SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #857 (25), Friday, April 4, 2003
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TITLE: Yakovlev To Step Down In 2004
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Governor Vladimir Yakovlev announced in an interview with TRK Peterburg television on Wednesday that he will not run for a third term in office in the 2004 gubernatorial elections.
 
The announcement seems to signal the end of attempts by Yakovlev and his supporters over the past year to circumvent a City Charter article limiting the governor to two terms. Yakovlev was elected to a second term in office in 2000.
 While some politicians welcomed the governor's statements as a sign of openness and respect for the law, analysts said Yakovlev stood no chance of being allowed to run again, with some suggesting that he may have been offered another official position after he leaves Smolny.
 Legislative Assembly Speaker Vadim Tyulpanov said on Thursday that he was "amazed by the governor's courage and wisdom," Interfax reported. "Making such a statement a year before the end of his term of office is a serious and wise move that will allow the city's residents to study and evaluate the advantages and flaws of prospective candidates in the time before the gubernatorial elections."
 Valentina Matviyenko, the newly appointed presidential representative in the Northwest Region, also welcomed the move, although she didn't understand the stir caused by the announcement.
 "I am extremely surprised that this statement is being seen as some kind of sensation," Interfax quoted her as saying Thursday. "In reality, [Yakovlev] has simply announced he is following the law."
 In the interview with TRK Peterburg, the governor said that he had made the decision not to run for a third term as early as 2000, after he was elected to the present term.
 "I didn't want to dampen the ardor of my team, particularly ahead of an event like the city's 300th anniversary," he said when why he didn't announce his decision not to run again before Wednesday.
 The comment raised some eyebrows among analysts, who pointed out that the question of the possibility of another term only arose as a result of a Constitutional Court ruling in July 2002 that opened the door for some regional leaders to run for third and, in some cases, even a fourth term.
 Boris Vishnyevsky, a Legislative Assembly deputy from the Yabloko faction, said that Yakovlev's decision was more a case of facing reality than anything else.
 "There is no question that, if he had the opportunity, Yakovlev would run a third time. Nobody turns down power - especially this kind of power," Vishnyevsky said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "Yakovlev has finally understood that there's no way for him to be re-elected. Now, he is simply trying to be a good loser."
 Leonid Kesselman, a senior researcher at Sociology Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, agreed.
 "I think the situation around the question of the third term was turning sour," Kesselman said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "Yakovlev finally understood that his support was fading and that his elite was starting to leave him in search of the next opportunity."
 Yakovlev began making public statements about his desire for a third term last summer, citing as a motive his desire to see a number of projects begun under his administration through to their completion.
 A bit later, in an edition published Aug. 5, Yakovlev told Ogonyok magazine that choosing a new governor would bring an interruption in work on projects begun under him.
 "I would like to stay on as governor. There are too many projects that still have to be completed, and any change in power will bring an unavoidable break, a pause," he said in the interview. "There are questions that urgently require solutions, and [a break] would be an unaffordable luxury."
 To run for a third term, however, Yakovlev would have had to introduce amendments into the City Charter, which limits the governor to two terms. To amend the charter would have required the support of two thirds of the deputies in the Legislative Assembly, which he was unlikely to garner. Any hopes Yakovlev may have had for a third term suffered a further blow on Oct. 2, when the City Charter Court ruled that any attempt by the governor or his supporters to open the way for a third term - by amending the City Charter or otherwise - would be illegal.
 On Wednesday, Yakovlev said that it would have been possible to introduce changes to the City Charter, but that he had "not made this [his] goal."
 "For the sake of the continuation of democratic reforms in St. Petersburg, you have to realize that, if there is a law, you have to follow it, no matter how imperfect is it," he added.
 What Yakovlev plans to do after he leaves office remains unclear, and the governor himself said he has not given this question much thought, saying only that he intended to remain in politics.
 "I think that it's already to late for me to leave politics completely," he said on Wednesday.
 Yakovlev's spokesperson, Alexander Afanasyev, said that the governor wasn't looking any further ahead than the end of May.
 "The governor's plans for the future are to organize the 300th anniversary. This is the most important priority at the moment" Afanasyev said on Thursday. "And you shouldn't forget that he still has one year left in power."
 Some analysts, however, believe that the governor is already looking further down the road.
 "I think that he has a few ideas about what he might do after his term ends. Maybe not concrete plans, but definitely options. He has probably already been made some offers," Kesselman said.
 Ruslan Linkov, who heads the Democratic Russia Party's St. Petersburg branch, suggested that Yakovlev might be looking to stay in the gubernatorial profession.
 "Yakovlev could well have plans to run for governor in the Leningrad Oblast," Linkov said Thursday. "If he doesn't do this, or if he does but fails to get elected, then he could try to get on the Communist Party list for the Duma elections."
 Another question raised by Yakovlev's announcement is whether he will attempt to help one of his own political allies take his place at Smolny. While Yakovlev might want to try to thwart any moves by the Kremlin, with which he has often had rocky relations in the past, to move its preferred candidate into the governor's seat, Kesselman said that he might try a different tack.
 "If the president turns out to have a very high level of support in the city before the elections, Yakovlev might very well chose to support him. Your enemy, if he is successful, can become your friend," Kesselman said.
 But Vishnyevsky disagreed, saying that Yakovlev was very likely to try to back a successor to would protect the city administration's interests, as well as his own.
 "I think the governor will certainly want to help chose his successor and to try to push his own candidate in the gubernatorial elections," he said. "Although he only announced yesterday that he wouldn't seek a third term, Yakovlev has very little time left and should already try to identify a successor."
 One reason Yakovlev might want to keep the Kremlin out of Smolny is concern over the access the next governor would have to further information on the internal workings of his administration, but both Kesselman and Vishnyevsky dismissed this as a major concern.
 "In this country, the laws do not function and you have to always cover yourself. I am sure that Yakovlev has already done this," Kesselman said.
 Vishnyevsky said that prosecuting a leader after they have left office is not common practice in Russia.
 "Besides," he added, "If Moscow had wanted to prosecute him for any crimes he might have committed, it would have done so a long time ago."

TITLE: Powell: U.S. Will Lead Iraq Rebuild
AUTHOR: By Barry Schweid
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS, Belgium - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told Washington's European allies and friends Thursday that the United States - not the United Nations - must have the lead role in Iraq's postwar reconstruction.
 
In a fast-paced series of meetings with his NATO and European Union counterparts at the NATO headquarters here, Powell did not resolve differences over the nature of the UN role after the fighting is done in Iraq.
 "I think the coalition has to play the leading role," he told a closing news conference. "But that does not mean we have to shut others out. There will definitely be a United Nations role, but what the exact nature of that role will be remains to be seen."
 Powell's comments clashed with the view in European capitals that the reconstruction of Iraq should be guided by the United Nations, not the U.S. or Britain, which went to war against Iraq on March 20. Powell played down the differences, calling his meetings consultative.
 "I'll report back [to President George W. Bush] what I heard. We are still examining the proper role for the United Nations," he said
 UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said at the world body's headquarters Thursday that "the idea of UN involvement in post-conflict Iraq is an issue under discussion."
 "I believe the UN has a role to play," he said. "The extent and the nature of that role is under discussion here in the council and in other capitals."
 Powell and the Europeans did reach tentative agreement, however, that NATO should consider deploying peacekeepers in Iraq. Powell said the United States made no formal request, but said, "I am pleased that there was a receptive attitude" to the suggestion which was first made last December.
 The idea was shelved after French-led objections amid an increasingly acrimonious debate over Iraq that provoked one of the worst splits in alliance history.
 "The ministers were ... more than willing to see whether other international organizations, like NATO, might have a role in helping" Iraq's reconstruction, NATO Secretary General George Robertson told reporters.
 The Europeans want the United Nations to take a lead role on reconstruction, while the U.S. plans to install an interim American administrator in Baghdad at least in the immediate aftermath of the fall of President Saddam Hussein.
 Powell was to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov later in Brussels. Ivanov arrived keen to smooth Moscow's troubled relations with Washington and London. He told reporters the main task "now before the entire world community is to search together for an exit from the situation."

TITLE: Berezovsky Has His First Day in London Court
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: LONDON - Controversial powerbroker Boris Berezovsky emerged Wednesday from extradition hearings in London's Bow Street Magistrates Court wearing a satirical mask of President Vladimir Putin in defiance of the regime he claims is seeking to muzzle and even kill him for his opposition stance.
 
The court agreed to a request to adjourn the hearings made by Berezovsky's defense for more time to put together a case to show the fraud charges forwarded by the Russian authorities against him and his close associate Yuly Dubov are politically motivated. It set the next hearing for May 13. Under British extradition law, the accused cannot be extradited if it can be proved the charges brought are connected to that person's political opinions.
 At a news conference following the hearings, Berezovsky exuded bravado, saying the chances of his extradition on charges he defrauded the Samara regional administration and the AvtoVAZ car giant out of 60 billion rubles between January 1994 and December 1995 were "absolutely zero."
 "The timing for [forwarding the charges] is, of course, connected to politics. The timing is connected to the beginning of the run up to the Duma elections this December," he said. "They want to take me out of the parliamentary fight."
 The British government made a surprise decision last week to give the green light to the Russian prosecutors' request for extradition proceedings to begin against Berezovsky and Dubov, who are both in self-imposed exile in London, handing the matter over to the courts and setting bail for Berezovsky and Dubov at Pound100,000 ($156,000) each.
 At the same time, after 18 months in waiting, the home secretary informed Berezovsky in a letter last Friday that his request for political asylum had been turned down because of the extradition charges, his defense lawyer, Alun Jones, told the court. Jones said lawyers would appeal that decision.
 Berezovsky has for years been reviled in Russia as a gray cardinal of Boris Yeltsin's Kremlin who specialized in pulling strings for his own personal enrichment to gain him stakes in national airline Aeroflot, oil major Sibneft, and a trading monopoly on AvtoVAZ cars, while his control over ORT television made him a political kingmaker in presidential elections in 1996 and 2000. A litany of allegations that he has been involved in gangland killings, mafia dealings and embezzlement have also long swirled around his rise.
 But his appearance in court on Wednesday marked the first time he has ever sat in the dock.
 He looked visibly rattled as he and his partner rose to stand before the judge, tensely looking around the court, as five police officers guarded the exit.
 But as Jones began to lay out his case for a delay to proceedings due to the possible political motivation for the charges, Berezovsky began to relax.
 "The reality of this case is that Mr. Berezovsky is the political enemy of the Russian government," Jones said. "He is known in Russia and abroad as a fierce critic of the military attack on Chechnya ... and as a fierce critic of the growth in the power of the security services.
 "Under these circumstances, he lives in fear of assassination by those loyal to the Russian government. [He fears] his life would be in great danger if he returned to Russia," he said.
 "The history of this case is simple: It's politically motivated. The policy is: Denounce Berezovsky as a criminal now, we'll find a crime later," he said.
 Jones laid out the litany of charges that have been brought against Berezovsky in the past before the AvtoVAZ fraud investigations began in August this year. He said allegations initially made in 1997 that Berezovsky embezzled millions of dollars from Aeroflot had been dismissed by a Moscow court. But he said that Putin, on gaining power, had told officials the case would be renewed.
 "Nothing has come of it, however," he said.
 Jones said accusations later forwarded by Russian prosecutors that Berezovsky had helped fund Chechen rebels had not gotten anywhere either.
 He said he has asked the Home Office to disclose whether it had received any applications for Berezovsky's extradition on these charges earlier. "The allegations of crime are in relation to theft in 1994 and 1995," he said. "But it's not a simple as that. Three different groups of allegations have been forwarded at a time that coincides with the rise to power of President Putin and Berezovsky's opposition to the security services."
 Berezovsky has been credited with helping get Putin elected. But whatever relationship they had appeared to sour soon after Putin took power, and Berezovsky announced his opposition to the strengthening of the Kremlin's grip over politics - over the Duma, the Federation Council and the media. Berezovsky said that after his ORT slammed Putin's handling of the Kursk disaster in August 2000, he was forced to sell his stake in the channel and then he left for London.
 Jones questioned why the charges that Berezovsky had defrauded AvtoVAZ in 1994 and 1995 had not been looked into earlier. "It is extraordinary that it didn't occur to anyone to challenge this immediately," he said.
 He said full details of the transaction in question had been disclosed at the time in Samara's regional budget.
 In an interview after the hearings, Berezovsky also questioned the validity of the charges. He said he had signed documents from Samara regional Governor Konstantin Titov and AvtoVAZ chairman Viktor Kadannikov saying they did not object to the transaction now under question, which involved a complicated tax offset scheme.
 Both Kadannikov and Titov have long been seen as allies of Berezovsky. They were, however, interrogated by prosecutors in September last year as investigations were ramped up.
 Berezovsky said the extradition proceedings had backfired if the Kremlin had intended to use them to silence his opposition voice. He said the court hearings had only served to give him a bigger platform for criticizing the Kremlin.
 He said he would continue to press for the left and right wings to join in opposition to Putin in time for the Duma elections. Charges were brought against Berezovsky a few weeks after an interview with him was published in the leftist Zavtra newspaper in which he made his first overtures to the Communists.
 Dozens of Communists rallied outside the British Embassy in Moscow on Wednesday holding slogans such as "Freedom to Boris" and "The Communist Party Is With You."
 Berezovsky repeated he was ready to spend $100 million on the elections.
 But even as Berezovsky hatches plans for a political comeback, he will have to inform the police every night of his whereabouts. The court ruled Wednesday that Berezovsky would be allowed to stay at three different addresses, but would have to inform the police every time he moved. He was told he would have to hand over his passport.
 State-owned television channels Channel One and Rossia downplayed Wednesday's hearing, with newscasters reading brief reports. NTV and TVS had longer reports and aired footage of Berezovsky outside the court.

TITLE: PACE, Russia in Standoff Over Tribunal
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - In a sharp rebuke to Russia, European lawmakers on Wednesday agreed that a war-crimes tribunal for Chechnya should be formed if Moscow fails to take a tougher stance on human-rights violations in the republic.
 
On Thursday, Russia angrily denounced the suggestion as "politically harmful." Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the main Kremlin spokesperson on Chechnya, said the Council of Europe's move ignored changes in the region, primarily the overwhelming support in last month's referendum for a constitution anchoring Chechnya within Russia.
 "The decision is politically harmful, because it runs counter to prevailing new developments in Chechnya's political situation after the referendum, which point to peace and stability," he said in a statement.
 Interfax quoted Russia's deputy general prosector, Sergei Fridinsky, as denouncing Wednesday's resolution as "lacking legal foundation." "It is blatant interference in legislation governing justice and Russia's legal system," he said.
 The lawmakers in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe voted 97-27 on Wednesday in support of the resolution, paving the way for a tribunal modeled on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Ten lawmakers abstained.
 The resolution, drafted by PACE's human-rights rapporteur for Chechnya, German lawmaker Rudolf Bindig, criticizes both Russian troops and Chechen rebels for abuses committed in the republic. The vote drew an immediate response from the Russian side, which has opposed the idea of a tribunal since Bindig raised it about three weeks ago.
 "There won't be a tribunal on Chechnya, and there won't be PACE in Chechnya either. None of their representatives will travel to the republic," Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian delegation to PACE, said in televised remarks from Strasbourg, France. "We will use today's vote to close the issue of Chechnya in PACE once and for all."
 "Raising the issue of setting up some tribunal is absolutely out of place," said Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration.
 The head of the Federation Council's foreign-affairs committee, Mikhail Margelov, said PACE does not reflect the current reality of Europe and should be reformed. Russia will submit reform proposals shortly, he said, without elaborating.
 Bindig delivered a harsh report to the Parliamentary Assembly that accused both Chechen rebels and Russian troops of human-rights abuses. "Impunity encourages further human-rights abuses," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 Bindig, citing documents from the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, said prosecutors have opened only 162 cases concerning crimes committed against Chechen civilians since the ongoing conflict began in late 1999. Of those cases, only 57 have been sent to court.
 "In the majority of the cases, the final verdicts are not issued and guilty parties are not identified," Bindig said.
 Bindig, whom Russian officials have accused of sympathizing with the rebels, sharply criticized the rebels for carrying out attacks on pro-Russian Chechens and for the hostage-taking raid on a Moscow theater in October.
 In the resolution passed Wednesday, PACE calls on Chechen rebels to stop terrorist activities and denounce all forms of crime. The Russian government is urged to take tougher measures to ensure that troops do not commit human-rights abuses and to severely prosecute service personnel found guilty of abuses, regardless of their rank.
 The resolution says that, if Russia fails to step up efforts to bring guilty parties to justice, PACE will recommend to the international community that a war-crimes tribunal be set up for Chechnya.
 In his report, Bindig cast doubt on the March 23 referendum on new constitution that subordinates Chechnya to federal law and was approved by an astounding 96 percent of voters, according to election officials. Turnout was about 85 percent. Bindig said he doubted such a high turnout was possible in the war-torn republic. He also pointed to criticism from Russian human rights groups about new names being added to voter lists at the last minute and about the large number of soldiers and their families who were allowed to cast ballots.
 Bindig said it would be an "illusion" to believe that Chechnya would return to normal after the referendum without prosecutors and courts boosting their efforts to punish war criminals.
 
