SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #888 (56), Tuesday, July 29, 2003
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TITLE: Court Gives Budanov 10-Year Term
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: ROSTOV-NA-DONU, Southern Russia - A military court on Friday found Colonel Yury Budanov was sane when he strangled an 18-year-old Chechen woman in 2000, sentencing him to 10 years in prison and stripping him of his military rank and awards.
Budanov, 40, wearing black slacks and a blue denim shirt, stood calmly as he listened to the verdict, his hands crossed in front of him and his eyes fixed on Judge Vladimir Bukreyev.
Budanov is the highest-ranking officer to be tried for military atrocities committed in Chechnya, and his trial has been closely watched as an indication of Moscow's willingness to crack down on human-rights abuses in the region.
Prosecutors said they were satisfied with the verdict, while Budanov's lawy er said his client would appeal.
Budanov admitted to strangling Elza Kungayeva in March 2000, but said he did so in a fit of rage after he became convinced that she was a rebel sniper.
Kungayeva's family says she was abducted by federal troops from her home in the Chechen village of Tangi and subsequently beaten, raped and strangled.
The Rostov court ruled in December that Budanov was temporarily insane at the time of the killing, basing its controversial decision on the last of a series of psychiatric evaluations carried out during the proceedings. But the Supreme Court overturned that decision in February, and ordered a retrial.
The court on Friday convicted Budanov on charges of kidnapping, murder and abuse of authority, and sentenced him to 10 years in a high-security prison. A charge of rape was dropped during the first trial.
It took Bukreyev two hours to read through the verdict, which included various accounts of the murder and the results of six psychiatric tests. He said his ruling was based on the most recent evaluation, which concluded Budanov was sane but in a highly agitated state of mind at the time of the killing.
Counting the three years he has spent in pretrial detention, Budanov will have to serve seven years in prison.
Cameras were barred from the courtroom. Other than dozens of reporters, the only people on hand for the verdict were Budanov's wife and sister-in-law and a handful of supportive retirees. Kungayeva's family and their lawyer, Abdulla Khamzayev, were absent.
Reached by telephone, Khamzayev welcomed the conviction but said the verdict was too soft and "on a par with malicious hooliganism."
He said he did not see how the verdict might curb atrocities against civilians in Chechnya.
Budanov left the courtroom without saying a word. During the retrial he had stuffed cotton into his ears and read books as a protest.
Some Budayev supporters in the courtroom gasped when the 10-year sentence was announced. Budanov's supporters had hoped for five to six years, while prosecutors had demanded 12 years as they concluded their case earlier in the week. Khamzayev had asked for 15 years, and Kungayeva's family had sought life imprisonment.
Prosecutor Vladimir Milovanov declared the sentence "legal, well-groun ded and fair."
Budanov's wife, Svetlana, refused to talk to reporters as she left the court with her sister, Yelena. "Let us get over it," she said.
One of the retirees, who gave his name only as Valentin, indignantly pointed to the defendant's cage, saying, "It isn't Budanov who should be sitting there but Yeltsin and Grachyov, who started it all." Boris Yeltsin was president and Pavel Grachyov was defense minister during the first military campaign in Chechnya from 1994 to 1996.
"He [Budanov] was doing his duty in the military," he said.
His remarks were echoed in part by Budanov's ex-lawyer, Anatoly Muk hin.
"We do not agree with the accusations in full - for example, kidnapping," Mukhin said during a break in the proceedings. "What does it mean that he could not enter Kungayev's house? That after he received information [about Kungayev allegedly being a sniper] he had to wait until everybody was shot? He had to do his duty."
Budanov's current lawyer, Alexei Dulimov, criticized the verdict as "illegal and unjust" and said he would appeal.
Afterward, local pro-Budanov movement leader Sergei Mochalin and his wife, Olga, posed for the cameras in a tearful embrace. Asked why she was crying, Olga Mochalina replied, "I feel sorry for him."
Sergei Mochalin called the ruling a present "to the bandits" from the federal government ahead of the presidential election in Chechnya in October.
Mochalin's movement is collecting signatu res in the region for Budanov's amnesty.
An informal poll of a dozen Rostov residents on Friday found that many were sympathetic to Budanov and thought he was a scapegoat.
"[The Chechens] behead people and that's OK, no one sentences them," said one man in his mid-30s who gave his name as Alexei.
Pro-Moscow Chechen leader Akhmad Kadyrov praised the conviction Sunday, saying it would be a lesson to all Russian service personnel in Chechnya.
"From now on, people in uniform will think carefully before committing a similar or another illegal act against an innocent person," Kadyrov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
President Vladimir Putin's chief spokes man for Chechnya, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, called the verdict fair and said it has "tremendous significance" to the residents of Chechnya, Ekho Moskvy reported.
A deputy head of the pro-Kremlin Unity's State Duma faction, Oleg Kovalyov, expressed surprise at the harshness of the sentence.
"I thought the court would send Budanov away for treatment, because after watching his behavior for two years one cannot help but conclude that this is the behavior of a mentally disturbed man," he told Interfax.
Deputy Aslambek Aslakhanov, who represents Chechnya in the Duma, said, however, that the "punishment was not adequate for the crime."
TITLE: Governor Candidate Dumped By Party
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The United Russia party's Moscow-based general council on Friday ejected Legislative Assembly deputy Konstantin Sukhenko, the head of the United Russia faction there, from the party after he announced that he would run for governor in September's elections.
"[Sukhenko] was removed from the party because he violated the party's charter and did not carry out decisions made by the party's general council," United Russia spokesperson Svetlana Vinnikova said in a telephone interview on Monday.
Sukhenko notified the City Election Committee of his intention to run for governor on Thursday, a day before United Russia announced that it backed Valentina Matviyenko, the former presidential representative to the Northwest Region, for the post.
The party's general council on Friday recommended that any of its members who intended to run for governor withdraw their respective candidacies in favor of Matviyenko. However, Sukhenko refused to follow the party line, and left his name on the list of 32 candidates set to face off on Sept. 21 for the top job at City Hall, which became vacant after former governor Vladimir Yakovlev was appointed on June 16 by President Vladimir Putin to work as vice prime minister responsible for national communal-services reform.
Sukhenko said the decision seemed to be "taken in a purely authoritarian way."
"I feel relaxed now, and I can say what I think," he told Interfax on Monday. "Now, I need the support of the citizens - not of the federal center - and I can feel overwhelming support."
"I treat the fact that I was expelled as a wrong decision, based on a superficial analysis of the situation," he said.
Sukhenko said he would gather the signatures by Thursday, but that, if he failed, he would pay the deposit.
"This is mainly about business - [Sukhenko] knew that events would turn out this way, because party managers warned him that he would be kicked out [of the party] if he announced his candidacy," independent Legislative Assembly lawmaker Vladimir Yeryomenko, a former member of the pro-governor United City bloc in the parliament, said in a telephone interview on Monday.
"[Sukhenko] had been saying for quite a while that Matviyenko would not be a good governor for the city, because she didn't want to take into account the interests of certain business groups that favor him," he said. "The situation is a reflection of a struggle for the governor's job between different businesses in the city."
Yeryomenko refused to mention any of the companies in question by name, but sources at the Legislative Assembly who preferred to remain anonymous said that Sukhenko is engaged in the assembly in lobbying the interests of some business linked to local gasoline distribution.
Dmitry Cherneiko, the deputy presidential representative to the Northwest Region and the head of the federal employment service in St. Petersburg, said that Sukhenko's decision to run for governor was "destructive."
He also expressed doubts abo ut Sukhenko's ability to drum up the required level of backing to be able to run.
"He won't be able to get a positive result in relation to registration," he said.
According to the rules established for the election by the City Election Commission, candidates must hand over a list of 37,000 signatures of people backing their candidacy or a deposit of $7.5 million rubles (about $248,000) by 6 p.m. on Thursday.
By Monday, just one candidate had submitted the signatures. Alexander Gabitov, a council member from municipal district No. 62 and the son-in-law of State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, handed in 40,599 signatures.
Other political parties were quick to pounce on United Russia's decision to expel Sukhenko as an error and a sign of internal strife.
"The United Russia party, the party of power, has demonstrated once again that it is not united at all," Igor Artemyev, a deputy from the Yabloko faction in the State Duma, was quoted by his press service as saying on Friday.
"This action demonstrates that there are a number of people within United Russia who have different points of view and positions," Artemyev was quoted as saying. "It looks as though they are united by one common principle - to be closer to power."
"[Sukhenko's] decision to run [for governor] and [the actions of] the faction, which calls itself 'pro-presidential,' could hit the interests of Valentina Matviyenko from a side that was expected less than any other to be the source of such a threat," he was quoted as saying.
Boris Vishnevsky, a Yabloko-faction lawmaker in the Legislative Assembly, said that expelling Sukhenko was one of the biggest mistakes that United Russia has ever made.
"They've kicked out someone who is unusual for that party - he was bright and able to do something useful," Vishnevsky said in a telephone interview on Monday. "It seems they don't like people like that in United Russia."
TITLE: Goblin Makes Case Against Demonizing Expletives
AUTHOR: By Carl Schreck
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Damn, shoot, darn, hell.
Watch the standard Russian translation of Guy Ritchie's 2001 crime caper "Snatch" and you would think that these are the foulest words known to gangsters in London's criminal underworld.
But watch Dmitry Puchkov's Russian translation of the same film, and you'll hear an array of expletives that would make a sailor blush. Puchkov even changed the Russian title - "Bolshoi Kush," or "Big Score" - to an extremely crude, if justifiably accurate, variant: "Spizdili."
While sex and violence are accepted components of Russian movies, profanity is still a major taboo. Puchkov's unique, obscenity-laden translations of English-language movies have made him one of the hottest commodities on Russia's gigantic pirate movie market.
And, although he has become something of a cult figure, few people know his real name.
