SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #866 (34), Tuesday, May 13, 2003
**************************************************************************
TITLE: Motorists Brace for 300 Road Problems
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While government officials - particularly those responsible for regulating traffic in St. Petersburg - have spent recent months trying to allay the fears of city motorists, signs that recently appeared on major highways leading into St. Petersburg are unlikely to help their cause.
But although the signs reading "Entry to St. Petersburg will be restricted from May 23 to June 1" are enough to scare away at least a few would be visitors, traffic officials are again saying that, for most drivers, there should be no cause for alarm.
"These signs are intended for drivers of trucks or other vehicles that are passing through St. Petersburg en route to another destination," said Sergei Khrankevich, the spokesperson for the St. Petersburg branch of the State Inspectorate for Transport Safety (GIBDD).
"These drivers will be asked to go around the city," he said.
Khrankevich added that the drivers of trucks and automobiles claiming to have St. Petersburg as their destination may be subject to searches if the police don't believe the drivers' claim or if the police suspect that they may be carrying dangerous cargo, such as flammable or explosive materials.
Khrankevich stressed that the situation shouldn't be difficult for drivers as long as they followed government recommendations for travel to, from and within the city during the period of the celebrations.
In an attempt to make the public more aware of these recommendations, the GIBDD has published leaflets, somewhat ironically titled "Time To Live in St. Petersburg," which are available at gas stations in the city.
The leaflets include a map highlighting alternative routes through the city, with the very heart of the city's historical center - including the stretch of the Neva River running between Liteiny Bridge and the city's sea port - completely shaded in as areas that will be regularly closed to traffic.
A number of local newspapers, including Gazeta and Delovoi Peterburg, have also published the map in their editions.
The leaflets ask drivers to display "responsibility" and a "patriotic spirit" during the period of the celebrations, and advise drivers how to best try to avoid being stuck in traffic jams during the busiest period, between May 24 and June 4.
According to the brochure, drivers should simply avoid the city's busiest streets and, if possible, skirt around the city entirely.
"Drivers should understand that, for instance, Nevsky and Moskovsky prospects won't be closed all the time," Khrankevich said in a telephone interview on Monday.
"But they should be aware that, from May 30 to June 2, many main roads will be closed occasionally 15 minutes [before] high-ranking officials pass or some planned event [is due] to take place," he said.
According to Khrankevich, drivers caught in these situations will be redirected to neighboring streets, while cars parked along major arteries will be towed away.
The leaflets provide examples for each of the city's regions. In the event that Moskovsky Shosse is closed, for example, cars will be detoured to a route along Prospect Gagarina, Ulitsa Tipanova, Prospect Slavy, Ivanovskaya Ulitsa, Volodarsky Bridge, Oktyabrskaya Naberezhnaya, and further along the right bank of the Neva River to the northern parts of the city.
In order to make their way off of Vasiliyevsky Island, drivers are advised to make their way along Bolshoi, Sredny or Maly prospects, then along Syezdovskaya Liniya, and across Tuchkov or Birzhevoi bridges to Kronverksaya Naberezhnaya.
The leaflets also give tips on avoiding Pushkin and Petrodvorets, which will be hubs of much of the official activity set to take place during the anniversary celebrations.
The city center, however, remains the biggest trouble spot, with the Palace and Troitsky bridges, the Palace and Moika River embankments, St. Isaac's Square and the area near the Mariinsky Theater also recommended as areas to avoid.
TITLE: Chechen Suicide Bomb Kills 40
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Two suicide bombers drove a truck full of explosives into a government complex in Chechnya on Monday, killing 40 people in the deadliest attack since a March vote anchored the Muslim region firmly in Russia.
The blast, which exploded with a force of at least 1.2 metric tons of TNT, completely destroyed a regional government administration building in Znamenskoye and severely damaged the two-story office of the Federal Security Service, which is leading the military campaign in Chechnya.
Six small residential homes, housing several families each, also were leveled in the blast, emergency officials said.
The blast, in the relatively peaceful north of Chechnya, wounded some 200 other people, seven weeks after a constitutional referendum held in March.
A defiant President Vladimir Putin vowed not to let the attack derail the Kremlin's peace plan.
"We can not allow anything like this to happen, nor will we," he told government ministers.
Soldiers guarding the administration building, which also housed the local Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters services, fired on the truck, but it smashed through barriers before exploding in a fireball only meters short of the main building.
The powerful blast, in a border area north of the regional capital Grozny that has long been under Moscow's control, gutted the building and destroyed eight village houses.
"Forty people have been killed in the blast," a spokesperson for Chechnya's Interior Ministry said. NTV television put the death toll at 41.
Scores of local residents and rescue workers used pickaxes, spades and their bare hands to free people trapped under slabs of concrete.
Personal belongings and clothes were scattered under mounds of fallen masonry and woodwork.
Officials said two people were pulled alive from the rubble. Most of the casualties were police guarding the complex and villagers living nearby.
The rebels driving the truck - said by officials to be suicide bombers - are believed to have been killed in the blast.
A top regional official blamed fighters loyal to fugitive rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov. But a Maskhadov spokesperson said his men had played no part in the attack.
It was more grim news for Putin, who used his tough stance against Chechen rebels to score an easy election victory in 2000, and will cast a shadow over his annual "State of the Nation" address scheduled for Friday.
A low point for Putin came last October when Chechen rebels seized 700 hostages in a Moscow theatre.
A total of 129 people and all the rebels died after Russian forces used a powerful knock-out gas to storm the building and end the siege.
Last December, a similar bomb attack on regional administration headquarters in Grozny killed about 80 people.
Putin's defiant words on Monday, however, suggested that the Kremlin would press ahead with its plan to end 10 years of conflict between rebels and Russian forces. The next stage envisages elections in December for a regional president.
After the explosion, Putin ordered government officials to draft a treaty dividing political powers between Moscow and Grozny, a key part of the peace drive.
But one top official said that Moscow, which has withdrawn more than 1,000 troops from the region this year as part of the peace plan, had let down its guard.
"[We] underestimated the situation and, to some extent, relaxed our defences," said Alexander Korabenikov, deputy presidential envoy for Russia's south.
A spokesperson for Maskhadov, the region's former president and now a fugitive sought by Moscow's forces, denied responsibility for the blast. "Such methods are not acceptable for the Chechen resistance," Salambek Maigov told Ekho Moskvy radio.
But the head of the present pro-Moscow Chechen government, Akhmad Kadyrov, blamed Maskhadov's men.
"We need to be more vigilant and responsible so that no vehicles with explosives can travel around the territory of the republic," Kadyrov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
"Where did this car with explosives come from? How did it get to Znamenskoye? I have many questions," he said.
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: Russia Admits to U.S. Nuke Program
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - After nine years of secret research, the Nuclear Power Ministry has admitted for the first time that it is working with the United States on an experimental program to turn bomb-grade plutonium into fuel for existing nuclear power plants.
The idea is to help eradicate the vast stockpiles of plutonium from thousands of decommissioned nuclear warheads by mixing the extremely toxic material with thorium, a less-dangerous and naturally occurring metal commonly found near uranium deposits.
The Nazis experimented with thorium as a potential weapon of mass destruction before World War II, and invading Soviets confiscated tons of the stuff as war booty and brought it back home.
Although the Nazis never achieved a chain reaction with thorium, Russian and American scientists eventually did. And now Russian specialists, with American money, are working on peaceful applications of the radioactive element - one of which is using plutonium to trigger an energy-producing chain reaction out of it.
The result, they say, will not only be a cheap source of electricity for millions of homes and enterprises, but also the degradation of weapons-grade plutonium to the point that it will be unsuitable for making nuclear weapons.
Unlike uranium, the supplies of which are dwindling, thorium is abundant and can be easily mined in numerous areas, including the Tomsk region of Russia, America, India and China.
"The possibility of using thorium fuel in existing reactors is very significant because it means we will not have to change the reactors," said Valery Rachkov, who runs the Russian side of the project as deputy head of the Nuclear Power Ministry's scientific research department.
"It is also very important that it serve non-proliferation purposes," Rachkov said in a recent interview.
So far, funding for the project has come solely from the American side and has been relatively paltry - $2 million from the U.S. government and $3 million from Thorium Power, a private Washington-based company founded in 1992 to capitalize on the scientific work of Alvin Radkowsky, a former student of hydrogen bomb "father" Edward Teller, and the chief scientist of the U.S. Naval Reactors program from 1950 to 1972.
Despite the relatively small budget, Thorium Power President Seth Grae and influential members of Congress are optimistic that the project will eventually lead to the neutralization of tons of the deadly substance - just eight kilograms of which could be used to flatten Moscow or New York.
"Our fuel is really designed to be a way of disposing of the plutonium, to eliminate it while also making energy," Grae said in an interview in Moscow earlier this month. Grae met with some of the more than 300 researchers from seven institutions - including Moscow's famous Kurchatov Institute - now working on the project, which is being coordinated by the Nuclear Power Ministry and monitored by nuclear safety watchdog Gosatomnadzor.
There is already an international mechanism for plutonium disposal similar to the 20-year program for uranium signed in 1994 called "Megatons to Megawatts," through which Russia has already diluted and sold - for some $3.5 billion - uranium from 7,000 of a planned 20,000 nuclear weapons to the main supplier to America's nuclear power stations.
In 2000, Russia and the United States each agreed to eliminate 34 tons of plutonium by burning it as so-called MOX fuel, a mix of oxidized uranium and oxidized plutonium. To do that, however, Russia would have to build a special facility at a cost of some $2 billion, or roughly half the amount required for the entire project. The money was supposed to come from the international community, but to date few countries have appropriated any cash.
Grae says that his version will be faster, cheaper and safer than the MOX alternative, as does a formidable backer of the project in Congress - Representative Curt Weldon, a Russian specialist on the House Armed Services Committee who has traveled widely here.
"I have strongly supported additional funding to test the thorium process at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow," Weldon said by e-mail from Washington. "The thorium process provides the double benefit of reducing weapons-usable fissile material and producing advanced, proliferation-resistant nuclear reactor and fuel cycle technologies. As such, it is in the best interests of the United States to provide funding to advance this technology."
While nuclear experts involved in the MOX program refuse to speculate when or even if the project will get off the ground, Grae says that with just $200 million in funding the thorium-plutonium fuel could be ready for commercial use within three years.
Of Russia's 30 nuclear reactors, eight - four in the Saratov region, two in the Tver region and one each in Volgodonsk and Novovoronezh - are of the type (VVER-1000) that can be easily adapted to run non thorium-plutonium fuel. Two more plants with the modern VVER-1000 reactors are currently being built, and another is planned.
The Russian scientists working on the project say that each of these reactors will be able to burn about 700 kilograms of plutonium a year - just a fraction of the plutonium Russia has stockpiled in underground facilities belonging to nuclear power plants, which are already filled to the brim. In fact, even if funding is found eventually for both the MOX facility and the thorium project, it would take decades to dispose of it all.
In his recently published book "Nuclear Danger," independent nuclear expert Vladimir Kuznetsov estimates that Russia is already sitting on 150 tons of weapons-grade plutonium, and with some 16,000 to 18,000 warheads set to be dismantled over the next few years, lots more will have to be dealt with.
This year, the team of scientists working on the project expect to produce a working model of the process and test fuel samples.
"It is a huge volume of work, but we believe that if the funding opens, we will be able to prepare it," said one researcher.
Weldon, the member of congress, has been lobbying hard for the U.S. government to allocate $3.5 million this year to expedite the project.
However, the U.S. Department of Energy said earlier this month that no budget funding had been allocated specifically for the project this year. Nonetheless, Weldon said he was confident the cash would be found despite the budget squeeze as a result of the war in Iraq.
