My son was looking for a refuge in Afghanistan and he cannot return to a Russian jail.&quot;
 In Vakhitov's absence, the Yildyz madrassa was reopened, under another name, and only for female students.
 The Tauba mosque now has two new imams, both educated in Saudi Arabia. Among its parish are men of Wahhabi appearance, who wear a beard but with their mustaches shaved off. The mosque is also attended by women in standard urban attire - such as fur hats and skirts shorter than required of strict observers - and children in bright winter outfits, giving it a friendly, family atmosphere.
 Vakhitov's mother said her son has a fiancee, who will wait for him until he returns home.
 
 
<b>A Wrestling Champion
 </b>
Another Guantanamo Bay detainee, Rasul Kudayev, is not so fortunate. His fiancee married another man while he was in Afghanistan.
 
Kudayev, 24, is a native of Kabardino-Balkaria and, in 1996, he won the republic's wrestling championship.
 He was raised by his mother in the Balkar village of Khasanya, near the capital, Nalchik. The family's one-room house of crumbling brick now faces the skeleton of what would be the largest mosque in Kabardino-Balkaria. The construction has been dragging on now for 13 years.
 His mother, Fatima Tekayeva, a nurse, said she brought him to Islam 10 years ago but that he was never a devout Muslim.
 &quot;Rasul went to wrestling practice with much greater zeal and regularity than he attended the mosque or prayed,&quot; Tekayeva said reproachfully. She was wearing a white headscarf and a woolen dress that covered all of her body except her hands.
 She divorced Kudayev's father when the boy was 10 and raised him and his elder half-brother on her own. Even by local standards, the family lives in poverty. The house's only room has a wooden floor, but the floor in the corridor and in the kitchen, where the family's life goes on, is cold concrete. There are hardly two mugs or forks that match.
 Their home, however, is constantly full of young people, who come to pay their respects to Tekayeva, known in the neighborhood for her piety.
 &quot;The police call me a spreader of Wahhabism among the young. But look at these Wahhabis,&quot; she said, pointing to her visitors - young men, some chain-smoking and clean-shaven, sitting around a clumsy homemade table and chatting with her elder son, Arsen Mokayev.
 They said that Kudayev was a talented athlete and a regular teenager. Like his brother, he smoked, despite Islam's prohibition, and never showed any fervor in his religious duties. Judging by family photographs, he had never grown a beard.
 A young ethnic Balkar man like Kudayev has little opportunity in his native republic. Balkars comprise only 10 percent of the population in Kabardino-Balkaria, which is governed mainly by Kabardins. Like the Chechens, the Balkars were deported to Central Asia by Josef Stalin's regime in the 1940s and, after they returned to the North Caucasus, they never regained sufficient political power to match the Kabardins.
 After completing the sixth grade, Kudayev stopped going to school so he could help his mother at home. Even without attending classes, he passed his school examinations, but he was not accepted at police school because the family could not collect the money for the necessary bribe, his brother said.
 Kudayev earned some money by doing odd jobs, but he spent most of his time at home, going out mainly for wrestling practice.
 In late 1999, he told his family he was going to Central Asia to further his career in sports. His coach, whose family had been deported to Kyrgyzstan, had told him there were good prospects for athletes in the region, his brother said.
 Kudayev called his mother half a year later, just to tell her that he was fine. &quot;When I asked him from where he was calling, he hung up,&quot; Tekayeva said.
 She learned in April that her son was in Guantanamo Bay. &quot;I was watching a television report from Cuba and suddenly saw an inmate in an orange robe who walked exactly like my son, with his hands deep in his pockets,&quot; she said. &quot;Then, when Russian investigators began showing photos of Russian detainees in front of the camera, I recognized Rasul in one of them.&quot;
 Tekayeva, who has not received any letters from her son, has resigned herself to his situation.
 &quot;It was Allah's will that my son was sent there, and it will be his will if he is brought out,&quot; she repeated several times. &quot;I also don't expect any mercy for him from any government, either American or Russian. Let everything happen according to the wishes of Allah.&quot;
 Tkachyov, the investigator, said Kudayev was the friendliest of the Russian detainees. When he visited him in Guantanamo Bay, the first thing Kudayev did was ask him for a cigarette.
 Tkachyov offered another version of how Kudayev popped up in Afghanistan. &quot;He wanted to escape service in the Russian army. Kudayev fled to Georgia and then via Azerbaijan and Iran went to Afghanistan,&quot; he said.
 Some of the other detainees were also of conscript age and had gone to Afghanistan to avoid the draft, he said. &quot;Some told me they did not want to serve in the Russian army, but were ready to take up arms to fight against Russia,&quot; Tkachyov said.
 
 
<b>A Police Officer
 </b>
Shamil Khazhiyev, 31, expressed the strongest anti-Russian sentiments of all the detainees, Tkachyov said. During the first round of questioning in March, he gave investigators a made-up name and personal details. In reality, he was a police lieutenant from Uchaly, a town of 40,000 in Bashkortostan.
 
In 1999, he was studying law at Ufa State University by correspondence and, upon finishing the course, he expected a career promotion, his colleagues said.
 &quot;We don't know what happened to him or how to explain his escape to Afghanistan,&quot; said Yamil Mustafin, the acting head of the town's police force.
 Leonid Syukiainen, an expert on Islam from the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences, compared the Afghanistan fugitives to the idealistic Westerners who moved to the Soviet Union after the 1917 Revolution to help build a socialist society
 &quot;Of course, there had to be a combination of reasons for these people to flee to Afghanistan, but I believe that their strongest motive was that they sincerely sought a fair Islamic society there,&quot; he said.
 Investigators disclosed the names of other Russian detainees in Cuba, but refused to provide any other information about them. They are: Ruslan Odigov from Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria; Rustam Akhmerov from the Chelyabinsk region and Timur Ishmuradov from the Tyumen region.
 The United States has not charged any of the detainees but, if charged with being members of a terrorist organization that plotted against U.S. citizens, they could face capital punishment, Tkachyov said.
 A U.S. military order covering the trial of noncitizens in the war on terrorism, signed by President George W. Bush, says that individuals &quot;may be punished in accordance with the penalties provided under applicable law, including life imprisonment and death.&quot;
 But, according to Tkachyov, the Russian detainees have proven useful to U.S. investigators trying to get a fuller picture of the activities of al-Qaida and the Taliban.
 &quot;The Russian inmates were rather helpful in this, although they were not members of the Taliban but fought under the banner of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a radical Muslim organization that united natives of former Soviet republics in Afghanistan,&quot; he said.
 Russian authorities have said that they intend to ask the U.S. government to extradite the Russian citizens.
 &quot;We will insist on their extradition, but there would be certain obstacles,&quot; Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky told Interfax earlier this month.
 To win the detainees' extradition, Russia must have evidence against them. U.S. authorities have provided no evidence so far that they were carrying arms when detained or had committed any other crime in Afghanistan, Fridinsky said.
 Tkachyov said that prosecutors in Russia would like to be able to try them on charges of participating in a criminal organization, being mercenaries and illegally crossing Russia's borders.
 U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow told Interfax in late November that, if the detainees were to be held responsible under Russian law, they would be handed over to Russian authorities.
 Tkachyov, however, was not optimistic that they would be handed over to Russia soon. He said the detainees planned to seek political refuge in the United States or another country. &quot;They believe everybody needs them,&quot; he said.
 Mokayev, the brother of detainee Kudayev, said that it was no mystery why the detainees preferred to risk harsh punishment in the United States rather than return to Russia, where they would face a relatively short prison term.
 &quot;If they get into the hands of Russian investigators, they will be tortured and humiliated, and their will and inner beliefs might be broken,&quot; said Mokayev, who served two years in prison in the 1990s for a petty offense. &quot;In the States, even if they are executed, they will think they are dying for their religion, and, for a devout Muslim, this is just fine.&quot;
 Deputy Justice Minister Yury Kalinin last Tuesday promised to guarantee their rights if they are handed over to Russian authorities.
 &quot;We give a full guarantee that all individuals handed over to us for investigation or for criminal punishment after a verdict is rendered won't face any violations,&quot; he said at a government human-rights conference in Moscow.

TITLE: Chechnya Gears Up For the Referendum
AUTHOR: By Yuri Bagrov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia - Moscow moved forward Monday with preparations for a constitutional referendum in Chechnya, and President Vladimir Putin's human-rights envoy to the region conceded the situation there still has not been normalized.
 
The statement was underscored by the latest of a series of kidnappings of local Chechen leaders. The deputy head of the village administration in Ishcherskaya, Nikoai Lozhkin, was kidnapped from his home Sunday night, an official in the pro-Moscow Chechen administration said on condition of anonymity. The four masked hostage-takers, wielding submachine guns, warned his family not to go to police, Interfax reported.
 Meeting with Putin on Monday to discuss preparations for the referendum, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, Putin's human-rights envoy, said violence is not subsiding in Chechnya.
 &quot;There are no normal conditions, no elected authorities or self-government, there are no telephone lines&quot; and this is all &quot;a perfect environment for crime,&quot; Sultygov said, according to Interfax. Still, he was quoted as saying, the Chechen population was &quot;inspired&quot; by the chance to elect its own government, Interfax reported.
 Putin said the referendum and the creation of an Interior Ministry in Chechnya were a response to what &quot;the Chechen public asked for.&quot;
 The draft of the constitution was published Monday in a local Chechen newspaper, its 112 articles outlining the system of government for the region and proclaiming it a state within Russia, Interfax reported. The government will be led by a president, who can be any Russian citizen older than 30, regardless of residency. There will also be a bicameral legislature.
 The Kremlin has claimed virtually to have ended military operations that began in Chechnya in 1999 after a series of incursions and apartment house bombings and it is urging refugees to return home. Itar-Tass reported Monday that law enforcement operations in the relatively calm districts of Chechnya were being turned over to police.
 However, troops continue to be killed daily in small-scale skirmishes and mine explosions. In fighting over the last 24 hours, six soldiers and one police officer were killed and 16 wounded, the Chechen official said. Three rebels were detained in a clash on the outskirts of Grozny between Interior Ministry troops and rebels that killed one soldier and wounded another, the official said.
 Russian forces aimed artillery barrages against rebels in three regions, and more than 200 suspects were detained in sweep operations for rebel sympathizers. Such sweeps have drawn widespread accusations of human-rights abuses.

TITLE: Islamic Militants 'Were Planning Terror Attacks'
AUTHOR: By Jamey Keaten
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - Four self-avowed Islamic militants arrested in France in possession of possible bomb-making materials were planning one or several terror attacks in Europe, the government said Friday.
 
