SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #882 (50), Tuesday, July 8, 2003
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Suicide Bombers Kill 13 in Moscow
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky and Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: President Vladimir Putin, speaking two days after suicide bombers killed 13 at a Moscow rock festival, said Monday that Russia will stand strong against terrorism and promised to hunt down and destroy Chechen terrorist groups.
 
"They must be plucked out of the basements and caves where they remain hiding and destroyed. Their main task is to undermine the process of a political settlement [in Chechnya]," Putin said at a Cabinet meeting.
 Two female suicide attackers wearing belts with explosives blew themselves up Saturday afternoon outside the Tushino airfield, where some 40,000 young people were attending the annual Krylya rock festival. Eleven people died at the scene, while two more died later in the hospital. More than 50 people were injured in the blasts, which occurred 15 minutes apart.
 Police spokesperson Valery Gribakin read off a list of names of 14 people whose documents - student ID cards, train tickets and passports - had been found at the second blast site. Most of those killed were born in the early 1980s. One of the victims was a young child.
 "After the latest series of terrorist attacks, we can say that the bandits operating in Chechnya are not only connected with international terrorist organizations but they have become an inalienable - maybe the most dangerous - part of the international terrorist network," Putin told the meeting.
 "I will stress once again that no country in the world is under the sway of terrorists, and Russia won't be either," he said.
 No arrests have been made in Saturday's attack. The Prosecutor General's Office is looking for the organizers of the blasts and possible accomplices, prosecutor's office spokesperson Natalya Vishnyakova said.
 Thirty-eight people remained hospitalized Monday, five in critical condition, Moscow health committee spokesperson Lyubov Zhomova said.
 All of those injured and killed have been identified except for the second suicide bomber, officials said.
 The first bomber, 20-year-old Chechen native Zulekhan Elikhadzhayeva, detonated a belt of explosives packed with bolts and pieces of metal at 2:45 p.m. at the main entrance to the fenced-in airfield.
 She had bought a ticket at a nearby clothes market and was agitatedly pushing her way through line when police officers screening concert goers with a portable metal detector spotted her and tried to lead her away, the Interior Ministry and eyewitnesses said.
 "She was excited and pushed her way through the line to the entrance. When the police approached her to lead her away, she knew she had been made and detonated her bomb," said an eyewitness, a young man who asked not to be identified.
 However, only a third of the explosives detonated, injuring three people, and she lived for about 20 minutes, Russian newspapers reported Monday. Doctors said she died of massive blood loss.
 She was tentatively identified after investigators found what is believed to be her passport near her body.
 Investigators also discovered an airline ticket in her name showing that she flew to Moscow from Tbilisi the day before the attack, local media said.
 The Georgian State Security Ministry denied Monday that a passenger with her name was on the passenger lists of any flights Friday.
 Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, speaking through his Moscow-based representative, Salambek Maigov, denied any involvement in the attack.
 First Deputy Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, however, said on Rossia television on Sunday that relatives of the Chechen woman whose passport was found have connections to rebels.
 Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov said that the attack could be tied to a decree signed by Putin last Friday night ordering the Chechen presidential election to be held Oct. 5. The rebels oppose the vote, which is to be followed by regional parliamentary elections in a Kremlin-drafted peace plan.
 Khusien Isayev, head of the Chechen State Council, said that he doubted that there was a link but predicted more attacks to destabilize the situation in Chechnya ahead of the vote, Interfax reported.
 Putin on Sunday was to fly to Uzbekistan and then Malaysia, where he was to sign a $900 million deal on supplying Su-30MK fighter jets. But the Kremlin said in a statement Sunday that he had decided to call off the trip "in connection with the tragic consequences of the terrorist act in Moscow."
 The body of the second suicide bomber was shredded beyond recognition, Kommersant reported.
 All 13 victims were killed in the second explosion, which occurred about 100 meters away from the first and at the entrance to the Tushino outdoor clothing market, where concert tickets were being sold.
 Mourners on Monday placed flowers and candles at a makeshift shrine to the victims just 2 meters away from the epicenter of the second blast. The sidewalk was dotted with small holes from the metal balls used in the bomb. Fresh graffiti scrawled across the wall of a nearby underpass read: "We will remember you forever" and "Death to Chechnya."
 Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov declared Tuesday a day of mourning. All concerts and shows at Moscow venues have been canceled.
 Luzhkov also said each of those injured in the attack would receive 50,000 rubles in compensation and families of those killed would receive 100,000 rubles.
 Luzhkov, together with Gryzlov and Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, visited the scene of the attack on Saturday. City authorities decided not to stop the show, fearing the spectators - many of them intoxicated teenagers - might panic. They later provided some 200 buses to ferry those leaving the concert to a local metro station.
 Many in the crowd did not hear the explosions over the loud music and only found out when anxious relatives and friends started calling their cell phones. MTS's local cell phone network was flooded with so many calls that it went down shortly after the blasts and remained off for hours.
 "Rumors started spreading really quickly," said Andrei Mikhailov, 22. "People started saying that someone was sneaking in cell phones filled with explosives."
 "I thought it was fireworks or maybe that they had started spraying water out of a truck," said Yevgenia Savina, 18, who was standing near the stage, about 200 meters away from the blasts.
 Anxious parents rushed to the airfield, but the police barred them from entering. Many spent hours clinging to the bars of the fence around the field, hoping to catch a glimpse of their children.
 "If only I knew that she was all right," said Valentina Smirnova, who came to the airfield after failing to reach her 18-year-old daughter Sonya on her cell phone. "She just passed her exams at the institute. She and her friend Olesya wanted so much to go to celebrate the start of their vacation."
 Fans and concert organizers seemed less concerned, and the music went on for six hours after the attack. 
 The first victims will be buried Wednesday, Interfax reported.
 City Hall ordered that all attics and basements in Moscow apartment buildings be checked to prevent new attacks.
 Meanwhile, organizers have called off a two-day outdoor rock festival, Nashestvie, scheduled for the first weekend of August. They cited security concerns for the cancellation.
 Saturday was the first time that suicide bombers - who have staged several attacks in Chechnya in the past year, killing scores of people - have managed successfully to carry out an attack in Moscow.
 Moscow saw its first suicide bombers in October last year, when a group of 41 Chechen rebels, including women wearing belts with explosives, took 800 people hostage at the Dubrovka theater. Special forces, however, used gas to knock out the rebels before they were able to detonate their explosives.

TITLE: LenOblast Vote Sees Return of Old Face
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The field of potential candidates for the Sept. 21 St. Petersburg gubernatorial elections continues to grow as nine people have already informed the City Election Commission of their intention to run for the office. But in the Leningrad Oblast, which surrounds but does not include St. Petersburg, the slate remains a little thinner, with only three gubernatorial hopefuls yet to announce that they will try to unseat the incumbent, Valery Serdyukov.
 