 <i>(SPT, Reuters) </i>

TITLE: City Duma To Protest Finance Ministry Plan
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In a rare moment of unity, all but one of the deputies at the Legislative Assembly voted in favor of a resolution addressed to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov protesting a Finance Ministry decision to block the transfer of federal funds to city coffers. The ministry said that the funds would remain frozen until the city agreed to include a line in the 2002 budget report promising to pay back a $200-million loan granted in 1997.
 
The loan was for a new business center and station for a high-speed railway link between St. Petersburg and Moscow. The rail project is presently stalled.
 The ministry informed City Hall of its decision in a letter at the end of last week, saying that the federal government refused to accept the city's report on the 2002 budget, meaning that 90 million rubles ($2.8 million) in funding for renovation projects in the city connected with the 300th anniversary was in jeopardy, lawmakers said.
 Although the Finance Ministry says that it is still pushing the city for a guarantee that the loan would be repaid, it backed off the demand for the inclusion of such a guarantee in the budget report, after 37 members of the assembly voted for the resolution.
 &quot;By doing this, I think that, once and for all, we have made it clear that we aren't going to surrender city funds that easily,&quot; Mikhail Amosov, a deputy from the Yabloko faction, said in an interview on Wednesday.
 Amosov said that the Legislative Assembly would appeal to the courts for help if the Finance Ministry didn't drop its demands.
 But the one member who voted against the resolution, Legislative Assembly Speaker Vadim Tyulpanov, said that he had done so because he thought the chamber was jumping the gun.
 &quot;It would be better to wait for a while before disturbing the negotiation process,&quot; Tyulpanov said in the chamber during the debate on the resolution.
 The loan in question was originally granted to VSM, a joint-stock company in which the federal government holds 85 percent of the shares. In 1997, two British Banks - Credit Agricole Indosuez and SBC Warburg Dillon Read - granted VSM a $200-million loan to help finance a project to build a new railway station, a business center, a three-star, 368-room hotel and a six-story underground parking facility on Ligovsky Prospect, adjacent to Moskovsky Vokzal. The Finance Ministry convinced City Hall to be co-guarantor for the loan, which is to be repaid over 13 1/2 years, with the first payment due in 2007, at an interest rate of 7 1/2 percent. The Legislative Assembly, however, refused to approve the deal, after the local Audit Chamber issued a scathing report that raised doubts about the project's financial viability.
 Officials at VSM could not be reached for comment on Thursday.
 The lack of agreement from the Legislative Assembly meant that the loan finally went ahead with the federal government as the sole guarantor. Construction on the site got underway in November 1997, only to come to a halt due to difficulties caused by the August 1998 financial crisis. The construction site remains abandoned, representing what some political insiders in the city sarcastically refer to as the most expensive hole in Russia.
 According to Sergei Dyomin, the deputy head of the City Hall Financial Committee, the &quot;reasons for blocking the transfer were bureaucratic, and not political.&quot;
 Most of the comments from deputies in the assembly pointed to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin as being behind a political move to discredit Governor Vladimir Yakovlev.
 &quot;I think that this is a case of mudslinging. It is unbelievable that officials at such a level could be engaged in these types of political games. They have obviously gone insane,&quot; said Olga Pokrovskya, a member of the Yabloko faction, in an interview on Wednesday, &quot;I'm not exactly saying that we're on Yakovlev's side on this, but Yakovlev and the city are completely different questions, and we hope that the resolution will make Kudrin ease off.&quot;
 Igor Mikhailov, an independent lawmaker in the assembly, agreed that targeting the 300th anniversary funds was an unfair tactic on the part of the Finance Ministry.
 &quot;What we're talking about is money that is to be transferred for a program that was approved by the president in February 2002 to renovate architectural sites in the city,&quot; Mikhailov said on Wednesday. &quot;This is a clear attempt at blackmail on the part of the authorities in Moscow.&quot;
 &quot;In this sense, this could be considered as a move against the president,&quot; he added.
 However, Sergei Vyazalov, the deputy finance minister, said that St. Petersburg was just one of 11 regions warned by the government that their budget reports would not be approved and federal transfers could be frozen as a result of unpaid debts in 2002, Interfax reported Wednesday. He said that six of the regions had already adjusted their reports or taken other measures to correct the situation.
 Vyazalov also said that, in any case, financing for 300th-anniversary projects would not suffer because it is being channeled through Gosstroy, the federal construction committee, and the tempo of the financing &quot;appears to be going ahead as planned.&quot;
 Valentina Matviyenko, recently appointed as the new presidential representative for the Northwest Region, played the role of peacemaker on Wednesday.
 &quot;This case should be settled on a legal basis,&quot; Interfax quoted Matviyenko as saying. &quot;Both sides have a mutual interest in solving these problems.&quot;

TITLE: City Cop Arrested in Murder Investigation
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A St. Petersburg police officer was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the murder on Saturday of four employees at an electronic-slot-machine parlor on Sredny Prospect on Vasilievsky Island.
 
The Prosecutor's Office said that Konsantin Olenchikov, a police officer in the city's Central District who it would only say was in his mid twenties, was being held for the crime.
 Boris Salmaksov, the deputy head of the City Prosecutor's Office, said that &quot;the investigation into the crime had uncovered substantial evidence against the suspect,&quot; and that Olenchikov would soon be charged with the murders, Interfax reported.
 Yelena Ordynskaya, the spokesperson for the Prosecutor's Office, said Thursday that Olenchikov would be charged under Article 105 of the second part of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers multiple murders. If convicted, Olenchikov would face a prison term of between eight years and life.
 Ordynskaya said that ballistics tests were being carried out on Thursday on two handguns found by investigators at the suspect's home to determine whether he might have been involved in other crimes presently under investigation.
 All four of the murder victims - Central District Police Sergeant Pavel Romanov, slot-machine operator Anna Pavlova, cashier Gennady Latyshev and cleaner Galina Shibitova - worked for the gaming parlor, with Romanov providing security under a contract with the city police.
 The cleaner's 14-year-old daughter, Svetlana Shibitova, suffered serious head wounds during the early Saturday-morning attack, and was initially reported by the Prosecutor's Office to have died later in hospital.
 On Monday, Ordynskaya told The St. Petersburg Times that the erroneous report of the girl's death had been deliberate, in order to lead the killer to believe that there were no surviving witnesses to the crime.
 She would not say on Thursday whether information from Shibitova had played any part in the decision to arrest Olenchikov.
 Ordynskaya said that the Prosecutor's Office believed that theft was the motive for the crime as about 300,000 rubles ($9,600) had been taken from the scene after the shooting.
 Although charges being brought against a police officer is not unusual - 195 police officers were charged last year - the seriousness of the crime is out of the ordinary.
 &quot;Most of the cases are related to abuse-of-power charges,&quot; Ordynskaya said.

TITLE: Defense Ministry Looking to the CIS
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Unable to find enough volunteers and conscripts to fill its ranks, the military is planning to recruit citizens from other former Soviet republics to serve in its all-volunteers units, the Defense Ministry said.
 
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the armed forces will recruit young men from throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States to serve as professional soldiers for three years.
 &quot;A decision has been made to recruit volunteers from the CIS,&quot; Ivanov was quoted by Komsomolskaya Pravda as saying in its Wednesday issue.
 Russian law requires males between the ages of 18 and 27 to join the army for two years or participate in alternative service for 3 1/2 years. But draft dodging and numerous exemptions from military service have left the 1.1-million-strong armed forces without enough men.
 President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday ordering the conscription of 175,000 young men this spring, but the Defense Ministry's mobilization and personnel planners doubt they will be able to fill the quota. In previous years, desperate draft officials have recruited young men who are physically or mentally unfit for service.
 Ivanov said he hoped Russian-speaking volunteers from neighboring countries would be more qualified and fit for service.
 &quot;We may get a good contingent, people who are much healthier than those we recruit now,&quot; he told Komsomolskaya Pravda.
 The Russian military has also been trying to attract volunteers for years, but the wages offered by the Defense Ministry remain too low to attract sufficient numbers.
 Professional soldiers are paid about $150 per month.
 While being too low for Russians, the wages might look attractive to citizens of Russia's poorer neighbors, who already travel here to fill civil-sector jobs that are unpopular among Russians.
 The Defense Ministry, which has about 130,000 professional soldiers, plans to fill all of its so-called permanent readiness units with volunteers by 2008.
 The 1998 law on military service would have to be amended to allow citizens of other countries to serve in Russia's forces.
 In a contradiction of the law, Russian military units based in CIS republics such as Tajikistan and Armenia already have service personnel who are not Russian citizens. Typically, the personnel served in those units in Soviet times and volunteered to stay on after the break-up of the Soviet Union, a Defense Ministry official said Wednesday.
 The official, who asked not to be named, said a special commission has been set up under the auspices of the Presidential Administration to study what should be done to grant citizenship to those service personnel.

TITLE: New Laws To Be Tougher on Drug Dealers
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Drug dealers will face tougher sentences of up to 20 years in prison, while addicts will be get more lenient treatment under Kremlin-drafted legislation aimed at tackling the country's soaring drug problem.
 
&quot;We have prepared a bill stipulating a prison term of 15 to 20 years for drug dealers,&quot; President Vladimir Putin said in the Central Russian city of Tambov on Wednesday. &quot;For victims of drug dealers, we will provide for other penalties.&quot;
 The details are the first to emerge about a raft of amendments to the Criminal Code that Putin announced at a cabinet meeting March 11. The amendments soften penalties for juveniles and those convicted of minor offenses in an attempt to thin out the country's overcrowded prison population.
 The bill will be considered by the Duma in about two weeks, a spokesperson for the Duma's legislation committee, Alexander Urmanov, said Thursday.
 He said the bill will probably be approved quickly, like most bills submitted by Putin.
 The bill increases prison sentences for those convicted of producing or selling drugs by an average of 20 percent. Sentences for buying and possessing drugs are slashed by about a third.
 The bill also increases the amount of drugs a person is legally allowed to carry, meaning a drug addict caught with a single dose would not face jail time. This measure is seen by some human-rights activists as a way to prevent the police from planting drugs on suspects.
 While the legislation is a necessary step in liberalizing the judicial system, it still has serious flaws, said Oleg Zykov, head of the No to Alcoholism and Drugs foundation and a member of the presidential commission on human rights.
 &quot;By law, drug addicts - usually young people - face only two options: a suspended sentence, which they regard as meaningless and leads to more serious crime, or a prison term that, instead of putting them on the right path, only helps proliferate the criminal mentality of drug addicts,&quot; he said.
 The bill would have more teeth if it offered a third option of medical treatment, he said.
 There are 448,000 registered drug addicts, according to Health Ministry figures released last month. Police and medical experts put the real number of addicts at 3 million to 5 million.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Seleznyov To Leave
 </b>

MOSCOW (SPT) - State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov said Thursday that he does not want to retain his post if he is re-elected to parliament in December elections, Interfax reported.
 Seleznyov, who has been speaker for the past eight years, said he would rather head a Duma faction.
 "[Being the speaker] is a very heavy burden. Besides, I think I have done enough to develop the parliamentary system in Russia, and I'm not indispensable," Seleznyov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
 Seleznyov, who was elected speaker when the Communist Party had control of the Duma, was stripped of his party membership in May for balking at an order for Communists to quit their leadership posts.
 He told Interfax that he would run from the 29th district in St. Petersburg on the ticket of Russia's Revival Party, which he heads.
 
 
<b>Chechen Rebel Killed
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Special forces killed a Chechen rebel field commander, Bakar Bibulatov, a close associate of rebel warlord Shamil Basayev, Interfax reported Thursday, quoting Russia's military command in the North Caucasus region.
 Bibulatov's fighters were responsible for armed assaults, robberies and hostage takings, the report said.
 
 
<b>No Theater Settlement
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - The Moscow city government has refused to discuss an out-of-court settlement for victims of last fall's hostage raid, dealing a further blow to their legal efforts to win compensation, their lawyer said Thursday. 
 Lawyer Igor Trunov represents more than 100 plaintiffs - both those who suffered three days as hostages at the hands of Chechen rebels, and those whose relatives were among the 129 hostages who were killed. The vast majority of the dead succumbed to the effects of a narcotic gas used by special forces to knock out the attackers.
 Trunov said the Moscow government had rejected his offer to discuss an out-of-court settlement, saying the city was not responsible for compensating victims of the hostage siege. 
 Moscow's Tverskoi District Court rejected the first three lawsuits earlier this year. Trunov said had filed an appeal with the Moscow City Court on those cases, and would press on with the other suits.
 
 
<b>15 Deserters Detained 
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - Fourteen soldiers fled an Interior Ministry unit to protest hazing but quickly gave themselves up, and a soldier at a Strategic Missile Forces abandoned his post but was detained soon after, officials said Wednesday.
 The first incident occurred Tuesday night, when the 14 members of a unit stationed near the northwestern city of Novgorod fled their garrison. They didn't take weapons and surrendered Wednesday, said Roman Dmitriyev, a spokesperson for the Military Prosecutor's office.
 He said the deserters wouldn't be punished.
 In a separate desertion incident, Private Valery Polovinkin fled Tuesday night while on patrol duty, taking his Kalashnikov automatic rifle and 60 rounds of ammunition, the Defense Ministry's press service said.
 The 19-year-old was found Wednesday morning near his unit in the settlement of Surovatikha, in the Nizhny Novgorod region. 



TITLE: U.S. Starts Attack on Airport in Baghdad
AUTHOR: By Ellen Knickmeyer and Chris Tomlinson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEAR BAGHDAD - U.S. troops attacked Baghdad's international airport Thursday night after pushing through the outskirts of the darkened capital.
 
