SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #870 (38), Tuesday, May 27, 2003
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TITLE: Colonel Jordan's Flag Comes Home
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova and Andrei Zolotov Jr.
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After a perilous 80-year journey through four countries, an imperial military flag that has outlived all those who rallied around it returned to Russiaís tsarist-era capital on Monday in a ceremony full of pomp and emotion.
The St. George standard was handed over to St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum by financier Boris Jordan, whose grandfather, lancer guard Colonel Boris Jordan, brought the flag to the United States shortly after World War II, largely to make sure it would not fall into Soviet hands.
"This establishes a link between epochs," Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky told guests and journalists gathered in the museum's regal St. George Hall. "For all of us it is very important that the relics of Russia's military glory are returning here with a proper reception."
The St. George standard, granted by Tsar Alexander II to His Majesty's Lancer Guard Regiment in 1876, was the highest symbol of military honor for an elite unit of cavalrymen who fought under it in several wars and its loss in battle was punishable by court martial. The standard is valued at $300,000.
At Monday's ceremony, complete with military orchestra and honor guard, the flag passed from Jordan to U.S. Consul General Morris Hughes - whose country had preserved it in a military museum for more than 50 years - and then to Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi before finally landing in the hands of a visibly moved Piotrovsky, who quickly kissed a corner of the fringed fabric. Jordan's brother and mother, her eyes brimming with tears, looked on, as did Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and Valentina Matviyenko, the presidential representative in the Northwest Region.
Jordan, whose primary business is the Sputnik investment fund, was last in the public eye as head of NTV television. His two-year stint there ended last fall and led to some rocky relations with the Kremlin. But Jordan said personal conflicts should not jeopardize historical decisions, such as returning the standard.
"Temporary misunderstandings should not affect the long-term," he said after the ceremony.
Olga Barkovets, a historian and aide to Jordan who has worked on the standard's return for months, said that he undertook to return the flag at the behest of his late father, Alexis. She said that Alexis Jordan brought up the flag in a conversation with her last summer, telling her that the last members of the lancer guard regiment had placed it in a U.S. Army museum for safekeeping.
"There are so few of the officers' immediate heirs left," he told her. "Everything has to be returned to Russia. Otherwise we will die and there will be nobody left to do it."
After Alexis Jordan died in August, his widow found documents tracing the flag's history and showing that it was at the U.S. Cavalry Museum in Fort Riley, Kansas.
The documents, copies of which were obtained by The St. Petersburg Times, offer a glimpse of the dramatic last days of a regiment founded in 1640. The cavalry officers rallied around the flag through the Civil War of 1918 to 1922. When they fled the Crimea in 1920, they took it with them as a holy symbol of their loyalty to an imperial Russia they had hoped to restore. They took the flag to Turkey and later to Yugoslavia.
World War II posed a dilemma for the officers. While some joined the anti-Nazi resistance or declared their loyalty to the Soviet Union, many others considered Hitler's Germany to be a friendly force because it was fighting a common enemy: Soviet Russia. Some lancer guards, including Colonel Boris Jordan, joined the Russian Guard Group in Yugoslavia, which wore Russian uniforms but took orders from the Waffen SS.
In 1944, the officers began to fear that the standard would fall into Soviet hands and sent it to Germany, where it was lost in the chaos of the war's final days, Colonel Jordan wrote in an account dated 1953.
The account describes in touching detail how the officers, who were scattered about refugee camps and feared they would be repatriated forcefully to Stalin's Russia, finally found the flag in the U.S.-controlled Bavarian National Museum in 1945. Colonel Jordan and his fellow officers pleaded with the U.S. occupation forces for three years to regain the flag, which Moscow also had the right to claim.
"Chaos reigned in the whole country. Nobody knew what to do with the millions of foreigners," Colonel Jordan wrote. "The Americans just couldn't get it through their heads why scores of Russians didn't want to return to their homeland."
In February 1948, U.S. authorities released the banner to Jordan, who brought it to a refugee camp for a church service.
"Everybody in attendance had tears on their eyes as they came up to kiss the standard," Jordan wrote. "But it was especially touching to see the attitudes of the simple Russian people who had made their way out of Soviet Russia."
Shortly afterward, with the help of a U.S. officer friend, the flag was shipped to New York and placed in the Russian Orthodox Church of Christ the Savior.
The church was later closed, and in 1975 the seven surviving members of the Association of Officers of H.M. Lancer Guards voted to place the standard in the U.S. Cavalry Museum "until the monarchy is restored in Russia and a request by a legal representative of the Royal Government for the return of the standard to Russia is made."
The Jordan family, however, decided not to wait that long.
"A restoration of the monarchy today is absurd for Russia. What is most important is that the Soviet regime is no longer in place," Barkovets said.
The U.S. military agreed earlier this year to grant a request from the Jordan family, the Culture Ministry and the Hermitage Museum to return the flag.
The pomp surrounding the flag was part of the museum's larger effort to recapture the spirit of Russia's pre-revolutionary military glory. The ceremony, which opened with Tchaikovsky's rousing 1812 Overture, was followed by the opening of the Military Gallery, a collection of more than 300 portraits of tsarist-era military leaders, which were restored over the past five years at a cost of some $1.5 million.
In time, the St. George standard will be put on display at the Museum of the Guard, gradually being created as a subdivision of the Hermitage. Before then, however, it will have to undergo painstaking restoration work.
TITLE: Lenoblast Worried By Stalled Shipping
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Over 100 cargo ships will find themselves stuck in Lake Ladoga for the height of St. Petersburg's 300th-anniversary celebrations, and the Leningrad Oblast Administration says that the situation poses an environmental danger in the area.
Quoting anonymous sources in the oblast's Environmental Committee, the Fontanka.ru Web site said that the Federal Guard Service (FSO) ordered the St. Petersburg Sea Port closed during the period for security reasons.
The sources in the committee said that they were only informed of the order on May 16, leaving them little time to make preparations to deal with the clean up of about 15,000 tons of additional organic waste and sewage generated by the ships while they wait.
A number of vessels have been pressed into action by the oblast administration. While officials at the Environmental Committee confirmed that the situation is causing the oblast government some headaches, Oleg Krupov, the deputy head of the committee, who has been charged with dealing with the situation, refused to comment on Monday.
Andrei Markelov, the spokesperson for the St. Petersburg Sea Port administration, said the port that the port actually received the order from the FSO some time in March, leaving the administration enough time to warn shipping companies that the port would be closed from May 29 to June 1. He said that this would ultimately cost the port, as well as some shipping companies, because leaving or entering the port during this four-day period will be prohibited.
"The port is going to be closed for of one simple reason: There is only one deep-water canal here that is 100 meters wide," Markelov said in a telephone interview on Monday. "It would have been unsafe to have ships passing through the canal at the same time it was being used by the high-speed boats carrying the official delegations."
"This is not such a big loss," he said. "Like our governor said, we only celebrate the 300th anniversary once every 100 years."
Markelov said that the port usually handles the arrival of about 100 ships per day, with each ship paying an average of $10,000 of port taxes, which would mean losses of about $3 million during the enforced layoff.
But the port's firms say that the situation isn't really critical.
"There is going to be enough work to keep us busy just unloading those ships which have already arrived in the harbor," Irina Krikun, a spokesperson for the St. Petersburg Sea Port joint stock company, the largest sea-cargo-handling company in the city, said in a telephone interview on Monday.
Krikun also said that the back up of ships might not be as bad as some are predicting, for the same reason she says that traffic situation on the city's streets has turned out to be better than many feared.
"The information [on which ships are where] differs at the moment," Krikun said. "You have probably noticed how simple it is to drive though the city now. Many [drivers] have left the city after they were scared away ... We'll see how it all goes and just hope that we'll be able to avoid any serious difficulties."
Tourist companies dealing with cruise ships said they had to inform their partners even earlier to avoid refund disasters generated by the inability of cruises to dock here during the period.
"[This type of] business really requires that the companies be informed at least six months in advance," Igor Glukhov, the deputy director of Inflot Worldwide, said in a telephone interview on Monday. "Rumors that the port would be closed have been circulating for a while. Imagine what would have happened if a cruise ship like the Norwegian Dream ended up stuck out at sea on its way to St. Petersburg?"
"The FSO wouldn't be able to cover this magnitude of losses. Tourists would have demanded millions of dollars in compensation," he added. "Tour operators would have suffered, as would have St. Petersburg's image."
Although Glukhov said that the closing of the port for a few days had meant the cancellation or rescheduling of a number of cruises, he says that the damage to city's tourist industry will be negligible.
"We work with more then 80 companies with cruise ships entering the city about 250 times a year, carrying about 200,000 passengers. This year we have seen 25-percent growth and became the most visited city in northern Europe with regard to cruise tourism," Glukhov said.
TITLE: 'Kostya the Grave' Killed in Drive-By Shooting
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A reputed former crime boss of St. Petersburg, Konstantin Yakovlev, known ominously as Kostya Mogila, or "Kostya the Grave," was gunned down in central Moscow in an apparent contract hit.
Two men on a motorcycle opened fire on the car Yakovlev was riding in on Sunday evening, killing him and two men who were with him, Denis Tsaryov and Sergei Chikov, both Muscovites.
A woman was also seriously wounded in the attack and was in the intensive care ward of the Sklifosovsky Institute's emergency care hospital on Monday, Moscow city police said. Police said they could provide no information about the woman. There were contradicting reports about whether she was in the car with Yakovlev or just walking by.
The men on the motorcycle caught up with Yakovlev's black Nissan Maxima sedan at about 5 p.m. as it drove along Pereulok Obukha, near the Indian Embassy and Justice Ministry. The assailants pulled out Kalashnikov assault rifles and fired through the car's windows, police said. Yakovlev, 49, Tsaryov, 27, and Chikov, 52, who police said had an extensive criminal record, were declared dead on the scene. The assailants dumped the guns and raced away. Police attempts to intercept them Sunday evening failed.
No one answered the telephone Monday at the press service of the city prosecutor's office, which is handling the case.
Past Russian media reports have described Yakovlev as the point man of Moscow criminal rings trying to edge the prominent Tambov gangs out of St. Petersburg. Contract murders that have thinned the northern capital's crime and business circles in the past decade are generally attributed to disputes between the two criminal groups.
In 1991, Yakovlev was given a suspended sentence for extortion, NTV television reported Monday.
Andrei Konstantinov, head of the AJUR investigative agency and established chronicler of St. Petersburg's crime world, who knew Yakovlev personally, said that he emerged as a powerful racketeer in the late 1980s and was one of the first crime bosses in St. Petersburg to start legal businesses. His main interests were banking and media.
"In the mid-1990s, he had Sergei Lisovsky [head of Premier SV, then Russia's largest advertising agency] and Boris Berezovsky among his business partners," Konstantinov said. "This is why Yakovlev was once among the main suspects in the murder of Vladislav Listyev." In 1995, Listyev, the newly appointed head of ORT television, which was controlled by Berezovsky, was killed as he was trying to root out shady advertising deals at the channel.
Three years ago, Yakovlev, who reportedly had control over several St. Petersburg television channels and hefty stakes in the city's oil and retail businesses, moved to Moscow, Konstantinov said. Yakovlev's influence on St. Petersburg's crime world declined dramatically after he left the city, but he still had some powerful enemies.
"He was a very good diplomat, but after years of bloody gang wars in St. Petersburg, there were dozens of people who would want to see [Yakovlev] dead," Konstantinov said. "[Yakovlev] had also turned to religion and sincerely considered himself a good Christian. He would talk about God for hours."
Russian media reported Monday that police found papers on Tsaryov identifying him as an aide to Federation Council member Leonid Bindar. Other reports said he was an aide to State Duma Deputy Mikhail Zadornov. Bindar's and Zadornov's offices, reached by telephone Monday, denied the reports.
TITLE: Concerts, Costumes Plus a Little Abuse
AUTHOR: By Natalia Yefimova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Thousands of people took to the streets this weekend to enjoy concerts, costumes and a little abuse of the governor as St. Petersburg kicked off its 300th birthday bash.
Governor Vladimir Yakovlev welcomed guests gathered inside the huge round hall of the Ice Palace on Friday with a shout of "Happy birthday, St. Petersburg!"
The city "appeared contrary to all logic, like a phantom, a dream city, but when Peter the Great built it he managed to change the whole path of Russia's development," Yakovlev said ahead of a two-hour smorgasbord of ballet, opera and children's performances.
The show was one of 2,700 events scheduled between now and June 1 - 10 days of festivities that will peak on May 30-31 when St. Petersburg hosts summits of the European Union and Commonwealth of Independent States.
The highlight of the weekend came Sunday as scores of costumed Peter the Greats marched down Nevsky Prospekt, with clowns, floats, music and an eclectic mix of vehicles, from fire trucks to horse-drawn carriages.
The parade, replete with balloons, flags and sparkling antennae, reached its culmination at Palace Square, where the governor subjected himself to the annual tradition of getting his tie snipped off. A crowd of pint-sized attackers flung themselves at Yakovlev to the salvos of a fake Aurora, the cruiser whose famous shot in November 1917 marked the start of the October Revolution. In the comic ceremony, along with his tie, the governor symbolically gives up his powers for a day and lets the carnival take over.
With many streets closed off to traffic and crowds of visitors swarming the city, Russian press reports have hyped the inconveniences - and indignation - experienced by local residents. Some agreed that the city's birthday party hasn't made them feel too welcome.