Serdyukov himself has not yet announced officially that he will run for another term, but few doubt that there is any question that his name will be on the ballot on oblast election day, which is also set for Sept. 21. Serdyukov enjoys solid support in the Oblast but, unlike Valentina Matviyenko, whose Kremlin backing has made her a clear early favorite in the St. Petersburg race, the incumbent governor already faces at least one candidate with serious credentials and experience in running for the job.
 Vadim Gustov, the representative for the Vladimirskaya Oblast in the Federation Council, announced his intention to run for the position of oblast governor on Friday. A win in the race would mean a homecoming of sorts for Gustov, who was the governor of the Leningrad Oblast in September 1998, when he was appointed as deputy prime-minister in the emergency government of Yevgeny Primakov, which was formed to try to control the situation resulting from the August 1998 default and subsequent plummet in the value of the ruble.
 Despite Serdyukov's popularity, Gustov believes that he has a solid chance of winning.
 "Before the final decision to run for governor was made, we examined [my] ratings and traveled throughout the entire region," Gustov said at a briefing after he had submitted his application documents on Friday, RIA-News reported. "The results of our investigation showed that we really should run."
 Some analysts believe that Gustov could mount a significant challenge to the incumbent, but much will depend on his ability to gain access to media resources, as much of the electronic media in the region is controlled by the oblast government.
 "It is going to be difficult, but necessary, for him to refresh people's social memories because I think that many of the people don't even remember his name," Leonid Kesselman, a political analyst at the Sociology Department of the Russian Academy of Science, said in a telephone interview on Monday.
 Gustov does have a solid track record, particularly as the person who oversaw the introduction of a new oblast investment law in 1997 that provided significant tax breaks to firms investing in the region for the period during which they were recouping their original outlays. The law, which has been defended by Serdyukov's administration against threats created by changes in federal tax legislation, has allowed Leningrad Oblast to attract $524.3 million in new investment between 1998 to 2001, with new arrivals including such major companies as Ford, Philip Morris and Caterpillar.
 Kesselman says that it may be difficult to remind people of the part Gustov played in getting the ball rolling.
 "People have a habit of getting used to things, even if those things are not that positive. It is more important [for people] to experience relative stability, which really does exist, than it is for them to hear new ideas," Kesselman said.
 According to surveys quoted in the local media, Gustov's popularity ratings remained as high as 40 percent during the last gubernatorial elections in the oblast, which were held in 1999.
 Perhaps as interesting as a candidate in the oblast race, if only for his notoriety, is Rudolf Kagramanov, the head of the local Scandalism Party, who says that he will run for governor both in the Leningrad Oblast and in St. Petersburg. Kagramanov has tried to run for office in just about every election held over the last five years and either managed to register only to finish dead last in the vote count or was unable to meet the registry requirements themselves
 Kagramanov says that, should he manage to win both votes, it would have allow him to unify St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast.
 "We're going to have St. Petersburg with the Leningrad Oblast attached to it," Interfax quoted Kagramanov as saying on Friday. "This is my plan for enlarging the regions in which I'm running."
 Kagramanov was just one of five people to announce they would run for the governor's post in St. Petersburg since Friday.
 On Friday, Sergei Belyayev, the former chief of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, and Vasily Goryachov, a journalist with the local "Russia's Land" newspaper, Vladislav Terekhin, who listed himself only as unemployed and Tatyana Amelina, who did not list a profession, all filed candidacy applications with the City Election Commission.
 The governor's post was left open on June 16 when former governor Vladimir Yakovlev was appointed deputy prime minister and put in charge of overseeing reforms to Russia's housing and communal services sector.

TITLE: Playing Away From Home Is Nothing New Here
AUTHOR: By Kevin O'Flynn
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Last week, Andrei Li was looking as he does every night for a place to sleep on the streets. The Sakhalin native survives by selling a newspaper for the homeless.
 
On Monday, he had a Schengen visa in his new passport and was walking around the streets of Graz, Austria, as a representative of Russia in the first Homeless World Cup.
 Li ,along with five other homeless men from St. Petersburg, are on one of 18 teams gathered in Graz for the weeklong tournament, starting Monday. The homeless team from Brazil is being tipped as the favorite, while South Africa is a close runnerup.
 The World Cup is organized by the Independent Network of Street Papers, which connects 50 papers from 27 countries, including The Big Issue in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Melbourne, Diagonal in Buenos Aires, Hecho en Chile in Santiago and Put Domoi in St. Petersburg.
 "This is to show that bomzh, er, the homeless, are not always the stereotypic drunks but normal people who want to do something," Li said in an interview as his team prepared to leave for Austria on Sunday.
 Arkady Tyurin, the editor of Put Domoi and the team's manager, said that one local television reporter saw the team and asked why they looked so normal. Tyurin promptly replied, "Yes, they do look almost human."
 Smartly dressed in tracksuits, the team looks like a regular soccer team. Only a closer look at some of their faces shows signs of their tough lives.
 The players are people who have not given up, said Tyurin, who himself spent 2 1/2 years on the street. We want "to show that we are all people," he said.
 Many months of preparation went into organizing the trip, starting with notices advertising for players in night shelters and later to articles in Put Domoi and the local media. Put Domoi is a smartly designed biweekly with a circulation of 6,000. St. Petersburg's homeless sell copies for 15 rubles (50 cents) and pocket half of the proceeds.
 ISPN and Caritas, the Catholic agency for overseas aid and development, helped cover the costs for the flights to Austria and accommodations.
 One of the reasons the team could travel was the huge help given by the St. Petersburg passport office, which ensured that the players got their documents despite not having any residency permits, Tyurin said.
 "We were surprised that they helped us so much," he said.
 Apart from Li, most of the Russian players have a place to sleep every night - either with relatives or in rented rooms. But they all lack the residency permits, or propiskas, that give them the right to live in the city and live normally.
 "You don't have medical insurance or the proper legal papers, and you feel that you could be thrown out at any minute,"Tyruin, who lived for seven years without a residency permit, said "I had somewhere to stay, but I had to avoid catching the eye of the police."
 The team members have very different stories as to how or why they became homeless. One said he was forced to sell his apartment after the 1998 economic crisis, another blamed family circumstances, while a third had to sell his communal room to pay off debts when he was released from jail.
 "Each has their own story," Tyurin said. "They are a good representation of Russia."
 Some players said they have traveled abroad before, but never to a World Cup.
 "I'm going to represent Russia," player Denis Chernoritsky said. "It's amazing."
 The team seemed quietly confident ahead of their departure, even though they have only trained together for three months.
 Real Madrid trained the Spanish homeless side and Manchester United gave the British team a hand, but St. Petersburg's Zenit refused to help, said player Temir Yursynbekov, who lives in hostel for former prisoners.
 "We asked but didn't get anything," he said. "Some teams have had three years of training, and we've had only three months. ... [But] we will try."

TITLE: Grozny Looking for Vouchers
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The pro-Moscow Chechen administration is pressing Moscow to pay about $33 million for losses incurred to residents who did not get privatization vouchers in the early 1990s.
 
Critics said that the appeal sounded like a populist move ahead of Chechnya's presidential election and that Chechen officials would do better to focus on reviving the war-battered economy than a decade-old complaint.
 In the early 1990s, every Russian citizen received a voucher with a face value of 10 rubles that they could trade for shares in privatized enterprises. The idea was that the enterprises' values would grow, and the shareholders would earn healthy dividends. 
 Then-Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev, however, refused to participate in the scheme, saying Chechnya did not need "tips from a foreign state" and "could take care of its citizens itself."
 Chechen State Council head Khuzein Isayev said last week that Chechens lost out by not receiving 1.2 million vouchers in 1992 and that Moscow must compensate the republic to a tune of 1 billion rubles ($33 million) - the value of the vouchers adjusted for inflation.
 "As Russian citizens, residents of the republic own part of the federal property and have the full right to demand what legally belongs to them but was not given them in vouchers," Isayev was quoted as saying by Kommersant in Thursday's issue. "The thing is, no one dealt with this issue before now."
 Isayev did not say how the money would be spent.
 The State Council's top legal official, Arbi Satuyev, has been charged with drawing up an application for the money from Moscow, Kommersant reported.
 Former Russian parliament Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov dismissed the appeal as a PR stunt ahead of the presidential election in October.
 "I think this idea is just part of the election campaign - a bit of public relations to show the people that the authorities are trying to get some money for them. For poor people, a billion rubles sounds big," Khasbulatov, now a professor at the Russian Economics Academy, said in a telephone interview.
 "What is 1 billion rubles?" he added. "Just look at the damage in the republic. Our calculations show that it totals at least $100 billion in destroyed enterprises and housing."
 The Property Ministry was not immediately available for comment. But a ministry source told Kommersant: "We forgot about vouchers long ago. ... All Russians - not only Chechens - failed to get anything from the vouchers. They were just sheets of paper that symbolized the right of citizens to share some of the property."
 Mocow has set aside about 14 billion rubles ($463 milion) for compensation this year, in addition to the 22.5 billion rubles allotted for the republic in the federal budget.

TITLE: An Inventor Attempts To Save the World
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Editor's note: This is the first of two stories.</i>
 
 MOSCOW - Lev Maximov has engines in his head. Metals levitate in his mind. His dreams are nuclear.
 
