SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #842 (10), Tuesday, February 11, 2003
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TITLE: Smolny Focuses On City Subway
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While the annual season of city-budget wrangling is still months away, City Hall has already weighed in with the first budget proposal of the year, in the form of a massive development project for the city's subway system.
 
The City Administration's Transport Committee said on Monday that it is pushing a 12-year, 87.4-billion-ruble (about $2.7 billion at the current exchange rate) program that would include the construction of a number of new stations, including three on a new "purple" line to serve the southeastern regions of the city.
 But officials at Metrostroi, the company responsible for carrying out the construction work, say that the program has a certain castle-in-the-air quality to it.
 "For me, what is most interesting is: From where are they going to get the money?" Metrostroi spokesperson Olga Baburina said in a telephone interview on Monday.
 This year, Metrostroi is scheduled to receive a combined 2 billion rubles (about $62.5 million) from federal and local budgets - a jump of 237 million rubles (about $7.4 million) from last year's figure. The largest chunk of the money is earmarked for the construction of a detour around a collapsed portion of tunnel on the Kirovsko-Vyborgskaya line and to complete a new station, Komendantsky Aerodrom, in the northeast of the city, according to Baburina.
 The $180-million renovation project on the Kirovsko-Vygorgskaya line was begun shortly after December 1995, when water from the Neva River flooded into the collapsed tunnel section running between the Lesnaya and Ploschad Muzhestva stations, isolating inhabitants of the city's northern districts from the system.
 Work on the section, being undertaken by Impregilo, a joint French-Italian venture, has been halted a number of times over the last eight years for a variety of political, financial and technical reasons, with the completion date for the section being put back repeatedly. Most recently, on Nov. 29, a specialized tunneling device the company was using was halted by an enormous stone, causing another delay. Work resumed on Friday, but officials say the incident has lead them to question whether the stretch of track will be opened again for service by the start of 2004, as presently planned.
 "We have just the two main works to complete [over the next two years]: the Komendantsky Aerodrom station, which is scheduled to be finished in the first half of 2004, and the broken part of the line," Baburina said. "But it's difficult to say whether it will be done on time. It could take half a year [to tunnel through], or it could take a year - who knows how many rocks there are on the way?"
 There are also doubts about the likelihood of getting the go-ahead for the more ambitious 12-year plan. Sergei Zrentiyev, the deputy head of the Transport Committee, admitted Monday that City Hall officials themselves don't really believe that they will manage to get the tens of billions of rubles committed for such a large-scale development project for the metro system.
 "This program has been drawn up on the maximum scale," Zrentiyev said in a telephone interview. "The [annual] growth in spending to finance subway construction is below the level we want to reach."
 "But, if the program becomes law, it will be easier for us to push this question when the city budget is being formed," he added.
 Beside the flooded tunnel and the uncompleted Komendantsky Aerodrom station, City Hall has another subway-related nightmare to deal with - the so-called "lost" Admiralteiskaya station. Built in 1997 under the building housing the Aeroflot ticket offices at the corner of Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa and Nevsky Prospect, the station is virtually complete. All that is missing is an entrance/exit.
 Zrentiev said that there are at least eight proposals for building the necessary entrance/exit for the station, but none of them are ideal, due to the location in the city's historical center. There are numerous old buildings in the area that are in bad condition, and hundreds of residents of privatized apartments would have to be relocated at the city's expense. 
 "Even the least expensive project, to build the exit in the area between Bolshaya Morskaya Ulitsa and the arch of the General Staff Building on Palace Square, would be extremely difficult," Zrentiyev said. "The central telephone office is located there, and there are underground lines everywhere."
 He said that City Hall will likely only return to serious consideration of the question after 2004.
 Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly, said that the city parliament would be very cautious while considering the program. 
 "It's about seven billion [rubles] a year, isn't it? They couldn't solve the problem with the broken line in eight years, even though they spent billions of rubles on it," Vishnevsky said Monday. "The subway is a positive thing, but it's possible to sink in so much money that it will be very hard to dig it back out."

TITLE: Popov Appointed Chechen PM
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Anatoly Popov, the head of the federal agency overseeing reconstruction in Chechnya, was appointed Chechen prime minister Monday, filling a post vacated amid a squabble between former Prime Minister Mikhail Babich and the head of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration, Akhmad Kadyrov.
 
Kadyrov said Monday that he picked Popov, 42, after discussing the appointment with President Vladimir Putin and the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, Viktor Kazantsev, news agencies reported.
 "Popov is my choice, my candidate," Kadyrov was quoted as saying on Monday. He said Popov is "not an ambitious or aggressive person, knows Chechnya well and is able to work in a team."
 Gazeta reported that Putin called Kadyrov on Friday night and urged him to choose Popov. The newspaper, citing unnamed Kremlin sources, said Popov's appointment had been backed by the Interior and Defense ministries and the Federal Security Service - the so-called power ministries that strive to limit Kadyrov's power in Chechnya.
 A Popov aide said by telephone that her boss flew to Grozny on Monday for talks the next day with a visiting team from the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe.
 In sacrificing the uncompromising Babich less than three months after his appointment, the Kremlin has confirmed that it is betting on Kadyrov as the future elected president of Chechnya, said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies.
 In the longer term, however, Babich's ouster may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory for Kadyrov. But, for now, the appointment should keep both Kadyrov and the Kremlin happy, he said.
 Popov, an experienced financier with high-level connections in the presidential administration and the military, will be able to secure better control over federal funds being sent to Chechnya than his predecessor, Makarkin said. The government has earmarked 1.84 billion rubles ($60 million) for Chechnya's reconstruction this year.
 "Also, Popov is a figure whose stance over Chechnya has never depended on Kadyrov," Makarkin said.
 Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov appointed Popov to oversee Chechnya's restoration in September 2001. The Audit Chamber has uncovered misappropriations of more than $22 million meant for restoration in 2001, but Popov's name has never surfaced in the case.
 Popov, a native of the southern Volgograd region, graduated with an economics degree from the Volgograd Agriculture Institute and, in 1991, was offered an advisory post in the Soviet government. Shortly after the Soviet collapse in December of that year, Popov assumed a senior position at Menatep bank, a one-time banking powerhouse that folded after the 1998 financial crisis.
 Many of Popov's former associates from Menatep currently occupy influential government positions. Among them, for example, is Vladislav Surkov, the deputy head of presidential administration, who was once on the Menatep board.
 Popov served as chief financial officer of Rosvooruzheniye, a state-owned arms-export agency, for four months in 1998. After that, he was made the deputy head of Moscow City Hall's food-purchasing agency.
 He ran in Volgograd's gubernatorial election in 2000 and came in a distant fourth, despite waging what one local newspaper described as a "cost-is-no-object campaign."
 Popov stands by the Kremlin's often-repeated line that the war in Chechnya is over.
 "There is no war in Chechnya, as such. There are armed sorties of bandits," he told TV-Center television in March last year.
 In signing the decree appointing Popov as Chechen prime minister Monday, Kadyrov also accepted Babich's resignation, Itar-Tass reported. Babich tendered his resignation last week.
 The spat erupted between Kadyrov and Babich last month when Babich publicly accused Kadyrov of overstepping his authority by installing a new Chechen finance minister without consulting him. The chief prosecutor of Chechnya, Ivan Kravchenko, sided with Babich in objecting to the appointment, which saw a non-Chechen replaced with a Chechen native, Eli Isayev.
 Attempts by Kadyrov to fill his administration with Chechen natives also raised the ire of the Chechen prime minister before Babich, Stanislav Ilyasov. Analysts say the prime ministers are handpicked by the Kremlin to keep an eye on how federal funds are spent in Chechnya.
 Isayev, however, will remain in his post as finance minister, Ilya Vlasov, Chechnya's minister in the federal government, said Monday, Interfax reported.

TITLE: Taking Cash Out of Russia Made Easier
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The State Duma earned the applause of foreigners and economists alike Friday by passing long-lobbied-for legislation that will make it easier to take cash out of the country.
 
Lawmakers passed in the third and final reading amendments to the law on currency controls that will allow all travelers - both Russians and foreigners - to carry out up to $3,000 without declaring the sum and up to $10,000 with a declaration. Amounts of more than $10,000 must be wired out electronically through banks.
 Currently, Russians may take out up to $1,500 without either a declaration or documentation. But foreigners must declare every cent and provide documents, such as a declaration stamped upon entry or a bank certificate proving how the money was imported.
 The legislation - the result of intense negotiations between the Duma, the Federation Council and the cabinet - is expected to gain Federation Council approval and be signed into law by President Vladimir Putin within the next few months.
 Friday's vote was the second attempt to ease regulations on currency flows out of the country. Lawmakers originally passed a more liberal version of the bill on Dec. 20, 2002, which allowed up to $10,000 to be taken out of the country without a declaration. The Federation Council rejected the bill a week later.
 The new version is likely to get the remaining stamps of approval without a glitch, observers said Friday.
 "We expect the bill not to have any troubles any more," said Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia.
 Somers called the adoption of the bill not only a sign of common sense, but a victory for finally making Russians and foreigners equal.
 "Everyone won. It's doubly good: Foreigners get equal treatment, and Russians can take $3,000 out," said Somers, who, like the European Business Club, has lobbied the government to make such changes for more than two years.
 Many foreigners, unaware of the regulations, have been stopped at the border while trying to leave with unspent and often insignificant sums. Others have had substantial amounts confiscated.
 More experienced foreigners, including Somers, have learned that some customs officials show more common sense than the law and allow foreigners to take out the small sums needed to catch a cab at their port of arrival.
 "What I have been doing is just tell them honestly that I have, let's say, $80 for the cab," Somers said in a telephone interview Friday. "And customs officers would usually let me go."
 He said that his personal record in taking money out of the country in such manner was $120.
 But, Somers stressed, frequent trouble at customs was unsettling and left a bad impression with foreigners, including much needed foreign investors.
 The current system was put in place largely in an attempt to staunch high capital flight throughout the 1990s.
 That threat is over, and the government has better things to worry about than the negligible amounts of money leaving the country in the pockets of travelers, analysts said.
 "All the capital that could leave has already gone," said Christopher Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank.
 Apart from Russia's image, the economy too could benefit from more liberal currency controls, said Alexei Moiseyev, economist at investment bank Renaissance Capital. According to Moiseyev, allowing more cash to move out of the country could help ease the pressure on the ruble from Russia's current positive balance of trade and inflow of currency into the country.
 "The current system is ridiculous and harmful," he said.
 Weafer also welcomed the fact that, once the amendments kick in, there would be a point of reference in the issue, replacing the often hectic and incoherent changes that have occurred in the past.
 The large amounts of hard currency in the economy also push interest rates on ruble accounts below the inflation rate and generally slow the development of the banking sector, Moiseyev said.

TITLE: Press Minister Hospitalized
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Press Minister Mikhail Lesin was hospitalized after apparently suffering a heart attack and was to be flown to a clinic in Europe for treatment, a ministry official said Sunday. The official, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed a report from Interfax that said Lesin was hospitalized with the preliminary diagnosis of a heart attack. 
 
Interfax reported that Lesin was to be taken to a clinic in an unspecified European country on Sunday night and would likely remain there for treatment for at least 10 days. The official confirmed Lesin would be moved but did not say where or when.
 Lesin, 44, was appointed in July 1999 by then-President Boris Yeltsin to head the newly created Press Ministry. He had earlier worked as Yeltsin's public-relations chief.
 Critics of Yeltsin's successor, President Vladimir Putin, have accused his government of stifling media outlets that have questioned or criticized Putin's administration and its policies, including its approach to the war in Chechnya.

TITLE: Amid All The Hype, Stepashin Talks Sense
AUTHOR: By Thomas Rymer
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Unless you're from out of town - or have spent the last year participating in some kind of sensory-deprivation experiment - you've probably already heard enough about St. Petersburg's upcoming anniversary celebrations to last you for, to name a random figure, 300 years. I can sympathize.
 
