SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #843 (11), Friday, February 14, 2003
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TITLE: Bloc Stymies Assembly a Third Time
AUTHOR: Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: For the third time in a row, members of the United City faction in the Legislative Assembly sabotaged the chamber's regular Wednesday sitting this week by not showing up. But members from the faction, which is made up of factions that support Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, said that they will be in their seats next week, and they will be there with the specific intent of removing Legislative Assembly Speaker Vadim Tyulpanov, of the pro-Kremlin Unity faction, from his position.
 
"The bloc is saying that it will try to remove the speaker and it could be done by way of a number of different methods," Viktor Yevtukhov, a member of United City, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "We'll see if it will work or not."
 Thirty three deputies were present for the session - one short of the 34 needed to form a quorum in the 50-seat assembly. Sources within the chamber, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that some of the absent lawmakers had claimed that their absence was due to illness, while others were simply at their dachas with their telephones switched off.
 Tyulpanov was clearly frustrated by the situation.
 "Dear legislators, today nobody wanted to work," Tyulpanov said bringing the attempt at holding a session to an end. "Thank you for your patience."
 The speaker had spent most of the day before throwing in the towel in attempts to contact the missing lawmakers personally, but was unable to convince even the few whom he could find to participate in the session, according to a statement from his press service.
 At a press conference on Thursday, Yury Rydnik, the head of the United City bloc, said that Tyulpanov's inability to convince the recalcitrent deputies to attend pointed to the need for him to be replaced.
 "The Legislative Assembly speaker is obliged to look for compromise," Rydnik said. "But, over the last three weeks, Vadim Tyulpanov has failed to reach agreement with the bloc on the question of who will head commissions, and has failed to gather a quorum, which means that he has failed to do his job."
 United City is suggesting four candidates to replace Tyulpanov, who defeated incumbent speaker Sergei Tarasov for the speaker's chair by a vote of 28 to 19 on Jan. 15: Natalya Yevdokimova, a member of the Yabloko faction; Yury Gladkov, from the Union of Right Forces; Konstantin Serov, a member of United City; and Yury Savelyev, from the Communist faction.
 Other developments this week, however, appear to bode ill for United City's chances of removing the speaker.
 On Wednesday, Tyulpanov was able to reach some sort of accommodation with Tarasov, the head of the Our City faction, which is part of the United City bloc, over next week's session. One day later, the faction unexpectedly announced that it will leave the pro-governor bloc.
 "I don't agree with the announcements made by the bloc's members at today's press conference," said Vatanyar Yagya, an Our City faction deputy, in an interview with Interfax on Thursday. "This would have just led to a worsening in our relations with people who elected us."
 At a press conference following the canceled session on Wednesday, Tyulpanov said that the United City lawmakers had been avoiding the sessions in response to a request by Yakovlev.
 "[Tuesday] evening, the 16 deputies of the United City bloc had a meeting with Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, where he asked them not to show up at the next session of the parliament."
 He also addressed questions around the standoff with United City over the distribution of control over different assembly committees.
 "It is very difficult to reach an agreement with United City because there isn't a single, unified opinion on how to distribute positions in the commissions," he said.
 Rydnik confirmed indirectly that the bloc maintains close contacts with the governor, but defended the situation.
 "A dialogue with the executive branch is normal. It's a shame that not all of the deputies have a contact with City Hall," he said.
 Smolny also criticized the present speaker's work.
 "Tyulpanov is a very bad dancer. He can't dance properly because certain parts of his anatomy prevent him from moving well," City Hall Spokesperson Alexander Afanasyev said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
 "Would anyone have listened to him if Tyulpanov asked the vice governors not to show up at work in City Hall?" Afanasyev asked. "We should raise the question of interference in the work of the legislative branch by an unconstitutional institution of the presidential representative's office but, instead, everybody is screaming that the governor is doing something [wrong]."
 Afanasyev has complained that the choice of Tyulpanov as Legislative Assembly speaker was influenced by the Presidential Administration in the Kremlin, and engineered with the help of the presidential representative of the Northwest Region, Viktor Cherkesov. But Alexei Gutsailo, Cherkesov's spokesperson, reacted angrily to his comments on Thursday.
 "If Afanasyev had some arguments to support this position, we could discuss them, but all we have heard since last year are these baseless comments," Gutsailo said in a telephone interview.
 "As for calling this an unconstitutional [institution], the office was set up by a presidential decree and, if such a document is not enough for Afanasyev, it just shows how unprofessional he is. It is unpleasant to say these things about colleagues but, I'm sorry, I'm already tired of hearing all of this over and over."

TITLE: City Residents Cleaning Up Overdue Debts
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Whenever Angelina Gambaryan spotted the long list of tenants who owed large amounts in back payment for communal services on the door of her building, she would look away, in order to avoid seeing her own name there.
 
But, last May, Gambaryan noticed a second piece of paper stuck to her door that offered a way for tenants to work their way off the debtors' list.
 "I realized instantly that it was a way out for my family, which owed 8,000 rubles ($260) for communal services by that time," said Gambaryan, a 36-year-old single mother of two sons.
 She is now one of a small number of people living in the city's Vasileostrovsky district who joined a program run by the district that allows them to pay off their debts by working as street and courtyard cleaners. 
 The Vasileostrovsky administration decided to launch the new initiative last spring, after the number of debtors in the district climbed above 10 percent of the total population of 180,000, with the collective debt totaling about $1 million.
 The debts owed by apartment tenants varied, with some behind by only one month, while others had not paid for several years. The individual debts generally ranged from 2,000 rubles ($66) to 25,000 rubles ($830), with 89,000 rubles ($2,800) being the record. The district administration looked for a new way to deal with the problem.
 "We realized that filing court cases wasn't an effective way to deal with the debt situation and hoped to help people out in a different way," said Galina Parfyonova, the head of Communal-Service Department No. 1 in the Vasileostrovsky district.
 According to the St. Petersburg Housing Maintenance Committee, total outstanding debt in communal-services payments for the entire city over the last ten years is about $43 million, with more than 300,000 families behind in payments. Communal-services payments cover utilities such as natural gas, electricity, heat and water, as well as services such as street and courtyard cleaning, building maintenance and garbage removal.
 The most problematic areas are the city's central districts, like Vasileostrovsky, which is located on Vasilyevsky Island. These districts tend to contain a large number of communal apartments, generally housing people with lower incomes.
 According to Parfyonova, about 50 percent of Vasilyevsky Island residents live in communal apartments.
 "From what I know, the newer city districts, which generally house people in better financial situations, have far fewer problems in collecting for communal services," Parfyonova said.
 Gambaryan, who lives in a <i>kommunalka</i>, or communal apartment,<i> </i>added her new work as a street cleaner to her regular job as a telephone operator for a city telephone-directory service, where she is paid about $80 a month.
 &quot;I went for the offer because I didn't see any other option to pay off these debts,&quot; she said.
 The working day for Gambaryan, who is a school teacher by education, begins at 6 a.m. with her street-cleaning shift, where she works until 1 p.m. After that, she rushes off to her six-hour shift at the directory service.
 Gambaryan says that she asked that 100 percent of her salary from the new work be transferred automatically to pay off the debts.
 &quot;I knew that, if I had the money given to me directly, I wouldn't have been able to keep from spending it on other necessities,&quot; she said.
 The decision worked out so well that Gambaryan managed to pay off her communal-services debt by the end of last year, but she decided to stay on with the work afterward, and now is using the money to pay off a computer that she bought for her son on credit.
 Despite Gambaryan's positive experience, not many others have opted for the program. Parfyonova says that, at present, only 12 people in the district have joined the program. She also says that paying off outstanding communal-services debts is not the only way the program helps the district. According to Parfyonova, there are only 82 people working as street and courtyard cleaners in her area of the district, whereas there are supposed to be 104.
 A large part of the problem may be the stigma attached to the work for many. Gambaryan says that many of her acquaintances who also owe debts for communal services laughed mildly at her enthusiasm, preferring to avoid such work. Gambaryan herself said that she had some difficulties getting adjusted to the idea of her new job last summer.
 &quot;I always had a stereotype of street cleaners as being of the lowest social status,&quot; Gambaryan said. &quot;At first, I was even afraid to raise my head, in case somebody I knew recognized me while I was working.
 But she now says that the work has changed her outlook on people.
 &quot;I realized that the people who are throwing their garbage all around are the ones who should be ashamed, and not me,&quot; Gambaryan said. &quot;I'm cleaning up the city.&quot;
 Now she says that her biggest problem with the work is that it sometimes feels like it doesn't bring any results.
 &quot;The next day a street or a courtyard is as dirty as it was the day before,&quot; she says. &quot;For instance, there is one courtyard in my area, which has already been nicknamed the 'Italian,' because the people there throw their garbage right out of their windows.&quot;
 The work has also raised questions from her son, who asked why she bothered to study to be a teacher if she was going to work as a street cleaner.
 &quot;Why do I need to study then?&quot; he once asked her.
 But Gambaryan says that her job is easier than her former teaching position.
 &quot;Teachers receive almost the same salary, but the work is much harder on your nerves,&quot; she said. &quot;Here, I can just work and have my thoughts to myself.&quot;
 Meanwhile, Parfyonova says that the district administration has been receiving inquiries from other districts about the nature of the project and their experiences. Gambaryan thinks that more people who owe money for communal services should give the program a try.
 &quot;It's not the worst way out.&quot; she says.

TITLE: Jet Lands After Engine Trouble
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: A Russian jet with 151 people on board made a successful emergency landing at Pulkovo-1 airport in St. Petersburg on Wednesday after suffering engine trouble, an emergency official said.
 
The plane, a Russian-made Tu-154, which was carrying 141 passengers and 10 crew members, landed at Pulkovo at 1:46 p.m., said Oleg Semenog, the spokesperson for the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast administration of the Emergency Situations Ministry. He said nobody was hurt.
 One of the engines failed during the flight from the northern Siberian city of Novy Urengoi, Seminog said.

TITLE: Gryzlov Says City Unsafe for Celebration
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said on Tuesday that not all necessary steps to guarantee public safety during St. Petersburg's upcoming 300th-anniversary celebrations have been taken. He also said that the Interior Ministry is monitoring extremist groups that could disrupt the festivities, and vowed to crack down on criminals and illegal residents in St. Petersburg.
 
&quot;I thought the [security] plan was not being carried out thoroughly, and that adjustments had to be made. My concerns have proved to be justified,&quot; Gryzlov told journalists at a press conference following a meeting at the headquarters of the Interior Ministry's St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast department devoted to questions of public safety during St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary.
 Gryzlov stressed that the celebration would be a unique political happening that required a maximum level of security to protect official guests, tourists, and residents.
 &quot;St. Petersburg is expecting at least 45 heads of state during the peak period of the anniversary. This is an unprecedented event for Russia, and this type of gathering happens rarely anywhere,&quot; he said. &quot;Our aim is to guarantee the safety of official guests, while enabling the city to maintain a festive atmosphere.&quot;
 Gryzlov said that, in order to guarantee public safety, the Interior Ministry was planning a number of preventive measures, including a crackdown on foreign citizens who are not registered in St. Petersburg. Gryzlov added that the government was currently working on new measures to identify and deport foreigners living in the city without registration. 
 With regard to the threat of attacks by extremist groups, Gryzlov said that the Interior Ministry was carrying out surveillance on the activities of a number of these. He named China's Falung Gong and anti-globalist movements as two dangerous groups that could be planning to disrupt the anniversary.
 &quot;We have the names of members of these organizations who want to come to St. Petersburg,&quot; Gryzlov said.
 During the festivities themselves, Gryzlov said that law-enforcement agencies would have an increased presence on the streets of the city.
 &quot;There will be at least one police officer on each corner,&quot; he said. &quot;We are planning to bring an extra 2,500 Interior Ministry troops and have another 850 in reserve. We are also putting together reserve detachments that will come from other parts of Russia's Northwest Region.&quot;
 According to Gryzlov, St. Petersburg's Interior Ministry University will also provide 100 students with a knowledge of foreign languages to meet foreigners at border points.
 &quot;In the best sense of the word,&quot; he added.
 The public-transport system will be policed thouroughly, with the metro receiving particular attention.
 In what should be welcome news to drivers and commuters alike in the city, Gryzlov said that official guests will, when possible, travel by boat, reducing the number of traffic jams that events of this type usually generate. This will require, he said, the establishment of new security controls along the Neva River and in the Gulf of Finland.
 Despite the shortfalls in preparations mentioned during the press briefing, Gryzlov said that he was confident that the celebration would not be marred by criminal acts.
 &quot;We are putting together a whole series of preventive measures, and I hope that, in light of this, criminals will just leave the city,&quot; he said. &quot;They have a choice: They either turn themselves in to the police, leave the city, or else they will all be thrown into jail.&quot;

TITLE: Senate Pans Language in Duma Bill
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOCOW - The Federation Council on Wednesday rejected a bill banning the use of profanity and foreign words in official situations as too vague, and called for a joint commission to be set up with the State Duma to rewrite the legislation.
 
&quot;If this bill is enacted, about 30 articles of the Russian Constitution would have to be amended,&quot; Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 The bill, which established Russian as the state language, outlawed the use of &quot;vernacular, disdainful or foul&quot; language, unless the words were used as a form of artistic expression. It also forbade foreign words whenever a commonly acceptable Russian equivalent could be found, and stated Russian was to be used in all official situations.
 Senators voted down the legislation 126-7, with 10 abstentions. The Duma passed the bill 248-37 last week.
 Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said Wednesday's rejection was an example of a subtle Kremlin game in which the executive branch appeases the public's conservative sentiments by getting a bill approved in the high-profile Duma and then thrown out by the little-watched Federation Council. The rejection appeases liberals and Western public opinion, he said.
 &quot;Thus, the large conservative electorate thinks there is a language law, and serious political parties, foreign observers and the highly educated public know there isn't any,&quot; Ryabov said.