The 66-year-old pensioner and inexhaustible inventor gets better with age, registering a dozen patents in the last two years alone. Of the 60 or so unique gizmos to his credit, he's certain that at least a couple can literally save the world - or at least make it a much safer place to live.
 Although not everyone takes his work seriously, many do, some so much that they've stolen his designs, his institute and nearly his life. 
 Maximov doesn't like to talk about that, though. It's not that he minds, it's just that he would rather talk about the only things that really matter to him - his machines.
 He says that his latest creation, a gas-powered steam generator, is vastly more efficient than those currently used to produce comparable amounts of energy and &quot;could save the world,&quot; if he could only convince the United States, the world's biggest polluter, of its economic benefits.
 Contemporary gas-and coal-powered generators can be as large as 10-story buildings and produce vast amounts of carbon dioxide, the acidic gas that most scientists say causes global warming. Maximov's version is about 1,000 times smaller and also produces carbon dioxide, but in liquid form, which can be used to make all kinds of marketable products, such as fertilizers, medicines and dry ice.
 &quot;We can create enough pressure to liquefy the carbon dioxide so that it can be collected and used,&quot; he says. &quot;Some countries want to pump the byproduct deep into the sea, but why? If my technology is implemented, the byproduct will be worth 100 times more than the initial cost of the gas needed to power the boiler in the first place.&quot;
 And then there is the levitating liquid-metal device - one of Maximov's first, and he still says his best, invention. Patented in 1960, this contraption organizes gas pressure in such a way that liquid materials, including metals, are levitated inside a large vessel at the top of a factory and then pulled down through specially shaped openings that can spit out metal products such as pipes or train rails at a rate of 1 kilometer an hour.
 &quot;Imagine a ton of liquid metal that has just been melted. Normally it cools down, then it goes to the presses to become flat. Then it is cut. Then it is bent and then welded into a pipe or something else. With my invention, pipes of any diameter can be cut to any length as they form and are immediately ready to use. The amount of liquid metal in the vessel is limited only by the volume of the vessel and can be any size - even 100 tons,&quot; he says.
 &quot;Today, officially, about 30 percent of all of the energy produced in the world is used for metallurgy. With my technology, the figure would be in the single digits.&quot;
 Maximov's most controversial - and potentially most profitable - creation, however, is a nuclear reactor that runs on thorium, as opposed to much-more volatile uranium or plutonium.
 The reactor is so safe that terrorists will drop nuclear plants from their list of potential targets, he says. The most vulnerable part of present-day reactors are the control rods that regulate chain reactions, but Maximov's assembly has no rods whatsoever.
 &quot;If a plane crashes into my reactor, or a suicide bomber blows it up, it would cause some radioactive pollution - but only in the immediate vicinity. With the exception of thorium, the fuel will contain only a little bit of weapons-grade uranium, just enough to trigger the chain reaction in the thorium.&quot;
 The reactor would not only make the nuclear plants immune from Chernobyl-type meltdowns - the technology would also revolutionize the entire energy industry by making nuclear power exponentially more cost efficient: Maximov believes his assembly would be operational for up to 50 years, whereas the uranium assemblies Russia currently uses work for about three years.
 State Duma Deputy Ivan Nikitchuk, a nuclear scientist from Arzamas-16, one of the still-restricted scientific settlements where much of the country's secret nuclear research is conducted, said that if the government eventually embraces Maximov's thorium fuel assembly, Russia would gain &quot;a colossal economic advantage.&quot; 
 &quot;In contemporary reactors we now burn a maximum of 7 percent of the nuclear fuel that runs them,&quot; Nikitchuk said. &quot;Even if we could utilize half of the fuel, it would be huge progress. But if, as Maximov says, his thorium reactor could burn 90 percent, it would be a breakthrough.&quot;
 Without funding, however, Maximov's machines will remain on paper and his body of work will never receive the scrutiny it deserves. With a monthly government stipend of 1,400 rubles ($45), he can't afford to do much more than think and design.
 But things weren't always that way.
 Originally trained in the 1950s and 1960s as a nuclear physicist, by the 1980s Maximov had developed scores of original concepts in areas a far afield as industry, defense and space, and in 1989 the Soviet Union's Council of Ministers decided to build him his own research institute.
 Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, who signed the decree creating the institute, said in an interview that the idea to build the center came after experiments based on Maximov's levitating liquids machine at Uralmash, one of the country's largest metals factories, proved promising. 
 &quot;I understood that all of Maximov's ideas were very attractive and that they could be used in different sectors of the economy,&quot; Ryzhkov said. &quot;That is why we decided to build him a research and design center.&quot;
 A vast scientific complex that would cover three hectares and employ 1,000 scientists and 2,000 other people was supposed to be built in Novosibirsk to develop Maximov's ideas.
 The Council of Ministers even gave it a classic Soviet-style appellative: the Institute of Physic and Technical Problems of Metallurgy and Special Machine-Building of the U.S.S.R.'s Minatomenergoprom.
 Some $10 million was spent constructing a 14-story, 25,000 square meter building that was to be the main design and research center, but the project never got off the ground - it collapsed together with the Soviet Union.
 The entire complex was 90 percent finished when it was auctioned off by the regional administration in 1993 &quot;for the price of a three-room apartment,&quot; Maximov says. He doesn't remember the exact price, he says, because &quot;rubles were crazy then.&quot;
 A year later, Maximov's entire scientific archive was stolen, including secret reports written for the Soviet government and the blueprints for 10 of his inventions that he intended to patent abroad. He says he was never able to initiate a proper investigation into the crime, but he believes the booty ended up in the archives of what is now the Nuclear Power Ministry, a charge the ministry denies.
 That same year, on Aug. 27, 1994, he was abducted by several people inside one of Novosibirsk's secret nuclear-research compounds who shoved him behind the seat of a car. He said it was clear to him that his abductors intended to kill him, but security guards managed to free him before the car could leave the compound. Again, no investigation followed, he says, because law enforcement authorities refused to cooperate.
 The &quot;attempt&quot; on Maximov's life came shortly after he started to protest publicly against a deal the Kremlin had struck with Washington to turn highly enriched uranium into low-enriched uranium that would be sold to the United States for use in its nuclear power plants.
 That deal, hailed as a hallmark in post Cold War relations, resulted in Russia selling virtually all of its existing weapons-grade uranium - 500 tons - to the United States for $11.9 billion, a fraction of the $8 trillion a special State Duma commission investigating the deal in 1997 concluded it was worth.
 On April 8, 1997, the chief of staff of the Siberian military district, Lieutenant General Yevgeny Malakhov, referring to Maximov's outspoken opposition to the uranium deal, wrote State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov a letter in which he warned that Maximov's life was in danger.
 &quot;We have information that an extremely alarming situation has developed around L. N. Maximov that threatens his life. This and several other facts say that the scholar has touched on the interests of big state crooks. 
 The precautions being taken now cannot provide [him] safety for long; more radical measures are needed,&quot; Malakhov wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The St. Petersburg Times.
 Seleznyov, however, never received the warning, Maximov says, and two years later he was attacked again, this time while riding Novosibirsk's longest escalator.
 Several men with stun guns rendered him unconscious as he descended into the Ploshchad Lenina metro station and when he came to they beat him with brass knuckles. 
 He spent the next six months in the hospital recovering and the damage done in the attack can still be seen on his forehead, but again, no investigation followed.
 But Maximov has no time to contemplate what history may or may not decide about his work; he's too busy inventing.
 Next up? A car engine that will work on liquefied air, for which Rospatent, the state patents agency, just gave preliminary approval.
 But it is his nuclear designs that continue to spark controversy.
 And in this field, where billions of dollars are at stake, Maximov is seen as a dangerous outsider threatening the well-being of a handful of senior officials at the powerful Nuclear Power Ministry.

TITLE: Khodorovsky Caught by Shifting Politics
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan and Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The pressure on Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky reflects a shifting balance of power in the Kremlin, where players who have emerged during Vladimir Putin's presidency are asserting themselves to challenge well-established alliances between the old guard, leading financial-industrial groups and political parties ahead of the elections.
 