This is especially so because, so far, the negative reports coming out of the run-up to the event have far outnumbered the positive ones.
 The completion dates for a few projects - the repair of the section of subway line between the Lesnaya and Ploshchad Muzhestvo stations and another segment of the city Ring Road being the two most prominent - that Governor Vladimir Yakovlev initially said would be completed by the anniversary, have been shifted back to the end of the year. Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref has warned that federal funds provided for the event not earmarked in proper time will be taken back. Even President Vladimir Putin has publically chastized Yakovlev for the state of preparations.
 The latest episode in preparation bashing came courtesy of Federal Audit Chamber President Sergei Stepashin, like Gref and Putin a St. Petersburg native trasplanted to Moscow. On Monday, Stepashin cited Kazansky Sobor and the The Bronze Horseman statue as particular instances where federal funds are not being used effectively. His report didn't come as a surprise to anybody.
 What must have raised a few eyebrows is what he said next: He's not even planning to be here for the festivities! Coming home to criticize the event before hopping a plane back south is what we've come to expect from the St. Petersburg team in Moscow. For a member to say that he's not going to show up in May at all is something new.
 Even more disturbing is the fact that Stepashin's reasons for the planned absence are pretty sound: "What is the sense in waiting in line behind such a flood of important visitors. No doubt he was referring to the host of foreign dignitaries Putin has invited to attend the event and to be his guests at the newly refurbished presidential residence just outside the city - the Kanstantinovsky Palace - and their staffs, who will occupy the lion's share of the city's hotel rooms.
 Stepashin's comments were refreshing, because they were the first from a member of the Moscow-based crew - or from any of the politicos still here, for that matter - that pointed out that the anniversary has become an event designed for and targeted at politicians and officials, foreign and local alike. He says that it is more designed to indicate the investment climate in the country than anything else.
 But Stepashin wasn't here just to gripe about his hometown. He will still come to celebrate the anniversary, which he points out really should be considered to last for the whole year. It's just that he, like so many of his fellow St. Petersburg natives and so many ordinary tourists, is going to celebrate the event by sticking with tradition.
 As of Tuesday, there are 105 days left until the anniversary. But wait a little longer and keep your eyes peeled for Sergei Stepashin during the White Nights. He says that he will be in town.

TITLE: U.S. Aiming To Speed Up Visa Applications
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Security checks on applicants for visas to the United States will not be eased for anyone, but U.S. consulates are trying speed up the processing of applications, Washington's top visa official said.
 
"I don't think we are ever going to be able to go back to doing visas the way we did before Sept. 11," said Janice Jacobs, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, in an interview late last week.
 Introducing the checks had created backlogs worldwide, but Jacobs said she hoped these would be cleared soon.
 Jacobs was in Moscow to update U.S. consulate staff on developments. She said a focus of her visit was homeland security and that visa officers are the United States' first line of defense. 
 The U.S. is getting good cooperation from several countries in performing the checks, she said.
 "Russia has been particularly helpful," she said.
 Asked if Russians might benefit from the partnership that it has formed with the United States with its support for U.S. President George Bush's war on terrorism, she said the measures adopted applied to all nationalities and religious groups and that no exceptions could be made.
 "We target people who are the highest [security] risk, so we are not spending a lot of resources looking at people we don't need to," she added.
 Starting this year, almost all applicants will be interviewed before receiving a visa, a measure that will affect Russians little because this is already the case, she said.
 As part of measures to stop visitors from using forged documents or visas, an interactive database is being updated every five months. It carries details, including photos, of all visa applications, successful or not, that can be accessed by all U.S. officials working with foreigners, she said.
 A biometric measure, "probably a fingerprint," will be introduced to all U.S. visas from October next year, she said.

TITLE: Deputies Get Down and Dirty
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - State Duma lawmakers, who just two days earlier passed a bill banning politicians from cursing and using slang, found out Friday that it was hard to practice what they were preaching.
 
Independent Deputy Alexander Fedulov launched a withering attack on the ethics commission, which monitors lawmakers' behavior and, in an ensuing brawl, ended up fending off blows from Communist Deputy Vasily Shandybin.
 The row broke out during a discussion led by Unity Deputy Galina Strelchenko of a report by the ethics commission. Fedulov called for a vote declaring the commission's activities unsatisfactory, saying it had improperly assessed statements by the Communists - foremost Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, to whom he referred to as "a political prostitute."
 Fedulov then called for an end to "political whoring" - to a collective sigh from the other lawmakers. A moment later, Shandybin approached Fedulov with flailing fists to defend Zyuganov. Other deputies joined in the brawl, attempting to pull Fedulov and Shandybin apart.
 "Vasily Ivanovich, Vasily Ivanovich, you'll squash him, don't touch him!" Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov pleaded in televised comments.
 Fedulov was then banned from speaking for the rest of the day. A proposal to ban him from speaking for a month did not gain enough votes.
 Under the language bill that was passed in a final reading Wednesday, vulgarisms, scornful words and curses are restricted whenever Russian is used as the state language - in government bodies and official correspondence as well as in the media and advertising. The bill still must be approved by the Federation Council and President Vladimir Putin to become law.
 But those proposed restrictions did not stop several other lawmakers from lashing out Friday.
 Riled that the ethics commission report said he had offended Russia in statements made during trips abroad, human rights activist and Deputy Sergei Kovalyov said the commission was "servile."
 In response, Deputy Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky called Kovalyov "state criminal No. 1" for his "dirty slander" of Russia during his speeches abroad. Zhirinovsky is currently under investigation by the ethics commission for an obscenity-filled outburst he made against the United States at a private party in Iraq. A video of the outburst was shown on television.
 Perhaps recalling his years behind bars as a human-rights activist, Kovalyov, who is sometimes referred to by liberals as "Russia's conscience," urged the lawmakers to stop their "diarrhea of consciousness."
 Strelchenko said the ethics commission will review the minutes of Friday's session in two weeks and urged for the drafting of a detailed ethical code for the deputies.
 Friday was not the first time that deputies have come to blows in the Duma. In June 2001, during a heated debate on the Land Code, pharmaceutical tycoon and Deputy Vladimir Bryntsalov head-butted and kicked Communist Georgy Tikhonov.
 In 1999, Zhirinovsky was banned from speaking in the Duma for a month after a brawl with Deputy Nikolai Stolyarov.

TITLE: Putin Bestows Order on Beloved Soviet-Era Actor
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Two of Russia's most famous former spies - one real and one from the movies - met Saturday when President Vladimir Putin decorated an actor who played a Soviet agent who helps defeat the Nazis in a popular Cold War-era film serial.
 
In an official ceremony at his residence outside Moscow, Putin hung an Order for Service to the Fatherland, Third Class, around the neck of actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who was invited to visit the president on his 75th birthday.
 In "Seventeen Moments of Spring," a 1973 made-for-TV serial that is shown repeatedly to this day, Tikhonov played Colonel Maxim Isayev - known in Germany as Shtirlitz - a Soviet double agent in World War II Berlin whose web of intrigue contributes greatly to the allied victory.
 Putin's 16-year KGB career included a stint in East Germany, where sketchy accounts suggest his deeds were more modest.
 While the role of Shtirlits may have been Tikhonov's most topical role for the meeting, he appeared in dozens of films during his career, including playing the role of Andrei Bolkhonsky in the 1968 versuon of "War and Peace" and the lead roles in such Soviet classics as "Survive Until Monday" (1968|) and "White Bim, Black Ear" (1977).
 After presenting Tikhonov with the cross-shaped medal and a big bouquet, Putin invited him to sit down and share champagne with top security officials, including the heads of the domestic and foreign intelligence agencies that are the main successors of the KGB. 
 Putin told Tikhonov he is one of Russia's favorite actors and said he hoped to see him perform again. Putin has said he decided to join the KGB at age 16, several years before "Seventeen Moments of Spring" came out.
 Sitting at a table with Putin and the other officials, the actor told anecdotes about incidents stemming from his role as Shtirlitz, including a story about meeting a Russian man in Switzerland who said he would never have chosen his profession if not for the movie.
 Tikhonov said he "came to the president not for an award but to shake his hand and thank him for all the big and good things he is doing for the country," Itar-Tass reported.
 
 <i>(SPT, AP) </i>

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Gem Heist
 </b>

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Three armed thieves robbed the Korall jewelery store at 138 Moskovsky Prospect on Saturday morning, shooting and killing the store's security guard and seriously injuring a 29-years-old salesperson, before making away with about $20,000 worth of jewelery.
 The three people came into the store around 10:30 a.m., while the store was empty. After killing the guard, they shot the woman in the chest and lower back.
 The thieves then smashed two display windows and grabbed the contents of the cases, said Yelena Ordynskaya, the press-secretary for the St. Petersburg Prosecutor's Office.
 Ordynskaya said the woman was hospitalized and is in critical condition. She said that no one has yet been arrested in the police investigation.
 
 
<b>Pankisi Local Problem
 </b>

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) - Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze on Monday rebuffed Russian claims that Georgia hasn't done enough to flush rebels out of the Pankisi Gorge, insisting that Georgia will deal with the situation on its own.
 "My friendly advice is that Russia should look after Chechnya, the Chechen problem, and solve it. And Georgia will solve Pankisi problem and settle it," Shevardnadze said during his weekly radio address.
 He was responding to criticism from Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov during a conference in Munich, Germany.
 Also Monday, Shevardnadze called on Chechens not to violate the Georgian border with Russia to avoid any provocation. 
 "A big importance will be paid this year to the prevention of any misunderstanding and provocation," Shevardnadze said. "I believe that Chechens realize what Georgia had done for them."
 He said that more than 4,500 Chechen refugees are currently in Georgia, mainly children, women and the elderly.
 
 
<b>Repression Victims
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill providing additional government pensions and other privileges to children of victims of Soviet-era political repression, his office announced Monday.
 The new law gives people whose parents were subjected to political repression while they were minors the same rights as other repression victims, the presidential press service said in a statement. 
 More than 20 million people are believed to have suffered in political purges between the 1917 Revolution and the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1953, and more than half of them died. Political repression continued after Stalin's death, but on a lesser scale.
 During the Stalin era, the children of purge victims were routinely sent to state orphanages where conditions were sometimes as harsh as those in prisons. Many died of malnutrition and mistreatment.
 Repression victims have long received government benefits, and human rights activists had pushed for a law extending benefits to victims' children. The bill was passed last month by both houses of parliament.
 
 
<b>Politkovskaya's Win
 </b>

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - Anna Politkovskaya, a Novaya Gazeta journalist who has reported extensively on Chechnya, won the 2003 Prize for Journalism and Democracy on Monday.
 The prize, awarded annually by the parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, includes a $20,000 award. It is given to journalists who, through their work, promoted OSCE principles on human rights, democracy and the free flow of information.
 "Granting her this honor is a strong statement of the parliamentary assembly in support of courageous and professional journalism, for human rights and freedom of the media," said assembly president and British lawmaker Bruce George. 
 The award was established in 1996 by Freimut Duve, a former member of the German Bundestag and now the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media.
 Politkovskaya will receive the award Feb. 20 in Vienna, Austria. 



TITLE: Flowers, Bullet Hole Usher In 'Nord-Ost'
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - One of the few reminders of the Dubrovka siege that greeted former hostages, politicians and other theater goers arriving for &quot;Nord-Ost&quot;'s rebirth Saturday were bright flowers that remained scattered on the snow in memory of the 129 hostages who died.
 
Inside, the theater had been cleansed, physically at least, of all that could remind people of the death and horror of those three days when armed Chechens took 800 hostages. The only remnant in the completely refurbished theater is a hard-to-find bullet hole - visible only to cast members - left in one of the five metal walkways on the stage.
 The siege and the hostages, however, were inevitably the only thing on everyone's mind. Ticket holders lining up to get though newly installed metal detectors joked nervously about police being everywhere, even under the seats.
 For Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who attended the performance with Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko and U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, the return of one of the city's most popular musicals was a show of defiance.
 &quot;It's a celebration of the will of Russia, the will of our people who, with this revival, have said that terrorism will not succeed,&quot; Luzhkov said before the start of the show.
 Organizers are well aware of the symbolism of the show's rebirth. The show's slogan &quot;History of Love&quot; has been expanded to include the phrase &quot;History of Our Country.&quot;
 &quot;It has become by itself a part of the history of the country,&quot; said &quot;Nord-Ost&quot; director Georgy Vasilyev, himself a former hostage.
 For many, the inside of the theater has been indelibly linked with the images of death and threatened devastation shown on television: debris from the fierce gunfight that ended the siege, dead female Chechen fighters with explosives wrapped around their stomachs slumped over seats, and bulky explosives that could have blown up the theater.
 Security has been tightened up. Metal detectors and video cameras were installed, and security guards patrolled the inside of the theater Saturday night. Sniffer dogs and sappers checked for bombs before the start of the show.
 The theater has been renovated from the color of the seats - ice-blue rather than red - to the audio system and theater curtains, leaving little to jog the memory of the aftermath of the siege.
 &quot;Practically nothing in this auditorium reminds one of those hours,&quot; Vasilyev said.
 He said he tried to show his parents where he had sat but couldn't find the seat.
 The orchestra pit, which was used as a toilet during the siege, has been filled in and moved closer to the audience.
 &quot;We do not need to explain why we changed the pit,&quot; Vasilyev said.
 To complete the makeover, costumes and the script have been spruced up.
 Understandably, few had wanted to return to the theater. &quot;Nord-Ost&quot; lost 27 cast members. Few of the musicians had wanted to see the orchestra pit again.
 &quot;The cast has overcome this through sheer will power,&quot; Vasilyev said. &quot;We came and rehearsed.&quot;
 During the siege, hostages in the audience joked that they should keep their ticket stubs so they could see the show to the end once they had been released. Vasilyev promised a girl sitting next to him that she would be able to, and the show's backers gave each former hostage two free tickets.
 Vasilyev said the show had little choice but to return, with the Moscow government paying for theater renovation and both the city and federal governments pressing for the show to reopen.
 &quot;In fact, we had no time and no choice, although maybe it was not the best choice,&quot; he said.
 He said, however, that perhaps the return was a way for the former hostages to get over their pain.
 &quot;I'm happy that I'm again in this hall, not as a hostage but as a free person,&quot; he said. &quot;I know many hostages who want to sit in the same place so they can get rid of their heavy psychological burden. I think this is the right way out.&quot;

TITLE: School Gives Pupils Their Senses Back
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: SERGIYEV POSAD, Moscow Region - The toy plastic plate in the little bag Yana carries over her shoulder is the only way the 5-year-old knows it is lunchtime. Yana is blind and almost completely deaf.
 
