SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #879 (47), Friday, June 27, 2003
**************************************************************************
TITLE: Putin's English Skills Pass Toughest Test of All
AUTHOR: By Alex Kwiatkowski
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - When President Vladimir Putin wanted to show that he can speak the Queen's English, he went to the toughest judge - the queen herself.
By opening his speech at a Buckingham Palace state banquet with a few sentences in flawless English, Putin drew plaudits and bolstered his credentials as an international-minded Russian leader. Some previous Russian and Soviet leaders may have had a smattering of English, but none put it on public display with Putin's aplomb.
Opening his speech at Tuesday's banquet, Putin said in English: "We would like to express to Her Majesty and the people of the United Kingdom our sincere condolences for the loss of the British soldiers in Iraq. It's clear for everyone that, in spite of the differences that existed before today, we need to act jointly."
He then continued in Russian, but the brief words' impression was strong.
"I think he spoke beautifully," said Harry Cummins of the British Council in Moscow.
"Gorbachev's English was unusable. Nobody could speak English. Not Khrushchev, Brezhnev nor Andropov. Stalin had no time," said Gennady Gerasimov, the former head of the Interior Ministry's information department.
Putin is also the first leader able to speak German, Gerasimov said. Putin learned German as a KGB agent in East Germany and takes opportunities to show it off. He has sometimes opened meetings with foreign leaders with a brief chat in English, but the formality of the Buckingham Palace banquet raised the bar.
Part of Putin's appeal to Russians is the air of self-discipline that he projects and his efforts to learn English reinforce the image.
Professor Alla Nazarenko, the deputy dean of the Faculty of Modern Languages at Moscow State University, said that Putin's use of English was both a sign of respect and a sign of the times.
"It was to be polite, to please the queen, but it was also a recognition of the importance of English today, the most widely spread language for international communications," she said.
Boris Yeltsin's former image adviser, who runs a political image consultancy, said that a leader of Putin's stature needs at least one, if not two foreign languages.
"A Russian leader of today must of course be able to speak English and maybe even a second European language," Yekaterina Yegorova said.
Yeltsin, perhaps a bit too late, is also having English lessons, Yegorova said.
TITLE: Governor Race Gets Expected Candidate
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The race to succeed Vladimir Yakovlev as governor of St. Petersburg took a long-expected twist on Tuesday when Valentina Matviyenko, presidential representative to the Northwest Region, announced that she will run for the post of governor of St. Petersburg.
"My decision is final and firm," Matviyenko was quoted by Interfax as saying on Tuesday.
"I wasn't thinking about becoming governor of St. Petersburg when I came [up from Moscow] to work as presidential representative," Matviyenko said. "However, when I saw the state of the city I wanted to make do as much as possible to change it for the better."
Matviyenko said she has already set up a team to canvas local opinion of the city's most pressing problems to help her form her program when she officially registers as a candidate.
"This is not a spontaneous decision," she said. "I thought for quite a while, had discussions with businesses, the political elite and citizens. I looked at my options [and] think my experience can be used."
Matviyenko said that one of her goals, if she is elected, would be to reform the City Administration to make it more open and decentralized, with district administrations getting more power and more money from the city budget. She also called for more input from both Russian and foreign business into how the city should be run, saying that St. Petersburg is currently entering a new stage of development.
In a poll carried out by the Public Opinion Poll agency in March - the most recent poll available - 22 percent of respondents said that they would vote for Matviyenko, while 26 percent said that they would vote "definitely against." Fourteen percent said that they would vote against all candidates.
"It seems obvious to me that power given by Moscow played a role here, and people are treating Matviyenko as Yakovlev's candidate," Tatyana Dorutina, of the St. Petersburg League of Voters, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
"Anyone who remembers what she was doing here a long time ago is against her," Dorutina said.
Matviyenko was head of the Leningrad city council's committee for culture and education until 1989.
"[St. Petersburg] citizens are treating this election as an election with no alternatives, as happened during the [2000] presidential election, when people voted for Putin saying he would win anyway," Dorutina said. "Political parties are also quite flexible now, so many other parties as well as Unity will support [Matviyenko]."
Shortly after Matviyenko's announcement on Tuesday, the pro-Kremlin Unity faction in the State Duma and a number of federal-level politicians voiced support for her candidcacy.
In the March poll, 15 percent of respondents said that they would vote for State Duma deputy Oksana Dmitrieva, with 5 percent saying that they would vote against. Dmitrieva has yet to declare that she will run for the governor's job, although she has said that she is considering running.
Dorutina said that Dmitrieva probably would not have much chance of beating Matviyenko in an election, pointing to the lack of media coverage for the Duma deputy.
"Just compare the coverage Matviyenko is getting with what's happening in relation to Dmitrieva," she said. "She's not being seen at all."
The politicians who voiced their support for Matviyenko on Tuesday included Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov and former Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, now deputy prime minister in charge of communal-services reform.
Yakovlev said recently that he was expecting a tough battle for the job of governor, but has seemingly revised his opinion and said Tuesday that Matviyenko has no serious competitors. Speaking on national NTV television, he also said that he thought Vice Governor Anna Markova - who polled just 0.8 percent support in the March poll, with 9.5 percent against - should withdraw her candidacy, which she announced on June 5.
According to Legislative Assembly sources, Markova is also under pressure from within the assembly to withdraw from the race. Assembly lawmaker Vladimir Yeryomenko, a close ally of Markova, said that the vice governor is also under pressure from Matviyenko's supporters.
"She's been told that it would be worse for herself, the city and its citizens if she decides to run, which is why she hasn't been appearing in public recently," Yeryomenko said in an interview on Wednesday.
"She needs some time to think about it, and it's likely that she will drop her candidacy," he said.
Markova's office could not be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, acting Governor Alexander Beglov on Wednesday appointed Yelena Rakhova as City Hall's representative to the Legislative assembly. Before declaring that she would run for governor "to save democracy in St. Petersburg," Markova held the post, and also represented City Hall-drafted legislation in the assembly - which Rakhova is not allowed to do as she is not a vice governor.
Beglov denied that Markov's absence from the Legislative assembly is linked to the announcement she made June 5.
"What do you mean she's disappeared? She's everywhere," he said in an interview on Wednesday. "The position [of City Hall representative to the Legislative Assembly] has been vacant for about a year since former representative [Alexander] Prokhorenko was appointed to head the [City Hall] External Affairs Committee."
"Any vice governor can represent laws," he added.
"Markova and Matviyenko are both just citizens, they both have the right to announce their intention to run for governor, and neither has to meet with me to talk about it," Beglov said. "Markova is busy as a vice governor at the moment."
New representative Rakhov on Monday resigned her position on the City Election Commission, on which she will be reportedly be replaced by Alexander Gnyotov, head of the judicial department of the customs service for the Northwest Region.
Konstantin Sukhenko, head of the Unity faction at the Legislative Assembly, distanced himself from the question.
"I'm quite outside all this intrigue, although I don't see anything wrong with it," Sukhenko said in an interview on Wednesday.
"An acting governor has the right to choose his own representative," he said. "That's normal practice."
TITLE: Kadyrov Drafts New Treaty for Chechnya
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - With an eye on Chechnya's upcoming presidential vote, pro-Moscow Chechen leader Akhmad Kadyrov has drafted his own version of a crucial treaty dividing powers between the republic and Moscow that challenges federal law and provides Chechnya with more autonomy than any other Russian region.
The draft, which was published in the Chechen press last weekend, declares Chechnya a sovereign state within Russia's borders that has its own national bank and the right to participate in foreign affairs and open representative offices abroad. It states that Chechnya would closely work together with Moscow on these issues.
The proposal also envisions the creation of free economic zones in Chechnya, an unconstitutional practice that Moscow has long been attempting to end in neighboring Ingushetia and other regions.
Also contradicting the Russian Constitution, the draft says that Chechnya would have the sole authority to exploit natural resources such as oil. The Constitution says that the regions and Moscow must work together in the exploitation of natural resources.
Kadyrov, however, insisted that his draft fully complies with federal law.
"Ahead of any possible criticism, I want to take full responsibility in stressing that the draft fully corresponds with the requirements of the Russian and Chechen constitutions," Kadyrov was quoted by Interfax as saying this week. He said that the treaty might be signed by Moscow and Grozny in September.
Kadyrov's draft will be considered by Voloshin's commission within the next two weeks, Stanislav Ilyasov, the federal minister for Chechnya, was quoted as saying by the Vedomosti newspaper in Tuesday's issue.
Alexei Makarkin, political analyst for the Center for Political Technologies, said that Chechnya might be granted broader autonomy than other regions because it is a special case.
"The idea of a special status for the republic is very popular among Chechens, and Moscow understands that without such concessions it will be unable to pacify the republic," he said. The big question remains how many rights Moscow will allow it to have, he said.
Former Economics Minister Yevgeny Yasin dismissed the idea of creating free economic zones, saying that Chechnya would become "an all-Russian offshore haven," Vedomosti reported.
TITLE: Court Ruling Sparks Uproar and Walkout
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The 2 1/2-year court case against Mikhail Mirilashvili, an influential local tycoon imprisoned in January 2001 on charges of kidnapping, sparked bitter arguments between defense lawyers and judges in the case on Tuesday, when the court decided to appoint an anonymous expert to examine a tape containing threats allegedly made by Mirilashvili.
When the decision was announced on Tuesday afternoon, all three of Mirilashvili's lawyers left the courtroom in protest at what they called an "outrageously unlawful event."
"An anonymous witness would be understandable, but an expert ... How will the defense be able to find out if this expert is professional enough to analyse the tape?" Sergei Afanasyev, one of the three lawyers, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
"Why don't we introduce anonymous judges and anonymous prosecutors as well?" he said, adding that the trio "left as a sign of protest against this lawlessness."
On Wednesday, the next hearing was adjourned shortly after it began because the lawyers were again absent.
St. Petersburg General Prosecutor Nikolai Vinichenko asked his employees "not to comment on the case yet," the City Prosecutor's Office receptionist said by telephone on Thursday.
The tape in question contains a conversation, in Georgian, involving a person from the criminal gang that kidnapped Mirilashvili's father - also Mikhail - in August 2000. The first analysis of the tape, carried out in 2001, concluded that the voice on the tape was Mirilashvili's, threatening to kill the kidnappers.
Later, Afanasyev said, a translator concluded that it could not be treated as a threat, but just as an emotional outburst. The argument centers on whether there is just one person recorded on the tape, or several at different times, and it is this confusion that the anonymous expert has been appointed to clarify.
The court's decision said the expert will be known by the pseudonym Anna Petrovna Ivanovna, and will be questioned about "her" conclusions by video conference to protect "her" anonymity.
The chain of events leading to the case began with the kidnapping of Mirilashvili's father on Aug. 7, 2000 as he was being driven along Vyborgskaya Naberezhnaya. According to the police, his black Toyota was stopped by unknown people wearing police uniforms who checked the documents of the car's occupants, showed them a gun and then asked the driver to leave the car. Mirilashvili Sr. was then driven away in his car by the kidnappers. He was released the next day, although the circumstances surrounding the entire incident remain unclear, and police and family members have not even said whether a ransom was paid or even demanded.
A month later, on Sept. 8, two men and a woman of Caucasian origin were shot in broad daylight in front of the Hotel Astoria, where an international forum on investment and business in St. Petersburg was being chaired by Mirilashvili and was attended by luminaries such as President Vladimir Putin's chief economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov.