TITLE: Russia: Diplomacy Key to N. Korea Crisis
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Isachenkov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia on Thursday criticized the UN nuclear watchdog agency's decision to refer the standoff over North Korea's nuclear program to the UN Security Council, saying the move dealt a blow to diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis.
 
The International Atomic Energy Agency's move could open the way for punishing sanctions, which North Korea has said it would consider an act of war. Russia and Cuba refused to support the measure during Wednesday's session of the IAEA's 35-country board of governors.
 The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that sending the question on to the Security Council was a &quot;premature and counterproductive move that doesn't help to establish a constructive and trusting dialogue between the interested parties.&quot;
 Russia &quot;firmly stands for solving the crisis around North Korea's nuclear program exclusively by political and diplomatic means,&quot; the Foreign ministry said in a statement. It added that Moscow was prepared to support the nuclear agency's decision, if that would help Washington and Pyongyang find a way to &quot;establish a direct dialogue&quot; at the sidelines of the Security Council.
 Russia, which has maintained good ties with North Korea since during Soviet times, has attempted to mediate the standoff. A Russian presidential envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, recently visited Pyongyang and said Russia was planning new initiatives in order to encourage talks.
 Yet, even though its relations with Pyongyang are now the warmest in years, &quot;Russia has practically no levers over North Korea,&quot; said Alexander Pikayev, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office.
 Pikayev said that a military conflict is unlikely in the short term with Washington's attention focused on Iraq, but possible in the more distant future if North Korea provokes the United States by building nuclear stockpiles or conducting nuclear tests.
 A South Korean presidential envoy and the mayor of the North Korean capital Pyongyang held separate talks with Russian officials Thursday on ways to defuse the crisis.
 Soon-hyung Chough, an aide to South Korea's President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, was scheduled for meet ings with the leaders of both the State Duma and the Federation Council, as well as with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov during the duration of his four-day visit.
 The positions of the governments in Seoul and Moscow have &quot;much in common&quot; and Seoul is counting on Russia to &quot;continue to assist in a settlement on the Korean Peninsula,&quot; Moo-hyun said on Thursday, according to comments quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency.
 Meanwhile, Pyongyang Mayor Yang Man Gil, who opened an arts exhibition in Moscow on Thursday, said that the crisis had been caused by the U.S. desire to &quot;crush our country&quot; and promised that North Korea will &quot;give a super-tough answer to the tough U.S. policy,&quot; the agency said.
 The current crisis began in October, when U.S. officials said North Korea had acknowledged having a nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 agreement. Washington and its allies suspended oil shipments to North Korea - which in turn expelled UN nuclear inspectors and withdrew from a global nuclear-arms-control treaty.

TITLE: Chechen Refugees Make Case To Official
AUTHOR: By Yuri Bagrov
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: KARABULAK, Ingushetia - Hundreds of Chechen refugees crowded around a visiting European human-rights official at a camp for displaced people on Thursday, demanding to know when it would be safe for them to return to Chechnya.
 
Meanwhile, in Moscow, an ethnic Chechen politician, who says he is rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov's new representative in Russia, called for a renewal of long-severed contacts aimed at settling the conflict in Chechnya and challenged President Vladimir Putin to seek an end to the war.
 Salambek Maigov said his task is to establish contacts that could lead to negotiations between federal authorities and representatives of Maskhadov, the separatist leader, who was elected president of Chechnya in 1997.
 &quot;This is a unilateral step by the Chechen side, aimed to achieve a peaceful settlement of this long-standing conflict,&quot; Maigov told a news conference.
 The initiative came despite repeated statements from federal officials that they will not negotiate with Maskhadov, whom they call a terrorist and blame for the October raid at a Moscow theater.
 At the Bart refugee camp in Ingushetia, a tight cordon of federal police and security troops surrounded Council of Europe human-rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles, preventing some 300 refugees from speaking with him directly. There were about 2,000 refugees at the camp.
 &quot;When will order be established in Chechnya?&quot; called out some. &quot;When will our abducted relatives be released?&quot;
 Gil-Robles is evaluating conditions for civilians and refugees in advance of a constitutional referendum next month that federal officials insist will promote peace.
 He met on Wednesday with Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya's Moscow-backed administration, as well as the region's chief prosecutor and military officials, and told them he had heard many complaints about the abduction of civilians by federal troops.
 &quot;I hope you will conduct work on the facts about the disappearance of these people,&quot; Gil-Robles said.
 Many of the tens of thousands of refugees who have fled to Ingushetia to escape war say federal authorities have pressured them to return to Chechnya despite persistent violence, including abuse of civilians by federal forces.
 The head of Putin's human-rights commission, Ella Pamfilova, said in Moscow on Thursday that, during a visit to the region this month, refugees told her they no longer feel the kind of pressure to return to Chechnya that they experienced last year.
 &quot;They are now left alone, meaning that nobody is forcing them to move to Grozny,&quot; Pamfilova said at a news conference.
 But she said many refugees still fear returning because it is dangerous.
 &quot;Unfortunately, people still are going missing,'' she said. &quot;We have fresh facts about disappearances and murders of people.&quot;
 Two reporters who tried to speak with Gil-Robles outside the camp Thursday were briefly detained and accused of not having proper press accreditation. Radio Liberty's Moscow bureau said one of the broadcasting agency's Chechen stringers, Aslanbek Dadayev, had been released from detention.

TITLE: BP Strikes Record $6.75-Bln TNK Deal
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - What a difference a couple of years can make.
 
Just over two years ago, in a dispute often cited as a reason never to invest in Russia, Mikhail Fridman and other major shareholders of TNK were threatening to scuttle global oil giant BP's $471-million investment in Sidanco.
 Now, the two sides are all smiles, after clinching the largest equity deal in Russian history.
 On Tuesday, BP announced that it was putting $6.75 billion into another trailblazing oil venture, this time with TNK's owners, to create a global top-10 oil producer valued at $18.1 billion and put BP on equal footing with ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch/Shell as the world leaders in terms of proven hydrocarbon reserves.
 &quot;We are very proud to be part of the biggest deal in Russian history,&quot; Fridman told reporters Tuesday.
 &quot;It sets a new standard for the Russian market. It is a reflection of the political change that has taken place in Russia over the past three years ... Russia has stopped being associated with instability and nontransparency,&quot; he said.
 The new company, yet to be named, will combine TNK, Sidanco and other major oil and gas assets. BP and TNK's major shareholders - Fridman's Alfa Group and Viktor Vekselberg's Access-Renova - will each own 50 percent of the new company, under terms carefully crafted to give both sides equal management control and prevent the wrangling over assets that once almost sent BP hightailing it out of the country.
 The deal is the first major transaction to make good on growing global interest in Russian oil and could pave the way for other major foreign investments in the sector as instability in the Middle East leads to a push to diversify supplies. Russian oil companies have been slashing costs way below world averages, and implementing steep production hikes, at a time when overall growth is slowing for multinationals.
 &quot;It seems to me that BP has recognized ... that Russia will take a leading position in the global oil market,&quot; Vekselberg said.
 The creation of the company ties BP with fast-growing TNK, which has been boosting annual output by an average of 10 percent in recent years, and gives the supermajor an initial production increase of 13 percent and boosts its overall reserves by 30 percent.
 BP CEO John Browne sought to convince investors in a Webcast conference on Tuesday that all the necessary safety nets were in place to reduce the risk of making an investment in a country that, just a few years ago, he had slammed for being the opposite of America, where &quot;laws, not men&quot; governed.
 &quot;This is a major strategic step into a country with massive oil and gas reserves and immense potential for future growth,&quot; Browne said Tuesday. He said that Russia was now BP's sixth new &quot;profit center&quot; at the core of its future growth.
 BP Group Vice President Robert Dudley, Alfa chairperson Fridman and Renova chief Vekselberg were visibly pleased Tuesday after finally hammering out a deal, signed after all-night negotiations, that capped nearly two years of on-again, off-again bargaining and due-diligence probes.
 The company puts together BP's 25-percent stake in Sidanco and its shares in Rusia Petroleum, which holds the license to the massive Kovykta gas field in eastern Siberia, ideally located for supplying energy-hungry China. BP also brings its Sakhalin 5 exploration license and its Moscow network of retail stations. From Alfa and Access-Renova come TNK, its stake in Sidanco and in Rusia Petroleum and in the Rospan gas field, as well as the Sakhalin 4 and 5 exploration licenses. The new company will have reserves of at least 5.2 billion barrels, and will produce some 1.2 million barrels per day, according to BP estimates.
 Slavneft, which TNK recently acquired together with Sibneft, is not part of the deal. Neither is BP's stake in LUKArco, a joint venture with LUKoil.
 Dudley said that clinching the deal just two years after BP and TNK were locking horns over Siberian oil firm Sidanco illustrates the progress that Russia and its businesspeople have made in improving the country's investment climate.
 &quot;The pace of reforms in the past two years gives us the confidence to make this investment, an investment which we do not take lightly,&quot; he said, citing in particular improvements to the tax system and to laws regulating bankruptcy procedures.
 He said that the rift over Sidanco actually helped bring the two companies closer together.
 BP entered Russia in 1997, paying $471 million for a 10-percent stake in Sidanco, which at the time was controlled by Vladimir Potanin's Interros. Two years later, it was ready to move out, up in arms over an aggressive attack on that asset from TNK, which took over Sidanco's biggest field in bankruptcy procedures that BP claimed TNK had illegally rigged in its favor.
 BP's rancor over that deal, which led it to write off $200 million of its investment, even spread to Washington, where the British behemoth conducted an aggressive lobbying campaign challenging the legality of past dealings by TNK's shareholders. It also fought on Capitol Hill to prevent U.S. Eximbank from extending a loan to TNK, but lost.
 But, by 2001, the two companies had reached a peace settlement, and TNK returned the field it had grabbed from Sidanco. Later, TNK even agreed to boost BP's stake in Sidanco to 25 percent and give it management control.
 TNK's Vekselberg was keen on Tuesday to stress the new level of trust the two companies had built by working together.
 &quot;The negotiations were long and hard. But, in the end, we decided that the positives in the future ahead of us outweighed the negatives in our past. The trust we have since built is a serious foundation for the development of the company,&quot; Vekselberg said.
 Analysts said that the fact that BP was increasing its exposure to Russia, despite getting burned in the past, made the deal even more significant.
 &quot;BP was once a victim of poor corporate governance, but, instead of being deterred from investing, they have gone on and made this deal,&quot; said Stephen O'Sullivan, head of research at United Financial Group.
 &quot;This deal is much more significant because it is not a wide-eyed newcomer coming in. It sends a signal that Russia is a very different place under Putin than it was under Yeltsin,&quot; he said.
 Browne said in the Webcast conference that the deal was designed to give BP maximum leverage to avoid the shenanigans of the past.
 He cited as examples a board structure that gives both sides an equal number of board seats and veto power over major decisions. The deal also outlines arbitration procedures that will be enacted should the two sides fail to reach agreement.
 Also balancing the two sides' interests is an agreement whereby Alfa and Access-Renova, or AAR, nominates the chairperson of the board of the new company, who will not have veto rights, while BP nominates the CEO. The CEO also has the right to forward candidates for the position of the company's chief financial officer, Dudley told journalists.
 BP will also install its own people in middle management in the new company, he said.
 Another way to make sure that AAR toes the line is by not paying the whole $6.75 billion all at once. BP will pay an initial $3 billion in cash, but the remainder will be paid in three annual tranches of $1.25 billion in BP shares on the anniversary of the deal and valued at market prices 30 days before that date.
 At current rates, the $3.75 billion in stock would give Fridman, Vekselberg and Access chief Len Blavatnik roughly 2.5 percent of BP.
 Fridman said that the alliance would give the new company the clout to expand into Eastern Europe and China that is not currently enjoyed by a solely Russian-owned company.
 The deal must still be approved by Russia's Antimonopolies Ministry for it to go ahead. The ministry declined to comment on the deal.
 
 <i>
Staff Writers Valeria Korchagina and Simon Ostrovsky contributed to this report. </i>

TITLE: Landmark Sale Puts Russia Into New Stage
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina and Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW- BP's spectacular $6.75-billion commitment to Russia reverberated throughout the corporate community Tuesday, as business leaders and economists alike called it a pivotal event that could open the floodgates to further investments across the economic spectrum.
 
&quot;This is a landmark event that sends Russia into a new stage,&quot; said Valery Nesterov of Troika Dialog investment bank.
 &quot;First, there was the era of privatization, conducted mostly with the use of domestic capital,&quot; he said. &quot;Now, it is time for Western companies and money to enter the scene.&quot;
 With a single stroke of a pen, BP matched all foreign direct investment in the country in the last three years combined, said economist Christof Ruehl, the World Bank's top Russian specialist.
 &quot;This deal is a vote of confidence to put significant money into any sector,&quot; he said. &quot;[Until now], foreign investors were not willing to take a concentrated ownership position in Russian businesses.&quot;
 Ruehl said that, although direct investments in Russia have always been low and foreigners have been interested in natural resources, there has always been the opinion that Russia needed to create markets in these sectors first before it could attract serious investors. 
 &quot;But, with this agreement, the Russian oil sector has become 'normal,'&quot; he said.
 The deal for 50 percent of an expanded TNK will create Russia's third-largest oil company and put BP, the world's third-largest oil company, on par with ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch/Shell in terms of proven hydrocarbon reserves.
 The new-found optimism generated by BP's investment - roughly equal to 1.5 percent of Russia's gross domestic product - has already spread to the markets.
 The benchmark RTS index has gained nearly 10 percent since Friday, when word first leaked that the deal would be announced this week.
 The biggest beneficiaries have been other oil companies, such as Yukos, whose shares soared 5.2 percent on Tuesday alone. 
 &quot;BP paid a 25-percent premium over the average value of other Russian oil stocks, so, a positive re-rating of Russian oils is imminent,&quot; said Leonid Mirzoyan, oil and gas analyst with Deutsche Bank.
 Tuesday's announcement also drove Russia's sovereign bonds to record highs, as investors in emerging-market debt continue to see them as a safe haven from global uncertainties.
 Russia is now the second-largest component of J.P. Morgan's benchmark Emerging Markets Bond Index Plus (EMBI+) after Mexico, accounting for around 22 percent of emerging-market debt, which many investors hold.
 But the implications of the deal may go well beyond the oil sector and financial markets.
 &quot;I'm confident that BP's example will attract new foreign investments to other sectors, too,&quot; said Irene Commeau, managing director of the European Business Club. &quot;This deal is very good news for all foreign investors working in Russia.&quot;

TITLE: Audit Chamber Chief Slams Sale of Hotel
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Federal Audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin sent shockwaves though the St. Petersburg City Administration on Monday by announcing that the sale of government shares in the city's prestigious Grand Hotel Europe had contained violations.
 
