SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #836 (4), Tuesday, January 21, 2003
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TITLE: Jordan Ousted As Head Of NTV
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Boris Jordan - a U.S.-born investment banker who took charge of NTV television during a highly politicized takeover by government-controlled Gazprom and oversaw the channel's comeback - was suddenly fired on Friday as general director of NTV's parent company, Gazprom-Media.
Although, technically, Jordan remains general director of NTV, he is certain to lose this position, too. Alexander Dybal, the low-profile chairperson of Gazprom-Media's board, who was voted in Friday to replace Jordan as the holding's general director, said a change in NTV management can be expected.
"We have different viewpoints on corporate governance and strategy of business development," Dybal was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Jordan's spokesperson, Oleg Sapozhnikov, suggested there was a political motive behind the decision. "We think the true reasons for the dismissal are outside the realm of business, because, previously, the shareholders had more than once expressed satisfaction with the management's work and the development strategy it had chosen," he said.
In September, Gazprom struck a deal with government-linked bank Evrofinans to restructure Gazprom-Media into a new holding, 51-percent owned by Gazprom and 49 percent by Yevrofinans, which assumed Gazprom-Media's debts of $600 million and put up $100 million in cash. In a statement announcing the deal, shareholders said that, in recognition of Jordan's and his team's efforts in reviving the company after it nearly collapsed in the battle between Gazprom and NTV founder Vladimir Gusinsky, NTV management would get 10 percent of the television company, while Jordan would get the option to buy 5 percent of the new holding, in non-voting shares, plus a three-year contract to run it.
Jordan's firing appeared to be the result of several factors, some political, others business-related and personal. But whether it had to do with President Vladimir Putin's fury over the way NTV covered the October hostage crisis in Moscow, Jordan's refusal to sell NTV's ads through the advertising market's near monopolist Video International - a company founded by the current press minister - or whether it was his unwillingness, or inability, to rein in the channel's editorial policy or his strained relationship with his immediate boss, Dybal, and rival media executives, it boils down to a perhaps unpleasant conclusion: that Jordan's proclaimed Western-style, business-only approach to running the country's leading privately managed media holding was rejected by the highly politicized, financially opaque and personally interconnected media environment.
"It's a tangle of subjective and objective causes complicated all the more by the current political situation," said Anna Kachkayeva, a media analyst with Radio Liberty. "He regarded our Byzantine system of interaction with a certain contempt, including in the business field, and didn't play by the rules. He didn't manage to build up a relationship with his rivals, Channel One's Konstantin Ernst and VGTRK's Oleg Dobrodeyev. He lost the support of a political clan and didn't get the support of another. He remained a foreign body in the system, which would reject him sooner or later."
"The hostage drama expedited this process," she said. "When Putin came crashing down [on NTV], that sent the signal that Jordan should be avoided like the plague."
At a meeting with media managers in November, at which NTV managers were conspicuously absent, Putin strongly criticized the station's coverage of the hostage crisis. Without explicitly naming NTV, he accused it of putting its ratings above the lives of the hostages and took a jab at Jordan, who holds a U.S. passport.
"Thank God someone can make money, but not at any cost, not on the blood of your own citizens, if, of course, those who do this consider these citizens to be their own," Putin said.
In the runup to Jordan's ouster, several newspapers published stories citing unnamed Gazprom sources accusing him of padding his triumphal reports of NTV achieving profitability last year for the first time in its history. As late as Thursday, there were reports that NTV had damaged Gazprom's business interests in Kazakhstan by airing a documentary in December in which opposition figures accused Kazakh government officials of corruption in regard to oil-and-gas transit.
"Taking into account the damage to Gazprom's economic interests, the company's leadership may resort to quite tough actions in regard to [NTV's] top management," the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta said Thursday. Vremya Novostei, which is believed to be tied to Kremlin Chief of Staff Alexander Voloshin, ran an advertorial on the same day of the same substance.
These reports ran the same day Jordan had a decisive meeting with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller. Miller was supposed to have met with Putin the day before, but there was no confirmation the meeting took place.
Jordan could not be reached this weekend. In an interview with The Washington Post published Saturday, he said tensions with the Kremlin rose after the hostage crisis, and Press Minister Mikhail Lesin told him he needed to discuss the differences with Gazprom. Jordan said he did not expect Gazprom's reaction. "I felt there would be pressure, and we would deal with it and go on," he said. "This came as a bit of a surprise."
The government has distanced itself from Gazprom's decision to fire Jordan. The Press Ministry declined to comment.
"Is Gazprom-Media a news organization? No," Lesin told reporters Friday. "Then why are you asking me about it? Call the Registration Chamber."
A government source, however, said Jordan had alienated most of the establishment by his arrogance and failure to play the game. "In the end, there was nobody to defend him," the source said.
Inside sources said Jordan was negotiating the compensation he is due under the early termination clause of his contract as general director of Gazprom-Media, a position he has held since October 2001. Dybal said Jordan would be compensated, describing the sum only as "fair and significant." The word in media circles put the bargaining in a range from $10 million to $75 million.
TITLE: Ouster of Jordan Puts Dybal at Center Stage
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Friday's sacking of NTV general director Boris Jordan from his position as CEO of NTV's parent company, Gazprom-Media, has thrust little-known St. Petersburg media entrepreneur Alexander Dybal into the public spotlight. Dybal, a 36-year-old businessperson who is believed to have ties to President Vladimir Putin's inner circle, is now seen as one of the leading candidates to replace Jordan as head of the television channel as well.
Dybal came to Moscow at the request of a close Putin ally, Alexei Miller, who appointed him chief of Gazprom's information-policy department shortly after Miller himself was named the gas company's chief executive in 2001. In October of that year, Dybal was made the chairperson of Gazprom-Media's board of directors, even though he had been expected to replace Alfred Kokh as Gazprom-Media's chief executive. That job went to Jordan.
"I have worked in independent media for more than 10 years and can, thus, lead to the creation of a new media company that will be based on business, not politics," Dybal said on Oct. 25, 2001, at his only joint news conference with Jordan.
Despite his relatively young age, Dybal is indeed one of the pioneers of private media in Russia. In 1990, together with former journalist Oleg Rudnov, he founded Radio Baltika - St. Petersburg's first independent radio station that, like Ekho Moskvy in Moscow, gained popularity and influence for its coverage of the attempted coup in 1991. He served as the station's commercial director.
In 1995, Dybal followed Rudnov to St. Petersburg state television, GTRK-Peterburg Channel Five, which, at the time, broadcast far beyond the city's limits and had the reputation of being liberal in its coverage.
During 1996 mayoral elections, when Channel Five supported St. Petersburg Governor Anatoly Sobchak, Rudnov was Channel Five's chairperson and Dybal was its general director. Putin ran Sobchak's failed re-election campaign.
In 1997, when national Kultura channel was formed on the basis of Channel Five's national network, Dybal returned to Radio Baltika. When Putin came to his native city for Sobchak's burial in 2000, he gave his first detailed interview as acting president to the radio station, Kommerstant reported.
Shortly before joining Gazprom, Dybal was in charge of the media department at the North-West Center of Strategic Development, a think tank led by Georgy Kovalchuk, whom the Kommersant newspaper described as a friend of Putin's.
Dybal left a good impression at Radio Baltika. "I have never heard a single bad thing about him. We still maintain friendly ties with him," said Roman Osadchy, a station employee, in a telephone interview Monday.
However, Ruslan Linkov, a liberal St. Petersburg politician, said Rudnov and Dybal led Channel Five into a deep crisis for their editorial and economical policies.
"They are people without a political position," Linkov said by telephone. "They were with Sobchak at a certain time and then worked with [St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir] Yakovlev."
At Gazprom-Media, Dybal's partnership with Jordan went through an initial friendly phase before spoiling to such a degree that, as Kommersant quoted Dybal as saying last week, he was denied a pass to NTV premises.
"Jordan has seriously underestimated Dybal, who turned out by far to be not as petty and stupid as he thought," said a top government official, who did not want to be named. "In the end, Dybal outplayed Jordan."
Dybal could not be reached for comment Monday. In interviews with other newspapers over the weekend he refused to elaborate on the nature of Gazprom's business differences with Jordan. He also declined to say whether he will become NTV's general director.
He said, however, that he initiated the push for Jordan's resignation, which was approved by Miller.
He also hinted that Jordan ignored him and, by proxy, Gazprom, in making some key business decisions. "There were several major decisions, which are important for the development of the holding, that were not approved [by Gazprom]," he was quoted by Vedomosti on Monday as saying. "Shareholders had to face a fait accomplis."
It was not immediately clear what kind of decisions Dybal meant.
Dybal, who was put in charge of appraising Gazprom-Media for a possible sale, also appears to have negotiated the holding's future separately from Jordan. Last month, he met with Martin Pompadour, vice president of Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp Europe, without Jordan, Radio Liberty reported.
Sergei Savushkin, the former general director of the now-defunct AST-Prometei television who was ousted by Jordan's team in February last year, said on Monday that his meetings with Dybal had left him with the impression that Dybal was a small-scale media manager unprepared for the challenges of big media.
"He is a young manager with experience running a regional radio station - probably an able one, with some merits," said Savushkin, who now runs the new Rambler-TV network. "But he does not have enough experience in running a TV station and a media holding. I have the impression that it was by coincidence that he was propelled to a position that he himself is not ready for."
TITLE: Tyulpanov Election Fallout Continues
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Less than a week after saying that he was ready "to build a constructive relationship" with the Legislative Assembly and its newly chosen speaker, Vadim Tyulpanov, Governor Vladimir Yakovlev was much less positive in reported comments about the situation made on Monday.
Yakovlev's spokesperson, Alexander Afanasyev, ridiculed the election of Tyulpanov last Wednesday - by a vote of 28 to 19 over incumbent speaker and Smolny favorite Sergei Tarasov - saying that it was a sign that democracy had "come to an end" in the Legislative Assembly.
"It is good, of course, that the Legislative Assembly was able to find its new face so quickly. [But] who is responsible that this is the face they chose?" Afanasyev quoted Yakovlev as saying in a Monday telephone interview. "The day that such parties as Yabloko, SPS and the Communists unite to oppose the governor's [interests], the switch to democracy has come to an end in the Legislative Assembly."
The vote for speaker in the assembly is carried out by secret ballot, but sources within the assembly say that the 28 votes garnered by Tyulpanov, the Kremlin's preferred candidate, indicated that the the majority of the members of the Communist Party faction had voted for him. For this reason, Yakovlev's representative accused the Union of Right Forces (SPS) and Yabloko, two of the more liberal factions in the chamber, of striking a deal with the Communists.
"It was impossible to imagine that these parties would unite with the Communists, but democracy in Russia has a habit of taking an ugly shape," Afanasyev said
For their part, political analysts downplayed the nature of the alliances behind last week's vote and focusing on what lays ahead for the legislature.
Leonid Kesselman, a political analyst at the Russian Academy of Science, said that what is most important is that the Legislative Assembly has shown that can work more productively now by forming factions, proof of which, he says, is the fact that it took only two sessions to choose a speaker - a process that took almost 2 1/2 years in the case of Tarasov. Kesselman characterized the significance of the event by saying that it deserves a spot in the Guiness Book of World Records.
However, Kesselman said that the focus of the chamber will likely simply shift to the question of who will replace Yakovlev after the gubernatorial elections scheduled for next year.
"From now on they are going to be mostly busy with thinking about to whom the city is going to be handed over," Kesselman said Monday. "I don't think it will be [local electricity utility Lenenergo chief Andrei] Likhachyov, because [russian energy utility monopoly UES chief Anatoly] Chubais won't be allowed to get hold of the city that easily."
Kesselman said that Boris Gryslov, Russia's Interior Minister and and the head of the pro-Kremlin Unity party, seems to him the most likely candidate.
"As for the communists, it doesn't seem likely to me that anyone needs their support here anyway," he said.
In an interview published in Kommersant daily on Monday, however, Tyulpanov said that he was leaning toward pushing for a member of the Communist faction as one of his two deputy speakers.
"It is likely that I will have two deputies, one from the SPS and Yabloko side, either Yury Gladkov or Mikhail Amosov, and the other from the Communists," Tyulpanov was quoted as saying. "They are pushing for Yury Savelyev. I still don't know him very well, but my first impression [of him] is positive."
Savelyev, the former dean of the Baltic State University and the head of the Communist faction in the assembly, is used to being in the news, having treid to fire four American professors at the university in 1999 in reaction to the launching by NATO of the air offensive in Kosovo.
In April 2000, the U.S. State Department slapped personal sanctions on Savelyev for allegedly helping Iran develop a long-range nuclear-missile program.
Savelyev could not be reached for comment on Monday.
TITLE: Thousands Still Living Without Heat
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Although repair units are working extra shifts and even the army is helping, thousands of Northwest Region homes are still without heat, the regional department of the Emergency Situations Ministry reported on Monday.
Although the ministry says that, since New Year's Eve, heating systems in 92 buildings in the region - home to 14,045 people - have been restored, a greater number of people - 16,822, including 3,879 children - had spent almost three weeks without heat as of Monday. The units have been unable to repair the heating systems in 164 buildings.
According to Valentin Sidorin, the spokesperson for Leningrad Oblast Governor Valery Serdyukov, proper heating will be restored in all of the buildings by the end of the week.
According to Sidorin, all of the children in the effected buildings were offered places in children's recreation camps and retreats.
"Less well-off elderly people and people suffering from chronic illnesses were also given the opportunity to move into local hospitals," Sidorin said. "We also organized cafeterias in schools serving hot meals to the poor."
While work continues on restoring service to those buildings without heat, government officials are offering different explanations for the length of time involved in the repairs and the causes of the breakdown in the first place.
"Considering the amount of work involved due to the huge number of apartment buildings that was suddenly left without heat, it was clear from the very beginning that solving the problem was going to take a long time," Oleg Seminog, the spokesperson for the Northwest Regional Department of the Emergency Situtations Ministry said on Monday. "Also, these people have suffered enough from work that was of poor quality because it was done too quickly in the past. We may not be going as fast, but we are making sure of the quality of the work we are doing."
According to Seminog, on Sunday alone, nine residential buildings in the regions, housing 1,249 people, had service restored.
Sergei Shoigu, the head of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, speaking Sunday on ORT's weekly live news-analysis program "Vremena," blamed regional governors for not informing federal authorities about the run-down state of central-heating systems earlier.
"Who, if not the local authorities, should have the best idea about the state of the pipes?" Shoigu asked rhetorically on the program.
Natalya Yevdokimova, the head of the Social Issues Committee of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, agreed with Shoigu.
"All of the districts of St. Petersburg have to report to the city government about their readiness for winter as early as September," Yevdokimova said. "In the same manner, all Russian regions have to report to federal government on the state of their preparations by that same time. Why, then, did all of the regions say they were fully prepared when local authorities were fully aware of the situation? They lost so much time."