In July 2001, two missing people, identified only as Dvali and Kukushadze, were found by the police with the assistance of two men extradited from Ukraine earlier that month and who stood accused of committing the triple murder.
Analysts were less than impressed with the court's decision.
"An anonymous expert is nonsense," Yury Vdovin, deputy head of the St. Petersburg branch of human-rights organization Citizens Watch, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.
"An audio tape demands technical expertise," he said. "If [the name of the expert] is classified information, it can only mean that [the expert] has been provided by a party interested that the case is solved in a particular way. There can't be any other reason."
"I suspect it's because somebody wants part of Mirilashvili's business. Obviously, it should have been possible to prove something over such a long period of time," Vdovin said. "However, nothing's been proved, and the case is being prolonged by numerous infringments of the law on the part of the investigators."
Mirilashvili, 43, is a native of Georgia who now holds dual Russian-Israeli citizenship. With his father and brother, Gabriel - both of whom now are reported to live in Israel - he is said to have a wide range of business interests in St. Petersburg, including real-estate, pharmaceutical, trading, entertainment and construction companies.
The next hearing is slated for Friday.
TITLE: New Service Hopes To Help Lost Pets
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Losing a beloved pet can be a traumatic event for any family, but a service that starts work next week hopes to make that unhappy occurrence much rarer.
Lost Pets Search has been set up by the nonprofit Lost and Found organization and the Poteryashka charitable center for homeless animals, and will be officially launched on Tuesday. It aims to provide a more effective way to reunite distraught owners with their AWOL animals and provide people who find a lost pet some compensation from the owner.
"People should have some financial motivation for going to the trouble of taking essential steps to help find an animal," Mark Frenkel, head of Lost and Found, said in a telephone interview this week.
According to figures from Poteryashka, over 5,000 pets - mainly dogs - go missing in St. Petersburg every year. At present, the center only manages to track down about one fifth of the errant beasts.
Poteryashka, which has been working in St. Petersburg for the last seven years, provides services ranging from maintaining a database of lost and found pets to helping people adopt a lost pet and even help with vetinary problems.
"Unfortunately, many St. Petersburg residents lack the special qualities necessary to be a pet owner," Poteryashka head Marina Pushenko said by telephone this week.
"In 90 percent of missing-pet cases it is the owner's fault."
According to Pushenko, the easiest way to make sure a wandering Fido or Spot is returned to the family bosom is to attach a piece of paper with the owner's phone number to the outside of an animal's collar. In this case, anyone who finds the homeless creature can call the owner instantly.
"However, in St. Petersburg most owners don't even bother to do that, or they place the identification inside the collar, which people don't dare to check because they're afraid of the reaction of a strange animal," she said.
Pushenko said Poteryashka wanted to improve its services, and therefore agreed to Lost and Found's suggestion of setting up a joint project.
Lost Pets Search works like this: When people find a lost pet, they take it home and call Poteryashka with the animal's details. Then, Lost and Found representatives go to the person's home, take a picture of the animal and place it in local newspapers. When the grieving owner sees the advertisement or finds their missing mog - or whatever creature - in Poteryashka's database, they call Lost and Found and give the finder some financial compensation.
According to Lost and Found's Frenkel, a person who looks after a lost pet should get between 50 and 100 rubles for each day of looking after the animal, depending on its size and needs.
At present, he said, the service is advertising in local free newspapers like Astok, Metro and Privet, Peterburg! as well as on local television. He said that when people find a lost animal they should note characteristics such as its breed, size, color or colors, any distinguising characteristics such as a scar or a limp, and collar type, if there is one.
Frenkel also said that if people find a lost animal and are unable to take it home but know its regular haunts - for example, that it lives in a certain cellar or regularly eats at the same garbage dump - they can still call Poteryashka with the details. If pet and owner are reunited, the person will still be entitled to compensation.
However, he warned off opportunists out to make a quick buck from unhappy critters.
"Information on seeing a lost dog just occasionally on some street or other is completely useless," he said.
Poteryashka's Pushenko said that, to her surprise, the center fields about 2,000 calls from people desperate to find a wayward furry friend, but more than 5,000 calls from people who have chanced across a directionless critter.
"For me, this shows that quite a number of pet owners don't really care when an animal goes missing," she said, adding that, on average, the center helps to trace three missing dogs per day.
"Sometimes, it's very quick, but often it takes much more time," she said.
Once, Pushenko said, Poteryashka received a call from some dog lovers who said a seriously wounded female sheep-dog - which they said had been hit by a car while crossing the road - was lying under the balcony of an apartment building. Staff from the center treated the hapless hound, and waited for its owners to contact them.
"A few days later, we had a call from people who said that they'd lost their dog and wanted to adopt another," she said. "When we quizzed them about the characteristics of their lost pet, we realized it was the same female sheep-dog."
"They picked up their dog 20 minutes later, in tears of joy."
Poteryashka can be contacted at 527-5682. Lost and Found can be called at 238-7724.
TITLE: Russia Reaps Dividends of Increasing Demand for Oil
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - For over a decade, Russia has searched for an instrument to regain its influence in world politics. And now it seems to have found it - oil.
The demand for crude oil is now forcing major developed countries to seek good relations with Russia, the world's second-largest producer. In the clash between the West, particularly the United States, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries over stable crude oil supplies, everyone wants to be Russia's friend.
A number of U.S. officials have argued in past months that Russia should boost its oil output to gain a more prominent role on the market, and that Russian crude is welcomed by American consumers.
OPEC is also showing growing interest in Russia, issuing open invitations for Russia to join the 11-state cartel. Just this month, Russia for the first time participated in an OPEC meeting as an observer.
But as consumers push Russia to boost production and OPEC pushes Russia to play by its quota rules, all Russia has to do to preserve its newly acquired importance is literally nothing. It has not to side with either consumers or suppliers.
This is mainly a question of diplomacy, since Russia is not in a position to take sides anyway. A price-taker by nature, unlike No. 1 producer Saudi Arabia, Russia is poorly equipped for quick output alterations. Asking Russia either to dramatically boost output to suit consumers or to cut it to please OPEC is pointless, at least for a few more years. In the meantime, Russia is well positioned to gorge itself on petrodollars and think what it should do in the future.
Created in 1960, OPEC grew into a force to be reckoned with on the world oil market, particularly after it agreed in the mid-1980s to guarantee steady oil supplies at an acceptable price ($18 per barrel on average). The successful operation of the mechanism was secured by Saudi Arabia's role as swinger, its willingness, when necessary, to cover for short-term supply interruptions caused by anything from political disagreements between other cartel members and the main consumers, wars, or even unusually cold winters in the United States.
But the sweet deal between the world's largest producer and U.S. consumers seems to be souring. As a result, the United States has turned its attention to other oil-producing regions to ensure alternative flows to the market should Saudi Arabia fail to fulfill its role as OPEC's swinger.
"There is growing irritation within the U.S. administration with Saudi Arabia," said Alexei Malashenko, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center. "They are annoyed with Saudi Arabia for becoming less devoted to the United States, with the fact that terrorism often takes routes from Saudi Arabia, and an occasional Saudi-bred bin Laden pops up here and there."
Saudi Arabia's rulers are under pressure from within OPEC and from within their own kingdom.
Saudi Arabia's leading role in OPEC began to weaken after the first Gulf War in 1991. The second U.S.-led military campaign in Iraq further reduced Saudi influence on other, primarily Islamic members of the cartel, who are less inclined to be friendly with the United States or, like Iran, see the United States as an enemy.
Additionally, the internal political situation in the kingdom of 22 million people, which lives almost entirely on oil revenues, is deteriorating. Public discontent with budget policies seen as slighting the average citizen while the lion's share of oil revenues is channeled to the extended royal family feeds the growth of radical Islamic movements.
"The authorities are trying really hard to control the situation," Malashenko said. "They have jailed radical imams in their hundreds and introduced strict censorship. But, as with any extremist movements it works like a spring - you can press it down, but it will fire back as soon as an opportunity arises."
The internal and external political factors combine to prevent Saudi Arabia from being as friendly with the United States as it might otherwise be. For example, in the buildup to the U.S. military operation in Iraq early this year, the Saudi leadership denied the United States the use of Saudi air bases, as this would be too unpopular to handle both within the kingdom and in the region in general. Hence the irritation from the U.S. side.
LOOMING OIL DEfiCIT
And yet, as OPEC becomes less and less reliable for consumers, its influence on the market continues to grow, for the simple reason that in most non-OPEC oil-producing regions worldwide deposits are drying out.
The world's current daily demand hovers at around 75 million barrels. About 40 million of the total volume is oil that needs to be purchased from the major oil producers. About 27 million barrels of the oil supplied to the market comes from OPEC. The United States' keen interest in the game is based on the fact that out of the total 75 million barrels of daily global consumption, a whopping 20 million barrels are eaten up by the U.S. economy, with 60 percent of this oil burned in the engines of American automobiles.
With OPEC's control of the market already huge, by 2010 the situation will develop even more radically in favor of the cartel, said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank.
With global demand for oil expected to reach 90 million bpd, at least 70 million barrels will be oil purchased on the market from foreign producers, Weafer said. OPEC's share at that moment will likely be 50 million bpd, making all developed economies even more dependent on the cartel's behavior.
And this is precisely the situation a major consumer like the United States wants to avoid. Thus, its interest in reviving Iraqi oil production, its increased attention to barely tapped Caspian hydrocarbon deposits and its friendly approach to Russia.
"So, the U.S. is pursuing a goal of building up a buffer that can protect the market in the case of supply shortages. And it's done by encouraging Russia to grow production and restoring production in Iraq as quickly as possible," Weafer said.
Of course, producers like Russia or Iraq, or the numerous states that have access to the Caspian Sea region deposits, would never be able to replace OPEC, or even become serious competition to the cartel. But the aggregated potential output capacity of all of them could cover a temporary shortage.
"And it is the short-term shortages that are a real threat to economies," Weafer said, adding that, even if Saudi Arabia were at some point to turn into an Islamic republic, oil production would still have to resume, since oil is the only source of income for the country. "Stopping production for a long time would be simply suicidal," he said.
A 2-YEAR LAG
The United States is rushing to get Iraq's oil production up to full capacity of 3 million barrels per day, but this will take time, at least two years. And this gives OPEC a chance to win back the loyalty of its customers.
In the meantime, Russia can relax and take time to figure out what it should do. In any case, at the moment, it has little power to raise exports because of the limited capacity of existing routes - mainly ports and pipelines.
Russia's oil majors have long campaigned for construction of more pipelines that could allow them to boost exports. The state, which controls all but the Caspian Pipeline System with a designed capacity of 560,000 bpd, however, has taken a cautious approach.
In 2002, Russia exported about 3.5 million barrels per day, and this year exports are expected to hit about 4 million bpd. By the end of 2005, providing the Baltic Pipeline System's throughput is expanded from the current 240,000 bpd to 840,000 bpd and the Yukos-backed Russia-China pipeline is built, Russia will be able to export just under 4.5 million bpd.
Further projects to expand export capacity and allow Russia to increase its presence on the world market, including a pipeline from western Siberia to Murmansk, have barely moved beyond the discussion stage.
TO PUMP OR NOT TO PUMP
But, if Russia does resolve the export pipeline-bottleneck problem, a fundamental economic question must still be answered: Should Russia try to boost production and exports to maximum levels?
As the world pays big money to purchase oil on the market, Russians, whose domestic oil market is closed and regulated, still buy oil at $5 per barrel - all thanks to the fact that current export levels are locked in by the limited export capacity.