Tracer rounds, anti-aircraft fire and artillery blasted near Saddam International Airport, 16 kilometers southwest of the city center, and officers of the 3rd Infantry Division, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attack on the airport had begun.
 Large sections of Baghdad lost power for the first time since the war began after huge explosions rocked the capital. Richard Myers, chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. Central Command has not targeted the city's power grid.
 U.S. troops from the 7th Infantry rolled down a single-lane road on the southern edge of the city earlier in the day, despite punishing heat. They fired at Iraqi troops who tried to ambush the armored column on both sides.
 One unit came within 16 kilometers of Baghdad's city center at one point, but then moved off in a different direction, because they were more interested in engaging Iraqi troops than holding territory.
 Thousands of U.S. military vehicles of the 7th Infantry had pushed across the Euphrates River from the south and west of Baghdad after fighting through a failed Iraqi attempt to hold the bridge at Musayyib, 55 kilometers due south of the capital.
 Elsewhere on the battlefield, at least one U.S. soldier was killed by possible friendly fire, and reporters embedded with the troops said two Marines were killed in or around Kut - one from bullet and shrapnel wounds, the other when the truck he was driving struck another on a road obscured by dust clouds kicked up by a convoy.
 Three soldiers collapsed from heat exhaustion as temperatures rose about 30 degrees celsius outdoors and over 35 degrees inside the tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.
 U.S. tanks and Bradleys destroyed more than seven Iraqi armored personnel carriers and more than 15 Iraqi tanks, engaging both Republican Guard and regular army troops guarding Baghdad's southern flanks.
 Scores of blown up Iraqi vehicles and dozens of dead lined the roads where the Iraqis had built fighting positions. The dead were in uniform - though it was unclear whether they were Republican Guards or regular army units.
 Dozens more surrendered. The Army was slowly shuttling the prisoners to the rear as it pressed ahead toward the capital.
 In Kut, a military town on the Tigris River southeast of Baghdad, Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines battled Iraqis building to building. The Marines jumped from rooftop to rooftop and went through all the rooms in some buildings.
 They fought at close range in a date-palm grove, tossing grenades at each other. Late in the battle, a small group of Iraqis with AK-47s tried a suicide charge against a tank.
 &quot;At the end, they came charging in a human wave - 10 to 15 guys with AKs that we mowed down,&quot; said Lieutenant Colonel B.P. McCoy.
 He said 30 Iraqis were killed in the battle, and U.S. forces destroyed seven tanks and 20 anti-aircraft artillery.
 A Sea Knight helicopter evacuated three injured Marines, and one died in the helicopter as a doctor tried to resuscitate him. The other two had minor gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
 Another Marine was killed when the truck he was driving plowed into another on a dust-obscured road. At least 10 other Marines were injured in the accident and evacuated on a Sea Knight.
 On the outskirts of Kut, Marines opened fire on a military training academy, blowing a hole in a mosaic portrait of Saddam.
 Residents said women and children had been sent out of the city in the past days and that pro-Saddam militias had taken young men away to force them to fight the advancing coalition forces.
 &quot;They want to give us machine guns and make us fight. We are civilians, how can we fight?&quot; Kut resident Kasem Fasil said. &quot;Some people, they didn't want to fight, and they killed them.&quot;
 Ali Hussein, another Kut resident, said if the Americans go to Baghdad, they are afraid Hussein's forces will unleash chemical weapons on Shiite Muslim towns like theirs. Hussein rules over a Sunni Muslim regime.
 The Marines say they found a cache of untouched chemical-weapons protection suits at a bunker in the area.
 With coalition forces now well inside the so-called Red Zone radiating from Baghdad, troops had breached the region in which commanders feared Hussein's forces might resort to chemical or biological weapons. The troops were expected to don chemical protective gear despite the heat.
 So far, no such weapons have been detected. Iraq denies it still has weapons of mass destruction, and U.S. troops have yet to locate any, although they've found hundreds of chemical protective suits.
 At a Baath Party building flying Iraqi flags, a small group of men sat clustered in a grassy area around a woman dressed in a black chador and waving a white flag of surrender.
 Many Iraqis sat down by the roadside, waving and smiling at the Marines to show they were not combatants.
 The Pentagon said Republican Guard reinforcements had moved out of Baghdad toward the approaching Americans. New groups of Hussein's best trained and equipped fighters were dispatched to replace units shattered Wednesday when some U.S. forces had fought to within 30 kilometers of the city.
 But many Iraqi units quickly abandoned defensive positions and fled, leaving behind trenches littered with everything from mortars and small arms to teapots and bedspreads.
 &quot;When they ran, it wasn't for lack of ammo. They've got enough,&quot; one Marine said as he examined the trenches.

TITLE: Russia-U.S. Tensions on Iraq Stoked By Airstrikes
AUTHOR: By Eric Engleman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - In the latest sign of U.S.-Russian tensions over Iraq, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that American airstrikes had targeted a residential Baghdad neighborhood where the Russian Embassy is located. U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow was called to the ministry to hear a protest over the bombing, the ministry said.
 
&quot;The Russian side demanded that the American authorities take urgent and exhaustive measures so that such dangerous and unacceptable incidents are not repeated in the future,&quot; the ministry said.
 The ministry did not report any casualties in the airstrikes, but said &quot;the security of the Russian diplomatic representation's staff came under direct threat.&quot;
 Russia's ambassador to Washington, Yury Ushakov, delivered a similar protest to U.S. officials.
 Asked about Vershbow's meeting at the Foreign Ministry, a U.S. Embassy official said U.S. forces were designating only military targets and using only precision-guided weapons in Iraq.
 On a visit to the city of Tambov, about 400 kilometers southeast of Moscow, President Vladimir Putin reiterated Russia's opposition to the war, telling military veterans that Russia would &quot;strive to return the [Iraqi] problem to the United Nations,&quot; news agencies reported.
 Meanwhile, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov lashed out at the United States over allegations that Russian companies had provided Iraq with military equipment in violation of UN sanctions.
 Echoing previous official denials, Ivanov dismissed Washington's allegations as &quot;propaganda&quot; intended to distract attention from criticism of its campaign in Iraq. &quot;Now that it's hot for them, they are raising an outcry. It's not excluded that there will be other groundless accusations,&quot; Ivanov was quoted as saying by the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.
 Former President Boris Yeltsin added his criticism of the war on Wednesday, calling it a &quot;very crude political, strategic mistake,&quot; Itar-Tass reported.
 However, Yeltsin, who is visiting Japan, cautioned against allowing U.S.-Russian relations to slide back into Cold War animosity.
 &quot;We overcame this with such difficulty, and we can't return to it,&quot; Yeltsin said.
 Amid the chill in U.S.-Russian relations, the State Duma last month put off ratification of a nuclear arms reduction treaty signed last May, citing negative feelings over Iraq.
 Moderate lawmaker Vladimir Ryzhkov, who is in charge of parliamentary contacts with the U.S. Congress, pointed out Wednesday that Russia needs the arms reduction treaty more than the United States, because it can't afford large nuclear arsenals.
 &quot;It's wrong and simply stupid to use the treaty to blackmail the Americans,&quot; Ryzhkov told reporters.
 Also Wednesday, the Duma refused to consider a nationalist-sponsored motion to provide massive humanitarian aid to Iraq. Only 105 lawmakers of the 226 necessary to put the draft resolution on the agenda voted to open debate.
 The war in Iraq can bolster global demand for the Russian weapons that have proven effective in action, the head of an arms-trading company said Wednesday.
 &quot;You don't have to be an expert to see that there will be interests in the Russian weapons,&quot; said Alexander Nozdrachev, head of the state-owned Russian Agency for Conventional Weapons, according to the Interfax-Military News Agency.

TITLE: Rumsfeld Dismisses Chance Of Hussein-Saving Ceasefire
AUTHOR: By Matt Kelley
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday there was &quot;not a chance&quot; that the United States would agree to an arrangement that would halt the war and allow Saddam Hussein to survive as Iraq's leader.
 
&quot;It doesn't matter who proposes it, there's not going to be one,&quot; Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing. He said that governments that are discussing such a deal &quot;provide hope and comfort&quot; to Hussein's regime &quot;and give them ammunition that they can then try to use to retain the loyalty of their forces.&quot;
 Rumsfeld said it was too late for Hussein to seek exile. &quot;If you're asking if we're still encouraging him to leave, the answer is no,&quot; he said.
 But while the secretary said it was too late for Hussein or his top aides to save themselves, it was not beyond that point for members of Iraqi's military, and he urged them to stage an uprising.
 &quot;Iraqi officers and soldiers can still survive and help to rebuild a free Iraq, if they do the right thing,&quot; Rumsfeld said.
 &quot;They must now decide whether they want to share the fate of Saddam Hussein or whether they'll save themselves, turn on that condemned dictator and help ... Iraq's liberation,&quot; he said.
 Rumsfeld said there are contacts between the United States and some Iraqi military leaders. &quot;There's still contact, and you never know&quot; when the contacts might bear fruit, he said.
 Air Force General Richard Myers, giving an update on the U.S.-led campaign, said U.S. forces were &quot;on the outskirts of Baghdad right now.&quot;
 Rumsfeld was asked by a reporter about efforts by some countries to try to craft a deal to end the war short of the overthrow of Hussein and his regime. &quot;There is not a chance that there's going to be a deal,&quot; he said.
 Rumsfeld said that talk of such an arrangement would unrealistically feed the optimism of those around Hussein, &quot;with hope that one more time, maybe he'll survive, one more time he'll be there for another decade or so.&quot;

TITLE: Trade Influences Stance on Iraq
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan and Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With U.S.-led forces nearing the outskirts of Baghdad, the Kremlin is softening its staunch opposition to the war, in what analysts say is an indication that Moscow wants to mend frayed relations with Washington and, perhaps, win a spot for Russian companies in postwar Iraq.
 
&quot;For political and economic considerations, Russia is not interested in the defeat of the United States,&quot; President Vladimir Putin told reporters in the Central Russian city of Tambov on Wednesday.
 Putin did not elaborate, but he continued to toe the softer line Thursday, saying Russia will continue to cooperate with the United States, despite differences over Iraq.
 &quot;In the political sense, the United States and Russia are the biggest nuclear powers in the world, and the special responsibility for the protection of international peace rests upon us,&quot; he told reporters, who were hastily called late Thursday to his suburban residence of Novo-Ogaryovo, The Associated Press reported.
 &quot;In solving any problems of a global character, including crisis situations, we have always cooperated, are cooperating, and will cooperate with the United States,&quot; Putin said. 
 Putin emphasized the importance of the U.S. economy for Russia, saying trade turnover in 2002 was $9.2 billion and was expected to approach $10 billion this year.
 The Foreign Ministry, however, did not tone down its strong criticism of the war to match Putin's rhetoric. Ahead of a meeting Thursday with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in Brussels, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov demanded that the crisis be returned to the UN.
 A Foreign Ministry official refused to comment on Putin's remarks. The ministry on Wednesday summoned U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow to protest U.S. airstrikes on a Baghdad district where the Russian Embassy is located.
 Alexei Malashenko, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said Ivanov appears to be continuing to play a &quot;bad cop&quot; role but Putin can no longer afford to sit on the fence as U.S.-led forces inch closer toward ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime.
 Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' USA and Canada Institute, agreed.
 &quot;This is a clear shift in Kremlin rhetoric ... [showing] that the endgame is near in Iraq and it is time to try to mend relations,&quot; he said.
 Putin, who previously called the start of the war &quot;a big political mistake,&quot; chose a rather unusual location to make the shift in rhetoric. Putin was in Tambov, located about 400 kilometers southeast of Moscow, on a visit meant to discuss medical-insurance reforms, and most of the reporters in his entourage concentrated on covering this issue. It was not until 9:30 p.m. that Russian news agencies and the Kremlin's official Web site reported Putin's remarks on Iraq, and Vremya Novostei was the only large newspaper to report them on its front page Thursday. 
 After weeks of verbal offensives and counter-offensives, U.S. President George W. Bush's administration also appears to be adopting a more conciliatory tone toward Russia. Vershbow -who has spent the past few weeks spelling out what economic sticks the United States can apply to Russia - was quoted by Izvestia on Thursday as saying Washington recognizes that Russian oil companies have formidable interests in Iraq. 
 He suggested that Russia participate in shaping a vision of a postwar Iraq, as this would increase &quot;Russia's role in [its] postwar reconstruction.&quot;
 Analysts estimate that Iraq has $57.2 billion in contracts - primarily in energy and communications - with companies from Russia, the Netherlands, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, China and France. Of those deals, 90 percent, or $52 billion, are with Russia, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
 Iraq owes Russia over $8 billion. 
 Russian companies are split over whether a new Iraqi regime will honor their interests. 
 &quot;We expect the contract to be honored at the end of the war. After all, after the revolution the Soviet Union accepted [part of] the debts of tsarist Russia,&quot; a LUKoil spokesperson said Thursday.
 Zarubezhneft expressed doubts about its deals, saying it stands to lose $150 million to $180 million in potential profits in Iraq. The company was drilling dozens of oil wells in cooperation with Tatneft and the Iraq-based Northern Oil Co. when the war broke out. 
 Mashinoimport, which has some $30-million worth of oil-drilling equipment in Iraq, shared Zarubezhneft's pessimism. &quot;More questions have been raised than answered,&quot; a Mashinoimport official said.
 Tekhnopromexport is not counting on filling a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to build a large power station. &quot;Our contract was through the UN, a respected organization, so of course we hope to get some form of compensation at some point,&quot; said Tekhnopromexport spokesperson Samvel Oshinyants.
 Analysts also are divided over the fate of Russia's economic interests.
 &quot;There is a possibility that current contracts and contracts that have been discussed but not signed might be broken,&quot; said Alexei Vorobyov of the Aton brokerage. &quot;I am confident that Russian interests in the oil sector will be infringed upon.&quot;
 However, Christopher Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank, said, &quot;It is very likely that Russian companies will retain those interests in Iraq.&quot; He said some Russian contracts have a good change of being renegotiated.
 
 <i>
Staff Writer Lyuba Pronina contributed to this report. </i>

TITLE: Illarionov: Russia Lagging Behind Other CIS States
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia is not only losing its position in the world economy, it has already lost its position as the economic engine of the former Soviet Union, presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov said on Wednesday.
 
&quot;Russia can no longer be considered the economic engine of the Commonwealth of Independent States,&quot; Illarionov told a conference organized by the Higher School of Economics, adding that the economy is headed for derailment, unless reforms of the natural monopolies are sped up and government spending is reined in.
 The government is officially targeting growth of 4.4 percent this year, but preliminary data shows 6.1-percent growth in the first quarter, and most economists now say that 5 percent for the year is more likely if oil prices stay above $25 a barrel.
 Illarionov, however, said that even 5 percent was poor, considering the economic performance of other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
 The economies of several neighboring countries have outperformed Russia since the 1998 crisis, Illarionov said.
 While Russia's cumulative economic growth between 1999 and 2002 was 19 percent, Ukraine's was 20 percent, Azerbaijan's 30 percent, Armenia's 31 percent and Kazakhstan's 36 percent, he said. And over the last three years, Russia averaged annual GDP growth of just 6 percent, compared to 9.5 in Armenia, 10.5 percent in Azerbaijan and 11 percent in Kazakhstan.
 Illarionov refrained from estimating Russia's economic growth this year, but his pessimism at the conference was echoed by the International Monetary Fund, which played a central role in the default and devaluation fiasco of 1998.
 John Odling-Smee, a senior IMF official for Europe, said his institution is downgrading its growth forecast for Russia from its original 4.9 percent.
 &quot;We don't see any preconditions for such growth this year,&quot; he said.
 Other economists at the conference, including Johanness Linn, the World Bank's vice president for Europe and Central Asia, took issue with Illarionov's assessment of the CIS economies.
 Linn said that although Russia is heavily dependent on oil and gas exports, countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are even more so, and the growth they are experiencing is due less to reforms than the abnormally high price of oil recently.
 &quot;If we look at other sectors, I'm sure the picture there is very different,&quot; Linn said.
 The point was seconded by the head of the Higher School of Economics, Yevgeny Yasin.
 Yasin said oil could not account for Ukraine's success. Rather, he said, &quot;the economic slowdown that started in Russia in 1998 hit Ukraine later and was much more serious, so the country is now growing from very low levels.
 Yasin said that Russia could learn from reform projects in other CIS states, namely Kazakhstan, which has already liberalized its currency controls and successfully overhauled its pension system and energy sector.

TITLE: Vimpelcom To Open GSM Service in April
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Local mobile-phone users are hoping to make some savings in the midst of a price war, as the country's No. 2 mobile operator, Vimpelcom, unveiled plans to sign up the first St. Petersburg customers to its Beeline services in mid-April. In response, the two GSM-standard competitors currently operating on the local market, Megafon and MTS, have announced special rates and extra services. Market analysts are predicting that Vimpelcom will struggle to capture a significant market as a result of its late arrival.
 