Investigators believe the suspects were close to a terror cell based in Frankfurt, Germany, that allegedly has ties to the al-Qaida network, and had spent time in Chechnya.
 The Interior Ministry said two of the four suspects told investigators that they had received training in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge and met with Chechen rebel leaders.
 In Moscow, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin's spokesperson on Chechnya, said the arrests shored up Russia's argument that Chechen rebels are an inseparable part of international terror networks.
 The suspects were arrested last Monday in an apartment in a tough Paris suburb by security agents acting on orders from France's top counter-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere.
 On Friday night, the four were formally put under investigation - a procedural step just short of the filing of charges - for &quot;criminal association in connection with a terrorist enterprise,&quot; judicial sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
 In Monday's apartment raid, agents found suspected electronic components that could serve as detonators and chemicals used in the making of electronic circuits, a French Interior Ministry statement said.
 The raid in suburban La Courneuve also turned up a suit to protect against nuclear, chemical and biological attacks, a video camera, two empty gas canisters and false identity papers.
 Initial reports said the suspects were also found to possess mysterious liquids in small vials, raising fears that they had been planning a chemical attack.
 However, the ministry statement said the vials contained a mixture used to connect electronic components, and ferric chloride, which is commonly used for soldering electronic circuits.
 Under questioning, the suspects did not confess to planning an attack, the statement said, adding, however, &quot;there is no doubt, given the elements found, that ... terrorist actions were being prepared in the more or less short term.&quot;
 Russia has long warned of the involvement of Chechen rebels in international terrorist activities, and pointed to a long line of foreign mercenaries who have fought in the republic. However, many Western governments continue to see Chechnya as a more complex conflict, involving both those fighting for the separatist cause and some international terrorist elements, and they have criticized Russian troops for brutal treatment of civilians. Russia also warned about an international terrorist presence in the Pankisi Gorge long before other countries, concerned about possible Russian threats to Georgian sovereignty, started paying attention.
 Yastrzhembsky said Friday that the information coming from Paris vindicated Moscow's position.
 &quot;This information confirms the existence of a terrorist network with a wide, cross-border infrastructure. It is a chain of recruiting fighters, in the given case in Western Europe, their preparation, in this case in Afghanistan and the Pankisi Gorge, and their combat experience, which happened in Chechnya,&quot; he said.
 &quot;It shows that no country is protected from the activity of this kind of infrastructure and this kind of network, especially when we're talking about the use of weapons of mass destruction,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Netanyahu, Ivanov Talk Peace
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Mideast peace plan backed by Russia and the United States will be useless unless the Palestinian side comes under new leadership that truly wants peace, Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday.
 
Netanyahu met with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov for discussions focusing on Mideast tensions - both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the growing prospect of war in Iraq.
 The meeting came after last week's gathering of the Mideast Quartet - an ad hoc grouping of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - to develop a so-called road map for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Details of the plan have not been completed, but it broadly seeks Palestinian statehood, better security and Israeli pullbacks in the West Bank and Gaza.
 &quot;No matter what road map is put before us, if the other driver doesn't want to get to peace, no road map will help,&quot; Netanyahu said at a joint news conference with Ivanov.
 &quot;I spent quite a bit of time in our discussions today explaining our concern that the present Palestinian leadership does not want to get to peace and therefore we think that [U.S. President George W.] Bush's call for a new Palestinian leadership is the only way we will get to peace.&quot;
 Netanyahu earlier dismissed the possibility that Palestinian elections would bring a change in position.
 &quot;The election has no real value because there is no democracy or genuine parliament on the Palestinian territories,&quot; he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 Elections had been set for Jan. 20, but the Palestinian cabinet postponed them on Sunday, saying they could be held no earlier than three months after an Israeli military withdrawal from West Bank towns.
 Ivanov reiterated both Russia's insistence that Iraq unconditionally fulfill the terms of the UN Security Council resolution on weapons inspections and that action against Iraq for noncompliance must be taken only within the framework of UN resolutions.
 &quot;Any action beyond the United Nations Security Council resolutions can only make the situation more complex,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Grozny Residents Vanish Into A Veil of Darkness
AUTHOR: By Timur Aliyev
PUBLISHER: Special to The Moscow Times
TEXT: GROZNY - In November, residents of the Chechen capital received address signs for their homes. The street name and house number were written out in large white letters on a blue background - easy to read even from a distance.
 
The last time Grozny saw this kind of spruce-up was at the start of the 1990s, when the Soviet-era names of some streets were switched to Chechen ones. So it's no wonder that most people grabbed up the signs and even complained to the mayor's office if they didn't get one.
 But some residents have been hesitant, because of what human-rights campaigners say are new tactics used by the Russian military for conducting its special operations in the republic.
 In the village of Aldy, on the outskirts of Grozny, only Said Isayev did not hang a shiny new address sign outside his home on Ulitsa Masayeva. When neighbors asked him the reason, he said, &quot;Why? So that it's easier to find me at night?&quot;
 After darkness falls, a dim ray from a flashlight will be enough to read the address, he said, &quot;and I don't need unexpected visitors at night.&quot;
 Human-rights advocates say a wave of nighttime abductions is sweeping across Chechnya. Unidentified armed men in masks burst into homes, seize residents and take them off to unknown locations.
 About 20 people a week disappear this way, their bodies sometimes surfacing on the outskirts of towns and villages, Usam Baisayev of the human-rights organization Memorial said at a Nov. 30 meeting of Chechen nongovernmental organizations in Ingushetia. The Moscow Helsinki Group also said it has gathered considerable evidence on nighttime arrests and murders.
 The human-rights activists put the blame on federal troops, who have changed strategy since the &quot;Nord-Ost&quot; hostage crisis in late October re-energized the campaign in Chechnya.
 On Nov. 4, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov announced that troop reductions in Chechnya would be suspended and troops would carry out tough, but targeted, special operations to weed out Chechen rebels.
 Instead of mopping up entire villages, troops are now checking specific locations in an effort to target only &quot;bandit formations,&quot; a spokesperson for the federal command, Ilya Shabalkin, said last week.
 Shabalkin denied that federal troops were responsible for the disappearance of local residents. He said it was rebels who conduct the nighttime raids, targeting officials in the republic's pro-Moscow administration and local citizens who cooperate with the authorities. Many Chechen officials and police have been killed.
 The killing a few weeks ago of Alkhan-Kala's former mayor, Malika Umazheva, was typical of the nighttime raids. She was shot by unidentified masked men who broke into her home after midnight.
 Law-enforcement officials blamed the rebels, who they said had threatened her for cooperating with the Moscow-appointed Chechen administration. The rebels, however, accused federal troops, saying Umazheva was punished for being too outspoken about abuses by federal forces in Alkhan-Kala.
 Baisayev said the nighttime raids were not new, but are now receiving &quot;greater emphasis.&quot; At the same time, large-scale military operations have become less severe, he said.
 &quot;Lately, when I speak to residents in villages where there has just been a mop-up, they respond that everything is all right,&quot; he said. &quot;By this they mean that no one has been killed. While the pillaging is no less, murders during daytime sweeps virtually no longer happen.&quot;
 Interior Ministry spokesperson Albert Istomin said in an interview posted on the Web site Strana.ru that the tactical change announced by Ivanov was a means of increasing efficiency. &quot;The fight with terrorists must be conducted using a targeted approach, an agent network and other work,&quot; he said.
 His ministry is creating 10 commando units to carry out special operations, Istomin said. &quot;Their main aim is to conduct mop-up operations and fight against terrorism, and not just in Chechnya,&quot; he said, adding that two such units will be posted on a permanent basis in the northern Caucasus.
 The Chechen police also are creating mobile groups together with federal troops, said Chechnya's acting interior minister, Said-Selim Peshkhodev.
 Peshkhodev, whose men normally participate on an equal footing with the military during sweeps, said &quot;our task is to go on the offensive to restore order and protect the citizens of Chechnya.&quot;
 Peshkhodev said he had no information about the reported nighttime disappearances.
 Yury Ponomaryov, the acting prosecutor of Chechnya, said his office is keeping a close eye on the activities of federal troops.
 &quot;When any special operation is conducted in any region, military prosecutors work with the civilian prosecutors of that region. In other words, prosecutors are always present during such operations,&quot; he said in an interview in Grozny earlier this month.
 &quot;Soldiers do abuse their authority, of course, and other crimes are committed,&quot; Ponomaryov said. &quot;In these cases we carry out an initial investigation and send the case to the military prosecutor's office for a decision in Khankala.&quot;
 The military prosecutor's office in Chechnya said 472 abduction cases have been opened in the past two years.
 According to Memorial, about 600 people have disappeared in the republic over the past two years.

TITLE: 18 Escape Young Offenders Center
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Eighteen teenage inmates staged an escape from a young offenders' detention center in Kolpino, 25 kilometers south of St. Petersburg, early Sunday morning.
 
Seven youths were captured immediately, and six more some time later in St. Petersburg, while five remained on the loose Monday afternoon, Vladimir Kalinichenko, spokesperson for the St. Petersburg Correctional Administration said on Monday.
 &quot;They way they escaped was rleatively simple,&quot; Kalinichenko said. &quot;They just put a bed against the fence around the area of the of the center, threw mattresses on the ground on the other side, and then jumped over.&quot;
 A guard spotted the youths while they were making their escape and sounded the alarm, leading to the capture of the first seven.
 Most of the escapees, who were from 14 to 17 years of age, had only recently been sent to the facility, where they were serving sentence of from four to six years, Kalinichenko said. He said that none of them had been sentenced for committing violent crimes.
 &quot;The ones who were captured said that they just wanted to go home for New Year's,&quot; he said.
 The detention center is one of 60 around the country that, like Russia's system of prisons for adults, is overcrowded and suffering from underfunding. The buildings at the center are in poor repair and 15 to 20 youths are crwoded into every room.
 &quot;It was a serious emergency and a tough situation for the center's staff,&quot; Kalinichenko said. &quot;First, it was a pretty large group of escapees. Second, it's tough with teenage escapees, since we are prohibited from shooting in an escape situtaion, unlike with adult inmates.&quot;
 Kalinichenko said that police squads were combing the city for the remaining five escapees. He said that, according to article 313 of the Russian Criminal Code, prison terms for can be increased after an escape attempt.

TITLE: Ivanov Talks Up Russia-NATO Links
AUTHOR: By Mara D. Bellaby
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov declared Moscow's new relationship with NATO to be the Kremlin's most significant foreign policy initiative of the past year, according to an television interview aired Sunday.
 
In the wide-ranging interview with state-controlled Channel One summing up Russia's foreign-policy record, Ivanov called the alliance between the former Cold War foes &quot;the most noteworthy and unusual event of 2002.&quot;
 NATO and Russia signed an agreement in May that made Moscow a limited partner, tying the Kremlin closer than ever to its former enemy. A joint council was created for making decisions on counterterrorism, nonproliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, missile defense, peacekeeping, search and rescue at sea and other issues.
 &quot;We managed to create a structure in which Russia and other states have equal rights,&quot; Ivanov said.
 The council has already proved that it &quot;may become an effective mechanism of cooperation,&quot; Ivanov said.
 The closer ties helped muffle Moscow's protests about NATO's decision last month to invite seven new members to join the alliance.
 &quot;We are no longer standing on the verge of nuclear catastrophe,&quot; Ivanov said. &quot;We have no external enemies and in this sense feel secure.
 &quot;But this does not mean we have no enemies at all,&quot; Ivanov said, citing international terrorism, organized crime &quot;and the forces that are trying to violate the nonproliferation regime and are poisoning countries with drugs.&quot;
 He said these common threats &quot;can only be resisted jointly&quot; by the international community.
 Ivanov also reiterated the Kremlin's relaxed attitude to the presence of U.S. troops in Central Asia as part of the anti-terror campaign. He said the U.S. presence would not weaken Russia's influence there. &quot;Much is going to depend on us,&quot; he said.
 As for foreign-policy goals, Ivanov said Russia will continue to focus on guaranteeing its security, creating conditions that promote continued democratic reforms and protecting the interests and rights of ethnic Russians living abroad.
 Moscow is also aiming next year to improve ties with the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose grouping of former Soviet republics, Ivanov said.
 &quot;But our foreign policy is equally directed to the West, East, South and North,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Judge: Budanov In Need of Help
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ROSTOV-ON-DON, Southern Russia - Colonel Yury Budanov, accused of murdering a Chechen woman, requires immediate psychiatric treatment as his trial continues, the judge presiding over the case said Friday.
 
