SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #847 (15), Friday, February 28, 2003
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TITLE: Search Continues for Iraq Solution
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush agreed Thursday to work toward a solution to the Iraq crisis taking into account "the interests of the world community," the Kremlin said.
"During a discussion on Iraq, both sides expressed the intention to step up work within the UN Security Council with the aim of working out a plan of action to take account of the interests of the world community," a Kremlin statement said, without elaborating. The statement said a telephone conversation had taken place at Washington's request.
Russia has long been pushing for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, with Putin saying Wednesday, after a meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, that war is not the only way to force Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to disarm.
But, while Russia signed on to an initiative put forward earlier this week by the leaders of France and Germany that would prolong the work of international weapons inspectors in Iraq, Putin has been careful not to alienate Washington and London.
In Beijing, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Thursday that UN weapons inspectors in Iraq have made progress, and should be given more time.
A Russian-Chinese statement issued during Ivanov's visit said that war with Iraq "can and should be avoided."
"The two sides reiterate their determination to try their utmost to promote a political solution to the Iraq issue, and believe war can and should be avoided," the statement said.
Russia and China "advocate the Iraq crisis be resolved within the framework of the United Nations and through political and diplomatic means," their statement said.
"The UN Security Council should intensify its guidance and support the inspection work," it said.
A poll released Thursday showed that just 2 percent of Russians think a war should be launched against Baghdad, while 42 percent think weapons inspections and sanctions should be stopped and Iraq should be left in peace.
The Public Opinion Foundation conducted the survey of 1,500 Russians in cities and villages on Feb. 21. It found that 49 percent of Russians consider Iraq a friendly country, up from 39 percent one year ago. Twenty-two percent consider it unfriendly, down from 35 percent in February 2002.
Eighty seven percent oppose U.S. and British plans for war, and 45 percent agree with the Russian government's position that the international inspectors' work should be continued. Forty two percent agree that "Iraq should be left in peace, international inspections should be ended and international sanctions should be canceled."
Public Opinion Foundation polls have a customary margin of error of 4 percent.
Meanwhile, about 160 Russians and Ukrainians, including construction engineers, embassy workers, and children, arrived in Moscow after being evacuated from Iraq.
A plane carrying some 100 Russians and 60 Ukrainians landed Wednesday night at Domodyedovo Airport, NTV television reported. It was the first large-scale exodus of Russians and Ukrainians from Iraq.
Foreign Minister Ivanov said late last month that there were about 700 Russian "specialists" in Iraq.
(AP, Reuters)
TITLE: Alleging Abuses, Three Quit Navy Academy
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Alleging that they had been victims of theft, violence and humiliation, three students have left St. Petersburg's Nakhimov Naval Academy, and complaints from the boys' parents have led to the establishment of a commission to look into the charges. The commission, headed by the deputy commander of the Russian Navy, Admiral Mikhail Zakharenko and including other high ranking naval officers and representatives of the St. Petersburg Military Prosecutor's Office, began its work in St. Petersburg early this week and is scheduled to conclude its investigation on Friday.
The commission has arranged for medical examinations of the students as well as individual interviews with the students and their parents. The commission is also looking into the living conditions of students at the academy and the qualifications of teachers working there.
When their initial complaints of abuse at the academy brought no action, the parents of the three boys approached the Soldiers' Mothers Committee - a non-government organization that champions conscripts' rights - on Saturday, saying that their children complained that they had routinely been beaten, assaulted and victimized by a group of their fellow classmates.
While hazing is commonplace in the armed forces, discipline is usually strict in military and naval schools, said Yelena Vilenskaya of the Soldiers' Mothers Committee.
She said that the St. Petersburg branch of the organization is used to getting complaints from mothers whose sons are serving in the Chechen war, but that complaints from parents of naval-academy students are something new.
"It started shortly after they began their studies in September 2002," said Marina Soboleva, the mother of 14-year-old Vladimir Sobolev. She said that her son's troubles began in particular when he started defending a classmate, who had been physically abused.
Sobolev was this weekdiagnosed as suffering from a mental disorder by specialists at the Bekhterev Psycho-Neurological Institute, and will have to undergo a rehabilitation course.
According to Soboleva, a group of older boys at the academy terrorized her son, forcing him, for example to punch his friend in the face. If he refused, they threatened to beat him even more violently.
"Sergei's friend, who had already left the college [earlier this academic year], was telling my son 'you had better do what they say, or they will really be hard on you,'" Soboleva said.
Andrei Papulov, 14, who suffered two severe bruises on his head as a result of beatings, will also have to spend some time in the hospital. Papulov, from a navy family in the southern-Russian town of Anapa, described the attacks and the lack of reaction from instructors at the academy.
"A group of students beat me until I lost consciousness," Papulov said. "The major troublemakers are a group of only four people, but many students are scared to confront them because they corner everyone and threaten to beat them up."
Papulev said an officer was present during the attack, and even tried to intervene, but ultimately abandoned the effort and locked himself in his office.
Albina Karyazina, the mother of 15-year-old Sergei Karyazin, said that the beatings were a symptom and a result of a broader situation of criminal behavior at the academy.
"Telephone cards, clothes, even swimming trunks would disappear," she said. "I could bring my son two pairs of swimming trunks per week, and they would promptly disappear." According to Karyazina, when her son tried to speak up against the thefts, it only led to more severe beatings. Among her son's injuries were a concussion and liver damage.
Polyakova of the Soldiers' Mothers Committee said that boys had also reported being stripped naked and then beaten and humiliated by other students.
According to the boys and their mothers, only the students who tried to go against what they say is the traditional lifestyle at the school, such as drinking alcohol and smoking into the early hours, were the victims of excessive violence.
"When I called my son at 1 a.m., I heard noise as if some low-class farce was taking place there," Karyazina said. "I thought everyone should be quiet at that hour."
The parents want criminal cases to be launched against Nakhimov Navy Academy officers who, they say, have been negligent and endangered their sons' health by not addressing the problem of violence on the part of some academy students.
They are particularly angry that their first move of contacting Rear Admiral Alexander Bukin, the head of the academy, brought no result. The boys' mothers say that Bukin refused to acknowledge that there were problems at the school, dismissing the accusations as groundless. Instead, he labelled their sons as informers, and said that he might have made a mistake in admitting them into the academy in the first place.
Yevgeny Tkachuk, the deputy military prosecutor of the Leningrad Military District, said on Tuesday that his office is examining the complaints thoroughly.
"We should first determine if it actually took place and, if so, will look into the college's authorities' role in the problem," Tkachuk said.
Captain First Class Igor Dygalo, an aide to the commander of the Russian Navy, said that the commission has, so far, failed to find any ground to the complaints. No severe bruises or injuries have been found on other students and none of St. Petersburg's medical facilities has reported treating a Nakhimov Academy student who had suffered any form of abuse.
"The naval authorities aren't interested in hiding anything here because [having an honest investigation] is the only way to maintain a healthy atmosphere within the navy," Dygalo wrote in a statement released on Thursday, claiming that incidents of naval authorities concealing cases of abuse were part of a long-gone past. "Every aspect of the life of the students in the college has been carefully examined, with no evidence of wrong-doing found."
"There are tensions in any group of people, but that doesn't mean that they always grow into abuse and violence," he added.
While the commission was scheduled to present its report to the public on Friday, Nakhimov Academy authorities held a press conference at the school on Thursday, with a number of first-year students countering the accusations. The students, standing in front of the TV cameras, branded the allegations as lies.
But, according to Ella Polyakova of the Soldiers' Mothers Committee, seven more sets of parents are now preparing complaints to the commission and college authorities following a parents meeting at the Nakhimov Academy earlier this week.
Nakhimov Naval Academy were established by the Soviet government during World War II in St. Petersburg, Riga and Tbilisi. Generations of Russian naval officers have been graduates of the prestigious school.
"We have three generations of navy officers in the family - my husband is a Nakhimov Academy graduate," Karyazina said. "None of us would have imagined that such a nightmare could take place in a renowned naval academy like the Nakhimov Academy. This is a traumatic experience for our whole family."
TITLE: Turning Up Doesn't Help Smolny's Allies
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Although 16 lawmakers of the pro-Smolny United City bloc have decided to show up for two straight sessions of the Legislative Assembly, it seems to have made very little difference in defending the interests of Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, as his supporters have watched most of the chamber's important committee positions go to their opponents.
The pro-governor bloc has managed to grab only eight of the 70 seats on the 10 committees that have already been selected, and none on the two senior committees - legislative and budget.
Vladimir Yeryomenko, a lawmaker from the United City bloc, said that he is worried about the development of a situation in which the minority bloc will be left with no influence in the parliament.
"Everything would depend on the attitude of the majority [in the future]," Yeryomenko said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "It is a very negative trend when questions are being answered according to the interests of business, and are being determined by the amount of money that has been paid."
"I know this to be true, but I'm not going to talk about particular cases," he added.
"We have just started following a tradition in which a majority has a right to decide everything, which is a practice we can see in all the European parliaments," Igor Mikhailov, a lawmaker who left the United City bloc in February to join the pro-Kremlin deputies, said in an interview Wednesday. "For the moment, there is a majority that has formed that has united different mutual interests. I hope that the minority understands that it could win if it cooperated."
Mutual interests, however, played a negative role for a project favored by pro-Kremlin lawmakers on Wednesday, when the United City bloc managed to unite with a number of deputies from the Communist faction to wreck a plan by Legislative Assembly Speaker Vadim Tyulpanov to hold a final vote to decrease the number of lawmakers necessary to hold a session in the chamber from 34 to 26.
The draft, offered by Tyulpanov in mid February and passed in the first reading at the previous session, wasn't even included on the agenda for Wednesday's sitting.
"It's not only us, but it looks like left-wing [lawmakers] and a number of other deputies also understand that they would deprive a minority of its right to defend its interests. This is a democratic tradition," Yeryomenko said.
Tyulpanov had to do a little work at the begining of the day on Wednesday just to make sure that the session took place. The electronic registration sytem in the assembly showed that 20 members were present at first, even though a head count put the figure at 35. At 10 a.m., Tyulpanov had to announce an hour break to wait until more lawmakers showed up at the session hall.
"The [electronic] voting system showed that there was no quorum but, when we counted 35 lawmakers present, we asked our legal department if we could start this way. The answer was 'yes,' so we did," Tyulpanov said in an interview Wednesday.
The assembly not only filled out most of the spots on the remaining committees, but also managed to vote on a few pieces of legislation, including a proposal for a single tax for small businesses operating in the city, which was passed in its third reading, and for investment in the renovation of buildings within residential neighborhoods constructed in the 1960s, which passed in the second reading.
The construction law stipulates that money investors operating in these areas transfer to the city budget for infrastructure development, must be spent to finance projects in the same area.
"This is the end af a difficult period of placing [lawmakers] in certain seats," said Mikhail Amosov, the head of the Yabloko faction, in an interview on Wednesday. "What we are doing now can be described as normal work."
"The work will start on a full scale when the committees begin offering drafts for [new] legislation. We have, for instance, already looked through questions such as mandatory medical insurance," he said.
TITLE: Kidnappings Rising Before Referendum
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Respected human rights organization Memorial warned on Thursday that the planned constitutional referendum in Chechnya won't reflect the will of the people, saying it has documented an increase in kidnappings and disappearances linked to federal troops.
"We think the conditions are not right for holding the referendum in Chechnya," said Memorial head Oleg Orlov, who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Chechnya ahead of the March 23 vote.
"We are seeing an increase in the level of terror on the eve of the referendum," he told reporters. "Is [the referendum] the reason for the campaign of terror? If so, it has achieved its goal. In the run-up to the referendum, the population is very intimidated."
The Kremlin is touting the referendum, to be followed by the election of a president and a parliament, as a key element in the peace process. If approved, the constitution would be subordinate to federal law.
Memorial said it is alarmed by the growing number of kidnappings and disappearances of people, some of whom are carried away by masked soldiers on armored personnel carriers without license plates and others by Chechen gunmen.
Although some cases are investigated and suspects are brought to trial, most are not even registered by law-enforcement officials, it said.
Orlov said Memorial has counted 42 cases - many of which involve more than one missing person - in January and February alone. The group is pressing prosecutors to investigate an additional 600 cases.
Chechnya Prosecutor Vladimir Kravchenko said Wednesday that 1,660 people, including service personnel, are considered missing in Chechnya, Interfax reported.
A pro-Moscow Chechen-administration taskforce charged with searching for the missing puts the number at 2,800, Memorial official Alexander Cherkasov said.
"With five out of every 1,000 people missing, the rate of terror in Chechnya is higher than during Stalin's great terror [in the late 1930s]," Cherkasov said. "You can imagine what kind of affect this is going to have on the region's psyche."
Vakha Baibatsirov of the Chechen administration's Moscow office brushed off Memorial's concerns.
"It is none of their damn business commenting on the will of the whole population," Baibatsirov said in a telephone interview.
Council of Europe human-rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles earlier this month endorsed the referendum as the beginning of a path to peace.
Orlov said that despite the increase in missing persons, the number of mopping-up operations, in which troops surround a village and indiscriminately arrest, beat up and sometimes kill residents, has decreased markedly in recent months.
They do, however, still take place, and with mixed results, he said. A drawn-out operation carried out by Chechen OMON officers in Starye Atagi in December and January ended with no complaints about human rights abuses being filed, he said.
But a operation from Jan. 8 to Jan. 15 in Argun was "an absolute return to the old times," he said.