According to Shoigu, the reason both regular water and water used for heating freezes in the pipes, causing them to burst, is that hurried construction schedules during huge building campaigns during the Soviet period caused construction workers to cut corners in properly insulating underground pipes. Regional and municipal governments have not allocated funds to correct the situation in recent decades.
Preliminary calculations show that the central-heating-system failures in the Leningrad Oblast resulted in 161 million rubles ($5 million) in damages, Serdyukov told reporters on Monday, Interfax reported. The sum covers money already spent on repairs and that to cover further works.
Another factor in the length of time for the repairs, Yevdokimova said, is the obsolete nature of much of the country's electric-power system. This winter, with temperatures falling below minus 30 degrees Celsius, many more people have turned to using electric heaters.
"The power grids are simply unable to handle this level of electricity use, and transformers turn off, leaving houses without electricity," Yevdokimova said. "It is a vicious circle: the pipes burst and hot water floods the basements, doors in apartments get swollen and people use electric heaters, both to keep warm and to dry the doors so that they can open them. Then the electricity goes off."
"Until each region develops a detailed program for capital repairs to the systems involved in delivering heat, electricity and gas to residential buildings, this winter's nightmare will recur - just as regularly as winter itself," Yevdokimova said. "Wasting money on Ice Palaces and hoping that next winter is going to be mild is stupidity."
TITLE: Integration Back on the Agenda
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINSK, Belarus - After months of acerbic disputes, President Vladimir Putin and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko reaffirmed their commitment Monday to closer integration under the Russia-Belarus Union treaty.
The two leaders vowed to push ahead with plans for closer economic ties and a constitution-like document that would give more political weight to what is now a loose alliance.
"Despite heated discussions, the sides moved forward in several key spheres last year," Putin said.
He said that the two countries agreed that "the course toward creation of a union state is the strategic direction of Russian-Belarussian relations."
Analysts say the union's future as anything more than a loose alliance is in doubt, but Lukashenko disagreed with that assessment Monday.
"The main result of last year, I believe, is that we preserved our union and did not retreat from the frontiers we had reached," Lukashenko said. "Both the supporters and the opponents of our union see that integration is continuing."
Putin stressed that the countries must work faster to introduce the Russian ruble as a single currency, though he said it would probably be impossible to do so by January 2004, as Russia had hoped.
Putin emphasized the importance of agreement on natural gas and Lukashenko promised that a joint venture to transport Russian gas through Belarus would be created by the middle of this year.
Putin criticized the union in June, saying he didn't want to create anything resembling the Soviet Union. He suggested that Russia's economy would be hurt by unification with Belarus.
In August, Putin infuriated Lukashenko by offering a plan to unite the two countries as one under the Russian constitution, suggesting Russia would absorb its neighbor and Lukashenko would lose power. Putin also offered a European Union-style arrangement, but Lukashenko rejected both suggestions.
After the United States and 14 EU nations imposed travel bans on Lukashenko to protest his authoritarian policies, the isolated leader came to Moscow in November and pledged Belarus' eternal friendship with Russia.
TITLE: Duma Heating Session Ends in Cold War
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Friday skipped a State Duma session where he was supposed to report on government measures to fix heating in the regions.
Angry lawmakers refused to recognize the minister sent in his stead - Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko - as well as Gosstroi head Nikolai Koshman and Unified Energy System CEO Anatoly Chubais. They canceled the one-hour session set aside to discuss the cold and housing infrastructure.
Barred from speaking on the Duma floor, Khristenko presented his prepared remarks to journalists outside the chamber. He said this year's heating problems were not caused by fuel shortages, as in previous years. He attributed one third of the heating breakdowns to deteriorating infrastructure, 12 percent to accidents and the rest to incompetence on the part of local officials and engineers.
He said the federal government was giving technical and financial assistance to all regions hit by this winter's harsh weather. The government has also drawn up amendments to a housing-policy law to allocate 20.5 billion rubles ($644 million) toward resolving housing problems.
Khristenko, Koshman and Chubais blamed "irresponsible" local officials for heating shortages and the housing-infrastructure breakdowns.
"Everyone should be accountable for their own deeds," Chubais said.
He added that he thought UES was handling the situation well.
"We are satisfied with how the big-energy industry came through the period of low temperatures," he said.
UES produces about 30 percent of the country's heating, while municipal authorities must arrange for the rest.
Koshman told reporters that 75 emergencies have been registered since the heat was turned on this winter, and that 38 regions have suffered large housing-infrastructure breakdowns this month.
He said the most critical situations are in the regions of Arkhangelsk, Novgorod, Sakhalin, Koryakia and Karelia.
Yabloko Deputy Sergei Mitrokhin chided his fellow lawmakers for canceling the government's hour, saying it was "a shameful mistake."
"Someone wanted very much to help the government avoid responsibility and dump blame on local officials who are not able to resolve the heating problem due to lack of funds," he said.
A Russia's Regions deputy moved to cancel the government's allotted time shortly after the 2 p.m. session got under way. Unexpectedly, a majority voted to support the motion, including members of the pro-Kremlin Unity party.
Lawmakers demanded that Kasyanov answer for this winter's heating shortages and refused to listen to Khristenko, sent because he oversees energy issues and winter preparations in the government, and Chubais and Koshman, who had come at the Duma's request.
Duma Deputy Speaker Lyubov Sliska said she had spoken to Kasyanov, who told her that, due to his busy schedule, he would not be able to come to the Duma until Feb. 12, agencies reported.
TITLE: Apartment Blaze Leaves 7 Dead
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Seven people were killed when fire swept through an apartment in a two-story wooden building in the Leningrad Oblast town of Luga early Monday.
Fire fighters took an hour to put out the fire, which was reported at 4:47 a.m., but Tatyana Striganyuk, a spokesperson for the St. Petersburg Fire Department said that the four men and three women inside the building had already died, most likely from smoke inhalation.
"At present, we know that these people weren't a family, but a group of people who had gotten together in the apartment," Striganyuk said.
Striganyuk said the number of fires reported in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast over the first two weeks of 2003 has been significantly higher than that for the same period last year. She said that a large number of the fires were the result of careless use of electric heaters during particularly cold weather.
"It is particularly dangerous when people use heating devices in their homes that are designed for heating streetcars or other things, especially when the devices are left unattended" Striganyuk said.
TITLE: Ten Bodies Discovered Near Grozny
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: VLADIKAVKAZ, North Ossetia - Chechen prosecutors have opened an investigation after discovering the remains of 10 people on the outskirts of Grozny, an official said Saturday.
The remains were discovered in Petropavlovskoye, a desolate suburb of Grozny dotted by bombed-out factory buildings and oil rigs, an official in the Moscow-backed Chechen administration said. The bodies have been sent to the city of Mozdok in North Ossetia for identification, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
An official at Grozny's Zavodskoi district police department said the bodies were found a week ago and that authorities had been unable to identify most of them because they were damaged by an explosion. The official said two bodies were identified - that of a man last seen when he was detained by troops during a security sweep in the town of Argun in late December and a state-farm director who was seized by gunmen around the same time.
Also Sunday, Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu said his ministry has put its forces on an increased state of alert following recent warnings of a terrorist attack.
A security official said last Tuesday that Interpol reported that a terrorist attack was being planned by Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev.
TITLE: Weapons-Stealing Trial Gets Under Way in Makhachkala
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A military court in Makhachkala opened hearings Friday against seven soldiers and a civilian charged with stealing and selling weapons and ammunition, including a powerful anti-personnel land mine similar to the one that killed 45 people at a military parade in May.
The seven men, all officers from the 136th motorized brigade stationed in the nearby town of Buinaksk, were arrested in June. According to investigators, the central player in the operation was the head of the brigade's sapper unit, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Yamkovoi, who is accused of stealing seven MON-90 land mines identical to the one used in the Victory Day bombing in the Dagestani town of Kaspiisk. In addition to the casualties, about 170 people were wounded in the attack.
Several days before the blast, Yamkovoi passed one such mine to another officer, Lieutenant Colonel Akhmed Ramazanov, who passed it on to Yusup Teimurazov, the only civilian on the defendants' bench, news agencies reported Friday, citing investigators. Teimurazov, an unemployed Buinaksk native, was also charged with taking part in an illegal armed formation.
The investigators claim that Teimurazov was a subordinate of Chechen rebel leader Rappani Khalilov, who has been accused of ordering the Kaspiisk blast, along with a dozen more terrorist bombings in Dagestan in the past two years.
Seven members of Khalilov's group were convicted Thursday of carrying out 13 such attacks. The Dagestani Supreme Court handed them sentences ranging from seven years to life in prison.
The other four soldiers include Yamkovoi's driver and the heads of the ammunition depot from which the mines were allegedly stolen. However, investigators have charged the men only with illegal weapons sales, and not with complicity in the attack, Interfax reported.
Yamkovoi and his deputy are also charged with negligence leading to the deaths of two soldiers during the destruction of old mines at the brigade's firing range back in 2001, Interfax said. The officers allegedly failed to cordon off the destruction site.
During the investigation, Yamkovoi reportedly denied the charges against him. The newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote last year, citing Yamkovoi's family, that his confessions had been beaten out of him.
A Dagestani journalist covering the trial said by telephone that the judge in the case told reporters the trial promises to be a difficult one, in part because there are three medical certificates indicating that the defendants were tortured.
TITLE: Kursk Relatives Set To Launch Appeal
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A group of relatives of sailors who died when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank in August, 2000, are to appeal to the Moscow Okrug Court against the decision by Russia's Chief Military Prosecutor to close the investigation on the catastrophe that killed all 118 crew members.
Moscow-based lawyer Boris Kuznetsov, representing the interests of 30 of the families of the Kursk sailors, told Interfax that the decision to file the complaint was taken at a meeting this Saturday meeting with some of the relatives. According to Interfax, Kuznetsov said that he intends to launch an appeal to Russian authorities to "free the investigation from political influences, in order to bring the process within judicial bounds."
Kuznetsov said that Artur Yegiyev, who headed the investigation, was also present at the meeting and had told the relatives that his teams had investigated all the existing explanations of the catastrophe and that the investigation had reached accurate conclusions.
The office of the Chief Military Prosecutor reacted to the announcement by saying that it didn't see any purpose to reopening the investigation, and accused Kuznetsov for pressuring some of the victims relatives, Interfax reported.
On Monday, the news agency also quoted Irina Lyachina, the widow of the submarine's captain, Gennady Lyachin, as saying that she could see no reason to doubt the conclusions of the commission that investigated the catastrophe.
TITLE: Russia, India Ink 'Landmark' Arms Deal
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes and Russian officials signed an agreement Friday to expand the burgeoning military cooperation between the two states to include the joint development of a next-generation fighter jet and other weapons projects.
"It's a landmark document," Fernandes told reporters after talks at the Defense Ministry. "We believe that it will contribute to strengthening our military-to-military relationship."
He said that the protocol on military cooperation covers Indian purchases of new Russian weapons and envisages cooperation in building a new fighter aircraft and joint production of the Brahmos cruise missile.
The two countries have decided to increase the charter capital of the Brahmos venture from $240 million to $300 million, Indian media reported.
The Brahmos, based on the Russian Yakhont anti-ship missile, has a range of 300 kilometers and flies at twice the speed of sound. It is expected to be deployed in 2004, becoming the first supersonic cruise missile in India's arsenal. India and Russia are also considering exporting the Brahmos.
Fernandes also said that a long-awaited deal on the acquisition of the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov will be signed by the end of March, Indian media reported.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov dismissed concerns that military cooperation between Moscow and New Delhi could spark instability.
"I don't see any danger to the balance of forces," Ivanov said. "India is the world's most populous democracy, and we have been linked by decades of close friendship."
Ivanov said that Russia remains eager to provide new weapons for India's air force, navy and ground forces, adding that the joint research and development of new weapons is the most promising field of military cooperation.
India was a major customer of Soviet weapons, and, following the 1991 Soviet collapse, it became the second most important foreign client behind China for Russia's struggling defense industry.
Andrei Nikolayev, the head of the State Duma defense-affairs committee, estimated that New Delhi has bought some $30 billion worth of weapons from Moscow since the 1960s, Itar-Tass reported. Russian weapons account for 70 percent to 80 percent of Indian arsenals, Nikolayev said.
Fernandes said that the two countries were developing ties in all spheres, including substantial Indian commercial investments in the Sakhalin oil fields of the Far East.
"It's India's biggest overseas investment," Fernandes said.
Along with bilateral ties, Fernandes and Russian officials discussed international issues.
(AP, SPT)
TITLE: S&P Cold On Hike In Rating
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Standard & Poor's on Friday moved to project some reality onto perceptions of Russia's economic health, saying that, despite growing speculation to the contrary, an upgrade to investment status remains a long way off.
The ratings agency, a leading arbiter of a country's creditworthiness, said that, despite a recent upgrade to two notches below investment grade, the pace of reforms continues to lag and weak economic infrastructure is still intact.
"There is a long delay between enacting many of the structural, legal and administrative reforms, their subsequent implementation and then their actual impact on political legitimacy and economic performance," S&P sovereign debt analyst Helena Hessel wrote.
"In the meantime, the absence of a viable banking sector, low labor mobility, slow progress in liberalizing the economy and weak institutional structures make Russia vulnerable," she said.
Standard & Poor's has given Russia a record seven rating upgrades over the past two years.
Both S&P and Moody's raised their ratings for Russia in December to two notches below the desired investment grade, citing rising reserves and falling debt-service risks - S&P to BB and Moody's from Ba3 toBa2.
The higher the rating, the easier and cheaper it is for the government to borrow money abroad.
Most analysts found the ratings reasonable, noting that the market has a tendency to go too far in its expectations, often based only on positive macroeconomic indicators.
"Investors are not good at understanding structural issues and usually neglect them because they are too difficult," said Marcin Wiszniewski, Russia analyst at Morgan Stanley in London. "So there is always a risk, like with Russia, where all the positive news comes from simple economic numbers and the negatives are intangible, difficult to quantify and are concentrated in structural issues," he said.
In its daily market comment on Friday, Aton investment bank commended Russia's macroeconomic success over the past four years, but said that, with an upcoming election year, "we expect the pace of reform to slow and do not expect a ... rating upgrade until after the presidential election in March 2004."
Wiszniewski agreed that Russia could potentially break into the "A" ratings tier in 2004, but that would be the best-case scenario. More realistically, he said, the general consensus puts it somewhere around 2005.
TITLE: Largest Pre-1998 Private Retail Bank-Finally Laid To Rest
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After more than three years of detective work and nearly 2,000 lawsuits, state-bank-restructuring agency ARKO on Monday finally closed the book on Alexander Smolensky's SBS-Agro, the largest private-retail bank in Russia before it collapsed in 1998, helping to bring down the entire economy with it.
"SBS-Agro was the most difficult project for ARKO in every respect and today we can finally say that this is the last stage of its long and painful death," ARKO head Alexander Turbanov said.