&quot;The government stake of shares in the Grand Hotel Europe was sold for peanuts. The hotel's location alone probably costs ten times the amount paid,&quot; Interfax quoted Stepashin as saying.
 According to some analysts, the shares were sold for as little as one fifteenth of their actual value.
 Stepashin added that the Audit Chamber had sent the documents of its investigation into the share sale to the Prosecutor General's Office. 
 The City Property Fund was responsible for selling the government's shares in the hotel in October 2002, within the framework of a privatization program.
 The government's stake, which amounted to 40.37 percent of the shares, was sold for 32.878 million rubles ($1.03 million). The shares were acquired by GXE Holding AG, a Swiss company that already held a 48.5-percent stake in the hotel. 
 Vladimir Vasilyev, the deputy head of the Property Fund, said that he did not wish to comment on the situation on Wednesday. 
 Stepashin's statement sparked an angry reaction from the City Administration. 
 Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's spokesperson, Alexander Afanasyev, expressed strong disagreement with Stepashin, claiming that the head of the Audit Chamber often failed to back up his statements with evidence. 
 &quot;Stepashin makes such exotic statements that it makes one's head spin, and these statements don't lead to anything,&quot; he said on Wednesday.
 &quot;When Stepashin makes statements, I would like to see some evidence, and to see the guilty parties punished. Instead, Stepashin just creates intrigues. His actions do more harm than good to the city that he is supposed to represent in Moscow,&quot; he said.
 According to Stepashin, St. Petersburg Vice Governor and head of the City Property Committee Valery Nazarov has sent a letter of protest to the Prosecutor General's Office. Nazarov was unavailable for comment on Wednesday. 
 Grand Hotel Europe General Director Andrei Mikishin said Tuesday that the deal was done legally.
 &quot;In our opinion, the sale was completely legal,&quot; he said Monday. &quot;The first valuation was carried out by St. Petersburg Evaluation Company. After the Audit Chamber first said that there had been some violations a month ago, a second valuation was carried out by BDO Ruf Audit at the request of our Western shareholders, and it confirmed the first valuation.&quot;
 BDO Ruf Audit is a Russian property evaluation company.
 Mikishin said that the low price of the shares was explained by the fact that it takes into account the debts contracted by the hotel during its renovation in the early 1990s. According to City Hall's Property Committee, the debt amounts to $21 million. 
 The Audit Chamber's findings, however, are supported by a number of analysts, who say the price at which the shares were sold was far from corresponding to the actual value of the hotel. 
 &quot;The City Administration uses the debts contracted by the hotel during its reconstruction to justify the low price at which the shares were sold,&quot; said Alexei Shaskolsky, who heads the property-evaluation group at St. Petersburg's Institute of Enterprise Problems, in an interview on Wednesday. &quot;My calculations show that the price of the hotel should have corresponded to the hotel's total turnover for 1 1/2 years, which represents $50 million. Taking into account the debts, the price of the stake should have been about $15 million.&quot;
 Shaskolsky said that both poor management and corruption have played their part in the financial problems that the Grand Hotel Europe is currently experiencing.
 &quot;I think it was in somebody's interest to sell the shares at such a price, or somebody had the means to exert pressure on the deal,&quot; he said. &quot;The City Administration could also have taken measures to influence the way the hotel was managed, or to have cancelled the contract. I think the hotel would be run a lot more efficiently if it was operated on the basis of franchise, as is now the practice all over the world.&quot;
 St. Petersburg Audit Chamber head Dmitry Burenin went further, saying that measures should be introduced to call the city officials responsible for the poor financial results to account. 
 &quot;Government property, especially if located in the center of St. Petersburg, has to undergo a thorough examination,&quot; he said on Tuesday. &quot;As far as the city administration is concerned, I think it's unacceptable that it has done nothing to correct the situation. The question that arises is: Why hasn't the administration done anything to liquidate the debt? At present, officials do not carry any responsibility for financial results. I think such a responsibility ought to be introduced.&quot;
 In the meantime, to avoid a similar situation in the future, the Audit Chamber has frozen the sale of a government stake in another St. Petersburg hotel, Hotel Moskva0, until the shareholding has been officially evaluated.

TITLE: Anniversary May Close Airport for Four Days
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Airlines flying to the airport said that losses resulting from the cancellation of flights would be considerable. 
 Although a final decision is only due at the beginning of March, Prokhorenko, who also works as the head of the city's External Relations Committee, said that there was little doubt that the airport would be closed.
 &quot;It's likely that the proposal on the cancellation of domestic flights [at the Pulkovo-1 terminal] will be adopted soon, while the issue of international flights [at the Pulkovo-2 terminal] is still being considered,&quot; he said. 
 As yet, however, neither Russian nor foreign airlines have received any official confirmation of the closure, despite having already taken an estimated 3,000 flight reservations for the period.
 Andrei Gusarov, the head of the St. Petersburg branch office of KLM, estimates that the airline's losses will amount to $125,000 if Pulkovo-2, which handles international flights, is closed. &quot;But we'll only really be able to count the real losses after June 1,&quot; he said on Thursday. 
 &quot;We need to get the exact information as soon as possible. Until now, no official information has been available, other than verbal reports from Pulkovo, where the assumption is that the airport will be closed,&quot; Gusarov said. 
 The St. Petersburg branch of British Airways also said that, as of Thursday, it had received no official confirmation of the airport's closure from either the City Administration or Pulkovo. 
 The decision to close the airport is motivated by the huge number of non-scheduled government flights, Prokhorenko said, with Pulkovo expecting about 120 such flights on May 30 alone. 
 Russian airlines also report that they have had no confirmation of any decisions on the closure of Pulkovo-1, which handles domestic flights. Aeroflot is continuing to sell tickets for the period of the 300th-anniversary celebrations. On average, the company operates a total of 31 return flights per day to Moscow from St. Petersburg.
 &quot;Usually, a special schedule is issued for when official delegations arrive, making restrictions on civil aviation that last for just a few hours,&quot; Lev Koshlyakov, a deputy director at Aeroflot, said on Tuesday. 
 On average, Pulkovo airport handles 100 domestic and international flights per day at its two terminals. Pulkovo-1 has a capacity of 1,200 passengers per hour, while Pulkovo-2 has a capacity of 800 passengers per hour. 
 Prokherenko said that the unprecedented levels of activity in the city during the period of the anniversary celebrations, with about 45 heads of state expected, will only affect St. Petersburg's air-transport system - most of the official events are scheduled to take place in the Konstantinovsky Palace, which is being converted into a presidential residence, in the St. Petersburg suburb of Strelna. According to Prokhorenko, guests will be transported between the palace and the city center by water.

TITLE: Central Bank To Let Ruble Rise on Dollar
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The days of decline and fall for the Russian ruble are over. 
 
Faced with surging demand for the national currency as oil dollars flood the economy in unprecedented volumes, the Central Bank this week declared a strong ruble policy for the first time since the steep devaluation in 1998.
 Forced to navigate between market forces bolstering the currency and flaming inflation by printing money to absorb excess dollars, the Central Bank, which had planned to let the ruble depreciate to 33.7 per dollar over the course of the year, now says that a stronger national currency is inevitable as long as oil prices remain at multi-year highs. 
 Central Bank Chairperson Sergei Ignatyev announced the sea change in Poland earlier this week, saying that the government would meet its inflation target of 10 percent to 12 percent by letting the ruble strengthen 4 percent to 6 percent this year. 
 In response, daily dollar sales in Moscow soared tenfold to $667.32 million on Tuesday, and hit an all-time high of $692 million on Wednesday. Likewise, the ruble has gained 17 kopecks against the dollar in the last four days, and is now near a five-month high of 31.66. 
 But, while long-awaited currency stability is welcomed by individuals and foreign investors, without structural reforms and rapid development of the small-business sector, future economic growth could be jeopardized - a point hammered home by the International Monetary Fund on Thursday. 
 &quot;A revival of structural reforms combined with a flexible, but cautious, approach to macroeconomic policies will be needed to foster sustained and broad-based growth and a reduced dependence of the economy on natural resources,&quot; the IMF said at the end of its regular 12-day visit to Moscow. 
 The IMF, which played a pivotal role in the 1998 debt and devaluation fiasco, warned of &quot;signs that [economic] growth is slowing, despite the benefit of continued strong world energy prices.&quot; 
 One reason for slower growth is the stronger ruble, but Central Bank First Deputy Chairperson Oleg Vyugin said on Thursday that that was the price of taming inflation. 
 &quot;We consider curbing inflation to be a priority,&quot; Vyugin was quoted by Interfax as saying.

TITLE: Sibneft Hunting for A Piece of BP Action
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - No. 5 oil major Sibneft said Wednesday that it wants to parlay its leverage over TNK asset Onako into a stake in TNK's new $6.75-billion mega-merger with BP, despite the architects of that deal having ruled out the possibility of their new baby being shared with anyone else.
 
Analysts, however, say that it is unlikely that complications untangling the web of Sibneft's and TNK's cross-holdings will derail the record-breaking deal.
 Sibneft was on track to gain an 8.6-percent stake in TNK International - a holding company that owns 97 percent of TNK, 25 percent of Rusia Petroleum and 44 percent of Rospan - under a planned share swap for its 30-percent stake in key Onako subsidiary Orenburgneft, which it now jointly owns with TNK.
 But that deal was thrown into doubt, after the TNK shareholders agreed with BP on Tuesday to create a new company that will pool TNK International's assets. Those assets include stakes in TNK, Sidanco, Rospan and Rusia Petroleum, along with BP's existing holdings in Russia.
 &quot;We wouldn't rule out taking an equity stake in NewCo. [the temporary name for the BP-TNK tie-up] for the Orenburgneft stake,&quot; a Sibneft spokesperson said Wednesday. He added, however, that it was possible Sibneft may just end up keeping its stake in Orenburgneft.
 He would not comment on whether Sibneft might seek to enforce its share swap through the courts. He would say only that the two sides had so far clinched only a preliminary agreement on that deal.
 The two major TNK shareholders, Mikhail Fridman and Viktor Vekselberg, told reporters Tuesday that Sibneft would not be a stakeholder in the new company.
 The new company is set to become Russia's third-largest oil company, either now or in the near future.
 Analysts said that it was most likely that Sibneft's and TNK's cross-holdings in Onako would end up being part of a swap under a deal to split Slavneft, the company both firms won with a joint bid of $1.86 billion in a privatization auction in December. The auction was widely criticized at the time, as only Sibneft and TNK made a bid for the company. 
 BP and TNK have both said that Slavneft is not part of the merger.
 TNK and Sibneft's shareholders are still negotiating over how to divide up the Slavneft spoils.
 Options under consideration include folding Slavneft into Sibneft, with TNK or its shareholders receiving an equity stake in Sibneft, or splitting Slavneft's assets equally between Sibneft and TNK.
 TNK has also suggested that Slavneft could be folded into TNK with Sibneft receiving an equity stake in TNK in return.
 TNK would not comment Wednesday on whether that option, or any other options, were still under consideration.
 Sibneft has said that it wants to reach a deal on Slavneft by mid-February, leaving just days for the two sides to negotiate an agreement that will be acceptable to both sides.
 Peter Henshaw, BP's head of external relations in Moscow, said that he did not expect Sibneft's cross-holdings to cause any significant or substantial problems for the international oil major's new Russia deal.
 &quot;In the overall scheme of things, [Sibneft's cross-holdings] are not going to be an obstacle to getting BP's merger completed,&quot; said Paul Collison, energy analyst at Brunswick UBS Warburg. &quot;When BP merged with Amoco, it had far greater complications to deal with than that.&quot;
 He added, however, that there could also be problems dealing with the debt TNK had accrued for its Slavneft bid. Even though Slavneft is not part of the BP tie-up, TNK's debt for that deal has moved to the balance sheet of the new company, he said.

TITLE: Labor Chief Calls For End to Strike
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The head of Norilsk Nickel's largest union on Tuesday urged his colleagues to stop their hunger strike, widening a rift between the metal giant's two labor groups.
 
&quot;A hunger strike is not the way,&quot; Valery Glazkov, head of the 42,800-member Alliance of Trade Unions, said in a telephone interview. &quot;All problems will be decided at the workers' conference on March 12.&quot;
 The union's leaders on Monday joined in the hunger strike started last week by the leaders of the Trade Union Federation, after talks with management over wage increases, additional vacation and disclosure of management salaries and other financial information ended with no compromise.
 As of Wednesday evening, 59 people were participating in the hunger strike, said Alliance of Trade Unions official Nadezhda Koshlyakova. 
 Two hunger strikers had been taken away by ambulance on Monday, and four more were ordered to stop working by doctors on Tuesday.

TITLE: What Are the Real Reasons for a War in Iraq?
AUTHOR: By Robert Skidelsky
TEXT: REGIME change in Iraq, probably by war, now seems inevitable &quot;in weeks rather than months,&quot; as U.S. President George W. Bush puts it. France and Russia are unlikely to veto a United Nations resolution specifically authorizing the use of force against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Their argument will be that, whether or not the war is justified, the most important thing now is to preserve the authority of the UN. But what authority will the UN have if it is simply a rubber stamp for U.S. unilateralism?
 