Judge Viktor Kostin said he intended to transfer Budanov from his regular prison cell to the prison's special medical unit, but said he would not make a final decision until Monday to allow more consultations with lawyers.
 Budanov's transfer would not affect the course of the trial, which would continue.
 The judge's decision came after a team of experts concluded that Budanov was insane at the time of the killing. The examination - the fourth psychiatric test performed on Budanov since the beginning of his trial in February 2001 - was widely expected to lead to acquittal or a light sentence.
 Budanov has admitted strangling 18-year-old Heda Kungayeva in Chechnya, but says he killed her in a rage while interrogating her because he thought she was a rebel sniper.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Grenade Kills Two
 </b>

YEKATERINBURG, Ural Mountains (AP) - Two men were killed and a third was injured in a grenade blast in the Sverdlovsk region, police said Monday.
 The three had gathered Sunday for a night of drinking in a garage in the town of Zarechny, the Sverdlovsk regional police's press department said. The garage owner was showing off the grenade when he accidentally detonated it, the press service said.
 The explosion killed the two guests and blew a hand and part of a leg off the garage owner, the press service said. Police have opened a criminal case on charges of murder and illegal possession of weapons.
 
 
<b>2 Reporters Beaten
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - Two journalists were beaten in the Far East city of Khabarovsk in an attack blamed on ultranationalists, Izvestia reported Monday.
 Molodoi Dalnevostochnik editor Oleg Chuguyev and journalist Irina Polnikova, Chuguyev's wife, were attacked by two young men wielding pipes and clubs at the entryway to their apartment building in downtown Khabarovsk on Friday, the newspaper said. Chuguev suffered a fractured skull and remained in the hospital over the weekend after undergoing an operation. Polnikova escaped the attack with minor injuries.
 The journalists suspect that the attack was provoked by their newspaper's recent publication of investigative articles about local ultranationalist groups, Izvestia said.
 
 
<b>Greetings to Vatican
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II sent Christmas greetings Sunday to Pope John Paul II, calling for the two to "resume our brotherly contacts."
 Relations between the groups have been strained over Orthodox allegations that the Vatican is pursuing an "expansionist tragedy" in traditionally Orthodox countries, to which the Roman Catholic Church has responded with criticism of what it sees as attempts to weaken its congregations. Five foreign-born Catholic priests have been expelled from Russia, and the pope has been unable to fulfill his wish of visiting the country because of Orthodox pressure.
 "Illuminated by the gracious rays of the light of Christ, let us resume our brotherly contacts and send joyful praise to the newborn Divine Child, who has come to Earth for our sake," the patriarch wrote, Interfax reported.
 Alexy also promised to make a special prayer during Orthodox Christmas, celebrated on Jan. 7, for God to grant the pope "a life of peace and numerous gifts" during the year.
 
 
<b>More Theater Suits
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Fourteen more people filed lawsuits Monday against the Moscow city government for compensation in the theater hostage-taking by Chechen rebels, raising the total number of those seeking damages to 38, their lawyer said.
 Igor Trunov said the plaintiffs include former hostages and relatives of those who died in the siege, Interfax reported. The new cases come a day ahead of scheduled hearing for the first 24 lawsuits, asking for amounts of compensation varying from $450,000 to $1.5 million.
 
 
<b>New Chechnya General
 </b>

ROSTOV-NA-DONU, Southern Russia (AP) - Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Sunday ushered in the new general responsible for military operations in Chechnya and thanked his fired predecessor for his service. 
 During an hourlong ceremony at the North Caucasus military headquarters in this southern town, Ivanov introduced the new commander, Colonel General Vladimir Boldyrev, who previously headed the Siberian military district. 
 Boldyrev replaced Colonel General Gennady Troshev, who was fired by President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. 
 "You have put a lot of effort, energy and support into maintaining this important region in high combat readiness," Ivanov told Troshev, in remarks shown on Channel One television. "You are well known by all the military - and not only by the military." 
 Ivanov thanked Troshev for his contributions, and promised that "we will find a suitable place for him in the military if he, of course, agrees to remain in the army," Itar-Tass reported. 



TITLE: Cash Restrictions Likely To Remain in Place
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After a year of debate and high-level lobbying efforts by Western businesses, it will likely take at least another year before restrictions on foreigners taking cash out of the county are eased.
 
The State Duma on Friday approved in second and third reading long-awaited amendments to the law on currency that would raise to $10,000 from $1,500 the amount of cash foreigners and Russians can carry out of the country without special Central Bank permission.
 Lawmakers in the lower house also voted to introduce the same requirements for residents and non-residents, because currently foreigners cannot legally take a single cent out of the country without a declaration stamped upon arrival, or a special bank receipt.
 But President Vladimir Putin's representative in the Duma said Putin would veto the measures if they pass the Federation Council as expected. 
 &quot;I don't want to dramatize the situation but, under such a limit, about $150 billion could leave the country in the near future,&quot; news agencies quoted Alexander Kotenkov as saying Monday. 
 &quot;I have no doubt that the law will be vetoed by the president,&quot; he said.
 The government, represented by the Finance Ministry and the presidential administration, want the limit capped at $3,000 and urged lawmakers to adopt that figure ahead of Friday's vote. Although several influential deputies, including budget-committee chief Alexander Zhukov, did, the majority did not, opting instead to challenge the veto threat as a way to urge the government to liberalize currency controls.
 For many foreign businesses, the limit is less important than the paperwork needed to travel with hard currency.
 &quot;I think that $10,000 is normal, but we don't insist on any particular amount, for us it is just important to be able to carry some cash and to have equal rights with residents,&quot; said Irene Comeau, managing director of the European Business Club.
 In January, the EBC and other groups of foreign investors sent a letter to Prime Minister Mikhail Kaysanov and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref that said that lifting the currency restriction was among the top items on their wish list for 2002.
 &quot;As for the currency rule, I can't understand why such a minor problem still exists and continues to have a negative affect on the investment image of Russia,&quot; Comeau said

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Unemployment Down
 </b>

MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - The number of unemployed in Russia fell 0.1 percent on the month and 18.4 percent on the year in November to 5.142 million, or 7.1 percent of the labor force, the State Statistics Committee said Monday.
 The figure was calculated according to the methodology of the International Labor Organization.
 The number of officially registered unemployed rose 4.4 percent on the month and 17.3 percent on the year in November to 1.249 million, or 1.7 percent of the labor force.
 Russia's labor force was estimated at 72.6 million as of the end of November, the committee said. 
 
 
<b>Real Incomes Rise 
 </b>

MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - Real disposable income rose 0.2 percent on the month and 7.7 percent on the year in November, the State Statistics Committee said Monday.
 Real disposable income is income adjusted according to the consumer price index (CPI), with mandatory payments deducted.
 Russia's average per capita income in November stood at 4,245 rubles ($133) per month, up 25 percent on the year and 1.8 percent on the month.
 The nominal monthly wage in November stood at 4,785 ($150.24) rubles, up 3 percent on the month and 34 percent on the year, according to preliminary estimates. In November, real wages rose 1.4 percent on the month and 16.4 percent on the year.
 
 
<b>$10Bln Flight Expected
 </b>

MOSCOW (Prime-Tass) - Capital flight is expected to total $10 billion in 2002, down $6 billion on the year, First Deputy Central Bank Chairman Oleg Vyugin told reporters Monday.
 Vyugin said that capital flight is declining, due to the launch of Russian companies borrowing on foreign markets. He did not elaborate.
 Earlier in December, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Andrei Petrov said that capital flight totaled $3 billion in from January to October, compared to $16 billion and $24 billion for the whole of 2001 and 2000 respectively.
 Petrov contributed the decline to improvements in the investment climate, which is due in part to the lower tax burden. 



TITLE: S&P Joins Slavneft Criticism
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Standard &amp; Poor's on Friday gave a thumbs down to last week's $1.86-billion joint purchase of Slavneft by Sibneft and TNK.
 
The international ratings agency revised its outlook for Sibneft to &quot;negative&quot; from &quot;developing&quot; and lowered its Russian rating for the company because of the acquisition, which it said weakens the financial profiles of both companies.
 S&amp;P said that Slavneft is financially weaker and less efficient than both Sibneft and TNK, and taking on its $680 million debt load &quot;offsets the positive impact of the improved asset diversification and cash-flow base of both companies' business profiles.&quot;
 S&amp;P said it was also concerned about the uncertainties over how Sibneft and TNK will divvy up Slavneft.
 Sibneft and TNK said after winning the Slavneft auction Wednesday that they planned either to split Slavneft's assets between them or to have one company absorb Slavneft and offer equity to the other. But on Friday, Sibneft insisted that it was better placed to grab Slavneft outright.
 &quot;Consolidating Slavneft into Sibneft is the preferred and most practical option,&quot; Sibneft First Vice President Alexander Korsik told investors.
 Korsik said Sibneft's long-term and short-term debt would rise by 57 percent by the end of 2002 due to the Slavneft purchase, to $2.2 billion from $1.4 billion six months ago.
 TNK Chief Financial Officer Iosif Bakaleinik said during a Web conference that the acquisition would boost TNK's current $1.9-billion debt burden to about $3 billion, but added that it could be pared back to $2 billion in 2003 if oil prices remain high.
 Bakaleinik said TNK's net profit under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles stood at $830 million in the first nine months of 2002 and net sales at $4.13 billion
 He reiterated that TNK would show double-digit growth in 2003, raising oil output by 11 percent to 820,000 barrels per day.
 TNK International combines oil firms Tyumen Oil and Onako and is controlled by two groups of shareholders - Alfa Group and Russian-U.S. joint venture Access/Renova.
 Sibneft produces 520,000 bpd from its fields in western Siberia. Slavneft, No. 9 in Russia, produces 320,000 bpd. Sibneft said it was counting on Slavneft's healthy west Siberian reserves, which it estimates at 2.2 billion barrels, to show healthy growth as well in the next few years. 
 
 <i>(SPT, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: Hunger Strike Threatens Russian Air-Travel Safety
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Hundreds of air-traffic controllers across the country were on hunger strike Monday, with more threatening to join in Tuesday in a fight for higher salaries.
 