"Expenses incurred by the U.S. during the war in Iraq should not hinder the allocation of the funds," Weldon said. In fact, he said, while the war in Iraq will require significant resources, "it has taught the world a valuable lesson about the dangers that proliferation of weapons technology presents. My intention is to convince my colleagues in Congress that the thorium process can play a vital role it preventing nuclear weapons materials from falling into the wrong hands and that its development should receive the funds necessary to continue its progress."
The project is facing opposition on two fronts that are in some ways related. One is the increasingly powerful global environmental groups who are against nuclear energy of any kind, and the second has to do with Iran.
Tom Cochran, director of the nuclear arm of the non-profit environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, said that the whole issue of funding for the project is tied to one issue - Russia building nuclear reactors in Iran.
"The U.S. spends close to $1 billion per year on Cooperative Threat Reduction efforts," he said. "Spread over several years, the [thorium] program is fundable. But the greater threat to U.S. funding of programs like this is not the war in Iraq, but Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran."
Proponents of the program like Weldon, however, say that the opportunity for the United States is too good to pass up - if the project works in Russia, it could work in America as well.
"If such systems were attainable, American nuclear facilities would be remiss if they did not consider such a system," Weldon said.
The fuel could be used all over the world. Of the 441 nuclear reactors that existed in the world at the beginning of this year, 260 can burn thorium-plutonium fuel, according to the London-based World Nuclear Association.
Environmental organizations and nuclear safety experts say that the whole idea is wrong and dangerous and that burning thorium is no better than burning uranium, since both produce substances that could be used by terrorists to make small nuclear devices.
Specifically, irradiating thorium in a reactor will produce uranium-233, a fissile material that can be weaponized.
"Look, uranium-233 is a wish for any terrorist," said Kuznetsov, who formerly worked for Gosatomnadzor.
"Only 4 kilograms of it could make an operational nuclear device that could be easily hidden in a backpack or suitcase. This is the biggest reason to refuse to deal with thorium fuel altogether."
Grae dismissed these concerns, saying that the process developed by Radkowsky, Thorium Power's former chief designer, essentially eliminates uranium-233 as a byproduct.
"In our design, almost all of the uranium-233 that is produced is burned instantaneously in the core as it is produced, generating some of the reactor's power," he said.
Experts familiar with Radkowsky's work backed Grae's claim.
Richard Garwin, who helped build the U.S. hydrogen bomb and the author of several books on nuclear proliferation and security issues, said in an e-mail interview from New York that, under certain circumstances, it is indeed possible to completely eliminate uranium-233 when burning thorium fuel.
"If the thorium fuel is mixed with some natural or depleted uranium, then the U-233 cannot be separated chemically from U-238. It is true that most of the U-233 is burned up during the long residence time - which is typically 9 years, as I understand it," Garwin said.
A Russian nuclear physicist working on the thorium project said the new fuel assemblies that will go into existing reactors to handle the thorium are designed to work for exactly nine years.
Rachkov, the Nuclear Ministry's pointman for the thorium venture, said that, although Russia is in no rush to introduce the new fuel, the project will continue with or without U.S. funding.
"When the first assemblies prove good, we will start calculations, and we will be able to say clearly what thorium's prospects are as a fuel," he said. "But nothing will be completely clear until real fuel is used in real reactors, which will take two to three years.
Above all, he said, the new nuclear cycle must prove to be commercially viable: "If [thorium] turns out to be less efficient economically, even by one kopek, no one will deal with it."
And if American funding dries up, "we will finish what we have started, but we will not start anything new," Rachkov said.
TITLE: Local Police Getting Help on Languages
AUTHOR: By Claire Bigg
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: "It is late, please be quiet." "Sorry, there is no access at this point." "Did your belongings disappear while you were asleep or while you were absent?"
Many St. Petersburg residents may have heard at least one of these phrases from members of the city's police force. But now, as a result of a Russian-English phrase book being distributed to the police by the Interior Ministry, visitors to St. Petersburg during the 300th-anniversary celebrations might end up hearing them in English for a change.
The city's police, however, is not renowned for its fluency in foreign languages, and foreigners in St. Petersburg have often complained of communication problems with the police.
"Phrase books have been handed out to the personnel in our department and should be distributed throughout the whole Interior Ministry administration by May 16," Olga Barashkina, the spokesperson for the Northwest Region's Transport Administration (UVDT), said in an interview on Monday. "At the briefing where the phrase books were distributed, we were told that we were required to study them.
"We are supposed to study the phrase books, or at least to know on what page we can find the sentence we need," Barashkina added.
She said that she has already received a booklet and that she and her colleagues have already begun to study.
The Northwest Region UVDT and the State Inspectorate for Traffic Safety (GIBDD) was the first to receive the booklets, which are in a pocketbook format and are about 60 pages long. The books come in different versions, as each contains vocabulary specific to a particular department of the Interior Ministry.
The phrase books distributed to the Northwest Region UVDT, for example, contain sentences explaining how to get to the Admiralty and other tourist attractions from train stations and vocabulary concerning cases of theft. Officers on duty in the area of train stations in particular will need the booklets, Barashkina said.
Along with the examples listed above, the phrase book contains sentences such as "Was the door of the compartment closed or bolted?", and shorter instructions such as "Stop it" or "Give way, please."
The phrases in the books are printed both in English and in a phonetic transcription in Russian.
"If the police officer is unable to understand what a foreigner is saying, he can ask the foreigner to point at the sentence in English in the book," Barashkina said.
Barashkina, despite calling the phrase book "a little naive," says that they are necessary. "Our staff has a basic knowledge of English, but the phrase book contains deals with specific vocabulary and nuances."
Not everyone working for the Interior Ministry is as convinced that giving the books to police officers is the best solution.
Sergei Bazarov, who works as a duty officer with the Special Services Administration of the St. Petersburg Police Department, and works exclusively with foreigners, primarily answering calls on a hot line set up for those who fall victim to crime here, says that the ministry picked the wrong targets.
"It would be better to distribute the booklets to the tourists, so that they could point out the sentences to people in Russian," Bazarev said in a telephone interview on Monday. "They're not expensive. They only cost ten rubles each."
Bazarov says that, whether the phrase books are effective or not, something had to be done in a situation where the police are generally unable to communicate with most foreigners.
"The knowledge of foreign languages among St. Petersburg police officers is very poor," he says. "Most officers know a few words in English from school, but that's about it."
Bazarov says that he is the only officer working on the hot line who speaks a foreign language - English. He added, however, that, although there isn't always foreign-language speaker on duty, callers who are able to leave their addresses in Russian are then visited by a police officer accompanied by an interpreter. He said this service is available 24 hours per day.
This is not the first time that phrase books have been distributed to St. Petersburg's law-enforcement officers. They were first used when St. Petersburg hosted the Goodwill Games in 1994. The Interior Ministry says that what is being distributed now is an improved version.
While the total number of visitors to the city last year was 3 million, Interior Ministry forecasts put the number of tourists, foreign officials and there staffs that will visit St. Petersburg for the anniversary celebrations at 2 million tourists for May and June alone.
To better handle the influx of foreigners, Pavel Rayevsky, the spokesperson for the Interior Ministry Administration for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast (GUVD), said that police officers with a knowledge of foreign languages will be on duty on many of the city's streets during the 300th-anniversary celebrations.
"We will station police officers who speak foreign languages out on the streets," Rayevsky said on Monday. "They will be joined by over 100 students from the Interior Ministry University in St. Petersburg who have a good knowledge of foreign languages."
Rayevsky, however, was unable to say just how many officers able to speak a second language would be available.
"I can't give an exact figure," he said. "But there are more than just a few."
TITLE: V-Day Adresss Calls for Unity
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Hundreds of thousands of people on Friday commemorated the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany 58 years ago, while more deadly violence in Chechnya cast a shadow over the Victory Day holiday.
Addressing a military parade on Red Square, President Vladimir Putin made an explicit link between terrorism and Nazism and called for "the priceless experience of unity" that helped defeat Nazism in 1945.
"A new, global and very serious peril has emerged in the world - international terrorism. To counteract it, the efforts of all civilized countries must be united," Putin, standing near Lenin's mausoleum, told 5,000 troops and cadets lined up on the gray cobblestones of Red Square.
He paid tribute to World War II veterans, hundreds of whom - with medals gleaming on their chests - came to see the parade.
In a veiled reproach to the United States and its war on Iraq, Putin said, "We should not forget why fascists assumed the right to decide the fate of the world and the fates of other countries and peoples, why they got the false idea of considering themselves history makers and hoped to escape punishment."
As Putin spoke, news broke that a bomb had exploded in Grozny, killing one Russian soldier and wounding two more. The bomb, hidden in a pile of debris, detonated about 40 meters from the main entrance to the Dynamo Stadium, where a parade of Interior Ministry officers was to have been held later in the day. The parade in Grozny was cancelled. The military, however, went ahead with a parade on its Khankala base outside the Chechen capital.
Russian officials called the Grozny blast a terrorist attack - the same language they have used to label other attacks by Chechen rebels.
A spokesperson for the federal troops in Chechnya, Ilya Shabalkin, said the military also had averted a suicide bombing of Grozny's Victory Day parade. He said a female Chechen rebel was detained Thursday who admitted under interrogation that she was acting under orders from rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov to stage a suicide bombing.
A powerful bomb ripped through a Victory Day parade in the Dagestani town of Kaspiisk last year, killing 45 people. Investigators have accused rebel warlord Rappani Khalilov of masterminding the attack.
In Moscow, several groups of veterans waving red banners marched with Communist leaders along downtown streets after the Red Square parade and called for the ouster of the Cabinet.
Festivities in the western Siberian city of Omsk also were tarnished by a deadly incident. As residents walked along the city's main street after a fireworks show, a quarrel between several young men ended up with one throwing a hand grenade. One man was killed and 11 were wounded in the blast, Interfax reported Saturday.
Most Soviet-era holidays, including May Day and Revolution Day (now called the Day of National Reconciliation), are considered little more than a day off work. But Victory Day remains an important and meaningful holiday for 83 percent of the population, according to a recent survey by the Public Opinion Foundation.
The survey also showed there is a growing number of young people who do not share this opinion. Some 22 percent of Russians aged 18 to 35 said they did not celebrate Victory Day, giving reasons such as, "I was not in the war" and "My relatives did not fight in it."
TITLE: Suggestion From Yakovlev Riles Column Contractor
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One of the chief projects associated with the city's 300th anniversary - the restoration of the Alexander Column, which stands in the center of Palace Square - will be completed on time, but not without having touched off a dispute between City Hall and the contractor doing the work, Itarsia.
The basis for the row is a 1 1/2 meter tall latticework fence that Vladimir Sorin, Intarsia's chief architect, says should be part of the project in order to protect the monument from vandalism and other forms of damage.
"We have to do this to prevent it from being defaced," Sorin said in a telephone interview on Monday.
"People already break bottles on the column and try to write on it," he added. "What else can we do when we are dealing with people like this?"
Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, however, opposes the idea, Izvestia daily reported on Thursday.
To the further annoyance of those in charge of the restoration process, Yakovlev is also pushing to have the four antique-style light standards that surround the monument painted brown to match the rest of the column.
Sorin says that Itarsia can do without any more suggestions from the head of the city administration.
"The governor doesn't know about restoration and has his own job to take care of," Sorin said.
"The light standards will be painted the same color as the fence, once it has been installed," he said.
Sorin says that work on the fence to enclose the column will begin in the fall and defends the decision with the fact that there was a fence around it for the first two years after it was erected, in 1834.
According to the City Hall Committee for the Protection of Architectural Memorials, the fence will be decorated with 170 two-headed eagles - the symbol of the Romanov Dynasty - and 13 three headed eagles, all of which will be painted silver and gold.
Along with Itarsia, some members of his own administration disagree with Yakovlev on the question of the fence.