At least one person was killed, and dozens of others were beaten to a pulp, according to testimonies recorded by Memorial.
Meanwhile, the Central Election Commission is to hold a discussion on Chechnya's readiness for the referendum on Friday. A CEC spokesperson said the commission would discuss security and logistics with security and Chechen officials.
Stanislav Ilyasov, the federal minister in charge of Chechnya, said on Thursday that he was certain the most of the population in Chechnya would support the referendum and vote for the constitution. "Surveys and meetings with local officials show that the adoption of the constitution is necessary and everybody understands that," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
TITLE: Local State Employees Join in Protest
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: About 5,000 health, education and cultural workers joined the countrywide protest by state employees in St. Petersburg on Thursday.
The participants marched from Gorkovskaya metro station to the cruiser Aurora, where they held a meeting, and then moved on to the residence of Viktor Cherkesov, the presidential representative for the Northwest Region.
The protesters were demanding that reforms to payments of state salaries not be carried out without introducing important guarantees, as well as raises in their low salaries.
"Our salaries are so meagre that we can't even buy decent clothes. I'm happy that I'm wearing my white work gown, so nobody can see how I'm dressed," said Viktor Fyodorov, a radiologist from the St. Petersburg suburb of Pushkin.
Medical workers also complained that they did not even recieve their minimum social-privileges packages, which include such perks as vouchers for state-run rest resorts.
"Doctors are ready to join the protest because they don't want to become slaves," "No to Pochinok's Payment Conception!" and "The Labor Minister Is Shameless!," read some of the placards carried by the protesters.
Galina Boldova, a primary-school teacher in St. Petersburg, who has worked at the same school for 37 years, said that the hardest thing for her is to answer students who ask why she works for such a low salary. She earns 1,300 rubles (just over $40) a month.
"But how can I leave these children, when I see how they - especially those of working-class parents - spend most of their time in the street, and nobody cares about them?" she asked.
Irina Alexandrova, a kindergarten teacher, said that she was taking part in the protest because she "still believes in the Russian government."
"If I didn't believe, I wouldn't have come," she said. "I hope that the government will take note, and the situation will change."
TITLE: Pasko's Lawyers Still Looking for Reversal
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Lawyers for military journalist Grigory Pasko said Wednesday that their client still hopes that the presidium of the Russian Supreme Court will decide to overturn a guilty verdict for treason in 2001 and to halt any other criminal procedings against him.
"I don't see any other option in relation to the case," said Ivan Pavlov, Pasko's defense lawyer.
Pasko was sentenced to four years in prison by a Vladivostok military court after he took notes while attending a meeting of Russian naval commanders in the city. The court said that he had intended to pass the notes to Japanese reporters with whom he was working on environmental issues.
Pasko was paroled in January, although the criminal case against him was not closed.
Pasko's lawyers said Wednesday that, on Jan. 23, they sent a complaint to the chairperson of the Russian Supreme Court, asking that the guilty verdict against their client be reviewed.
"We'll be doing our best to have Pasko cleared," Pavlov said, adding that he hopes the case will be re-considered within the next few months.
Pavlov also said that Norwegian ecological and human-rights organization Bellona sent a similar complaint to the European Court.
Pasko was in St. Petersburg on Wednesday to meet with supporters and also with colleagues from a new ecological magazine, Ecologiya i Pravo ("Ecology and the Law"), of which he is the editor-in-chief.
The magazine was founded by Bellona in June, and is published every other month in St. Petersburg, with a circulation of 500 copies.
Pasko said he plans to continue his journalistic activities at the magazine, where he will again focus on environmental issues.
According to Pasko, one of the country's most urgent ecological problems still has to do with the radioactive waste problem in the Sea of Japan, on Russia's East coast
"Thanks to Bellona and to a greater situation of openness on ecological issues in the Northwest Region, there has been more progress with covering the radioactive-waste problem and attempts to solve it at the Barents Sea," Pasko said. "But, in the Far East, the situation doesn't seem to have changed."
TITLE: City's Cancer Patients Get a Helping Hand
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: When Kira was diagnosed with cancer three years ago, it completely changed her life. The 67-year-old, a teacher at an orphanage, enjoyed an active life, taking her students hiking and pouring herself into her work, but suddenly found herself unable to work - an invalid.
"Since I don't have a family, my work was everything for me and, in one instant, I found myself left with nothing," said Kira, who asked that her last name not be given.
According to Galina Antipova, the chairperson of the Oncology Patients Association, an NGO that works with cancer patients, one of the most significant things that Russians diagnosed with the disease lack is a place where they can receive advice on their rights as patients and emotional support.
"When people are first diagnosed, they are in a state of shock, and don't know where to go or what to do,"Antipova said. "Some of them are so hit by the bad news that they end up committing a sort of passive suicide, and give up on trying to fight the problem."
The Oncology Patients Association, founded in 1996, is the only organization in St. Petersburg providing cancer patients with the emotional and psychological support that may be as important for them as medical care.
Through the organization, which was founded and is still supported by the Scottish St. Petersburg Charity Forum, cancer patients are able to attend a number of free classes - including art therapy, exercise and dance - go to free classical-music concerts and museums together and talk to a psychologist, as well as receiving some medicine and valuable medical literature.
More than 100,000 St. Petersburg residents suffer from some form of cancer, with about 18,000 new cases registered in the city every year, according to the St. Petersburg Health Committee. The city's oncological hospitals and hospices are overcrowded, and people often have to stand in long lines for treatment.
At present, the Oncology Patients Associtation works with 164 cancer patients. These include women and men suffering from all forms of the disease, although only about 15 of the most active women involved regularly attend the classes.
"This union is my life," Kira said. "It helps me keep busy and maintain contact with people I miss."
Kira attends all three classes offered ,and says that art therapy is her favorite.
On one recent Wednesday afternoon, six elderly women sat around the table, reading aloud the poems that the teacher of the class had asked them to compose using certain words. Showing some embarrassment, they also showed the pictures they had painted as part of the homework for the class.
"I worked with children all my life, and never realized that I could draw," Kira said.
Another participant, Galina, also 67, said: "Writing poetry helps my express my deep inner feelings toward my life."
But the women say that, while the classes help them get closer in touch with their own lives, they rarely discuss their illnesses with each other in the classes - it is considered bad form.
"We come here for positive emotions," Kira explained.
Antipova says that art-therapy class is meant to help people discover their hidden talents and to distract them from negative thoughts, and that the type of support the classes offer is more common in other societies.
"It is a simple fact that people have cancer all over the world," Antipova said. "It's just that, in more developed countries, the level of social support for thes patients if very different from that in Russia."
Antipova said that she was astonished to see how well the social support for cancer patients is organized in Great Britain, where there is the whole group of specially trained personel - the Macmillan Nurses.
The Macmillan Nurses begin working with patients from the moment of their diagnosis, as well as working with patients in day hospices. Antipova says that Russia desperately needs more of these sorts of services.
She also says that she was surprised to see how developed volunteer services and attitudes are in some other countries.
"People are in line to volunteer for cancer patients as free hairdressers or cooks," she said. "Here, we don't have much of that."
According to Antipova, people in Russia generally volunteer to help oncology patients only after they have had a relative suffer from the same problem. Antipova - who lost her father to brain cancer when he was 59 - and her assistant - who also had a close relative die from the disease - are perfect examples.
As well as providing direct help to cancer patients, the association also tries to provide support for the patients' relatives, who often face emotional hurdles and need someone to whom to talk and from whom to get advice.
The staff at the association receive a low salary and seem to be kept afloat by their enthusiasm. They say they are also very grateful to St. Petersburg Charity Forum, which pays their rent and some other bills, and to the St. Petersburg International Women's Club, which recently stepped in to help them out.
"The nice ladies from the International Women's Club appeared just at the moment when I was on the edge of despair," Antipova said.
But the new help from some new organizations has been accompanied by some bad fortune as well. Just before New Year, the union's office was robbed. The thieves took the group's computer, television, video recorder, printer, copying machine, and even central heating radiators - all of the things of value that it had been able to gather together over the last six years.
The union's buildings are also in need of repair, and the old radiators in the offices obviously do not provide enough warmth.
"We are now at a stage when we are grateful for any kind of help," Antipova said. "Even a used photocopier would be support for us."
St. Petersburg Oncology Patients Association, at 13 Shpalernaya Ul., can be reached by e-mail at SPAOP@mail.admiral.ru, or by phone at (812) 279-1597. Ask for Galina Antipova, who speaks English.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Aid to Afghans
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) - Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov warned Thursday of continuing instability in Afghanistan, and said more efforts had to be made to eliminate remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida.
"The leaders of al-Qaida and the Taliban are alive and well," Ivanov told reporters during a trip to the Azeri capital, Baku.
He said Moscow would continue to support the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, providing "not so much military as economic, financial, medical and other help."
Dubrovka Settlement
MOSCOW (AP) - Faced with an uphill legal battle to win damages for victims of last autumn's terrorist raid on the Theater Center Na Dubrovke, the plaintiffs' lawyer has offered the Moscow city government an out-of-court settlement, Itar-Tass reported Thursday.
Lawyer Igor Trunov, who represents 81 plaintiffs, said Thursday that he had sent a letter to the city government offering to bring down the damage award sought from nearly $60 million to no less than $50,000 per plaintiff, Itar-Tass reported.
He said he had come up with the figure using the example of the families of the sailors killed in the Kursk nuclear submarine. Each was paid about $25,000, the report said.
Deputies Decorated
MOSCOW (SPT) - All 35 Moscow city deputies were awarded medals Thursday for their role in the special operations that ended the siege of the Theater Center Na Dubrovke - even though four deputies were not in town during the crisis, media reported.
The awards were given by the veterans association of the Alpha special-forces group, the president of which, Oleg Goncharov, is himself a Moscow city deputy, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported.
The deputies brought food and drink to the relatives of the hostages, and each worked a 24-hour shift during the siege, the paper reported.
Kasyanov in Hospital
MOSCOW (SPT) - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has been diagnosed with influenza and admitted to a hospital, the government's information department said Thursday.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin supervised a cabinet meeting on Thursday that addressed recent privatizations and the issue of migration cards and migration policy in general.
Kudrin is to attend a meeting of the Interstate Council for Eurasian Economic Cooperation on Friday in Kasyanov's stead, the information department said.
Tunneler Jailed
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A prisoner who escaped by digging the longest tunnel in Russian jailbreak history was returned to his Siberian penal colony on Thursday to serve a longer sentence, a news agency reported.
Yevgeny Pechenkin and two cellmates dug a 113-meter tunnel two years ago, adding beams, electricity and a ventilation system. Pechenkin, sentenced in 1998 to 9 1/2 years for fraud, was handed a 2 1/2 year sentence for his escape.
TITLE: Evening News on NTV Gets a Chechen Face
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Six months ago, Aset Vatsuyeva's life resembled that of many other Chechen women in Moscow. At home, she cleaned, cooked and looked after her young son. Police harassed her on the street and in the metro.
Then the aspiring 25-year-old journalist received a surprise telephone call from NTV producer Leonid Parfyonov.
This month, Vatsuyeva became the country's first Chechen news presenter, with NTV television's 10 p.m. news show "Strana i Mir," or "The Country and the World."
The Monday-through-Thursday show pairs Vatsuyeva with Alexei Pivovarov, and they present the news in a light, conversational way - continuing the style introduced by Parfyonov with his weekly analytical show "Namedni." Vatsuyeva and Pivovarov trade off with two other co-hosts every other week.
Vatsuyeva, a Grozny native whose father made a name for himself as a journalist in the early 1990s, said nothing surprised her more than the unexpected phone call from Parfyonov last August.
"I thought it was someone from Moscow State University or a journalist calling because I often have been asked for advice on Chechnya," she said in an interview. "I was stunned when I realized that it was Parfyonov on the phone saying that he had a job offer for me."
She said Parfyonov told her that he was specifically looking for a Chechen presenter and had heard about her from a friend, a British journalist.
"I did not believe that I was qualified for the job, but accepted it anyway," Vatsuyeva said.
Pivovarov, who co-created the concept for "Strana i Mir," said Vatsuyeva's involvement might be the start of an era of political correctness on television.
"I think the country is ready for political correctness. In the United States, this would mean having a white person and an African-American or an Arab, for example. In Russia, this could only mean having a Chechen," Pivovarov said.
News presenters on television who are from minority groups have been few and far between. One of the best known was Alexandra Buratayeva, an ethnic Kalmyk who worked for Channel One. She was elected to the State Duma as part of the pro-Kremlin Unity party in 1999.
Vatsuyeva, as a recent graduate of the journalism department at Moscow State University and the daughter of former Chechen dissident Abdulah Vatsuyev, was an obvious choice for NTV, Pivovarov said. Her father was the editor of the hard-hitting Groznensky Rabochy newspaper in Grozny.
"Aset's presence on the show was part of a concept that should make it a success - or so it seems to us. It is up to our viewers to decide," he said. "At least she is getting noticed by everyone."
Vatsuyeva came to Moscow in 1997. While studying, she wrote for Obyedinyonnaya Gazeta, which is published by State Duma Deputy Aslanbek Aslakhanov and distributed in Chechnya. Later she wrote for Obshchaya Gazeta.
She put her career on hold when she got married and gave birth to her son, Zia, whom she named after Zia Bazhayev, a Chechen businessperson who died in a plane crash in 2001.
