SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #900 (68), Tuesday, September 9, 2003
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TITLE: Mariinsky Sets Destroyed in Blaze
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A fire early Friday morning in a warehouse belonging to the Mariinsky Theater destroyed scenery for at least 30 of the theater's productions, causing damage valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars and jeopardizing the start of the theater's new season.
The fire, which broke out at about 3 a.m. in the building on Ulitsa Pisareva, about a kilometer from the theater, destroyed 400 square meters of the five-storey brick building, the St. Petersburg branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said. The building's roof and floors collapsed at about 6 a.m.
"The fire started on the first floor, and spread very quickly," ministry spokesperson Vladislav Stulovsky said. "The rapid spread of the fire was helped by the large ammount of flammable materials in the building."
The first three floors of the building were used as storage space for scenery, with a wood workshop on the fourth floor and a scenery-painting area on the fifth floor.
The scenery affected consisted mainly of frames, the Mariinsky press service said on Monday. Quoting an interview given to news agency RIA Novosti in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, by the theater's artistic director, Valery Gergiev, the press service said that the total cost of scenery for one production is between $500,000 and $1 million.
Because the Mariinsky's soft scenery - painted canvases, furnishings, etc. - is kept at a different warehouse, the press service said that it is difficult to estimate the total cost of the damage caused.
The Mariinsky has three other warehouses around the city.
"Not all, but the bulk of decorations were destroyed. It is a real tragedy for the theater," Mariinsky Deputy Artistic Director Svetlana Ostanina said on NTV.
The damage caused to the building itself was put at about 7 million rubles, the fire service said, quoting official Mariinsky figures.
The cause of the fire had not been ascertained as of Monday, but investigators were not ruling out the possibility of arson. The fire service said that witnesses reported strange people entering the building just before the fire broke out.
NTV quoted eyewitnesses as saying that an unidentified man was seen dousing the building in kerosene and setting it alight.
The fire service said that 134 fire fighters were involved in tackling the blaze. Five fighters were injured, including one who was taken to the hospital.
Despite fears that the Mariinsky would have to delay the start of its new season, slated for Oct. 10, the theater said Monday that it would be able to reopen on schedule.
"The theater will open its new season as planned on Oct. 10 with a performance of [Rimsky-Korsakov's] 'The Golden Cockerel,'" a press officer said.
Mariinsky Artistic Director Valery Gergiev, in the Netherlands for his Rotterdam Gergiev Festival, promised a swift investigation into the fire, and that the theater's season would start on schedule.
"I am constantly in contact with St. Petersburg to find out the causes of the fire, and to make arrangements for the theater to be ready to start the new season in the first 10 days of October," he was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying. "Intensive efforts to remove the aftermath of the fire will be continued."
"There are no grounds for speaking about a Russian cultural crisis," RIA Novosti quoted Gergiev as saying.
The theater's press service said that it had no concrete information on the specific scenery that had been damaged, but said that the scenery for several of its most popular productions, including the ballets "Swan Lake," "The Nutcracker" and "La Bayadere," were safe. It also said that the theater would not cancel any of its planned tours.
In his interview with RIA Novosti, Gergiev was equally upbeat.
"After the Rotterdam festival, we'll go on vacation until October," he said. "The new season will open with new productions and festivals, in particular a ballet festival."
Interfax reported that the scenery for the theater's production of Tchaikovsky's opera "Yevgeny Onegin" that is due to travel to Japan in November is safe, but that the fire destroyed the scenery for the performances of the same opera in Germany in December.
Quoting the theater's press service, Interfax reported that the scenery would be rebuilt in time.
Goodwill messages and offers of help from around the world flooded into the theater even as early as Friday.
"We had messages from opera and ballet theaters around the world, and from individual admirers," the theater's press service said.
Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi said that his ministry would give the theater financial and organizational support.
The sets were not insured, but Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref said on Monday that the government would help the theater pay.
TITLE: Court Set To Hear Election Lawsuit
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The St. Petersburg City Court on Friday accepted a lawsuit filed Thursday by Vice Governor Anna Markova against Valentina Matviyenko, the frontrunner in the race for city governor, accusing her of violating election legislation and abusing adminstrative resources at the highest level, and demanding that her name be removed from the ballot papers.
In a Kremlin meeting last Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin wished Matviyenko luck in the current race for the top job at Smolny, and asked her to work hard as governor on the city budget for 2004. The meeting was broadcast by state television channels Rossiya and Channel One.
"Putin violated the law," Markova's lawyer Vita Vladimirova said in a telephone interview on Friday, adding that Matviyenko continually abused her position as presidential representative in the Northwest Region.
"Matvienko's campaign breaks the 2002 law on voters' rights, which forbids campaigning paid for from other sources than official campaign funds," Vladimirova said.
Matviyenko spokesperson Galina Gromov refused to comment on Monday after Markova's suit was accepted.
Matviyenko said Friday that Putin had acted completely within the law.
"Why can everyone else express their opinion and he can't? I personally take his words as an assurance that I can win these election honestly, competing with other candidates," she told reporters.
Recent polls have given Matviyenko a clear lead in the race to succeed Vladimir Yakovlev as city governor, with Markova trailing in second place with ratings under 10 percent.
The elections, slated for Sept. 21, were called when Putin appointed Yakovlev as deputy prime minister in charge of communal-services reform in the government of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
Analysts said that Markova is unlikely to succeed in her bid to have Matviyenko thrown out of the race.
"It is so obvious that everything has already been decided," Tatyana Protasenko, a senor researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Sociological Institute, said in a telephone interview on Monday.
"Markova has no chance in court," she said, adding that most voters care little for the specifics of Russian legislation.
"I have compared the results of various polls monitoring ordinary people's opinions of this struggle, and I found that only about 15 or 16 percent of respondents openly reacted negatively to Putin expressing his support to one of the candidates," she said. "Everyone else either considered this either a minor lapse, easily forgivable, or even the president's duty to express his opinion."
Yevgeny Volk, a political analyst with the Heritage Foundation in Moscow, said that the court accepting Markova's suit is part of a hypocritical game.
"It's nothing but an imitation of democracy," Volk said in a telephone interview on Monday. "Russian authorities have began to care whether things look fair, nothing more than that. In Russian politics, like in George Orwell's 'Animal Farm,' everyone is equal, but some are more equal than the others."
Volk said that the case will likely be dismissed, and that Markova's lawyers will have difficulty in proving that Putin's endorsement of Matviyenko was a deliberate promotion of her candidacy.
According to federal legislation, all court cases involving the potential disqualification of a candidate should finish at least five days before the vote, which in this case would be Sept. 16.
"The legislation on this particular subject is rather vague and can be interpreted in a number of ways," Volk said.
On one hand, he said, it is possible to see Putin's actions as premeditated, because television crews were invited and the president spoke in front of them. On the other hand, Putin officially invited Matviyenko for a discussion of matters other than her election campaign.
Markova spokesperson Vladimir Anikeyev said that the outcome of the case is far from predictable.
"We are not playing any games, we are above that," he said in a telephone interview on Monday. "When we filed the suit, we were being open and serious, and we presume the court was being serious when it accepted the case."
"Needless to say, we expect the court to be just as open and serious [in examining the case]," he said. "It doesn't take much - just to follow the legislation."
TITLE: When It's Icy Cold, Here's the Hotline
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Leaking roof? Rats running around the building? No hot water, or no water at all? Any of these problems sound familiar? They do to thousands of St. Petersburg residents.
Now, the common complaints that are such a fact of life here are being collected and published by an organization that says it is trying to force city authorities to take action on the often desperate conditions that have plagued some of the city's buildings for years.
Narodny Kontrol ("Popular Control"), a private, nonprofit initiative, was launched at the beginning of July. Since then, it says it has fielded over 3,500 complaints about living conditions from city residents.
"Our aim is to deliver information on people's living difficulties to the higher city authorities that have the power to influence the situation," Narodny Kontrol head Inga Burikova said.
Every two weeks, the organization publishes a thick bulletin listing the names and complaints of the people who have called its hotline or visited any of its five offices. The bulletins are later sent to city authorities.
The seemingly endless list of complaints makes for eerily repetitive reading after a while. It would almost be amusing - if this routine reality wasn't spoiling people's lives.
"We haven't had water in the toilet for half a year. The walls of our apartment building have cracks," wrote Tatyana Opilat of 22/32 Ulitsa Shelgunova on the Petrograd Side.
Opilat is not alone.
Narodny Kontrol's bulletin for the first two weeks of August contained 17 water-related complaints - either no water or poor water pressure - 12 complaints about rats, and 30 about leaking or otherwise defective roofs. And that's just from the Nevsky District, one of the 19 areas by which the bulletin is organized.
Other common moans include broken elevators, no central heating, litter cluttering up yards and homeless people squatting in cellars and attics.
According to Burikova, Narodny Kontrol is able to help solve about 20 percent of the cases reported.
"Another 40 to 45 percent of complaints require action from the city administration, or even a change in federal legislation," she said. "The other 30 to 35 percent can only be resolved with substantial financial help."
Burikova said that Narodny Kontrol was set up by three people, but that she "had no right" to disclose their names - or where the organization gets its money from.
However, a recent high-profile advertising campaign linked the organization to the frontrunner in the race for city governor, as posters have appeared around the city bearing the slogan "Narodny Kontrol for Valentina Matviyenko."
Matviyenko, the presidential representative in the Northwest Region, is favorite to win the vote on Sept. 21 to replace former Governor Vladimir Yakovlev.
Appropriately enough, Yakovlev was appointed deputy prime minister in charge of communal-services reform on June 6. Local housing authorities - commonly known by their Russian acronym, Zhek - which are responsible for the state of the city's buildings, fall within Yakovlev's new remit.
The picture painted by Narodny Kontrol's bulletins is of a city whose people always keep extra candles and torches on hand in case the electricity should go off, a spare bottle of water in case the supply should fail, and extra sets of warm underwear for when the heating breaks down.
"People usually appeal to us when they fail to get help from their local Zhek" said Artyom Porshkov, who works in a Narodny Kontrol office in the Central District.
"For example, one woman came to us when she was already utterly desperate about the rats running around the cellar and the entrance hall of the building where she lived - and even her apartment, which is located on the fifth floor of the building," he said.
Porshkov said the woman had called her local Zhek office, which told her that it was doubtful that she could have rats in her fifth-floor apartment if they lived in the cellar and that "it should have been a problem for first-floor residents, not her, to complain about."
He said that some more unusual complaints often border on the ironic. One set of apartment-building residents, for example, came to the Narodny Kontrol office to say they were having problems getting to their homes.
It turned out that the three apartments in question were the only ones that had not been bought up by a new hotel in the same building. Every time the complainants came home, they were stopped by the hotel's security service and sometimes not allowed in. Postal workers could also not deliver the mail because of the security at the door.
Burikova said that one of the most outrageous cases she had come across in the last two months was that of the building at 26 Yeleninskaya Ulitsa in the suburb of Lomonosov. The building is gradually slipping into a ravine.