The Vimpelcom network in St. Petersburg was given the final go-ahead by the State Communications Committee on Monday, and testing began on Tuesday, Vimpelcom Vice President Alexei Mishenko said at a press conference on Tuesday.
 The company has already installed 110 base stations and will be able to provide customers with seven-digit St. Petersburg numbers as well as 11-digit federal numbers, he said. Agreements on the exchange of text messages with Megafon and MTS users have already been reached. 
 Andrei Yeliseyev, Vimpelcom's Northwest Region director, said that there were plans to increase the number of base stations to 250 by the end of the year, providing coverage for both the city and surrounding suburbs. 
 The company has already made agreements with 20 mobile-serivces outlets for the marketing of its services, as well as opening its own outlets on Konnogvardeisky Bulvar and Moskovsky Prospect. 
 Until recently, the local mobile-communications market has been dominated by Megafon (formerly Northwest GSM), which holds a 58.3-percent market share, and Russia's No. 1 cellular operator Mobile TeleSystems or MTS, with 35.6 percent, according to the ACM-Consulting research agency. 
 Mikhail Alexeyev, a senior consultant at ACM-Consulting, said that Vimpelcom has a good chance of attracting as many as 50,000 customers within three months, though the general situation on the local market is unlikely to be drastically altered as a result. 
 Though drawing no direct links with the appearance of Vimpelcom on the local market, Megafon launched a number of new services at a press conference on Thursday. 
 Megafon Northwest Branch Director Alexander Volkov said the new services would include three new technologies - GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and LBS (Location Based Service), allowing for the transmission of photo, music and video messages, geographical positioning on maps and SMS-chat functions.
 Volkov estimated that only 5 percent of Megafon's total revenues came from such specialized services, though there are plans for the figure to be increased to 10 percent in the near future. 
 Alexeyev said that &quot;each company should get a third of new customers, if none of them offers anything out of the ordinary, but the late entries into the market will have trouble capturing market segments that are already occupied.&quot;
 Nevertheless, certain changes are expected with the arrival of Vimpelecom, Alexeyev said. &quot;The first change will be that Megafon and MTS will lose revenue from roaming services - before its arrival, Vimpelcom subscribers from Moscow had to pay MTS or Megafon for services while in St. Petersburg,&quot; he said. 
 Vimpelcom Vice President Nikolai Pryanishnikov said that Vimpelcom subscribers from Moscow pay a total of $200,000 per month to MTS and Megafon for roaming services while visiting St. Petersburg. 
 Analysts also said that the appearance of Vimpelcom will change the average mobile-phone user. &quot;Vimpelcom makes wide use of pre-payment schemes, orienting itself towards the mass market, and developing a large number of clients spending small amounts,&quot; Alexeyev said. &quot;That will inevitably lead to a drop in the average income from clients.&quot; 
 Vimpelcom also has a reputation for encouraging its dealers to promote its services aggresively, which may force competitors to make adjustments. 
 &quot;In any event, the cost of attracting a new customer will increase,&quot; Alexeyev said.
 Vimpelcom currently operates in 43 regions of Russia, with 4 million subscribers in Moscow, a total of 6 million subscribers throughout Russia, and profits for 2002 of $129.6 million.

TITLE: President Calls for Improved Arbitration
AUTHOR: By Alex Nicholson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Lawmakers this month will sink their teeth into a Kremlin-backed plan to clean up an incestuous corner of the judicial system by breaking too-close ties between arbitration and appeals courts.
 
The amendments to the law on arbitration courts, which President Vladimir Putin submitted to the Duma in February, if passed, would cut down on biased appellate rulings by replacing local appeals courts with 20 interregional appeals courts, supporters say.
 The current system allows the same judge who presides over an arbitration trial - Russian arbitration courts hear only economic and commercial cases - to rule on the appeal.
 And even when the appeal is heard by another judge, who often sits just down the hall, the degree of separation may be too low for comfort.
 &quot;The courts may be different, but their offices are all next to each other,&quot; said Sergei Pepelyaev, managing partner with Pepelyaev, Goltsblat &amp; Partners in Moscow. &quot;All the people work in the same collective and their relations naturally influence the decisions they take.&quot;
 The country's appeals courts and its 10 cassation courts, which were created in 1995 as watchdogs to rule on the procedural integrity of arbitration court hearings, overturned almost the same percent of rulings they heard last year.
 Last year, the country's appeals courts heard 68,769 cases from arbitration courts, of which they overturned 27 percent.
 The cassation courts found violations in 29.3 percent of the 51,022 arbitration cases they considered.
 However, it is not the quantity that counts, Pepelyaev said. What matters is that the new system would smooth out imbalances. Some courts - such as the Moscow arbitration court - are reputed for almost never overturning initial arbitration rulings.
 Prototype courts could go into operation in Moscow, the Moscow region, St. Petersburg and the rest of the Northwest Region as early as next year, while the amendments propose a countrywide switch by 2006.
 Lawyers and analysts say the new appellate courts would make the arbitration court system more effective and transparent.
 &quot;I have been involved in litigation for eight years and often come across court decisions being appealed in the same court,&quot; said Yaroslav Klimov, a senior lawyer in Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's litigation department.
 &quot;This has never inspired confidence that the ruling would be independent. All sorts of factors play their role, it's partly psychological - who is friends with who,&quot; he said.
 Klimov said he once appealed a trial judge's refusal to accept five different procedural requests, but the appeals court rejected him out of hand.
 &quot;The appellate court - which, of course, was located in the same court building as the court for the first case - quickly supported the trial court's decision on all five requests,&quot; Klimov said.
 Furthermore, a clause in the current arbitration law allows local authorities to distribute federal-budget funds earmarked for the courts, including medical care and housing for judges and other employees.
 Thus, the appeals and the arbitration courts depend on the goodwill of the same local authorities for funding - which may sap their independence and makes it less likely for an appeal to succeed in politically charged cases.
 Making the appeals courts super-regional would render it harder to influence both court decisions.
 &quot;The Supreme Arbitration Court [which developed the amendments] always had one idea: Free-up the lower arbitration courts, so cases don't pile up and the regional elite doesn't interfere in the work of federal courts,&quot; Vedomosti quoted a source in the president's legal department as saying.
 Such major changes could take a long time to implement, Klimov warned.
 &quot;How this will operate is not clear, and, in Russia, these transitional periods can go on for years,&quot; he said.
 Others say the government is serious about moving the reforms forward.
 Presidential Deputy Chief of Staff Dmitry Kozak, an adamant supporter of court reforms, promised in February that the amendments would be pushed through the Duma as quickly as possible.
 &quot;Judicial services have seen the highest percentage increase in terms of budget spending,'' said Christopher Granville, a senior political analyst and equity strategist at United Financial Group.
 &quot;It may be tiny compared to other budget articles, but it shows that Putin is putting his money where his mouth is.&quot;
 Oleg Naumov, a judge with the Supreme Arbitration Court, said that the new system would be well worth the funds that have been earmarked in the 2003 budget.
 &quot;The state will have to spend a little more, but then - you don't economize on justice.&quot;

TITLE: Plan To Cut Bureaucracy Threatens Institutions
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The number of ministries and other federal bodies with similar powers would be slashed from 56 to 15 or 17 under a plan being drafted by the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, the ministry said Tuesday.
 
A proposal to dissolve at least three governmental bodies has already been forwarded to the cabinet, Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Mikhail Dmitriyev was quoted by news agencies as saying.
 The ministry refused to name the three federal bodies it wants to eliminate or even identify whether they are ministries, committees, agencies, services or inspectorates - the five main classifications of federal bodies.
 &quot;There are purely ethical reasons for this: What if the proposal is dismissed?&quot; a ministry spokesperson said.
 President Vladimir Putin has called upon the cabinet to come up with proposals to slash the federal government's notoriously bloated bureaucracy, which currently employs more than 2 million people. In addition to the economic ministry, the government's own apparatus is also drafting a plan.
 Although he didn't name which three bodies his ministry is suggesting be eliminated first, Dmitriyev did say that all but 18 of the 500 people they collectively employ should be retained. He also said the move would free up 80 percent of the office space currently occupied by these bodies.
 However, he noted that axing two or three agencies at a time is not his ministry's strategy for streamlining the federal government. Rather, he said, a complete overhaul should be carried out in an orchestrated fashion.
 Exactly how the economic ministry thinks this should be done is still being debated. But a final plan, which will detail which federal bodies will stay and how they should function, will be ready by the end of the year, Dmitriyev said.
 The ministry wants to divide federal bodies into a three-tiered hierarchy, with the government at the top, several ministries in the middle and &quot;the 'departments' that are not part of the government&quot; at the bottom, he said.
 The new system is aimed not only at getting rid of the overlapping functions and the excessive powers some have, but also at boosting the overall efficiency of governing by simplifying procedures for introducing new regulations.
 Many laws cannot be realized the way it is now, Dmitriyev said. For example, he said, a law allowing people to invest a part of their pensions was passed six months ago, but cannot be implemented without 10 new government regulations and only one or two have been signed.
 Putin first called for comprehensive administrative reform in 2001 and last year said he wanted it done by the end of 2003. It appears unlikely that the government will be able to reform itself by the end of this year, but Putin has managed to make some progress on overhauling the law enforcement complex.
 Last month he did away with the Tax Police, giving most of its functions to the Interior Ministry. He also put the Border Guards under the control of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and dissolved the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information, or FAPSI, whose functions were absorbed by the FSB and the Defense Ministry.

TITLE: U.S. Court Rejects $3-Bln Case Against Russian Aluminum
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A New York court has thrown out a $3-billion racketeering and corruption suit against metals tycoon Oleg Deripaska and his company Russian Aluminum, a RusAl lawyer said Monday.
 
The judge hearing the case ruled that Russia, not the United States, was the proper forum for the dispute.
 Konstantin Remchukov, chairperson of the advisory board of Base Element, Deripaska's holding company, praised the decision, telling reporters in Moscow that it was not only a vote of confidence in RusAl, but also in Russia's judicial system, which is an &quot;adequate forum&quot; for resolving business disputes.
 The plaintiffs, however, including Deripaska rival Mikhail Zhivilo's company, Mikom, and offshore metal-trading firms Base Metal Trading and Alucoal Holdings, consider the ruling &quot;clearly wrong&quot; and will appeal within 30 days, Bruce Marks, Zhivilo's lawyer, said by telephone from Philadelphia.
 In 2000, Zhivilo and others filed a claim against Deripaska, RusAl and more than a dozen other companies and businesspeople under the U.S. Racketeering-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. In the claim, Deripaska is accused of fraud, money laundering, extortion and complicity to murder.
 Zhivilo, the former director and major shareholder in Novokuznetsk aluminum factory, or NKAZ, was seeking $900 million in losses from the &quot;illegal bankruptcy of NKAZ,&quot; which resulted in RusAl's acquisition of the factory, and $100 million from the takeover, &quot;through pure physical force, bribery and extortion,&quot; of the Kachkanar vanadium-mining complex, or GOK.
 The RICO statute allows plaintiffs to claim triple damages.
 In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge John Koetltl said: &quot;The plaintiffs' claims involve the bankruptcies of two major Russian companies ... The controversy presents issues that are of clear import to Russian citizens that should be resolved by the Russian courts ... The case has virtually no connection with the United States. As such, the local interest in resolution of the dispute is virtually none.&quot;
 &quot;The judge clearly did not apprehend the degree of corruption that is prevalent in the Russian courts,&quot; Marks said.
 &quot;The court denied the case because it did not want to assume the workload - the case has tremendous connections to the United States,&quot; Marks said.
 &quot;There are multiple U.S. defendants. The money was laundered through New York. The bribes were paid through New York banks and these people are connected with the Izmailovo mafia, which has a base in New York,&quot; he said.
 &quot;The U.S. has a strong interest in ensuring that organized-crime business groups like this don't use the United States as their base of operations,&quot; he said. &quot;And we think that the appeals court will understand this.&quot;
 RusAl's lead counsel, Michael Burrows, said the complaint was &quot;a poorly written screenplay designed to grab headlines&quot; and accused the plaintiffs of &quot;attempted blackmail.&quot;
 &quot;They may try to bring this action in some other jurisdictions,&quot; Burrows said. &quot;I believe that an English court would come to the same conclusion, a court in Canada would come to the same conclusion.&quot;
 &quot;It is evident that if there were even the smallest grounds to think that money laundering took place on U.S. territory or that there was a threat of assassination, then the judge would not have concluded that the U.S. was not the forum for the dispute,&quot; Remchukov said.
 Remchukov said the legal victory would have an immediate impact on the company's business.

TITLE: Assessing Military Strategy in the Fog of War
AUTHOR: By Vitaly Shlykov
TEXT: IN his classic book &quot;On War,&quot; Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz wrote: &quot;War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the factors on which action is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.&quot;
 
I will, nonetheless, attempt to offer an assessment of the current military campaign in Iraq, using the 1991 Desert Storm operation as a point of comparison.
 In the build-up to the war, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld frequently urged that the U.S. military not use Desert Storm as a frame of reference in planning for the &quot;Shock and Awe&quot; phase. Indeed, the current military campaign has little in common with the war 12 years ago. This has led many Russian commentators, politicians and military leaders to conclude that the U.S. operation is not going as planned.
 Their assessment seems convincing at first glance. During the first three days of the land war in 1991, allied troops took some 30,000 Iraqi soldiers prisoner. The first three days of Operation Iraqi Freedom netted just 4,000 prisoners.
 In 1991, the U.S.-led coalition accomplished all of its objectives in the land war in less than four days. Allied forces in Desert Storm destroyed 4,000 Iraqi tanks out of a total of 4,230. They obliterated 2,140 of 3,110 pieces of artillery, along with 1,856 of 2,870 armored personnel carriers and 240 of 800 combat aircraft.
 In contrast, during the same war, the allies lost just four of their 3,360 tanks, only one piece of artillery out of 3,633, nine armored personnel carriers out of the total 4,050, and 44 of 2,600 planes.
 According to conservative estimates, Iraq lost 25,000 to 50,000 soldiers in Desert Storm; some estimates even go as high as 100,000. Meanwhile, of 737,000 soldiers deployed by the U.S.-led coalition, only 148 died, including 89 Americans.
 Iraqi losses are incomparably lower this time around, even by the U.S. count - several hundred men so far. Iraq admits to losing only 14 tanks near Basra.
 Does this mean that Operation Iraqi Freedom has run into complications, as most Russian experts confidently conclude? Are allied assertions that the operation is going as planned nothing more than a whitewash?
 Von Clausewitz argued that politics determine the goals of war. The allies' political motivations, and their military objectives, in 2003 are clearly different than they were in 1991. The goal of Desert Storm was to liberate Kuwait even if that meant annihilating all Iraqi forces in the region.
 The goal of Operation Iraqi Freedom is to oust Saddam Hussein and to disarm Iraq. Disarmament, according to von Clausewitz, means to destroy a country's armed forces, conquer its territory and break its will to resist. With these three goals in mind, the atypical progress of the current war begins to make sense.
 Von Clausewitz defines the destruction of a country's armed forces not as their physical extermination, but as &quot;reducing them to a state in which they can no longer fight.&quot; The United States has not given up on the idea of inciting the Iraqi army to remove Hussein from power. U.S. commanders have therefore ordered few airstrikes on regular Iraqi army units.
 This strategy largely explains the limited Iraqi losses of men and materiel. Hussein, for his part, is in no rush to send his regular army troops into battle, clearly fearing that they will prefer capture to almost certain death in combat. The Americans have also gone easy on the regular Iraqi army so as not to force them to hide behind &quot;human shields&quot; in the cities.
 Hussein, on the other hand, would rather concentrate the army in the cities, where they could be forced to make a defensive stand under the &quot;supervision&quot; of loyal Republican Guards and Baath Party operatives. This is why coalition forces are focusing their bombs and missiles on Iraq's military and government installations, Baath Party offices and the Fedayeen, units of irregulars loyal to Saddam Hussein's elder son, Uday.
 The U.S.-led coalition is also making steady progress in the occupation of Iraq. Keep in mind that Iraq is a large country, 1 1/2 times the size of Italy. Its 27 million people are concentrated in the cities, such as Baghdad (5 million), Basra (1.3 million) and Nasiriyah and its suburbs (600,000).
 U.S. and British forces are presently unprepared to assume the burden of providing essential food and services to the residents of these cities. As a first step, the allies are therefore putting in place the infrastructure that will allow the occupation force to assume full control of Iraq. They seized Iraq's only deep-water port, Umm Qasr, with its facilities for loading oil tankers, and immediately began sweeping the harbor for mines. They also seized Iraq's major oil fields and refineries before Hussein could sabotage or destroy them. Oil exports will finance the purchase of food and medicine for the Iraqi people once the Hussein regime is overthrown. The coalition has also secured a number of strategic bridges across the Euphrates River as well as the Tallil airfield outside Nasiriyah.
 The coalition's third and, perhaps, most difficult objective is to break the Iraqis' will to resist, or put simply, to prevent Iraq from becoming another Palestine. Without an appreciation for the importance and difficulty of this task it is impossible to understand the nature of this military campaign. U.S. and British forces are doing everything they can to avoid civilian casualties, even at the risk of incurring heavier casualties themselves. Rockets fall on the markets of Baghdad from time to time, of course, but the Americans have not tried to justify these mistakes as military necessities.
 What's more, civilian losses are roughly equivalent to allied losses from friendly fire. Statistics show that friendly fire deaths are common in any major armed conflict. During World War II, some 20 percent of all American casualties resulted from friendly fire. In Vietnam, that figure rose to 40 percent. As reports of the current military operation make clear, friendly fire has accounted for most allied casualties, while Iraqi troops have inflicted only minor losses.
 This could mean that coalition forces have been slowed not by Hussein's forces, but by other, less obvious factors. Perhaps they are trying to lure the Republican Guard into the open country outside Baghdad with the objective of routing them before they can take cover in the capital. It's also possible that the Americans are shoring up the rear in preparation for a decisive attack on Baghdad. Other scenarios are also possible.
 U.S. and British forces will have little trouble defeating Hussein's army. They hold an overwhelming military advantage, and they will dictate the pace and the terms of further military engagements. The only way that Saddam Hussein could &quot;have his say&quot; in this scenario would be to use weapons of mass destruction, which he almost certainly has at his disposal. That would definitely be his final word, however. And I am confident that coalition forces are prepared for this possibility.
 