Last week, at the joint request of ARKO and long-suffering shareholders, who both agreed that the bank no longer had any assets to claim, the Central Bank officially annulled SBS-Agro's license. Now the only hurdle remaining before the drawn-out saga ends is the Moscow arbitration court, which needs to officially declare the liquidation process over, a move expected in the next few weeks, Turbanov said.
When disgraced tycoon Alexander Smolensky's bank closed its doors in the summer of 1998, it had debts totaling 53 billion rubles - equal to about $6 billion in July of that year - versus assets of just 3.5 billion rubles.
Along with the 40 billion rubles owed to foreign creditors like the EBRD, Chase Manhattan and Deutsche Bank, more than 1 million depositors were still waiting for a total of 5.4 billion rubles when ARKO finally took over the bank in November, 1999.
Since then, the agency has spent some 6 billion rubles trying to unravel the labyrinth of enterprises and cross-holdings that made up Smolensky's empire.
Turbanov said that 99.5 percent of all retail depositors have gotten their money back. "In relative terms they lost not more than 25 percent of their original savings," he said.
Turbanov said that there are 5,000 depositors who have not come forward, many of whom had very large deposits, some of which are worth $1 million or more. They will have 70 days to do so after the arbitration court's ruling.
Foreign creditors who accepted SBS-Agro promissory notes under an agreement signed in February 2001 will get whatever is left after retail depositors are satisfied. Marina Chekurova, Turbanov's deputy, said that they will be lucky to get pennies on the dollar.
Turbanov said that tracking down the bank's assets was no easy task.
In the course of its investigation, ARKO filed 1,720 legal suits against former SBS-Agro managers, but lost almost all of them.
"Our main problem was the absence of many original documents, which were missing since we took over the bank," Turbanov said. "We have presented materials on at least 80 dubious deals to the Prosecutor General's Office, but prosecutors said they did not find any evidence of crime."
In fact, the only person who was punished for the failure of SBS-Agro, is Alexander Alexeyev, a deputy head of the Moscow branch of the Central Bank who was accused of illegally extending a 5.8-billion-ruble stabilization loan to the bank in 1998 and 1999.
Smolensky, who once said that SBS-Agro's foreign creditors deserved only "dead donkey ears" for the $1 billion they lost, told Kommersant in an interview published Monday that he expects his new bank - Pervoye OVK - to be as big as SBS-Agro once was by 2005.
Pervoye OVK miraculously emerged from SBS-Agro's ashes, having somehow inherited most of the dead bank's national branch network and most of its top managers, including Smolensky's nephew Alexei Grigoriev, who is now its chairperson. Smolensky, however, is not officially associated with Pervoye OVK, although he takes credit for it.
Never remorseful, Smolensky told Kommersant that people were essentially stupid for trusting their money with SBS-Agro.
"I hope next time depositors will think twice before putting money in a bank with high deposit rates," he said.
TITLE: Ministry: 2002 GDP Increased by 4%
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The economy expanded 4.1 percent in 2002 after 5 percent growth the year before, beating the initial target of 3.8 percent, an official at the Economic Development and Trade Ministry said Friday.
The figures were preliminary, but came at the higher end of market expectations and were largely in line with the latest official forecast. Economists surveyed in December expected to see 3.9-percent to 4.2-percent growth in 2002.
The official said that the ministry expected growth of 4.4 percent in 2003.
Russia's 2003 budget was shaped on the assumption that gross domestic product, the widest measure of the country's economic health, would expand 3.5 percent to 4.4 percent, depending on global-crude prices.
The official said that 2002 industrial-output growth beat the initial target of 3.7 percent, coming at 3.9 percent last year. Russia's industrial sector grew 4.9 percent in 2001.
Of this 4.1 percent GDP growth, exports accounted for 60 percent, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said in an interview published Friday in Vremya Novostei, and oil, natural-gas and metals exports accounted for the lion's share. The domestic market accounted for the remaining 40 percent.
Kasyanov said that he was concerned that Russia's economy remains highly dependent on international factors and global markets.
Russia has great investment potential, he said, particularly in manufacturing, the country's most profitable sector. Investment is needed in order to raise labor productivity and the quality of goods, while at the same time lowering costs.
(Reuters, SPT)
TITLE: Russian Firms Clinch 3 Oil Deals in Iraq
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Iraq awarded two new contracts to Russian oil companies Friday and gave preliminary approval to another deal in what appeared to be a last-ditch attempt to get Russia on its side as the threat of a U.S.-led military attack mounts.
But the fate of Iraq's biggest deal with Russia, a LUKoil contract to develop the vast West Qurna field, remained undecided following talks between Russian officials and Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan. Iraq announced late last year that it was tearing up the five-year-old deal in a surprise move that threatened to undermine Russia's long-standing ties with Iraq.
At a signing ceremony Friday attended by Iraqi Deputy Oil Minister Hussein Suleiman al-Hadithi and First Deputy Energy Minister Ivan Matlashov, Gazprom's construction arm Stroitransgaz was awarded a contract to develop block 4 of the Western Desert oil field. Soyuzneftegaz, an obscure oil firm owned by former Fuel and Energy Minister Yury Shafranik, won the rights to develop the Rafidayn oil field in southern Iraq. Another deal was signed that outlines future projects for Russian oil companies in Iraq, but no further details were given.
Iraq also started negotiations with state-owned holding Zarubezhneft on the giant Bin Umar oil field, Reuters reported.
Al-Hadithi said that the agreements "reflect the will of the Russian and Iraqi governments to pursue good relations," news agencies reported.
News of the contracts came as Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov made his strongest statement yet against a U.S. strike on Iraq. In an interview with Al-Jazeera television on Friday, he said that war against Iraq would be a "terrible and fatal mistake" and that Russia considers any U.S. unilateral action "completely inadmissible."
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Thursday lashed out at the United States, saying that it was putting "mounting pressure" on international arms inspectors that "disagrees with the letter and spirit of [UN Security Council] Resolution 1441."
Analysts said that the new contracts signed Friday were puny in comparison to the deal for the West Qurna field, which is one of the biggest in the world, and were unlikely to impact Russia's stance on Iraq. Russia, however, has so far offered little support for a U.S. strike, juggling warming ties with Washington against fears of U.S. dominance in oil-rich Iraq and a possible drop in crude prices as a result of war.
Kremlin-connected analyst Sergei Markov said Sunday that Russia could still try to veto any U.S. proposal for war against Iraq forwarded to the UN Security Council if it coordinated that move with fellow council member France.
LUKoil attempted to put a positive spin on the outcome of talks over West Qurna on Friday. Russia and Iraq have agreed "to drop all claims against each other," the company said in a statement. LUKoil stressed that it still considered the agreement valid.
Matlashov, however, said that differences still remained.
"We must continue a discussion of the rules and plans [of this contract]," Matlashov said, according to Russian news agencies. "It is not a question of taking LUKoil and replacing it with someone else ... We have differences here, but the door is open for further discussions."
Russian oil majors have had close ties with the Iraqi oil industry since Soviet days and are worried about losing out to richer Western oil giants should the United States move in.
Even though the new contracts signed Friday cannot be implemented under UN sanctions, analysts said that Russia would still try to use them as an additional bargaining chip in a future carve-up of Iraq's oil patch, which contains the second-largest reserves in the world. "One of the very few ways Russia can try to have input over the future of Iraq is to have these contracts signed," said Paul Collison, oil-and-gas analyst at Brunswick UBS Warburg.
"But the really critical thing will be what happens with the West Qurna field and LUKoil," he said. "This is one of the biggest oil fields in the world and is longstanding. What happened on Friday was just noise. These contracts are not going to move ahead unless there is a regime change. But anything that [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] signs is going to have limited value in a new regime."
"The only thing Iraq has to offer is oil. It is trying to get Russia signed up to help stem any attack against the regime."
Markov said that Russia's position on Iraq would not be decided by contracts but by concerns such as the precedent that would be set if the United States were allowed to oust Hussein.
"It is impermissible to allow the U.S. to do whatever it wants, but it would be senseless for Russia to vote against this on its own," he said. "We will try to coordinate our actions with France."
TITLE: NovosibirskFinally Gets Go-Ahead For Airport
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After nearly a year of infighting, the government finally gave the go-ahead to an ambitious $170-million overhaul of Novosibirsk's Tolmachevo airport, the home base of leading domestic-route carrier Sibir and a key hub in future passenger and cargo transit between Europe and Asia.
The state-controlled airport's board on Friday approved a Russian-German consortium's strategic-development plan to revamp existing facilities and add a new terminal, which would dramatically increase international traffic at the 40-year-old airport and nearly quadruple passenger capacity by 2007.
"The interests of the airport, Sibir and the region have all been taken into account in the approved concept," said project coordinator Darya Dolotenkova, who also heads the Institute of Professional Auditors, which helped choose the concept in a tender last year.
In April, a three-way consortium of German construction-management company Obermeyer Planen + Beraten and Russian consulting companies Vneshaudit and PACC beat out some 20 other bidders with a draft concept for the airport's development.
Before Friday, however, the project could not move into the financing stage because there was no consensus on whether it was necessary to build a new terminal. Sibir insisted on it, but Tolmachevo's management and board, which is chaired by senior Property Ministry official Alexander Borodin, wanted only to reconstruct existing facilities.
Borodin said Friday that the swaying factor was the impressive projected traffic-growth figures put forward by the winning consortium, which he said the board found realistic.
Sibir is Russia's fastest-growing airline, carrying 2.7 million passengers last year, up 41 percent year on year. Sibir says that its pace of growth is likely to continue over the next few years, but not without a new terminal.
Sibir also sees Novosibirsk, located in the heart of Russia, as being a major international hub for both passenger and cargo traffic between Europe and Southeast Asia.
Borodin said that an investment program will be discussed by the board in March. In the meantime, he said, the existing terminal will undergo improvements to handle growing traffic until the new terminal is built.
Tolmachevo, located 17 kilometers west of downtown Novosibirsk, currently has just one working runway and can only handle 1,000 passengers per hour, just a fraction of the capacity of Moscow's Sheremetyevo.
Sibir accounted for about half of the 1 million passengers serviced by the airport last year, according to Mikhail Koshman, the airline's spokesperson.
Since it stands to gain the most from the revamp, Borodin said he hopes that Sibir will participate in financing the airport's development.
Koshman said that the airline fully supports the project and will do everything it can to raise financing.
He said that the development strategy approved Friday was very close to what Sibir wanted.
"This is the first public acceptance of the fact that Sibir was right about the necessity of a new terminal," he said.
TITLE: Tax Official: Foreigners To Benefit From Pension System
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Although foreigners may not be thrilled about paying the unified social tax, a Tax Ministry official said Thursday that they will reap some of the benefits of the government's safety net.
Nadezhda Shelemekh, head of the Tax Ministry's unified social-tax department, said that the constitution grants foreigners the right to some benefits of the tax. The ministry began levying the tax on foreigners Jan. 1.
The unified social tax is split between state pensions, compulsory medical insurance and the social-insurance fund.
Shelemekh said that there were a number of situations in which foreigners could receive pensions but did not elaborate.
Experts were puzzled by Shelemekh's statement.
The pension law allows only foreigners with permanent-residency permits to receive pensions, said Peter Reinhardt, tax partner at Ernst & Young.
Even if expatriates could receive a state pension, few of those working legally would want to.
"Expats would benefit from a Russian pension only if they're coming from a country with a less generous pension system than Russia, and there are few such countries," he said.
While the tax's base rate of 35.6 percent has drawn criticism from businesses, the increase in labor costs for multinationals employing high-priced foreign specialists should be minor because of the tax's regressive scale.
The base rate applies only to the first 100,000 rubles ($3,145) of an employee's annual salary and shrinks in increments to 2 percent on amounts exceeding 600,000 rubles.
Companies would thus pay about $3,320 for an employee earning $10,000 per year and $4,940 for an employee earning $100,000.
"It would probably not be perceived as a huge additional cost," Reinhardt said. "But it's an additional cost nonetheless."
Because the tax is levied on the companies, expatriate employees should not feel the impact, unless their employer tries to compensate for the higher labor cost through more modest raises.
"Social-security costs in the host country are rarely a factor in setting expats' pay levels globally, though," Reinhardt said.
Even if employers passed on the full cost to foreigners, "the vast majority of expats would still be much better off than under the old income-tax regime," Reinhardt said. Under the previous tax code, the top marginal rates on income tax were 30 percent to 35 percent.
The move somewhat levels the playing field between domestic and foreign employees, although levying the unified social tax on expatriates is unlikely to free up many jobs. It also would earn the government substantial revenues.
Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov has estimated that 300,000 foreigners have work permits.
At that number, even if the average salary for an expat in Russia were $10,000, the government could collect an extra $1 billion in tax revenues.
While most double-tax treaties do not encompass social-tax payments, companies have found other schemes to lower or skirt the unified social tax - sometimes more easily, tax experts said.
TITLE: 'Peasant' Example Set for EU Farmers
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BERLIN - European farmers should follow the lead of "Russian peasants," who managed to boost grain exports 150 percent last year to a record 12 million tons without state subsidies, Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said Friday.
"The time has come for Western agricultural producers to learn from Russian peasants how to work completely without any state support," Interfax quoted him as telling reporters at a trade conference in Berlin.
"There hasn't been a situation since 1928 when the supply of grain exceeded domestic demand," said Gordeyev, who is also a deputy prime minister.
Gordeyev said that Russia produced 86.5 million tons of grain last year, 1 million more than the year before.
Gordeyev's comments come as trade tensions mount between Moscow and Brussels.
Europe is the largest market for Russian grain, but the European Union decided late last year to impose import quotas and duties after the bloc's internal market was flooded with cheap imports, mainly from Russia and Ukraine.
Moscow is threatening to retaliate with import duties and quotas of its own on meat imports, most of which come from Europe.
European Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler said after meeting with Gordeyev later Friday that Brussels is ready to offer Moscow a deal for exclusive import rights but will not alter the size of the bloc's already agreed annual quota.
Fischler said that the EU could award Moscow a special allocation within an overall quota agreed late last year for imports of medium-and low-quality wheat.
"We are prepared in principle to agree a country quota with Russia," Fischler said.
"The overall [2.98-million-ton] limit will not change," he said, referring to the EU's tariff-quota system for grain imports that entered into force Jan. 1. Some market observers had speculated that Moscow was holding out for an exclusive grain deal outside the overall quota.
"The size of the Russian quota was not discussed today - the experts will now have to talk about this," Fischler said.
Asked if Russia was prepared to negotiate about its planned import restrictions on meat in return for an EU grain-import quota, Gordeyev said: "I do not think that these proposed exchanges have much to do with each other."
That statement was contradicted, however, by one of Gordeyev's own deputies, who said that, by slapping restrictions on meat imports, Brussels will be forced to relax its grain stance.
"I believe that the introduction by us of [these] measures will make our partners adopt a more flexible approach," said Pavel Vintovkin, acting head of the ministry's food-market-regulation department.
