SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #907 (75), Friday, October 3, 2003
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TITLE: Police Dossier Implicates Kadyrov in Crimes
AUTHOR: By Clem Cecil
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - A confidential Interior Ministry document, obtained by the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, accuses Akhmad Kadyrov, President Vladimir Putin's appointed ruler in Chechnya and his favored candidate in Sunday's presidential election, of using systematic extortion and violence.
The document, a report from a colonel specially seconded to Chechnya, was written a year ago and obtained in Chechnya this summer. It paints a frightening picture of the republic as a place where life is cheap, violence universal and in which armed men who support or oppose Moscow act with equal brutality.
The author, Colonel A. Zhizhin, makes it clear that armed resistance to Moscow was continuing three years after the start of 1999 military campaign. He writes of a "sharp deterioration in the situation in the Chechen Republic over recent months" caused by "an increase in acts of terrorism and sabotage committed against federal forces, as well as in attacks against officers of the Chechen police."
Zhizhin goes on to warn: "The increased activities of the militants, Kadyrov's low popularity in the republic, and frequently incompetent actions of the federal forces cause a negative response from most Chechen residents who mistrust the policies of the federal authorities."
Kadyrov, who was appointed head of the Chechnya administration by Putin in June 2000, is strong favorite to be elected president of the republic Sunday, in a poll in which he has no serious rivals.
Officials in the office of Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Putin's main spokesman on Chechnya, have called the document a forgery.
However, it was obtained by IWPR from a senior Chechen police official and carried an appropriate serial number, which was hidden during photocopying by folding over the corner of the page, in order to protect our source. The sheer detail and precise dating in the document, as well as its even-handed criticism of all sides, also suggests that it is genuine.
Some government officials claim that the situation in Chechnya has stabilized in the year since the document was written and especially after Moscow's constitutional referendum in March. However, a spate of suicide bombings in the past year, claiming hundreds of lives, suggests that things are actually no better and may actually be worse.
Mikhail Burlakov, a former State Duma deputy, who comes from Grozny and was until recently head of the North Caucasus department of the Nationalities Ministry, said he had seen many similar documents and had no doubt that this was one was genuine. He said he believed the situation in Chechnya had deteriorated since the report was written.
Zhizhin signs the report as a member of the Criminal Police Internal Forces Operational Search Actions team, which conducts what are euphemistically known as zachistki, or "mopping up operations" that have terrorized Chechen villages. He recommends that his information be used in future operations.
The Interior Ministry, which commissioned the report, is in bitter competition with the FSB, for authority in Chechnya. "There are tensions between these two organs at the highest levels and these trickle down to the ground," Burlakov said. This suggests that the report may have been part of a larger campaign by enemies of Kadyrov to undermine his standing in Moscow.
Certainly, the report details what amounts to supporters of Kadyrov organizing a campaign of extortion against businesses, farms and bureaucrats "supposedly to raise funds for Akhmad Kadyrov's presidential election campaign," many months before the election was announced. Three men who did not pay their dues on time in the Vedeno district were murdered by masked men, Zhizhin notes.
The man mentioned as Kadyrov's main enforcer is Sulim Yamadayev, the deputy military commandant of Chechnya, who is believed to control an armed group of up to 10,000 men.
"A group of armed men led by Khamzat Gayarbekov, who reports to ... Yamadayev have arrived in Shelkovskaya district and have been collecting money from managers of state farms, industries, government offices, drivers and owners of oil delivery trucks," the colonel writes. In the last year, Yamadayev is reported to have quarreled with Kadyrov and become a more independent force.
Zhizhin is scathing about the Chechen police force - supposedly his colleagues in the Interior Ministry - who are said to be loyal to Kadyrov and adopting, he says, a "wait-and-see attitude" as the political situation changes.
A portrait of Chechnya emerges as a place at the mercy of powerful warlords, who are a law unto themselves. Zhizhin describes a situation in which fighters loyal to warlords Ruslan Gelayev and Shamil Basayev still operate in Grozny - believed to be under the pro-Moscow administration's control - and move freely in daylight in Basayev's home district of Vedeno.
"For most people in Chechnya, the meaning of life becomes serving one or other of the warring factions, i.e. Kadyrov, Yamadayev, Basayev and Gelayev," Burlakov said.
Clem Cecil is Moscow correspondent for The Times (of London). Thomas de Waal in London contributed to this report.
This article comes from the Caucasus Reporting Service of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, www.iwpr.net
TITLE: Voter Survey Shows Putin Favorite to Head Smolny
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: If President Vladimir Putin had decided to quit his job in the Kremlin to join the gubernatorial race in St. Petersburg, he would have won, but not in the first round, according to a survey conducted by local PR agency Business Market.
Competing against 19 other suggested candidates whose names are most often mentioned in the national media, Putin would have got 29 percent of votes, followed by former governor and Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Yakovlev with 12 percent, Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky with 11 percent and local State Duma deputy Oksana Dmitriyeva with 10 percent.
Nobel Prize winner Zhores Alfyorov and St. Petersburg University rector Lyudmila Verbitskaya would have got 9 percent and 4 percent respectively, according to the survey of 2087 St. Petersburg residents on Sept. 11-18.
The support for Anna Markova and Valentina Matviyenko, the two candidates who face a run-off second round of the gubernatorial election on Sunday were not included in the survey. Election laws forbid ratings being published in the period around polling days.
"We wanted to demonstrate that we can do sociological surveys during an election campaign," Nadezhda Kalashnikova, general manager of Business Market, said Thursday. "We would have wanted the media to know they can approach us if they want different kinds of surveys conducted."
"With such strong competitors, Putin was not able to muster 50 percent to win in the first round," Business Market said of the survey Wednesday. "It looks like the city would accept Vladimir Yakovlev as a candidate in the future. It is likely he could use his popularity in the city's next [gubernatorial] elections."
Other candidates on Business Market's list were Audit Chamber head Sergei Stepashin, Federation Council speaker Sergei Mironov, Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov and Baltika brewery head Taimuraz Bolloyev. They received support of four percent to six percent.
Others who polled lower were Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, the head of the national anti-drug unit and former presidential envoy to the Northwest Region Viktor Cherkesov.
Tatyana Dorutina, a member of the St. Petersburg League of Voters, said Putin would be a good candidate for St. Petersburg if he retired as president.
"When Putin's term expires I'm sure he will be welcome in St. Petersburg with his 70 percent rating," Dorutina said.
"As for Yakovlev, there is no way he could run for office in St. Petersburg because what he did [to the city] is a crying shame. It has put all his political carrier into question. People are not even sure how he long he will last in the federal government," she added.
Leonid Kesselman, a political analyst in the Sociology Department of the Russian Academy of Science, said Business Market's survey was just an attempt to advertise the agency, and had nothing to do with a professional sociology.
"They are people who don't know what they are doing," he said Thursday.
"This has nothing to do with an attempt to find out what's really going on in the minds of citizens. It just an attempt to get attention so that somebody will come to them to advertise condoms or chicken," he added.
Kesselman said the work of professional sociologists during the election campaign has inspired Matviyenko to rely on more open-minded members of her team, not just on those who came to her headquarters to earn money.
"There was one Matviyenko who appeared [in the city] when she first came here, and another who will win. There are two teams at her headquarters - one is made up of those who want to get close to the feeding trough and the other contains such open-minded people as [Dmitry] Cherneiko, [head of the Northwest department of the Federal Employment Service] service and Andrei Likhachyov, [Lenenergo head]. The second team is getting most of her attention," Kesselman said.
But Vladimir Anikeyev, a spokesman for City Hall candidate Anna Markova said the survey looks to him as an attempt to influence the election even though it is prohibited to publish ratings of candidates participating in the election race five days before a polling day. The first round of the gubernatorial race was held Sept. 21.
"They play with Putin's name knowing that it is allowed to do anything that is not banned," Anikeyev said Thursday. "Today they refer to the president. Tomorrow they will publish ratings for different parties."
"As for a new Matviyenko team of some kind, I'd say it is wrong to change horses in midstream. She says she's got scientists and professionals in her team, but she hasn't got any original ideas of her own, she only quotes what someone else says," he said.
TITLE: Putin: Missiles To Be Put on Combat Duty
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin told top military commanders Thursday that Russia will put dozens of the SS-19 multi-warhead, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on combat duty.
In a separate development, a Defense Ministry paper released ahead of Putin's comments warned that Russia might have to revise its plans for military reform and nuclear defense strategy if NATO did not drop what it termed its "anti-Russian orientation."
Putin explained the move was to prevent further aging of the country's land-based strategic nuclear arsenal, and maintain its capacity to overcome any missile defense system.
"I am speaking here about the most menacing missiles, of which we have dozens, with hundreds of warheads," Putin told a gathering of top commanders and Kremlin officials at Defense Ministry headquarters. "Their capability to overcome any anti-missile defense is unrivaled. "
Putin said the SS-19s would be put on duty to phase out hundreds of Soviet-era ICBMs that have aged beyond repeatedly extended service lives. Such replacements would give the Russian defense industry a breathing space to develop new systems, he said.
Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush signed the so-called Moscow Treaty last May that requires the two countries to cut the number of warheads on combat duty to between 1,700 and 2,200 a side. It allows both countries to store, rather than dismantle the warheads. It is the scrapping of the START-II strategic arms reduction treaty, however, that has allowed Russia to keep SS-19s on combat duty.
Russia acquired and stored an unspecified number of Soviet-era SS-19s from Ukraine in the 1990s, according to Alexander Pikayev, a security analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center. These stored missiles can remain in service until the 2030s, deputy chief of the General Staff Yuri Baluevsky told the meeting.
In addition to the pending introduction of the modernized SS-19s, the Russian military may also revise its own nuclear doctrine if NATO doesn't amend its "offensive" doctrine, according to an undated draft Defense Ministry document on the modernization of the armed forces released to the press ahead of the meeting.
The document doesn't only call for a "change of Russian nuclear strategy," but also provides for "thorough reformation of the principles of military planning," if NATO's doctrine remains offensive.
While containing warnings to NATO, the 73-page document also praises the cooperation between Russia and the Western alliance. It is the "new level of relations" with great powers, including United States, that allows Russia to "radically cut" its nuclear forces, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said.
While noting that "the level of direct military threat is not high," Ivanov still said it would be "irresponsible" for Russia's military planners to assume that the threats will not increase. And one major element of this planning would be preparing Russian armed forces to carry out pre-emptive strikes anywhere in the world to intercept attacks on Russia, Ivanov said.
According to the Defense Ministry, the Russian military should be prepared to fight two "conflicts of any type" simultaneously as well as carry out peacekeeping operations.
Russia's 1.16- million strong armed forces would undergo no more major personnel cuts, while increasingly relying on professional soldiers rather than conscripts and commissioning new systems to boost its rapid-reaction and combat capabilities, the document said.
Ivan Safranchuk, the Moscow representative of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, commented Thursday that the Russian armed forces would hardly be able to fight two regional conflicts simultaneously, let alone two "conflicts of any type."
According to Pikayev, some of the speeches by senior military commanders, including warnings to NATO, could have been aimed at pleasing patriotic-minded sections of the Russian electorate ahead of the State Duma elections.
TITLE: New ISS Crew Has No Plans For Marriages or Divorces
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STAR CITY, Moscow Region - What's the next drama in store for the international space station, where a member of the current crew became the first man to marry while in orbit? Not a divorce, the American commander of the three-nation crew said Wednesday.
Michael Foale, commander of the mission scheduled to begin with a launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Oct. 18, said neither he nor either of his two crew members intends to tie - or untie - the knot from aboard the space station.
"We do not plan to do any new marriages or divorces in space," Foale said after a news conference Wednesday at the Star City cosmonaut training center outside Moscow. "We are a very boring crew in that regard."
The others in his team are cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, who will command the Soyuz spaceship on the way to the station, and Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque. All three men are married with children.
In August, cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko caused a stir when he married Texas resident Yekaterina Dmitriyev as he orbited above the Earth.
Russian officials accused Malenchenko of showboating and tried in vain to convince him to delay the wedding until he returned to Earth.
TITLE: Laura Bush Calls for Media Freedom
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - U.S. first lady Laura Bush departed from Moscow for Washington on Thursday after raising Washington's concerns about press freedom in Russia.
She departed for Washington early Thursday after having coffee with Cherie Blair, the wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was also visiting Moscow.
On Wednesday, Bush attended a book festival hosted by first lady Lyudmila Putina that was also attended by the wives of the Armenian and Bulgarian leaders.
Addressing giggling schoolchildren, Bush urged them to "turn off television when you get home and read."
"This festival is ... a celebration of freedom - the freedom to write what we want to write and read the books that we want to read," she said.
A senior U.S. official traveling with Bush said her comments reflected U.S. concerns over what Washington says is government pressure on the Russian media and a concentration of ownership.
"The government on occasion does not hesitate to squeeze the media," he said. But, he added, "The fact is, it [press freedom] is a lot better than it used to be."
U.S. President George W. Bush and President Vladimir Putin did not mention the issue at a news conference in the United States last week, but Putin told students in New York that press freedom had its limits.
Bush arrived with an entourage of U.S. writers, the creators of some of America's most popular books for young people: R.L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps series; teen thriller writer Peter Lerangis, who wrote some of the Baby-Sitters Club books; and Marc Brown, who writes and illustrates the Arthur the aardvark series.
Bush, speaking at the opening session of the festival, said such events "celebrate books and reading and great writers."
Bush chose Stine and Lerangis to accompany her in Moscow in part because of their books are among the few that have been translated into Russian.