Puchkov is known instead as Senior Police Detective Goblin, or just Goblin for short. A pirate DVD or video cassette with his "Special Version" stamp on it guarantees the viewer that no obscene language will be softened or lost in translation.
His Internet handle derived from his six-year stint as a police officer.
"Goblin is the name given to a police officer who is dangerous," he said in a recent interview.
Puchkov went on to achieve cult status among computer fanatics in the late 1990s as an authority on the computer game "Quake."
When his movie translations began floating around the Internet in 2001 and started appearing in video kiosks a year later, his work started gaining a wider audience.
"He's really fashionable right now," said Masha, a salesperson at a video kiosk near the Vodny Stadion metro station in northern Moscow. "People come by all day long asking if we have Goblin translations."
Puchkov started translating movies in 1995 because he didn't like the Russian versions of his favorite flicks. Since then, he has executed more than 50 synchronized translations, primarily of crime, war and action movies, which are his favorite genres.
"My tastes are probably related to my army and police service," Puchkov said. "'Rambo' was the first Hollywood movie I ever watched during Perestroika. I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen back then."
The amount of time it takes Puchkov to dub a movie depends on the genre.
"If it's an action movie where they don't talk much, like 'Predator', then the entire translation will be about eight pages, and that will take me about a day," Puchkov said. "If it's a movie like 'The Shawshank Redemption', where everybody talks a lot, then it takes me about a week."
Puchkov's English-language education consists of translating Led Zeppelin lyrics by himself in school and a two-year course at the Dzerzhinsky Police House of Culture. When he encounters any slang or jargon, he consults friends in the United States via e-mail.
By far the Goblin films most in demand are Puchkov's farcical translations of the first two "Lord of the Rings" films. He has translated the first film, "The Fellowship of the Ring," as "Bratva i Koltso," or "The Posse and the Ring," and the second film, "Two Towers," as "Dve Sorvanniye Bashni," or "Two Toppled Towers," a play on a Russian expression meaning to go crazy.
Puchkov sets J.R.R. Tolkein's tale in Russia and re-christens several characters with comical Russified names. For example, Frodo Baggins is renamed Fyodor Sumkin (from the Russian word sumka, or bag), and Gollum is renamed Goly, the Russian word for "naked."
Puchkov's use of profanity has earned him both praise and outrage from viewers.
"There are two groups: People who tell me how cool and great the translations are and people who are very angry about the swearing," he said.
Puchkov argued that no one is forced to watch his versions and that he's maintaining the integrity of the original script rather than simply being vulgar.
"There are certain jokes you don't tell your grandmother, and there are certain movies you don't let your children see. I'm just making the movie closer to what the director originally intended to create," he said.
There are equally disparate opinions about Goblin translations in Puchkov's own household. Puchkov said that his son, Zhenya, 22, laughs at the movies, while his wife, Natasha, 45, refuses to watch any of his translations except children's movies such as "Shrek."
"She really can't stand the expletives," Puchkov said.
Puchkov's career as a translator, however, may be in jeopardy - not because of profanity, but because of intellectual-property issues.
Konstantin Zemchenkov, who is familiar with Puchkov's work as the director of the Russian Anti-Piracy Organization, said that Hollywood studios make deals with local companies for their film's distribution rights in Russia and that Puchkov should be held responsible for distributing pirated materials.
"It is without a doubt piracy," Zemchenkov said in a telephone interview. "He takes the legal translation of a movie and changes it around, giving the film a completely different character."
Puchkov asserted that he does not make any profits, saying that he earns a living as the owner of a small grocery store.
"This is just a hobby for me," Puchkov said. "The real pirates are the people making huge amounts of money in video kiosks off of my name. They know that the Goblin stamp means that the movie will sell twice as many copies."
Zemchenkov rejected Puchkov's claim.
"He is without a doubt getting money from someone for his work," he said.
Puchkov conceded that his translating activities may come to an end soon, assuming a studio doesn't decide to hire him to translate the movies for which it has legal distribution rights. "They'll come after me in a year at the latest," he said.
As for the future of profanity in Russian movies, Puchkov predicted a later, but imminent, deadline.
"There will be swearing in Russian movies in about five years," he said, noting that in 1939, American audiences were scandalized when Clark Gable said the word "damn" in "Gone With the Wind."
"They fined the filmmaker for that," Puchkov said. "And now look at the language in Hollywood movies."
TITLE: Second Suspect Detained in Case of Murdered Governor
AUTHOR: By Anna Dolgov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - A second suspect has been arrested in last fall's brazen murder of Magadan Governor Valentin Tsvetkov, and prosecutors consider the case largely solved, officials said Monday.
The suspect, Sergei Filipenko, was detained Thursday, and a court on Friday sanctioned his detention for 10 days while prosecutors draw up charges, Prosecutor General's Office spokesperson Natalya Vishnyakova said.
She refused to provide any other details about the suspect or the murder investigation. Tsvetkov was gunned down in broad daylight near his office on Novy Arbat in October in an attack that had all the markings of a contact hit. The killing is widely believed to be linked to conflicts around his region's highly lucrative gold mining or fishing industries.
Investigators in March arrested their first suspect, Artur Anisimov, a 40-year-old Armenian native. Anisimov ran a private security outfit in Magadan whose clients included companies controlled by Tsvetkov's adviser Valentina Tikhacheva. Tikhacheva herself was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of involvement in the misappropriation of $16 million worth of seafood.
Investigators also have said they were looking into a possible connection between the killing and Tsvetkov's efforts to ensure the repayment of a $45 million loan to the region's largest gold venture, Omolon.
The Prosecutor General's Office said Monday that five suspects in Tsvetkov's murder remain at large but with Filipenko's arrest the case has been all but solved.
TITLE: The Town in the Middle of the Yukos Storm
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: KIROVSK, Murmanskaya Oblast - The 30,000 inhabitants of this Arctic town in the middle of the vast Kola Peninsula pride themselves on being happy and hospitable.
There are reasons for this: For an industrial town, the multicolored buildings look refreshingly pristine and the view is panoramic, especially this time of year, when the sun always hangs in the sky, except for an occasional dip behind the barren and breathtaking Khibiny mountains.
But life hasn't always been so idyllic.
Like hundreds of other outcroppings in Stalin's gulag system, Kirovsk was designed as a labor camp of death and detainment. It is a city, they say, that was built on bones.
For the native Khibiny people, life changed forever in the fall of 1929, when the world's largest and highest-quality apatite deposit was discovered buried deep beneath their native land. Apatite, which comes from the Greek word for "deceit" because it is often mistaken for other minerals, is the key source of phosphorous for plants and thus the key ingredient in most fertilizers. Large deposits of these calcium phosphates are found in a few other areas of the world, but none can match the quality of Kola's reserves, from which numerous condensates used by numerous industries are created. The Soviets even found a military application for the stuff, making liquid explosives out of it during World War II.
The discovery was a godsend for the country's struggling farming industry, and Sergei Kirov, the charismatic Politburo member, wasted no time capitalizing on the find, convening a summit of top geologists to assess mining prospects while simultaneously ordering the creation of a new town, Khibinogorsk, so extraction could commence immediately.
And it did - between 1930 and 1932 the Soviets sent nearly 48,000 people to work the area.
After Kirov was murdered in 1934, setting off a chain of events that culminated in the Great Terror, the town's name was changed to Kirovsk in his honor and the presence of the former Leningrad leader has been felt in the area ever since. A statue of him dominates the city center and the small cabin where he made the decision to create the town has been turned into a museum.
But ask anyone in Kirovsk these days who the father of their town is and the answer isn't Kirov. It is Khodorkovsky.
"We know that [Mikhail] Khodorkovsky and Yukos own everything here, though we don't know if that is good or bad," says Denis, a foreman at one of the mining units of Apatit, the company that controls nearly every facet of life in Kirovsk and its neighbor Apatity, where 60,000 people live.
Some 15,000 people now work at Apatit, a $500-million-per-year company that produces nearly all of Russia's apatite concentrate and about a third of the world's.
Although well-known to scientists for decades, few people had ever heard of the company before this month, when it found itself at the center of a political storm in Moscow that has grown so fierce that it is threatening to overturn the economic order of the country.
How this prized asset came to be part of Khodorkovsky's empire is at the heart of the government's assault on Yukos and its parent company Group Menatep, which began with the arrest of Menatep Chairperson Platon Lebedev on July 2 for allegedly stealing a government stake in Apatit in 1994, and has since mushroomed into allegations of tax evasion and even multiple murder.
Officially, Apatit is owned by a company called Russkiye Investory, which is controlled by Khodorkovsky and other core shareholders of Yukos and Menatep, but the people of Kirovsk are less concerned with who owns their factory - and nearly every other business in town - than they are with avoiding a repeat of the days of desperation that accompanied the company's privatization a decade ago.
In 1994, when the factory's workers became its owners, production ground to a halt, salaries were frozen and layoffs began as management scrambled to concentrate the company's shares in their own hands.
"Most people were left on the streets, but even those who managed to save their jobs were poor," recalls Irina Dyomina, who now works in the local post office. "How was it? It was terrible. People were starving and scared."
To this day, a poster hangs over one of Apatit's mines offering workers 150 rubles (now $5) and "monetary compensation for your vacation" for each share they sell.
Back in 1994, the word among workers was that Khodorkovsky had ordered their salaries frozen to pressure them into selling their shares. Yukos denies this, as does Apatit general director Alexei Grigoryev.
Grigoryev refuses to discuss the details of privatization, saying that he was only the chief engineer of one of Apatit's mines back in 1994. But he was insistent that people were free to do what they wanted with their shares.
"We had a normal privatization process," Grigoryev says in an interview in his office. "Everyone had the right to do anything they wanted with their shares. Some decided to sell their shares, some decided not to - there are different ways to deal with property," he says, adding that employees still own part of the company, although he wouldn't say how much.