&quot;She used to be unable to do anything,&quot; said Natalya Shaboyan, the teaching assistant in charge of Yana and her three classmates at the Sergiyev Posad School for the Deaf and Blind, the world's largest boarding school of its kind. &quot;You don't know how happy we were when she learned to dress herself, eat by herself or make gestures to communicate with us. She is such a tender girl.&quot;
 Yana knows it's time to eat when Shaboyan takes the small plate out of her bag and puts it into her hand for her to feel. When she grows a little older, the toys in her bag will be replaced with a small book whose pages are filled with raised symbols - a triangle for classes, a flag for physical education, a washing machine for the laundry room, a shovel for the greenhouse, a nail for metals shop, a jar for pottery and a ball or yarn for weaving shop. She will learn to speak - and understand - the tactile sign language that students use here, feeling each others' hand signals. If she does well, she will also learn to use her voice.
 Yana is one of the 170 residents living on the school's sprawling 12-hectare, yellow-brick campus in Sergiyev Posad, a town dating back to a 14th-century settlement and located 60 kilometers northeast of Moscow. The youngest resident is 2 years old, and the oldest is 44.
 &quot;I like to say that there are two jewels in our town: one is the Holy Trinity St. Sergius Monastery and the other is our school,&quot; said the school's director, Galina Yepifanova.
 Hieromonk Zinon, a priest from the monastery, which is widely considered one of the country's holiest sites, leads specially adapted Orthodox services for students who wish to attend, deputy director Vera Belova said. 
 She proudly pointed to two little boys who serve as sacristans at the school's chapel and recently won an award in a children's theology contest.
 &quot;We didn't realize that they would do better than many normal children,&quot; she said.
 Two graduates, to whom the staff lovingly refers to as &quot;our stars,&quot; now study at a pedagocial college. 
 But, in part due to an improved survival rate for babies with multiple disabilities, an increasing number of Sergiyev Posad's students also have mental and physical disabilities. These students are sometimes taught in the &quot;complex structure of defects&quot; department, where the emphasis is on self-service and basic labor skills, rather than sciences.
 The Soviet education of deaf and blind people started in the 1930s, when professor Ivan Sokolyansky began working with a group in Kharkov, Ukraine. His efforts produced the Russian answer to America's Helen Keller - researcher and writer Olga Skorokhodova, who wrote poems and earned a doctorate in pedagogical science. She died in 1982, at the age of 66.
 After World War II, one of Sokolyansky's students, professor Alexander Meshcheryakov, continued his mentor's studies in Moscow and, in 1963, the Sergiyev Posad school was founded in what was then the town Zagorsk. Although small groups for the blind have been formed recently in the schools for the deaf, and the other way around, the Sergiyev Posad campus remains the country's only boarding school of its kind. However, due to a lack of public awareness, it is not full. &quot;We would gladly accept another 30 children,&quot; Yepifanova said.
 About 50 of the school's 170 residents are orphans. Others, like Yana, who is from Astrakhan in southern Russia, have parents who occasionally drop by for visits. Parents who live close enough sometimes take their children home for weekends or holidays. Graduates who have nowhere else to go remain at the campus to work.
 All of them are entrusted to the school's staff of 300 teachers, doctors, teaching assistants and nurses, who teach them to speak, understand, read, write, count, draw, sculpt, pray, grow plants, make rugs or - if nothing else - make nails. The underlying aim is to teach the students to communicate with others and lead meaningful lives.
 Donations cover about 40 percent of the state-owned school's budget, Yepifanova said. Former first lady Naina Yeltsin has helped with fundraising since her first visit in 1998, and similar schools in Germany and the Netherlands have provided assistance.
 The school was brought back from the brink of collapse a few years ago by private Russian donors and the Hilton/Perkins Program, administered by Helen Keller's alma mater, the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts, and funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
 On Friday, a group of school's Russian donors are to throw a fund-raising party at the Pushkin Literary Museum on Ulitsa Prechistenka in Moscow to raise the school's profile and showcase its students: several children will sing and their pottery, paintings, rugs and puppets will be exhibited and sold at a charity auction.
 The school's workshops are an integral part of the children's education.
 &quot;Our main task is to develop the hands, eyes, attention, thinking and memory,&quot; Emiliya Mosnitskaya, who teaches weaving, said on a recent afternoon. &quot;But we are trying to make the crafts beautiful.&quot;
 Nearby, a boy embroidered a butterfly on a rug and two others wove a colorful carpet on a small loom. 
 In the next room, 29-year-old Slava Lyubovkin - one of the graduates who has stayed on campus after graduation and shares a two-room apartment with another former student - painted a bright yellow sun on a ceramic plate for the Pushkin auction. He can see a little through his thick glasses, and relies to a great extent on the relief of the sun on the plate. Next to him, Mansur Rakhimov, who is blind and deaf, put the finishing touches on a clay camel. He picked up a plastic camel every so often for direction. 
 To a visitor, the school's eight-building campus looks well-off compared to many of the country's crumbling institutions, boasting a 25-meter swimming pool, bright playroom, sophisticated medical equipment and a variety of teaching aids. Thanks to help from Tatyana Shestopalova - one of the organizers of Friday's charity event - about 100 children vacation every summer at a Black Sea resort.
 State funding has improved over the past two years, Yepifanova said. A presidential program for disabled children has provided funding for new medical equipment. During his most recent visit in December, Labor Minister Alexander Pochinok presented the school with a large television set that it had requested and promised to raise the teachers' salaries. Senior teachers earn about 5,000 rubles ($155) per month, which is higher than the local average. Other staff members make much less.
 The problem with state funding, however, is that the school cannot redistribute earmarked funds to more worthy projects. For example, too much money is allocated for food and not enough for gasoline, Yepifanova said.

TITLE: LUKoil Again Snubbed by Iraq
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Baghdad on Monday again pulled the plug on LUKoil's $3.7-billion project to develop the massive West Qurna oil field, saying this time that it is final, but also held out hope of signing a trade agreement with Moscow worth up to $40 billion over the next 10 years.
 
&quot;The LUKoil contract is finished, the contract has been scrapped, and there is no room for discussing it again,&quot; acting Iraqi Oil Minister Samir Abdulaziz al-Najem told reporters in Baghdad. &quot;The company has failed to fulfill its commitments.&quot; 
 LUKoil had held the contract initially until mid-December last year, when Baghdad reneged, saying that the No. 1 Russian oil major had broken the terms of the deal by not beginning development work.
 Monday's announcement seemed not to effect LUKoil's determination to pursue the West Qurna oil field, which holds 7.8 billion barrels (1.11 billion metric tons).
 &quot;Our contract is still valid,&quot; LUKoil President Vagit Alekperov said Monday, Interfax reported.
 Dmitry Dolgov, a LUKoil spokesperson, said that Iraq has not formally informed the company of any changes. &quot;And, if there are any, it would be a subject for an arbitration court in Geneva to decide on,&quot; he said.
 Iraq's decision in December to break off the West Qurna project with LUKoil coincided with Russia voicing a tougher stand regarding Baghdad's disarmament. 
 It was unclear whether Monday's announcement was related to President Vladimir Putin's visit to Germany and France, where he was expected to discuss United Nations arms inspections and the escalating conflict between the United States and Iraq. 
 The government did not comment officially on the West Qurna decision, but a government source, who declined to be identified, said that Russia would not give up on the field. 
 &quot;Russia still sees the project with LUKoil's participation as a priority,&quot; the source said, Interfax reported. &quot;Breaking it would have a very negative affect on trade and economic ties between Russia and Iraq.&quot;
 The source also said that LUKoil's work on the project has been slowed down by the UN sanctions against Iraq, and that replacing the oil major with another company would be unfair.
 However, al-Najem said that awarding the West Qurna deal to another company is possible. &quot;Concerning other companies, the door is still open,&quot; he said.
 Iraq has signed a number of contracts with Russian oil companies.
 In January, Baghdad awarded a contract to state-owned Stroitransgaz to develop a field in western Iraq.
 Iraq also signed a deal with state-owned Soyuzneftgaz to extract 200,000 bpd from the Rafidain field in the south of the country, and with Tatneft to develop a field in the west.
 Iraq has begun negotiations with Zarubezhneft, a state-owned holding company for foreign projects, on the giant Bin Umar oil field. Al-Najem said that the field is estimated to hold 450,000 bpd of recoverable crude.
 He also said that Iraq had reached the final stage with another Russian company on developing the al-Kharraf oil field in southern Iraq, which has reserves of 100,000 bpd.
 Trade Minister Mohammad Mehdi Saleh said Monday that Baghdad hopes to sign a 10-year, $40-billion deal with Russia on cooperation in the oil sector, Prime-Tass reported.
 The agreement should be signed by the prime ministers of both countries, Saleh said, Prime-Tass reported.
 Al-Najem said that Iraq bought from Russia a total of $1.2-billion worth of oil equipment under the UN oil-for-food deal. 
 &quot;There are still large prospects for Russian firms to invest in our gas fields and sell oil equipment under the oil deal,&quot; he said.
 
 <i>(Reuters, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Local Oil Prices Collapse, Export Capacity Blocked
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Domestic crude prices have plummeted to just $5 per barrel in February, as bottlenecks in oil-transportation capacity have squeezed exports and rising production has led to a glut at home.
 
Prices have fallen 72 percent, from a high of about $18 in September, close to the prices at the beginning of 2002, when Russia cut exports in support of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' effort to stabilize oil prices.
 The drop in prices is likely to be temporary, as it has arisen from the combination of pipeline monopoly Transneft's refusal to ship crude to the Latvian port of Ventspils and bad weather stalling work at a number of Russian export ports, industry analysts said.
 The current bottleneck situation should be resolved by April, when the seas calm, said Pavel Kushnir, oil-and-gas analyst with United Financial Group.
 &quot;But there's no guarantee that it won't be repeated next year,&quot; he added.
 Furthermore, analysts said that low domestic prices would not hit the bottom line of most oil majors, but could affect companies such as Surgutneftegaz or Tatneft, which have few storage and refining facilities and large volumes of domestic sales.
 Nevertheless, oil majors have portrayed falling prices as a warning sign of a potential crisis.
 Rocketing oil production is outpacing the construction of new crude-transportation infrastructure. Output rose 8.9 percent in 2002, with another 7.8 percent expected this year, UFG reported Tuesday.
 Transneft can export an estimated 3.5 million barrels per day, while oil output hit a 10-year high of 8.07 million bpd in January, Reuters reported. Russia's exact export capacity, however, is classified as a state secret.
 At the beginning of 2003, state-owned Transneft stopped shipments of crude through Ventspils, after a year of pressure on Latvian authorities to allow a Russian investor to buy into the port.
 Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko said this week that the ban on shipping crude through Ventspils will remain in place until at least March 1. Some companies have sent oil to Ventspils by railroad, but high rail costs make large shipments inefficient and are likely to hold them to 20 percent of the port's capacity, UFG estimated. Ventspils has throughput of 15 million to 16 million metric tons of crude per year.
 With the seasonal bad weather expected to clear up by April, the government could keep Ventspils dry for at least six more months, Kushnir said. The pressure could make the Latvian authorities more amenable to selling a stake in the port to a Russian investor, he added.
 Oil majors have seized on the issue as a platform for airing concerns about their ability to keep boosting production in coming years.
 LUKoil Vice President Leonid Fedun said this week that bottlenecks could lead to a 29-million-ton export-capacity shortfall by 2005, and a whopping 80-million ton shortfall by 2010.
 &quot;What happened to Surgutneftegaz is the appearance of the first spot in the case of smallpox,&quot; Fedun told journalists. He was referring to No. 3 oil major Surgutneftegaz's recent forced closure of wells - especially costly in winter - after Transneft refused to accept more oil from the company than its quota.
 Transneft said Surgutneftegaz's troubles were more closely linked to paperwork problems, such as a failure to declare the crude's destination, Reuters reported.
 LUKoil has a vested interest in spinning the capacity shortage of pipelines. It is in the process of negotiating with the state to build a pipeline from Western Siberia to the Kola Peninsula in north European Russia. But even as the company carries out its feasibility studies, key issues - such as who will own and operate the pipeline, set the tariffs or decide on the conditions under which other exporters may access the pipe - remain up in the air.
 &quot;The producers realized that it's better to address the issue now then to pay for the capacity shortage later,&quot; said Timerbulat Karimov of the Aton brokerage.