Later, with Putina, she also toured several of the festival exhibits on libraries, translations and children's literature.
On Wednesday evening, Putina arranged for a private showing of the ballet "Don Quixote" for Bush and her other guests at the Bolshoi Theater.
(AP, Reuters)
TITLE: City To Host Voices for Hospices Concert
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg will on Saturday join the world's largest simultaneous singing event Voices for Hospices - a series of charity concerts to raise funds for international hospices.
At exactly 7 p.m. local time the concerts will create a Mexican wave stretching through 40 countries from New Zealand to the west coast of North America.
In St. Petersburg's case, the young Swedish conductor Kristofer Wahlander will combine the forces of one of the world's finest countertenors, three of Russia's most talented singers, two famous St. Petersburg chamber choirs and the fine Kaliningrad Symphony Orchestra in the famed Shostakovich Philharmonic. Together they will perform Handel's "Messiah."
Voices for Hospices gives hospices the opportunity to raise funds and support for their work by organizing their own musical performances under the umbrella of Voices for Hospices. This will be the fourth time that such a worldwide event has been held. Previous events have raised more than $1 million for local hospices and palliative care services.
Wahlander said he got to know about this project last year when after one concert, a couple came up to him and told him about their work with hospices in St. Petersburg and about the project.
"I was very moved by their work and was very glad that I would be able to help in some way," Wahlander said.
"I think such actions are absolutely vital as we tend to get caught up in our own everyday life unless we are reminded of the people who are suffering. If such actions, and by this I mean all charity work, were not done, then the world would be a far worse place to live in," he said.
"It is very easy to become egocentric as you do not see people dying of cancer everyday. It is completely normal to get annoyed if the marshrutka is full and goes past without picking you up, but if you are reminded that people are living in the knowledge that they are going to die within the next few weeks, then it puts your everyday nuances in a completely different perspective."
Wahlander said the choice of playing Handel's Messiah was made by Michael Siggs, a trustee of the St. Petersburg Healthcare Trust, which will benefit from the concert. The team has invited young English countertenor David Walker to will sing the alto part.
"Countertenors, men who sing women's parts in falsetto, are very rare in Russia and I am very please to be able to give the St. Petersburg audience the opportunity to hear this phenomenon, in this case by one of the very best countertenors in the world," Wahlander said.
The other singers to take part in the event are no less accomplished. They include soprano Irina Vasiliyeva, tenor Dmitry Voropayev, and bass Yevgeny Ulanov. The concert will also feature the St. Petersburg State Chamber Choir, and the Lege Artis Choir.
Tickets and booking arrangements are available at the Philharmonic for 500 rubles. ($16.34).
TITLE: Appointee Seeks Public's Vote
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - She may be President Vladimir Putin's choice to be the country's first woman governor, but the frontrunner for the St. Petersburg runoff is keen to be seen as her own woman.
As a former deputy prime minister and ambassador, Valentina Matviyenko can certainly claim a wealth of experience in city and national government.
But electoral success has so far proved elusive for the 54-year-old from Shepetovka, Ukraine, who last month compared her career path to that of three-time British Prime Minister "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher.
"I'm told that Thatcher also started as a pharmacist," Matviyenko said. "Another coincidence is that she began her career from the youth organization of her party, and I started working in the Komsomol."
But the comparisons may end there, if she fails to win a race she started as odds-on favorite.
Matviyenko narrowly failed to win the Sept. 21 first round, falling just short of an outright majority with 48.9 percent of the vote.
And she has found it hard to dispel the impression that she is back in the city as President Vladimir Putin's handpicked candidate for another bite at the cherry.
In the 2000 St. Petersburg gubernatorial election, she pulled out of a challenge to Governor Vladimir Yakovlev after trailing badly in the polls. This Sunday, she hopes to make it third time lucky in a straight runoff against Yakovlev's vice governor, Anna Markova.
Last month Matviyenko walked into a political firestorm when she controversially received Putin's public backing on national television. The president wished her "luck in the election," a step that rival candidates claimed violated election laws on senior government officials campaigning on behalf of candidates.
Matviyenko stayed on the ballot after the Supreme Court ruled that she had not violated campaign rules, and that her appearance was "not of a campaign nature."
But she could yet face another opponent: voter apathy. While in the low-turnout first round, the goal was to win 50 percent of the votes, according to local election rules this time the successful candidate must gain more votes than "Against All Candidates," otherwise the election would have to be run all over again in a year's time.
Matviyenko's failure to win on the first ballot comes despite a well-funded publicity campaign, aided by the use of administrative resources at her disposal, after Putin reassigned Matviyenko from her post as deputy prime minister in charge of social issues to presidential envoy for the Northwest Region in March.
Yakovlev welcomed her appointment, as he had gotten involved in a number of highly public spats with her predecessor as the presidential envoy, Viktor Cherkesov.
In this new role, Matviyenko was ideally placed to gear up for a gubernatorial bid as Yakovlev, whose second term as governor was due to run out in 2004, took up the offer of a deputy prime minister's job in Moscow.
With Yakovlev announcing his departure during the city's 300th anniversary celebrations in early June, Matviyenko was ready to roll for a fall election, quickly marshaling a large campaign fund. Meanwhile, her rivals were caught on the hop, as they had expected to raise finance for an election in the New Year.
But while Matviyenko has her detractors, there are plenty of testimonials too.
Nikolai Petrov, expert of the Moscow Carnegie Center called Matviyenko a "self-made woman" with good communication skills.
"She wins hands down when compared with her predecessor as envoy in St. Petersburg, Viktor Cherkesov, with his gloomy, secretive face," said Petrov. "She is open, public and charming, and she is a local. She communicates well, and she looks better in real life than she appears on television."
Lyudmila Verbitskaya, the rector of St. Petersburg State University, became another fan after visiting Matviyenko on fundraising trips to Moscow.
"I had the impression that she was the first to turn on the light in the White House and the last to turn it off," she said.
The director of the city's world-famous State Hermitage Museum, Mikhail Piotrovsky, said in a statement posted on Matviyenko's web site that the restoration of the museum's storage facility "into the world's best for art storage" was possible due to Matviyenko's help.
And he added that one of her biggest pluses is her predictability.
"It's the first time we got a candidate about whom we know perfectly well what she is able to do," he said. "If Valentina Ivanovna does things the same way as before, with the same enthusiasm and knowledge, it would not be bad."
Alexander Kolyakin, the representative of Moscow in St. Petersburg, remembers working with Matviyenko in the 1970s and 1980s. "She is very concrete, clear and straightforward," he said. "And she is not embarrassed by her past, like some people do who used to occupy high positions in the Communist Party and now claim to have been secretly opposed to the Soviet system."
Matviyenko started her political career in St. Petersburg, then Leningrad, which she first visited as a teenager on a trip from medical college. She "fell in love with the city," according to her official biography.
After graduating from the city's Chemical Pharmaceutical Institute, Matviyenko took the typical career route of Komsomol and Communist Party posts, then worked in various jobs in the St. Petersburg city administration.
Most famously, a story had it that Matviyenko once intervened to save the Angleterre hotel from demolition, after a group of students had demanded the hotel be kept up as a memorial to the famous Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, who was found shot dead in one of the rooms.
It was in 1989, at the height of perestroika, that Matviyenko got her break in national politics, being elected as a deputy to the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet.
In 1991, she joined the new Russian Foreign Ministry team of Yevgeny Primakov, and served as ambassador to Malta and Greece. When Primakov was appointed prime minister during the 1998 financial crisis, he recalled Matviyenko to Moscow as deputy prime minister with responsibility for social issues.
She was tasked with reducing the huge backlog of unpaid salaries, which in 1999 reached 77 billion rubles. By 2002, the figure had fallen to 29.9 billion rubles ($1 billion), according to the State Statistics Committee.
During a strike by schoolteachers from the Irkutsk region this spring, protesting months of unpaid wages, officials involved in negotiating a solution with Matviyenko say she did all she could to fix the problem.
"It was her achievement to make the work of the tripartite commission effective," said Oleg Sokolov, the head of the labor department of the Independent Trade Union confederation. "She was a good coordinator, who was quick to resolve the hottest issues in the regions. As a social manager she was effective. But I don't know about her being a governor."
Yury Korgunyuk, an expert at the Indem think tank, doubted that Matviyenko would be a big-spending governor if she won the election.
"I have doubts that she will be able to cope with such a big economy," he said. "She has never run a city, she has experience in social issues, but the city would be a big challenge for her. The city is in a bad way. I would not expect too many differences for St. Petersburgers if she comes to power."
TITLE: Vice Governor Portrays Herself as Local Heroine
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Like her former boss, Vladimir Yakovlev, Anna Markova hopes to step up to lead St. Petersburg from the vice-governor's post.
Like Yakovlev, who beat liberal Anatoly Sobchak in a closely contested 1996 election, she started the campaign as underdog and faces a candidate backed by fellow St. Petersburger, President Vladimir Putin, who served with Yakovlev in Sobchak's administration.
But this time around Putin appears close to settling his old score with Yakovlev - even though voters narrowly failed to elect his envoy, Valentina Matviyenko, in the first round of voting on Sept. 21.
With just 15.8 percent of the votes cast in the first round, narrowly ahead of "Against All Candidates," Markova can only win on Sunday if she garners the support of all the defeated first-round candidates - and breaks through voter apathy that led to a turnout of just 29 percent.
But Yabloko official Igor Artemyev, Yakovlev's former city finance chairman, who later switched his allegiance to become a staunch critic, has ruled out switching his party's support to Markova in the second round of voting.
"Markova ... bears responsibility for all the ugliness committed [by Yakovlev's administration]," Artemyev said last week. "She is a direct heiress of Yakovlev."
Markova entered the gubernatorial race after Yakovlev's early resignation during the city's 300th anniversary celebrations in early June. The governor was promoted to deputy prime minister, making way for Matviyenko.
In a reference to Matviyenko, Markova complained of "pressure" in her declaration speech to the city's legislative assembly, and said it was "no secret" that "one candidate has already been campaigning for two months."
"I understand [that] nobody will say 'hello' to me," she said. "The media will not show me, according to an order [given to them], my allies are going to suffer. Even now I am already threatened. Some promise [to organize] a car accident, others to put me under a steamroller."
Leonid Kesselman, a political analyst at the sociology department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that the only way Markova could raise her profile with St. Petersburg voters was to champion local democracy.
"What else could she do?" he said. "If one candidate tries to strangle democracy, another should defend it. She was forced into this. Her supporters are communist-oriented people."
But while Markova has tried to portray herself as a champion of local democracy against a Kremlin-imposed candidate and a heavy-handed dirty tricks campaign, it is her record as Yakovlev's loyal lieutenant at City Hall that voters may well judge Markova on.
Serving as a City Hall official under Yakovlev, from 1999 as a district head and from March 2002 as vice-governor and chair of the city assembly's administration committee, Markova is relying on local support to give her a chance against her high-profile opponent.
The plain-speaking Yakovlev was a popular choice with a frustrated electorate as governor in 1996, as a contrast to high-minded law professor Sobchak.
While his predecessor was known for liberal ideals and persuasive oratory, Yakovlev was more focused on practical local issues, and was little known outside the city's construction sector before his election as governor.
But under Yakovlev, St. Petersburg's promised economic regeneration program failed to materialize, as the city struggled to shrug off its 1990s image as the country's organized-crime capital.
Yakovlev hoped to persuade the city assembly to allow him to run for a third term as governor in 2004, but after a shift in December 2002 assembly elections undermined his power base, his detractors appeared to gain ground.
The campaign against Yakovlev's administration focused on a series of scandals prominently reported in the media that centered on alleged misuse of some of the $300 million earmarked for the city's anniversary celebrations.
In what later appeared to be a readying for the early election, the campaign against Yakovlev coincided with Matviyenko's appointment as presidential envoy, and her prominent role in the 300th anniversary celebrations.
But even if Matviyenko wins second time around, Markova casts doubt on whether her influential rival will be able to wrest resources from central government to rebuild the city's crumbling infrastructure.
"It is time to stop believing that the federal budget will keep helping St. Petersburg, as it did for the jubilee," Markova said on her official web site. "The country gave us an unbelievable amount of money, 40 billion rubles [$1.3 billion]. Let's face the truth: the celebration is finished.
"The president and the government have a truck-full of problems - military reform, collapsing communal services, cities getting frozen. That is why anyone who promises pots of gold from the capital is a liar."
Markova was born in Leningrad in 1955, into a family tracing its ancestry to Czarist army officers. In 1979, she graduated as a librarian from the Nadezhda Krupskaya State Culture Institute and went to work for the city police, where she continued her education, graduating the judicial department of the Interior Ministry's Supreme School and gaining a masters degree in teaching.
Working her way up through the ranks over 20 years, where colleagues remember her as a demanding and competent administrator, Markova wound up as head of the Kolpinsky District Police Department, before leaving the force in 1999 to join Yakovlev's team as head of the city's Frunzensky District.
But Olga Pokrovskaya, a Yabloko member of the city assembly, said Markova's main attributes as head of the administration committee were loyalty to Yakovlev and her ability to block reform, rather than listening to democratic debate.
"The main thing this committee did was to back the City Hall line and veto over 60 [proposed] laws," she said.
"City Hall was never interested in passing new laws, but rather in issuing orders so that it decided everything by itself, without asking anybody else's opinion," she said.
TITLE: Kinocenter Cancels Chechen Film Event
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The Kinocenter movie theater on Wednesday refused to screen hard-hitting documentaries about Chechnya for a film festival, saying the 18 films from six countries were "unacceptable" and "too highly politically charged."