"I went to have a look at the column yesterday evening after work, and these young people ... I just can't think of a good enough way to punish them," Sergei Moiseyev, a member of committee, said in a telephone interview on Monday. "I have nothing against young people, but there are bottles everywhere - everybody is trying to cut something away."
Reconstruction on the column was begun in May 2001 with 4 million rubles (about $143,000) donated by Hazar International, a Turkish construction company, which later abandoned the project. Moiseyev said that the initial money was only enough to erect scaffolding for the work. The rest of the funding, 29 million rubes (about $935,000), was later transferred to the project from the federal budget.
The initial decision to build the column was made in the early in 1830s by Nicholas I, who wanted to build a monument to praise the victory of his brother, Alexander I, who preceded him as Tsar and who's armies defeated Napoleon in 1812. The 47.5-meter tall column was designed by the French architect August de Montferrand, the same architect who built St. Isaac's Cathedral. Two thousand soldiers and 400 workers were required to stand the column, with a total weight of 600 tons, upright. The column is not fixed to the ground in any way, standing only by its own weight.
TITLE: SARS Check Leads to End of Quarantine in Russian Hotel
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - A Chinese airliner carrying about 100 passengers was ordered back to China after landing in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk on Sunday, three days after Russian aviation officials told airlines and cargo carriers to suspend reservations on flights to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in connection to SARS.
Meanwhile, 80 people were freed from a 10-day quarantine in a hotel in Blagoveshchensk near the Chinese border Friday after doctors said none had the deadly SARS virus.
Russia has no confirmed cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has killed more than 500 people worldwide.
The State Civil Aviation Service said Thursday that it had told carriers to be prepared for a complete stop to all flights to the area.
The aviation authority's press service said that no new passenger tickets or cargo containers on flights to mainland China, Hong Kong or Taiwan could be sold. For now, however, those already holding tickets and cargo already arranged will be able to fly, it said.
A complete cancelation of flights would require an order by the chief epidemiologist, Deputy Health Minister Gennady Onishchenko, and Cabinet approval, the press service said.
But national carrier Aeroflot on Thursday continued accepting bookings for flights to those destinations, saying it had agreed with the civil-aviation authority that the checks it was conducting on boarding passengers were rigorous enough to continue flying.
Khabarovsk officials, however, banned all air travel between their region and SARS-stricken Southeast Asia last week. That prompted the decision Sunday to force the China Northern Airlines plane to return to Harbin in China, RIA-Novosti reported.
In Blagoveshchensk, meanwhile, 65 Chinese and 15 Russians who had found themselves in forced isolation after an ambulance carried away a 25-year-old guest, Denis Soinikov, more than a week earlier were allowed to leave the Zarya hotel Friday night.
The hotel administrator said there was no stampede toward the door.
"Nobody packed their bags and ran. It is all quiet," she said by telephone. "But there have been no new bookings either."
She declined to comment on what the atmosphere inside was like during the 10-day isolation, but Russian television said canteen attendants had refused to serve meals to the Chinese.
Soinikov remains in a local hospital in critical condition. Officials say he displays typical SARS symptoms, but laboratory tests have so far failed to isolate the virus.
(AP, Reuters, AFP)
TITLE: Moscow's Arbat Hit by Explosion
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - A gas explosion ripped through a two-story building on Moscow's Arbat pedestrian zone at about 8 p.m. Monday, injuring at least 10 people, the police said.
The explosion probably occurred in a Georgian cafe on the first floor of 36 Arbat, destroying the first floor and causing the second floor to sag, police spokesperson Nikolai Gribakin told reporters at the site.
None of the 10 victims were in serious condition, and rescue workers believed that no one was left buried under the rubble, Gribakin said. He said the blast appeared to have been caused by a gas leak in the Kinto cafe.
Interfax reported that 13 people were injured in the explosion and that it originated in the second-floor apartment of a woman in her late 70s.
Interfax said the woman escaped uninjured but nine victims were hospitalized in serious condition.
Thick smoke and flames enveloped the yellow building Monday evening, while at least 10 fire engines battled the blaze.
TITLE: Ivanov Plays Down Differences on Iraq
AUTHOR: By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Speaking two days ahead of talks with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Monday that differences between Russia and the United States over Iraq were tactical, not strategic, and it was possible to repair frayed ties.
"Even at the peak of the Iraq crisis, we did not act against each other but defended different approaches to solving the same problem. This point is of fundamental importance," Ivanov said.
"The fact that we share an interest in searching for the most effective way to meet global challenges helps bring the positions of Moscow and Washington closer together," he said. "This is our position ahead of upcoming talks with Powell."
Ivanov spoke at the opening of a one-day conference on the new world order, organized by the Russia in Global Affairs journal and attended by diplomats, lawmakers and foreign-policy experts from Russia, the United States and European countries.
Among the guests was former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who conference organizer Sergei Karaganov described as the author of one of the only successful projects of the late 20th century - the reunification of Germany.
Ivanov, who adopted a tougher anti-U.S. stance than the Kremlin during the Iraq crisis, reiterated on Monday his vision of the new world order as a "pyramid topped by the United Nations and its Security Council."
"There is no alternative to the United Nations," he said.
The role of the United Nations in postwar Iraq is one of the areas in which Russia and the United States disagree. Under a draft U.S. resolution introduced last week, the UN would have an advisory and primarily humanitarian role in Iraq.
With a debate on whether the post-Cold War world is unipolar or multipolar dominating the discussion, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow began his presentation by jokingly thanking Karaganov for giving him the floor "at this multipolar conference."
"We are not against multilateralism. We are interested in results first and foremost," he said, implying that the American priority was to act effectively to the threat of international terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Vershbow said that Washington would like Russia to play a more active role in solving what it sees as the nuclear proliferation problems in Iran and North Korea.
He said that Russia is expected to use its influence with Syria and the Palestinians to end support for terrorist groups.
On the sidelines of the conference, Vershbow said that the draft Security Council resolution lifting sanctions against Iraq will be discussed during Powell's visit to Moscow.
"We hope to find common ground on these issues," he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
He also said that Powell will be laying groundwork for an informal summit between U.S. President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on June 1. Powell would like to meet with President Vladimir Putin during his two-day visit Wednesday and Thursday, Vershbow said.
Monday's conference largely focused on the future of the U.S.-Europe-Russia triangle, which was challenged by the Iraq war, and the need to adapt to the new realities of international relations - how to deal with a threat from a nonstate entity such as a terrorist group and what the conditions for a preventive strike should be.
"Perhaps the UN Charter should be revised, but we should agree on the rules," said Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French Institute of International Relations.
Some Russian speakers, such as Politika think tank director Vyacheslav Nikonov and Vyacheslav Dynkin, the deputy director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, were skeptical about the potential benefits of a closer Russian alliance with European nations and advocated warmer ties with the United States. Nikonov said Russia's role should be to "bridge the gap between old Europe and the U.S."
"The hope for Europe as a guaranteed partner is not very strong in Russia today," Dynkin said. "Historical circumstances are pushing us toward a partnership with the U.S. and improved relations with China and India."
European attendees said they realized Europe's shortcomings, despite the narrowing economic gap between the continent and the United States. Horst Teltschik, former head of the German chancellor's Foreign Policy Office, lamented Europe's unreadiness to assume responsibility for handling international military and political conflicts.
"Both Europe and Russia are strong only through their cooperation with the U.S.," he said. "Without the U.S., both Europe and Russia are very weak."
TITLE: Putin To Delive Speech Friday
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin will deliver his annual state of the nation address to parliament on Friday, the presidential press service said.
The announcement was made as Putin held his regular Saturday Kremlin meeting with his administration leadership and key government ministers to discuss domestic and foreign policy.
Putin's speech will be delivered to members of both houses of parliament in the Kremlin's Marble Hall, the press service said.
State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov said that the speech would most likely force the chamber to postpone the ratification of a key arms control treaty with the United States.
The Duma was expected to take up the ratification on Friday, but Seleznyov said that deputies would likely spend the day discussing Putin's address and would deal with the treaty at the following session, on May 21, Interfax reported.
The Moscow Treaty, which was signed by Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush about a year ago, calls on both countries to cut their strategic nuclear arsenals by about two-thirds by 2012. The U.S. Senate approved the treaty in March.
Russian officials have said that they want the treaty to be ratified before Putin meets Bush at an informal summit in St. Petersburg on June 1.
TITLE: Analysts Probe Soyuz Recorders
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - An initial analysis of data from flight recorders on the Soyuz-TMA-1 shows that a technical glitch rather than human error caused the capsule to land about 500 kilometers off-course on the wind-swept Kazakh steppe on May 4, a senior Russian space official said.
The Soyuz-TMA-1 was shipped on May 6 to the offices of its designer and producer, Energia, in Korolyov, where engineers retrieved the flight data recorders. The glitch should be pinpointed by Tuesday, said the official, a senior designer at Energia.
The designer, who asked not to be named, said in a telephone interview late last week that a glitch in Soyuz-TMA's control system or onboard computer might have forced the capsule into a steep descent.
Energia engineers have already analyzed the capsule's voice recorder, which contains every word uttered by cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin and U.S. astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Petit during the descent, the designer said.
Soyuz crew members are required to describe out loud every command they enter during a flight back to Earth, the designer said. The voice recorder indicates that the crew played by the book, he said, adding, however, that only a thorough analysis of all the flight recorders would show whether human error or a technical glitch led to the steep descent.
The three crew members told a news conference in Star City outside Moscow on May 6 that they did not enter any wrong commands.
One minute before the controlled descent was to have started, the Soyuz-TMA's control system went into so-called ballistic trajectory mode, sending the capsule into a steeper and far less comfortable dive to Earth, Budarin told reporters May 6.
Meanwhile, the head of a commission investigating the Soyuz's descent, first deputy Energia chief Nikolai Zelenshchikov, said Thursday that U.S. experts would not be involved in the investigation. The statement contradicted earlier information from NASA chief Sean O'Keefe, who said last Monday that U.S. experts would take part in the probe. Zelenshchikov told Itar-Tass that including NASA officials in the investigation "would create difficulties in [the commission's] work."
He added that no Russian experts had been included in the U.S. investigation of the Columbia shuttle disaster, in which all seven crew members were killed. No Russians were on board the Columbia.
"We will definitely inform our American colleagues about the results of the work and will give them full information, but for now we have nothing to give," Zelenshchikov said.
He said his commission would finish its investigation by May 23.
TITLE: Liberal Russia Faction Picks Berezovsky, Ousts His Rival
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - One of two rival wings in the Liberal Russia party voted Sunday to reinstate Boris Berezovsky and a number of his allies, who were ousted from the party late last year. Liberal Russia's leaders, however, immediately denounced the vote as illegitimate and called those who took part in it "imposters."
Berezovsky plans to run for a State Duma seat on Liberal Russia's ticket, despite a conflict with party leadership and Russian prosecutors' attempts to extradite him on fraud charges.
Sunday's disputed meeting of the party's central council was the latest episode in a bitter battle between Berezovsky and Liberal Russia co-chairpeople Viktor Pokhmelkin and Boris Zolotukhin - a conflict that has heated up since the April 17 slaying of the party's third co-chairperson, Sergei Yushenkov.
One-time Kremlin powerbroker Berezovsky helped found the opposition Liberal Russia movement in early 2002 and has given it funding ever since, Andrei Sidelnikov, a spokesman for the party's pro-Berezovsky faction, said Sunday.
But Yushenkov, Pokhmelkin and Zolotukhin broke with the self-exiled tycoon last fall after he declared a plan to form an anti-Kremlin alliance with the Communists. Justice Ministry officials have confirmed that, under the law, Berezovsky's party membership has been terminated.
Berezovsky spoke at the meeting by video link from London.