Yukos has traditionally relied on Boris Yeltsin's retinue, known as the Family, and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov's team for leverage in the halls of power, sometimes playing these two clans against one another to remain relatively independent, according to Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank.
 However, with the influence of the Family waning, Yukos can no longer rely on it for patronage and protection, and is vulnerable to attack from other clans, such as the one led by two deputy heads of the presidential administration, Viktor Ivanov and Igor Sechin, political observers said.
 Ivanov served in the Federal Security Service, including in its St. Petersburg branch, for years before joining the presidential administration in January 2000, and his clan is known as the St. Petersburg chekists, or security-service officers, who hail from Putin's hometown. This clan has many supporters in the law enforcement, defense and security agencies. Sechin began working with Putin in 1990 in St. Petersburg and, when Putin moved to Moscow in 1997, he brought Sechin with him.
 Having assumed high posts under Putin, the chekist clan's leaders have been working quietly to expand their influence, and apparently decided to make their influence felt as the parliamentary and presidential elections near. Yukos is prized for its financial resources and lobbying capabilities.
 Ivanov and Sechin have competed with the clan of the so-called old St. Petersburgers, which includes Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin, Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref and Unified Energy Systems CEO Anatoly Chubais. The chekists seem to have even less love for the Family, which includes presidential chief of staff Alexander Voloshin and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
 Roman Abramovich, the main shareholder in Sibneft, which is merging with Yukos, is reported to be among the Family's supporters. In a sign that he may also come under pressure, Audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin said on Monday that Sibneft is one of the &quot;biggest tax cheats&quot; among Russian companies. &quot;We think that we have to change the way we collect taxes from our largest oil companies,&quot; Interfax reported Stepashin as saying.
 Khodorkovsky himself has made no secret of his belief that the fraud charges brought against his business associate Platon Lebedev and the pressure being put on his oil company is the result of a Kremlin power struggle.
 &quot;My opinion is that what we are seeing here is the beginning of a fight for power between various branches of the sphere around Vladimir Vladimirovich,&quot; Khodorkovsky said late Saturday in Tomsk in an interview with Krasnoyarsk's TV-2 television.
 He declined to say which Kremlin clan was putting pressure on him, and by not naming names he avoided an all-out war.
 Khodorkovsky was tough in defending his company. &quot;We are the largest company in the country and we are an independent company.&quot; He said Yukos has &quot;sufficient resources for its legal and political defense&quot; and suggested it had powerful supporters of its own.
 &quot;There are enough forces in society that are not interested in having people with epaulets thinking that they have received a carte blanche,&quot; he said in the interview, which was posted on Ekho Moskvy's Web site.
 But Khodorkovsky sought to downplay his and his company's political clout. &quot;One should not exaggerate the real influence of our political activities. We are not as formidable a force in the sphere of politics as many try to imagine.&quot; Yukos, he said, is not the &quot;subject&quot; in the struggle for power but the &quot;object.&quot;
 He also sought to demonstrate that he and his company are careful not to go against the president. &quot;If he has any objections, he directly states them. And we then try to ensure that these objections do not grow,&quot; Khodorkovsky said. 
 At the same time, Khodorkovsky gave no clear answer to a direct question on whether he may run for president in 2007 when Putin's second term would end.
 These statements indicate that Khodorkovsky does not plan to surrender and will fight to keep control of Yukos, although he is ready to negotiate with the new heavyweights in the Kremlin, according to Pribylovsky and Nikolai Petrov, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
 It may remain unknown to the general public what specifically those putting pressure on Khodorkovsky want from him and on what terms Khodorkovsky will settle, but one clear sign that a deal has been struck would be the release of Lebedev, analysts said. 
 Lebedev, the third-largest shareholder in Yukos' parent company, Group Menatep, was arrested last week and charged with defrauding the state of $280 million in a 1994 privatization deal.
 Vyacheslav Nikonov, the head of the Politika Foundation, said the main goal being pursued by the people behind the attack on Khodorkovsky is still unclear.
 &quot;If it is all about trying to scare him off from going too far into politics, then it is pretty much already achieved. Khodorkovsky can be kept on a short leash for as long as [Lebedev] is in prison,&quot; Nikonov said.
 Khodorkovsky has been openly funding political parties that will challenge the pro-Kremlin United Russia coalition in December's elections. 
 There is little doubt that pro-Kremlin deputies will form a substantial part of the next State Duma and that Putin will get re-elected. &quot;However, the question still remains, who will Putin have to thank for forming the majority in the Duma and helping him&quot; to secure a second presidential term, Petrov said.
 Nikonov said that the presidential administration's efforts to beef up a pro-Kremlin party ahead of the elections are clearly uncoordinated.
 &quot;There are a lot of towers in the Kremlin: Spasskaya, Waterpumping, Arsenal Two of them are not even named and not all of the towers are connected to one another,&quot; he said.
 The chekist clan is behind the recent decision by the People's Party, whose members control more than one-fifth of the Duma, to break away from United Russia, which is supervised by Voloshin and his deputy Vladislav Surkov, according to the analysts. 
 The co-chairpeople of United Russia's higher council include Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov and Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, as well as Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov. 
 There has been some speculation that the highly publicized arrests last month of senior Moscow police officials and one of Shoigu's deputies, who are accused of running an extortion ring, were aimed at discrediting Gryzlov, Shoigu and, by extension, United Russia. 
 Interestingly, the same investigator from the Prosecutor General's Office - Salavat Karimov - conducted the first interrogations of the arrested police officials and is now investigating the alleged crimes committed by Lebedev.
 Over the past three years, Karimov has made a career of investigating high-profile cases against Russia's tycoons. It was Karimov who handled the case against Vladimir Gusinsky in 2000, which led to the media magnate's departure from Russia's political arena and from the country itself.

TITLE: Questions Remain in Journalist'sDemise
AUTHOR: By Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Hundreds of people gathered on Saturday to pay tribute to investigative journalist and State Duma Deputy Yury Shchekochikhin and urge the authorities to find out the cause of his death.
 
The results of an autopsy Friday, however, will only be known in 10 days to a month, said Yevgenia Dillendorf, a spokesperson for the liberal Yabloko party, of which Shchekochikhin was a member.
 Shchekochikhin, 53, died Wednesday night after suffering a serious allergic reaction, and many of his colleagues in the Duma and at his newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, have expressed fears of foul play.
 Dillendorf said on Friday that the autopsy will show whether Shchekochikhin was poisoned. She said he had suffered a rash that appeared to have ended up fatally damaging his internal organs.
 She said that several laboratories were poring over the autopsy.
 The Central Clinical Hospital, where Shchekochikhin was hospitalized for nine days before his death, declined to comment on Friday.
 Prominent figures including former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Yabloko head Grigory Yavlinsky and Union of Right Forces leader Boris Nemtsov attended a memorial service for Shchekochikhin at the hospital Saturday.
 &quot;This is a loss not only for his relatives but for the whole country because civil society is based upon people like this,&quot; Gorbachev said.
 Yabloko Deputy Vladimir Lukin opened the memorial service by offering condolences to Shchekochikhin's wife and two sons. He ended his speech with an appeal to the authorities to come up with &quot;a clear, precise and full answer&quot; to questions about the cause of the death.
 Retired police General Alexander Gurov - who in the 1980s served as a primary source for Shchekochikhin's unprecedented exposes of corruption in the Soviet ranks - also expressed bewilderment about the death.
 &quot;His condition suddenly worsened, and too many questions have been left unanswered after his death,&quot; Gurov, who heads the Duma's security committee, told Gazeta.ru.
 In Soviet times, Gurov worked as chief of the Interior Ministry's anti-organized crime department and helped Shchekochikhin investigate corruption and abuse of power in the nomenklatura for a series of groundbreaking articles.
 Shchekochikhin had many enemies and received numerous threats due to his investigative reporting, Dillendorf said.
 Shchekochikhin, who suffered a slight stroke in April, first felt ill June 17 during a trip to Ryazan on an assignment for Novaya Gazeta, Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov was quoted by Kommersant as saying in its Friday issue.
 When he returned to Moscow, his condition continued to worsen and he was hospitalized, Muratov said.
 Central Clinical Hospital doctors were unable to diagnose Shchekochikhin's condition, and the patient slipped into a coma five days before his death. He never recovered consciousness.
 Shchekochikhin served as the deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta from 1997 and as a Duma deputy from 1995.