Festival organizers accused the authorities of intimidating Kinocenter into canceling the event and promised to show all of the films at the Sakharov Museum instead.
Kinocenter found that "several foreign films are unacceptable to be shown," theater manager Vladimir Medvedev said in a statement Wednesday.
"We don't mind Russian films, but foreign films have anti-Russian tendencies, and we don't need that at our Kinocenter," he told Ekho Moskvy radio. "We are not into politics. We just show movies. We don't show films linked to politics, especially when they are linked to the Russian government and the president.
"We have good relations with all the top power structures. Why should we spoil our relations?" he said.
Medvedev said he particularly objected to "Assassination of Russia," a documentary financed by Boris Berezovsky that accuses Russian secret services of masterminding the 1999 apartment bombings that killed several hundred people in Moscow and other cities.
Yury Samodurov, director of the Sakharov Museum, an organizer of the festival, said Kinocenter officials had asked him if he had cleared the program with Vladislav Surkov, a deputy head of the presidential administration.
"I have the impression that Kinocenter was pressured into refusing to take part in the festival," Samodurov said at a news conference.
The traveling festival was to have opened at Kinocenter on Thursday, after making stops in London, Washington and New York. It will now be held at the Sakharov Museum at 57 Zemlyanoi Val.
Most of the films show the first and second Chechen conflicts through the eyes of foreign correspondents. In one of the films, "Babitsky's War," Radio Liberty's Russian correspondent Andrei Babitsky interviews Russian soldiers, rebels and ordinary Chechens to expose the suffering, fear and desperation of those living in Chechnya. Another film, "Terror in Moscow," is a chilling British television documentary about the Dubrokva theater hostage crisis last October.
In addition to the Sakharov Museum, the free three-day festival is organized by Berezovsky's Foundation for Civil Freedoms, the Holocaust Foundation, the Memorial human rights group and a number of other Russian human rights groups.
TITLE: City Plugs Fall Events To Draw Tourists
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Locals agree that St. Petersburg is beautiful in autumn, but most foreign and out-of-town Russian tourists prefer to go elsewhere at this time of year.
To coincide with the important occasion of the city's 300th anniversary, local authorities are making an effort to schedule as many national and international events into the diary as possible, with some of them in fall, usually a low season for traveling.
The ninth Congress of the Russian Tourism Industry Union held this week in St. Petersburg - for the first time in the history of the organization - is a case in point.
"We very much wanted to host the congress. It would be a precious opportunity for Russia's leading travel agencies - many of which are based in Moscow - to see St. Petersburg's charm in the fall," said Sergei Korneyev, the union's vice-president and head of its Northwest Region branch.
"It is fashionable to be here in the summer, but people need to be reminded that the city is no less attractive at other times of year."
The congress drew over 400 travel industry professionals from throughout Russia. They discussed the major problems in the field, including the visa regime, development of national resorts and fighting corruption.
"Business tourism is a niche with an enormous potential here," said Marina Beskrovnaya, head of the Tourism Committee of the St. Petersburg administration. "It provides one of the most efficient mechanisms to overcome dependence on White Nights popularity. I very much regret we couldn't move the economic forum from June to the fall. But we will continue inviting and organizing important international events during low season."
The committee, which records the entry of some 3 million foreign visitors, including from the CIS, to the city each year, estimates the average tourist spends $300 a day, including accommodation.
St. Petersburg is still a very season-dependent city, with travelers coming by crowds during the White Nights. The summer profits feed the town for the rest of the year. Many industry professionals believe the best prospects are for business tourism.
The first attempt at restoring the long-lost tradition of splendid winter seasons in St. Petersburg and to provide balance to the high season in winter - the Arts Square Festival at the Shostakovich Philharmonic - was held in December 2000. Now, local tour operators promote it with much enthusiasm in addition to the Stars of the White Nights summer festival, which has already received worldwide recognition.
The northern capital's finer hotels are also chipping in to help make St. Petersburg the place to visit in winter. White Days - a winter alternative to the White Nights festival - was launched last year to offer visitors discounted cultural package deals that include food and lodging.
The Grand Hotel Europe has joined together with four other leading St. Petersburg hotels - the Angleterre, Astoria, Radisson SAS and Sheraton Nevskij Palace - to offer White Days weekend packages, including a three-night stay in one of the hotels, a buffet breakfast daily, limousine service to and from the airport and tickets to the Hermitage and the Mariinsky Theater.
"When the festival started, it saddled the organizers with losses," said Alla Shpanskaya, formerly deputy director of the Philharmonic and now director of local Radio Classica. "Now, the event is known around Europe, attracting stars such as pianist Yevgeny Kissin and soprano Barbara Hendricks, and guests coming to town specifically to be here for the Arts Square."
TITLE: Rutskoi Charged Over Deals
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Former Kursk Governor Alexander Rutskoi will be charged with abuse of office over deals that allegedly cost the Kursk region millions of rubles when he was governor, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.
Investigators summoned Rutskoi to appear at the ministry's Voronezh branch Wednesday to face charges on suspicion of authorizing the purchase of agricultural equipment at inflated prices, said the office of Kursk Governor Alexander Mikhailov.
Mikhailov's office said in a statement that Rutskoi authorized regional authorities to take a loan of 25 billion non-redenominated rubles from the Parex bank in 1998 to purchase wheat mills and combines. The statement said these "illegal deals" caused millions of rubles in damages to the regional budget.
Rutskoi, who was governor from 1996 to 2000, denied the accusation Wednesday and said the charges were an attempt to prevent him from running for a State Duma seat in a single-mandate constituency in the city of Kursk, Interfax reported. He said his blood pressure shot up after he received the summons and he had to check into a Moscow clinic, where he remained Wednesday.
Investigators declined to comment.
Rutskoi served as vice president to Boris Yeltsin, but was ousted after helping lead a failed uprising against the parliament in 1993. He was later reconciled with Yeltsin but fell out of favor after Vladimir Putin came to power.
TITLE: Tver Governor Cited for Tender
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW - Tver Governor Vladimir Platov has been charged with abuse of office for allegedly helping a friend win a regional tender - a deal that cost the Tver budget $13.5 million.
This is the second time that a governor has been charged in post-Soviet Russia. Governors tend to run their regions as fiefdoms, although President Vladimir Putin has tried to rein them in.
Tver prosecutors informed Platov of the charges Monday and ordered him not to leave the region pending a trial, the Prosecutor General's Office said.
Platov will be allowed, however, to make one-day trips out of the region in his official capacity as governor, Kommersant reported Tuesday.
Platov denied any wrongdoing in the 2002 tender.
"This is a political gimmick to prevent him from participating in the gubernatorial election," his lawyer, Alexei Yegorov, told Interfax.
Platov is running for re-election on Dec. 7. Tatyana Astrakhankina, a State Duma deputy with the Communist Party, plans to challenge Platov.
TITLE: Illarionov: GDP on Track
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: A top Kremlin economist said Thursday that Russia was on target to double gross domestic product in the next 10 years, despite the economy's sensitivity to oil price fluctuations.
Andrei Illarionov, President Vladimir Putin's chief economic adviser, said that doubling gross domestic product in a decade was "completely realistic."
"Ten years is too long," he said at the opening of the World Economic Forum conference in Moscow. "It can be done sooner, maybe in only eight years."
Russia's economy began to grow at the end of the 1990s after a long slide that followed the Soviet collapse of 1991. According to official statistics, GDP rose by 4.3 percent in 2002, marking the fourth straight year of growth. However, it also marked a slowdown from 9 percent growth in 2000 and 5 percent in 2001.
Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said the target of doubling GDP - which would require yearly growth of about 7.2 percent - was a good incentive for the government to push through needed administrative reform. "It's key that the state not intervene in the economy. Markets can take care of themselves."
Critics argue that the target - declared by Putin earlier this year - is a political stunt timed to coincide with parliamentary elections in December and presidential elections early next year.
Al Breach, chief economist at the investment house Brunswick UBS, warned that the forecast growth over the next 10 years would not necessarily be steady.
"Expect here in these next years that we might get a nasty recession in the run of that growth," he said. "You can't expect to avoid the credit cycle."
Doubling GDP would require a compound growth rate of 7.2 percent per year for the next ten years. In dollar terms, this is achievable, Breach said, but in ruble terms, the annual rate would need to be closer to 10 percent a year to compensate for real ruble appreciation. For this to be possible, "you'd need productivity gains in government itself and more support for business as a whole," he said, echoing Dvorkovich.
Illarionov said that worldwide, in the last five decades, 70 countries have managed to double their GDP within a ten-year period. "Why can't Russia? Why must it be one of the unlucky half of the world that cannot?"
The economy has been buoyed by the high price of oil, the country's main export commodity. Some analysts have said the strong revenues have allowed the government to shirk much-needed structural economic reforms. They say over-dependence on the natural resources sector leaves Russia vulnerable to oil price fluctuations.
Illarionov, however, said there was "nothing bad" about the economy's sensitivity to commodity prices because high prices meant high demand for a commodity which Russia has in abundance. "It would not be smart not to reap the benefit of these high prices."
He added, however, that the Russian economy was not only sensitive to market forces but also to the oil pricing policies of other governments - namely member countries of the oil cartel OPEC - which "distort" the market.
He said that intervention by OPEC into the global oil markets is responsible for "oil shocks" and makes Russia's sensitivity to oil prices problematic.
OPEC has been lobbying for closer cooperation with Russia - the world's second largest oil exporter - in order to stabilize volatile global oil markets following the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Illarionov dismissed the prospect of closer ties with the cartel.
(AP, SPT)
TITLE: RTS Hits New High, Analysts See Trouble
AUTHOR: By Alex Fak
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The market went into overdrive Thursday as the Russian Trading System climbed up another 2.5 percent to hit a new record high of 588.4 by close of trading.
The market surge drew the attention of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who boasted at a Cabinet meeting that the country's stock market capitalization has "the highest growth rate in the world."
But even as Kasyanov fueled the fire with his optimistic comments on a continuing climb, analysts warned the market could soon overheat.
"A bubble is more than likely" in the future, said Roland Nash, head of research at Renaissance Capital. "In a country with a weak public sector, a very strong link to the oil price and poor public transparency, it's almost inevitable that you would have overshoots in both directions."
"We're now in territory that stretches fundamental valuations," he warned.
The RTS index almost reached Renaissance's end-of-the-year target of 590 Thursday. But Nash said that target is based on "some aggressive assumptions" - including continuing high commodity prices and political stability.
Analysts pointed to increasing capital flight sparked by this summer's legal attack on Yukos as a sign that not all was peachy. The Central Bank's reserves dropped $2.9 billion from July 4 to Sept. 5, reversing a steady climb over the first half of the year.
Although reserves regained some lost ground last week, inching back $500 million to reach $62.6 billion by last Friday, analysts said that recovery had been too short-lived to talk about a reversal of flight.
Nash said that unlike the 1997 bull run, which was powered by foreign money, the latest rise has been driven by Russians until very recently.
"If the Russians start taking money out of the country, it removes a great deal of support" from the stock exchange, he said.
Another aspect of Russia's bull run that is raising concern is growing investor interest in risky second-tier stocks that are less transparent and generally have worse management.
"Investors have become addicted to high returns in Russia, and to get those high returns, they have to now take more risks," Nash said.
"Some of these [second tiers] have not been visited since '97, and their management understands that investors are just temporary friends," warned James Fenkner, head of research at Troika Dialog.
He noted that Russia's stock market capitalization to GDP ratio is now in the range of 30 percent to 50 percent, compared to around 15 percent to 20 percent in other Eastern European economies.
"I don't understand how it could get larger," he said.
But judging by the recent rally, the skeptics are far outnumbered by optimists. Brunswick UBS, for instance, believes the RTS index is undervalued. Al Breach, the chief economist, says that even if oil falls to $19.5 per barrel, Brunswick projects RTS growing by 20 percent over the next year - and around 50 percent if oil stays strong.
"Two things make a bubble: a lot of credit expansion [debt], and overvalued assets. Russia has neither," he said.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Local Exchange Growth
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Turnover at the St. Petersburg Currency Exchange grew 43.5 percent in September over August and amounted to 71 billion rubles, Interfax reported on Thursday.
According to a stock exchange press release, September dollar turnover reached $528,559 and euro turnover was 90.451 million euros. In ruble terms, foreign currency exchange went up from 14.752 billion rubles in August to 19.277 billion rubles in September.
PeterStar Buys BCL
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - PeterStar telecommunications sealed a deal to acquire 100 percent of Baltic Communications Limited (BCL) from Metromedia International Telecommunications, an American investment company.
The press release announcing the deal set the price tag at $3.8 million, $1 million of which will go to buy 100 percent of the BCL shares, and $2.8 million will be used to pay off BCL debt. PeterStar is using in-house funds for the takeover.
Caterpillar Output
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Caterpillar, the major U.S. manufacturer of construction and mining machinery, plans to increase production by 29.4 percent at its Tosno, Leningrad Oblast plant in 2003, Interfax reported on Tuesday.
General Director Gilbert Holmes said that production in 2004 would go up another 30 percent.
The Tosno plant was opened in March 2000 with an investment of $50 million an manufactures parts for construction machinery and harvesters assembled at Caterpillar plants in Belgium, France, Sweden and Great Britain.
Neste to Invest
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Neste St. Petersburg, a subsidiary of Fortum Oil and Gas Oy, a Finnish company, will invest 6 million euros in its chain in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.
In 2004 the company will build an automated filling station costing 1.8 million euros, and three full-service stations costing 600 million euros each.
Neste St. Petersburg operates 28 filling stations in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast.