Pokhmelkin said that a meeting of the central council can only be called by party leaders at the request of one-third of its regional offices and neither he nor Zolotukhin had received any such request.
Sidelnikov, who was among the party members reinstated at the controversial meeting, said Pokhmelkin and another top party official, Yuly Nisnevich, were voted out of the party Sunday.
Pokhmelkin scoffed at the decision.
"We plan to find out in detail who exactly took part in today's meeting under the aegis of our party," Zolotukhin, a respected lawyer, told Interfax. "There is no question that we will respond accordingly - which could include ejection from the party for violating its charter."
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: 5th Test for Budanov
MOSCOW (SPT) - A military court on Monday ordered a fifth psychiatric evaluation for Colonel Yury Budanov, a former tank-regiment commander on retrial on charges of killing an 18-year-old Chechen woman, Interfax reported.
In December, the North Caucasus Military District Court in Rostov-on-Don cleared Budanov of criminal liability on grounds that he had been mentally ill at the time of crime. But the Supreme Court overturned the ruling in February and ordered a retrial, which is now under way at the same court but with new judges.
The request for the latest psychiatric examination came from the lawyer for the family of Elza Kungayeva, who was strangled by Budanov in March 2000. Budanov has admitted killing the woman, but said he did it in a fit of rage, thinking that she was a rebel sniper.
The court plans to set a date and venue for the examination on Friday.
Sanction Squeemish
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia signalled its unease on Saturday over a U.S. draft resolution that would lift UN sanctions on Iraq and give Washington and its allies control over Baghdad's oil revenues.
Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said that the draft had some positive aspects but "there are also a number of parts which are not sufficiently clear and which require serious work and clarification".
Speaking to Interfax news agency, he indicated Russia would press for the United Nations to have a central role in post-war Iraq when the 15-member Security Council resumes consideration of the U.S. draft next week.
EU Pushes Kyoto
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The European Union wants to see Russia taking active measures to ratify the Kyoto protocol fighting climate change, Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said in an interview on Friday.
Under a complex weighting system, Russia's ratification is crucial for the protocol to come into force after the withdrawal of the United States, the world's top air polluter.
"Their intentions are clear. Now it's just a matter of them getting it done," Wallstrom said. "I guess it's in the hands of [President Vladimir] Putin himself and [Prime Minister Mikhail] Kasyanov." An important checkpoint to measure Russian action would be the EU-Russia summit in St Petersburg in late May, she said, but made clear Russia could not expect any more help from the EU to finance the treaty.
"Of course it's about money, about rubles. They are trying to calculate how much [the treaty] will give," she said.
Another problem was that the consequences of global warming were not taken seriously by many in Russia.
"The basic knowledge of climate change is very bad," she said. "Even some scientists seem to claim that maybe it would even be good for Russia."
TITLE: Oil in Iraq Still Subject To Dispute
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia signaled its unease on Saturday over a U.S. draft resolution that would lift UN sanctions on Iraq and give Washington and its allies control over Baghdad's oil revenues.
Deputy Foreign Minister Yury Fedotov said that the draft had positive aspects, but "there are also parts that are not sufficiently clear."
The United States introduced a draft resolution on Friday that would give the UN stamp of approval to a U.S.-British occupation of Iraq for at least a year and give the Americans and British control of the country's oil wealth for rebuilding the country.
Under the American plan, the United Nations would have solely an advisory role, and its influence would be limited mostly to humanitarian issues.
"Most UN Security Council members, on the one hand, welcome the fact that the issue of the postwar rebuilding of Iraq has reached the Security Council," Fedotov told Interfax. "But, on the other hand, the U.S.-proposed draft resolution may raise numerous questions."
Fedotov said that the document in particular "fails to provide a clear picture of the transition from the UN's oil-for-food program to the lifting of international sanctions against Iraq."
Russian officials have repeatedly said that the sanctions, imposed against Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, should be lifted but only after UN inspectors have verified that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Washington opposes the return of UN inspectors and has sent its own experts to look for banned weapons.
Fedotov indicated to Interfax that Russia would press for the UN to have a central role in postwar Iraq when the 15-member Security Council resumes consideration of the U.S. draft next week.
He said China was sending a senior official to Moscow on Monday for consultations on the Iraqi question.
Putin is to meet with President George W. Bush June 1 in St. Petersburg - their first meeting since deep disagreement over the invasion of Iraq - and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will be in Moscow this week to prepare for the summit.
French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder said Friday in Poland that they were open to "constructive negotiations" on the proposal. Chirac emphasized that the UN should play a central role.
China and France - all veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council - opposed the U.S.-led war to topple Saddam Hussein.
On Saturday, the 15 ambassadors of the Security Council joined UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for an annual retreat in upstate New York to discuss Washington's proposal for a special UN coordinator to work with U.S. and British administrators in Baghdad.
Experts from Security Council member missions were to study the draft at a closed meeting Monday at the United Nations. Council ambassadors will begin debate on the proposal Wednesday.
(AP, SPT)
TITLE: Russia Key To Ratification Of Kyoto Climate Protocol
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - As the host of a key global-warming conference this fall, and as a potential signatory with a swing vote on the contentious Kyoto Protocol, Russia has found itself at the forefront of the climate-change debate.
"We are looking forward to serious, interesting discussions," Yury Izrael, chair of the conference's organizing committee, told reporters Wednesday. "We are not going to create new contradictions but ... find out what is really going on on this planet - warming or cooling."
This question and whether or not global warming poses a big enough threat to warrant the solution's price tag are at the heart of reports - more than 500 of them - submitted for experts' discussion in Moscow this September when they gather at the third International Conference on Climate Changes.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol seeks to minimize climate changes by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, gases believed to cause global warming by trapping the sun's heat in the atmosphere.
In order for it to graduate into a binding treaty, states representing 55 percent of global emissions must sign on.
Russia alone accounts for 17.4 percent of global emissions. Given the other, mostly European, signatories, Kyoto will pass if Russia joins.
Many countries - most prominently, the United States - argue that the protocol's requirements are too expensive to implement.
The agreement calls for developed countries to reduce emissions to 5 percent below their 1990 level as early as 2008.
U.S. President George W. Bush provoked the ire of many signatories when he rejected the pact in 2001, saying the tough regulations would choke the country's economy.
The U.S. Center for Public Policy Research said in an April report that if Kyoto is ratified, gas prices would rise from 14 cents to $0.66 a gallon by 2010, while electricity prices would increase anywhere from 2 percent to 86 percent, costing the U.S. economy $400 billion per year.
Russia does not have a comparable report quantifying the potential economic toll, Izrael said.
"The most important issue - whether [ratifying the Kyoto Protocol] will bring about an improvement of the climate or its stabilization, or its worsening, is not clear," he said.
The conference is expected to attract 1,200 participants from around the world. Scientists from 52 countries have submitted 530 reports for the conference so far. Politicians and economists will grapple with the short-and long-term consequences of climate change, he said.
TITLE: Hotels Opening Too Late for Jubilee Bash
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A series of major new hotel-construction projects in the city will not be completed in time for the St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary celebrations, with market analysts estimating that the firms involved will lose revenue of around $5 million as a result of the delays.
There are about 200 new hotel projects currently underway, and the three projects that have now put back their opening dates - the Dostoevsky Hotel, the Grand Hotel Emerald and a hotel-cottage project on Kamenny Island - were among the largest, with investment in the projects totaling about $40 million.
Grand Hotel Emerald Deputy Direct orYelena Globa said that, despite the five-star hotel's planned May opening, the Emerald will now be opening in July. "We've been waiting to be connected to the water supplies for six months, and we still haven't been hooked up to the electricity lines," Globa said.
"And, even when you get connected to the electricity and water supplies, you can't just open up and start working the next day - you need at least 1 1/2 months to test everything: the fire-alarm system, the air conditioning, and so on," she said.
Globa cited local bureaucracy as one of the main obstacles holding back the construction process and creating delays for the $18-million hotel on Suvorovsky Prospect being built by Neval. The hotel will have 92 rooms, a restaurant and bars.
Igor Sazonov, sales director for the Dostoevsky Hotel, said that only 70 of the planned 214 rooms at the hotel, as well as its restaurant, reception and conference halls, will be opened as planned on May 25.
"We planned to open all the rooms in May, but we've had certain delays with supplies and construction," Sazonov said.
The third major hotel project intended for completion in time for the city's 300th anniversary celebrations - four apartment hotels being built on Kamenny Island by Europe-Hotel, at a total cost $3 million - has been postponed for a whole year.
"The construction process has been delayed because the engineering facilities [on the island] are very undeveloped, and as a result of the Monument Preservation Committee," Europe-Hotel General Director Andrei Mikeshin told Vedomosti newspaper in late April.
Natalya Sheludko, spokesperson for the City Administration Construction Committee, said that only one hotel project will not be missing its planned opening date prior to the city's 300th anniversary celebrations - the hotel being built on Pochtamtskaya Ulitsa by Baltic Construction Company. The firm is reconstructing a three-story apartment block as a seven-story, three-star hotel with 80 rooms at a total cost of $5 million.
The Baltic Star, located close to the Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna, with 106 rooms, will be receiving official delegations during the anniversary celebrations, only later being opened to the general public.
Sheludko said that the city's anniversary has provided a significant catalyst for hotel-development projects, despite the fact that the deadline for the celebrations themselves at the end of May is being missed.
"In 2002, we drew up the Tourist Infrastructure Plan for development through to 2010, and 115 permits for hotel construction have been issued along the guidelines of that plan," Sheludko said. "Those hotels should provide as many as 27,000 beds."
According to the City Construction Committee, St. Petersburg has 37,000 hotel beds at present, with 2.8 million tourists expected to visit the city in 2003.
The City Administration has predicted that the city's anniversary celebrations in May and June could attract as many as 15,000 official visitors and 2 million tourists.
"The hotels that postponed their opening dates will miss out on as much as $5 million in takings," said Sergei Kovalyov, an executive director with the Inter-Consult consulting firm.
Others, however, were keen to point out that the missed completion dates won't seriously hamper the anniversary celebrations. "The anniversary has played a positive role by creating a boom in hotel construction, while the mass onslaught of tourists isn't expected until 2004," said Sergei Korneyev, vice president and director of the Northwest Department of the Russian Association of Travel Agencies.
"The anniversary itself is aimed at officials and VIP guests for the most part, rather than tourists, while its impact on the travel business will only really be felt next year, or in July and August at the earliest," Korneyev said. "For that reason, the issue of completing hotel construction isn't of primary importance - if they manage it by the end of the year, that will be good enough."
Korneyev also said that the hotels may not be opening in time for the anniversary celebrations in order to save money.
With a significant increase in the number of tourists only expected later in the year, the hotels may not want to open now and then have to maintain a complete staff and high fixed costs, Korneyev said.
TITLE: Suspected Spies Face Court Case
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Three employees of wireless-equipment maker LM Ericsson face charges for allegedly passing secret information from the company to a Russian intelligence official, Swedish prosecutors said Thursday.
Afshin Bavand, 46, was charged with gross espionage and industrial espionage, while Mansour Rokkgireh, 44, and Alireza Rafiei Bejarkenari, 40, were charged with complicity in industrial espionage.
Bavand could be sentenced to life in prison, while Rokkgireh and Bejarkenari could get four to five years, chief prosecutor Thomas Lindstrand said. All three are Swedish citizens.
The trial is scheduled to start May 14 and last for two weeks. A verdict is expected in June.
Bavand is accused of handing over secret company information to a Russian intelligence agent, while Rokkgireh and Bejarkenari are accused of helping him gather the information.
"If these ... secrets have been given away, it is my opinion that it may cause harm to the overall defense or to the security of the country," Lindstrand said.