Many people, however, refute Grigoryev's version of events.
"This is simply not true," says Denis. "Most employees were forced to sell their shares shortly after privatization took place - including my mother. She was an accountant at the factory and received quite a large number of shares, but the company ordered all the employees to sell their shares. People had to sell to keep their jobs."
Whatever actually transpired a decade ago, the important thing now is to avoid the chaos that engulfed the town and the factory a decade ago, Grigoryev says.
"Not many people remember what was happening with this company 10 years ago. Mines were closed, factories were shut, nonpayments were huge, and our customers could not pay us because they had financial problems of their own," he says.
"Today, however, we have a different situation."
Indeed, the dark days of privatization seem like a distant nightmare because the company has undergone a remarkable transformation.
Wages are far above the national average, with miners getting an average of nearly $600 per month, despite rising unemployment in the area. An electronic sign, reading "No Vacancies," greets visitors to the company's main office.
With business booming, management is embarking on an aggressive modernization program and is even planning 12 years down the road, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
Igor Zaporozhets, Apatit's first deputy technical director, says that the company has been investing tens of millions of dollars per year in new equipment to increase efficiency, and the results have been dramatic.
"Of the 8.5 million tons of apatite concentrate we produced last year, 53 percent was mined by machines. Ten years ago the figure was about 15 percent," he says. "The new equipment is safer, but it also increases the prestige of being an underground miner."
The company plans to invest a total of $1 billion into production through 2015. "This is what we need and this is what we will do," Grigoryev says.
But lurking in the shadows is the very real threat that the case against Lebedev could see the company thrown into chaos once again.
"In the last 10 years the company has gone through many troubles and has survived them all," Grigoryev says. "But the recent events in Moscow worry me a lot, because here is an organism that breathes and works. We have just normalized work and have long-term plans. It would be a shame to see that undone."
The Yukos affair has already produced a notable change in the psychology of Apatit's employees, who rushed en masse to withdraw their savings in the days after Lebedev's arrest. Ironically, in Kirovsk and Apatity it is Menatep St. Petersburg that handles all the functions normally handled in the regions by state savings bank Sberbank, but few people here know that Menatep St. Petersburg is headed by Lebedev.
The local newspaper, 2X2, published an announcement from Menatep St. Petersburg in its Friday edition last week urging people not to panic and empty their accounts because it had enough money to meet all its obligations.
Grigoryev says that he is actively cooperating with authorities in their investigation, but he says he can't understand why Apatit is being linked to Yukos. He also refused to say where the company got the financial resources it needed to revive production in the mid-1990s.
"A criminal case has been opened, but I'm not going to talk about it. Yes, investigators were here last week for three days and made an inquiry. We know the law and presented them with what they asked for, but the volume of information is large and concerns the company's activities, so it is impossible to present everything at once. We are sending more documents to the General Prosecutor's Office every day."
A Moscow court refused on Wednesday to release Lebedev, who has been in Lefortovo prison since his arrest.
"Hopefully they will sort out this issue," he says. "It is important to preserve the belief that we are all doing a big and great thing at Apatit, and that we will not return to that horrible situation we were in 10 years ago."
Meanwhile, as the case centered on their company entered its fourth week, the miners of Apatit were still wondering what all the fuss is about.
"Until now we didn't even know who Platon Lebedev was," says Mikhail. "Well, actually, we still don't know who he is."
TITLE: Fire Fighters Taking the Heat of New Jobs
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Following a presidential decree in November 2001 ordering the unification of the country's regional fire-fighting services with the respective regional departments of the Emergency Situations Ministry, local firefighters have turned into multi-functional rescue workers - and officials say that the service is feeling the strain.
Now, St. Petersburg can dial 01 - previously used just in case of fire - for assistance in a number of situations, ranging from railroad accidents to rescuing animals to landing a plane that has suffered engine failure.
"It was important that everyone knew that they only had to remember one number to call in emergency situations," Leonid Belyayev, acting head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast fire department, said at a press conference on Monday.
"People can try calling different numbers, but it won't help. Our service has no right to refuse a call."
Of the new service's almost 2,000 employees, 75 are currently available at any one time to answer emergency calls.
It is expected that up to 500 people will be available daily for rescue missions and related tasks by the beginning of next year, when the merger between the two bodies officially comes into force in each region.
From Jan. 1, 2004, the service, which currently covers St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, will split into two departments that will cover the city and the oblast, respectively.
The first seven months of this year have seen the service answer 25,869 call-outs in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, including 4,512 fires in St. Petersburg, 691 cases of fixing broken doors, 163 road-traffic accidents and 30 railway accidents. Officials say it has also saved 64 lives since Jan. 1 - including 28 swimmers who found themselves in difficulty in local waters - and rescued six animals.
However, the increased workload means that the fire fighters-cum-rescue workers are now themselves the people in need.
With an average monthly salary of between 3,500 and 4,500 rubles (about $115 and $150), officials say that fire fighters can not be blamed for seeking alternative employment.
"We can't really expect our staff to stay with us unless we can offer them benefits, such as, for example, help with finding an apartment," Major General Viktor Safyanov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry, said on Monday.
In addition, Safyanov said, the service requires more equipment. While the service is strong on land, it is lacking in marine and arial capabilities - it still does not have a helicopter, which would cost around $4.5 million, or a single rescue boat, which would cost another $1.5 million, money that the service is hoping to convince the next city governor and the Legislative Assembly to provide.
Ultimately, some cooperation and assistance - although not financial - is expected from people who call the service for help. According to Safyanov, between 70 and 75 percent of people who have died in fires so far this year were either drunk or suffering from a severe hangover.
Although the fire department's Belyayev said his office is efficient and reliable, he said that it was obvious that the rescue teams need more equipment and more staff.
He said the service currently has 86 percent of the employees it requires - an improvement from last year's figure of 60 percent.
"If you know you live next to a fire station, you'd assume that the help would come from there because it is the nearest place," Belyayev said. "However, quite often, that is not the case. The unit may be [based] nearby, but the chances are that, considering our intense schedule, all our people would be out working elsewhere."
"The rescue teams are doing everything, including, for example, digging out drowned bodies from lakes and rivers, which is a very time-consuming process," he added. "Once, it took us nearly five hours to find the corpse of a nine-year-old girl who had drowned."
TITLE: Women Looking To Avoid Pregnancy
AUTHOR: By Mara D. Bellaby
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - All too often, by the time a patient reached Patimat Abakarova's clinic it was too late: She was pregnant and seeking an urgent way out. Now, the women come seeking advice on how not to get pregnant.
Abortion, once the country's primary means of birth control, is in steady decline in post-Soviet Russia, but the rate is still staggering: For every 10 births there are about 13 abortions, compared with roughly three in the United States.
"There are so many methods of birth control available now ... methods that not only prevent pregnancy but can help ease other medical problems," Abakarova said.
The Russian Health Ministry has proposed scaling back the liberal policy whereby women can cite a wide range of non-medical reasons - being unmarried, poor, already raising three kids - to obtain an abortion well into the second trimester of pregnancy.
The new proposal would still guarantee abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy to anyone. But after that, most women - including rape victims - would be turned away.
"Abortion should never in any society be the primary method of birth control," said Vladimir Kulakov, a leading gynecologist and head of the Scientific Center for Obstetrics and Gynecology, linked to the women's clinic at which Abakarova works.
In the Soviet era, women had limited options for avoiding pregnancy. Men regarded Soviet-made condoms as uncomfortable and unreliable. Doctors were wary of prescribing oral contraceptives.
Abortion was outlawed by Josef Stalin for 19 years as he sought to boost the birthrate. It was reinstated in 1955, after his death, and became widely available even in small towns.
Abortions skyrocketed in the chaos after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when jobs and the social net evaporated overnight, often hitting women hardest.
Four years of economic growth have taken some of the financial bite out of starting a family. Birth rates are climbing, albeit slowly. Last year, there were 9.8 births for every 1,000 people compared to 9.1 the year before, according to government statistics.
But demographers still predict that, by 2050, the world's largest country will have a population comparable to just over a quarter of the United States'.
Occasional efforts by nationalist politicians to outlaw abortion have gotten nowhere, while the latest limited measure has won tentative support, including from many women's groups. The proposal, still in a draft stage, would have to be formally adopted by President Vladimir Putin's government.
Under the proposed new rules, after the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, abortions would be limited to women whose husbands died or were severely injured and those who choose abortion after being legally stripped of their parental rights in connection with previous children.
Today, all major birth-control methods are easily available at the corner pharmacy, often without prescriptions, and advertisements abound for clinics offering pills known in the United States as RU-486, which can cause an abortion if taken in early pregnancy.
"Young people are more literate and informed about birth control," said Tatyana Lobova, who runs a city-funded family planning clinic in Moscow. "But not everybody and not everywhere."
Irina Sigratovskaya, 22 and newly married, said her husband wants to stop using condoms now that they are married. They would like to have children, but not yet. "I'm working all the time. He's working all the time," she said, sitting in a clinic and flipping through a pamphlet that promises happiness, health and love for those choosing an oral contraceptive.
Across town, at the women's clinic where Abakarova works, patients ranging in age from 15 to about 30 shuffle about, their high heels covered in the center's mandatory blue slip-ons. To fight the sexually transmitted diseases plaguing the country, Abakarova encourages her patients to use oral contraceptives as well as a condom.
"I would say that certainly the majority are no longer choosing abortion," she said.
TITLE: Estonia Finds Russian Boat
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TALLINN, Estonia - A 19th-century Russian vessel that sank in the Baltic Sea with 177 sailors aboard has been discovered off the Finnish coast, Estonian researchers said.
The Russalka - Russian for mermaid - belonged to the czarist fleet and sank in 1893. It was found 24 kilometers from Helsinki, researchers told the Estonian daily Postimees.