"My husband and I were planning to go to the countryside for the weekend, but the roads are all blocked," said Natalya Rakhmanova, 70, who lives near Nevsky Prospekt. "Now we'll go to the cemetery instead. If the road there is still open, that is."
But others welcomed the burst of excitement. "It's fun!" said Olga, 20, who came to watch the parade with two friends from their residential neighborhood on the outskirts of town. "This is our city. We love it. And now the whole world will get to see how wonderful it is."
The city's celebrations include a wealth of entertainment - water and laser shows, concerts, parades, balls and the unveiling of new monuments. More somber events, including religious services and processions, will also be held.
Staff Writer Irina Titova contributed to this report.
TITLE: Vivat St. Petersburg!
TEXT: The official celebrations for St. Petersburg's 300th anniversary got under way over the weekend.
Friday night saw the first of the promised shows on the Neva River - although many who gathered on the spit of Vasilievsky Island and along the Neva River's embankments were left disappointed as the event in question was water-based rather than the laser display they had expected. In fact, the laser show, by Japan's Hiro Yamagato, will take place on Tuesday and Saturday at midnight. After the opening of the ice-cream festival and steam-train trips to former imperial palaces on Saturday, Sunday saw two important, yet very different, events - the unveiling to the media of Konstantinovsky Palace, the new presidential residence in the suburb of Strelna, some 10 kilometers southwest of St. Petersburg (top r, bottom l), and the third running of the city's annual carnival, including a number of incarnations of Peter the Great (top l), and all the traditional bands (bottom c) and costumed paraders, and some less traditional monster trucks (2nd top r). On Monday, meanwhile, the city was the recipient of another birthday present - this one from Helsinki - of new fountains and 300 new apple trees to adorn Tercentenary Park on Primorsky Prospect. For more on the celebrations so far, see story, p. 2.
TITLE: 1703+300 = 2003
TEXT: May 27
10 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. The laying of wreaths at the Bronze Horseman Ploshchad Dekabristov
11 a.m. to 11:20 a.m. The laying of a commemorative medal on the sarcophagus of Peter the Great by the governor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Yakovlev Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral
11:30 a.m. to noon Unveiling of a commemorative emblem for the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg Gosudarev Bastion, Peter and Paul Fortress
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Orthodox Church service in honor of the anniversary St. Isaac's Cathedral
Noon to 1 p.m. Delivery of the Icon of Our Savior to St. Isaac's Cathedral St. Isaac's Cathedral
Noon 300th-anniversary Water Sports Festival Neva River
1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Procession of the Cross and Divine Liturgy in honor of St. Petersburg's anniversary St. Isaac's Cathedral
1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Governor's review of the Cadet Corps Palace Square
2 p.m. Gala opening of the new Main Gate of the State Hermitage Museum on Palace Square State Hermitage Museum
2 p.m. "The St. Petersburg School of Mountaineering Salutes the City's 300th Anniversary," a sports show Park Pobedy
2:30 p.m. St. Petersburg Government Awards in Literature and the Arts Hermitage Theater
3 p.m. Grand reopening of renovated historical parts of St. Petersburg State University St. Petersburg State University, 7 Universitetskaya Naberezhnaya
3:30 p.m. Grand Assembly of the World Club for St. Petersburgers Hermitage Theater
4 p.m. Gala opening of a public Art Mediatheque Mayakovsky Central Public Library
5 p.m. Gala opening of the Mikhailovsky Garden Mikhailovsky Garden
6 p.m. "Songs of a Great City," a choral concert Capella
6:30 p.m. Gala opening of the new St. Petersburg Opera Theater and the modern-day premiere of "Peter the Great," an opera by Donizetti St. Petersburg Opera Theater
7 p.m. Stars of the White Nights Festival: The Queen of Spades Valery Gergiev conducts Tchaikovsky's opera, based on Pushkin's story about German, a young soldier who seeks to learn the secret of winning at cards from an old countess. Mariinsky Theater
7 p.m. to 11 p.m. "Chapel Choir," a gala concert of choirs on the Kazan Cathedral plaza At the end of the concert, a 1,000-strong choir will perform "Rejoice, Our Lady," by Balakirev Kazan Cathedral Plaza
7:30 p.m. Ceremonial presentation of a new grand piano to the Shostakovich Philharmonic as a gift from the City of Hamburg, followed by a gala concert Shostakovich Philharmonic
8 p.m. Solo concert by Alexander Rozenbaum Palace Square
9 p.m. Water show on the Neva River Neva River
9 p.m. Captain's Reception on board the Mir sailing ship, attended by the Governor of St. Petersburg Neva River
11 p.m. Hiro Yamagato laser show Neva River
May 28
10 a.m. Finals of the 300th Anniversary Athletic Tournament City arenas
11 a.m. Street Basketball Festival Kirov Stadium
11 a.m. The 300th-anniversary International Demidov Assembly St. Petersburg House of Science
11 a.m. "St Petersburg in European Science and Culture," an international conference Smolny
11 a.m. to 3 p.m. 300th-Anniversary Athletic Tournament for secondary-school students Corporate and school stadiums around St. Petersburg
Noon 300th-Anniversary Horse Race Petrovsky Stadium
Noon "White Nights 2003," an international dog show Zenit Sports Complex
Noon Grand opening of the 5th and final exhibition, "St Petersburg's 300th" Mikhailovsky Manege
2 p.m. 300th-anniversary City Sports Fest Kirov Stadium
4 p.m. Automobile Racing Meet Neva Ring track
4 p.m. 300th-Anniversary Jet Ski Show Neva Ring
4 p.m. "Gift for St. Petersburg," a traditional arts and crafts show Lenexpo
5 p.m. 300th Anniversary Bodybuilding Show Gigant Hall
6 p.m. 24 Hours of St. Petersburg motorboat race Neva River, by the Peter and Paul Fortress
7 p.m. "Planet Parade," a gala concert attended by Honorary Citizens of St. Petersburg Arkady Raikin Variety Theater
6 p.m. to 9 p.m. A 300th Anniversary Show featuring Russian pop stars Petrovsky Stadium
7:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. "For You, Great City!" Performances by ballet companies, choreography schools and ballet legends, including the ballet "Cinderella" by Tchaikovsky, starring dancers from the Mariinsky Theater and Moscow's Bolshoi Theater Palace Square
TITLE: Public Gets A Look at Revamped Palace
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: While thousands of workers toiled round the clock to prepare the crumbling Konstantinovsky Palace for this month's grandiose summit of world leaders, the 18th-century residence had been strictly off-limits to journalists and curious onlookers.
Now that most of the $280 million renovation has been completed, the presidential administration has proudly unveiled its masterpiece. And even skeptics have to admit that the result is breathtaking.
The bluish walls and yellow marble pilasters of the central Marble Hall, where President Vladimir Putin will host a Russia-European Union summit this Saturday, give but an inkling of the imperial grandeur restored during the past year.
The coffee-and-milk-colored palace of Italian baroque, with the Russian national flag waving on top, stands prominently on a hilltop surrounded by vast green lawns, ponds and freshly planted lindens. Its northern facade overlooks the windy Gulf of Finland, connected to the palace by an intricate network of canals landscaped with drawbridges and fountains.
Few people believed that the palace - the most neglected historical site in the dazzling "necklace" of landmarks surrounding St. Petersburg - could be renovated in time for the celebration of the city's 300th anniversary. But Kremlin officials now tout the project as a miracle of speedy, high-quality work.
"Just 1 1/2 years ago, the 200 hectares of the park's territory were a swamp, and the palace itself was in such decay that it could have collapsed," Vladimir Kozhin, head of the presidential property department, told reporters Sunday.
The toughest part of the reconstruction was the foundation, whose ancient oak piles had rotted away in the damp ground. Securing the palace on the hillside required more than a million cubic meters of sand and soil, Kozhin said.
Although most of the interior was restored using old pictures and blueprints, the palace now mingles tradition with high technology. The meeting rooms are equipped with monitors and discreetly hidden booths for interpreters.
In addition to the Marble, Oval and Blue halls, the palace has some 50 rooms, each one unique and some already serving as museum expositions. The decor includes impressive crystal chandeliers, painstakingly carved friezes and gilded paintings climbing up the columned walls and across the arched ceiling.
While there are some innovations - including an oak belvedere styled as a ship's hold with a spiral staircase leading to the cupola's observation deck - the emphasis was clearly placed on recapturing the palace's history.
One example is the grottos and re-opened wine cellar stocked only with Hungarian Tokai wines.
"The wine has already arrived," Kozhin announced.
The palace, built between 1720 and 1750 as the brainchild of Peter the Great, bears the name of the son of Nicholas I, who went on to become the reformer of the Russian Navy.
The entire ensemble, including the grounds, will be completed in 2005, said Gennady Yavnik, head of the foundation in charge of the work. But parts of the territory will be opened to the public as early as June.
Meanwhile, 20 upscale guesthouses have been built to house some of the 45 heads of state expected at this weekend's summit. Each of the 2,000-square-meter cottages - which boast their own meeting rooms, swimming pools, saunas and gyms - bears the name of a Russian city and is decorated with gifts from there.
Like the area surrounding the palace, the guesthouses will also be available for private individuals, but Kozhin declined to name the price of such a sojourn.
Organizers of the press tour made it clear that security was no less a concern than luxury. Military sappers would be seen combing the area for explosives.
The entire territory, known officially as the Palace of Congresses complex, includes a park, the four-star Baltic Star hotel and a helipad.
"Many ministries have already filled out applications to use the complex for their conferences, meetings and celebrations," Kozhin said, adding that various nongovernmental and private organizations also have shown an interest in renting out the facilities.
Officials have said that the project was funded only with private donations and not a kopek of government money.
TITLE: Expat Opinion on St. Petersburg
TEXT: St. Petersburg's 300th-anniversary celebrations will be attended by hundreds of thousands of visitors. But the city is also home to a large expatriate community. Staff Writer Irina Titova talked to four foreigners who live here year round to find out what the city and the holiday mean to them.
Thomas Noll, German. Director, Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel.
Q: How long have you lived in St. Petersburg?
A: I've been in St. Petersburg for almost two years, after having spent over 20 years working in hot countries. I needed a change of scenery.
Q: What is it like for you to live and work here?
A: It's a fantastic city to live in. I'm very happy about the quality of our employees and our managers here. They are very well educated. This city is growing. Business here is growing. So, with all the economic crises all over the world, St. Petersburg is the best place to be now, in my business at least.
Q: What do you like most about St. Petersburg?
A: I like the White Nights period, with almost 24 hours of sunshine. And I'm glad to have met my love here. She is Russian, and she is from St. Petersburg.
Q: If you could change something about the city, what would it be?
A: I'd change the appearance of many of the courtyards, reduce pollution, educate people to be more environment friendly - for instance, not to throw garbage into the canals or on the streets.
Q: What is your favorite place in St. Petersburg?
A: I like the historical center. I like to be on a boat on one of the White Nights. It feels like Venice, just more grandiose.
Q: How important do you think the 300th anniversary is for the city?
A: It will be a big boost for the city and will provide it with a lot of publicity from the more than 5,000 journalists who are coming to cover the events. This city has the potential to become one of the most visited places in Europe.
Wilfred Eckstein, German. Director, Goethe Institute in St. Petersburg:
Q: When did you first come to St. Petersburg. Why?
A: My first visit was to Leningrad, in 1985. I remember that strangers on the street asked us for chewing gum and pens. My girlfriend at that time received an offer of marriage in the space of a one-minute conversation with a young man. It was all very strange.
Q: What do you like most about St. Petersburg?
A: I really appreciate the German-Russian cultural heritage of the city. The city itself has a multicultural character.
Q: What do you like least about the city?
A: Unfortunately, the increasing incidence of street robberies makes life unpleasant for everybody here and has a negative effect on the image of the city.
Q: What is your favourite place in St. Petersburg?
A: It is the Kunstkamera - the first threshold between Russia and Germany.
Rachel Shackleton, British. Owner and general director, Concept Training and Development Services.
Q: When did you first come to St. Petersburg? Why?
A: I originally came to work for the Grand Hotel Europe in December 1992 as the training and development manager. After three years working there, I started my own company.
Q: What do you like most about the city?
A: I like the people and the city very much. The city is very beautiful as are the people - friendly, fun and with a good sense of humour.
Q: If there was one thing you could change about St. Petersburg, what would that be?
A: If possible, I would change the weather so that the winter would be shorter, but this is obviously not possible. The other thing I would change is the visa and work-permit system for people who have lived and worked in this country for over three years, particularly if they are paying taxes and own a company here.
Q: What is your favourite place in St. Petersburg? Why?
A: My favourite place is Lomonosov for two reasons: The Oranianbaum estate is very beautiful and peaceful whatever time of year you choose to visit, and the tea room in Lomonosov cooks the best pirozhki in St. Petersburg.
Adrian AB Terris, British. General Director, St. Petersburg Yellow Pages and President of Petersburg Caledonia.
Q: When did you first come to St. Petersburg. Why?
A: I first arrived in 1994 and planned to stay for two years. I had six objectives, with the main driving force being linked to getting a better understanding of the great Russian writers of the 19th century. My main aim and objectives had been fully satisified within three months of my arrival.
Q: What do you like most about St. Petersburg? What surprises you? Is there one thing that you hope never changes about the city?
A: The people and culture remind me of the warmth and sincerity of my home city, Glasgow. The geographical position; the dynamism between the cold, dark winters and the light, hot summers - like living two years for every one - life energies conspire between the two poles.