"There are 15 families living in that building, and the building may fall down at any moment," she said. "However, the official decision that was made in 2002 about repairing the building is still not being carried out."
Burikova said that there are a number of reasons why St. Petersburg residents have so much about which to complain.
"First, it's because of the city being rather old - the older parts especially need lots of work," she said. "However, there are also a lot of situations in which the problems are caused by negligence on the part of the communal-services authorities."
"For instance, many complaints from the Nevsky District are about dirty yards, streets and entrance halls, and a subsequent invasion by rats," she said. "These problems could have been solved by local communal-services authorities, if they'd done what they were supposed to be doing."
TITLE: Russians Claim the Top Prize at Venice Film Festival
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: VENICE, Italy - A Russian film about the harrowing reunion of a father with his sons after a 10-year absence, won the Venice Film Festival's top prize, the Golden Lion, on Saturday.
First-time director Andrei Zvyagintsev dedicated the award to Vladimir Garin, the 15-year-old star of "Vozvrashcheniye" ("The Return"), who tragically drowned shortly after the end of shooting in the same lake where several of the picture's scenes were filmed. While promoting the film in Venice, Zvyagintsev refused to speak about the matter.
"You see only two actors up on the stage tonight. Those who saw the film know there were three main actors," said Zvyagintsev, 39, who was greeted with a standing ovation Saturday.
"The fact is that the actor who played Andrei died tragically two months ago. We would like to dedicate this award to him," he said, clearly moved by the occasion.
The director's remarkable debut tells the tale of two adolescent boys whose mysterious and overbearing father returns after a decade-long absence, imposing a harsh program to turn his boys into men. The man puts the two children through a series of grueling tasks that ultimately brings disaster.
"Vozvraschenie" also won the award for best first feature.
"For a first-time director it's absolutely extraordinary," said Screen International critic Lee Marshall before the award was announced. "It's an incredibly strong story of a father-son conflict, with elements of even Greek tragedy behind it."
In a strange coincidence, a separate first-time Russian director won the Golden Lion in 1962. He was Andrei Tarkovsky, presenting the film "Ivanovo Detstvo" ("Ivan's Childhood").
The only other time a Russian won the Golden Lion was in 1991, when director Nikita Mikhalkov took the prize for the Soviet-French film "Urga Territoriya Lyubvi" ("Close to Eden").
The runner-up Jury Grand Prix was awarded Saturday to "Le Cerf-Volant" ("The Kite"), a film by Lebanese director Randa Chahal Sabbag about love and separation along the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Cult Japanese filmmaker Takeshi Kitano won a Silver Lion for his directing of "Zatoichi," about a blind samurai warrior who saves a village from sword-wielding gangsters. Kitano won the Golden Lion in 1997 for his film "Hana Bi."
Organizers said the jury had difficulty choosing this year because of the number of high-quality films on offer.
"The most important indicator of success has been that almost all the films shown have been sold out for distribution," said Franco Bernabe, the president of the Biennale umbrella group which organizes the festival.
Twenty films competed for the Golden Lion award at the 60th annual edition of the world's oldest film competition, but some 145 titles were shown.
Festival director Moritz de Hadeln said Zvyagintsev may not have wanted to talk about Garin's tragic death because he did not want to influence the jury, Agence France Presse reported.
The opening scene in "Vozvrashcheniye" shows Garin and a group of boys leaping from a wooden tower into the dark waters of a lake. Garin reportedly drowned after jumping from the same tower after filming wrapped up.
The boys' screen father, Konstantin Lavronenko, hinted at the tragedy at a news conference held hours before the film's premiere last week.
"There were times when we had a lot of fun, even though there were times when we shed tears," he was quoted by Agence France Presse as saying.
The movie's other young star, Ivan Dobronravov, 14, wept openly at the premiere.
Zvyagintsev told a news conference last week that the cast spent two months shooting in the Gulf of Finland and bonded so well that it was "a miracle of the meeting of three human beings."
He said he cast the actors in Moscow and St. Petersburg over five months.
Zvyagintsev graduated from Moscow's State Institute of Theater Art in 1990 and since then has acted in minor roles in television and film and directed a few made-for-TV movies.
(Reuters, SPT, AP)
TITLE: First Sailor From Sunken Sub Buried
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The first burial of a sailor who died when the K-159 submarine sank took place at the Serafimovskoye Cemetery on Friday.
Over a hundred people, including relatives, colleagues, friends, came to pay their last respects to Yury Zhadan, 29.
Zhadan's mother, Nadezhda, was hysterical with grief at her son's funeral, and needed medical attention beforehand. Her husband, also Yury, had also served on the K-159. Yury Jr. was their only child.
Svetlana Romanova, the mother of one of Zhadan's former classmates, said that Zhadan was "a very kind person, and one who never panicked."
"I think our country is at fault for what's happening with our army and navy," Romanova said.
"If a country wants a fleet, it should provide the necessary financial support for it," she said. "They've ruined the country and the army, and the only thing left is the faithful people who serve honestly."
During an address at the funeral, Igor Kurdin, the head of the St. Petersburg Submariners' Club, said that it appeared that the lessons of the Kursk submarine disaster of August 2001 had not been learned.
"When a sub is taken to sea, but the safety of its crew is not guaranteed, it is nothing less than negligence," Kurdin said.
Anatoly Stavropolsky, the deputy head of the division in which Zhadan served, said Zhadan "would remain in the memory of submariners."
Zhadan was one of three sailors who escaped when the submarine sank on Aug. 30. He died while waiting to be rescued, as did one other sailor. Only Lieutenant Maxim Tsibulsky survived.
The bodies of the other seven sailors have yet to be recovered from the sunken vessel. Some of their relatives were at Zhadan's funeral, and said they hoped that the vessel would be raised next year.
TITLE: Duma Gears Up for Key Budget Session
AUTHOR: By Anna Dolgov
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - After a two-month summer break, the State Duma returns for its fall session on Tuesday to discuss the draft 2004 federal budget and dozens of other bills, including those on foreign trade and commercial secrets.
But deputies are likely to be too busy preparing for Dec. 7 parliamentary elections to do much more than fulfill their main task - the approval of next year's budget, analysts said on Monday.
"If they approve the budget, then that would be enough to thank the Lord for," said Yury Korbunyuk, an analyst with the Indem think tank.
Beside the budget - which comes up for the first of four readings on Sept. 19 - the Duma is expected to consider more than 60 bills. These include bills on commercial secrets, the state regulation of foreign trade and the procedure for adopting constitutional laws.
Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal Yabloko party, will continue his annual tradition of proposing an alternative federal budget. This time, his version will introduce subsidies to raise 35 million Russians who live below the poverty line to the minimum subsistence level, Izvestia reported last week.
Yavlinsky said that his faction will also propose 11 bills - including an amendment to the Criminal Code - to impose public control over the secret services, Izvestia said.
When they gather Tuesday morning, deputies will first draft the Duma schedule for September and the following months and then review in first reading amendments to the law on bankruptcy and the Administrative Code.
Deputies are expected to split their time between the Duma and trips to meet with voters ahead of the December elections.
Due to the looming vote, the fall session is likely to be filled with populist displays - some of which appear to have started already.
The Communists are pushing for revising the results of privatization, while a group of deputies from the centrist People's Deputy faction are calling for the ouster of Unified Energy Systems head Anatoly Chubais.
"The authors' arguments are like this: First, Chubais is disliked by the people; second, he is responsible for turning off power in the regions," said Boris Nadezhdin, the deputy head of the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, Interfax reported. Under Chuabis' reign, UES has repeatedly switched off electricity over debts.
Chubais is running for a Duma seat on the SPS list.
People's Deputy has submitted to Duma committees a draft appeal to the government to call an emergency meeting of UES shareholders to consider dismissing Chubais. The state holds a majority stake in UES.
Communist lawmaker Tatyana Astrakhankina has drafted an appeal to revise privatization results, Interfax said.
Communists have constantly complained about privatization, which enriched a few insiders and impoverished millions. But supporters insist that the privatization was carried out according to the laws of the time, and that revising its results would wreck havoc in the country.
Neither proposal is likely to go far, Korbunyuk said, dismissing them as "nothing but pre-election propaganda."
TITLE: Communists Finalize Duma Elections List
AUTHOR: By Francesca Mereu
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Communists on Saturday picked an anti-Semitic nationalist and an Agrarian to join Gennady Zyuganov at the top of their party list, as they shaped their electoral bloc going into the Dec. 7 parliamentary election.
After a 14-hour congress held on the premises of the agricultural company Rosagropromstroi, which is headed by party financier Viktor Vidmanov, some 300 party members approved the trio.
Zyuganov will be followed on the list by former Krasnodar Governor Nikolai Kondratenko, who is known for his anti-Semitic remarks, and Nikolai Kharitonov, who heads the agro-industry faction in the State Duma.
Also among the top 18 people on the party list are two people connected to the Yukos oil major, a female former cosmonaut, a Nobel laureate, Zyuganov's right-hand man and a party member he once accused of being a Kremlin mole.
A party official who asked not to be named said the vote on the top three spots was not an easy one. "We discussed for hours whether to give Kondratenko the No. 2 spot," he said.
Many party members were against choosing Kondratenko, since they believe that his open anti-Semitism could scare voters away, the official said. "But Zyuganov opted for him, since he believes he is able to attract the nationalist-communist electorate."
After overseeing Krasnodar from 1997 to 2000, Kondratenko chose not to stand for re-election and now represents the region in the Federation Council.
Initially, Zyuganov planned to give the second spot to Zhores Alfyorov, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2000. Communist Deputy Alexander Saly told reporters during a break at the congress that Alfyorov, who was given the No. 5 spot instead, refused to be included in the troika since it would have meant full-time party work and no time for his scientific activities.
Almost everyone agreed on Kharitonov for the third spot, since "he will be able to attract the peasant electorate," the party official said.
The official said Zyuganov is pleased by the "Communist-Nationalist-Agrarian troika," believing this could attract a wide spectrum of voters.
The top three names on the party list are important because voters cast ballots for parties based on the first names they see on the ballot.
After the congress, Zyuganov called the Communists' federal list a "democratic" structure since it includes people from different organizations. "Eleven out of the 18 most important people on our federal list are not KPRF members, but they have been actively cooperating with us," he said.
No. 18 on the list is Duma Deputy Speaker Gennady Semigin, often a key player in behind-the-scenes intrigue. A former businessman, he heads the executive committee of the Popular Patriotic Union of Russia, or NPSR, an umbrella group uniting some 15 left-wing political movements, with the Communists as its backbone. In the Duma, Semigin formally represents the Agrarian faction.
Earlier this year, the editors of two left-wing opposition newspapers, Zavtra and Pravda, published a joint article called "Operation: Mole," accusing Semigin of helping Kremlin officials organize a fifth column in the NPSR.
Zyuganov endorsed the article, and the party's leaders issued a resolution admonishing Semigin's committee for overstepping its bounds and abetting the Kremlin's attempts to sow discord.