E.ON Energie to Bid
MOSCOW (SPT) - The German electric power company E.ON Energie has announced plans to bid in the tender to select a management company for the Northwest Combined Heat and Power Plant, Interfax reported.
"We are likely to take part," said E.ON Moscow office head Semyon Gershovich.
TITLE: Chevy-Niva Price Goes Euro
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The first Russian-American automobile will no longer be priced in dollars.
Market analysts view GM-AvtoVAZ's trek into the euro zone this week as another excuse for the company to jack up prices for its sole product - the Chevrolet-Niva.
When GM-AvtoVAZ opened its factory in Tolyatti last year, company officials announced they were finally bringing an affordable, Russian-made quality automobile to the market.
The jeep originally cost $8,000, but as demand increased the price rose to $8,500, which the company attributed to design improvements.
On Wednesday, the numbers were the same but the symbol in front of them changed from "$" to a euro sign, effectively raising the price another 14 percent in ruble terms.
GM-AvtoVAZ spokesman Vladimir Derbenyov said he didn't expect the changeover to scare customers away, "because starting in October we will be selling improved Chevy-Nivas with four major changes."
The changes - a new generator belt, electronically adjustable mirrors, a coolant for the power steering column and a new exhaust system - are worth the extra $1,230 consumers will have to pay, he said.
Asked why the company decided to denominate its prices into euros instead of simply raising the price in dollar terms, Derbenyov said it was following the market trend; Ford switched to the euro in February.
Ford, which produces its Focus model at a plant near St. Petersburg, imports component comprising nearly 80 percent of the car's value. By comparison, GM-AvtoVAZ said 60 percent of the components for the Chevrolet-Niva are produced by AvtoVAZ, while the remaining 40 percent are produced almost exclusively by other Russian suppliers.
"We are improving the quality of the car by using new parts assembled in Russia from Western components," Derbenyov said. "Their prices are denominated in euros, too. This is an ongoing process."
TITLE: CEO Marks Listing With Attack on U.S.
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - United Heavy Machineries on Tuesday became only the fourth Russian company to be fully listed on the London Stock Exchange - and the industrial giant's CEO and main shareholder, Kaha Bendukidze, took the opportunity to attack American foreign policy.
Bendukidze's company, known by its Russian acronym OMZ, is near the tail end of a $56-million contract to build the outer shell and primary circuit of Iran's controversial Bushehr nuclear power plant, which the United States fears could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction.
Bendukidze called senseless the assertion that the light-water reactor used to power the $800-million plant could fuel a covert nuclear weapons program.
"No one in the world could explain how to use it as a weapon - unless you drop it on the head of a general," Bendukidze told an investment conference.
Washington has been putting increasing pressure on Moscow to refrain from supplying Iran with so-called dual-use technology. And although Russia is not backing down on the supply of technology, President Vladimir Putin joined his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush, in urging Tehran to step up its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency during their meeting in Camp David over the weekend.
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov backed up Putin's remarks in the United Nations on Tuesday, urging his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi to be more open about his nation's nuclear projects.
On Monday, Iran acknowledged that traces of weapons-grade plutonium had been found on some equipment on its soil, but argued that the equipment could have been contaminated abroad.
Bendukidze also criticized the United States for its general opposition to nuclear power in Iran, suggesting Washington was guilty of applying a double standard since it helped another "axis-of-evil" country - North Korea - build a Bushehr-like reactor under the Clinton administration in exchange for a promise that Pyongyang would not pursue its nuclear arms program. North Korea promptly reneged on that promise.
"Iran is better than North Korea," Bendukidze said. "At least in Iran they have elections and ... student uprisings."
But with only $1 million worth of work to go on its Bushehr contract, OMZ is hoping to turn its attention to Finland, where it is favored to win a contract to help build that country's fifth nuclear reactor.
OMZ is competing with U.S. General Electric and French Framatom-Siemens for a contract to build the reactor's outer shell and primary circuit, and Bendukidze said a decision is expected as early as next week.
He said OMZ's quality and safety standards are as high or higher than its competitors, but the company, unlike its competitors, cannot offer financing.
"Only the Russian government can provide this guarantee" because nuclear power is a political issue, he said.
Izhorskiye, now part of OMZ, built two of Finland's four nuclear reactors almost 20 years ago.
Nonetheless, analysts in Moscow were optimistic about OMZ's prospects.
TITLE: Russia Nears Jackson-Vanik Repeal, WTO with Meat and Poultry Deal
AUTHOR: By Catherine Belton
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - In what appears to be an attempt to spin some good news beyond the backslapping bonhomie of the recent summit between Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick announced late Monday that Russia and the United States have reached a deal on quotas for imports of U.S. chicken, beef and pork.
Zoellick said a last-minute agreement to preserve the United States' historic import market share in these goods had been hammered out at a meeting in Tokyo between Allen Johnson, the chief U.S. agriculture trade negotiator, and Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Maxim Medvedkov just before the Camp David summit.
Zoellick said the deal could help Russia's case in Washington for entry into the World Trade Organization and for the lifting of Soviet-era Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions, which have been a thorn in the side of Russian-U.S. ties.
"This is a very good agreement that ensures that we will maintain our historical access to Russia's market and adds room for growth," he told reporters.
"This moves us a key step in one aspect," he said, referring to WTO accession.
"This will remove three of the most important stumbling blocks that Al and I have heard from members of Congress that made it quite clear that they were unwilling to move forward with Jackson-Vanik as long as Russia had restrictive policies toward our poultry, our pork and our beef," he said.
Under the agreement, the United States will once again have a 74-percent share of the poultry-import market, 4 percent of the beef-import market and 9 percent to 11 percent of the pork-import market, Johnson said at the same news conference.
The two officials did not say, however, how long the agreement, which is in principle only and has yet to be approved by Moscow, would be in place.
U.S.-Russian trade ties have been snarled over Russia's attempts to stem a tide of U.S. chicken that began to flood its market soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result of a trade deal clinched by former President George Bush, Russia has been the biggest market for the U.S. poultry industry for 10 years.
In 2002, Russia placed an embargo on U.S. poultry, claiming it was substandard, and in May this year imposed a restrictive new quota system in an attempt to stimulate the domestic industry.
As a result, U.S. poultry imports to Russia have been plummeting. In 2001, they reached a peak of 1 million tons, worth $700 million. By 2002, they were down to 690,000 tons, and in January through July this year they were at 371,000 tons, a drop from the same period in 2001, said Toby Moore, spokesman for the USA Poultry and Egg Export Council.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Gazprom Satiated
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Gazprom said on Tuesday it planned no more borrowing this year.
"We are not going to borrow anything for the rest of this year. We are restricted by the fact that we have fulfilled the program for this year," board member Andrei Kruglov told reporters.
Gazprom has set a borrowing limit of 130 billion rubles ($4.25 billion). In September, Gazprom placed a bond of 1 billion euros, and in February it sold a $1.75 billion eurobond. It has borrowed $3.31 billion on local and international markets this year.
Gazprom has one of the country's heaviest debt burdens, of $13 billion, mostly in short-term liabilities. The company is now replacing short-term and expensive debt with longer-term and cheaper liabilities.
'Sign or Forget It'
MOSCOW (AP) - A dispute between Russia and Belarus intensified Wednesday, with Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov saying Belarussian demands had prevented the Slavic neighbors from reaching an agreement on plans to introduce the Russian ruble as the single currency in both nations.
Kasyanov said officials had failed to agree on the terms of a deal during meetings and that there may not be enough time to introduce the single currency by Jan. 1, 2005, as planned, Interfax reported.
"If the agreement on a single currency is not signed and ratified by the end of the year, you can forget about Jan. 1, 2005, as the date for its introduction," Interfax quoted Kasyanov as saying.
$159Bln External Debt
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The country's external debt rose to $159.1 billion at the end of June from $154.4 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2003, the Central Bank said Wednesday.
The data is presented at face value and calculated according to international methodology, the bank said in a statement released on its web site, www.cbr.ru.
Manufacturing Slowing
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Manufacturing enjoyed an eighth month of expansion in September thanks to brisk domestic demand, but the pace of growth slowed for the second month running, Moscow Narodny Bank said Wednesday.
"Although signaling a further slowdown, growth nevertheless remains solid and well above the average for 2002 and rates recorded at the start of 2003," MNB said in a statement.
The Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index, or PMI, based on a monthly poll of 300 purchasing managers, fell to a seasonally adjusted 53.1 in September, its lowest reading since April.
In August, the index, designed to give a snapshot of manufacturing conditions, stood at 53.7. A reading above 50 indicates expansion, below 50 indicates contraction in the sector on the previous month.
September's data suggested a further growth of production and new orders but at slower rates than recorded in preceding months, the bank said.
Gazprom Plugs Leaks
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Germany's Ruhrgas and Gazprom said on Wednesday that they were stepping up cooperation on curbing leaks from Russian gas pipelines, aiming to save huge amounts of energy and protect the environment.
The companies said they would broaden cooperation on limiting emissions from the 7,500-kilometer Volgotransgaz pipeline network and thereby reduce the annual amount of energy lost.
TITLE: Jury Still Out on 1993 Violent Confrontation
AUTHOR: By Jean MacKenzie
TEXT: What October events?" My friend Alexei, a Muscovite born and bred, looked at me blankly when I told him I had a piece to write for the ten-year anniversary of that momentous occasion. "Oh, you mean when Yeltsin pounded the Parliament." He shrugged dismissively.
But for the small army of foreign journalists who lived through that time, October 1993 stands as a major landmark.
It had been just two years since the last major upheaval, the farcical coup attempt that ultimately put an end to the Soviet Union and signaled the political demise of Mikhail Gorbachev.
The new Russian Federation seemed a land of limitless possibilities. Boris Yeltsin was a hero, who had defied the tanks of August 1991, in the name of freedom and democracy. Those who opposed him, the recalcitrant Old Guard, were doubtless on the fast track to history's trash heap.
Those intrepid foreigners who lived in Moscow were suddenly rich: Yegor Gaidar's "shock therapy" had sent the ruble into a dizzying downward spiral, and the greenback was king. Twenty-somethings who were barely off the dole at home could afford the high life in the "Wild, Wild East." The Russian population, tied to the "wooden" national currency, was not so fortunate.
The social costs were fearsome: In my first years at The Moscow Times, we had brain surgeons and rocket scientists working as drivers, since their professions no longer paid enough to feed their families.
Savings were wiped out overnight. One friend, Sonya, wryly recounts how she finished a book in 1993 that she had signed a contract for three years earlier. "I was to be paid 6,000 rubles," she said, "with which I was going to buy a new car. When I got the money, I used it to purchase a kilogram of tomatoes."
This was the background for October, 1993: Social upheaval, rampaging discontent, and a political battle between Yeltsin, who wanted to push forward, and his vice president, Alexander Rutskoi, aligned with the chairman of the Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov, who blamed the Western-looking government for the people's woes.
The foreign press largely cast the struggle in Manichean terms. Yeltsin, of course, the brave white knight battling the darkness.
"Were you really that naive?" asks Alexei. Looking back at the things we said and wrote, I would have to say that yes, we were.
I have fragmentary images of that September: It had been unusually cold, and the 500th anniversary of the Arbat had been accompanied by rain and sleet. I had been assigned to interview Bulat Okudzhava for the occasion, and can still see the great bard tramping through the snow on his Peredelkino lawn in bed slippers as he came out to welcome his guest.
Mstislav Rostropovich had played on Red Square, enormous crowds nearly trampling each other in their eagerness to see the great maestro who had been unceremoniously rejected by his homeland decades before.
In late September, Yeltsin announced his suspension of the Supreme Soviet, and the city turned into a battleground. Barricades dotted the Garden Ring, and the stubborn deputies refused to disband, holing up in the White House despite cut-offs of water and electricity.
October arrived in a warm, golden haze, making it a lot more comfortable for the crowds milling around the Parliament. There were campfires and songs, accompanied by vodka and fist fights. In 1991 crowds had gathered around the White House, then the Russian Federation building, to defend Yeltsin; now they were there to protect those inside against him.
A popular anecdote of the time: The government has devised a new question for the passport questionnaire. "Were you a defender of the White House? And if so, in what year?"
Inside the building, the increasingly beleaguered deputies held their own vigils. Correspondents who managed to sneak in through underground passageways told of candlelit sing-alongs, accompanied by the stench of overflowing toilets and unwashed bodies.
I went with friends to Kolomenskoye on Sunday, Oct. 3, to enjoy the mild fall weather, and watch families braiding red and gold leaves into enormous crowns for children and dogs. Few seemed troubled by the political stalemate in the center. But when we came back into town in late afternoon, we noticed the crowds on the Garden Ring, heading up Tverskaya. "We're taking Ostankino!" one participant shouted in answer to our questions.
Television footage shows a spittle-spewing Rutskoi on the balcony of the White House, exhorting supporters to storm the Kremlin, a proper Lenin at Smolny.
Over 100 people died in the fracas at the television tower that night. I ended up at home, watching the news, once the embattled Ostankino had managed to establish coverage from a remote location. I tried calling my family in Boston, to let them know that I was all right. The response from my befuddled parents: "That's fine, honey, but can you call back later? The Red Sox are in the playoffs!"
Oct. 4 was a black day for Russia, as tanks fired on the White House while crowds cheered. By the evening it was all over, the deputies had been routed, the forces of good had triumphed once again.
Moscow was still a battle zone, however: snipers lurked on rooftops, and one friend and I spent a few tense moments crouched behind a car in an insane attempt to get to our favorite restaurant, the Tren-Mos, for dinner that evening (it used to be right across from the Moscow swimming pool, now the Church of Christ the Savior). Alarmingly, the restaurant was open and we were far from the only ones in it. Who goes out to dinner during a war?