"But, if the pipelines match the export demand, it will soon lead to an equalization of domestic prices with international prices," said Pavel Kushnir, oil-and-gas analyst with United Financial Group.
"The question is whether Russia needs domestic oil prices to be equal to world market prices," Kushnir said.
According to Kushnir, with abundant export capacity, there would be a window of opportunity to simply buy oil domestically and resell it abroad, for as long as prices differ. Soon enough, though, the gap would close, forcing domestic consumers to pay international prices.
Another potential problem is oversupply to the market, which would ultimately end the current run of high oil revenues. In this case, Russia would indeed need to think again about becoming OPEC's ally.
"The test will come if prices go from the high $20s to the low $20s or lower," said Edward Chow, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, who specializes in energy issues. In this case, Russia would have to decide whether it would want to support OPEC's actions aimed at propping up the price, he said.
So far, Russia has avoided doing so. Even when it formally agreed to OPEC's demand and promised to cut output by 150,000 bpd in the fall of 2001, the pledge proved to be nothing more than lip service, since output actually grew during that period.
But, for now, there is no rush for Russia to make any decisions.
To keep its sweet position between the United States and OPEC, all Russia has to do is not take sides publicly, Weafer said.
TITLE: Yukos Takes Stocks Over 500 Mark
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The benchmark RTS index climbed over the 500 threshold on Wednesday for the first time since October 1997, boosted by a rally of Yukos shares.
The Russian Trading System hit a high of 502.11 in midafternoon trading, before settling to close up 1.89 percent at 492.82.
Shares in oil giant Yukos jumped 3.16 percent to an all-time high of $14.05 after the company announced it would increase oil exports by 42 percent this year.
The bullish market earlier this week pushed Yukos' capitalization to $30 billion, the highest of any Russian company. With Wednesday's gains, its capitalization topped $31 billion.
Traders, who had widely expected the RTS to pass 500 this month, said that stocks were being boosted by renewed interest from foreign investors and high oil prices.
Flush with petrodollars, Russian corporate investors have little incentive to invest in depressed markets abroad, so they are pouring money into the local market, they said.
"We believe that it will move higher from this level in the near future, with all likelihood that it will break its all-time high of 569 before this year is over," said Sam Barden, head of international trading and sales at Trust investment bank.
Barden said that, apart from liquidity, a main moving force behind the market surge has been a huge demand for Russian assets from Russian industrial groups.
"The Russian market is evolving, and we are in the latter stages of asset consolidation," he said. "Those industrial interests have long-term views, and the assets and companies that they are buying will likely be repackaged and resold back on the market" as initial public offerings.
Alexei Zabotkine, economist at United Financial Group, predicted that the RTS would reach 520, cautioning that the third quarter might bring a correction if oil prices fall as expected and squeeze the flow of petrodollars onto the market.
Peter Westin, senior economist at Aton, said that outperforming blue chips aside, the Russian stock market is offering some "interesting stories" for investors, particularly in second-tier stocks.
He noted that the RTS rally is coming on the back of positive news about GDP growth. Economists have been steadily raising their economic growth forecasts in recent months.
"For example, adding 1 percent to the gross domestic product forecast adds 10 percent to the market upside," Westin said.
Yukos produces 1.6 million barrels per day of oil and its output will rise to 2.3 million bpd after it acquires Sibneft.
The capitalization of ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil firm, stands at $ 246.4 billion.
TITLE: Sukhoi Deal Could Backfire on Megawati
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia's parliament is launching a probe into alleged irregularities in the purchase of Russian fighter jets - a potentially damaging political scandal for President Megawati Sukarnoputri ahead of next year's general elections.
The scandal revolves around the purchase of four Sukhoi jet fighters and two Mi-35 helicopters. Megawati signed the $192.6-million deal to buy the aircraft during a visit to Moscow in April.
General Endriartono Sutarto, the head of Indonesia's military, said that Indonesia would eventually like to buy a total of 48 fighters, which would be a major coup for struggling Sukhoi, but opposition lawmakers have accused Megawati's administration of violating legal requirements to channel all military purchases through the Defense Ministry.
She instead bought the six initial aircraft using funds reserved for natural disasters, they say.
"The government has violated the law," parliamentary defense-commission member Rizal Djalil said Wednesday. "There are a lot of people who could stand to enjoy a huge amount of money through commissions and markups."
Parliament has established a committee that meets next week to begin its investigation. The panel has already announced plans to summon cabinet ministers and try to question Russia's ambassador to Jakarta.
Graft scandals have a history of causing trouble for governments in Indonesia, where corruption is widespread. In 2001, the country's highest legislative body forced Megawati's predecessor, Abdurrahman Wahid, from power after a scandal involving the misuse of state funds.
Although it remains too early to say whether the fighter-jet affair will cause serious problems for Megawati, it comes at a time when the president is trying to galvanize political support ahead of the 2004 elections.
"Megawati has clearly violated several procedures in purchasing the planes," The Jakarta Post said in an editorial. "There is speculation that some people are reaping financial profits from this deal."
Megawati's administration has not responded to the allegations of impropriety. She has spent the last eight days overseas on a tour of Asian countries and is scheduled to return to Jakarta on Friday.
A spokesperson for Rosoboronexport, the Russian defense industry's export wing, categorically denied that any bribe-giving or bribe-taking had taken place, saying, "it was a black-and-white, state-to-state agreement, there can be no question about bribes."
Questions have also been raised over the logic of Indonesia's cash-strapped government buying new high-tech fighters when much of the military is ill-equipped with even basic weaponry. Navy ships and air-force planes often sit idle for lack of fuel or maintenance.
(AP, SPT)
TITLE: Drought, Cold Snap Threaten Already Low Harvest Forecast
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - A combination of cold spring weather and drought in the country's main southern grain-producing regions could threaten an already low harvest forecast, Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev told reporters Wednesday.
The Agriculture Ministry is sticking to its previously announced grain forecast of 70 million metric tons for 2003, a fall of 24 percent on last year's record 86.6 million tons - and a deficit on expected consumption of 4.5 million tons.
"The weather has been unusually cold in most of Russia's regions, and the grain harvest will be delayed by 10 to 12 days this year," he said.
"Such a delay will complicate the harvest due to the onset of fall," he added.
Gordeyev said that the Krasnodar, Stavropol and Rostov regions had suffered from drought over the past two months.
The minister said that, while he was sticking to his original forecast, he would present "a revised figure, taking into account the situation in all the regions," by the end of July.
"We can already say for sure that this year we will not have the volumes we had last year," Gordeyev said.
Gordeyev announced that the government would soon provide extra funds to keep harvest losses to a minimum.
A presidential decree would give 1.5 billion rubles ($49 million) from the federal budget to finance harvesting, he said.
The ministry's downbeat forecast was reinforced by Dmitry Rylko, the general director of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies.
"The situation in southern Russia is very difficult," he said. "Recent rains won't help the situation, as they are too late."
He said that his institute's forecast for this year's harvest was between 66 and 72 million tons.
Rylko agreed that consumption was likely to exceed production, leading to higher prices over the second half of the year - and reduced exports.
TITLE: Kremlin Already Placing Bets on Matviyenko
AUTHOR: By Nikolai Petrov
TEXT: In the Soviet era, St. Petersburg was known as the cradle of three revolutions. More recently, the city has given us Russia's second president, Vladimir Putin, along with the many local officials who rode his coattails into top jobs in Moscow. This lends a symbolic significance to everything that happens in the northern capital.
Governor Vladimir Yakovlev's resignation right after the city's 300th anniversary celebrations, necessitating a special election, was doubly symbolic. It represents revenge for the sins of the past, and a test of the effectiveness of Putin's model of "managed democracy."
During the last gubernatorial race in 2000, Putin, who served with Yakovlev under former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, withdrew support for his candidate, Valentina Matviyenko, when it became clear that she stood no chance of winning. It might have appeared that Putin had reached a satisfactory compromise with the outwardly loyal Yakovlev. Not quite.
The first to lay into Yakovlev and his cronies was Viktor Cherkesov, Matviyenko's predecessor as presidential envoy to the Northwest Region, and formerly St. Petersburg's top chekist. On the eve of the city's 300th-anniversary celebrations, when enough compromising material had apparently been gathered on Yakovlev, Matviyenko took over Cherkesov's post. On June 24, she announced her candidacy for the post of governor, undoubtedly with the Kremlin's backing.
By throwing Matviyenko's name in the ring for a second time, the Kremlin has basically admitted that it wasn't leaning lightly on Yakovlev back in 2000. Putin had wanted to get rid of him, and he'd failed. Without arranging for a special election, he would not have got his way this time around, either.
Yet it would seem that the Kremlin has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Even if Matviyenko prevails at the polls, her tenure as governor will always carry the taint of behind-the-scenes deal-making. Her defeat - which is entirely possible - would be interpreted as a crushing blow for the Kremlin.
All the maneuvering in St. Petersburg smacks of a particularly cynical brand of horse-trading for top government posts. Blackmail and vote-rigging are passed off as normal practice in Moscow's dealings with regional leaders. This no longer surprises anyone after the Yevgeny Nazdratenko saga. The present situation in St. Petersburg simply confirms that this has become the norm.
This will be the third election in St. Petersburg not held on schedule. In 1996, the election was postponed until May in a bid to help incumbent Anatoly Sobchak by putting space between the gubernatorial and presidential elections. Sobchak lost anyway. In 1999, the vote was originally timed to coincide with the State Duma election, but was called off at the last minute to spite Yakovlev. He won handily. And now the governor has resigned before his term was out. At this point, the Kremlin has failed twice to ensure victory for its chosen candidate. Three strikes and you're out, as they say.
It is significant that in a region with extremely strong democratic traditions that has given us dozens of outstanding politicians, the Kremlin's choice is now the only viable candidate to become governor. The popular Irina Khakamada, who represents the city in the Duma, announced earlier that if Matviyenko were to run, the political right would be in her corner. Another possible candidate from the right, Andrei Likhachyov of Lenenergo, also announced that he would not run. Matviyenko has already collected the endorsements of Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of the city's Legislative Assembly, and Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov.
No one seems willing to contest the election without the Kremlin's blessing. Only Deputy Governor Anna Markova has announced her intention to run. State Duma Deputy Oksana Dmitriyeva, a popular figure in the city, is also considering a bid. It would seem that we're about to witness a rare event in Russian politics: an all-female election.
The timing of the election is everything. On one hand, the Kremlin's strategy leaves one of Russia's key regions without a leader on the eve of the State Duma election. On the other hand, Yakovlev's departure was calculated to ensure that the gubernatorial election could not legally coincide with the messy and unpredictable Duma vote, a scenario that posed too great a risk for the Kremlin.
The gubernatorial election will probably be scheduled for September; the final date will be determined by the Legislative Assembly on June 30. Thus the election could be the opening act of the first full election cycle on Putin's watch. It will set the tone for the parliamentary and presidential elections to follow.
St. Petersburg is a city of ancient and distinctive traditions, such as its propensity for steam-rolling establishment candidates, even when no one is running against them. Back in 1989, the entire communist leadership of the city went down in flames. If the pressure from Moscow on St. Petersburg voters is too blatant, it could have the opposite effect. And in that case, the popularity of "local boy" Putin wouldn't count for beans. The stakes today are much higher than they were four years ago. The Kremlin is playing a very risky game. We'll soon find out if Putin knows how to cut his losses.