Zyuganov on Saturday did not hide his displeasure at the choice of Semigin, but he said it was the decision of the congress. "Differences notwithstanding between me and him, we carried out all the needed democratic procedures for the nomination of the candidate."
Party deputy chairman Ivan Melnikov said there were four candidates for the 18th spot and the congress voted for Semigin.
Svetlana Savitskaya, a Communist lawmaker who in 1984 became the first woman to walk in space, was chosen for the No. 4 spot. Valentin Kuptsov, Zyuganov's first deputy, was given the sixth spot. The 13th and 14th spots went to two Yukos men, Alexei Kondaurov and Sergei Muravlenko.
Kondaurov is an official aide to the president of Yukos Moscow, a major division within the oil company. A long-time Communist backer, he ran in the fourth spot on the party list in the Far East in the 1999 elections, but did not make it into the Duma.
Muravlenko was chairman of the Yukos board from 1993, before privatization, until resigning the post in June. Last year, he funded Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov's Rebirth of Russia party and was reported to be intending to underwrite the Communists as well.
The Kremlin's attack on Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky is seen in part as payback for his efforts to win influence in the Duma by funding opposition parties. He has acknowledged giving money to Yabloko and has said that other Yukos shareholders may be financing the Communists.
Zyuganov told journalists at the end of the congress that some 270 people were chosen for the federal list and 185 to run in the single-mandate districts. Half of the Duma's 450 seats are chosen on the basis of party lists; the other half by direct vote.
TITLE: Kadyrov Accused of Intimidation
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - A candidate in Chechnya's presidential election accused the Moscow-appointed Chechen administration of acting president Akhmad Kadyrov of using intimidation and violence against others on the ballot.
"There are certain bureaucrats who are putting pressure on some candidates to leave the pre-election process, and thereby clear the path for acting president Akhmad Kadyrov," Malik Saidullayev said at a news conference Monday.
The millionaire businessman said the Chechen police force, headed by Kadyrov's son Ramzan, had committed "mass violations," using intimidation, force and weapons against representatives of his father's opponents in the election race.
Saidullayev said one of his own assistants was kidnapped and tortured for four days by Ramzan Kadyrov's men and said he too had been "ambushed" by an armed crowd of Kadyrov supporters when he was recently in Chechnya.
The Kremlin has not publicly backed any of the 10 candidates in the race.
Independent polls have shown Saidullayev and Aslanbek Aslakhanov, who represents Chechnya in the State Duma, leading the race, their popularity far surpassing that of Kadyrov.
One candidate has already pulled out of the Oct. 5 elections and Aslakhanov recently threatened to withdraw his candidacy if the authorities "fail to create conditions for holding democratic elections."
Saidullayev, however, said he did not intend to withdraw his candidacy, saying it would be a "betrayal" of his supporters.
"Even if these elections are only 30 percent fair, I think I will still beat Kadyrov," he said, warning that if any more candidates withdraw, the elections would be compromised.
The chairperson of Chechnya's election commission, however, denied reports that the election race was fraught by unrest.
"Whatever Chechnya specialists say about passions running high, the exchange of insults and negative reporting in the election race, is untrue," Abdulkerim Arsakhanov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
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LONDON - A key witness in the extradition case of Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev said Monday that he signed a statement accusing Zakayev of kidnapping only after being held in a pit for several days and beaten.
Ducquar Dushuyev was questioned about his change of evidence in Bow Street Magistrate's Court by British lawyers acting on behalf of the Russian government in Zakayev's case.
Dushuyev told the court Monday that he was arrested in November 2002 and taken into Russian custody where he was tortured before signing a statement saying Zakayev had ordered the kidnapping of two priests.
Khawar Qureshi, the Crown Prosecution Service lawyer acting on behalf of Russian authorities, contended that Dushuyev gave himself up to avoid punishment for his crimes.
"You were never arrested [or] held in a pit. You gave this evidence of your own free will," Qureshi said.
Dushuyev replied through an interpreter: "I gave this evidence when I was in that pit. I spent six days in the pit."
The court was shown a videotape of a December 2002 interview given by Dushuyev on Russian television while he was in custody in which he makes the claims against Zakayev.
Although Dushuyev appeared red-eyed and unshaven, Qureshi suggested that his demeanor on the tape did not indicate any recent torture.
"You are smiling. You are not frightened are you?" asked Qureshi.
Dushuyev replied: "What would you imagine a man who is frightened should do? Lying on the ground twitching?"
Dushuyev told the court he left Chechnya after his release from custody and contacted Zakayev's defense to offer assistance. He said he does not intend to claim asylum in Britain or go back to Russia but plans to go to an unspecified third country.
Moscow alleges that Zakayev was a senior Chechen rebel commander who helped kill at least 300 Russian security personnel during the 1990s. He faces 13 charges, including kidnapping and murder, if extradited from Britain. Zakayev denies all the charges against him.
TITLE: Regional Votes Provide No Surprises, Incumbents Win
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Two out of the three incumbent governors held onto their seats in weekend regional elections that offered no surprises.
Novgorod Governor Mikhail Prusak and Omsk Governor Leonid Polezhayev won 78.73 percent and 56 percent, respectively, of their regions' votes, while Sverdlovsk Governor Eduard Rossel collected only 42.85 percent in an election that will now go into a second round, according to preliminary results released by the regions' election committees on Monday.
All three incumbents have governed their regions for more than 10 years and were running for third and final terms Sunday. Federal law requires a second round to be held if no candidate wins 50 percent or more of the vote. Final results are expected to be released this week.
In a hiccup, the Novgorod election committee was supposed to finalize its results Monday but postponed the announcement after irregularities were found in a vote-count report for the region's Demyansky district, Interfax said.
Preliminary results showed that the Novgorod governor faced little competition. Runners-up St. Petersburg businessperson Vladimir Dugenets and National Power Party co-leader Alexander Sevastyanov managed to collect only 4.39 percent and 4.34 percent, respectively.
Leonid Mayevsky, a Communist deputy in the State Duma, gave centrist Omsk Governor Polezhayev more of a fight, but still only garnered 28 percent of the vote. The next two leading candidates won less than 2 percent combined, Interfax said.
Sverdlovsk's charismatic Governor Rossel failed to win re-election outright when Anton Bakov, a lawmaker in the regional legislative assembly, took 14.43 percent and Federation Council Senator Andrei Vikharev took 13.68 percent. A total of 12.7 percent voted against all the candidates, while 7.23 picked the regional head of Yabloko's, Yury Kuznetsov.
A runoff vote between Rossel and Bakov is scheduled for Sept. 21.
TITLE: Zhirinovsky Picks Academics To Run
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant leader of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, will run for parliament on Dec. 7 alongside two obscure scholars, he said Monday.
The No. 2 and No. 3 names on the party's list are Pavel Chernov, a political science professor and retired security service colonel, and Zhirinovsky's spokesman Alexei Ostrovsky, a 27-year-old graduate of the Moscow Institute of International Relations.
In presenting LDPR's platform, Zhirinovsky said the party's principles rest on the power of the state and tackling the problem of the country's declining population by legalizing polygamy.
"We have been standing and will stand for Russia, as a powerful state, protecting the rights of all nationalities, including the great Russian nation," Zhirinovsky said. There are 20 million more women than men in Russia, he said.
"These circumstances force us to take a stand against so-called safe sex, which is being propagandized in the media," he said.
TITLE: U.S. Calls on Gaidar's Experience in Iraq
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton and Oksana Yablokova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The architect of Russia's at times disastrous transition to a market economy, Yegor Gaidar, has been invited by the American-led coalition authority in Iraq to help craft a recovery plan for that country's war-torn economy, Union of Right Forces co-leader Boris Nemtsov announced at his party's congress Monday.
The announcement nearly stole the show from the party as it announced its list of contenders for December's parliamentary elections - at a mid-congress briefing, reporters were more interested in Gaidar's plans for Iraq than in his party's plans for Russia.
"Many of the problems they are experiencing in Iraq are problems created by the collapse of a totalitarian regime that had a high level of state participation in the economy. These problems have parallels with the histories and practices of post-socialist countries," Gaidar, a co-founder of the party, told the conference. "They want to work out how to minimize the risks and privatize the economic system in the shortest period possible."
As President Boris Yeltsin's first - and youngest - prime minister, Gaidar spearheaded the country's move away from a planned economy. He was also the overall architect of the largest and swiftest privatization in world history.
Seeing himself as a "kamikaze" who didn't have much time to bring about revolutionary change before opposition forces moved in, his program of "shock therapy," aimed at combating potentially disastrous shortages of goods, ended up sparking a wave of hyperinflation that saw prices increase by a factor of 26 within a year, wiping out the life savings of an entire generation overnight. His scheme to privatize as rapidly as possible saw the crown jewels of the economy handed over to a handful of well-connected insiders for next to nothing.
This time, however, it's unlikely that Gaidar will have quite as much influence. An official at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said that Gaidar had been invited to take part in an international conference in Baghdad later this month "with a view to explaining how European experience with economic reform might help Iraq manage its transition."
The official said that experts from nine Central and Eastern European countries had been invited to speak and that about 50 Iraqi leaders, including members of government committees and some ministry advisers, would be in attendance.
He could not say, however, what role the conference will play in deciding Iraqi economic policy, or what the future role of participants might be. The U.S. authority in Baghdad could not be reached for comment.
In a telephone interview later Monday, Gaidar said that he had only received the invitation Friday and had yet to discuss any plans with representatives of the U.S. administration. "Time would tell" if he would have to pack up his work in Russia and move full time to a brief advising Washington on reconstructing Iraq, he said.
The decision to pick some of the world's most experienced brains on transition economies comes as U.S. President George W. Bush seeks to extend responsibility for looking after postwar Iraq to non-coalition countries. (See story, page 5).
Ironically, it also comes shortly after Iraq's new oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr Al-Uloum, told the Financial Times that his country is preparing to privatize its oil sector.
"It would be fantastic if [Gaidar] were handed the opportunity to deal with the same giveaway twice in one lifetime," said James Fenkner, the head of research at Troika Dialog in Moscow.
"It's the same sector too," he said, drawing a parallel with Russia's oil-dominated economy.
A longtime critic of Russia's reforms, Marshall Goldman of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, said by telephone that Washington could have made a worse choice - it could have asked advice from fellow Union of Right Forces member Anatoly Chubais.
"If they had invited Chubais, that really would have set off a firestorm. That would have really been too much," he said. Chubais was appointed by Gaidar in the mid-1990s to run Russia's privatization program.
Goldman, however, said that Gaidar could prove to be an important voice for Washington.
"Gaidar had the best of intentions. Maybe this is not such a bad idea. Having seen what happened to Russia, he will be aware of the pitfalls," he said. "He can help Iraq avoid making the same mistakes."
TITLE: Pensioners About To Be Swamped by 55 Options
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina and Alex Fak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Finance Ministry announced Friday a list of 55 private companies with the right to manage billions of dollars in pensions savings, amid criticism that such a profusion will confuse people and leave control of the funds in the government's hands.