But Ericsson spokesperson Henry Stenson said that the espionage involved the company's commercial telecommunications systems, and not its military-related work. "The Cold War is over, but evidently there is a continued interest in gathering information."
Stockholm-based Ericsson also makes radar systems for defense programs worldwide, including for the JAS-39 Gripen fighter planes made by Sweden's Saab and Britain's BAE Systems.
The suspects worked in the development unit but did not hold high-ranking positions, according to Ericsson.
Bavand was arrested in November while talking to a Russian intelligence agent near Stockholm. Police searched the Russian, who was not identified, and found $4,000 and Ericsson documents.
Sweden responded by expelling two Russian diplomats. Russia later expelled two Swedish diplomats, apparently in retaliation.
TITLE: Experts Reduce Oil-Production Forecast
AUTHOR: By Charles Hanley
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi oil experts, reassessing damage to their industry from postwar looting, have scaled back projections by one-third and expect to produce only 1 million barrels a day in June, the acting oil minister said Sunday.
In one sign of the energy shortfall in this oil-rich country, Baghdad expects within two weeks to begin importing gasoline from neighboring Kuwait to help motorists who now line up for hours to buy scant supplies at city gas stations.
"There will be a clear improvement," said acting minister Thamir Ghadban.
As if to underscore the depth of the energy crisis, the news conference at which Ghadban and Iraq's acting electricity chief spoke had to be moved to a sunlit hallway when city power failed and lights went out in an Oil Ministry conference room.
Kareem Hasan, interim head of the national Electricity Commission, said that the capital was receiving only 40 percent of its electricity needs, but "hopefully" full power will be restored within two months, when repairs are completed to transmission lines extensively damaged by U.S. bombing and vandals.
Ghadban and Hasan, named to their interim posts by the U.S. occupation authorities, met to coordinate the supply of oil to Iraqi power installations.
Before the U.S.-British invasion shut down the industry in March, Iraq was producing about 3 million barrels a day of crude oil, of which at least 2.1 million barrels was exported.
Heavy postwar looting of oilfield and other industrial equipment has slowed the industry's resumption of full production.
Iraqi oil specialists had predicted the industry might rebound to half its prewar production level in June, but Ghadban said that wouldn't happen.
"We were more optimistic, but after meeting with senior people from the various upstream companies, we are now more realistic," he said. "We shall meet that target [1.5 million barrels a day] at a later date."
The "upstream" companies are state-owned enterprises at the crude-protection end of the industry.
Ghadban attributed the more pessimistic outlook to damage to equipment and to limited supplies of industrial water, needed in huge quantities for oilfield operations. Power shortages have reduced water-pumping capacity in many places.
Iraq's proven crude oil reserves - at 112 billion barrels - are second in size worldwide only to Saudi Arabia's. Oil had accounted for 95 percent of Iraqi revenues in recent years.
TITLE: U.S. Senate Discusses Plans for Tax Cuts
AUTHOR: By Genaro Armas
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - With debate over tax cuts moving to the senate, Democrats took a pre-emptive swipe at U.S. President George W. Bush's stimulus plan as favoring the rich and ignoring mounting budget deficits.
In advance of Bush's three-state swing this week to promote his tax cut package, Treasury Secretary John Snow defended the plan Sunday as providing the right fix for "a soggy economy."
The Bush blueprint wouldn't "trickle down" to low-and middle-class Americans, Senator Bob Graham, a 2004 presidential candidate, countered on CBS' "Face the Nation." "Any economic stimulus plan has to put money in the pockets of those Americans most likely to spend it."
Snow said that the recovery isn't as strong or robust as it should be. "A soggy economy is what we've got today ... that's why the president's pushing the jobs and growth plan," he told ABC's "This Week."
Snow's appearances on Sunday talk shows were part of the administration's effort to promote Bush's tax-cut plan. The president met Monday with small-business owners in Albuquerque, New Mexico, before heading to a plastics plant in Omaha, Nebraska.
On Tuesday, he'll talk to senior citizens in Indianapolis and give another speech on his economic stimulus plan.
In Washington, meanwhile, the senate opened debate Monday on a GOP-backed, $350-billion tax cut measure that is less than half of what Bush had first sought. Several Republicans see that bill as a starting point, but many Democrats support no more than $150 billion in tax relief.
The House on Friday approved a $550-billion version of the bill that would trim levies on wages, capital gains and some business investments. It would give the president a smaller tax reduction than he wanted on corporate dividends.
Any more tax cuts, or an increase in spending, would likely put the federal government deeper into debt, which is nearing $6.4 trillion, or roughly $70,000 per family. By current law, the debt cannot exceed $6.4 trillion, so congress must vote to raise it.
Senate minority leader Tom Daschle said that lawmakers had no choice but to do so, but hoped congress would vote on that measure before tackling tax cuts.
"So there's no doubt that deficit and debts ... are matters of fiscal policy that have to be dealt with," Daschle said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "This administration's ignored them from the beginning."
The soaring debt was the result of years of spending increases and past tax cuts, Treasury chief Snow said.
He called the deficit more manageable than in previous years, however, and understandable given job losses and an economy performing "far short of its potential." Meanwhile, deficits and debt rising during a good economy, such as during the mid-1990s, are more troublesome.
Snow said consumer spending has been "pretty good" and low interest rates were helpful, but business spending has been hampered by the decline of the stock market, corporate accounting scandals and the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001.
TITLE: Latest Great Game Over Oil Begins in Siberia
AUTHOR: By Ian Bremmer and Bruce Clark
TEXT: HIGH noon is drawing near in a contest over Eurasia's richest oil reserves. The outcome will affect world-trade patterns and the global balance of power for much of the coming century. No, it is not of post-Hussein Iraq that we speak, but of Siberia. That region's huge and relatively untouched energy prizes have already started to sparkle more brightly because of the conflict in the Gulf. For Russia in general, and Siberia's oilmen in particular, the surge in crude prices and wild uncertainty over the future of the Middle East turned out to be a geopolitical and financial windfall.
That much may be self-evident, but something less obvious has recently emerged. Siberia's energy, and above all its pipeline routes, are likely to grow more significant over time, whatever the future of Iraqi reserves.
One of the players in Siberia's great game, Japan, has made a strategic decision to diversify its energy sources, for reasons that go far beyond short-term financial calculations. Hence the prospect of a spectacular reconciliation between Russia and Japan, which previously had the worst relationship of any pair of countries in the G-8.
This began to unfold in January, when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi went to Moscow and made clear his intention to finance a $6-billion pipeline, from southern Siberia to the Russian Pacific port of Nakhodka, a stone's throw from Japan.
The pipeline idea carries political risks for both Koizumi and President Vladimir Putin. Russia and Japan can never be fully reconciled unless they can bypass their dispute over the Kuril islands, an archipelago that the Soviets annexed at the end of World War II.
But the two leaders are determined to finesse the future of the Kurils, probably because they have something else in common. In domestic policy, Koizumi and Putin are limited in their ability to carry out bold reforms because of vested interests. So both see that if there is one area where they might succeed as mold-breakers, it is in foreign affairs. That is one reason why Russian-Japanese rapprochement, and the Nakhodka pipeline, have a good chance of materializing. Another is that the Japanese government, unlike the U.S. government, has no ideological objection to paying for pipelines. So, why does this create a geopolitical contest?
The answer is that the Russian government has an alternative partner in the business of bringing Siberian oil to market - China. With its soaring energy needs, China is at least as thirsty for Russian oil as Japan is, and the idea of a close Sino-Russian embrace has some powerful friends in Moscow.
Russia and China have already agreed in principle on a smaller, cheaper pipeline than the one Japan is suggesting. But, from Russia's point of view, there are catches in the Chinese proposal.
For example, China wants to send tens of thousands of workers into Russia to build the pipeline. That sends shivers down the spines of the Russians, who already face a long-term strategic problem in Siberia. How can the 7 million (and falling) people who inhabit the Russian Far East keep control of the region, when the adjacent parts of China have a population of 300 million and rising?
Both suitors in this contest have strengths and weaknesses. Russia does not want to offend China, but it does not want to become hopelessly dependent on the Chinese either. On the other hand, if oil prices plunge, the modest China line will seem more realistic - unless the Japanese remain determined to "buck the market" and pour money into the Nakhodka project, whatever happens.
What is the best outcome from the viewpoint of Western states that are not immediately involved? Arguably, there is nothing intrinsically dangerous about a close economic partnership between Russia and China, unless Russian transfers of military technology become part of the deal, as they may.
On the other hand, it is probably not in Western interests to see China humiliated, starved of energy and angry with Russia. So the West, like Russia itself, may want to see this contest settled on terms that give some prizes to everybody.
Russia will try to keep both its would-be partners guessing and agree in principle with both ideas. But the Japanese government, despite its strong commitment to the Siberian project, may not be able to keep its coffers open indefinitely. Koizumi has exposed himself politically by soft-pedaling Tokyo's claim to the Kurils, and the backlash from Japanese nationalists could be acute unless there is some positive response from Russia.
Putin has said that he expects to make an announcement on the pipeline on Tuesday. If they can spare a moment from rebuilding Iraq, Western governments should use all their influence to keep the Japanese proposal in play.
The Western world is now paying a terrible price for its energy dependence on a single region of the world, and pumping Russian oil to the Pacific will be a good way to ease that reliance - long after the war in Iraq is a distant memory.
Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group and Bruce Clark is on sabbatical from the Economist magazine. They contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Kremlin Cash Cow Swaps Citizens for New Gas Deal
TEXT: IN mid-April, Gazprom signed a 25-year contract to buy natural gas from Turkmenistan. In exchange, President Vladimir Putin acquiesced to Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov's demand to end the 10-year-old dual-citizenship agreement between the two countries.
Niyazov interpreted this concession as giving him carte blanche to pursue his own agenda. On April 22, he signed a decree ordering the roughly 150,000 residents of Turkmenistan who hold dual Turkmen-Russian citizenship to choose within two months which passport they want to keep.
On April 23, police began removing Russian citizens with dual citizenship lacking a valid Turkmen visa from airplanes in Turkmenistan. And on April 25, a crowd in the capital Ashgabat burned a portrait of Putin and trampled a Russian flag.
To get a sense of Turkmenistan today, imagine Stalinist Russia. But where Stalin robbed the people blind to fund his dreams of massive industrialization, the Turkmen leadership moves its ill-gotten gains abroad. Under Turkmenbashi, hundreds of local schools and hospitals have been closed. At the same time, Islamist schools have opened; after all, the Taliban were one of the few regimes in the world that Turkmenistan had a good working relationship with.
The same thing has happened in Turkmenistan as happened earlier in the Congo and Nigeria. When the colonial regime departed, local rulers proved incapable of anything but arrests, theft, personality cults and denouncing their former colonial rulers. But there's a difference: Turkmenistan depends on Russia to this day. Its main source of revenue, natural gas, flows through Russian pipes. You'd think this would give Russia the right to dictate its terms to Turkmenbashi. But you get the impression that Niyazov is calling the shots.
Why? Probably because of the special nature of the companies that sell Turkmen gas. Under the new contract signed in Moscow last month, large-scale deliveries of Turkmen gas to Gazprom will not begin for several years.
Until 2006, the bulk of Turkmen gas sold to Ukraine will be delivered by an obscure shell company called Eural Transgas. The company was registered on Dec. 5, 2002, in the Hungarian village of Csabdi, with just $12,000 in charter capital. Some press reports have linked suspected organized crime boss Semyon Mogilyevich to the company as well. According to analysts at Hermitage Capital Management, Eural TG stands to rake in up to $946 million per year on the deal.
It's no secret that the Kremlin views Gazprom as an illicit cash cow for the party of power. But the Eural TG deal destroys Russia's pretensions to leadership in the region. A country willing to swap 150,000 of its citizens for natural gas is unworthy of a leadership role. A country that abandons 150,000 of its citizens so that a company registered in the village of Csabdi can make a couple of hundred million dollars is beneath contempt.