In Grozny, the rest of her immediate family tried to make ends meet while living in their half-ruined apartment, which had been damaged in the first Chechen campaign. Their apartment building was demolished at the start of the second campaign in 1999 and, along with thousands of other Chechens, they fled for Ingushetia.
Vatsuyeva was reunited with her family later that year when her father, mother, brother and older sister moved to Moscow. Vatsuyeva last visited Chechnya in 2000 to research a story.
"Strana i Mir" started broadcasting during an ongoing dispute at NTV over a management shuffle that saw the sacking of Boris Jordan, the U.S.-born financier who had run it since April 2001.
As a result of the conflict, Parfyonov pulled the plug on "Namedni" earlier this month. He remains an NTV producer.
Pivovarov said that launching a new show during the crisis was difficult.
"We pretended that nothing was going on, leaving all of our channel's problems for later," he said.
"Strana i Mir," which premiered on Feb. 10, was initially scheduled to go on the air in October but was delayed over technical difficulties.
In the meantime, Vatsuyeva put together a daring report about Chechen women who had lost loved ones during the two campaigns. NTV aired the report during the Oct. 23-26 Moscow theater siege - 19 Chechen women who had lost relatives were among the 41 hostage-takers.
"Women in Chechnya are the most active part of the population, while Chechen men are demoralized and are generally filled with apathy," Vatsuyeva said.
For Vatsuyeva, the theater crisis was more personal than the drama that millions of people watched unfolding on television. As police combed the city looking for suspected accomplices of the Chechen hostage-takers, her 20-year-old brother Apti was detained during a police raid.
"They said my brother belonged to the most suspicious age group, was taking wrestling training and led him away. They said he was a bandit and linked to bandits," she said.
He was freed only after Parfyonov and NTV's security service got involved, she said.
She said she long has been afraid of police harassment.
"I always keep my documents and registration in order, but Chechens always raise suspicions. I always shudder when I see police officers," she said.
TITLE: U.S. To Help Russia Keep ISS Working?
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - U.S. Member of Congress Nick Lampson on Thursday introduced legislation to allow NASA to help Russia build additional spacecraft if President George W. Bush notifies congress that the vehicles are needed to ensure the safety of the crew on the international space station.
The bill, which was submitted to the House of Representatives, would exempt NASA from the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000, which forbids payments to Russia. The proposed legislation would allow NASA to make such payments to cover the cost of additional spacecraft.
With space-shuttle flights on hold because of the Columbia disaster, the Russian craft is "the sole means of support for the space station until the shuttle fleet returns to service," Lampson said.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told a congressional committee Thursday that the 16 countries participating in the ISS have agreed that the Soyuz space capsule now docked at the station will be used to bring the current crew back to Earth.
Two new residents, one American and one Russian, will go up on a fresh Soyuz that will remain attached to the station for the next six months, he said.
He added that the station partners have agreed to increase the number of flights of unmanned cargo ships, called Progress.
An additional Progress will be launched this year and an extra one next year, he said.
TITLE: Businesses Say Reform Must Start at Top
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva and Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - To make structural reforms work on the ground and open the country to new business and foreign investments, Russia should start reforming itself from the top down, former Economics Minster Yevgeny Yasin said Wednesday.
Yasin, presenting an annual economic and investment report prepared by his Expert Institute in association with Ernst & Young and the American Chamber of Commerce, said that excessive bureaucracy and red tape remain Russia's most troublesome and dangerous problem.
"Without an active civil society, state authorities want to acquire more and more power. And, so far, they are succeeding because there are no democratic constraints," he said at an economic conference.
The Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, or RSPP, wants to do something about it. On Wednesday, the business lobby set up a new committee on administrative reforms and will present the Kremlin with a conceptual program reducing the burden on business, RSPP vice president Igor Yurgens said at a separate news conference.
The big guns of big business last week met to discuss corruption with President Vladimir Putin, who demanded more suggestions and less criticism.
"Speeding up the reforms is important. They're not moving very willingly in the run-up to elections," Yurgens said. "We went to ask if our help was needed or not. The answer was yes. We were given three months to prepare proposals, which is 12 times less time than the government had."
The main points already under discussion by the committee are support for small and medium-sized enterprises, which the RSPP concedes suffer more than big business, reforming bureaucracy and separating conflicting functions out of single government agencies, as well as the more amorphous and pervasive problem of corruption.
Yasin said that reforms have, as a result, become merely a topic of discussion and dispute in the government, while real actions often lag behind.
"There is nothing wrong in arguing about what is better for Russia, but without public discussion any unexpected decisions frighten investors," he said.
Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin acknowledged at the conference that the government has not achieved "as much as we would have liked on important reforms."
Yasin said that his institute, which is affiliated with the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, supports a new economic program approved by the government last week.
The program aims at diversifying the economy away from the energy sector.
"The structure of the Russian economy is very uneven, and it cannot grow further without reforms," he said, pointing to the urgent need to restructure Unified Energy Systems, Gazprom, the Railways Ministry and the municipal sector.
Kudrin said that the government is optimistic about the diversification, which he said would allow for the modernization of the economy and give a much-needed jump-start to domestic production.
The country is not ready to move faster on tax reforms because of its dependence on oil, he said.
But reducing the tax burden depends on three factors: continued economic growth, cuts in government spending and a shift in the tax burden from manufacturing toward the natural-resources sector, which could also spur diversification, Kudrin said.
Export duties on oil and petroleum products are likely to be increased to $39 to $40 per metric ton as of March 1, which would provide an additional $500 million in the following two months and contribute as much as 150 billion rubles ($4.6 billion) to a stabilization fund by the end of the year, he said.
However, he warned that the fund should not be used to speed up tax reform.
If oil prices drop to $16 to $17 per barrel, due to the situation in Iraq, "we could fall into a trap where we don't get those taxes we're counting on in 2004," Kudrin said.
The budget should be drawn up based on a price of $18.5 per barrel, not some high price from last year, he said.
Steve Chase, president of Intel in Russia, who was also speaking at the conference, said that the country remains an unfriendly place for investments.
But, despite the difficulties, including those involving free access to capital, intellectual and property rights and infrastructure, Intel recently announced plans to boost the number of workers at its research center in Nizhny Novgorod from 350 to 1,000 in the next few years, he said.
"But we could have done much more in Russia if it had a more open and competitive economy," Chase said.
The main question for Russia now is "how the country can increase its competitiveness in the world economy," he said.
TITLE: Suspicions Raised by Gas Giant's New Deal
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Gazprom has failed to gain control of lucrative gas sales from Turkmenistan to Ukraine, allowing instead a little known Hungarian-based company to pocket over $130 million in fees annually as a middleman.
News of the deal, reported Wednesday by Vedomosti, raised investor fears that the gas giant's management was resorting to the same financial scams as the old team under which billions of dollars were alleged to have been squirreled away annually into crony companies.
Gazprom's new team had pledged to regain control of sales from Central Asia to Ukraine from Itera, a gas giant alleged, but never proven, to have been the main vehicle for siphoning off Gazprom assets by the company's former management. From 1999 to 2002, Itera transported Turkmen gas to Ukraine, paying Gazprom for the use of its pipeline network, while reportedly receiving hefty handling payments from Ukraine.
But instead of Gazprom taking over the Turkmen- gas transportation, the gas giant's deputy chairperson Alexander Ryazanov in December signed off on a contract that put an unknown company Eural Transgas, founded that month, in charge of transporting 36 billion cubic meters of gas annually along that route.
According to the contract, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times, Eural TG is to pay Gazprom $470 million in transit fees annually for the use of its pipeline network.
But, in the meantime, under that contract, Ukraine is to pay Eural TG 13.7 billion cubic meters of gas, which has a value of $600 million on CIS markets and $1.5 billion if sold on European markets, a Gazprom source told Vedomosti.
That gives a minimum profit of $130 million and a maximum of $1.03 billion.
A Gazprom spokesperson on Thursday would not confirm or deny the report, citing the confidentiality of commercial agreements. But he did confirm that Eural TG would receive additional funds for its services as a middleman.
Investors are up in arms over Vedomosti findings that the company was founded by obscure individuals, including Israeli citizen Zeev Gordon and three Romanians, with just $12,000 in charter capital.
"There is no reasonable explanation to this fact," said Vadim Kleiner, director of research at Hermitage Capital Management. "Why give up an attractive business to an obscure company? This seems like a substitute for Itera."
The Gazprom spokesperson, however, claimed that the company was set up as an incentive for the Ukrainian government to push out Itera as its traditional supplier. He said that Gazprom had reached agreement with Kiev for the company to be re-registered as a 50-50 owned company between Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy, the country's national gas company.
"The Ukrainians were not ready to give all the additional profits for transporation to Gazprom. We do not have the right to insist on which company they use for transportation," he said.
He said that under the 50-50 deal, the additional funds received by Eural TG for its services would be shared by Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrainy. He could not say when Eural TG's new ownership structure would be set up.
TITLE: Local Stock Exchange Unloads $17-Million Worth of Fish
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Working in a sector of the economy that is currently shrouded in controversy, the St. Petersburg Futures Stock Exchange has completed the running of a tender for state fish quotas, the stock exchange reported on Wednesday.
Five hundred and forty lots were bought for a total of 529 million rubles ($17 million), distributing the right to catch around 67,000 tons of fish. The quotas were bought up by 77 companies, with the bulk of them operating in the Primorye and Kamchatka regions.
Sergei Mitrovanov, general director of the St. Petersburg Futures Stock Exchange, said that the exchange had won the right to hold the tender from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry tender for the first time.
One thousand, six hundred and thirty lots for eight different sorts of fish, running from cod to calamary, were offered at the sale, with 95 companies taking part in the tender. The stock exchange itself reported that it took a 0.22-percent premium from the total value of sales.
The city's other exchange, the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange, held a similar auction for fish quotas in 2002, selling 351 lots for a total value of 1.7 billion rubles, according to the stock exchange's official figures.
Russia's next auction of fish quotas will be held on March 15 at the Moscow Metal Exchange, while four more are planned by the Economic Development and Trade Ministry for April and another in July.
"We've invited all the stock exchanges that have an interest to apply for the right to hold an auction, and then we'll make a selection," a spokesperson for the ministry said, adding that, in the past, the Eurasian and Moscow Metal stock exchanges have held the majority of the fish-quota auctions.
The spokesperson for the ministry said that only the rarer and the most commercially viable breeds of fish are offered at auction.
"Our experience in holding auctions shows that they are a normal market mechanism, allowing fishing companies to work effectively," he said.
The industry has been dogged by scandal, however, where it concerns the allocation of quotas by the State Fisheries Committee. Three weeks ago, the head of the committee, Yevgeny Nazdratenko was suspended. The official reason given for his suspension was his failure to approve allocations for fishing quotas in Primorye and Magadan for 2003. Nevertheless, there have been allegations that Nazdratenko, formerly the governor of the Primorye region, had refused to approve the allocations because he believed that they favored firms close to current Primorye Governor Sergei Darkin.
With analysts estimating that every dollar invested in fishing nets $12 in profit, the temptations offered by the allocations are strong, and it has also been widely suggested in the Russian media that Nazdratenko disapproved on 2003 quotas as they neglected companies in which he has interests.
Boris Reznik, a member of the State Duma's Corruption Committee, said that the Prosecutor General's office is investigating a series of corruption cases that target the "entire leadership" of the State Fisheries Committee, it was reported last week.
Nazdratenko's suspension came in the wake of the opening of an investigation of Leonid Kholod, a deputy head of the State Fisheries Committee. Kholod had been accused along with Alexander Rogatnykh, chief of the Magadan-based State Fishing Research Institute, of illegal fishing of crab and other shellfish, claiming that the catches were being used for scientific research. The value of the catches is said to have amounted to 100 million rubles.
Prior to that, in November Deputy Prosecutor Vladimir Koleshnikov said that Leonid Kholod, a deputy head of the State Fisheries Committee, and Alexander Rogatnykh, chief of a Magadan-based state fishing research institute, are being investigated for illegal fishing for crab and other shellfish under the guise of scientific research, which could have costed as much as 100 million rubles ($3.17 million).
According to State Fisheries Committee statistics released on Tuesday, 3.24 million tons of fish and fish products were caught in 2002. Russian fish-processing factories produced 2.8 million tons of fish products in the same year, 6.4 percent lower than the previous year's results. The consumption of domestically produced fish products fell by 13 percent over the same period.
TITLE: Kaliningrad Rejects Euro Dung
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Just off the Kaliningrad coast, 1,800 tons of Belgian pig manure have been floating in the Baltic Sea for more than three weeks, after becoming stuck in a tug of war between a Belgian company and the regional government.
The Belgium Embassy has appealed to Kaliningrad Governor Vladimir Yegorov to resolve the problem. The delay is costing Belgian company Vimex 2,000 euros ($2,150) per day.
The ship Nona is carrying what was supposed to be the first of a series of shipments of manure for the exclave's farmers, Vimex said. However, when it approached the Pionersky port on Jan. 29, it was not allowed to dock.
Kaliningrad officials said that the cargo does not have the right documents and that it should have been registered with the State Chemicals Commission, which registers agricultural chemicals.
"That's bullshit, or pig shit, whatever you like," said a frustrated Viktor Orlov, Vimex's representative in Kaliningrad, in a telephone interview.
Orlov said that all the documents were verified by the Russian Embassy in Brussels and that the manure cannot be classified as an agrochemical.
"We have all the legal documents," he said. "We have a pure natural product."