TITLE: Interros Announces Reform of Media Empire
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prof-Media, part of tycoon Vladimir Potanin's Interros holding and one of the country's biggest media conglomerates, announced plans Thursday to move its subsidiaries to a single share, thus paving the way for a public offering.
 
Prof-Media controls national newspapers Izvestia and Komsomolskaya Pravda, sports daily Sovietsky Sport and tabloid Express-Gazeta, as well as FM radio stations Avtoradio, Energia and Novosti Online.
 The holding also holds minority stakes in Expert business magazine and Prime-Tass news agency, but is looking to shed them, Prof-Media General Director Vadim Goryainov told journalists Thursday.
 The restructuring is likely to take about two years, Goryainov said. It was too early to say whether the public offering would be international or domestic, he added.
 Potanin began buying up media stakes in 1997. The following year, Interros pooled the diverse stakes into Prof-Media, but never centralized finances for the separate media outlets.
 The new structure will oversee all financial, production and distribution issues for the media within the group, although each media outlet will retain control over its editorial, advertising and promotion departments.
 Prof-Media's radio stations will be moved into a radio holding, which in turn will be a subsidiary of the restructured holding.
 With combined sales of about $90 million and net profit of $13.5 million in 2002, a restructured holding will be both more concentrated and more transparent, Goryainov said.

TITLE: Meat Quotas Come Under Fire From EU
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - The European Union slammed Russia's recent decision to limit meat imports, and chided Moscow for not consulting Brussels about the move ahead of time, news agencies reported Friday.
 
The head of the European Commission's Moscow office, Richard Wright, was quoted by Interfax as saying in a statement Friday that Brussels regretted Moscow's decision because it came at a time when Russia and the EU were enjoying &quot;strong and privileged&quot; trade relations.
 The remarks came after Wright and other EU officials discussed the quotas with the Economic Development and Trade Ministry in Moscow.
 Russia last month announced that it would introduce beef and pork-import quotas from April 1, with quotas for poultry to follow one month later.
 Wright said that the quotas run counter to a 1994 agreement between the two governments on partnership and cooperation, and that both sides agreed to continue discussing the issue.
 Meanwhile, Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Maxim Medvedkov was quoted by Prime-Tass as saying Friday that, while several members of the the World Trade Organization were angered by the new quotas, the WTO had decided that they do not violate its rules.
 Medvedkov, Russia's pointman on WTO accession talks, said that an agreement had been reached with the global trade body that would allow Moscow to impose similar trade barriers for other products in other areas besides agriculture.
 From May 1, Russia will limit poultry imports to 744,000 metric tons until the end of the year, and to 1.05 million tons per year in 2004-2005.
 Beef and pork imports will be limited to 315,000 tons and 335,000 tons from April 1 through the rest of the year, and to 420,000 and 450,000 tons, respectively, in 2004-2005.
 A spokesperson for the ministry said that Russia does not plan to issue quotas for imports of beef and pork to exporting countries, but intends to distribute them among importing firms.
 &quot;The order has not yet been signed, but the main principles have been formulated,&quot; the spokesperson said.
 
 <i>(SPT, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: Ministry Faces New Corruption Allegations
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Railways Ministry illegally paid top employees nearly $15 million last year, according to the government's budget watchdog.
 
The ministry illegally allocated 464.6 million rubles ($14.6 million) to support the staff of its Moscow headquarters in the first nine months of 2002 - six times more than was budgeted - and nearly all of that amount, or 441.9 million rubles, was never officially accounted for, the Audit Chamber said Friday on its Web site, www.ach.gov.ru.
 The ministry, in breach of budget legislation, &quot;continued to centralize the sector's resources and accumulate funds from its divisions for wages for its central-office staff in the absence of any government decisions on the matter,&quot; Audit Chamber spokesperson Leonid Zhigalov said by telephone.
 In addition to the $14.6 million in misappropriations, the ministry rented out federal property or allowed it to be used for free without the required permission of the Property Ministry, Zhigalov said.
 The chamber found that, in the first nine months of 2002, tenants failed to allocate at least 11.1 million rubles to the federal budget, he said.
 &quot;The Railways Ministry didn't even ask for permission from the Property Ministry,&quot; Zhigalov said.
 The ministry denied it had done anything wrong.
 &quot;All our expenditures have been agreed with the government,&quot; Railways Ministry spokesperson Ilya Kiselyov said.
 No other details of the audit were made public Friday, but the chamber said that full reports of its findings would be sent to the Prosecutor General's Office, the government and the Interior, Finance, Railways and Property ministries.
 The report of financial abuse at the ministry comes less than a week after Railways Minister Gennady Fadeyev gave a glowing report of the sprawling natural monopoly's financial results for 2002, in which revenues rose 31 percent on the year to $13.4 billion.
 But Zhigalov said that Fadeyev had done little to clean up the mess left by his predecessor, Nikolai Aksyonenko, who was fired early last year after a damning Audit Chamber report.
 &quot;[The misuse of federal-budget resources and state property] at the ministry has not only not been eliminated, not only has there not been a plan worked out to eliminate it, but it has worsened,&quot; Zhigalov said.
 In October 2001, then Railways Minister Aksyonenko was charged with abuse of office and accused of misappropriating 70 million rubles ($2.33 million). The chamber found that the ministry had used state money to buy apartments for top ministry officials. An investigation into the case is ongoing.
 The results of that check served as the main reason for President Vladimir Putin's sacking of Aksyonenko in January 2002.
 Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref last week criticized the ministry's overall wage policy, saying an average 230-percent wage increase in the sector over the last four years, versus a 40 percent increase in labor productivity, threatens to undermine economic stability in the whole country.

TITLE: Sources Claim BP Closing In On 25-Percent Stake in TNK
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Global oil giant British Petroleum is finalizing a multibillion dollar commitment to Russian oil that goes far beyond current expectations, and it may be concluded within the week, industry sources said Saturday.
 
In a transaction that could be worth as much as $3.7 billion, BP is going to swap its 25-percent stake in Sidanco and its 33-percent stake in Rusia Petroleum for 25 percent plus one share in TNK International Ltd., the parent company of the country's fourth-largest oil producer, Tyumen Oil Co., or TNK.
 This move will be just the start of a high-risk investment program by the world's No. 3 oil firm in the world's No. 2 oil exporter.
 &quot;Think big,&quot; one senior source familiar with the plan said. &quot;BP knows it needs new pastures, but there is a lot of nervousness in the company about how investors are going to react because Russia is still Russia.&quot; 
 &quot;This could be one step on the way to TNK becoming BP's vehicle in Russia,&quot; the source added. BP is scheduled to report its annual results and deliver a strategy statement on Tuesday.
 BP bought a 10-percent stake in Sidanco in 1997, but the investment quickly became a major headache for the oil giant, as TNK launched a hostile takeover bid.
 At the time, the Interros financial group controlled Sidanco.
 BP was eventually forced to write off part of its investment in Sidanco.
 The dispute ended peacefully when TNK finally bought Sidanco from Interros, and agreed to increase BP's ownership to 25 percent and give it management rights.
 Those rights expire this year.
 BP said last year that it considered Russia, where oil output is booming for the fifth straight year, as one of the key areas for its future growth.
 Sources close to companies involved in the transaction say that a deal is close, but is being held up because of uncertainty over how TNK and No. 5 producer Sibneft intend to split up Slavneft, which they bought 50-50 in a tender last year, Dow Jones reported.
 TNK and Sibneft have set a Feb. 21 deadline to reach an agreement on divvying up Slavneft.
 Sibneft wants to merge with Slavneft and give TNK an equity stake in the new company - a plan that BP reportedly opposes, because it would get only indirect access to Slavneft assets.
 TNK, on the other hand, wants to divide Slavneft's reserve base, refineries and distribution network between the two companies, according to Dow Jones.
 Another issue concerning BP is that TNK International's top assets are owned by different holding companies with the same beneficial owners - Alfa Group and Access/Renova.
 Dow Jones quoted analysts as saying that BP wants a simplified ownership structure.
 Another question mark hangs over how to value unlisted TNK International, as only 3 percent of its most valuable asset, TNK, is publicly traded on the Russian Trading System.
 But those shares have been surging on the rumor that the deal with BP is near the finishing line. TNK gained 16 percent on Thursday and nearly 8 percent on Friday to close at $1.72.
 The rumors also buoyed Sibneft shares, and helped push the benchmark RTS index up 2.61 percent.
 &quot;Everyone has forgotten about Unified Energy Systems, Mosenergo and Norilsk Nickel,&quot; Konstantin Shapsharov of Alfa Bank said. &quot;Everything started with TNK. Foreigners started buying, and so did Russians.&quot;
 Vladislav Metnyov of Trust and Investment Bank said that rumors of new foreign investment in the oil sector could particularly affect companies whose owners, like TNK's, are seen as financial investors rather than oilmen and therefore more likely to sell their holdings.
 Others include Sibneft and Yukos.
 But Metnyov was cautious about the rumor: &quot;All the rumors about BP and TNK are a bit premature. I wouldn't really connect Sibneft with rumors about BP and TNK.&quot;
 Sibneft, prone to big jumps because of low liquidity, was up 6.56 percent at $1.95. Yukos was up 1.96 percent at 9.645, and top oil producer LUKoil was up 2.45 percent at $14.21.
 Metnyov said that Sibneft, one of the sector's worst recent performers, losing 12 percent in January, had bounced off lows after a sell-off on earnings that came in below the mark Monday.
 
 <i>(Reuters, SPT) </i>

TITLE: Fur: A Dying Business Revived in Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: &quot;I came here because Russian sables are the best in the world,&quot; said Angelo Tzelkos, a fur broker from Toronto, Canada. &quot;I once heard them described as light as a feather and as soft as a woman. There's nothing like it.&quot;
 