As of next month, some 40 million pensioners-to-be must either select one of the 55 private companies or have the investment portion of their money managed by state-owned Vneshekonombank, or VEB, by default. Their combined pension savings to be invested have reached nearly 40 billion rubles ($1.3 billion), which is expected to grow to 170 billion rubles next year and 1.3 trillion rubles by 2010.
But, with so many competitors, companies will have to fight to get a decent share of the market.
"It is laughable to have 55 companies in such a small market. It makes the business unattractive," said Anatoly Milyukov, general director of Alfa Capital.
Private management companies polled Friday said that passing muster was a snap after the tender criteria were eased, including dropping the requirement of a five-year track record.
Only four companies, including the Bank of Moscow and Deutscher Investment Trust, failed to make the cut, as they had posted losses in the past two years, Finance Ministry representative Yury Zubarev said.
Milyukov said that the criteria were relaxed following "hard lobbying" by large corporate structures that want to keep pension money in the company.
The list features only about a dozen well-known names, including Troika Dialog, Alfa Capital, Aton and United Financial Group, among myriad smaller management companies created specially by corporate groups.
Igor Moryakov, executive director at Troika Dialog's management company, said that, by allowing so many companies onto the pension market, the state has shifted the responsibility for narrowing the field onto the shoulders of future pensioners.
"Psychologically, it is easier to choose [VEB]," Moryakov said, while large corporate groups may steer their employees toward their in-house management companies.
An overcrowded market is not management companies' only complaint.
Delays in mailing out account information to future pensioners have left too little time before the Oct. 15 deadline for people to knowledgeably select a management company, the company representatives said.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said the government will set a new deadline, "on Monday or Thursday at the latest," for the Pension Fund to complete its mailing.
"After that we will decide on moving other deadlines for pension reform," Interfax quoted Kasyanov as saying.
TITLE: UES Looking To Move Into Ex-USSR Power
AUTHOR: By Alla Startseva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia's national power monopoly is planning an "aggressive" expansion into the former Soviet Union, the company's chief said on Sunday night.
"We have very aggressive plans, and these plans concern most of the [Commonwealth of Independent States] nations," Unified Energy Systems CEO and State Duma candidate Anatoly Chubais told Rossia television late Sunday. "Georgia was only the first step."
Last month, UES bought Tbilisi-based Telasi, which controls Georgia's main power plants and the capital's grid, from AES Corp. of the United States for an estimated $150 million.
Chubais said that UES, which gets less than 10 percent of its revenues from exporting electricity, had already synchronized the power grids in 14 neighboring countries so that they all operate on the same frequency.
Now, he said, the state-controlled giant is ready to expand its activities in the CIS even further.
UES spokesperson Andrei Yegorov declined to say which assets UES is looking to acquire.
"Chubais will announce our plans concerning CIS countries at a press conference on Monday," he said.
Seppo Remes, the executive director of investment fund Vostok Nafta and a representative of minority shareholders on the UES board, said he was unaware of the specifics of the expansion plan, but that he was aware that "something is happening with Kazakhstan, Armenia and Ukraine."
"If indeed there are some plans in those countries, as a shareholder I am satisfied," Remes said.
Andrei Zubkov, a power analyst at Trust investment bank, said that the most interesting targets for UES in the CIS are grid and generation assets in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, due to the relative sophistication of their electricity markets.
"The hydro-generation assets of Tajikistan and Kyrgystan are also very attractive," he said.
UES already owns 50 percent of a hydro-electric plant in Kazakhstan and 100 percent of one in Armenia, as well as an Armenian thermal plant.
All three stakes were transferred in exchange for debts.
"UES has been negotiating with AES concerning its other assets in the CIS," said an industry expert who declined to be named.
AES subsidiary AES Silk Road owns hydroelectric and heating plants in Kazakhstan, as well as Kazakh and Ukrainian distribution companies.
TITLE: Russians Look To Launch Leaner Satellites
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russian scientists say that they could slash the price of putting satellites into orbit around Earth by a factor of 10, simply by making them 10 times lighter.
The Moscow region-based Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation, or IZMIRAN, has developed a number of satellite prototypes that it hopes will one day replace those now used to monitor surface activity on Earth.
The current generation of satellites weigh in at hundreds or thousands of kilograms, making sending them into orbit a pricey endeavor.
Putting such satellites into orbit atop rockets like the Proton and Soyuz costs on average between $45 million and $50 million just for the launch.
IZMIRAN says new satellites could be sent up on smaller, cheaper rockets.
Longer-term plans involve replacing heavy geostationary satellites used to relay everything from television programs to telephone conversations with batches of smaller satellites.
But the institute's current proposals are more modest and deal with very specialized satellites.
Most satellites launched today fit into the medium class, weighing in at around 1 ton and over, and the medium-heavy class that can weigh as much as 3.2 tons.
Satellites like these can carry from 24 to 60 transponders each, with the volume of information they can carry depending on the number of transponders at their disposal.
Small satellites, or those weighing less than 600 kilograms, can hold eight to 10 transponders, according to the Russian Satellite Communications Co.
"We're not saying that all satellites need to be replaced immediately," said Viktor Orayevsky, IZMIRAN's director.
"Satellites that monitor extraterrestrial activity have higher demands on them than those that watch the Earth and it is too soon to replace them," he told reporters at the fourth International Aerospace Congress in Moscow last month.
"Small satellites cannot be used to collect high-resolution information from the Earth's surface either, because the equipment needs to be much bulkier," he said.
Yet there are areas where small satellites and spacecraft could be employed quite effectively, he said.
One of the institute's projects, the Vulkan system, will be used to monitor the Earth, its atmosphere and the ionosphere - the outer layer of the atmosphere - to forecast natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes and tidal waves several days before they happen.
IZMIRAN is developing the Vulkan satellite systems as part of Russia's 2001-05 federal space program.
The five satellites required for the new system will be launched on a platform designed by the Institute of Electromechanics near Moscow and the Makeyev State Rocket Center design bureau located in the Chelyabinsk region.
The first satellites will be assembled in the first half of next year, but Orayevsky was not willing to say how much the project will cost or estimate the launch cost.
The Vulkan satellites will be much lighter than current satellites, mainly because the instruments used on them have been shrunk to miniature size.
For example, Orayevsky said, the main instrument used to measure the electron density of the ionosphere, the electron canon, now weighs only 20 kilograms.
"Together with the Paton [electric welding] institute [of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences] in Kiev, we have developed an electron canon that weighs 2 kilograms," he said.
Researchers achieved these results by changing the way electron density is measured, not by refining existing technologies.
"Before it was measured by reflecting radio waves off points in the ionosphere, now we measure wave-resonance characteristics," he said.
According to Orayevsky, changing the principal measurements has allowed researchers to shrink many instruments they use down to size.
As a result, IZMIRAN has been able to develop satellites that weigh less than 100 kilograms.
Together with its platform, a Vulkan satellite - orbiting at heights of 400 kilometers to 1,100 kilometers at an angle of 82.5 degrees - weighs in at 202 kilograms.
"You don't need an entire Proton or Soyuz rocket to put something like that into space," Orayevsky said.
IZMIRAN proposes using conversion rockets, or ICBMs that were designed to carry nuclear warheads, such as the RS-20 and RS-18, known by their NATO code name of Satan and Stiletto in the West.
The satellites could even be launched from submarines on Russian Shtil missiles known in the West as the Gadfly, or Volna type missiles known as the Stingray, Orayevsky said. These missiles have already been used to launch clusters of small test satellites in experiments.
Other aerospace companies have also mulled the use of smaller satellites, but say it is too early for their use to be practical.
"If you launch small satellites individually, the cost comes out to be nearly the same as it would be to launch larger satellites that can hold more transponders," said Denis Sukhorukov, a spokesman for the state owned RSCC.
"However, the real cost advantage comes when you can launch two separate satellites, say a small one and a medium one, into orbit atop the same rocket."
The RSCC, which operates communications satellites that broadcast state television and radio, has plans for these kinds of launches in the future. "For us it is a new direction, but very interesting," Sukhorukov said.
The RSCC will start the launch of a series of five Express-AM communications satellites weighing 2.6 tons each in December at a cost of $100 million each.
IZMIRAN has specialized in investigating magnetic storms and substorms on the Earth's surface since its inception in 1940, and was the first to use satellites to make magnetic measurements in 1958.
More recently, throughout the 1990s it led the CORONAS space mission, sending satellites into orbit around the Earth to study the sun's electromagnetic radiation.
TITLE: Belarus Sees Gazprom Price Hike
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Saturday ordered the government to analyze a proposal by government-controlled Gazprom to stop selling to neighboring Belarus at low Russian prices.
Gazprom threatened on Friday to charge Belarus more for gas after the landlocked country refused to set up a joint venture to manage pipelines running through it to Poland and Germany.
Analysts said the move was also backed by the Kremlin, increasingly unhappy with the policies of Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been criticized in the West for stifling democratic freedoms and human rights.
They also said Western clients of the world's largest gas firm were unlikely to suffer if Gazprom raised prices for Belarus because Minsk does not have the means to pilfer gas from export pipelines.
"We see no reason why we must keep supplying Belarussian consumers at Russian domestic prices, generating no profit. If we cannot agree [on the venture] we should switch to market conditions," a Gazprom spokesperson said.
The hike would kick in next year, Gazprom said. Belarus currently buys Russian gas at a substantial discount.
Russia and Belarus agreed last year that state-controlled Gazprom would supply Belarus with 10.2 billion cubic meters per year at a price of $30 per 1,000 cubic meters. By comparison, the company, which supplies Europe with one quarter of its gas needs, sells gas to Western consumers at $90 to $140 per 1,000 cubic meters and at $30 at home.
The deal also called for Gazprom and Belarus to set up a venture to manage Belarussian pipelines, which export 20 bcm to Europe, but Belarus has not taken any real steps so far.
Analysts said they believed gas supplies and pipeline ownership issues were not the only reasons for the move.
"I think there is a major crisis of Russian and Belarus relations," said Valery Nesterov, an anayst with Troika Dialog.
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: Tough To Determine Who Is in the Minority
AUTHOR: By Andrei Piontkovsky
TEXT: What really matters in the political life of the country has nothing to do with "virtual electoral passions" and everything to do with the conflicts raging within the executive branch. Our Whigs and Tories do not do battle in parliament, but behind the scenes in the Kremlin.
The powers that be have mastered electoral strategies, having borrowed and creatively adapted the best of what KGB "active measures" and American political advertising have to offer. As a result, the political establishment can hold onto power for as long as it likes, as will be demonstrated in the forthcoming elections. The only thing that could upset its endless and unbroken rule is internal conflict.
Following the State Duma elections in December, a majority will be formed, usually referred to as a "Putinite" majority. But it is not entirely clear what Putin is in this context, particularly if one recalls the history and origins of the Putin republic. In order to comprehend the fast-moving events of the present day, it is worth glancing over the history of the republic's infirmity.