"It is a ridiculous situation when people who know nothing about agriculture are insisting on registration."
Belgian Embassy official Andre de Rijck said that Russian authorities are scared that the manure contains toxins.
"But we have certificates that it is all clean," he said.
Manure is never included on lists of agrochemicals, Orlov said. If it were, farms and anyone else who uses manure would have to register with the State Chemicals Commission as well, he said.
In addition to the shipment's documents being checked by the Russian Embassy, test results for the manure were completed by the labs of the Agriculture Ministry, Orlov said.
The 1,800-ton shipment was supposed to be the first of 50,000 tons arriving from Belgium this year.
The manure is being given for free to farmers, who only pay for transport from the port to their farms. Vimex said it hoped later to sell seeds and other products to the farmers it helps.
Orlov said that Kaliningrad farmers have been calling him up and wishing him luck getting the manure to port.
"There is a lack of cattle. There is a lack of manure. We think this is very important for agriculture in Russia," Orlov said.
Some media reports have speculated that the decision not to allow the manure into Kaliningrad was made by the governor.
Yury Krupnich, an agricultural consultant for the regional administration, denied that Yegorov had anything to do with the delay, saying that various federal authorities at the port made the decision.
He acknowledged, however, that the administration was worried about potentially toxic shipments.
He insisted that the Belgian manure lacked a number of documents and that it was an agrochemical.
He also said that Kaliningrad has enough manure.
The State Chemical Commission refused to comment, as did the governor's office.
"He does not deal with manure," said Kaliningrad administration spokesperson Valentin Yegorov.
TITLE: Vodka Seized in Dispute Over Trademark Rights
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Over 10,000 bottles of Moskovskaya vodka destined for the Benelux countries have been impounded by Dutch customs officers pending the resolution of a long-simmering spat over the rights to sell Russia's national spirit abroad.
Unfazed by the seizure, Soyuzplodoimport, the state-run vodka producer that sent the shipment, said this week that this was, in fact, part of its efforts to outmaneuver SPI Group, with which it is locked in a battle over rights to the popular Moskovskaya and Stolichnaya trademarks, as well as dozens of others.
"We shipped the vodka specially," Soyuzplodoimport spokesperson Vladimir Uvatenko said, adding that the shipment of Russian-made Russian vodka lends tangible weight to its case.
"As well as the documents for our lawsuit, there is a concrete shipment of vodka. Now, the court has a concrete case to consider," he said.
SPI, for its part, claimed to be unruffled by the suit, and welcomed the chance to fend off the challenge. "Let them prove it isn't [counterfeit]. They can carry the costs and hire the lawyers," SPI spokesperson Sergei Boguslavsky said.
Vodka magnate Yury Shefler's SPI Group owns the international rights to sell the brands, which it bottles in Latvia, in the trade confederation of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg and some 100 other countries.
Soyuzplodoimport holds only the domestic trademark, and has no legal right to sell its locally produced vodka anywhere outside the country. But, arguing that vodka sold as Russian cannot be made outside Russia, it wants to win SPI's right to the label in each of the countries where SPI registered the trademark - starting with Benelux.
Soyuzplodoimport contested SPI's trademark, on file with the Benelux registry, by filing a competing application for the Moskovskaya rights this month.
But, as holder of the original Benelux trademark, SPI says that Soyuzplodoimport needs its permission to use the Moskovskaya label. Since that authorization was never given, SPI's Boguslavsky said that the vodka sitting on the border is counterfeit.
Soyuzplodoimport knew its vodka would be impounded upon arrival and picked the fight. It sent the crates of bottles along with a lawsuit staking its claim to the label, as a way to raise the profile for its claim.
Soyuzplodoimport filed suit in a Rotterdam district court challenging SPI's rights to use the vodka trademarks in the Benelux countries on Feb. 20. A preliminary hearing has been set for March 12.
The tug of war over the brand name began in October 2001 in Russian courts. After many appeals and delays, SPI lost its right to the Moskovskaya and Stolichnaya brand names in Russia, which it had held along with 41 others since 1997, after the Agriculture Ministry argued to a judge that SPI had obtained the trademark illegally from a company descended from the Soviet Union's food and drink import-export agency, also called Soyuzplodoimport. Along with Moskovskaya, 16 other popular vodka trademarks were put in the government's hands at the same time.
Shortly thereafter, in early 2002, SPI moved production of its brands from Kaliningrad to Riga, Latvia.
Worldwide sales of vodka from the Latvijas Balzams distillery came to an estimated $600 million last year. SPI claims that it can still call its vodka Russian, as it uses spirits imported from Russia.
TITLE: Ministries To Join Forces in Struggle Against Bootleggers
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government's top cop teamed up with its economic pointman Wednesday to battle the burgeoning bootleg market, which they said is costing the country billions of dollars per year.
Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov and Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref told reporters after the first joint meeting of the two ministries' advisory boards that it was time to put an end to the counterfeit economy.
"It has to be understood that, no matter how fancy the word 'counterfeit' may sound, it is still theft," Gref said at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "It's worse than theft - it's plundering."
In the run-up to a hotly anticipated first meeting of the government's intellectual property task force on March 13, Gref and Gryzlov said their two ministries would cooperate to improve legislation and press for tougher penalties for bootleggers.
"How much are they robbing from us?" Gref asked rhetorically.
"Between $3 billion and $12 billion per year on the market for audio-video and digital products alone."
Western companies, meanwhile, lost about $1 billion in royalties from audio-video products sold illegally in Russia last year alone, according to Konstantin Zemchenkov, director of the Russian Anti-Piracy Organization.
Gryzlov said that sales of bootleg auto parts are twice as high as the international average, while sales of fake clothing and cosmetics are six-and 12-times the international norm, respectively.
Ten percent of medicine sold in Russia is fake, said Alexei Orlov, head of the Interior Ministry's economic crime department. The black market for pharmaceuticals is worth $250 million to $300 million per year, he said.
The wave of fake goods has taken a physical toll as well.
Some 32,800 people died in 2002 after drinking bootleg liquor, 6.7 percent more than the previous year, said Nadezhda Nazina, head of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry's trade inspectorate.
Law-enforcement bodies seized about 3,800 decaliters of bootleg alcohol last year, Nazina said.
Part of the problem is that courts acquit 70 percent of counterfeiters, whose goods return to the market, Gryzlov said.
Zemchenkov said that it is difficult to prove in court that goods are counterfeit.
Furthermore, even when counterfeits are seized, the courts often allow the pirates to keep the equipment they used to make the fake goods, Gref said. The fact that bootleg products can be confiscated but the equipment cannot is "nonsense," he said.
But the ministries' attention to the piracy problem is a step forward, Zemchenkov said.
"They have diagnosed the problem, and we can expect to see increased activity and more raids before the government's committee meeting."
TITLE: Russia Blocks Pipe Under Caspian Sea
AUTHOR: By Aida Sultanova
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAKU, Azerbaijan - The Kremlin's envoy to the Caspian region said Wednesday that Moscow would seek to ban pipelines along the bottom of the sea, creating a possible obstacle for a U.S.-backed project to send Caspian oil to a Turkish port.
Deputy Foreign Minister Viktor Kalyuzhny cited environmental reasons as the main argument for banning pipelines.
"We view the construction of pipelines through the Caspian negatively, first of all because of this sea's uniqueness and, second, because of the geodynamic situation," he said in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku. "We would like to risk as little as possible with these things."
Kalyuzhny said that Russia would seek a pipeline ban as part of a future convention on the Caspian Sea's status.
Construction on a pipeline between Baku and Ceyhan in Turkey began last year, and the first oil is scheduled to flow through it in 2005. The pipeline, which would circumvent Russia, is backed by Washington as a way to improve access to oil outside the Middle East.
TITLE: Rethinking the Question of Railroad Reform
AUTHOR: By Russell Pittman
TEXT: IT'S not just Russia. Everywhere in the world, state monopolies providing rail and electricity services are being restructured and reformed, and for good reasons. They eat through massive government subsidies, but can't keep their infrastructure from falling apart. They have little incentive to minimize costs or adopt new technologies, and they provide lots of opportunities for cronyism and corruption.
But what kind of reforms? Will the widely accepted prescriptions for reform work well in Russia? There are reasons to be skeptical, and indeed a little fearful.
The traditional state railway and electricity enterprise is a vertically integrated natural monopoly: The same enterprise both operates the infrastructure (the track or long-distance transmission lines) and provides the service (the trains, power generation). But reformers have come to realize that there may be nothing "natural" about monopolies in the provision of these services: It is easy to imagine more than one company offering freight service over a monopoly track infrastructure, and more than one company generating electricity that will flow over a monopoly grid.
However, trying to create competition in the services sector may create a new set of problems. If the infrastructure operator is also a service provider, it may have an incentive to discriminate against other competing service providers. The standard reform package entails not only demonopolization of the services sector but also vertical separation between the services sector and the grid.
In Russia, the principal reform plans call for separating train-operating companies from the track enterprise and the electricity-generating companies from the grid, privatizing the service providers and opening up those sectors to competition, while maintaining the network grids as state-owned and state-controlled monopolies. Your average Western expert may express happy surprise that Russia is adopting the mainstream model with little modification.
However, the mainstream model has not always worked as well in practice as in the consultant's PowerPoint presentation. It has worked in some conditions in some places, especially in the electricity sector, but it has also had some spectacular failures.
The main problem has been in the assumption that competitive markets can replace regulation in the train operating and electricity generating sectors. In railways, the world experience with reform to date is that little competition is typically created among freight-hauling train companies. The advantages of size and coverage enjoyed by one large train operator are substantial, and new entrants make little headway. In the UK, Sweden, Holland, and Australia, the experience so far has been similar: Following vertical separation, a single freight-train-operating company maintains its near-monopoly market share. A few independent train operators appear, usually run by the large freight shippers themselves, but real competition is quite limited.
The corresponding problem in the electricity sector has had far more serious consequences, and here the prime example is California. California's vertically separated electricity system worked until there was a dry spell that reduced hydroelectric production, followed by a hot summer that increased air-conditioning demand. Then the hazards of the cost structure of electricity generation made themselves apparent. Even though it may seem that there are a large number of suppliers, when capacity limits are approached, two bad things happen: The costs of generation begin to increase rapidly, and individual generating companies can affect prices by withholding supply. The results in California were blackouts, huge price increases, and the bankruptcy of local electricity-distribution companies. Eventually, the state had to step back into the market to guarantee power supplies.
There are other problems besides whether the services sector can be reformed to be competitive. One is the ability of the infrastructure enterprise to pay its expenses. One solution is continued state subsidies, but avoiding these is one of the reasons that reform is called for. A second solution is setting prices high enough to cover fixed costs, but this may not be easy. This seems to have been the biggest problem with rail restructuring in the UK: The infrastructure operator, Railtrack, though subsidized on the passenger side, was unable to make up its expenses from access charges, and went bankrupt.
For the UK, where most freight is carried on roads, a bankrupt rail system was a serious inconvenience but not a catastrophe. For Russia, it could be disastrous.
A final problem with a restructuring plan that maintains countrywide monopoly-grid operators is that a single enterprise controlling all the railway infrastructure or all the long-distance electricity transmission lines in Russia would be - as some have called the Railways Ministry in the past - a state within a state, less likely to be state-controlled than state-controlling. Does Russia really want a Gazprom on Wheels and a Gazprom with Wires?
There are alternative plans that could be and are being considered. The large Latin American countries that have reformed their money-hemorrhaging state railroads - Brazil, Mexico, Argentina - have created regional, vertically integrated companies that compete with each other at common points of service. For example, one company can haul your freight northeast from Mexico City, and if you don't like its service, a second company can haul it northwest and a third company south. It's not a perfect system: If you really must get your freight to or from a particular city, you may face a monopoly carrier. But it provides some competition to many shippers, and the results so far have been impressive increases in productivity and the replacement of subsidies with private investment in the railroads and railroad tax payments to the government. Such an imperfect solution may appear pretty attractive when compared with the alternatives, although it may work better in some places (e.g. European Russia) than in others (e.g. Siberia).
In the United States, both rail customers and electricity customers have benefited from this kind of "geographical competition" for many years. As an alternative that has avoided the disasters experienced by the vertical separation model, it seems worth consideration in Russia.
Russell Pittman, a visiting professor at the New Economic School and economist at the U.S. Department of Justice, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. The views expressed are his own and are not necessarily those of the aforementioned institutions.
TITLE: Paying a High Price for Political Obsession
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
TEXT: TO hear Alexander Afanasyev tell it, they're all innocent. Every time I talk with Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's spokesperson about the latest City Hall official to come under the gaze of the Prosecutor's Office, that's the line I hear. Each case is, according to Afanasyev, just another example of the region's law-enforcement agencies following orders from Moscow to try to make Yakovlev and his administration look bad. I'm sure that, even if I had called him at 4 a.m. on the night of the big Feb. 23 Defenders of the Fatherland Day parties, he would have been able to mumble through his standard answer without much difficulty.
The whole problem here is that, while he may be right to complain that the arrests are all part of a bigger political game, his reason for believing that this is so wrong doesn't wash.
I can't help but wonder while considering some of the reported activities of various bodies in the city administration - the Sports and Communications Committee, for instance, which is headed by Valentin Mettus, the Prosecutors Office's latest target - why they don't just forget about political motives and go after these people for simple questions of legal violations.