Nikolai Petrov, head of the Center for Political and Geographical Research, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: City Election Brings Case of Deja Vu, Again
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
TEXT: On my way to work on Tuesday, I saw a long line of cars and buses near St. Isaac's Square stuck in a traffic jam, waiting for a few black cars and their police escort to pass by. Traffic jams are nothing new in St. Petersburg, and I would have dismissed it as a stereotypical snapshot of today's city if I hadn't heard Valentina Matviyenko announce her decision to run for governor just a few minutes previously.
When Leonid Brezhnev was at the top of the political pile in the Soviet Union, a popular phrase summing up his ubiquity appeared that translates roughly as "Turn on even an iron and Brezhnev's face will appear on it." The English equivalent would - in the case of the current presidential representative to the Northwest Region - be: "She would turn up to the opening of an envelope."
It occurred to me on Tuesday that, given Matviyenko's rapidly developing penchant for publicity, that the number of her potential voters stuck in traffic waiting for her cavalcade to pass will increase drastically over the next three months. Events over the weekend suggest that not only the city's roads are going to blocked during that time.
It appears that most of St. Petersburg's media outlets are also going to come under increasing pressure. Over the last few weeks, many outlets have already been brought to heel by the Kremlin to make sure that 3.5 million potential voters won't be able to read articles or watch television footage portraying President Vladimir Putin's regional lapdog in a poor light.
Matviyenko's Moscow-backed campaign team could probably accuse me of bias given the lack of any mention so far in this column of City Hall gubernatorial candidate Anna Markova, who announced that she would run for the governor's job on June 5. But, given that Markova has disppeared from public view since then, what can I say about her - good or bad?
Maybe Markova is running scared of the steamroller with which anonymous illwishers threatened her (although she said it was a "friendly threat," whatever one of those is). Maybe she is too busy with her day job as vice governor in charge of resolving emergency situations in the city. The point is that I haven't seen Markova using her what are known as "administrative resources" - exposure through media outlets, for example, or appearances in an official capacity at envelope openings - for gubernatorial-campaign purposes as Matviyenko is doing.
A simple example: I went to the News.yandex.ru Web site and did a search for "Valentina Matviyenko." The search returned 314 hits, of which just 43 were dated June 24, the day she announced her candidacy. A search for "Anna Markova" turned up just 19 results but, surprisingly enough, many of the headlines contained the word "Matviyenko." Coincidence is a funny thing.
Articles No. 30 and 31 of St. Petersburg's gubernatorial-election law say that all candidates employed at the higher levels of federal and local branches of power do not have the right to retain their administrative resources, and must resign for the duration of their election campaign. All they can operate with, according to the law, is an election fund of 50 million rubles (about $1.65 million), most of which they have to raise themselves, as they get just 77,000 rubles (just over $2,500) of city budget money for the campaign.
Of course, despite both declaring their intention to run, neither Matviyenko nor Markova has yet been registered as a candidate, meaning that they both have candidate candidate status, so to speak. This is why the numerous recent examples of Matviyenko using her administrative resources can only be the basis for a discussion about honesty and dishonesty in Russian political life, and no more.
Discussions of that nature have a precedent in St. Petersburg electoral history. In 1996, then mayor Anatoly Sobchak was competing for the city's top political job against his former deputy Vladimir Yakovlev. Like Matviyenko is doing at the moment, Sobchak monopolized the local media, by introducing censorship and banning papers from running articles carrying even so much as a mention of other candidates. It was a fatal mistake - Sobchak lost.
The parallels between the media-related shenanigans of 1996 and the machinations in today's nascent campaign season illustrate that Russian politicians seem remarkably inept when it comes to learning from their past mistakes.
In 1996, four journalists were fired from local daily Nevskoye Vremya by editor Alla Manilova for revealing the censorship that had been introduced at the paper by Sobchak's campaign team. I am still proud of being one of that quartet.
Now, it's sad for me, seven years later, to see Daniil Kotsubinsky and Pyotr Godlevsky, journalists at local television channel Peterburg Television, being taken off the air and put in such a difficult position that they have been forced to consider quitting.
Maybe I would feel a bit different if I hadn't heard, a few days ago, that Manilova - who is still editing Nevskoye Vremya - is being headhunted to be Matvieynko's image maker during the election campaign, and may be appointed head of City Hall's Media Committee if the presidential representative is successful.
If this turns out to be the case, anyone trying to maintain a publically objective stance in St. Petersburg may face serious problems come early October.
And all for one reason - so that Matviyenko only has to open envelopes with her face on them.
TITLE: stereoleto ready to party
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The success of last year's inaugural Stereoleto dance-music festival means this year's version, which kicks off on Saturday, is almost twice as big.
Last year's four parties have increased to seven this time out. The events, each dedicated to one particular country, will feature artists from Germany, U.K., France, Finland, Sweden, Italy and Japan.
The festival's musical line-up is pretty diverse, ranging from Berlin-based pop duo Stereo Total through the psychedelic live/DJ project of The Future Sound of London's Garry Cobain to Swedish crooner Jay Jay Johanson. Festival promoter Ilya Bortnyuk, who runs the Svetlaya Muzyka agency, claims there is no particular system in choosing the acts.
"I just choose from the ones that I like and that I think will look interesting," Bortnyuk said this week. "It's clear that they're all different."
The geographical principle adopted by the promoters is not exclusive in every case, as most parties have Russian DJs and acts, although the Finnish party, headlined by saxophonist Jimi Tenor, features exclusively Finnish artists.
Electronic music dominates, but there are exceptions, such as Italy's Nicola Conte, whose act will be entirely acoustic except for probably one electric piano.
The location, Molodyozhny Theater on the Fontanka River, is an interesting choice, as the festival will use not only the 700-capacity theater hall, but also the garden adjacent to the theater.
According to Bortnyuk, Stereoleto is aimed at an audience that does not go to gigs by bands like local group Korol I Shut - which holds the dubious honor of being possibly the world's only stadium punk-rock act - or to raves.
"The age range is from 20 to 50, socially [they range] from students to owners of big companies," he said.
Last year's Stereoleto brought complaints that headlining performances started too late, at least in one case at 3 a.m., although the official start was indicated as 10 p.m.
"Nobody promised it will be early, they are night events," said Bortnyuk. "Practice shows that most people come between midnight and 1 a.m., so there's no sense in starting before 1 a.m."
For certain events, such as Amorphous Androgynous' show, which will employ a huge video screen for psychedelic visuals, a bigger, open-air stage will be installed in the garden.
"Four events will generate great interest, because The Future Sound of London, Rubin Steiner, Jimi Tenor and Jay Jay Johanson are monsters," said Bortnyuk. "Many don't even believe that they come, but I do. They all have tickets at least."
He claimed the acts he announced normally came - unlike a forthcoming festival in Sochi, which had advertised the Chemical Brothers and Aphex Twin as headliners in August, only for organizers to request Bortnyuk this week to book the latter for it.
"These are acts that take six months to book at least," he said. "So I wrote them back, 'Guys, you could have advertized The Rolling Stones as taking part - with the same result.'"
This year will also see the opening of a summer cafe in the Molodyozhny Theater's garden. Called Summer-Time Stereo Cafe Molodost ("Youth"), it will be open from noon until midnight and feature cultural programs, such as film screenings or, on certain nights, non-DJs, from musicians to politicians, playing their favorite music from any source, be it a CD or a tape.
"I think Stereoleto will be a favorite place to spend Saturday nights for many people," said Bortnyuk. "Of course, many people come to see a certain artist, but many come just to hang around. There's a very good atmosphere there; on one hand, it's in the park, open-air, on the other hand, it's in the city center."
Tickets for all the events will cost 300 rub. (presale) and 400 (on the gate), except Amorphous Androgynous (400 and 500 rub., respectively). 2,000 tickets have been issued for every event.
q
June 28 - Germany: Stereo Total (live), Maxwell Implosion (DJ set), DJ Sahaj;
July 5 - U.K.: DJ Martin Lever, DJ James Holroyd (Chemical Brothers tour DJ),
Amorphous Androgynous, DJ Kimbar;
July 12 - France: DJ Gregory, Rubin Steiner (live), DJ Anton (RFI), Alexandroid;
July 19 - Finland: Jimi Tenor (live), Aavikko (live), DJ Bunuel;
July 26 - Sweden: JayJay Johanson (live), Swanky Tunes; DJs Kosinus and Kisloid;
Aug. 2 - Italy: Nicola Conte & High Five 5tet (live), Nicola Conte (DJ set), DJ Lovesky;
Aug. 9 - Japan: Kyoto Jazz Massive (DJ show), Nozh dlya Frau Muller (live), DJ Kostrov.
Molodyozhny Theater, 114 Nab. Reki Fontanki. M: Tekhologichesky Institut. For information call 315-4919 or 110-6138. Links: www.stereoleto.spb.ru
TITLE: 'Musique Automatique' in stereo
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Stereo Total's roots lie rather in French chanson from the 1960s and 1970s, but also Neue Deutsche Welle from the 1980s, and a "lot of Japanese bands," according to singer Francoise Cactus.
"Anyway I think we get influenced by almost everything," she said in a recent interview from her Berlin home.
Of the German scene, Cactus mentioned primarily DAF, or Deutsche American Freundschaft, and The Plant as well as an art movement called Genius Dilettantes, which she joined after moving to Berlin from Paris in the mid-1990s.
"There were musicians, artists," said Cactus. "They mean you haven't to be a professional who has learnt 20 years of piano, you go and do it without having learnt anything. That's how I started making music. In the first band I had we were three persons, and we never had played before. Then we rehearsed and went to stage and had our first concert."
The other half of the band is Germany's Brezel Goring. While they both sing, Goring, described by Cactus as a"kind of orchestra man" plays almost every other instrument including guitar, organ, samplers and synthesizer. On tracks where a drum machine is not used, Cactus plays on a small drum kit.
The band usually sings in French and German, although it readily incorporates almost any other language. Cactus and Goring exchanging languages with each other sounds especially amusing.
"It's a little bit boring that everybody wants to sing in English," said Cactus. "I mean why? Every language is beautiful and I like people singing in all kind of languages. Sometimes we sing in English but very rarely. If I could speak Russian, I would like to sing in Russian, too. It's a beautiful language for singing."
Surprisingly, sensational New-York-based rock-and-roll guitar band The Strokes invited Stereo Total to open for its European and British tour last year, which brought the band some serious exposure in the U.K.
"We were surprised ourselves when they asked us," Cactus said. "The bass player from their band, Nikolai [Fraiture], knew our band and he came to see us in New York when we were playing there, and then the rest of the band [heard us] on the radio in the U.S. - and they were really enthusiastic."
Cactus' vocal style is reminiscent of French chanson, and her favorite singers are Sylvie Vartan, Francoise Hardy, France Galle, Jane Birkin, Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg. She has some reservations about Bardot, though.
"I mean as a singer she was OK, but now when she's old she's gone completely crazy and she's now a completely reactionary woman. It's not cool, but [I like] the way she was singing when she was young."
Cactus admitted her reasons for moving Germany were not entirely musical.
"First for the boys," she said. "The boys in Germany look pretty good."
She said that, although Berlin does not look very good, it is more stimulating artistically than Paris.
"Paris looks very cute, when you go through the streets," she said. "In Berlin it's very good for artists. It's really interesting. There are a bunch of musicians, a bunch of painters, a bunch of people doing something, doing movies. I like underground movies and stuff like that."