He added that Russia may introduce restrictions on meat imports "shortly" but did not specify when.
(SPT, Reuters)
TITLE: Empire Strikes Back on the Net
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Soviet Union has been given a new lease on life ... on the Internet.
Ru-Center, which registers Internet addresses in Russia, has resumed doling out domain names in the .su zone more than a decade after the country collapsed.
RosNIIROS, the government organization that administers the Russian Internet and the parent of Ru-Center, began debating whether to discontinue the Soviet zone in 2001 - much like the Czech Republic eliminated Czechoslovakia's .cs and the Democratic Republic of Congo axed Zaire's .zr.
The Communications Ministry early last year had ruled that Ru-Center cease registering addresses ending in .su.
However, the Fund for Internet Development, a Russian nonprofit organization, was able to convince the ministry to keep the zone alive following an intensive lobbying effort, Andrei Vorobyov, a spokesperson for Ru-Center, said by telephone last Tuesday.
"They organized an online poll that showed that Internet users supported the continued development of the .su domain," he said.
FID director Konstantin Vinogradov said that a panel of experts had determined that .su should continueoperating for the benefit of already registered sites.
"There are 28,000 addresses in the .su zone, and it is in their interests to keep the zone running," he said.
Twenty new addresses have been assigned in the.su zone since the Communications Ministry allowed Ru-Center to continue registering in December, he added.
Only trademarks may be registered in the zone until April so that companies have time to assign Internet addresses to their brands before cyber-squatters do.
The .su domain was created in 1990 and grew steadily to a peak of 30,000 addresses in 1998.
That number later fell to around 25,000, before rebounding to the present 28,000.
One reason for continuing .su is that it is often difficult to register an address in .ru, Vinogradov said.
"Lately, we've been seeing companies register in the .su zone whose names are already taken in .ru," he said.
Stanislav Kolbin, the technical director of Softline, a software-distribution company that operates throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States, said that his company registered in .su because it wants to be present everywhere online.
"The idea is to have sites for every region that we work in," Kolbin said. "Because .su means Russia, we have a site in that zone."
Softline also has sites in the .ru, .by (Belarus) and .ua (Ukraine) zones.
Vorobyov said that he hopes .su will somehow bring together the Internet community of the former Soviet Union.
"The .su domain is like a unifying domain for all Russian-speaking countries," he said.
Despite the presence of .su, the .ru zone is continuing its rapid increase in registered addresses.
The.ru zone grew by 66 percent in 2002, compared with the previous year to 156,000 sites, according to Ru-Center.
"This growth represents the overall development of the Russian Internet," Vorobyov said.
Russia still lags behind other European countries when the number of domain names is compared with the size of the population.
The Czech Republic has some 120,000 registered domains, while Belgium has 208,000 and Germany, the European leader, has 5.7 million.
TITLE: Microsoft Looks To Grab Mobile Software Market
AUTHOR: By Brian Bergstein
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - After dominating the desktop, burrowing into the Internet and bursting into the video game market, Microsoft Corp. is making progress at getting firmly into the palm of your hand.
Already a force in software for personal digital assistants, Microsoft is ramping up efforts to provide the operating systems for those devices' close relative: the next generation of "smart" cellphones that can handle e-mail, digital photos and other data.
Microsoft says that it can make mobile devices easier to use through seamless connections with its desktop programs. "We feel a certain sense of responsibility," said Microsoft's mobile-product manager, Ed Suwanjindar. "When you ask people what they want to do with these devices, very often they're similar to the things they're already doing on their Windows desktop."
More than 400 million cellphones are sold each year, but the division between those devices and handheld computers is beginning to blur. All-purpose communication devices are emerging that not only carry a conversation but also host e-mail, messaging, Web surfing, picture, sound and entertainment functions.
One of Microsoft's top competitors is Symbian Ltd. Two other competitors also loom: PalmSource Inc., the Palm Inc. operating-system spinoff, and Research in Motion Ltd., maker of the Blackberry wireless-messaging gadgets.
Microsoft says that it knows software best. Its rivals say that operating systems that mesh telephony and data well are another matter entirely.
"You don't want to replicate the experience of the desktop on your phone," said Peter Bancroft, spokesperson for Symbian, a joint venture of Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita, Motorola, Psion and Siemens. "This is not anything against PowerPoint or Microsoft at all, but I don't suppose anyone wants to view a PowerPoint on their phone."
But an executive might want to store a PowerPoint presentation on a phone and display the file at a meeting. But that can be done on Symbian or Palm-powered devices, too.
PalmSource's chief competitive officer, Michael Mace, believes that Microsoft programs such work better on the Palm system because the company enlisted outside developers to shape mobile-only versions of the software.
"Symbian is specifically created for mobile devices," added Bill Plummer, a Nokia vice president. "Symbian is not a technology that has been transformed, however awkwardly or not, from a different platform to this platform."
TITLE: Lapins Find a Use for Excess Quality Time
AUTHOR: By Brian Arengi
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Alexander Lapin created his web site at www.lapin.ru with one purpose in mind: to unite all Lapins.
"Many people throughout the entire world have this name, and we live all over," he says on the site. "We are all totally different: Every one of us has their own interests, desires and possibilities. But we all have one thing in common - this fabulous surname."
Lapin gathers and publishes information on other Lapins along with their photographs. So far, some 20 people have responded to the Web site, which was set up in mid-2002.
"The better known the site becomes, the more Lapins will click on it," he said in an e-mail interview. "I don't publish Lapins who I found myself on the Internet, I need their permission."
Lapin has received messages from as far away as France, "but so far I have not done any promotion beyond Russia."
"The English version of the site is still not finished, but will be ready soon."
And that English version should bring plenty of new Lapins to the site.
"My friends were in America and said that, in Chicago alone, there were two pages in the phone book with the name Lapin," Lapin said.
The meaning of the name Lapin remains a mystery and, in modern Russian, there is no definition, he said.
"In practically every country, there are people with that surname - the Finns even have a Lapin Kulta beer," he said.
But the Lapins he has talked to so far are quite happy about the site nonetheless, he said. "Everyone is very glad that ... they can come together on the project. A few offer their help in continuing it but, so far there, haven't been any Web masters or anyone to work on the design. I do it myself."
Lapins not only unite in cyberspace, but in the real world as well.
"I met a pretty girl that I found attractive," Lapin said. "We met accidentally outside a store - I helped her carry a bag - and while talking I discovered that she is a Lapina!
"She doesn't know my name - so far I haven't told her."
TITLE: Following Venezuela or Chasing After Portugal?
AUTHOR: By Pyotr Aven and Christopher Weafer
TEXT: THIS year will be one of the most decisive in Russia's relatively short and turbulent economic history. If the government's objectives are achieved then, at the end of the next 12 months, the economy will finally start to develop away from crisis recovery and toward sustainable growth.
Superficially, 2003 looks set to be a relatively uneventful year for the economy, with modest macroeconomic targets written into the budget that should be achieved, even with wide fluctuations in the price of oil. However, 2003 is much more important, and therefore potentially much more hazardous, than these modest budget targets suggest: This year should be the last year of transition from the old economic structure to a new one that will see increased foreign direct investment, faster sustainable growth and diversification of the economy away from its dependence on commodities. If, by the end of 2003, we do not see a basic financial infrastructure in place, then the investment case for Russia will be thrown into serious doubt, if not lost.
When the current government took office in May 2000, it set two main economic objectives, one medium-term and the other long-term. The medium-term objective was to reduce the economy's exposure to world oil prices and to use the period of resulting relative stability to push through changes seen as a necessary precondition for sustainable high rates of growth.
This reduction in exposure was achieved by encouraging oil companies to increase production and exports, so that, while the federal budget's dependence on oil revenues persists, a much lower average oil price is needed to balance the budget than was the case in 1998. In 1998, an average price of $26.50 per barrel (Urals) would have been necessary to balance the budget; instead, it was a little more than $11 per barrel. In 2003, the key macroeconomic targets will be achieved, as long as the average price of oil remains at or above $16 per barrel.
Many changes have occurred in the past three years, and attitudes now are certainly much more positive vis-a-vis future growth. However, much of the relative prosperity that has been achieved can be linked, directly or indirectly, to the flow of petrodollars into the economy. Even in the gray economy, which accounts for a significant share of GDP, much of the money can be traced to oil.
For the economy to grow at 6 percent plus per year - the target set by President Vladimir Putin in his state of the nation address last April - and to achieve greater diversification, Russia will have to attract significantly larger capital inflows, either in the form of repatriated Russian capital or FDI. This is the government's long-term economic objective and, if it is not realized by 2004, rather than catching up with Portugal, Russia will be keeping company with Venezuela and Nigeria, experiencing boom-and-bust oil cycles.
Achieving this long-term objective will require putting into place the financial infrastructure for facilitating capital inflows and enabling their deployment in the economy. Despite a significantly improved image, Russia is still struggling with the same issues of credibility that have dogged it for the past decade. Investors are still convinced that one of the biggest risks they face in Russia is the expropriation of their assets by business partners or government agencies. To overcome this, the government will have to push ahead with structural reforms.
In particular, this means that by the end of 2003 or beginning of 2004 we will have to see the following reforms:
Bank reform. There should be fewer, but better regulated and capitalized banks in order to help build confidence in the system. The proposed deposit-insurance scheme, put forward by the government, will have to be passed by the State Duma and signed into law.
Pension reform. This is necessary in order to make a domestic source of investment capital available, which is important for stable investment growth. We will need to see all the relevant legislation in place, including regulations governing the award of management mandates and supervision of the industry.
Judicial reform. Investors will have to see improvement in legal protection and a transparent system for handling commercial disputes. What constitutes adequate protection is difficult to define precisely. At this stage, it is important that we see progress on new shareholder-protection legislation and an end to the abuse of minority shareholders.
Other reforms. Natural-monopoly reforms, etc., will continue through 2003, but the main efforts to conclude these will not come until after the election period is over, i.e., after March 2004.
In many ways, this is the critical transition year for Russia after more than 70 years of communism and a decade of restructuring and confusion. While this coming year may look somewhat bland, the objectives that need to be achieved over the next 12 months are absolutely critical for Russia's investment case in 2004 and beyond.
Pyotr Aven, the president of Alfa Bank, and Christopher Weafer, the chief strategist at Alfa Bank, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: U.S. Budget Plan: Rockets and Caviar
AUTHOR: By James K. Galbraith
TEXT: U.S. President George W. Bucg gets good press. "Bush Offers a Cure" was the banner on the Chicago Sun-Times on Jan. 8 - to take just one example. Commentators everywhere were calling his "bold" and "daring" tax-cut proposals a "stimulus package" and a "recovery program." Even the big number plays well: $674 billion! Imagine that. But, in fact, it is not a big program. It isn't much of a "stimulus package." That $674 billion is spread over 10 years. Only about $100 billion is set to be paid out this year, about 1 percent of economic output.
Any tax reduction puts money in the bank. But there isn't an effect on economic growth until consumers and businesses actually go out and spend the money. Will they do so under Bush's proposal? Some will. But many businesses already have too much capital equipment they can't use. And households may prefer - initially at least - to pay off some of their enormous debts.
The key element in the Bush package is by far the least effective part of the plan: the proposal to eliminate federal income taxation on corporate dividends. Some $364 billion is due to this one proposal. Most dividends earned by middle-class households escape taxation already, as they are paid into tax-deferred pension accounts such as 401(k)s. Over 10 years, more than $75 billion of the loot from Bush's cut will flow to people making more than $1 million a year.
The proposal would create a new class of financial instruments - tax-exempt, dividend-bearing corporate stock. This is very bad news for state and local governments, which now raise capital by issuing tax-exempt state and municipal bonds. They would face higher financing costs, which means that new schools, roads, parks, museums and libraries will all become more expensive.
Bush's plan would greatly reduce the tax advantage of 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts - making it no less advantageous to hold common stock directly. Discount brokers would emerge as big winners - which may explain why Charles Schwab spoke up for this cut at Waco last summer when Bush held his economic summit.
Overall, Bush's new plan fits a pattern: He apparently believes that rich folks should not be taxed - whether their income takes the form of executive salaries (top income-tax rates are also being lowered in the new Bush plan), dividends, capital gains (already tax-favored), or from the estates of their rich aunts and uncles. And, as Bush's dream is realized, the tax burden will shift further onto working people.
One clear alternative to the Bush tax scheme is to provide a short-term, partial holiday from the payroll tax. This measure would place the new income in the hands of working people who would, almost certainly, spend most of it. A payroll-tax holiday on the employer side also would provide direct relief to many labor-intensive small businesses who need it right now. Social Security, for the moment, doesn't need the money. (But to keep Social Security's finances whole, why not restore the estate tax and dedicate its future revenues to the Trust Fund?)
But there is a better and faster way yet to get new spending. That is for government itself to step up its own spending. Government purchases enter the Gross Domestic Product directly, when they occur; there is no need to wait for households or businesses to decide between saving and spending. For this reason, a war with Iraq, if it costs the $200 billion this year that some experts have estimated, will dwarf the near-term impact of the new Bush tax proposals.
Of course, Bush does have a spending program: Ballistic Missile Defense. A study by Economists Allied for Arms Reduction estimates its full cost at more than $1 trillion over the next 33 years. But, like the tax proposals, most of it is irrelevant to the economy right now. Mostly, the $50 billion to $60-billion annual cost of missile defense in the peak spending years will come due just when the baby boomers get set to retire.
Much better than this policy of rockets and caviar is the government spending we already have, mainly by state and local governments, on our schools, universities, hospitals, roads, parks, libraries, museums and the environment - not to mention the bill for homeland security, which has been largely dumped on cities and states.
As everyone knows, this spending is under siege. Since states and localities have to balance their budgets, and since revenues are crashing, vital services are being lost - just when the economy needs them most - as well as the jobs and incomes they provide.
Thus, the best single economic measure right now would be a large, temporary new program of federal-revenue sharing. That could be coupled to a larger Medicaid match, expanded coverage for unemployment insurance and other immediate forms of relief.
Bush's plan includes $3.6 billion for the states. But that is enough to cover estimates of the budget gap in Texas alone - or less than half of New York's projected deficit. Since boldness is being praised these days, let's make an alternative big enough to stop spending cuts by state and local government. A $150-billion program, all told, this year and next, would come closer to meeting the need.
And that could be paid for, over 10 years, by not enacting Bush's pointless, ineffective and unfair proposal to make corporate-dividends tax exempt.
James K. Galbraith is an economist and professor at the University of Texas, Austin. He contributed this comment to Newsday.
TITLE: Trade Unions at a Crossroads As the Threat of Strikes Arises
TEXT: PRESENTING the figures for 2002, statisticians will no doubt tell us that production has risen, wages have increased, and that, after three years of growth, the standard of living has returned to pre-1998 crisis levels. However, what the statistical reports will not show is the sharp increase in the number of labor disputes over the past few months.