The strike did not affect flights Monday, but protesters said they were settling in for a lengthy battle.
 Management stood firm on Monday, saying it would not give in to demands for a 30-percent hike in pay.
 By federal law, air-traffic controllers are not allowed to go on strike. But, if a solution is not reached soon, they will be barred from work over their weakened conditions - controllers are required to go through a medical examination before every shift.
 Forced sick leave could cause havoc not just for domestic flights but also international flights passing over Russia on routes between Europe, Asia and the United States.
 Participating in the hunger strike Monday were at least 20 air traffic control centers monitoring the airspace over the southern Rostov-na-Donu and Saratov regions, Novosibirsk and Omsk in Eastern Siberia and large swathes of the Far East and Far North.
 &quot;We are asking for a 30 percent raise, which is a perfectly realistic goal that can be reached by changing the State Corporation of Traffic Controllers Enterprises' ratio of expenditures. It has nothing to do with the budget,&quot; Sergei Kovalyov, president of the Federation of Trade Unions of Air Traffic Controllers, was quoted by Interfax as saying on Monday.
 The State Corporation of Traffic Controllers Enterprises is the state-owned company that oversees the country's airspace.
 State Corporation head Boris Kushneruk said the controllers' salaries were increased at the start of the year and there was no money for a 30-percent hike.
 &quot;We raised salaries by 15.79 percent as of Jan. 1. This was done by taking funds from other areas of work,&quot; Kushneruk said on Channel One.
 Union representatives said salaries remain too low to attract new employees and to allow current workers to make ends meet.
 Nikolai Plotnikov, a top union official, said 27 percent of the state corporation's revenues are allocated for the salaries of air traffic controllers while in other countries the share varies from 50 percent to 60 percent. Before the 1998 crisis, controllers were getting 49 percent, he said.
 The exact number of striking controllers was unavailable Monday afternoon. At the Rostov-na-Donu center, which oversees air traffic in much of southern Russia, one third of the 600 controllers were on strike, Plotnikov said.
 There are about 7,000 air-traffic controllers in Russia. 
 &quot;More people keep joining the hunger strike after their shifts,&quot; Plotnikov said.
 &quot;Our job is becoming more and more demanding, but there are no rewards,&quot; Andrei Lastochkin, an air controller from Novosibirsk, told NTV television. 
 His colleague Oleg Trushkov said staff of the Novosibirsk air-control center have been living in dormitories for 12 to 15 years, with no hope in finding permanent housing.
 Some controllers handed in their resignations as they went on hunger strike. They have to work two more weeks by law, and they said they would leave if a solution wasn't found before then.
 &quot;This simply means people don't see a future in the job unless the conditions are improved,&quot; Plotnikov said.
 He said controllers were pushed into starting the hunger strike after attempting for months to negotiate for raises.
 &quot;We have been trying to attract attention to our problems for the past three years,&quot; he said.
 The hunger strike is the second this month. Controllers went on strike early this month, but postponed the protest after a few days on a promise from management to find a solution by year end.
 &quot;But, by Dec. 22, it became clear that we getting nowhere,&quot; Plotnikov said.
 The average air controller's salary is 8,000 to 9,000 rubles ($251 to $283) per month, Plotnikov said. In the Black Sea resort of Anapa, however, the salary is less than 5,000 rubles ($157). Even in the expensive western Siberian region of Tyumen, where salaries are about 12,000 rubles ($377), the amount is no match for the high cost of living, he said.
 Plotnikov also said that controllers are rapidly aging and it is next to impossible to find new staff at current salaries.
 &quot;The average age of air traffic controllers is 45,&quot; he said, adding that they are expected to retire by 50.
 With no solution in sight on Monday, some government officials suggested that it might be necessary for military air-traffic controllers replace the strikers in the civil sector, Russian media reported.
 Union leaders said that this would be a dangerous move, since the military controllers generally have less experience and don't speak English - a must in order to secure safe passage for foreign airlines that fly through Russian air space.
 Foreign airlines contacted Monday said they have not received any warnings of potential interruptions in air traffic.
 &quot;We have a flight arriving tomorrow from Tokyo, and it is expected to fly as usual,&quot; a Japan Airlines official said.
 Another foreign airline official said, however, said that the Transportation Ministry has been working on alternative routes. &quot;And, besides, the air-traffic controllers are probably right,&quot; he said on condition of anonymity.
 Aeroflot spokesperson Lev Koshlyakov said the airline was preparing to reroute flights if necessary.
 He said the early December strike led to about 40 extra hours of flight time for Aeroflot jets.
 &quot;This whole ordeal is damaging for the industry,&quot; he said. &quot;After all, it is the passenger who pays for everything. And, if it appears that air travel is unsafe or unreliable, fewer passengers are going to seek our services.&quot;
 Koshlyakov, however, noted that long-distance and international flights were the least likely to be affected. &quot;But there could be problems for those who want to fly into or out of the places were air traffic controllers are protesting,&quot; he said.
 Air-traffic controllers found at least one high-profile supporter in the government Monday - State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov. He urged the government to step into the strike and ensure controllers' salaries are raised.
 &quot;They are people with extremely rare skills. I do not envy passengers who now realize that their plane is being guided by a starving air traffic controller,&quot; Seleznyov told Interfax.

TITLE: Christmas Sales Falling Short of Expectations
AUTHOR: By Anne D'Innocenzio
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Despite jammed stores and malls during the last weekend before Christmas, U.S. retailers remain anxious and uncertain after a desired sales bonanza failed to materialize.
 
Many storeowners disappointed by consumers' cautious buying are now looking with some desperation to last-minute shoppers and post-Christmas bargain hunters for some relief in what has been a difficult holiday season.
 Federated Department Stores Inc. reported Monday that sales through the seven days ended Saturday &quot;did not strengthen as much as anticipated.&quot; It warned Monday that sales for November and December will most likely be below its goal range of unchanged to up 2.5 percent from a year ago.
 At K-B Toys Inc., &quot;we are happy that we are holding ground, but we were really hoping for a higher increase&quot; during the weekend, spokesman John Reilly said Sunday.
 Analysts said other merchants had a similar experience.
 &quot;It was a solid weekend, but retailers needed a spectacular weekend,&quot; said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group. &quot;It was what I expected, but not what I hoped.&quot;
 Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard's Retail Trend Report, believes that sales at stores opened at least a year could fall below his already reduced 2 percent forecast. Same-store sales are considered the best indicator of a retailer's health. &quot;The season is reflecting great spending caution and could be the weakest in a dozen years,&quot; he said.

TITLE: Internet Rich With Free Stock-Surfing Options
AUTHOR: By James K. Glassman
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The No. 1 question I'm asked most these days is: &quot;What will the stock market do next year?&quot;
 
The answer is easy: &quot;I don't know.&quot;
 In the short term (and I would place the next 12 months in that category), future U.S. market movements are a random walk, utterly unknowable from today's perspective - and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The long term is another matter. It's a very good bet that stocks will rise at least at the same rate they have risen have over the past three quarters of a century, which would bring the Dow Jones index to about 70,000 by 2025.
 The No. 2 question is more sensible: &quot;What are the tools of the trade that help you the most?&quot;
 For investors who want to do their own research, this is the Golden Age.
 Eight years ago, when I started writing about stocks, The Washington Post provided me with a subscription to Bloomberg Business News, an electronic-research service with a mammoth database. Bloomberg was a pleasure. I could get history, news and analysis on practically any stock in the world in a few seconds. I could generate cool charts (in black and white) on my dedicated terminal.
 Even though the technology seems outdated today (the interface was clunky, and I had to learn complicated codes), it was all new and dazzling at the time. But expensive. A terminal, I was told, cost about $1,500 a month.
 I no longer have a subscription to Bloomberg because, frankly, I don't need it. Nearly all the information I used to extract from the paid service is now available free on the company's Web site (www.bloomberg.com) - a gift (and promotional tool) offered by Michael Bloomberg, even before he became mayor of New York.
 Certainly, the more complex paid version of Bloomberg continues to provide valuable services to professional traders and financial journalists. But long-term investors are well served by the public site. I'm especially attached to the &quot;Return Analysis&quot; feature. You can find out the average annual return (including dividends) for any specific period you care to define, going back five years.
 Since the turn of the millenium, free financial Web sites have improved dramatically. While Bloomberg is good, it's not the best. In my opinion, those honors go to MSN MoneyCentral (http://moneycentral.msn.com), not so much for extensive content - most of the sites offer similar information - but for clear, accessible design.
 Type in the symbol for Coca-Cola Co. (KO), and you get an opening page with the stock's price, its trading volume (and, for comparison, the average daily volume), price-to-earnings ratio, dividend, dividend yield, market capitalization, shares outstanding, the four most recent news stories and a &quot;Stock Scouter&quot; analyst rating from 1 to 10 (Coke, by the way, is rated 9, expected to &quot;significantly outperform the market&quot; at lower-than-average risk).
 But I am more interested in numbers than opinions, so I next click on MoneyCentral's &quot;Financial Results.&quot; There's another clean, easy-to-read page showing the highlights, then further pages that give five years of detailed statements of the firm's income, cash flow and balance sheet - plus a 10-year summary. In addition, you can go into depth in nearly any category.
 For example, MoneyCentral has more than 100 news stories on Coca-Cola, in chronological order; price charts going back 10 years; Wall Street analyst ratings (for what they're worth); earnings estimates; records of trading by insiders (director Herbert Allen sold 5,600 shares on Sept. 23); and easy access to SEC filings.
 The site also has a superb stock screener. I used it to find the top 25 large-cap stocks with these characteristics: high dividend yield, low P/E ratio, low debt, high revenue growth, and high &quot;relative strength&quot; (that is, powerful upward price movement). The dream stocks that MoneyCentral churned out included Eni S.p.A. (E), the Italian-based energy company; Exelon Corp. (EXC), Philadelphia and Chicago electric utility; Washington Mutual (WM), the country's top thrift; Nissan Motor Co. (NSANY), Japanese automaker; BASF, AG (BF), German-based chemical company; and WellPoint Health Networks Inc. (WLP), managed health care.
 My second-favorite free financial site is Yahoo! Finance (http://biz.yahoo.com), which has especially good one-page stock write-ups under &quot;Profiles,&quot; each with a spiffy synopsis of the company's business and a layout of all the essential numbers. Another favorite Yahoo! feature is detailed historical price data. You can find out the high and low for any stock on any day, adjusted for splits that have occurred in the meantime.
 In third place is CBS Marketwatch.com (http://cbs.marketwatch. com), which I read for its business and investment analysis. It has more original content than Yahoo!, but to get it, you're required to register by name. The site will send you special e-mail newsletters of your choosing on subjects like real estate and taxes.
 America Online recently revamped its Personal Finance channel, making it more user-friendly. Once hard to navigate, the AOL stock section is now a close fourth among free sites and is easy to access when youre getting your AOL e-mail. It is ironic for a site owned by the worlds largest media company, but one of AOLs drawbacks is a lack of timely business news.
 The best mutual-fund site, by far, is Morningstar (www.morningstar.com), the Chicago-based research firm. Like SmartMoney, it's a hybrid. The free features give you good data on thousands of funds, plus news and opinion columns, but, like more than 100,000 other subscribers, I happily pay $109 a year extra to get the research firm's deeper analysis, including brilliant one-page summaries in PDF format. Morningstar also covers stocks, but I prefer it for funds.
 The single most important research tool I use is the Value Line Investment Survey (www.valueline.com), which comes both in an online and a paper version. While I use both, I admit a preference for flipping through the flimsy newsprint edition. Each week a new edition, with about 140 single-page analyses of individual companies from seven or eight industries, arrives, along with an index and a top-notch newsletter, featuring three portfolios, articles on stock screens and write-ups of highlighted stocks. The 1,700 stocks are updated every three months.
 Value Line also ranks stocks from 1 to 5 on three measures: timeliness, safety and technical attributes. The record of its 1-rated stocks is legendary. Over the past 20 years, according to independent analysis by the Hulbert Financial Digest, Value Line's picks have returned an annual average of 14.3 percent, compared with 12.6 percent for the market as a whole.
 This expertise isn't cheap: $598 a year (in the paper, Web-based and CD-ROM version). An expanded edition, with 7,600 stocks covered, is $995.
 
 <i>
James K. Glassman is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington public-policy think tank. This column first appeared in the Washinton Post. </i>

TITLE: Russia's Rail Reform On Track for Failure
TEXT: THIS month, a package of reforms aimed at overhauling the Railways Ministry passed its second reading in the State Duma. It's a curious thing: Reforming Unified Energy Systems, the national power monopoly, has been like pulling teeth; but railways reform has passed like a hot knife through butter. It makes you wonder.
 