Stereo Total's most recent album, its fifth, is called "Musique automatique," with the title referring to psychoanalysts' method of automatic writing, which the band to a certain extent adopted while composing and recording.
"With this album we thought 'O.K., we won't think what we want to do,' so we didn't want to have a concept and then to run after this concept. We thought, 'Let's see what comes. We never put barriers in front of us - and we just do some sounds, write some things on a paper and then see what happens.'"
"Musique automatique" was released in 2001. Since then the band has done a few remixes since then and now is working on a follow-up.
Despite occasionally using auxiliary musicians at its shows, Stereo Total will appear in St. Petersburg as a duo, performing songs from "Musique automatique" and every album that the band has put out, plus some new, unreleased songs.
Though the band's lyrics occasionally touch some tricky political or feminist issues, its shows sound like an amusing, exciting experience.
"We are not taking ourselves seriously," said Cactus. "I mean we never complain in our songs or so like a lot of other musicians do. A lot of musicians have the blues in their shoes. But we're kind of positive. It's not always sunny - sometimes it's sunny, but sometimes it's a little bit melancholic. Sometimes it's ironic, but not in a mean way. Sometimes it's like a game."
Stereo Total opens Stereoleto at 11 p.m. on Saturday. Links: www.stereototal.de
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Canadian mainstream jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall is last-minute, but impressive, addition to the rich and variable jazz bill this week. Though not a breakthrough innovator, Krall, who won a Grammy for best jazz vocal in 1999, provides quality and accessible jazz songs, which have helped her to sell more records than other contemporary jazz artists can even dream of. Personally, she is a favorite of Elvis Costello, who might become her husband before long. Krall will appear at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory on Wednesday.
Friday sees the opening of the two-day Peter and Paul Jazz Festival, which runs from 6 p.m. to midnight at three locations in the Peter and Paul Fortress and continue at local clubs. On Saturday, during the day, the "family" part of the festival is planned, starting from noon. See Gigs for acts appearing.
The Jazz Philharmonic Hall will start its own annual jazz festival, White Night's Swing, on Thursday. According to spokesperson, this year the festival will include a two-day competition of jazz acts, plus a couple of galas.
And don't forget the jazz boats, which continue to offer two-hour trips every Wednesday and Saturday.
Stereoleto, seven Saturdays of mainly electronic dance events start with German party headlined by pop duo Stereo Total Saturday (see articles, this page).
Meanwhile, Manchester Week in St. Petersburg, featuring a few musical events, starts the same day. Promoted in cooperation with Manchester City Council, the city that produced such bands as The Fall, The Stone Roses and The Smiths, the festival features a few DJ parties at Par.spb and a show by Amorphous Androgynous, a.k.a. The Future Sound of London's Garry Cobain, on July 5, which is also part of Stereoleto.
A live band from Manchester is also coming, though it is not part of Manchester Week - probably because of its strictly hardcore punk nature. Gold Blade will appear at the day-long Okna Otkroi! rock festival on Saturday, and will also appear at Stary Dom on Friday and Moloko on Sunday. Check www.goldblade.com.
The other live acts who will gather at the Kirov Stadium for the festival, whose name translates as "Open the Window!" represent what is called "Russian rock," from monsters like DDT to total unknowns carefully selected by a certain jury at tiresome auditions during the past 12 months.
Red Club, which was closed for an entire week to hold a series of private parties, according to its spokesperson, returns with a bang holding concerts of local club scene favorite Billy's Band, which will showcase its new live album on Friday, as well as La Minor, the urban folk band which has been away from the city for a while.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: pure and simple every time
AUTHOR: By Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Some restaurant reviews just write themselves. Some, on the other hand, just fester and brew and never really get going. This review falls into the second category - but not through any fault of the restaurant, which was superb in many ways and to which I tender my humble apologies in advance.
In brief, Kvareli, a tiny Georgian cafe tucked away round the back of the Peter and Paul Fortress, is a great place to go and have enormous amounts of good food in a congenial setting without breaking the bank. If that sounds like (admittedly very bad) advertising copy, it's because Kvareli deserves it.
My two dining companions and I showed up, starving hungry, early on Sunday evening after a long walk along the river. We took a seat at one of Kvareli's six - count them! - tables, ordered some Borzhomi mineral water (35 rubles, or $1.15, per bottle), kicked back and scrutinized the menu.
Kvareli's menu contains the usual assortment of Caucasian dishes - lobio, various kebabs and so on - that can be found in most such establishments, but also includes a few novelties, such as varenniki stuffed with Suluguni cheese, which we meant to order but, unfortunately, forgot about. It didn't matter. The dishes we ordered left us absolutely stuffed and barely able to make it out of the door.
We kicked off with a selection of starters between us. The satsivi with chicken (60 rubles, $2) - Kvareli has two other varieties, including an interesting-sounding version with eggplant - was pronounced very good. Also excellent was the eggplant with nuts (40 rubles, $1.30), which was gorgeously moist and tender. The adzhapsandali (60 rubles) was a dry version of the more soupy vegetable concoction that I'm used to, but still more than acceptable. The lobio (60 rubles) was a standout, with a wicked little sting of something hot in the tail, while the selection of pickled vegetables (40 rubles) set everything off nicely and included some great pickled garlic, a personal favorite.
However, the real star of the starter show was the double (sic) khachapuri. I've long been a big fan of this bread stuffed with cheese that is an essential accompaniment to any Georgian meal (at least here; I have yet to make it down to the country itself), but this was a veritable bread behemoth. When I asked our server if it would be enough for the three of us, she chuckled and told us it would be more than sufficient. And indeed it was - we barely finished it between us. A brilliant idea.
Moving on to main courses, one of my companions picked the curiously named sudak po-Leningradsky (Leningrad pike-perch; 100 rubles, $3.30), which turned out to be the eponymous fish in a cheesy white sauce that also, my companion fancied, contained a hint of mint. In any case, it was swiftly devoured and pronounced more than satisfactory.
I went for the sturgeon kebab, just about the most expensive dish on the menu at 170 rubles ($5.60), which was thoroughly worthwhile. I would counsel anyone interested to order the spicy tomato sauce that comes with some of the other kebabs as an excellent complement to the fish.
The highlight in the main-course department, however, was my other companion's kavkazsky shashlyk, or Caucasian kebab (140 rubles, $4.60). This was an enormous affair including chicken, lamb and pork, and had my companion in raptures over the tenderness of the meat and the aforementioned piquant tomato sauce. My companion reckoned it was probably one of the largest kebabs available anywhere in the city, and certainly one of the tastiest.
We accompanied the whole experience with a liter of the house white wine (300 rubles, $9.90), which was very drinkable and came in a pleasingly rustic-looking pottery carafe. For good measure, my English companion and I also polished off a glass of cognac (20 rubles, $0.65) each as well, which made the evening even more pleasant.
It remains only to unreservedly recommend Kvareli to all and sundry, and apologize once again to the its owners for not being able to do the cafe justice in words. As Arnold Schwarzenegger robotically said, "I'll be back." And, next time, I'll be trying those cheese-stuffed varenniki.
Kvareli. 22 Ul. Lizy Chaikinoi. Tel.: 8-911-256-4257. Open daily, noon until the last guest leaves. Menu in Russian only. Dinner for three, with alcohol: 1,329 rubles ($43.85).
TITLE: museum's out for the summer
AUTHOR: By Darja Agapova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Anna Akhmatova Museum at the Fontanka House is an example of how a small museum can succeed without the resources of giants like the State Hermitage and the Russian Museum The institution is a center for spirited and inventive work, in stark contrast with many museums in the post-Soviet era, which are often seen as sleepy, conservative establishments, forever complaining about the drop in state financing and other shortages.
The museum's latest exhibition, "The Garden of Eden," runs in conjunction with the National Center for Contemporary Art, recently opened in the courtyard of the Fontanka House, endeavoring to prove that new ideas provide new resources.
The exhibition comprises several projects by St. Petersburg artists that are integrated in such as way as to combine modern and traditional art, creating what the project's curator, Maria Korosteleva, described as new "amicable" landscape art.
The museum has founded a tradition of putting on summer events that make excellent use of the space formed by the 18th-century Sheremetyev park, now the museum's courtyard. The first such summer project was last year's "Garden of Sculpture and Relaxation" exhibition. While the museum's already well-established Christmas exhibitions and performances are aimed at children, accompanied by their parents, the summer projects are clearly aimed at visitors' inner child. The current exhibition evokes childlike sensations with the poetic disorder and somewhat hooliganistic nature of the objects formed from living flowers in the lyrical green scenery. The flower couches and television sets are reminiscent of the popular Russian children's game sekretiki, now becoming a thing of the past, with children's secret "treasures" hidden under buried splinters of glass, the treasures being sweet wrappers, pictures and shriveled flowers. The Musorshiki art group's "Junk Pipes" playground, built out of refuse collected with the help of residents in the neighborhood, also recalls the past, bringing back the memories of childhood afresh.
The exhibition's title appears to be a reference to Peter the Great's definition of St. Petersburg as a "paradise." The architectural dreamer Oskar Madera, in his "Pavilion St. Petersburg," formed of over five hundred birch twigs and featuring a luminous signboard, uses this historical association to good effect, giving shelter from the rain to numerous celebrities from St. Petersburg's past, ranging from poets to terrorists, nestled at Vladimir Kozin's "300 Years - 300 Faces" portrait gallery. The gallery employs a mocking, Russian doll style, along with cheap, primitive techniques.
Maria Lukka's "Adam and Eve" figures - or, rather, their sexually distinctive fragments formed from plaster-cast, resembling medical specimens rather than sculptures - appear to be "running away" from the sheltered company of colored heads towards the white-netting figure picking flowers that is "Angel" by Nadezhda Zubareva.
A similarly lyrical and, at the same time, ironic tone was set by a round table discussion held as part of of the Eden exhibition. The discussion centered on the current "Mariinsky-II" design competition, and was dubbed with a provocative title "Let's Build a City." Held on June 17, the discussion was wide-ranging, though the subjects covered were serious in nature, and the participants well respected, including competition secretary Ludmila Likhachyova, renowned St. Petersburg art historian and critic Ivan Czeczot, Alexei Lepork, lecturer on contemporary architecture at the European University in St. Petersburg, and Alexei Vinogradog and Dmitry Melentyev from the architectural bureau Vitruvius and Sons.
Perhaps as was only to be expected, the discussion began with reminiscences of times gone by, before turning to the current state of St. Petersburg's architecture and hopes and ideals for the development of the modern. According to Ivan Czeczot, our criteria for judging modern architecture are similar to those now used in the choice of clothes, and so the work of an architect has moved closer to that of a tailor. His own preference is for the "costume" of Arata Isozaki, which pays tribute to the Russian avant-garde art of the 1920s and 1930s, and to the architecture of Constructivism. "We don't have any buildings, not even one, by Japanese architects yet. Let it be a Japanese pagoda, as a monument to Kazimir Malevich," Czeczot said.
Likhachyova's official status prevented her from discussing her own preference before the end of the competition. Nonetheless, she spoke about the progressive education of domestic architectural clients. "Not so long ago, Russian clients couldn't even dream of the opportunity of inviting foreign architects, as it was too expensive. Now, the costs are about equal. Also, the competition will develop the flow of information on modern architecture here, so we'll get informed decisions soon."