It was inevitable that a conflict would break out between the three groups that united behind the project in the autumn of 1999 to install a successor to President Boris Yeltsin. It was an alliance of convenience and the objectives pursued in the joint operation by the different parties were too diverse. The Family needed to prevent, at all costs, the seemingly unstoppable rise to power of a rival clan led by former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, which threatened not only to deprive the Family members of their property but also of their freedom. The chekists dreamed of the security services taking revenge, and "liberals" dreamed of an iron hand that would lead Russia along the path of market reforms.
Vladimir Putin was not a core member of any of these clans, having found himself at various times in his career on the periphery of all of them. As a lieutenant colonel in the KGB, a second-tier official in the St. Petersburg mayor's office under Anatoly Sobchak and then in the presidential administration under Yeltsin, Putin was not able to become either leader or ideological leader of any of these groups. He simply proved to be the lowest common denominator, so to speak, capable of uniting the heterogeneous aspirations involved. Each group approaches Putin in a profoundly instrumental fashion, seeing him as a tool for realizing their corporate interests.
Due to insufficient political experience and experience in power, Putin has difficulty playing the role of supreme arbiter, maintaining the balance between the rival clans in his entourage. As a result, he remains a more or less passive observer of the decisive battle between these groups.
In this battle, the chekists enjoy certain advantages. First, they have a more developed sense of corporate solidarity and unity of purpose. Second, if for nothing other thanthe fact that they did not occupy that many key posts in the Yeltsin period, they are less sullied, in the public consciousness, by privatization and corruption scandals than their rivals. Third, they are sitting on a huge mound of first-hand information about these scandals and control the law-enforcement agencies, which are capable of using this information. And lastly, let's not completely forget about the president's resources. It is quite clear where his personal sympathies lie.
Observing the battle of the Kremlin bulldogs, the remains of the vanishing intelligentsia love to repeat the line from Joseph Brodsky: "But thieves are dearer to me than bloodsuckers."
Excuse me, but are the heirs of Felix Dzerzhinsky, Lavrenty Beria and Yury Andropov really such bloodsuckers? It was not they, but the Family, that unleashed two bloody wars in Chechnya order to boost the ratings of their chosen candidates for president.
Tyrants? Suppressors of free speech? It was not the chekists but a crack team of super-liberal marauders from the Union of Right Forces that purged NTV.
Big cheeses from the presidential administration, gathering foreign journalists for briefings, would have us believe that they view the siloviki as some kind of dissident minority within the party of power. If you follow their logic, presumably future school textbooks on the history of "Putinism" will mention the "anti-Party" group of Viktor Ivanov, Igor Sechin and Yury Zaostrovtsev - as well as the careerist and double-dealer Vladimir Ustinov, who, threw in his lot with them. But it seems highly probable to me that they may write about the "anti-Party" group of Alexander Voloshin, Mikhail Kasyanov, and Vladislav Surkov - together with Gleb Pavlovsky.
The thing is, behind this so-called dissident minority stand tens of thousands of (quite literally) armed men, who are fed up with offering their protection services to furniture stores and believe it is time that they moved on to bigger and better things, such as extending these services to oil companies.
The chekists have thrown down a very serious challenge, and they have popular sentiment on their side: primarily, the entirely natural desire for social justice, which the chekists can exploit mercilessly, and support for aggressive xenophobia and for phantom revanchism in the foreign-policy sphere.
It seems to me that this group has a very serious political future. Moreover, I don't see within the ruling elite a "majority" that is capable of responding to this challenge.
If the chekists are dissidents in power, deviating from the general Putin line, then what is this general line exactly? Not to mention the fact that the chekist onslaught could not have continued for as long as it has without Putin's blessing.
Apart from that, it's no secret that Putin's political philosophy and favorite concepts - managed democracy, administrative vertical, dictatorship of law, a "control" shot to the back of the head, etc. - are close to this group.
And so, in terms of the world outlook of "S.," the fighter on the invisible - but bugged - front was right when uttering the phrase to his sidekick "B." (that was then relayed to the rest of the world), which may go down in history - "I will take care of the chief myself."*
Editor's note: This refers to the published transcript of an alleged telephone conversation between deputy head of the presidential administration Igor Sechin and Rosneft CEO Sergei Bogdanchikov, at the beginning of July. For full details see: www.compromat.ru
Andrei Piontkovsky, an independent political analyst, contributed this comment to The St. Petersburg Times.
TITLE: It Seems Gusinsky's Deal Has Disintegrated
TEXT: Greek law-enforcement organizations handed their Russian colleagues a most unexpected gift on Aug. 21, when they arrested Vladimir Gusinsky at the Athens international airport. The arrest did not result from any new charges against Gusinsky. Quite the opposite. The former media magnate had flown to Greece for a relaxing cruise, but his yacht struck a long-forgotten, barnacle-encrusted mine.
The Greek passport official who arrested Gusinsky probably didn't know much about Russia. He just ran the visitor's name through his computer, discovered that Gusinsky was wanted in Russia and politely escorted him to a maximum-security prison.
It's not hard to guess what will happen next. The justice system is pretty much the same wherever you go: It moves by inertia. Once a human seed has been ingested, it won't be expelled before it has passed through the entire digestive system. There's no point in trying to cut open the stomach of the Greek justice system or any other. You can drag out all the logical arguments you want: that the charges against Gusinsky are so obviously politically motivated; that a Spanish court rejected a similar request in 2001; and that Gazprom has dropped its claims against Gusinsky. Such common-sense logic won't speed up the process.
There's also no point in thinking that Greek authorities will extradite Gusinsky. They won't.
Some very interesting questions remain unanswered, however. Why did the normally prudent Gusinsky carelessly fly to Greece in the first place? And why has the Prosecutor General's Office still not completed the extradition request? And why didn't it trumpet the arrest when it happened? We didn't hear of Gusinsky's detention until Agence France Presse reported the news two days later.
Let's approach these questions logically. Russia's request for Gusinsky's arrest had been gathering dust for several years in Greece, among other places. And Gusinsky made a point of avoiding these countries.
So why did he suddenly decide to vacation in Greece? What changed between 2001 and 2003?
The main thing that changed was that, in June of last year, Gusinsky sold Gazprom his remaining Russian assets - among them a blocking stake in NTV and 49 percent of NTV Plus - for $50 million. These were the very assets for which he was once offered $300 million as he sat in a Russian prison. Gusinsky turned down that offer. It seems reasonable to assume that if Gusinsky sold for $50 million what he could have sold for $300 million earlier, something besides money was probably thrown in to sweeten the deal.
One little extra might have been the release of a hostage: Anton Titov, the chief financial officer of Media-MOST, who was convicted in December 2003 of defrauding Gazprom. The real sweetener might have been a "get out of jail free" card for Gusinsky himself.
No sooner had Gusinsky's deal with Gazprom been concluded than rumors began to spread that the charges against him would be dropped, that his return to Russia was imminent, even that he had already returned and was living in his house in Chigasovo. And there seemed to be something to the rumors. Gusinsky began to keep a very low profile, in striking contrast to Boris Berezovsky, who has created an opposition political party and accused President Vladimir Putin of all of the deadly sins, including the apartment bombings in Moscow.
To sum up: There is good reason to assume that Gusinsky cut an informal deal with the Russian authorities: He sells his assets in Russia, the authorities leave him in peace. The only logical explanation for Gusinsky's decision to holiday in Greece this summer is that he believed he was no longer being pursued by Russian prosecutors.
He thought everything had been agreed.
But the Russian authorities apparently didn't see it that way.
Yulia Latynina is a presenter of the "24" news and comment program on Ren TV.
TITLE: Property Redistribution Is Not the Solution
AUTHOR: By Konstantin Sonin
TEXT: According to some surveys, 77 percent of Russian citizens support the idea of revisiting the results of privatization. It should come as no surprise that the majority of the population favors a redistribution of property, as it simply reflects the fact that the majority is poor, while a minority is very rich. However, any mass redistribution of assets aimed at reducing inequality is doomed to failure. At best, Russia will find itself caught in an endless cycle of property redistribution followed by its reconcentration.
A decade after economic reforms were launched, most productive assets are concentrated in the hands of a few individuals, the so-called "oligarchs". Although the majority of Russians attribute this state of affairs to a flawed privatization process, this is not necessarily the case.
It is only natural that when property rights are poorly protected, control rights over assets become concentrated. Moreover, the larger a single owner's share is, the greater their incentives are to pursue improvements, such as improving corporate governance. Recent cross-country studies show that the worse the general protection and enforcement of property rights are, the greater the concentration of control rights.
Therefore, even if a more "fair" distribution of property, resulting in a more equal distribution of wealth, could be achieved, it would not stay that way for very long.
Dependent courts and corrupt bureaucrats do not allow economic agents to enjoy the fruits of their labor fully unless control rights are highly concentrated.
Unfortunately, we do not have examples of major redistribution of shareholder capital by means of reforms. However, the countries of Latin America do provide a good example of redistribution in the area of land ownership.
In the 20th century, many Latin American countries were drawn into an endless cycle of redistribution. Typically, the poor and unfranchised would put political pressure on the rich elite, e.g., by threatening revolution, as a result of which democratization would take place. As the government became more sensitive to the interests of the median voter (who is inevitably poor in countries with huge asset inequality), reforms were implemented, including the redistribution of land from the rich to the poor. Then the rich elite would mount a coup (usually with the active involvement of the military, although they were often relatively bloodless). After the coup, the elite would use its political power to seize property back from the poor (in many instances, the land was returned to pre-reform owners). As time passed, political pressure or the threat of revolution would force the elite to extend the franchise and establish democracy. A left-wing populist would come to power and the cycle would start all over again.
For example, Argentina's first elections with universal male suffrage were held in 1912. In 1930, the democratically elected government was overthrown in a coup. Elections were held again in 1946 and another coup was mounted in 1955. New elections were held in 1973, democracy fell to a coup in 1976, only to be reinstated in 1983. During that time, the country - whose per capita GDP had been 80 percent of the United States' in 1946 - stagnated economically for almost half a century.
Following military coups in Venezuela in 1948, Guatemala in 1954 and Chile in 1973, a significant share of land redistributed by reforms preceding the coups was handed back to the previous owners. In Guatemala, it was the land reform of 1952. In Brazil, the coup of 1964 was mounted after the democratically elected president pushed through agricultural reforms paving the way for significant land redistribution.
Although a right-wing military coup seems completely unrealistic in Russia, there is a lesson to be drawn. The threat of forced property redistribution makes the rich spend enormous amounts of money on maintaining their political power. From the standpoint of GDP growth, this is a waste: Both asset redistribution and any activity to oppose redistribution are, by definition, unproductive activities.
There is no doubt that inequality carries with it substantial costs for the economy. In the long run, the main cost comes from the fact that wealth inequality results in unequal opportunities and, thus, capital often does not end up in the hands of those who would employ it most efficiently. In the short run, economic inequality is closely associated with political inequality, which, in turn leads to low demand for good market institutions - such as institutions to protect property rights.