For weeks there was a curfew, and I remember crazy "curfew parties' where we all stayed the night, drinking and talking, waiting for the ban to lift at 6:00 a.m. I am ashamed to say so, but it was an exciting time to be young, footloose and free in Moscow.
Now, 10 years older and a century more disillusioned, I am not quite sure why it all happened.
The folk hero of 1991, the strongman of 1993, descended into buffoon status just a few years later, destroyed by illness and drink. The vouchers and loans-for-shares programs made billionaires of the few and cynics of the many - it would be difficult to find more than a handful of Russians today who can say the word "democracy" without a wince or a grimace. Even relatively progressive Muscovites talk with more than a hint of nostalgia about the old days, when "people were much more honest."
For foreign journalists, Russia is just another story, no longer the center of the universe. Moscow news has to battle for column-centimeters and airtime with the more pressing coverage of war and terrorism.
From the vantage point of 2003 it does seem that October, 1993, was just an episode, not the decisive battle we thought at the time. Forces much more powerful than the hapless Khasbulatov or the rabid Rutskoi were arrayed against the new republic: the talented and ruthless young financiers, out to grab the nation's resources; the desperate politicos, determined to hold on to power, whatever label it bore; the armies of aid workers (whose ranks I have since joined), sprinkling dollars and wisdom, in the firm belief that democracy and wealth would be the next crop.
So what was accomplished in October, 1993? To paraphrase late Chinese premier Zhou Enlai's famous comment on the French Revolution: "It's much too soon to tell."
Jean MacKenzie is the Regional Development Director for IREX, Central Asia
TITLE: A Truly Great Nation Can't Ignore Murder
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
TEXT: This country is proud of its literary heritage, especially when it wants to demonstrate that Russia is a world power.
How could anyone doubt Russia's greatness after seeing the long list of world-famous works written in the 19th and 20th centuries: Joseph Brodsky, Osip Mandelshtam, Nikolai Gumelyov, Mikhail Bulgakov, Boris Pasternak, Lev Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky ...
The works of Dostoyevsky, that's what I was thinking about on Monday.
To be more exact, I was thinking about one phrase spoken by a character in The Brothers Karamazov; Ivan, the modern, rational atheist says he will not accept any model of a harmonious society that can only be realized through the tears of a child.
"It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony," Ivan says.
Last month, tears flowed. The blood of a 6-year-old Tajik gypsy girl was spilt. She was killed by a group of young people who consider themselves the children of a great nation. These were skinheads, a growing group of human beings who are ready to kill for one simple reason - because someone looks different.
What shocked me most in the few short days after this awful tragedy happened is the unbelievable indifference of local people to the murder. They either did not know about it or regarded it as some sort of an unlucky crime that deserves little attention in a big city such as St. Petersburg.
Looking back at my experience working at a newspaper in Denver, Colorado, I feel ashamed about the response to the murder in my hometown. If a child was murdered there, the horror of it would have been on everybody's lips and brought to houses and business centers on the pages of local papers, by radio and TV channels every single day. It would have been presented to the audience as the most shameful thing that ever happened in the city.
In St. Petersburg, no one seems concerned at all. One of the main news agencies, Interfax, said not a single thing Monday, when the police reported four suspects had been detained in relation to the murder. The gubernatorial elections are more important, of course.
"It looks like the question of the collective responsibility of a community for everyone living in it is of no concern to Russian people," said Ruslan Linkov, head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Democratic Russia party.
He quoted William Saroyan, who said that whenever blood is spilled, he himself is the victim.
"This sounds like nonsense in the contemporary world where modern consumers attend free rock concerts that are part of election campaigns; it is impossible to understand," he said.
Last weekend, Linkov had his own encounter with indifferent officials.
On Sunday night, he was attacked in his doorway by three strangers. One tried to stab him. After escaping, he called the nearest police station for help. The police had promised to arrive in half an hour.
After waiting 3 1/2 hours to no avail, he went to bed.
It was a pleasant surprise that police found the alleged killers of the girl, considering that in recent months their main success has been in detaining campaign leaflets.
The next step was for local authorities should be to start a campaign against racism.
Unfortunately nothing of the kind is happening. They'd rather campaign for themselves, telling voters how great their country is, which put the first man in space, leads the world in ballet, and has great literature.
It is a great shame they know nothing of this literature, except for the famous names. If they knew more, there would be less tears and, maybe, no blood.
TITLE: congress looks at preservation
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Two magnificent 18th-century towns in suburban St. Petersburg - Pavlovsk and Pushkin - are at the heart of this year's Congress of Russian Historical Towns and Regions.
The idea behind the congress - being held in Pavlovsk and Pushkin on Thursday and Friday - is to develop a strong network between professionals involved in the preservation, management and promotion of the country's historical places, and produce an common strategy to solve problems.
"This year's event will have a special festive spirit, as the two host towns will be showing not just how they have preserved and restored their treasures but also how they have turned them into living organisms," said Igor Serdyukov, general secretary of the Union of Russian Historical Towns and Regions, an umbrella group for over 180 cities and estates from all over the country that organizes the event. The congress was first held in 2000.
Pavlovsk and Pushkin have both revived a number of venerable pre-revolutionary traditions, such as the summer musical seasons in Pavlovsk's Rose Pavillion.
The congress is not a meeting of leaders of regions. Rather, it is meant for professionals and low-level or middle managers to share experience, know-how and survival strategies.
As part of the program, restorers from Tsarskoye Selo are showing off the spectacular results of their decades-long recreation of the legendary Amber Room in the town's Catherine Palace. Nikolai Tretyakov, general director of the Pavlovsk Museum and Estate, has a lot to tell his guests.
"Pavlovsk is the only estate museum in Russia to be self-supported," Tretyakov said. The major plight of most Russian museums, he said, is not so much a lack of funding but the inability to draw up an efficient budget.
"The key thing is to determine your priorities, to be able to see what is crucially important for your particular museum or estate," Tretyakov said. "Very often, museum directors put all their effort into shaking money out of the government, but when it comes to spending they are absolutely helpless."
Tretyakov also accused some major museums of using their weight to grab the lion's share of the country's culture budget.
"Some of them just bite off as much as they possibly can," he said. "The Hermitage, for instance, has installed stainless-steel toilet facilities. I am not sure if there was a need for that."
"One of the most essential things museum managers still need to learn is marketing," said Tatyana Pchelyanskaya, head of PR and Marketing at the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg. "It sounds almost absurd, but many curators can't explain what is so special about their museum. Unless they understand what is unique about their cultural product, they won't be able to raise any funds to support it or invest in it."
One of the major issues discussed at this year's congress will be the unification of efforts of various Russian towns wishing to join UNESCO's World Heritage List.
"The [southern] town of Derbent has just joined the list, and it is a big victory of the local citizens," Serdyukov said. "Many more towns are struggling for the same, but everyone is just about themselves. There is no joint effort and an overall concept, and this is a mistake."
The objects on the UNESCO list get additional funding from their respective countries. Naturally, there is a lot of competition between poverty-stricken Russian museums, estates and whole towns.
"We need to develop a policy and revise the current standing as well," Tretyakov said.
Typically, World Heritage Sites include architectural complexes, such as Kiev's Vladimirskaya Hill and St. Sophia Cathedral or Moscow's Red Square and the Kremlin. But in 1990s, under pressure from Raisa Gorbacheva, the whole city of St. Petersburg made the list - although this doesn't include any of its beautiful suburbs.
"St. Petersburg stretches from Kronshtadt to Kolpino, and some very average village up there has more rights to claim the UNESCO money than a gem like Pavlovsk. I think this is unfair," Tretyakov said.
The congress is also launching a crusade against "indifferent directors."
"We already speak up against vandals, but an apathetic and uninterested manager can sometimes do much more harm," said Alexander Ivannikov, first deputy head of the city administration's Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade. One of the proposals was for the museum directors to become a contract job, not a lifetime appoinment, which is often the case.
The next congress will be held in Tomsk, which marks its 400th anniversary next year.
TITLE: dva samoliota frontman, 36, dies
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Vadim Pokrovsky, frontman of popular local band Dva Samaliota and one of the best-loved people on the local club scene, died aged 36 of a liver condition in a Moscow hospital Sept. 24. He was buried in the suburb of Pavlovsk on Thursday.
Pokrovsky formed Dva Samaliota with Anton Belyankin in 1988. Originally formed for personal interest, the band was born out of the pair's common passion for Afro-Cuban rhythms.
Fed up with the so-called "Russian rock" of the time - complete with bad playing, pseudo-poignant lyrics, existential complaints and messianic posturing - Pokrovsky developed Dva Samaliota's trademark nonsensical, quasi-African language, which the band used to pretend was Swahili, while playing a blend of ska and Afro-Caribbean.
"I'm glad that my idea has been fulfilled - to show people in this country that music exists, because for some reason ears here are tuned so that they listen to the words first," said Pokrovsky in an unpublished interview with The St. Petersburg Times in September 2002.
"I did this because I wanted to show a mood, a naked emotion - listen, guys, I sing that I'm down or I feel very good. It was an artist's choice, a musician's choice," he said.
"I know that many musicians first sing nonsense and then put on the words - I did it differently, and I think that I'm individual," he laughed. "Everybody asked, 'What are you singing about?' 'Of course, about love. About love, about animals, about women, about nature."
Pokrovsky added that Seraphim Makangila, the Zaire-born vocalist of Markscheider Kunst, once recognized some words in his songs as African.
"It's probably because I'm the sort of person who observes a lot and remembers things both with my eyes and my ears. It probably somehow stuck in my memory and then broke through," he said.
Pokrovsky was born in St. Petersburg on April 25, 1967. When he was three, a cat jumped on his face, leaving him with a stutter for life. On his grandfather's advice, he started to speak in a sing-song voice to be able to communicate, and later began to sing.
Pokrovsky grew up on art rock, and at 11 had an idea of Pink Floyd, Genesis and Jethro Tull - unlike most of his peers. His music interests changed when he heard Police and Talking Heads, and he still adored Sting when talking last year. Unlike Belyankin, however, Pokrovsky was not a punk-rock fan.
"Punk didn't affect me, because there were a lot of emotions, but little music in it. Probably, I'm not interesting or trendy, but I am more into Phil Collins and Sting."
He dismissed The Beatles as "show biz's first product" - "It's a lesson for our managers and producers of how to do something out of the ordinary," he said - and was enthusiastic about ABBA.
Artistically active at school, he produced an amateur musical, "Bremenskiye Muzykanty" ("Musicians of Bremen"), based on the then-popular Soviet animated film of the same name but entirely with his own music.
To please his parents, Pokrovsky entered technical college. In 1988, his second year there, he met Belyankin, and two years later Dva Samaliota was one of the most popular new bands in the city, with a series of foreign tours and festival performances to follow. In 1994, the band was based in Moscow, and was in high demand among club promoters there.
When speaking about the decisive point in forming the band, both Pokrovsky and Belyankin mentioned the day when they independently bought the same vinyl record, a Cuban export with a black man wearing a red shirt on the cover. The two met the same evening at Pokrovsky's home and tried to reproduce Cuban rhythms until the morning.
Pokrovsky quit Dva Samoliota due to drug addiction in 1997, and worked as a night guard at a home for mentally handicapped children in Pavlovsk. He claims his job helped him to overcome his 15-year heroin addiction. When rejoined the band, he drank excessively for a period.
"It's my thing - to do everything to the hilt," he said. "If I get addicted to drugs, then I go to the end, if I drink, I drink to the end, and if I fall in love - that could end in murder."
When Pokrovsky left in 1997, the band announced it was going on vacation, but it July that year it reformed with a new frontman - Grigory Sologub of Stranniye Igry, the 1980s ska band that Dva Samaliota considers its major influence.
After three years and two albums with Sologub, Pokrovsky returned as the band's frontman in 2000. In the wake of the success of the 2000 album "Podruga" ("Girlfriend"), the band signed a contract with Moscow producers and recorded an album, "A Vy-to Kto?" ("Who Are You?"), which was to become its major breakthrough.
Though the album has still not been released, the eponymous single was released earlier this year. The last album the band recorded with Pokrovsky on vocals was "Poo!," the 2002 "secret" album that was not released officially due to contractual obligations and exists only in a limited number of copies put out "for friends."
Pokrovsky's demise notwithstanding, Dva Samaliota is set to continue.
"[Pokrovsky] was the main figure in the band, especially in its early stage, 15 years ago," said drummer Mikhail Sindalovsky.
"But with us, the band is the body where none of us - its members - means much. I think time will pass and we'll start doing another program - unfortunately without Vadik."
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: Seminal local rock band Akvarium will play two concerts - called "Zachem Angelam Samolyot?" ("Why Do Angels Need an Airplane?") - at Stary Dom on Saturday and Sunday.
Despite early reports from the club that the band will perform mostly electric instruments in the first concert and acoustic instruments in the second, frontman Boris Grebenshchikov said the two shows will only differ as much as any other two Akvarium concerts.
"We've never been a stadium band, and if even we were, we rejected it a long ago," said Grebenshchikov, who has played five different local clubs over the last two years. "We can play a stadium any time ... but we want to play clubs."
For the concerts, Grebenshchikov said he had plans to produce posters to stand out from the usual local club posters.
"We've fought and are still fighting for the posters. Now I am fighting to have them put up not poor posters, but good ones. This could be the poster," he said, pointing to an oriental landscape at his kitchen.