TITLE: Popular Bird Again Flies Coop
AUTHOR: By Iran Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Weighing a mere five kilograms and just 11 centimeters in height, <i>&quot;Chizhik Pyzhik&quot;</i>, a bronze sculpture of a Siskin, which usually occupies a perch on the Fontanka River near the Mikhailovsky Castle is a favorite with tourists, newlyweds and, unfortunately, thieves.
 
According to officials at the city's 79th police precinct, which is responsible for the territory that includes the tiny statues usual home, Chizhik Pyzhik was stolen from its spot on Sunday night - an occurrence that has become so regular that it is difficult to get a consensus on how many times the ill-starred monument has gone missing.
 Nadezhda Yefremova, the head of the monuments department of the St. Petersburg Museum of sculpture, says that this is the fourth time the little bird has gone missing, while a duty officer at the 79th precinct, who asked that his name not be given, said that it had flown the coop more than that, although he could not provide a specific figure.
 Yefremova says that the most likely reason people steal the statue is for the value of the metal of which it is made, although she says the value of the actual materials is unlikely to fetch more than a few thousand rubles on local metals markets.
 Yefremova said that the statue, which was created by Georgian sculptor Rezo Gabriadse in 1994, was returned to the city twice after having surfaced at precious metals outlets. The duty officer at the 79th precinct also said that the police had once caught thieves at the scene in the act of trying to abscond with the statue.
 The last time Chizhik Pyzhik was lifted, in April 2002, it did not resurface and its spot was left vacant until a Muscovite, who was angered by its absence during a tourist visit here, made an anonymous contribution to have the little bird restored to its place. A new Chizhik Pyzhik was created by St. Petersburg sculptors and re-installed in its rightful place in September with the help of funding from the disappointed tourist.
 &quot;I doubt very much that anyone is going to help have the sculpture replaced this time, as there seems to be no point,&quot; Yefremova said.
 But for city residents and visitors who subscribe to the belief that managing to toss a coin so that it stays on the little bird's pedestal brings good luck, the Siskin will be missed. Newly married couples, in particular, come to the site to look for a sign of good fortune.
 Although the Russian word for Siskin is <i>&quot;Chizh&quot;</i>, the rhyming nickname &quot;Chizhik Pyzhik&quot; was given to students of a law school founded by Pyotr Oldenburgsky in 1935 on the site where, the statue sat before it disappeared again on Sunday.
 The official uniform at the school was green and yellow, the same colors as the Siskin. Like many students at the time (as well as at present) , the students of Oldenburgsky's college were prone to trying to get away from the books to unwind, with one of the most popular spots being a nearby tavern operated by a merchant named Nefyodov.
 A popular rhyme (it rhymes in Russian) begins with the line &quot;Chizhik-Pyzhik, where have you been?&quot; and follows with the answer &quot;Drinking vodka on the Fontanka.&quot;
 Increasingly, monuments in the city have been the targets of vandalism and theft, with the apprehension of vandals who were attempting to saw the head off of one of the equestrian statues on the Anichkov Bridge in June and the theft of the sculpture based on Nikolai Gogol's &quot;Nose&quot;, on Rimskogo-Korsakova Ulitsa, last September being two recent examples.
 Both the police and Yefremova say that it is likely that the statue will not surface at a precious-metals dealer this time either.
 &quot;Someone might just have take, Chizhik-Pyzhik as a souvenir,&quot; Yefremova said.

TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Krotov Quits
 </b>

ST.PETERSBURG (SPT) - Victor Krotov, the head of the City Hall Financial Committee has voluntarily resigned, Interfax reported on Monday, quoting the City Hall press-service.
 Alexander Beglov, the acting governor, has appointed Mikhail Krylov, Krotov's former deputy, to act in his place.
 Earlier in June, the Legislative Assembly attempted to bring a vote of no confidence against Krotov, but abandoned the idea after the presidential representative's office asked the city parliament not to complicate the political situation in the city.
 According to Vladimir Barkanov, the head of the Legislative Assembly Budget Committee, the deputies wanted to punish Krotov because "the Financial Committee was stopping the St. Petersburg Audit Chamber from examining the way the budget was administered from 2000 to 2002 by repeatedly missing Legislative Assembly sessions and because the current budget was being administered in a strange way over the first four months of 2004," Interfax reported Bakarov as saying.
 
 
<b>Saucy Platform
 </b>

ST. PETERSURG TIMES (SPT) - Mikhail Druzhininsky, the leader of local anti-globalist organization, has announced that his organization and its allies would endorse a single candidate in the Sept. 21 gubernatorial elections as long as the candidate was willing to make certain committments, Interfax reported on Friday.
 "We are in the process of deciding who we will support. Beside committing to running on a serious social and economic platform, we also want the candidate to guarantee that we can pour ketchup all over them and throw them off of a second floor. We will support anyone who gives us this type of guarantee," Druzhininsky said.
 At the same time Druzhininsky said that he and his allies were not planning to pay much attention to the gubernatorial elections because they have many other plans "here and abroad," Interfax reported.
 
 
<b>EU Media Warning
 </b>

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - The European Union warned Moscow on Monday that recent actions against the news media could make neighborly relations difficult.
 The statement calling for "measures to support and strengthen the plurality and independence of the media" was issued on behalf of more than 30 countries by Italy, which just took over the rotating EU presidency.
 The EU statement expressed "concern" about the June 22 closure of TVS television.
 It also expressed "hopes" that any changes to Russia's media law "will not constrain the ability of journalists to report fully and accurately on the upcoming Duma and presidential elections."
 The State Duma last month passed a bill that would give authorities the right to shut down news outlets during a campaign if they violate election laws.
 
 
<b>Sport Seals Status
 </b>

MOSCOW (MT) - A shareholder of Sport, the state-controlled station that last month replaced TVS on channel 6, said Monday that it has struck a deal to buy a 75 percent stake in Boris Berezovsky's MNVK.
 The deal seals the rights of the station to keep broadcasting on the channel.
 MNVK holds the broadcasting license for Channel 6 - even though the Press Ministry pulled the plug on its TV6 television last year.
 The ministry later held a tender and awarded TVS with a temporary permit for the channel. MNVK was challenging that decision in court until Monday.
 In announcing the stake acquisition on Monday, shareholder Rosmediacom did not disclose any details of the deal. Rosmediacom is owned by three state-controlled companies, Vneshtorgbank, Sberbank and the All-Russian State Television and Radio Co., or VGTRK. Sport's other shareholders are the State Sports Committee, the Moscow city government and VGTRK.
 
 
<b>Chopper Shot Down?
 </b>

MOSCOW (AP) - An Mi-8 military helicopter that crashed in Chechnya, killing five soldiers and injuring 10 others, could have been brought down by gunfire, local media reported Monday.
 The helicopter crashed Sunday in the Kurchaloi region south of Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city. Preliminary reports suggested a technical failure was to blame, but Interfax quoted an unnamed source as saying several dozen bullet holes were found in the crash debris. Itar-Tass also quoted sources from the inspection team working at the crash site as saying that the helicopter could have been shot down. 



TITLE: Leading Banks Make Top 1,000
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Wide-scale reform of the banking sector may still be a long way off, but at least some Russian banks are making a name for themselves abroad.
 