In short, the rich do not have an interest in independent courts or an efficient bureaucracy. Instead, they maintain private systems for protecting their property rights, which, in turn, jeopardize the property rights of others, and don't give the rich an incentive to demand a high level of property-right protection from the state.
There is one more problem related to inequality: The nature of the redistribution game makes it impossible for the authorities and big business to strike a deal.
Thus, it is conceivable that many rich people today would agree to sacrifice a substantial part of their wealth in return for a guarantee that there would be no further redistribution in the future. Unfortunately, however, the state cannot give such guarantees. And another problem is that the more of his wealth an oligarch sacrifices, the weaker he becomes and the easier it will be demand money from him the next time.
In Latin America, transitions to or from democracy followed by property redistribution happened, for the most part, in periods of economic recession. In this respect, the recent attack on Russian big business is unusual, since the economy is growing at a rapid pace.
One might think that nobody needs economic growth in Russia except ordinary citizens, the government and the president - and that an oligarch is only interested in GDP growth insofar as his own wealth grows with the whole economy.
This logic, however, is flawed. For oligarchs, sustainable growth is much more important, as it protects them from those who would seek to question the legitimacy of their ownership rights. If those voters that favor a new round of property redistribution (77 percent of the electorate, apparently) were represented by a popular left-wing movement or an elected politician (and it cannot be ruled out that President Vladimir Putin could assume such a role), the haves might face awkward questions about how they obtained their property. However, while the economy is growing these questions tend to recede into the background.
In other words, those who think that privatization was conducted unfairly are not that much concerned with those who took the lion's share of the pie, as long as the pie itself is growing.
What can the oligarchs do to support economic growth? The first thing they can do is to reduce their spending on unproductive activities - including the corruption of bureaucrats and courts. However, they face a coordination problem much like the participants in an arms race. It may be beneficial for each oligarch if all oligarchs reduce their investment in the private protection of property rights. However, each of them rationally foresees that once he reduces his investment in private protection, others will respond by increasing theirs, thus making his productive investments less profitable.
Privatization and the subsequent events of the 1990s have resulted in a dramatically uneven distribution of wealth in Russia. There is little doubt that it has had and continues to have a negative effect on economic development. However, a new round of forced redistribution will not improve the situation. Rather, Russia could be drawn into an endless cycle of property redistribution from rich to poor and back again . Needless to say, the absence of economic growth for the duration of such a period is a foregone conclusion.
Konstantin Sonin is an assistant professor at the New Economic School and senior economist at CEFIR. This comment first appeared in Vedomosti.
TITLE: Two Different Price Tags For the Same Oil Major
AUTHOR: By Tatyana Lysova
TEXT: Foreigners tend to get fleeced in Russia. They end up paying inflated prices for hotel rooms, museum tickets, taxi rides - simply because they have much more money. And oil major Slavneft, like a ticket for the Hermitage, has two price tags - one for domestic buyers and another for the rest of the world.
The domestic price was paid last December to the state by the TNK/Sibneft consortium; the "foreigner's" price will be paid to TNK by BP. The state got $1.86 billion for 75 percent of Slavneft, putting its total value at $2.5 billion. And now, one-quarter of Slavneft (half of TNK's stake) is valued at $1.35 billion (the whole company, therefore, at $5.4 billion). At least that is the price BP has agreed to pay for TNK's 50-percent stake in Slavneft to be included in the joint TNK-BP company.
You might think that the organizers of the Slavneft privatization auction would be kicking themselves, and that the Finance Ministry would be kicking the privatizers over the revenues that the exchequer missed out on. But no one is kicking anyone. The thing is, it was essentially the state's decision to scare off China's CNPC, which was said to be prepared to pay the "foreign" price, from participating in the auction. And, for TNK's owners, that decision proved to be extremely profitable.
Having spent $900 million on the privatization and previously about $400 million on buying up shares in Slavneft and its subsidiaries, TNK will make $1.35 billion from BP and another $175 million in share dividends this year. In other words, it has already made back its initial investment, and then some. And the 1/4 of Slavneft still owned by TNK - worth $1.35 billion, based on the BP deal - can be considered pure profit.
Can this be the material value of "administrative resources," which enable many oligarchs to buy on the cheap and sell sell at a good mark-up but which are difficult to quantify? Or is it a measure of the effectiveness of TNK's and Sibneft's management techniques? If it is the latter, then one can put a price on the state's ineffectiveness at managing its own property. Because, as the main owner of Slavneft, the state could have consolidated its stakes in Slavneft's subsidiaries, kept a closer eye on management and, as a result, sold the company for more. That's the theory anyway. However, the state as an owner always lets others make money from it. Now we know how much TNK's owners made.
Tatyana Lysova is the editor of Vedomosti, where this comment first appeared.
TITLE: Chris Floyd's Global Eye
TEXT: Strange Attractors
Who carried out the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States? People in the pay of Saudi Arabia, trained and maintained by the secret services of Pakistan. What did George W. Bush do to punish these accomplices to mass murder on American soil? Nothing. Instead he killed more than 30,000 innocent people - in Iraq.
This is not some baseless "conspiracy theory" - unlike, say, the Bushists' fantasies about a pre-war coupling between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. (Of course, the pair probably ***are*** in bed now, thanks to the pious bawds in the White House, whose lust for Iraqi booty has engendered a whole new breed of terrorists in the conquered land.) No, the Saudis' payment of protection money to Osama - the scion of one of the kingdom's most powerful, well-connected families - has been known for years. Likewise, Pakistan's intimate involvement with the Taliban and other Qaida-connected groups - such as Mohammed Atta's Sept. 11 brigade and the gang that killed American journalist Daniel Pearl - has also been widely attested.
- hence largely forgotten - history has surfaced again, in the confessions of top Osama henchman Abu Zubaydah, unearthed by author Gerald Posner and reported last week in Time magazine.
Zubaydah, captured by the Americans last year, confirmed that Saudi royals began paying off bin Laden in 1991. Young Osama, victoriously returned from the CIA-backed jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, was feeling his fundamentalist oats, and wanted to take up arms against the demonic secularist Saddam, after the latter's invasion of Kuwait. But the Saudi royals preferred to bring in the hired muscle of their long-time business partner, George H.W. Bush. When Osama threw a fit over the presence of American "infidels" on holy ground the royals told him he could go kill Americans if he wanted to - as long as he kept his jihadi hobby outside the confines of the kingdom. They bought his compliance with copious amounts of petrodollars ~ most of them supplied, ironically enough, by the oil-addicted denizens of the United States.
Zubaydah, under torture (yes, we know, Americans ***never*** torture people - and they don't launch unprovoked wars of aggression, either), gave up names, dates, even telephone numbers of al-Qaida's enablers in the Saudi royal family and Pakistani military. True, the wily terrorist operative might have been lying. But shortly after Zubaydah spilled these red-hot beans, all three Saudi princes he had named turned up dead - within a single week, in June 2002. One died in a car crash, one reportedly had a heart attack, and the third wealthy prince somehow "died of thirst" in the Saudi desert. The following week, the top Pakistani official fingered by Zubaydah was also killed, along with his family, when his airplane suddenly fell out of a clear blue sky. Of course, this could just be coincidence - after all, planes fall, cars crash, hearts fail and multimillionaires die of thirst in the desert every day, right? Still, it looks as if Zub's canary-like warbling might have struck a nerve somewhere out there.
Naturally, the Bushists kept these insights into the origins of the Sept. 11 atrocity hidden from those perpetual patsies, the American people. They didn't want to embarrass their Saudi and Pakistani allies, who were now pouring money into the pockets of Bush's war-profiteering cronies in the arms trade. What's more, an open investigation into the true context of the attack would have distracted from the more important business at hand: slaughtering Iraqis for fun and profit.
And "slaughter" is the operative word. A recent in-depth, in-country body count - carried out by the Iraqi Freedom Party, a pro-business, anti-- Iraqi dissident group championed by American conservatives ~ put the number of civilians killed by the Bush invasion at 37,000: the equivalent of 460,000 American deaths, as a percentage of total population. No doubt Bush's own fundamentalist followers will greet this news scripturally, "with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of musick," chanting, "Osama hath slain his thousands, and Bush his tens of thousands!"
But while Bush diverts massive resources to the Iraqi conquest, Osama sits safely ensconced in the Afghan mountains, Newsweek reports. From this redoubt, he's directing the resurgence of the Taliban, holding terrorist summits, and planning "unbelievable" new attacks on the weakened American state, which is being bankrupted, fiscally and morally, by Bush's bloodsoaked folly in Iraq.
With an obliging "enemy" like Bush, whose policies create the perfect conditions for terrorism - anarchy, humiliation and mass death - Osama no longer needs his Saudi patrons. He's now attacking his own homeland as well, frantically gnawing the hand that fed him. If he manages to topple the tottering kingdom - or provoke Bush into destroying it for him with a "pre-emptive" strike to keep it out of al-Qaida's hands - the "war on terror" could quickly turn into Gotterdammerung: global economic collapse, conflict and chaos spreading like wildfire, millions plunged into fear and ruin - the Baghdadization of the world.
Dazed by the lure of loot and glory, hamstrung by their own willful ignorance of the complexities of history and human nature, the third-rate thugs of the Bush Regime have entered into an unwitting collaboration with the equally dazed, equally ignorant bin Laden mafia. Each gang draws meaning and justification from the other, each cloaks its own criminality and murder in the guise of a crusade against the other's evil. And both draw their power and profit from the same unrenewable natural resource:
The blood of innocent people.
For annotational references, see the "Opinion" section at www.sptimesrussia.com.
TITLE: Britain To Send 1,200 More Troops to Iraq
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON - Washington's closest ally, Britain, announced on Monday a reinforcement of some 1,200 soldiers to Iraq as U.S. President George W. Bush warned of a long fight ahead on the "central front" of the terror war.
Following a U.S. plea for more non-American troops to counter violence and share the cost of occupying postwar Iraq, London said it would send two more battalions to bring its contingent controlling the south to more than 12,000.
The U.S. wants to see another 15,000 soldiers from other countries in Iraq to back its 130,000-strong force.
Underlining the dangers involved, two U.S. soldiers were wounded on Monday when their convoy struck an explosive device on a Baghdad bridge in the latest of daily attacks.
Earlier, virtually as Bush was addressing Americans in the early hours of Monday Iraqi time, U.S. troops rammed gates, jumped walls and stomped through bedrooms in a raid netting four guerrilla suspects in Saddam Hussein's hometown, Tikrit.
Bush said in his speech that further time and sacrifice were needed in Iraq to beat the "enemies of freedom" in what he termed the "central front" of the U.S.-led war on terror that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks. He asked Congress for $87 billion for operations in Iraq.
Iraqis and occupying U.S. troops were left wondering just when they would see the back of each other.
In a speech on Sunday night answering criticism at home - and around the world - of Washington's handling of postwar Iraq, Bush said: "Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there - and there they must be defeated."