If war is inevitable, let us at least go into it with eyes open. The reasons we have been given for war are excuses: I doubt whether even the &quot;hawks&quot; in Washington and London believe them. The claim is that Hussein poses a formidable threat to the Middle East, the West and the world, against which pre-emption is justified. Three arguments have been adduced in support of this.
 The first is the alleged link between Hussein and al-Qaida. There is no evidence of this, although U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has recently tried to revive it.
 The next is that Hussein had failed to disarm, contrary to UN Resolution 687, which ended the Gulf War. Instead of disarmament, there was deception - a deception that still continues. The impression given is that Hussein has continued to accumulate a large stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery.
 In fact, there has been a substantial disarmament since 1991. The British government's own dossier, &quot;Weapons of Mass Destruction,&quot; which was designed to magnify the threat Hussein poses, admitted that, despite Iraq's obstruction of the work of UNSCOM and IAEA (the inspection teams on the ground between 1991 and 1998), the major elements of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological programs were, in fact, destroyed or dismantled. As a result, it was left with what the former British ambassador to Iraq, Harold Walker, called a &quot;risible&quot; capacity. The more intrusive inspections begun in November have found almost nothing, which - we are told - only shows how good Hussein is at concealing things.
 Yes, Hussein has not completely disarmed. He still has some chemical and biological capacity and continues to play a silly game of concealment and deception. Perhaps he sees this residual capacity as some sort of deterrence against invasion. But a war to depose him is completely disproportionate to his breach of the terms of the armistice of 1991. What his deception does justify is a continuation and strengthening of the present inspection system - as France has proposed.
 The next argument, which contradicts the previous one, is that, even if he has largely disarmed - what is to stop him from rearming? This relies heavily on the lack of will of the international community to keep the present regime of inspections and sanctions in force indefinitely. Far better to get rid of him now than try to keep him bottled up in Baghdad forever. But who is talking of forever?
 Hussein is 65. He may be immoral, but he is not immortal. The United States and its allies &quot;contained&quot; the threat of the Soviet Union for 40 years or more with weapons, armies and bases all over the world. It is an insult to our intelligence to claim that they lack the will to keep Hussein under lock and key for five years or so more - as, indeed, he has already been for the last 12.
 As neither of these arguments is terribly convincing, we are given a final one. Hussein himself may not be a threat, but what is to stop him from secretly handing his chemical and biological agents to terrorist groups? In theory, nothing at all, but one has to come to a judgment about how likely this is. Leaving aside the question of whether the damage that could be done by terrorists would justify a full-scale war, the risk of a transfer of weapons from Hussein to terrorist groups seems very small. It is hard to see what satisfaction he would get from the use of weapons of mass destruction not attributable to Iraq, and he would know that, if it was attributable, the response from the United States would be fearsome. Moreover, it is hard to see him handing over command of something he values so highly to an organization not under his control. If it is al-Qaida that we have in mind, that Islamicist group and Hussein's secular regime are like chalk and cheese.
 Any sane person will probably conclude that Hussein does not pose a threat to other countries that justifies a pre-emptive war to remove him. No one is suggesting that Bush and his advisers are insane. So why are they so determined to have one?
 The main reason, I think, is that getting rid of Hussein has been a goal of U.S. foreign policy ever since 1991. Then, President George H.W. Bush was persuaded that sanctions would accomplish this, without having to march on Baghdad. The United States, in short, has always seen sanctions not as a way of getting Iraq to disarm, but of getting rid of Hussein. President Bill Clinton reaffirmed this when he said, in 1997, that sanctions would stay in place &quot;as long as Saddam lasts.&quot; The issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was, except for its nuclear program, never central to the plot.
 What transformed the situation was Sept. 11, 2001. Bush and some of his advisers came to see that the way might be open to use force to bring about what sanctions had failed to accomplish. So the alleged link between Hussein and al-Qaida was the first to be exploited. The administration's escalating rhetoric against the threat posed by Hussein failed to convince most other countries, but it made it difficult, if not impossible, for Bush to retreat from war without losing most of his political capital.
 Two powerful subsidiary arguments reinforced the main one. The first was that the overthrow of Hussein and extended U.S. occupation of Iraq would transform the security situation of Israel without Israel having to make damaging concessions to the Palestinians. The second was that U.S. control of Iraq's oil production facilities would break the OPEC cartel and guarantee the United States a flow of cheap energy. Although why Russia should be thought to welcome this development is a mystery.
 Thus, with one coup, the U.S. administration can hope to restore the amour propre of the Bush family and resolve two of its most pressing foreign-policy issues, as well as make the Middle East a laboratory of democracy. No wonder the policy of regime change in Iraq seems so attractive - foreign policy rarely offers opportunities for such grand achievements.
 The delusions on which it is based will become apparent only later.
 
 <i>Robert Skidelsky is a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords and professor of political economy at Warwick University, U.K. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: When Nothing Is Happening, Staging is Key
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
TEXT: SITTING in the Legislative Assembly chamber and watching yet another session not taking place this Wednesday, the thought, which has occurred to me on more than one occasion, crossed my mind that the current goings-on at the Mariinsky Palace are more suited to the stage of the Mariinsky Theater.
 
With this in mind, I started wondering which opera would be the best match for the current situation in the assembly. The problem is that, despite all my searches and questioning of friends, I haven't been able to find a libretto absurd enough.
 Modest Mussorgsky's &quot;Khovanshchina,&quot; about the political machinations in the early days of the reign of Peter the Great, seemed, at first, like a possible selection.
 In the roles of the <i>streltsy, </i>the palace guards - who kick off the opera by boasting of how they murdered their opponents during the night - and their commander, Prince Ivan Khovansky, we have the pro-Smolny United City bloc, led by Yury Rydnik.
 (A word of caution: I'm not suggesting that any member of the faction or in Smolny has literally killed anyone, although President Vladimir Putin has, essentially, accused Governor Vladimir Yakovlev of committing the political equivalent against his predecessor, Anatoly Sobchak.)
 On the other hand, we have the pro-Kremlin groups, headed by the assembly's speaker, Vadim Tyulpanov, and their operatic equivalent, the groups around Prince Vasily Golitsyn, a former lover and adviser to Tsarina Sofya, Peter the Great's half-sister.
 (The observant among you may spot the plot starting to unravel. Again, no-one is suggesting any amorous connection between Tyulpanov and anyone in the Kremlin.)
 Act I features a letter sent anonymously to the tsar denouncing the streltsy; both sides in the assembly have repeatedly cited - and failed to produce - letters being sent from various people to various people with various instructions, all aimed at the other group's downfall.
 This all collapses, however, in Act II. Just as Khovansky and Golitsyn are about to come to blows, the Old Believer leader Dosifei appears, urging both sides to unite and save Russia. I find it hard to believe, in this mess, that anyone will appear and urge the assembly factions to unite for the sake of our little corner of the country.
 That's a shame, because the rest of the story pans out pretty well. The streltsy, sentenced to execution by the Kremlin, are pardoned after they come to heel. Golitsyn is exiled (called back to Moscow?). The Old Believers, meanwhile, set fire to their hermitage and self-immolate, rather than face death at the hands of the tsar's troops.
 An apt metaphor, maybe, for the fate awaiting anyone stupid enough to attempt the fruitless task of trying to solve the assembly impasse.
 So, what other opera options are there? The problem is that the current shenanigans at the Mariinsky (Palace, that is) have many of the ingredients for a classic opera - political intriguing, high comedy, farce, accusations of betrayal and treachery. Too many, in fact.
 Sure, we're missing a body and a love interest - don't bet against them showing up soon, though - but not even a great librettist like Lorenzo da Ponte, who wrote the words for Mozart's best-known operas, could incorporate them all into one work.
 So, let's try to create our own opera. The cast list could look something like this. 
 Tyulpanov's brother Vladimir, interestingly enough, is a baritone on the books of the Mariinsky Theater. Vadim, meanwhile, is reputed to sing &quot;for pleasure.&quot; So let's put him down as Rigoletto, the hunchback jester - and a baritone - in Verdi's opera of the same name. Rigoletto is frank, outspoken and unpopular in the court of the Duke of Mantua, where he is forced to &quot;perform&quot; to keep his employer amused.
 Meanwhile, Governor Vladimir Yakovlev could strut his stuff like the carefree Duke of Mantua. I can just hear him singing &quot;La donna e mobile&quot; as he strolls around with his faithful, bootlicking courtiers in tow.
 In this case, Rydnik should be Borsa or Marullo, one of the said faithful courtiers, who even, on their boss' orders, kidnap Rigoletto's daughter.
 Then there's Igor Mikhailov, an independent lawmaker currently siding with the United City faction, who made himself a hero among his bloc's opponents by actually showing up to Wednesday's assembly session. Defections and deceptions happen left, right and center stage in opera, so Mikhailov could be any one of many characters.
 Playing a minor, but important, role in all of this is, inevitably, Putin. Putin seems to me, in this context, to combine the qualities of the Grand Inquisitor from another Verdi masterpiece, &quot;Don Carlos,&quot; whose every appearance strikes terror into the hearts of the people and the lead characters.
 Meanwhile, the city's electorate looks more and more like the peasant populace in another of Mussorgsky's works - &quot;Boris Godunov&quot; - as they flounder in a sea of hopelessness, praising whoever happens to be on the throne at the time.
 It's high time to start selling tickets to the Legislative Assembly. Then anyone interested could sit there with me while nothing really happens, and I can use the time to explain how real entertainment should be staged.
 
 <i>A special word of thanks goes to my friend, our arts editor, Peter Morley - who does know about opera - for his immense help with this column. </i>

TITLE: breaking musical boundaries
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Violinist, composer and arranger Alexei Aigui pays a rare visit to St. Petersburg this weekend to perform with his ensemble, 4'33&quot;.
 
Although the group plays regularly in Moscow, it last appeared in St. Petersburg at a poorly organized concert at the SKIF festival in 2001.
 According to Aigui, this weekend's concerts will largely be based on 4'33&quot;'s most recent album, &quot;Schastye, Slava I Bogatstvo&quot; (&quot;Happiness, Glory and Wealth&quot;), released in September, with some older numbers. 
 A rock fan as a teenager, Aigui describes his current set as &quot;very hard-edged.&quot; &quot;There are bass, drums - it's hard and high energy,&quot; he said by telephone from Moscow this week. 
 While 4'33&quot; is a popular fixture on Moscow's contemporary-music scene, Aigui is best known for his soundtrack to Valery Todorovsky's award-winning 1997 film, &quot; &quot;Strana Glukhikh&quot; (&quot;Land of the Deaf&quot;). However, he said, writing music for films was not something he planned to do.
 &quot;I had no idea of becoming a film composer; it happened by chance,&quot; he said. &quot;Somebody heard the music, gave it to Todorovsky to listen to, and so on. I wasn't intent on it happening.&quot;
 &quot;Clearly, many more people watch films - primarily thanks to television - than listen to the music,&quot; he said. &quot;In Moscow, we're known because we play concerts frequently but, in the rest of Russia, we hardly play at all. As a concert group, we're practically unknown.&quot;
 Aigui formed 4'33&quot; in 1984, taking the group's name from the famous, eccentric work by John Cage, in which the performer does nothing for the length of time indicated by the title. However, Aigui said, the group has drifted away from its early academic minimalism.
 &quot;The name was suggested by critic Dmitry Ukhov,&quot; Aigui said. &quot;I readily agreed - it was a very appropriate name. When we started out, we played mostly other people's music, mostly minimalist. We played a few Cage pieces in our first concert. But, gradually, it has mutated, from academic music to music with a style that's still unclear.&quot;
 Apart from Aigui, 4'33&quot; now includes Erkin Yusupov (trombone), Andrei Goncharov (trumpet), Andrei Romanika (drums), Denis Kalinsky (cello) and Sergei Nikolsky (electric bass).
 As well as his film work, Aigui also writes the music for the popular television series &quot;Kamenskaya,&quot; but described it as &quot;more of a way of making money.&quot;
 &quot;It's much more interesting to play concerts. There's often no creativity involved in composing television music,&quot; he said. &quot;I can't speak for everyone, but it's mostly done by hacks or losers - including me, as a hack rather than a loser. To think that you can find fulfillment composing music for television is naive.&quot;
 Aigui's other film credits include writing soundtracks to old silent films, starting with Fritz Lang's 1927 classic, &quot;Metropolis&quot; which he took on in 1996.
 &quot;Unlike television, I liked it a lot,&quot; he said. &quot;It's real creative work - you can find something interesting and improve the film. I'm totally free here; I compose from the beginning of the film to the end. If the film lasts for one hour, it's 60 minutes of music playing a great role, unlike for television, where it's rather banal.&quot;
 &quot;It's hard work. You have to devote several months to writing music that coincides precisely with the picture,&quot; he said. &quot;With silent films, the editing is very complex, and you have to get it absolutely precise. I haven't seen anything good done with [music for] silent films. You simply want to stand up and walk out, especially when they play jazz to it.&quot;
 Possibly because of his film work, the press labeled to Aigui as &quot;Russia's Michael Nyman.&quot; Now, Aigui says, the description still haunts him, even if his music doesn't sound like that of the British composer, famous for his soundtracks to Peter Greenaway films.
 &quot;The comparisons to Nyman started very early. It's easy to understand why this happened, when a person writes minimalist-style film music - and Greenaway films were very popular [in Russia] at the time,&quot; he said. &quot;Once they attached the label, it's hard to get away from it. For example, a big review of our last album started, 'Now, it doesn't sound like Michael Nyman.' They can't do without Michael Nyman, unfortunately.&quot;
 As well Aigui's own music, 4'33&quot; occasionally interprets rock classics. In the group's early years, it played Frank Zappa's &quot;Black Napkins&quot; and &quot;Sheik Yerbouti Tango&quot; - the latter of which it still plays - while, last year, Aigui recorded a whole album of Jimi Hendrix tracks, &quot;Up From the Skies,&quot; with Cologne-based pianist Dietmar Bonnen. The duo also performs the album in concerts.
 &quot;I like to react to other people's ideas,&quot; he said. &quot;The idea came from Dietmar Bonnen, who was keen to do it.&quot;
 &quot;To play Hendrix in a rock manner is meaningless and rather stupid - because you can't play better then he did - which is why we played Hendrix as academic music, with piano, violin and voice, and in an absolutely different style,&quot; he said. &quot;When 4'33 did academic concerts, we played a couple of [Hendrix] numbers a couple of times but, in our interpretation, it simply sounds like early music.&quot;
 Aigui was born in Moscow in 1971, to the family of prominent Russian-Chuvashian poet Gennady Aigi. Although his father is highly esteemed in Chuvashia, an autonomous republic on the Volga River, Aigui says that he is linked to the land only by descent.
 &quot;I've only been to Chuvashiya twice, and practically can't speak Chuvashian,&quot; he said. &quot;They want to invite us there, but somehow nothing ever comes of it.&quot;
 As a teenager, Aigui was into Led Zeppelin, and briefly played bass with a hard-rock band (which he refuses to name) in the mid-1980s. Of Russian groups, he highly rates 1980s Moscow avant-rock band Zvuki Mu, saying it was &quot;original and interesting in every aspect - in music, lyrics and stage image.&quot; He also mentions Moscow's Vezhlivy Otkaz (see article, this page) and St. Petersburg's Auktsyon as interesting.
 Married to a Frenchwoman, Aigui now divides his time between Moscow and Paris. He performs in France both with 4'33&quot; and in collaboration with French musician Pierre Bastien, a partnership that produced the CD &quot;Musique cyrillique&quot; (&quot;Cyrillic Music&quot;) in 2001.
 Aigui argues that, despite the wide range of styles he employs, there is continuity in his works.
 &quot;All my music sounds the same. It's easy to recognize, it's composed for more or less the same lineup, in more or less the same style. I don't make fundamental stylistic changes,&quot; he said. &quot;But all our records are rather different. If our last disc was somewhat hard and heavy, then the previous one [2001's &quot;Equus&quot;] was for string trio and piano. It was quite different - academic music.
 Most of all, Aigui objects to the use of the word &quot;pop&quot; to describe his style.
 &quot;It's absolute stupidity,&quot; he said. &quot;It has nothing to do with pop, because pop performers sell tens of thousands of discs, at least, not hundreds. That's why it's ridiculous to call us 'pop.'&quot;
 