A strike by air-traffic controllers hit the news because it threatened to bring air travel to a halt across the country. But, while the country was celebrating the New Year and Orthodox Christmas, an unprecedented dispute broke out in Norilsk between the management of Norilsk Nickel and the company's trade union.
Common to all these disputes have been demands for better compensation packages. Yet, not so long ago, even many months of wage arrears did not raise much protest. Economic growth seems to have affected social psychology and created favorable conditions for the rise of the labor movement.
Norilsk Nickel, of course, is not a typical Russian company but one of the global leaders in its sector. Workers' wages are impressive by Russian standards, at about $700 per month. It is also worth bearing in mind that the cost of living is higher in Norilsk than in Moscow, living conditions are harsher and the environment is more polluted.
For the past few years, an agreement has been in place between Norilsk's management and the union - a member of the All-Russian Confederation of Labor - stipulating that wages be indexed to the tune of 20 percent per annum, roughly in line with inflation. The union demanded that the agreement be honored, while management accused workers of wanting to "eat the company."
The piquancy of the situation is that all this is happening at a time when Norilsk Nickel is expanding. The corporation is purchasing a factory in the United States. It financed the election campaign of former CEO Alexander Khloponin, who won the Krasnoyarsk gubernatorial contest. The Norilsk mayoral election is now approaching, and the company has to ensure that its man wins.
And all this doesn't come cheap. From the management's point of view, corporate solidarity dictates that workers should finance their masters' ambitious plans out of their own pockets.
However, the union did not back down, and management has declared war. Workers are being handed prepared forms denouncing their membership in the union. The reason for quitting has already been written in for them: "I do not wish to participate in collective action and strikes that undermine the company I work for." All they have to do is sign on the dotted line.
Nevertheless, on Dec. 28, a meeting of union representatives voted to undertake collective action and, now, one of the country's largest companies is on the brink of a strike. Neither side wants production to grind to a halt, but negotiations have dragged on and the problems are not being resolved.
If the Norilsk union is smashed, it will send out a strong signal to other companies. Until now, unions have not posed much of a problem to anyone. However, if they start to defend workers' rights - as in the case of the air-traffic controllers and in Norilsk - they will, no doubt, experience the more brutal aspects of Russian business practices in full. If the Norilsk union is victorious, workers in other companies will surely start to assert their rights as well.
Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
TITLE: Why Don't We Ask About the Big Five?
TEXT: Editor,
There can be no two opinions about the danger of nuclear weapons and their proliferation in countries ruled by tyrant regimes. However, certain issues need to be discussed more openly, rather than being shoved under the carpet. For example, is there any justification for the big five permanent members of the UN Security Council to retain (as the United States and Russia do) arsenals of nuclear weapons while exhorting other countries (e.g. India) not to develop them?
India has consistently argued for a global and comprehensive elimination of nuclear weapons. There is no justification for the use of treaties such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in order to provide immunity to countries that already possess nuclear weapons. The world would be a much better place without nuclear weapons, not only those possessed by North Korea or Iraq, but also by the United States and Russia.
These countries should at least bind themselves in a temporal framework for eliminating their own weapons of mass destruction. The excuse that such weapons would help them in defending themselves from attacks from rogue countries or terrorists is an extremely lame one. It amounts to double standards and is detrimental to the evolution of a more just and equitable global order.
Ninad Bondre
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio
Under Pressure
In response to "Foreigner's Feeling Strain of Life in Today's Russia," Jan. 14.
Editor,
Your article on the recent measures by government agencies regarding a number of foreigners, most of whom work for non-government organizations, requires correction.
I can perfectly understand some of the irritation and disgust on the part of local authorities after more than 10 years of experience with foreign NGOs. The litanies of political correctness, the so-called global - but in essence Anglo-Saxon - views and values that are being spread by quite a few of the politically active foreign citizens in Russia can indeed be nerve-wracking.
The heroic Chechen freedom fighter vs. the Russian soldier and rapist; the enlightened Catholic missionary vs. the backward Orthodox priest; the Greenpeace volunteer vs. the ruthless new Russian capitalist - I exaggerate, but it can be tiring at times. In particular, when you consider that a majority of the concerned activists share a U.S. background: The one society that is wasting the lion's share of the world's energy resources, defending the death penalty and anti-personnel mines, and arbitrarily acting as the world's sheriff, applying precision bombs or Peace Corps activists - whatever comes in handy.
The political elite of Western Europe have long succumbed to this new-world ideology. That does not mean that Russia has to follow suit. As a Western European, I am pleased that there is a society committed to withstanding and to mounting a resistance with the required critical mass. Ex oriente lux.
Dr. Thomas Fasbender
Moscow
Editor,
Regarding the recent expulsions of Irene Stevenson, the AFL-CIO representative in Moscow, and U.S. Peace Corps representatives from the Russian Federation, I hope the Russian people have the sense to realize that the FSB has done and is doing Russia and Russians a tremendous disservice by such actions.
By his generally pragmatic approach to the West, President Vladimir Putin had made tremendous progress in building confidence, trust, and mutual understanding with existing and potential economic partners who have the money, expertise, and the desire to help rebuild the Russian economy and set Russia on the path to unprecedented prosperity.
I am aware of some 100-plus Western companies that have been actively studying trends in Russia over the past two years and were very close to a decision to jump into the Russian market. I know that the vast majority of these companies, having since learned of these recent expulsions on top of the myriad of other inadvisable and anachronistic FSB actions - undermining media freedoms, jailing innocent public-policy researchers, etc. - have decided to take a giant step backward and place all plans of expansion into Russia on indefinite hold.
Clearly, the FSB's heavy-handed, patently absurd actions have caused significant and lasting damage to Russia's international reputation and to the Russian people's future economic well-being. It is time for the country's leadership and the State Duma to step up to block the FSB's excesses and give real political power back to the only player that truly matters in a democratic society - the people.
William Smith
Honolulu, Hawaii
Editor,
In January 1997, I moved to St. Petersburg and began teaching English at the Herzen Pedagogical University. It was dark and cold and classes did not begin for a month, so I walked around the city's museums and curious markets with the most pedestrian awe. I was 22 years old, just out of college in grimy East Los Angeles and had recently suffered a Peace Corps Pre-Service Training of 10 weeks duration in Vladimir.
After the gray of Vladimir, St. Petersburg seemed so bright that my eyes hurt. I would always believe that the town was much more beautiful in the snowy shawls of winter than the bright dust of a teeming summer. I spent more than two years at Herzen as a volunteer, and I was able to accomplish enough that I left without a sense of shame. While I was there, we started an English-language drama club and opened a small library with sleek Penguin Classics instead of clunky Raguda Press editions, Thomas Pynchon instead of Theodore Dreiser. A couple of computers grew into a small lab that was used judiciously by graduate students and faculty and a spry secretary who had tired of her typewriter.
It was not much, but we may have just as easily done nothing and the Peace Corps, the university and the students would have been just as satisfied. I could have just traipsed around the museums and tramped around the unctuous beer bars. And sometimes I did.
There is no more imperfect organization than the U.S. Peace Corps. It relies on long-term volunteers to fill professional positions in other under-funded organizations. Its administration is transient at best and when they are not transient enough they are asked to move, usually to a post with as little in common with the previous as is geographically and sociologically possible. Typically, the Peace Corps adjoins itself to causes such as fighting hunger in Africa, raising health literacy in Southeast Asia, or developing small business in the former Soviet bloc. Usually, it needs support from other lumbering agencies or ministries whose staff is either numb or unaware to the severity of the cause.
Many Peace Corps volunteers were probably ill-equipped to teach English or small-business development to Russians. Still, many were well-equipped and, most importantly, the vast majority were willing at least to try. While I was in college, getting a degree in English, I worked as a cook and I believe I can vaguely remember smoking pot, too. Quite often, my students found my background interesting and griped about the nonexistence of part-time work in lieu of full-time studies. The largely female faculty I worked with was downright amazed when I chipped in with tips on how to make a better soup, reincarnate the potato as something new and tasty, and they delighted when I turned sweetened condensed milk, brinza cheese, pears and some "waffles" into a magnificent tort. I do not recall being accused of flouting pedagogical acumen for such instances.
Likewise, I heard many such stories from other volunteers, many about as busy as I was and most jealous that I landed in St. Petersburg while they were encamped in places like Kirov.
Nevertheless, no volunteer I ever met, in Russia or since then, was equipped to be a spy. Most Peace Corps volunteers had trouble finding new boots for the winter or acquiring an adapter for their beard trimmers. I would submit that any intelligence-agency official who is worried about the counter-revolutionary activities of Peace Corps volunteers must be so delusional and so paranoid that they ought be medically discharged and flogged for outright failure. If Peace Corps volunteers spy, then I am James Bond. All such accusations do is highlight a bureaucrat's desperate attempt to uncover more paper to push.
Volunteers tended to love and hate Russia, usually in direct proportion to how much they missed home. However, we all seemed to agree that, once we realized how fortunate we were to be in Russia - and to have enough money to buy an ice cream whenever we wanted one, or a beer, or pirozhki - then we were really able to do something special with the small group of friends and colleagues whose vision, however small, we shared.
When volunteers from my group were leaving, many were genuinely sad. Some were sad they had frittered away two years never being fortunate, others were sad that they had only glimpsed their fortunes so tentatively and others were sad to leave good friends and families that had adopted them. It seems that the latest group of volunteers will be left with only the most tenuous claims to such feelings and emotions. It is unfortunate. They have lost a lot even though many might be apt to think otherwise. Russians have also lost a lot, not nearly as much but those who did lose something are likely to be those who had the least to lose.
Kevin Kaye
Santa Clara, California
Not the Same Old
In response to "Same Old Story" a letter by Dennis Garwitz Sr. on Jan. 14.
Editor,
Dennis Garwitz Sr. not only typifies American ethnocentricity, but also leads me to believe that he is so encumbered with tunnel vision that he doesn't see the logic in his own argument as it applies to the man running the United States.
I suspect Garwitz has never been to Russia, nor does he personally know any of the "common people of Russia" of whom he speaks so fondly. I have traveled extensively through Russia, beginning in 1992, and the Russia of today is far better off than the Russia I witnessed under the drunken but emotionally connected Boris Yeltsin.
In 1992, a visit to a local grocery store in Moscow was like a scavenger hunt. Sure the sign over the door might say "meat" but, once inside, you might find only ketchup. The babushka gauntlet outside every metro station was usually the only place you could find decent vegetables. A good Russian friend of mine, whose husband was a journalist for a prominent newspaper, was still so paranoid about their phone being tapped that she didn't want me to call her because of my American accent. On my next visit in 1995, inflation was so high that I had trouble figuring the exchange rate in my head because of all the zeroes involved. In the meantime, the mafia grew like a fertilized pumpkin and just about everyone involved with the Yeltsin years, including his own family, were lining their pockets and flaunting their wealth openly, while the average person was still waiting in lines and looking over his or her shoulder.
Vladimir Putin enters the scene and things start to change. There is actually food in the stores, there is free enterprise, and people don't worry about having a foreigner for a friend. As a stable, sober, law-abiding citizen who is willing to work with his foreign counterparts rather than burp at them and try to look up their wives' skirts, Putin has given Russia a legitimacy that it has never had before. The people of Russia have a leader they are proud of, a leader who has been handed a downtrodden, bankrupt, and depressed country that has made momentous strides since he came to office. Rome wasn't built in a day, nor can democracy be.
But Putin's efforts and accomplishments far outweigh anything that the Soviet leaders and Yeltsin combined ever accomplished. We are no longer afraid of Russia nor are they of us. We have cosmonauts living with our astronauts on the space station; Russia wants to be part of NATO; and President George W. Bush says he can see Putin's soul and he is a man he can trust.
So let's fast forward to present-day America. We have the homeless, jobless problems Garwitz thinks only Russia has. We are so tired of the empty promises of politicians that, even though we have had the right to vote for more than one candidate for our entire existence, most of us don't. And that is on every level, from city to national.
Russia wants to compete with all the other countries militarily? Who is getting ready to invade Iraq, even though the weapons inspectors can't find anything? Who says if you are not with us, you are against us? Who is calling up every reservist in the country and sending warships to the Persian Gulf? Whose economic policies have put so many people out of work that the average age of a person in a homeless shelter is 33? Whose Congress is full of millionaires who keep passing laws to increase their wages and your taxes? Who is going to start the next world war?
Not this "anti-Roosevelt." He has been the voice of reason. Although he is "with" us, he doesn't want us to go to war with Iraq. He is more than willing to reduce his arsenal of nuclear arms, while we drag our feet. He has reduced his military, while we call our reserves up. He is trying to build his economy, while ours takes the downward plunge. What country is now offering its citizens money to inform on "suspicious" people?
If you want to make comparisons, then Putin is Roosevelt, and Bush is Hitler.
Jackie Slabaugh
Navarre, Ohio
More Theatricals
Editor,
As it happens, I was born and bred in the vicinity of the Mariinsky Theater. As a child, I went there to matinees and knew it as "Mariinka" back at the times when the whole world to the Kirov-Ballet. Also, I am an alumnus of Secondary School No.243 and later I frequented early Soviet discos at the 1st Five-Year Plan Palace of Culture - now both these buildings are to be demolished in order to construct the new Mariinsky stage. Therefore, I think it is me and other St. Petersburg citizens who should have priority in deciding how should it look.
What would you say if I came to your home town and started proposing to "spice things up a bit" as far as its visage is concerned?
As to Eric Owen Moss' last-year design, I think the nickname "garbage bag" is too mild and know a more apt, albeit a more rude definition for it: "a heap of s**t". Dilapidated and litter-strewn as present-day St. Petersburg is, I don't think it deserves that anyone, even a "civilized American" would, so to speak, s**t on its head.
Eugene Tsypin
St. Petersburg.
TITLE: Twin EU Peaks
AUTHOR: By Charles Grant
TEXT: WHO should lead the European Union? That is one question that the convention on the future of Europe has so far failed to answer. Federalists have called for the European parliament to elect the Commission president - currently chosen by the heads of government - in order to boost their authority. But those who favor a stronger role for national governments, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac, have argued for a new president of the European Council (the summits of heads of government and the Commission president) to give leadership to the Union.
Now Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, the German chancellor - who are trying hard to revive the Franco-German alliance - have tabled a compromise: a European Council president, to be chosen by the heads of government, together with a Commission president elected by the European parliament. Once again, an agreement between Paris and Berlin is set to shape the EU's institutional development. But this is no giant leap forward in European integration. It is a sensible deal that would respect the EU's division of power between the center and the member states.
Since this twin-presidency idea gives something to both the federalist and the intergovernmental camps, the convention will probably back it. It is likely to kill off the rival scheme of Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister, and others, for the Commission and the European Council to share the same president.
There is a strong case for the appointment of a senior politician to chair the European Council. That body is proving increasingly incapable of providing strategic leadership to the EU. Currently, the prime minister of the country with the rotating presidency chairs the Council but this term lasts only six months, which means that the incumbent cannot make much impact. In 2004, when the Council expands to include 25 heads of government, it is likely to become even less effective.