Marina Koldobskaya, director of the St Petersburg branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art, was not so optimistic. She said that we would have to put up with bad architecture for the foreseeable future as a suitable environment for ideas and concepts has not yet been formed. The architects present agreed with these sentiments, complaining of the depressed state of the domestic architectural school. Nevertheless, they expressed a hope that things would change for the better, with the participation of the stars of the international architectural world in the competition paving the way forward, giving the local architectural school a "tuning fork" with which to achieve the right architectural "tone."
"The Garden of Eden" runs through Aug. 31 in the garden of the Anna Akhmatova Museum at Fontanka House.
TITLE: the word's worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Utrom - dengi, vecherom - stulya!: You have to pay cash up front.
Russians are fabulous quoters. The average Russian has a mental library of apt quotations and aphorisms that includes the Bible, 30 or 40 Russian and foreign poets, standard translations of Shakespeare and dozens of novelists. They use them straight, they use them ironically, they twist and tweak them to fit the circumstances. Everyone nods or laughs, and you, the hapless foreigner, wonder what on earth that was all about.
One of my favorite sources of aphorisms is the work of Ilf and Petrov. I highly recommend their novels to anyone under the impression that corruption and scams are a phenomenon of the post-Soviet period, introduced by the Wicked West. When someone says, Etot oligarkh - veliky kombinator (That oligarch is a real conman!) they are referring to Ostap Bender, the hero of Ilf and Petrov's comedic novels. Bender once said, Benzin vash - idei nashi (the gas is yours, the ideas are ours), which can be used to describe any deal in which one side puts up the money and the other side (supposedly) provides the know-how. Oni ne predlagali partnyorstvo. Oni na samom dele predlagali "Benzin vash - idei nashi" (They didn't propose a partnership. They proposed that we bankroll their so-called brilliant ideas!)
It was a wise man who insisted on getting paid by Ostap Bender before handing over the goods: Utrom - dengi, vecherom - stulya! (literally, "you give me the money in the morning, I'll give you the chairs at night," or "you have to pay cash up front.") This is a good phrase whenever someone wants you to do work without paying in advance (or at all). Da, ya napishu statyu. No utrom - dengi, vecherom -stulya! (Yes, I'll write the article, but give me the money in advance.)
Ilf and Petrov also gave us the oft-quoted phrase, Spaseniye utopayushchikh - delo ruk samikh utopayushchikh (literally, "the task of saving drowning men is up to the drowning men themselves"). This is used whenever it's clear that no one is going to help you and that you must rely on your own devices. Another useful phrase is kipuchy lentyai (a bustling lazybones) - someone who makes a fabulous show of frantic activity, but actually does nothing. On, kazhetsya, khoroshy sotrudnik. Da net! On - kipuchy lentyai (He seems like a good worker. Not at all! He just puts on a good show.)
Another phrase you hear often is krizis zhanra (crisis of genre), which refers to any standard form of art or work that is no longer popular or relevant, or anything that is no longer going well or easily. Ya pytalsya pisat otchyot, no ne poluchilos. Krizis zhanra. (I tried to write the report, but I didn't get anywhere. I've lost my touch.)
Gigant mysly (a giant among thinkers) is used ironically to refer to any silly person with an unjustifiably high opinion of his intellect. Sbylas mechta idiota (literally "an idiot's dream has come true") refers to any time you get what you hoped for and discover that it's less than you had expected. Menya naznachili direktorom. Sbylas mechta idiota. Odni problemy. (I was named director. What an idiot I was to want it. All I have is problems.)
And I always think of Ilf and Petrov when I'm nearly mowed down as I try to cross one of Moscow's streets. Peshekhodov nado lyubit. Peshekhody sostavlyayut bolshuyu chast chelovechestva. Malo togo - luchshuyu ego chast. Peshekhody sozdali mir. (We must love pedestrians. Pedestrians make up the majority of humanity. Moreover - the best part of humanity. Pedestrians created the world.)
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
TITLE: snapshots of photo history
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Over a hundred years passed between the invention of photography in 1839, if its "official" birth is taken as the work of Frenchman Louis Daguerre and his daguerrotype, and photographs becoming "collectable" for museums. Leading the way was the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, which, in the 1930s, became one of the first of the world's museums to begin collecting photographs, establishing a photography department in 1940.
Just a small part of the vast, fascinating MoMA collection can now be seen at the "Looking at Photographs" collection opened on Sunday at the State Hermitage Museum. In view of the quantity of rare, first-class photographic works and the internationally renowned names that stand behind them, this is probably the most significant event to take place in the photographic life of the city in the last decade - it's certainly recommended for anyone who wants to expand their IQ on photography.
The current exhibition was originally put together by John Szarkowski, director emeritus of the Department of Photography at MoMA, and was first shown in 1973 in New York. The exhibition was a visual interpretation of his book, "Looking at Photographs," published in the same year, which also served as the catalog at the exhibition. The motivating idea behind the book and the exhibition was not only to collect "benchmark photographs," but also to give an introduction to the aesthetics and the historical development of photography. To that end, Szarkowski chose 100 photo-works from MoMA's collection for the New York exhibition, covering the period from the appearance of photography to 1973. Later, especially for the Russian version of the exposition, Szarkowski added 25 works to fill the period from 1973 to the present day. In this form, then, the project is being exhibited for the first time, a fact that the organizers have taken much pride in stressing.
"As a rule, photography has not developed in a disciplined and linear manner, but has rather grown like an untended garden, making full use of principles of random selection, laissez-faire, participatory democracy, and ignorance," Szarkowski wrote in his book-catalog in 1973.
Szarkowski's book, as well as the exhibition itself, was probably one of the first such attempts - both symptomatic and remarkable - to explore the nature of photography and to comprehensively revise its history. At the same time, he says, the book does not pretend to employ a systematically objective approach, and has the character or genre of a "personal take" on the history of photography. This perhaps goes a long way to explaining the dominance of works by American photo-artists at the exhibition.
"Although the museum has always been trying to collect work of masters from around the world, it is impossible to deny that the photography department is far more aware of photo-art in the U.S., than abroad," Szarkowski writes in the exhibition's catalog.
Szarkowski's central idea was to explore and to consider photography in all its genres and functions. This is why those visiting the exhibition will be confronted by such stylistically and functionally different works, ranging from the artistic, including portraits and landscapes, journalistic reportage, and technical and advertising photography. The approach also led to individual photographers having a maximum of one photograph in the exhibition.
The mood for the exhibition is immediately set by "Loch Katrine" from the 1840s by William Henry Talbot, a key figure in the development of early photography. That mood is then further developed by works from 19th-century masters of the art such as Gaspar-Felix Nadar, David Hill and Robert Adamson, Timothy O'Sullivan and William Shew.
In the early 20th century, the increased artistic aspirations of the photography can be seen in the works of Eugene Atget, Jacques Lartigue, Andre Kertesz, Alexander Rodchenko, Arnold Newman, Alfred Stiglitz, Edward Steihen, August Sander and Henri Cartier-Bresson. In addition, there are a number of works by unknown photographers of the past, such as the postcard "Apples Grown by Irrigation at Artesia, New Mexico" (1907), where everyday occurrences are given an aesthetic value.
The second half of the 20th century is represented by the works of contemporary classics such as Irving Penn, Harry Callaghan, Robert Adams, Richard Avedon, William Klein. Szarkowski's most recent additions to the exhibition - covering the last thirty years of the 20th Century - include color photographs by Cindy Sherman, David Hockney and Tina Barney.
In view of the breadth of the period that it covers, the exhibition also provides an excellent reflection of the technical evolution of photography. As was the case with engraving in their day, a variety of techniques were employed to produce the photographs that are on display here. In this sense, the 19th-century was perhaps the most fruitful period for photography.
The first technique was the daguerreotype process, followed by calotype, albumen, ambrotype and other processes that gave improvements in terms of the length of exposure, expense and speed of production, and the opportunity to make copies. The latter was an important factor, as early techniques didn't allow for the production of negatives.
According to Szarkowski, "for an art museum, even today, to make a serious commitment to the art of photography requires some imagination, and the willingness to accept some intellectual risks."
"Looking at photographs" runs through Aug. 31 at the State Hermitage Museum. Links: www.hermitagemuseum.org
TITLE: manchester week set to go mad (for it)
AUTHOR: By Aliona Bocharova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: "The Brits are coming" is the slogan for the upcoming Manchester Week in St. Petersburg, which kicks off on Saturday and runs through July 6. With 30 events crammed into that time, it looks like Manchester will indeed be staging something of a temporary invasion, with everything from music and fashion events to regional development and community projects.
"It is the biggest external event of the year for Manchester," event coordinator Martin Lever said about the industrial city of about 2.5 million in northwest England in an interview this week. "Manchester and Petersburg are twin cities, and have been partners for over 40 years. Therefore, Manchester Week plays a key role in the UK's contribution to the 300th anniversary of Petersburg."
"It took us two years to put the program together," Lever said. "The event is supported by 60 partners, including major institutions such as the Manchester City Council, the City Administration of St. Petersburg, the British Consulate in St. Petersburg, the British Council, the State Russian Museum, as well as a number of local and international non-governmental foundations."
Although the event is operating on an official level and the Manchester Chamber of Commerce is bringing trade delegates to discuss doing business in Russia at briefings, the organizers of Manchester Week are keen to present an alternative and creative way of celebrating the city's 300th anniversary.
"We focus on the image of Petersburg and Manchester as dynamic and vibrant cities," Lever said. "It's an experiment for both sides that doesn't only entertain, but also helps lay down the infrastructure for the development of the creative industries in St. Petersburg and the enhancement of the city's regeneration."
The regeneration of central Manchester's Northern Quarter has been set as an example of successful implementation of development projects in creative industries.
"The area was in serious decline ten years ago, yet record and clothes stores were opened in the neighborhood, they attracted clubs and restaurants, followed by designers and art galleries, and the place is booming now," Lever said.
The Northern Quarter example is to be brought up at creative-industries seminars organized with OSB-Group, which claims to be the only creative-industries agency in St. Petersburg.
"OSB-Group, which will be holding the fashion round table and creative-industries networking evening, sees itself as a mediator in the field," the group's Dmitry Milkov said this week. "Creative industries as a business branch are not yet developed in St. Petersburg, so we would like to acquaint Russian fashion designers, journalists and buyers with their counterparts from Manchester, so that they can share their experience, and perhaps come up with ideas for international partnership."
Local state institutions have been enthusiastic about development projects in the social sphere. The City Administration supported the Manchester City Council initiative called "Increasing Employment Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities," while the Russian Museum cooperated with Manchester institutions to carry out "Arts for Health," a series of workshops for health-care professionals and artists that introduce the concept of art therapy and enhance its local application.
The "Football in the Community" project should be one of the most interesting taking place in Manchester Week, as it functions at a grassroots level, bringing together Zenit, St Petersburg's only Premier League football club, with Manchester United, the world's richest and probably best-known club. Five coaches from Manchester United will train children from minority backgrounds - to raise awareness of social issues and wider participation in sport - and Zenit junior teams to improve their soccer skills.
"Although we received major funding from Manchester City Council and the European Regional Development Fund, a lot of organizers and participants have invested their own money in implementing their projects," Lever said. "That is why they form the basis for future development and cooperation."
Cross-cultural communication will not only be used to share professional experience, however, but also as a source of inspiration for several art projects. The "Emplacements" project will bring British and Russian artists together to work in small groups exploring issues of the place and identity of St. Petersburg citizens, in an attempt to create temporary, context-based artworks such as installations, live art and new media to be exhibited at the Ziegel Factory.