 <i>
4'33&quot; plays Red Club at 8 p.m. on Saturday, and Brodyachaya Sobaka Art Basement at 7 p.m. on Sunday. Links: http://aigui.ifrance.com, www.433.da.ru. </i>

TITLE: art band gives club circuit a polite refusal
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After 17 years of producing alternative music, seminal art-rock band Vezhlivy Otkaz is calling it quits with a final St. Petersburg show at Red Club this weekend.
 
In a recent telephone interview from his home in the village of Kozino in the Tula region, the band's frontman, Roman Suslov, said he has simply &quot;lost interest in playing the clubs.&quot; 
 Suslov has lived in Kozino for nearly a decade, now running a small stud farm there with his wife Anna. He said a significant factor in his decision to stop playing is that &quot;it's become impossible to combine my life here with my life in Moscow.&quot;
 &quot;There's no musical fulfillment in playing the clubs,&quot; he said. &quot;I've become so tired of that life, and I think I'm doing the right thing by electing to stop going to Moscow to take part in all of that.&quot;
 Although Vezhlivy Otkaz (&quot;Polite Refusal&quot;) never achieved mainstream popularity, it has maintained a die-hard fanbase in Russia for more than a decade. However, Suslov said, its audience was too small to sustain the band's work financially.
 &quot;We produced our last album ourselves,&quot; he said, referring to &quot;Geran&quot; (&quot;Geranium&quot;), the band's seventh album, released in December. &quot;Our friends paid for the studio and the printing.&quot;
 Although this month's shows will be the band's last in Russia, Suslov said it may continue touring abroad, at least for the immediate future.
 &quot;If we're invited to go somewhere, we may go, but I think that that sort of thing is going to happen a lot less often now,&quot; he said. &quot;In fact, at some point this year we'll probably stop playing altogether.&quot;
 Vezhlivy Otkaz emerged as part of the Russian rock explosion of the 1980s, when dozens of new or formerly underground bands appeared on the scene after Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost relaxed restrictions on music and art. But Vezhlivy Otkaz's style provided an alternative to the kind of mainstream pop that was popular at the time - the band's music contained jazzy, quasi-classical arrangements and ironic, sometimes nonsense lyrics. 
 &quot;This country has always been bad for music - especially for alternative music, because, as a rule, so-called 'Soviet rock' was very one-sided, and had a vulgar, dissident bias,&quot; Suslov said. &quot;Also, its emphasis was on lyrics, rather than on music, because music was always secondary. ... Nobody practiced music in a serious manner.&quot;
 Although Vezhlivy Otkaz released an album of folk-influenced songs, &quot;Etnicheskiye Opyty&quot; (&quot;Ethnic Experiences&quot;), in 1990, when folk and world music was enjoying a faddish popularity in the United States and Europe, Suslov said the band has never been able to find its niche on the world music scene.
 &quot;We don't fit in very well because our style is so different,&quot; he said. &quot;'Etnicheskiye Opyty' could be classified [as world music], but it doesn't fully fit in. I think the world-music scene expects Tuvans with guitars. It's the Tuvans who fit in, not us.&quot;
 Remarkably, perhaps, Suslov said he did not discuss his decision to stop playing with any of his four bandmates - Dmitry Shumilov (bass), Mikhail Mitin (drums), Andrei Solovyov (trumpet) and Pavel Tonkovid (saxophone).
 &quot;It was obvious anyway: I haven't written anything for two years and I'm in a kind of state of apathy,&quot; he said. &quot;Honestly, I'm tired of saying the same thing over and over again on stage.&quot;
 Combining club performances with village life has been difficult for Suslov who, in addition to working on the stud farm, was also elected chairperson of an agricultural co-op last year.
 &quot;What I do in the village is farm work,&quot; Suslov said. &quot;It's just ordinary village life: from looking after the animals to working the soil, and so on.&quot;
 Although he lived in Moscow before moving to Kozino, Suslov said he had no trouble adjusting to village life, but added that his job at the co-op has proven difficult.
 &quot;You have to conform to the type of behavior that has been developed by all of the collective-farm chairpeople before you,&quot; he said. &quot;I don't fit in well because you have to use their language and gestures. ... Sometimes, I have to make an effort just to play the game.&quot;
 Despite the difficulties, Suslov said he has dreamed since childhood of having a house in the country - he purchased his Kozino home in the early 1990s, after a lucrative European tour. And if, in the early days, Suslov used to play his guitar and write songs from his rural perch, he said he no longer does either.
 &quot;I just don't have any desire anymore,&quot; he said. &quot;But if that desire ever returns, I'll just start playing all over again.&quot;
 

 <i>
Vezhlivy Otkaz plays Red Club at 8 p.m. on Friday. Links: www.otkaz.ru. </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Leading local ska-punk band <strong>Spitfire </strong>celebrates its 10th birthday with a gala concert at the Palace of Youth, or LDM, on Saturday.
 
The band dates its history from Feb. 10, 1993, when it made its stage debut at the now-defunct Indie Club.
 &quot;The show will include [material] from all our albums, plus some new songs,&quot; said Denis Kuptsov, the band's drummer. &quot;We couldn't see the point in doing a special program; everyone knows what we're about, anyway.&quot;
 Kuptsov said that a tobacco company sponsoring the event had banned the group from using images of a skull on the concert's posters. The posters also warn that only people aged 18 and over will be allowed into the venue. Kuptsov, however, begged to differ.
 &quot;It's nonsense,&quot; he said. &quot;Nobody will be checking passports.&quot;
 The headline act at the event - which is called &quot;10 Let - Polyot Normalny&quot; (&quot;10 Years - Everything's Fine&quot;) - will, of course, be Spitfire, with support coming from short appearances by Tequilajazzz, Markscheider Kunst, Pep-See and Pyat Uglov.
 Last month, Spitfire recorded a new album at the Vielklang studios in Berlin that it is planning to release this fall.
 Also appearing Saturday will be Leningrad frontman Sergey Shnurov, whose status as the current <i>bete noir</i><strong> </strong>of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov was further enhanced last weekend.
 After being denied permission for a stadium concert in Moscow last year - reportedly after Luzhkov given one of the group's CDs and didn't like what he heard - Leningrad was banned from appearing at the Nasha Radio-promoted &quot;Chartova Dyuzhina&quot; (&quot;Chart Dozen&quot;) award ceremony on Saturday. The band turned up as planned, but was told it couldn't go on stage.
 &quot;We came to hang around and get our prizes, because Nashe Radio nominated [Leningrad] as 'Band of the Year,&quot; with the 'Song of the Year' and so on,&quot; said Kuptsov of Spitfire, whose members have performed with Leningrad since early last year. &quot;They said only [Shnurov] could go on stage, without the band.&quot;
 Shnurov's response, according to Kruptsov, was typically brusque and foul-mouthed.
 However, Kruptsov said, it wasn't all bad news for the band.
 &quot;We sat in our dressing room at Luzhniki [Stadium], journalists came and interviewed us,&quot; he said. &quot;We were provided with drinks, given a dressing room - and we didn't even have to play.&quot;
 Later Saturday night, Leningrad played at the Kitaisky Lyotchik club - without any interference from Luzhkov.
 Also celebrating its 10th anniversary this weekend, although on a smaller scale than Spitfire, is local punk band <strong>Vibrator, </strong>with a concert called &quot;Desyat Let - A Khuli Tolku?&quot; (&quot;10 Years, But What's the Sense?&quot;).
 Vibrator will appear in concert at Orlandina at midnight on Saturday, alongside its regular co-stars Komatoz, Pyat Uglov, Hasta La Vista Che and Nizhny Novgorod band F.P.G.
 Finally, Tom Waits-inspired trio <strong>Billy's Band </strong>will also be in party mood this weekend - although, in this case, the party is for someone else's birthday.
 According to the band's singer/ double-bassist, Vadim &quot;Billy&quot; Novik, the group will mark the birthday of George Washington, the first president of the United States, on Sunday.
 &quot;Our songs have lots of different characters in them, and we'll make them all 'George' for the night,&quot; Novik said. &quot;We'll also talk about [what we're celebrating] a couple of times.&quot;
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: macaroni, a small sample of italy
AUTHOR: by Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: &quot;A Trattoria is a home away from home for many Italians. Eating in a Trattoria is like eating with an Italian family. The mood can be relaxed or boisterous and most of the time friendly. The food is basic, simple and honest.&quot;
 

 </i>- From the Web site <br> of Benny Rappa's Trattoria, 
 North Myrtle Beach, <br> South Carolina
 
 
The trattoria is an integral part of life in Italy. The Italians have a saying, &quot;A tavola non s'invecchia&quot; (&quot;You don't grow old at the table&quot;), that sums up much of the country's approach to food, drink and good living.
 
The recently opened Macaroni, opposite Mollie's Irish pub on Ulitsa Rubinshteina, claims to be St. Petersburg's first genuine Italian trattoria. It is owned by the team that runs Il Grappolo, an up-market Italian eatery on Ulitsa Belinskogo that provided one of this column's finest dining experiences of 2002.
 In contrast to the contemporary twist on classic Italian cuisine provided by its big brother, Macaroni offers a fairly modest selection of basic staples. All the favorites are there - minestrone, lasagne, various pizzas, tiramisu and so on - and at much lower prices than at Il Grappolo (the most expensive dish on the menu is a reasonable $12; all prices are quoted in u.e.).
 Physically, Macaroni resembles any one of hundreds of trendy-wine-bar-type establishments that can be found in London or any other major European city. For St. Petersburg, this provides a refreshing change. The decor is very simple, all clean lines and lots of light (the big windows will make for wonderful summer evenings, methinks).
 My dining companion and I stumbled in out of the slush and were greeted by a smiling, smart-casually dressed host, who pointed us in the direction of the cloakroom and then led us to a table.
 While we perused the menu, which is printed on the laminated table mats, we ordered a bottle of Italian Chardonnay/Pinot Grigio ($18) that proved to be a pleasant, light, if somewhat insubstantial, accompaniment to proceedings.
 My companion kicked off with a tuna salad ($5), a decent-sized mix of fresh, crisp vegetables (including green olives, which were great) topped with a mound of tuna (from a can, of course, but that hardly mattered). It was at this point that my companion confessed to never having eaten in an Italian restaurant before, so she hesitated to pass judgment on the food. However, the dish got a thumbs up, which I can confirm from my small sampling of it (for purely professional reasons, of course).
 I started with a personal favorite, the Caprese salad ($6), to see how it compared to the version at Il Grappolo. Macaroni's version turned out to be smaller (it could hardly be otherwise, given the gigantic proportions of the dish at the other establishment), and simpler, missing the balsamic vinegar that is a traditional part of the salad. Nonetheless, the mozarella was tasty enough, and the tomatoes fresh, and the whole ensemble was an easy start to the meal.
 For the main course, my companion went for the lasagne ($6). This was a traditional, substantial slice of ... well, you know what lasagne should look like. My companion, eating the dish for the first time, said that the dish &quot;didn't surprise&quot; her but, on reflection, said she could easily be persuaded to move to Italy to get to know it better. 
 I, meanwhile, turned my attention to a vegetarian pizza ($8). Although not gigantic, it was substantial - as most of Macaroni's dishes seem to be - with a proper, thin-and-crispy base generously topped with red bell peppers, zucchini, tomatoes and so on. A perfect accompaniment was provided by the garlic-and-chilli oil brought by our server. Whereas some places aim for heat with their chilli oil, the Macaroni version is more garlicky, and gave a nice tang to the pizza.
 The star turn of the evening, though, was provided by the tiramisu ($4.50) that both of us chose for dessert. Quite simply, it was the best that I have ever tasted in St. Petersburg, and better than most I have had elsewhere (and, believe me, as a tiramisu addict, I have had it many, many times). The dish was wonderfully light, smooth and perfectly flavored (no Amaretto overdose here), and Signor Nappini deserves a hearty round of applause for having created it.
 Our server was excellent throughout - relaxed and smiling, and ready to help with those difficult decisions, like which tea to choose. Eventually, my companion went for a pot of green tea ($2.50), while I sipped a cappuccino ($2). Both of these were, of course, excellent.
 We departed feeling almost too full to move back into the dark St. Petersburg evening and decided that, should it prove impossible to get to a trattoria in Italy any time soon, Macaroni is definitely going to get a return visit. Or ten.
 