Q: If there was one thing you could change about St. Petersburg, what would it be?
A: I would ensure better pay for driving instructors and inspectors - the present system allows for irregularities in the granting of licences, thereby ensuring poor driving skills at best and, at worst, a high incidence of car accidents, the disruption of business and, indeed, needless deaths.
Q: What is your favorite memory of St. Petersburg?
A: The birth of my daughter, Avelina.
Q: What is your favourite place in St. Petersburg? Why?
A: The dove on top of the dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral. The message is perfect: Peace, eternity and beauty.
TITLE: Finally, McCartney's Back in the U.S.S.R.
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Legions of Russian Beatles fans who never got to see Lennon and McCartney instead got Lenin and McCartney on Saturday when the former Beatle played to about 20,000 people, including President Vladimir Putin, just a few hundred meters from Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square.
After missing out on the Beatlemania that took over the world in the 1960s, Moscow fans made up for lost time by eagerly welcoming McCartney to Russia for the first time.
"30 years waiting for you," read one banner hoisted over the crowd, as many wept tears of happiness at finally seeing and hearing their idol.
Although deeply disapproved of in the Soviet Union, the Beatles popularity knew no bounds and far outreached any other Western rock music.
"There's no one higher than Paul McCartney, only God," said an office manager with one Western firm who had been a fan since her student days.
"This is my youth come back!" said a middle-aged woman as she danced during the concert. "I never thought I would be here in Moscow listening to him."
"This hand shook Paul's," a stunned fan told TVS television, after meeting McCartney before the concert. "I don't plan to wash it for several days."
Although the Beatles were derided as the "belch of Western culture" and refused permission to play in the 1980s, McCartney on Saturday received a welcome worthy of a royal visit.
There were objections. More than 100 State Duma deputies tried to have the concert cancelled, saying it was too close to the graves of Lenin and Stalin or that the loud music might damage St. Basil's Cathedral.
But this time McCartney had a powerful fan.
A clearly starstruck Putin showed McCartney and his wife, Heather Mills, around the Kremlin on Saturday afternoon after they arrived from a stop in St. Petersburg, where the former Beatle was feted by the St. Petersbutg Conservatory. McCartney then performed an informal rendition of "Let it Be" especially for Putin.
Putin, 51, who was a teenager at the height of the Beatles' popularity, told McCartney how much Russians loved the group in Soviet times.
"It was very popular, more than popular. It was like a breath of fresh air, like a window on the outside world," he said in a meeting shown on television. "I'm sure a lot of people play and sing your songs. They like you a lot."
The concert, one of the last on a 14-month world tour, was also obviously something special for the 60-year-old McCartney as well.
"I hear a lot of you learned English through the Beatles. ... How proud does that make me feel," he told fans on Red Square.
Doing his best to charm the audience, he spoke in Russian, reading from prepared notes throughout the show, starting with "Privyet rebyata."
Beginning the 2 1/2-hour concert with "Hello, Goodbye," he ripped through a hit list of Beatles' songs including "Hey Jude," "Lady Madonna" "Getting Better" and "She's Leaving Home," as well Wings and solo numbers.
But the song the audience and McCartney himself seemed to be waiting for the most was a simple parody of the American rock songs by The Beach Boys and Chuck Berry: "Back in the U.S.S.R." When McCartney began to sing, the crowd went wild.
"Finally we got to do that one here," he said after the song. For many fans, the song was seen as a special link between the Soviet Union and the Beatles, but when asked before the concert McCartney said that he had known little about the Soviet Union when he wrote it.
"It was a mystical land then," he said. "It's nice to see the reality. I always suspected that people had big hearts. Now I know that's true."
Putin, although not scheduled to attend the concert, strolled out of the Kremlin about a half hour after the concert started and sat down between Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and rock singer Andrei Makarevich.
Having missed the first raucous rendition of "Back in the U.S.S.R.," Putin may have been behind a decision by McCartney to diverge from his set list and play the song again for an encore. McCartney said only that it was a request from a special person.
Perhaps due to high ticket prices of 1,000 to 10,000 rubles ($30 to $320), the number of people at the concert was far from the expected 50,000. Anyone with the 1,000-ruble standing-only tickets saw little of McCartney performing at the St. Basil's end of the square, apart from the display on large video screens. Those who got the posh front-row seats looked at times like they belonged more at a fashion show than a rock concert.
It was a pity, said one fan on the Beatles.ru forum, that McCartney didn't recycle John Lennon's famous quip at the Royal Variety Performance in London in 1963, when he said, "Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry."
Although crowd control seemed more courteous than usual at such events, the police and security guards managed to be a bit heavy-handed, confiscating bottles of water and telling people to stop being so excitable.
"You're not at B-2," one security guard told a group of fans, referring to the Russian rock group.
"How right he was," retorted a fan.
Staff Writer Lyuba Pronina contributed to this story.
TITLE: Russia To Add To Its Arsenal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Russia is asking the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to maintain a U.S. freeze on testing as it considers full-scale development of battlefield nuclear weapons.
A senior Russian official told reporters Thursday that his government also intends to develop new types of weapons, which he said probably would not be nuclear-armed and certainly would not be aimed at the United States.
Russia's aim is to counter new threats and challenges, and the weapons would not be made on a large scale, the official said without elaboration.
The briefing at the Russian Embassy followed talks by Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet, and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, and a short session with Bush.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said that Moscow was determined to accelerate the warming of relations with Washington.
TITLE: Russia 'Sells' Vote for Iraqi Oil
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia dropped its opposition to a UN resolution lifting sanctions on Iraq once it believed its Soviet-era debt and massive oil contracts in the country would be respected, the Russian press said Friday.
"Russia 'sold' its vote in exchange for the respect of contracts and debt," Izvestia said.
Kommersant accused the Russian leadership of abandoning its principles in voting for the resolution, abandoning its demand that UN weapons inspectors return to the country to ensure it is free of weapons of mass destruction before lifting sanctions.
After weeks of opposition to the U.S.-sponsored resolution, Russia voted in favor Thursday of lifting the 13-year-old sanctions on Iraq, effectively handing over temporary control of Iraq's oil revenues to the United States and its allies through an internationally-audited Development Fund.
"U.S. concessions made to the anti-war coalition do not change the substance of things, but help save face for those who extolled the key role of the UN," Izvestia said.
The daily said that a key point in winning Russia's approval was the U.S. concession to reschedule Iraq's debt - including $8 billion owed to Moscow - through the Paris Club.
Yet the resolution effectively establishes a moratorium on the debt by declaring Iraq's oil revenues immune from legal proceedings until Dec. 31, 2007.
And the resolution did not put a deadline on relinquishing U.S.-British control of the country, merely scheduling a review in 12 months and the promise that an internationally recognized government would eventually be set up by the Iraqi people.
Yet the pro-Kremlin Vremya Novostei daily declared in a headline that "everyone won in Iraq" - sanctions were lifted while the United Nations won a role in postwar Iraq.
In weeks of tense negotiations, Russia argued for strong UN involvement in the country, anxious to ensure that its debt, as well as billions of dollars in undeveloped oil contracts, did not fall entirely into U.S.-British hands.
The biggest Russian prize is a $3.7-billion contract secured by one of the country's biggest oil companies, LUKoil, to develop the prized West Qurna oil field.
The former Iraqi regime cancelled that contract in 2002 on the grounds of nonperformance by LUKoil, although the company says that it will sue any new contender.
"To the extent it [the resolution] re-establishes United Nations authority it could be said to be good. With the United Nations back in the game Russia's position is improved," said Jonathan Stern, an energy analyst at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was quoted as saying in Paris on Thursday that the new UN Security Council resolution would create a favorable environment for Russia to take part in the postwar rebuilding of Iraq.
He also said that Moscow would insist on existing oil contracts being honored.
But Russia's fight to secure its oil interests in Iraq is far from over. "I would say Russia has some advantages. They know how to work in Iraq where a lot of equipment is already Russian," said oil analyst Ivan Mazalov at Commerzbank Securities in London.
But, he added, "there will be pressure to diversify contracts away from Russia."
How the cards fall for Russia's interests may not become clear for a year or two, by which time a new Iraqi government may have rewritten the country's oil-investment rules.
"The final decision can only be taken by an Iraqi authority," said Christopher Granville, a strategist in London with Moscow-based investment house United Financial Group.
Russia has also scored a coup by rebuffing calls from some hard-line members of the United States administration, among them Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, to write off $8 billion in Soviet era debt owed by Baghdad.
"Russia has won quite a victory over the neo-conservative lobby," said Granville. "Paul Wolfowitz said the debt should be written off. Russia said it is still paying off its own Soviet-era debt and silenced the hard-line lobby."
(AFP, Reuters)
TITLE: UES Adopts 5-Year Plan For Monopoly Breakup
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The board of directors of Unified Energy Systems on Friday ended years of often acrimonious debate and tinkering by finally agreeing on a blueprint for how - and to whom - the assets of the world's largest utility will be parceled out over the remaining five years of its existence.
Anatoly Chubais, the company's chief executive, could barely control his glee as he emerged from the meeting to announce that, contrary to assertions by his critics, only current shareholders of the company will be able to inherit the monopoly's highly prized assets in the breakup.
In other words, the shenanigans that occurred the last time Chubais presided over a mass privatization drive - the rigged loans-for-shares auctions of the mid-1990s that created the oligarchy - will not be repeated.
"It is ... clear that opponents of the revamp, including civil servants, have been dealt a crushing defeat both morally and professionally," Chubais said, referring to Andrei Illarionov, President Vladimir Putin's outspoken economic adviser, who has repeatedly urged the government to sack Chubais.
Under the so-called 5+5 plan, which refers to the five years Chubais spent preparing to break up the company and the five years it will take for him to do so, UES's assets will not be sold for cash.
Instead, shareholders of UES will be able to swap their shares on a pro rata basis for direct stakes in the highly coveted national generating companies, or gencos, that will soon be created. Since the government, which owns 52 percent of UES, will not exercise its pro rata rights, whatever stakes in the new generating companies left up for grabs will be auctioned off, with UES shares being the only legal tender. "The company will go to the annual meeting with an approved strategy," Chubais told reporters.
The board approved the plan by a vote of 14-1, and Chubais said that directors suggested only minor amendments that would be formally approved during a meeting headed by board chairperson Alexander Voloshin, the Kremlin chief of staff, ahead of Friday's annual shareholders meeting. "There are some localized changes, not major ones," he said.
Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko, who chairs the state commission in charge of power sector reform, said that Chubais could expect little or no resistance from the government from here on in. "On the whole, I am in favor of 5+5," Khristenko told Interfax after his commission met to discuss the document Friday. Any differences between the government and UES "are not critical to carrying out this strategy."
Deputy CEO Vyacheslav Sinyugin said that board members had no objection to the shares-for-shares auctions, but that directors representing minority shareholders wanted more clarification on the swap scheme and the mechanisms for consolidating UES assets into larger companies in order to attract investment.
However, independent board member Alexander Branis of Prosperity Capital Management said that Sinyugin's remarks were not completely accurate.
"I was the only one to vote against the plan because I am concerned about several things - the sale of assets ... and how the auctions will work. All the old concerns remain," he said..
"Portfolio investors might be squeezed between the government, which will be increasing its stake in the national-grid company, and industrial giants, who will be acquiring stakes in the wholesale-generating companies."
The 5+5 document calls for the creation of 10 wholesale generating companies that will each consist of fully owned UES assets located in different parts of the country in order to encourage competition. Six of the companies will be made up of thermal power plants, and four of hydroelectric plants, which the government intends to retain full control of for strategic and safety reasons.
The six thermal wholesale-generating companies, or gencos, will become fully private as the government withdraws from the generation business and increases its stake in the new Federal Grid Co., which will retain a monopoly on electricity transmission.
"Maintaining control over the grid is the government's No. 1 task in the reform," said Khristenko, adding that the government may allocate budget funds as early as next year to acquire grid assets now belonging to partially privatized regional utilities.
Details of the new scheme were leaked to the press in bits and pieces throughout the week, stoking demand for the company's stock and pushing its share price up 30 percent and its market capitalization over $10 billion for the first time since the economy imploded in 1998. Still, the stock is trading at roughly half its all-time high of $0.46, which it hit in July of 1997.
Chubais, who recently had his contract renewed for another five years, took credit for "increasing the value of the government's assets in UES by $3.5 billion since Jan. 1, 1999." His first year as CEO, 1998, "doesn't count" he said, because "it was a crisis year."
The surge in share price, he said, started as soon as "the long-standing dispute over the company's reorganization was over."
"I am aware of what is now going on on the stock market. This is quite symptomatic. [The company's] capitalization has exceeded all expectations."
One worry, Chubais said, is that the "free float," or liquidity, of UES shares is shrinking dramatically as major financial and industrial groups with interests in aluminum, coal and even oil rush into the market to snap up sizeable chunks of UES shares so that they can participate in the upcoming auctions.
"This process doesn't please us, but it is inevitable as large minority shareholders emerge," he said. "I don't think it has reached the critical point where it can allow direct manipulation by the market."
TITLE: Net Giants Open Site for Anniversary
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A new Web site, providing coverage of the St. Petersburg 300th anniversary celebrations in real time, was launched on Monday. The site, which can be found at www.flyway.ru, has been developed by telecommunications companies Equant, Cisco, Comset and Intel. According to Ekaterina Ovchinnikova, spokesperson for the project, the site features on-line video broadcasts of the official jubilee programs and celebration events, which are now available to visitors from across the globe.