 <i>Vitaly Shlykov is a former defense minister and a member of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. </i>

TITLE: Flying Not an Option During 300th Week
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
TEXT: JUST as in English, there is a saying in Russian that a good host would give someone his last shirt. Lately I've felt like writing to the Kremlin and telling them my size, since the shirts it seems to be ready to give away are those of myself and the other 4.5 million residents of St. Petersburg - not to mention those of their friends and relatives and anyone else who feels like visiting the city at the end of May.
 
The cause for this feeling is the official announcement by Pulkovo 2 International Airport this week that international flights to the site would either be limited or canceled entirely from midnight on May 20 to midnight on June 2. The decision was taken to facilitate the arrival of the thousands of members of the 48 governmental delegations from around the world that are coming to a summit scheduled for the period and to take part in the celebrations for the city's 300th anniversary.
 I'm not begrudging our honored guests their right to come and spend three days checking out the splendors of the Konstantinovsky Palace and cruising along the city's waterways, but I am annoyed with the fact that it is we local residents that are expected not only to lose our shirts, but also not to be at all bothered by the prospect.
 I'm a little calmer about it now but, earlier this week, my annoyance at the situation even drove me to slip up and suggest to a friend that the decision was a violation of Russians' civil rights as guaranteed by the constitution.
 My friend quickly pointed out my mistake.
 &quot;Wait a second! Where do they want to close the airport, in some city in America?&quot; he laughed over the phone. &quot;Don't be naive! There is only one person in Russia that has any guaranteed rights. His name is Vladimir Putin.&quot;
 He had a point, which put an end to my constitutional rantings but didn't leave me feeling any better.
 Unless we're talking about their driving habits, I think that Russians are too patient. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Kremlin has been promising us better times and more attention to our interests. There have been some improvements - as long as you live in a major center like Moscow or St. Petersburg - but, for at least 90 percent of the population, there hasn't been much evident in the form of results. Most of these people don't put up a fuss. They just keep on waiting.
 So it's no surprise that the airport's management does not expect any complaints from would-be passengers thwarted by the decision. People are just too used to this kind of treatment.
 &quot;From a legal point of view, there are no grounds for complaints, although we have received requests from some airlines to make exceptions,&quot; Valery Indusov, the deputy director of Pulkovo Airport, said at a briefing on Monday.
 From a legal standpoint, frustratingly, it seems that Indusov is right. 
 &quot;It seems that it is the exclusive right of airport's management to determine the schedule of flights and to also cancel them. It is possible to talk about a violation of the right to freedom of movement, but I don't see the point,&quot; Yury Shmidt, a local lawyer, told me this week. &quot;The 300th anniversary is such a unique event, although I'm sick and tired of it.&quot;
 &quot;If I need to go somewhere during this time, I'll fly out of Moscow,&quot; he added.
 Shmidt pointed out that, from a judicial point of view, this is the same as the government closing city roads for governmental motorcades, creating huge traffic jams and the accompanying flares of anger from our drivers who, as noted above, don't seem to be as patient as the folks who need to use the airport.
 The good news for the city's drivers is that the government plans to move most of the visiting officials around by boat, so visiting linguists might miss out on a golden opportunity to analyze some of the more colorful phrases in the Russian language.
 With regard to the decision about the airport, it seems to me that the celebrations may in fact be for the people, as the Kremlin and City Hall claim. To be more precise, the celebrations are targeted at a very patient people. Sure, they get a little testy if they are told that Russia's interests are being undermined somewhere abroad but, at home, they won't kick up a fuss if someone else gives away their last shirt.

TITLE: mask gaining recognizable face
AUTHOR: by John Freedman
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Like an aging radical with a glint in his eye, the Golden Mask festival probably never will settle down into complete respectability. It not only would be hard to imagine the Golden Mask without a few good controversies, it would be a downright shame. That is always almost half the fun. 
 
And yet, since it was founded nine years ago, the Golden Mask has grown up. It has become what Eduard Boyakov wanted when he signed on as general director in 1996 - a national forum, a time and space that brings together Russian theaters from all over the country on a regular basis. Ironically perhaps, that success is clearest this year, since the festival is running in two cities - St. Petersburg, where the March 27 opening and April 14 closing ceremonies are being held, in addition to the entire performance schedule, and Moscow, where most of the shows nominated for awards are being performed through April 20. The only possible conclusion is this: If the Golden Mask can run simultaneously in two locations at once, it has become a force to be reckoned with. 
 The St. Petersburg connection is a natural this year, considering that the city's 300th anniversary is less than two months away. The jury is still out on what reviews Governor Vladimir Yakovlev will get for leaving so many streets, squares and buildings in such a state of neglect before the big celebration. But the city itself, one of Russia's great theatrical centers, has risen to the occasion. That was evident at the opening ceremonies last week, which took place at the history-laden, 247 year-old Alexandrinsky Theater. 
 Two moments alone made the point. The first occurred as it was revealed that the St. Petersburg-educated, Moscow-based actor Georgy Taratorkin, famous for playing Raskolnikov in the film of Fyodor Dostoevsky's &quot;Crime and Punishment,&quot; was sitting in a seat that often was occupied by Dostoevsky himself. The other took place as two faded though gorgeous curtains were lowered from the flies - these were the actual drapes used in Vsevolod Meyerhold's historical production of &quot;The Masquerade,&quot; a show that performed the very night the October Revolution began on the streets of St. Petersburg in 1917. Suddenly, the scope of Russian culture was distilled into something that was tangible to everyone in the hall. 
 The festival kicked off with productions by two of Russia's most renowned venues, St. Petersburg's Maly Drama Theater showing Igor Konyayev's production of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's &quot;The Moscow Choir,&quot; and Moscow's Theater Yunogo Zritelya offering Kama Ginkas' production of Chekhov's &quot;The Lady With the Lapdog.&quot; But there were more than just big names at work in the festival's early days. The young Andrei Prikotenko showed his hit production of &quot;Oedipus Rex&quot; for St. Petersburg's Theater on Liteiny; St. Petersburg's tiny Osobnyak Theater, located in a semi-basement, presented an unorthodox reading of Milorad Pavic's novel &quot;The Dictionary of the Khazars&quot; under the title of &quot;Lexicon&quot;; and the SamART Theater of Samara brought its production of Bertolt Brecht's &quot;Mother Courage,&quot; featuring Roza Khairullina, who established her reputation in Kazan, in the title role.
 &quot;Oedipus Rex&quot; has been a phenomenon since premiering in March 2002, going beyond mere popularity to achieve something approaching pop status. This isn't surprising, since Prikotenko opens the production with a long blast of pop music and a risque epilogue during which the actors play out the tragedy in brief as if it were a comic-book story. This tongue-in-cheek approach to Sophocles' tale of the man who unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother is repeatedly reprised throughout the performance. Many of the scenes are played as if this were a farce. 
 Apparently, Prikotenko assumes that contemporary audiences are unable or unwilling to stay with a deeply disturbing play about the messy, dangerous paradoxes of fate and revenge unless they are served up with song, dance and sex. Perhaps he's right, although he comes close to making this a parody rather than an interpretation of Sophocles. 
 The saving graces are the extraordinary set by Emil Kapelyush and Ksenia Rappoport's fine performance as Jocasta, mother and wife to Oedipus. Kapelyush uses a mix of canvas and imitation stone to create a world outside of time. His crowning element is a series of stone blocks hanging above the actors that shake like an airborne earthquake each time a fateful decision is made. Rappoport, an actress of great sincerity, plays the pop entertainment with lighthearted irony and has depth to spare when she takes her heroine to the darkest edges of human experience. 
 Alexei Slyusarchuk's production of &quot;Lexicon&quot; at the Osobnyak is a challenging work in which a narrator (Dmitry Podnozov) weaves the words of Pavic's novel with improvisations that draw the audience into the performance, while characters come and go to tell or act out their stories of memory and belief. 
 This is a tale of war and death - much of it set in Belgrade during the NATO bombing - and tries to embrace all of the myths, all of the religions, all of the peoples that live in an ancient land where love and hate are inextricably intertwined and politics is an abomination. Through film clips on a brick wall; through musicians performing among the audience; through the actual preparation of a fish dinner that three spectators eat at the end; and through questions the actors pose to the audience but never answer, an atmosphere seething with paradox and mystery arises. 
 Adoph Shapiro's version of &quot;Mother Courage&quot; has the audience on a rotating disk that moved with Mother Courage's cart every time she picked up to travel to a new town during the 30-year war raging around her and her family. This created a visceral link between the audience and Brecht's highly ambiguous character whose livelihood depends on war even as she does everything possible to avoid, if not subvert, all of the combatants. The effect was weakened, however, by Yury Kharikov's set and costumes, which consisted of billowing scraps of multi-colored cloths behind whose excess few of the actors were even visible.
 None of this affected Khairullina, a small, puckish actor with a talent for calling a spade a spade. Though buried in padding and folds of cloth, she was entirely unconstrained by them. Her Mother Courage - irreverent, shrewd and tragically flawed - at times seemed to be the only one living in a land of the walking dead. 
 Festival problems? There have been a few. Moscow's Fomenko Studio, nominated for Golden Masks in three categories for &quot;The Madwoman of Chaillot,&quot; backed out at the last moment. Days after the festival commenced, the Osobnyak Theater was flooded when the apartment above it caught fire, although &quot;Lexicon&quot; will go on as scheduled on April 11. The most tragic setback occurred shortly before the festival began, when the stage manager for the opening ceremonies died. In true theatrical fashion, however, the show did go on. 
 That has become a tradition at the Golden Mask - dealing with difficulties as they arise and going on with the business of theater. There are still another ten days of that ahead.
 
 <i>
See Stages for performance times and locations. Links: www.goldenmask.ru </i>

TITLE: they're polystylistic philanthropists
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: When an article in The Guardian called Menlo Park &quot;very, very odd,&quot; the newspaper was not exaggerating. The London-based band uses theatrics such as hog roasts, cockroach races, fire-eating and trapeze art in its shows, while still managing to produce music.
 
Yet another in the succession of off-the-wall London-based bands brought to Russia by Moscow-based promoters Bad Taste (after The Tiger Lillies and Nigel Burch and the Flea Pit Orchestra last year), Menlo Park arrives this week to play two concerts in St. Petersburg. It may sound incredible, but both are free.
 The band's frontman, Chris Taylor, 23, was born in Philadelphia and raised on hip hop, although he says it is irrelevant to the music he plays today. After moving to London in 1997, Taylor, in 1999, formed Menlo Park, which today consists of five members: South Africa-born John &quot;Viola&quot; Greswell (a former award-winning violinist, on viola); Manhattan native Harper Simon (the son of singer/songwriter Paul Simon, on guitar); Brit Ben Nicholls (a classically trained pianist and cellist, on bass); and Scotland's Seb Rochford (a jazz drummer with his own band, Polar Bear).
 &quot;Basically, everybody is too good to be in our band but they are anyway,&quot; Taylor said in a phone interview last week.
 So far, the band has produced one album, 2001's &quot;Menlo Park,&quot; and two &quot;postcard&quot; EPs - written in a particular town - including last year's &quot;Greetings From Montauk, NY.&quot;
 &quot;While on a writing trip in the United States, Menlo Park decided to document a few of its new songs - a record of ideas - a musical postcard that would capture the energy and mood of the trip,&quot; Taylor said. &quot;The record unforgivingly portrays the coming of age of a group of young men drunk in a beach house armed with a banjo and writing songs about prison rape and Southern love.&quot;
 In honor of Menlo Park's Russian tour, Bad Taste released a Russia-only compilation CD called &quot;Show Business.&quot; Out on March 20, it features tracks from the band's first EP and album as well as more recent material. 
 A postcard from Moscow is also planned, while Menlo Park's new Russian-language song &quot;Doktor Anushka&quot; (sung in broken Russian by Taylor) is available free on the band's Web site.
 Menlo Park is named for the small town in New Jersey where Thomas Edison recorded &quot;Mary Had a Little Lamb&quot; on the first phonograph on Dec. 6, 1877. Another reason Taylor cited for taking the town's name is that it was at Menlo Park Veterans Hospital that author Ken Kesey first tried LSD as a volunteer for the U.S. government's program to test a variety of psychoactive drugs, including LSD and amphetamine IT-290, in 1959. 
 &quot;But whatever ... It's just a name that doesn't get annoying,&quot; Taylor said. &quot;We almost called the band Mother Trucker.&quot;
 The band's musical style has been described as &quot;dark cajun country voodoo folk,&quot; but Taylor said that label doesn't apply anymore. &quot;Maybe it worked once, when we were exploring those areas but, now, we're much less cajun voodoo folk and more dark psychedelic punk gospel gypsy country rock.&quot;
 According to Taylor, the band draws its inspiration from such diverse acts as Doctor John, The Kinks, Johnny Cash, Spike Jones and The Animals. But, despite a list of influences that includes a number of rock acts, Taylor once said &quot;I hate rock.&quot; Last week, he elaborated.
 &quot;I don't really hate anything,&quot; he said. &quot;I just get pissed off with most current rock bands that tend to be rather boring. They get into the studio and will only be happy if the guitar solo is exactly like the Dead Kennedys, the bass is exactly like The Stranglers and the drums are exactly like Iggy Pop - and they'll never sound as good as any of them. ... Actually, I do hate them.&quot;
 Not surprisingly for a band that in four years has only released one album, Taylor said that Menlo Park is primarily a live band. 
 &quot;Our live show is currently our strongest attribute, but that will change with the next album. Not to say that our recordings to date aren't works of absolute genius, but they just don't tend to have the universal appeal of our live show. You see, we are a No. 1 band trapped inside an indie band's drum stool. The world just doesn't realize.&quot;
 But what makes Menlo Park's shows special?
 &quot;We aim to make our shows the best thing you've ever seen,&quot; Taylor said. &quot;Some bands just get up and play but that's never been enough for us. We are live music philanthropists.&quot;
 <i>

 Menlo Park performs at 7 p.m. on Wednesday at Cynic and at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday at Red Club. Links: www.menlopark.co.uk </i>

TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: This Saturday's <strong>Fuzz Awards </strong>concert will, at last, be headlined by Leningrad, which has been arguably Russia's most popular rock act of the last few years, in spite of - or perhaps because of - being banned in Moscow (by personal order of Mayor Yury Luzhkov), the Moscow Oblast and, now, Estonia for its often expletive-laden lyrics.
 