Yulia Latynina is host of "Yest Mneniye"("Some Might Say") on TVS.
TITLE: Army Reforms Are Really No Reforms At All
AUTHOR: By Alexander Golts
TEXT: AT first glance, the blueprint for military reform unveiled by the Defense Ministry on April 24 looked promising. It seemed that President Vladimir Putin had finally broken the resistance of Russia's top brass, forcing them to come up with a plan for converting at least part of the army to a volunteer force.
According to Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, 91 units will be staffed by professional soldiers by the end of 2007. The so-called permanent-readiness units of the Airborne Forces, the Marines and the Ground Forces will be combined. For the first time, the Defense Ministry accepted the principle that a corps of professional sergeants capable of maintaining discipline in the barracks should form the basis of the new army. Ivanov promised that such sergeants would be assigned to all units, not merely units manned by contract soldiers.
Three years ago, the much-touted "military reforms" amounted to little more than the unification of two military districts, transferring command of the military space troops from the Strategic Missile Forces to the General Staff, and restoring the Ground Forces Central Command. Back in 1997, you may recall, "military reform" meant quite the opposite: abolishing the Ground Forces Central Command and combining the military space troops with the Strategic Missile Forces. One year ago, Ivanov declared that the main task of military reform was rearmament. Creating a professional army was seen strictly as a long-term goal.
Celebration at this point would be premature, however. The government has proclaimed its intention to create an all-volunteer army no fewer than three times in the past 11 years - first in 1992 and again in 1996. Each time, the military establishment scuttled its plans. There is little doubt that the same fate awaits Ivanov's reforms.
When Putin approved a plan for conversion to an all-volunteer army advanced by the Union of Right Forces back in 2001, the generals responded with a budget-busting condition: That every volunteer soldier be provided with an apartment. They have since dropped this demand, but the initial stage of turning the army into a professional force will nonetheless cost some 130 billion rubles ($4.18 billion).
The generals have also managed to link force conversion to the purchase of new materiel. They justify such expenditures by arguing that if the soldiers are going to be paid real money, they ought to be able to handle a weapon. According to the Defense Ministry's peculiar logic, conscripted soldiers, who serve "for free," can spend two years in non-combat jobs. There is every indication that the brass is once more doing everything in its power to convince Putin that Russia cannot afford an all-volunteer army.
Even the laudable plan to introduce professional sergeants into the military has been designed to fail. If Ivanov is to be believed, 40,000 to 60,000 professional sergeants will be serving in the Russian army within one year. The Defense Ministry has made no provision for building training facilities or developing training programs for future sergeants, however. This means that the sergeants will simply be selected from the pool of current conscripts who have received the extremely primitive military education provided by the army's six-month course of basic training. It goes without saying that "sergeants" like these will wield no authority in the barracks. They will be no older or battle-tested than their subordinates. And then the brass will have every reason to declare that even professional sergeants cannot put a halt to the hazing of recruits that plagues the military.
Most importantly, the military establishment has successfully defended the necessity of a conscript army. The Defense Ministry will consider cutting the term of obligatory service from two years to one, and only when 50 to 60 percent of Russia's soldiers are under contract and most draft exemptions and deferments are abolished.
The military insists that defending a country as expansive as Russia requires a huge army formed from millions of reservists who have received military training during their two-year hitch in the army. It was certainly no coincidence that Ivanov hailed the mobilization and deployment of 7,500 reservists during training exercises in the Siberian Military District as the Armed Forces' most significant achievement of 2002. Exercises like these are intended to dupe the Kremlin into believing that the old Soviet conscript army can be brought back to life.
In fact, Russia's ability to organize a mass mobilization is nothing more than a myth. The strategic reserves of arms and ammunition needed to supply a multi-million-man army were exhausted long ago. Putin recently admitted that in 1999, when Chechen fighters made an incursion into Dagestan, he was one step away from ordering a general mobilization. This would have made good sense. Moscow had failed to deploy the necessary troops for an entire month. At the same time, many Dagestani men, most of whom had served in the Soviet Army, wanted to fight the separatists. What could have been simpler than calling up local reservists, arming and equipping them, and forming them into units led by regular officers. But the army leadership knew that the arsenals in the North Caucasus had been empty since the first Chechen war, and that the army was already short of junior officers.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Russia's top brass continues to defend a military strategy that only works when the entire economy is geared to support the army and the entire male population can be called up at any moment. The generals realize that their own professionalism is at issue. They were taught to command an army whose greatest strength was its sheer size. Their military strategy is based on the assumption that when one soldier dies in battle, he can be easily replaced by a second drawn from the reserves.
Iraq's recent defeat revealed the true value of such an army, made up of poorly trained soldiers and staffed by officers used to taking orders, not thinking for themselves. The Iraqis simply stood no chance against professional soldiers equipped with high-precision weapons and backed by an efficiently run information war. Russia's generals cannot even fathom how the Americans managed to pull it off. They are consoled by fairy tales about Iraqi generals selling out to Washington.
The reforms proposed by Russia's generals will ensure them a pleasant life for the next few years. But as a result, Russia will wind up with an army no more effective than Soviet cavalry units were in 1941.
Alexander Golts, deputy editor of Yezhenedelny Zhurnal magazine, is currently a visiting fellow at the Center for Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Who's Going To Spoil the Petersburg Party?
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: IN a few weeks, U.S. President George W. Bush and other world leaders will be in St. Petersburg to meet President Vladimir Putin at an informal summit to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city by Peter the Great. Peter made St. Petersburg the capital of Russia in an attempt to link his mostly Asian empire to Europe. But the task of Westernizing Russia has never been completed.
Putin was obviously intending to use the coming summit to demonstrate the exceptional progress that has been achieved under his leadership in finding Russia a place in the Western community of countries. Hundreds of millions of dollars were siphoned out of the federal budget to renovate the streets and old imperial palaces in St. Petersburg to make the summit a success. But the Iraq crisis may have ruined it all.
The short working visit to Moscow by British Prime Minister Tony Blair this month was expected to close the gap between Putin and the Anglo-American coalition. But there was, it seems, no serious progress.
Washington and London want a swift removal of the UN sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990. A removal of sanctions may facilitate a resumption of oil exports at full prewar capacity, an influx of much needed investment, a quick rebuilding of the shattered economy and further oil production growth.
For Russia - and other oil exporters - the prospect of fast oil-production growth in Iraq is bad news: Not only would world oil prices be depressed, but investment that could go to our oil industry might be diverted. To prevent such a scenario, Putin insisted that sanctions be removed only after UN inspectors, operating in Iraq under the protection of UN peacekeepers and independent of the U.S.-led allies, officially verify the liquidation of all weapons of mass destruction - a process that may take a year or two.
In the meantime, the UN-controlled oil-for-food program should continue in Iraq. This program provides the population with basic food and medicine, but does not allow any substantial investments in Iraq - so keeping oil production at a relatively low level. After talks with Blair, Putin told journalists: "Russia is ready to support the UN inspectors in Iraq most actively."
Putin was implying that Moscow is ready to send its soldiers into Iraq to protect the UN inspectors from the U.S. military. The idea of deploying French and Russian troops in Iraq under a UN flag to support inspections and prevent a U.S.-led invasion was seriously discussed in Moscow and Paris before the war. Even after it began, the idea was not abandoned: It was assumed in Moscow that a Russian-led peacekeeping force could help separate the opposing armies and impose a ceasefire when the U.S.-led coalition got bogged down.
Of course, events in Iraq destroyed the anti-U.S. narratives of the Russian elite. But why doesn't Putin change his policies correspondingly?
After the summer of 2001 and especially after Sept. 11, 2001, the Kremlin did not use the term "multipolar world" at all. Now Putin is stating time and again: Russia believes the world should be multipolar.
French President Jacques Chirac has recently also been publicly insisting that a multipolar world, with various centers of power that would contain U.S. global hegemony, is inevitable. In Moscow, where the former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov first came up with the concept, French support is seen as evidence of an impending collapse of U.S. supremacy.
The Foreign and Defense ministries, and the intelligence community that predicted the United States would get a bloody nose in Iraq, are today trying to cover up their blunder with new predictions that the war in Iraq is only beginning, and that the wicked Americans may still be defeated.
In several weeks, the United States will be ready to resume oil exports from Iraq and will demand that the UN lift sanctions. If Russia, France and others block the lifting of sanctions in the Security Council, the oil exports will still go ahead regardless, just as the invasion did in March. Putin will be forced to make a crucial decision: To follow the multipolar dream and face mounting U.S. hostility, or perform a humiliating backtrack and face the hostility of the majority of the Russian elite.
Maybe the St. Petersburg extravaganza will help: Putin would hate to spoil the show in his hometown. The Kremlin may accept the inevitable and hope that a victorious Bush will be merciful.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.
TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: Group Therapy
Veteran observers of the klepto-plutocracy that has, lazar-like, long encrusted the American body politic were not surprised to see the hoary name of the Bechtel Group bobbing up in the swill of sweetheart deals now being doled out by the Corrupter-in-Chief for the "reconstruction" of his new fiefdom in Iraq. Decades before its comrade in cronyism, the Carlyle Group, made its meteoric, Bush-assisted ascent to global prominence, Bechtel had already perfected the dark art of milking intimate government connections for fat, risk-free contracts.
Last week, while the notorious coward George W. Bush - who walked away from his National Guard duty during the Vietnam War, a criminal act known as "desertion" when committed by lesser mortals - was basking in the man-musk of a shipload of sailors, reciting his usual lies about al-Qaida's "alliance" with Saddam Hussein, and weasel-wording his "victory" declaration to avoid taking full legal responsibility for the consequences of the war of aggression he had unleashed, Bechtel was quietly pocketing a secret, closed-bid, open-ended Iraq contract that could give them almost $700 million in taxpayer money before the 2004 election - with the alluring prospect of untold billions to follow, Mother Jones reports.
What's more, as The New Yorker reports, this public largesse will also fill the coffers of a key Bechtel partner in Saudi Arabia - a well-connected global conglomerate that has also been a long-time financial partner of both George Bush I and George Bush II: the Bin Laden Group.
Bechtel, which has served Saudi royalty for more than 60 years, bristles with heavyweight kleptoplute connections. During the 1980s, current Bush warlord Don Rumsfeld acted as a paid shill for a Bechtel pipeline project in the Middle East, operating with the blessing of the Reagan-Bush administration's secretary of state, George Schultz - Bechtel's former president (and now "senior counsel" to the company). Rummy conducted a passionate two-year courtship of a certain Saddam Hussein, plying him with trinkets, blandishments and sweetmeats to win his lordly favor for a Bechtel-built line from Iraq to Jordan, according to national security archives obtained by the Institute for Policy Studies.
Rumsfeld's strenuous attempt to lay pipe with Hussein happened to coincide with the latter's most extensive use of poison gas in the Iran-Iraq war - gassing carried out with the exemplary assistance of U.S. military intelligence and technology provided by the Reagan-Bush administration and its "special envoy" to Baghdad: Don Rumsfeld. Meanwhile, another Reagan-Bush crony, Attorney General Ed Meese, tried to bribe the Israeli government with $700 million in secret funds to put the kibosh on their opposition to the Bechtel deal, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. This skullduggery earned Meese an investigation by a special prosecutor, but as the case lacked the key element of any serious government crime - oral sex with an intern - the probe was soon dropped.
In the end, Hussein - who was first put on the CIA payroll back in the 1950s, UPI reports - balked at Bechtel's billion-dollar price tag and rejected the project. Now of course, in a fitting bit of historical symmetry, the son of the CIA's most famous director, George Bush, has handed Iraq to Bechtel on a silver platter.