"We can say with 100 percent certainty that the shipwreck we found is the Russalka," the newspaper quoted captain Vello Mass as saying in Friday's edition.
Built in 1868, the Russalka was one of the czarist navy's first so-called "ironclads" - a ship covered in iron sheeting. One of its last ports of call before it sank was Tallinn, the capital of Estonia and part of the tsarist empire at the time.
The wreckage was found at about 75 meters below the surface, Mass told Postimees.
Estonian and Finnish researchers spent more than a month trying to locate the wreck. Earlier expeditions had failed to find it.
Mass said the team would notify Russian authorities about the discovery before deciding what to do next.
A 1902 Estonian monument to the Russalka, a bronze angel holding a crucifix and tilting it toward the ship's watery grave, is a popular tourist sight in Tallinn. Many Estonian newlyweds leave bouquets at its granite base to honor the sailors who died.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Court Rejects Claims
MOSCOW (AP) - A Moscow court rejected appeals Monday in 21 compensation cases filed by survivors and relatives of victims of October's hostage-taking raid by Chechen rebels at a Moscow theater and the rescue operation that left scores dead, news agencies reported.
The Moscow City Court upheld rulings by a lower court that said city authorities were not obligated to pay damages for pain and suffering, the Interfax news agency reported.
Lawyer Igor Trunov has filed 64 moral compensation suits, arguing that Russian law entitles terrorism victims to compensation from the government of the region where the attack took place.
City officials argue the law on compensation applies only to material damages for loss of income, and say they have not ruled out the possibility of paying material damages.
Armed Chechen rebels seized a crowded theater during a popular musical in October, taking some 800 people hostage for nearly three days. A total of 129 hostages died, the vast majority from the effects of a narcotic gas used by Russian special forces to knock out the attackers before storming the theater to end the crisis.
Birth Bonuses
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Four babies born on St. Petersburg's official 300th anniversary were given vouchers for two-room apartments at the city's Baby Palace on Friday, Interfax reported.
Governor Yakovlev suggested last year that the first, 27th and 300th babies born on City Day, May 27, would be granted free apartments. However, because of certain logistical difficulties, four babies ended up getting lucky.
The first two babies - a boy born to a Svetlana Vlasova and a girl born to a Svetlana Bubnova - were born almost simultaneously, at 12:02 a.m. and 12:03 a.m. according to the clocks at the respective maternity units.
However, the commission charged with establishing which baby was born first could not establish the accuracy of the two clocks in question, and therefore decided to award apartments to both infants for arriving "first."
Job Description
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Yakovlev, the former governor of St. Petersburg, will not bear the full responsibility for the country's preparation for the winter, President Vladimir Putin said at a cabinet meeting on Monday, Interfax reported.
"Preparing for the winter is primarily the task of the regions themselves," the news agency quoted Putin as saying.
"The task of the [deputy] prime minister is to help regions to invest the necessary resources," Putin was quoted as saying. "The regions should not wait for something to be handed down to them from the center."
Yakovlev said he had already warned of such cases.
"I've already said that we are not going to do something that the regions should be doing, but we will demand that they are completely ready," Interfax quoted him as saying.
Customs Arrest
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - St. Petersburg police arrested the deputy head of the law department of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Customs Academy for taking a bribe of $7,000, Interfax reported Monday.
Suren Grigoryan, 30, was caught taking the money from a 26-year-old unemployed female in return for a fake graduation diploma from the academy.
According to the police press service, Grigoryan offered his services to the woman at the beginning of July in exchange for the money.
TITLE: Tax Charges Add to Yukos Woes
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prosecutors lashed out at Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Monday for criticizing their investigation of core Yukos shareholder Platon Lebedev and widened their politically charged probe to include a new charge of tax evasion.
In a sign that the divide among the political elite is deepening in a vicious war that has pitted conservative Kremlin hawks against the country's biggest oil company, prosecutors accused Kasyanov of trying to pressure the courts.
"Such comments by the prime minister, to put it mildly, are inappropriate. They can be seen as an attempt to pressure the courts," Prosecutor General's Office spokesperson Natalya Vishnyakova said at a news conference Monday.
"Each branch of power should mind its own business," she said. "We're not just talking about a bucket of potatoes but losses to the state in the hundreds of millions of dollars."
Kasyanov has publicly spoken out against jailing suspects in economic crimes. After the Moscow City Court on Wednesday refused to release Lebedev on bail, he said the case was ruining Russia's investment climate. Then on Friday, he said he thought the stand-off would be over soon.
"I don't believe the situation should or could take a negative turn," he said in televised remarks before leaving for a summer vacation on Lake Baikal. He is due to return to work Aug. 6.
Kasyanov's open siding with Yukos is a sign that the struggle between Yukos and the prosecutors is only part of a bigger battle for economic leverage and power between the old elite that obtained power and vast wealth under President Boris Yeltsin and the siloviki, the former KGB officers who rode President Vladimir Putin's coattails to the Kremlin, analysts said. Kasyanov, who has been a key government player since the early 1990s, is seen as a member of the old Yeltsin elite, also known as the Family.
The standoff has sent the Russian stock market plunging 13 percent since it began. It also has sparked a new wave of capital flight amid fears of a new destabilizing carve-up of property rights.
Lilia Shvetsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said on Monday that a solution to the crisis still looks far from view even though business leaders have warned that Putin by allowing the campaign to continue he risks undermining the economic stability that has been the hallmark of his term so far.
"The president is not ready to rein in the power structures yet," she said.
She said there are three reasons why Putin considers it worth pursuing the attack despite its potential impact on investor confidence and the risk of renewed capital flight.
"He does not think that this attack is creating problems for Russia's stability. He can see the opinion polls that indicate the majority of the population are opposed to oligarchs," she said.
"Second, he has been persuaded that this involves more than just economic crimes. And, third, he sees the political ambitions of the old oligarchs as more dangerous for his own position than anything else," she said.
Putin so far has kept largely mum on the crisis. He has said, somewhat ambiguously, that he is against using "arm-twisting and jail cells" to solve economic crimes but added that the crimes must be fought.
On Monday, prosecutors said they were investigating Lebedev, as head of Group Menatep, the holding company that controls the assets of core Yukos shareholders, on a new charge of being behind an illegal tax-evasion scheme using a domestic offshore tax zone in the town of Lesnoi in the Sverdlovsk region.
Irina Aleshina, a prosecutor's office deputy department head, told reporters that the heads of four Menatep-affiliated companies struck an agreement with the Lesnoi administration in 1999 that granted them tax breaks worth 9 billion rubles ($300 million). She said the agreement was against the law because tax benefits could only be granted if the companies registered in the tax zone conducted 80 percent of their operations there, which, she said, was not the case.
Prosecutors later contacted by telephone would not disclose the names of the companies involved nor spell out whether the new charge was aimed only at Lebedev or Group Menatep as a whole.
Pavel Kushnir, an oil and gas analyst at United Financial Group, said he thought the tax charge would have little impact on the operations of Yukos. He said Yukos has pushed down its tax payments mainly via an agreement with authorities in the Mordovia region, under which Yukos trading arm Yukos-M paid a profit tax of just 7 percent instead of the normal 24 percent.
The Audit Chamber investigated this tax arrangement last year and did not find anything illegal about it. Nevertheless, the chamber recommended that the Finance Ministry ban all such agreements from July 1, 2004, Kushnir said.
Menatep spokespeople Yury Kotler and Alexander Simanov would not comment Monday on Menatep's tax arrangements in Lesnoi, but they both described the prosecutors' allegations as "ridiculous."
TITLE: New Investigators Picked To Check On Dirol Plant
AUTHOR: By Angelina Davydova
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Dirol-Cadbury factory, Russia's largest producer of chewing gum, was set to go to court again on Tuesday to contest charges from the Natural Resources Ministry that the manufacturer releases harmful agents into the atmosphere. The hearing, the third to be held on the question in front of the St. Petersburg Arbitration Court, is to schedule dates and appoint independent experts to carry out research into the plant's activies in connection with the charges.
Dirol first heard the charges from the ministry in a statement it received at the begining of July, ordering it to cease production by July 7. The statement followed a ministry inspection that was carried out between April 15 to June 10 and, according to the ministry, revealed that the plant, in Novgorod, was utilizing agents not specified in the production proposals initially filed with the government.
According to the ministry's press service, the factory, without authorization, replaced the use of ethanol in its production process with edible oil, triacetyl, lactic acid and propylene glycol, the last of which is an agent 166 times stronger than ethanol.
Consequently, according to the ministry, the concentration of harmful agents being released into the atmosphere is now 3 to 4 times greater than normal.
Immediately after receiving the ministry order, on July 4, Dirol-Cadbury sought and won an injuction in the court to allow it to continue operations.
The ministry, in turn, filed a complaint against the injunction.
OnJuly 17, during the court's preliminary hearing, Dirol-Cadbury presented the results of research it had commissioned from the St. Petersburg Mendeleev Scientific Research Institute. The institute's study found that the the factory does not release triacetyl, while the concentration of other agents is within a range considered normal.
Dirol says that the ministry is overreacting and that the differences in actual production procedures at the plant and those described in the documentation are being worked out.
"We admit that there have been some discrepancies, and have already started to work on eliminating them," Alexander Ovchinnikov, a spokesperson for Dirol-Cadbury, said.
He also said that the company had been guilty of failing to inform the ministry of the changes because some employees had not submitted the necessary documents by June 24, the deadline set by the ministry.
Faced with the conflicting evidence, the court has called for another study to be done, this time by an independent organization agreed upon by both parties. Tuesday's hearing will confirm the participants, according to Ovchinnikov.
While Dirol maintains that its production facility is not violating environmental-standards legislation, some environmental groups have taken the ministry's side.