At a news conference on Monday, Iraq's U.S. governor Paul Bremer said $20 billion of the money Bush mentioned was earmarked for reconstruction in Iraq. "It is a dramatic illustration of the fact that the American people are going to finish the job we started when we liberated Iraq," he said.
Iraq's U.S.-appointed transitional Governing Council was set to face its first major test in the Arab world on Monday when Arab League foreign ministers were to discuss whether a Council delegate may represent Baghdad at their meeting in Cairo.
Arab states have been loath to fully endorse the body for fear of legitimizing the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Sixty seven American and 11 British soldiers - plus hundreds of Iraqis - have been killed in combat or crossfire since Bush declared major combat over on May 1.
There was no rush from Washington's foreign allies on Monday to answer Bush's call for money.
Japan, normally a quick backer of Washington, offered only a lukewarm response, and other countries said that they would like to see greater United Nations involvement in post-war Iraq first.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, busy kicking off a campaign for re-election as head of Japan's ruling party, had no immediate response. One of his chief spokespeople expressed only a basic understanding of Bush's call for Japan and Europe to chip in funds to help in the security and reconstruction effort in Iraq.
"It has always been the position of the Japanese government that it is willing to assist as well as contribute to humanitarian efforts," spokesperson Yu Kameoka said.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, in a radio interview Monday, applauded Bush for emphasizing that "the job is not finished in Iraq."
However, Australia, a staunch U.S. ally, already has ruled out sending peacekeepers. Last week, Prime Minister John Howard said that his government - which had contributed 2,000 troops to the assault on Baghdad - wouldn't dispatch a peacekeeping force even if the UN Security Council approves new measures to back Washington.
India reiterated that it will consider sending troops for stabilization operations in Iraq only if authorized by the United Nations.
New Zealand would examine what it could do to provide further troops for Iraq "if the UN were to step up its involvement," Prime Minister Helen Clark said.
While discussions on greater UN involvement are at an early stage, "we support strengthening the United Nations role in Iraq. That has always been our position," she said.
But she added that, with New Zealand already committed with teams of engineers and demining specialists in Iraq, and peacekeeping units in Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands, "it's unlikely that New Zealand could contemplate any large contribution."
(Reuters, AP)
TITLE: Disappeared Lord May Have Gone To India
AUTHOR: By Jane Wardell
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - It is a mystery that has fascinated Britain for almost 30 years: the disappearance of the dashing Lord Lucan from a bloodstained car near the English coast, days after his children's nanny was bludgeoned to death and his wife beaten with a lead pipe.
Some thought the debate about whether Lucan drowned himself in the English Channel or fled abroad in 1974 would die when the aristocrat was officially declared dead in 1999.
But photographs published Sunday have renewed the speculation. A former senior Scotland Yard detective claims the pictures of a gaunt, bearded man taken in the Indian state of Goa in the early 1990s are of Lucan.
Former police officer Duncan MacLaughlin claims in a new book, "Dead Lucky," that Lucan lived undetected in India under the name Barry Halpin from 1975 until his death in 1996.
MacLaughlin said the photographs - published in the Sunday Telegraph - were handed to him by Mark Winch, a former drug dealer who became friendly with Halpin.
Winch said that Halpin was a well-spoken gambler who loved to play backgammon, a pastime for which Lucan, known as "Lucky" to his friends, was famous.
Richard John Bingham, the seventh Earl of Lucan, has not been seen since the night of Nov. 7, 1974, when nanny Sandra Rivett was battered to death in the family's home in London's wealthy Belgravia district.
Lucan's wife Veronica was hit in the head repeatedly when she ran downstairs to investigate. Detectives believe Lucan intended to murder his wife - his marriage was described as "grimly unhappy" - and killed the nanny by mistake.
Lucan's friends and family have long maintained that he drowned himself in the English Channel. Inside the car he left behind, police found a length of lead pipe and bloodstains matching the types of both Lucan and Sandra Rivett.
But at least 70 Lucan "sightings" have been reported since his disappearance, in such far-flung places as Melbourne and Johannesburg.
Some conspiracy theorists speculated that Lucan might be tempted to sneak an up-close peek at his daughter's London wedding in 1998, but even the most avid watchers failed to spot him. He was declared dead by the High Court in 1999.
MacLaughlin and co-writer William Hall acknowledged their evidence is tenuous, but said they were certain the man in the photos is Lucan.
Lucan was 39 when he disappeared and MacLaughlin says the photographs fit with his age and display his "broad, aristocratic forehead ... and distinctive eyebrows, and the crease that stood out between them."
The book also details MacLaughlin's interviews with locals in Goa who describe Halpin as camera-shy and reluctant to talk about his family. MacLaughlin said residents identified a picture of Lucan as Halpin. It was during that visit to research his book that MacLaughlin discovered Halpin had died in 1996. His body was cremated.
"To be sure it was him we needed DNA. No one will ever have that," MacLaughlin told a press conference on Sunday.
TITLE: Roddick Downs Ferrero To Win U.S. Open
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Andy Roddick strolled into the interview room and made a statement before one question could even be asked.
"No more, 'What's it feel like to be the future of American tennis?"' he declared.
Good point, kid.
After beating Juan Carlos Ferrero 6-3, 7-6 (2), 6-3 Sunday to win the U.S. Open, there is no question Roddick is America's new star - not just one in waiting.
Roddick chose the ultimate American tennis stage to make that leap, capping a tournament that began with a goodbye to Pete Sampras, who won his record 14th Grand Slam title at last year's Open.
"I don't think you could have written a script any better," Roddick said. "Starting it off with Pete's retirement. ... It was just too good."
He was just too good.
Roddick rode his rocket of a serve to his first Grand Slam victory in his first major final, completing a sensational summer on the hard courts.
"It was not a surprise for me," Ferrero said. "If he serves so good, it's not easy to beat him. I think I played a really bad match today. I didn't do my tennis. I didn't hit the ball aggressive like yesterday. Maybe because he served so hard all the time and I didn't feel a rhythm on the court."
Ferrero, playing for the fourth straight day after rain interfered with the schedule last week, didn't exhibit the same energy that has earned him the nickname "Mosquito" for the way he scurries around the court. A day earlier, he'd beaten Andre Agassi to take over the No. 1 ranking in the world.
Roddick turned 21 during the Open, and Ferrero is 23, making for the youngest combined ages of U.S. Open finalists since Sampras beat Agassi in 1990.
Roddick won at the very tournament he often came to as a child, watching the greats from the cheap seats of the National Tennis Center.
"I came here so much when I was younger," he said. "I still don't believe that I've won the U.S. Open. It's so farfetched for me."
Roddick blasted three straight aces to end it, giving him 23 for the final and a tournament total of 123. He won his season-leading 19th straight match, and he's 37-2 since hiring Brad Gilbert, Agassi's former coach, after a first-round loss at the French Open. He has won a tour-best six titles this year and moves up to a career-best No. 2 in the rankings.
"There's been a lot of pressure on him. This will shut a lot of people up that he was all hype," U.S. Davis Cup coach Patrick McEnroe said. "We knew he had it. It's a great day for him and for American tennis. It's a great passing of the baton."
After nailing his final ace to finish off the reigning French Open champion, Roddick curled up, covering his eyes as they welled with tears.
Then, he jumped over the camera well much like he leaps into the air on his spectacular serve, making a mad dash up the stairs of Arthur Ashe Stadium to find his coach, his family and his girlfriend, actress and singer Mandy Moore.
On the way back down, Roddick slapped high-fives with fans as he maneuvered through the seats.
Roddick kissed his shiny trophy on both sides and even on the top, once wiping off the spot where he'd placed his lips so there would be no smudge.
As he made his exit, kids hollered, "Andy, can we have your hat?"
He obliged, signing and giving away several hats he had hooked to his racket bag.
During one stretch, Roddick won 23 straight points on his serve. That included the final game of the first set, which he won this way: forehand winner down the line, service winner, ace, ace.
"I'm baffled by how calm I felt out there. How easy it was," Roddick said. "I almost didn't feel anything."
On Saturday, showing remarkable resiliency, Justine Henin-Hardenne produced all the right shots and beat fellow Belgian Kim Clijsters 7-5, 6-1 Saturday night to win the U.S. Open for her second major title of the year.
"I didn't know if I was going to be able to compete and fight 100 percent. It's hard when you have to play a Grand Slam final when you have only 20 hours to recover," Henin-Hardenne said. "I've always had a lot of character. I always have been a big fighter."
She fought off two set points in the first set against the No. 1-ranked Clijsters, which must have felt like a minor nuisance compared to what Henin-Hardenne went through to beat Jennifer Capriati in three sets the night before. In that match, Henin-Hardenne was within two points of losing 10 times, trailed 5-3 in the second set and 5-2 in the third, and Capriati twice served for the match.
Against Clijsters, Henin-Hardenne won nine of the last 10 games and broke serve six times, including in the last game, which ended with a clean volley winner. It helped that Clijsters was tentative all night, with 30 unforced errors in the first set alone and a total of 40, twice as many as Henin-Hardenne.
With a tour-high seven titles in 2003, Henin-Hardenne jumps to a career-high No. 2 in the rankings, ahead of injured Serena Williams.
Still, she isn't exactly a household name in the United States: A representative of the main tournament sponsor called her "Christine" while presenting the champion's trophy and $1 million check during the on-court postmatch ceremony.
TITLE: Dolphins All at Sea on First Sunday of New NFL Season
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MIAMI - A humble second-year franchise playing at highly touted Miami, the Houston Texans were the biggest underdogs of the NFL's opening weekend. That made them mad. So did the Dolphins' trash-talking in pregame warmups.
"One of their players said, 'I'll see you after today's practice,"' Houston's Jabar Gaffney said. "That was their thinking - they were looking at us like this was just a little practice."
The Dolphins can only wish the game had been just a practice. Kris Brown kicked his fifth field goal, a 35-yarder, with 0:25 left and the Texans stunned Miami 21-20 on Sunday.
"Not many people gave us a chance to win, but we're not shocked," Brown said. "We took it as a slap in the face that we were the largest underdogs the opening weekend."
The Week 1 upset was the Texans' second in as many seasons. Last year they became the first expansion team since 1961 to win their opening game by beating the Dallas Cowboys.
Miami, a 14-point favorite, fell to 0-1 for the first time in 12 years.
David Carr kept Miami's proud defense on its heels by throwing for 266 yards, including a 78-yard touchdown to Corey Bradford. Brown made field goals of 50, 36, 24 and 23 yards before hitting the game-winner.
The Texans forced the game's only three turnovers, including an interception by Marcus Coleman that set up the winning score. They limited Ricky Williams, last year's NFL rushing champion, to 69 yards on the ground.
"There was never any room to run the ball," he said, "because we couldn't get in any kind of rhythm."
The Dolphins had won 11 consecutive openers and 17 consecutive home games in August and September since 1994. They're below .500 for the first time since the end of 1996.