St. Petersburg's Soyuzpushnina held its 158th international fur auction Feb. 1 and Feb. 2, attracting 100 brokers and potential customers from across the globe, and passing $10-million worth of pelts under the hammer.
 After a few years in the doldrums, the fur trade in Russia is showing signs of recovery.
 Soyuzpushnina has held a monopoly on fur auctions in Russia since 1931. It is one of the world's eight major fur auctions, alongside those in Copenhagen and Helsinki, the Seattle Fur Exchange in the United States, Canada's Harvesters Fur Auction and others.
 The Russian fur industry flourished during the Soviet era, when Russia had about 100 fur farms, which sold the majority of their produce abroad, producing a valuable inflow of foreign currency. The farms received substantial state support.
 Since the early 1990s, however, the Russian fur industry has been in decline. Many of the fur farms have closed or found themselves in very reduced circumstances.
 &quot;There were about 100 fur farms working in the country until 1990,&quot; said Soyuzpushnina Deputy General Director Mikhail Lebed, who runs its St. Petersburg office. &quot;Now, there are no more than 40 left.&quot;
 Russia produced up to 10 million mink pelts at the end of the 1980s. Now, that figure has fallen to about 2.7 million. 
 Michael Lehrfreund, a broker from London who first took part in the auction 39 years ago, said that the auction used to offer much larger quantities of furs.
 &quot;In the 1970s, it was a fantastic auction. It was 11 days of looking, and 10 days of selling,&quot; Lehrfreund said. This year's auction had three days for looking at the furs on offer before the two-day selling period.
 Lehrfreund suggested that the decline in the Russian fur industry is a result of the changes in the Russian economy, with the government no longer providing subsidies to an industry that can no longer afford &quot;to invest in the breeding stock.&quot;
 &quot;The quality declined, so the clients were offered lower and lower prices, and the farmers decided it wasn't worth it,&quot; Lehrfreund said.
 Valery Koloushkin, director of the Pryazhinskoye farm in Karelia, said that, just 12 years ago, Karelia had 20 farms producing up to 1.5 million mink pelts.
 &quot;Now, we only have seven such farms, which produce only about 120,000 mink pelts a year,&quot; Koloushkin said.
 According to Koloushkin, the current problems in fur farming have two major causes: the lack of credit on favorable terms, and the absence of state grants that fur farms used to get indirectly when receiving leftovers from the fish and agricultural industry, providing a cheap form of forage.
 At the same time, Lehrfreund noted, the fur business has experienced a partial decline across the globe in recent years.
 &quot;We had three fur auctions in London, but don't have them any more,&quot; he said. &quot;We used to have 430 fur-trading companies; now, we only have 25.&quot;
 &quot;Now, priorities have moved towards having good cars and taking vacations,&quot; he said. &quot;Fashion has moved on from having full fur garments towards trimming, which is to say having just a fur collar or some other fur accessory,&quot; Lerhfreund said.
 However, according to Lebed, over the last two years, the Russian fur industry has begun a gradual process of recovery, and is experiencing changes for the better.
 The results of this year's auction are one indication. Over 200,000 mink pelts were exhibited, and 40 percent were sold. 135,000 wild-sable pelts were sold, with the majority - 130,000 pelts - going under the hammer.
 These volumes were twice those of last year's auction, and the volumes of farmed furs were double those of two years ago, when the market had almost collapsed entirely. 
 The average price for a sable pelt reached $57.71, 6 percent higher than the price last year, while minks went for an average $16.38. 
 Lebed said the improvement is the result of Syouzpushnina's policies in its cooperation with suppliers. He said that Soyuzpushnina, together with Zenit Bank, developed a program for financing fur farms and trapping enterprises through which Soyuzpushnina financed between 30 percent and 60 percent of the estimated cost of the products on offer.
 Additionally, firms were able to receive their income from the sales almost immediately after the auction, rather than 45 days later, as had previously been the case.
 Soyuzpushnina has already agreed a $9-million program of financing for 2002 and 2003.
 The result of these measures is that, to a large extent, Soyuzpushnina is now providing the subsidies previously supplied by the government. 
 Lebed said that Russian fur producers appreciated the new approach, and had returned to the auction, which they had effectively left en masse in recent years. Just 37,000 farmed-fur pelts were on offer at the December 2001 auction.
 &quot;We also need to get rid of a certain amount of chaos in the Russian fur market,&quot; Lebed said. &quot;Fur producers should see that it's much more profitable to sell skins through the auction than through private orders,&quot; he said.
 Lebed said that Soyuzpushnina's next step will involve &quot;bringing the biggest customers for Russian furs back to the auction.&quot;
 Besides making the auction service more effective, Soyuzhpushnina is also planning to offer new financial services, including the opportunity to reserve required volumes of fur with a deposit of only 20 percent of the price. 
 Nevertheless, the auction has some work to do to bring the number of customers attending the auction back up to competitive levels. The Helsinki auction gathers from 200 to 250 buyers, while the Copenhagen auction can count on up to 350 customers. The auctions in North America attract around 300 brokers per auction. 
 However, the foreign buyers at the auction seemed to enjoy the fact that there were no crowds filling the auction room.
 &quot;I like the St. Petersburg auction,&quot; said Tzelkos, the Toronto buyer. &quot;It's very relaxed and friendly. Other auctions are very high pressure, due to the large numbers of buyers.&quot;
 Despite the relatively low attendance, the new strategy at Soyuzpushnina appears to be paying dividends. Its lowest point came in 1999, when the January auction turned over a mere $3 million. In 2002, the figure reached $8 million, with a further 25-percent increase in 2003.
 According to Lebed, in December last year, the St. Petersburg auction welcomed its first Russian customers, who had never taken part in the local auctions before. 
 &quot;This is a very good sign,&quot; Lebed said. &quot;We feel confident about turning the whole situation round.&quot;

TITLE: Asian Markets Mixed, Yen Loses to Dollar
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HONG KONG - Many Asian stock markets closed lower Monday on jitters over a possible war in Iraq, but the key indexes edged higher both in Tokyo and Hong Kong.
 
Japan's Nikkei Stock Average of 225 issues gained 36.77 points, or 0.44 percent, to 8,484.93. On Friday, the index slid 36.03 points, or 0.42 percent.
 The Nikkei initially slipped following Wall Street's weaker close last Friday. But both the Nikkei and TOPIX indexes rebounded as investors snapped up issues that had weakened in recent sessions, traders said.
 Blue chips including Canon, Kyocera and TDK, as well as major telecom issues such as NTT and NTT DoCoMo, supported the stock market in otherwise lackluster trading ahead of a national holiday in Japan on Tuesday.
 Despite the rise, investors in Tokyo remain concerned that a possible U.S.-led strike on Iraq could hurt global economic growth and topple markets.
 In currency trading, the U.S. dollar was quoted at 120.33 yen, up 0.17 yen from late Friday in Tokyo and also above its late Friday level in New York of 120.22 yen.
 In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index rose 81.19 points, or 0.89 percent, closing at 9,232.14. On Friday, the index had gained 24.80 points, or 0.27 percent.
 Brokers said that there was selective buying of blue chips following recent losses.
 Many investors in Hong Kong were awaiting for direction later Monday from Wall Street on concerns about a possible military conflict in Iraq.

TITLE: A Credible Case for Steve Case
AUTHOR: By Michael Kinsley
TEXT: SINCE Osama bin Laden isn't actually within our borders, as far as we know, the person with the biggest image challenge in America may be Steve Case. Certainly, in the corridors of Time Warner, the company he enticed into merging with his own America Online three years ago, there is little to choose between these two public enemies. With his resignation as chairperson of AOL Time Warner last month, followed shortly by the company's announcement that it lost nearly $100 billion last year, Case becomes the fall guy for what is universally regarded as one of the great business disasters of all time. And, more than that, he is the official symbol of almost every deplorable recent business-world development: the dot-com bubble (or, rather, the collapse of the dot-com bubble - no one minded the bubble itself); pointless shuffling of corporate assets; executives who enrich themselves at the expense of stockholders and employees; stale cheese danish in the company cafeteria; and so on.
 
The dynamics of reputation are mysterious. Steve Case is on the verge of being stamped as the Michael Milken of this decade, even as the Michael Milken of an earlier decade - Milken himself, a convicted financial criminal - is skillfully rehabilitating his name. Case may be crying all the way to the bank, but it's still worth pointing out that this is very unfair.
 First, as others have noted, any complaint that former Time Warner shareholders may have is with the management that sold them out too cheap. And former shareholders of AOL have no valid complaint at all, at least about the merger itself. In a landscape of dumb decisions based on delirious fantasies about the Internet, the one decision that stands out as brilliant, even in hindsight, was Case's. At the very peak of the dot-com frenzy, when others (including everyone from small investors to the executives of Time Warner) were madly trading hard cash and hard assets for airy Internet promises, Case was cashing in the airy promises for hard cash and the hard assets of an established business. And he was doing so on behalf of his shareholders, not himself. At the time of the deal, January 2000, AOL had revenue of $4 billion a year and Time Warner had revenue of $26 billion. Yet AOL got 55 percent of the combined company.
 Some people said right away that Time Warner was getting ripped off, but this wasn't as obvious as it seems in hindsight. Time Warner management deserves at least a small dollop of sympathy, and Case deserves a bit of credit for courage. Despite the giant gap in revenue, the total value of AOL's shares in the market was actually double the total value of Time Warner's. By that standard, it was AOL getting ripped off, by settling for only 55 percent of the combined company. When the merger was announced, Time Warner's stock soared 39 percent, while AOL's went down.
 Soon enough, of course, the companies were going down, down, down together. Shares in the combined company are worth less than a fifth of what they were at the time of the merger deal. But the actual terms of the merger cannot be blamed for this, since they affected only the value of the two companies relative to each other, not the value of the combined company relative to the outside world. You might think, in retrospect, that a little less chatter about synergies and a little more attention to converting customers from dial-up Internet access to broadband would have served even the former AOL shareholders better. But the main reason AOL Time Warner plummeted is that every high-tech and media company plummeted. The entire NASDAQ is down by more than two-thirds.
 Case also makes a strange poster child for CEO greed. By the admittedly absurd standards of today, his greed is fairly modest. Case didn't even make the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans until 1999, with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion, which was also his peak, and he lasted just three years before falling off the list again in 2002. Among those richer than Case in bubble-year 1999 were David Filo of Yahoo, at $3.7 billion, and Jay Walker of the virtually forgotten Priceline.com, at $4.1 billion.
 It's true that Case has cashed in almost $500 million of AOL Time Warner shares and options since January 1999, but he is far from the worst offender in this regard. He still owns 18 million shares (plus a ton of options) that he could have sold but didn't. Last year he even bought a million shares on the open market. Case's successor as chairperson, Dick Parsons, sold 700,000 shares in 2001, when they were worth about $50 a share, or $35 million, which was most of his holdings at the time.
 But the case for Case is not entirely defensive. He surely deserves more credit than he's getting now for his role in bringing the online revolution to the masses. He staked his career on this at a time when few people knew anything about it, and most of those who did were scoffers. He is arguably more responsible than any other person for introducing millions of ordinary, non-techy people to the joys of cyberspace. In doing so, incidentally, he also created a real business with more than 30 million real people paying up to $23 a month in real money. You could say he brought the magic of the Internet to the real world and a bit of real-world sobriety to cyberspace. In fact, I would say it. But not around anyone from Time Warner.
 
 <i>
Michael Kinsley is the former editor of Slate magazine. He contributed this comment to The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: TV Being Turned Into an Opiate for the Authorities
TEXT: THE new general director of NTV television, Nikolai Senkevich, appointed Alexei Zemsky as his first deputy just over a week ago. Zemsky possesses two obvious qualifications for the job: Senkevich knows him; and Zemsky, a producer of entertainment programming, once had a hand in producing a live broadcast of President Vladimir Putin.
 
When NTV staffers learned of the appointment from a wire report, they voiced their displeasure on the evening news. The network's executives couldn't pull the plug because, apparently, they had no idea what buttons to push or where the control panels were, and the people who could have helped them were busy trashing them on the air.
 Then, the journalists really cut loose, requesting a meeting with Gazprom chief Alexei Miller. What were they thinking? 
 This story has three morals.
 Two years ago, we watched as businesspeople very efficiently took over NTV. They attacked from so many directions at once that the network's executives didn't have time to react. They paid off the NTV security guards and drove a wedge between the journalists.
 This year, we have seen what happens when bureaucrats try to do a businessperson's job. How hard could it be to replace the general director of a company in which you own the controlling stake? Harder than it looks, judging by all the egg on their faces. This is the first moral of the story.
 The goal of all this seems to have been to demonstrate the president's tight grip on the television industry. Instead, we saw what an influx of the tsar's appointed servants can do to the command structure of a major corporation.
 The problem is that incompetent management of a TV network becomes immediately obvious to its viewers, whereas incompetent management of a corporation only shows up at the end of the year on the balance sheet. It seems to me that Gazprom's $4.3-billion budget deficit last year is directly related to Miller's habit of not rushing into decisions. This is the second moral of the story.
 Those in power view television as an enterprise producing something called &quot;control of the populace.&quot; But this is a subtle form of control: It uses information, not the lash. NTV's former general director, Boris Jordan, maintained a balance between pliability and independence, allowing him to control his staff while his staff influenced the viewers.
 Then they appointed the totally pliable Senkevich to replace Jordan, but he is unable to control his staff. 
 However, here's the rub: If you keep Senkevich in charge, you'll have no trouble controlling the picture, but you'll lose the audience. From a means of controlling the populace, television will become the opiate of the leadership. And this is the third moral of the story.
 Information is like pain. No one likes to feel pain. But you have to contend with two incontrovertible facts. If you modify the nervous system so as to feel no pain, you risk discovering too late that your backside is on fire. And, you can't tune the nervous system using an enema, even if the enema is administered by an experienced proctologist.
 
 <i>
Yulia Latynina is author and host of &quot;Yest Mneniye&quot; (&quot;Some Believe&quot;) on TVS. </i>

TITLE: Russia Lacks a Little Latin-American Magic
TEXT: IN his address to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre last week, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced that, while his country had previously been oriented toward the United States and, to a lesser extent, Europe, Brazil would now seek to develop political and economic ties with its Latin American neighbors, South Africa and China. Lula didn't mention Russia once in his speech.
 