"I believe that the ministry claims are justified. It seems like the factory was trying to save on costs by using cheaper, locally purchased agents instead of imported ones," Alexei Kiselyov, the Toxic Campaign Coordinator for GreenPeace Russia, said in a telephone interview on Monday. "There's nothing extraordinary in the ministry's actions. It's just a way to make the factory management get moving"
"It's quite normal for the Natural Resources Ministry to issue an order to a factory to stop operations, but it's very difficult to actually stop the facility from functioning. In most cases, the factory management either appeals to a court, or just refuses to shut down production," he added. "For instance, the ministry has been trying to suspend the operations of the Cepruss Pulp and Paper Mill in Kaliningrad for seven months. Sometimes action by the prosecutor's office is also required."
The Dirol-Cadbury factory, opened in 1999 and now employing 350 people, produces 40 percent of all chewing gum sold in Russia, including the Stimorol and Dirol brands, and has revenues of about $310 million, according to Business Analytica research company.
The factory was built at a cost of $100 million by a Danish company Dansk Tyggegummi Fabrik A/S (Dandy), which was later acquired by the British company Cadbury. Cadbury also operates a chocolate-production plant - its largest production facility outside of the U.K. in Chudovo, in the Novgorodskaya Oblast.
TITLE: Ministry Targets Second Gum Manufacturer
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In an echo of an order issued to Dirol-Cadbury earlier this month (see related story, this page), the Natural Resources Ministry has ordered the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, the world's largest chewing gum producer, to stop work at its St. Petersburg factory for unspecified ecological violations.
Ministry officials would not specify Monday exactly what regulations Wrigley had violated, but Igor Saveliev, general director of Wrigley Russia, said by telephone that the ministry's order was "somewhat misplaced" and that the company had no plans to halt production.
In the order sent to Wrigley, a copy of which has been obtained by The St. Petersburg Times, the ministry said: "Wrigley, St. Petersburg is to halt operation and other activities on July 28."
Saveliev said that, as far as he could tell, the ministry was referring to the construction of a new production wing at the plant. The planned $25-million addition would double the factory's production capacity, but a web of red tape has kept the company from building the wing's outer walls, he said.
Natural Resources Ministry spokesperson Nikolai Gudkov said that the cases at Dirol and Wrigley were routine inspections and unconnected.
Saveliev at Wrigley, however, said that it was "hard to say" if the two events suggested that the government was targeting foreigners operating in the chewing-gum market.
"We had a similar investigation into our emissions, but no violations were found," he said.
TITLE: Study Says City Is Middle Price
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Moscow is the world's 36th most expensive city in the Economist Intelligence Unit's bi-annual cost of living survey, with St. Petersburg ranking 74th tied with Abu Dhabi, Atlanta and Toronto.
St. Petersburg's finish represents a jump of four spots from last year, while Moscow fell four spots from its 32nd place finish last year but remains the most expensive city in Eastern Europe.
The survey, released on Monday, indicates that the theme for this year was the soaring cost of living in euro-zone countries.
The most expensive European cities, however, still lie outside the euro zone: They are Oslo (3rd) and Zurich (4th). Copenhagen (6th), whose currency is pegged to the euro, is the most expensive in the EU, having dethroned London (10) this year. Paris (7th) is the most expensive in the euro zone.
Many European cities climbed significantly in the rankings as the strengthening of the euro against the U.S. dollar made countries using that currency relatively more expensive than others.
Dublin (24), for example, shot up 34 places this year with Frankfurt (22) following a similar trajectory, rocketing 33 spots.
European cities account for seven of the ten most expensive cities. But they are outpriced by two of their Asian counterparts. Since 1991, the two most expensive cities have been found in Japan, where Tokyo (1) and Osaka (2) extended their reign for yet another year. Hong Kong (5) is the only other non-European city in the top ten.
U.S. cities became comparatively less expensive over the past year as cities in the euro zone leapfrogged over them. New York (13) dropped out of the top ten but remains the U.S.' costliest city with Chicago (16) and Los Angeles (19) not far behind.
The survey monitors 134 cities, comparing prices for a basket of 160 goods and services, including food, utilities and leisure activities using New York as a base line, assigning it 100 points on the index. Tokyo scored 137, Moscow 88 and St. Petersburg 73.
Data gathered by EIU researchers indicates that 1 kilogram of bread costs an average of $0.90 in Moscow, $3.58 in New York and $6.16 in Tokyo. An hourly rate for house cleaning in Moscow is $4.43 in comparison to $30 in New York. The survey took both high- and low-end prices to compile an average figure.
While almost everything in Moscow and St. Petersburg is much cheaper than in Tokyo, Paris, London or New York, there are categories, like health care and sports, where Russia is significantly more expensive.
An average fee for using a tennis court for one hour in Moscow is $30.40, almost four times more than the $7.94 it would cost in London, while entrance fees to public swimming pools average $7.92 in Moscow - twice as much as in Tokyo.
East European cities generally offer better value than their Western counterparts, according to the survey. Bucharest (114) with a score 52 maintains its position as the cheapest in Europe with a cost of living just 40 percent that of Oslo, with a score 127.
In Africa, Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire rose 22 places to be ranked 36th, tied with Moscow, because its currency is pegged to the euro.
The relative cost of living in Middle Eastern cities has generally fallen. In some cases, such as in Bahrain (68), Dubai (68) and Riyadh (78), this has been due to a currency pegged to the U.S. dollar, while others such as Tel Aviv (49) has been hit by the security situation. Tehran maintains its position as the world's cheapest city. Its cost of living is a mere quarter of Tokyo's.
PRICEY
COST OF LIVING (selected city)
Rank City Index Rank Last Year
1 Tokyo 137 1
2 Osaka Kobe 133 1
3 Oslo 127 5
4 Zurich 119 8
5 Hong Kong 115 3
7 Paris 112 17
10 London 109 8
13 New York 100 7
27 Beijing 92 13
27 Berlin 92 51
36 Moscow* 88 32
74 St Petersburg** 73 78
82 Prague 70 106
125 Tehran 32 131
* Tied with Abidjan, Shanghai, and Taipai
**Tied with Abu Dhabi, Atlanta, and Toronto
Source: Economist Intelligence Unit
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Rating Clearing
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Standard & Poor's ratings agency said on Friday that it had raised its corporate-governance score for local electricity utility Lenenergo to CGS-5.9 from CGS-5.7, following improvements in the company's standards of governance regulatory infrastructure of the sector, Interfax reported.
"Standard & Poor's believes that Lenenergo's corporate-governance practices have improved over the last year, taking into account the significant risks of the upcoming reorganization of the utilities sector," said Julia Kochetygova, the director of Standard & Poor's Governance Services. "There are still governance weaknesses, however, owing to the significant involvement of the majority shareholder compared with the limited influence of minority shareholders and independent directors."
The ownership structure and influence component remains unchanged, reflecting a comparatively high level of ownership transparency and the positive influence of the two strategic investors, UES and Fortum of Finland. This component score is constrained by the regulatory environment, which limits the company's commercial freedom. The component score is also limited by some of UES's policies, which lack transparency, Standard & Poor's analysts reported, according to Interfax.
New Network
Mobile operator Tele2, the fourth GSM-operator to appear on the St. Petersburg market, launched its network on Monday, providing services on the GSM-1800 frequency. The equipment for the network was supplied by Siemens, Interfax reported.
Until recently, the St. Petersburg cellular-telephone-services market has been dominated by Megafon (previously St. Petersburg-based Northwest GSM), with a 58.3-percent market share, and Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), Russia's No. 1 cellular operator, with a 35.6-percent share, according to market research agency ACM-consulting. Analysts believe that another 700,000 subscribers will appear in St. Petersburg by the end of the year.
The major shareholder of Tele2 is Swedish telecommunication holding Tele2 AB, owning 60.6 percent in the company. The holding currently operates in 22 countries, having stakes in 11 cellular companies, with a total of 17.7 million subscribers, Interfax said.
Until recently, Tele2 was providing mobile services in St. Petersburg under the brand name Fora Communications on the AMPS/NAMPS-800 frequency, serving about 43,000 subscribers.
YukosSibneft Rolls On
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Yukos, the country's top oil producer, said Monday that it is going ahead with plans to sell Eurobonds, contradicting a Sunday Times report that the offer is being delayed by a dispute with the government over alleged tax evasion. The report cited unidentified people familiar with the matter.
Earlier this month, Yukos said that it had hired Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse First Boston, Morgan Stanley and UBS AG to manage a Eurobond sale this year to help finance a takeover of smaller rival Sibneft for as much as $14.5 billion in cash and shares.
The Antimonopoly Ministry said it plans to rule on the takeover this week.
Moscow-based Yukos, Russia's biggest oil producer, is under investigation for alleged tax evasion, and one of its owners is in custody on charges of stealing shares in 1994. The investigations have raised concerns that the deal may be halted. The transaction would create the world's No. 6 publicly traded oil company.
MTS $300M Bond Sale
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) - Mobile TeleSystems, eastern Europe's biggest wireless company by subscribers, sold $300 million in floating-rate notes to fund acquisitions, Andrei Braginsky, MTS's head of public and investor relations, said Monday.
Credit Suisse First Boston, the investment-banking unit of Credit Suisse Group, arranged the sale, Braginsky said in a telephone interview.
The bonds, which mature in August 2004, pay interest at 400 basis points more than the three-month London Interbank overnight rate.
MTS has announced more than $700 million of acquisitions in the past two years, according to Bloomberg data, as the company expands to try to become the dominant wireless company across the former Soviet Union.
TITLE: Sibneft Payout Will Give $1Bln to Its Shareholders
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: New Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich will have even more cash available to go after big players after the $1 billion half-year dividend announced by his oil major Sibneft on Friday.
Sibneft, some 92 percent of which belongs to Abramovich's holding company, Millhouse Capital, surprised the market with the latest in a string of record payouts as its core owners move into other fields of activity in the run-up to its merger with Yukos.