Equant is also providing technical support for the International Press Center for the duration of the 300th anniversary, according to Tatyana Prokhorova, general director of Equant.
TITLE: Investment Needed for Transport Sector
AUTHOR: By Katherine Ters
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Poor infrastructure is putting a brake on the development of Russia's sea-freight industry, and container-shipping companies are saying that if Russia is going to reap the benefits of this rapidly growing sector, there needs to be significant investment in port terminals and interior transport networks
Currently, just 1 percent of freight in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States is containerized. Container-shipping operators say that the industry could double in size in the next five to seven years, but only if transport infrastructure keeps up with rapidly increasing volumes.
Within the industry, there have been complaints about the high costs and poor service levels at Russian ports, as well as calls for greater public investment in port terminals and interior transport networks, customs reform, and the privatization of the railways.
Russia's total container-freight market has been estimated at 1 million 20-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) this year. Two companies control the two container terminals which deal with the vast bulk of Russian sea-freight: the First Container Terminal (FCT) at the Port of St. Petersburg, and the Vostochny International Container Terminal in the Far East. The lack of competition may go a long way to explaining why both ports are so costly.
"St. Petersburg is the most expensive port in the whole of Europe," said Elena Siems, the general manager of international shipping giant Maersk-Sealand (MSL), which moves 75 percent of its Russian volumes through FCT. "Storage costs in St. Petersburg are about 12 times higher than in the West, according to our data," said.
Being expensive doesn't mean that the service levels are any higher. The port of St. Petersburg is also the slowest in the Baltic. According to Siems, containers usually sit in the port for between 10 and 15 days, while in Rotterdam, the average time spent in the port is 45 minutes.
In December 2001, the Federal Government approved a program for the modernization of transport from Russia for 2002 to 2010. The program included measures aimed at redirecting as much Russian cargo as possible through Russian ports. FCT has had to cope with a significant increase in traffic as it has absorbed some of the cargo flows that previously went through the other Baltic ports of Riga, Hamina and Helsinki. Last year, FCT's total volume was estimated at 450,000 TEUs - a 40-percent increase over 2001.
"The boom in the port industry in Russia has already started," said Alexey Kalinchenko, the area sales manager of Bergen Bunkers, an oil-bunkering firm operating in the Baltic and Black Seas. In 2002, the total turnover of all Russian ports was almost one-third greater than in 2001.
While the FCT is modernizing and expanding, it's not happening fast enough. FCT's total current capacity is 500,000 TEUs, but operators say that traffic is going to increase steadilyand that, if the port is going to keep up, it will need to maintain a comparable program of development and better utilize its existing potential.
Several operators complained about excessive red tape, slow customs procedures and poor crisis management in situations like this winter's extreme ice conditions.
"Customs-clearance procedures need to be simplified," Siems said. "While there have been improvements, if we're talking about going from 100 to zero, then we're now at about 80."
However, port-handling facilities are not the only key factor. Most container freight that comes into the port of St. Petersburg goes on to be transported elsewhere in Russia. "Infrastructure in Russia, particularly in the interior, is years away from supporting massive containerization," Siems said.
Natalya Gavrik, international sales manager at Vladivostok-based Pavino Shipping Company, said that restructuring Russia's railway system should be a major priority. "The interaction between the ports and railways is one of the most vital issues," she said.
Gavrik said that ports in the Far East were experiencing a deficit of cargo and that only half the capacity of the 22 major ports in the Far East is being used at present. Nakhodka port is operating at 60-percent capacity and Vostochny at 80 percent. She said that the growth of railway tariffs, particularly in the east of Russia, was contributing to the deficit.
"Overland transport is extremely expensive," said Sebastian FitzLyon, the Honorary Australian Consul in St. Petersburg. "It's actually cheaper for a lot of companies from Asia-Pacific countries, like Australia, to ship their cargo all the way to St. Petersburg, rather than using the Far-Eastern ports and sending their cargo overland," he said.
Several container-freight companies said that privatization was the only way to kick-start urgently needed rail reform. "We need to start paying on a per-kilometer basis, not per route or according to political incentives," one operator said. "Private rail companies need to be allowed to make money, so they can reinvest in platforms and eventually get their service levels up."
Helsinki-based container-freight company Containerships resorted to building its own container terminal at Litke Bay, at Kronshtadt on Kotlin Island. The new Litke Bay terminal became fully operational last year.
Gavrik cited the example of the Regional Logistics Center of the Far East, which was a joint project of the Vladivostok Sea Trading Port and the Far Eastern Railway. According to Gavrik, the new center cut waiting times by 10 percent and helped the port process an additional 25,000 - or one-third - more freight cars in 2002 than in 2001.
While hesitant to disclose details on specific projects, operators say that more projects are in the pipeline.
TITLE: IRU Claims Corruption Still Strong In Customs
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Half a year after a crisis that could have blocked much of the country's foreign trade, the leading international trucking union is still seeking consensus with the Russian government.
The Geneva-based International Road Union, or IRU, is pushing four government agencies - the Economic Development and Trade, Foreign and Transportation ministries and the State Customs Committee - to do more to root out organized crime in international cargo transportation.
Last December, the Geneva-based International Road Union, or IRU, threatened to stop honoring TIR documents, which are IRU-authorized papers that waive truckers through border customs points on the promise that they will declare their cargoes at their final destination. IRU President Martin Marmi said that the system could not continue because many cargoes disappear after entering Russia and the goods' owners thus avoid paying the customs duties they owed.
The State Customs Committee then filed some $60-million worth of legal claims against IRU for duties not obtained since 1999.
Later the same month, customs agreed to drop legal claims, and IRU restored the TIR system on the condition that Russia would enforce changes to prevent the disappearance of cargoes.
Some 70 percent of the trucks entering the country use TIR documents, according to customs officials. The IRU believes that the volume of goods transported under this system accounts for about 30 percent of Russia's total foreign trade, or about $3 billion per year.
Negotiations on Friday between the IRU and the State Customs Committee were "very, very positive," IRU Deputy General Secretary Umberto de Pretto said in an interview.
De Pretto said coordination between the ministries had proven difficult and talks with the Transportation Ministry had proven especially so. The IRU delegation expressed frustration at having been unable to arrange a meeting with Transportation Minister Sergei Frank.
The lack of coordination between ministries, he said, "is causing difficulty at the international level when there is information being sent, for example, to the United Nations that is inconsistent with the actions we are taking with the State Customs Committee."
De Pretto said that, since December, several TIR-system fraudsters have been identified and the money they owed in back customs fees has been paid.
Russian customs officials now relay information to the IRU on what goods have been delivered within about three days, he said, while in the past it could have taken months to be reported - and sometimes it never was. Ideally, the information is transferred immediately.
There is less abuse of the system than many claim, Yury Sukhin, president of the Association of International Road Carriers, or ASMAP, said at a round table organized by the IRU in Moscow on Thursday and attended by representatives of about 400 trucking companies.
Sukhin said that only six Russian trucks have not delivered their cargoes to their destination points since Dec. 17. In the previous years, there were hundreds of such cases each year.
TITLE: Board Coup At Top Airline
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The man widely credited with turning Aeroflot into a lean financial machine, chief financial officer Alexander Zurabov, leapfrogged his boss and rival Friday to become chairperson of the flagship carrier's board of directors.
Aeroflot CEO Valery Okulov, former President Boris Yeltsin's son-in-law, stripped Zurabov of the power to sign financial documents in March, just two months after Zurabov was appointed aviation adviser to Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
Out of nine board members who voted Friday, Okulov was the only one to vote against Zurabov.
Okulov was not available for comment.
Aeroflot shareholders, of which the government is the largest with a 51 percent stake, last year voted to give the board broader powers, including sole authority for any transaction worth more than $15 million. The board can also dismiss the CEO by a simple majority vote.
TITLE: Tourists Finally Finding Room at the Inn as Chains Head East
AUTHOR: By Robin Munro
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - People have long been talking about the need in Russia for affordable international-standard lodging, cheaper than the four-and five-star hotels that dominate in Moscow and St. Petersburg. This year, the talk has given way to plans to establish chains of just such hotels across the country.
On Feb. 20, Delta Capital Management announced plans to build up to 50 Country Inn hotels across Russia in the next decade, in partnership with Rezidor SAS, the operator of Radisson hotels.
A few days later, spokespeople from Menatep, a holding affiliated with oil giant Yukos, said that the company had teamed up with Marriott and British hotel developer Sabre Projects to invest $300 million in the creation of a chain of at least 40 mid-market hotels.
Soon after, German-based hotelier Kempinski said that it would establish its own chain of three-or four-star hotels in the regions. The operators of Novotel and Katerina hotels also announced plans to develop three-star hotels.
The hotel and tourism industry welcomed the reports. "Finally, there will be accommodation to suit tourists' purses," said Helene Lloyd, marketing director of Tourism, Marketing & Intelligence in Moscow.
However, the projects will face many hurdles, and experts remain only cautiously optimistic.
"It should be a winner if the sites can be found and put together with investment capital and operational, marketing and brand skills," said Simon Hudspeth, director of hotel consultancy HVS International. "We see lots of interest, but not much genuine development. We have several proposals out relating to potential developments and networks of developments. But I haven't seen any being built yet."
Paul Price, vice president of Delta Capital Management, explained the potential economic ramifications. He pointed out that international hotel chains derive two-thirds of room supply in the mid-scale and economy segments, with roughly one-third coming from the luxury segment.
"This phenomenon is most evident in the U.S. hotel market, as the majority of budget hotels are chain-affiliated," Price said. "Europe, which has a large base of small, privately owned hotels, is in the process of catching up. The Russian hotel market, with only a handful of internationally branded three-star hotels, offers enormous growth opportunities."
If the hotel chains do in fact come to fruition, they could provide a welcome boost. "Russia needs the identity and infrastructure of a chain of hotels," said Darren Blanchard, managing partner of Consolidated Hotel Consulting. "The business opportunity is there."
Demand
But is the need there?
Stephane Meyrat, senior consultant at Hotel Consultant & Development Group, said that when non-branded, local hotels are taken into account, most hotels in Moscow are already in the two-and three-star category, since that is what most people can afford.
One-and two-star Moscow hotels achieved room occupancy levels of around 80 percent last year, Meyrat said, charging an average room rate of $18. Meanwhile, three-star hotels set rates at around $60, while maintaining occupancy levels near 70 percent.
But these numbers may be changing. Scott Antel, a partner with Ernst & Young's hospitality-consulting group, said that many Russians are no longer comfortable staying in Soviet-era hotels with low standards of service.
"With increasing incomes and foreign-travel experience, many more Russians expect and are willing to pay $70 to $100 per night," he said. "Overall, the three-star market worldwide should be a growth product, given the increasing numbers of people with greater incomes in Asia, Russia, the former East European countries."
The Russian hotel market is already undergoing a decentralization process, with attention focusing on the Golden Ring, Sochi, Anapa and the Krasnodar region, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Yaroslavl.
Existing Players
Markku Wahlberg, general manager of Holiday Inn Moscow-Vinogradovo, said that there is a definite need for midrange hotels, especially given the amount of time it will take to put them all in place. "Forty or 50 hotels in Russia looks a very high number to me," he said. "But if you look at the progress all the major chains here have been making, it is a very long process."
Wahlberg said that Six Continents, owner of the Holiday Inn brand, holds a management contract to operate a Holiday Inn hotel due to open in Samara next year, and that it is negotiating with other potential partners in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the regions.
Heimo Kayhty, chief executive of Best Western Finland, which has responsibility for the brand in Russia and the Baltic States, said Best Western wants to expand in Russia, but not as an operator, purely as a marketer of its brand. For now, the midrange brand is represented at the Best Western Art Hotel in Moscow and the Best Western Hotel Neptun in St. Petersburg.
"Best Western is a worldwide brand name and our clients are coming from everywhere in the world," he said. "Our customers want to stay with our brand in Russia and are asking if we have Best Western hotels in Russian cities."
Kayhty said that the chain is negotiating with potential partners in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Local vs. International
Uncertainties arise about how international brands will be introduced at hotels across Russia.
Care needs to be taken when transplanting Western ideas of management in Russia, Wahlberg warned. "Customers don't know the brands really well here, so they think international brands are all five-star. You have to take this into consideration. You have to have a little pampering."
Russian customers prefer comfort to the minimalism that is fashionable in European hotels, he added. For instance, while most Europeans are content with a shower, Russians often want a bathtub in their rooms as well.
Asked whether the Country Inn brand was likely to catch on in Russia, Price said Russian companies using the Roman alphabet such as J-7 and Wimm-Bill-Dann had no trouble becoming market leaders.
But Antel questioned whether foreign brands would be as important as owner-operators of three-star hotels in Russia as they are of four-and five-star hotels.
"Creation of a Russian three-star brand either by a foreign or Russian operator would not surprise me," he said. "This is how many of the bigger names initially got started in developing markets," with the Sol Melia and NH brands in Spain being examples of this strategy. "Entry barriers at this level are lower than for the higher-standard brands," Antel said.
Antel also said that there is room in the midrange market for small, non-branded hotels.
CHC's Blanchard saw the issue of midrange hotels as merely a matter of time, with the only question being who will cash in on it. "The race is on between international hotel companies and Russian entrepreneurs to meet the shortfall of a Russian group of hotels."