For some reason, railroads are considered state property. But, in fact, that's not quite true. The rails, ties and roadbed belong to the state, as well as most of the rolling stock. But Russia also has private freight agents. Some own their own rolling stock, while others have nothing but a license to ship goods by rail.
 The main advantage that such private operators enjoy is the discount rate that they receive from the Railways Ministry. Think about it. It would never occur to a factory owner to rent out his factory, cover the tenant's gas and electricity costs, and demand that in return the tenant sell the goods he produces in that factory 40 percent cheaper than the owner sells his own. Yet this is exactly how the Railways Ministry does business. It allows freight agents to use its rail network, trains and cargo handlers - and it cuts 40 percent off their bill. Occasionally the ministry camouflages the discounts somewhat by giving them not to shipping companies but to the factories that produce the goods - on the unspoken condition that the factory use a particular shipper. If the producer should go with an independent shipper, the ministry makes clear that &quot;unexpected&quot; problems could ensue - a shortage of rail cars, cargo sent to the wrong destination, delays in unloading, and so on.
 To cut a long story short, the government bears the costs of maintaining the rail network and the rolling stock, and private companies reap the profits.
 Back in 1992-1996, during Gennady Fadeyev's first stint as railways minister, the leading freight agent in Russia was a Swiss-based firm, TransRail, which was directly accused of corruption and connections with top officials in the Railways Ministry. According to documents now on file at the Prosecutor General's Office, TransRail owes the ministry $535 million. The company not only received discount rates, it also neglected to pay its bills.
 When Nikolai Aksyonenko took over at the Railways Ministry, TransRail was demoted, and the freight market was dominated by two companies, Yevrosib and Iriston. Yevrosib was run by the minister's nephew, Sergei Aksyonenko. Iriston nominally belonged to an offshore company, Mercury Financial Ltd., but rumor linked it to the minister's son, Rustam. When Aksyonenko was sacked for corruption, the railways portfolio went to former minister Fadeyev, although this time a member of Vladimir Putin's St. Peterburg elite, Vladimir Yakunin, was appointed to look after him. And Yakunin is tipped to take over once he has learned the ropes.
 So what will the planned reforms actually change? The sign on the door. The Railways Ministry will be called Russian Railways, a Russian joint-stock company. This new company will still own the rails and rolling stock, and the same private freight agents will still dominate the shipping market. The reforms pose no threat to anyone's vital interests and offer no guarantees that the newly formed company will not funnel its profits into the pockets of freight agents. And, as a result, the reforms are sailing through the Duma.
 Ten years into privatization in Russia, we are witnessing the birth of another company whose finances are nontransparent, very much like Gazprom. Gazprom also has its hands in everything: production, sales and delivery. It produces natural gas at the cost of $4 per 1,000 cubic meters, sells it in Russia for $25 per 1,000 cubic meters and abroad for $80. It borrows hundreds of millions of dollars - and operates at a loss.
 
 <i>
Yulia Latynina is author and host of &quot;Yest Mneniye&quot; (&quot;Some Believe&quot;) on TVS. </i>

TITLE: State Scored Own Goal Over Slavneft
TEXT: IT was to have been the auction to top all privatization auctions: The beginning of a new era of open, competitive sell-offs of state property, netting much more cash for the budget than any other privatization tender in Russia's post-Soviet history. It was to mark a clean break with the rigged privatization deals of the Yeltsin era and to give real weight to the claims of the Putin administration that the days of sweetheart deals for Kremlin cronies are genuinely over.
 
And it all went wrong. Any lingering illusions to the contrary were well and truely disabused by the farcical, four-minute auction for 75 percent of Slavneft that took place on Wednesday - in which the Sibneft/TNK vehicle, Invest-Oil, paid a fraction over the $1.7-billion starting price.
 But, in fact, the writing had been on the wall for a number of weeks. Indeed, some would say that the winner was decided back in the summer, when Sibneft managed to install its man, Yury Sukhanov, as CEO of Slavneft, in the run-up to the tender - during what became a rather ugly corporate struggle.
 In the weeks preceding the auction, oil majors LUKoil, Yukos and Surgutneft all dropped out of the running, discouraged by Sibneft/TNK's blocking stakes in Slavneft's key subsidiaries - and quite possibly by evidence of asset-stripping uncovered during the process of due diligence.
 For those that hadn't got the message - including the cash-rich Chinese National Oil Corporation and the Rosneft-affiliated Finansprofit Expert - the heavy artillery was wheeled out in the final week. Obscure lawsuits were filed against four of the participants, leading to their exclusion on the eve of the tender. And CNPC pulled out after the State Duma first fulminated about the perils of selling to a Chinese state-owned company, and then government officials bluntly told CNPC execs that they would not be welcome at the auction.
 The real blow that has been dealt is not to the government's coffers, however, although an extra billion dollars certainly would not have gone amiss. Far more damaging is the blow that has been dealt to the Putin administration's reputation and to Russia's investment &quot;attractiveness.&quot; The government, by hyping the auction and courting foreign bidders, has shot itself spectacularly in the foot and blown all the rhetoric about establishing a level playing field clean out of the water.
 And one more thing: The Chinese government has received a snub that it is unlikely to forget for some time to come. It will be interesting to see what happens the next time a Russian company attempts to participate in a major Chinese tender.
 So was it really worth it?
 
 <i>
This comment first appeared as an editorial in The Moscow Times on Dec. 20. </i>

TITLE: Blair for U.S. President
AUTHOR: By Thomas L. Friedman
TEXT: WITH Al Gore now out of the U.S. presidential race, everyone is giving the Democrats advice on who their candidate should be. All I know is that whomever the Democrats choose needs to keep in mind a few basic rules that Democrats have forgotten in recent years.
 
Rule No. 1: People listen through their stomachs. The key to the success of any presidential candidate is to convey to voters - in a way they can feel in their gut - that you as a leader know what world they're living in. George Bush Sr. lost to Bill Clinton because he failed to convey to voters in their gut that he knew what world they were living in - a world of rising economic insecurity.
 Clinton's campaign conveyed through one phrase, &quot;It's the economy, stupid,&quot; that he knew exactly what world people were living in and, because of that, they were ready to overlook his foibles. Connect with people's gut concerns and they'll go anywhere with you - without asking for the details. Don't connect, and you'll never be able to show people enough details to get them to follow.
 President George W. Bush has conveyed to Americans in their gut that he understands exactly what world they're living in now - a world threatened by terrorism in which, as the former N.S.C. adviser Sandy Berger put it, &quot;national security is now personal security.&quot; In this new world, Bush has been a warrior without mercy. No Democratic leader has - yet - forged such a gut connection with the American people on this issue.
 Rule No. 2: Never put yourself in a position where you succeed only if your country fails. The Democrats can't just wait for Bush to fail in Iraq, or hope the economy collapses, and assume they will benefit. People want to hear a positive alternative agenda. There can be a hard-nosed Democratic alternative. It is one that would say, &quot;Yes, let's win the war on terrorism, but that requires a multi-pronged approach that addresses all our vulnerabilities and levels with the American people.&quot;
 Right now the Bush bumper sticker reads: &quot;You Can Have It All: Guns, Butter, War With Iraq, Tax Cuts &amp; Humvees.&quot; This is nonsense. America has never won a war without the public being enlisted and summoned to sacrifice. Is there a Democrat ready to push for a crash oil-conservation program and development of renewable energy alternatives? That would also respond to European anger over Kyoto. Is there a Democrat ready to take on absurd U.S. farm subsidies and textile tariffs that help keep countries like Pakistan poor by keeping them hooked on aid, not trade? Is there a Democrat ready to take on the far-right Bush forces, which are now trying to undermine all U.S. support for global population controls? (Just what we need: more failed states with exploding populations.)
 Is there a Democrat ready to say we don't need more long-term tax cuts, which will only produce chronic large deficits that will reduce resources for both homeland security and Head Start? And our economy doesn't need more short-term tax stimulus either - it needs a successful war on terrorism. The economy is recovering slowly on its own. What's holding it back now are fears about terrorism and war with Iraq, which keep oil prices high and investment low. The minute those are resolved, you will see consumers ready to spend and companies ready to invest.
 Rule No. 3: Get a candidate people like. I don't know George Bush, and I do not like his domestic policies. But I find him hard to dislike. The &quot;likability factor&quot; is hugely underestimated in politics.
 Rule No. 4: Get a candidate who can give a fireside chat. In these confusing times, people crave a leader who can explain why we're doing what we're doing and how it will lead to a better world. That is what the Democrats need. Bush conveys a lot of sincerity, but he lacks the emotional or intellectual depth really to reassure people. I'm convinced that one reason for his high poll ratings is projection: We desperately want to believe that he knows what he is doing, and that he is always acting in the best interests of the country - and not on naked political considerations - because, if he isn't, we're all sunk.
 Right now there is only one Democrat who could live up to all these rules: the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Maybe the Democrats should give him a green card. He's tough on national security, he has an alternative global vision, people like him and he is a beautiful, reassuring speaker. He's Bill Clinton without baggage. I'd say he's a natural.
 
 <i>Thomas L. Friedman is a columnist for The New York Times, where this comment first appeared. </i>

TITLE: Getting the Democratic Party Started
TEXT: THE last several days have seen Henry Kissinger resign from leading the 9/11 commission, Trent Lott quit his post as incoming Senate majority leader and former Vice President Al Gore pull out of the 2004 presidential race. A little political tumult is good for the republic.
 
The families of the victims of 9/11 may get the honest assessments they crave from the commission. The GOP may reconsider its wink-and-nod courtship, as personified by Lott, of &quot;states' rights&quot; Southern Republicans.
 And the Democrats? They could grab the chance to come out of hiding and take some stands.
 Everyone from former NATO Commander Wesley Clark to Vermont Governor Howard Dean has a better (though still long) shot at the Democratic presidential nomination. The important question, however, is whether any of the contenders would give the Bush White House a run for its money in 2004.
 Gore's withdrawal, after midterm elections that clobbered the Democrats, exposes a party that seems downright frightened of opposing Republicans. The nadir was perhaps Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle's mealy mouthed defense of Lott after Lott made remarks that the non-Beltway world saw as openly racist. As for Gore's own recent decision to take traditional Democratic stands on tax cuts and backing the United Nations on Iraq, they came too late to help him or his party.
 Now the Democratic candidates can start by targeting each other, and more power to them. Where should the party stand on secret court proceedings for proclaimed terrorist enemies? For the idea of monitoring the daily lives of ordinary citizens? Does it make sense, as President George W. Bush is urging, to give the CIA a largely free hand in assassinating foreign leaders? Then there's the economy. What is the Democratic message going to be - roll back the Bush tax cuts? Targeted tax cuts for low and middle-income workers? Health insurance reforms?
 If the Democratic Party doesn't find a way to make itself relevant, it could be in the political wilderness like the GOP after Richard Nixon narrowly and bitterly lost to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election. It took eight years for the party - and of course Nixon himself - to come roaring back.
 The Democrats' success will depend on their being able to summon the gumption to challenge the White House, which can only benefit. One-party government doesn't help any party. Every government, even one that prefers keeping the focus on terrorism, needs its loyal opposition.

TITLE: Kremlin Found Good Diversion With Zakayev
TEXT: Akhmed Zakayev has become the Kremlin's most wanted man.
 