"[We want] to have posters like they have in San Francisco, you know? It's a sphere of art - the San Franciscan poster, the art of the poster. We have nothing like this here."
Unfortunately, the public still has to wait, because the posters for the Stary Dom concerts, which appeared in the city this week, do not differ much from Akvarium's older posters - and are decorated by the image of Grebenshchikov wearing a top hat.
Apart from Akvarium, Stary Dom will also become home for a John Lennon Birthday Party on Oct. 9. Kolya Vasin, Russia's No. 1 Beatles fan and keeper of the tradition of celebrating the date since 1971, said he was impressed by the new club's size and acoustics.
Holland's Duncan Peltenburg Trio will come to St. Petersburg for a trio of concerts this week.
Peltenburg is a Rotterdam-based guitarist, who described his style as "world fusion," using a phrase coined by his friend (the world part hints at African music influence in his playing).
"To me it doesn't matter what style of music a group or song fits in," he wrote in a recent e-mail interview. "The most important thing for me is that the song or band moves me. If it catches your ears, mind and heart. That what they do is an outlet."
Peltenburg, who said his greatest influence was Jimi Hendrix, added that he is coming to St. Petersburg thanks to the father of a guitar student of his, who happened to be Russian.
"He listened to the demo and wanted to know if I was interested in playing in St. Petersburg," wrote Peltenburg. "Anybody in their right mind would take up this opportunity. It's not common for instrumental bands from western Europe to play in Russia."
While the city is in gubernatorial-elections mode, there are people ready to make things even crazier.
A final election night party is scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday at Cynic, with journalists and candidates who lost in the first round slated to be present. Valentina Matviyenko and Anna Markova have also been invited.
Pornographic-movie producer Sergei Pryanishnikov, who withdrew his candidacy, and his colleague Igor Bubenchikov, a.k.a. Buba, are going to host the party, which promises to include exit polls and the latest results of the vote counting.
- By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: more good news for georgian fans
AUTHOR: By Peter Morley
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: As regular readers of this column may well be aware, Georgian food is a particular favorite of mine. It is always a delight to discover new places to add to the list, which this week gained a valuable new member in Ketino, located 10 minutes walk from Vasileostrovskaya metro station.
When we entered on Tuesday night, the right-hand side of Ketino's one dining room was taken up by a group of Dutch people who were obviously having a great time. This boded well.
The room itself has a slightly odd feel, almost slightly formal. This is created by the decorative curtains and the slightly austere furnishings, although offset by the use of a vivid yellow for much of the decoration - and, on Tuesday, by the presence in the corner by the bar of a group of musicians. Although restaurant musicians are often a cause for complaint, these were anything but. They performed Georgian songs, some with guitar accompaniment, and some without, and were a genuine delight to hear. No wonder they got an ovation from the Dutch group when they left.
Food-wise, although it is an offshoot of the popular cafe Salkhino, which is located right by Gorkovskaya metro station, Ketino's menu is not exclusively Caucasian, although dishes from that part of the world do predominate. It is also pretty meat heavy, although there are enough dishes for vegetarians to be able to construct a pleasing meal.
My dining companion and I kicked off with a couple of starters, both cheese based. The straight fried suluguni (130 rubles, $4.25) was excellent, full of salty flavor and served with a delicious herb that we, unfortunately couldn't identify. The cheese rolls, which contained a mixture of suluguni, tvorog and mint, were even better, and provided a nicely cooling start to the meal.
My companion then moved on to his satsivi ($10.15), which he - somewhat bizarrely - criticized for being too good. He had been in Georgia earlier this year, and said that, there, the chicken that provides the basis of the dish was usually on the bone and often somewhat stringy. Ketino's version comes boneless, tender and full of flavor. Still, I guess there is no pleasing some people. (My companion cynically pointed out that, for over $10, Ketino's satsivi should be damn good, and indeed he said it was.)
I, meanwhile, was making my way through a huge bowl of lobio (130 rubles), which has to rank among the best I have tasted. I ordered it hot - it is also possible to order a cold version - and was pleased with my choice, as the almost soupy consistency, set off with pomegranate seeds and raw onion, made for a warm, filling dish.
So filling, in fact, that I wondered whether I would have room for my main course, the Georgian-style fish (400 rubles, $13.05). This consisted of mainly filleted chunks of the ubiquitous sudak - which should, I am informed, be translated as Zander fish, and not as pike-perch, which apparently does not exist - covered liberally with a tomato-based sauce including various flavorings and small pieces of hot pepper. The dish itself was not actually that spicy, and reminded me more of a great Provencale fish recipe that my mother cooks. I enjoyed it greatly, and did actually finish it - although, as with most of Ketino's dishes, it came in an extremely generous portion.
My companion chose as his entree the Salkhino meat (370 rubles, $12.10; when will restaurants here realize that "meat" is not a good enough description?). Again, this was huge, and very filling - it took my carnivorous friend quite a while to get through. It also came with two Georgian sauces - spicy adzhika and sour tkemali - that our server highly recommended, but my companion left them alone, saying that the wonderful taste of the meat with its mushroom-and-cheese sauce was good enough.
We were too full to order any dessert - in fact, we ended up taking leftover lobio and some of excellent khachapuri (130 rubles, $4.25) home with us - despite our server's exhortations.
The final word must be reserved for Ketino's wonderful service. The place claims to be a family-run cafe - its business card festures the two smiling Georgian women who run it - and we were certainly made to feel right at home. Just one example: I forgot to pick up the check when we left, but upon calling later, was positively encouraged to come back, even though the cafe had closed. I can only wish that such genuine customer-friendly attitudes can be spread to other places in the city, and will certainly go back to Ketino for another serving of its lovely, homely charms.
Ketino. 23 8-aya Liniya, V.O. Tel.: 326-0196. Open daily, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Menu in Russian and English. No credit cards. Dinner for two, without alcohol: 1,970 rubles ($64.35).
TITLE: venice: it's not just traditional art
AUTHOR: By Andrei Vorobei
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sun, stone and water is a simple way to describe the famous archipelago located in a lagoon in the north of the Adriatic Sea. The Venetian phenomenon traces its history back to 5 A.D., and has been formed by centuries of events, including barbarian invasions, the rise and fall of the Byzantine empire, the dynasty of the Doges, wars with the Turks, plagues, Napoleon's campaigns, Austrian rule and many others - including annexation to the Kingdom of Italy and confirmed by the Venetians in 1866.
It takes around 20 unforgettable minutes by train to reach Venice over a huge bridge connecting the archipelago to the Italian mainland. The historic city center spreads over 118 islands, linked by 140 bridges and divided into two main groups by the Grand Canal. It was actively built up between the 9th and the 13th centuries, when it first became a trading center, and consequently possesses all of the characteristics of a medieval city: a highly compact building plan, narrow cobbled streets and little green space. The feeling created is of a huge labyrinth - especially when the absence of any house-numbering system is added.
At the same time, as a former part of the Byzantine Empire and a trading post uniting East and West, Venice has a unique combination of Eastern and Western architectural ideas, producing a fascinating mix of completely different styles - where Palladian austerity meets Eastern luxury. The Basilica di San Marco is just one of the most obvious examples. The absence of any motorized transport on land dictates the rhythm of life. All of these factors combine to create a peculiar Venetian microcosm, which is compounded by what locals call the acqua alta, or high water, when parts of the city can be completely submerged by the high tide.
The point is that, due to its location, Venice has been unable to expand with time, and accordingly has remained untouched for several centuries. In one sense, time has dictated Venice's form, but not its contents: the city today is a Mecca for both lovers of traditional art and for fans of cutting-edge contemporary trends.
As all guidebooks point out, sunny, sky-blue Venice was home during the Renaissance to its own school of painting, which was renowned for its feeling of and synthetic approach to color. Artists such as Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Giorgione, Paolo Veronese, Jacopo Tintoretto and - in the Baroque era - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo brought the city widespread fame. Almost uniquely, many works by these masters are still in their original locations - not in museums, but in numerous of the city's palaces and churches, and a visitor can encounter them just by walking around the city. Additionally, huge collections can be seen in the Accademia di Belle Arti and the Museum de Correro.
In terms of modern art, Venice is a great place to familiarize yourself with both visual and performing arts. The reason for this is the Venice Biennial (www.labiennale.org), arguably the world's greatest contemporary-art festival. The biennial began in 1893 as a two-yearly exhibition of Italian art, and now represents countries from five continents and reflects all spheres of modern culture and art - visual arts, architecture, cinema, theater, music and dance.
In particular, the visual-arts biennial remains the least-changed event and is the largest, most prestigious exhibition of modern visual art in the world. The current festival, called "Dreams and Conflicts: the Dictatorship of the Viewer," opened on June 15 and runs through Nov. 2. Arsenale and Giardini are the historical, picturesque venues where countries have their permanent pavilions; Russia, for example, has been represented since 1914.
In all likelihood, this years' running of the festival - the 50th - will not be remembered so much for the record number of participating countries - there are 64 national pavilions - or even for the wonderful bonus anniversary events, but rather for the symptomatic changes that have taken place in the concept and structure of the festival.
The festival's curator, Francesco Bonami, has described the basic idea behind the festival as "Glomantism." The term tries to encapsulate what he sees as the "new Romantic dimension" that has arisen as an artistic answer to the "destructive wave of globalization." In practical terms, according to Bonami's essay in the biennial's catalogue, this means "the end of the cycle of large-scale thematic exhibitions which began in the late 1960s. As a result, the vision of the 'omnipresent' curator transformed, forcing him/her to acknowledge the broad and fragmented field of contemporary art. It became clear that any notion of the 'global,' (either in a formal or discursive sense) as driven by the last three decades of curatorial practice, could no longer be framed by the sole vision of the curator/ author."
To achieve this, Bonami invited 10 leading curators from around the world who, alongside the traditional, pavilion-based section of the biennial have created their own, autonomous art projects - such as "Delays and Revolutions," curated by Francesco Bonami and Daniel Birnbaum; "Individual Systems," curated by Igor Zabel; and "Utopia Station," curated by Molly Nesbit, Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Rirkrit Tiravanija - that completely correspond to a Romantic lexicon and Romantic ideas. The current biennial is no longer the old baggy monster it used to be, but rather a set of independent plots on a human scale among which the spectator is an active participant - almost a dictator - simply because making a choice means being active: participation, imagination, control. To see the whole biennial takes no less than two or three days.
Another "must see" for modern-art lovers is the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, one of the five museums of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Peggy Guggenheim - a daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, Solomon's younger brother - was known in her own right as a patron of contemporary artists. The collection is located in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, where Peggy Guggenheim lived from her 40s until she died in 1979 aged 81. It presents a great collection from which it is possible to learn the history of art from the first part of the 20th century from first-class examples.
Combined with Venice's world-famous tourist attractions - the Doges' Palace, the Piazza and Basilica di San Marco, the Lido (which film fans will want to visit as a location made famous by Luciano Visconti's film of Thomas Mann's novel "Der Tod in Venedig," or "Death in Venice) and the Fenice Theater - this makes the city one of Italy's most attractive, especially for art lovers. This is borne out by the fact that, during the high season, tourists outnumber residents by some way. In terms of weather and tourist numbers - i.e., warm and not too many - fall and spring are probably the best times to visit the city. At the same time, it probably not a long-stay city; after a couple of days, a sort of claustrophobia sets in due to the narrow streets and little open space.
It is difficult to write about Venice for a St. Petersburg publication without mentioning the Russian city's nickname of "The Venice of the North." Certainly, Venice could be compared to St. Petersburg - but only if you have never been there.
HOW TO GET THERE.
There are no direct flights from St. Petersburg to Venice, but there are at least two other options. Aeroflot flies from Moscow directly to Venice's Marco Polo Airport, which is 12 kilometers over the bridge connecting Venice to the Italian mainland or 10 kilometers by sea.
The flights take just over 3 hours, and leave on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
There are regular connections on public transport both by land and sea.
Alternatively, it is possible to fly from St. Petersburg to Munich and then take a direct train to Venice's Santa Lucia railroad station. The train leaves at regular intervals around the clock.
Flights to Munich take 2:40 and depart every day.
This route is more expensive, but it does have the bonus for art lovers of visiting Munich's famous Pinakotheks modern-art museums - and then enjoying spectacular views of the Alps from the train.
WHERE TO STAY.
As a prime tourist destination, Venice abounds in hotels and other accomodation options. It is recommended to book as far ahead as possible, as accomodation is usually full to capacity year round.
The website www.veniceinfo.it has a hotel reservation system. It offers useful information - locations, prices, etc. - on hotels, guest houses, and other places to stay.
WHERE TO EAT.
Venice has always suffered from a bad reputation for having expensive restaurants offering poor food and substandard service.
However, this is far from the case. There are numerous hotels, restaurants, cafes and bars that serve good food - mainly regional dishes - at reasonable prices.
The golden rule is "When in Venice, do as the Venetians do." In other words, avoid tourist-oriented restaurants.
Obviously, the closer the dining place is to tourist attractions, the more expensive it is likely to be - the panoramic views afforded by the restaurant's location will be reflected in the bill.
By law, each establishment must have a statutory closing day and must publish its menu and price list outside its premises.
TITLE: the bad, bad lands of mexico
AUTHOR: By Ann Hornaday
PUBLISHER: The Washington Post
TEXT: "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" is all that its title implies and more: a homage to the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone with a Latin twist and a little John Woo thrown in for good measure.