Fifteen Russian banks are among the top 1,000 in the world and 14 are in the top 25 in Central and Eastern Europe, according to an annual report by The Banker, published in the magazine's July issue. Last year, 12 Russian banks made the global list and 12 made the regional ranking.
 Analysts say that the rankings, which rely on companies' own data and are based on tangible net worth [first-tier capital], should not be taken at face value, but that they do give some indication of direction.
 &quot;This is useful information,&quot; said an analyst at financial research agency Rating Center. &quot;Whether banks make it on the list depends on their goals, not fundamentals alone.&quot;
 State savings bank Sberbank is the top Russian bank on The Banker's list, but it only ranks 155th, with $2.34 billion in first-tier capital, a far cry from first-ranked Citigroup's $59 billion.
 Alice Partridge, The Banker's deputy research editor, said that, for the purpose of comparison, the magazine employs annual financial statements audited to international accounting standards in establishing its rankings, though these standards are still not mandatory in Russia.
 &quot;We aim to get IAS accounting standards for all the banks, although occasionally this is unavailable as banks report first in Russian standards and then IAS,&quot; she said. &quot;We usually make a note of these banks and change the figures to IAS when they become available.&quot;
 Also making the rankings harder to compile is the fact that fiscal years vary in different countries. European banks, for example, file their annual reports in December, Indian and Japanese banks publish in March, and in Australia they publish in December.
 In addition to these problems, Russian banks are quite skillful in changing numbers to suit particular goals.
 &quot;Some banks manage to reduce the difference between Russian and IAS accounts to a minimum,&quot; the analyst from Rating Center said. &quot;Others have a difference to the tune of a multiple.&quot;
 The new names in this year's top 1,000 are the Bank of Moscow, Uralsib and Trust. Sobinbank, which made the list last year, dropped out due to deteriorating financials, according to The Banker.
 Out of three new additions to the list, two have recently renamed themselves and mapped out new growth strategies.
 &quot;One of the rationales behind these rebranding efforts is to change a lengthy name into one that is shorter and more catchy,&quot; said Andrei Ivanov, analyst at Troika Dialog. &quot;But the major reason is a change in corporate strategy and goals.&quot;
 Trust, a successor to Trust and Investment Bank, which was known under its Russian acronym DIB, shifted gears into investment banking, whereas Uralsib changed its name from Bashkreditbank and is now trying to position itself as a one-stop bank that offers commercial-banking services nationwide.
 DIB was one of the two major bridge banks that succeeded Menatep, a former cash cow for Mikhail Khodorkovsky's industrial empire. The other is Menatep St. Petersburg.
 Since its name change, Uralsib has gone on a shopping spree and acquired several other banking institutions in areas outside its native Bashkortostan.
 Ivanov said that industry insiders look at the top 100 banks, rather than the top 1,000.
 &quot;Appearance in the top 1,000 list is more of an image issue,&quot; he said.
 
 

<strong>2002 MEMBERS </strong>

 Sberbank
 Vneshtorgbank
 Gazprombank
 International Industrial Bank
 MDM
 Vneshekonombank
 Globex
 Bank of Moscow
 Alfa
 Uralsib
 Rosbank
 Petrokommerzbank
 Nomos
 Trust
 International Moscow Bank <i>Source: The Banker</i>


TITLE: Profits at Two Oil Majors Shoot Up In Wake of War
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Carefully timing each other's moves, the country's two largest oil companies issued their first quarter results Monday - and both blew market expectations away.
 
Boosted by sky-high global oil prices that averaged more than $30 per barrel in the first three months of the year, both Yukos and LUKoil tripled their net profits in the first quarter of the year under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, beating analysts' expectations.
 The two giants have been competing for years to lay claim to the title as Russia's biggest producer. 
 Longtime No. 1 LUKoil was recently overtaken by fast-growing Yukos, but while Yukos is more profitable and the country's largest company by market capitalization, LUKoil claims it is the largest private company in the world in terms of oil reserves.
 The tale of the tape was equally split Monday, as LUKoil boasted higher revenues - $5.1 billion versus $3.9 billion - but the leaner, meaner Yukos took home the higher profit, at $1.27 billion versus $820 million. 
 But both posted a threefold rise in profit on the year. 
 &quot;The gap between the two companies remains, with Yukos being on top in terms of profitability by a margin of roughly 50 percent,&quot; said Ivan Mazalov, oil and gas analyst with Commerzbank in London.
 Seeing its main rival take the lead, LUKoil mapped out a cost-cutting program last year, but it has thus far failed to narrow the gap.
 In 2002, LUKoil reported sales of $15.4 billion, more than a third higher than Yukos' $11.4 billion. However, Yukos cleared $2.7 billion in profit, while LUKoil's was $1.8 billion.
 Oil companies worldwide have been riding high as the war in Iraq and output disruptions in a number of oil producing countries, including Nigeria and Venezuela, have kept prices unusually high.
 But analysts said that the soaring profits posted by LUKoil and Yukos were due to more than just luck. 
 &quot;The fact that LUKoil managed to keep costs at bay, despite 6-percent ruble appreciation in real terms is particularly impressive,&quot; said Konstantin Reznikov, oil and gas analyst with Alfa Bank.
 According to Reznikov, both companies are likely to report lower profits in the second quarter of the year due to a drop in oil prices and increases in taxes, which usually follow price changes with a two-month lag.
 LUKoil's stock edged up 2.1 percent Monday to $20.53 per share, which translates into a market cap of $17.5 billion.
 Yukos, meanwhile, jumped 4.85 percent to $14.04, implying a market cap of $31.2 billion.
 &quot;Yukos is more efficient, but it is almost twice as expensive as LUKoil,&quot; Reznikov said.
 Alfa Bank recommends that both stocks be held. 
 &quot;There is probably a tiny, 10-percent, upside left on LUKoil, while Yukos's price is close to its fair value,&quot; Reznikov said.
 


TITLE: Russia Threatens More Poultry Restrictions
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Ongoing food safety fears may prompt Russia to ban all imports of poultry and poultry products from the European Union after July 11, according to an Agriculture Ministry document issued after talks with EU veterinary officials in Brussels on Friday.
 
The Russian delegation, headed by First Deputy Agriculture Minister Sergei Dankvert, accused the EU of using double health standards for imports and exports.
 &quot;When there is a need [for Russia] to import a European shipment, there are no limitations and everything is imported. But when the issue concerns exporting Russian products to the EU, the EU sends a 250-page questionnaire. There should be no double standards. We want to clear up this issue, and we will,&quot; RIA Novosti quoted Dankvert as saying before meeting with EU officials.
 Brussels and Moscow on Friday agreed to sign a unified veterinary certificate that will replace the bilateral agreements Russia has with each EU country. Dankvert said that Russia needs health safety guarantees from the EU as a whole, especially with new countries set to join the union.
 During Friday's talks, Brussels told Russia that it would on July 11 lift the current ban on poultry exports from the Netherlands, the world's fourth largest poultry exporter, as well as Belgium and Germany.
 The ban was introduced after an outbreak of avian flu this year, which prompted a Russian farm to kill more than 90,000 chickens to prevent an outbreak in the country.
 Russian veterinary officials insist that the danger of avian flu spreading from Europe to Russia has not yet passed.
 &quot;Russia retains the right to limit poultry imports from all of the EU countries,&quot; Interfax quoted the Agriculture Ministry document as saying.
 Russia purchases up to a third of the EU's poultry exports, importing 264,000 metric tons last year, or 20 percent of poultry imports.

TITLE: If You Don't Want To Know, Then Don't Ask
AUTHOR: By Joseph C. Wilson IV
TEXT: 
 
WASHINGTON - Did the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?
 
Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear-weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
 For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as charge d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last U.S. diplomat to meet with Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George Bush's ambassador to Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.
 It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional-weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.
 In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the CIA that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake, a form of lightly processed ore, by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990s. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.
 After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to Niger, I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the CIA paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the U.S. government.
 In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-'70s and visited as a National Security Council official in the late '90s. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River over the John F. Kennedy bridge, the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.
 The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq - and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.
 I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
 Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.
 As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors - they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government - and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.
 Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the CIA. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.
 Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in U.S.-government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a CIA report summing up my trip and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.
 I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a &quot;white paper&quot; asserting that Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.
 Then, in January, President George W. Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.
 The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that, in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.
 Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.
 The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand - though I would be very interested to know why. If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March &quot;Meet the Press&quot; appearance, Cheney said that Hussein was &quot;trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.&quot;) At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.
 I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological-weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear-research program - all of which were in violation of UN resolutions. Having encountered Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.
 But were these dangers the same ones the Bush administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor &quot;revisionist history,&quot; as Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.
 