Moscow's reaction to Denmark's decision last month not to extradite Zakayev to Russia was furious. Moscow suspected Copenhagen of political bias in favor of Chechen separatists, accused the European Union of operating double standards, and threatened to raise the issue in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
 Moscow also followed up on its promise to chase Zakayev wherever he goes. Zakayev was arrested by British police after arriving in London on Dec. 6. Although he was quickly released on bail, he still faces long court procedings and the risk of being handed over to Moscow.
 Unlike separatist leaders like Aslan Maskhadov or Shamil Basayev, Zakayev has never been a focus of public attention. Instead, he has worked as an efficient negotiator in numerous discussions with the federal authorities, including personal meetings with Boris Yeltsin and, last year, with Kremlin envoy General Viktor Kazantsev.
 How did Zakayev, to paraphrase Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, become as dangerous to Russia as Osama bin Laden is to the United States?
 As it did in the Kaliningrad question, Moscow is treating accession to a Russian demand as a key condition to maintaining its engagement with Europe.
 In the case of the extradition case submitted to the Danish government, old Soviet habits resurfaced, and the Russian government was unable to make its case before the court of a European country. One television commentator has already commented that it is even more difficult to imagine Russia's prosecutor general, Vladimir Ustinov, before the British House of Lords. I am afraid that the problem is more serious and that the debate over Zakayev's extradition is shifting attention just as the Kremlin would like it to - in the wrong direction.
 Let's not forget what Zakayev has been doing: shuttling between European capitals urging Western support for peace talks aimed at a settlement of the situation in Chechnya. This has been particularly important, as Moscow has repeatedly declined any such talks, while the use of military force has become increasingly ineffective. At the same time, the obstinate position on the case was not surprising, considering electoral commitments made by President Vladimir Putin concerning Chechnya.
 The Chechen congress in Copenhagen, of which Zakayev was one of the main organizers, was intended to be an important landmark in the peace process. Sadly, the hostage situation in the Theater Center na Dubrovke sank these plans. Even worse, the terrorist attack gave Moscow a long-awaited pretext to exclude any consideration of peace talks with Chechen separatists.
 So Moscow's objective is not Zakayev. The issue at stake is the peace talks concerning Chechnya. However stupid the Russian government's attempt to depict Zakayev as a criminal may seem, it is generating the intended results.
 Zakayev's mission as a peace envoy has been irrevocably destroyed. Instead of trying to facilitate agreement and deals to create a favorable climate for the case for Chechen independence, he is now forced to defend himself. European politicians aren't likely to be impressed by the evidence presented by Moscow, but it will be very difficult for them to keep meeting Zakayev. At home, public attention has been redirected away from what is happening in Chechnya and to the chances of having Zakayev extradited. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has received a free hand to emulate the peace settlement by orchestrating efforts for a speedy referendum and new elections that are hoped to strengthen Moscow's control over the rebellious area.
 We can joke about the embarrassing performance from Russia's Prosecutor General's Office and the Soviet habits of the Russian political establishment, but they are attaining their objectives. It is doubtful, unfortunately, that it will bring any good news for the Chechen people or the region that has suffered for so long.
 
 <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>Battlefield Earth</b>
 <i>&quot;Our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a mass scale.&quot;
 </i> - George W. Bush
 

 
A legitimate fear indeed from the fearmonger-in-chief. But what about the far more likely scenario: That these short-cuts to mass destruction will be supplied not by outlaw regimes, but by &quot;lawful&quot; states?
 
What if, say, some hard-line element in the Chinese military slips a bit of chemical fireworks to a ragtag group looking to wreak freelance hell on the West? Or the Taliban's patrons in Pakistan's secret service provide their jihadic soulmates with nuclear ready-mades from that country's bristling atomic arsenal? Or a zealot in India's Hindu extremist government decides to usher in the world-ending age of Kalki with his country's nukes? What then?
 All these scenarios represent a much more imminent possibility than the doom-crying threat now attributed to the brokenbacked regime of Saddam Hussein. Yet we don't hear calls to bomb Beijing or incinerate Islamabad from the sternly pursed lips of President Can't-Chew-a-Pretzel.
 Of course, beyond the ever-increasing likelihood of bad juju leaking out of one of America's many business partners, there lies the most realistic possibility of all: that the &quot;shortcut&quot; technology of mass murder will come from the United States itself. Because, God knows, America's gilded &quot;guardians&quot; won't be able to stop it. Even the much-censored report on the Sept. 11 attacks issued this month by the U.S. Congress makes clear the horrendous record of lies, laxity and criminal negligence that constituted the response of the United States' $30-billion security apparatus to the red-flag warnings before the terrorist assault.
 If the apparatchiks couldn't stop a massive attack in broad daylight by 19 marked men - we now know that most of them had been rumbled by various intelligence services, and two were even roommates of an FBI informant - how can we possibly expect them to prevent some far more obscure, but equally deadly, threat: say, a disaffected player in the depths of America's gargantuan military complex shuffling some atrocious whizbangery to a well-heeled foreign terrorist? Or to a shifty middleman willing to buy - and sell - with no questions asked?
 No, the genie is long gone from the bottle in regard to &quot;shortcut technologies.&quot; They are out there, in endlessly mutable forms, with an almost infinite range of possibilities for their sale, transfer and deadly application in the &quot;war against civilization.&quot; Of course, it was &quot;civilization&quot; that developed these technologies and loosed them on the world in the first place. They were expressly designed - by the &quot;civilized&quot; world - to kill large numbers of people as quickly and indiscriminately as possible: the precise strategy followed by the Sept. 11 hijackers.
 Even now, avatars of civilization like Donald Rumsfeld are working in secret labs with billions of secret dollars to develop ever-more deadly weapons for secret armies: fearsome new weapons of mass destruction, &quot;precision&quot; ordnance to incinerate and obliterate human matter without mercy - and sci-fi torture implements to control &quot;unruly&quot; crowds with blistering rays that induce illness, boil skin, scramble brains and destroy nerves.
 And all of these weapons can be directed against anyone on earth - including U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil - at the unchecked, unchallengeable order of civilization's supreme leader, George W. Bush, who has now openly claimed this power for himself, The Associated Press reports. This chilling announcement was merely the public unveiling of a secret presidential directive issued a few weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, and first noted here in November 2001. As Global Eye said then, Bush's license to kill is deliberately vague. The definition of those worthy of death is left entirely up to the president: There is no legislative oversight, no judicial review, no public scrutiny. If he wants you dead, he can have you killed. It's as simple as that.
 These assassinations are &quot;legitimate,&quot; we're told, because &quot;the Bush administration and al-Qaida together have defined the entire world as a battlefield.&quot; Hence any action anywhere - targeted killing, kidnapping, torture, imprisonment - can now be justified as a &quot;military necessity.&quot;
 The measures taken by these &quot;civilized&quot; men go far beyond those necessary for the adequate defense of the country. They are obviously designed to facilitate a system of military dominance abroad and repression at home, whenever it's deemed necessary. If the regime actually cared about security, it could simply use the overwhelming powers and resources the government has long possessed.
 Instead, Bush blocked billions in bipartisan Congressional funding that would have sent immediate assistance to the real front line against terrorism: the police, fire and emergency services of America's communities. Instead, he budgeted $30 billion for a &quot;Homeland Security&quot; department that doesn't even include the failed security apparatus in its &quot;reforms.&quot; At every turn, he undercuts international efforts to curb nuclear proliferation, chemical weapons, landmines, money laundering and arms peddling, while his CIA operatives grease the international drug trade for their hired hands, the Afghan warlords.
 These are not the actions of someone whose primary concern is security for his people and peace in the world. But they are no doubt an inspiration for terrorists and &quot;outlaw regimes&quot; everywhere. To be successful, Bush says, to be a &quot;great power,&quot; you must squander your country's treasury on technologies of death and dominance; you must scorn law, embrace corruption, operate in secret; you must demonize your adversaries, strike first, kill their civilians - and subjugate your own people to the arbitrary will of the leader.
 &quot;Mad ambitions&quot; indeed.
 
 <i>
For annotational references, see the &quot;Opinion&quot; section at www.sptimesrussia.com </i>

TITLE: Iraq Blasts 'Little Bush,' Inspections Go On
AUTHOR: By Nadia Abou El-Magd
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD - Iraq has blasted what it calls the mad campaign of &quot;little Bush&quot;, the U.S. president threatening to go to war if Baghdad fails to give up alleged weapons of mass destruction.
 
Around Baghdad, UN experts looking for weapons visited three sites while Iraq said it would soon receive a first batch of Arab and European volunteers ready to act as human shields to try to stave off a U.S. attack.
 &quot;The administration of little Bush is launching a mad campaign based on lies and accusations,&quot; the ruling Baath Party newspaper al-Thawra wrote in a front-page editorial directed at President George W. Bush, whose father George Bush spearheaded the first U.S. campaign against Iraq as president in 1991
 Iraq insists it is hiding no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, though UN inspectors have called its arms declaration wanting and American and British officials have called it a lie.
 &quot;We have told the world we are not producing these kind of weapons, but it seems that the world is drugged, absent or in a weak position,&quot; President Saddam Hussein said Sunday during talks with visiting Belarus envoy Nikolai Ivanchenko.
 Hussein's scientific adviser Amir al-Saadi told reporters in Baghdad Sunday that Iraq had answered many of the questions about its weapons program in a declaration to the United Nations earlier this month or in interviews officials have given UN inspectors who have been working here since last month.
 Al-Saadi accused the United States and Britain of ignoring Iraq's replies and making judgments before UN experts could fully examine the Iraqi declaration.
 &quot;Why don't they let the specialized organs of the United Nations get on with their task?&quot; al-Saadi asked at a televised news conference.
 &quot;We don't even have an objection if the CIA itself comes and joins the inspection teams to show them the places which they claim have something,&quot; he said.
 Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has said the Iraqi weapons declaration earlier this month leaves so many unanswered questions that it is impossible to confirm the accuracy of Iraq's claim to have no weapons of mass destruction. Blix has asked the United States and Britain to share intelligence to help inspectors determine the truth.
 U.S. President George W. Bush, pointing to what U.S. officials call fabrications and omissions in the declaration, has already declared Iraq in &quot;material breach&quot; of UN demands but has decided to hold off any military response for at least a month as the Americans seek to build UN support for attacking Hussein.
 In Washington, a senior Bush administration official said on condition of anonymity Sunday that the United States is in &quot;watch and wait&quot; mode this week.
 &quot;Iraq's actions to date suggest they have not made the strategic choice to disarm,&quot; the official said. &quot;While we have not given up on disarming Iraq through the United Nations, we are now entering a final phase in how we compel Saddam Hussein to disarm.&quot;
 Babil, the Iraqi newspaper run by Hussein's son Odai, said in a front-page editorial Monday that the United States was a &quot;terrorist country&quot; that wanted to attack Iraq as part of a plot to control the region.
 On the streets, Iraqis expected war. &quot;Of course I'm afraid,&quot; said a 35-year-old woman shopping Sunday in Baghdad who gave only her first name, Solafa. &quot;Most people don't know what is going on, the media are keeping people in a coma. TV doesn't broadcast the latest news, some people don't even know that there are inspectors in the country.&quot;
 UN experts have made almost daily inspections since resuming work last month, working in Iraq for the first time since teams left in 1998 ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes launched to punish Baghdad for alleged failure to cooperate.
 Sites visited Monday included a military industrial facility at Al Fao. Last week at Al Fao, inspectors were briefly delayed getting into a guest house at the complex while officials there sought permission to let them enter.
 A year ago, an Iraqi engineer who said he defected after having been arrested inside the country reported working for the Iraqi government's Military Industrialization Organization and an affiliated company, Al Fao.
 In an interview with The New York Times, conducted in December 2001 in Thailand, the engineer said his work involved repairing secret storage facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

TITLE: Thousands March, Call For ETA To Disband
AUTHOR: By Alberto Letona
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BILBAO, Spain - Tens of thousands of people marched in silence through the coastal city of Bilbao on Sunday to demand the dissolution of the armed Basque separatist group ETA.
 