One crucial role for the new president would be to represent the EU externally, at the highest level. Neither the Commission president nor Javier Solana, high representative for foreign and security policy, has the credibility to visit the White House or the Kremlin to discuss big strategic issues. Nor would a new EU foreign minister - a post proposed in the convention and now supported by Chirac and Schroeder, which would fuse the roles of Solana and Chris Patten, the commissioner for external relations.
The new president, serving a five-year term, would also have an important internal role. After meetings of the European Council, prime ministers regularly fail to fulfill their promises. The president would badger them to do so. They would have few formal powers. A successful president would have a strong personality but also the trust of national leaders.
The small member states do not like this idea. They fear that the new president would strengthen the intergovernmental side of the EU, which the big countries tend to dominate, at the expense of the Commission, which they see as their friend and protector. Hence Schroeder's insistence that he would not accept the new president unless the overall institutional balance of the Union was preserved.
Blair will be reluctant to accept an enhanced role for the European parliament, which is not his favorite institution. Some British officials fear the arrival of a more party-political Commission Could it make objective judgments on, say, competition policy if its leader had a clear mandate from one of the parliament's political parties? But such worries are misplaced. So long as national governments continue to appoint the other commissioners, the Commission will remain a multiparty institution.
If Blair wants the European Council to have a new president, he will have to accept a role for the parliament in choosing the Commission president. He may be able to sugar that pill if he can persuade the convention that a congress of national and European parliamentarians should do the choosing. But France and Germany have once again made the pill for Britain to swallow.
Ever since Chirac became French president in 1995, the Franco-German alliance, which once dominated the EU, has been in disarray. Are this couple now back together? The agreements last October between the French and German leaders on farm spending, and now on the institutions, are impressive demonstrations of public affection. But the personal chemistry remains combustible. Schroeder would probably prefer to have close relations with a number of countries, including Britain, rather than be monogamously wed to France. Furthermore, once the EU has grown to 25 countries, it will be impossible for any two members, however close, to dominate.
That said, some figures close to Schroeder claim it is partly Britain that has pushed Germany - against its better judgment - back into bed with France. For Britain now appears unlikely to join the euro in the near future. And that means, they say, that the UK is neither a completely trustworthy nor a viable partner for big decisions on the future of the EU.
Charles Grant is director of the Center for European Reform. This comment first appeared in the Financial Times.
TITLE: The Case For Learning a Lesson
TEXT: AFTER weeks of preliminary hearings, Moscow's Tverskoi district court last week begun hearing evidence in the multimillion-dollar complaint filed against the Moscow city government by victims of the October hostage crisis and their relatives.
Three plaintiffs took turns Thursday telling their stories of pain and suffering - the sleepless nights, the frayed nerves, the irreparable losses.
After federal commandos raided the theater, 129 of the hostages died - nearly all of them after inhaling a gas pumped into the building to knock out the Chechen hostage-takers and then receiving inadequate medical help.
All but one of the 61 plaintiffs are seeking $1 million each in damages - something terrorism victims in Russia have never done before.
The plaintiffs are suing the Moscow city government because Russia's law on terrorism allows victims of terrorist acts to sue local authorities for compensation. But it seems unfair to hold the Moscow city government responsible for the poor coordination that turned a successful raid into a botched rescue.
The federal law in question bars victims from suing law enforcement and secret-service officers for damages incurred during rescue operations.
But there is no law that would bar legal action to find out whether the law-enforcement agencies and secret services could have prevented dozens of armed men and women from driving across the capital to seize a theater with some 800 people in it.
There is also no legislation that would prohibit a lawsuit against the officials who were in charge of organizing the rescue and treatment of the hostages. An investigation commissioned by the Union of Right Forces concluded that the hostage death toll would have been significantly lower if municipal and federal officials had not botched these efforts.
The current suit will hardly help identify or convict officials guilty of gross negligence, nor will it address the complicity of officials who were calling the shots in the rescue operation.
But a guilty verdict could hit the authorities where it hurts - their pocket - and it comes as no surprise that Moscow City Hall has already said it would call on the federal government to pay part of the damages.
A guilty verdict could also teach both regional and federal officials that they cannot simply write off such attacks as a nasty byproduct of the war in Chechnya, but that they will have to pay each time they neglect their duties and let their citizens fall victim to terrorist acts that could have been prevented or better handled.
TITLE: The Revolution Brewing Within Army Ranks
TEXT: RUSSIAN generals have been coming up against a new problem: Their soldiers are deserting en masse.
Until recently, soldiers deserted in ones and twos, shooting a few people and then running off. In each instance, there was a very thorough investigation: The soldier had yet to be found, but nonetheless the military authorities confidently announced that the soldier in question was a drug addict, hooligan and mentally unbalanced; and that the conditions enjoyed by the soldier in his unit were exemplary - he had everything short of senior officers serving him oysters in bed.
Now individual soldiers no longer shoot their torturers. Instead they are abandoning their units, without shooting anyone, in groups. Recently, on New Year's Eve, 24 conscripts deserted unit 01375 in the village of Kamenka near St. Petersburg.
True to form, on the day of the desertion, military prosecutors managed to establish, it was not the officers who had been mistreating the soldiers, but the opposite. A gross violation of military discipline had been committed by the soldiers, and an officer had been attacked. The same old story: Soldiers raising their hands against their kind benefactors.
Military prosecutors now face a genuine dilemma. The only time that the rotten Russian state properly investigates a murder and catches the murderer is precisely when murders are perpetrated by soldiers. And they go after them with one thought in mind: If even one soldier gets away with it today, then tomorrow garrisons across the country will be strewn with corpses.
And what if, following the unorganized shootings and the organized desertions, we start to see soldiers revolting?
This form of protest was extremely common in ancient societies. But what would happen if this ancient form of social protest were to take place at a missile base, whose warheads could take out the Kremlin or, say, Washington? Who would take such a country seriously?
And what if the revolt were to occur at an ordinary military base, but was then supported by the local population?
It is strange that, in our poverty-stricken country, separated into two very unequal halves by the shiny doors of armor-plated Mercedes 600s, we have completely forgotten about the phenomenon of social uprising and revolution.
It is worth recalling that, at the beginning of the 1990s, the young and penniless did not become revolutionaries, but bandits. We will probably never fully appreciate the extent to which a very serious social uprising was averted, absorbed by organized crime groups; nor do we realize the number of potential Stepan Razins and Pugachyovs who instead ended up collecting tribute from kiosk-owners. Now those days are over, but the social discontent remains.
Rich people don't go into the army - nor do the smart or the healthy. The system of bribe-taking in conscription offices is such that those who end up in the army are from the most oppressed and alienated sections of society - but at the same time, these people are rather well-organized.
And if nothing is done, then, sooner or later, the most oppressed class in this country is going to take up arms - the same ones that are handed out to them on a daily basis by their oppressors.
Yulia Latynina is author and host of "Yest Mneniye" ("Some Believe") on TVS.
TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: Cold Draft
Last week, Global Eye wrote of the brutal contempt shown by the Bush Regime toward the troops sent out as cannon fodder for its wars of profit and domination. Global Eye inferred this contempt - still unspoken at that time - from the Pentagon's crash program to create "super-soldiers," using drugs, hormones, wired brains, even genetic modification to turn young men and women into sleepless, remorseless killing machines.
This kind of abuse, coupled with the Regime's increasingly callous treatment - or rather, lack of treatment - of the nation's aging military veterans, clearly indicated a profound disrespect for the essential worth of each individual soldier. They were not regarded as human beings, but as just so much biological material to be manipulated at the whim their leaders, then discarded.
Again, this was all by inference; Global Eye looked to deeds, not the honeyed words of praise for "our magnificent troops" offered at whiles by President Bush and his warlord, Donald Rumsfeld. But just as foul deeds will rise, no matter how thickly they are plastered over, so too will a word of ugly truth sometimes escape from the lips of even the most practiced deceiver. And so it was last week, when Rumsfeld inadvertently confirmed the elite's scornful contempt for the suckers who serve them on the frontiers of empire.
It was at a Pentagon press briefing - the usual assured performance, with the relaxed defense chief holding forth and cracking wise before a roomful of awed, sycophantic reporters. He parried softball questions about Iraq and Korea, announced a few changes to the command structure of "Special Operations" (the significance of which was almost totally ignored by the big-time media players at the scene; more on this below), then answered a question about recent proposals to reinstate military conscription.
These proposals are a political ploy adopted by some liberal Democrats to force Washington's political leadership - of both parties - to think more seriously about the reality of committing troops to war. It's all too easy for the elite to approve military action when the lives of their own privileged sons and daughters are never on the line. Let's have a real draft, say these liberals, one without the exemptions and dodges that spared fortunate sons like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and almost the entire national Republican leadership from Vietnam: a war they all supported but wanted someone else - the darkies, the suckers, the poor white trash - to fight for them.
While the intention is understandable, the tactic is unsound. For one thing, it's hypocritical; the proposers would be the first to oppose reinstating conscription if the Regime actually called for it - and rightly so. Even worse, the ploy has introduced the idea of a draft into public discourse. If and when the Regime decides it needs forced conscription to feed its war machine, it can undermine opposition to the measure by pointing to this Democratic "support" for such a move. Naturally, any new draft would retain the old outs for elite offspring. But the Regime could bask in that rosy "bipartisan" glow so beloved by media opinion-makers.
But, for now, Bush still has a couple of million bodies to fling on his foreign fires before he need think about conscripting new ones. So Rumsfeld swatted the question away - but it was perhaps the very ease of the parry that undid him. Ever the corporate pedant, Rumsfeld couldn't simply dismiss the notion of a draft; he had to explain why it was such a bad idea. His reason? Because the biological material "sucked" into the last draft, during the Vietnam War, was of such "inferior" quality.
Here the contempt finally broke through the avuncular rictus. Rumsfeld explained that your quality types - college boys, married guys, teachers and others - took advantage of "all kinds of exemptions" to skip out on combat. "And what was left" - not even "who," just "what" - "was sucked into the intake, trained for a few months, then went out, adding no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services."
Think about that. "No value." More than 58,000 of these "intake suckers" were left dead on the battlefield; hundreds of thousands more were maimed, scarred, tormented, brutalized, broken - but they had "no value" to the "United States armed services." No value - just meaningless biological material to be chewed up in geopolitical games.
But let's be fair. It's not just American soldiers who are viewed this way by the elite; it's the entire world. This too was revealed at the press briefing, in Rumsfeld's offhand announcement about Special Operations. This, it turned out, was no mere bureaucratic shuffling, but a vast extension of the machinery of "targeted assassination."
When this dread doctrine was first promulgated by Bush, we were assured its lethal powers would be hedged with strong safeguards; indeed, none but the president himself could be trusted with the final approval of such a draconian step. This was, of course, a lie. CIA officials have already begun assassinating designated terrorist suspects without higher approval, as in Yemen last year. Now, Rumsfeld has extended this human hunting license to Special Ops commanders worldwide, who can act on their own bent to kill people accused - secretly, extrajudicially - of being terrorists.
It's all of a piece with the cold-blooded corporate thinking that rules the White House. The bottom line - augmenting the power and privilege of the entrenched elite - is all that matters. Any biological material that gets in the way has "no value."
For annotational references, see the "Opinion" section at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: London Police Raid Mosque After Arrests
AUTHOR: By Michael Mcdonough
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - British police with battering rams raided a mosque suspected of being a center of Islamic radicalism, arresting seven alleged terrorists early Monday in a search linked to the recent discovery of the deadly poison ricin.
Officers stormed the Finsbury Park mosque - base of a radical Muslim cleric - about 2 a.m. and searched two neighboring houses as helicopters circled overhead, shining bright lights on the buildings.
Egyptian-born cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri was not arrested, though Britain has ordered him to quit his pulpit for his inflammatory sermons and he is wanted in Yemen on terror charges.
Police, who have had al-Masri under surveillance for months, said the raid was linked to the Jan. 5 discovery of ricin in a London apartment. One of the world's most deadly toxins, ricin has been associated with al-Qaida and the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
No ricin was found in the raid, said police, who added six of the suspects were North African and the seventh Eastern European.
"Evidence gathered during recent counter-terrorist investigations in London and elsewhere has uncovered links between the premises and suspected terrorist activity. Such evidence has made this operation absolutely necessary at this time," a police statement said.
Al-Masri denied his mosque was linked to terrorism or the Jan. 5 discovery of ricin, saying the raid was "propaganda to gain support for war against terrorism."
"There was no reason to raid the mosque," he said by telephone. "It's open. They have surveillance on it, the cameras and everything. It's just a propaganda."
Al-Masri, who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, allegedly belongs to the Islamic Army of Aden, which claimed responsibility for a 2000 suicide bombing of the warship USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors.
Finsbury Park mosque where he preaches was the site of a rally marking the first anniversary of Sept. 11, during which radical Muslims praised Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terrorist attacks as revenge on the United States for its support of Israel and actions against Iraq.
Richard Reid, who was convicted of trying to destroy a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001 with explosives in his shoes, also reportedly attended the mosque, officially called North London Central Mosque.
The cleric has denied any involvement in violence and says he is only a spokesman for political causes. He has had British citizenship since 1985, and is protected by British law from extradition to Yemen.
Britain's charity watchdog has ordered al-Masri to give up his pulpit at the mosque because of his "inflammatory and highly political" speeches.
Police said Monday's raid was not connected to the removal order, which al-Masri has appealed.
British Home Secretary David Blunkett praised Monday's operation, the latest in connection to the ricin discovery, which led to the arrest of four North African men on terror charges.
In another ricin-linked raid, on Jan. 15 in Manchester, an unarmed officer was stabbed to death and two others injured during the arrest of three men, also described as North African.
One detainee broke free and grabbed a knife, and the botched raid sparked criticism of police procedures as under-prepared to handle terror suspects.
Kamel Bourgass, 27, appeared in court Friday charged with the murder of detective Stephen Oake, and Khalid Alwerfeli, 29, of Libya, appeared in court Monday charged with possession of articles and documents or records for terrorist purposes.
In Monday's raid, police said they didn't enter parts of the mosque used for prayer but only office space and accommodation areas.
"We have taken every step possible to show our respect for the Muslim faith and to minimize the impact to those who use the mosque and the wider Muslim community," the police statement said.
A Finsbury Park resident who lives opposite the mosque and identified himself only as Ali said that between 50 and 100 men, mostly North Africans, lived in the building at any one time because they couldn't afford to live anywhere else.
Jerry Scanland, landlord of the Auld Triangle pub on the same street as the mosque, said the raid began shortly after 2 a.m.
"There was a big police presence - around 150 police," he said. "I saw police in riot gear leave the mosque carrying ladders and battering rams."