Another art project entitled "PROSPEKT - Manchester/Petersburg City Mapping," run by TEA, a Manchester artists group that includes Jon Biddulph, Peter Hatton, Val Murray and Lynn Pilling, also focuses on multiple identities and communication based on contrast between local and tourist information. The artists of the TEA group will team up with the Russian artists, Igor Lebedev and Igor Baskin, and take exploratory journeys through St. Petersburg.
"We are going to approach the city as outsiders with information gathered from guide books, the foreign press and tourist maps, and the Russian artists are going to bring an intimate, local knowledge," TEA artist Jon Buddulph wrote in an email this week. "As a result of the project, we hope to produce artistic 'maps,' probably based on existing ones, yet with photography, text and drawings. They will be exhibited publicly as alternative city guides, probably on the street."
One of the epicenters during Manchester Week will be club-cum-cultural center Par.spb, which will be hosting two art exhibitions - one by Manchester artist Zimeon Jones, and a second, "Urban Abstraction," by Gordon Connel and Jo Harrison, also Manchester artists - as well as music gigs.
"The St. Petersburg electronic-music scene holds enormous creative potential and energy," says Lever. A frequent guest DJ at Par.spb himself, he believes that "Russian DJs are advanced enough; they lack no skill, just confidence. Therefore, some of them will be brought to Manchester for the St. Petersburg Week to play at the Russian parties."
Meanwhile, Par.spb will be hosting the Grand Central Records Party on June 28, followed by the "Tecknique" Party on June 29, with Lever and fellow Mancunian DJs Riton and Master Wong performing.
For many, however, the sensation of Manchester Week will be a performance by the Future Sound of London, one of the most significant electronic projects of recent years, which will present a program entitled "Psychedelic DJ Experience" on July 5 at Stereoleto, a series of summer gigs at the Molodyozhny Theater (see articles, p. ii). FSOL members met while living and studying at university in Manchester, as did another group of musicians, Tubalate, the internationally renowned Manchester brass quartet.
"The Tubalate project was one of the first to be planned for the Manchester Music Week, which later developed into Manchester Week as the project expanded," said Anastasia Boudanoque, arts coordinator at the British Council. "The musicians visited St. Petersburg in October 2002 for the first time and announced a competition for young Russian composers to write a piece for a tuba quartet. They will announce and perform four winning pieces at the Marble Palace on July 5."
Boudanoque returned from Manchester on Wednesday and had some comments about perception of the Manchester Week back in Great Britain.
"The event has been receiving exceptional attention from the British press, and even Tony Wilson, who stood at the roots of Manchester club culture [as owner of the city's seminal Hacienda club] and is a living legend, showed up at the press conference to express his admiration."
The project is set to continue with St. Petersburg Week, which will begin in Manchester on Oct. 6.
"The city has already started getting ready for the event, preparing the best city venues and grounds to welcome St. Petersburg's creative forces," Boudanque said.
For the full timetable, see the Web site www.ukatspb.ru
TITLE: Arafat, Hamas Differ on Ceasefire Timing
AUTHOR: By Karin Laub
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: JERUSALEM - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Thursday that a formal cease-fire announcement was imminent after Palestinian negotiators secured a commitment from Islamic militants to halt attacks on Israelis for three months.
However, there were growing signs that a declaration might only be made over the weekend. Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi said that the militant group will "declare to everyone its final decision in the coming days," even though Arafat said that an announcement could be made "in the coming few hours."
Despite the promises, violence continued. A Palestinian shot dead an Israeli man and seriously wounded a second - both telephone company employees - in northern Israel near the West Bank border. Security guards wounded and arrested the assailant, a member of a militia linked to Arafat's Fatah movement.
Palestinians also fired several mortar shells and homemade rockets at a Jewish settlement in Gaza and an Israeli community bordering the strip. In the West Bank, Israel razed the house of a Hamas militant who allegedly recruited suicide bombers.
A truce might help end 33 months of violence, a necessary prelude to the U.S.-backed "road map" plan aimed at establishing a Palestinian state by 2005. The plan requires the Palestinians to break up the armed groups, but Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has ruled out using force for fear of civil war.
The truce deal was negotiated by Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian uprising leader jailed by Israel, and the heads of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups in Damascus, Syria. Barghouti, using envoys, acted on behalf of Palestinian leaders, the negotiators said.
Arafat told reporters at his West Bank headquarters on Thursday that a formal announcement would be made soon.
"Until now, it has not been officially decided, but we expect that in the coming few hours, there will be a declaration," he said.
There was no information on the venue.
But Mahmdou Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said that more time was needed.
"There is a great deal of communication between all the parties which has intensified ... but at this point, I don't expect that there will be a declaration about our position... in the coming hours," he said.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders in the Gaza Strip have insisted that the deal is not final, while Israel and the United States were skeptical about its value, saying that Palestinian security forces must quickly disarm the militias.
As part of the truce talks, the Palestinian militias sought guarantees from Israel that it will halt all military strikes, including targeted killings of wanted Palestinians.
Barghouti's truce document says that Israel must halt military strikes, but does not make it a condition for agreement. Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a senior Arafat aide, said, "We're still waiting for guarantees from the Americans to force Israel to stop its assassination policy," a reference to the killings of militants.
The U.S. national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, will arrive later this week to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Israel has said that it cannot give a blanket promise to halt strikes against Palestinians planning attacks as long as Palestinian security forces do not act against the armed groups. It wants the armed groups dismantled as called for in the road map.
U.S. President George W. Bush, siding with Israel, said Wednesday that "in order for there to be peace in the Middle East, we must see organizations such as Hamas dismantled, and then we'll have peace, we'll have a chance for peace."
Shortly after reports of the emerging cease-fire Wednesday, Israeli helicopters fired rockets at a car carrying a Hamas militant in the Gaza Strip, killing two bystanders and wounding 17 people. Among those hurt was the targeted man, Mohammed Siam, who Israel said was on his way to fire mortars at a Jewish settlement.
Israel's deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said that Israel would not compromise on its security.
"Each time, we fear there will be a terrorist attack and it won't be addressed by the Palestinians, we will react," said Olmert.
But Cabinet Minister Yosef Lapid, head of the moderate Shinui party, said that Israel should give a truce a chance.
"If they will stop their terror attacks, we can stop the activities against them, and that way we can see if they... support the road map or are taking advantage of the cease-fire," he said.
The truce deal was negotiated over the past few weeks by Barghouti, a leader of Arafat's Fatah movement on trial for his alleged role in terrorist acts.
TITLE: Fighting in Liberia Kills 200, 1000 Casualties
AUTHOR: By Jonathan Paye-Layleh
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MONROVIA, Liberia - Liberia's health minister on Thursday reported 200 to 300 civilians killed and 1,000 wounded in the battle for the country's besieged capital, and morgue workers described mortuaries filled to overflowing.
Soldiers commandeered private vehicles to collect more broken bodies from the streets of Monrovia at daylight Thursday, working against a backdrop of pounding rain and crackling gunfire.
Monrovia was on edge but calmer early Thursday, with the shelling, rockets and frantic refugee movements of the past two days silenced.
However, there was no indication of retreat by rebels fighting to take the city, and unconfirmed reports had rebels sighted around the port, a key objective well inside Monrovia.
Rebels are driving home a three year war to oust warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor, a newly indicted UN-war-crimes suspect who launched the West African country into 14 years of conflict in 1989.
Early Thursday, Health Minister Peter Coleman said that the past two days of fighting in the city had killed between 200 and 300 civilians and injured 1,000.
Coleman said that the dead included at least nine Liberians killed when rockets struck an evacuated U.S. diplomatic residential compound Wednesday.
The U.S. Embassy had opened the gates of its residential compound to Liberians seeking shelter, and thousands of them crowded in Wednesday - hoping proximity to the Americans would mean safety.
Hours later, three pieces of ordnance landed within the high-walled compound and exploded, sending the refugees running.
In Washington, U.S. State Department press officer Brooke Summers said that there was no indication that any U.S. citizens were killed. She said that a guard and a gardener employed by the embassy were killed. The last Americans had recently been moved out of the residential complex to the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy across the street.
"Everybody in the world is sitting to watch us die," a refugee, Suah Kolli, cried at Monrovia's John F. Kennedy hospital, where 200 wounded brought in by midday overflowed the hospital's wards and lay sprawled, moaning and bleeding, in slippery hallways.
The French humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontiers evacuated another hospital overrun by fighting, and by midday was treating scores of wounded in its own compound.
Refugees packed schoolyards, shell-gutted houses and the country's main soccer stadium, while many of Monrovia's people simply cowered in their homes. Aid workers described a humanitarian nightmare even before fighting broke Tuesday, with cholera and starvation rampant among the crowded refugees.
Taylor's forces have lost at least 60 percent of the country to two rebel groups - each determined to drive out the president, a UN-indicted war-crimes suspect accused of roiling West Africa's conflicts for 14 years.
The U.S. Embassy, in a statement Wednesday, condemned what it called the rebels' "serious violation of the cease fire."
At the United Nations, the British ambassador urged the United States to intervene and enforce a cease-fire.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Kangaroo Cull
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - The Australian Army will kill as many as 15,000 kangaroos to keep a southeastern army base from being overgrazed, a military spokesperson said Wednesday.
The Defense Department said that the plant-eating marsupials threatened the environment in the 42,090-hectare Puckapunyal training ground 100 kilometers north of Melbourne.
Animal activists vowed to protest, saying that the real problem was a fence surrounding the training ground that prevented the kangaroos from roaming freely. Animal Liberation Australia spokesperson Rheya Linden said more killing could not be justified.
"Kangaroo numbers are severely reduced," she said.
The decision was made after an April census found 36,000 kangaroos on the base and environmental consultants said that the area could only sustain 10,000 of the animals, Hannan said.
Hannan said that licensed shooters would kill 6,500 eastern gray kangaroos to start. Another count would be made at the end of August before a decision is made to continue the killings.
Cuban Custodians
HAVANA (AP) - Two American children brought to Cuba by their father were taken into protective custody Wednesday after their mother sought Fidel Castro's help.
In a case that recalled the battle over young castaway Elian Gonzalez, state-run television reported that authorities took action after confirming that the mother, Cornelia Streeter, had sole custody of Henry, 10, and Victoria, 8.
Streeter made her appeal in a letter, which was was delivered to the Cuban president by a "friend of our commander in chief," said the government statement read on the nightly news broadcast.
American authorities said that they knew about the case and were working to determine the facts. They said they had not communicated with the mother.
The statement said that Cubans remained mindful of the Elian Gonzalez case and the support most Americans showed for the child's return to his father.
Elian was 5 years old in November 1999 when he was rescued at sea off Florida following a boating accident that killed his mother and other Cubans trying to immigrate illegally to the United States.
The whereabouts of Streeter were not immediately clear, but the statement said that she had been asked to travel to Cuba immediately to get her children.
Publishing Sentence
LYON, France (AP) - An appeals court on Wednesday upheld the six-month prison sentence of an editor who published works that called into question the scope of the Holocaust.
The lawyer for publisher Jean Plantin said he will appeal the decision to a higher court.
A lower court found Plantin guilty in June 2000 and gave him a six-month suspended sentence for publishing materials challenging some aspects of the Holocaust. The court also ordered Plantin to stop his activities.
Prosecutors say that Plantin continued to publish similar works, violating a condition of his suspended sentence. A court in January revoked the suspension, a ruling that was upheld on Wednesday.