The Fuzz Awards, which were founded in 1994 by local rock magazine Fuzz - then going by the name Rock Fuzz - have frequently been a target of criticism for not fully reflecting what is happening on the contemporary music scene in Russia. Critics have charged that the awards pay too little attention to local bands that have broken through to national success, preferring instead to have a soft spot for radio-friendly Moscow-based acts.
 Saturday's concert will also feature performances by Moscow-based acts Zemfira, Nogu Svelo! and Deti Picasso, as well as local acts Kirpichi, Piknik and Animal Jazz.
 Meanwhile, local Radiohead-influenced club band Torba-Na-Kruch will be distributing some alternative awards of its own at City Club on Friday. The awards - which go by the rather predictable moniker of the <strong>Zzuf Awards </strong>- were established last year, and feature nominations in various oddball categories. Last year, for example, one trophy went to the person who had made the longest journey to attend one of the band's concerts. (For the record, fact fans, it turned out to be a certain Igor Druzhinin, who had travelled all the way from Sarov, a town some 1,100 kilometers from St. Petersburg.)
 One of the local club scene's most recently established favorites, the Tom Waits-influenced trio <strong>Billy's Band, </strong>will play its most ambitious show to date at PORT Club on Friday, with support coming from Estonian grunge band Blind. Both acts will also appear at the new &quot;exclusive&quot; club Pla.Styl.Inn on Sunday.
 Irregularly published local punk fanzine <strong>&quot;Nozhki I Vilki&quot;</strong><i> </i>(&quot;Knives and Forks&quot;) is set to celebrate its fifth birthday with a punk fest at Orlandina on Thursday. The publication, which specializes in the &quot;do-it-yourself&quot; punk and hardcore scene, will present various acts that have had something to do with it down the years, be it writing articles, drawing pictures, or simply being reviewed in the photocopied magazine.
 Lined up to play are Vyborg's P.T.V.P., Belarussian group deVIAtion, and local bands Skafandr, Bondzinsky and 'Til I Die.
 The ninth issue of &quot;Nozhki I Vilki&quot; is expected to have appeared by the day of the concert.
 Also worth checking out is eccentric British band Menlo Park, whose debut Russian gig at B2 in Moscow on Wednesday was quite a success, according to the band's Moscow-based promoters, Bad Taste. There were a couple of hitches, though, as what was advertised as a &quot;brothel-farm&quot; show - replete with live chickens, feathers and hay - didn't come off quite as expected.
 &quot;There was no hay and there were no feathers, because the feathers we had been sold turned out to be dirty, so we couldn't dump them on the public, and there wasn't enough hay , so we decided to do without it,&quot; a Bad Taste spokesperson wrote by email on Thursday.
 &quot;The chickens were all half dead,&quot; she added. &quot;But the circus actors were great.&quot;
 See the article on p. ii for more.
 
 <i>- by Sergey Chernov </i>

TITLE: robin bob-bob-bobbing along
AUTHOR: by Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Tuesday evening was somewhat frenetic for me. In between finishing an article, having my newly purchased washing machine installed and meeting friends who were visiting from London and Irkutsk, respectively, I had to find time to eat, preferably at somewhere that I could subsequently review for this column.
 
It was then, rushing out of the door and jamming a hat on my head, that I remembered about Robin Bobin. When I moved into my apartment just before Christmas, a colleague had pointed out a few local establishments that he said were worth visiting. In particular, he said, the portions at Robin Bobin were very generous, which sounded ideal on Tuesday, given the hunger levels of both myself and my dining companion.
 Robin Bobin is laid out in three basement-level rooms with low ceilings on Gagarinskaya Ulitsa, although only two of the rooms are visible when you enter - the third one is hidden further back. It is decorated in a sort of a pastiche of an Olde Worlde-type place, with faux-brick walls and timber beams &quot;supporting&quot; the ceiling. There's also an interesting brazier with a fake fire burning in one of the windows.
 We sat down at the only free table in the first room, and ordered drinks - a Baltika (40 rubles, $1.25) for me, and a grapefruit juice (15 rubles, $0.45) for my companion - and perused the menu.
 Here, it should be said that Robin Bobin fits into that awkward category of eateries that are not really bars or cafes, but not really restaurants either. While we were there, most people at other tables were just having a drink or two, but there were also a few diners as well. The diners, in our opinion, made the right choice, while those who were just drinking missed out. The menu contains a broad selection of salads, nearly all under 100 rubles, and both fish and meat main courses, most of which fall between 100 and 200 rubles. There are some interesting names to be found as well, like the &quot;Sir Robin's Cap&quot; and the &quot;Churchill&quot; steaks.
 I started out with the &quot;Printsessa Na Babakh&quot; salad (48 rubles, $1.50), which I assume is a misprint for &quot;Printsessa Na Bobakh,&quot; or &quot;Princess of Beans.&quot; This was a mix of mushrooms, beans, cheese and mayonnaise, topped off with a few walnut halves and enlivened by the presence of a hint of garlic. When all mixed together, it provided a nice, if somewhat bland after a while, way to line the stomach.
 My companion, meanwhile, had chosen the &quot;Vesyolyye Kalmariki,&quot; or &quot;Jolly Little Squids,&quot; (55 rubles, $1.75) containing the eponymous seafood, which my companion reckoned was freshly prepared, along with Indian corn, onion, garlic and lemon juice. My companion is not a great fan of hot or spicy food, and found the salad to be somewhat on the piquant side for her tastebuds - as she put it, &quot;the little squids really are jolly.&quot; She still finished it all, though.
 For mains, my companion tucked into the &quot;Frantsuzskaya Shtuchka,&quot; or &quot;French Thing,&quot; (115 rubles, $3.65) which was a massive portion of pork, topped with vegetables and baked in a cheese sauce. This was all devoured without much comment (I said we were both very hungry) as was the portion of braised vegetables - cauliflower, mushrooms, eggplant, carrots and onions - that she had as a side dish (49 rubles, $1.55), so I can only assume that it was more than edible.
 In the meantime, I was getting to grips with the &quot;Zavtrak Kusto,&quot; or &quot;Cousteau's Breakfast&quot; (175 rubles, $5.55), presumably a reference to legendary French diver and television personality Jacques, the co-inventor of the aqualung. In any case, this came as two foil-wrapped parcels of salmon, and provided a welcome opportunity to get my fingers greasy. The salmon was steamed to almost perfect tenderness, and was ever-so-subtly flavored by the bell pepper and lemon slives with which it was wrapped. My side dish also deserves a mention - I can't think of many places that serve potato wedges glazed with soy sauce (35 rubles, $1.10). Anyway, they were delicious.
 Unfortunately, time was pressing, and we had to skip dessert, but we'd managed to refuel - if that's not too rude a word - for a very reasonable price and with some tasty food along the way. We were only 40 minutes late to meet my visiting friends as well. In St. Petersburg, that's not bad going.
 
 <i>
Robin Bobin. 26 Gagarinskaya Ulitsa. Tel.: 279-8342. Open daily, noon to 3 a.m. Menu in Russian only. Credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, with alcohol: 532 rubles (about $17). </i>

TITLE: brit film, from nuns to beckham
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The fourth running ot the Festival of New British film kicks off at Dom Kino on Wednesday. This year's festival includes 12 films, all of which will be shown at Dom Kino.
 
The festival opens with a screening of Peter Mullan's &quot;The Magdalene Sisters&quot; (see interview, this page) at which several cast members are expected to be present, although the director himself cannot attend.
 The festival will also be held in Moscow, where it opens on Thursday, and a shorter version will be held in several other cities across Russia, including Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg.
 Mullan's &quot;The Magadalene Sisters,&quot; which tells the story of young women who were forced to work in laundries and suffered abuse at the hands of the Roman Catholic nuns supervising them, drew a furious reaction from the Vatican, which branded it a falsification that drew a distorted picture of reality. Women who worked in the laundries, however, welcomed the movie, saying that it was honest and truthful, and that the story definitely needed to be told.
 &quot;We know that the Vatican would like to see it banned but we will show 'The Magdalene Sisters' because we need a deep and serious film,&quot; said Francesca Canty, the Moscow-based deputy head of culture and arts of the British Council in Russia. 
 The rest of this year's festival program is fairly varied, ranging from light comedy to Shakespearean drama to psychological drama to a Western.
 Mike Figgis' &quot;Hotel&quot; blends elements of a historical drama, a tense thriller and a documentary reflecting on the process of shooting the film. As well as directing the movie, Figgis was also responsible for its script and music. The starring role is taken by Figgis' favorite actor, Julian Sands, with other lead parts played by Salma Hayek, Ornella Muti and Chiara Mastroianni. 
 After a fourth time of asking, the festival organizers have realized their dream of including a Mike Leigh film in the program. &quot;All Or Nothing,&quot; an ironic, yet funny, tale about the parents of a sick child in working-class South London, was nominated for the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival.
 Fans of British soccer giant Manchester United will be delighted to know that they can make a date with David Beckham - or at least his celluloid image - during the festival. &quot;Bend It Like Beckham,&quot; directed by Gurinder Chandha, tells the story of a soccer-mad 18-year-old British Asian woman whose hobby creates problems with her devout Sikh father.
 After a series of conflicts with her family, the lead character, Jesse, whose idol is, predictably, England soccer star Beckham, and who shows much talent for the game, realizes her dream. As she is bidding farewell to her family at the airport on her way to hook up with a team in the United States, Beckham himself walks past - a sort of good omen.
 The British Council's Canty said that, originally, the producers did not dare to ask Beckham himself to appear in the film, and had begun to search for a look-alike to cast. However, the soccer star himself then called and offered to appear as a move to encourage women to play soccer. The movie was nominated for a BAFTA award, the British equivalent of the Oscars, as best British film.
 Unlike previous runnings of the festival, in which live translation into Russian was provided over the cinema's loudspeakers, this year, translation will be available via headphones that audience members can request at the entrance.
 
 <i>
Screenings of some movies in English take place at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. See Screens for details of screenings. Links: www.ukatspb.ru </i>

TITLE: washing some dirty laundry in public
TEXT: An award-winning film that outraged the Vatican is set to open the fourth Festival of New British Film next week.
 
The work in question is Peter Mullan's 2002 film &quot;The Magdalene Sisters,&quot; which won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. Several cast members are expected to be present for the screening here, on Wednesday at Dom Kino.
 Set in the mid-1960s, &quot;The Magdalene Sisters&quot; plunges the viewer into the atmosphere of the &quot;Magdalene laundries,&quot; to which young women were sent for bringing shame on themselves and their families.
 The laundries' soubriquet is drawn from the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene, a prostitute who became a follower of Jesus. Mullan first came across the story by accident, while watching a documentary on Britain's Channel 4 television called &quot;Sex in a Cold Climate.&quot;
 The story told in the documentary blew the director away, he says. Apart from the exhausting work, the women also suffered from moral, physical and even sexual abuse from the nuns who supervised them. Rather than focusing on one particular heroine, the film presents a series of bitter recollections from various of the women.
 This week, Mullan gave an e-mail interview to Staff Writer </i><strong>Galina Stolyarova.</strong><i>
 </i>
 
q:<i>How do you feel about the Russian premiere of your film?
 </i>a:Very excited. I only wish I could be there but, unfortunately, work commitments prevent me.
 
I so much want to visit Russia. I've always loved Russian drama. I especially remember seeing a Russian drama group in Glasgow a few years ago performing a strange mix of comedy and tragedy that had me totally spellbound.
 
 
q:<i>In terms of sadism and brutality, do you see any parallels with Russian or Soviet history in the story of the Magdalenes?
 </i>a:The methodology they applied is shared by torturers all round the world. The prisoner's self-esteem is taken away; you deny them education, you deny them access to the outside world; you deny them communication to one another; you don't allow friendships to form and you take away their identities and give them new names. It is about breaking people down.
 

 
q:<i>How do you think the film might be perceived by a Russian audience, which is non-Catholic and largely atheist?
 </i>a:I really don't know how it will be received by a Russian audience, but people respond to good drama anywhere. I once had a conversation with a Glasgow taxi driver who was taking me to the airport who was not outraged by the women's treatment. Instead he took umbrage at my criticism of the nuns, whom I'd compared to the Taliban. He gave me dog's abuse. I kept saying, in the context of 1960s Ireland and the Magdalene, there are comparisons to be made with the Taliban. The driver, who was Catholic, did not disagree: He simply did not think I should have made these comments in public. As he put it, there are forces out there that would exploit such a statement. He genuinely did have a point, particularly in relationship to the west of Scotland and Northern Ireland. In communities where sectarian differences are volatile, the idea of Taliban nuns could be grist to the mill of extremists.
 

 
q:<i>When you first heard the story, what touched you so deeply that you wanted to make a feature film about it?
 </i>a:I was inspired, and horrified, by Steve Humphries' acclaimed Channel 4 documentary &quot;Sex in a Cold Climate,&quot; about Ireland's Magdalene asylums in which young women were incarcerated, sometimes for life, for dubious moral reasons. Between the industrial schools and the Magdalenes, a big part of the economy was based on slave labor.
 
This is a country where thousands of the disenfranchised, the unrespectable poor, had their kids locked up for no other reason than economics. And the reason there was no outcry is that they were in no position to complain. I wanted to show in the film how these places were very clean and efficient factories. The whole point was that from the outside they looked okay.
 
 
q:<i>Would you describe yourself as Catholic?
 </i>a:I'm a Catholic, my family is Catholic and my kids go to Catholic school.
 

 
q:<i>What is your opinion of the controversy the film has caused?
 </i>a:I didn't expect the Vatican would be so insane as to give us all this free publicity ... I thought they would ignore it.
 
There is denial everywhere. I can't think of a time really in the past 400 years when the Catholic church has lost so much credibility. There are priests now in New York taking their collars off to walk the streets ... That's an indication of how bad things have got.
 
 
q:<i>How realistic do you think the film is? In other words, what is the balance between reality and fiction? Did you have to exaggerate the brutality or downplay some of it?
 </i>a:I used the testimonies of former Magdalene inmates who had appeared in documentaries as the starting point for my screenplay. Only after I'd drafted it did I meet any of them and ask them what they thought of my script. If they'd told me it was absolute crap, it bore no relation to anything that happened, then I wasn't going to make the film. A couple of Italian newspapers carried out their own research - they found, between them, eight different women with eight different experiences of the Magdalenes. Their experiences make the film look like f***ing Toy Story.
 

 
q:<i>What was the response of people who have been through something similar?
 </i>a:Some women said that their experience was much more violent than the film, that there was much more physical violence. Others have said there was less violence.
 
It's a bit like talking to people who have just come out of prison. They will give you completely different stories about their regimes. the only thing they have in common is there's a lock, there's a key and there's the screws.
 
 
q:<i>Were the Magdalenes and the nuns willing to talk?
 </i>a:One day my brother Lenny, the film's casting director, phoned me to say a woman who had worked in the Magdalenes had come for an audition. Her name was Phyllis McMahon. I was like, &quot;Was she a cleaner or what?&quot; No - she was a nun in a Magdalene. It was a bit like a Nazi Storm trooper auditioning for a part in &quot;The Great Escape&quot;!
 