Petrovsky Stadium, the 20,000 seat home of local soccer club Zenit, is a case in point. How much do you figure a stadium of this size is worth? I'm guessing that a professional appraisal of the property would manage to come up with a price somewhere in the millions of dollars. And I don't even have to guess - in this case I'm sure - that the price should be at least a little higher than $14. But $14 (454 rubles), according to the Agency for Journalistic Investigation, is exactly the price that City Hall came up with during the formation of draft privatization papers last year.
This is either an extreme example of corruption and insider privatization deals or of a level of stupidity that can only be labeled as criminal. Either way, you would think that the prosecutors would be taking a look.
Or consider the case of Yury Chabrov, the head of the Alternativa agency, which was hired by City Hall to act as the middleman in a $40,000 deal to buy an unfinished sport's complex, who was found floating in the Neva River in April 1999 with his fingers cut off and a broken back? I'm not sure about suggestions from the self-styled investigative weekly newspaper Your Secret Adviser that he was killed as a result of some difficulties with the deal, but I'm even less sure about the Prosecutors Office's conclusion that his death was an accident.
This deal could be a reason for the unexpected death of the businessperson, although prosecutors at that point concluded that it was an accident. Accidents of this type happen to businesspeople who move in these circles far too often.
Take the rumors that surrounded the death of Valeri Malyshev, one Governor Yakovlev's closest allies and, coincidentally, the man who preceded Mettus as the head of the Sports and Communications Committee. Malyshev was officially listed as having died of a stroke less than a year after an investigation into abuse of the office was launched in relation to him by the Northwest Region Prosecutor's office. Malyshev might have been hounded into poor health, as some officials in Smolny maintain, but the talk in the halls of the Legislative Assembly here is still that Malyshev received even more direct aid in dying.
"He was helped to die ... He knew too much about what is going on in City Hall," was one such anonymous comment.
The point is that, when I start to think of all of these cases, I end up with too many questions. I just wish that the Northwest Region Prosecutor's office would provide some answers sometimes.
But so much tie has passed since criminal cases were initiated against various members of the city administration and all the prosecutors have been able to come up with - not counting a few resignations - are "thousands of pages of the investigative materials." None of those cases have resulted in a court decision of any kind.
The federal government continues to talk about the need to fight corruption in the country. Federal officials meet with oligarchs, hold numerous press-conferences and even show people what instances of corruption they suspect took place.
So, in a way, Afanasyev is right. It's all a political game. But the problem isn't that the cases are launched because of politics. The problem is that they don't go anywhere because nobody seems to care about anything but politics.
TITLE: the indestructible punk roaches
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Tarakany!, one of the country's best-known and articulate punk bands, continues its 12th-anniversary nationwide tour, "Punk Rock Dyuzhina" ("Punk Rock Dozen"), this Friday and Saturday with concerts at local rock club Orlandina.
Despite the birthday celebrations, however, the band isn't actually certain about its age: Its members don't remember the date of their live debut as Chetyre Tarakana ("Four Cockroaches"). They do know, however, that the show took place at a high school or a Young Pioneer's palace sometime between early March and late April 1993.
"It was a completely juvenile, amateur event, kind of a trial," said frontman Dmitry "Sid" (as in Vicious, the late bassist/backup singer for the Sex Pistols) Spirin. "For a while, we played only forgettable gigs."
When the band adopted the name Chetyre Tarakana - the four members took the name from a children's song, "Four Cockroaches and a Cricket" - the group had already existed as Kutuzovsky Prospekt for nearly a year, but decided to change its name when promoters of a rock festival advised it to do so.
"They said that a bunch of impudent, teenage punks like us could be molded into a Russian Sex Pistols because we looked the same, had the same foolish, teenage aggression, and performed the same raw, disorderly songs. They said that, if we changed our name, our popularity would skyrocket," Spirin said. "There were already bands called Nochnoi Prospekt and Neonovy Prospekt. Nobody needed another Prospekt."
In 1997, Chetyre Tarakana changed its name to Tarakany!, after a split with its original drummer Denis Rubanov, who claimed the rights to the name Chetyre Tarakana.
But, even with a new name, the band had its work cut out. The road to punk-music legitimacy, and to becoming a Russian Sex Pistols, is paved with obstacles, the most treacherous of which is sounding like a Soviet band.
"In the 1990s, it was very important not to produce sovok [a derogatory slang term for all things Soviet]," said Spirin.
Not only did the band shun Soviet music, it distanced itself from other Russian punk music of the day - specifically, from Omsk punk musician Yegor Letov and his band Grazhdanskaya Oborona. Letov became an extreme nationalist in 1993, when he formed Russky Proryv, or Russian Breakthrough, a coalition of punk musicians and nationalists and radical communists.
"I'm fine with allowing Letov to personify 'Russian punk,'" Spirin said. "We're considered Russian punk because we live in Russia but, in every other respect, we have nothing to do with what is known as Russian punk. At least, that's how we see it.
"None of the Tarakany! have ever been fans of Letov ... not of his anti-Soviet period, his pro-Soviet period, his red, brown or whatever periods," Spirin said. "We just don't really care about him in any of his manifestations."
Spirin said he harbors a similar dislike for the term "Russian rock," feelings about which he sings in "Russian Rock" on the bands sixth, and most recent, album of new material, "Strakh I Nenavist" ("Fear and Hatred").
"Just as there is no Italian jazz, Mongolian hardcore or Japanese heavy metal, there ought to be no 'Russian rock,'" he said. "'Russian rock' is a poor person's comfort. If we can't play, we call ourselves Russian rockers. If we can't express ourselves musically through internationally accepted ways of making music - with melody, rhythm, energy - we shouldn't just pretend."
In its early days, Chetyre Tarakana's songs contained a great deal of English-language lyrics: The band's second album was sung almost entirely in English. Every band on Moscow alternative scene, Spirin said, dreamed of Western tours and releases, because they were sure that such music would never become popular in Russia, with its manufactured, lip-sync pop craze. With time, however, he said he came to the conclusion that the goal of success in the West was an impossible one.
"People didn't understand that, in addition to having songs in a foreign language, you have to play as well as Western bands do, as well as having an interesting approach to music," Spirin said. "It's like learning how to build a Mercedes Benz in your basement and selling it for $50,000. It's just impossible."
With its third album, "Ukral! Vypil! V Tyurmu!" ("Stole! Got Drunk! Went to Jail!"), the band had all but stopped using English texts. That album was also the first the band didn't produce itself - it had been signed to a deal with local independent record label FeeLee, a deal that endures to this day.
With Spirin as the only original member, Tarakany!'s current lineup includes Dmitry Kezhvatov on guitar, Alexei Solovyov on bass and Sergei Prokofyev on drums.
Spirin and Prokofyev also take part - with members of Moscow punk bands NAIVE and Chervona Rutta - in a spin-off project called Priklyucheniya Elektronikov, which covers Soviet children's and pop songs in a variety of styles, from pop-punk and heavy metal to ska and reggae.
Although Tarakany! is considered a veteran band - and is thus privy to a great deal of punk-rock clout - the band was at the receiving end of criticism two years ago, when its "Punk Rock Pesnya," or "Punk Rock Song," was used in a television commercial for Snickers candy bars - a move seen as utterly un-punk by some fans.
The band responded with a statement that they were "proud to be in the same league" as The Clash and The Rolling Stones, both of which allowed their songs to be used in advertising ("Should I Stay or Should I Go" and "Satisfaction," respectively).
"The 'Punk Rock Song' wasn't ideological," Spirin said. "It was just for fun."
Tarakany! play at 7 p.m. on Friday and the same time on Saturday at Orlandina. Links: www.tarakany.ru
TITLE: making music with just a wave of a hand
AUTHOR: by Avery Johnson
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - In a small warren of rooms on the fourth floor of the Moscow Conservatory, the sound of sliding scales can be heard. There, a lone musician plays an instrument without ever touching it.
The instrument is a theremin - invented in 1920 by Soviet musician, inventor and electrical engineer Lev Theremin - and it is widely considered the world's first electronic instrument, a precursor of the synthesizer.
Despite the importance of his invention - and the fact that, during his 97 years of life, Theremin played many roles, including electrical engineer, inventor, musician, society dandy, prison inmate and spy - Theremin has been largely forgotten.
But, at the Conservatory's Theremin Center for Electro-Acoustic Music, theremin player Lydia Kavina labors to keep the inventor's legacy alive, and his instrument in (or near) the hands of musicians. Every Friday at the non-profit studio is Theremin Day, when Kavina - who is Theremin's great niece in addition to being a composer and theremin player - gives free theremin lessons to a group of about 300 students.
The theremin, or thereminvoks in Russian, is an electronic instrument that creates sound when the player's hands move about the instrument, disrupting the electrical fields around it. The result is a ghostly sound that has been used to produce sound effects in science fiction and horror films - including Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" (1945) - practically since the instrument's invention.
But, by playing and promoting a varied repertoire on the instrument, Conservatory graduate Kavina hopes to expand usage of the theramin beyond cinematic soundtracks.
"For me, the theremin is interesting because of its diversity," Kavina said. "It has many uses: You can play classical, popular or jazz music on it."
Within her pop repertoire, Kavina regularly performs with the St. Petersburg electronic outfit Messer Chupps. But, like her great uncle, Kavina is first a classical musician, and bases her repertoire on staples like Camille Saint-Saens' "The Swan," Rachmaninov's "The Storm" and Dvorak's "Humoresque." She has also composed a considerable body of original work for the instrument.
But her efforts may have been in vain.
"Except for Kavina and a few of her students, there are few musicians today who are carrying the classical tradition forward," said Bob Moog, the inventor of the synthesizer and head of Moog Music, in a recent e-mail interview.
Kavina is one of only a handful of professional theremin players left in the world, but she is still hopeful.
"The numbers change every day," she said. "Today, there might be only five but, tomorrow, there could be six and, the next day, 15."
There is some basis for her optimism. In the United States, the theremin has enjoyed a rise in popularity in recent years, largely as the result of a 1993 documentary entitled "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey." Moog said that, in the past six years, his company has sold about 1,000 theremins per year.
Born in 1896 into an aristocratic St. Petersburg family, Theremin, having obtained degrees in Physics and Mathematics, in 1919, Theremin fell in line with the new Bolshevik regime. While working as a government researcher, Theremin found that the human body could act as an electrical conductor, and that the movement of hands near circuitry registered as changes in pitch. The theremin - then called an "etherphone" - was born.
As a means to promote electrification among the Soviet people, Vladimir Lenin sent Theremin and his invention on a show-tour of the country in 1922. That tour led to an overseas assignment, first in Europe and later in the United States, where the cream of New York society turned out for the first theremin concert, after which Theremin remained in the country for a decade.
"Theremin was a Russian patriot, so he didn't leave [the Soviet Union] for political reasons," Kavina said. "He thought of this as a business trip. It never came into his mind to give up his citizenship. He knew he would return to his country."
Indeed, the Soviet trade organization Amtorg asked Theremin to ferret out U.S. industrial secrets to aid the Soviet effort to catch up with the West.
"You could say he was a spy," Kavina said.
But Theremin biographer Albert Glinsky underplayed Theremin's spying in his book "Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage" (2000), writing that the inventor's work amounted mostly to infrequent vodka sessions with gray suited-men in a Fifth Avenue bar.
In 1938, Theremin was recalled to the Soviet Union. When he arrived in Russia, Josef Stalin's purges were in full swing, and, according to Kavina, most of his friends had either left Russia or been thrown in prison. And, in 1939, Theremin was sent to a labor camp near Magadan, his reputation tarnished after his years in the West. Even after being released post-World War II, Theremin continued to work for the state, this time under the aegis of the KGB, eventually devising a wireless bug that was used to tap Spaso House, the residency at the American Embassy in Moscow.
Meanwhile, the theremin had been used to produce sound for a host of American science fiction movies, including "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) and "It Came From Outerspace" (1953). By the late 1960s, though, the instrument had been eclipsed by its successor, Moog's synthesizer - a development Theremin, isolated from events in the West, knew nothing about.
In the mid-1980s, Theremin took Kavina, who had exhibited a talent for theremin playing, under his wing.
"I was 9 years old when he started the lessons," Kavina said. "He was never a teacher in the normal sense of the word, not strict or giving homework."
Kavina continued to study the theremin, making her public debut in 1991. In 1993, Theremin died at the age of 97.
Today, a decade after the inventor's death, Kavina said she feels that the Conservatory, and the country, underestimate the value of her great uncle's invention.
"For so long, there's been no support for electronic music," Kavina said. "Now, we're just trying to build it up from nothing."
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Rock club Moloko, which has been asked to leave its premises by its district's Property Committee, has started a petition against the planned closure. The appeal can be signed in the club. The venue has also prepared a letter to city authorities to be signed by some respected mainstream rock figures, from Akvarium's Boris Grebenshchikov to DDT's Yury Shevchuk. According to manager Yury Ugryumov, Moloko will work through May. "Then, if nothing happens, we'll throw away the idea or start looking for new location," he said.
Meanwhile, Faculty, which calls itself the official club of St. Petersburg State University, abruptly closed earlier this month. Although the club issued no warning, manager Nikita Pozdnyakov said it is currently under repairs and will reopen before long. The club, which used to host concerts by best-known local bands such as Kirpichi and Tequilajazzz, had been experiencing repertoire difficulties, and even placed an ad on the Web for an art director. No date for the reopening has been set.
With rock places facing difficulties, more and more venues are appearing that aim at an up-scale crowd claiming to have more refined taste than the usual nouveau riche (or New Russian) blend of casino and Russian lip-sync pop. Key words to look out for here are "restricted," "elitist," "membership" and "invitation-only."