Sibneft shares skyrocketed more than 20 percent to $2.50 on the news before settling down to close at $2.40, a daily gain roughly equal to the announced dividend of 21 cents per share.
"The payment of interim dividends is an extension of our philosophy of distributing profits to shareholders," company president Eugene Shvidler said in a statement. "Sibneft strives to provide maximum returns for shareholders, after setting aside funding for its investment program and financial obligations."
Shareholders registered on July 31 will receive the dividend, which is expected to be approved at an extraordinary shareholders meeting scheduled for mid-September.
Yukos, flush with cash, and heavily indebted Sibneft have agreed to harmonize their ratios of debt to assets ahead of the merger, the first phase of which is settling terms with core Sibneft owners.
After that, Sibneft will move to deal with its minority shareholders, who hold the remaining 8 percent of the company unless recent market transactions have further reduced the size of its free float, analysts said.
Reznikov said that the new company that will grow out of a Yukos-Sibneft merger could embrace the dividend policies advocated by Sibneft, which is committed to paying out cash remaining after capital expenditures and debt payments.
Yukos has been gradually increasing its payout ratio, and recent dividends have been between a fifth and a quarter of net profit. But that is far behind Sibneft, which set the all-time high Russian dividend with a $1.09 billion payout in 2002.
Sibneft shareholders will get 25 percent of the new company in a complicated cash and equity deal valued at up to $15 billion. Yukos offered to buy back 10 percent of its own shares earlier this month as part of the trade.
Dividend payments are equivalent to share repurchases in a sense that both result in wealth distribution to shareholders, so the recent Yukos move could mean the company is getting closer toward Sibneft in terms of dividend policies.
The Anti-Monopoly Ministry has yet to approve the merger, and its delay in doing so, coupled with the recent legal assault on Yukos and its parent company Group Menatep, has caused speculation that the government may block the deal.
But Interfax, however, quoted a source in the ministry as saying Friday that it would likely give the green light sometime in the middle of August.
TITLE: Losing Family Comforts
AUTHOR: By Andrew M. Cockburn
TEXT: There is no doubt that the deaths of his two sons will be a devastating blow to Saddam Hussein, but those who hope that their loss will leave him a broken man are likely to be disappointed.
He'll probably release another audiotape in the next few days saying that he has sacrificed his two sons for the struggle and calling on other Iraqis to be prepared to do the same, one veteran of the Iraqi opposition observed.
What was already a life-and-death struggle for Hussein is now also a blood feud.
Even so, his grief must be extreme. Hussein has always been a family man. One of the very few jokes known to have been coined by the ex-dictator of Iraq concerns the late Uday, who, so Hussein used to quip, had been an "activist" from an early age. This is in reference to the time in 1964 when Hussein was in jail and his wife, Sajida Khairallah Telfah, would bring baby Uday for a visit - with secret messages from Hussein's fellow Baathist conspirators concealed in Uday's diapers.
Later, when he was cleaving his way to absolute power, Hussein's primary instruments were close family members - his half-brothers Barzan, Watban and Sabawi, as well as his uncle, Khairallah Telfah, and cousin Adnan. Son-in-law Hussein Kamel Majid emerged as a central pillar of the regime in the 1980s, as did another member of Saddam's Majid relatives, Ali Hassan al Majid.
It was a classic example of tribal rule.
Proximity to the throne through blood ties, however, was no guarantee of job security. Hussein's brothers lost their influence - all had been prominent in the repressive security services - after their mother died in 1982. Adnan Khairallah played a vital role as minister of defense in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s - a little too successfully, perhaps, given that he died soon after the cease-fire in a mysterious helicopter crash. Hussein Kamel Majid was executed for his temporary defection to Jordan in 1995.
In the dangerous quicksand of court politics under Hussein, only his sons were above the law. Others might be punished for particularly egregious crimes, such as the occasion when the family was lined up to watch cousin Luai Khairallah have his arm broken by Hussein for assaulting his school teacher. But Uday and Qusay appear to have enjoyed total impunity. (Hussein did allegedly consider harshly punishing Uday for murdering his food taster in 1988, but soon relented.) They were the only people whom he felt he could totally and unreservedly trust, and now he has lost them.
Further, the manner of their death has ominous implications for the hunted Iraqi leader, given that they apparently were betrayed by their Mosul hosts. The opulence of Nawaf Zaidan's villa, at least before it was riddled with American gunfire, suggests that he did well under the old regime, but that was evidently no bar to his vastly increasing his fortune by exchanging his guests for the immense reward on offer.
It is also worth noting that the hiding place selected by the two fugitives was hardly obscure, suggesting that the family is not exactly melting into the population.
Abid Hamid Mahmud Tikriti, Hussein's private secretary, could think of no more imaginative place to hide than in one of his many residences, where he was duly apprehended. If Hussein is lurking in a similar bolt hole, then it seems entirely possible that he will be unearthed in the near future.
Hardly less ominous for Hussein is the rattle of celebratory gunfire in Baghdad at the news of his sons' deaths. He may never have labored under the illusion that the people of Iraq love him, but the fact that Baghdadis at least should express such jubilation at the passing of Uday and Qusay indicates that there is little possibility of a groundswell of support in Iraq for a Saddam Hussein regime restoration.
The fact that those guns may tomorrow be turned on the U.S. occupation forces under the inspiration of Iraqi nationalism or Islamic fervor is of little use or consolation to him.
Thus Hussein's options are ever more limited. All he really has left is his image of himself as the dauntless Arab fighter who will never back away from a duel. Now that almost everything he once possessed, including his family, is gone, he is once again a hunted fugitive, just as he was in the winter of 1959 after his failed attempt to assassinate the then-leader of Iraq.
Under his subsequent rule, the story of that flight, complete with happy ending, became the stuff of legend, books and a movie.
This time there is little chance of a happy ending. All he can hope for is the legend.
Andrew M. Cockburn is the co-author of "Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein." He contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.
TITLE: Taking Leave But Keeping In Plain Sight
TEXT: Volunteers for a number of candidates running in the city's Sept. 21 gubernatorial election made their first appearances outside metro stations over the weekend, handing out campaign literature in what already appears to be an unfair race.
The reason that the race has been and appears likely to remain an uneven match is the position of one of the candidates - Presidential Representative in the Northwest Region Valentina Matviyenko.
Given her announcement last Thursday that she was taking a leave of absence from her post in order to run her campaign, perhaps it seems unfair to bring up her position - and the free news coverage and resources it provides her with - as being an issue.
But Matviyenko's activities over the two days following the announcement indicate that she is aware of the uses to which her office and title can be put.
On Thursday, television stations carried reports of a meeting she held - in her role as presidential representative - with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.
On Friday, the press service at the presidential representative's office issued a press release detailing Matviyenko's tour through dacha areas ringing the city and her discussions with the locals about improving commuter-train and telephone service to their summer getaway places.
Apparently, this is the political equivalent of the "what I did on my summer vacation" reports we used to write in school.
True, the City Election Commission has yet officially to register Matviyenko's candidacy, so she didn't have to leave office as early as she did. But her actions over the next couple of days laid the move bare for what it appears to have been - a simple PR stunt.
The rules requiring her to leave federal office are there to prevent candidates from having access to resources or coverage not available to their opponents. Not requiring them to leave the office until actual registration just allows candidates like Matviyenko to enjoy a grace period and take advantage of all the coverage they can get.
Even more worrying is the fact that Matviyenko has left herself an escape clause should she feel the need for a little more time on television.
Even though the law says that the government must appoint a temporary replacement for her, Matviyenko has said that she will continue to be involved in activities related to specific tasks that she had been given by President Vladimir Putin or where they involved national security issues.
Given the way that the game has been played so far, that sounds like a formulation tailor made for skirting the election laws - particularly if dachas are defined as objects of national-defense importance.
TITLE: The National Peculiarities of Politicians' Rest
TEXT: Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov is off on vacation as of Saturday to Siberia's Lake Baikal and then the warmer climes of Sochi, and this has prompted Itar-Tass to poll Cabinet ministers on how they relax. And hey, they're a bunch of nature-lovin' outdoorsmen.
Yes, outdoors MEN. Itar-Tass reports that the lone female minister, Galina Karelova, vacations like "a true lady": she naps, reads and sunbathes.
Otherwise, "The favorite pastime of vacationing ministers is fishing," Itar Tass reports. Fishing fanatics include Kasyanov, his deputy, Boris Alyoshin, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, Deputy Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev, and Nationalities Minister Vladimir Zorin. Kudrin and Alyoshin claim to make their own fish soup.
Other ministers rhapsodize about the hunt or long walks, while Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko is an amateur wild-life photographer.
Now, some of this is probably true. But history also amply demonstrates: Hunting, fishing and Russian politics, mixed in equal parts, form a Harmonic Convergence of lying.
Take Boris Yeltsin, who in 1996 famously claimed to have bagged 40 ducks in one day. Perhaps he was using an AK-47 on full automatic with tracer fire. Utka, "duck" in Russian, is also the word for bedpan, and a Moscow art exhibit later lined up 40 bedpans in his honor. In 1997, Yeltsin had a fabulous time fishing in Karelia: Local officials had airlifted in 10,000 extra fish.
It's not just Yeltsin. Argumenty i Fakty once unveiled the KGB scuba divers who used to put fish on Nikita Khrushchev's hooks (a not-uncommon Communist Party practice, according to Arkady Vaksberg's "The Soviet Mafia"). Other officials hiding behind trees used to toss rabbits out for Leonid Brezhnev to bag.
And then there was the legendary 1997 bear-hunting trip by Viktor Chernomyrdin: When news reached the governor of Yaroslavl of a mother bear and two cubs hibernating inside a tree, he carved a helicopter landing pad out of the woods and paved a road from it to the den, so the prime minister could be chauffeured right up to the bear's lair - at the head of an entourage that included dogs, bodyguards, professional hunters in crisp new uniforms, an ambulance, a kitchen and a mobile dining room.