Dozens of officers still surrounded the mosque at 11 a.m. and blocked the road with metal barriers. Police handed out leaflets at the local subway station saying they had made efforts to respect the mosque and the people inside.
TITLE: Likud Lead Holding Firm Ahead Of Vote
AUTHOR: By Ian Deitch
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party holds a solid lead over the rival Labor party nearly a week before national elections, according to polls published Monday.
The two surveys, published in leading Israeli newspapers, appeared a day after Sharon said European countries were too biased against Israel to mediate any renewal of Mideast peace negotiations.
Sharon has repeatedly promised to seek peace and make "painful concessions" if re-elected Jan. 28. But Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna said Sharon's comments indicated he was not sincere about reviving peace talks that collapsed after the Palestinians launched an uprising more than two years ago.
Sharon's party is forecast to win 31 to 33 seats in the 120-member parliament, compared to 19 seats for the Labor Party, according to the polls in two dailies, Maariv and Yediot Ahronot.
Corruption allegations against Sharon earlier this month hurt Likud in previous opinion polls, but the numbers have stabilized over the past week or so.
The Labor Party has said it will not join a coalition government led by Sharon. But the surveys indicated Sharon could still cobble together a narrow majority of about 63 seats if extreme-right and religious parties join with Likud.
The Maariv survey, conducted by the New Wave polling firm, questioned 1,000 eligible voters and had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points. The Yediot Ahronot poll, performed by the Dahaf Institute, questioned 1,003 people and had a margin of error of 3.5 points.
Israeli political analyst Gadi Wolfsfeld said that Sharon's support appeared solid, and that he was benefiting from his "anti-charisma."
"Israelis have had enough of the sleek politician who looks and sounds good on camera," he said. "What they want is someone who comes off as real and is a workhorse."
Meanwhile, an emerging Mideast peace proposal, known as the "road map," has been formulated by the so-called Quartet of mediators - the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.
It envisions a resumption of negotiations and would require Israel and the Palestinians to take a series of steps leading to a Palestinian state in 2005.
At a news conference, Sharon did not directly address the "road map," saying only that he sees "eye-to-eye" with the United States.
"To the European side, I said, 'Your attitude toward Israel and the Arabs and the Palestinians should be balanced," Sharon said. "When it will be balanced you are mostly welcome to participate. But at this moment the relations are unbalanced ... . [The Europeans] don't understand that[ in order to move things forward[ [Palestinian President Yasser] Arafat should be removed from any influential position."
When asked about the "road map" in an interview with Newsweek, Sharon was quoted as saying: "Oh, the Quartet is nothing! Don't take it seriously! There is [another] plan that will work."
He said that if Arafat was removed and Palestinian militants crushed, Israel would recognize a provisional, demilitarized Palestinian state with temporary borders, and after prolonged calm, enter negotiations on a final peace deal.
TITLE: UN Inspectors Claim Progress on Iraq as U.S. Ups Rhetoric
AUTHOR: By Charles J. Hanley
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD - After two days of talks, the chief UN arms inspectors and Iraqi officials agreed Monday on practical steps to greater Iraqi cooperation in the UN disarmament program, including Baghdad encouraging weapons scientists to submit to private UN interviews.
Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN nuclear agency, arrived Sunday as the United States warned time was running out for Baghdad to comply with UN orders to eliminate all its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons or face attack.
The two said after the talks that substantive issues, such as a complete accounting of old Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, remain unresolved.
"These issues are open and may require time," said Blix, head of the UN agency responsible for Iraqi chemical and biological disarmament.
They must report next Monday to the UN Security Council, updating their findings and Baghdad's compliance with the UN oversight regime that resumed Nov. 27 to certify that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.
Blix would not say whether that report would be upbeat or pessimistic, but he said of the discussions here: "There are a number of points which would have otherwise been negative but which have now been turned around."
The head of the Iraqi delegation to the talks, presidential science adviser Amir al-Saadi, described the talks as "very constructive and positive."
The United States and Britain insist Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government still maintains illegal weapons and threaten war if it does not give them up. U.S. Navy flotillas and military units have been converging on the seas and deserts of the Middle East.
Senior U.S. government figures underlined growing American impatience with Iraq and the inspection process, speaking on television on Sunday.
"We can't keep this up forever," Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
However, others on the 15-member Security Council advocate more patience, allowing the inspectors months more to do their job.
"We are going to say we still need some time," ElBaradei said at a news conference after Monday's three hours of talks.
A joint UN-Iraqi statement listed these among other major points of agreement:
The Iraqi government will encourage weapons scientists to agree to private interviews with UN inspectors. The two sides did not, however, announce agreement on conducting such interviews abroad, an idea pushed by the U.S. government.
Iraq agreed to expand the list of such potential interview subjects, with advice from the UN experts. The list of about 500 submitted last month was called not a "serious effort" by Blix.
Iraq will conduct a "comprehensive search" for old 122mm rocket warheads designed to hold chemical agents. Sixteen such warheads, unfilled, have been found in two Iraqi locations in recent days. Thousands such munitions remain unaccounted for in Iraqi documents reviewed by the United Nations.
Iraq agreed to respond to questions regarding its 12,000-page declaration submitted to the United Nations on Dec. 8, reporting on its chemical, biological and nuclear programs. Both Washington and UN inspectors criticized the declaration as inadequate.
Some documents requested by the UN inspectors to help fill gaps in the declaration have been handed over. Others requested have not been produced.
Blix said the UN teams have not yet analyzed the documents, but he told reporters, "For the moment, I don't see that this has taken us forward." He added, however, that "at least it was a response, a partial response." He did not describe the material.
Blix noted that the substantive issues still needing resolution included questions, the result of accounting discrepancies, about the disposition of old Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, such as VX nerve agent and anthrax.
Speaking of the agreement on practical matters, he said, "We have come a long way" toward what he called an "effective, credible disarmament process."
"Today was just not the time for substantive issues," he added.
TITLE: Thousands Protest War in Iraq
AUTHOR: By Angela Doland
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - Activists in Tokyo carried toy guns filled with flowers, one banner at a Moscow rally read "Iraq isn't your ranch, Mr. Bush," and anti-war protesters in Paris shouted, "Stop Bush! Stop war!"
The slogans and banners were different at protests around the world Saturday, but the message to the United States and its allies was the same: Find a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis.
U.S. President George W. Bush also faced peace protests in several cities at home this weekend. In Washington, rally leaders were expecting tens of thousands of activists, some arriving in bus from far-away states such as Wisconsin.
In Paris, the 6,000-strong march was the third nationwide demonstration since October. A Jan. 12 poll in the Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper showed 76 percent of those surveyed didn't want French troops to take part in a U.S.-led operation.
"You can see people are waking up when they see us marching," said Flore Boudet, a 21-year-old demonstrating with her classmates from the Sorbonne University.
In Moscow, Russians chanted "U.S., hands off Iraq!" and "Yankee, Go Home!" at a march outside the U.S. Embassy. One banner read: "U.S.A. is International Terrorist No. 1."
Near London, about 200 people demonstrated outside the barbed wire fence of a military base. Elsewhere in Europe, a protest in Goteborg, Sweden, gathered 5,000 peaceful demonstrators, while a few hundred people marched in the German cities of Cologne and Bonn.
About 100 people from Turkey's Green Party demonstrated in Istanbul, throwing toy guns into a trash can. About 1,000 activists marched in Cairo, while several Pakistani cities had small anti-war demonstrations.
In the Middle East, a march in Cairo, Egypt, drew 1,000 people, while some of the 4,000 protesters in Beirut, Lebanon, carried posters of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Not all protesters were pushing for peace: In the Syrian capital, Damascus, some people shouted, "Our beloved Saddam, strike Tel Aviv," a refrain from the 1991 Gulf War.
In Tokyo, thousands of people marched in the glitzy Ginza shopping district, including a group of students wearing Bush face masks and toting toy guns filled with flowers. Some Japanese demonstrators played island folk songs on traditional string instruments from Okinawa, where more than half of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan are stationed.
On Friday, Hussein proclaimed his country ready for war and warned that his enemies risked "suicide" at Baghdad's gates. A day earlier, international weapons inspectors found 12 empty chemical warheads in Iraq - a find described by U.S. officials as "troubling and serious."
The United States and Britain are marshaling a large military force in the Persian Gulf to back up their warnings against Saddam to give up weapons of mass destruction or face attack. Iraq claims it has no such weapons.
On Saturday, most of the protesters targeted their anger at Bush, who says the United States has the right to attack even without UN backing. Many activists say a war against Iraq without United Nations approval would be illegal and immoral.
"It is illegal because, under current circumstances, there is no UN mandate for war," Gabriel Carlyle, a spokesman for the London-based lobby group Voices in the Wilderness, said Friday.
"It is immoral because hundreds and thousands of innocent people will die, and it is not about human rights and democracy but replacing Saddam Hussein with a more U.S.-friendly dictator," he said.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Kibaki Hospitalized
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - President Mwai Kibaki has been hospitalized to remove a blood clot from his leg and treat slightly high blood pressure, his doctor said Monday.
The 71-year-old Kibaki, who led the opposition to a historic victory in Dec. 27 elections, was admitted to Nairobi Hospital on Sunday evening, said Dr. Dan Gikonyo.
Kibaki has been receiving treatment since a Dec. 3 car accident in which he dislocated his right ankle, fractured his right arm and damaged his back. He has been in a wheelchair since the crash.
The blood clot formed while the leg was in cast, Gikonyo said.
"Prolonged immobilization in a plaster may cause blood clots in the limbs," he said. "In the current state where the president has elevated blood pressure, treatment should be done in hospital to avoid any complications of bleeding."
Pacific Earthquake
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - A powerful earthquake hit the Solomon Islands on Monday, causing residents to flee homes and buildings. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu issued an alert for a tsunami, or giant wave, for low-lying nations across the Pacific but later withdrew the warning
The National Disaster Management Office in the Solomon Islands had no immediate reports of injuries as a result of the 7.2-magnitude quake, which hit between the impoverished nation's South Malaita and Makira regions, spokesman Martin Karan said.
The earthquake was centered about 190 kilometers east-northeast of the island of Bougainville at a depth of 32 kilometers beneath the earth's surface, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Australia Burning
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Hundreds of people began sifting through the charred remains of their homes in Australia's capital on Sunday, after the worst wildfires in the city's history swept through suburbs, killing four people and forcing thousands to evacuate. Nearly 400 houses were destroyed, officials said."I have been to a lot of bush fire scenes in Australia ... but this is by far the worst," Prime Minister John Howard said Sunday.
Hospitals treated about 250 people for burns and the effects of smoke from the fires, which swept into Canberra on Saturday.
Fire crews admitted they were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the flames, but John Stanhope, Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory, defended emergency services against charges they were ill-prepared.
"This was an event of such enormity, of such force and such devastating power that it simply ran over the top of us," he said.
Police said a 61-year old man died of smoke inhalation while trying to save his house, and an 83-year-old woman died in her home. A 37-year-old woman was found dead at her burned-out home along with an unidentified body.
Globes Decided
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The lines were drawn and the battle joined for Oscars on Sunday as one of the hottest contests for Hollywood's top honors narrowed at the Golden Globes with the drama "The Hours" and musical "Chicago" taking top awards.
"The Hours" claimed the title of best dramatic film and earned star Nicole Kidmanthe award for best actress in a drama for playing writer Virginia Woolf fighting mental illness.
"Chicago," based on the popular stage show about an aspiring actress whose murderous ways make headlines, claimed three awards, more than any film. It won for best musical or comedy while stars Richard Gere and Renee Zellweger won for best actor and actress in a musical or comedy.
Jack Nicholson was named best dramatic actor, his sixth Golden Globe for acting, as a retired insurance actuary pondering if his life was wasted in "About Schmidt.
The movie categories, however, enjoy the spotlight because they come at the start of Hollywood's long awards season and are often a strong indicator of who will win Oscars, the film industry's top honors handed out in March.
Flying High
HOUSTON (Reuters) - On Naked-Air, seatbelts aren't the only things coming off once the pilot switches off the sign.
Passengers aboard a May 3 chartered flight from Miami to Cancun, Mexico, dubbed "Naked-Air," will be free to drop their pants, shed their bras and underwear and move about the cabin au naturel.
Castaways Travel, a Houston-area travel agency that specializes in "clothing-optional trips," is offering what it bills as the world's first all-nude flight for $499, round-trip.
"Once the aircraft reaches cruising altitude, you will be free to enjoy the flight clothes-free," the agency's Web site says.
But those thinking about engaging in monkey business on the trip are warned: "Inappropriate behavior is not condoned for this nude flight."
Seats aboard the chartered Boeing 727-200 jet are reserved for the first 170 passengers, and the destination is an all-inclusive "Nude Week" vacation at the El Dorado Resort & Spa in Cancun.
Given the incredibly strict airport security that is now the rule in the U.S., passengers aboard "Naked-Air" should have it a bit easier - none are likely to be carrying too much in their luggage.
Trigger Happy
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek police have arrested a tourist from neighboring Albania who told them he was in Athens on a bank-robbing vacation.
A police spokesperson said the 31-year-old Albanian was seized Thursday outside a central Athens bank minutes after staging his fourth robbery in the capital in as many days.
Since arriving in Athens on a tourist visa Sunday, police said the man had netted nearly 125,000 euros in armed hold-ups of banks around the city.
"He said he decided to take a bank-robbing holiday," the spokesperson said.
FT Mops Up
PARIS (Reuters) - Crafty France Telecom workers have brought out a new weapon for mopping up the company's $70-billion pile of debt - mops.
Union officials in the eastern region of Alsace have begun selling the mops at about a dollar each to help the phone giant tackle the world's largest debt run up by a single listed company.
The state-controlled firm went on a debt-fueled expansion spree during the Internet boom only to slip up when markets crashed.
The CGT union has sold 10 mops so far, so that leaves just 69,999,999,990 more to sell before France Telecom can wipe the slate clean, a union official told Liberation newspaper.
TITLE: Raiders, Bucs Set for Superbowl Showdown
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OAKLAND, California - The Oakland Raiders did more than "Just win, baby!"
They did it their way, blending a renegade past with a pass-happy present to defeat the Tennessee Titans 41-24 on Sunday in the AFC Championship game.
Rich Gannon, the 37-year-old league MVP, led the way with three touchdown passes and another score he ran in himself.
His thirtysomething teammates - Bill Romanowski, Rod Woodson and Tim Brown - along with 40-year-old Jerry Rice, sent the Raiders and maverick owner Al Davis to the Super Bowl for the first time since 1984.
"I've been looking at this game for 14 years and watching other people go," Brown said. "Now, I'm finally on my way. It's a great feeling."
It will be a Silver and Black championship game, tinged with more than just a touch of gray.
The veteran Raiders - the team built to win right now - will go for their fourth Super Bowl title next Sunday in San Diego. They'll play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who beat the Philadelphia Eagles 27-10 in the NFC Championship game earlier in the day.