 <i>
Macaroni. 13 Ulitsa Rubinshteina. Tel.: 315-6147. Open daily, noon to midnight. Takeaway pizza also available, noon to midnight. Menu in Russian and Italian. Credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, with alcohol: 1,808 rubles ($56.50). </i>

TITLE: it's tough being a composer
TEXT: The program for the Mariinsky Theater's upcoming international ballet festival, which gets under way next Friday, includes the world premiere of &quot;Princess Pirlipat,&quot; a new work conceived as a prelude to Tchaikovsky's perennial favorite &quot;The Nutcracker.&quot; &quot;Princess Pirlipat&quot; is based on a part of E.T.A. Hoffman's &quot;Nutcracker and the Mouse King&quot; that was omitted from Tchaikovsky's work. The composer charged with filling Tchaikovsky's shoes for the new ballet is St. Petersburg's Sergei Slonimsky.
 
The impetus for &quot;Princess Pirlipat&quot; came from choreographer Mikhail Shemyakin who, after the premiere of his new version of &quot;The Nutcracker&quot; at the Mariinsky in February 2001, declared his intention to create a prologue to the ballet based on Hoffman's tale. 
 Slonimsky is a prolific composer, whose output includes 10 symphonies, six operas and many smaller-format works, such as romances, instrumental duets, trios and suites. In 2002, a year-long festival of Slonimsky's music was held to celebrate the composer's 70th birthday, and decorated with the Rossiya Prize, Russia's highest award for achievement in symphonic art.
 For &quot;Princess Pirlipat,&quot; Shemyakin is responsible for stage and costume design, while the choreographer is Mariinsky dancer Kirill Simonov, who choreographed Shemyakin's &quot;The Nutcracker.&quot; Mariinsky Artistic Director Valery Gergiev will conduct the premiere, on Feb. 27. The new ballet is Slonimsky's second excursion into the genre, some 20 years after his &quot;Icarus&quot; enjoyed a successful run at the Mariinsky.
 Last week, Slonimsky sat down with </i><strong>Larisa Doctorow </strong><i>in the study of his apartment on Naberezhnaya Kanala Griboyedova to talk about the new ballet, his music and, more generally, about life as a composer.
 </i>
 
q:<i> How long did it take you to compose the music for &quot;Princess Pirlipat&quot;? 
 </i>a:I started a little over a year ago. It took me a year at first to write it in my head, then a month sitting at my desk to put it on paper, and finally another month to orchestrate. The scores are now at the Mariinsky Theater. I also wrote a suite based on the ballet themes. 
 
I think I will wait a while after the premiere to gauge the reaction to the ballet. In my experience, a new piece improves after a number of performances. Normally, you have to wait for the sixth or seventh performance to say whether something is a success or not. 
 
 
q:<i>How would you characterise the music for &quot;Princess Pirlipat&quot;?
 </i>a:There are two contrasting lines. One is melodic, and the second - which characterizes the realm of evil, the rat kingdom - is computerized music.
 
In the Mariinsky Theater, there is a computer studio, and I created and recorded the music on a real computer. Of course, it will be quite difficult to balance its tempi with the music for orchestra. For that we need rehearsals.
 
 
q:<i>Why was the computerized component important?
 </i>a:I wanted to show the rats in their element. And this sharp, heartless music, like computerized laughter, suits them and their nature well. These days, the landscape is changing. Rats are embracing the technical revolution. They are all computer-literate.
 
In the ballet's key, highly dramatic moments, I use two or three note motifs, combining them capriciously, in rondos. I use minimalism - a fashionable trend in contemporary composing - and I combine it with symphonic, melodic music.
 Of course, the score borrows from Tchaikovsky, in stylistic terms but, in a way, I am dealing in parody, along the lines of [Spanish author Miguel] Cervantes. I tried to create a parody of pop music, the symbol of success and of money. 
 
 
q:<i>Does your ballet have a happy ending? 
 </i>a:It was inevitable. We don't want to see a ballet that ends in an orgy of rats. Drosselmeyer will punish the rats and disperse their kingdom. Unfortunately, his nephew remains a nutcracker, and has to wait till he meets the young woman who will fall in love with him the way he is. My idea was to show the sad destiny of a nice, noble person who has to go through the circles of hell here on Earth.
 

 
q:<i>This conception is modern and very gloomy. Does it reflect your outlook on life?
 </i>a:Naturally, these are impressions taken from my life. I don't want the rats to triumph, in my ballet or in life. I am an active person. I try to do something if I see things that I don't like.
 

 
q:<i>Presumably, your status doesn't give you the opportunity of staying at home alone with your piano, of being a hermit?
 </i>q:I think it's always been like that. Do you think that the situation for artists was better in Hoffmann's time? I'm sure it wasn't.
 
Hypocrites and dishonest people have always existed but, sometimes, they can be beaten. Just a few days ago, I received a letter from the Samara Opera and Ballet Theater. In 1999, my new opera &quot;The Vision of Ivan the Terrible&quot; was staged there. Mstislav Rostropovich conducted the premiere. It was phenomenally successful and, to date, the theater has shown it 30 times, which is unheard of for a new and a complex work.
 Last September, when the Samara theater opened its season with the opera, it was sold out. But some groups of extreme-right activists, including some linked to the church, organized demonstrations calling the work anti-Russian and demanding it be removed from the program. They say that I presented Ivan the Terrible in a bad light, that he did not kill his son, that he was compassionate and good. These people never read historians like [Nikolai] Karamzin, [Sergei] Soloviev, or [Vasily] Klyuchevsky.
 The letter says: &quot;Similar demands were made in 1946 concerning the works of Shostakovich. We know where that took us. We will not buckle under.&quot;
 The more people shout scandalous things about my opera, the more people want to see it. So I was not afraid of critics then, and I am not going to be scared now. 
 However, I can not fight alone. You see how modestly I live. I have no car, no dacha. But I am not for sale. Nobody will buy me. I am not afraid of critics. These days, I am persuaded that moral firmness is important. Without it, one cannot create emotional music, but only hypocritical compositions.
 
 
q:<i>What are your thoughts about composing today?
 </i>a:There was a time in the past when we lost our most talented people because of the atmosphere in our Union of Composers. They emigrated and work successfully abroad.
 
I work a lot with young musicians. We have very talented people. But the more talent they have, the more difficult it is to find a path to professional success.
 I wish they had more opportunities to be heard, performed and staged. Now, as we are getting ready for [St. Petersburg's] 300th anniversary, I would like to have some means to stage their works. I also wish that our music and ethical education would improve . 
 Now, some people are trying to close the only existing publishing house for composers. It does not concern me directly. I have been a member of the Composers' Union for over 45 years, and all my compositions are published. But it concerns young composers. 
 Serious music should keep its place, and not feel threatened by pop music. I don't like it when, instead of writing serious music, composers are forced to write pop music. It is easy to write short, simple motifs. They are easy to perform and easy to forget, but they don't bring much to the listeners. I believe people who love serious music will never be crooks and criminals. And this is a problem facing our city and our country.
 
 <i>
&quot;Princess Pirlipat&quot; premieres at the Mariinsky Theater on Feb. 27. </i>

TITLE: all tied up and nowhere to go
AUTHOR: by Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: St. Petersburger Yulia Belomlinskaya became a living legend in New York's Russian community in the 13 years she spent in the city, as an artist, actor, singer - and dominatrix. Her book, &quot;Poor Maid, or Apple, Hen and Chicken,&quot; which was recently published by the Amphora publishing house, is largely based on her experiences in the Big Apple. The launch party held for the book in the Brodyachaya Sobaka Art Basement on Tuesday showed Belomlinskaya's Bohemian side to the maximum, as it included not only a solo concert, but also an S&amp;M show.
 
Belomlinskaya left St. Petersburg for New York in 1989. After failing to make a decent living as a fabric designer in her new city, she decided to try out as a dominatrix, working for three months under the pseudonym &quot;Mistress Sasha Russian Nightmare&quot; at the club Pandora's Box.
 &quot;I have nothing to with sado-masochism,&quot; Belomlinskaya said. &quot;I just wanted to try it so I could write a book about it some day.&quot;
 Indeed, the book contains details such as the club's &quot;menu&quot; - including such delights as &quot;public humiliation,&quot; &quot;suffocation,&quot; &quot;torture chamber,&quot; &quot;golden shower&quot; and &quot;brown shower.&quot;
 Belomlinskaya noted that &quot;Publishers found this part of the book most unusual, interesting and convincing.&quot;
 &quot;Poor Maid, or Apple, Hen and Chicken,&quot; which tells the tragi-comic story of an unmarried Russian woman trying to make a living in New York and struggling for her beliefs and ideals in a country of yuppies, exemplifies the story of the ideologically restless, empty 1990s generation.
 Belomlinskaya's performance, which bears the same name as her book, became popular at New York's popular restaurant Samovar, attracting a mixed Russian-American artsy crowd, including, occasionally, celebrities such as Johnny Depp. Tuesday's performance at Brodyachaya Sobaka included the promise that &quot;Anyone interested will be whipped for free.&quot; For S&amp;M novices, Belomlinskaya even gave advice on where to get the right gear in St. Petersburg.
 &quot;I went to a sex shop to get a pair of proper boots, but they all cost over $100, and poor maids can't afford that. So I went to a youth store at Apraksin Dvor for advice. They sent me to a punk street stall nearby where everything cost $3 to $5,&quot; she said, producing a collar, handcuffs, and other metal and leather accessories.
 Belomlinskaya's &quot;victim&quot; was Amphora PR Manager Olga Chumicheva. The show turned out to be funny and not sexually provocative.
 &quot;I saw it as an opportunity to increase my reputation as a PR manager, and add to the publishing house's image,&quot; Chumicheva said.
 Amphora's director, respected writer Pavel Krusanov put it more simply.
 &quot;It was the best book presentation I've witnessed in my life,&quot; he said.
 Belomlinskaya currently lives in St. Petersburg, working at the Mitki artists' group's Red Sailor publishing house. While she plans to write another two novels, as well as perform her musical program at various venues in the city, she is confident that &quot;Poor Maid, or Apple, Hen and Chicken&quot; will be a hit.
 &quot;There's a vagina on the cover,&quot; she said. &quot;So that should help it sell better.&quot;

TITLE: film portrays a slippery world
AUTHOR: by Tom Birchenough
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Mikhail Brashinsky's debut feature &quot;Gololyod&quot; (&quot;Black Ice&quot;) is the latest in a recent line of films that have tried to capture Moscow's mood during the last decade. Perhaps the most profound to date is Alexander Zeldovich's &quot;Moscow&quot; (1999), which shares &quot;Black Ice&quot;'s sense that a new stratum of society has evolved with an inherent predilection for self-destruction that is as damaging as any criminal violence in the non-cinematic world.
 
Brashinsky's film exists in two parts, and its main characters are nameless, referred to only as &quot;he&quot; and &quot;she.&quot; The heroine of the film's first segment (Viktoria Tolstoganova) is a high-profile defense lawyer who combines her career with an energetic love life and other stressful pursuits such as underwater diving. On the eve of learning the outcome of her latest case, she comes into possession of a recording that could change its outcome, and she suggests as much to her client and the prosecutors. As we follow her progress through the day, a series of unexpected shocks serve to magnify the film's dramatic tension, and to suggest that she is being warned away from a decision she has not yet made. Her fate is ultimately decided more prosaically, in part by the &quot;black ice&quot; of the title.
 Brashinsky's Moscow is a slippery, fast-moving world. Visually, it is presented in an exaggerated fast-cut style (1,011 cuts in a 70-minute film, a record in Russian filmmaking), and works well in the (commendably economical) digital medium in which it was shot. Cinematographer Alexei Fyodorov achieves a suitably blurred, energetic look that catches the film's low-light moments especially well.
 Vision itself is one of the film's key themes. The single meeting point for the heroine of the film's first part and the hero of the second (Ilya Shakunov) is an ophthalmic hospital where both have come with contact lens problems - the symbol is somewhat overused. 
 The &quot;he&quot; of part two lives a life that is similarly successful to that of the &quot;she&quot; of part one, working as a teacher and interpreter of Italian; certainly, the material prosperity of his home suggests wealth. Living with his younger gay partner, he is a regular at Moscow's few but distinctive gay clubs, but he is far from content with life. Despite the similar lifestyle both main characters share, the context of the film's second part, unlike that of its first, lacks the hint at the wider semi-criminal context of the lawyer's tale. Instead, it is a particular and personal story of a character for whom self-destruction is as important as the actual damage he inflicts on his boyfriend and - in one memorably lengthy scene - his furniture.
 Brashinsky seems here to be moving toward something else: a sense that his character's willfully destructive instincts are linked to the absurdity of his perception of the reality around him. One scene, for example, has him performing simultaneous translation of a conference-room discussion on the correct method of preparing spaghetti sauce.
 The influence of another cinematic master of the absurd, Kira Muratova, seems to loom here, and some of Brashinsky's dialogue recalls the heightened comedy of non-communication that Muratova has perfected in recent films. Indeed, &quot;Gololyod&quot; can be compared - in subject if not in scale - with Muratova's 1989 masterpiece of Perestroika-era disorder, &quot;Astenichesky Sindrom&quot; (&quot;The Asthenic Syndrome&quot;). A comparison with Muratova's 1997 &quot;Tri Istorii&quot; (&quot;Three Stories&quot;), however, also highlights a weakness in &quot;Gololyod.&quot; The second episode overruns and exhausts its subject, while the prospect of a third story might have brought a deepening of the film's ideas. Nevertheless Brashinsky, until now known best as the chief film critic for &quot;Afisha&quot; magazine, has shown that he has mastered the language of film from behind the camera, and created in &quot;Gololyod&quot; a work that convincingly captures the mood of its moment.
 