"I was happy that I had an opening in my schedule for this," Chernomyrdin said after gunning down a sleepy bear cub. "I love hunting. There is no other recreation that I can afford. I am always short of time."
I guess hunting is quick when you're chauffeured to your victim.
But when Teddy Roosevelt on a presidential hunting trip was made a mirror-image offer - a bear cub chained to a tree - he turned away in disgust. His mix of dignity and mercy created the concept of the teddy bear. And Roosevelt went on to lead a progressive, pro-business, reform government and to set aside large tracts as national parks. Russia may be led by self-satisfied outdoorsmen; but at a time when the country desperately needs men of Roosevelt's integrity, it's been well-documented that hardly any of them would stand up for a bear cub and against a corrupt oil company.
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The St. Petersburg Times, writes the Daily Outrage at www.thenation.com.
TITLE: Philippines Starts Investigation of Mutiny
AUTHOR: By Jim Gomez
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MANILA, Philippines - Philippine police arrested an aide to disgraced former President Joseph Estrada Monday and were investigating a senator for their suspected role in a mutiny by soldiers demanding the government step down.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo vowed to prosecute all 296 mutinous soldiers who seized a Manila shopping complex for 19 hours before giving up without a shot Sunday.
Arroyo, who had threatened to crush the rebellion with tanks and sharpshooters, told the country on Sunday night that the peaceful squelching of the rebellion was "a triumph for democracy."
"I assure the world that this event does not in any way injure our national security and political stability," she said in a televised address hours before she was to give her annual state of the nation speech Monday in which she was expected to stress her control of the country.
She said that 296 soldiers, including 70 officers, were involved and that all would face prosecution based on "the articles of war."
Five junior officers who organized the uprising were questioned Monday under guard and will likely face courts martial, said army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Joselito Kakilala. The other mutineers were confined to barracks.
About 3,000 police officers and sharpshooters took up position Monday outside the Congress building, where Arroyo was to speak.
Outside the Congress, thousands of left-wing protesters called for Arroyo's resignation, saying she had failed to give land to farmers, control corruption and ease crushing poverty.
"Arroyo only speaks of an illusion of growth," labor leader Elmer Labog said. "The people's call for Arroyo's resignation will continue to escalate, especially after the mutiny by young officers and soldiers."
Protesters danced, sang and burned a 3 1/2-meter effigy of Arroyo with moving legs, symbolizing the president on the run.
Police on Monday arrested Ramon Cardenas, a member of Estrada's cabinet, who owns a house near Manila where officers found assault rifles, ammunition and red arm bands similar to those used by the mutinous soldiers in taking over complex in downtown Manila.
Police described his residence as a "staging area or safehouse" for the mutineers.
Cardenas was Estrada's deputy executive secretary during his presidency, which ended in January 2001 when massive street protests toppled him from power over alleged corruption.
Estrada is now standing trial and his lawyers earlier denied he was involved in Sunday's uprising.
Senior armed forces officials said civilians would also be investigated, including Senator Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan, a former army officer who led a spate of past coups. He has denied involvement in Sunday's uprising.
The renegades had wired the downtown building complex - home to some of the city's richest citizens, foreign businesspeople and diplomats - with explosives and booby traps.
The mutinous troops, who had complained of corruption and misconduct in the upper ranks of the military and government, demanded on national television that Arroyo and her government quit.
But generals loyal to Arroyo sent in hundreds of their own troops, along with tanks and armor and the renegades gave up without a shot fired.
The 56-year-old Arroyo has repeatedly said she won't run in presidential elections next May. However, there have been rumors she may change her mind and such speculation may have helped prompt Sunday's mutiny.
The Philippines has had about eight military uprisings and coup attempts since the "people power" ouster of dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Estrada was pushed from office to make way for Arroyo in 2001.
Unlike those cases, there was almost no public support for Sunday's mutiny.
Before giving up, one of main mutiny leaders, navy Lieutenant Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes, said the officers were not trying to grab power but wanted to push for reform.
He sounded bitter that only a few citizens turned out to support the rebellion.
"It's frustrating to know that the Filipino people chose to be led this way," he said. "The corruption will continue. This will all be a show, but believe me, nothing will happen. There will be no reforms."
TITLE: Israel Ready To Release Palestinian Prisoners
AUTHOR: By Steve Weizman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - Bearing a package of goodwill offerings toward the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon prepared for talks with U.S. President George W. Bush aimed at finding an elusive peace.
Just hours before Sharon's arrival Sunday in Washington, the Israeli cabinet approved the release of Islamic militants from prison and tore down some troublesome West Bank roadblocks in what were seen as an attempt to counter Palestinian charges of Israeli recalcitrance in peacemaking.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas presented a list of complaints against the Israelis in a meeting Friday with Bush, ahead of Sharon's Tuesday visit to the White House.
Sharon was to meet Monday with American Jewish leaders.
Abbas cited Israel's refusal to free thousands of Palestinian prisoners. He also called for a halt to construction work on settlements in the West Bank and to a wall separating the West Bank from Israel.
Supplying Sharon with some capital to expend during his White House talks, his first since October last year, the cabinet reversed an earlier position and agreed to free imprisoned members of the violent Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two groups responsible for almost all of the nearly 100 suicide bombing attacks that have killed more than 300 Israelis in 33 months of violence.
A senior Israeli official traveling with Sharon said that about 540 prisoners would be released within a week - about 210 from the Islamic groups, a similar number from Fatah, headed by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Abbas and the remainder common criminals.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the cabinet decision did not quote numbers of prisoners to be released; rather, criteria for deciding who was eligible.
However, the decision did not appear to satisfy many.
Palestinian officials said that of the 7,700 prisoners Israel is holding, 3,000 could be freed with no threat to Israel's security.
Hamas leaders threatened to renew attacks against Israelis unless all prisoners were released.
Hardline members of the Israeli Cabinet denounced the decision, approved by a vote of 14-9. The released prisoners "may return to acts of terror," warned Housing Minister Effie Eitam of the hawkish National Religious Party.
Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said the Islamic militants to be freed were in administrative detention - imprisonment without trial. "They belong to those groups [Hamas and Islamic Jihad], but were not personally accused of murder or anything like that," Lapid told Israel TV.
Israel has also pledged to withdraw from two additional West Bank towns, and on Sunday dismantled three West Bank roadblocks. At a roadblock outside Ramallah, a crowd of Palestinians cheered as an Israeli bulldozer cleared huge cement blocks from the road.
The roadblocks, in place since the beginning of the violence in September 2000, have severely restricted movement in the West Bank, crippling the economy and causing severe hardships. Israel has said the roadblocks are necessary to stop attackers.
TITLE: Bloodshed Continues in Liberian Capital
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Zavis
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MONROVIA, Liberia - Shells slamming into tin-roof homes killed at least 16 civilians in Liberia's war-battered capital and the U.S. Ambassador appealed to rebels to lift their bloody eight-day siege of Monrovia to allow food and aid into the city.
Rebels and government forces on Sunday battled at key crossings leading toward President Charles Taylor's downtown stronghold, with the insurgents showing no signs of slackening their drive.
The insurgents overnight bypassed one of three embattled spans, Stockton Bridge, leading from the rebel-held island port to mainland Monrovia, government field officers said.
After a night of combat, the rebels were in what had been a government-controlled suburb around the bridge - claiming to be in control.
"This morning we saw fighters coming in, telling us not to panic," one woman, reached by telephone, said in the New Georgia neighborhood, gunfire and booms echoing behind her. "I'm scared."
Taking northern neighborhoods around the bridge would give rebels a foothold on the mainland, from which they could battle their way toward the government-held downtown.
But U.S. Ambassador John Blaney appealed to insurgents to lift their eight-day siege and withdraw, saying "If they want to get to a post-Taylor era, this is the way to do it."
The main rebel movement "needs to show that they have regard for the people of Liberia, that it is not indifferent to the great human suffering that is taking place here," Blaney said.
Taylor claimed Saturday that as many as 1,000 people have died since rebels launched their third attempt in two months to take the capital. Aid workers place the week's toll at about 400.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Monster Catfish Dies
BERLIN (Reuters) - A giant catfish that ate a dog and terrorized a German lake for years has washed up dead, but the legend of "Kuno the Killer" lives on.
A gardener discovered the carcass of a 1 1/2-meter-long catfish weighing 35 kilograms this week, a spokesperson for the western city of Moenchengladbach said on Friday.
Kuno became a local celebrity in 2001 when he sprang from the waters of the Volksgarten park lake to swallow a Dachshund puppy whole. He evaded repeated attempts to capture him.
"He was our Loch Ness monster," said Uwe Heil, member of Kuno's Friends, a local band named after the fish.
Several anglers identified the carcass as Kuno, but doubts linger.
"That's not the Kuno we know," said Leon Cornelius, another member of Kuno's Friends. He said he had seen several huge catfish in the lake.
Low water levels and a summer heat wave probably killed the catfish, among the biggest found in Germany. The northern city of Bremen plans to stuff it and put in a museum.
Divorce Note
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian Muslim men can divorce their wives through text messages on mobile telephones, the New Straits Times daily reported, quoting a religious adviser to the government.
Hamid Othman, adviser to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, said divorce via SMS or short messaging service was in accordance with sharia law if it was clear and unambiguous.
"SMS is just another form of writing," the daily on Saturday quoted Hamid as saying, following an Islamic court decision on Thursday that ruled in favor of a man who served divorce on his wife using SMS.
Islamic law permits a man to divorce his wife by declaring "I divorce you" three times.
TITLE: OPEC Quota Changes Unlikely
AUTHOR: By Bruce Stanley
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - When OPEC oil ministers last met to review their production quotas for crude, some feared that exports from a resurgent Iraq would soon undermine the high prices they were then enjoying.