One such place, Pla.Styl.Inn, which has been on the scene since early February in secret, invitation-only mode, will throw an opening party Friday - although by invitation only. The "open" launch party is scheduled for Saturday. Tickets will cost 200 rubles ($6.35) but, according to the club's spokesperson, in a month the place will be open only to members and invitees. The awkwardly spelled Pla.Styl.Inn - pronounced "plastilin" ("plasticine") - stands for "Place. Style. Inn," and will host house parties with Moscow and local DJs, but a concert by live act Billy's Band is scheduled for March 20. Located in the former premises of gay club 69, which folded last year, the club is aimed at the "business elite, fashion and show business, trendy musicians, artists and writers, teachers and students of elite universities, gilded youth, popular club characters," according to a press release.
Onegin, a similarly restrictive club that threw a pompous and much talked-about launch party earlier this month, defines itself as "everything that is most sophisticated and elitist: interiors, cuisine, public." Now, the club is holding "exclusive concerts," starting with an acoustic set by Ilya Lagutenko, frontman of the pop/rock band Mumii Troll, on Saturday.
International acts this week include the Richard Galliano Trio at the Shostakovich Philharmonic on Friday. French jazz accordionist Galliano rediscovered his French roots on advice from tango composer Astor Piazolla, and is bringing what he calls the "new musette" - a traditional French music style, but influenced by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix.
What Galliano does for musette is probably what Sweden's New Tango Orquesta does for tango. Claiming to be the sole orchestra in the world developing and playing only original written tango, it uses traditional acoustic instruments and electric guitar, and incorporates avant-garde, free form, improvisation and aggressive jazz.
Finally, Vilnius, Lithuania-based drummer extraordinaire Vladimir Tarasov will come for a couple of gigs with his local counterparts. See Gigs.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: erotica and good food - in one!
AUTHOR: by Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Lazy Sunday evenings are by far the best time go and review restaurants. At that time, most people are safely tucked up at home in front of a good film, and you can have a nice quiet meal to give you strength before the start of the week. Howevver, my dining companion and I had completely forgotten that last Sunday was a much-loved Russian holiday - Defenders of the Fatherland Day. We arrived at Svoznyak, on Ulitsa Vosstaniya, a new place that describes itself as an "erotic puppet theater, bar and restaurant," to find the place packed with tablefuls of rowdy men and a hoard of couples feeling - to put it mildly - in a romantic mood.
Undeterred, we took a seat at the bar, where a friendly bartender served us a Campari with orange juice (100 rubles, $3.15) and a Franziskaner wheat beer on tap (120 rubles, $3.80), and had a good look at the surroundings.
With the exception of the giant marble pole trickling with water and surrounded by sculptures of prostrated women, the decor is only gently erotic, and more in the slapstick genre, with a few scantily clad puppets in suggestive poses here and there. Otherwise, the place is populated by an eclectic hoard of bizarre - and, to be honest, fairly unsexy - puppets and sculptures of Egyptian, Inca, prehistoric and medieval inspiration. What prompted the owners to call it Svoznyak, or "draught," remained a mystery to us.
Overall, Svoznyak is actually quite a cozy place, if a little tacky, and the curved wooden separations that enclose every table give it an appropriate intimate feel.
After our short, but instructive, stay at the bar, we were seated in an isolated little alcove for two that some couple must have booked before deciding to stay in for the Sunday-night film.
In the comfort of our newly found alcove, we proceeded to dig into the starters we had ordered - a celery and Roquefort soup (130 rubles, $4.10) for my dining companion, and a Roquefort salad for me (180 rubles, $5.70). The soup, which came in a generous portion, was creamy and subtle, and the salad, a mix of chunks of Roquefort, cubes of other cheeses, grapes and croutons was a real treat, which I strongly recommend to all lovers of strong cheese.
By this time, the puppet show had started, and it became increasingly difficult to focus on food as the puppets groped each other, squirmed, and pouring out a flow of sexual innuendoes. Other highlights of the evening included a dazzling violin performance "by Paganini himself," and a no-less-energetic performance by a topless woman, to the delight of the alcohol-fuelled male audience.
All this didn't prevent us from doing our homework conscientiously and paying close attention to the food, which wasn't difficult because the mains were as tasty as the starters. The main I had ordered, duck breast with orange sauce and peels (400 rubles, $12.70), was tender and aromatic, and the potato croquettes (60 rubles, $1.90) provided a decent accompaniment. My dining companion was reasonably pleased by his veal blanquette (270 rubles, $13.55) and chips (60 rubles, $1.90), despite finding the meat a little dry.
Among the few unusual dishes that caught my eye on the menu were venison, for a dazzling 850 rubles ($26.95), and frog legs in garlic butter, which went for 400 rubles.
For drinks, we each had a glass of Chilean Sunrise Cabernet and Sunrise Carmenere, both 120 rubles ($3.80), which we found to be a little rough.
Reclining on our golden fish-shaped cushions, we decided to stay a bit longer and share the house's cognac-flamed creme brulee, 160 rubles ($5.05). Already feeling rather full, we had trouble finishing it, but it proved far too tasty to be left half-eaten.
It is difficult to sum up Skvoznyak in a few words, but it is a place that definitely deserves to be seen, if only once, as it offers one of the most eccentric mixes of genres you will find in this classical city. And even those not feeling particularly erotic can be sure to appreciate Skvoznyak as one of the few places in town that manages to combine friendly service and fine food.
Skvoznyak. 20 Ul. Vosstaniya. Tel.: 272-2277. Daily, noon to 2 a.m. Menu in Russian only. Credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, with alcohol: 1,770 rubles ($56.10).
TITLE: a fairy-tale ballet-dancing career
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Alina Cojocaru barely has any time to think seriously about her lightning-fast rise to fame. The 21-year-old principal dancer of London's Royal Ballet says the tempo of her life is even a little scary.
"When I think about it, it's always like, 'Oh my God, I'm only 21, and I've been through so much," Cojocaru said in an interview before her debut at the Mariinsky Theater this week. "It's like a whole lifetime. I've just been carried away."
Sitting on a well-worn sofa in her dressing room at the Mariinsky, where she danced as part of the Mariinsky International Ballet Festival, the delicate, Thumbelina-like Cojocaru said that her life has much in common with the story of Cinderella - which explains why she feels close to the ballet of the same name. The parallel first struck her after dancing Cinderella for the first time at Kiev's Opera and Ballet Theater in the 1998-1999 season.
"I remember seeing a picture of myself holding ballet shoes," Cojocaru recalled. "I thought that I was born with a gift for dance - like Cinderella, who received her gift from a good fairy. When I was born, the magic ballet shoes were there, waiting for me."
"When Cinderella enters the ballroom, she is beautiful, no-one can take their eyes off her," she said. "I'm not saying that I only feel beautiful on stage, but that the stage does that magic transformation. It's where the gift shows, and does the magic."
Born in Bucharest, Romania, into a family of market-stall holders, Cojocaru expressed an early interest in gymnastics, but quickly switched to dance. At the age of nine, she was invited to the Kiev Ballet School, where she studied for seven years. At that point, though, she had still not seen her first ballet.
"I loved dancing, but I was childish about it," she said. "I looked at my teacher and thought, 'I want to be that good.' I just loved going through the movements and, of course, the shoes."
When, aged 10, Cojocaru saw her first ballet, her attitude changed. She said that, watching "Giselle" from the wings, "I realized where I should be going, and what this art is really about."
In 1997, Cojocaru, then 16, won the prestigious Prix de Lausanne, and took a six-month scholarship at the Royal Ballet. When the course finished, she had two drastically different options open to her: stay with the Royal Ballet - in the corps de ballet - or return to the Kiev Opera and Ballet Theater - as a principal dancer. It was a tough choice.
"My parents couldn't really advise me, because they don't know much about the ballet world," Cojocaru said. "Of course, they wanted me to go to London - because it's a much nicer place to live than Ukraine - but, for them, I wasn't a ballerina so much as their young daughter who needed a safe place to live."
Relative standards of living notwithstanding, Cojocaru returned to Kiev, where she danced an array of top roles - including Cinderella - in a single season. By the end of the 1998-1999 season, she felt it was time for a change, and sent her resume to the Royal Ballet, who invited her to join the troupe - in the corps de ballet.
Although she considered the Mariinsky at the time, St. Petersburg appeared less of a ballet capital than London. In addition, the theater's repertoire at the time offered little more than staples by choreographers like Marius Petipa - of whom she had had enough in Kiev.
"I knew that I couldn't go any further in Kiev," Cojocaru said. "To develop, I needed the Royal Ballet."
The speed of Cojocaru's rise to the top in London - she made a dazzling transition from corps-de-ballet member to first soloist in just one season - shocked even the dancer.
"I've been getting such rave reviews, with such high expectations. I should probably stop reading them," she laughed.
Cojocaru's first solo performance in London was the lead role in Sir Frederick Ashton's "Symphonic Variations," in February 2000. It won high praise from the critics, and her career was launched. She went on to dance Juliet, in "Romeo and Juliet," and Giselle, a character of particular importance to her from seeing her first ballet. After her debut in the role in 2001, Anthony Dowell, then head of the Royal Ballet, promoted Cojocaru to principal dancer. She was just 19.
Reflecting on the past five years, Cojocaru said her decision to return to Kiev for a year as principal dancer was crucial - and paid off from her first role in London.
"My experience from Kiev was so much help," she said. "Without it, I could never have learned the role [in "Symphonic Variations"] in the five days I was given."
"I got used to performing for large audiences [in Kiev] and, more importantly, I built up my confidence. I wasn't scared any more," she said. "I knew I wouldn't feel lost on stage at Covent Garden [the home of the Royal Ballet]."
Although Cojocaru said she now feels happy in London, the transition from Kiev was far from seamless. She describes her first year as a "nightmare" - she spoke almost no English, it took her more than an hour to get to work on crowded public transport, and she continually got lost in numerous bills and pieces of paperwork.
"In Kiev, I never received my salary through the bank," she recalled. "In London, I had to learn so much so quickly, and I needed the language all the time."
These days, though, the only thing Cojocaru misses about Kiev is the people. About three years ago, she couldn't resist a nostalgic trip to the Ukrainian capital. When she arrived, almost all her friends and teachers were out of town on their summer holidays.
"I have very good memories about Kiev, our classes, funny performances and jokes," she said. "I have friends in London. but those first friends are special. It can't compare."
Being based in London, Cojocaru often dances works by Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan who, fortunately, are her favorites. She is looking forward to dancing the lead role in MacMillan's "Manon" later this year.
"Macmillan's choreography is so easy to communicate. You don't have to try to act - you just do the choreography, and the acting comes naturally with the movements," she explained. "It's not only your body, but your heart and soul dancing together. It's a holistic experience."
Cojocaru's devotion to her art knows few boundaries. She virtually lives on stage - her record is rehearsing five roles simultaneously.
"I was doing Olga and Tatyana, in 'Yevgeny Onegin;' Kitri, in 'Don Quixote;' and Nikiya, in 'La Bayadere,'" she said. "I almost killed myself. My whole life was just hectic, flying and jumping from studio to studio."
Calling herself a hopeless perfectionist, Cojocaru said she is learning to be less hard on herself.
"Who will benefit if I kill myself, striving for perfection?" she asked rhetorically. "Sometimes, I think about ballet and go through things at home, and ballet is the last thing I think of when I fall asleep. Sometimes, I wake up still going through things."
Despite her hectic schedule, Cojocaru said she does not want to sacrifice her personal life to the stage.
"Often, if you devote yourself to your art, you eventually realize that you don't have time for yourself, but I'm not like that. I'm simply living my life," she smiled. "You work in the studio and give it your all but, then, you leave the studio and go out with someone."
With many years in ballet still left, Cojocaru already has her eye on drama - although she aims to keep everyone guessing as to exactly what she means.
"I'd love to do a drama production. We're working on it. I think I should start with something short and easy," she said - before adding that she already has something in mind.
Alina Cojocaru dances at the closing concert of the Mariinsky International Ballet Festival on Sunday.
TITLE: celebrating plane romance
AUTHOR: by Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The airplane became one of the most recognizable symbols and one of the most magnetic myths of the 20th century. In the Soviet Union, for example, airplanes were a central theme in the works of avant-garde artist Alexander Deineka, a eulogist for the new Soviet lifestyle in the 1930s and 1940s. Today, the heroic spirit of war is hardly fashionable, and airplanes may seem a strange theme for a contemporary-art exhibition. For St. Petersburg artist Pyotr Shvetsov, however, the appeal of the airplane is still alive, which is reflected in the exhibition of his lithographs and paintings, entitled "Aeroplany" ("Airplanes"), that opened in the Navicular Artis Gallery at the Free Arts Foundation at Pushkinskaya 10 on Saturday.
The assembly of French, German, U.S. and Russian fighters, bombers and airliners conjure up an ominous, anxious atmosphere, which is enhanced by the sounds of an airplane engine sputtering. Yet some magic is also present, as most craft depicted are propeller planes that were replaced by jet-engine machines after the 1940s. Now, they serve as a symbol of a previous epoch, rather than reflecting reality.