It's a different story outside Moscow and St. Petersburg. Cities with populations of more than 1 million may be able to sustain only 200 to 300 international-standard hotel rooms, Blanchard said. "It is practically impossible to forecast when demand could sustain 500-1,000 rooms, so each of the developers will need to watch its competitors carefully to ensure that early saturation leading to price competition does not result."
Location
Local administrations have rolled out the red carpet for the new arrivals. In its General Plan, the Moscow city government called for the creation of 19,500 hotel rooms by 2010, of which 40 percent are to be in the two-and three-star categories.
Hudspeth said that nevertheless, there are serious impediments to development. "It is always hard to find sites with good title, and to blend the investor, normally Russian, with the operator or brand provider, normally foreign."
The cost of land in Moscow, Meyrat pointed out, is another major issue. With property prices driven up by scarcity and high development costs, no midrange hotels are likely to be located inside the Garden Ring. Three-star hotels may have to charge more than $150 to break-even.
"Compared to mid-tier hotels in Europe," Meyrat said, "and in consideration of the corresponding quality of accommodation, such rates are not very advantageous to budget-conscious visitors."
Cost
The Country Inn hotels are expected to cost $5 million to $12 million each in development. They will have 80 to 120 rooms, priced at $90 per night in Moscow and $70 in the regions. Price predicted a 20-percent return on investment during Country Inn's first several years of operation in Russia.
Meyrat said that construction of a midrange hotel in St. Petersburg would cost $5 million to $15 million, and that it would take roughly six years of operation to earn the money back.
Robert Shetler-Jones, a director of British-run developer Sabre Projects, said that the Marriott hotels his company plans to open are likely to have 150 to 250 rooms, at $70 to $80 per night. These prices are not much different from those charged by many older hotels in the regions.
Shetler-Jones said that he expected construction costs to be $1,000 to $1,500 per square meter in Moscow and from $700 to $900 per square meter elsewhere.
These estimates are in line with Hudspeth's judgement that the projects will be prosperous only if they are accessible to the domestic commercial market - probably at $70 to $125 per night.
"The key to success in this market will be if you can manage to build these properties for a cost low enough to secure your return," Antel said. "Typically, three-star properties need to be built for $80,000 per room or less if they are to make money."
Blanchard said that midrange hotels should target the budget-conscious business traveler, rather than tourists. "If the price-sensitive, local tourist decides to trade up, or the occasional international tourist happens to stop by, then this will be a bonus for the hotelier," he said. "It certainly won't be their lifeblood."
The Regions
A lack of competition has allowed regional hotels to continue providing substandard service, Blanchard said. "We know of hotels that operate at 30-percent occupancy, but still turn away clients, preferring to say they are fully booked rather than individual reservation clerks going to the trouble of doing the paperwork."
Prices in these hotels are often in excess of $100 per night in some cities in the far reaches of Russia, Blanchard said. "Price is not indicative of quality, but rather of the amount of competition in a specific market. Under a well-managed group this will soon change."
However, he warned of a backlash, as the reality of development hits home. Protective measures by existing hotel owners in some cities, including the city authorities themselves, may prove problematic.
Another critical issue is staffing. Considerable resources will have to be invested into training.
"Applying a coherent concept across a vast country requires a strong set of standards and management application," Blanchard said. "In the early 1990s, international hotels had little choice but to utilize large expatriate-management teams in the early years of opening. In the budget-sensitive midrange sector, this simply is not viable for a sustained period."
Mass Market
In the face of many recent tourism-dampening events - Sept. 11, the war in Iraq, the spread of SARS and declining prosperity in the West - Russia has recorded healthy growth, with numbers of foreign tourists visiting the country on the increase.
Foreigners are generally guarded and unsure about how to approach locally operated establishments, where ownership is often murky, managers are not commercially oriented and staff can be surly. But it is not just the hotels themselves that keep the crowds away.
"Visas, visas visas," Lloyd replied when asked about the barriers to Moscow and St. Petersburg becoming a mass tourism market. "Also, the lack of a decent, user-friendly taxi service for non-Russian speakers, and unfriendly police scaring foreigners or extorting bribes from them."
Meyrat said that visas are a priority for the tourism industry, saying that while State Duma deputies are happy to take tourists' money, recently implemented strict controls on foreigners' stays might discourage people from visiting the country. "The lifting of visa restrictions in the Baltic countries has greatly contributed to the rise in general tourism, particularly in the summer months," he said.
There are still more obstacles. Blanchard said that airport infrastructure, and Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow in particular, is "an appalling advertisement for Russia. The structure of passport control, customs, luggage handling, porterage and access stack against the potential tourist and ensure the first visit is the last, with few recommendations to friends at home."
Nevertheless, Blanchard said, arriving at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow is a superior experience. As more airlines quit Sheremetyevo (British Airways is shifting locations in July), prospects may improve.
Meyrat said that it is not just the hotels in Moscow that must change in order to attract foreign tourists and their money, but also shops and restaurants. Even though significant progress has been made since the early 1990s, there is a long way to go in order to measure up to other major tourist destinations, such as Paris, London and New York.
Also, people coming to Moscow may well want to visit other Russian locations. "The choice of mid-class hotels in St. Petersburg and in the Golden Ring cities of Vladimir, Yaroslavl and Suzdal is incommensurate with the tourism demand," Meyrat said. "This leads to unhappy surprises, though this is slowly improving."
TITLE: E-Russia Enters Second Phase
AUTHOR: By Larisa Naumenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The government has launched the second stage of its Electronic Russia campaign by awarding six companies with ten projects meant to reinvigorate the 76 billion ruble ($2.4 billion), eight-year initiative to make the bureaucracy more efficient.
The projects handed out through tenders are together worth 111.5 million rubles ($3.6 million) over the next two years, the Communications Ministry has said. The campaign will last through 2005.
E-Russia's first stage involved analyses by the Communications and Economic Development and Trade ministries of IT use in the government sector. Pilot projects were run in places like Chuvashia to test the viability of programs like filing taxes online to judge whether they would work on a nationwide scale.
Opening a forum on the impact of E-Russia for individuals, business and society, held in conjunction with the Svyaz Expocom-2003 exhibition last week, Communications Minister Leonid Reiman emphasized the collaboration between federal and regional IT-promotion programs.
"[This conference] will help promote the integration of regional IT programs with the federal E-Russia program," Reiman told participants at the conference, the first of a series to take place in all seven federal districts this year.
The Institute of System Analysis at the Russian Academy of Sciences will develop a system of information, marketing centers and infrastructure that would let government bodies from schools to ministries order notebooks and other such supplies electronically, through a centralized system.
Software company TekhnoServ will provide intra-governmental electronic-document exchange.
System integrator AYAXI will be responsible for creating Web sites for government bodies. The firm last year designed a Web site for President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin administration, www.president.kremlin.ru.
The other winners include Compulink and Informsistema, as well as the Prime-Tass news agency, which will cover the program's progress.
Tseren Tserenov, head of the department for corporate management and new economics at the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, said that with the second stage, government bodies at all levels should work to make themselves more transparent by opening up their information resources to the general public.
A series of pilot projects is planned within and among certain government bodies to assist the ongoing administrative, pension and housing-sector reforms.
This, Tserenov said, would demonstrate the advantages of electronic government.
"We are convinced that these reforms cannot be implemented without E-Russia," he said.
"On the other hand, we can't build electronic government without a proper administrative reform. We can't automate chaos," Tserenov said.
Tserenov estimated that only eight or nine Russians in 100 have access to the Internet, while other data released earlier this year put that figure lower, between 4 percent and 5.5 percent of the population.
Increasing Internet penetration is thus a key to E-Russia's success.
When a critical mass of Internet users is reached - a level Tserenov considered to be around 10 percent to 15 percent - there will be a quality shift in IT usage, he said.
People will be more likely to use the Internet to request information, file their taxes online and register property, forming a constituency that will push for greater accessibility.
"There will be enough people to demand more openness from government and more services received from the government via the Internet. This will stimulate the government to implement the E-Russia program."
The government, in turn, will need to rework its functions to facilitate coordination among its diverse branches.
For example, Tserenov said, the city of Moscow loses $25 million per year through pensions that are paid out to the deceased because it takes up to six months for death certificates to arrive at the necessary organizations. Online paperwork would cut the time and the amount of money spent, Tserenov said.
TITLE: How To Reinvigorate Russia-U.S. Relations
AUTHOR: By Michael McFaul
TEXT: TO most analysts of international affairs, whether based in London, Moscow or Washington, President Vladimir Putin's behavior during the run up to the U.S.-led war in Iraq was very predictable. From a classic realpolitik perspective, Putin behaved rationally. Russia had concrete interests in the preservation of the status quo in Iraq, and U.S. military intervention threatened those interests.
More generally, from a realist perspective, Russia - like France and Germany - had nothing to gain from another demonstration of U.S. military might.
Even if Putin, at a pragmatic level, understands that he lives in a unipolar world dominated by the United States, he would prefer to see the emergence of a multipolar world in which Russia is one of the poles. His policy on the Iraq war gave him an opportunity to stand with the so-called anti-imperialists - a cheap normative victory for Russia that has won few normative points from the international community in recent years.
President George W. Bush, however, did not fully understand Putin's behavior, because the U.S. president does not always view the world through a realist lens. In addition to power and interests, Bush believes that relationships between individual leaders also matter. Rightly or wrongly, Bush believed that he had a "special friend" in the Kremlin. In times of need, people expect support from their friends. In his time of need in the debate before the Iraqi war, Bush was puzzled by Putin's decision to stand together with the French and Germans, and not with his American friend.
Bush, it must be remembered, thought that he had established a special relationship with his counterpart in Moscow. At their first meeting, in Slovenia in June 2001, Bush went out of his way to reach out to Putin on a personal level. The U.S. president is not a scholar or strategic thinker - he is a former businessperson. And as a businessperson, he understands the importance of personal relationships in getting things done. Because he had some important business with Putin at the time - first and foremost the abrogation of the ABM Treaty - Bush deliberately tried to foster a personal bond with Putin during their very first encounter. At this meeting, Bush reported, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy... . I was able to get a sense of his soul."
Sept. 11, 2001, seemed to move the two presidents even closer. For the first time since World War II, the leaders in the Kremlin and the White House had a common enemy. In words, both Bush and Putin spoke in tough terms about destroying terrorists wherever they may be. In deeds, the two presidents cooperated in bringing down the Taliban in Afghanistan. As a result of these experiences, Bush thought that real chemistry had developed between him and Putin. Putin visited Bush's home in Crawford, Texas, and Bush traveled to Putin's hometown, St. Petersburg. Although we do not know what Putin actually thought about Bush as a person, we do know that Bush was very impressed with Putin as an individual. "Friend" was a word used by him to describe their relationship. Importantly, Bush had not developed any such relationships with his counterparts in Germany or France. On the contrary, well before the war in Iraq, it was widely known that Bush despised both Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac. While Bush tried to speak with Putin frequently, he rarely spoke to Schroeder or Chirac.
The Bush administration firmly believes that Putin made a major miscalculation in not supporting the U.S. position on Iraq in the lead-up to war.
Paradoxically, however, Putin's decision not to back the war in Iraq will not have long-term negative implications for U.S.-Russian relations because Bush is so eager to repair his friendship with Putin.
In coming to St. Petersburg on June 1 (and spending the night, unlike his "stopover" in France at the G-8 summit, after which he plans to sleep in Switzerland), Bush will be signaling his mending-fences priorities as regards the countries of the "coalition of the unwilling" - Russia first, Germany second, France third.
Why is Russia at the top of the list? Analysts and diplomats like to talk about the common geostrategic interests that are pushing the two countries back together - controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction and fighting terrorism top the list of U.S. foreign policy priorities. Russia can be useful in dealing with these issues, Germany and France less so.
But there is another political and personal reason for Bush. He needs to patch up the relationship with Putin and re-establish the fact (or even illusion) that the two presidents have an intimate bond and have turned around U.S.-Russian relations after the dismal years of the Clinton-Yeltsin era. Bush has never claimed to have a special bond with Schroeder or Chirac, but he did make the claim with Putin. He has a real stake, therefore, in getting things back to the way they were pre-Iraq crisis. Bush also needs a few successes in mending fences with key countries after the war in Iraq, since Democratic Party presidential candidates have already begun to criticize him for doing too much collateral damage to U.S. international interests by the way he conducted the war. A turnaround in U.S.-Russian relations would serve as the perfect rebuttal to these presidential hopefuls.
So, ironically, the context is ripe for improved relations. But to do what?
What is strikingly absent from U.S.-Russian relations is any new big ideas which might actually signal that the relationship has recovered from Iraq and is special. The current agenda - Jackson-Vanik, chicken and steel imports, visa regimes, WTO membership - seems rather small. Moreover, the Bush administration is totally consumed with Iraq and, more broadly, the Middle East and, therefore, is unlikely to suggest any new big ideas for the foreseeable future. Bush and his team have undertaken a lot of major foreign-policy initiatives in the past two years. They will be content to work on these marginal issues.
This creates another window of opportunity for Putin. Instead of waiting to react to what the United States proposes - the conventional Russian approach to U.S.-Russian relations over the last decade - Putin could really seize the moment and put forward his own suggestions for grand new initiatives. A real deal on North Korea? A creative trade halting Russian transfer of nuclear technologies to Iran in exchange for a massive, cooperative R&D program on missile defense?