In fact, Russia almost never came up at the World Social Forum. Hot topics included the world economic crisis and experience with participatory democracy amassed in cities controlled by Lula's Workers Party. There were protests against the impending U.S. attack on Iraq, of course. 
 Russia didn't come up much at Davos, either. The Russian delegates this year couldn't bemoan a domestic financial crisis or boast about rapid economic growth. As a result, Russia was lost in a long list of second-rate economies, all vegetating on the margins of the world economic system. When you get right down to it, how is oil-rich Russia any more interesting than oil-rich Nigeria?
 The world isn't much interested in Russia these days, and rightly so. Russia has nothing to show the world as it once did. Ours is a society run by faceless bureaucrats who have set themselves the most insignificant of goals.
 Nikita Khrushchev once promised to overtake the United States in 20 years and to build communism at the same time. Today's visionaries, at best, predict that Russia will catch up with Portugal in 10 years. But at least Khrushchev dreamed big. When the Soviet regime figured out that it would never overtake the United States or build communism on time, it hosted the Olympic Games in Moscow to soothe its wounded pride. The current regime can't even land a major international sporting event.
 The world couldn't care less about Russia, and Russia has responded in kind. As befits a thoroughly provincial society, we studiously avoid noticing the global processes that directly affect our lives. For all the talk about globalization, the Russian press ignores most of the globe. This myopia was obvious in coverage of the Davos forum. The Russian press took scant notice of the event, and even that was only because a number of Russian leaders were in attendance and it would have been bad form to ignore them completely. The World Social Forum didn't merit even that.
 Russia has no intention of solving its own social problems, not to mention the world's. Fifteen years ago, the skeptics warned that Russia could turn into the Brazil of the north - no carnivals, but plenty of snow. Later, we feared turning into a banana republic without the bananas. Now, these nightmares look like unfulfilled dreams. The collapse of Russia's science-driven industries and the decline in manufacturing over the past 15 years have led to a raw-material economy controlled by an oligarchy and an increasingly authoritarian political system.
 The last decade of neo-liberal reform in Latin America, on the other hand, was a time of staunch opposition, popular protests and the rise of mass political movements. Politicians relying on those movements are now coming to power. Lula, who heads a broad-based coalition, is a far more effective leader than the Venezuelan populist Hugo Chavez. But individual presidents are not the real story. These are dynamic societies looking for new models of development and trying to solve their problems.
 Russian society, by contrast, has come to the firm conclusion since the mid-1990s that it has no role to play in running the country, and the ruling elite has obviously decided that nothing needs to be changed. Stability has therefore become the slogan of the day, as it was in the Brezhnev era, when it became clear that the hopes of the Thaw era were just pie in the sky. Under Brezhnev, stability led the country into stagnation. Much has changed since that time. Today, stability is no longer a euphemism for stagnation, but for decay.
 
 <i>
Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies. </i>

TITLE: Meeting International Standards
AUTHOR: By Alisa Melkonian
TEXT: MOVING towards unification and harmonization with the International Financial Reporting Standards, Russia has recently introduced a new accounting standard related to the recognition of deferred corporate income tax in a company's financial statements. 
 
The International Accounting Standards Committee adopted the current international financial-reporting standard covering the principles for the recognition of deferred tax in 1996. 
 The Russian standard on deferred tax, which comprises the majority of the most significant principles of the international standard, came into force in 2003 - which is to say, seven years after the original decision had been taken. 
 Nevertheless, the adoption of the new standard is highly indicative, not only in terms of showing Russia's intention to comply with international accounting standards, but also in its demonstration of a willingness to improve the presentation of reports. 
 It is hoped that this will allow all users of financial statements to obtain a clearer understanding of the true nature of a company's financial position.
 Deferred tax represents the amount by which the future income-tax liabilities of a company will be increased or reduced as a result of current-year transactions. 
 Such an effect results from the fact that profit, for tax purposes, usually differs from the profit shown in financial statements in almost all countries, including Russia. 
 The failure to recognize deferred tax in financial statements, by showing only current corporate-income tax, leads to a situation in which shareholders and other users of financial statements are being mislead. 
 It also creates the risk that a company's financial position may be worsened, if over-optimistic dividends are paid on the basis of profits that are not genuinely available for distribution. 
 It was these factors that played a fundamental role in leading the international financial community to take the decision to introduce the deferred-tax concept. 
 We believe that in, adopting this concept, Russia hopes to achieve the same effect. 
 However, based on our experience, calculating deferred tax under international financial reporting standards in various countries, we predict that the practical application of this standard in the Russian context may prove extremely difficult.
 
 <i>
Alisa Melkonian is a tax supervisor at KPMG St. Petersburg. </i>

TITLE: Turkmenistan: Following in Stalin's Footsteps
AUTHOR: By Masha Lipman
TEXT: IN just over a decade as independent states, the various former Soviet republics have gone their separate ways so fast and so far that it's hard to believe they were once parts of the same empire.
 
Under Communist rule, all the constituent republics, from the Baltics to Central Asia, worked according to economic plans drafted for them in Moscow. They were governed by the same Communist nomenklatura, brainwashed with the same ideological tools, had the same school curriculum and the same schoolbooks and watched the same daily TV news at 9 p.m. -with the secretary general of the Soviet Communist Party as the central newsmaker.
 Today the three Baltic states are about to join NATO. Russia is relatively democratic. And the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic, is a totalitarian autocracy of Orwellian - or Stalinist - dimensions.
 Turkmen President Saparmurad Niyazov, who has assumed the title of Turkmenbashi (&quot;The Father of All Turkmen&quot;), apparently regards himself as complete master not only of his people but also of the universe. He has renamed streets, city districts, a town, a canal and countless schools and hospitals in honor of himself. He has also given new names to three months and to six days of the week. He has closed down the Turkmen opera and ballet theater, deeming these arts to be alien to Turkmen culture. His list of achievements even includes the reinvention of human age: Youth in Turkmenistan now extends through 37, and at 61 one enters &quot;spiritual greatness&quot; (Niyazov is 62), which lasts for 12 years. Old age begins at 85. The Father of All Turkmen has granted his country a &quot;spiritual code of conduct,&quot; which he compares to the Bible and Koran. Living by this code is a moral duty of all Turkmen. Learning it is mandatory in Turkmen schools.
 When a ruler assumes divine powers and undertakes to shape his own reality by giving new names to the basic elements of life, it's not long before he sets out to reshape his people as well - an ambition that invariably results in ferocious repression. Unfortunate countries - such as the Soviet Union and North Korea - have learned this from experience. The lucky ones who have never been subjected to such megalomaniac experiments find it hard to see what is so obvious to us: The leader who has taken to writing epics or inventing his own philosophy of time and space is a mortal danger to his people.
 In today's Russia, it is not uncommon to hear people say, &quot;It's like the year 1937&quot;- the time when Joseph Stalin's terror killed millions of Soviet citizens. But it's only a metaphor. President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin may be obsessed with taking control of political life in Russia but, fortunately, it is far from succeeding.
 In Turkmenistan, however, &quot;the year 1937&quot; is more than metaphor. It has elements of chilling reality. Niyazov has built a brutal, isolationist, totalitarian regime in his country. Any trace of political opposition has been eradicated. Torture, lawless arrests and disappearances of people are common. A free press does not exist (the Russian print media were recently barred from Turkmenistan). Internet access is strictly limited.
 In late November, it was reported that there had been an attempt on Niyazov's life. It proved to be a bizarre, and apparently staged, assassination scheme, in which several men with automatic weapons tried to take aim at Niyazov's motorcade. Niyazov was unhurt. The evildoers were arrested.
 Of course, assassinations have repeatedly been used by a variety of rulers as a pretext for campaigns of terror. One of the most well known is the murder of Leningrad Communist leader Sergei Kirov in 1934. After that killing, Stalin launched a massive extermination of much of the Communist elite, as well as of great numbers of rank-and-file Soviet people. The terror was effectively enhanced by show trials.
 The aftermath of the purported attempt on Niyazov's life looks a bit like Turkmenistan's 1937. The Father of All Turkmen promptly named the perpetrators of the hideous crime. The plotters, the country was informed, included several high-ranking officials who had dared criticize Niyazov's regime.
 Some had sensed the danger and defected, among them former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov. But, according to some accounts, Shikhmuradov came back when he learned that his family had been arrested. A short time later he was seen making a confession on Turkmen television, looking blank-faced and speaking in an eerily even voice - possibly the result of torture or drugs, or both.
 Television has lent the affair an immediacy not available to those who conducted Stalin's show trials. Shortly after Shikhmuradov's confessions, scenes of public wrath were also televised. One after the other, Turkmen people have appeared on the screen demanding that the traitors be killed. They plead that the criminals be given to them so they can kill them with their own hands.
 The trials were conducted quickly. Within two months of the alleged assassination attempt, 46 people had been convicted as plotters, with more to come. Shikhmuradov and several others were sentenced to life. About a month later, Niyazov placed strict limits on travel abroad.
 Little concern has been raised in the world over the Turkmen show trials. In Russian intellectual circles, people shudder at the news coming from Turkmenistan, yet some admit to a perverse satisfaction: By comparison with Turkmenbashi's regime, Russia looks like an ideal democracy.
 The Russian government is far too pragmatic these days to antagonize Turkmenistan's dictator and thereby threaten its ties with a country rich in natural gas. But Russia is not alone in showing indifference to the plight of Turkmen people. Since Sept. 11, 2001, interest in human rights has subsided dramatically. Except for human-rights organizations, the world has expressed hardly any concern over Niyazov's regime.
 With Iraqi President Saddam Hussein picked by the United States as the epitome of evil, other villainous leaders can kill and torture their citizens undisturbed.
 
 <i>Masha Lipman, deputy editor of Yezhenedelny Zhurnal, contributed this comment to The Washington Post. </i>

TITLE: Effects of the Columbia Disaster Run Deep
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: RUSSIAN space officials almost immediately recognized the loss of the U.S. space shuttle Columbia as an opportunity to earn some badly needed extra cash. The fleet of U.S. shuttles may be grounded for a year or more. In the meantime, only the Russians can keep the international space station aloft.
 
The ISS - an ambitious joint venture by Russia, the United States, Europe and Japan - was constructed and has been supplied by Russian and U.S. spaceships. The lion's share of payloads has been sent up via U.S. shuttles that can deliver up to 100 tons at a time.
 The Russians deliver much smaller payloads by unmanned Progress cargo spaceships. Moscow is also responsible for providing the ISS with an escape lifeboat, a Soviet-designed Soyuz capsule that is permanently linked to the ISS and can take the crew back to Earth in an emergency.
 The Soyuz has a designated six-month lifespan of service in space, and so, twice a year, the Russians launch a new Soyuz to replace the previous one. During these lifeboat rotations, Russian space officials send up three-person visiting crews that stay on the ISS for a couple of weeks. Two such missions included space tourists (one American and one South African). The ticket for each is believed to have cost some $20 million.
 This elaborate procedure for managing the ISS has increasingly annoyed both NASA and its Russian counterpart, Rosaviakosmos.
 Although the ISS is being expanded, NASA is still unable to keep on board more than a three-astronaut permanent crew, because the Soyuz capsule cannot take more than three people in a possible emergency evacuation. Also, the pledge by Moscow to continue to supply Soyuz lifeboats at a pace of two per year is increasingly being called into question because of a lack of money. The failure to send up new Soyuzes could in turn threaten the future of the ISS.
 Last October, Yury Baturin - a former defense adviser to Boris Yeltsin who abandoned politics several years ago to become a full-time cosmonaut - told me that Rosaviakosmos has a Soyuz capsule ready to go to the ISS in March or April, but severe financial problems may prevent getting another Soyuz ready in time for the fall.
 Apparently, enough cash has been scraped together to complete a second Soyuz in 2003, but the commitment to supply Soyuz capsules in 2004 is anything but solid.
 The idea of bankrolling Russia's ISS commitment by taking paying tourists to space has failed, with no more contracts materializing after the first two successful ones.
 In December, U.S. officials began publicly talking about the possibility of ditching Russia as a partner in the ISS project, because it cannot fulfill its contractual obligations. The move would still mean retaining Rosaviakosmos only as a subcontractor. NASA has been developing its own lifeboat spacecraft with a much larger crew capacity to replace the Soyuz, but insufficient budget funding has slowed the project down.
 Now that the entire U.S. shuttle fleet is grounded, it seems rather fortunate that Rosaviakosmos was not ousted from the ISS and that the small, old-style, Soviet-designed Russian spacecraft are still operational and can, in theory, keep the ISS alive while NASA sorts out its shuttle problems.
 However, Rosaviakosmos is still broke. To provide more launches to serve the ISS while the shuttles are grounded, the Russians are demanding immediate cash commitments.
 In fact, for more than a year already, Washington has been offering to pay Rosaviakosmos in full for the Soyuz lifeboats sent to the ISS. This offer is part of the compensation package the U.S. administration has been promising the Kremlin if it stops its nuclear cooperation with Iran and withdraws the more than 1,000 Russian engineers and technicians who are helping Iran build a nuclear-power reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf.
 Until now, Moscow has resisted U.S. overtures and has continued to sign arms and nuclear contracts with Iran. While close links with Iran are maintained, it's hardly likely that the U.S. Congress will approve budget funds to be disbursed to Rosaviakosmos.
 After the imminent occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces, the Bushehr issue may cause a severe rift between Washington and Moscow in the second half of this year.
 The first casualty of such a rift may be the ISS, which could end up being closed down and flying without a crew.
 