Oakland's oft-touted "Commitment to Excellence" will be tested by a coach who knows it well - Jon Gruden, who left the Raiders for the Bucs after last season.
"How ya doing, coach?," Raiders receiver Jerry Porter quipped. "I'll see ya later."
Gruden looked forward to the reunion, too.
"I've got a lot of respect for where I come from," he said. "I do have some close relationships with some of those players."
Gruden's last game with the Raiders ended with a spirit-sapping loss in the snow in New England. It came after an apparent fumble the Raiders recovered late in the game was ruled an incomplete pass, and it provided these Raiders even more motivation.
Sunday was a clear, perfect day at a stadium known as the Black Hole, and the Raiders looked as much like the swashbuckling bad boys they once were as the new high-tech team they have become.
The old: 14 penalties for 127 yards, a handful of cheap shots and a bevy of vicious hits on Steve McNair, who paid a huge price for his 194 yards passing and two rushing touchdowns.
The new: Unbelievably, Oakland called exactly one running play over the first three quarters, leaving the work to Gannon, who threw 41 times for 286 yards and scrambled for 41 more, including a fourth-quarter touchdown.
The Raiders took the lead for good late in the second quarter, when Barton stripped Tennessee's Robert Holcombe, giving Oakland the ball at the Tennessee 16. Two plays later, Gannon hit tight end Doug Jolley for a score and a 21-17 lead.
On the next play, special teams got into the act, forcing a fumble by John Simon and setting up a field goal for a seven-point lead at the half.
Oakland tackled punter Craig Hentrich to set up a field goal for a 10-point lead in the third.
McNair was then at his gutty, gritty best, leading the Titans on a 67-yard touchdown drive to make it 27-24.
Tennessee appeared to be stopped on that drive, but Terrance Shaw got called for a personal foul, Oakland's fourth of the game. On the next play, McNair ran in from 13 yards for his second score.
"McNair played like a true warrior today," said Oakland's first-year coach, Bill Callahan. "He had no quit in him, no die in him."
Tampa Bay 27, Philadelphia 10. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers forgot about the cold and their past. They simply rolled up their sleeves and let their league-leading defense go to work.
Now they're off to sunny San Diego for their first Super Bowl - a long, sad history behind them.
After being stunned by a Philadelphia touchdown in the first minute of the NFC Championship game Sunday, the Bucs shut down Donovan McNabb and company to beat the Eagles 27-10.
"Nobody really expected us to win this game," said Tampa Bay coach Jon Gruden, in his first year with the team. "That fueled our enthusiasm to play."
After the Eagles' early flurry, sparked by Brian Mitchell's 70-yard return of the opening kickoff, it was all Tampa Bay. The Bucs led 17-10 at halftime and stifled Philadelphia after intermission.
Alstott scored on a 1-yard run at the end of a 96-yard drive in the first quarter that was highlighted by Joe Jurevicius' 71-yard catch-and-run.
Brad Johnson threw a 9-yard TD pass to Keyshawn Johnson in the second quarter, and Ronde Barber's 92-yard interception return with 3:12 left in the game clinched it after the Eagles had driven 73 yards to the Bucs 10. Martin Gramatica kicked two field goals.
"We won a cold game again. We won a road playoff game and we scored a touchdown here in the Vet," Gruden said.
Who could ask for more?
TITLE: Local Hero Hewitt Out Of Open
AUTHOR: By Phil Brown
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MELBOURNE, Australia - Younes El Aynaoui overpowered Lleyton Hewitt with his serve and big forehand Monday, knocking the top-ranked player out in the fourth round of the Australian Open.
The Moroccan, seeded 18th, beat Hewitt 6-7 (7-4), 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-5), 6-4, derailing his hopes of becoming the first Australian winner of the home Grand Slam tournament since 1976.
Hewitt, known as an outstanding returner, had only three break chances in the match as El Aynaoui served at speeds up to 210 kilometers per hour.
El Aynaoui ran around to hit forehands from all corners of the court, and at all angles. In the final game, he reached match point with a leaping overhead smash and then won the 3 1/2 -hour match with a forehand into Hewitt's backhand corner.
"I hope I didn't give away all the power I have - there are still more matches left," El Aynaoui said.
The 31-year-old El Aynaoui reached only his third Grand Slam tournament quarterfinal. His second was in the U.S. Open last year, where he lost to Hewitt in four sets.
El Aynaoui had the first service break in the fourth set's seventh game. At 30-all, Hewitt hit a passing shot attempt wide, and then double faulted.
Serena Williams, the top-ranked women's player, avoided an upset, starting slow again but finishing strong to move within three victories of completing the "Serena Slam."
Williams, who already holds the most recent titles from the French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open, beat Eleni Daniilidou 6-4, 6-1.
Her quarterfinal opponent will be fellow American Meghann Shaughnessy, who saved five break points in the final game to beat Elena Bovina 5-7, 6-2, 6-4.
Meanwhile, Andy Roddick became the second American in the men's quarterfinals, rebounding from two sets down to beat Mikhail Youzhny 6-7 (7-4), 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, 6-2.
Counting two previous losses to Youzhny, Roddick had lost six consecutive sets against the Russian Davis Cup hero before staging his comeback.
He pulled out a tight third set with a heavy serve return that Youzhny hit wide, gained an early break in the fourth set and broke twice in the fifth, ending with a low shot that Youzhny volleyed into the net and three unreturnable serves.
"Midway through the third set, I was thinking whether there was a flight out tonight," Roddick said. "I was a little frustrated but I didn't let it get the best of me."
Another American hope, James Blake, lost 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 to Germany's Rainer Schuettler, who gained the fourth round when 2002 runner-up Marat Safin withdrew with a wrist injury from a fall in an earlier match.
Williams played the last match on center court before organizers temporarily suspended play on the outside courts, citing temperatures of 95 degrees and high humidity. They had the option of closing the roof over center court, but did not do so.
"It's hard to breathe," said Williams, who sat gulping air during the changeovers. "But it's OK, I like the heat."
Williams, who missed the Australian Open with an injury last year before winning the other three majors, has struggled early in three of her four matches here so far. In Monday's first set, she gestured in exasperation over some of her misses.
Her serve was broken twice in the set, but she broke three times. The 20-year-old Daniilidou, who's from Greece and was seeded 18th, helped by double-faulting eight times.
Williams then settled down, reducing her errors from 21 in the first set to six in the second.
Shaughnessy, a 23-year-old who's seeded 25th, reached the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam event for the first time by winning her 11th straight match to start the year. Before the Australian, she won a warmup tournament in Canberra.
Serving for the match against Bovina, a U.S. Open quarterfinalist last year, Shaughnessy saved break points with an error by the 19-year-old Russian, a service winner, an overhead smash, an inside-out forehand and an ace. After another service winner, she finished the 2:19 match when the 20th-seeded Bovina netted a backhand serve return.
Schuettler, a 26-year-old German who had never reached a Grand Slam quarterfinal before, rebounded from early breaks by Blake in the first two sets.
In the final set, the two traded service breaks in the fourth and fifth games, and Schuettler gained the key break in the sixth when Blake double-faulted. Schuettler finished with a forehand down the line that Blake couldn't handle at the net.
(For other results, see Scorecard.)
TITLE: Italians Sweep Euro Short-Track Medals
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Italian favorite Fabio Carta led his country's short-track speed skaters to a dominating performance in the European Short Track Championships at St. Petersburg's Ice Palace over the weekend.
Carta, Michele Antionioli and Nicola Franceschina swept the overall men's classification, while the Italian teams won both the men's and women's relays.
"Italian men are fierce competitors at competitions," Carta said at a press conference Sunday.
"We wanted to take all the medals at this championship."
The championship was the second big short-track event at the Ice Palace, following the sport's World Cup in December.
On Friday, Carta led the Italian charge by taking the gold in the men's 1,500-meter final in 2:23.950.
Antonioli took the silver, 0:00.049 behind, with Franceschina in third.
Carta also took the gold in the 500-meters in a time of 0:42.699, accelerating with one lap left to edge Belgium's Pieter Gysel by 0:541.
Antonioli got a measure of revenge in the 1,000 meters, claiming his first European Championship gold in a time of 1:30.928.
Franceschina finished second, a mere 0:00.009 down, while Carta, in the only race he was denied gold, came third in 1:31.035.
However, Carta showed his star quality to destroy the field in the 3,000-meter event, winning in 5:09.330.
Gysel finished second in 5:15.708.
In women's racing, Bulgaria's Salt Lake City Olympic medalist Yevgenia Radanov won all four individual races - 500 meters, 1,000 meters, 1,500 meters and 3,000 meters, for which the top eight competitors qualify - to take the overall gold for the fourth time.
"It gets harder every time you win the championships," she said. "After you win the first time, you want to win every time."
Russia's Tatyana Borodulina pushed Radanova all the way in the 500 meters, but Radanova secured the win in the final meters, winning in 0:45.086 - far outside her own world record, set in 2001, of 0:43.671, but 0:00.068 ahead of the Russian.France's Stefanie Bouvier took bronze in 0:49.435. Bouvier also took silver in Friday's 1,500 meters.
On home ice, the championships proved successful for Russia's female short-track skaters, with Nina Yevteyeva, from the Western Siberian city of Omsk, taking bronze in the overall classification, and the Russian team clinching silver in the 3,000 meter relay.
Yevteyeva also took bronze in the 1,500 meters
In the men's 5,000-meter relay, the Italians were almost a lap ahead of their nearest rivals after only 23 of 45 laps. The team cruised to victory, led by Carta, over a lap ahead of second-place Great Britain, with France in third place.
Italy also dominated the women's 3,000-meter relay, leading from the start while Russia and Bulgaria fought for second place. Russia eventually claimed the silver - in a decision announced after the race - when Bulgaria's Daniela Vlaeva was disqualified for impeding Yevteyeva while attempting to overtake the Russian and causing both skaters to fall. The Netherlands claimed the bronze medal.
The championships were overshadowed by a serious injury to 18-year-old Bulgarian skater Assen Pandov, son of the country's national-team coach, Ivan Pandov, in an accident in the heats for the 500 meters.
Pandov and Russia's Dmitry Vasilenko fell while coming out of a turn, and one of Vasilenko's blades sliced open Pandov's thigh almost to the bone.
Pandov was immediately taken to the intensive-care unit of the nearby Alexandrovsky Hospital, and underwent nearly three hours surgery.
Russian Short-Track Federation head Gennady Burbulis said on Sunday that the operation had been successful, and that the doctors had said that Pandov has a good chance of recovering from the injury and resuming his skating career.
TITLE: Super Seattle Rallies To Down Mavericks
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEATTLE - With 0:45 of big plays, Rashard Lewis made the Seattle SuperSonics forget about 2 1/2 weeks of misery.
Lewis had 19 points and 13 rebounds, hitting a turnaround jumper with 0:43.1 remaining and two free throws with 0:10.3 left to lead Seattle to a dramatic 85-81 victory over the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday night.
"I had no conscience," Lewis said. "I was just thinking, 'Put it through the hoop.'"
The Sonics have slumped this month, opening the new year with six losses before an overtime victory Friday against Memphis. But Seattle looked steady down the stretch in handing the Mavericks their third straight loss.
"They're the best team in the NBA right now," Lewis said. "They only have eight losses, and that tells you what kind of team we are when we come to play."
The Mavericks completed a 1-3 road trip that included a 123-94 loss in Sacramento and a 111-106 loss at Phoenix.
"It's been a tough road trip," said Dallas center Raef LaFrentz. "We didn't see this coming. We didn't expect to be coming off three losses, but we are. We've just got to work through it."
Peja Drobnjak scored 19 points in a rare reserve role for the Sonics, hitting 8-of-13 to break out of his three-game shooting slump. Kenny Anderson scored 13 points and made a key jumper from the left corner with 1:49 to play.
"It was a spot-up," Anderson said. "They moved the ball in the rotation. I was open, and I just stepped in and hit it."
The Sonics built an 81-76 lead on Anderson's jumper, only to see the Mavericks tie it again at 81 with 58.6 seconds to play on an inside bucket and a 3-pointer by Michael Finley.
"They came down and made some big shots and key stops," Finley said. "There's a reason we lost, but it didn't come down to those last possessions. Throughout the game, we let them get confidence."
Orlando 101, Toronto 93. Tracy McGrady showed Toronto Raptors' fans what they're missing.
McGrady had 35 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists against his former team, leading the Orlando Magic to victory over the Raptors on Sunday.
McGrady, who played three seasons in Toronto before signing with Orlando as a free agent, shot 14-for-31 from the field. The NBA's leading scorer was booed throughout the game.
"Thank you for booing me," McGrady said. "You are doing me a favor really, because when they boo me like that it just gives me more motivation to play."
"I enjoy the challenge and I enjoy the boos. Keep on booing me every time I come back. Please, please, Toronto, please keep doing it."
McGrady shot just 3-for-10 from the field in the first quarter, then found his range.
"I was rushing things. I was a little overexcited to be back here," he said. "I was listening to the boos every time I touched the ball, but once I found my rhythm, I was back to normal."
Jacque Vaughn added 15 points and Pat Garrity scored 13 for the Magic, who ended a two-game losing streak despite missing injured Grant Hill and Mike Miller.
Miller has a sprained right ankle and Hill was put on the injured list Saturday because of chronic pain in his surgically repaired left ankle.
Morris Peterson had 25 points for the injury-riddled Raptors, who have lost three straight and 15 of 17. All-Star Vince Carter missed his 21st straight game with a strained right knee.
Orlando's Darrell Armstrong said McGrady relished the booing.
"He was laughing at it. He rides that to the fullest," Armstrong said. "The boos really mean 'We miss you T-Mac. We wish you were still here.' He loves to come back up here and play."
(For other results, see Scorecard.)
TITLE: 'Big Easy' Grabs Two In a Row
AUTHOR: By Doug Ferguson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HONOLULU - Ernie Els holed a 13-meter birdie putt on the second extra hole Sunday to win the Sony Open against 21-year-old Aaron Baddeley, making him the first player in 14 years to capture the first two PGA Tour events of the season.
"I was just trying to stay alive," Els said. "All of a sudden, I win the tournament."
Unlike last week in Kapalua - an eight-stroke victory with a record score - the Big Easy had to work hard for this one. Els appeared to be beaten when he pulled his drive left of the 322-meter 10th green, leaving him only about 4 meters of putting surface and no shot. He pitched it through the green, and Baddeley had 6 meters for birdie.
"When it was [2 meters] away, I was hoping I hit it hard enough," Els said. "You can almost not believe it. That was quite something."
With steely nerves and a game that belies his 21 years, Baddeley holed a 4-meter birdie putt on the 18th hole to force a playoff, made another birdie from 2 meters to continue and was in much better shape than Els on No. 10, the second playoff hole. He never dreamed Els would make it.
"It was a heck of a putt," Baddeley said. "I'm disappointed because I had a chance to win. But I'm happy because I made Ernie work for it, and I didn't have my A-game today."