Bush and his team will be receptive to new ideas for improving U.S.-Russian relations. The real question is: Does the Kremlin have any?
Michael McFaul is professor of political science at Stanford University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His latest book is "Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin." He contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: Chechnya Will Be Putin's Stumbling Block
TEXT: WHEN the government starts talking about achieving a conclusive peace in Chechnya, it usually means one thing: More fighting.
The recent spate of violence in Chechnya came as no surprise. Chechens in Moscow began warning several months ago that the referendum championed by President Vladimir Putin would lead to an escalation of the conflict in the region. Before the election, the residents of Chechnya were told that if the referendum passed, federal sweep operations would cease and the government would actually begin to treat them like normal citizens of Russia.
The referendum passed without serious incident. But passage of the new constitution did not stop the sweep operations or the violence against the residents of Chechnya. Everything continued as before, with one exception: Chechen society had once more been deceived and insulted. The fighters were more or less obliged to make a show of strength. Aslan Maskhadov has some 2,000 men under arms capable of making life unpleasant for federal troops and the regional administration. Maskhadov also has about 10,000 reservists at his disposal for large-scale operations.
Suicide bombers have been used more than once in Chechnya, but they are not the weapon of choice of the Chechen resistance. Arab radicals resorted to blowing themselves up because more traditional methods proved utterly ineffective against Israeli and U.S. forces. The fighters in Chechnya, on the other hand, were trained by officers from the Soviet school and are very confident taking on regular-army units.
These facts compel us to look elsewhere for answers. Why were the terrorist attacks carried out in the Nadterechny and Gudermes regions of Chechnya? Blowing up the local administration and Federal Security Service headquarters in the Nadterechny region - the safest, most loyal and prosperous in Chechnya - makes clear that the federal government has no control of the region. The explosion during a religious holiday in the village of Ilaskhan-Yurt was simply an assassination attempt on Akhmad Kadyrov, head of the Moscow-backed regional administration.
It remains unclear how a truck loaded with explosives could have passed through innumerable checkpoints on the road from the mountains in the south to the Nadterechny region on the plains of central Chechnya. Perhaps the explosives were loaded on site? If so, where did the suicide bombers get them? However powerful the fighters might be, they have no bases in the plains of Chechnya. Building such bases would be too great a risk - expensive and difficult to equip, and excessively vulnerable to seizure by federal troops.
If the explosives did not come from a rebel arsenal, who else has large supplies of munitions in Chechnya? Why, the federal troops, of course. But we're not talking about selling the enemy a dozen grenades or a couple thousand rounds of ammunition. This was a ton of TNT. A deal like that couldn't go unnoticed.
Setting off a bomb during a Muslim religious festival is not exactly how Chechens do business. No matter how much you hate Kadyrov, this was the worst possible place for an assassination attempt. Huge civilian losses were guaranteed, and all to no effect. Neither attack fits Maskhadov's modus operandi. It's entirely possible that the fighters who organized these attacks were operating without orders from the rebel leadership. Were they acting on orders from the Russian security services instead?
Press reports on the recent terrorist attacks in Chechnya were accompanied by reports of destroyed armored personnel carriers, dead soldiers and fire fights. These are more Maskhadov's style, but they are an everyday occurence in Chechnya. The press normally doesn't bother to report them. Now, suddenly, they start informing us about all sorts of horrors. Chechen sources say that the fighters are becoming more active. It may well be that federal troops have sustained signifcant losses, and the brass can no longer keep them under wraps.
But it's hard not to think that our political strategists and media magnates are making an issue of Chechnya again for a reason. You get the same feeling watching television coverage of Putin's falling job-approval ratings.
Elections are around the corner. The Chechen war brought Putin to power, but the administration's inability to secure victory or peace there is becoming its Achilles' heel. We will soon learn that, contrary to popular belief, the current regime has more than one Achilles' heel. A lot more.
Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: Devil's Advocate
Too little attention has been paid to a remarkable declaration by George W. Bush in his state of the union address last January. In between great lardbuckets of warmongering lies and vacuous preening, Bush also delivered this ringing passage: "We do not claim to know all the ways of providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history."
Dismissed at first as either a bit of overheated rhetorical trumpery or else a slab of coded red meat thrown to his voracious "core constituency" on the hard Christian right, Bush's declaration is in fact a powerful tool for understanding what otherwise seems to be the irredeemably chaotic nature of human reality. In essence, his masterful philosophy can be boiled down to this: "God did it."
For example, last week, Iraqis began unearthing a mass grave that could contain up to 15,000 bodies of Shiites slaughtered during an uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991. Some heretics might want to blame Hussein for this atrocity, or even assign partial blame to George H.W. Bush, who specifically called on these Shiites to rebel, then betrayed them, granting the just-conquered Hussein permission to use his full military might against the rebels, while a vast U.S. army stood by, motionless, in Kuwait. But now, thanks to Bush Junior's revelation of divine agency behind every single act in history, we know that neither ex-CIA asset Hussein nor his long-time supporter and sugar daddy Bush Senior were in any way responsible for those corpses moldering in the desert wastes. God did it.
It's all so simple, isn't it? So blindingly clear, so infinitely comforting. Feel free to try it at home. Take any situation you please and run it through the patented George W. Bush God Did It meat-grinder. You'll find a neat little patty of moral clarity on the other end, ready to fry up in a creamy sauce of red wine, onions, amnesia and self-absolution.
Big event or private failing, it doesn't matter. That father who just slammed his infant's head into a wall? All part of God's plan - for verily, His loving hand is behind all of life and all of history. The Holocaust? Surely it goes it without saying that those six million Jews weren't killed by the Nazi Regime, nor that any of the U.S. financial elitists - such as the Bush Family - who made millions of dollars bankrolling Nazi enterprises while U.S. soldiers were dying on the battlefield were in any degree responsible for what seemed to be their own actions. No, you poor, misguided, Satan-deceived wretches - God did it, don't you see?
And the Sept. 11 attacks? Again, no true believer could ever hold Mohammed Atta or ex-CIA asset Osama bin Laden responsible - especially not for an act which, as many Bushist evangelicals now openly avow, was a blessing for the United States, because it greatly augmented the powers and popularity of the man the Lord Himself has appointed to lead the country - yea, the world - to a new promised land of peace and prosperity. No: God killed those 3,000 innocent people, He burned them, He crushed them, He flung them out of windows hundreds of meters in the air. It was His loving hand, that same hand behind all of life and all of history.
This divine principle applies equally to acts of omission, as well as commission. Consider Bush's "war on terror." It's true, the anthrax killer has not been caught. Osama bin Laden has not been caught (in fact, he's busier than ever). Mullah Omar has not been caught. Saddam Hussein has not been caught. It's true, Afghanistan has collapsed again into anarchy, rampant warlordism, fierce Islamic extremism, hopelessness, violence, despair. It's true, Iraq is collapsing into anarchy, incipient warlordism, fierce Islamic extremism, hopelessness, violence, despair. But none of this has anything to do with the staggering, criminal incompetence of the Bush Regime in gutting legitimate domestic security measures at home - both before and after Sept. 11 - and launching mindless foreign adventures aimed largely at thrusting American military power into the world's oil regions, regardless of the consequences. No; it is without doubt the will of the loving God behind all of life and all of history.
When - and if - He wants these miscreants to be caught, they will be caught. For now, He is quite content to let them roam the earth and murder more innocent people. When - and if - He wants to relieve the suffering of the Afghan and Iraqi peoples, He will do it. For now, He is happy to watch children blow themselves to pieces with brightly-colored cluster bombs. There's nothing that His faithful servant, George W. Bush, can do about any of this. He is not to blame; God did it. We are all merely automatons, pushed hither and yon by the all-encompassing wisdom of His totalitarian order.
Yes, on the surface, this all sounds like the self-justifying moral onanism of a complacent, pampered, willfully ignorant upper-class twit - but it is actually one of the most profound and earth-scorching expressions of religious nihilism ever uttered by a public figure. Stepping far beyond Nietzsche, who merely asserted that God is dead, Bush's philosophy declares that God is a lust-maddened, child-devouring demon, glutted with the blood and bones of the innocent; the malevolent agent of every atrocity ever committed in "all of life and all of history."
Does Jerry Falwell know about this?
For references, see the "Opinion" section at www.sptimesrussia.com
TITLE: Israeli Government Approves 'Road Map'
AUTHOR: By Mark Lavie
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - Middle East peace efforts, stalled by 32 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, creaked back into motion Monday following the Israeli government's historic vote recognizing Palestinians' right to a state.
In a six-hour meeting Sunday, the hardline cabinet conditionally approved the U.S.-backed "road map" to Mideast peace, which envisages creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.
The 12-7 vote, with four abstentions, marked a sea change in policy, especially for hawks in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party for whom Palestinian statehood has been anathema. "This was not a simple day," Sharon said after the vote. "This was not a happy decision."
Palestinians accepted the plan a month ago.
Officials began preparing Monday for a meeting in the coming days between Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. That meeting could pave the way for a three-way summit with U.S. President George W. Bush, expected to take place next week, possibly in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik.
The "road map" is a three-year, three-phase blueprint for stopping the violence and leading to a full Palestinian state living in peace next to Israel.
Sharon's right-wing government gave its conditional approval to the plan, adding demands that the Palestinians have rejected up to now.
Palestinians pointed to the Israeli conditions, charged that Sharon was not sincere and insisted that the "road map" plan must be implemented unchanged.
Israeli commentators were divided over whether the acceptance of the road map was simply a tactical move aimed at avoiding confrontation with the United States, or whether the Israeli prime minister has had a change of heart on how to solve the conflict with Palestinians.
For decades, Sharon was Israel's most prominent hawk, arguing that a Palestinian state would pose a mortal danger and pushing for Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to thwart future land concessions to the Palestinians.
However, he told cabinet ministers Sunday that Israel could not continue ruling over 3.5 million Palestinians, and there was a direct link between the bloody conflict and Israel's economic woes.
A poll published Monday in the Yediot Ahronot daily showed 51 percent of Israelis believed that the road map would not lead to an agreement, but 56 percent believed Israel should agree to the plan regardless. The survey, of 505 adults, did not give a margin of error.
The vote came after a flurry of weekend diplomacy. The United States issued a statement saying Israel's reservations about the plan would be taken seriously, and on that basis, Sharon said Israel would accept the contents of the plan, forcing his reluctant cabinet's hand.
The process of bending Israel's will was expected to refurbish the U.S. image in the Arab world, where Washington has been seen as Israel's champion.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said that the cabinet decision "was as difficult as crossing the Red Sea." Sharon faced down the opposition of two of his coalition partners, whose four ministers voted against, along with three ministers from his own Likud party. Four abstained.
The two rebellious parties did not quit the government, however.
Approval of the plan was carefully worded to allow Israel to wriggle out from under some of the measures that are toughest for Sharon's government to accept.
The cabinet statement said that, "Israel agrees to accept the steps defined in the road map," not the plan itself.
TITLE: Spanish Peacekeepers Killed in Plane Crash
AUTHOR: By Selcan Hacaoglu
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ANKARA, Turkey - Seventy-four people, mostly Spanish peacekeeping forces serving in Afghanistan, were killed when a Ukrainian plane crashed early Monday while trying to refuel in northwest Turkey, Turkish media reported.
The plane was flying from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to Zaragoza, Spain, with a refueling stop in Trabzon, NTV television reported, quoting unnamed Turkish aviation officials.
The Russian made YAK-42 hit a mountain slope near the town of Macka, 30 miles south of the Black Sea port of Trabzon, NTV said.
Spain's Defense Ministry said that there were 62 Spanish military officials on the plane, 41 from the army and 21 from the air force. Turkish officials reported 12 crew members aboard.
Military officials at the scene said that there were no survivors, CNN-Turk television reported.
The plane apparently went down on its third attempt to land in thick fog at Trabzon airport, the aviation officials said, NTV reported. The officials said that the pilot reported not being able to see the runway in the first two attempts, and the plane disappeared from radar screens at 4:45 a.m.
Turkish soldiers retrieved more than 25 charred bodies from the wreckage, Governor Aslan Yildirim of Trabzon told CNN-Turk television.
One witness, Sait Topcu, told CNN-Turk that the plane was exploding in flames when he reached the site.
"I had to wait 15-20 minutes for the explosions to end before I could get near to it," Topcu said. "I saw two charred bodies and called the para-military
The Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that the army troops were from an engineers' regiment that had finished a four-month tour of duty. It also said that, until now, no Spanish troops had died in the 17 months they have participated in the Afghan peacekeeping mission.
In Kabul, there was sorrow at the news.
"Our sympathies are with the families of the persons involved in this plane crash," said Dutch Lieutenant. Colonel Paul Kolken, a peacekeeping spokesperson in Kabul.
Kolken said that 62 Spanish peacekeepers from an engineering regiment left Kabul on Monday for Spain after completing their four-month tour-of-duty in Afghanistan-the same number apparently killed in the plane crash. But he could not confirm the group was the same as the ones that died in the plane crash in Turkey.
TITLE: Algerian Earthquake Hopes Diminish
AUTHOR: By Juliane Von Reppert-Bismarck
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: REGHAIA, Algeria - Looting and disease threatened survivors of Algeria's earthquake, and foreign rescuers began to pull out Sunday as hopes diminished for finding more people alive in the ruins.
As the death toll from Wednesday's quake neared 2,200, anger erupted over the slowness and meagerness of government aid and rescue efforts, with many people calling for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's resignation.