This move will delight - and enrich - the Bush/Bechtel buddies in the Bin Laden Group. As oft noted in these pages, in the 1980s, George W. Bush received a helping hand for his floundering oil businesses from the Saudi group's front man, Khalid bin Mahfouz, who secretly cast bin Laden bread upon American waters to win influence with well-connected kleptoplutes - like, say, the wayward son of the former CIA director and then-current vice president.
Today, Mahfouz is under house arrest in Saudi Arabia for allegedly financing the holy-war hijinks of the bin Ladens' own wayward son, Osama. Or to be completely accurate, he's accused of financing those holy-war hijinks after the Reagan-Bush CIA finally stopped financing them. But despite his confinement, Mahfouz (who is also Osama's brother-in-law) is still a player in the kleptoplute nexus: for example, he's currently a business partner of former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean - the very man whom George W. Bush has appointed to chair the investigation of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks allegedly ordered by, yes, that ex-CIA employee and former executive of the Bin Laden Group: Osama bin Laden.
The Bin Laden Group was also heavily invested in by the Carlyle Group, the "private equity" firm (and major arms merchant) that, like Bechtel, specializes in the sell-off of public services and other government-insider deals. Carlyle's best-known bagman, George Bush I, used to make ritual pilgrimages to bin Laden family headquarters in Saudi Arabia to procure their potent baksheesh. When Carlyle's post-Sept. 11 orgy of war-profiteering began drawing unwanted attention, however, the bin Ladens cashed in their Carlyle chips and, officially, ended the partnership.
But they remain welded to Bechtel and will now reap the fruits of the latest installment of the War of the Wayward Sons - a conflict driven on both sides by ludicrous and primitive religious passions coupled with a voracious lust for power and loot. Yet although this war has now engulfed the entire planet, it is no "clash of civilizations" or grand agon of world-historical forces. As shown by the small sampling of connections above, it's more of a dust-up in the boardroom, a falling-out at the country club, a bit of bad blood amongst a tiny clique of vicious predators threaded together in a Byzantine web of kinship, corporate ties - and complicity in generations of murderous crime.
For annotational references, see the "Opinion" section at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: Officials Warned Over SARS Negligence
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BEIJING - China's premier vowed that every resource would be used to stop the spread of SARS as sanitary workers in the south of the country moved onto the streets to stop the widely-prevalent habit of spitting.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has infected almost 5,000 people in the country, originated in China's south last year before spreading across the vast nation and overseas.
Over 1,000 sanitary workers in the southern city of Guangzhou patrolled the streets to enforce a law against spitting or dropping cigarette butts in public as part of local measures aimed at stemming the spread of SARS, Xinhua news agency said.
Doctors say that spitting, sometimes referred to as China's national pastime, can propel droplets to others and inadvertently spread SARS.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao warned officials that they would be held accountable for any negligence over SARS.
His comments, quoted by state media on Sunday, came a day after the World Health Organisation said that it had still not received enough data on the spread of the epidemic in China.
"Every patient must be treated, every contagious source must be segregated and every potential risk must be eradicated. No formality or pretence is allowed," Wen was quoted as saying.
"The fight against SARS is a severe test of officials, who must take full responsibility of ensuring people's health and safety." Xinhua Wen was quoted as saying on the Xinhua Web site.
At least 240 people have died from SARS in China and more than 4,900 have been infected, the bulk of the world's total of more than 7,000.
Wen voiced fears about the virus spreading further through China's vast and densely populated countryside, where health services are ill-equipped to treat the virus, much less handle a major outbreak.
"There is still risk of further expansion. In rural areas, there are channels and potential risk for the spread," he said.
The World Health Organisation has said that it needed more data from China to help stop the spread of the flu-like disease that has already sparked widespread fear and riots in the country.
"We don't have detailed information from China on about half of the cases, which would allow us to track SARS effectively," said spokeswoman Maria Cheng.
Together, China and its autonomous territory Hong Kong have been hardest hit by SARS. In Hong Kong, 215 people have now died from the disease. However, about 250,000 primary students headed back to class on Monday after a six-week school closure. High school students resumed studies recently.
As new infection rates have dropped in Beijing, Hong Kong and elsewhere, the disease has spread in Taiwan.
New deaths there pushed the island's tally to 27 fatalities and 207 cases of infection. It also reported 23 new cases on Monday - its worst one-day jump since the outbreak began two months ago.
Despite the statistics, the vice chairman of Taiwan's SARS Control and Relief Committee, Dr. Lee Ming-liang, said that some of the cases had taken more than a week to confirm and there were indications that the outbreak could still be brought under control.
Authorities also announced the death by suicide of a man with SARS at a Taipei hospital last month. They said that he had received erroneous information that his wife had died of the disease.
A dentist in southern Kaohsiung also was one of the new deaths reported Monday, an indication that SARS has spread from northern and central Taiwan to the south.
The man, who had a history of tuberculosis, died a week ago, but officials, judging from the rapid deterioration of his health, only recently determined that he died of SARS, which he might have contracted from one of his patients. officials said.
In Taipei, morning commuters started the working week by complying with a government order to wear masks on the subway. Also, Taiwanese authorities are installing video cameras to keep watch over about 8,000 people quarantined in their homes in case they have contracted the illness.
Although infection rates in some urban areas, like Beijing, are falling, there's a danger that SARS could spread fast through the countryside. The Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao warned of possible unseen "channels of infection" in rural areas without adequate hospitals and doctors. The World Health Organisation visited southern Guangxi province, fearing it could be hit by an epidemic which could possibly be brought in by hundreds of thousands of returning migrant workers.
"Guangxi is susceptible to infection because of its location," WHO spokesperson Mangai Balasegaram said. "It's a poor region. It would be ... less able to cope."
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder continued with a Southeast Asia tour Monday. He visited Malaysia, where two people have died of the illness. Aides to the chancellor said that he is not taking any extraordinary precautions regarding his health during his tour.
Separately, officials in Kuala Lumpur announced that Malaysia will impose a 10-day quarantine on students and workers arriving from SARS-affected areas.
"This matter is urgent, which is why we have decided to implement it straightaway," Health Minister Chua Jui Meng said.
South Korea on Monday reported its second case of SARS after an American man in his 80s showed symptoms of the disease after arriving the previous day from the Philippines.
The ethnic Filipino man was placed under quarantine, and officials tried to track other passengers who had been aboard the Asiana Airlines flight OZ372.
In Finland, the University of Turku Central Hospital said a Finnish man who had been on vacation in SARS-hit Toronto in late April had probably contracted the illness there.
The patient was said to be recovering well, and no one who has been in contact with him has shown any of the disease's symptoms: fever, aches, dry cough and shortness of breath.
Officials in Canada, eager to avoid disruptions to its tourism, disputed that there was a Toronto link to the case.
Dr. Colin D'Cunha, health commissioner in Ontario province, said the idea was "preposterous," and that the only way the man could have been infected in Toronto was through SARS patients in a hospital.
"Unless somebody managed to visit one of our hospitals despite the restrictions ... they couldn't have been exposed - it's that blunt," he said. "I'm sure the [Finnish patient] had some respiratory symptoms and, simply put, was diagnosed with SARS because the person had spent some time in Toronto."
Experts around the globe are racing against time to find a treatment but no one is expecting a quick breakthrough.
There is no standard treatment for SARS and six to 10 percent of patients die from the disease that is mostly passed by droplets through coughing and sneezing.
(AP, Reuters)
TITLE: U.S. Administrators Arrive For Iraqi Reconstruction
AUTHOR: Robert Burns
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BASRA, Iraq - The new American civilian administrator of Iraq arrived Monday to take over the task of piecing the country back together and declared he was "delighted to be here" to begin helping set the country on a democratic course.
"It's a wonderful challenge to help the Iraqi people basically reclaim their country from a despotic regime," said Lieutenant Paul Bremer in a tarmac interview minutes after his plane landed.
Bremer arrived in this southern city with General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the man Bremer replaced as the senior American civilian in Iraq, retired Army Lieutanant. General Jay Garner.
The three men met in Qatar on Sunday and flew together to Kuwait that evening. On Monday morning they flew aboard an Air Force MC-130 special operations aircraft to Basra. Bremer also met with senior officers in Qatar at the U.S. Central Command headquarters that ran the Iraq war.
"I also want to say how proud I am of the work my good friend Jay Garner and the people who are working for him, how proud I am of everything they have done here in the last couple of weeks under extraordinary circumstances," Bremer said after arriving in Basra.
He said he wanted to "pay public tribute to Jay and all of his people for the great job they have done."
Reacting to reports that Garner would be leaving the country earlier than originally planned, Bremer said, "I certainly intend to work with him in the next weeks here to get a bunch of serious milestones accomplished."
Standing beside Bremer, Garner said the reports that he would be leaving early are "not true."
"What I say we have here is one team, one fight," said Garner. "We'll drive on."
Bremer said former U.S. ambassador Barbara Bodine, who was coordinator for central Iraq, including Baghdad, within the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, was being reassigned back to Washington by the State Department "for their own reasons."
The New York Times, citing unidentified administration officials, reported in Monday's editions that four other officials under Garner were also expected to leave soon: Margaret Tutwiler, who had been head of communications; Tim Carney, who had been overseeing Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals; David Dunford, a senior Middle East expert; and John Limbert, the ambassador to Mauritania.
Neither Bremer nor Garner commented on that report, but a Defense Department official traveling with the Bremer party, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated that Tutwiler, at least, had never been expected to stay in Iraq very long.
Following the U.S.-issued decree on Sunday dissolving Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, Bremer was said to be considering issuing additional orders to dissolve Hussein's former defense and security apparatus, including the Republican Guard and the Special Republican Guard that were loyal to him.
Myers alluded to these next steps in ridding Iraq of all vestiges of the ousted regime.
"There is absolutely no chance that Saddam Hussein and his Baathist Party or those who are following Saddam Hussein are ever going to come to power again in Iraq," Myers said. "We are deadly serious about ensuring the stability of Iraq, and the future of Iraq depends on an Iraq that is free of any hint of the former regime."
Bremer, 61, is a former assistant to former Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger. He was ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism from 1986 to 1989, and he also has served as U.S. ambassador to Holland. He most recently has been chairman of the Marsh Crisis Consulting firm.
Bremer reports directly to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. General Tommy Franks, the Central Command chief, remains in charge of all U.S. and allied forces in Iraq and the region.
In Basra, Bremer was meeting with British officials who are responsible for establishing order in the city. Myers was meeting with British commanders and having lunch with their troops.
In some respects, including the availability of electric power, Basra is further along in recovery than is Baghdad. The power is working in most of Basra and work is under way to finish repairs of the water system.
In Qatar on Sunday, Myers said that the U.S. military is pulling out of one Qatari air base and upgrading another.
Myers, who had flown overnight from Washington, told troops upon his arrival in Qatar that the American presence at an air base called Camp Snoopy would "go away" soon.
Snoopy served as a logistics hub for U.S. military operations in the Gulf region. Also, specialized Air Force planes such as the EC-130 Commando Solo airborne broadcast station flew missions over Iraq daily from Snoopy. Flight operations are to cease this month and the camp will close by mid-June.
Major changes, meanwhile, are under way at another Qatari air base used by American forces in the war. Under Pentagon ground rules for reporting on Myers' visit to Qatar that air base could not be identified in this story.
Myers said earlier that substantial improvements are in the works for that air base, including the construction of new housing.
Brigadier General Rick Rosborg, commander of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing at the base, said in an interview that dozens of the approximately 140 fighter aircraft that operated from the base during the war were heading home. At the same time, additional support aircraft such as C-130s and other cargo planes are arriving in increasing numbers.