 <i>Joseph C. Wilson IV, U.S. ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, is an international business consultant. He contributed this comment to The New York Times. </i>

TITLE: The Intelligence Games Remain the Same
AUTHOR: By Pavel Felgenhauer
TEXT: 
 
The row in Britain over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - or their absence - intensified last week. Journalists accused the authorities of having &quot;sexed up&quot; a dossier on Iraq's illegal weapons, published last September, by inserting a line about Saddam Hussein having a 45-minute capability (see story, page 5).
 
British ministers and officials, in turn, accused the government-owned BBC of an &quot;inadequate piece of journalism,&quot; while the BBC said it was standing by its story.
 During the invasion by U.S.-led forces in March, Hussein did not use weapons of mass destruction at all. And now, after more than two months of intensive searches, coalition soldiers have failed to find any such weapons. It would seem evident that Britain and the United States invaded Iraq using an erroneous pretext.
 When the British dossier on Iraq was published last year, the evidence presented in the document did not match the conclusions. Hussein clearly did not have any serious long-range mass-destruction capabilities and his short-range capacity was extremely limited.
 Although the British government is adamantly refusing to admit the facts, it is clear its dossier was essentially a propaganda-laden sham, full of conjecture.
 For the general public this may be something new and disturbing, but not for veterans of Cold War spy games. Numerous films and books, produced over the past decades, have portrayed the intelligence services of East and West as omniscient, omnipotent, ruthless organizations that fought a vicious worldwide cloak-and-dagger battle.
 Ruthless they maybe were and are, but the omniscient and omnipotent part is like the Iraqi dossier - a conjured projection.
 When I talk to veteran spies or read the dossiers they have produced (some of them are now partially declassified), time and again I'm appalled by the poor quality of the material. Even tabloids would think twice about publishing some of these stories - so incredible and unsubstantiated are they.
 But, of course, spy organizations' output is never intended for publication - it is always top secret and for a good reason. British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a strategic mistake when he published his &quot;sexy&quot; Iraqi dossier for all to see.
 During the Cold War, the military and political establishments of both East and West wanted their intelligence services to produce evidence that the other side was armed with the best weapons possible and that the enemy was at least 10 times stronger numerically and ready to pounce at any minute.
 Accurate intelligence reports that exposed the real weaknesses of the opposing military machine or disclosed the lack of genuine aggressive intentions in the West (or East) were dismissed out of hand as disinformation specially planted by the enemy. Intelligence officers that had the folly to seek and report genuine findings were regularly reprimanded or dismissed by their superiors.
 Now the Cold War is long over and with it the need to produce a constant stream of fictitious &quot;evidence&quot; to support the nonstop arms race and maintain allied cohesion in the face of the enemy. But the intelligence services of the East and West are still staffed by essentially the same people as before: Professionals when it comes to producing a top-secret equivalent of the U.S. National Enquirer.
 Last April, President Vladimir Putin publicly ridiculed Blair about the failure of the allies to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction in occupied Iraq. He joked: &quot;If need be, we would have found them long ago.&quot;
 He certainly would have. When Russian forces were preparing to invade Chechnya in September 1999 (preparations were commenced at least half a year in advance, as with the war in Iraq), a plausible pretext also arrived in time - the invasion by Chechen rebels of neighboring Dagestan and a series of mysterious explosions of working-class apartment blocks in Moscow. (During planning and preparation for the war in Chechnya, Putin was head of the Federal Security Service.)
 The British are lucky to have the BBC. It's impossible to imagine that Russia's state-run television channels could launch an investigation or air any program exposing the shams that led to the invasion of Chechnya, or even question obvious contradictions in the official version of events.
 Only public exposure can break up the system of collusion of unscrupulous spooks with government officials to conjure up pretexts for more wars and arms procurement. But in Russia there is little hope it will ever happen.
 
 <i>Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst. </i>

TITLE: Raising GDP Through Energy
AUTHOR: By Vitaly Yermakov
TEXT: The Russian administration wants to have its cake and eat it too, at least as far as the tariffs of Gazprom and Unified Energy Systems are concerned.
 
President Vladimir Putin recently, in his state of the nation address, set the goal of doubling the country's GDP over the next decade. This implies an average annual growth rate of 7.2 percent, compared with 5.1 percent in the recent four-year period of recovery since the 1998 economic crisis (1999 to 2002). During this period, only in one year did annual GDP growth exceed 7 percent.
 One of the preconditions supporting such a dramatic growth spurt would be for the government to rein in increases in electricity and gas tariffs. In the same address, regarding tariff policy, the president said: &quot;State-regulated tariffs of the infrastructural monopolies are increasing faster than prices in the free-market sector of the Russian economy. As a result, there is growing redistribution of economic resources in favor of the monopoly sector, and its share in the Russian economy is growing. And yet the monopoly sector is not exhibiting a high level of efficiency. Thus, the monopolists strangle the competitive sector in our economy. The government should control this more strictly.&quot;
 However, a national energy strategy, which was released not long after the state of the nation address, envisages a gradual liberalization of prices for gas and electricity in order to eliminate price distortions and to create incentives for replenishing capital stock in Russia's gas and power sectors. The government approved the energy strategy in general terms on May 23 and was supposed to finalize it by the end of June, but is still dragging its feet.
 To reach the ambitious GDP growth target set by Putin, while allowing tariffs to grow at the pace stipulated in the new energy strategy, the government will have to perform a nightmarish juggling act.
 Current government thinking links tariff increases with a slowdown in economic growth in the first seven years of the reform. For example, there are four possible scenarios with different policy instruments and corresponding projections of economic growth within the energy strategy. The scenario envisaging a quick restructuring of Gazprom and UES and rapid increase in energy tariffs is associated with average annual economic growth over the next decade of just 2.5 percent to 3.0 percent.
 To add confusion to an already complicated picture, the government's energy strategy contains contradictory tariff projections. The troubling discovery that the strategy is suffering from a mild case of schizophrenia can apparently be explained by the fact that the section on economic scenarios was prepared by the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, while the section on the gas industry comes from the Energy Ministry. What is more worrisome is that they could not resolve their differences and included two conflicting sets of numbers in the publicly presented draft.
 Gas prices are the key energy input for domestic consumption, and natural gas is a key input for electricity generation (accounting for over 68 percent of fuel inputs for thermal plants producing electricity and heat), and therefore higher gas prices will directly translate into rising electricity bills, hitting the entire economy.
 The administration wants to avoid a painful &quot;shock therapy&quot; at all costs, especially on the eve of parliamentary and presidential elections. But the low gas prices in Russia threaten to undermine the security of gas supply, because they prevent Gazprom from investing in a new generation of gas projects and also make it uneconomical for independent gas producers to be in business unless they have access to the profitable gas-export market.
 Against this backdrop, Gazprom has been pushing for a safe option: the creation of a two-tiered market for natural gas in Russia as an alternative to the breakup of the company. The two-tiered market idea is a compromise solution. Broadly speaking, the proposal calls for introducing higher &quot;commercial&quot; prices that will coexist with lower &quot;regulated&quot; prices. 
 The zone of unregulated gas would gradually expand to 30 to 40 billion cubic meters by 2005 and amount to approximately half of Russia's domestic consumption by 2015. Initially Gazprom was not enthusiastic about the idea, but recently, it seems, the new Gazprom management - now facing an acute problem of maintaining its current production levels - decided to embrace the idea of expanding the zone of liberalized gas.
 This course may indeed provide a way out of the current tariff deadlock and secure better aggregate rates of economic growth for Russia, at least initially, but it comes with a price tag - prolonging overall inefficiency of the Russian economy.
 On the one hand, he wants to shield the energy-inefficient economy from the inflationary and destabilizing effects of an overly rapid increase in energy tariffs. On the other, he understands that low prices for key inputs will deter investment in Russia's energy-producing and energy-consuming infrastructure and industry. His solution up to now has been a go-slow approach: a gradual and highly controlled increase in natural monopoly tariffs.
 All indications are that the state will continue to squeeze UES, Gazprom and the Railways Ministry in an effort to test their pain threshold and determine their true costs. A policy of limiting natural monopolies' tariffs may reduce pain in the near term, but is likely to add to Russia's economic problems in the longer term.
 This is because distorted prices for major inputs such as gas and electricity distort all other prices throughout the economy and send the wrong signals to economic agents. The resulting inefficiencies create a self-reinforcing trap.
 The administration's progress in formulating and implementing its strategy on energy tariff regulation in the coming months will provide an important indication of the Russian state's ability to deliver on its goal of doubling Russia's GDP over 10 years.
 