Although Svetsov confesses that "I have never done a parachute jump, and doubt that I could," he is very much into military symbolism, aviation history and heroism. Most works at the exhibition are untitled, and those that are bear the name of the airplane depicted - B-50, Tu-87, etc. The lithographs on display resemble old newspaper clippings, an effect created by Shvetsov's artistic technique of imposing gauze or sackcloth on old airplane photos, says Navicula Artis Gallery curator Andrei Klyukanov. This makes them ethereal and blurry, imbued with the sounds of the rumbling engine.
As Shvetsov explains, the main heroes of the exhibition are not the planes but, rather, the pilots: "I wanted to talk about the 20-year-old boys who are invisibly present in each work at the control columns of the planes."
According to Klyukanov, "We perceive the pilots of the time as the last dandies and knights. They had their own code of honor, and were the only people to have an individual fighting technique - a sort of an aerial knights' tournament."
"That's why they enjoyed certain privileges, and their eccentricites were accepted," Klyukanov says. "For example, one German pilot had a cigarette lighter built into his control panel, while another flier agreed to navigate only if there was a bottle of champagne in the cabin."
Apart from the graphic works, also on display are painted objects - wooden fragments, small planks, pieces of iron and other wreckage that seems to have been found on an airfield. Also there is a painting glued to a food-preparation board; the effect is to domesticate the image, and neutralize the lithographic images of the plane, with its overtones of ghosts and angels of death.
A giant, 50-square-meter fresco of a 1930s Soviet airplane on the ceiling squeezes the gallery's walls with its wings, and recalls the works of Daneika, who decorated the ceilings of stations in the Moscow metro system with airplanes. However, whereas those frescoes and mosaics were installed by Soviet artists to last for centuries, Shevtsov's fresco - created especially for the exhibition - will be painted over after March 13 as Shevtsov's own heroic gesture.
In addition, Klyukanov says, covering over the fresco "also gives the artist's works the status of pure art."
TITLE: cerebral fable short on thrills
AUTHOR: By Stephen Holden
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: Whether gazing darkly over the ocean from a captain's perch in "The Perfect Storm'' or contemplating the viscous, shape-shifting reality of a mysterious planet from a space station in his new movie "Solaris,'' George Clooney projects the brooding solipsism of a man's man encased in a shell of loneliness. In the Hollywood pantheon of recycled heroes, he suggests a Clark Gable for the new millennium, without the raised eyebrow and rakish leer. That space station, the setting for most of "Solaris," is a gleaming, sterile pod that feels increasingly claustrophobic as this solemn science-fiction fable prepares to dispense its intriguing riddles. The world of "Solaris" may be a universe away from the frothy Las Vegas gloss of "Ocean's Eleven," this star's last collaboration with Steven Soderbergh, who directed both movies. But Clooney's guarded insularity injects both films with steady dark bass notes.
"Solaris" observes its characters in semi-shadow much of the time. Clooney's eyes glisten through the gloom like shiny black coals studded into a craggy twilit landscape. But a third of the way into the film, Clooney's shell begins to crack. As his character, Chris Kelvin, starts to unravel, the grimy rivulets of guilt and longing leaking out of him lend the movie a palpable subterranean ache. Chris' tears aren't the warm, cathartic sobs of a grieving Rhett Butler softened by one too many brandies, but the tremors of a man who thought he had all the answers suddenly confronting a scary metaphysical conundrum.
A psychiatrist called upon to investigate the increasingly irrational behavior of a crew posted at a distant space station named the Prometheus, Chris continues to mourn the suicide of his wife, Rheya (Natascha McElhone), years after her death. As he confronts forces that might be described as a kind of virtual reality emanating from his own mind, his certainty of what is real and what is not begins to crumble, and a lifetime of stifled doubts and regrets rears up to haunt him.
"Solaris" was adapted from Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel, which also inspired a 1972 film by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. The story turns out to be a kind of aesthetic Rorschach for filmmakers.
In the hands of Soderbergh, collaborating with the producer James Cameron (who directed "Titanic"), many of the fussy scientific and philosophical details of the two previous incarnations have been discarded. Retooled into a sleek pop fable that doesn't bother to connect all its dots, the movie aspires to fuse the mystical intellectual gamesmanship of "2001: A Space Odyssey" with the love-beyond-the-grave romantic schmaltz of "Titanic," without losing its cool. It's a tricky balancing act that doesn't quite come off.
Because Soderbergh is far from a pop sentimentalist, the movie's strain of Kubrickian skepticism dampens any Cameronian romantic heat. The chill is only accentuated by Cliff Martinez's ethereally melancholy score of synthesized pulses filtered through strings.
Arriving at the space station, Chris discovers that the mission's commander, Gibarian (Ulrich Tukur), who summoned him but refused to say what was wrong, has committed suicide. The two remaining scientists, Snow (Jeremy Davies) and Gordon (Viola Davis), are exhibiting symptoms of acute paranoia presumably brought on by their scientific inquiries. Snow is a giggling, maniacal trickster, while Gordon refuses to leave her quarters. One tantalizing clue as to what's happening is the realization that the oceanic planet under examination seems to be reacting to the scientists, as though it knows it's being observed.
Once he awakens after a troubled sleep to find his dead wife lying beside him restored to life, Chris finds himself surrendering to the same unnerving phenomena. The heart of the film is his agonized dialogue with this flesh-and-blood phantom woman who seems physically real but whose selective memory suggests that she is only a mental projection of what he remembers of her. As the couple rake over their past, we learn that the bitterest bone of contention between them was Rheya's failure to inform Chris of her infertility before they were married. Now, in her resurrected state, she appears weirdly indestructible.
The movie goes out of its way to emphasize that Chris and Rheya are no Leo and Kate locked in eternal puppy love, but a sorrowful couple who weathered many battles while married. Her wide eyes staring hawk-like out of her angular mask of a face, McElhone projects a forbidding sensuality. Even when she becomes emotionally unstrung, her eruptions have the slightly robotic quality of the android she might well turn out to be.
The movie is visually handsome in an austere way. Its space station has an interior that suggests an elegant oversize Laundromat with furniture that reminds you of giant computer keyboards. Solaris itself is a golden, rainbow-flecked swirl of matter that exerts an increasingly irresistible gravitational pull.
But once the novelty of the space station has worn off, the movie's atmosphere begins to feel uncomfortably cramped and stifling. For "Solaris" is a science-fiction film lacking action-adventure sequences. The absence of boyish friskiness, kineticism and pyrotechnics makes it a film that offers no vicarious physical release. Its insistence on remaining cerebral and somber to the end may be a sign of integrity, but it could cost it dearly at the box office.
"Solaris" shows at Avrora through March 7, at Mirage Cinema through March 5, and starts March 7 at Parisiana.
TITLE: bad habits, compositional genius
AUTHOR: By Stephen Press
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: Don't judge the subject of this book by the image displayed on its cover: a detailed closeup from Ilya Repin's familiar portrait of Modest Mussorgsky, garish red nose and all, painted in 1881 just days before his death at St. Petersburg's Nikolayevsky Military Hospital. Alcoholism took its toll early; he had just turned 42. Other images of the composer of "Boris Godunov" and "Pictures at an Exhibition" show a much different character: well-groomed, fastidiously dressed, and with an aristocratic demeanor. While we cannot ignore the tragic leitmotif of dipsomania and early death, to many people the art he created marks him perhaps Russia's greatest national composer.
Nevertheless, those interested in his weaknesses will not be disappointed by "Musorgsky: His Life and Works." David Brown has written a no-holds-barred biography in the long-lived Master Musicians series. But the focus here is on Mussorgsky's music. Brown enthusiastically traces his entire output in a rich historical and social context. He draws freely on the latest scholarship to give us a new vision of the composer.
Mussorgsky's output was respectable for someone who composed so fitfully. It is especially remarkable, given that Mussorgsky, who had been born into the gentry in 1839, had to take a civil service job to make a living after Alexander II emancipated the serfs in 1861. In his youth, he studied piano with his mother, and he followed family tradition by entering cadet school in 1851. There, he gained lifelong friends and, quite possibly, his addiction to alcohol. He also continued musical studies. At graduation, he was commissioned as an officer in the prestigious Preobrazhensky Regiment, Peter the Great's old group. Yet he obviously was not suited to military life and, by June 1858, the tsar had granted him a discharge; it came in time for the first of many emotional crises in his life.
Before being discharged, Mussorgsky met two important mentors: the critic Vladimir Stasov, later his most ardent supporter, and Mily Balakirev, the artistic heir of Mikhail Glinka. He immediately began composition lessons with Balakirev, whose teaching method was unorthodox (analyzing works by the masters while playing through four-hand piano reductions) and manner invasive ("No, no, this is how your piece should go"). His pupil was eager and grateful. But differences arose: A particularly brusque Balakirev dismissal came in 1867, after he looked over Mussorgsky's newly completed "St. John's Night on Bald Mountain." As Mussorgsky's maverick tendencies distanced him from Balakirev, he drew closer to Stasov.
The account of the last years is depressing. Drink gradually took its toll, and Mussorgsky was dismissed from government service in January 1880. On his desk were two incomplete operas. Financial support soon came from opposing groups, one calling for the completion of "Khovanshchina," the other for "Sorochintsy Fair." Mussorgsky finished neither. After fits and falls, and possibly a stroke, he was taken to a hospital on Feb. 24, 1881. There was some improvement in his condition, and Repin painted his portrait in four sittings. Then, as Brown relates, "came the fatal act. In his craving for alcohol, which had been totally forbidden him, Mussorgsky bribed one of the orderlies to bring in a bottle of wine or cognac. The result was catastrophic."
Mussorgsky's career as composer is also distinctive: the early influence of Alexander Dargomyzhsky's opera "The Stone Guest" caused him to embrace realism in art, marked by the song "With Nurse" and the incomplete experimental opera dialogue, "The Marriage," of 1868. Despite the continuation of this style in "Boris Godunov" (1869) and occasional reappearances in later works, the rest of his career saw a retreat to a more traditional, lyrical style. Mussorgsky was primarily an opera composer; his output for piano and for orchestra is small. His chef-d'oeuvre is the 1872 revision of "Boris Godunov," one of the greatest Western works of the 19th century, which attests to his technical mastery - a remarkable feat given his lack of rigorous training. The extended musical discussions of the operas will undoubtedly tax the lay reader with their talk of enharmonic relations, tonal parentheses, nonfunctional harmony and more. But there is as much to be gained in the far more accessible analyses of the composer's 64 songs; they trace the same musical development.
Mussorgsky quickly left behind the customary sentimental romance. "Old Man's Song," from 1863, about a beggar lingering near a doorway, demonstrates his keen skill in capturing the essence of humanity's outcasts in a manner detached but hardly indifferent. As Brown notes, the tone of this song is especially remarkable: "already the composer of 'Boris Godunov' is in prospect." "Kalistratushka," from the following year, demonstrates his newfound interest in the folk milieu. Then, with "Darling Savishna" - the babbling of an idiot declaring his love for a peasant girl, a scene Mussorgsky actually witnessed - realism appears in his songs. But by 1868, "The Orphan" presages that alliance of realism with lyricism that would produce some of the best pages in "Boris." The survey ends with the familiar "Song of the Flea" of 1879. Listening to the songs would complement the book but, alas, there is no complete recording available.
Brown's book fills a need. As well as being a state-of-the-art guide to Mussorgsky's life and works, it is a useful introduction to the history of mid-19th-century Russian music. For those undaunted by the density of Brown's musical examples, his illumination of this impressive body of work can only foster deeper appreciation and encourage further investigation. The book may even start a campaign for the proper spelling and pronunciation of the composer's name (one "s" and stress on the first syllable).
Stephen Press, who teaches music history at Illinois Wesleyan University, is the author of the forthcoming book "Prokofiev's Ballets for Diaghilev."
"Musorgsky: His Life and Works." By David Brown. Oxford University Press. 336 pages. $35.
TITLE: the word's worth
AUTHOR: by Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Da net!: absolutely not, no way, under no circumstances!
Even before you had your first Russian lesson, you knew that da meant yes and net, no. And then, in your second year of Russian, once you had gotten used to people sleeping on stoves (na pechke) and accepted that you would never ever be able to use certain verbs of motion properly, in one of your translations you come across, "U vas bolshoi kollektiv?" "Da net! Ya da Sveta!" We all got the question: "Do you have a large staff?" But what about the answer? Back to the dictionary.
According to my etymological dictionary, the original meaning of da was "in order to, in order that," and is related to the Latin denique (finally, in the end; and then; at worst; in short, to sum up; in fact, indeed). If that weren't puzzling enough, the Dal Russian dictionary tells you that da can replace virtually any conjunction. It conveys doubt; can be used to indicate a correction, reminder, or emphasis; or can express the wish for something to happen. In other words, if you can't think of a word, use da and chances are it will fly.
In da net! da is used for emphasis - absolutely not, under no circumstances, no way, forget it. When used with a command, it implies "I mean business": Da molchite! Da ostav ty menya v pokoye! (Shut up! Leave me the hell alone!) It replaces "and" in Ya da Sveta (Sveta and I), but with the connotation of "just me and Sveta."
Prikhodi vecherom, da zakhvati vino means "Come on over this evening, and grab some wine," but has a slight shade of "and by the way, on second thought, while you're at it, you ought to pick up a bottle of wine." If someone can't come to your party and replies, Khochu priti, da ne mogu, da stands in for "but": I'd like to come, but I can't. And after the party was a roaring success, the poor guy who couldn't make it can pine, Da, znal by, poshyol by (if only I'd known, I'd have gone).