It was Phyllis who made, for me, the absolute key statement. I asked her, &quot;What went wrong? What the f**k happened that nuns could do these things?&quot; And she said, &quot;Absence of doubt. We had no doubts about what we did.&quot; Phyllis was eventually cast as Sister Augusta.
 
 
q:<i>What was the toughest moment during the filming?
 </i>a:When I piled Pound17,000 [about $25,000 at current rates] of my own money into the film and deferred my own fee.
 

 
q:<i>Do you think the Catholic church should acknowledge abuse in the Magdalene asylums, apologize to inmates and provide compensation?
 </i>a:If it wants to see out the 21st century, it's got a lot to do. The people I've met don't want money - I've met hundreds now. They want to go back to mass, but they feel they can't because there's not been an apology, and recognition of their plight has to be given. So all they want is to make peace with God.

TITLE: discover a different mindset
AUTHOR: by Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Certain articles that appear in these pages need disclaimers, and this is one of them, as it largely concerns Viktor Bogorad, whose cartoons appear in the pages of The St. Petersburg Times. Nevertheless, the exhibition of works by his cartoonists collective is proof, if it were needed, of the immense talent of local artists - not to mention of the strange mental processes that set cartoonists apart from the rest of us.
 
The exhibition &quot;cartoon.spb.ru,&quot; showcasing work by the local Nuance artists collective, of which Bogorad is a member, opened at the Association of Free Artists Gallery at Nevsky 20 on Tuesday - April Fools' Day, or <i>Den Durakov </i>in Russian.
 The exhibition contains works by all three members of Nuance - Bogorad, Leonid Melnik and Vyacheslav Shilov, all of whose drawings feature regularly in local newspapers - in roughly equal measure. The works range from Shilov's clear-cut, line-drawn belly-laugh humor to Bogorad's darker surrealism, with Melnik falling somewhere in between.
 The exhibition is laid out in a circular upstairs room at the Association of Free Artists, with a massive paper spider's web - a humorous take on the World Wide Web, possibly? - strung from the ceiling. From the center of the web, a gigantic spider grins down maniacally. (Arachnophobes can rest easy. I hate spiders, but this one - the exhibition's mascot, featured on all the publicity materials - is more friendly than fearsome. It's almost cuddly, in fact. Almost.)
 The cartoons by Bogorad, the oldest of the artistic troika, are probably the least immediately accessible. That honor must go to Shilov, the youngest of the three, whose drawings are of the Gary Larsen absurdist school. An example: &quot;Spor&quot; (&quot;Argument&quot;), depicts a face-off between an army major and a shepherd on a bridge over a deep canyon; the tough, glowering soldiers behind the major are mirrored by some equally vicious-looking sheep backing up the shepherd.
 Bogorad's works are much darker, literally and metaphorically. His humor covers a broader range than that of the other two, from sad commentary on contemporary Russian society - his &quot;Klassiki&quot; (&quot;The Classics&quot;) has a man sitting at the base of a statue in an identical pose to the statue, only with empty bottles by his side - to the downright surreal, as in &quot;Lyubov&quot; (&quot;Love&quot;), the character in which has only one eye, his other one being at the center of the flower he holds.
 Bogorad is also, as might be expected, more overtly political than his comrades. His &quot;Gosudarstvo I Ya&quot; (&quot;The State and I&quot;) shows a worried-looking man switching on the light in an upstairs room while, on the roof, a three-headed monster seems to be eating itself. At the same time, one of the funniest works there is Bogorad's &quot;Greenpeace,&quot; which depicts a man in a rainstorm running with an umbrella outstretched over a fish in front of him, making a somewhat cruel point about many environmentalists.
 Like Bogorad, Melnikov executes his drawings in pastels, but in lighter, more Shilov-esque colors, and with a gentler brand of humor than his colleagues. Particular standouts among Melnikov's drawings for me were &quot;Udachnaya Okhota&quot; (&quot;Good Hunting&quot;), showing a naive-looking hunter with three cats on leads, and &quot;Myslitel&quot; (&quot;The Thinker&quot;), a twist on Rodin's famous sculpture that depicts a slightly podgy man thoughtfully contemplating a hole in one of his socks - the only garment he's wearing.
 As well as the drawings, it's worth taking time to check out the various CDs and diskettes suspended from the aforementioned spider's web that have art-related anecdotes taken from various sites pasted onto them. If you want to find out why Picasso particularly admired Rubens, as well as see some of the finest cartooning in St. Petersburg, then don't miss this exhibition.
 
 <i>
&quot;cartoon.spb.ru&quot; runs through April 30 at the Association of Free Artists Gallery. </i>

TITLE: moscow artist comes north again
AUTHOR: by Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Exhibitions of works by Moscow artists are becoming increasingly common in St. Petersburg galleries. The past winter has seen Oleg Kulik, a scandalous Moscow artist who is no longer a wonder in the capital, at the private D-137 Gallery and &quot;Moscow Art Manezh St. Petersburg,&quot; a spin-off of the annual Moscow showcase, at the Manezh. Last week, a retrospective of works by Moscow's Valery Koshlyakov, one of five artists representing Russia at the upcoming Venice Bienialle modern-art fest, opened at the Dmitry Semenov Gallery.
 
Although gallery owner Dmitry Semyonov describes putting on an exhibition of Moscow art in St. Petersburg as a &quot;thankless task&quot; - saying that &quot;local artists are often too snobbish, and the artistic crowd is mostly unaware of the what is happening on the art scene elsewhere in the world&quot; - Koshlyakov, who has exhibited in cities from Stockholm to Chicago, is already familiar to local audiences. The artist himself, whose works are now part of the collections of the State Russian Museum and Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery, enjoys working in the city.
 &quot;I fell in love with St. Petersburg back in 1993, when I did an exhibition called 'Art and Sculpture' with Vladimir Dubosarsky at the Russian Museum,&quot; Koshlyakov said. 
 As if to prove his point, a large canvas entitled &quot;St. Petersburg&quot; occupies the front wall in one of the two gallery halls. In it, the barely discernible Troitsky Bridge resembles Monet's &quot;Waterloo Bridge,&quot; which hangs in the State Hermitage Museum. Distinctive features of Koshlyakov's early style - such as an ascetic palette mainly employing gray and brown and dripping paint to create the effect of looking through a rain-smeared window - are also reminiscent of typical St. Petersburg weather.
 &quot;I use paint drippings to imitate frescos, as frescos are associated with the grand format that I use,&quot; Koshlyakov said.
 Koshlyakov has exhibited at the Dmitriy Semenov gallery before, after being invited in summer 2001.
 &quot;He came with a bag of scotch tape and some paintings&quot;, Semyonov said. &quot;He asked me if he could work a little in the gallery and, in a few days, its walls were 'scotch taped.' The huge scotch-tape collages shocked the visitors, but everyone acknowledged his talent.&quot;
 The current exhibition presents a small retrospective of Koshlyakov's work - just 11 pieces are on display - dating from 1995 to 2003. It includes early canvases, such as &quot;Sobor Svyatogo Petra&quot; (&quot;St. Peter's Cathedral&quot;) and &quot;Arka Tita&quot; (&quot;Titan's Arch&quot;), depicting imperial architecture in a fresco style, that have long since become classics. The most recent paintings are different, with new shades of yellow and pink appearing, and lines becoming more distinct.
 Stylistic changes notwithstanding, Koshlyakov's works are as honest and sincere as they always have been. His positivity is amazing, as is the fact that an artist in love with the classics, ancient architecture and painting suddenly seems to have become avant-garde.
 
 <i>
&quot;Koshlyakov&quot; runs at the Dmitriy Semenov Gallery, 62 Liteiny Prospect, though April 16 . Call 164-5323 for details. </i>

TITLE: the word's worth
AUTHOR: by Michele A. Berdy <i>
TEXT: Nepronitsayemoye litso:</i><strong> </strong>a poker face
 
I don't know if it's the nature of capitalism in general, or American capitalism in particular, but card games, both honest and dishonest, are a great source of figurative expressions for dealings in business. Luckily for the card players and wheeler-dealers among us, Russian offers many of the same metaphors from the card table. 
 A good expression is <i>kak karty lyagut, </i>which can be translated as &quot;however the chips fall&quot; or, depending on your fortune up to that moment, &quot;if my luck holds&quot; or &quot;if my luck changes.&quot; <i>Sostoyitsya sdelka? Ne znayu - kak karty lyagut. </i>(Is the deal going to work out? I don't know - depends on how the chips fall.) You can also speculate on what advantages your opponent might have at the negotiating table with the phrase <i>kakiye karty u nego v rukakh: Ya ne uveren, chto my smozhem s nim dogovoritsya. My ne znayem, kakiye karty u nego na rukakh. </i>(I don't know if we can make a deal with him. We don't know what cards he's holding.) <i>Rasklad </i>is the way the cards get distributed among the players, and can also mean the way things shake out. <i>Pri khoroshem rasklade nasha pozitsiya budet ochen silnoi. </i>(If things shape up in our favor, our position will be very strong.) To describe a piece of good fortune, or bad, you can say <i>Ya vytyanula khoroshuyu kartu </i>or <i>Ya vytyanula ne tu kartu. </i>You can translate this as &quot;I was dealt a good hand,&quot; or &quot;I was dealt a bad hand.&quot; 
 As all poker players and negotiators know, the trick of a good player is not letting others guess your hand. <i>Po ego nepronitsayemomu litsu nevozmozhno bylo ponyat, o chyom on dumayet. </i>(He had such a poker face, I had no idea what he was thinking.) <i>Blef</i> (a bluff) and <i>blefovat </i>(to bluff) are the same in Russian as in English: <i>Da net! On etogo ne sdelayet! Eto blef! (On blefuyet!) </i>(No way! He won't do it. He's just bluffing.) When you decide the guy doesn't have a royal flush in his hand, but only a pair of eights, you call his bluff - <i>vzyat ego na pont: On skazal, chto esli my ne dogovorimsya, on obratitsya v druguyu firmu. Ya reshil vzyat ego na pont. I slava Bogu, chto risknul. Okazalos, chto nikakoi drugoi firmy net. </i>(He said that if we didn't cut a deal, he'd go to another company. I decided to call his bluff. Thank God I took the chance! It turned out that there wasn't any other company.) 
 Let's say you're not sure if he's bluffing because he's &quot;keeping his cards close to his chest&quot; <i>(on ne khochet raskryvat svoyi karty). </i>There's always that moment of truth when it's time to &quot;lay your cards on the table&quot; or &quot;show your hand&quot;: <i>pora otkryt/raskryt karty. </i>
 What you're hoping is that the other guy doesn't have the trump card - <i>kozyr. U nego kozyr na rukakh - on uzhe podpisal dogovor s edinstvennym postavshchikom. </i>(He had the trump card - he'd already signed a contract with the only supplier.) When relating the sad story of the failed negotiations to your office buddies, you can say, for dramatic effect, <i>Potom on vylozhil svoi glavny kozyr. </i>(Then he pulled out the trump card.) Using the adjective from <i>kozyr, kozyrnaya sdelka, </i>can be translated as a &quot;sweet deal.&quot; In slang, <i>kozyrny </i>can mean &quot;a winner,&quot; something &quot;hot&quot; or &quot;snazzy&quot;: <i>kozyrnoye platyo </i>- that dress is a real winner. 
 You're also hoping the guy you're negotiating with is playing by the rules, but sometimes he isn't. <i>On igral kraplyonymi kartami </i>(He was playing with marked cards.) This kind of guy is a card shark in American slang, or <i>kartochny shuler</i> in Russian. With this kind of player, it's better to get out of the game as fast as you can; The deck is stacked against you <i>(vsyo protiv tebya). </i>
 
 <i>
Michele A. Berdy is a translator based in Moscow. </i>

TITLE: Palestinians Clash With Israelis in Gaza Strip
AUTHOR: By Ibrahim Barzak
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israeli troops looking for weapons-smuggling tunnels raided a Gaza refugee camp early Thursday, killing four armed Palestinians in exchanges of fire and demolishing five houses.
 
In the West Bank, two Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed by army fire.
 In the army raid, soldiers backed by 35 tanks, four attack helicopters and more than a dozen bulldozers entered the Rafah camp near the Egyptian border. A firefight erupted. Four Palestinian gunmen were killed, including one hit by fire from an Apache helicopter, and seven were wounded.
 The army said the raid was meant to uncover tunnels used for smuggling weapons from Egypt, and that four houses were razed. Palestinians put the number of demolished homes at five.
 No tunnels were discovered but four soldiers were wounded when a bomb went off under a tank. 
 The militant Islamic group Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in attacks, claimed responsibility for the tank attack, saying it was a &quot;gift to the Iraqi people.&quot;
 The Rafah camp has been a flashpoint of fighting in the past 30 months, with troops destroying dozens of homes allegedly used for covering tunnels or as firing positions. 
 The army has demolished nearly 700 houses in refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza since September 2000, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The demolitions have rendered more than 5,000 Palestinians homeless, the Red Cross said.
 In the West Bank town of Qalqiliya, meanwhile, Israeli troops searching for Palestinian militants late Wednesday night shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian when he opened his door to look at troops outside, witnesses said. The army said the youth tried to run away from troops, and was shot after he ignored calls to stop.
 In the West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli troops shot and killed a local Hamas leader early Thursday morning, the army said.
 Khaled Rayyan, 28, was hiding in a relative's house with his wife and child when soldiers broke down the door, said his wife, Salam. Rayyan was killed when he tried to attack the troops with a pistol, she said.
 Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian cabinet minister, said he condemned the killings, particularly of the teenager. &quot;I ... urge the international community not to allow Israel to continue exploiting the war with Iraq to achieve its end goal,&quot; Erekat said.
 Palestinians have expressed concern that Israel would step up military strikes while the world's attention focuses on Iraq. However, there has been no sign of a significant increase in raids in the past two weeks. 
 In the West Bank town of Tulkarem and an adjacent refugee camp, nearly 1,000 men and teenage boys who had been questioned on Wednesday during an Israeli military sweep were being kept from returning to their homes on Thursday. 
 The army said they were being kept out so soldiers could search homes and question other residents.

TITLE: Hijacked Ferry Boat Chased Back to Cuba With Hostages
AUTHOR: By Anita Snow
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: HAVANA - A small ferry boat hijacked in Havana Bay and forced to sail toward Florida had returned to Cuba Thursday after Cuban authorities chased it some 48 kilometers into international waters.
 
The boat left international waters late Wednesday under Cuban government escort, a U.S. Coast Guard official in Miami said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He declined further comment.
 It was unclear whether the hijackers had surrendered.
 FBI agents had waited nearby on a U.S. Coast Guard cutter as Cuban authorities tried to persuade the hijackers to give up. The men had threatened to throw some of the passengers overboard if they did not get their way, the Cuban government said in a written statement on Wednesday.
 As the boxy, flat-bottomed ferry struggled through choppy seas on Wednesday, the hijackers had radioed a command post of the Cuban coast guard to demand another boat and enough fuel to reach the United States, Cuba's Prensa Latina news service said.
 The seizing of the vessel came a day after a Cuban passenger plane was hijacked to Key West, Florida, by a man who allegedly threatened to blow up the aircraft with two grenades that later turned out to be fake. Another Cuban plane was hijacked to Key West less than two weeks before.
 The string of hijackings coincides with a new crackdown on dissent in Cuba and rising tensions with the United States. Some 78 dissidents have been arrested in recent weeks on charges of conspiring with U.S. officials, and the first round of trials begins Thursday.
 In the past, Cubans have taken advantage of periods of U.S.-Cuban friction to try to flee the island.
 An FBI spokesperson in Miami said that agency negotiators flown by helicopter to the scene of the ferry standoff were standing by on the Coast Guard cutter while Cuban authorities dealt with the situation. The ferry was drifting in international waters about 96 kilometers off Key West, she said.
 Fidel Castro's government said it would handle the crisis in the Florida Straits. The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that Cuba had taken the lead role but said it was ready to assist.
 &quot;What we won't do in any case is to use measures of force that put in danger the lives of the people aboard this boat,&quot; the Cuban statement said. It said 50 passengers were on board.
 The cooperation between agencies from both countries underscored the worries both American and Cuban officials have about the recent rash of hijackings.
 In an unusual move, the top U.S. diplomat in Havana on Wednesday warned Cubans not to undertake any more hijackings, telling them in a message read on communist-run television that they would be prosecuted and lose the right to seek American residency.
 The message by James Cason, chief of the U.S. Interests Section, demonstrated growing worries about the possibility that such hijackings could end in violence or spark a migration crisis.
 The high-seas drama began early Wednesday when a group of people armed with three pistols and at least one knife hijacked the ferry, Havana said in a statement read on state television.
 The ferry provides service between Havana and the small communities of Casablanca and Regla on the other side of Havana Bay.
 FBI spokesperson Judy Orihuela said Cuban officials told her agency that there were 15 to 20 people aboard the 14 meter boat. There was no immediate explanation for the differing figures.
 The Cuban statement said two Cuban Coast Guard boats had followed the ferry out to the high seas, where they will remain to provide assistance in an emergency or to escort the ferry back to Cuba.
 Several ferry boats were hijacked to the United States in 1994, when some 35,000 Cubans headed toward Florida in dilapidated boats and rafts. The wave of illegal migrants subsided only after the United States agreed to send back Cubans picked up at sea.