 <i>
Vitaly Yermakov, an analyst with Cambridge Energy Research Associates, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times. The opinions expressed are the author's own and do not represent those of CERA. </i>

TITLE: Putting the Cuffs on PR And the Electoral Image
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: In Ilf and Petrov's classic novel &quot;The Golden Calf,&quot; the underground millionaire Koreiko leads a quiet, unassuming life. Soviet workers, after all, drove plain old Zhigulis.
 
The police officers arrested during a series of highly publicized raids last week, on the other hand, liked to flaunt their ill-gotten gains. They drove around in Mercedes and wore $30,000 Swiss watches. And it's hard to imagine that they parked the Benz around the corner from the office and drove the rest of the way in a Lada to avoid arousing suspicion. Yet despite their high profile, they didn't stand out from their fellow officers, because their fellow officers did exactly the same thing.
 I am not implying that the police force is entirely corrupt. There are honest cops, just as there are honest journalists and government officials.
 But corruption in the police is systemic. Flouting the law and having one's palms greased are the norm. The police, like doctors and teachers, are government employees. You hear a lot about doctors going on hunger strikes, but have you ever heard of traffic cops striking over unpaid wages?
 It seems logical to assume that no matter how guilty the arrested officers might be, they weren't hauled in just for bribery, extortion and framing people for a fee. These &quot;werewolves&quot; were more likely pawns in a larger game. Nowhere is it written that pawns have to be innocent.
 What kind of game? Perhaps the werewolves crossed a rival group in the police.
 However, the scale of the sweep operation belies that theory. Undesirable elements within the system are usually put away without a big song-and-dance. Take former Kalmyk Interior Minister Timofei Sasykov, for example. He was suspected of everything from offering protection to illegal oil refineries to controlling the narcotics trade in the republic. But he was quietly put behind bars on a technicality. The media circus that accompanied last week's raids makes more sense if you figure that those who carried it out - drawn primarily from the FSB and the Prosecutor General's Office - were gunning not for the &quot;werewolves&quot; themselves, but for the entire Interior Ministry.
 This wasn't a case of the technical removal of one general and half a dozen others. What the public saw was a picture of horrific, systematic corruption: police banks, protected casinos, a $1 million tennis court, and so on. Anyone seeing all this on the evening news had to wonder: &quot;If Lieutenant General Vladimir Ganeyev lives like that, his boss - Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu - must really live in the lap of luxury!&quot;
 Apart from the Interior Ministry, the operation could have been directed against its chief, Boris Gryzlov, who in addition to being the country's top cop is also head of the pro-government United Russia party. United Russia is said to be run by Kremlin chief of staff Alexander Voloshin and his deputy Vladislav Surkov and financed by oligarchs. State Duma elections are right around the corner. Those who bankroll the campaign can count on a healthy return on their investment after the election.
 It seems the St. Petersburg chekists in the administration are not entirely happy with this. Rumor has it that this faction supports a new party built around Duma deputies elected in single-mandate districts who form the Russia's Regions faction.
 News of the sweep operation leaked quickly. With no hope of killing the story, the Interior Ministry took the lead in getting the word out. Gryzlov was the first to tell the country about the &quot;werewolves&quot; on the morning news.
 The minister's proactive stance is unlikely to boost his popularity among regional law enforcement officers, but it did much to neutralize a potential PR nightmare for the Interior Ministry and United Russia. This is no coincidence. United Russia has excellent PR people, capable of a rapid response in critical situations: Surkov, for example.
 
 <i>
Yulia Latynina is a columnist for Yezhenedelny Zhurnal. </i>

TITLE: Committee Clears Blair Cabinet in Intelligence Investigation
AUTHOR: By Michael Mcdonough
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - A parliamentary committee on Monday sharply criticized the British government's handling of intelligence on Iraqi weapons but cleared Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications chief of &quot;improper influence&quot; in drafting a controversial intelligence dossier.
 
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said that the dossier, published in September, gave undue prominence to a claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein giving the order.
 It said the language used in the dossier was &quot;more assertive than that traditionally used in intelligence documents.&quot;
 The cross-party committee also said that Blair misrepresented to lawmakers the status of another dossier on Iraqi arms, published in January, which included material copied from a graduate thesis posted on the Internet.
 The committee said that it was &quot;wholly unacceptable&quot; for the government to plagiarize work without attribution, as happened with the January dossier.
 &quot;We further conclude that by referring to the document on the floor of the House (of Commons) as 'further intelligence,' the prime minister - who had not been informed of its provenance, doubts about which only came to light several days later - misrepresented its status,&quot; the committee's report said.
 The September dossier has become the focus of a bitter dispute between the government and the British Broadcasting Corp., which quoted an unidentified intelligence source as claiming Blair aides redrafted the dossier to include the 45-minute claim and boost the case for war. Blair has described the BBC report as &quot;absurd,&quot; while communications chief Alastair Campbell said it was a lie.
 The Foreign Affairs Committee, which questioned Campbell, said the powerful communications chief &quot;did not exert or seek to exert improper influence&quot; in including the 45-minute claim in the September document.
 That verdict was only reached after the committee chairperson, ruling Labor Party lawmaker Donald Anderson, used his tie-breaking power as chair to exonerate Campbell.
 However, the report said that it was wrong for Campbell - an unelected special adviser hired outside the civil service system - to have chaired a meeting on intelligence matters, and said that the practice should cease.

TITLE: SPORT WATCH
TEXT: <b>Bryant Surrenders
 </b>

DENVER, Colorado (Reuters) - Los Angeles Lakers player Kobe Bryant has surrendered to police in Colorado after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her at a mountain resort, authorities said on Sunday.
 
Bryant, 24, was released after turning himself in and posting a $25,000 bond on Friday, a statement issued by the Eagle County Sheriff's office said.
 The woman, who accused Bryant of sexual misconduct, went to deputies last Tuesday and told them that the alleged incident had occurred in the mountain town of Edwards the previous night.
 Prosecutors have yet to file charges in the case. A judge has ordered the case sealed.
 
 
<b>Woods Breezes
 </b>

LEMONT, Illinois (Reuters) - Tiger Woods recorded his fourth victory in 10 U.S. starts this year, firing a three-under-par 69 to cruise to a five-stroke win at the 100th Western Open on Sunday.
 The world No. 1 finished 21 under at 267 to tie the 72-hole scoring record for the tournament established by Scott Hoch in 2001. U.S. PGA champion Rich Beem (67) was second at 272.
 U.S. Open winner Jim Furyk (65), U.S. Masters champion Mike Weir of Canada (68) and Jerry Kelly (68) were tied in third at 274
 Woods began the round with a six-stroke lead after setting the 54-hole tournament scoring record of 198, 18 under.
 
 
<b>A Year Apart
 </b>

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Celta Vigo's out-of-contract captain Alexander Mostovoi says he is optimistic of signing a new deal with the Spanish first-division club.
 The Russian international, who became a free agent at the end of last season, said the only stumbling block was the length of contract on offer.
 "I want a two-year deal, while Celta offers me one plus one (year option)," the playmaker told Monday's Sport-Express newspaper.
 "I keep telling them it's only one more year, only some $200,000 extra. Not much if they want to keep me."