TITLE: Specter of Baath Party Lingers As U.S. Declares It Dead
AUTHOR: Ted Anthony
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BAGHDAD, Iraq - The United States declared Saddam Hussein's Baath Party dead Sunday, with the war's commander telling Iraqis that the instrument of their deposed dictator's power was dissolved and promising to purge its influence from the country it has dominated for 35 years.
General Tommy Franks' message, delivered in Arabic by an announcer on the coalition's Information Radio, broadcast a clear message over the AM radio waves across postwar Iraq: Any activity by Baath Party holdouts who oppose U.S. occupation will not be tolerated.
"The Arab Baath Socialist Party is dissolved," Franks said, but high difficulties remain in genuinely eliminating it. American administrators are struggling to balance the need for a fresh start with an unwelcome reality - that thousands of Iraq's civil servants had Baath affiliations.
Franks' order came a month after American troops invaded Baghdad and drove out Hussein's regime, which used intrigue and terror to make sure the minority Sunni Muslim-dominated party extended its reach and control into all corners of Iraqi society.
The statement told Iraqi citizens to collect and turn in any materials they had relating to the party and its operations. It called them "an important part of Iraqi government documents."
Unseating the Baath, which advocated Arab unity but became a personal tool of Hussein and his lieutenants, was considered a top priority of American military planners in the run-up to the Iraq war, which began March 20 and largely ended by mid-April. Banning was the next logical step - one that has followed American military victories in the past. Allied occupiers banned the Nazi Party in Germany after World War II, and the Fascist Party was banned in Italy. But lower-level party figures were rehabilitated if they renounced the old regimes and were cleared of specific criminal wrongdoing by tribunals. The general's order Sunday was in some ways academic, given that the Baath regime is no more and the U.S. military and its civilian administrative counterpart occupy the country.
But some upper-level government and party leaders, including Hussein, remain unaccounted for. The United States says that it has made hunting them down a high priority. For Iraqis who lived under Hussein's brutality for entire lifetimes, the news was unthinkable just months ago - a coda to the convulsions of history they have spent recent weeks watching from front-row seats. "The people are liberated from fear, from their chains. We were living in a big prison," said Amir Sadi, 25, of Baghdad. "The Baath Party was like a gang. It wasn't a political party." Whatever it was, it was everywhere. In the weeks since fighting ebbed, the U.S. occupying force's administration has moved to appoint its own overseers to government ministries and bring people back to work with an eye toward excluding Baathists who worked closely with the Hussein regime.
However, membership or affiliation with the party was required for many government and professional jobs, and American officials have acknowledged that purging one-time Baathists from the ranks of Iraq's civil service entirely may be neither possible nor desirable. That could prove contentious. The acting health minister was the subject of a demonstration by doctors last week because of his political past and Baath links, and more such protests are likely.
Franks' statement also said that "apparatus of Iraqi security, intelligence and military intelligence belonging to Saddam Hussein are deprived of their authority and power." The general emphasized, though, that freedom of expression - including political expression - would be ensured under coalition occupation.
"All parties and political groups can take part in the political life in Iraq, except those who urge violence or practise it," he said. The Baath Party lurched to power briefly in Iraq in 1963 before staging its takeover in 1968. Hussein, who reportedly got his start in the party as a clandestine killer, was a Baath force starting in the late 1960s but did not formally grab control until 1979.
As many as 1.5 million of Iraq's 24 million people belonged to the party. But only about 25,000 to 50,000 were full-fledged members - the sort of elite targeted by U.S. officials. The Baath Party was founded in neighboring Syria in 1943 and spread across the Arab world, promoting Arab superiority and Arab unity with a violent, Soviet-style Baath faction headed by President Bashar Assad. The Baath specter still looms in Iraq. In recent days, anti-Hussein graffiti on walls in the Jadiriyah neighborhood have been defaced, with all the words painted over except one: "Saddam." That makes Iraqis wonder: Are its forces in hiding, waiting for their moment?
TITLE: No Jackson No Problem As Lakers Defeat Spurs
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LOS ANGELES - The three-time defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers won a most difficult game without coach Phil Jackson.
Considering what he's been through recently, maybe it's good Jackson stayed home to avoid further stress, although it couldn't have been easy watching the Lakers' 99-95 victory over the San Antonio Spurs on television Sunday.
"Let's say if he survived this, he's OK," said assistant Jim Cleamons, who filled in. Jackson missed the game after undergoing an angioplasty Saturday to unblock an artery leading to his heart.
The Lakers won by scoring the game's final six points on two free throws by Shaquille O'Neal and four by Kobe Bryant to even the Western Conference semifinals 2-2.
"That's the heart of a champion," Bryant said. "We don't budge, we know that. You knock us down, we get back up. We find a way to win."
As far as playing without Jackson was concerned, Bryant said: "We just look at it as another obstacle. We thrive in these types of situations."
Bryant led the Lakers with 35 points, shooting 10-of-24 from the floor and 14-for-17 from the foul line. He also had a key steal, picking off an inbound pass by Tony Parker with 0:14.2 left and the Lakers leading 98-95.
"I just wanted to get in the passing lane," Bryant said. "I saw the ball in my path and just went for it."
O'Neal had 29 points, 17 rebounds, five assists and four blocked shots. He made 17 of 23 free throws.
"I thought he did an incredible job at the foul line," said San Antonio's Tim Duncan, who did pretty well himself, making 16 of 20 free throws.
Duncan shot 10-for-17 from the field in scoring 36 points. He also had nine rebounds and five assists.
Jackson, whose teams have won a record 25 straight playoff series and nine championships, missed the first postseason game of his 13-year career as an NBA head coach. He had experienced tightness and pain in his chest for about a week. Jackson was released from the hospital about 2 1/2 hours before Sunday's game.
Derek Fisher added 17 points for the Lakers. Stephen Jackson had 15 points and a playoff career high 10 rebounds and Parker scored 14 for the Spurs.
"We had a pretty good shot. It didn't happen," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "I'm very pleased with the way we competed. We just have to stay confident and take care of business at home."
Stephen Jackson's 3-pointer with 1:31 remaining capped a 6-0 run and gave the Spurs a 95-93 lead, but the Spurs wouldn't score again.
O'Neal made two free throws 14 seconds later to tie it, and after the Spurs committed a turnover, Bryant made a free throw with 48 seconds left to put the Lakers ahead for good.
Stephen Jackson missed a 3-pointer with 24 seconds to go, forcing the Spurs to foul. They got to Bryant with 14.2 seconds left, and he made two more foul shots, making it 98-95.
Bryant then stole Parker's inbound pass and added another free throw to complete the scoring.
"We let this game get away from us," Stephen Jackson said. "This is one we definitely should have had."
Sacramento 99, Dallas 83. Doug Christie had 13 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists as the Sacramento Kings calmly executed their game plan and evened their second-round series 2-2 by beating the Dallas Mavericks 99-83 on Sunday night.
With their best player on the bench, Christie established the energy early, and it rubbed off on his teammates. All five Sacramento starters scored in double figures and six players reached the mark in all, including Chris Webber's replacement in the starting lineup, Hedo Turkoglu, who had 17 points.
There was no panic by the Kings, who played on consecutive nights in the playoffs for the first time in the team's history in Sacramento. The game tipped off just under 22 hours after the Mavericks' dramatic 141-137 double-overtime win in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals.
Vlade Divac added 16 points and nine rebounds, and the fun-loving Kings were suddenly themselves again - smiling as they walked off the court during timeouts and patting each other on the back of the head.
The Mavericks averaged 128.7 points through the first three games of the series, but they never got in sync against the Kings' pressure defense - the biggest difference in the outcome.
Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki, who was averaging 27.6 points in the postseason, was held to 11, and was ejected with 2:20 left for kicking a pile of towels after being whistled for a technical.
Philadelphia 95, Detroit 82. Allen Iverson had 36 points and 11 assists Sunday night, giving Philadelphia one major, distinct advantage - a player who could create with the ball - as the 76ers evened their second-round series 2-2 by beating Detroit 95-82 Sunday night.
"That's what makes their team so hard to play; you have to deal with him and all the chain reactions he causes out there," Pistons coach Rick Carlisle said. "Obviously, we're going to have to do a better job."
Chauncey Billups returned to the lineup for Detroit after missing two games because of a sprained ankle, but the point guard shot just 1-for-6 and didn't make a drive to the basket all night.
Backup Chucky Atkins had all sorts of difficulty trying to defend Iverson, whose quickness allowed him to free himself for jumpers - or to drive the lane or the baseline, draw extra defenders and create enough easy baskets to allow Philadelphia to maintain a comfortable lead throughout.
Philadelphia coach Larry Brown said he called more pick-and-roll plays that he had in his entire pro coaching career - quite a statement, considering this was his 2,277th game as a head coach.
"It was a pick-your-poison thing," Iverson said, "and after a while I wanted to run it every play, because they couldn't adjust to it."
Iverson finished 13-for-27 from the field, and his 11 assists accounted for more than half of Philadelphia's total.
TITLE: Ducks Snatch Advantage With Game 1 Road Win
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ST. PAUL, Minnesota - The Anaheim Mighty Ducks are winning the close ones, and they've been nearly unbeatable away from home.
Minnesota must find a way to reverse those two trends to avoid falling behind 2-0 in the Western Conference finals.
The Mighty Ducks improved to 5-0 in overtime games and 5-1 on the road by beating the Wild 1-0 in two extra periods Saturday.
Anaheim also got 39 saves from Jean-Sebastien Giguere and a few fortunate bounces to beat the Wild, continuing a trend that developed in the first two rounds. In sweeping defending champion Detroit and beating Dallas 4-2, the Ducks won the first two games on the road in both of the series. Taking a 2-0 lead back to the Arrowhead Pond would be a huge step toward Anaheim's first-ever trip to the Stanley Cup Finals.
"This is not a lucky thing," coach Mike Babcock said. "We've worked hard all year and deserve to be here."
The Wild could have easily won in regulation were it not for Giguere, who improved to 9-2 in the playoffs and extended his overtime shutout streak to a near-record 160 minutes, 49 seconds. It's the second-longest run in history behind Patrick Roy's 162:56 in 1996-97.
"Our goalie saved our bacon," Babcock said. But he reminded reporters that "the other team has a goalie, too."
Manny Fernandez, who works out with Giguere in Montreal during the offseason, was nearly as good as his counterpart until Petr Sykora lifted a 2-on-1 shot over Fernandez's glove and into the back of the net.
Lemaire didn't think Fernandez or Dwayne Roloson - who will probably also get some playing time in this series - should feel any pressure.
"They're not playing against Giguere," Lemaire said. "They're playing against Anaheim."
Fernandez didn't speak to reporters after Saturday's game, but he was in good spirits Sunday.
"I don't think we're the kind of group that freaks out after one game or gets nervous," he said. "I don't think anything changes from here on out."
Ottawa 3, New Jersey 2 (OT). Playing with poise and composure, the Senators have the edge on the playoff-savvy New Jersey Devils, up 1-0 in the Eastern Conference finals, which resume in Ottawa on Tuesday night.
"I think we are playing with confidence, and that's probably the difference from the past two years," Senators goalie Patrick Lalime said on Sunday. "We believe we can do it, and we're just having fun out there."
Fun and playoffs didn't always go hand in hand for the Senators, whose previous six postseason appearances ended with four first-round and two second-round exits. And that includes last year, when Ottawa squandered a 3-2 second-round series lead - and a 2-0 lead in Game 6 - against Toronto.
The Senators are succeeding despite uncertainty at the ownership level, which led to the team filing for bankruptcy in January. It wasn't until last week that the franchise's future in Ottawa became more secure when the Ontario Supreme Court approved the team's sale to Toronto billionaire Eugene Melnyk.
"We had a great regular season where we had to deal with a lot of adversity," forward Todd White said. "And we've been able to be very resilient and mentally tough."