But it's also very much a Robert Rodriguez film, or "flick," as he insouciantly calls this picture. "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" is the third and final installment of a trilogy of contemporary westerns that started in 1993 with the release of Rodriguez's first feature, the micro-budgeted "El Mariachi." Since then, the 35-year-old Texan has proven to be one of Hollywood's most creative and successful action directors, consistently hewing to the scrappy, do-it-yourself ethic that gave "El Mariachi" much of its zing and charm. "Desperado" (1995), which was something between a remake and a sequel, boasted an exponentially bigger budget and the burgeoning star Antonio Banderas, but Rodriguez clearly hadn't abandoned the principles of economy, ingenuity and humor that animated his first film; "Desperado" went on to become a cult hit on video.
Eight years later, fans are understandably panting for the climactic installment of the "Mariachi" cycle; happily for them, "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" proves to be a whiz-bang kick in the pants. Again, Rodriguez effortlessly deploys the rituals and fetishes of the western and action genres - the blood and bullets, the fire and leather and cleavage - but always with a sly, self-referential wit. The violence is so stylized that it's virtually abstract; the double-fisted showdowns and near-constant gunplay are so cartoonish that they outpace the flaccid comic-book adaptations that came out earlier this summer.
Indeed, there is always something childlike - detractors might say arrested - about Rodriguez's movies, whether in the warm, playful action of the "Spy Kids" franchise or the far more graphic "Mariachi" pictures ("Spy Kids" fans, take note: Leave the youngsters at home for this one). Thus, in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico," a tough guy brings $10,000 to a seedy bar in a child's lunchbox; the film's chief supporting character, a corrupt CIA agent, wears corny T-shirts with slogans like "I'm With Stupid" and "CIA" emblazoned on the front. Welcome to Robert Rodriguez's world: slick, anarchic, larger-than-life and, always, exuberantly irreverent.
"Once Upon a Time in Mexico" finds El Mariachi (Banderas) on yet another quest for revenge. In "Desperado" he was looking for the drug dealer who killed his girlfriend in "El Mariachi," and here, he's hunting down Barillo (Willem Dafoe), who apparently has killed Mariachi's wife (played in flashbacks by Salma Hayek) and daughter. But here, "El," as he is called, is really only a supporting player in a labyrinthine story involving Barillo's plot to assassinate the Mexican president and a counter-plot hatched by CIA Agent Sands, played by Johnny Depp with the cheeky flair he brought to his star turn in "Pirates of the Caribbean."
Admirers of the pure action of "Desperado" will be sated by the set pieces that punctuate "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" with clockwork regularity: As the smolderingly quiet loner, Banderas executes with aplomb a near-silent gunfight in an ornate Mexican church, and a flashback scene with Hayek features a series of stunts that begins with them chained together and swinging out of harm's way like a human Slinky, and ends with - what else? - the couple narrowly escaping an encroaching fireball. As always, El Mariachi has some explosive tricks hidden in his guitar case; here, the instruments throw flames and propel themselves like motorized land mines.
But the real star of "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" isn't Banderas, or even the guns, but Depp, who is quickly proving to be the most larcenous man in show business by stealing every movie he's in. As the morally slippery Sands, Depp is at once loathsome and compulsively likable; Sands might ruthlessly dispatch an innocent man for cooking too well, but he's also the kind of guy who rigs a bullfight in favor of the bull. Although he ostensibly hires El to foil the assassination plot, it's never clear which dog he has in what fight. By the time he is horribly blinded by a gruesome plastic surgery operation you can't help but cheer him as he makes one last, crippled stand for ... something.
"Once Upon a Time in Mexico" is a busy movie (Ruben Blades, Mickey Rourke, Eva Mendes and Rodriguez rep players Cheech Marin and Danny Trejo all have significant supporting roles), maybe too busy - there's so much movement and talk and story that it's easy to lose track of what has become of the simple guitar player from a tiny Mexican border town. Still, with its fleet humor and swift, nimble action, it brings a terrifically entertaining cycle of movies to a fitting end, with the guitar-and-gun-slinging hero proving once and for all that revenge may not always be sweet, but it can be very, very cool.
"Once Upon a Time in Mexico" is showing at Crystal Palace, Kolizei, Leningrad, Mirage Cinema and Neo. The film gets its Russian premiere Friday night at Jam Hall, 42 Kamenoostrovsky Prospect. Tel.: 346-4014.
TITLE: gogol comes out of the overcoat
AUTHOR: By Stephen Metcalf
PUBLISHER: New York Times Service
TEXT: Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London, raised in America and is of Indian descent. With a background similar in outline to that of Zadie Smith, she nonetheless arrived at an entirely different imaginative enterprise. She renounced the writerly flourish, never once played the exotic and scaled her characters to actual human existence. Self-effacing as it was, "Interpreter of Maladies" became a word-of-mouth phenomenon and eventually won a Pulitzer Prize. It was that rare success: remarkable for being so thoroughly deserved.
Just where did that melancholy poise come from? "Read all the Russians," Ashoke Ganguli's grandfather tells him in Lahiri's new novel, "The Namesake," "and then reread them. They will never fail you." On his way to visit his grandfather in Jamshedpur, Ashoke is dutifully rereading his favorite story, Nikolai Gogol's "Overcoat," when his train derails. Lying amid the wreckage, almost passed over for dead and clutching the surviving pages of his book, Ashoke manages to wave meekly. As a result, he is rescued. And as a result, he lives, he marries, he moves to America and has a son. Faced with hospital red tape Ashoke is forced to name his child before he has received instructions from his grandmother, who must be consulted on this vital decision. At a loss for words, Ashoke mutters "Gogol."
How like Lahiri to have a name passed down along such a peculiar and delicate chain of accident. Significant as it is for the reader, "Gogol" only fills the young American Ganguli with feelings of dissonance and shame. When a high school English teacher assigns "The Overcoat" as homework, our Gogol approaches the class with a "growing dread and a feeling of slight nausea." Upon discovering that his namesake was a severe depressive - a "queer and sickly creature," as Turgenev once described him - who slowly starved himself to death, Gogol feels freshly betrayed by his parents. If you suspect that all this involves more than its share of juvenile caprice, so does his father. As Lahiri tells us, Gogol's father "had a point; the only person who didn't take Gogol seriously, the only person who tormented him, the only person chronically aware of and afflicted by the embarrassment of his name, the only person who constantly questioned it and wished it were otherwise, was Gogol."
As Gogol moves into young adulthood, he becomes that classic case: the charmingly spazzy, high-achieving mild depressive who doesn't yet comprehend how alluring he is to women. It is women who take him by the lapels, shake him awake to life's charms and inject the chronology of his life with some zest. We get Moushumi, who announces, at 13, "I detest American television," before returning to her "well-thumbed paperback copy of 'Pride and Prejudice'"; Kim, who, reeking of nicotine and college, first inspires Gogol to re-dub himself Nikhil; and the elegant and sly Maxine Ratliff, whose parents slowly take over Gogol's life. Here Lahiri's narrative, as it portrays the Ratliffs' stupefying commitment to the good life, takes on a dash of Edith Wharton. How they love their Antonioni double features at the Film Forum and, in New Hampshire, their Adirondack chairs and farmstand corn. They induce in the reader, and in Gogol himself, a pleasant trance, through which aversion heroically fights its way to the surface.
Its incorrigible mildness and its ungilded lilies aside, Lahiri's novel is unfailingly lovely in its treatment of Gogol's relationship with his father. This is the classic American parent-child bond and in Lahiri's rendering, it touches on quiet perfection. As a young boy at the beach, Gogol wanders off with Ashoke one day in search of a lighthouse. (The echo back to Virginia Woolf is surely intentional.) They walk and walk, "past rusted boat frames, fish spines as thick as pipes attached to yellow skulls, a dead gull whose feathery white breast was freshly stained with blood." Finally they reach the lighthouse, only to discover that they have forgotten their camera. "Will you remember this day, Gogol?" his father asks. "How long do I have to remember it?" Gogol asks in return. "Try to remember it always," his father replies, leading him back across the breakwater. "Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go."
It's as if Lahiri were saying: in America, where so little is suitably customary or ceremonious, there might at least be this. Memory, unaided by even a photograph, lays a claim on us that is so much more exacting for being so perishable. This is my novel, such as it is, Lahiri is also saying: in a world of eroding kinship, the story of one modest, haphazard stay against oblivion, summed up best, of course, by the name Gogol.
"The Namesake. By Jhumpa Lahiri. 291 pp. Houghton Mifflin Company. $24.
Stephen Metcalf is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn.
TITLE: the word's worth
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Paronimy: paronyms, words allied by derivation from the same root.
Because Russian is largely built on one proto-language that has been fine-tuned by all sorts of prefixes and suffixes over the millennia, there is a plethora of paronymous words that native speakers often confuse. And if they confuse native speakers, they're guaranteed to wreak havoc with us hapless non-native speakers.
A classic example is abonement and abonent. Abonement is a season ticket, a subscription; abonent is the subscriber. Ya kupil abonement na tsikl lektsii v muzeye (I bought a season ticket to a series of lectures at the museum.) Ya khochu ostavit soobshchenie dlya abonenta 53999 (I want to leave a message for subscriber 53999).
Zhelanny/zhelatelny can also throw you. Zhelanny is something you are aiming for, zhelatelny is what you would like to see happen, the preferred outcome. Sometimes these are synonyms - what you are aiming for is what you prefer to get - but sometimes they are not. However, you can see the subtle distinction in the following sentence (which is a bit of a linguistic stretch, for illustration purposes): Dima - zhelatelny kandidate, no Sasha - nash zhelanny kandidat. (Dima is a preferred candidate, but Sasha is the candidate we want).
Confused? Then take two kinds of "friendly": druzhny and druzhestvenny. Both express the idea of "being disposed in a friendly way" but druzhny means "internally friendly," made up of friends, while druzhestvenny means "externally friendly," disposed in a friendly way to others. So druzhnaya komanda is a team made up of friends, while druzhestvennaya komanda is a team that is friendly to other teams.
You can see the difference in the news headline that was the inspiration for this migraine-inducing column: Yabloko i SPS uzhe ne druzhnyye partii, no mozhet byt, oni stanut druzhestvennymi? This is a real nightmare for translators. What it means is: Once upon a time the members of the Yabloko and SPS parties were all good friends, but now they aren't. Can the parties at least get along? But that doesn't help the poor translator in the news bureau, who has 10 minutes to come up with a headline. How about: Yabloko and SPS are no longer one big happy family, but maybe they can still be friends? Or: Yabloko and SPS are no longer chummy, but maybe they'll at least stay congenial? You lose the word play, but at least you get the meaning.
Thank heavens nadet/odet (to dress) are paronymous words with clear-cut rules of usage - if complicated. Nadet chto (what) na kogo (on whom) or na chto (on what); odet kogo (whom) vo chto (in what) or chem (as what). The rule of thumb is that nadet is followed by an inanimate object (WHAT you are putting on), and odet is followed by an animate object (WHOM you are putting it on). Nadet is the verb to use when you are talking about yourself. Ya nadela palto (I put on my coat.) Ya nadel braslet na yeyo ruchku (I put the bracelet on her wrist). Ya odela rebyonka v shkolnuyu formu (I dressed the child in his school uniform.) Ya odela rebyonka zaichikom (I dressed the child as a rabbit).
So how about a more interesting example: What verb do you use for a condom? The confusion comes from not knowing if a body part is considered to be animate or inanimate in Russian. But look at the example above: Ya nadel braslet na yeyo ruchku. In Russian, body parts are inanimate (sorry, guys). Nadet is the way to go: You use it for putting something on yourself, or for putting something on something else.
Michele A. Berdy is a Moscow-based translator and interpreter.
TITLE: FBI Checks Officials For Source of Leak
AUTHOR: By Curt Anderson
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: WASHINGTON - The FBI's first task in the investigation of a leak that disclosed the name of a CIA officer is to narrow the list of government officials who may have known her identity, a number that could be in the hundreds.
The FBI spent Wednesday assembling a team of experienced agents to handle the investigation, which will probably include interviews with senior members of President George W. Bush's staff.
Investigators want to find out who leaked the name of a CIA officer married to former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who had accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. The officer's name, Valerie Plame, first appeared in a July 14 story by syndicated columnist Robert Novak, and she was identified later by Newsday as an undercover officer.
The White House reported no contact from investigators Wednesday, even as staffers combed through phone logs, e-mails and other documents to make sure potential evidence was preserved.
In Congress, Democrats and Republicans sparred over whether a special counsel should be appointed to investigate. Democrats contend an agency headed by Bush appointees cannot adequately investigate the administration, a claim Republicans have labeled politically motivated.
Overseeing the investigation is John Dion, a 30-year career prosecutor who has headed the counterespionage section at the Justice Department since 2002. FBI agents from the counterintelligence and inspections division and from the Washington field office will do the legwork.
The FBI, which can use grand jury subpoenas to compel disclosure of any evidence, has regularly used polygraph tests in investigations involving classified information. Asked if White House staff members would submit to lie detector tests if requested, spokesman Scott McClellan called the question "hypothetical."
"We will cooperate fully with the investigation and make sure that we preserve the integrity of the investigation," he said.
The White House and the Republican National Committee turned up the heat Wednesday on Wilson. The GOP's communication office highlighted remarks in which Wilson backtracked from his original assertion that Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, was responsible for the leak.
McClellan said Wilson "has said a lot of things and then backed away from what he said. So I think part of your role is to do some further questioning there."
Novak, in a column published Wednesday, wrote that he discovered Plame's identity when talking with a senior administration official about why Wilson, who had been part of President Bill Clinton's National Security Council, had been chosen to investigate allegations that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger.
A second official confirmed that Wilson's wife was a CIA officer, Novak wrote, adding that the CIA itself never suggested to him that publication of her name would endanger anyone. Novak also wrote that the officer's identity was widely known in Washington.