TITLE: Pierce Sends Reminder of the Glory Days
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WIMBLEDON, England - Two-time Grand Slam champion Mary Pierce upset No. 14-seeded Eleni Daniilidou 6-4, 6-1 Thursday in the second round at Wimbledon.
Pierce, ranked 86th and plagued by injuries in recent years, advanced to the third round of a major event for the first time since Wimbledon last year. She lost in the opening round at this year's French Open, and in the second round at the Australian Open.
Eighth-seeded Jennifer Capriati hit nine aces, including one on match point, to beat Marie-Gaianeh Mikaelian 6-2, 6-1.
No. 10 Anastasia Myskina beat Russian compatriot Lina Krasnoroutskaya 6-1, 6-4, and No. 23 Lisa Raymond eliminated Marlene Weingartner 6-3, 6-0.
In a battle of qualifiers on the men's side, Swede Robin Soderling beat Gilles Elseneer of Belgium 2-6, 7-6 (10-8), 6-4, 6-3.
Pierce looked in fine form against Daniilidou, committing just five unforced errors. She won the Australian Open in 1995 and the French Open in 2000, but her best showing at Wimbledon was a quarterfinal appearance in 1996.
"She's a delight to watch when she's on her game," said Pam Shriver, a five-time Wimbledon doubles champion and now a BBC commentator. "And I've never seen her apply her skills so well on a grass court. She now becomes a danger figure in her part of the draw."
Pierce faces a potential quarterfinal matchup against French Open champion Justine Henin-Hardenne, who was scheduled to play later Thursday.
The biggest tantrum so far at Wimbledon was so excessive that even John McEnroe disapproved. Maybe Andy Roddick didn't need the help, but Greg Rusedski's profanity-laced meltdown in the third set ended his comeback bid in their second-round slugfest Wednesday.
After Rusedski lost his cool, Roddick won the final five games to finish off the angry Englishman, 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-1), 7-5.
"He got pretty upset," Roddick said.
The blowup came when Rusedski led 5-2 in the final set. With Roddick serving at 30-15, Rusedski stopped playing a point when a fan erroneously shouted that a shot was out. Roddick won the point, and chair umpire Lars Graff let it stand, rather than replaying it.
"Ridiculous," Rusedski shouted at Graff during the ensuing changeover. He accused the umpire of allowing the fan to change the course of the match.
Rusedski couldn't regain his composure. In what had been a tight match, he won only five of the final 23 points beginning with the disputed ruling.
"He was playing well, and he let that just get under his skin," said McEnroe, a three-time Wimbledon champion who launched a few tirades himself at the All England Club. "It's an embarrassing way for him to walk off the court."
The BBC, which televised the match and picked up Rusedski's profanities on a courtside microphone, apologized to viewers. The tournament announced Thursday that Rusedski was fined $2,500, which McEnroe found surprisingly lenient.
"They cannot be serious," McEnroe said. "I'd be in jail for that."
Rusedski was contrite after his defeat.
"I lost it a little bit on that call," he said. "I apologize for my language. It was not necessary. ... Your emotions can sometimes take control of you because you want it so badly."
Roddick took exception to the suggestion that Rusedski's unraveling was the sole reason for the lopsided final few games.
"That, and I had just about the best returns I've hit for two years," Roddick said. "I'd like to think I had something to do with it."
Roddick, seeded fifth but the favorite with London oddsmakers, advanced to the third round for the third year in a row. He'll try to reach the fourth round for the first time when he plays No. 25 Tommy Robredo, who beat American Brian Vahaly.
q
WIMBLEDON, England (AP) - Ivo Karlovic is finally getting noticed for something besides his 6-foot-10 (208-centimeter) frame.
The Croatian qualifier, who shocked top-seeded defending champion Lleyton Hewitt in four sets in the first round of Wimbledon, is through to the third round.
This time there was no giant-killing involved. Karlovic's opponent Wednesday was Australian qualifier Paul Baccanello, ranked only one place higher than him at 204.
Karlovic won 6-4, 7-6 (7-3), 5-7, 6-2, serving up 29 aces.
"If I serve good anything can happen so I can expect the best but I don't know," said Karlovic, who played on outside Court 14 - just a short volley from Centre Court.
"Against Hewitt I played better because I had no pressure and I could just play my game. Against Baccanello it was a lot of pressure from everybody and especially me because I expected to win."
Karlovic beat three qualifiers to enter the main draw. His opening ace Wednesday was his 100th in the tournament so far.
Croatian compatriot Goran Ivanisevic seems to have left some of his magic on Wimbledon Centre Court since his win in 2001. Last year, Croatian teenager Mario Ancic beat seventh-seeded Roger Federer in the first round there.
Both Ancic and Karlovic cite Ivanisevic as their idol.
Karlovic has a tougher obstacle in the next round in his attempt to prove he's not a one-match wonder. It's Max Mirnyi.
Ranked No. 35 in the world, Mirnyi also is the only player able to stand up to Karlovic - the Belorussian is 6-5 (196 centimeters). On Wednesday, Mirnyi beat another talented Croatian, Ivan Ljubicic, 6-3, 6-4, 2-6, 6-2.
Monday, Karlovic was staying in a cheap hotel room where he had to use books balanced on a chair to extend his bed. Now he's upgraded to a room that costs the same per night as he was paying per week.
Reaching the third round has earned him $27,959 and that could double if he wins Friday, a marked change from his pre-Wimbledon tennis career.
"It has been quite tough," Karlovic said. "Sometimes, if I didn't earn enough prize money from one tournament, I couldn't travel to the next. It has been a little hand-to-mouth."
TITLE: Cincinatti Falls Victim To Wilson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - The Cincinnati Reds would have been better off if Paul Wilson began his suspension early. The Chicago Cubs could have used Kyle Farnsworth once more before he starts his suspension.
Just hours after being suspended for five games for fighting Wilson, gave up home runs to Bo Hart, Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen in the first inning, then gave up four more runs in the second in the Reds' 9-6 loss in St. Louis on Wednesday.
Cubs reliever Todd Wellemeyer gave up six runs in the 10th inning as Chicago was beaten by the Milwaukee Brewers 12-6. Farnsworth was out with a stomach flu.
"No matter what happened today it just didn't seem to work," Cubs manager Dusty Baker said. "We certainly missed Farnsworth today, big time."
Wilson was suspended for five games for starting a brawl last week with Farnsworth that ended with Wilson on his back and bloodied. Farnsworth was given three days.
The suspensions are set to begin Thursday, but Wilson is considering his options.
"I'm going to talk to my agents but I'll probably appeal," Wilson said.
Ken Griffey Jr. hit his first home run in 92 at-bats in the bottom of the first, a three-run shot to put the Reds up, but Wilson (5-5) gave it right back.
Hart went 3-for-5, raising his average to .500 (15-for-20) in six games as the replacement for injured second basemen Fernando Vina and Miguel Cairo.
Hart has five multihit games in six games since being called up from the minors.
"It's unexplainable," Hart said. "I'm just trying to hit the ball hard and hit good pitches, hit strikes. Hopefully, I'll continue to have that mind-set."
Matt Morris (8-5) gave up three runs in the top of the first before settling down to win for the first time in four starts. He lasted six innings, giving up five runs on seven hits.
Morris has allowed 28 runs in his last 31 innings over six starts since throwing consecutive shutouts in mid-May.
"I'm still a little off my game mentally," Morris said. "Not only am I not executing well as far as location and hitting my spots, I'm not thinking right, either."
Milwaukee 12, Chicago Cubs 6 (10 Inns.) In Chicago, Brooks Kieschnick led off the 10th inning with a pinch-hit homer off Wellemeyer (1-1) and Geoff Jenkins added a three-run shot for Milwaukee.
Luis Vizcaino (2-3) faced one batter, striking out Sammy Sosa with a runner on second to end the ninth.
Baltimore 9, Toronto 2. Melvin Mora homered, doubled and singled, scoring three times in the Baltimore Orioles' 9-2 victory in Toronto on Wednesday night.
Mora had been sidelined since Friday, when he was hit in the right hand by a pitch from Atlanta's Greg Maddux. The Orioles' outfielder leads the AL in batting at .366.
"Every single guy wants be an All-Star. It's something you look forward to because that's why you play, to be in there," Mora said. "I think I deserve it. I've been working myself hard throughout the first half. I hope I'll be there."
Sidney Ponson also boosted his All-Star bid, pitching his third complete game of the season. He raised his record to 10-4, winning at SkyDome against the team that leads the majors in hitting and scoring.
"That's a tough lineup to hold to two runs," Baltimore manager Mike Hargrove said.
The 26-year-old right-hander won for the sixth time in seven starts. The All-Star game will be played July 15 in Chicago.
"If they call me, I'll go. If they don't, I have three days' vacation," Ponson said.
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: New Real Boss
MADRID, Spain (AP) - Real Madrid selected Manchester United assistant Carlos Queiroz as its new coach Wednesday.
The Mozambique-born coach replaces Vicente del Bosque, who was fired Monday despite leading Madrid to a record 29th league title the previous day.
Queiroz, who has spent the last year with Manchester United, will be reunited with David Beckham, whose $41-million transfer from the English club to Madrid was announced last week.
Queiroz led Portugal's under-20 team to World Cup championships in 1989 and 1991, and also coached the Portuguese, South African and United Arab Emirates national teams. He also has coached Sporting Lisbon, the MLS' MetroStars and Nagoya Grampus Eight in Japan.
Hasek Coming Back?
DETROIT (AP) - Dominik Hasek is considering a return to the NHL and has spoken with the Detroit Red Wings about possibly ending his retirement and rejoining the team.
The 38-year-old goaltender and representatives of the Red Wings met in Europe recently, Roman Hozak, the player's press representative, said on Tuesday from the Czech Republic.
The star Czech player retired after winning the Stanley Cup in 2002 with Detroit.
Detroit general manager Ken Holland said he has been contacted by Hasek's agent, Rich Winter.
"While we have had discussions, at this time, no decision has been made by Dominik," Holland said in a statement.
"They continue to talk about it and we'll see how it goes," Winter said.
Detroit holds an option on Hasek for next season worth $8 million. If the Red Wings don't exercise the option, he would become an unrestricted free agent.
Detroit signed unrestricted free agent goalie Curtis Joseph last summer to a three-year, $24 million contract. The deal included a no-trade clause.
"If Dominik comes back it probably will be a sticky situation," Holland told radio station WJR. "Obviously, a lot of teams right now are looking for goaltenders. At the same time, money is a real issue around the league."
Kobe Inks Nike Deal
PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) - Kobe Bryant agreed to terms with Nike on Monday, becoming the latest basketball star to sign with the sneaker giant.
Bryant, who paid $8 million to get out of his six-year contract with Adidas Salomon about a year ago, wore several brands of shoes last season while negotiating with Nike and Reebok. Nike declined to disclose terms of the deal or possible plans for a Bryant signature shoe or apparel line.
Monday's signing came about a month after Nike inked sponsorship deals with LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, who are both expected to be among the top three picks in Thursday's draft.
"The combination of one of the world's best and proven NBA players such as Kobe, partnered with the exciting fresh talents of newcomers LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, will generate phenomenal energy for the brand throughout the world," Nike spokesperson Mark Shapiro said.
Bryant helps solidify Nike's dominance in the market for basketball sneakers. The company controls about 40 percent of the U.S. athletic shoe industry, more than the share of Reebok and Adidas combined, according to trade newsletter Sporting Goods Intelligence.