TITLE: Body Count Rises on Mexican Border
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MEXICO CITY - Nine people were tortured and killed near the border city of Nuevo Laredo in apparent drug-related violence, police said Wednesday.
 
Police haven't made any arrests but suspect the violence is part of a struggle by smugglers to control the region's narcotics trade after the arrest of drug lord Osiel Cardenas last month. 
 Four of the bodies were found in a car 19 kilometers outside of town, state police commander Felipe Ramirez said. In a second car, found on another highway 40 kilometers from Nuevo Laredo, police found five bodies.
 Police believe the victims may have been taken from a house in Nuevo Laredo late Tuesday. Witnesses said three cars drove up to the house and several people forced their way into the garage, then they appeared to kidnap nine unidentified people.
 Cardenas allegedly headed the Gulf cartel, which moved tons of marijuana and cocaine through northeastern Mexico to the United States.
 Violence in the region has increased since Cardenas's death. Last Thursday, federal agents shot and killed two suspected drug dealers and injured a third person in downtown Ciudad Miguel Aleman, across the border from Roma, Texas.
 A day earlier, gunmen in at least three vehicles exchanged shots with police on a crowded avenue in front of city hall in Nuevo Laredo, 128 kilometers northwest of Ciudad Miguel Aleman.
 One suspected gunman was killed and two injured after becoming caught in the middle of the shootout.

TITLE: A-Rod Is Youngest To Hit 300
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ANAHEIM, California - Alex Rodriguez was ready to pay big to get back the ball he hit for his historic 300th home run. He didn't have to.
 
Rodriguez hit it into the right-field bleachers Wednesday at Edison Field - and a fan threw it back on the field.
 &quot;I had signed a jersey, a bat, a helmet and a baseball. We were going to start with the baseball, so it was going to be a long negotiation,&quot; Rodriguez said. &quot;We had a nice care package set for him. So I'm very thankful that man threw the ball back.&quot;
 Rodriguez became the youngest player to hit 300 homers, but the Rangers lost 11-5 to the Anaheim Angels, who got home runs from Troy Glaus, Brad Fullmer and Darin Erstad.
 Rodriguez, 27 years, 249 days old, hit a three-run homer in the fifth inning off Ramon Ortiz (1-0), his second of the season. The fastest to 300 had been Hall of Famer Jimmie Foxx at 27 years, 328 days. Foxx finished his career with 534 homers.
 Rodriguez led the majors last season with 57 home runs and 142 RBIs, both career highs for the six-time All-Star. He doesn't rule out hitting 60 - especially if he recovers from the disc injury that sidelined him during spring training.
 &quot;The first thing I have to do is get back to 100 percent,&quot; he said. &quot;It's going to be a grind the next two or three weeks, but once I do that, anything is possible because I've worked extremely hard.&quot;
 Bengie Molina had four RBIs and Ortiz improved to 10-1 against Texas despite allowing four runs, seven hits and two homers over five innings. Ortiz allowed a major league-high 40 homers last season, seven to the Rangers, who led the majors with 230.
 &quot;I don't know that he's going to change his approach that much. He's still going to be aggressive in the zone with his pitches,&quot; manager Mike Scioscia said. &quot;I think the byproduct of challenging hitters are going to be home runs. He proved last year that it's not necessarily a curse.&quot;
 Angels rookie Francisco Rodriguez made his 2003 debut. The 21-year-old right-hander struck out Hank Blalock, Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez on 17 pitches during a 1-2-3 seventh, then gave up a leadoff homer in the eighth to Rafael Palmeiro - the first regular-season homer in the majors off Rodriguez.
 Rodriguez, who doesn't have any major league wins during the regular season, went 5-1 in the postseason last fall, a key to the Angels' first World Series title.
 &quot;When he came in like that and the fans started cheering and everybody was on their feet, that was definitely a flashback to last year,&quot; Angels shortstop David Eckstein said.
 John Thomson (0-1) allowed six runs and 10 hits in 4 1-3 innings in his AL debut. He went 9-14 with a 4.71 ERA in 30 starts last season with Colorado and the New York Mets.
 Texas leadoff hitter Doug Glanville went 3-for-5 and hit his first AL homer. Anaheim, which won 10-0 Tuesday night, scored double-digit runs in consecutive games for the first time since July 7-8, 2001, at Colorado.
 
 <strong>
N.Y. Yankees 9, Toronto 7. </strong>Erick Almonte, in his first game as Derek Jeter's replacement, homered and drove in three runs as the New York Yankees beat Toronto 9-7 Wednesday night to complete an opening three-game sweep of the Blue Jays.
 
&quot;This is probably the best game I've had in my life,&quot; Almonte said. &quot;I'm just happy.&quot;
 Almonte, recalled after Jeter dislocated his left shoulder in Monday's opener, went 2-for-5 in his first major-league start.
 On Monday night, he was unpacking in Columbus, Ohio, preparing for the start of the Triple-A season. But on Tuesday he went to Cincinnati and picked up his passport, which was brought from Tampa, Florida, then caught a connecting flight in time to get to New York's late-afternoon game.
 Almonte singled in the second inning Wednesday off former NBA player Mark Hendrickson (0-1) for his first career RBI, then hit a two-run homer in the third against Pete Walker for his first major league home run.
 &quot;He did everything as good as you can do it,&quot; New York manager Joe Torre said. &quot;I'm just happy for the kid.&quot;
 
 <i>
(For other results, see Scorecard.) </i>

TITLE: Webber Rules Over Wizards, Bucks Creep Toward Playoffs
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Chris Webber torched his old team again for 28 points, nine rebounds and six assists as the Sacramento Kings took control in the second quarter and held on for a 105-99 victory over the Washington Wizards on Wednesday night.
 
Sacramento, four games into a six-game road trip, nearly blew a 19-point fourth-quarter lead. The victory reduced its magic number to one to win the Pacific Division.
 &quot;We got a bit tired,&quot; coach Rick Adelman said. &quot;Four games in five nights. It's another good lesson. They got really aggressive and physical, and we have to respond to that.&quot;
 Jerry Stackhouse scored 27 points for Washington. Michael Jordan, playing almost nonstop in his bid to get to the playoffs one last time, scored 17 points and played 33 of the game's first 34 minutes and 42 minutes in all. The Wizards, back from going 2-4 on a two-week West Coast road trip, sank to a season-low six games under .500.
 The Kings, playing their third game in four days, were up by 22 in the third quarter before letting up in the fourth. The Wizards cut the lead to five on Jordan's tough baseline jumper with 2:20 to play, and they twice pulled within four.
 But Webber quieted the crowd with a 6-meter jumper, and the Wizards didn't have enough time left to catch up - especially after Kwame Brown missed three of four free throws in the final 70 seconds.
 The Kings went 4-for-4 from the free-throw line in the final minute.
 &quot;They're tough to beat,&quot; Stackhouse said. &quot;But we did have a valiant effort.&quot;
 Webber made 12 of 28 shots and scored 10 points in the third quarter. He has been fired up to play the Wizards since they traded him in 1998, and has two of his seven career triple-doubles against Washington.
 
 <strong>
Milwaukee 106, Houston 99. </strong>Sam Cassell scored 20 points as Milwaukee erased a 13-point deficit to win its third straight game Wednesday night.
 
The Bucks (37-39) are two games ahead of Washington (34-40) in the race for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Wizards lost to Sacramento, and the Bucks hold the tiebreaker over them.
 &quot;We control our own destination,&quot; Cassell said. &quot;I'm not worried about the Wizards. We just have to win.&quot;
 Houston (38-37) has lost four of five and is 1 1/2 games behind Phoenix for the No. 8 spot in the West.
 The defensive key for the Bucks on Wednesday night was Toni Kukoc's play on Yao Ming in the fourth quarter. Kukoc moved around Yao, holding him without a shot attempt and allowing him to get only one rebound, while forcing two steals in the period.
 Gary Payton and Kukoc each had 18 points for the Bucks, who scored 20 points on 22 Houston turnovers.
 Yao had 15 points and six rebounds in 33 minutes for Houston, although 12 of the points and four rebounds came in the first quarter. James Posey scored 20 points to lead the Rockets, while Francis added 17 points but committed six turnovers.
 
 <i>
(For other results, see Scorecard) </i>

TITLE: Tampa Beats Montreal Behind 'Bulin Wall'
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TAMPA BAY, Florida - All-Star goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin made 26 saves and extended his career-best unbeaten streak to 16 games as the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Montreal Canadiens 2-1 on Wednesday night.
 
Cory Sarich scored the go-ahead goal in the second, and Vinny Prospal tied a career high with his 22nd goal for the Lightning, who are 7-0-6 in their past 13 games and are approaching the first division championship in their 11-year history.
 Tampa Bay leads Washington by three points with two games remaining for each team in a race for the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference and home-ice advantage in their anticipated first-round playoff series.
 A victory by Ottawa at Washington on Thursday night would clinch the Southeast Division title for Tampa Bay.
 &quot;We're really excited, but it's not just about getting the division title,&quot; Lightning captain Vincent Lecavalier said. &quot;It's about starting to win a playoff series.&quot;
 Tampa Bay coach John Tortorella thinks a showdown of top goalies will highlight a matchup with the Capitals.
 &quot;The biggest key going into the playoffs is goaltending,&quot; Tortorella said. &quot;We're facing a good one in Washington, too, in that animal [Olaf] Kolzig when we play them.&quot;
 Khabibulin, who was 7-0-3 in March to earn NHL player of the month honors, is 12-0-4 since losing to the New York Islanders on Feb. 11. He has a 1.23 goals-against average and a.954 saves percentage during that span.
 The last unbeaten streak longer than 16 games by an NHL goalie was 21 by Chris Osgood (19-0-2) for Detroit seven seasons ago. Khabibulin (30-21-11) also set a club record for victories.
 Mathieu Garon (3-5-0) stopped 29 shots for Montreal.
 &quot;Tonight was a real intense game and a great goaltending duel,&quot; Canadiens coach Claude Julien said. &quot;The effort that the guys gave was positive, and you have to be happy with it.&quot;
 Center Jan Bulis scored the only Montreal goal 5:22 into the game.
 
 <strong>
Dallas 2, Anaheim 1. </strong>With Mike Modano out of the game because of an injury, Jason Arnott and Derian Hatcher scored third-period goals to lead Dallas past the Mighty Ducks 2-1 on Wednesday night.
 
&quot;Without him, it's pretty tough to win, but everybody picked it up,&quot; Arnott said. &quot;The first couple of periods, we were a little slow, but then we all picked it up.&quot;
 Modano, the Stars' leading scorer with 28 goals and 56 assists, left in the second period with what the team called a lower-body injury. Coach Dave Tippett said the injury wasn't serious, but didn't elaborate.
 &quot;If that's a playoff game, he probably plays. But we decided to keep him out,&quot; Tippett said. &quot;That's not an injury that will be lengthy at all.&quot;
 Hatcher's eighth goal, a 25-foot wrist shot in the slot with 11:18 left, was the difference for the Stars, who remained the top team in the Western Conference with 109 points and one game left.
 The Stars will be the No. 1 or 2 seed when the playoffs begin next week. Detroit has 106 points with two games left, and holds the tiebreaker against Dallas.
 Hatcher put the winner past Martin Gerber, who got a piece of the puck before it slid into the right post and trickled past the line. Gerber stopped 29 shots.
 Marty Turco stopped 26 of 27 shots and lowered his goals-against average to 1.76, just below the NHL record of 1.77 set by Chicago's Tony Esposito in 1971-1972 and Toronto's Al Rollins in 1950-1951. Turco will break the record if he allows two goals or less in Sunday's season finale against Nashville, if he plays.

TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: <b>Lemieux Retiring?
 </b>

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Mario Lemieux set up Eric Meloche's game-winning goal with 0:10.1 left in possibly his final NHL game, and the Pittsburgh Penguins rallied for two goals in the closing minutes to beat the Carolina Hurricanes 3-2 on Wednesday night. 
 Lemieux has said for weeks he may not play again next season, especially with the Penguins locked into a multiyear rebuilding mode. He said Wednesday he won't play in Pittsburgh's season finale in Washington on Saturday night. 
 "If this was my last game, I wanted to finish here, in front of the fans who have supported me," Lemieux said. "This [season] hasn't been much fun for the franchise or myself. It's been difficult." 
 Asked if he went in thinking it may be the last of a Hall of Fame career that began in 1984, Lemieux said, "Oh, yeah, I've been thinking about it for a while." 
 That's why he said, "The timing was perfect," in reference to Meloche's goal, which may have come on Lemieux's final NHL shift. He scored in Boston on his very first shot in 1984, and he had an assist on the first shift of his comeback game against Toronto in 2000, when he ended a 44-month retirement. 
 
 
<b>UCLA Hires Howland 
 </b>

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Ben Howland, who led Pitt from Big East doormat to national-championship contender in four years, was hired as UCLA's basketball coach Wednesday night. 
 "I want to make it clear how hard it was for me to leave the University of Pittsburgh," Howland said. "I can't imagine myself leaving Pittsburgh for anywhere except UCLA."
 The 45-year-old Howland was to be introduced at a campus news conference Thursday. He succeeds Steve Lavin, fired March 17 after the Bruins went 10-19 for their first losing season in 55 years. 
 Howland has a 168-99 record in nine years as a head coach - five at Northern Arizona and four at Pitt. 
 
 
<b>New Tennis Union
 </b>

LONDON (Reuters) - A fledgling breakaway tennis-players union formed last month is growing in numbers and looking to recruit more members next week, the group's lawyer has said.
 The International Men's Tennis Association (IMTA) has already signed up four of the world's top 10 players as well as 52 other Tour players, according to lawyer Rob Freeman.
 Among the elite players, top ranked Lleyton Hewitt, Marat Safin, Roger Federer, Paradorn Srichaphan, James Blake and Yevgeny Kafelnikov have signed on, according to Freeman.
 The IMTA claims that ATP chief Mark Miles dismissed the need for the new union in a letter to tournament directors, stating that "[the ATP's] representation of the players' interests is irrefutable".
 The IMTA was formed as a trade organization that hopes to replace the ATP Players Council as the voice of the players, not as a rival tour.
 
 
<b>Safin Out?
 </b>

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Davis Cup defending champion Russia could be without its No. 1 player Marat Safin for the opening singles matches of its quarterfinal tie against Argentina in Buenos Aires this weekend.
 The 2000 U.S. Open champion, who twisted his right ankle in Miami two weeks ago, aggravated the injury earlier this week while practising for the three-day tie on the clay courts of the Atletico River Plate Club in Buenos Aires.
 "It's highly unlikely that he will play on the opening day," Russia's Davis Cup captain Shamil Tarpishchev said on Wednesday night. "We'll see how he feels tomorrow before making a decision, but my guess is that he won't play until Saturday's doubles at the earliest."