Their homes demolished, some survivors have been living in makeshift camps of tarpaulins, umbrellas and sheets in open spaces amid the wreckage.
Furious crowds harangued the president as he toured the devastated region east of the capital Algiers where the quake's epicenter was located, causing him to cut short his visit.
Several newspapers mirrored that mood on their front pages Sunday. "Resign, Mister Bouteflika," Le Matin demanded. "Leave!" said Le Soir d'Algerie.
Four days after the quake, authorities were far from establishing a definitive death toll, saying countless bodies were believed buried under fallen buildings. As of Sunday, the known toll stood at 2,162 dead and 8,965 injured, the Interior Ministry said.
In the town of Reghaia, a single flattened 10-story building was thought to hold more than 500 bodies, officials said. Police and soldiers blocked streets leading to the ruin, standing guard in the stench of decaying bodies and clouds of dust kicked up by the wind.
Survivors who lost loved ones, homes and livelihoods banded together to protect what remained.
Dozens of angry locals grabbed a suspected jewelry thief in an evacuated building, dragging him by the scruff of his neck through the streets. Police struggled to keep the crowd at bay before taking the man away in a car.
"People in vans were seen looking around for things they could steal, but they saw we were well prepared," said Samir Helli, 26, who works in a diaper factory. "If they try to take anything, they will be strangled."
Reghaia, a town of 120,000 people 15 miles east of Algiers, didn't suffer the devastation as in nearby communities that were almost flattened, but many of its buildings were damaged. Structural experts were checking to see which could be salvaged, and said repairs could take months.
While their homes were too unsafe to live in, many people here were able to recover refrigerators, televisions and other belongings. They said that police, who concentrated on protecting shops in the city center, were too overwhelmed to patrol elsewhere.
"We have had to take care of our own security and that of our family by ourselves," said Ahcene Kabash, a construction supervisor.
Officials in Reghaia insisted that they were doing all they could and denied that looting was a problem. "This is not like Iraq" said Ahmed Makhloufi, the city's vice president for social affairs.
But outside the fissured town hall, an official fended off frustrated women, men and even children demanding tents.
"We still need about a thousand tents," the official told the crowd. "Maybe, God willing, we'll have the problem sorted in two or three days."
Survivors sickened by drinking dirty water flocked to a health center next to one makeshift camp, suffering from diarrhea. The center also treated more than 20 people Sunday for panic attacks and headaches-symptoms of stress, health workers said.
(Additional reporting by Kim Housego)
TITLE: Argentina Gets a New President
AUTHOR: By Bill Cormier
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Nestor Kirchner was sworn in Sunday as Argentina's first elected president since the economy unraveled 18 months ago, pledging to overcome its worst financial crisis in a century by defending domestic jobs and industry.
A center-left politician from a remote province in Patagonia, Kirchner told a packed congressional chamber that he hoped his four-year term would signal a fresh start for his financially depressed country.
"We are leaving the past behind," Kirchner told lawmakers and 12 Latin American leaders, including Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. "Today we have a new opportunity ... and change is the name of the future."
Kirchner's inauguration was loudly applauded by Castro, Chavez and Brazil's first elected leftist, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - all of whom have led an ideological shift to the left in a region where free market economic reforms have failed to curb widespread poverty.
Kirchner enters office with the weakest mandate in Argentine history after winning election by default when former President Carlos Menem dropped out of a runoff race earlier this month. The 53-year-old Kirchner had polled 22 percent of the vote in a late April ballot.
Sunday's event was seen as a new beginning for a country struggling to steady itself from five years of recession, a $141 billion debt default and deep currency devaluation. While the economy - South America's third largest - has recently shown new signs of life, the jobless rate remains at a near record 18 percent with more than half the population living in poverty.
Kirchner's economic plan, however, remains vague.
His challenges include shrinking a bloated public sector and overhauling the country's tax code. He also must secure a new aid agreement with the International Monetary Fund as the country pursues a sustained recovery.
Still, many Argentines appeared hopeful that the new presidency would mark an end to a year and a half of political and economic turmoil.
"This is our chance to start over again," said Jorge Sopo, a 66-year-old retiree among hundreds who stood on a wide boulevard outside the Capitol for a ticker tape parade.
Kirchner succeeds a caretaker president, Eduardo Duhalde.
Duhalde took power as a congressional appointee in January 2002 only weeks after the last elected leader, Fernando De la Rua, was forced out amid an imploding economy and deadly street rioting. De la Rua was halfway through his four-year term when the country plunged into economic chaos, bringing a revolving door of five presidents in two weeks.
Since winning the presidency, Kirchner has lashed out at U.S.-backed free market reforms and promised a multibillion-dollar public-works program to jump-start the economy.
Although he has likened the infrastructure-building proposal to a kind of "New Deal" for Argentina, critics question how a cash-strapped government can afford such a plan.
On Sunday, he vowed to wean the country from the kind of heavy borrowing from international lenders that brought on a huge debt crisis in December 2001.
At that time, Argentina defaulted on most of its enormous public debt, accumulated during years of government overspending that many here say was the chief cause of the crisis.
Kirchner also promised reforms to improve education and health care.
TITLE: PM's Party Holds Against Socialists in Spanish Vote
AUTHOR: By Daniel Woolls
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MADRID, Spain - Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's party held its ground Sunday in city and regional elections, the first test of national sentiment since he angered Spaniards by backing the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
The opposition socialists - looking ahead to national elections next year - had hoped to tarnish Aznar and his government not only for supporting the U.S.-led attack, but also for his handling of an oil tanker spill last November, Spain's worst environmental disaster.
But Interior Ministry results showed the opposition Socialists only slightly ahead in the overall vote count, 34.7 percent to 33.9 percent, with 99 percent of the votes counted. The Socialists only did slightly better than the 1999 municipal elections, while Aznar's Popular Party fell off only a bit.
However, it appeared that Sunday's vote would not translate into a significant change in the distribution of political power at the municipal level.
Aznar's party won the mayoral race in Madrid, perhaps the biggest single prize in Sunday's balloting, and retained control of Valencia and smaller cities and towns in central Spain. It also finished first in the race for the Madrid regional legislature, but failed to retain its majority as the Socialists made strong gains and could form a coalition with United Left.
At stake were 8,108 city council posts and legislatures in 13 of the country's 17 regions. More than 34 million of Spain's 40 million people were eligible to vote.
"You've scored sensational results," Aznar said at party headquarters after midnight. "Today, the Popular Party is still the great party it always has been."
Turnout was 68 percent, up from 64 percent in 1999. Socialists did best in traditional strongholds in Andalucia and southern Spain up to just below Madrid.
In northern Spain, Aznar's hopes of dislodging Basque nationalists who run town hall in Bilbao appeared to sputter. Moderate nationalists won 13 of 29 seats, a gain of four from the 1999 election.
The Iraq war dominated the two-week political campaign. Aznar defied public opinion in Spain and across much of Europe by taking a high-profile place in the U.S.-led coalition.
TITLE: Spurs Rally To Beat Mavs, Take 3-1 Lead
AUTHOR: By Jaime Aron
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DALLAS - With Dirk Nowitzki in street clothes, the San Antonio Spurs seemed to have it easy.
After all, the Dallas Mavericks weren't exactly dominating the Western Conference finals with their leading scorer and rebounder in the lineup. How could they do better without him?
For 2 1/2 quarters, the Spurs found out all too well as a pesky, gritty lineup gave Dallas a nine-point lead. Then Tony Parker led a 26-6 surge that sent San Antonio to a 102-95 victory Sunday night, giving the Spurs a 3-1 series lead.
"In the fourth quarter, we made a series of stops that got the game for us," San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich said. "But other than that period, when we did well defensively, I thought Dallas was fantastic and did everything it could to win the game. We were really fortunate to win."
Parker had 25 points and Tim Duncan had 21 points, 20 rebounds, seven assists and four blocks, putting the Spurs within a victory of their second trip to the NBA Finals in five years.
"The series isn't over," said San Antonio's Malik Rose, who had eight points and eight rebounds. "It's heavily in our favor, but we've got to go home and take care of business."
Business should be easier if Nowitzki and his playoff averages of 25.3 points and 11.5 rebounds are again missing. He's considered doubtful because of a sprained left knee sustained late in Game 3.
Although Nowitzki arrived at American Airlines Center on Sunday hoping to convince coach Don Nelson that he could play, the discussion ended when he tried to push off on it and couldn't.
"He told me I'm not playing under any circumstances. The risk is too high. I'm 24. I've got a lot of basketball ahead of me," Nowitzki said. "He knows better. He's seen it all. Sometimes, you've got to be smart. And it was smart for me not to play. It was probably the best choice."
Only six NBA teams have overcome a 3-1 deficit, the last being Miami against the New York Knicks in 1997.
Dallas will be facing elimination for the third time this postseason. Both others were Game 7s after failing to end the series earlier.
Another nugget in the Mavs' favor: They haven't lost four in a row since March 2000. This was their third straight loss since winning the opener on the strength of 49 straight free throws.
Dallas shot 50 that game. The Mavericks have shot 41 in the three games since.
"We're trying to attack the basket, we just aren't getting any calls," Dallas' Nick Van Exel said. "But we're still going to be aggressive."
Michael Finley and Steve Nash each scored 25, and Van Exel had 22 points and eight rebounds, matching Walt Williams for the team lead. Van Exel and Williams were making their first starts of the postseason.
The Mavericks used all sorts of small lineups, often having 6-foot-8 (203-centimeter), 235-pound (107-kilogram) Eduardo Najera as their biggest guy on the court. Their main plan was to double and even triple-team Duncan, leaving outside shooters open and forcing them to hit the big shots.
For the first 30 minutes, Manu Ginobili was the only one coming through. He matched his playoff high of 17 points by halftime, and finished with 21. Several were highlight-film worthy, including a reverse dunk along the baseline and a rebound putback that just beat the third-quarter buzzer.
Then Duncan, who had just eight points at halftime, found his groove and Parker stepped up. It was enough to turn a 64-55 deficit with 7:19 left in the third into a 67-66 lead just 4:16 later.
San Antonio never trailed again, although Dallas pulled within two on a 3-pointer by Raef LaFrentz with 3:12 left.
"We knew if we played tough we could fight this team to the end," Williams said. "We just didn't make enough big shots when we needed it and they did."
q
EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey (AP) - Kenyon Martin gave one emphatic prediction about the NBA Finals.
"Ain't no sweeping going on this year," the New Jersey forward said.
Actually, the way the Nets are playing, Martin could be selling his own team short. They've won 10 straight playoff games and swept two series in a row, having finished off the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference finals Saturday night.
But Martin was thinking more about losing four straight, as New Jersey did in last year's finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. The Nets will again be the underdog, although they return as a more talented, more mature and less star-struck team.
"We feel like we're going to go in there and win it," guard Lucious Harris said. "Last year we didn't know what to expect. We were happy to be there. You got give credit to the Lakers. They didn't win three championships for nothing. It's a good feeling to get back."
But first, there's a long wait. New Jersey has a 10-day break - an eternity for a basketball team --- before opening at Dallas or San Antonio on June 4. As coach Byron Scott is discovering, the drawback to being so dominant in the playoffs is that it leaves way too much time to kill.
"Five or six days is enough," Scott said. "Ten days is probably too much time. You never experience any thing like this during the regular season. It's going to mess up your timing."
TITLE: One Family Can't Lose In Stanley Cup Finals
AUTHOR: By Tom Canavan
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey - The Stanley Cup will spend a day or two with the Niedermayers this summer.
The only question is whether New Jersey defenseman Scott Niedermayer or Anaheim center Rob Niedermayer will be the one taking the big trophy back to British Columbia.
The Niedermayers will become the first brothers to play against each other in the Cup finals since 1946 when the Devils and Mighty Ducks begin play Tuesday night.
The last brothers to play each other for the Cup were Boston's Terry Reardon and Montreal's Kenny Reardon.
"As kids growing up, being competitive, we were always playing against each other, so I guess it's only fitting that we're doing it in the Stanley Cup finals," said Rob Niedermayer, who came to Anaheim in a deal with Calgary this season.
The Niedermayers have had very different careers.
An All-Star defenseman with the Devils, Scott has won two Cups and was a member of Canada's gold-medal winning Olympic team. Rob is finally starting to play his best hockey after stops in Florida and Calgary.
"I just wouldn't like to be the parents," Devils goalie Martin Brodeur said. "Brothers are brothers, but when you get to the parents, that's a little different. It's just weird."
The family feud on ice isn't all that rare. Scott and Rob have faced off at least once or twice a season since joining the NHL in the 1990s. They even went head-to-head in the playoffs in 2000, when the Devils swept Rob and the Panthers in the first round en route to winning their second title.
This time it's different. It's brothers competing for the biggest prize after battling through three rounds of the playoffs. At this point, anything goes. But there will be no insults directed at the opposing player's mother.
The brothers talked briefly Saturday by telephone, a day after the Devils beat Ottawa in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals. Anaheim swept Minnesota in the Western Conference, and has been waiting for more than a week to find out its opponent.
"I am sure everyone is excited about it," Scott said. "My mom [Carol], it might not be an easy situation for her. I guess she probably wishes we both could end up winning, but that's not the case."
Scott, who at 29 is a year older than Rob, did his best to keep his emotions hidden, calling the experience fun.
Neither Niedermayer intends to ease up at this point, especially when the other is on the ice.