Da nu! is a handy expression that expresses exasperation: Come on now! Get with it! Give me a break! Da... i to means "at that," as in the sentence: Da odin storozh na ves dom, i to glukhoi (there's only one watchman for the whole building, and he's deaf at that). And then da can be used to express "let" or "may" or even "long live" - a wish for something to happen. This was in currency during the Soviet period: Da zdravstvuyet sovetskaya armiya! Da budet svet! (Long live the Soviet army! Let there be light!). Although the dictionaries tell you that da-da-da! means "yes, absolutely, of course, no doubt about it," the dictionaries lie. In my experience, when someone tells me, Da-da-da! Ya sdelayu! it really means, "I'll do it when pigs fly."
In comparison, net is a simple soul: Net means no, and that's pretty much it.
There are a number of cultures in which it's impolite to say "no," and, until you figure this out, you keep expecting all those maybes, probablys, certainlys, undoubtedlys, and of courses will lead to action, and are constantly disappointed when they don't. Not so in Russia. Here the motto is, when in doubt, say no. For several hundred years, net has been the safe bet. Yes and a show of initiative could get you a one-way trip to Siberia, so why risk it?
On the other hand, net is distastefully bald, so there are a lot of polite ways to say no, mostly using all kinds of lovely vague and indefinite expressions: ne rekomenduyetsya (it's not a good idea); netselesoobrazno (it's not advisable); luchshe ne nado (better not); ya by ne stal (I wouldn't).
The vaguer the language, the clearer the message: You don't have a hope in hell of getting whatever you are asking from me. Net tak net (so no it is).
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
TITLE: Annan Makes Last-Ditch Effort on Cyprus
AUTHOR: By Alex Efty
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LARNACA, Cyprus - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Greek and Turkish Cypriots Wednesday to agree on a UN plan to unite their war-divided island.
Annan arrived in Cyprus after visits to Greece and Turkey where he lobbied the "mother countries" of Cyprus' two communities to support the proposal.
"I pray that the leaders, in their wisdom, will come to an agreement in the coming few days," Annan told reporters at the airport.
He said that this would allow the two peoples to hold separate referenda on March 30 "to bring into being the new state of affairs in Cyprus."
Following that, a reunited Cyprus could move to join the European Union next year.
"Let the word go out to Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot alike: you have a rendezvous with destiny," Annan said.
The Annan plan envisages Cyprus as a single country with Greek and Turkish Cypriot federal states linked by a weak central government. The plan provides for reduction of the current 34 percent of the island's territory under Turkish control to 28 percent and the return of 90,000 Greek Cypriot refugees to their homes in the freed territory.
He hopes to achieve an agreement by Friday, but he is prepared to extend this deadline by a maximum of one week.
"If this opportunity is missed, it is not clear whether it will come again any time soon," Annan said.
However, the signals from the leaders were not positive Wednesday. Both sides said that they needed more time to solve a problem that has defied settlement since 1974. Turkey invaded the island that year, after a coup by Greek Cypriot supporters of union with Greece. The breakaway state in the north is recognized only by Turkey, which maintains 40,000 troops there.
"Accepting the revised plan demands very painful concessions on our part," Cyprus Foreign Minister Yiannakis Kassoulides told state-run Cypriot radio early Wednesday.
Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash said that the new version of the Annan plan "has given the Greek Cypriots a cake and given us a peanut."
But Annan can expect significant support for his plan from Turkish Cypriots. Organizers of a pro-peace rally that drew 50,000 Turkish Cypriots last month have called another demonstration for Thursday on the Turkish side of Nicosia, the divided capital of the island. And some trade unions have urged members to stage a one-day strike to support the Annan plan.
Denktash, who rebuked last month's demonstrators for undermining him, held talks with Annan on Wednesday night. Afterward, Denktash said that his side would study the revised plan, but the secretary general "knows that this will not be over by the 28th."
TITLE: Els Out of Matchplay Tourney in First Round
AUTHOR: By Doug Ferguson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: CARLSBAD, California - Ernie Els should have known better.
He was seemingly safe this time, having blasted out of a bunker so close to the cup that his par was conceded on the 18th hole. He was 1 up over Phil Tataurangi, and all that stood in the way of a first-round victory was the Kiwi's 8-meter birdie putt.
"I shouldn't have looked," Els said. "Him making that putt shocks you a little bit."
Els was so stunned that he started laughing, almost as though he knew how the match at La Costa Resort was going to end. He was right.
Two holes later, Tataurangi hit a 6-iron to within 1 meter, a birdie that Els conceded even before stepping into a bunker for a miracle shot that never came.
Just like that, the Big Easy was on a plane home to Florida.
Just like that, the dream final between Els and Tiger Woods was up in smoke.
No one ever said the World Match Play Championship was easy.
"If you don't go out there and play well right away, you'll be going home," Woods said after a 2-and-1 victory over Carl Pettersson. "I know that, and everyone else knows that."
Even Woods had a tough time, even though he played flawless golf for 17 holes. He never took control until the 13th hole, and experienced the rollercoaster of emotions on the 16th, a par 3 over water.
Woods had 4 meters for birdie to win the match. Pettersson was off the green, but then chipped in for birdie.
"I had a putt that probably looked like it would win the match. Then, it looked like I could lose the hole," Woods said. "That's match play. It can swing that quick. I knew if I made that putt, I'd probably win the match."
And so it went through partly cloudy, breezy afternoon at La Costa, where nothing seemed certain until the handshake at the end.
. Mike Weir had to go 26 holes against Loren Roberts, the longest match in the five-year history of the event.
"It was a lot of hard work," said Weir, coming off a seven-stroke comeback to win the Nissan Open.
. Sergio Garcia was 3 up with six holes to play against defending champion Kevin Sutherland, then proceeded to lose the next five holes and head to the airport. It was the earliest departure for Garcia at La Costa.
. David Duval made a sterling recovery against Justin Rose with birdies on the 16th and 17th holes. They went to extra holes, and Duval needed two putts from 17 meters to advance. Instead, he three-putted, then lost on the 20th hole.
. Jay Haas, 49, the oldest player in the tournament, became the oldest player to win a match when he hammered Retief Goosen 4 and 3.
. Davis Love III was on his way to a 5-up lead until a wedge slipped out of his hand while he was standing in the bunker at No. 9. It touched the sand, causing him to lose the hole, but he still cruised to a victory over Paul Casey.
Rocco Mediate was a wreck after his 1-up victory over Shingo Katayama, a match that should have been over much earlier.
"I was 2-up, 1-up, 1-down, back to 2-up. It was pathetic," Mediate said.
The best news of all is that he gets to return Thursday and do it all over again, which beats the alternative - the other 32 guys are going home.
This tournament is 18-hole matches until the final, and anything can happen over such a short period of time.
David Toms was among the survivors, 3-up with four holes to play when he had to buckle down to hold off Anders Hansen.
Toms has missed the cut in his last two tournaments, so he was thrilled to be at a tournament where a few bad shots only cost him that hole.
"It's nerve-racking out there, but it's fun," he said.
"I'd like to do this more often," he added.
TITLE: Garnett Steps Up for T-Wolves
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MINNEAPOLIS - Kevin Garnett scored 12 of his 24 points in the fourth quarter and added 17 rebounds as the Minnesota Timberwolves beat the Utah Jazz 92-85 Wednesday night, averting a season sweep and extending their home winning streak to 15 games.
The Wolves won their fifth straight and their 11th in 12 games.
"Tonight's game answered a lot of questions about us," Garnett said. "Are we tough enough? Do we have what it takes to win?"
Few would question Garnett's status as an MVP contender. Garnett has averaged 29 points and 14 rebounds as the Wolves have gone 11-1 in February.
This time he struggled with his shooting for three quarters but took over in the fourth, making all seven of his shots. The crowd, which had waved MVP signs throughout the game, serenaded Garnett with chants of "MVP" in the closing seconds.
"He's the best player in the world right now," said teammate Troy Hudson. "He's our go-to guy in the fourth quarter because we know he'll come through for us."
Garnett, who had his league-high 48th double-double, put Minnesota ahead to stay, 83-81, with a layup with 1:40 remaining.
After the Wolves forced a 24-second violation on Utah's subsequent possession, Garnett grabbed an offensive rebound and fed Wally Szczerbiak for a 3-pointer with 0:44.1 remaining.
John Stockton missed at the other end, and Troy Hudson made six consecutive free throws in the closing seconds to seal the win.
"I can see why players want to play with him," Utah coach Jerry Sloan said of Garnett. "He makes the game easier for other players. That's how good he is."
All five Minnesota starters finished in double figures.
Szczerbiak also struggled for most of the game but came through in the end. He made just one his first 12 shots before hitting 3-of-5 in the fourth quarter, finishing with 12 points and 10 rebounds.
"I've watched players in this league for four years have horrible shooting nights and make shots down the stretch because they stay focused," Szczerbiak said. "But if we didn't have [Garnett], my shots wouldn't have been as big as they were.
Karl Malone scored 19 points to lead the Jazz, while Stockton had 10 points and 11 assists. Utah was the last team to beat Minnesota at Target Center, 105-97 on Jan. 4.
In the team's previous three meetings, Utah dominated the third quarters and outscored Minnesota by a combined 94-54.
Things started along that path in the third quarter Wednesday, as the Wolves had three turnovers, a missed layup and a missed dunk on their first seven possessions of the second half as the Jazz built a 53-46 lead.
But Minnesota answered with an 11-0 run. Rasho Nesterovic made a pair of inside baskets, Anthony Peeler hit a 3 and another long jumper, then Garnett nailed a 5-meter shot with 5 minutes remaining in the quarter to give Minnesota a 57-53 lead.
"In a game like this, the difference are the little streaks," Malone said.
The Jazz played without starting guard Calbert Cheaney, who had the flu. DeShawn Stevenson started in his place.
Boston 71, Indiana 69. Walter McCarty hit a go-ahead 3-pointer with 0:24.9 remaining, and the Boston Celtics extended the Pacers' longest winless streak in 10 years with a victory Wednesday night.
After McCarty's 3-pointer gave Boston a 69-67 lead, Jermaine O'Neal, who led the Pacers with 31 points and 13 rebounds, missed two free throws with 0:10.2 left. In the final 10 seconds, Paul Pierce and McCarty each converted one free throw before Miller shot an airball at the buzzer despite a wide-open look.
Miller missed three 3-pointers in the final quarter and had only nine points.
"We had every opportunity to win this game," Miller said. "We made big shots, but when it came to the biggest one, McCarty hit a three and I shot an airball."
The last time the Pacers lost six straight was Feb, 1993. They have lost nine of 13 overall.
"As a league, everyone is kind of struggling," Pacers coach Isiah Thomas said. "No one is playing exceptional basketball, but we still believe we're a good team. We are still only a half-game out of first place."
(For other results, see Scorecard.)
TITLE: Capitals Tame Buffalo To Extend Division Lead
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Washington defenseman Brendan Witt just needed to get his first goal of the season to start talk about a bigger role on offense.
Witt's first-period goal snapped a 65-game goal-scoring drought, and helped the Washington Capitals extend their lead in the Southeast Division with a 3-2 victory Wednesday night over the Buffalo Sabres.
"He was fantastic tonight," Washington coach Bruce Cassidy said. "The puck was following him everywhere. I should have put him on the power play for crying out loud."
Jaromir Jagr and Peter Bondra also scored for Washington, now three points ahead of Tampa Bay in the division.
Curtis Brown and Dmitri Kalinin had goals for Buffalo.
After Jagr scored the game's first goal at the 4:58 first period, Witt broke his scoring slump nearly 10 minutes later when he lifted a backhander over Buffalo goalie Martin Biron. It was the first goal for Witt since March 26, 2002, at Buffalo.
"I always enjoy scoring. I will take as many as I can get," Witt said. "It's no weight off my shoulder. It's stopping the opposition, that's my role."
Bondra ended Washington's drought on the power play when he scored his 24th of the season when he knocked in a crossing pass from Kip Miller on a second-period power play to make it 3-0. The goal was Washington's first on its last 19 power-play chances.
Bondra has now scored in two straight games for the first time since late December.
Brown started the Buffalo comeback when he knocked a loose puck by Olaf Kolzig, and Kalinin scored on the power play 12 minutes later to bring the Sabres within 3-2 with 5:10 remaining.
"We weren't in the game at the beginning and it took us a while to get going," Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff said. "We pinched down both walls and played reckless hockey, which ended up creating a lot of chances and gave them a lot of problems in the third period."
Kolzig, who finished with 35 saves, made the stops Washington needed down the stretch to preserve the two points.
"We make it interesting," Kolzig said. "We go from playing the best defensive period we had all year in the second to running around and losing coverage. I don't know what we were thinking in the third period."
Jagr, who has 35 career goals against Buffalo, put the Capitals ahead 1-0 when he patiently skated across the crease waiting for Buffalo goalie Martin Biron to commit before snapping a wrist shot behind him.
Miller, who was a scratch Monday because of a hand injury, also assisted onJagr's goal for the first of his two assists on the night.
Anaheim 2, Florida 1. Paul Kariya and Petr Sykora supplied the offense and Jean-Sebastien Giguere made 31 saves as the Ducks beat the Panthers on Wednesday night.
Anaheim, 8-4-1 in its last 13, went ahead 2-1 at 12:10 of the third period. Adam Oates passed from the right circle in front to Sykora, who poked in the puck for his 24th goal.
"That's why Oates gets the big cash," Babcock said. "He and Sykora made a heck of a play."
(For other results, see Scorecard.)