Coleman intercepted Jay Fiedler's desperation pass at the 5-yard line on the final play, and the crowd booed the Dolphins as the clock ran out. Miami lost to a team that went 4-12 last year and was outscored 107-38 while losing all four exhibition games last month.
"The way we were playing today, it wouldn't have mattered who we played," coach Dave Wannstedt said. "We would have lost the game."
The Dolphins committed 11 penalties, with the most costly a holding infraction that negated a 48-yard run to the 2 by Williams. He also lost a fumble that led to a Houston field goal, but he put Miami ahead in the fourth quarter by turning a short reception into a 35-yard touchdown.
The Texans answered with a 76-yard drive that took 7 1/2 minutes. Brown's 24-yard field goal left Houston trailing 20-18 with 4:55 left.
Coleman then stepped in front of a pass by Fiedler to give the Texans the ball at the Miami 36, and seven plays later Brown put them ahead.
"We felt if we could take the game into the fourth quarter, the pressure would shift to the Dolphins, because they were the favorites," coach Dom Capers said. "Then we'd need just a couple of big plays."
Detroit 42, Arizona 24. Joey Harrington threw a career-high four touchdown passes in Steve Mariucci's Detroit debut, spoiling Emmitt Smith's first game with his new team and Anquan Boldin's record-setting day.
Boldin caught 10 passes for 217 yards, a record for a rookie in his debut, and two TDs. Boldin, a second-round pick from Florida State, broke the record set by Washington's Hugh Taylor, who had 212 yards against Philadelphia in 1947.
Porcher said if he were Smith, he would've retired in Dallas after breaking Walter Payton's NFL rushing record last year.
Smith may have thought the same thing after he gained just 4 yards on his first five carries without a blue star on his helmet. He is playing on a poor team after winning three Super Bowls, one MVP award and one Super Bowl MVP trophy in 13 seasons with the Cowboys.
Smith ran for 64 yards on 13 carries, extending his rushing record to 17,226.
"Our pride has been hurt and our ego has been shocked," Smith said. "But we will bounce back from this."
Two teams expected to be among the NFL's worst played a close game for almost three quarters until the Lions scored three TDs - one on a punt return, another on an interception return - in about seven minutes.
Mariucci has returned to his home state following his firing in San Francisco, where he was 60-43 with three playoff wins over six seasons. Detroit was 5-27 under Marty Mornhinweg for the worst two-year mark in team history.
"This was a very emotional day for our players, for the coaches, for myself, and ... for our fans," Mariucci said.
Harrington was 17-of-30 for 195 yards and no turnovers. The third pick in last year's draft is the first Lions quarterback to throw four TDs since Scott Mitchell against Chicago in 1996.
Charles Rogers, the second selection overall this year, had four receptions for 38 yards and scores on his first two catches. On his second touchdown, he was fully extended on a 13-yard pass from Harrington to put the Lions ahead 14-7 early in the second quarter.
"They were starting to double him by the second quarter," Harrington said. "He's the kind of playmaker that opens things up, even when he isn't catching the ball."
Arizona's Jeff Blake, who replaced Jake Plummer, was 28-of-46 for 363 yards with three TDs. But he had an interception returned for a score and a fumble that set up another TD.
(For other results, see Scorecard.)
TITLE: New Russia Coach Gets First Point
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: DUBLIN - Ireland's hopes of booking an automatic place in the finals of Euro 2004 next summer suffered another setback when they were held to a 1-1 draw by Russia at Lansdowne Road on Sunday.
New Chelsea signing Damien Duff gave the home team a lead with a thrilling strike in the 36th minute, but Russian centerback Sergei Ignashevich got the equalizer just six minutes later to ensure that new national-team coach Georgy Yartsev enjoyed a satisfactory first game in charge.
After a dull opening half hour, characterized by aimless passing from both sides, a goal seemed highly unlikely.
Valery Yesipov had hit one wayward effort well wide for Russia, and Colin Healy had missed Ireland's best chance when stabbing wide a useful cross from Stephen Carr.
Full-back John O'Shea seemed to sum up the quality of the game in the 25th minute when he tripped over the ball, damaged his ankle, and had to be substituted. But then, in the 36th minute, Duff ignited the afternoon with his sparkling goal.
After receiving the ball just inside the Russian half, he raced forward, twisted past one defender before side-stepping Aleksander Mosotovoi and unleashing a low left-foot drive from 25 meters that deflected off Viktor Onopko and screwed past goalkeeper Sergei Ovchinnikov and into the corner of the net.
Russia's reply, however, was almost instantaneous. A succession of slick forward passes set up Alexander Kerzhakov to try his luck from the same distance as Duff, but Shay Given was able to tip the ball over the bar.
But from the resulting corner, Given, under pressure from Dmitry Bulykin, fluffed his attempted punch clear and the ball dropped to Ignashevich, who immediately drove it into the net for his first international goal.
Ireland raised the tempo in the second half and Duff and Kevin Kilbane, in particular, forced the Russian defenders into a series of last-ditch tackles to avert clear scoring chances.
As the match wore on, the visitors seemed content to settle for a draw and were happy to retreat in numbers to soak up the enthusiastic but blunt Irish attacking.
Elsewhere, Europe's most powerful soccer countries - except Germany - pulled rank over lesser opposition. Defending champion France led the way with a 5-0 hammering of Cyprus.
Italy had a thrilling 4-0 win over Wales with an 11-minute second-half hat-trick from Filippo Inzaghi, the Netherlands beat Austria 3-1 and Turkey overcame Liechtenstein 3-0.
England got past Macedonia 2-1 with a match-winning penalty from skipper David Beckham and a landmark goal for 17-year-old Wayne Rooney who became England's youngest scorer.
But Germany, European champion three times, played poorly and was held to a 0-0 draw by Iceland in Reykjavik, provoking a rare outburst from German coach Rudi Voeller.
"The players are going to get chewed out by me. Of course it was far too little for us. There's too much talking. I'm not going to put up with this for long," he said. "Naturally, it's not what I expected. Especially in the second half we didn't do enough. But we didn't lose. We were fortunate to come away with a draw."
That result was one of only two surprises across Europe in the 20 qualifiers played as the contenders for a place in Portugal next year kept the finals firmly in their sights.
The other upset saw Bosnia beat Norway 1-0 in Group Two with a late goal from Zlatan Bajramovic reviving the home team's faint playoff hopes.
Italy had countless chances to score, but could not break through a Welsh defence aided by both luck and judgement.
But after Italy took the lead through Inzaghi on 59 minutes, the rest swiftly followed. Alessandro Del Piero wrapped matters up with a late penalty that saw Italy replace Wales at the top.
England captain Beckham was on target with a 63rd minute penalty to give his team a hard-fought 2-1 win in Macedonia - its seventh successive victory, equalling its post-war record.
Earlier, Wayne Rooney equalized a first-half Macedonia goal to become England's youngest scorer in a senior international at the age of 17 years, 317 days.
South America. Brazil began its World Cup defense with a 2-1 win away to Colombia on Sunday in its opening qualifier for the 2006 finals, while Uruguay broke free of its negative tendencies to hammer five goals past Bolivia.
AC Milan midfielder Kaka came on as a second-half substitute for Brazil and scored the winner with his first kick of the game in the steamy Caribbean port of Barranquilla.
Ronaldo had put the world champion ahead in the first half, while Colombia replied through Juan Pablo Angel.
Javier Chevanton scored twice as Uruguay routed Bolivia in Montevideo after Manchester United striker Diego Forlan made the breakthrough. Nelson Abeijon and Carlos Bueno completed the scoring.
The two games completed the first round of the marathon South American World Cup qualifying competition in which the ten countries play each other twice over two years and two months.
Saturday, Argentina were held 2-2 at home by Chile, Ecuador beat Venezuela 2-0 and Peru hammered Paraguay 4-1.
(AFP, Reuters)
(For other results, see Scorecard.)
TITLE: Yankees Get Room at the Top as Wells Beats Boston
AUTHOR: By Ronald Blum
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - David Wells quieted Boston's bats for a day. It remains to be seen if the New York Yankees can shush the Boss.
The Yankees, with their AL East lead suddenly down to 1 1/2 games, came up with a big win Sunday as Wells pitched his finest game this season and Bernie Williams woke up with his first home run since mid-August, propelling New York over the Red Sox 3-1.
"A game like this, it's huge," Wells said. "Those guys are coming in for the sweep - you want to try to get the momentum back, and that's what we did today."
New York fans were pumped up by the return of Derek Jeter, who talked his way into the lineup after a missing five games with an injury. They really sprang to life when Williams broke a scoreless tie with two-run homer in the seventh off Jeff Suppan (1-2).
In the final scheduled meeting this year between the teams, New York (85-56) boosted its division lead to 2 1/2 games over Boston (83-59) with three weeks remaining.
"There's a big difference between being three games back in the loss column than one," Boston manager Grady Little said.
With owner George Steinbrenner - a.k.a. the Boss - in town and watching, New York had been blown out by a combined 20-3 in the first two games. Its lead, which had been 7 1/2 games on Aug. 20, was disappearing along with the summer heat. Steinbrenner made his displeasure known.
"A few guys out there are making a lot of money and not producing," he told the New York Post on Friday. "A few guys need a kick in the butt to get going." Of his coaches, Steinbrenner said: "I think they better be a little uneasy."
Saturday, Steinbrenner backed off.
"There are no plans anywhere to fire anybody," he told The New York Times. "I'm behind my coaches. I'm behind my players - particularly behind the players that they will come through and win for us."
On Sunday, there was little to be angry about. While Suppan took a one-hitter into the seventh and the Red Sox twice advanced runners to third base in the middle innings, Wells (13-6) got out of trouble each time, pumping a fist after escaping.
He had been winless in seven starts since July 19, and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre had publicly challenged his work ethic after a loss to the Chicago White Sox on Aug. 27. Wells' spot in the rotation was in jeopardy.
"Boomer responds to challenges," New York manager Joe Torre said. "There's no bigger challenge since he's been back here than this game today. He certainly restored order."
Suppan, who dropped to 0-5 against the Yankees, needed just 67 pitches to get through the first six innings as New York forced the outfield to handle just four balls - Jeter's single in the fourth and three weak flyouts. But Suppan wound up throwing 33 pitches in seventh.
He walked Jorge Posada with one out, then allowed Williams' first homer in 65 at-bats since Aug. 19. While he has 11 homers this year, just two have been hit at Yankee Stadium. Williams, who had been in a 9-for-60 (.150) slump, doesn't think the final three weeks will be easy.
"It's going to be a grind," he said. "Very hard."
Jeter was 1-for-3 with a walk, and made a high throw for an error on Johnny Damon's one-out grounder in the eighth. After Bill Mueller singled, Torre brought in Mariano Rivera, who retired Nomar Garciaparra on a flyout, allowed a bloop RBI single, then got David Ortiz on inning-ending forceout.
Nick Johnson gave Rivera some margin for error with an RBI single in the bottom half off Alan Embree, and Rivera finished for his 33rd save.
(For other results, see Scorecard.)