One month later, as its ministers gather once again, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries can afford to relax.
Chronic looting and sabotage have hampered Iraq's efforts to ramp up oil exports and exploit its crude reserves, which rank second in size only to those of Saudi Arabia. The longer Iraq takes to restore its once-mighty oil industry, the longer its fellow cartel members can put off cutting their own output to make way for fresh Iraqi barrels.
Demand for oil remains strong, with the United States and other major importers running down their inventories and the peak summer driving season shifting into top gear. The price for OPEC's benchmark crude has been stuck at or near $28 a barrel - the top end of the group's desired price range.
Given such conditions, OPEC representatives meeting Thursday in Vienna, Austria, will feel little need to tinker with output, oil analysts say.
"At these sort of numbers, they must be quietly rubbing their hands," said Rob Laughlin, managing director of London brokerage GNI Man Financial.
OPEC supplies about a third of the world's crude. The group agreed at its June meeting to leave its production ceiling unchanged at 25.4 million barrels a day.
"OPEC should retain the current production quota, because the current price is still quite good," said Indonesia's Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Purnomo Yusgiantoro, in comments reported last week by Indonesia's national news agency, Antara.
Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Naimi, seeking to reassure consumers, insisted that oil prices "are not high," in an interview Thursday with the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat.
"Even if we do not change the production ceiling, it is important to meet to review the market situation and developments and to hear the views of the 10 ministers regarding the developments in the markets," Naimi explained.
Al-Nasseri added that OPEC members, especially Gulf countries, are prepared to meet increasing world oil demand, which grows by at least 1 million barrels every year. He pointed to statistics that indicate that between 2003 and 2075, the Gulf region will produce about 500 million barrels, which is more than 50 percent of the world production.
The United Arab Emirates' top oil minister, Obaid bin Saif al-Nasseri, said on Sunday that there are no "convincing reasons" to change the current ceiling.
The big issue, as always, will be Iraq.
Although Iraq is a founding member of OPEC, it hasn't participated in OPEC's quota agreements since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. Iraq's erratic exports under the U.N. oil-for-food program made it the cartel's biggest wild card. Iraq stopped pumping crude altogether during the U.S.-led invasion, and it only just started offering long-term supply contracts last week.
In anticipation of an early resumption of Iraqi exports, other OPEC members began this spring to rein in excess production and stick more closely to their agreed quotas. Led by Saudi Arabia, they trimmed their excess output by 1 million barrels a day in May and an additional 250,000 barrels in June, Laughlin said.
Some oil ministers suggested at OPEC's June meeting that it needed to go even further and lower its production ceiling to avert a price crash once Iraq began pumping again at its prewar level of 2.1 million barrels a day.
Few of them foresaw the problems and delays Iraq would face. Looters and, more recently, saboteurs have compounded the task for American and Iraqi oil men trying to repair facilities left in tatters after 12 years of U.N. sanctions and a lack of investment.
Paul Horsnell, head of energy research at J.P. Morgan in London, believes Thursday's meeting serves little purpose but to prove to the world that OPEC is paying close attention to oil markets and prices.
"There is absolutely no problem. There's no pressure on them ... I don't expect any change at all at this meeting," he said.
TITLE: Armstrong Equals Record With Fifth Tour
AUTHOR: By John Leicester
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PARIS - Only with his Tour de France title finally assured during the last leg on the cobblestoned Champs-Elysees did Lance Armstrong celebrate by lifting a flute of champagne to a resounding "Cheers!"
Overcoming crashes, illness, hard-charging rivals and plain old bad luck, the Texan won his hardest but sweetest Tour on Sunday - a record-tying fifth straight that places him among the greatest cyclists ever.
Unlike previous years, when he won by comfortable margins, the grueling 23-day, 3,400-kilometer clockwise trek around France pushed Armstrong to the limit.
"Before the Tour started I was very confident about winning. But before next year's Tour, I won't be so confident," he said.
Armstrong joined Spaniard Miguel Indurain as the only riders to win cycling's most brutal and prestigious race five times consecutively - a record Armstrong plans to break in 2004.
"It's a dream, really a dream," Armstrong said in French after climbing the podium while "The Star-Spangled Banner" rang out. "I love cycling, I love my job and I will be back for a sixth. It's incredible to win again."
So action-packed was this Tour that Armstrong was prepared for the unexpected - even Sunday, on the largely processional final stage.
"If a plane landed in the race I wouldn't be surprised," he said before setting off from the Paris suburb of Ville d'Avray on the 148-kilometer ride through streets packed with cheering spectators, many waving American flags.
Armstrong shared the podium with five-time runner-up Jan Ullrich of Germany and third-place finisher Alexander Vinokurov of Kazakhstan, holding their hands above his head in a fitting tribute to the two men who battled him to the end.
Armstrong's fierce duel with Ullrich made this centennial Tour the most gripping in years, drawing millions of fans who thronged winding mountain climbs and adorned villages along the route with banners for the riders. "Lance is God," said one sign in the Pyrenees.
Armstrong's 61-second victory hardly resembled the previous four Tours, when he demoralized rivals by dominating in lung-burning mountain ascents and super-speedy time trials.
He had never before won by less than 6 minutes - even in 1999, three years after surgery and chemotherapy for testicular cancer that spread to his lungs and brain. Still, his average speed over three weeks - 40.6 kilometers per hour - broke his own record as the fastest in Tour history.
Armstrong's family jubilantly greeted him at the finish: wife Kristin, his 3-year-old son Luke, and twin girls Isabelle and Grace, who will be 2 in November.
A perfectionist who focuses on the Tour more than all other races, Armstrong also will be motivated to win in 2004.
"The other years I won by 6, 7 minutes. I think it makes it more exciting and sets up an attempt for number six," he said.
The outcome of the race wasn't decided until the rain-soaked time trial on Saturday, when Armstrong managed to stay upright on a slippery road while Ullrich skidded.
It seemed an appropriate way to determine the winner of a race marked by crashes and other mishaps. On one day, Armstrong and other leaders were temporarily blocked by protesters; on another he had to veer through a field to avoid a fallen rider.
Armstrong fought through stomach flu before the July 5 start and was bruised in an enormous pileup on the second day.
Besides Armstrong and Indurain, just three other riders have won the Tour five times, but not consecutively. They are Belgium's Eddy Merckx, and Frenchmen Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault. If Armstrong doesn't win a sixth title, the question of who is the best will long be debated.
"Armstrong's courageous, a fighter. Somebody who perseveres until the end," said Hinault, whose wins came in 1978-1979, 1981-1982 and 1985. "You have to do like him to beat him. He's certainly a star, but I don't know if he's a superstar. It's a new generation of riders. They have radios, they work more closely in teams. It's a different era."
Indurain said he still views Merckx as the greatest.
"He competed in virtually every cycling competition, whereas Armstrong really only focuses on the Tour," he said.
The Spaniard, who won the Tour from 1991-95, said Armstrong would be hard-pressed to capture title No. 6.
"Of course, it's possible. But every year it gets more difficult, and he'll face some tough rivals," he said.
In the final stage, France's Jean-Patrick Nazon wept after winning in a fierce sprint. Australian Baden Cooke was second, earning enough points to take the green jersey as the Tour's best overall sprinter. For a record-tying sixth time, Richard Virenque of France won the pink polka-dot jersey as the Tour's best mountain rider.
Armstrong said that in previous years, his preparations for the following Tour began almost immediately after his victory celebrations. Not this year.
"This Tour took a lot out of me," he said. "I need to step back from cycling and from the races and relax a little bit and focus on 2004 in due time."
TITLE: Sox Drop Yankees, Reduce N.Y.'s Lead to 1 1/2 Games
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BOSTON - Jason Varitek tied the game with a three-run homer and Johnny Damon followed with the go-ahead shot in a six-run seventh inning that carried the Boston Red Sox to a 6-4 victory over the New York Yankees at Fenway Park on Sunday
New York's lead in the AL East is now down to 1 1/2 games.
"It's going to be a dogfight all the way to the end," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "I'm not sure who's going to win, but the division is going to be determined by how we play each other because we obviously proved we play each other very even."
Jeff Weaver took a 3-0 lead and a two-hitter into the seventh before he walked Trot Nixon and hit Bill Mueller with a pitch with one out. Chris Hammond (2-1) relieved and Varitek homered over the Green Monster as a disgusted Weaver threw a towel in the Yankees dugout.
Damon then hooked a shot inside the foul pole in right for consecutive homers and a 4-3 lead.
Casey Fossum (5-4) allowed one hit, striking out one in one inning of relief of Derek Lowe.
Byung-Hyun Kim pitched the ninth for his sixth save in seven tries, allowing an RBI fielder's choice Hideki Matsui.
Toronto 10, Baltimore 1. Roy Halladay (15-2) pitched seven scoreless innings at SkyDome and became the first major-league pitcher to win 15 straight decisions since Roger Clemens won 16 in a row in 2001. Aquilino Lopez finished the three-hitter, allowing a homer to Larry Bigbie.
Carlos Delgado hit his AL-leading 30th home run. Rodrigo Lopez (3-6) tied a season high by allowing eight runs and eight hits in 3 2/3 innings.
In other games, it was: Toronto 10, Baltimore 1; Kansas City 5, Detroit 1; Chicago 9, Tampa Bay 1; Oakland 10, Anaheim 1; Texas 7, Seattle 3; and Cleveland 3, Minnesota 2 (14 inns.); Florida 7, Philadelphia 6; Los Angeles 1, Arizona 0; San Francisco 6, San Diego 2; Montreal 13, Atlanta 10; Cincinnati 8, N.Y. Mets 5; Chicago White Sox 5, Houston 3; St. Louis 4, Pittsburgh 3; and Colorado 6, Milwaukee 1.