 <i>Pavel Felgenhauer is a Moscow-based independent defense analyst. </i>

TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: George W. Bush paid eloquent tribute to the seven astronauts killed in the space shuttle Columbia last week. Too bad he ignored the equally eloquent words of warning about impending disaster in the program from NASA's own panel of safety experts - experts who the Regime fired after they dared bring their concerns to Congress.
 
Almost immediately after this critical testimony, the panel's chairperson was unceremoniously ashcanned by Bush's choice for NASA director, Sean O'Keefe. Apparatchik O'Keefe, who served as secretary of the Navy back in Daddy Bush's day, might not have had any experience in the space program, but he did have something far more important: a reputation as &quot;Dick Cheney's man,&quot; The Washington Post reports.
 After letting O'Keefe whet his whistle with a plum job in the White House Budget Office, Cheney and Bush moved him over to NASA, with orders to change the agency's focus from scientific exploration to the full-blown militarization of space. He was also instructed to &quot;streamline budgets,&quot; cutting corners to increase the profit margins of the unholy alliance of private military contractors who now control more than 90 percent of the shuttle program. And, here, O'Keefe did yeoman service for his corporate partners, bragging under oath last year that he had &quot;canceled or deferred&quot; a number of expensive shuttle upgrades, the Post reports.
 But let's be bipartisan about this. For it wasn't Bush who first abandoned the shuttle program to the tender mercies of the arms dealers Lockheed Martin and Boeing, but Bill Clinton - practicing his vaunted &quot;New Democrat&quot; (i.e., &quot;Old Republican&quot;) philosophy - back in 1996. The privatization sweetheart deal (and aren't they all, really?) gave the military mavens &quot;wide latitude&quot; to &quot;set their own parameters,&quot; free from pesky government oversight. The result has been a steady corrosion of safety standards, accelerated under the even more corporate-chummy Bush Regime, who kicked in an extra $2.9 billion for the LM-Boeing boys last year.
 So where is all the money going? Not to safeguard a bunch of pointy-headed science nerds carrying out experiments in space, obviously. No, the Bush Regime's priority is the development of what Pentagon warplanners call &quot;Full Spectrum Dominance&quot;: the projection of overwhelming military might throughout the heavens in order to - and here's a familiar theme - &quot;prevent the emergence of any global rival&quot; to U.S. hegemony. &quot;It's an &quot;urgent mission,&quot; says the U.S. Strategic Command, to &quot;seize the high ground&quot; and, in Donald Rumsfeld's words, &quot;avoid a space Pearl Harbor,&quot; The New York Times reports.
 &quot;Pearl Harbor&quot; seems to be a potent trigger word for the Regime, and for Rumsfeld in particular. You'll recall our recent reports on PNAC, the Rumsfeld-led think tank that spent the last decade drawing up plans for the invasion of Iraq and the domination of Central Asia. One key PNAC concept was the hope for a &quot;Pearl Harbor-type event&quot; that would sweep away opposition to imperial conquests abroad and pave the way for a broad militarization of U.S. society. Who says wishes never come true?
 Now, a similar fate is in store for the global commons of outer space, it seems. As with the Regime's other plans for domination, Strategic Command's reports are all couched in purely defensive terms - as if some rogue state or terrorist group were about to launch a multi-trillion-dollar space armada to encircle the earth with deadly intent. The truth is that only one country is capable of doing that: the Lord God's own U.S. of A. And the array of whiz-bang weaponry being avidly pursued by the Regime - including space-mounted lasers, orbiting nuclear arms and death-dealing solar magnifiers - goes far beyond anything required solely for defense. If implemented, &quot;Full Spectrum Dominance&quot; will be an inescapable, unstoppable loaded gun pointed at the head of every man, woman and child on the planet, giving new weight to Bush's oft-repeated declaration: &quot;If you're not with us, you're against us.&quot;
 And that's why Bush, just two months ago, rejected a direct, personal request from NASA veterans, pleading with him to halt further flights until shuttle safety could be massively upgraded, the Guardian reports. Why bother? As long as the overstretched engineers could get the bucket of bolts back into the air and keep those contractor (i.e., donor) profits pumping, Bush was more than content to ignore the pointy-heads and play with his Star Wars toys.
 O'Keefe too had bigger fish to fry: After sacking the experts, he spent the summer on the campaign trail, swanning around with Republican candidates throughout the country, including the Bush satrapy of Florida. He was also diverting NASA resources to a joint project with a private firm to develop &quot;brain-monitoring devices&quot; that could supposedly &quot;read terrorists' minds&quot; at airports, The Washington Times reports. To help field-test the mind-reading gizmo, NASA recently &quot;requested&quot; one airline to turn over all its computerized passenger data for a three-month period.
 What this vast invasion of privacy has to do with space exploration is anybody's guess, but no doubt the end product will prove profitable for the private firm enjoying O'Keefe's largesse. And who is this lucky company? That's classified, of course. Why should U.S. taxpayers know which politically connected corporate player is getting the money that could have gone to those safety upgrades that &quot;Cheney's man&quot; so proudly &quot;canceled or curtailed&quot;?
 And anyway, what are seven dead astronauts compared to the rude financial health of croney contractors? As always, the &quot;bottom line&quot; - money and power - carries the day. Right, Bill? Right, George?
 
 <i>
For annotational references, see the &quot;Opinion&quot; section at www.sptimesrussia.com </i>

TITLE: NATO Deadlocked Over Turkey Defense
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BRUSSELS - France, Germany and Belgium split NATO on Monday by blocking a plan to boost Turkish defenses in case of a U.S.-led war on Iraq - an action Washington charged faced the alliance with a credibility crisis.
 
The three NATO rebels, trying to slow the rush to war, say moves to defend Turkey would signal that a conflict had begun. Turkey, which borders Iraq, promptly invoked NATO's founding treaty to seek consultations for the defense of its territory.
 The countries blocked proposals to start planning for the deployment of AWACS surveillance planes, Patriot missiles and anti-chemical and anti-biological warfare teams to Turkey.
 Turkey responded by invoking NATO's Article IV, which says &quot;parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.&quot;
 NATO Secretary-General George Robertson called the deadlock &quot;very serious&quot; but said a solution could be at hand. Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis called it a dispute over timing and predicted the blocking countries would fall into line.
 In New York on Monday, Iraq sent a letter to UN weapons inspectors approving the use of U.S.-made U-2 surveillance planes and pledged to pass legislation next week outlawing the use of weapons of mass destruction, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations said.
 &quot;The inspectors are now free to use the American U-2s as well as French and Russian planes,&quot; Ambassador Mohamed al-Douri said.
 Iraq had blocked the use of the planes, which inspectors said they needed in their search for banned weapons.
 Al-Douri delivered the letter to the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, run at U.N. headquarters by Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector.
 Blix was on his way back to New York after a two-day visit to Baghdad, where he met with Iraqi officials in any effort to iron out problems and try to enhance Iraqi cooperation with inspections.
 The issue of the U-2 plane had been a key demand by inspectors along with other issues, including Iraq's failure to pass legislation outlawing weapons of mass destruction.
 Al-Douri said legislation would be passed next week and that Iraq would continue to encourage scientists to accept private interviews with inspectors seeking information about Iraq's weapons programs.
 The division in NATO over whether to use diplomacy or go to war to make Iraq disarm opened wide as Blix said he saw no new evidence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in papers Baghdad gave him at the weekend.
 &quot;This time they presented some papers to us in which they focused upon new issues. Not new evidence really as far as I can see, but they have, nevertheless, focused on real open issues and that is welcome,&quot; Blix said on arriving in Athens from Baghdad.
 French and German officials played down a weekend report in the German magazine Der Spiegel that there was a detailed Franco-German plan to try to delay a war by boosting the number of arms inspectors in Iraq and backing them with UN troops.
 &quot;The reports about a possible sizeable peacekeeping mission in Iraq do not correspond with reality,&quot; German Defense Minister Peter Struck told Germany's Deutschlandfunk radio Monday.
 But, showing no sign of backing off from its anti-war approach, the German government said Monday it saw no reason at present for a new UN resolution authorizing use of force against Iraq. Germany is currently on the Security Council.
 Iraq said if such a resolution was put forward, it hoped that its traditional ally Russia would veto it.
 Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz again dismissed suggestions President Saddam Hussein might go into exile and told NBC television U.S. President George W. Bush should do so. &quot;It is better for him [Bush] to resign and go to his Texas ranch and pray. Maybe God will pardon him for his crimes,&quot; he said. 
 U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said later Monday that France, Germany and Belgium made a mistake by blocking NATO planning for steps to defend Turkey in the event of war against Iraq, but said such a move would not delay a possible attack.
 &quot;It's unfortunate that they are in stark disagreement with the rest of their NATO allies,&quot; Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing.
 &quot;There's three countries. They're 19 countries in NATO. So it's 16-3. I think it's a mistake, and what we have to do for the United States is make sure that that planning does go forward, preferably within NATO but if not bilaterally or multiple bilaterals,&quot; he said.
 Asked if the move by the three countries would delay a possible attack, Rumsfeld said, &quot;No, because the planning's going to go forward outside of NATO is necessary.&quot;

TITLE: U.S.-Based Chinese Dissident Convicted
AUTHOR: By Audra Ang
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BEIJING - A United States-based Chinese dissident was convicted Monday and sentenced to life in prison on charges of spying and terrorism, ending a bizarre saga that involved allegations of cross-border kidnapping and hostages found tied up in a temple.
 
Wang Bizhang, 55, was arrested after police said they found him July 3 bound in a temple in a southern province while investigating a kidnapping case. Pro-democracy activists suggest he was abducted in Vietnam by Chinese agents after meeting with Chinese labor activists in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.
 Wang, who has permanent residency status in the United States, was convicted of spying for Taiwan between 1982 and 1990 and of setting up a terrorist group, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. It said he ordered an unspecified assassination in 1999 and plotted to blow up China's embassy in Thailand.
 The report was the first time the communist government publicly accused Wang of links to specific terrorist acts, but gave no evidence to support the charges and didn't indicate whether any attacks were carried out.
 Wang's parents faxed a statement to The Associated Press in Beijing accusing Chinese authorities of &quot;illegal abduction and illegal interrogation.&quot;
 &quot;All people of conscience will feel furious,&quot; said the statement, signed by his father and mother, Wang Junzhen and Wang Guifang. &quot;The world is fighting terrorism, but the Chinese government is making terrorism.&quot;
 Wang, a Chinese citizen, has lived abroad since 1979, first in Canada and then the United States. In the 1980s, while living in New York, he published a pro-democracy journal, China Spring. He slipped back into China without permission in 1998 in hopes of organizing an opposition party, but was caught and deported.
 Xinhua said Wang was accused of using his 1998 visit to set up a terrorist group. It said he told one man to carry out explosions and an assassination in 1999 on China's National Day holiday, which is Oct. 1. The report said he told Taiwanese authorities that he had stockpiled explosives on the mainland to blow up roads and bridges.
 &quot;The charges that have been leveled against him ... are trumped up and have no relation to reality,&quot; said Timothy Cooper, international director for the Free China Movement, an activist group in Washington. The group appealed to the U.S. government to &quot;exert all its influence&quot; to win Wang's release.
 China's Foreign Ministry said Wang's case was &quot;tried according to the law.&quot;
 Wang was visiting Hanoi with two other dissidents when they were reported missing in June. It was not immediately clear where he was living in the United States at the time of the trip.
 Chinese authorities said they found all three in southern China's Guangxi region, which borders Vietnam, while they were investigating a kidnapping case. Wang was apparently taken to Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, where he was formally charged on Dec. 5.
 The Chinese government has said the other two dissidents - Yue Wu and Zhang Qi - were cleared of involvement in Wang's activities. Xinhua had earlier said that Wang's trial was closed because it involved state secrets.

TITLE: Israel Kills Two Suspected Militants, Political Talks Go On
AUTHOR: By Mohammed Daraghmeh
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NABLUS, West Bank - Israeli troops killed two suspected Palestinian militants, including an unarmed fugitive, in the West Bank and Gaza Stripon Monday. Troops also caught a would-be suicide bomber who hid an explosives-laden suitcase in a hotel.
 