 <i>
&quot;Gololyod&quot; shows at Dom Kino through Feb. 16. </i>

TITLE: the power to reconstitute history
AUTHOR: by Barry Unsworth
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: It is 1910. Lev Tolstoy lies dying in the stationmaster's house at the railway station of Astapovo, a remote village in provincial Russia. Journalists from all over the world, along with a crowd of eccentrics and opportunists, have gathered, hoping to derive some advantage from the novelist's last hours. Among this throng, in Ken Kalfus' novel &quot;The Commisariat of Enlightenment,&quot; are Gribshin, a young cinematographer, who intends to get some shots of the count on his deathbed, and so perpetuate him on celluloid, and the ghoulish Vorobev, who wants to perpetuate him in the flesh by injecting him with embalming fluids. Vorobev was later to use his skills on Vladimir Lenin, but he was not present at Astapovo, nor was Lenin himself, nor Josef Stalin, both of whom, however, make brief appearances in the book. It doesn't matter, in the impeccable logic of the novel, whether they were actually there or not: They were there in spirit, both masters in the burgeoning 20th-century art of refashioning history through the manipulation of images. The action at Astapovo occupies the first half of the book. From there, we move through later phases in the bleak tragicomedy of post-revolutionary Russia, ending in 1924 with the death of Lenin, whose embalming, in a scene combining the macabre and the burlesque, begins while he is still alive. 
 
This is a novel about images, and about the power they exercise over our lives and the light, both physical and psychological, in which we see them. Some of the strongest and most effective scenes involve the ambiguous nature of light, at once deceiving and revealing, benign and destructive. The theme makes its appearance early. When the train containing Gribshin and Vorobev and the British journalist Khaitover comes through the darkness and approaches Astapovo station, Gribshin sees a radiance in the sky, &quot;much whiter than sunlight.&quot; Something happens inside the coach. &quot;First he felt the heat. The coach's walls burned white. Pocks on the face of an adjacent passenger seemed to be deepened by the shadows cast by the conflagration until the light became so intense that the man's face dissolved, leaving only his eyebrows and the idea of the man.&quot; When they alight on the platform, they find it blindingly illuminated by powerful cinematic lights mounted on tall tripods. 
 The same effects are achieved in the striking scene in which Gribshin, who has gone through a sort of identity change and now calls himself Astapov and is a Bolshevik official in the Commissariat of Enlightenment, is struggling to gain the soul of the Russian peasant and free him from centuries of ignorance and superstition. Gribshin/Astapov sets up lights of the same powerful sort in a village church. In the age-old dimness of the interior there is a sudden explosion of light. The peasants are at first blinded; then they see every corner of the church mercilessly lit up, stripped of mystery: &quot;The radiance was a viscid element, oozing into every corner and space of the church, into chinks, crevices, pitted surfaces, and human pores.&quot; Heat from the lamps starts to melt the surface of the icons. &quot;The pictures assumed unfamiliar hues, none of them natural. As the paint burned, the ghosts behind the icons emerged. ... The figures of the saints simplified until they resembled newspaper cartoons or caricatures.&quot;
 For the most part, Gribshin/Astapov carries the burden of human consciousness through this novel, being the only character whose experience runs all the way through it, and the only one who has anything approaching an inner life. And it is here that there are some difficulties in appreciation, because this inner life of his, as presented to the reader, is sketchy. Indeed, he can hardly be said to exist as a moral being at all, if the characteristic of a moral being is to question one's motives. It is quite a while since I read a novel of the kind we call serious or literary whose protagonist shows so little capacity for communing with himself - or with others, for that matter. Whenever an occasion for this occurs, the author seems deliberately to avoid exploiting it.
 However, in fiction, as in life, a lack is not necessarily a defect. It is not moral complexity or clashes of opinion that interest Kalfus, but the driving force of single ideas, the power of images to reconstitute what we call history. The absence of wavering, of self-questioning, gives the narrative relentless impetus that makes the novel a compelling read. Some scenes of action and description are realized so vividly that they almost have the force of hallucination. There is a recurrent vein of dark humor, and a grim sense of the lethal absurdities of totalitarian politics. No one in this book looks at anyone else's face or listens to anyone else's voice, except out of fear or coercion. People's lives are shaped by images - religious icon, propaganda poster, film. So they become in the end not much distinguishable from images themselves, manipulated elements in the dynamic of history, looking forward to our own time and the welter of mind-softening images in which we live. &quot;The Commissariat of Enlightenment&quot; is a chilling novel, but the imaginative energy that runs through it gives it a rare quality of distinction. 
 
 <i>
Barry Unsworth's novels include &quot;Songs of the Kings,&quot; which will be published this spring, and &quot;Losing Nelson&quot; (2000).
 
 &quot;The Commissariat of Enlightenment.&quot; By Ken Kalfus. Ecco/Harper Collins. 295 pp. $24.95. </i>

TITLE: the word's worth
AUTHOR: by Michele A. Berdy <i>
TEXT: Yuzabilnost saita: </i>the user-friendliness of a Web site.
 
I thoroughly enjoyed the debate in the State Duma and the press on the new language law, particularly concerning the use of &quot;non-standard&quot; language <i>(nenormativnaya leksika). </i>I don't believe obscene language can be &quot;banned&quot; if only because sometimes only &quot;non-standard&quot; language can adequately describe Russian reality.
 The other day, a colleague asked me, <i>&quot;kak tebe dvizheniye v Moskve?&quot; </i>(How do you like driving in Moscow?) and I replied, <i>&quot;esli ty khochesh uslyshat, kak ya khorosho materyus po-russki, ya tebe otvechu&quot; </i>(If<i> </i>you want to hear how well I can swear in Russian, I'll answer). Besides, it seems to me that if your mother didn't teach you when you can use &quot;non-standard language&quot; and when you can not, you're not likely to learn it from the legal code.
 But, as a lover of the Russian language, I do sympathize with attempts to keep Russian Russian. Why use <i>kreativnaya gruppa </i>(creative team) when there is an exact native Russian equivalent - <i>tvorcheskaya gruppa? </i>Do you really need to say <i>kontent-analiz </i>instead of <i>analiz soderzhaniya? </i>To me, <i>ya provela analiz soderzhaniya teleperedach </i>means &quot;I did a content-analysis of TV shows,&quot; while <i>ya provela kontent-analiz teleperedach </i>means &quot;I did a fancy, Western-style content analysis of TV shows, which indicates how hip and well-traveled I am.&quot; Russians call this <i>vypendrivaniye </i>or <i>vypendryozh. </i>I call it blowing hot air.
 On the other hand, most foreign phrases that have entered the language are used either because there is no native Russian word, or because the Russian word or phrase has unwanted connotations. Take the word manager - <i>upravlenets. &quot;Naznachili Ivana Ivanovicha direktorom. Neplokhoi variant - on khoroshy upravlenets&quot; </i>means &quot;They appointed Ivan Ivanovich director. Not a bad choice - he's a good manager.&quot; But if you use upravlenets, you're more likely to convey the sense of &quot;old-style director&quot; - a man in his mid-fifties, who ran a cement factory in Soviet times and knew how to wrangle budget money. But if you say, <i>&quot;on khoroshy menedzher,&quot; </i>the connotation is more &quot;new, Western-style manager&quot; - the kind of guy who can read a spread-sheet and knows something about marketing and rational use of personnel.
 Other economic terms like <i>marketing, franchaizing </i>or <i>master-liz </i>have entered the language as transliterations because they simply didn't exist in Russian, and it's easier to borrow the word than use a sentence-long explanation.
 The one area where the battle is completely lost is the world of computers and the Internet. No one is ever going to call their computer <i>vychislitelnaya mashina, </i>not only because it's too long and cumbersome, but also because these days you use your computer for just about everything but calculating <i>(vychisleniye). Kibord, veb-sait, onlain, chat, </i>(and the verb <i>chatitsya), optsii </i>... you can forget trying to find Russian equivalents.
 Recently, computer folks have started to refer to <i>yuzabelnost saita </i>- user-friendliness of sites. There is a way to say this in standard Russian: If baby-friendly hospitals are <i>bolnitsy dobrozhelatelnogo otnosheniya k rebyonku, </i>you could call it <i>sait dobrozhelatelnogo otnosheniya k polzovatelyu, </i>or maybe <i>udobny dlya polzovaniya sait </i>- but I wouldn't bet it will catch on.
 Russian Web surfers who think that &quot;R U OK?&quot; is good, standard English are not going to futz around with compound sentences. And besides, they didn't just transliterate the word, they Russified it with a good old Russian suffix. Their mothers should be proud.
 
 <i>
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter. </i>

TITLE: ElBaradei: U.S. Is in North Korean Range
AUTHOR: By John Lumpkin
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - North Korea has an untested ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States, top U.S. intelligence officials told congress on Wednesday. In Vienna, the UN nuclear agency declared North Korea in violation of its nuclear program and reported the country to the Security Council.
 
The UN move could lead to punishing sanctions, which North Korea has said it would consider an act of war.
 International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said that his agency would continue to press for a peaceful solution, but said that months of intransigence by North Korea's communist regime had left the UN nuclear watchdog no choice.
 &quot;The current situation sets a dangerous precedent,&quot; ElBaradei said. He said that North Korea was only a &quot;month or two&quot; from producing &quot;a significant amount of plutonium&quot; that could be used to make weapons, now that IAEA inspectors no longer control the country's nuclear programs.
 In Washington, U.S. intelligence officials told congress that North Korea has a ballistic missile capable of hitting the western United States and, possibly, targets farther inland.
 The weapon is an untested, three-stage version of its Taepo Dong 2 missile, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told reporters. CIA Director George Tenet, who joined Jacoby before the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday, acknowledged that North Korea has a missile that can at least reach the West Coast.
 Their statements seemed to be the strongest from U.S. officials saying that Pyongyang can strike the United States with a nuclear missile launched from the interior of North Korea.
 However, U.S. intelligence officials said later that North Korea has demonstrated no new missile capabilities in the last year. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Tenet and Jacoby's statements were based on the same information that led U.S. intelligence to conclude a few years ago that North Korea was close to being able to flight-test a three-stage Taepo Dong 2.
 Without flight-testing, the reliability of such a missile fired in anger is questionable. For several years, North Korea has held to a voluntary moratorium on flight tests of its long-range missiles, although U.S. officials say that the country may renew them at any time.
 White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer sought to play down the statements, saying that they reflected old intelligence. He said, &quot;This old news is why it's important to proceed with deployment of missile defense, and also why the president is focused on multilateral diplomatic talks to deal with North Korea.&quot;
 Some Democratic senators, however, criticized the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush in its handling of the North Korean standoff.
 &quot;It seems to me that's a threat that's as imminent, or perhaps more so, directly to the United States than is Iraq,&quot; said Senator Robert Byrd.
 Tenet told senators that &quot;it's a very good judgment&quot; that North Korea has already built one or two nuclear weapons.
 At issue in the current standoff is North Korea's ability to make more. It has taken steps to restart its plutonium-production line at a mothballed reactor, and U.S. intelligence officials say that it is also pursuing a uranium-enrichment program that would allow for additional nuclear weapons. It also expelled UN inspectors who were monitoring the shut-down reactor.
 In its resolution that sent the standoff to the Security Council, the IAEA's 35-state board of governors said that North Korea had not met its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and other accords.
 Because North Korea has expelled UN inspectors, the agency &quot;remains unable to verify that there has been no diversion of nuclear material&quot; for weapons use, it said.
 The head of North Korea's diplomatic representation in Germany, Pak Hyon Bo, told the German daily Financial Times Deutschland on Wednesday that his country will not respect any resolutions or suggestions by the UN Security Council.
 
 <i>
George Jahn in Vienna and George Gedda in Washington contributed to this report. </i>

TITLE: 'Bin Laden' Tape Played By British Agency
AUTHOR: By Jane Wardell
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - A British-based Islamic news agency said Thursday that it has a new audio recording of Osama bin Laden in which he predicts that he will die as &quot;a martyr&quot; this year in an attack against his enemies.
 