The noon rally was convened by the Basque regional government, run by the moderate Basque Nationalist Party, which says it favors independence through peaceful means and rejects ETA and its 34-year-old campaign of bombings and shootings.
 At the front of the procession were eight members of the party's youth wing, carrying a banner which read &quot;ETA, kampora&quot; - Basque for &quot;ETA, disappear.&quot;
 &quot;I hope this is the last time I have to demonstrate against ETA,&quot; said Alberto Gomez, a 48-year-old bank employee.
 Bilbao municipal police estimated attendance at 60,000.
 All of Spain's mainstream parties in the region took part except for the Basque branch of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party. It said the march was a tactic by Basque President Juan Jose Ibarretxe, whom the Madrid government accuses of being soft on ETA and its now-suspended political wing, Batasuna.
 Ibarretxe infuriated the Spanish government this autumn with a proposal to make the Basque region an associated free state, along the lines of Puerto Rico's relationship with the United States. Aznar rules out any change in the Basque region's status as part of Spain.
 Ibarretxe's government says it had been planning for weeks to stage a rally against ETA and that the march was not just in response to last week's shooting death of a policeman outside Madrid by an alleged ETA commando unit of two men. The government says the two were headed into the city to stage bombing attacks on New Year's Eve.
 Demonstrators criticized the Popular Party Sunday for missing a chance to join moderate Basques in denouncing ETA, blamed for more than 800 deaths since 1968.
 &quot;I don't understand the Popular Party's position,&quot; said Marialuisa Antxia, a 49-year-old homemaker. &quot;The theme of this rally should bring together all democratic forces in the Basque country.&quot;
 Also Sunday, a man considered to be a top ETA military chief slipped from jail in southwest France, police said. Ibon Fernandez de Iradi escaped from the Bayonne police station after being questioned Saturday night.
 Madrid has long sought him in connection with some 18 attacks, including the killing of an industrialist, a politician and a Basque police officer. French police searched for him and set up roadblocks around the region.
 France and Spain cooperate closely to hunt down ETA members. France's peaceful Basque country is used by ETA as a safe haven.
 Iradi was arrested Thursday along with eight others in what Spain hailed as one of the biggest blows to the armed separatist organization.
 French police launched an internal investigation was mounted to determine how Iradi escaped from the station and why his escape was discovered only hours later. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy suspended the five police officers on duty Saturday night while awaiting the results of the inquiry, the Interior Ministry said.

TITLE: Colombian Rebels Start To Embrace Modern Technology
AUTHOR: By Vanessa Arrington
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BOGOTA, Colombia - Tucked inside a small room in a downtown apartment building, an illiterate but mechanically trained rebel operates a remote control device.
 
Two miles away, a car without a driver slowly creeps along a shadowy street, a camera guiding it to the site where it will blow up with the click of a button.
 &quot;Just like PlayStation,&quot; explained an anti-terrorist police officer in Colombia's capital, Bogota.
 Bogota police prevented such a scenario earlier this month when they unraveled a rebel plan to guide five driver-less cars to police, army and public targets and set off the thousands of pounds of explosives inside the cars - all from the comfort of their own homes.
 Though the alleged plot was broken up, the proof of the rebels' new advanced technology has sparked more fear of what's to come.
 &quot;This is something that we have never seen before,&quot; said the police officer, who works undercover on the streets of Bogota and asked not to be identified. &quot;The imagination of these people has no limits.&quot;
 Homemade grenades, crude mortar rounds fashioned from cooking-gas cylinders and bombs tied to animals - mainly donkeys and horses - used to be enough for the leftist rebels fighting the government in Colombia's 38-year civil war.
 But in their stepped-up war against the hardline government of President Alvaro Uribe, rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have embraced new technology that authorities insist foreign terrorist groups must have introduced to them.
 The rebels' growing sophistication was flamboyantly displayed on Aug. 7 when Uribe took office amid a shower of mortar rounds fired from over a mile away that killed 21 people. Before then, police had not known the rebels possessed projectiles with such range.
 Authorities said the technology used in the attack was similar to that used by the Irish Republican Army. In the ongoing trial of three IRA-linked men accused of training Colombian rebels, army Major Carlos Matiz testified that rebels have acquired new technology from groups such as the IRA, Spain's ETA and Peru's Shining Path.
 The three Irish suspects were arrested at the Bogota airport after prosecutors say they spent several weeks training rebels in bomb-making techniques in a former rebel safe haven in southern Colombian.
 Former President Andres Pastrana gave FARC rebels control of a Switzerland-sized zone of jungle and cattle ranches before launching peace talks in late 1998. But the talks inside the zone went nowhere and on Feb. 20, Pastrana called off the negotiations and sent troops back into the safe haven.
 The Bogota police officer said the rebels took full advantage of the zone to test and refine new methods they allegedly learned from foreigners.
 &quot;They used it as a laboratory for terror,&quot; he said.
 Since troops have gone back into the zone, rebel leaders have less open space to plan their attacks, but the insurgents still control enough remote areas of Colombia for officials to believe that leaders are masterminding more high-tech attacks.
 A police offensive launched after a car bomb exploded in a Bogota grocery store parking lot Dec. 9 turned up a suspected rebel driving with explosives. Information he provided led to the discovery of the plan to detonate the driver-less cars.
 Police found three cars already prepared with explosives and the remote-control equipment, which police tested and found to work, said the anti-terror officer, who was involved in breaking up the plot.
 Two other cars were found, partially prepared for a remote-control attack - and the equipment to be used in them was uncovered in a Bogota clothing store, the officer said.
 Seven suspected rebels were arrested in connection to the plot. The officer said those preparing the remote-control cars were illiterate Colombians, recruited by the rebels and trained in the technology.
 About 65 people were injured in the Dec. 9 attack in which 110 pounds of explosives were used. In the foiled attacks, each of the driver-less cars held around ten times that amount.
 Though rebel groups have often called Christmas truces in the past, authorities are anticipating the worst this holiday season.
 Members of a new government committee are frequently meeting to coordinate counterterrorism efforts, and police and military officials are working overtime to search houses, set up roadblocks and arrest suspected rebels in the hope of finding clues to avert the next attack.

TITLE: Zenit Looks To Future With New Head Coach
AUTHOR: By Christopher Hamilton
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburg got its first glimpse of Zenit's new head coach, Vlastimil Petrzela of the Czech Republic, at a press conference with the club's president, Vitaly Mutko, on Friday.
 
&quot;I'm very happy to be in St. Petersburg,&quot; Petrzela said through an interpreter. &quot;I've seen everything from the club's youth academy to the team's system, and it's everything that I ever wanted [to work with].&quot;
 &quot;As I am new to the team, I can look at all the players as equals. I want to build a team of players who can work well together,&quot; said Petrzela, who described his coaching style as &quot;democratic.&quot;
 &quot;I have always respected Russian athletes, because they are usually among the best,&quot; he added.
 Mutko said Zenit is aiming to rid itself of the inconsistency that plagued it this year. 
 &quot;Our goal is to qualify for a European competition next year,&quot; he said. &quot;For seven years, I have poured my heart and soul into this team, and I am tired of working with amateurs.&quot;
 &quot;This year, Zenit pretty much made 10th place without a solid coaching team. We had a strong start with [former head coach Yury] Morozov, and then things began to fall apart,&quot; Mutko said, referring to the hiatus caused by Morozov's retirement for health reasons in May. &quot;Yet, if you at it statistically, we did as well as we did last season [when Zenit finished in third place].&quot;
 As part of the new strategy, the club has made many players available for transfer, including Predrag Randjelovic, Vladimir Mudrinic and Milan Vesnica, the three highly touted Yugoslavs who became Zenit's first signings from outside the former Soviet countries at the beginning of the season. beginning of last season
 &quot;The Yugoslav plan didn't work out, so now we are trying out the Czech plan,&quot; Mutko joked.
 Joining the three Yugoslavs on the transfer list are midfielders Boris Gorovoi, Denis Ugarov and Romanian Zeno Bundea, Belarussian forward Dmitry Ogorodinik, goalkeeper Alexander Makarov and stalwart defender Dmitry Davydov, son of former Zenit head coach Anatoly Davydov.
 &quot;Discipline, respect, and a desire to play for Zenit were the main criteria for determining who got to stay,&quot; Mutko said. &quot;We only wanted players who will give their all for the team. This team has made stars out of certain players but, if they think they're bigger than the team, then we are not interested in them.&quot;
 Petrzela, whose two-year contract was approved by Zenit's board of directors last week, revealed some of his practical plans for the future.
 &quot;I know that the team has a number of young players,&quot; he said. &quot;What we need to do is to get them to work as a team.&quot;
 &quot;Having reviewed a number of tapes, I can see that they can't play in a 4-4-2 formation,&quot; he said. &quot;For this reason, we need a strong central midfielder, as well as a strong defender. I am not that familiar with the Russian league, [so] I've invited two players from Sparta [Prague], whom I trained in the past.&quot;
 The two players in question are Martin Horak, a competent tactical defender, and Radek Sirl, a Czech under-21 international midfielder who has been described as a speedy, aggressive midfielder with strong technical skills.
 &quot;They played for me when Bohemians [Prague, which Petrzela coached from 1996 to 2002] challenged Sparta for the championship title,&quot; Petrzela said.
 &quot;Unfortunately, as often happens, Sparta then lured them away,&quot; he said. &quot;They know that they will have to play better than the [Russian] players to earn my respect - as well as the respect of the fans.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Oracle Into Final
 </b>

AUCKLAND - Software billionaire Larry Ellison's Oracle BMW Racing completed a 4-0 whitewash of bitter U.S. rival OneWorld on Monday to win a place in the America's Cup challengers series final.
 Oracle won the fourth race of their challengers semi-finals repechage by 64 seconds over OneWorld, which had led for the first half of the race and looked set to push the best-of-seven race series into at least one more day.
 But Oracle fought back strongly and will now sail against leading Cup contenders Alinghi of Switzerland in the Louis Vuitton Cup challengers final from January 11.
 Ellison's $85 million team won four straight repechage races against OneWorld but finished with a five-point advantage after OneWorld were penalised a point for possessing secrets from other teams in a long-running boat design scandal.
 Oracle was beaten 4-0 by Alinghi in their "double chance" semi-final to be forced into the repechage.
 The challengers final is now shaping as a billionaires' battle with Ellison's team advancing to take on biotechnology heir Ernesto Bertarelli's strong Swiss syndicate.
 
 
<b>Sychyov Settles
 </b>

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Spartak Moscow striker Dmitry Sychyov is eager to join French first division leader Olympique Marseille after settling his four-month dispute with the Russian club.
 The 19-year-old, who walked out on Spartak earlier this year, is expected to sign for an undisclosed fee on January 1.
 "I'm satisfied with the offer and I'm also happy the conflict between myself and my former club is over," Sychyov was quoted as saying by Sport Express newspaper on Sunday. "I'm very tired and I'm just glad it's all over."
 The forward was banned by the Russian Professional Football League for four months in September for leaving the Moscow team, a sanction that expires on Jan. 4.
 In August, Sychyov shocked the Russian game by submitting a written request to scrap his contract with Spartak after accusing the club of failing to pay a $10,000 signing bonus.
 Spartak was reported to want 6 million euros ($6.15 million) for the striker, widely regarded as Russia's best player during its miserable World Cup earlier this year when it was knocked out in the first round.
 But club spokesperson Alexei Zinin said earlier this week: "It wasn't that amount, but the sum suits Spartak."
 Russian media have since reported that the transfer fee was about half what Spartak wanted, but Sychev's agent Pavel Andreyev has declined to give details about either its length or amount.
 "Both parts are good," Andreyev said on Sunday. "We're really happy that the compromise with Spartak was found."
 
<b>Aussies Crush Sri Lanka
 </b>

PERTH (Reuters) - Australia crushed Sri Lanka by 142 runs in a triangular series one-day match to overtake England at the top of the competition standings on Monday.
 Australia made a record total of 305 for five from 50 overs, makeshift opener Darren Lehmann hitting a career-best 119 and Matthew Hayden scoring 64.
 Sri Lanka, in reply, collapsed to 163 all out in 43 overs with Australian fast bowler Brett Lee and all-rounder Shane Watson capturing three wickets each.
 
 
<b>Rose To Be Reinstated?
 </b>

NEW YORK (AP) - Baseball's Hall of Fame has started contacting its 58 living members, hoping to set up a meeting Jan. 17 in Los Angeles to discuss Pete Rose's possible reinstatement.
 Rose and commisioner Bud Selig are negotiating a possible end to the permanent ban the career hits leader agreed to in 1989 after an investigation of his gambling. Because he's banned, Rose cannot appear on the Hall ballot.
 DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer, met with Hall chairperson Jane Forbes Clark, Hall President Dale Petroskey and Hall Vice Chairperson Joe Morgan to brief them on the negotiations. Morgan, a Hall of Fame second baseman, has pushed for a compromise between Selig and his ex-teammate.
 "But it all starts with Pete," Morgan said during the World Series. "He's got to come clean." 