Imad Mabruk, a suspected militant, jumped from the roof of his home in the al-Ain refugee camp near Nablus to the roof of a nearby building to escape soldiers who called on him to surrender, his cousin said.
 Mabruk hid on the roof for several hours. At about 5 a.m. local time, gunshots were heard. Shortly after the soldiers left, Mabruk's family found his body, riddled with gunshot wounds, on the roof, his cousin, Yousef, said.
 Imad Mabruk had been sought by Israeli officials as a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO faction.
 Israeli military officials confirmed that Mabruk was unarmed but said he presented a danger to soldiers because, given his rank within the militant group, he could have been heavily armed. He was shot and killed trying to escape, the officials said.
 In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces stationed near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim shot and killed a Palestinian carrying an assault rifle and hand grenades, the army said.
 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon , meanwhile, launched negotiations on building a coalition government. Sharon, who crushed his rivals in a Jan. 28 general election, has six weeks to bring together parties with conflicting demands and interests
 In Israel's coalition talks, Sharon continued to court the left-center Labor Party, but it seems unlikely Labor's dovish leader, Amram Mitzna, will renege on a pledge to stay out of a Sharon government.
 Labor turned down Sharon's invitation to attend the first round of talks Monday, saying there was no common ground. &quot;The problem is not technical or administrative. The problem is the content,&quot; Mitzna told Israel's Army Radio.
 Mitzna also set four tough conditions for joining the coalition, including an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the dismantling of Jewish settlements and the unconditional resumption of talks with the Palestinians.

TITLE: Annual Muslim Pilgrimage Reaches Peak
AUTHOR: By Alaa Shahine
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOUNT ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia's top cleric warned more than 2 million pilgrims Monday against enemies of Islam, saying Muslims cannot be defeated by military might as long as they remain steadfast in their faith.
 
Speaking before midday prayers at Namira mosque on Mt. Arafat, Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah Al al-Sheik said Islam was passing through a crucial phase, but he avoided directly specifying Islam's enemies or a possible U.S.-led attack on Iraq.
 &quot;The enemy has exposed its fangs and is fighting our religion and is doing its best to drive Muslims away from their religion,&quot; al-Sheik told pilgrims in an emotional sermon as the annual Muslim pilgrimage, or hajj, came to its high point.
 &quot;Your enemy would not defeat you with its vast troops and equipment, but you will be defeated if your faith is weakened,&quot; he said. &quot;You have no other path [to victory], but to resort to God and turn your sayings into deeds.&quot;
 He said Saudis had tried in the past to spread Islam and God's word and were accused of being terrorists.
 &quot;The country is being targeted in its religion, morals and economy. It is being targeted in its education curriculum, and they claim that the curriculum calls for terrorism,&quot; al-Sheik said.
 The conservative kingdom has come under increasing criticism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who carried out the strikes were Saudis, and Saudi Arabia's curriculum, which includes a few religious textbooks that promote the kind of anti-Western sentiment espoused by Osama bin Laden, has been criticized as encouraging terrorism toward the West.
 About 500,000 pilgrims from inside Saudi Arabia joined about 1.5 million foreigners in this year's hajj, which is taking place under tight security because of fears of demonstrations against a U.S.-led war in Iraq.
 Anti-U.S. sentiment is running high in the Muslim world because of the threat of war against Iraq and American policies on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Many pilgrims have expressed anger or dismay at what they see as campaigns against their faith.
 &quot;Islam calls for peace and coexistence among people, it does not call for war,&quot; said Mohammed, a Nigerian who did not want to give his full name.
 After dawn prayers at the nearby valley of Mina, where most pilgrims spent the night in white fireproof tents, the short trek began to Arafat, a gentle plateau from which a small and rocky hill known as the Mountain of Mercy rises.
 Singing the pilgrim chant &quot;At thy service, my God, at thy service,&quot; they reached Arafat on foot, in buses and even clinging to the roofs of vehicles.
 By midmorning, helicopters hovered overhead and police barking orders through bullhorns tried to keep order on the ground. The arid plateau turned into an ocean of pilgrims with men dressed in identical seamless white garb and only the hands and faces of the women visible.
 Every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it is required to perform the hajj, a centuries-old pilgrimage to Mecca - the birthplace of Islam and its seventh-century prophet Muhammad - at least once in a lifetime.
 The annual ritual is a spiritual journey that, according to Islamic teachings, cleanses the soul and wipes away sins.
 Praying at Arafat, about 20 kilometers southwest of Mecca, is the main ritual of the five-day hajj. The time Muslims spend praying here is believed to symbolize the day of judgment, when Islam says every person will stand before God and answer for his deeds.
 
 
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 DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Al-Jazeera pan-Arab satellite television, the most popular station in the largely Arab Islamic Middle East, said Monday that Saudi authorities had barred it from covering the annual Muslim pilgrimage.
 
The station's chief editor, Ibrahim Hilal, attributed the decision to a falling out between the kingdom and neighboring Qatar over reports by the Qatari-based satellite news channel that the kingdom found insulting to its royal family.
 &quot;I don't understand how Saudi Arabia could ban a station that is watched by 30 million Arabs,&quot; Hilal said &quot;This is professionally frustrating... but banning is not going to make us review our independent editorial policy.&quot;
 A Saudi official, who refused to be identified any further, confirmed the station's visa requests for its staff to attend the hajj were denied. He would not say why.

TITLE: Jordan Illuminates His Last All-Star Game
AUTHOR: By Chris Sheridan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ATLANTA - Michael Jordan put the perfect ending on his farewell All-Star game - five seconds too soon.
 
Jordan said goodbye to the All-Star game with his eyes teary, his game a bit blemished, but his flair for the dramatic very much intact as the West beat the East 155-145 in double overtime Sunday night.
 A last-minute starter after Vince Carter relinquished his spot, Jordan had a poor start, a bad finish and then a good one.
 After clanging the potential winning shot off the iron at the end of regulation, Jordan made a high-arching 5-meter basket with 0:04.8 left in overtime to give the East a 2-point lead.
 &quot;I thought it was a game-winner, but obviously anything can happen in an NBA game, and that's exactly what happened,&quot; Jordan said.
 Kobe Bryant tied it by making two foul shots with 0:01 left, and Jordan's final shot of the first overtime was blocked just before the buzzer.
 That sent the All-Star game into double overtime for the first time ever, and MVP Kevin Garnett then scored nine of his 37 points as Jordan watched the final five minutes from the bench.
 In the end, it didn't really matter. Indeed, it was All-Star game but, on this night, there was only one star.
 Although Jordan missed his first seven shots, had four others rejected and blew a dunk, he did score 20 points to move past Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for most total points in All-Star history.
 But he needed to take 27 shots from the field - making only nine - in order to do it, in his 14th All-Star game.
 &quot;The important thing is I wanted it to be a competitive game,&quot; he said. &quot;It was a fun ending, either way you look at it.&quot;
 While his most memorable moment came late in the first overtime, his most poignant one came at halftime.
 Jordan joined singer Mariah Carey at center court, took the microphone after an extended ovation and bid a public farewell as Yao Ming, Kobe Bryant and basketball's future stood and watched.
 &quot;I leave the game in good hands,&quot; Jordan said. &quot;So many great stars rising and playing the game.&quot;
 &quot;I have passed on the things that Dr. J and some of the great players - Magic Johnson, Larry Bird - have passed on to me, I pass on to these All-Stars here, as well as to the rest of the players in the NBA,&quot; Jordan said.
 &quot;I want to thank you all for your support,&quot; he said. &quot;Now I can go home and feel at peace with the game of basketball.&quot;
 The entire evening played out as though it was a Jordan tribute.
 Allen Iverson arrived at the arena wearing a retro Bulls No. 23 jersey, Yao donned a pair of powder blue low-tops, a tribute to Jordan's alma mater, North Carolina, which clashed garishly with his bright red Western Conference uniform.
 Carey wore a Bulls jersey and a Wizards uniform top during a halftime show dedicated to Jordan. Several of the players wore Air Jordan shoes, and all of them stood in a pack to applaud and hug Jordan after he gave his halftime speech.
 &quot;I'm somewhat embarrassed because I got a feeling it's going to turn into the Michael Jordan show, which I don't want it to be,&quot; he said before the game.
 In the end, of course, it was.
 Jordan's go-ahead shot late in the first overtime was a thing of beauty, a perfectly rotating, high-floating jumper that looked true from the moment it left his fingertips.
 After hitting the shot, he drifted into a row of photographers and pumped his fist, getting a chest bump from Iverson as he went to the bench.
 &quot;I thought it was really scripted when he hit that shot,&quot; West coach Rick Adelman said.
 &quot;I thought it was over,&quot; he said.
 Things weren't over, though.
 Referee Ted Bernhardt called Jermaine O'Neal for a foul when he blocked Bryant out of bounds as Bryant threw up a 3-point attempt from in front of the West's bench.
 &quot;Leave it to the refs to ruin it,&quot; East coach Isiah Thomas said in disgust.
 Bryant made the first, missed the second and then had Jordan come over and say something to him.
 &quot;He was talking trash,&quot; Bryant said. &quot;Part of me felt I had a job to do, but another part of me just didn't want to do it, to be honest with you.&quot;
 He buried the final shot to tie the game, 138-138.
 Jordan received the ensuing inbounds pass while being tightly defended by Shawn Marion, and the Phoenix star got a large piece of the ball as Jordan attempted a 7-meter turnaround.
 Moments before tip-off, the public address announcer told the crowd that Jordan would be replacing Carter on the East's starting five.
 &quot;My decision was to start,&quot; Carter said.
 &quot;After a while I sat back and thought about it and said, 'Hey, this is his last one, he is the greatest player and I'm going to get this opportunity to come out here and play again,'&quot; he said.

TITLE: Thirtieth Win Puts Devils' Brodeur Into Record Books
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey - Martin Brodeur made NHL history Sunday.
 
Brodeur stopped 19 shots for his league-leading 30th win of the season, leading the New Jersey Devils to a 3-2 victory over the Minnesota Wild. He now has won 30 games for the eighth straight year, a feat no other goaltender has accomplished.
 &quot;Consistency is a key,&quot; Brodeur said. &quot;I try very hard not to have slumps. Staying healthy is a big factor. I've never been hurt, so that has helped me.
 &quot;I play a lot, so that is also big,&quot; he said. &quot;The team's level of consistency has also been big. Plus, it's a lot of fun to win games.&quot;
 Brodeur gave up two goals, but also made some good stops. He made a sprawling glove save on Andrei Zyuzin midway through the second period to thwart a scoring chance, then kicked aside three shots in the frantic final 0:32 to preserve the win.
 &quot;It's a good thing that this is now out of the way,&quot; Brodeur said. &quot;It's a great accomplishment, and I'm pretty excited about it. No one else has ever done it, so it has to mean something.&quot;
 The victory moved New Jersey within a point of the Ottawa Senators for the best record in the Eastern Conference. New Jersey is 13-2-1 in its last 16 games.
 Patrick Elias, New Jersey's leading scorer with 40 points, scored a second-period goal to increase his consecutive-point streak to five games. Elias has 10 goals and 10 assists in the last 17 games.
 The Devils took a 1-0 lead in the first period on defenseman Colin White's fifth goal of the season.
 John Madden got the play going by winning the faceoff and gave it to Turner Stevenson, who made the pass back to White at the right point. White then rifled a high shot to the right corner of the net that eluded goaltender Dwayne Roloson.
 The Devils increased their lead to 2-0 just three minutes into the second period, when Elias received a long pass from Scott Gomez, then skated past Wild defenseman Nick Schultz, spun round, and fired the blast past Roloson.
 &quot;Gomez saw me streaking up the side and made a great pass,&quot; Elias said.
 &quot;I'm sure he knew I was going there, but he has a great sense about these things,&quot; he said.
 The Wild got back into the game on Pierre-Marc Bouchard's power-play goal four minutes after Elias' goal.
 With Christian Berglund in the penalty box for boarding, Bouchard knocked home a rebound of Marian Gaborik's initial shot for his fifth goal of the season to make it 2-1.
 Minnesota had several good scoring chances in the second period, including a blast from the point by Filip Kuba, but Brodeur made a diving glove save to turn aside the attempt with 4:09 remaining in the period.
 The Devils increased their lead to 3-1 in the third period, when Jamie Langenbrunner deflected Brian Rafalski's shot past Roloson with 8:34 remaining. It was Langenbrunner's 15th goal of the season.
 The Wild cut the lead to 3-2, when Pascal Dupuis alertly knocked home a loose puck when Brodeur failed to glove a wobbly shot in front.
 Minnesota had three shots in the final 0:32, but Brodeur knocked them all down. The game ended with a physical altercation between White and Darby Hendrickson.
 &quot;Always, at the end of the game, there's a scramble,&quot; White said. &quot;But Marty is strong, and we stay tough late in the game.&quot;
 &quot;That's what's been winning games for us lately,&quot; he said.
 
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(For other results, see Scorecard.) </i>