The Al-Ansaar news agency said that the 53-minute tape was allegedly recorded this month, and acquired from a seller who advertised over the Internet.
 Imran Khan, who runs Birmingham-based agency Al-Ansaar, said that he translated the tape, describing it as poetic, with several verses from the Quran.
 &quot;In this final year, I hurl myself and my steed with my soul at the enemy. Indeed, on my demise, I will become a martyr,&quot; the al-Qaida leader purportedly says.
 &quot;I pray my demise isn't on a coffin bearing green mantles. I wish my demise to be in the eagle's belly,&quot; he continues.
 Khan said that experts contacted by Al-Ansaar believed that the &quot;eagle&quot; referred to the United States, and that the quote revealed bin Laden's wish to end his life in a final act of terrorism.
 In Washington, U.S. counterterrorism officials were reviewing a transcript of the tape, but said that they could not verify it was an authentic message from the terror chief.
 While the speaker mentions an apparent intention to die in the coming year, and uses some rhetoric similar to bin Laden's, officials said that they could not be certain of the speaker's identity without reviewing the actual recording. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
 Khan said that the agency, which has released previous bin Laden tapes, had used the same sources to check the validity of the new tape. His claims could not be independently verified.
 If authentic, the tape would be the latest in a series by bin Laden since the Sept. 11 attacks.
 On Tuesday, the Al-Jazeera satellite station aired the purported voice of bin Laden telling his followers to help Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein fight Americans, and U.S. officials claim that the message backs Washington's charge that the Iraqi leader has ties to the al-Qaida terror network.
 But President Vladimir Putin appeared to dismiss any al-Qaida link to Iraq in an interview to be published Thursday, saying that it cannot be proved that the al-Qaida leader is still alive.
 &quot;And his relations with Baghdad cannot be proved, either,&quot; Putin was quoted by the daily Le Telegramme as saying in the interview given Wednesday, the last day of a three-day state visit to France that ended in Bordeaux.
 Khan said that the new Ansaar tape claims a U.S.-led war on Iraq is a precursor to an invasion of Saudi Arabia.
 The speaker also calls for individual attacks against &quot;Americans and Jews&quot; around the world, as well as larger acts of terrorism, Khan said.
 Khan said that the speaker also bragged about how the Sept. 11 attacks took just a few people to create such damage.
 Khan said that the seller of the tape spoke with a Saudi accent, but he declined to say when it was acquired. Khan said that Al-Ansaar had held talks with several news organizations about selling the tape, and it expected it to be released publicly shortly.

TITLE: Powell Intends To Confront France, Germany On Iraqi War
AUTHOR: By Barry Schweid
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says that he intends to ask France and Germany whether they are opposing war with Iraq in order to get President Saddam Hussein &quot;off the hook.&quot;
 
The confrontations are set for Friday in New York, when chief UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei report on searches that have not turned up what the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has characterized as hundreds of concealed and illicit biological and chemical weapons.
 U.S. and Russian officials on Wednesday said that international missile experts this week did find that an Iraqi missile exceeds the maximum 130-kilometer range allowed under UN resolutions. U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte said that it was now up to Blix to recommend what to do about the violation.
 In the meantime, Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are pressing for congressional support for action against Iraq.
 Powell planned a third consecutive day of testimony, this time before the Senate Budget Committee. Rumsfeld was testifying at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
 In addition, Turkey's foreign minister, Yasar Yakis, was holding talks in Washington on basing American troops in Turkey for use against Iraq.
 Senator Joseph Lieberman asked Bush to consider convening debtor and donor conferences to pay for a smooth, post-Saddam transition.
 Powell told the House International Relations Committee on Wednesday that all 15 states who voted unanimously in November to threaten Iraq with &quot;serious consequences&quot; if it did not disarm knew that they were voting for force as an option.
 &quot;I hope in the days ahead we will be able to rally the United Nations around the original resolution and what other resolution might be necessary in order to satisfy the political needs of a number of the countries,&quot; Powell said.
 But he said that the United States would not be deterred by opposition to using force.
 &quot;France and Germany are resisting,&quot; he said. &quot;They believe that more inspections, more time&quot; should be allowed.
 &quot;The question I will put to them is: Why more inspections? And how much more time?&quot; Powell said. &quot;Or are you just delaying for the sake of delaying in order to get Saddam Hussein off the hook and no disarmament? That's a challenge I will put to them.&quot;
 In a letter to the president, Lieberman said that he was &quot;in full agreement that we must put an end to the threat that Saddam Hussein and his regime in Iraq pose to the U.S., the region and our allies.&quot;
 With debate on a new UN resolution due next week in the 15-member Security Council, Powell told a house committee that the United States was expecting support from several states, including Spain and Italy.
 Not among them, at this point, are France, Germany, Russia and China. The French, Chinese and Russians have veto power to kill any resolution.
 President Vladimir Putin, in France, reiterated his opposition to using force to ensure that Iraq is rid of weapons of mass destruction, and he repeated a warning made Tuesday that Russia could use its veto in the Security Council to oppose such action.
 A U.S. official confirmed that Powell would spend Friday in New York talking to foreign ministers. The Security Council members will have a chance to discuss the report from Blix and ElBaradei, first at the open meeting, and then in a closed session, said Germany's UN Ambassador Guenter Pleuger, the current council president.
 In other developments, chemical weapons experts headed into the Iraqi desert Wednesday to destroy a newly discovered batch of banned Iraqi weapons - 10 leftover artillery shells filled with burning, disabling mustard gas. Baghdad prepared legislation to outlaw such weapons as demanded by the United Nations.
 U.S. military planning was moving ahead. The Pentagon has called up tens of thousands more National Guard and Reserve members to active duty, pushing the total to 150,252.
 Of the 38,649 reservists mobilized in the last week, an undisclosed number will head for the Persian Gulf region. Already there are 130,000 U.S. land, sea and air forces awaiting Bush's decision.
 The New York Times reported in Thursday's editions that Pentagon officials say that Iraqi forces have moved explosives into the southern part of the country in preparation for blowing up bridges, bursting dams and igniting oil fields in a strategy to slow an American attack.

TITLE: Germany: NATO To Rule on Turkey
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BERLIN - NATO will act by Saturday on a request to start planning for Turkey's defense in case of a war against neighboring Iraq, German Defense Minister Peter Struck told parliament Thursday.
 
Struck's statement signaled an end to a standoff in which Germany, France and Belgium have held out against the U.S.-backed request to send AWACS surveillance planes, Patriot missiles and biochemical units to Turkey.
 &quot;We will have a decision in the North Atlantic Council at the latest Saturday, following the discussions in the UN Security Council Friday, which will absolutely satisfy Turkey's interests,&quot; Struck said.
 However, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder made clear in a speech to parliament earlier Thursday that Germany and France were closely coordinating their positions.
 &quot;For us, solidarity with Turkey, and our solidarity within the alliance, is beyond question,&quot; he said. &quot;But we also believe ... that unity of action with France is indispensable. German policy must never isolate France.&quot;
 Crisis talks at NATO began Monday after Turkey invoked the alliance's core mutual-defense treaty. 
 The three holdouts had refused to budge despite charges from the United States and the other 15 allies that continued division weakens NATO solidarity.

TITLE: Rampant Kobe Helps Lakers Win
AUTHOR: By John Marshall
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DENVER - Kobe Bryant has been on a roll. Still, this was something special.
 
Bryant scored an NBA season-high 51 points - in less than three quarters - as the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Denver Nuggets 113-102 Wednesday night to extend their winning streak to seven games.
 Bryant was 15-for-28 from the field and 18-of-20 on free throws in the NBA's first 50-point game this season. It was the 11th time he scored 40 or more points this season and his third career game with at least 50.
 Bryant finished five points short of his career high, set last year against Memphis, despite sitting out the final 13 minutes.
 &quot;I am playing in such a good rhythm right now,&quot; Bryant said. &quot;I don't know where it comes from.&quot;
 The Nuggets started with rookie Vincent Yarbrough guarding Bryant and switched in three others during the game. None of them stood a chance.
 Bryant has scored at least 35 points in seven straight games, including 42 in a 121-93 victory over Denver on Tuesday night. He had his 35 by halftime Wednesday, hitting 11-of-17 shots to tie a career high with 36 in the half.
 &quot;We tried a lot of things. Give him credit,&quot; Nuggets coach Jeff Bzdelik said.
 Bryant opened with a baseline jumper off a screen, then became angry after Denver's Donnell Harvey hit him in the jaw on defense.
 Big mistake. Bryant nodded his head as he backed down the court after a tough fadeaway over Harvey on the next possession, then held his followthrough and shook his head after hitting a 3-pointer that put the Lakers up 7-0.
 He ended the quarter with a pullup jumper between two defenders and a free throw, outscoring the Nuggets 20-15 as the Lakers led by 11.
 &quot;When you have a great player like that you just have to ride him,&quot; said Shaquille O'Neal, who added 18 points and 10 rebounds before sitting out the fourth. &quot;I think when Harvey gave him the blow to the mouth, it woke him up.&quot;
 Denver missed seven of its first eight shots and fell behind 15-3 in the first four minutes before getting to 31-28 midway through the second.
 Then Bryant took over. He hit a 3-pointer from about three feet behind the line, then dunked over Nikoloz Tskitishvili after spinning around Chris Whitney.
 Bryant added another 3, a long jumper from the wing and a tough fadeaway along the baseline. He failed on an attempted 360 in the closing seconds, but still hit the free throws to finish the half with two fewer points than Denver.
 &quot;He's tough. What more can you say,&quot; said Bzdelik, whose team has lost three straight and 10 of 12. &quot;I've been in this league a long time and he is playing better than anybody I've ever seen.&quot;
 Bryant wasn't through. He opened the second half with a layup, followed with a long jumper, then had a few words for Denver's bench after a near-impossible fadeaway along the baseline.
 He also had the Denver crowd cheering with a hard dunk, and eclipsed the 50-point mark with a pair of free throws with 3:18 left. He never got a chance at his career high, leaving the game with 1:08 left in the third.
 &quot;I told him the hook was out the way he was shooting the ball every time - that at the end of the third quarter he better get it before the quarter was over or else he was coming out,&quot; Lakers coach Phil Jackson said.
 Juwan Howard led the Nuggets with 22 points and seven rebounds.
 
 <strong>
Milwaukee 120, Dallas 114. </strong>The Dallas Mavericks are the top-scoring team in the NBA. The Milwaukee Bucks showed they can be just as dangerous with the ball.
 
Ray Allen had 28 points, Tim Thomas added a season-high 27 and the Bucks scored 65 second-half points to beat Dallas on Wednesday night - sending the Mavericks to their third consecutive loss.
 &quot;As deadly as they are shooting the basketball, running up and down in transition basketball scoring points, we're just as deadly,&quot; Allen said. &quot;With Timmy playing well and us playing the penetration game, we can get any of the shots we want out there.&quot;
 Milwaukee often went inside early in the game, which helped produce some open jumpers in the fourth quarter. The Bucks made eight of their final 13 3-pointers, while Dallas missed its final eight 3-point attempts.
 &quot;They can shoot the 3s, and so can we,&quot; Dallas coach Don Nelson said. &quot;We made them earlier in the game. They made them at the end of the game.&quot;
 The Mavericks also lost three consecutive games Jan. 15-19 at Sacramento, Phoenix and Seattle. They still have the NBA's best road record at 17-8.
 &quot;We haven't played well very well the last couple games,&quot; Steve Nash said. &quot;They're a good offensive team, but you have to do better than giving up 120 points.&quot;
 
 <i>
(For other results, see Scorecard.) </i>

TITLE: Philly Left Firing Blanks Again
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ST. PAUL, Minnesota - The site was different. The result was familiar.
 
Dwayne Roloson made 31 saves Wednesday night as the Minnesota Wild blanked the punchless Philadelphia Flyers for the second straight game, 2-0.
 Cliff Ronning and Wes Walz scored for the Wild, who beat the Flyers 1-0 Monday night in Philadelphia behind 30 saves from Manny Fernandez. It marked the first time in the Wild's three-year history they had consecutive shutouts.
 &quot;We're playing as well as we can play on defense, no doubt,&quot; said Minnesota coach Jacques Lemaire. &quot;We have a crew that is very focused. We just want to keep it going.&quot;
 Playing a home-and-home series against a tough defensive team was about the last thing the Flyers needed.
 The shutout loss was the fourth in the last eight games for the undermanned Flyers, who have scored a total of seven goals in that span. Philadelphia is 2-5-1-1 in its last nine games after going 10-1 in its previous 11.
 &quot;We have some key people who aren't competing to the level we need them to compete, especially with the people we are missing,&quot; said Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock. &quot;I think we had it going for a big period of time. We needed some people in the last couple of games to really step up. We didn't get it.&quot;
 The consecutive shutouts marked the first time since Oct. 20-22, 1999 that one team has recorded shutouts in both games of a home-and-home series. On that occasion, the Flyers blanked the New York Rangers in successive games.
 Roloson's biggest challenge came early in the third period with the Wild clinging to a 1-0 lead. Defenseman Brad Brown lost control of the puck near the Minnesota blue line, giving Michal Handzus a breakaway.
 But Roloson forced Handzus to his backhand and smothered the shot with his pad.
 The shutout was Roloson's second of the season.
 The Wild took advantage of a power play and a temporary injury to score the game's first goal at 14:38 of the second period.
 As the Wild were breaking out of their end, Philadelphia's Keith Primeau took a stick to the left ear from Andrei Zyuzin. Primeau fell to the ice and then skated gingerly to the bench while the Wild sped to the other end with a 5-on-3 advantage.
 Goaltender Robert Esche stopped Filip Kuba's high slap shot, but the long rebound was gathered in by Ronning, who beat Esche into the upper right corner. It was Ronning's 10th goal of the season and his sixth on the power play.
 &quot;One thing I've learned over the years is that when things are going well, you don't say too much,&quot; said Ronning.
 Walz gave the Wild a two-goal cushion at 5:55 of the third when he split the defense, took a pass from Antti Laaksonen and beat Esche between the legs for his ninth goal.
 
 <strong>
N.Y. Rangers 3, Florida 1. </strong>High-scoring forward Alexei Kovalev provided a goal in his first game back with the New York Rangers. But it was defense and solid goaltending that let them snap a seven-game winless streak.
 
Kovalev's empty-net goal with 0:10.8 left sealed a victory over the Florida Panthers and gave Glen Sather his first victory since he took over as coach Jan. 30, when he fired Bryan Trottier.
 &quot;It was definitely nice to get that goal,&quot; said Kovalev, acquired from Pittsburgh in an eight-player trade Monday. &quot;It's a great feeling, with the team on a winless streak to jump in and win the game and be a big part of it.&quot;
 But the real star Wednesday night was goalie Mike Dunham, who returned after sitting out two games because of a groin injury and made 27 saves.
 &quot;The second period I thought he made a couple of outstanding saves,&quot; Sather said. &quot;He was good. He hadn't played in three days. I didn't want to go too long without playing him.&quot;
 
 <i>
(For other results, see Scorecard.) </i>