TITLE: NFL's Playoff Picture Becoming Clearer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Rich Gannon and Eddie George helped their teams clinch division titles - with a little help from their big rivals.
 
Gannon set the NFL record for completions in a season and passed for 201 yards as the Raiders won the AFC West for the third straight season with a 28-16 home victory over Denver on Sunday. The Raiders (10-5) were able to clinch after the San Diego Chargers lost 24-22 to Kansas City.
 Tennessee clinched the AFC South with a 28-10 victory in Jacksonville, with George running for two touchdowns and 89 yards. The Titans (10-5) also got some assistance en route to the division crown - Indianapolis lost at home 44-27 to the New York Giants.
 The rest of the AFC playoff race is unclear. Twelve of the 16 teams remain mathematically alive for the playoffs - only Houston, Cincinnati, Jacksonville and Buffalo have been eliminated.
 In the NFC, Tampa Bay (11-3) clinched the NFC South without playing because New Orleans lost 20-13 to Cincinnati. If Philadelphia (12-3) beats the New York Giants next weekend, the Eagles get home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.
 Gannon broke Warren Moon's 11-year-old record for completions in a season in the second quarter and now has 411 completions this season. He finished 18-for-27 with one TD and needs 475 yards in the season finale against Kansas City to break Dan Marino's record of 5,084 yards passing, set in 1984.
 After scoring on its first three possessions, Oakland weathered a strong second-half comeback led by backup Steve Beuerlein, who passed for 234 yards after relieving an injured Brian Griese for Denver (8-7).
 
 <strong>
N.Y. Jets 30, New England 17. </strong>In Foxboro, Massachusets, Chad Pennington threw three touchdown passes and Curtis Martin became the second NFL player to rush for at least 1,000 yards in each of his first eight seasons.
 
The Jets (8-7) avoided playoff elimination and improved to 7-4 since Pennington became the starter. Martin finished with 106 yards for a total of 1,011 this season. Barry Sanders ran for 1,000 yards in his first 10 seasons.
 If the Jets beat Green Bay, and New England (8-7) beats Miami next weekend, New York will win the division. If Miami beats the Patriots, the Dolphins win the division. New England wins if it beats the Dolphins, and the Jets lose.
 
 <strong>
N.Y. Giants 44, Indianapolis 27. </strong>In Indianapolis, Amani Toomer caught three touchdown passes and Kerry Collins threw for 366 yards as the Giants won their third straight and took the inside track for a wild-card playoff berth.
 
If the Giants (9-6) beat Philadelphia on Saturday, they make the playoffs. Toomer finished with 10 catches for 204 yards and tight end Jeremy Shockey had seven catches for 116 yards.
 Peyton Manning was 30-of-46 for 365 yards for Indianapolis (9-6) and became the first passer in NFL history to throw for 4,000 yards in four straight seasons. The Colts almost certainly must win next week against Jacksonville to make the playoffs.
 
 <strong>
Green Bay 10, Buffalo 0. </strong>In Green Bay, Wisconsin, Vonnie Holliday sacked Drew Bledsoe five times, forcing fumbles on three, less than 24 hours after his 16-year-old cousin died of a congenital heart defect.
 
Holliday's first forced fumble led to Green Bay's only touchdown and his last ended Buffalo's hopes with 1:13 left.
 The Packers (12-3) are the only NFL team to win all their home games this season. The Bills (7-8) were eliminated from the playoff race.

TITLE: Hurricanes Blowing Hot At Right Time
AUTHOR: By David Droschak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: RALEIGH, North Carolina - Beating the top team in the NHL gave the Carolina Hurricanes more than confidence, it got them back on their game.
 
&quot;When you play a team as dominant as Dallas you know you can't cheat [on offense], so you never try to and that's the crux of our game,&quot; Carolina coach Paul Maurice said after a 1-0 win over the Stars on Sunday.
 &quot;You don't hang in the offensive zone, pinch when you shouldn't or leave the defensive zone early because that team will make you look terrible,&quot; he said. &quot;So, you play a good solid team game and your defense is always better.&quot;
 Jeff O'Neill scored with 8:32 left and Kevin Weekes stopped 28 shots for his second shutout of the season in a key win heading into the Christmas break.
 The Hurricanes' victory over the top scoring team in the league moved the defending Eastern Conference champions into a first-place tie in the Southeast Division with Tampa Bay at 38 points.
 &quot;This is a good way to go into the break - for the coaches, too,&quot; said Maurice, whose club rallied for a 3-2 overtime win in Atlanta on Friday night.
 &quot;You don't have to stew about the last two games that could have gotten away and you're fretting about where the team is at. You know they're going to come back positive and excited about the second half.
 &quot;In a lot of ways Christmas kind of closes the book on last season and we can get excited about our push to the playoffs.&quot;
 O'Neill's team-leading fifth game-winner came two days after he sent the game into overtime against the Thrashers, scoring from his knees.
 &quot;I'm trying to put my game together,&quot; said O'Neill who has 11 goals after scoring 41 and 31 the last two seasons. &quot;I've struggled early on and not a lot of good things have happened.&quot;
 Weekes recorded the 10th shutout of his career two games after returning from a concussion that sidelined him for three weeks.
 &quot;He was just so solid in that net,&quot; Maurice said. &quot;It looks like he never missed a beat. In a game like this, the difference is to be able to make big saves.&quot;
 Ron Francis got his 1,200th career assist on O'Neill's goal. Only Wayne Gretzky has more assists (1,963) than Francis.
 &quot;It's hard to find words to express what this guy is to the history of the game,&quot; said Dallas coach Dave Tippett, who played with Francis in Hartford. &quot;He's right there with the elite of the elite.&quot;
 The game was a defensive struggle and appeared to be headed to overtime before Sami Kapanen got Marty Turco leaning the wrong way in net and then fed O'Neill, who slipped the puck between the legs of the Dallas goalie.
 Dallas didn't generate much offense after coming off Saturday's 5-3 loss at New Jersey. The Stars completed a five-game road trip, and were without star Mike Modano for a third straight game. Modano is out with a concussion, and his team went 0-2-1 without him.
 &quot;I'm the last line of defense, but certainly if they have to get through three different phases of our defense that goes to show you how well we played as a team,&quot; Weekes said.
 O'Neill's apparent goal with 0:27.1 left in the first was waved off because Carolina defenseman Sean Hill was called for a slashing penalty behind the play.
 
 <strong>
Chicago 3, Los Angeles 1. </strong>In Chicago, Jocelyn Thibault blocked 24 shots, and three Blackhawks scored in a victory over Los Angeles.
 
Sergei Berezin, Kyle Calder and Eric Daze had goals for the Blackhawks, 6-1-1 in their last eight games.
 Erik Rasmussen scored for the Kings, who lost for only the second time in seven games (5-2). Los Angeles' Felix Potvin stopped 17 shots.
 Chicago went 0-for-3 on the power play and has converted just one of 37 chances. The Kings were 0-for-5 on the power play.
 
 <strong>
Anaheim 4, Coyotes 0. </strong>In Anaheim, California, Jean-Sebastien Giguere had his fourth shutout in six games and was backed by power-play goals from Matt Cullen and Niclas Havelid as the Ducks extended their home unbeaten streak to nine games Sunday night with a 4-0 victory over the Phoenix Coyotes.
 
&quot;Right now, the puck is going in when we shoot it,&quot; Anaheim coach Mike Babcock said. &quot;The reality is, we're not the biggest team in the league, and everyone knows it. But if we can bury 'em on the power play, it's hard for the other team to play stupid against us.&quot;
 Phoenix center Daniel Briere was serving a hooking penalty when Paul Kariya spotted Cullen cruising down the slot and threaded a backhand pass to him as he slipped behind Phoenix left wing Paul Ranheim.
 Cullen beat goalie Brian Boucher high to the glove side midway through the first period for a 2-0 lead.
 The Ducks completed the scoring four minutes into the third with their eighth power-play goal in three games, as Havelid beat Zac Bierk with a slap shot from the top of the left circle for his second goal of the night.

TITLE: Slumping Lakers Hold On To Break Streak in Toronto
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TORONTO - The struggling Los Angeles Lakers barely escaped Toronto with a win.
 
Kobe Bryant scored 31 points, including a layup with 0:33.2 left in overtime, as the Lakers ended a three-game losing streak with a 109-107 victory over the Raptors on Sunday. Shaquille O'Neal added 31 points and 15 rebounds for the Lakers, who won once on their four-game road trip. The Raptors were without injured All-Star Vince Carter and leading rebounder Antonio Davis.
 &quot;We're just treading water right now,&quot; Los Angeles coach Phil Jackson said.
 Morris Peterson had a game-high 27 for the Raptors, who have lost seven of eight. Peterson's 3-pointer with 9.2 seconds left in regulation appeared to give Toronto a one-point lead, but official Michael Henderson ruled it a two.
 &quot;He didn't make any calls. He missed them all,&quot; Toronto coach Lenny Wilkens said.
 Toronto's Lindsey Hunter also complained about the officials, saying they &quot;just don't want us to win&quot; late in the fourth quarter.
 Rick Fox's layup gave Los Angeles a 106-104 lead with 2:12 left in overtime, but Jerome Williams grabbed an offensive rebound, dunked and converted a 3-point play, giving Toronto a 107-106 lead with 1:52 left.
 O'Neal then missed a short jumper, and Brian Shaw missed a 3-pointer.
 After Peterson's pass deflected off Alvin Williams' hand, Bryant picked up the ball and made a layup, giving Los Angeles a 108-107 lead with 0:33.2 left. Robert Horry then made one of two free throws to make it 109-107 with 0:08.5 left.
 O'Neal fouled Hunter on a layup attempt. Hunter then missed the first free throw attempt before intentionally missing the second. The ball went off a Laker, giving the Raptors the possession with 0:01.4 left.
 Hunter then slipped out of bounds after receiving the inbounds pass, sealing the win for the Lakers, who improved to 3-13 on the road.
 Bryant said the Lakers are struggling because they are tired.
 &quot;We've won championships in the past few seasons, but in the process we've played four seasons,&quot; Bryant said. &quot;It takes a toll on your body. We also face teams that come out every night and play their best basketball.&quot;
 Derek Fisher's 6-meter jumper gave Los Angeles a four-point lead with less than two minutes left in regulation, but Jerome Williams followed with a jumper.
 After Bryant missed one of his two free throw attempts, Hunter made a long jumper to cut Los Angeles' lead to two with 40 seconds left.
 Jerome Williams then blocked Bryant's leaning jump shot attempt with 18 seconds left. Peterson then followed with what appeared to be his go-ahead 3-pointer with 0:09.2 seconds left in regulation, but the officials ruled it a two, tying the game at 102.
 Fisher then missed a jumper at the buzzer, sending the game into overtime.
 &quot;We had to pull this one out of the fire,&quot; Jackson said. &quot;This was very close to the prototype of the way we've been playing. We just can't seem to break through.&quot;
 The Raptors trailed by 11 midway through the third quarter, but pulled within two with 3:08 left in the period with an 8-2 run. Hunter's consecutive 3-pointers early in the fourth gave Toronto a 82-81 lead - its first lead since early in the first quarter.
 Bryant scored 22 points and had four assists as Los Angeles led 54-45 at halftime. O'Neal had 13 points and 12 rebounds in the first half, but he missednine of his 10 free throws. 
 
 <i>
(For other results, see Scorecard.) </i>