Former Attorney General Janet Reno, in June 2000 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the pool of potential leakers in any administration is extremely big.
"Almost inevitably, we find that the universe of individuals with authorized access to the disclosed information is so large as to render impracticable further efforts to identify the leaker," Reno said.
"Almost all leak investigations are closed without having identified a suspect," she added.
Justice Department guidelines allow for journalists to be subpoenaed only on rare occasions, after all reasonable attempts are made to obtain the information from other sources.
TITLE: N-Bomb 'Deterrent'
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Thursday it has completed reprocessing its 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods and is using plutonium extracted from them to make atomic bombs.
"[North Korea] successfully finished the reprocessing of some 8,000 spent fuel rods," a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA.
Accusing the United States of taking a "hostile policy" toward North Korea, the statement said that North Korea "made a switchover in the use of plutonium churned out by reprocessing."
The claim came as some U.S. intelligence analysts are becoming increasingly concerned that the communist regime may have three, four or even six nuclear weapons instead of the one or two the CIA had estimated.
New atomic bombs would give Pyongyang more authority at the negotiating table, and may allow it to part with one, either in a test or by selling it,
TITLE: Bali Blast Organizer Sentenced to Death
AUTHOR: By Justin Hal
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BALI, Indonesia - A top organizer of last year's deadly nightclub attacks on Indonesia's Bali island was sentenced Thursday to death by firing squad.
Ali Ghufron, alias Mukhlas, was "proven guilty of planning a terrorist action ... and we the judges sentence him to death," Judge Cokorda Rai Suamba said.
Ghufron is the third defendant in the case to be sentenced to death for the Oct. 12 attack that killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. Sixteen others have received prison terms ranging from seven years to life.
Ghufron reacted calmly and told the judges he would appeal. "The verdict is not in line with Islamic teachings," he said before the judges closed the hearing. During the trial, Ghufron admitted to having been the operations chief of Jemaah Islamiyah - the al-Qaida-linked extremist group believed responsible for the Bali bombings.
He has also admitted to traveling to Afghanistan in the 1980s and fighting alongside Osama bin Laden.
Ghufron is last of four leading suspects to be tried in connection with the near-simultaneous bombings of two nightclubs and the U.S. consulate that shattered the peace in one of the world's premier tourist islands.
Two of the militants, including Ghufron's brother Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, have already been sentenced to death and a third to life behind bars. Fifteen others have received prison terms ranging from seven years to 16 years.
Ghufron was charged with overseeing planning meetings for the attack. During the trial Ghufron showed no remorse for the attacks and, like other Bali suspects, used court appearances to attack the United States.
He has called U.S. President George Bush a terrorist and said the Bali bombings - the bloodiest terrorist atrocity since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States - were carried out to avenge the suffering of Muslims at the hands of America and Israel.
The Bali attack was reportedly part of a Jemaah Islamiyah campaign to destabilize Indonesia and pave the way for an Islamic state across Southeast Asia.
The network's alleged commander, Riduan Isamuddin Hambali, was captured last month in Thailand and is now in U.S. custody. Jemaah Islamiyah also is accused of directing the Aug. 5 car bombing of a U.S.-owned hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people. At least a dozen suspects have been arrested, but none has been formally charged.
TITLE: Poland's Border Crossings Quiet as Visas Introduced
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SLAWATYCZE, Poland - Poland's eastern border stations were unusually quiet Wednesday, the first day people in neighboring Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were required to have entry visas under new rules introduced before Poland joins the European Union next year.
The new visa regime brings stricter controls on what will become the EU's eastern border with the addition of Poland and nine other countries next May.
But economists say it will hurt struggling border-zone economies by making it more difficult for small traders to peddle wares across the frontier.
Until Tuesday, Russians, Belarussians and Ukrainians could travel to Poland with a tourist voucher they could pick up at the border, an invitation or proof they had at least $125 necessary to support themselves.
Now they have to obtain a visa from a Polish consulate at a cost of $11.60 for single entry and $58 for multiple entry.
Normally, cars wait six hours to enter Poland from Belarus at Slawatycze - mostly containing small-scale traders.
They buy appliances, building materials, food and clothing in Poland to sell at a small profit at home. For many, it is their only source of income.
On Wednesday, only 96 people holding visas turned up during the first 12 hours after the new requirements took effect.
Jaroslaw Zukowicz, a spokesman for Poland's Border Guards, said that despite the decrease in cars, truck traffic remained normal.
But where a long line of cars waited only a day before, only one car, an old Audi sedan, was at passport control at midday.
"The long lines will return in two weeks or a month after people get visas. No problem," said the driver, who gave his name only as Viktor, a 47-year-old teacher from Drohichin, Belarus.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Chinese Free To Wed
BEIJING (AP) - Marriage in China used to be a matter for a man, a woman - and the couple's employers. No longer.
On Wednesday, China eliminated a much-resented requirement for couples to obtain their bosses' approval before tying the knot, prompting thousands of couples to wed in what, for some, was also a celebration of the retreat of outside interference in their private lives.
The new marriage rules are among social reforms that increasingly are freeing private lives from unpopular government controls. Also beginning Wednesday, couples no longer require to get health checks to marry, and those wishing to divorce can do so without attending lengthy government mediation sessions.
Shots Test UN Control
MONROVIA, Liberia (Reuters) - A gunfight broke out between rebels and loyalist forces in Liberia's capital on Wednesday, leaving three civilians dead just hours after the United Nations took command of West African peacekeepers.
The worst violence in Monrovia since former president Charles Taylor left in August, potentially opening the way for an end to a long civil war, marred the debut of a force that is set to become the world's biggest U.N. peacekeeping mission.
Liberians blamed the peacekeepers for letting rebel leader Sekou Conneh bring armed bodyguards into the city on his first visit since a peace deal meant to end nearly 14 years of strife.
Al-Qaida Fears in Gulf
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. officials believe they have identified a young former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida's new chief of terror operations in the Persian Gulf.
Abu Hazim al-Sha'ir, a 29-year-old Yemeni now believed to be living in Saudi Arabia, is one of a new crop of al-Qaida operatives who are trying to fill the roles of senior bin Laden lieutenants who have been captured or killed since Sept. 11, according to U.S. officials.
"Capable replacements appear to be emerging, many of whom have demonstrated their ability to see previously planned operations through to fruition," according to one U.S. intelligence report.
EU Limits on Tobacco
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has halted the branding of cigarettes as "light" or "mild" but smokers and tobacco firms have shrugged off the latest step in the EU's campaign against smoking.
Cigarettes may no longer be produced under popular brand names such as Altria's Marlboro Lights and Japan Tobacco's Mild Seven, which the EU says mislead consumers about the dangers of smoking.
However, smokers will not see an immediate change. Tobacco firms have been phasing in new products over recent months, and retailers can still sell old stocks which breach the new rules.
Israel to Extend Wall
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel decided Wednesday to extend a partly built security barrier around much of the West Bank - including several sections aimed at shielding Jewish settlements, condemned by Palestinians as a major land grab.
To appease the United States - which opposes extending the barrier deep into the West Bank - the new sections will for now be disconnected from each other and from existing barrier sections built closer to Israel's pre-1967 border with the West Bank. The final route will be decided in the coming months.
TITLE: Hernandez Bunt Gives A's Win in Game 1
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: OAKLAND, California - It was the last thing anyone at the Coliseum expected: a bases-loaded, two-out bunt by slow-footed catcher Ramon Hernandez. And it was just crazy enough to give the Oakland Athletics a marathon victory.
Hernandez pulled off the surprise with a perfect bunt in the 12th inning, scoring Eric Chavez with the winning run to lift the A's over the Boston Red Sox 5-4 in their playoff opener Wednesday night.
At 4 hours, 37 minutes, the game was the longest in Oakland's postseason history, and it ended in the most improbable way: with the hard-hitting A's executing a small-ball play to eke out a run.
"It was the biggest hit in my career," said Hernandez, Oakland's All-Star catcher. "When you're playing a team like the Red Sox that's got good pitching and good hitting, you've got to try whatever you can to win."
By the time Chavez crossed the plate shortly after 11:45 p.m. local time, the teams were less than 14 hours away from the start of Game 2 on Thursday.
After Boston reliever Byung-Hyun Kim's troubles set up a tying single by Erubiel Durazo with two outs in the ninth, Chavez did his part.
Chavez helped prevent Boston from taking the lead in the top of the 12th, making a tremendous play at third base. On the basepaths moments later, he alertly stole third, and Derek Lowe later intentionally walked Terrence Long to load the bases.
"Freaky, just freaky," Chavez said. "It was probably the best game I've ever been involved in."
Hernandez and Chavez both acted on their own, according to manager Ken Macha.
"What an ending. Who would have thought that? A's win with a bunt," Macha said. "Shame on anybody who missed it."
Todd Walker homered twice and had four hits, putting Boston ace Pedro Martinez in position to pull off a win in the AL's toughest road ballpark. Then came the latest postseason misadventure for Kim, whose struggles nearly cost Arizona its World Series title two years ago.
In the ninth, Kim walked a batter and hit another before Durazo drove home pinch-runner Eric Byrnes with a tying two-out single off Alan Embree.
Martinez and Walker were the stars of the first seven innings. Martinez remained unbeaten in his playoff career by narrowly outpitching Tim Hudson, but he didn't get the win.
Martinez yielded six hits and four walks in seven innings, throwing a season-high 130 pitches. But Boston's imposing ace was never far from trouble: He allowed three runs in the third, threw out a runner at home in the fifth and barely escaped a bases-loaded jam in the seventh.
Atlanta 5, Chicago 3. Mark DeRosa, filling in for injured second baseman Marcus Giles, hit a two-out, two-run double in the eighth to lead the Braves past the Chicago Cubs 5-3 Wednesday night.
Atlanta evened the best-of-five NL division series at one game apiece. Game 3 is Friday night at Chicago's Wrigley Field, with Greg Maddux starting for the Braves against Mark Prior.
The Braves' vaunted lineup was overshadowed by a guy who doesn't usually start. DeRosa took over at second base for Giles, who had a deep bruise on his left leg after tumbling over first base in Game 1.
The Cubs walked Rafael Furcal intentionally to get to DeRosa, who made them pay by lining a 1-2 pitch from Dave Veres to the wall in left-center.
Standing on second, the former Penn quarterback pounded his hands together.
"I hope the Cubs don't take offense. I meant nothing by it," DeRosa said. "I've got the football mentality still. We needed this game going to Chicago."
As an added bonus, Giles appeared as a pinch-hitter in the sixth and came through with a run-scoring single that put the Braves ahead 3-2.
Anxious to protect the lead, Braves manager Bobby Cox called on John Smoltz in the eighth - even though he missed nearly a month at the end of the season with a sore elbow.
"You play this game with somewhat of a desperate mentality," Smoltz said. "We had to have this win."
Florida 9, San Francisco 5. Juan Encarnacion homered and Pierre wound up with a bases-loaded double on a misplay by Jose Cruz Jr. in a decisive three-run sixth as Florida rallied to beat sloppy San Francisco 9-5 Wednesday, evening the series at one game each.
Juan Pierre led a 15-hit effort, a day after Florida was held to just three. The Marlins overcame a three-run deficit in the fifth.
The Marlins got the split they so desperately needed at Pacific Bell Park, and did it by getting away from the small ball that sent them on this improbable playoff journey.
After an energized Barry Bonds helped the Giants take an early lead, Sidney Ponson couldn't hold it. Pierre and the Marlins sent the best-of-five series back to Florida at one apiece.
Carl Pavano, the winning pitcher when Florida clinched the wild card, earned another important victory by getting two outs.
Most of all, Florida kept Bonds from doing major damage. Rookie Dontrelle Willis, the Marlins' probable Game 4 starter, did his part by relieving in the eighth and retiring Bonds on a foul out.
TITLE: SPORTS WATCH
TEXT: Limbaugh Resigns
NEW YORK (AP) - Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh resigned from ESPN on Wednesday night, three days after sparking outrage by saying Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb is overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed.
Earlier Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidates Wesley Clark, Howard Dean and Rev. Al Sharpton called for the cable sports network to fire Limbaugh.
"My comments this past Sunday were directed at the media and were not racially motivated," Limbaugh said in a statement Wednesday night. "I offered an opinion. This opinion has caused discomfort to the crew, which I regret.
"I love 'NFL Sunday Countdown' and do not want to be a distraction to the great work done by all who work on it.
"Therefore, I have decided to resign. I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of the show and wish all the best to those who make it happen."
George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports, accepted the resignation.
"We regret the circumstances surrounding this," he said in a statement. "We believe that he took the appropriate action to resolve this matter expeditiously."
Thrashers Win
ATLANTA (AP) - With the numbers of injured teammates Dany Heatley and Dan Snyder taped to the back of their helmets, the Atlanta Thrashers beat the Florida Panthers 3-2 in a preseason game Wednesday night.
Snyder was still unconscious and in critical condition at Atlanta's Grady Hospital, while Heatley was in the same hospital with a broken jaw and other less serious injuries received in a one-car accident Monday night. Snyder's skull was fractured.
After they thought about canceling the preseason game, the Thrashers instead carried on with their schedule. Thrashers management made two announcements thanking fans for gifts and cards sent to the team for the players.
Before the game, the Snyder family released a written statement responding to the support received from the public.
"We are humbled and overwhelmed by the support and prayers that we've received from all over," the statement said. "Dany Heatley and our son, Dan, need strong support and positive energy in order to be able to overcome the difficult challenges that lie ahead.