"You see who it is and you play it the same way you would," Scott said.
Rob agreed.
"We both know each of us has a job to do out there," he said. "It's something that, for two weeks, we both understand that. Afterward, we can look back and talk about it. It should be pretty special."
Rob is hoping to get a little advantage this round. Because Scott already has won two championships, he's looking for a little extra support at home.
"I haven't asked them who they're going to cheer for. I hope they're siding with me," he said.
The brothers are close. They used to spend summers camping, fishing and hiking, but cut back after Scott married and started a family. Rob is still a bachelor.
"We were like any brothers, but he was great," Rob said. "He's always been very supportive. He kind of went through everything first, like with hockey, and he's always helped me out, given me advice, because he experienced it before I went through it."
One of Scott's favorite moments in hockey involves Rob, when they played for their hometown, Cranbrook, for a provincial title against undefeated Prince George. Rob was 12 and Scott was 13.
"We managed to win that game and my brother had four goals and was the star of that game," Scott said. "It was pretty neat. The littlest guy, the youngest guy won the game for us."
Scott is hoping the not-so-little and still youngest brother doesn't come up big again.
TITLE: De Farran Ends Castroneve's Winning Streak at Indy 500
AUTHOR: By Paul Newberry
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: INDIANAPOLIS - Indy got its three-peat, but it wasn't Helio Castroneves, whose bid for an unprecedented third straight victory in the Indianapolis 500 came up about five car-lengths short.
But teammate Gil de Ferran kept the Borg Warner Trophy in the family Sunday, giving Roger Penske another niche in the record book.
The Captain joined Lou Moore (1947-49) as the only car owners to win the race three years in a row. And no one comes close to touching Penske's record of 13 victories.
On a day when Michael Andretti drove into retirement on a golf cart, victimized again by the dreaded "Andretti Luck," Penske showed no signs of slowing down.
"We are a team," Penske said, sounding every bit like a guy who expected to win before the engines fired. "Everyone in the whole organization won. That is what counts."
Two years ago, Castroneves won Indy on his first try, holding off de Ferran. This time, the order of finish was reversed but the team colors remained the same.
"One of the things I pride myself in is getting here and staying connected," Penske said. "I spent more time here than I ever did."
He wanted to manage the attention surrounding Castroneves' quest for the three-peat, while ensuring de Ferran had recovered from a March crash that left him flat on his back with broken bones in his neck and back.
As usual, the Penske plan worked to perfection.
Driving in pain, de Ferran passed his teammate and fellow Brazilian on the 170th lap and held the lead the rest of the way. He got help from three caution periods that prevented Castroneves from building up momentum to go for a pass.
"Obviously, there's a little bit of disappointment," Castroneves said. "But I guess this is part of the game."
De Ferran grimaced as he extricated himself from his car in Victory Lane. The frown quickly morphed into a smile and tears of joy as he hugged his wife and two children, then sipped from the most cherished drink in motorsports: a bottle of milk.
"In the last few laps, I was thinking, 'Is this really happening?"' de Ferran said. "It was very, very difficult to focus. I was overflowing with emotion."
So was Andretti, who led 28 laps in his farewell race as a driver. He didn't get a chance to go for his first Indy victory, doomed when a part in the throttle failed just before the halfway point.
"It was just a freaky deal," Andretti said. "Maybe one screw came loose. It could have been a 10-cent part."
Andretti took his last Indy ride in a golf cart, heading to the garage with his wife, Leslie, balanced on his lap and his father, Mario, at the wheel.
"I feel kind of weird right now, kind of numb," said Andretti, who finished 27th in his 13th - and final - Indy attempt. "At least I know I could have won the last race of my career. I had a shot at it."
The words sounded a bit hollow. He'll head into retirement having led 426 laps at Indy - more than anyone who hasn't won the race. In fact, Andretti wound up just two laps behind Rick Mears, who won the 500 a record-tying four times.
"What can I say?" said Andretti, who will focus on his duties as a team owner. "If it's meant to happen, it's meant to happen. Never did. For whatever reason, it wasn't supposed to happen."
TITLE: Perry Runs Away With Colonial
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: FORT WORTH, Texas - Not even a near-perfect round by Justin Leonard could challenge Kenny Perry in the final round at the Colonial on Sunday.
Leonard tied Perry's course record with a closing 9-under 61, missing a chance for golf history with his only bogey at the 18th hole, and finished at 13 under. He was still six strokes behind Perry, who had a closing 68.
Perry's 19-under total broke the tournament record of 16 under, held by 1993 winner Fulton Allem. He was already a stroke under the record after his 61 Saturday gave him an eight-stroke lead.
Perry's victory was an anticlimatic ending at the Colonial, which began on a historic note Thursday when Annika Sorenstam became the first woman in 58 years to play on the PGA Tour.
The only drama during the final round involved Leonard. At 8-under for the day after his 1-meter birdie at the 162-meter 13th hole, he could have become the fourth person to shoot 59 in a PGA Tour event. The last was David Duval at the Bob Hope Classic in 1999.
But his 9-iron came up short of the green, 10 meters from the flag, and he pitched 3 meters past. His par putt for a 60 just slid past the hole.
All of the attention the first two days was on Sorenstam, who missed the cut by four strokes at 5-over after rounds of 71 and 74.
Crowds had gathered 10 to 12 deep along the ropes to watch her play. The media room was also packed with over 300 people for Sorenstam's post-round news conferences. But the crowds spread throughout the course and the media presence diminished significantly once Sorenstam was done for the tournament.
Perry took a share of the lead with a second-round 64, but went virtually overlooked because of Sorenstam. He followed Saturday with his career-low round that included three just-missed birdie putts.
q
CORNING, New York (AP) - Juli Inkster made her first Corning Classic victory one for the record books.
Inkster shot a 10-under-par 62 - tying the lowest final-round score by a winner in the history of the LPGA Tour - to beat Canada's Lorie Kane by four strokes despite a closing 67 by the Canadian star Sunday.
It was also Inkster's first victory since she beat Sorenstam for the U.S. Women's Open title last summer.
Inkster's cumulative score of 24-under-par 264 also shattered the tournament record of 268, set in 1998 by Tammie Green. It was Inkster's 29th career victory, 17th come-from-behind triumph, and the lowest round of her Hall of Fame career.
TITLE: Once Again, French Open Looks To Be a Tough Call
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - One year later, Albert Costa's championship run in the French Open seems just as improbable as when it happened.
It's the only title for Costa in his past 88 events, dating to August 1999. He has won just three Grand Slam matches since his remarkable showing at Roland Garros, which included an upset of three-time champion Gustavo Kuerten and a win over Spanish compatriot Juan Carlos Ferrero for the title.
Those happy memories will accompany Costa in his opening match Tuesday against lucky loser Sergio Roitman.
"When I arrived to Paris, I was like smiling all the time," Costa said Sunday, the eve of the year's second major event. "I'm not feeling the pressure. I just want to have fun and to play my best tennis."
With 15 wins and 11 losses this year, including a modest 7-5 record on the clay surface he prefers, Costa again begins the tournament as a long shot. While he acknowledged that he's not playing as well as at the start of the tournament a year ago, he said that he's more relaxed.
"I don't know if the people think I'm not going to repeat," he said. "I don't mind."
But it would be wrong to discount Costa as a title contender in the most unpredictable of major events - for men, anyway.
More than a dozen players, including a handful of Argentines and Spaniards, can claim a legitimate shot at the men's trophy. Costa puts the number at about 20, and history supports his contention that the draw is wide open.
Like Costa, Michael Chang (1989), Andres Gomez (1990), Thomas Muster (1995) and Carlos Moya (1998) won their only major title in the French. Eight men's champions at Roland Garros since 1983 have failed to duplicate that success at another Grand Slam event - the Australian Open, Wimbledon or the U.S. Open.
That's the case with only one woman, 1997 champion Iva Majoli. And because upsets among the women are rarer, the list of challengers for the championship is shorter.
Serena Williams, who began her run of four consecutive Grand Slam titles at Paris a year ago, is the strong favorite. The biggest threats to end her reign are sister Venus, 2001 champion Jennifer Capriati, Belgians Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne and France's Amelie Mauresmo.
Like Costa, Serena Williams is glad to be back at Roland Garros.
"This is where it all started for me," she said. "I'm here to have fun. I'm not here to defend the title. I'm just here to have a chance to win this tournament."
Serena Williams was impressed by Annika Sorenstam's foray onto the PGA Tour. The No. 1 women's tennis player has no desire to play against men, though.
"I think she did great," Williams said Sunday. "I really wanted her to do even better. But I think she did really, really well."
Williams added that Sorenstam proved "she can hang up there. It's cool she was able to do that."
Williams has been as dominant on the WTA Tour as Sorenstam is on the LPGA Tour, winning tennis' last four Grand Slam tournaments and opening 2003 with 21 consecutive match victories.
Asked how she thought she would do if tempted to play against men, Williams smiled and delivered a quick response: "I wouldn't be tempted."
TITLE: High-School Phemon James Inks Record Deal With Nike
AUTHOR: By Tom Withers
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: AKRON, Ohio - High-school senior LeBron James, the expected No. 1 pick in next month's NBA draft, signed a multiyear endorsement deal with Nike on Thursday worth over $90 million, a risky move by the shoe and sports apparel giant that helped make Michael Jordan famous.
Nike won a heated bidding war against sneaker rivals Reebok and Adidas to sign the 18-year-old James, considered a possible successor to Jordan on the floor and on Madison Avenue.
Terms of the deal were not released, but a source close to James, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the deal was for seven years and valued at more than $90 million.
On Thursday night, the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA draft lottery, and with it the right to select James.
James' choice of Nike, a $10-billion company and the market leader in athletic shoes, closed a frantic week of negotiating by his agent, Aaron Goodwin, with representatives of all three companies bent on signing the 6-foot-8 (203-centimeter) St. Vincent-St. Mary star.
"Nike is the right fit and has the right product for me," James said. "They are a great group of people ... committed to supporting me throughout my professional career."
Nike's package includes a personal shoe and apparel line for James, who will have artistic input into his sneaker model, Goodwin said.
James' deal is believed to be the richest ever given as an initial endorsement contract. It is also nearly on par with the five-year, $100 million deal Nike gave Tiger Woods in 2000.
When Jordan signed his first contract with Nike in 1984, it was for $2.5 million over five years. Shaquille O'Neal received $3 million from Reebok in 1992. Four years later, 17-year-old Kobe Bryant skipped college and got $5 million from Adidas.
TITLE: Clemens Aims for 300 Right When Needed
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - If only the New York Mets had scrounged up $15,000 more, it might have all been different for Roger Clemens.
His best friend could have been his catcher, Mike Piazza. He could have beaten the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees in the World Series. He could have been closing in on 350 victories.
And there would be no debate about which cap he'd wear on his Hall of Fame plaque - it would have an "NY" logo, all right, but it'd be written in curlicue Mets script.
Instead, he turned down the Mets after they picked him in the 12th round of the June 1981 draft. He wanted $25,000, the team countered with $10,000.
"My father had just died and the Mets' offer wasn't comparable to the Social Security benefits my family would have lost if I'd gone to work playing baseball," Clemens recalled.
Well, the Rocket turned out more than OK.
On Monday, he was scheduled to start in New York pinstripes on what could be a historic afternoon at Yankee Stadium. Against his former Red Sox team, he'll make his first try at earning his 300th career victory.
"It's another milestone, a number that all the great ones have achieved," Clemens said a few days ago. "I would've never thought of it a long time ago."
"Probably after my first or second year with the Yankees, everybody talked about it, about how difficult it was to do," he said. "At 200 wins, you don't think about it."
Yet ever since making his major league debut for Boston in 1984, Clemens has been defined by huge numbers - a record six Cy Young Awards, nearly 4,000 strikeouts and a pair of games in which he fanned 20.
Now, he's on the brink of becoming the 21st pitcher to reach 300 wins. The Yankees are desperate for any victory at the moment, after losing their seventh straight home game Sunday, 5-3, as the Toronto Blue Jays completed their first ever four-game sweep against New York.
Jeff Weaver unraveled after an error by Alfonso Soriano and the Yankees stumbled into Clemens' start against Boston on Monday on a season-high fourth straight loss. The skid has dropped New York 1 1/2 games behind the Red Sox in the AL East. Boston lost 6-4 to Cleveland.
"All our eggs are in one basket and that's Roger," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "The ironic part is we need a win and he's not too bad to send out there."
The Yankees' slump at Yankee Stadium is its worst since they lost 10 straight in 1986. The Yankees have lost 11 of the last 12 at home.
"It can't get much worse than it's been," Yankees star Derek Jeter said.
Greg Myers hit a two-run double and Josh Phelps also drove in two runs as the Blue Jays finished off an 8-2 road trip. The sweep over the Yankees came in Toronto's 27th season.
Torre dramatically changed his lineup, trying to spark his floundering team. Jeter did fine as the new leadoff man, hitting a home run and a single. Soriano also went 2-for-5 with a solo homer in the ninth while hitting in the third slot for the first time in the major leagues.
The Yankees stranded 12 runners, including at least one in every inning. New York also got a hit in every inning, but went 0-for-18 with runners on base.
Doug Davis (2-3), claimed on waivers by the Blue Jays on April 30 after being cut by Texas, pitched five innings and ended his three-game losing streak. He held the Yankees to one run, working around six hits and two walks.
(For other results, see Scorecard.)